Exodus 3: 1-15
Psalm 105 (VU pp828-829)
Matthew 16: 21-28

Are We Listening?

Last year it was Alberta, including the city of Fort McMurray; this year it’s the BC interior. Vast areas of forest have burned, and are still burning, but unlike Moses’ bush, these trees have indeed been consumed. Life has been disrupted for many even if most can go back to normal with a major “clean-up”.

Texas is the midst of a major crisis as unprecedented flooding has overwhelmed many areas, including the city Houston. Last time I looked it up 44 people are confirmed dead but that figure might rise. One report I read estimated the damage in 2 counties alone at 23 BILLION. Fire ants are floating around in massive colonies and people are returning to soggy houses to find alligators in their yards! Yikes! The only flood I ever experienced left me with a bunch of someone else’s firewood and a few very large zucchini. I was lucky in that the sump pump kept the water from flooding my furnace; some of my neighbours were not so fortunate!

In addition to the fires and flooding the other constant news item is the threat of nuclear missiles from North Korea and the threatened American response.

The United Nations has called the famine currently affecting Kenya, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen the largest humanitarian crisis since 1945. Interestingly, that has barely made the news!

The other day the CBC aired an interview with retired lawyer, 97 year old Ben Ferencz, the last living Neuremberg Trials prosecutor. Since the end of the original trials, he has spent his life advocating for peace and is concerned about emerging trends around the world that promote hatred and violence.

We know that white “Supremacists” of many forms are again flexing their muscles and spreading hate.

As Canadians we are struggling with the legacy of Residential Schools and especially how to teach the younger generations about this previously ignored and forgotten part of our history. Reconciliation will be a long journey involving ALL Canadians - both those of us who are descendants of immigrants and those who are aboriginal.

Some very “close to home” statistics are also very sobering. In Kings County I am told that ONE IN FOUR children live in poverty. In 2016 the child poverty rate in Nova Scotia was 24.3 % higher than it was in 1989 - the year the promise to eradicate child poverty was made.” We know that food bank use has not diminished.

A report issued last fall indicated that rates of domestic violence in Canada are staggering. 1/3 of the murders in Canada are “domestic” in nature.

Today’s passage from Exodus begins with Moses - seemingly just doing his everyday, job - herding sheep. This day though he takes the flock, beyond the wilderness, (now how is that even possible?) and encounters a bush, on fire, yet not burned up! When he investigates, the message changes his life!

If we remember anything about Moses we need to remember that his “people” were slaves in Egypt and had been for some time! It seems to me that the message from the bush can be boiled down to two basic points: ONE, God, the God of his ancestors, has heard the cries of the people; and, TWO, Moses is called to be the one to go and free the people.

While Moses himself was out of Egypt and “safe”, his people, the Hebrews were still back in Egypt, still slaves, still crying out to God for deliverance. On this day God was calling him to go back and deliver his people from under the thumb of a powerful and cruel tyrant.

Moses knew the kind of power he was dealing with! Perhaps he felt that he needed some “authority” behind him so he asked the fiery voice for a name. The Egyptians had many gods and each had a name, an identity and a sphere of influence. He also had to convince his own people that he has some kind of mandate to lead them in this hair brained venture.

In response to his request for the name behind this fiery voice he was told. “I AM WHO I AM!” What kind of name is that? I am is not a name, it’s a verb!

Well, that’s the point! The answer he received serves several purposes. First, it connects the history of the people to the ancestral promise to Abraham and Sarah. They have a history with this God. Secondly, it tells Pharaoh who he’s dealing with! This is not sone rinky-dink god of sky or thunder or the seasons but is the great I AM. This God is “being” itself and cannot be controlled by simply saying a name. This God has heard and is acting through Moses.

Thousands of years after Moses, the compelling image of the burning bush became a symbol of Presbyterianism, a part of our United Church heritage. It can be our symbol, our call to action, our sign that we have work to do. It can be a sign that we do not do this work alone but that the greata I AM of history is calling to us and goes with us.

I began my sermon with a bit of a news report - all of situations which need addressing in some way. From every corner of the world people are crying out for freedom, for justice, for help.

Shirley Endicott, author of a book called “Facing the Tiger,” became enraged at the stories of horrific family violence endured by some of her clients, and the ways in which Canadian culture perpetuated such violence and she adopted the image of the burning bush in this way: she says that she “became a burning bush!” She was on fire with a will to end the suffering of women and children at the hands of those who were supposed to love them.

On this first Sunday of our “fall season”, I wonder if we come to church so that we will feel better, or “closer to God” or do we come to hear a word of commissioning, of mission, to give us a way “we can make a difference.” Today we are called to go beyond the limits of our everyday lives and make a difference for those who need it most..

As individuals and as a congregation we are already very good at some of this. We have shown in the past that we can build towers of pasta, pyramids of peanut butter, forts of cereal, and morph strawberries and whipped cream into money for a refugee family. The Red Cross and our own United Church have giving campaigns underway for famine relief and some of us have given or are planning to give. Similarly, our church networks have told us that what is most needed in Texas is cash donations and not shipments of “stuff”. Our leaders are in frequent dialogue about what is and will be most helpful.

