Exodus 16: 2-15
Psalm 105: 1-6, 37-45
Philippians 1: 21-30
Matthew 20: 1-16

Who Are We?

There was a woman and her daughter who were talking to a counsellor. The daughter was preparing to go away to university. After some conversation the counsellor commented that they had experienced very little of the teen-parent conflict common to many families. To this the daughter replied , "It’s because of what she says every time I walk out the door!" The mom smiled.

"What is it that she says?" the counsellor asked. The daughter rolled her eyes, then looked gratefully at her mom.

"Remember who you are," she said. "Mom always tells me, 'remember who you are. It just ruined every stupid thing I ever started to do!'"

One of the most intriguing new tv shows from last season was LOST. An airline is driven off course by bad weather on a transpacific flight from Hawaii to Los Angeles and crashes on a seemingly deserted tropical island. Miraculously, 47 people survive the crash. The series is about their struggles to survive on the island which becomes increasingly mysterious with each passing episode. In many of the episodes a member of the core group of survivors, each of whom seems to have a “personal demon”, must make a decision about who they are and what values they will live by. Will they operate according to their “old” ways or will they put their past behind them and grasp the new start offered to them in this strange new world.

The church in Philippi was the first Christian congregation in Europe and the spostle Paul seems to have maintained a positive relationship with them. Writing from his prison cell, Paul enjoins the members of that early community to live their lives in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Now, that’s a tall order. What is “a life worthy of the gospel”? A few years ago fabric bracelets with the initials WWJD became popular, particularly among youth. The letters stood for “What Would Jesus Do”.

It seems simple enough at first, and it may be for your average child or teen, but as adults who must make our way in the world, trying to figure out what this may mean is not as easy as it might sound at first. We live in an increasingly complex world, have complex interconnections and have demands and expectations placed upon us that neither Jesus nor Paul not anyone in that cosmopolitan city of Philippi could have dreamed of.

Yet, when we start making lists of what is allowed and what is not, I think that we miss the point. The gospel is not about lists of permitted and forbidden behaviour, it is about a change of life and heart. In fact, I might even venture to say that making such lists is contrary to the gospel.

Allow me to explain. Here I must go the gospel lesson for today. In today’s gospel we have one of those infuriating little parables. There are many of Jesus’ parables which we have become accustomed to and have become such friends with that we have lost the edge or the offense. We all hear the parable of the prodigal son as a nice story of forgiveness, whatever else it may mean. We all hear the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin as metaphors for God’s search for us. Whatever they may mean, they don’t usually disturb us, until that is, some preacher like me turns theem on their head.

However, tis one doesn’t need any help. It is almost as offensive today as it was when it was first spoken. Back when I was a student I worked at a job where I punched a clock. The policy was that an employee had to work a full 15 minutes to receive 1/4 hour’s pay. If you worked from 11:46 till 6:14 you lost 28 minutes pay because you didn’t meet the magic cut offs, and it was the counter on the time-clock that counted, not the CBC time signal or any of the other radio stations. We knew the rules and we were all treated the same, which was, supposed to be fair. Occasionally when we forgot to punch in the manager could certify our arrival time, but that certainly wasn’t encouraged. And, for absolutely certain, if I missed 5 hours the manager was not going to authorize those hours no matter what my excuse was. It’s the only way to run a business with a number of port-time employees paid by the hour. Ellis-Birt limited might have gone bankrupt if it were known that you didn’t have to show up for more than an hour of your shift in order to find a full pay in your bank account on pay-day. While this parable certainly has implications for caring for the economic needs of all of the members of the community, I feel that its other meanings are more basic. This is, at its heart, a parable at the heart of the gospel Paul speaks of; the undeserved and totally free grace of God. Now, I’m sure that someone along the way has told you that there is no such thing as a ‘free lunch’. Almost every day, sometimes several times in one day, I forward an email to the RCMP fraud organization, ‘phone-busters’. The emails usually start something like this” I am wrioting to you in the strictest confidence. My late husband was the manager of the National Bank of Africa in Nigeria and has in his account 10 million US dollars, however I have become a Christian since he stole this money and now I want to give it to a fellow follower of Jesus. Or I want to share it with someone who will help me get it out of the country. All I have to do is send them my bank account information! We’d all like “something for (next to) nothing”, that’s why these scam artists can usually find someone to bite. That’s also why lotteries are so enticing, even for those who can’t afford them.

