NOTE: This is a ‘shared ‘ sermon between myself and the Rev Pam Reidpath, ordained last week, a candidate from the Rexton pastoral Charge. Her parts are blue, mine are black.

Proverbs 8: 1-4, 22-31
Psalm 8
Romans 5: 1-5
John 16: 12-15

I wonder how many of us have heard the words... "If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times .......your real friends really don’t care if you wear all name brand clothes, they like you for who you are... not for what you wear or.... you don’t have to do what your friends are doing...especially if you know that it is wrong..." You know those times when your parents or teachers have told you things time and again... and you still do not understand what they have been saying...you hear the words but can’t make sense of them....... It just doesn’t sink in. And many of us have probably also found ourselves saying the same thing to our children..... Then...one day we finally... finally understand what the adults were talking about. Ah, the wonderful moment when our children say "now I understand what you were talking about...."

Every so often, usually after a controversial, very hectic or difficult time in the life of the church, someone is bound to ask me, "If you knew then, what you know now, about ministry, would you still have sought ordination?" On one particularly bad day the answer was "No!", but on most days it is and unqualified "Yes!".

You see, the way I have come to look at it, is that we are given the strength and the insight and the grace that we need for our lives, when we need it, in the amount we need it, and not before.

Those of you who are parents know what I mean. If you focused on the difficulties of two hour feedings, colic, the terrible twos, earaches and chicken pox, you’d never have had any children, or at least not more than one! But taken together with the smiles, the first steps, the hugs, the joy of watching another human being grow and develop, you realize that somehow , you get through the other stuff. And, you realize that it is some of these difficult and trying times that draws you closer together as family. There’s a reason that your child only wants you when she’s sick, even if all she does is throw up all over you!

The time of transition spoken about in the Gospel lesson was a difficult time for the disciples. Jesus doesn’t want the anxious and fearful disciples to worry about what is to come, and promises the Spirit to help them to trust and understand.

We have all been in places of transition - Whether it has been moving from one community to another, leaving home and going to school - kindergarten or university- ending one job and not sure if there is another ahead, retiring, or beginning a family...with all the anticipation... but also the not knowing,

So, We may have some idea of how the disciples felt when Jesus tells them these things. They hear the words but they don’t fully understand.. just like when our parents told us things that we didn’t understand.... In the midst of Jesus’ farewell, he says.... I have a whole lot more to tell you, but you don’t need to know all there is to know....yet!

Any life change has times where one wonders if the change was worth it. A change in careers, a decision to end a bad marriage, a move to start a new life...are all life choices which can cause great difficulty ..but changes during which, the scripture lessons for today tell us, we can know the love, grace, presence and strength of God. Of course, there are many times when we do not choose the path of our lives, times such as the death of a spouse or a child, or the loss of a job, or an accident that causes a disability. We may look to the future, and throw up our hands...in despair and wonder if we can ever get through it. Yet, when we come to the point where we can look backward (after its completion) and wonder how we got through such a crisis, we can realize that it was God’s abundant grace which saw us through, one day at a time.

We, like the disciples, would like answers... to the many troubling questions of our lives. The disciples were told to wait and live their faith and they would understand when the time was right. Jesus promises that the Spirit, the Advocate, will come to guide them in the way of truth and will guide the Christian community as they move into the future.

That is one thing I have come to know in my heart.., as I have focussed on God’s call: on answering my call to ordered ministry. There are some things and situations that I have experienced, that if I had known they were coming... With the testing and pain caused by growth , I would not have entered into them. Yet, as I moved from one day to the next... from one place to the next... I felt a sense..no..... I knew that I was not alone on this journey... and that as I was faithful to answering God’s call, I would be equipped to continue moving forward.

When I went into ministry I wondered if I could do the funeral of a child or of a suicide victim, or sit with someone who was dying and the family, but found that I could, with the guidance of God’s Spirit and the support and understanding of colleagues.

The community is sometimes a forgotten part of this equation. The parishioners, neighbors and friends or our colleagues in our varied professions , all support us and help us to do what we know we can’t do on our own.

