Easter Season - Year B -- 2021
Indexed by Date. Sermons for Easter Year B
Acts 10: 34-43
Psalm 118
Mark 16: 1-8
I recall the Holy Saturday I received a phone call from the local Presbyterian minister. The message on my answering machine went something like this, “Beth, I saw him, I really did. I saw him, right here in Tatamagouche. I saw him at Fulton’s Pharmacy! (Pause) Elvis is alive”.
Well, with that, the whole congregation cracked up. Many knew the minister in question and, I suspect, some thought a Presbyterian minister, of all people, would be much more serious during holy week. He would claim to have seen Jesus, not Elvis! I wasn’t really surprised! I have not spoken with my former neighbour in ministry in years but I reached out to him on Facebook last week. He replied, texting, that “no,” he has not seen Elvis in Banff, where he now lives! He said nothing about Jesus!
At the beginning of the book, “Who Has Seen the Wind”, author W.O Mitchell, tells a humorous tale of 4 year old Brian O’Connal going to the local church and knocking on the door, expecting that God would answer, just like any home-owner. He was patient, as a delay meant only that “God might be in the bathroom”. Instead of God, he encounters a somewhat bewildered minister’s wife on the steps of the manse next door. His comments and questions seem to make her very uncomfortable. I think that she does not know what to do with the child but does not want to be mean or rude. He is told to come back the next day, after breakfast, when her husband, the minister, will be available.
When the boy does see the minister the next day, it seems that he is quite bewildered; adults know better than to ask such questions! Children are a different story. The encounter is an amusing take on how a child might understand the traditional theology of that era! And yes, I can chuckle, because the child is not sitting in my office!!!!
Apparently, Mitchell titled his book after a poem by the same name from the work of poet Christina Rossetti, :
“Who has seen the wind? Neither I nor you: But when the leaves hang trembling, The wind is passing through. Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I: But when the trees bow down their heads, The wind is passing by.”
In the preface to the book, Mitchell notes that wind is seen as a symbol of the presence of God. Southern Saskatchewan in the early 1930s was certainly well acquainted with wind! It lifted crops out of the ground and whole families out of their communities, scattering them across the province and the rest of North America.
If you were here last Sunday you heard Matthew’s account of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem and listened as the same people who had shouted Hosanna turned their backs on Jesus and shouted “crucify him!”
On Friday, we lived it again; this time from John’s gospel. As Holy Week ends we walk away from the newly sealed tomb, our hopes in tatters. As Holy Week ends we think it is truly finished. With Jesus gone, who knows when God would send someone else to pick up where he left off? It might be many generations!
The Gospel According to Mark was the first one to be written and it says so little about the Easter Event that generations of Christians have assumed that the original ending must have been lost; perhaps the back page of the original scroll just fell off with use!!! That actually could happen. At some point in the mists of time, some effort was made to restore the original ending but most scholars agree that the shorter one is the most original.
By Sunday morning the women, his friends, knew that he was “good and dead”. They had probably spent the Sabbath crying. We’ve all been there! As the morning dawned on Sunday, they gathered together the spices they had bought to finish the process used for preparing the dead for burial. It was the custom; the least they could do for a friend!
What a surprise they must have received, when they went to the tomb and discovered, “there he was, “GONE”. Oh, the heavy stone had been rolled away and a mysterious figure told them to find the disciples and tell them that Jesus would meet them in Galilee! But the text clearly says, they were so scared, they told no one.
I’ve always gotten a great kick out of that command when I read it in the Gospels. “Don’t tell anyone!” OBVIOUSLY they broke their silence at some point!
Yet, even with this terse ending, we are not left with just the empty tomb and a promise of a future encounter! Keep in mind that Mark was writing to a community of Christians several years after the events he recounts. The community to whom he wrote was alive and vibrant!
It would stand to reason that they did go to Galilee. They did tell others, after they recovered from their initial fear and shock. Obviously, “His is not here”, morphed into “he is risen”, as the chief proclamation of Easter.
Of course, this leads me to ask, may lead all of us to ask, “What is the real event of Easter?” Is it Jesus’ absence from the tomb or is it Jesus presence in their empty lives? The empty tomb did not prove anything but the change in the lives of the disciples as they encountered the power of God to bring life from death was transformative.
The 11 remaining disciples and the other followers had met in Jesus an expression of the holy never before experienced. At Easter they discovered that this could not be “killed”, that it was alive and out and about and among them and always would be. It brought them from doubt to faith and from fear to courage.
We live in a world of bad news. Just in the last few weeks we have heard of shootings in a shopping mall in Boulder, stabbings in North Vancouver, and many accidents during the recent blizzard both here in Saskatchewan and in Alberta. Covid numbers are out of control in Regina. When we talk “government response” and compare it with what the chief medical officer seems to be saying we realize we are the pawns in a war of medicine vs politics. It is a political quagmire. Our BC friends will not be in person at worship today while (except for Regina) we have no further restrictions. Some congregations have not yet returned to “in-person worship”. The possibility of changing regulations make it very frustrating and confusing for just about everybody that has to plan anything!
Our nerves are frayed; people are impatient and, of course, it’s all the government’s fault! It would all be much better if “we”, were running things.
Oh, we have issues other than COVID. Pipelines. Climate change. Cancer. Jobs. Seeding. Commodity prices.