This Thanksgiving I am going to see how big a harvest we can have for the food bank. I’ll tell you more aout that later!

The God of life calls us, as Moses was called, to act out God’s word in the midst of a culture of death and scarcity; to proclaim that God wants ALL people regardless of skin colour or economic circumstance to have abundant and full lives.

I saw a news piece a week or so ago where a tourist from Calgary, wearing a head scarf, became lost about 100km north of Winnipeg, who was simply asking for directions, was accosted and targeted with racial slurs and insults by a self-proclaimed Nazi. She did receive support from those who witnessed the event. BUT THIS WAS CANADA!

One of the things we can do is to stand up for the diversity of our immigrants and speak our against such acts of hate. We need to say that this is not our Canada. Most of us are immigrants too!

We have been told that at least some of the so-called “natural disasters” affecting our planet are caused by global warming. As people in a country that produces a great deal of the CO2 responsible we can each work to reduce our footprint.

When we look at international relations we need to advocate with our governments to adopt policies that promote justice and do not exploit people in developing countries. Why are we willing to allow companies to set up operations in the third world that we would not tolerate here? When we look at pipelines and resource extraction we need to consider the needs of the aboriginal peoples who call what we see as “wilderness”, their home and enter into a process of true dialogue.

We need to end the divisions between us and them and realize that we are all in the same boat - there is no spare planet to colonize when this one conks out. Of course, we can’t do any of this alone. We will need the help of community. And of government. And of the international community. We need also to realize that the work of liberation is God’s work. Genesis tells us that creation was God’s labour of love - and its been a long time since it could be called “good” in all its aspects.

God is calling for us to embrace life, freedom and justice for God’s creation, for all living things everywhere.

So lets do something, say something, give something and be and continue to be God’s messengers. Let’s catch some of that holy fire and burn with God’s energy as we go into the fall season with renewed hope that the people of God can indeed make a difference!

Amen.

Exodus 12: 1-14
Psalm 149
Matthew 18: 15-20

It`s About The Future!

On almost every tv series, serious or comedy, they have a “Thanksgiving” episode that usually goes something like this - a number of adults, usually young, far away, or estranged in some way, from their families, decide to celebrate the holiday together. The host cooks the turkey and some of the guests bring dishes to share. Often, the host has never ever made a thanksgiving meal, but almost all of them “know” from their own experience what it is supposed to be like.

The cook has questions: How big a turkey does one buy? 20lbs? 30? How long do you cook it? How do you make stuffing? What do you do for your vegetarian guests? And where do you buy all of the needed, but forgotten, ingredients, at the last minute? Panicked long-distance calls are made as traditional recipes are sought and found. Culinary and interpersonal disasters happen, but somehow, five minutes to the end of the show, the people show up, the table is set, the food is ready and, since they all appear in the next episode, no one will succumb to food poisoning!

Someday, somewhere, I suspect this event will become a part of a family story, or at least the “story of friends”. “Remember the year that you had 13 people over for Thanksgiving dinner and we didn’t eat till 11:30 because the turkey was so big and you forgot to buy ..........”

There are certain rituals which seem to be more or less universal across an entire culture - and for the descendants of European Immigrants one is a Thanksgiving complete with a huge turkey. Then there is Christmas which is basically Thanksgiving with a tree and a visit from Santa Claus, and another is Easter with an egg hunt and hot cross buns and lots and lots of chocolate. You might have noticed the totally secular bent to these celebrations!

Jewish people, it seems to me, are big on rituals: on the recitation and re-enactment of really old stories. Passover is one of these. is the festival that remembers the liberation of the people from slavery in Egypt. It is celebrated by Jewish people today and I am told that even people who never go to Synagogue celebrate it - it has always been, as far as I know, primarily celebrated in the home, around the dinner table.

Why, I wonder, do groups of people remember really old stories and celebrate rituals to mark them?

I think that sometimes we do so to add flesh to memories. For example, if the turkey is made the way Grandma used to, and we eat it off her china, then its almost like she’s back with us.

As a culture we regularly remember stuff that is so old that the “original event” happened before even our parents were born but it has meaning for us.

For some it all of the ceremonies around November 11 are in this category.

I was talking with a colleague the other day about Terry Fox. He was running when I was in High School. I can remember the song that played on the TV when the ads came on un. I can remember how the whole country seemed to be with him as he ran and how we hoped he would make it to the Pacific Ocean. It was asw if we were running with him. When his run finished just outside of Thunder Bay we hoped he would get back at it soon. We all shed a tear when we heard that he had died.

My friend has been in ministry for a number of years but she told me that she was not even born when Terry was running. She has a young child who will soon be in school and probably participating in a Terry Fox Run.

When I was young everything that happened before I was born was kind of all melted together into the lump of events “BB” before me! The assassination John F Kennedy is included because I was too young to have noticed or have cared but it is one of those watershed moments of history, in some ways, like 9/11 has become.