We are here today because at sometime.... We have heard our names called.. Maybe to be active members in the community, Or to support and encourage others, or..... to advocate for those who bear the brunt of injustices.. To be in relationship with God..... Because we have been called .

We may feel unprepared, yet what is most important is to venture forward in trust and faith...and that is not something just for clergy....it is for anyone

- seeking to live life, ordinary life, in God’s way

- seeking to keep one heart from being broken

- seeking to make a difference in the life of even one child...

seeking to offer a cup of cold water ....

seeking to be a friend...

seeking to follow a star

seeking to proclaim the Good News

seeking together to be the body of Christ

We are here because we have felt the prodding of God... pushing us to learn, to grow, to follow and to develop. And we have become God’s agent to each other. Those little things that we do as part of community and that express our faith...really matter

- the cards and letters you write, to simply say to someone..."I’m thinking of you."

-the casseroles and sweets that you deliver to grieving families

- the music ministry you provide

- your faithful attendance at Bible study

- the challenges you put to others within your community to think differently.. outside of the box... And many more areas that show you are a loving community.. .all these really matter.. and show your faith to the world. Each one here is unique and has gifts to offer and led by the Spirit ,together, we are able to ‘build the land that God has planned, where love shines through.’

We are here Seeking to be faithful witnesses of the love and peace of God as revealed in Jesus Christ. We can go out confident that we are not alone, even though we feel all alone sometimes.... that God is faithful..even when we doubt or even when we are not faithful.... that God will be with us ... whether we can see or feel or not... always and forever.

Thanks be to God!

Once upon a time a fine church going woman wanted to buy a talking parrot. She went to the pet store and selected a large male bird who had a beautiful plumage. As the store owner handed her the caged bird he warned her that the previous owner, a bartender, had taught the bird some pretty foul language, but that with patience and training she could probably teach him new and more acceptable words. Every day for weeks and weeks she taught the bird to say phrases such as "Praise the Lord", "Please, have another sweet", "Bye nowm have a good day" and, of course, "Let us pray". She warned the bird, not to use its former vocabulary. One day she was late for work so she did not feed the bird. When she came home that afternoon the bird was cursing and swearing in a loud voice. She felt like wringing the birds neck but being a fine church-going woman she put him in the deep freeze instead. After a while she took him out and warned him not to use those words again. Things went well for seven months but one day the alarm did not go off and she was again late for work. She did not have time to feed the parrot so when she arrived home the hungry bird was swearing to beat the band again. She put him in the freezer again. This time she left him so long that when she took him out, she had to wrap him in an electric blanket to stop his beak from chattering. When he was warm enough to talk he said, to his owner, "I thought I knew all the bad words there were,and I guess I deserved what I got, but tell me, just what did that turkey in that there freezer say?"

It was 1944. The world had been held in the grip of a war of death, destruction and fear for 6 long years. On the 6th of June, allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, an invasion began which signalled the beginning of the end of that terrible war. Thousands were killed and many taken prisoner. Instead of following the conventions of war on the treatment of prisoners though, the SS Commander Kurt Meyer, who like many in the SS, was know for his brutality, ordered the execution style murder of a number of Canadian POWs, many in the courtyard of the local church, the Abbaye d’Ardenne. The bodies were later discovered in unmarked shallow graces by the owners of the courtyard. Tried for war crimes, for this and other atrocities, Meyer was convicted and sentenced to death, but later had that sentence reduced. We also know that 6 Million Jewish persons were exterminated by the same regime,

Of course it’s easier to see this kind of brutality in the almost faded pages of history and in those who were, or are, our enemies.

Yet, we do know that our own soldiers, are capable of terrible things. 11 years ago Canadians were reeling at the news that a number of the soldiers of the Canadian Airborne Regiment beat and killed a Somali teenager. The news of late has been filled with news of the mistreatment of soldiers in the Abu Ghraib prison and pictures which show some of the soldiers clearly taking delight in these activities.