However, let’s get away from money. What is so offensive about the grace of God? What is so offensive is that it is grace; it is not ‘fair’. It seems that from the time that the church’s mission was broadened beyond the Jewish community there were tensions between the people who had been there forever and those who were “Johnny come lately’s”. It seems that these words of Jesus were remembered when the old timers tried to claim more power, or more say than those who had been there only a short time.

Now it would seem only fair, that in any organization, that those who had put in their time, would be entitled to more say, more power, more of almost everything. However this parable shoots all of that out of the water. It shoots it out of the water with the good news of the disturbing and infuriating grace of God.

It seems that the people who had worked all day were perfectly happy with the daily wage until they others received the same. Then, they felt they deserved more. And if this were really about labour relations, that would be true. Because the latecomers received what was necessary for daily existence it would be a great parable if the generous God gave the others more.

Yet time and time again this God gives what is needed, when it is needed, according to grace, not according to merit. The people of Israel were a generally ungrateful bunch, yet God’s grace was visited upon each and every one of them the same! Manna for only a day. Quail at various times.

It seems to me that we in the church, generally speaking, are the ones who have been here since sunup and we have come to feel that we deserve the grace of God. Now that is certainly a contradiction in terms. If grace is deserved, it is not grace. If I can go back to the tv series LOST for a moment. Early in the series, the character Sawyer is a miserable and vindictive man. Yet, it is not fairness that eventually wins him over, but grace. When the doctor and others treat him generously, out of all proportion to what he ‘deserves’ he eventually changes and becomes a contributing member of the community.

We don’t earn grace, we respond to it. Ingrained in us from childhood is the idea that goodness will win us favour. We may earn more privileges and responsibilities from our parents by being more responsible, by following their rules and by staying out of trouble, but if we have good parents, we don’t earn their love. And we discover that while adding a child to the family may mean that there are fewer treats and trinkets each, it does not mean that love is diminished. When a new baby is born the love the parent has is multiplied, not divided and that is the way with grace. Babies don’t ‘do’ anything to merit being loved, and neither can we ever hope to do anything to make God love us more or less than at our beginning.

This does not mean that our lives are not important. Quite the contrary. It does mean that our lives are to be lived in response, not as an attempt to earn something which was free to begin with. And what we live out is the gospel of this completely un-merited love, this grace that has surrounded us from our beginning. It’s not that we are awful terrible people that God could not possibly love, most of us aren’t that bad, but that we are loved anyway. Period. End of Story.

So we show that we know this by being as loving and as accepting of others as we can, without calculating their value based on a merit system. And what better community in which to model this that the church. I was once promoting the concept of youth elders and one of the more senior members of session said, “We have Bob” (not his real name).

I had seen the balloons outside his house months before and I said, “Bob is 40".

“You want someone younger than 40. You mean babies”. It didn’t seem to make much difference to her that her minister was much younger than that at the time”.

It’s about valuing people for the contribution they make at the time, not for because of past credits, or even future potential, but because each person is a beloved child of God here and now as they are, here and now.

We are all freely given the grace we need; let us model and embody that with and to others in our daily lives. Amen.

Exodus 17: 1-7
Psalm 78: 1-4, 12-16
Philippians 2: 1-13
Matthew 21: 23-32

It’s a wonderfully well told story. It could even be made into a movie, or two, if you had the right actors! It goes like this: “The people of Israel had been suffering for generations under the cruel yoke of their Egyptian taskmasters and they cried out to God for help. God called an “Israelite, raised as an Egyptian, but now on run for his life” to persuade the Pharaoh to let the Israelites leave Egypt Under his leadership they were able to leave Egypt but ended up in the wilderness, instead of the land of promise. They cried out to God for food, and they received food in the form of manna and then quail and then they they cried out to God for water and when it did not arrive immediately, they complained that God had abandoned them.” I think it could become a classic!

What’s wrong with this picture? What point was the author of the story trying to make? Why would the story of God’s chosen people be told in such a way as to put them in an unfavourable light? Surely such a story should emphasize the faithfulness and trust displayed by God’s people!

Unless we don’t have any television and have our heads in the sand, we’re all somewhat aware of the hardships endured by the millions who are forced to live in refugee camps for many years. We know that it would be a horrible existence, but that many people have been doing it for their entire lives. We are also very much aware of the hardships endured by those who have left their homes on the Gulf Coast of the United States, to seek shelter on higher ground. Few of us can imagine what it would be like to have entire communities, entire cities evacuated. Most of us could well imagine that at least some of those folks are saying, “What happened to ‘God Bless America!” and in effect, “Is God among us or not”. In the midst of any personal or national tragedy it is the question that is most frequently on the lips of those who are displaced, bereaved or touched by the events as they are unfolding.