Maybe that just shows my age but the Terry Fox North Run has become an annual event in many Canadian communities. Not only does it remember a remarkable person BUT more importantly it picks up where he left off, not just honouring his work, BUT raising money for research to find a cure for Cancer. His run inspired an entire nation who kept it going and who run for the same reason, “someday the hurting will stop”.

At the end of the day, we celebrate our “best rituals” and tell our “best stories” so that the future wl be better and so that there will be some direct continuity between the generations.

There is an old adage that goes, “those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” but I would argue that its much more nuanced than that. We have to both remember a past event or series of events AND to reflect on them in such a way that we can learn from our mistakes and successes and allow change to occur within us.

I was talking with a colleague many years ago, and in the context of wedding preparation, he asked me, “does it surprise you how little some people know about their parents?” I knew exactly what he meant.

There are government forms to make out for registering a marriage and the church “register” also requires some of the same information. The people getting married could tell me where they themselves were born but about half couldn’t tell me either the middle name of one of their parents or their place of birth. Some didn’t even know what their mother’s maiden name was. When I asked what their grandparents’ last names were though, it was as if a light went on! Gee if Gramma and Grampa’s last name is Outhouse then my mom must have been an Outhouse! (Don’t laugh, it’s a real surname!)

While surfing the net the other day, which sounds much more athletic than “browsing” doesn’t it, I came across an article on the benefits of telling family stories

However there has to be some purpose to the reminiscing - it has to be more than just telling the young people how easy they have it and more than telling what happened for its own sake. When family stories are not exaggerated, such as “I walked 5 miles to school and 5 miles home and it was uphill both ways” kids tend to tune those stories out! But when the stories have focussed on how one generation coped with un-welcome changes, for example, it helps the next generation to cope with everything from something as personal as “new school” jitters to the social sea change that may come from a move away from our dependance on fossil fuels and the changes that may bring.

The story of Passover, the story of how our Hebrew ancestors coped with small and large changes in their lives, reminds us that God’s people have gone this way before us and have not only survived but also thrived. The stories of the early church communities were advised to deal with conflicts gives us a perspective and the assurance that what we are going through is not totally new and just perhaps there is something to be gleaned from the past.

When we gather here at Avon we may tell our family stories - of our various founding congregations, of people we no longer have with us, of events that built us up or shook us, but we must remember that the most important stories are those which showed us that God was with us.

These events remind us that our present circumstances need to be viewed in this light - and to remind us that people of faith have had a history of going through enormous changes and do best when they do so in a way that they intentionally seek God’s word for their circumstance.

There used to be a bracelet popular with church teens with the letters WWJD on them. What would Jesus do?

Its not a simplistic question but it’s essential that we consider what the tradition and history of people of faith has to say to any dilemma we face as a community.

Mainline Christian churches in North America are in a tough spot. How do we reflect on our tradition in such a way as to produce a way forward out of our present bondage and into freedom.

There are no instant answers but that is our task?

Amen.

Exodus 14: 19-31
Exodus 15
Matthew 18: 21-35

That Many Times, eh?

Mention the name of the fictitious, ultra polite, too good to be true, Constable Benton Fraser, to a real RCMP officer and you will get an enormous “eye roll”. Constable Fraser spends the most of his time fighting crime on the streets of Chicago, assisted by his deaf, white wolf, Diefenbaker. With his ultra polite manners and exceptional tracking skills he is a comedic contrast to his partner from the Chicago police, Detective Ray Vecchio who is rude and loves to cut procedural corners. Constable Fraser is just “too good to be true.”

These days very few TV shows present “clergy” or even “church goers”, committed or otherwise, mainline or evangelical, in a favourable or realistic light.

Very often those “outside” misunderstand those “inside” and dismiss most of us as a mixture of crackpots and hypocrites.

Yet, some of what we talk about a great deal in church is also important in the secular world. Forgiveness is one of those things that has an importance beyond the world of faith and of communities.

As a follow up to last week’s reading on the settling of disputes within the church community this passage deals with forgiveness. While the passage begins with Peter asking a question about the number of times he has to forgive someone who has sinned against him, the parable used by Jesus speaks of it in terms of “economic indebtedness.”

I was joking with the Credit Union manager a while ago about forgiving my mortgage when she retires! She did not think that she would be able to do that! Other investors were counting on the income from my mortgage, and the loans of others. If forgiving loans became common the whole economy would begin to unravel.

The first passage read today was about the people of Israel following Moses out of Egypt and into the desert. Some of the early laws they were given stipulated a regular time for the forgiving of debt. It was called “The Year of Jubilee” and I believe it was designed to periodically level the playing field and to give everyone a fair shake at a decent life. While it is outlined in the biblical record, as far as I know there is no evidence of it ever being observed.

Fast forward many generations to the time of Jesus and a couple of foreign occupations and military defeats later. Theirs was a society of both extreme wealth and abject poverty.

This is one of those passages were Jesus is ASKED one kind of question by a disciple but essentially changes the topic when he answers it. Peter’s question concerns sin. Jesus RESPONSE uses the economic system with which they would all have been familiar as a challenging example on unlimited forgiveness.