Actually, we’re not all that different from the people Jesus knew - we too are looking, no craving, news of hope and new life and that everything will be OK. We see too much evidence of death and not enough of life. It would be really nice if we could have an honest to goodness encounter with the risen Christ, this year. Oh yes, he has to look like the Jesus that was on the wall of OUR Sunday school classroom! White, almost blonde and very western European. In actual fact, the likelihood that he looked anything like that is ZERO.
By contrast with the minister in Mitchell’s book, children’s program host, Fred Rogers, also a Presbyterian minister, was very comfortable with children and their questions. In times of crisis, he would tell us all “to look for the helpers and see what they were doing”. Maybe we can’t see the wind of the Spirit but we can see what the wind is doing. We can see health care workers going out of their way to treat the sick. We can see people embracing life in the midst of uncertainly. We can pause and lick our finger and test to see where the wind is coming from, and open our eyes and hearts to the breeze. Sometimes the only answer to the transformation we see, the breeze we feel, is the resurrected Christ.
It’s a good thing, I believe, that the ending of Mark’s gospel is so terse. His gospel is open ended. In fact, chapters are still being written. What if the stranger in the tomb had told the women, go to the disciples and tell them that Jesus is going ahead of you to Nipawin, and will meet you there! Jesus is going ahead of you to Codette and will meet you there! Jesus is going ahead of you, to your acreage, your quarter, and will meet you there! The truth of Easter is that we cannot go where he Presence of the Risen One is not already there - to meet us and to show us that our God is a God of abundant life.
Open your eyes that you may see glimpses of truth that God has for us. Look at what the winds of the Spirit are doing here and now in this part of God’s world, in 2021.
Call your friend and tell them, or better yet, show them, that you have met the Risen One, right here, right now, on this spring morning in our part of Saskatchewan.
Amen!
Acts 3: 12-19
Psalm 4
Luke 24: 36b - 48
Christ is Risen
Christ is Risen Indeed
This is the first proclamation of the group that would eventually become the Christian church. It is, I hope you noticed, a statement written in the present tense. Jesus’ resurrection is not a past event; it’s not something from history, but a present reality! The experience, the encounter with the Risen One, was pivotal in the life of that early faith community. It made all the difference in the world to them! As time went on this proclamation was the key Christian statement of faith.
When I was in theological school, the chair of the Education and Students Committee of Halifax Presbytery, in which the school was located, used to tell us, “You are so lucky that you are not from THIS Presbytery. During their ordination interview, any of our students may be asked to recite the Pre-Nicene Creeds from memory! It was supposed to be a joke as there ARE NO SUCH THING as “Pre-Nicene Creeds”. However I took up the challenge (leave it to me, eh) and said, “oh, you mean, “Jesus is Lord and Christ is Risen”. He had to admit that those statements qualified! ((This story got a big laugh from my last congregation because the minister in question had served the neighbouring Pastoral Charge for many years and was well known! )))
Before the church grew and became more organized and found that there was a need to write down what the church DID believe, these simple statements were the basis of their faith. The women who ran from the empty tomb, the disciples and their close friends who were the next witnesses passed on the proclamation, again and again, so that it has come to us, 20 centuries or so, later! Again it is not meant to be dusty history, but experienced as present reality.
I saw an article in the online edition of a newspaper. A pedestrian was hit by a car and subsequently died. The car and driver have not been found. Anyone with information is asked to contact the police.
What kind of information do they want? “My neighbour was washing a bloody fender the other week. He said that he’d hit a goose!” I once hit a pheasant, or more properly, a pheasant hit my car. I suppose hitting a goose could happen - especially outside of Codette, near those sloughs! Or, did you overhear the driver of the car talking at a bar when she’d obviously had “a few too many”. Or did you actually see it happen and could not tell anyone because you weren’t supposed to be in that part of town at that time!
There are many kinds of witnesses and many kinds of information sources for those trying to solve crimes. Wikipedia defines Crime Stoppers as “a community program that helps people to provide anonymous information about criminal activity.” The ads are enticing, “if your information leads to arrest and conviction, you could qualify for a cash reward.”
Back when I was in university, (which seems to have been somewhere between 100 years ago and just yesterday), some fiends and I were into “inspirational posters”. It was about the only way we could decorate our rooms! A friend had one which posed the question, “if being a Christian was a crime, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”
Hummmmm?
When we look at the stories of the earliest Easter experiences, they appear to be eye witness accounts. Like modern eye witness accounts, they are all over the map, they disagree on details, some minor, some pretty big? Some give a clearer picture than others. They were ALL written some time later and all we were written for particular communities - and so that people would come to believe in the power of God as shown in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
We all know that 99 year old Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and husband of Queen Elizabeth II has died, about 2 months short of his 100th birthday. Any news article or biography written about him now, after his death, would be different than those written earlier. And they will also be different than those written when one of their descendants ascend the throne! Each passing year changes how we view not only the present, but also the past.
When we look at the Gospels we also realize that these are Gospel, not unbiased news reports. Consider the differences between the newsletters sent out by our own MPs when they are in power and when they are, “on the wrong side of government”, as the expression goes!
These women and men, disciples, secret admirers, and hangers on, missed their friend, their leader, the one who had opened the scriptures to them in exciting and profound ways. Perhaps it was only after his death that they realized how close they felt to God while they were in his presence. It was only then that all the truths began to fall into place. They desperately wanted more time. They wanted more meals together. They wanted to just sit in his presence! For any of us who have lost loved ones, the longing to “have one more conversation” is almost universal; it’s so real we can “almost taste it”.