In many countries, including Canada, despite laws and public awareness campaigns, many children are the victims of familial abuse and many women and men are abused by the very partners who have covenanted to love and care for them. Schoolyard bullying is as prevalent as ever and we hear stories of kids being beaten, or even killed, for their brand name sneakers or designer clothing, or simply because they are seen as ‘different’ in some way.

In 1887, Lord Acton wrote the now famous words, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

The passage from the book of Kings is about a grave abuse of power on the part of the Royal Family and it is also about the courage of the prophet, part of whose vocation it is, to call the King to account for his sin.

To make a longer story, a little shorter: We have, in this passage,

1) a weak king,

2) a vicious Queen,

3) a defenceless landowner, who has something the king wants, in fact, the king wants it very badly.

4) Jezreel is the location of the King’s “winter palace”

5) Ostensibly the King wants this land for something as mundane as a ‘vegetable garden.

6) It is important to note that Naboth, is following the laws of his people in refusing to sell ancestral lands.

7) When he fails to negotiate a deal to buy the vineyard the king goes away sulking. 8) His wife, not a daughter of Israel, feels that it is an insult to her husband and sees to it that Naboth is executed on trumped up charges.

8) The king then goes and takes possession of the vineyard. Apparently, the Ahab can claim this Land since Naboth is now a criminal.

9) This is a tale of the innocent suffering and the corrupt getting what they want through devious means! End of story?

(Pause)

10) NOT SO FAST! We can assume that his sin did not go unnoticed. When power is abused in such a way people ALWAYS notice. Naboth’s friends and neighbours would certainly have known what had gone on, but none would have dared to so anything about it. After all, AHAB WAS THE KING! and what Ahab had done to Naboth, Ahab could, and likely would, do to them!

11) All is not lost, however. God is not content to let such abuse of power and injustice go unchallenged! We are told that the word of God came to Elijah the Tishbite and that this ‘word’ was a command to go and pronounce judgement on Ahab for his actions!

12) Heeding that call took a great deal of courage on Elijah’s part. IT would also have taken a certainty that it was the living God that was with him as he confronted the king. We might think that he had an easier job, than we might, because he was a prophet and would enjoy God’s ‘protection’, but that isn’t so! It becomes quite clear as we read more about Elijah, Ahab and Jezebel, that the power of that royal couple was very dangerous indeed and that Elijah, while he was God’s prophet, God’s care did not magically protect him from harm. What can we learn from this simple, yet both profound and very dramatic story?

First: That power is not bad in and of itself, but rather we are called to a wise and just use of power. Power is not to be used to hurt others in order to effect our own gain.

In the 1990 movie Pretty Woman, Edward Lewis, played by Richard Gere is a ruthless businessman who spends his time engineering hostile takeovers of floundering companies. He then breaks them into pieces and sells them at tremendous profits. He’s the kind of guy who rents the best suite in the hotel because it is the most expensive, but who won’t sit on the balcony because he is scared of heights. Then, one night while trying to escape from a boring party he meets Vivian Ward, a streetwalker, played by Julia Roberts. She learns the social graces of polo, opera, and whcih fork to use for what, while she teaches him that there is more to life than working 24/7, tramping all over someone when they are down and making a killing in business.

There are some people in society that have more power than others, and these people are expected to use that power differential carefully. The power of the police to enter a private residence is limited by law, as is the power of a teacher to discipline a child. Sexual harassment legislation protects those who have less power than others in their places of work.

The movie, usually seen at Christmas, “It’s a Wonderful Life” is about two businesses in a small town. As the movie begins, the manager of the ‘building and loan, George Bailey has been feeling despondent and useless and is ready to commit suicide. Through the work of an enterprising angel, seeking to earn his wings, he comes to realize what his town would be like if he had never been born and the wealthy town curmudgeon, Mr Potter, had no one to challenge his abuse of power.

The passage does not condemn power itself, but rather the abuse of power and calls the faithful to advocate on behalf of those who are victims of the misuse of power.

