Genesis 11: 1-9
Psalm 104
Acts 2: 1-21

Crossing Boundaries and Building Bridges

At the front door of the manse in Wallace, Nova Scotia, is an enormous doorstep, made of several slabs of quarried sandstone. Unfortunately, the house’s foundation is also made of sandstone. I say, unfortunately, because the gaps between the stones are big enough to let squirrels and other critters into the house! The stone quarry is just up the hill and around the corner from the manse. That same quarry has supplied stone for many public building projects, in various parts of Canada, including some of the stone for the parliament buildings in Ottawa. It may also be supplying stone for the repairs that are now underway. When repairing stone buildings it’s important to source the stone from the same place as the original, if possible. You have probably seen a lot of Wallace sandstone and did not know it! .

These days there are many alternatives to stone, but back at the dawn of civilization, the invention of sun-baked brick making opened up new worlds of possibility in the construction industry, especially for those who had no access to stone. .

Today’s passage from Genesis speaks of that far away time. The book of Genesis is divided into several sections. This story is the end of what can be called “the primeval history” section; it is that time between the short “creation section” which contains 2 stories, and the beginning of the long, long, story of God’s relationship with the specific group of people who eventually became “the Jews”. Many of these early stories in our Bible are also told in the scriptures and sacred stories of other cultures and peoples. They have a kind of mysterious, “once upon a time”, universal appeal. They are stories that explain how things came to be “as they are;” they are not just “our” story; these stories belong to everyone. .

If we follow along from the story of the flood, after which, presumably, all the people on earth were descendants of Noah, we come to time when the people have multiplied and begun to migrate. They have begun to spread into surrounding regions. They do this, UNTIL, they come to a plain where they begin a building project, made possible by this new brick-making technology, in the hopes that they can stay in that one place, have security in numbers and “make a name for themselves.” Perhaps they want to be seen as smarter and more sophisticated than their “country cousins!” .

This story is often referred to as “The Tower of Babel” (reminding us of the city of Babylon where their Jewish descendants would spend some time centuries later). When we think of the word “babel” we also think of confused utterances; or the talk of a toddler. .

In that area of the world there are the ruins of more than one of these towers. Archaeologists speculate that they were much taller than they are now; the top stories falling victim to erosion. They are called ziggurats and are “stepped pyramids” with flat tops. Steps run around the side allowing people to ascend toward the top by walking around and around the outside much like we would drive up a mountain range. These kinds of structures were either places for the gods to live or a place where one could get closer to the gods. .

One famous ziggurat is about 100 feet tall. By contrast the great pyramids in Egypt are about 500 ft. In modern day Dubai, in the UAE, there is a building 2,700 ft in height. I believe that one is now the tallest in the world. Clearly human beings have advanced in technology. I have seen more than one photo of a large church, whose spire once soared over the nearby buildings, but is now dwarfed by the glass and steel buildings of the modern era. .

As the Genesis story goes, God comes “down” and confuses their language so that they could no longer communicate or work together and had no choice but to continue to scatter. .

As I was doing some reading on this text for this sermon I discovered that commentators can’t really agree if the scattering and confusion of language was a divine punishment or not or what exactly it was they were being punished for! At the very least it seems that God’s will was that the people move and scatter all over the earth and not remain in one place. Perhaps their mistake was to attempt to make a name for THEMSELVES and to rely too much on their own technology and not on God. .

On Pentecost Sunday this story provides a contrast with the Pentecost miracle whereby the children of Abraham, the Jewish people, a diverse human family, countless generations later, are brought together in such a way that the disciple’s gospel proclamation is understood by everyone, despite the hearers understanding different languages. The miracle of Pentecost, whatever it was, brought understanding among diverse peoples. I find it interesting that the passage implies that the disciples did not speak in other languages but the people heard what was being said in their own languages. .

One of the last projects in which I was involved in Nova Scotia was the welcoming of a family of refugees from Myanmar who spoke “Malay.” When people who spoke that language were not available we used pictures, actions and “Google translate”, a very helpful app to be able to communicate with this family. Several of lour group spend a great deal of time, before their arrival, learning useful words and phrases. .

Yet, the cultural gaps involve more than mere words, written or spoken. One of the surprising things, to me, that I learned was that not everyone in the world has “surnames.” This can present very interesting dilemmas when doing things such as registering for a Social Insurance Number or “mother’s maiden name” which is a traditional security question when doing that or when opening a bank account! Like many immigrants of old, modern refugees have to figure out how to fit their culture and traditions into our system and we need patience and flexibility. .

By now we have all heard a great deal about the legacy of Residential Schools. As we know, at these boarding and day schools, First Nations children were deprived of their language and their culture and forced to adopt the ways of the dominant, white European culture. The most well-meaning of our ancestors confused our culture with the good news of Jesus as if they were identical. We missed out on many valuable insights that could have been gained from their thousands of years of living in this country. There were those, including the first Prime Minister who saw the Indians as a “problem” to be solved. If the destruction of language and culture was all that happened in these schools that would have been damaging enough, but many students were sexually and physically abused by those who should have cared for them. .