When Jesus died, his followers were devastated. That much is clear. When Jesus was executed as an enemy of the state, his followers were scared out of their minds! We know this as well. In the dark, outside the trial, one woman had recognized Peter; maybe others would. Would she tell someone if “Jerusalem Crimestoppers” offered a cash reward for the whereabouts of the “Jesus People.” How long would it be before the authorities would come knocking, looking for the rest of them. They would crucify the lot of them, if that would return the country to a semblance of peace! Their fears were not unfounded: Church tradition and history tells us that it happened - within a few years!
So, at first, they scattered.
Then they met! Usually, behind locked doors! They met because some women of their group brought them news - news not only of an empty tomb but of “resurrection”. The women had told them that this Jesus they had come to know and love had been raised from death. Jesus was alive!
It was hard to believe; impossible, in fact and the Risen One proved to be a slippery and elusive fellow; not everyone was at every “appearance”. In some he could be touched and could eat and in others the people were told not to touch him. He could pop into and out of locked rooms - like ghosts are supposed to be able to do - but he made it clear that he was not a ghost. It was all so confusing.
But what became certain was that death had not defeated him. What was certain was this the love of God they had experienced in his presence was still with them, in the most mysterious way - yet in the most certain way.
It was also certain that this was not meant to be a private revelation, it was not to be kept a secret - it was to be and did become both their central proclamation and the very foundation of their lives.
You might say, “But that was then, and this is now” The proclamation of the church is that the resurrection can be a reality today - it is a faith which has sustained the countless generations who have lived since that first Easter.
At Easter we may pray, in song:
1 Jesus stand among us, in your risen power let this time of worship be a hallowed hour. 2 Breathe the Holy Spirit into every heart; bid the fears and sorrows from each soul depart. 3 Lead our hearts to wisdom till our doubting cease, and to all assembled speak your word of peace.
So here we may be - gathered behind the locked doors of “COVID 19-20-21" - some have had their vaccinations, some have seen signs of hope, some had known people who died because of it and we are all a little bit afraid. But then, as we gather, and share our faith we realize we are unquestionably in the presence of the One whom we have met in the Gospel story and we are not alone.
Or our doors are locked - because of a diagnosis of cancer - and doctors have told us that there is nothing more to be done, other than comfort care - so we visit with the family we can, phone or Zoom or Facetime the family we cannot, sit and hold hands, share memories and favourite cookies, shed tears and smile and realize that somehow the Risen One is there with us - in our joy and in our sorrow.
Or we are sitting in our house with our pile of unpaid bills because of job loss or business closure and we work through our anger at the world about why this happened to us - “it is so unfair” and we receive an unexpected letter or email, a drop off at the door and we know that others care and have reached out to us with the love of Christ. His presence becomes so real we can almost touch it!
As I prepared the Easter services I was almost in tears because I knew that COVID best practices would prevent us from singing in community. I knew that those who had stayed home and were watching online, did not need to keep from singing. I kind of envied them but now showing up on Easter morning is not an option for the preacher, is it! Even though I cannot carry a tune, it is one of the things I miss most about COVID-time worship. But perhaps our life and our faith will have be our song for now.
40 years ago this coming December a group of us University students went to the local Nursing Home to sing Christmas Carols. An assortment of elderly residents in wheelchairs were lined up to hear us, but I saw one woman, on the arm of a staff member, walking down the hall to join us in song. She looked like she would have weighed about 90 pounds and was about 110 but her smile was as big as the room. Her actual words made no sense but this former Professor of Music was singing, “Joy to the World” in her soul; perhaps the only place that really counts.
At Easter, I think of this song:
My life flows on in endless song; Above earth's lamentation, I hear the sweet, though far-off hymn That hails a new creation Through all the tumult and the strife, I hear that music ringing It finds an echo in my soul How can I keep from singing?
Sometimes we sing songs of faith with great gusto because it is our faith; sometimes we sing because we are searching for that faith, that certainly, that experience and we so much want it to be true.
Then, as we sing, as we share with others, as we gather in community we realize that this IS our faith and that the risen Christ has answered our prayer and is among us. And we become part of that great cloud of witnesses who have lived and told the story from inside locked rooms and from mountaintops and prison cells and hospital rooms and all sorts of other places that the living God, as revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, has been present with and has transformed us. This proclamation is as true for us as it was when Mary first said, “ I have seen the Lord.”
May this be our experience this Easter-time and our life-long proclamation!
Christ is Risen.
Christ is Risen Indeed!
Amen.
Acts 4: 5-12
Psalm 23
John 10: 11-18
I think I may have told you this story before, I am not sure. It was Christmas Eve and when I arrived at the church there was a wooden crate at the front of the sanctuary which held a young lamb. There was also a manger, suitable for a real, human baby. I checked a few other things. All was set, I could relax! Soon, the church was filled to capacity, including the balcony! At the appropriate time in the service, in came Albert, the donkey, carrying Mary and her baby. Then the young shepherds came in, splendidly arrayed with tattered bathrobes, some older than they were, and carrying the crooks that had been used in that church for who knows how many years! The children all looked so “grown up”. It was all you would have expected of a live nativity in rural New Brunswick! It was perfect.
But, perfection was short-lived! One of those shepherds carried a second lamb. A LIVE lamb! Soon, all that could be heard was the one lamb calling to the other, and as the bleating became louder and louder the baby started fussing and there was little the parents could do! It was noisy; REALLY NOISY. The congregation started to laugh! I don’t think anyone heard anything else for the rest of the service!
NOTE TO SELF - one lamb is fine; two are one too many.