Second, this passage is also about being called by God to work for those who have become victims of others’ abuses of power. Organizations such as Amnesty International count on the advocacy work of people in the west who let the abusers of power know that their actions in the unlawful detention of political activists is not going unnoticed.

From the time we begin school we notice that some people let their power go to their head and use it to hurt others. It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to a schoolyard bully but it takes even more courage to stand up when the perpetrators have the power of government or militias behind them. In Guatemala, through the “Breaking the Silence Network” westerners have gone to the Mayan communities to accompany the indigenous people as they return to their land after having become refugees. The hope is that the presence of outsiders from the west will bring a kind of safety that comes from public exposure and at the same time it calls into disrepute the kind of government that would allow such atrocities to be committed against its own people.

We can help by purchasing fairly traded goods which give more of the profit to the actual producers than is common with regular products. It is a simple but effective way to make good use of our power and quietly calls the multinationals to account for their economic and ecological practices.

Our call to justice is a call to a right use of power. Just because the big companies can get away with paying far below a living wage, to the workers who make $200 sneakers does not make it right. We can avoid making money off of that kind of business AND we can sound the public alarm so that these practices will be exposed and society can use its collective power to effect a more equitable world.

God’s call to Elijah is our call: Go to Ahab and say, “The God of heaven sees what you have done. This kind of thing is not acceptable. Our God is a God of both mercy and justice. We are called to seek justice and resist evil wherever we can. We are called to be a people who use our power for the fulfilment of God’s purposes here on earth.

Amen.

2 Kings 2: 1-2, 6-14
Psalm 77: 1-2, 11-20
Galatians 5: 1, 13-25
Luke 9: 51-62

Are there any Harry Potter fans here today? As the second book nears its conclusion, Harry is deep in basement of Hogwarts School and is battling the huge snake that has been terrorizing the school. The headmaster’s pet phoenix brings Harry the sorting hat, and plucks out the monsters eyes which kill whomever looks at them. Harry now has a bit of an advantage and at just the right moment he notices that the hat is hiding a large, ornate sword with which he kills the snake and saves the day.

At the conclusion of the book Harry is told that only a true Griffindor would have been able to pull out of the hat the sword of the legendary founder of his house, Cedric Griffindor!

You may remember that at the beginning of his time at Hogwarts school, the magical sorting hat was unsure as to which house he belonged, but when begged not to be placed in Slytherin, the hat assigned Harry to Griffindor.

You might be asking what a series of children’s books has to do with the texts for today? Well, I think it is an example, from modern literature, of the transfer of prophetic power and spirit from one generation to another. Harry Potter’s life is marked by the need to understand his parents’ deaths and to make sense of them in the light of his own training and purpose as a wizard. The Harry Potter series is popular because, while it is a fantasy, it is a story of deep meaning. It speaks to the human condition and the choices that need to be made as each one of us journeys through a life marked by options which are not always clear but which certainly have life long consequences.

Of course, it is in a much more profound way that the scriptures of the Older and Newer Testaments speak to the human condition and its spiritual quests. In today’s passage from the book of 2 Kings we read of the transfer of prophetic power and authority from Elijah to his disciple, Elisha. Elijah was a prophet who lived about 3000 years ago, in the Kingdom of Israel. Elijah is best known for opposing the infiltration of local Canaanite religions and religious practices. Against the commands of God and God’s prophets, King Ahab’s foreign wife, Jezebel, had used her power and influence to promote the worship of her people’s gods, the “Baals”, who were mostly nature based fertility gods. The account read last week featured Elijah winning a contest with the prophets of Baal. He became a hero of his people in succeeding generations and his name was synonymous with the best of the prophetic tradition.

As with all leaders and heroes though, there comes a time when they can no longer serve and they must hand on their power and their role to another. Such is the substance of today’s account. A few comments will help us to understand this passage better.