Perhaps Peter picked “seven times” as a high number, thinking it was a lot of forgiveness but Jesus challenged him with something much greater - seventy seven times.

Scholars tell us that Jesus did not pick the number seventy seven times out of his head but references a somewhat obscure biblical passage in which Lamech, a descendant of Cain, vows to exact vengeance that many times. In effect, Jesus is askinng the disciple to reverse the “curse of Lamech”!

In Jesus’ day the wealthy few held all the land, and the money was supposed to flow to these folks at the top. It truly was a situation where the rich got richer and the poor barely survived.

As far as I know, the system operated on a commission basis. A manager would agree to collect a certain amount from a certain list of the owner’s tenants or clients. If he wanted to earn a REALLY good living he charged more overhead than if he merely wanted a good living.

Since the amount owed was so large, it is most likely that the man portrayed in this parable was an “upper level” manager; a CEO. It was more than one person could ever possibly owe - 10,000 talents. The average wage was about 3 talents a year! He had to be “management”. We don’t know why he could not pay but he couldn’t. (Perhaps he had blown all the money on crack cocaine, or, at the casino!) He begged for mercy because he did not want to be sold into slavery along with his entire family.

The master grants him mercy?

This in an amazing outcome!! Why?

Wouldn’t this encourage others to squander their responsibilities? Perhaps?

But it also ensures his future allegiance because he now OWED the boss a big debt - his life and his freedom. The boss had bought his loyalty, for sure!

Yet this does not change him in any way; he does not “get it”. When he encounters someone farther down the pecking order in his business, and this man begs for mercy, he grants him none. This man who would have been a “lower level manager” owed about 100 days pay; a great deal of money in a subsistence economy but not all that big considering the debt that had just been written off for him.

When hearing of this the boss calls him into the office and hands him over to be tortured until he could pay. (How that could actually happen is left to our imaginations).

The implication is that since we have been forgiven, we should be forgiving. Parables always lead to more questions though. What if the human to human sin or injury is enormous? What if it is something that happened over and over, year after year?

Pauline Dakin, the daughter of a colleague, and former CBC reporter has just written, Run, Hide, Repeat: A Memoir of A Fugitive Childhood. It’s already a besr-seller! It’s also one of the few books in the last while that I have read cover to cover in just a few sittings.

The author tells us that how her childhood as spent: on the run. After separating from her alcoholic husband and the father of her two children, her mother moved them, without warning, half-way across the country and then once again, a few years later, the rest of the way! There was a lot of secrecy in her life; she and her brother were not permitted to reveal even the most innocent of things about their lives as a family. She and her brother, when they were alone, would often speculate on what was really going on in their weird family.

She was 23 before her mother told her that all those times they ran, they were running from the mafia, to whom her father had ties and were determined to do them harm. She was also warned that they were still potential targets.

The person who convinced her mother of this danger was their former minister and her mother’s counsellor. Throughout the years this man had remained a part of their lives, periodically warning them that either that danger was near, or had just been narrowly averted.

After a while Pauline, who had become a skilled reporter, ceased to believe the story behind their strange behaviour. She became very angry at this family friend for the lost childhood friendships, the toll on her mother, and the strain in and disruption of their lives.

The great mystery was “why”. Her mother, even when she was working as a minister in various pastoral charges, continued to believe that they were in danger.

It turned out that the whole family had essentially been hijacked by their former minister who had been able to convince her mother, an otherwise rational, strong minded person, who was “nobody’s fool,” that they had to flee for their lives and keep the details of their lives secret, especially from her ex-husband and his family.

Pauline began to research what could have motivated this man, she came across some literature on “delusional disorder.” She found out that those who suffer from this condition can be completely convinced of something (that is technically possible) like “the mafia is after us”, even if it is highly improbable and this person can be very convincing to others. In this man’s case it might have been triggered by a head injury in childhood.

As Dakin completed her research on this mental disorder it was as if a great weight had been lifted from her. She no longer needed to hate this man for what he had put her mother through; for what he had done to her family. It wasn’t done in a deliberate attempt to hurt anyone; indeed it was all meant to be helpful, to be life-saving.

Almost every time I read a paper or surf the internet I see stories of horrific crimes - school shootings, racial attacks, family violence, rapes and the list goes on and on! In these cases the hurt is deliberately caused.

Sometimes it seems as if our justice system is an injustice system; a slap on the wrist seems to trivialize the wrong done. Even in places where the death-penalty is an option it’s not always administered fairly.

Perhaps we are focussing on the wrong thing. Forgiveness has little to do with the “justice system”. Perhaps forgiveness is not about who gets punished or not - its not about someone “getting off”, perhaps its about those who have been wronged laying down their burden of hatred.

Corrie TenBoom was a middle-aged watch maker in Holland at the beginning of WWII. The Nazis invaded and started to round up the Jews in her country. The Ten Booms began working with the resistance and hiding Jewish people in a secret room in their house - it was, after all, the Christian thing to do. They are eventually betrayed and arrested. Corrie was the only one of her family to survive. Later she is recorded as having said, “To forgive is to free a prisoner and to realize that the prisoner was you.”