Sheep are one of the biblical animals with which we are also familiar in Canada - while raising them is somewhat different. Sheep farmers I know keep their sheep off the roads by using barbed wire fences and they often live in loose housing in winter. Farmers do not spend much, if any, time sitting out in their fields “tending their sheep.” They had other work to do - in the barn, getting out the hay for the sheep or on the road, marketing the meat. Some farmers use donkeys to keep wolves, coyotes and dogs away from the herd. I think it’s unusual for a sheep to be “lost!”
I saw a you tube video the other day in which a shepherd spent a great deal of effort and energy pulling a sheep out of a narrow crevice only to have it run off and fall into the same crevice about 50 feet away. Some animals never learn, I guess, and some don’t pay attention to hazards. Seems that sheep are not very bright!
In several of today’s passages God’s care for people is compared to a shepherd’s care for the sheep! There is some effort made, in these verses, to distinguish between “good shepherds” and “hired-hands”. In terms of this passage the term “good shepherd” seems to be synonymous with “an owner”, who clearly has a larger stake in the sheep keeping venture than the “hired hands” who may well run at the first sign of danger or who won’t lift a finger to help because they “are on their coffee break”!!!!
Of course this is a metaphor for the spiritual life and the community of faith - in the new and developing Christian community. In this passage, Jesus styles himself as the good shepherd. There are thinly veiled allusions to the other religious leaders (such as the ones who had given Jesus such a hard time) and who were widely perceived as having more interest in their position and social privilege than they were in tending and caring for the common folks under their care.
I don’t think we need to dwell on this point, either! For too many generations, passages such as this were used to fuel antisemitism in the church and wider community. We need to realize that it is a brush that we can’t use to tar the entire Jewish community, then or now!
Of course, today’s passages are trying to draw a connection between the events of Holy Week and Jesus’ care for the sheep - both those “assigned” to him by history, culture and tradition (children of Israel) and the ones “not of his fold” (the Gentiles). Like a “good shepherd” he gave his life for the sheep; implying that the cross was the way in which he gave his life!
While the discussion of and decisions about the ministry to gentiles would take up a great deal of time and energy in the not too distant future, Jesus had been pushing boundaries of race and clan already with stories about the “good Samaritan” and his travels into gentile territories, to use just two examples. This new openness should have been an easier transition! Jesus teaching should not have surprised the disciples.
Looking at our own social situations and our own congregations, all too often we I think we limit our association to people just like us; in terms of economic or social status or class or other factors. Skin colour is all too often one of those factors!
I would be remiss if I did not refer to the events that have captivated the news in the last week, and it has nothing to do with news about COVID!
It was the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer accused of murdering a black man as he attempted to take him into custody. In an extremely excessive use of force this police officer seems to have had no regard at all for the man on whose neck he placed his knee and, it seems, his full weight. It is an incident of the kind of racism that is all too common in the United States and, sadly, even in Canada! I think I can say with all certainty that if George Floyd had been white he would still be alive and may not have even gotten charged!
People of all colours, but particularly black people are looking at this trial as a watershed moment. The question is asked with anger, tears and genuine feeling, “Will justice ever come to black people in America?” Will black people ever fully be part of the fabric of society? Will black people ever be able to benefit fully from the “American dream?” Will they ever truly be seen as people!
Lest we Canucks be complacent, we have similar issues in Canada and in some places in this country the overt racism is just as severe.
When I look at the gospel and read about Jesus concern for “sheep of other folds” I cannot help but think beyond the church itself, to our wider community and country, to our own black citizens, to our citizens of Asian heritage who have recently borne the brunt of racial violence (and this time it is because of COVID) and, of course, our First Nations people. We have our own very serious issues with people of “other folds”! We need to move from platitudes and good thoughts to actions and realize that love and justice is not just about ideas, it is a verb and it based in ACTION.
The first thing we need to realize is that we have conveniently forgotten that the biblical story is not about white people. Perhaps Pilate and the Roman soldiers were white, as we understand that, I don’t know for sure, but no one else was. Not Jesus and not the disciples!
Our common paintings and pictures have it all wrong! In actual fact his skin and hair would have been much darker and his facial features far from those common in Northern Europe. In short, he would not look like us at all but more like the people we see on the news reports about unrest in the occupied territories in the lands now claimed by the state of Israel.
As Canadians of European descent we have to come to a realization that the world does not revolve around us and we should not have the right to set the “standards” for as many things as we have been accustomed to doing in the recent past. There are people of other folds, of other ethnic groups, that as beloved of God as we are, they would have as much input into the equation as we do!
Perhaps when we look at the world in terms of “us and them” we may find it helpful to ask ourselves the serious question, “what if I am a ‘them’?” As they say, “that changes the water on the beans”. As white North Americans we find that a very uncomfortable idea to consider.
I love More Voices, our newest hymn book. Yet - I wonder how many of those hymns have we learned in their original language. I admit that it does take some effort but what barriers between the various folds of sheep might come down, if we did! How our horizons might expand, if we did!
In both Voices United and More Voices there is one hymn in the Yoruba language, a tongue common in Nigeria in West Africa. When it was first published, a number of musicians in our church spent a great deal of time promoting these hymns. There is a even CD set with authentic pronunciations, if you are interested! I have a set!