1. Elijah’s mantle, which was simply a cape or loose coat, seems to have been a symbol and means of his power. At both ends of today’s story the mantle is used, almost as a kind of magic wand, like Moses’ staff. Moses stretched his staff over the Red Sea to clear a path for the children of Israel, as they were escaping from Egypt and also used it to strike a rock to extract water while they were in the desert.

Just a few chapters ago, Elijah had called Elisha to be his follower by throwing this cloak over him.

2. The request of Elisha to receive a double portion of his spirit was NOT a request to be twice as powerful, it was rather, a request to be his principal heir. In the traditions of Israel, the oldest son received 2/3 of the property and the rest of the sons, 1/3. In other words, he is willing to take on principal responsibility to be God’s prophet in Israel. Elijah promises that this will happen only if Elisha sees him being taken away.

3. This transfer of power and authority takes place across the Jordan, in the land in which Moses had died. Locating it in the wilderness is an important symbol because, it is in the wilderness that people can more easily resist the forces of the world and allow themselves to be open to God’s power and Spirit.

As the chariot disappears Elisha knows that Elijah has gone. Elisha remains. The cloak, the symbol and means of divine presence and power floats to the earth. God’s power and presence remains and continues on, but Elisha will have his own battles to fight, his own ministry to fulfill.

Elijah was one of the prophetic figures seen by the disciples, standing with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. Like Moses he is one of the two “greatest of the greats” of the faith; one symbolizing the law and the other the prophets.

I was reading an article in this week’s issue of Macleans’ magazine about Terry Fox It usually arrives in the mail three days before the publication date! when you think of it, his goal was truly grandiose: to raise a dollar for every Canadian, for cancer research; his spirit was as large as the country. His means of raising the money was to run across the country. His uniqueness was that he had lost a leg to cancer and that this run was really a hop step, hop step, hop step. But he kept at it, mile after mile, kilometre after kilometre, the impossible equivalent of a marathon a day, through rain and snow and blistering heat, until the return of his cancer forced him to stop just east of Thunder Bay. There is a large monument there that marks the end of his run. In bronze and granite, sitting on a base of natural amethyst, it is a truly fitting memorial to a man who captured the hearts of a nation and who inspired us to respond, not just with our pocketbooks but by participating in runs held every year in thousands of communities ever since. Thousands of kids who weren’t even born in 1981 know who he was, what he did and they run to raise money so that, in Terry’s own words. “somewhere the hurting must stop.” It’s not about success, though that would certainly be nice, it’s about the journey, one step and a time, one heart at a time.

It’s the same with the life of faith. To carry forward the biblical image into our own day, we have received the mantle of the faith from our parents and from those who have journeyed in the faith in the past. There were those who built this church, (and the ones which stood on this site before this one). They are the ones whose faith caused them to venture from what was known, across the sea to live in a new land. We have inherited our legacy from hose who took from their post what was good and left behind what was useless and burdensome. Of course we are many generations removed from those early settlers and we will not be the last ones either.

However, as I was thinking about this passage I thought that the mantle of faith, wisdom and insight can also be transferred the other way; from the children in our families and communities to us. How often does something a child says come back to us, and teaches a lesson. Even after a child is grown and gone we can look at a picture of an event, or toll its memory over in our mind, and it can bring still more learning. We all know that we often learn our best lessons after the opportunity seems lost to use the learning. Yet when we learn to appreciate the joy of small children just as the ones closest to us are going out the door, all is not lost, there are still other children to appreciate, still more days to live their joy in life.

Somewhere in my mother’s kitchen cupboard is a picture of my little sister squatting down and looking intently into the oven; I doubt she even knew we took the picture. What you can’t see is what she was looking at: a self saucing pudding. You spoon a thick cake batter into a pan and then pour a sauce over the batter. As it cooks, lumps of dough rise through the sauce until the dough is on the top and the sauce is on the bottom. Whenever I see the picture it reminds me to delight in the simple things and not to miss them because I am looking for something grand and fantastic.