She had been beaten, made to do hard work on little food, her family were all killed, or allowed to die, and she saw many Jews go to their deaths, but still she was able to forgive. She was able to give up the burden of carrying that around.

Families and all human communities can be one of the most joy-filled organizations there are but they can also be some of the most frustrating, annoying and even hurtful. When humans interact, mistakes are made that hurt people both intentionally and unintentionally.

Ideally, the forgiven one repents and the two can begin a new life together but often that is not possible - to forgive does not make a right out of a wrong but it is a refusal to allow the burden of that toxic event or relationship affect the rest of one’s life.

To forgive someone is to be able to live in that paradoxical place where one does not forget but at the same time, it is not carrying it around like the enormous burden it could be.

Parables are meant to tease the mind and promote serious thought; they are not designed to give definitive answers to complex problems.

Seventy seven times, eh? That’s a lot. It could take us the rest of our lives. Maybe it’s meant to be a way of life. Or a way to life?

Amen!

Exodus 16: 2-15
Psalm 105
Matthew 20: 1-16

Many years ago I was charged with the task of going to the library to borrow a book for my grandmother. Instead of simply telling me the name of the book she wanted, she wrote the name on a piece of paper, which I handed to the librarian at the desk. I suppose my grandmother did not think I would get it right! It was the thickest novel I had ever seen. The title was in French but the book itself had been translated into English, over 1,000 pages. It was Victor Hugo’s, Les Misérables. This story is set in early 19th century and is a story of misery and poverty and struggle. It is also a story of redemption and grace. I know the basic plot but I must admit that I have never succeeded in getting through it. I’ve just started reading it on my Kindle. Maybe I will get to the end this time!

In “Les Miserables” the main character is a man named Jean Valjean who is jailed for 5 years for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his widowed sister’s family (and then he is sentenced to three more years for each of several escape attempts and another two for resisting arrest while he was on the lam) which added up to a total of 19 years. Some would say that these were “the good old days”! Valjean is eventually released but must carry a “yellow passport” forever identifying himself as a convicted criminal. Prison has not mproved Valjean; nothing has changed there!

After his release he steals from the first person to give him hospitality, a Bishop, but is forgiven; an act which does change him for the better and becomes a turning point in his life.

Did you catch that reference to the “good old days”? The time in question in that novel was far from good for the vast majority of the people of France, or most parts of Europe for that matter.

Movie after movie, set in those “good olde days” show us very graphically just how hard it was. In the movie, War Horse, the Naracott family are barely hanging onto then edge of survival. Mr Naracott, a veteran of the Boer war, and his family live as tenant farmers.

In the series, Outlander, all of the farmers on the estate owe a portion of their crop to the lord and master.

Based on a book by the same name, the movie, Angela’s Ashes shows us just how hard life was in depression era Ireland.

In the Palestine of Jesus day, life was as hard, or worse, for the vast majority as well.

As far as I know, the Denarius, the coin mentioned in the parable, was the “usual daily wage.” This daily wage was minimum, very minimum. Scholars disagree on whether this would support a family or not.

There are many unanswered questions in this parable. Each time the landowner goes to the marketplace, which seems to have functioned like the local employment office, he hires everyone. Yet, later in the day the ones hired at that time claim they are not working because “no one has offered them a job”! Where were they the first time? We don’t know!

We don’t know even why the landowner made several trips to obtain more workers - it was not the usual thing to do! Perhaps the sky turned and it looked like bad weather of the sort that could ruin a grape crop and he needed to hurry.

In the end though these questions are probably not important.

In addition, it would not have been usual to pay people in the very public way this landowner did. Those paid first, with the expectation only of what was fair, would have rejoiced at their full day’s pay and would have rushed off to spend it on the necessities of their life. T nhose paid next would also probably have rejoiced but as the landowner’s manager continued to give each successive group the same wage, I suspect the tension would have risen. Those hired first would probably have said to themselves, “Surely, we’re going to get a bonus for working in the hot sun all day”, but NO! In the end they received only what they were promised - a single denarius, a day’s pay. They found that it was pointless to argue because they had indeed agreed to that wage. The land OWNER was right; he could do what he wanted with what was his.

I wonder how many folks he would have found at daybreak when he went to hire his next crew? Could you really run a business like this? Whether this is about economics or not it is about God’s realm! But what is it saying? Taken as a whole, which is more or less how I believe we are to take parables, what is it saying to us?

Following closely on the heels of last week’s story on unlimited forgiveness, this is a story of generous grace.

One of the most helpful ways I have found to begin to look at a parable is by asking the question: who are we in this story?

Are we the landowner, one of those who do the hiring, making the decisions about what is done? Are we the one who has signed on early, followed orders, endured the heat of the day, perhaps even gone “the second mile.” Or are we the “new kid on the block”, just arrived and happy to be part of the crew.