One of these musicians is Bruce Harding - whom I would describe as an early middle-aged, balding red-head. He looks NOTHING like the average person from Nigeria! Early one morning he called a cab to take him to the Vancouver Airport. He asked the driver where he was from and when he was told, “from Nigeria”, Harding inquired a little further and then asked, “do you know this song? ” and he started to sing “Come, O Holy Spirit, Come” or “Wa wa wa Emimimo”, in the original tongue! I gather the cab driver’s head spun around almost 180̊to get a better look at this very white man, sitting in his back seat, singing his words of faith - 12,000 kms from his homeland. They spent the rest of the drive singing hymns and sharing their faith through song.
Too often we are afraid to make the first effort at connection. We are afraid to push the boundaries and embrace even a little change. While we are told that “We’ve never done it that way before”, can be the motto of a stagnant and dying congregation, we are afraid of change. Perhaps we are afraid - that something new will unsettle us and shock us- but perhaps we need to be shocked! Perhaps we should be unsettled! Why, some church goers have a fit if they can’t sit in their customary pew!
We need to move from warn thoughts of openness and inclusion to actions of the same. We may say we love everyone but if the only people we ever go out of our way to care for are people just like us, then do we truly believe what we say we do.
Love and faith are verbs - let us go from vision and grand ideas to actions of love no matter where the sheep are from.
Amen.
Acts 8: 26-40
Psalm 22
John 15: 1-8
Years ago, I lived on the East Coast of New Brunswick. Fredericton, the capital city of the province, was 2 hours to the west. Most people in that area would go to Fredericton via the Salmon River Road rather than head toward Moncton to take, “the highway”. The Salmon River Rd was paved, but that was about all it had going for it! I would call it “a wilderness road” as there were few houses along the most of it. Somewhere in the middle of that journey was a “dead zone” with NO CELL PHONE coverage.
One day I was driving along a NB highway, one of the big divided ones (which are cut through the wilderness in most cases, and a cream coloured luxury car passed me, just “lifting er”. As it sailed by me, I looked at the plate and saw, a crown, where a series of numbers and letters normally would be. I came to the conclusion that the person in the car must have been His Honour, Herménégilde Chiasson, the Lieutenant-Governor at that time, on his way back to Fredericton - on the highway. It did not take long for his car to disappear from sight! I gather this is a common driving method for those who chauffeur the “higher ups” from one place to another! I don’t think his driver would be pulled over for speeding in the “official car”.
So we have a story in the book of Acts about an encounter, arranged by the Holy Spirit, between Philip, the disciple, and a high official of the Queen of Ethiopia who had been travelling that road in a chariot. I don’t know that much about transportation in those days but it was clearly not the kind of chariot we have seen in the movies where one horse pulls a one man contraption with two wheels. I suppose it was the ancient equivalent of the Lieutenant Governor’s luxury sedan! But, in this case, he had time to stop and talk!
As we look at this story, we need to keep several things in mind. FIRST: Scholars tell us that this road was really not all that deserted, but in referring to it as a “wilderness road” the writer puts the later readers in the mind-set of other prophetic encounters. They were in a place where prophets and leaders often go to encounter the holy”. It’s a code!!
SECOND - He would have been reading from a large, heavy and very expensive scroll. He “had money.”
THIRD this man was, essentially, an outsider. Just about everything about him made him, “one of the THEM”. The simple description of him as an, “ eunuch from Ethiopia” tells us volumes! a) that he was a foreigner - a man with much darker skin than the people of Israel and b) he was a eunuch! Eunuchs were chosen for certain kinds of public service when they were boys and castrated, so that they could work with the king’s wives when they grew up.
Depending on how early this surgery was performed the hormonal changes common to boys becoming men would not have happened and the differences would have been obvious to many.
While the book of Acts makes it clear that this man, was a person of faith seeking a deeper understanding of the faith of Israel we know that he would have not been able to worship with the “real men” at the temple because the law forbade it. He was “not whole”.
As the story goes, he and Philip begin to speak, and in response to his question, Philip takes the opportunity to connect the life and death of Jesus to this passage from the prophet Isaiah. Clearly the man is looking for connection. Somehow the topic of baptism came up and when they came to a slough, he asked, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?”
We have already been told several reasons that some people would use, and many have, to exclude this man, but Philip could think of none and the man is baptized!
That is an interesting way to ask the question, isn’t it. Perhaps he is accustomed to finding out that his biological status IS a barrier to full participation in a community. Perhaps he is accustomed to hearing that his race or language also makes him second class in some other way.
What does this passage say to us, all these centuries later?
Openness and inclusion is, or at least is supposed to be, one of the marks of our United Church. A number of years ago I attended General Council and we affirmed our intention to become an inter-cultural church. Living in the Maritimes, I could almost be oblivious to the United Church people whose first language was not English and whose families had not been in Canada for hundreds of years. I could almost forget about the people who had not come from western Europe. But at General Council I was blessed to be led in worship by people from many other places and by people from the various indigenous communities. In the Maritimes, MOST indigenous people were Roman Catholic, because when Europeans came the Jesuits had claimed them as “theirs”.
I was ordained in 1988, the year the General Council meeting in Victoria decided that lesbian and gay people were eligible to be considered for ordered ministry. I suspect that initially churches in Saskatchewan experienced as much upheaval and controversy as we did in the Maritimes! It was a hard and painful time in the church and particularly painful for those who had long hoped for recognition of their gifts and call to ministry without having to hide a large part of who they were - only to find out that their acceptance was not as they might have wished.
I think that this unnamed man is an example of the kind of inclusion we tried to name in 1988. It was impossible for him to hide much of anything about himself but in the early church he found a joyous welcome!
Those who know the nuances of theology better than I do will tell us that the United Church’s original theological statement, The Articles of Faith, weave together two very different protestant theologies - reflecting common differences between Methodists and Presbyterians. Apparently it’s not at all easy to mix the two !