In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina there are a few stories, to be sure, of great fortune dropping in the lap of some of those forced to flee. Maclean’s carried a story in the latest issue, dated tomorrow I believe, about a couple who found several thousand dollars just ‘floating on the water’ and who are now living in very comfortable, even luxurious accommodations, thanks to a billionaire with a generous spirit, but there are more stories of people crammed into smelly and crowded shelters. There is the story of the original owner of that so called “windfall”. There are the stories of those who will take many years to rebuild their lives and regain their livelihoods. Then there are the stories like the one of the bus explosion which killed dozens of elderly nursing home residents. As we listen to and watch the news coverage WE may be asking, “Is the Lord among them or not?

Now it is important, when looking at the story to remember the progression of events that had ‘just taken place’. It’s hard to keep those kinds of details in our heads over a span of weeks! By the time this episode occurred the people had ample time and opportunity to see and benefit from the presence of this God who bore the brunt of their frustration and criticism. To recap: they had recently experienced the generosity of God’s grace with manna and quail, but they still wanted more and they wanted it immediately.

Of course, water was essential to life and they would not last many days without it. But, within the context of this story, this complaining is a sign that they lacked faith. They had been benefactors of the grace and generosity of God and they lacked the trust that was essential to the divine human relationship. They were not the first to fall prey to this and would not be the last.

The asked and unasked questions were answered with the word from God that they were led into the wilderness so that their lives could be sustained, not so that God could let them die and so that they could learn to depend upon God for their life and not upon their Egyptian taskmasters.

Back when I was in junior high school the book Roots told the story of African slave, Kunte Kinte and his capture and journey to slavery in the new world. It then outlines the story of the succeeding generations. I recall one scene in particular from early in the tv mini-series: the young slave has just arrived at his first owner’s plantation and he looks up at the moon in the night sky and wonders if it is the same moon that looks over his village near the Gamby Bolongo. Of course it is the same moon, but he has to work at keeping the story alive, the story of his true identity. He does this by insisting on the telling of the story, by insisting that the memory of who they were should not be lost by keeping alive he rituals of his tribe in this strange new land.

The people of Israel were in transition; between oppression and promise, as they would be in the future, and this story from Exodus asserts that “YES” God was with them in those uncertain times. God was calling them to faithfulness and God was bestowing his grace upon them each and every day.

As a people of faith we are in a time of transition. We can look back on our past and see a time when family values were agreed upon and solid, when there was far less uncertainty about what was important. We need to realize, like the Israelites that those ‘good old days’ were not as rosy as we would like to think they were and we need to realize that wishing them back will not, in the words of Star Trek, ‘make it so’. The people of Israel were called to journey forward, as we are called to journey forward. We have a mission, which is to give ourselves to God’s service, as we journey into the future. We are called to fulfil our mission to be God’s people in the world in which we live.

When I was in elementary school I could not wait until I grew up and could throw off the shackles of my parents’ rules, the shackles of rules at school and the limitations of being a kid. I figured that ‘Grade 10' would be about right! When I grew up, long after grade 10, I realized that adulthood has its own limitations and that many of the so called ‘shackles’ were ways in which my true freedom as a child of God could be expressed in a fuller way.

The people who were grumbling in today’s passage did not know what the land of freedom looked like, but they knew that it would be a perfect place, where ‘milk and honey flowed endlessly. What they had to learn was how to be faithful to this God who called them into this relationship of radical freedom.

At this point in the journey they are on the road to the promised land, but they must soon make a major rest stop at Sinai. Today’s story is one of them learning that they have not been abandoned, that the God of their ancestors is still with them and that this God will care for them in very significant and down to earth ways. What they need to learn next, before they reach the land of promise, is that the law of God must be accepted as the guide and parameters for expressing their freedom.