If we see ourselves as a worker, at the end of the day are we happy to have received much more than we could have expected, or in the case of the first, just what we were promised, or did we really want more? If we see ourselves as a manager are we angry that some were offended at our generosity? Do we want to keep as much of what is “ours” as possible.

Very often this parable has been interpreted in such as way as to make the church community almost synonymous with the vineyard. We know how some churches work: the old guard set the rules, tell others what to do and how to do it, and view newcomers with suspicion, except as a source of fresh energy. When the newcomers have learned “how we do things” they can be given some “say”. Amazingly churches, and community organizations, that have this tendency tend to be unable to see themselves as others see them.

But aside from the church community, aside from clubs and groups, we need to take a look at how our lives, at how our world works, and then let that be challenged by Jesus’ description of the realm of God.

What if the world operated by God’s rules and not human rules?

In our reading from the Hebrew Scriptures we encountered a group of folks with a very human problem. It’s a real, honest to goodness problem. Its not in their imaginations! They are starving. In Les Miserables it drove Monsieur Valjean to become a thief.

In this case the children of Israel are so hungry that they look back fondly to their lives in slavery. Now, that has to be bad. In the end God answers their plea for food.

But, you may notice, the answer does not consist of enough for an entire year, a month or even a week. They are not, “set for life”. The food that came each day was enough for only the one day because, as we are told, the manna would spoil by the next day. God provided - but the people had to learn to trust, that each morning, there would be new manna and in this case quail available for them to eat.

There are other stories in the Bible, one in a parable of Jesus, that spoke of those who had full storehouses, as trusting in themselves, not really trusting in God and in putting too much stock in material things! It’s a problem of those who have a great deal and those who have next to nothing!

Yet, these days, those who can only manage to “live from pay cheque to pay cheque” are often looked at askance by those who can “manage better”.

This parables raises questions for all of us. Bringing this parable into the 21st century it asks us to consider questions such as: Does our work give us the means to survive, to put food on the table or a roof over our heads, or does it give us status and privilege? Do we regard ourselves as better than someone who receives a lower wage? Which professions “deserve more compensation” than others. Years ago, I am told, a young man would often get a raise if he got married or became a father. Did this make him more valuable to the company or did the raise come from his increased need?

What about the work of women? For too long, women’s paid work has received less than that of men. Many years ago, “equal pay for equal work” became a mantra, but since men and women have traditionally done different work, at least in some companies, the mantra eventually had to become “equal pay for work of equal value”

We could ask other questions such as. “Is our success tied to the impoverishment of others?” Do the companies in which we invest, or from which we purchase goods” make workers labour in conditions we would not tolerate?

Many years ago I heard two saying that have stayed with me. One is from a simple black and white poster that said, “Justice - not just us” and the other, also from a poster proclaimed: “We must learn to live more simply in order that others may simply live.”

How does this parable challenge our assumptions about the value of people and the work they do? How does it make us see ourselves?

If we are all created in God’s image are we not deserving of enough to sustain life

God asks us all to be partners in the creating of a world that can truly be called “good”.

Amen!

Exodus 17: 1-7
Psalm 78
Matthew 21: 23-32

Quenching Spiritual Thirst

At 4pm on Tuesday afternoon it started. Apparently, the first three in line decided to do it “just for fun,” but by 12:30 the next morning there were over 500 waiting. By the morning news, police were encouraging people “car pool” to reduce the anticipated traffic congestion.

Of course I am talking about Wednesday’s return to Nova Scotia of Swedish home furnishing store, Ikea. Those in the crowd had a tremendous thirst for the bargain, the new, the trendy furniture with odd sounding names such as a folding coffee table named Arkelstorp or the glass top version, Liatorp. About a month ago we all got a catalogue in the mail to pique our interest; sometimes we don’t know we want something until we see it! Perhaps the promise of great door prizes will get people endure a lot of discomfort to be there “in line and on time.” I wonder if they would have endured the thunder and lightening storm on Thursday morning! Yet, I suspect that even the most ardent of shoppers will agree: it’s not a matter of life or death! You won’t die if you miss out on the “door crasher” specials.

The people of Israel, on the other hand, were in a life and death situation. They were braving the elements and dying of thirst and hunger. Not long ago we heard that they were provided with “manna,” a strange flaky substance that appeared on the ground each morning. This, along with an occasional flock of quail, is said to have sustaned them for 40 years!

Today it’s water they need. Water IS a need. You will die without it. We are a water rich country and we Canadians often take it for granted.

The people of Israel were trying to live in a desert; the wilderness of Sin, named after the name of the “moon goddess” worshipped by the peoples indigenous to the desert.) People in deserts do die of thirst; the need is real. As the story tells us, God provided. Moses struck the rock and water came from the rock and the people’s thirst was quenched.

Was it a miracle? Apparently there are rock-like formations that are known to store water and hitting the rock to break it open and release the water is a skill developed by some desert dwellers. If this is true, does it make it any less of a sign that they could depend on God?