One of the hymns in More Voices, is “Draw the Circle Wide” and it has become one of my favourites - the chorus goes like this:
Draw the circle wide. Draw it wider still. Let this be our song, no one stands alone, standing side by side, draw the circle wide and, v 1 God the still point of the circle, ‘round whom all creation turns; nothing lost, but held forever, in God’s gracious arms.
And then there is a poem by Edwin Markham:
He drew a circle that shut me out- Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle and took him In!”
Sometimes, I think we take the attitude that we are the vine-dressers, to use the image from the Gospel passage. We take out our pruners and we decide! We lop off the branches we don’t want around - perhaps because it’s easier than dealing with different varieties of grapes on one stem (or is that people in one church).
Perhaps it is our job to welcome and ensure a connection between the various members of our community AND THEN leave it to God to decide who is in and who is out. Let us not yearn for a community where there is no change, no challenge, and no difference!
To use one example of inclusion: true inclusion of people in wheelchairs has been a challenge in Canada for many years! Some of our older buildings are just so hard to adapt for wheelchairs.
Many years ago one of my Sunday Schools sent a proposal to the Stewards of the congregation. They saw how difficult it was for some of the older folks to get into the building and they thought it would be so much easier for them if they had a ramp. Well the men took out their measuring tapes and hemmed and hawed and looked at the regulations and at the shrubs around the church and hemmed and hawed some more. There were meetings in the church and there were meetings after the meetings! They said they weren’t at all opposed to a ramp but, “it had to be done right”. When I moved on there was still no ramp but eventually I heard that it has finally been built. It took a while - a lot longer than the children and their teachers were hoping it would! I was there for a service a few years ago and you would think the ramp had always been there! It was well planned, well built, and is available for anyone who needs it.
In another church, any requested change to accommodate wheelchairs was met with opposition and the excuse, “we have already done enough”. Often the welcome given by a church, or rather the lack of welcome, is unspoken but very obvious to those who seek to find a place to belong. Years ago now, the Emerging Spirit Campaign asked churches to look at themselves with fresh eyes and to ask, “if I was a newcomer - would I feel welcome here?”
When we read the book of Acts we meet a community in a period of great upheaval. They were trying to build on the foundation of their Jewish heritage but were constantly challenged to broaden that base and to widen that welcome.
The story of Philip and the man from Ethiopia is there to show how the Spirit can blow you away, can knock your socks off, and change your attitude about who can be in and who is out.
Those who have ears to hear - let them hear!
Amen.
Acts 10: 44-48
Psalm 98
1 John 5: 1-6
John 15: 9-17
Rural Life Sunday, Christian Family Sunday, Mother’s Day.
This is a busy Sunday. If you look at the list of all the things that are slated to be observed today -it is a formidable one - Rural Life, Christian Community and Mothers. How do you do justice to any of that in one service! Most United Churches, if we had regular in-person worship, would be focussing on Christian Family Sunday today. I’m not sure when “Rural Life Sunday” came about - most of the churches I have served did not need any lessons in “rural life” because they lived it!
On Christian Family Sunday, in the “good ole days” we would have Sunday School involvement and lots of baptisms. In my distant past much of the service would be done by a family with children old enough to do the readings.
In celebrating Christian Family Sunday in that way, we missed the point, even though it was usually a nice service! Christian Family Sunday is not about the families who are related by blood or adoption and who likely live in the same house, it is about the family of God, above and beyond that nuclear family.
Christian Family is about the little girl who would run over to sit with an older couple in the congregation - he didn’t really know why, she’s not a relative, but he had no grandchildren so he was pleased that she wanted to do that! She came with her grandmother who sang in the choir so she picked this couple to sit with even when there were other children her age! She looked so happy and he was so proud that she wanted to.
Christian Family is about providing a baby-sitter for an immigrant couple’s small children so they can be a part of worship while the parents concentrate on the minister who talks too fast in their now “third” language!
Once, I put out the word that a local family with children was in need of food and that Sunday afternoon I was able to take boxes and boxes and bags of it to them. The joy of the children at receiving the food was heartwarming. With children that excited about bread and cereal, I knew they had really been in need.
In healthy congregations traditional family boundaries are blurred, as Sunday school teachers and leaders of youth groups take on the role of a parent, big sister or grandparent.
So, on Christian Family Sunday we celebrate the family that is beyond our nuclear family. We celebrate the family that gathers here on Sunday, the family that gathers for Matthew 25 and other lunches, the family that brings casseroles, ice cream sundaes and sandwiches to the sick, the bereaved and “just because”. Christian Family Sunday celebrates the coming together of the most unlikely people into a community of love. Since we have converted largely to an “on-line family” we have been challenged to be that kind of family because that kind of family is about actions, not just feelings.
Christian family is also about supporting congregations in communities we have never visited.
In the aftermath of the ice storm of 1998 the United Churches around Truro NS organized a truck for Montreal. Food, batteries, diapers, and other stuff were gathered just because it seemed like the right and loving thing to do. Turns out the truck was very much overweight and about to be detained at the scales at the NB/Quebec border, but then the agent stepped outside and took a look at the sign on the side of the truck (which said something like, “with love from Nova Scotia”, but of course it was. “ en français”) and he said to the driver, “you are going to Montreal?” There was no fine, no need to bring a second truck to share the load, just a thankful smile and a wave through. He understood family!