One of the things I learn from this story of Elijah and Elisha is that we don’t exist in a vacuum of time and space but we are connected to the people of faith who have followed God’s call in all times and places, BUT YET, like Elisha, we are called to live in the time in which we find ourselves, we can not be productive if we are either yearning for a past which has gone by or a future which is not yet upon us. The members of the prophetic guild were not content to let Elijah go without a fight; they spent three days looking for him. However, they do not find him; it is time to move into the future with the new prophet who will continue to lead them in God’s way.

Those who have the prophetic power are the ones who are able to see the signs of the times, the signs of transition and movement and change and most of all the continuing care and call of God in and through all of this.

We who see these signs are called to live them in our lives and to pass them on to others, to share with those who are coming after us. We have received a great legacy; we need to work together so that we can be God’s faithful people in this time and place.

In his keynote address to the 150th synod of the diocese of Toronto on November 2003, the late Archbishop Ted Scott said, “There are two key questions which I believe we as Christian persons ought, from time to time ask ourselves: “What kind of a person am I becoming? What kind of a world am I helping to come into being?”

We don’t exist for ourselves of for our own generation but we stand in the middle of a long line of witnesses; some who have gone before us and many who will come after us. Let us seek to exercise faithful and courageous stewardship of this legacy of faith.

Amen.

2 Kings 5: 1-14
Psalm 30
Galatians 6: 1-16
Luke 10: 1-11, 16-20

Something Simple

I have a pop quiz for you. Now, I must tell you that when I was in school I always hated them; it made me think the teacher wanted to prove we weren’t doing our homework, (which was true on some overy rare occasions) but still!

Despite my memories of such quizzes, I’m giving one today. You may shout out the answer if you like. Please keep your own score.

Name me the 10 World Series Winners from the last decade of the 20th century, pause

I trust you only remember 9 teams because there was there one year when it was cancelled?

Now, the ten most recent Stanley Cup winners?

Now the ten most recent best actor and actresses at the Oscars.

Now name the last ten winners of the Nobel Prize for literature.

Now, name the ten wealthiest people in Canada.

How did you do? I will admit that I didn’t do so well, especially on the sports questions. I watched the last ten minutes of game seven between the Calgary Flames and the Tampa Bay Lightning and that was enough professional hockey for me for the year! I also know the an Islander a Prince Edward Islander, of course! won Conn Smythe trophy.

I suspect that I read about each of these things in the newspaper or heard it on the news when it happened. But just as quickly, the details disappeared from my memory, or will soon.

Now, another quiz!

Name your favourite elementary school teacher.

Name the high school teacher who had the most influence on your life.

Name three friends who were with you in the bad times as well as the good times.

Name five people who have made you feel appreciated and special.

Name half a dozen heroes whose lives have inspired you.

Name a Sunday school teacher who had a great influence on your faith.

I suspect that you did much better with the second set of questions. I also suspect that while you could probably score 100% on the first quiz by going home and logging onto the internet, while the second set of questions might require a great deal of thought. I also suspect that the people named in the second set of questions, except for the so-called heroes, have never made the newspaper, or the cover of People magazine!

No, the people we have listed are not likely regarded as ‘famous’; but are Oh So Important to us and their influence is impossible to measure. What they did probably wouldn’t make the news, even if you called it in and it was a slow day, but our lives wouldn’t have been the same without them.

I suspect that if you were to ask some of those people on the cover of People or on those pages of Sport’s Illustrated, they would have similar memories of important people in their lives and those influential teachers and friends and neighbours would also be relatively unknown.

The story of the healing of Naaman is one in which a powerful man comes to recognize the power in the simple and mundane. Naaman was a commander of the army and, I am sure, used to having what he wanted, when he wanted it. Yet the one thing he could not obtain for himself was healing from the terrible disease called leprosy. If there was one thing that leprosy did, it was to reduce all of its victims to the same level; that of a beggar and an outcaste. Remember that Naaman was the commander of the army that had raided Israel and had taken, as a slave, a young girl. She served Naaman’s wife.