You see, the slow, 40 year, wilderness journey of the people of Israel is mostly about them undergoing a slow change from being a people who were enslaved by harsh taskmasters to a people who could rely on and follow the God who provided for them and called them to freedom.

One of the passages we will read later in November speaks of the Christian calling to give cold water to the thirsty. When I was in Truro Presbytery a number of years ago, all the churches got together to raise enough money to drill a well for a village in Guatemala. We knew that giving them a community well in their own village would change their lives for the better.

One of the tragic things we have come to realize is that many First Nations communities in Canada do not have safe water. We also know that the destruction of the water table is a consequence of some mining operations. It seems to me that it is incumbent on us to preserve and safeguard the water supply that has been so generously supplied by the world in which we live.

This is the first Sunday in October is often called “World-Wide Communion” Sunday. It was started in the United States in 1933 as a way of giving hope and unity in a time of great poverty, divisiveness, hopelessness and unrest. While it is observed more in North America than it is elsewhere, it is still an opportunity for us to realize that we are part of a world wide fellowship of people who gather and are nourished at the table of Jesus.

Some use regular white bread cut into little cubes, like we do sometimes. Some use a common loaf and break off a piece for themselves or are given one. Some use wafers. The bread I will break today was made here last week with our prayers stirred into the dough. Next time our prayers will be kneaded into the dough the week before. Some use wine while others use grape juice like we do. Some receive in their seats and wait for everyone to partake together and some come forward. Some, like Juniper Grove gather in a circle and share together. There are many other variations.

Despite the differences in style there is more than enough that is similar to bring us together and remind us of our unity in Christ.

If you are looking for communion to keep you from dying of physical starvation or thirst, you will probably be out of luck BUT our faith tradition reminds us that we need more than physical food and water to survive.

We are reminded, again and again, that we can rely on God to supply our needs. We are challenged to the kind of ministry that can be God’s agent in a hurting, hungry and thirsty world. Someone has to go out and give that rock a good whack!

Our human tendency is to look at the cup half full. The people of Israel are certainly portrayed in this way. We are challenged to look at it, as one of the folks I visit in the local nursing home, put it: our cup runneth over!

We are recipients of God’s abundant grace.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Deuteronomy 8: 7-18
Psalm 65
Luke 17: 11-19

Thankfulness in the Midst of Chaos

These days my first clue that something tragic has happened, or is happening, somewhere in the world, is often a post from a friend on Facebook - “Praying for the people of ....” Hurricanes and earthquakes have topped the list lately, last week it was Edmonton and on Monday it was “Praying for Las Vegas! Of course this prompted me to Google, “Las Vegas” and I discovered that since I had disconnected from the world the night before a lone gunman had opened fire from the 32nd floor of a hotel on a crowd of some 22,000 concert-goers killing and injuring. The lead story in Tuesday’s Chronicle Herald screamed, “At least 59 dead, more than 500 hurt.” Canadians are known to be among the dead and injured!

Of course we have our “own” examples! A rampage by a single gunman in 2014 left three RCMP officers dead and the city of Moncton reeling in shock. Later that same year, Parliament Hill was stormed by a man who began by shooting and killing a soldier on ceremonial guard duty at the National War Memorial and then entered the Centre Block looking to kill more people.

Yet it’s not just the crazed strangers who make this kind of news. In Tatamagouche, only a few hours away from here, a woman was killed just recently by someone known to her. I know some of his family from my time in the area.

pause

To quote from the United Church’s website, “Starvation and extreme hunger are rapidly reaching a scale the world has not seen before in Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen. There is also extreme hunger, malnutrition, and starvation in Kenya. Vulnerable people, including children, are most impacted.

The usage of the Hantsport Food Bank has seen an increase in the past three years I have lived here. Of course, many of those families have children and are our friends and neighbours.

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The Canadian Foodgrains Bank is a partnership of 15 Canadian churches and church-based agencies working together on their single goal: “A World Without Hunger”. They ask us all to - Pray - Give - Advocate.

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Tomorrow is Thanksgiving - traditionally, it is a time to get together with family and friends and have a feast. It is ALSO a time to pause and reflect on the grace and bounty in our lives - a time to “count our many blessings”.

Many of you will recognize that as a line from a familiar hymn which goes like this -

 “When upon life’s billows you are tempest tossed, 
when you are discouraged, thinking all is lost, 
Count your many blessings , name them one by one, 
and it will surprise you what the Lord hath done”. 

A traditional celebration sometimes misses the point. Sometimes we forget to “take the next step”! Thanksgiving isn’t really about “eating until you are stuffed to the gills,” though there’s nothing wrong with that once in a while! When we have the food and the family at our table it’s easy to focus on that alone. However, this approach, which is only superficial, makes marking Thanksgiving very difficult for those whose world has come crashing down because of illness, death, family conflict or a sharp decrease in economic circumstances.