Another time a Presbytery organized a fund raiser to dig a well for a community in Guatemala - 6,000 kms away (even further from Nova Scotia, than Saskatchewan!!!!). Some people in the Presbytery had strong relationships with people in that community and they had visited back and forth, but most had never met them and never would - but it was the right and loving thing to do. The well was drilled, water flowed, lives were made easier and communities thousands of kms apart were united.
I am telling stories because I have difficulty describing Christian Family without actions. Love is not a feeling; Christian love is a verb. The challenge for us in the past year is how to DO the actions of love in our new environment of lock-down and social distancing. Of course, the one thing that is NOT loving in this time is carelessly spreading a potentially deadly virus!
Our culture has held “love” hostage for so long that even church people forget, it’s not a feeling or emotion; it’s a verb. Church people can sometimes forget that we can be ‘commanded” to love. It is one of the most important words in our language.
What is love?
I may have told you before that, around the time I was ordained, one of the members of the Maritime Conference ordination board ALWAYS asked the candidates a question like this, “speak to me of love.” His unusual and distinct style was sometimes unsettling, but it was an important question.
Since you can find out almost anything on the internet these days, I searched for word “love” and then I added the word, “Elvis” - known for his love songs! There is a CD collection of his picks of 50 greatest love songs - you can buy it from the Graceland store if you are interested
But today, as I said, Im not very interested in that kind of love but would like to focus on the command to love? To our modern ears, I suspect that that does not sound quite right. If we think of love as an emotion, of course, we cant be commanded to love, but if love is a way of life, is should be our goal.
When I was at some church camp, or other, I learned a song (a round actually) where one of several verses was, “don’t throw your junk in my back yard, my back yard, my backyard, don’t throw your junk in my backyard, my backyard’s full”. Most of my life I have had good neighbours. I may have had one that let his junk wander over to my yard! There is a saying that “good fences make for good neighbours” and that is sometimes true. “Please, Mr neighbour, don’t take all the ripe raspberries - Im not sure who owns them so you can have about half!” Nasty neighbours can make life difficult and it can be hard to act in loving ways toward them. I saw a picture on Facebook the other day of a set of steps leading up the the entrance of a duplex. The owner (or tenant) of the lefthand side had shovelled the left side of the steps - perfectly - but the right side was completely untouched. I wonder what led to that kind of behaviour!
Siblings often have spats and couples quarrel because the closer we live to and with others, the more difficult it can be, to act in loving ways. The man who mowed my grass in Nova Scotia insisted that his secret to a happy marriage was that he and his wife did not want a divorce on the same day!
We are in the season of Easter - the 50 days of celebrating the resurrection of Jesus and reading of his appearances to the fearful and scattered disciples.
We get the idea somewhere that those Bible times were easier, more simple times BUT THAT SIMPLY ISN’T TRUE. .
Think of the reality of living in an occupied country and being treated poorly by the Roman soldiers just because they could!
One of the veterans whose funeral I conducted this past week took part in the liberation of France and a young man who had grown up in Dieppe, in France, connected with him many years later, in gratitude for the life he may never have had, if the Canadians had not come ashore at great cost and effort.
For the people in Jesus day, there was no liberating army and they ended up enduring greater and greater persecution as time went on.
In that context they are reminded of the words of Jesus - to love God, to love one another, to love their enemies. The Christian community formed its identity in this difficult situation.
It’s easy to love the people we like. It’s easy to love the people who are always nice to us. It’s easy to love someone in a relationship that demands nothing but that is not the reality to which our passages speak.
So on this day let us ask God to lead us in the ways of love, toward and behalf of all the people who cross our path, or whose stories cross our path, and whom the Spirit prompts our action.
God loved us first. Can we do any less than love others.
Amen!
Acts 1: 15-17, 21-26
Psalm 1
John 17: 6-19
As I was working on the bulletin for this week, my mind wandered to a frequently aired TV commercial. It is for “pull ups”; yup, the “diapers” for toddlers! My mind makes odd connections!
No doubt you have heard and seen their ad; the jingle includes the words, “Im a big kid now. Went from baby bottles to drinking from sippycups - went from wearing diapers to rocking these great pull ups - We’re 50,000,000 strong so put on your pull ups and help us sing this song.“ I don’t know where the “50,000,000" number came from but just imagine that many toddlers in pull ups, involved in a song and dance routine! I’m not sure how many football fields it would take!
Almost every mom agrees that the time with small children goes so fast - changes happen so often. Most kids delight in being able to do things by themselves, “ME DO IT” is an oft repeated demand. That kind of growth and change is the subject of cute cross stitches and gramma’s sage advice to “not wish their childhood away”. Of course Kimberly Clark knows this and probably invented pull-ups to lengthen the amount of time a child “needs” their disposable products!”
I don’t want to say any more about toilet training and the vices and virtues of disposable diapers or the relative merits of potty training aids. EXCEPT to emphasize what we already know, all babies grow and as they grow, their needs change. You blink and they have grown an inch, or a foot. They have twice as many teeth and have mastered the words NO and ME! I used to really notice it when the Sunday school closed for the summer and then opened up again in the fall. The children had ALL changed so much!
The lectionary has taken us on quite a journey since Easter and we have arrived at that “in-between” Sunday - the one between Jesus’ formal departure at the ascension and the Sunday of Pentecost - the powerful manifestation of the Holy Spirit.
Since that Easter morn, Jesus has spent 50 days teaching and guiding his disciples and then promised them that when he did leave they would have a new and powerful experience of the Holy Spirit. Going by the time-line in the book of Acts, on this day, Jesus is gone and the followers are all sitting around and wondering, “what is next”?