She was the one who told her of this prophet in Samaria who could cure such diseases; and so the message was passed up the chain of command. So in the ways of the powerful Kings of the day, the King of Aram sent gifts to the King of Israel with what amounted to an order to cure his army commander. As you heard, the King was most upset. What, was the King of Aram trying to pick another by asking the impossible and paying for it in advance?

Elisha, however, saves the day by sending word that the commander could come to him. So he arrives with all his bells and whistles, but Elisha does not roll out the red carpet, he does not even come out of his house. He sends a messenger to tell him that he is to wash in the Jordan, seven times. Naaman is angry.

Why?

Well, he should have had hocus-pocus and bells and whistles and incantations and the like, not the cold shoulder. He was the commander of a much better army. Who did that religious nut think he was!

And second, there were better rivers in Damascus! In the rivalry of nations, he thought of the Jordan as little more than a muddy creek. Again a servant saved the day with this little bit of wisdom: “if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you now have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, “Wash, and be clean”?

And it is in that phrase, as well as in the seemingly insignificant intervention of the two servants that a significant part of the message of this passage can be found. pause

There was once a terrible accident and a child was killed. As the news spread around the community the feelings of grief and helplessness simply grew and grew. The family that lived next door to the child involved had a five year old girl of their own. She thought about the news for a while and then asked if she could go out and play. A little while later the frantic mother noticed that she was not in the yard. Just as she ran outside to look for her daughter, she saw he coming from next door. When asked why she had gone next door she said, “To help Mrs Smith”

When asked what she could possibly do to help, she replied, “I just sat on her lap and helped her cry”.

Many stories of the heroes of old, and new, especially The Harry Potter series I like so much are filled with feats of fantastic proportions and against impossible odds. Harry evades killer spiders by escaping in the magic car, and . Sometimes the situations in which we find ourselves do call for great courage and risk, such as the D-Day invasion remembered recently, or rescuing someone from a house fire or from drowning, or standing up against great opposition for a cause you believe in, but most often it’s the seemingly small ways that count the most.

It’s not always the seemingly great things that make the most difference, it’s the simple things. It’s not having all the answers, but about being vehicles for the loving, embracing and healing power of God. We need our brain surgeons, or thinkers and philosophers, our Nobel Prize winners and maybe even our sports heroes, but we also need the other largely unsung people who keep our communities and country together. We need our theologians and our church leaders, both in Canada and internationally, but we also need the run of the mill heroes of the faith.

We need, the people of faith who hold up others in prayer. We need people who put their faith in action despite the sometimes difficult circumstances of their lives. We need people who put their faith into action, because of the circumstances of their lives. We need people who sing hymns knowing deep within that their message is relevant and speaks to their deepest hurts and needs and read the Psalms knowing that the Psalmist speaks the words they feel but cannot articulate.

We need those who see to it that a lasagne dinner is delivered so the family camping out at the hospital, can get away and doesn’t have to cook. We need those who take the casseroles and cookies and cakes so the grieving family can offer visitors something without worrying about buying groceries. The faith needs the heroes who offer to pick a neighbour’s relative up at the airport, or milk the neighbours’ cows so that they can visit a child in a far away hospital. The community needs those who sit with struggling friends and talk and talk and listen through seemingly endless cups of coffee and muffins.

None of these things amount to much in the grand scheme of things, and they aren’t brain surgery, but they are very, very important to those who receive them. They can mean the difference between sanity and collapsing in confusion and being overwhelmed by the forces which seem to be controlling life. They are often the vehicles of God’s healing power.

To live this way to put into our practice our belief that our God is a God of love. That God cares for all people, no matter how wealthy or poor, that God does not have the same ways of measuring faithfulness that we do.

Naaman learned a thing or two about the never ending grace of this God and a thing or two about how different the values of the world are from the values of the kingdom.

As Christians, as a people who celebrate God’s presence, seek justice and resist evil, we are called to do those things which proclaim our faith whether they be large or small. We are called to trust that gifts given in faith will become, in God’s hands, acts of heroic proportions.

Amen.