Yet, the holiday comes around every year and is mandated in scripture. To be fair, scripture does not say anything about the turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie kind of Thanksgiving. Scripture talks about the giving of “first fruits,” the sharing with the stranger and the “noticing” our blessings kind of thankfulness!

pause

As I was preparing for this sermon I thought of the “I Spy” series of books I have shared with many different children over the years. Here’s one, courtesy of the Hantsport Public Library. It’s not the one I know best from memory, but it will do! If you are not familiar with these books, each page depicts a large amount of stuff. One of these looks like a child’s room, or curio shop, inundated with semi organized clutter. (Think of Garth Scott’s museum.) Yet, if you pause, focus on a page and observe closely you CAN find the things named in each attached list amidst all of the other miscellaneous items. With each thing spied, the child on your knee will probably say excitedly, “I see it”, “I found it” , “there it is”.

Sometimes, looking for our blessings is like that. They are there, hidden among the clutter.

Now, it’s easier said than done to notice the blessings when we are in a state of “less” or a “loss” but we must always keep in mind that blessings and things are not the same. Sometimes having to look for them makes us appreicate them more!

My dad has been gone for a little over ten years now and when I go “home”, the house still seems strangely quiet without him there, especially when we are sitting down to a festive meal. I miss his proclaiming everything on the table, lovely, bountiful and delicious.

Whenever I moved he would come for a first visit to my new place and after a nap and something to eat he would go exploring to see what there was to see. He would go to the farm of a total stranger to strike up a conversation. I know he would have proclaimed this area as one of “wonderful growth” - in the context of farming. When I think of him, I think of appreciating the simpler things of life.

Today’s scripture passages are traditional ones for Thanksgiving - the first passage is a warning against forgetting God in the midst of plenty and the other is about the one man healed of leprosy who noticed and gave thanks.

One of the dangers of success is that we will begin to give ourselves all the credit. We may say things along the lines of, “I got a good education, so I deserve a good job with a high salary. Or, “I have a good job because I am good at my job.” Or, “I have a good garden because I know how to grow stuff”. Or, “I am well off because I invest well.” Or, “I am healthy because I look after myself, eat right and exercise regularly.” Or, “Canadians deserve to be better off than others and need to make sure that ‘those people’ cant come and take advantage of what we have built.” We see our wealth for our own use and not as a responsibility or a trust.

I have known the story of Jesus healing the ten people with what is referred to as “leprosy” since I was a child. You all hear it read earlier. It was usually told as a reminder to be grateful; a reminder to say. “Thank you.”

The story leads me to wonder along with Jesus, why the other nine did not return. My interest in this train of thought was piqued by one of the many email posts I read each week! ((Sorry, I cant remember the name of the internet friend who posted the thought about noticing)) A careful reading will tell us that Jesus does not “heal” any of them in as many words but tells them to go to the priest. Since only the priest could certify a healing this would have been understood by all of them as words of healing. The healing, it seems, happened on the way and one man, a Samaritan, not only noticed but took the time to return to Jesus and offer thanks. He noticed! We need to remember that Samaritans were not well thought of; they were seen as half-breed heretics. The only reason the man was hanging out with men of Israel was probably because they all had leprosy; misery loves company, they say.

The other nine would have known of the scripture read earlier in the service: “when you are successful and well fed, don’t forget God’s role in your success.” They knew that.

BUT it was this one man who noticed and perhaps this is the first step, the crucial step, in the life of gratitude. Noticing. Notice your blessings. Name your blessings. Realize that you haven’t gotten here all on your own, all by yourself, with no help. Don’t take things for granted, notice them, look for them. Give thanks!

Even the most brilliant neurosurgeon, for example, has had teachers who guided and mentored and challenged along the way. Medical school and teaching hospital facilities along with a myriad of other factors contributed - such as genetics, the right opportunities at the right time, AND of course, hard work, sacrifice and long, long hours.

A few years ago I saw a very moving video, from Thailand, I think. In this video a boy was caught stealing medicine for his sick mother and was harshly scolded by the shop-owner. A nearby business owner intervened, paid for the medicine, and in addition to the medicine gave the boy some vegetables.

Fast forward to 30 years later; this same man, now older collapses in his shop, just after giving food to a beggar. He hits his head and ends up in hospital. He is still in a hospital bed when his daughter receies the bill. She is forced to put a “for sale notice” on the shop because she can’t pay. We see a doctor looking over the shop-keeper’s MRI images. The next day the daughter receives a revised bill of 0.00 and a note saying that it was paid for him all those years ago - when the man had showed mercy and generosity to a young boy who had to become a thief to survive. It’s the true story of Dr. Prajak Arunthong. He noticed and said thanks in a very meaningful way!

I believe that proper thanksgiving results in generosity - in sharing or in giving back in some way - whether its food, or money, or time or something else. You can’t keep true thanksgiving to yourself. Of course thanksgiving is not a day; thanksgiving is a way of life.

What do you notice? If you are sure there is nothing this year, look beyond your current chaos; see if there is a glimmer of someone or something for which you can give thanks. Look for a way to bring that forward so that it overshadows the other things. Reflect on the question, “What or who has brought you to where you are today?” Who or what has healed you and how can appropriate thanksgiving be expressed?” Today, tomorrow and every day.

Amen!