In the last few months, we have been able to glimpse the fears and joys of the disciples and their friends as they coped with the death of Jesus, and then, with the reality and implications of his resurrection. Afraid for their lives, they have mostly been in hiding (the original self-isolating, I suppose) and yet have experienced the powerful presence of the Risen One.
It is this same risen one who had, in life, embodied the divine in new and powerful ways. It is the same risen one who had opened the scriptures of their ancestors to them and showed them things they had never seen before.
Their faith has grown and so have their numbers. The text tells us that they now numbered 120 and that is just those who were in the room that day to hear Peter!
On this day, Peter’s sights were fixed on going forward - and the one thing that seemed to be foremost in his mind was Judas, or rather putting the whole “Judas thing” behind them. He has been one of them and he had betrayed them. Thata really hurt! Things were way off balance! Additionally, 12 was a perfect number; 11 was not. There were 12 tribes of Israel. Jesus had chosen 12 disciples. Clearly, a replacement was needed. But in order to make things complete, it could not be “just anybody”; it had to be someone who had been with them from the beginning - and that beginning was Jesus’ baptism by John, the beginning of his ministry and this replacement had to have stayed the course to the bitter end. He had to be a witness to the resurrection and the ascension. Perhaps Peter felt that someone who would share their common experience would erase the pain that Judas’ betrayal had brought upon them. I don’t know!
So they prayed and settled on a short list and “drew lots”. I gather it was felt that the Holy Spirit was at work in the outcome of what we would call “gambling”. It wasn’t random, in their eyes! Matthias was chosen and then, is never heard from again! Poof! He disappears!
It’s an odd story to include in the book of Acts, for that one reason. If you didn’t know anything about the early church and had been reading along, you might expect to begin to read about his teachings or accomplishments but no - there’s nothing!
But, I think there are other reasons to look to this story as guidance for the church in any age. Simply, they were a community that had to move forward - while they had a foundational story of Jesus, his life, death and resurrection, they could not go back, but neither could they stay where they were. It was a story that presumed a forward trajectory! This was one step in that moving forward.
We are in the same sort of situation; the church is ALWAYS in the same sort of situation. The details are different each and every year - this year most of our changes are probably related to COVID. Services which are a mixture of online and in-person, not being able to do pastoral care in person, funerals for family only, mailing and hand delivery of an enhanced bulletin, no relief fund work, no Matthew 25 ministry, no formal, or informal, after church luncheons. A few years ago it was something else; in a few years it will be something different. The question for us is always realizing what the actual reality really is and how our ministry responds to it so that we can continue to follow the call to discipleship.
In the disciples’ situation they felt they needed someone who had known and experienced the same story - someone who understood them by walking in their shoes all that distance - all that time. Soon though, the Holy Spirit would being other people their way and those folks did not have the background they did but nevertheless were called to begin to journey with them. All too soon, all the original players were gone and then they were gone and their replacements and so on and so on. The last 2,000 years of the church have depended on these people replacing others as they came to faith, grew and matured in it and then passed the baton of faith to others.
A few years ago a couple from Alberta came to see my mom. Last time they had been on PEI was probably 40 years before. His son was looking after the ranch - and he trusted him, but like a rancher and a dad, he still worried. Likewise the church must move on and trust the new folks, even if they would have done some stuff differently.
This brings me to the other major passage for today; which I might call, “Jesus prayer for his own followers.”
In this passage, we “over-hear,” as it were, a prayer of Jesus for his disciples and other followers. In biblical studies these verses are part of what is often referred to as his “high priestly prayer”. Admittedly, the passage does not really sound like Jesus, at least not the Jesus who spoke in the simple language of the parables and who drew crowds by the thousands! It sounds so “highfalutin”; so unlike Jesus! The wording is somewhat convoluted and hard to understand; and we may wonder, “just who is he talking about?”
As I was reading it in preparation for my sermon today, it struck me that while he was praying for the remaining 11 disciples, the three, or more women named Mary, and the others he has know personally while he was working and ministering, he was ALSO praying for you and me, 2,000 years later.
I was reading a commentary by Cláudio Carvalhaes a professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York and he described this passage as a woven tapestry - with threads supplied by God, by Jesus, by us, and by the Holy Spirit.
Imagine what a tapestry would look like with just two colours - it could look like a striped piece or fabric or a checkerboard. Kind of boring, eh! Imagine now a tapestry with all sorts of colour and with some threads worked in without being plain warp and weft resulting in a fancy and intricate pattern that makes it come alive and stirs the imagination and moves the soul.
Jesus is praying for those folks who have been part of this congregation since Nipawin itself was founded. He is praying for the descendants of those who broke the prairie sod while living in soddys. It is a prayer for all those whose vision brought them to this country and to us, as their legacy. This tapestry reflects the colours and languages of our entire United Church, and indeed the entire Christian Church. This is Asian History Month and I can think of a number of Ministry Personnel of Asian heritage who bring their various gifts, colours and languages to our church. We would be poorer without them. I also think of the various other nationalities represented in this community which gives us flavour and spice and makes us who we are. I think also of the indigenous peoples who were here thousands of years before we arrived. They are all a part of this rich tapestry to which we now belong.
If Jesus is praying for all those who will follow, in generations at that time unimagined, we too are called to work for the good of all the people he loved and was concerned over.
We have inherited a great legacy and we hold a great mission. May we know the sustaining presence of the Spirt as we journey in faith.
Amen.