((We gather here in St. Stephen’s today for our annual memorial service. We remember and give thanks for the faithfulness of these ancestors whose graces we tend in the cemetery. We give thanks for the lives of those we ourselves can recall. We give thanks for those who told and lived the story of faith so that we could catch it, so that we could understand it , so that we could live it. )))

There is a wonderful hymn that talks about this journey of faith and it asserts that the journey is our home. Life is much more than the setting of goals: lets get the kids out of diapers; lets get hockey over with; lets wait till the kids are away from home; lets wait for retirement; wait. God calls us to live fully and faithfully in those in-between times. To use the example of having a small baby in the house: Even if life is bound by a 2 hour feeding schedule which we could not possibly sustain long term, that schedule at that time is what we must do for the health and development of our children. That is one of the most important things we could be doing at that time. We know that in families there is very little that is ever static; we are always on a journey. We know well the expression, Children grow up too fast. While tehy can’t wait to ‘get big’ their parents wake up one day and they are teenagers and the next day and they have, as the song puts it, ‘babes of their own’. Raising children is a series of constant changes. If those changes are looked toward as goals and the time in-between is overlooked we may have missed some very valuable time together.

Is the Lord among us or not? The answer is yes if we are prepared to fully engage our faith in the time in which we live. We cant live in the past and while we are on a journey to something else, we must live in faithfulness in the here and now. God is with us. We need only to ask for water for our journey and bread for our souls and it will be provided in ways appropriate to this time and place. Let us open our eyes to the journey in which we are engaged. Let us open our hearts to the God who goes with us. Let us journey in trust and in faith.

Amen.

Exodus 20: 1-4, 7-9, 12-20
Psalm 19
Philippians 3: 4b-14
Matthew 21: 33-46

Every so often something happens which seems to make our world a much smaller place. The devastating floods caused by Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast of the United States have made Biloxi and Baton Rouge seem so close to us. For many years the power of television has made the world seem a much smaller place. I know what the power of the internet has done to my relationships with colleagues; I correspond by email to many people I feel I know well, but have never met. I had an email from one of them from on Friday afternoon. She lives in Baton Rouge and requested that I pray for her grandparents who are in their late 90's and have been evacuated from Port Arthur, Texas. Such requests put a real identity to the news reports of so much flooding and devastation and so many anonymous people fleeing for their lives on clogged highways. When it turns out to be less devastating than expected, we rejoice with them.

This is Worldwide Communion Sunday. It’s not called that because on this Sunday “everyone” around the world celebrates communion. On every communion Sunday, we gather around the table and celebrate our unity amidst our differences. On every communion Sunday we remember that the Christian story is a story of God’s self giving love in Christ. On every communion Sunday we re-enact God’s love being poured out for us so that we might be filled, and we celebrate God’s love broken for us, so that we might be whole.

On this Sunday, in addition to what we usually reflect on, we are called to reflect in a special and deliberate way on what it means to be part of a world wide fellowship of believers; believers who gather at similar tables, regularly, or, like us, from time to time, to celebrate the sacrament of Christ’s giving of himself for the salvation of the world.

Though our scriptures for today don’t talk specifically about the sacrament of communion they do talk about the life of faith: self giving, focussing on needs of the whole rather than the wishes of one part, and total dedicated to God’s ways.

In his letter to the church in Philippi, Paul asserts that what we are called to do, he says is to share in the suffering and resurrection of Christ.

In communion we hold the symbols of bread and wine and we enact the great mystery of living and dying in Christ - we remember the suffering of the world and we seek new life for it.

Communion is not about success; the Christian life is not about success. The life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth was not about success but about the journey of faith. Paul tells the early believers that the life of faith is about pressing on toward the goal of a life fully lived for the gospel.

Paul does this by reminding people that he was a “good Jew” and that he would have every reason to pat himself on the back. Paul’s list of accomplishments may sound strange to us, but if it were translated into traditional Christian images he might have said something like this: “ I was baptized as an infant and have gone to church every Sunday of my life and my parents as grandparents did before me and they were some of the folks who build this church and I’ve never broken any of the ten commandments, I pray every day, I give to the food bank and am the biggest giver to my church”. However, Paul argues, what is really important is my daily participation in the life of the community and knowing the ups and downs and that the death and resurrection of Jesus as a daily reality for the people of faith. Christianity is not about getting it right, its about relationship. Christianity is about participating in the ups and downs of the lives of others and allowing God’s love to enter into those times in our lives. In fact it can be said that it is especially in those times which are hard, the times of brokenness and emptiness that this self giving of God in Christ is most strongly felt.

It is in the prayers said for friends of strangers in need. It’s in the pot of hot soup delivered to the home of someone in need. It’s the contribution to the lunch at the funeral reception, or serving at it. It’s the caring call or visit to the hospital where family sit by the hour. It’s the sitting with those closest to us in a time of pain and anxiety. It’s the going the second mile. It’s the walking with those who need the companionship even if they don’t always want it at the time. It’s the giving what we can and doing what we can to make the lives of thsoe we have never met more whole, more bearable. It’s the being willing to be broken and poured out so that Christ’s Spirit can make us whole.

So as we cone to the table we come to have our brokenness healed and our emptiness filled but we also come seeking that this filling and healing can come most often in participating in the emptiness and brokenness of the world God loved son much.

As we are broken and poured out for others, as Christ was, so we are filled with the blessings of the Spirit.

Amen

Deuteronomy 8: 7-18
Psalm 65
2 Corinthians 9: 6-15
Luke 17: 11-19

An evangelist was speaking to a crowd of people and he said, “I have spent the best years of my life in the arms of a woman who is not my wife”. After everyone gasped in shock, he continued, “it was my mother.” Everyone let our a sigh of relief and he went on to make a point in his sermon.

A few weeks later an elderly minister who had heard the evangelist decided to use the same story and he began, “I spent the best years of my life in the arms of a woman who was not my wife.” He paused and his congregation looked at him wide eyed as he continued, “ but ... can’t remember who she was.”

Clearly, if you are going to tell a story like that, you have to remember the punch line!

In the history of the people of God the “story” is very important. The “story” is what reminds the people that God has been with them for generations. The story is what reminds them of who they are. Most critically, the story reminds them “whose” they are. In the reading from the book of Deuteronomy we heard one of these stories being referred in, as they prepare to make a transition from the nomadic life of the desert to the settled and agricultural life of the promised land. In the desert they did not grow crops and it was very easy to see that God had looked after them, but once they entered the promised land they would have to become farmers and there was a danger that they would forget their story. There was a chance that they would forget that this story was not only part of the past, it was a intrinsic part of their present.

You all know how much work farming is; in Palestine it was much more so. The danger inherent was not that their needs would not be met; the danger was that God’s grace would be forgotten.

You see, for the people who are about to enter the promised land, it is crucial that they remember the story in order to secure their future prosperity as God’s people. As we look at their story as the years go on, when they forgot this crucial teaching to remember the story of who and whose they were, they ended up in very hot water.

The point, for us is much the same. The story is not just that God has been with the people in the past but that God is with the people here and now and God is calling all of us to be part of that great and continuing story.

The gospel story is about ten people who were suffering from the dreaded disease of leprosy. They requested healing and were told to go to the Priest, a pre-requisite of proving that you had been healed. Only one of these men came back to give thanks to Jesus. Why?

Of course the rest were thankful; how could they not be. Leprosy was a debilitating illness which resulted in a total and complete ostracism from family and community. To be given a clean bill of health by the priest was the ticket back to a normal life. If only they could have flown to find a priest to sign their certificate of health. Of course they were thankful; or maybe they were just overjoyed and didn’t stop to think whose power had done this.

However, there was something in the faith expression of this one that drew praise from Jesus. It seems that a Samaritan, a virtual outsider, knew more about how to live the story of thankfulness than a child of Israel.

As I see it, the whole point is adopting the attitude of thankfulness, a way of looking at life which moves the focus from ourselves and our very real lives of struggle and hard work to the grace and power of God. It’s not that our wealth and the things we have are free gifts, through no effort whatsoever on our part; we DO work for much of what we have, but to focus on ourselves is to allow ourselves to believe that we are the authors of our success. There are so many factors that we can’t control such as family environment, such as where and in what time and place we were born, and a whole host of things that we should never allow ourselves to believe that our success is as a result of our own brains and a reward for our faithfulness, especially when we may then believe that the failure of others is a punishment for their lack of faithfulness.

Perhaps our success is a mandate for a ministry of sharing and caring. Part of knowing and following the story is living a life of thankfulness, living a life of sharing with those who are not as blessed.

We will gather around the table in a few moments to reenact another key story in our lives as God’s people. We remember that God, in Christ, allowed himself to be poured out and broken so that the world might be filled with all of the fullness of life that it could hold.

As we gather at this Holy table, let us remember the God who goes with us always. As we gather at our meal tables in the next few days let us remember that they too are holy tables; tables around which we can experience at least part of the fullness of God’s love and care for us.

Let us give thanks to God for God has done marvellous things for us.

Amen.