Westerners such as ourselves (and Im talking those of Western European heritage, not Western Canadians - it does include Maritimers!) have all too often not been willing to recognize the Spirit of Life in the other and there has been little or no “mutual understanding” .

Pentecost was a Jewish harvest festival for which many people gathered in Jerusalem. There were already Jewish people whom spoke other languages who came to Jerusalem for the major pilgrimage festivals. The church did not invent the word “Pentecost” and while this day may celebrate the birth of the Christian community known as the church, it is NOT the birth of the Holy Spirit. We cannot lay an exclusive claim to the Holy Spirit. What we call, “the Old Testament” is filled with the actions of the Spirit - beginning, of course, in the very first chapter with the account of creation which begins, “in the beginning”. .

((Today in Nipawin we are celebrating the anniversary of this church building. Yet we must never forget that the church is not a building, a church is a people. We may have close attachments to a particular building, but the church is a people of “flesh and blood”. )) .

On June 10, 1925 the United Church of Canada was formed, merging Methodists, Congregationalists and some of Canada’s Presbyterians into one denomination, determined that more could be done for the Gospel of Jesus by working together than separately. It was evident, not only in “Canada’s West,” where communities were far flung and it was a challenge to have one church, let alone 2 or three but also in the rest of the country where “rivalry” was getting in the way of ministry. Church Union was not without its difficulties but we are still here, preaching the Good News, feeding the hungry and ministering to those in need in this diverse country, 94 years later. .

Pentecost does not celebrate uniformity. We are not all of one language or one culture, but we can hear the Good News of God’s love for all of creation in ways which allow for the diversity and differences that make our country great. .

So let us remember that is God who gives us the gifts we need to thrive and survive. We cannot do it through human efforts alone. Let us remember that diversity is a gift of a loving God. Let us also remember that understanding in the midst of diversity is a gift of the Spirit and the will of a loving God.

So let us celebrate our differences and seek the gift of understanding that is a true gift of God’s Spirit. Amen.

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

Describing the Indescribable!

I was talking to someone on Friday morning and the topic of “really stupid things people do” came up. She said, I’m going to make a poster that says, “common sense is a flower that does not grow in every garden”.

Today’s passage from the Hebrew Scriptures is from what we call, “wisdom literature.” When I was taking my first university course in biblical studies the professor who taught it, was also Dean of Arts, and had to be away at “deans’ meetings” every fall. He asked another professor in the Department of Religious Studies to take the two lectures on “Wisdom Literature”. For each of the years this happened the substitute professor, who had a very dry sense of humour said, “Dr Scobie asked me to take this section; after all what would the Dean of Arts know about wisdom!” It wasn’t a criticism; merely an observation that wisdom is not acquired by the same kind of study common to academic subjects.

The book of Proverbs, by seemingly simple observations, seeks to point out the difference between wisdom and folly. When I was in my second pastoral charge the men’s club used the book of Proverbs as its devotion for each meeting. One of the men would read half a chapter at the beginning of each meeting. When they reached the end of the book they would start again at Chapter 1. Unlike today’s passage most of the book of Proverbs is composed of short, pithy sayings. For example, Proverbs 6:6 tells us, “Go to the ant, you lazybones, consider its ways, and be wise.” Sounds like it was written for a teenager by a frustrated parent!

In parts of the book of Proverbs, such as the passage read today, Wisdom is personified as a woman. Not all women are wise though; not all female behaviour is worthy of praise, for in the chapter immediately prior to this one, the woman who is written about is not, “Lady Wisdom” but a prostitute seeking to lure an unsuspecting man to his destruction. Clearly, “if it feels good, do it”, is NOT the way of wisdom. You have to discern. Wisdom is the first of God’s creative acts and was with God for the rest of the creative process.

In the history of the Church, the Christ is sometimes identified with Wisdom. The Christ is also identified with the Logos, or Word. So seeking to combine Hebrew thought and Greek philosophy, the Christ is either the Wisdom or the Word of God.

Today is Trinity Sunday. From my point of view, it is one of the hardest Sundays to preach. In fact I looked on my website where my archive can be found and for one reason or another I usually manage to be on study leave this Sunday of the church year. If I had not moved here I would have been just finishing a week long seminar and would not be preaching. I was talking to a friend and colleague yesterday morning and she mentioned the same thing. I guess she was hoping to gain some insight from one of my old sermons. I told her that I too was out of luck!

Where does the concept of “the trinity” come from anyway? When I was at university I was involved with prison outreach program run by the local Anglican priest. ((I guess I didn’t tell the search committee that I had been in prison, many times, did I?))

One of the “regulars” was a burly man with bushy hair and a thick black moustache. A Jehovah’s Witness, week after week, he goaded the minister with, “the Trinity is not in the Bible, the Trinity is not in the Bible.” His translation of the Bible, which had a distinctive green cover, had a couple of verses which when translated, in their way, supported that position. ((When I was on my first internship I spotted one of those Bibles in the church chapel and pointed it out to my supervisor who had no idea where it came from, but it was removed from the chapel))

And yes, I would have to agree; there is nothing in the Bible that specifically PROVES the Trinity. It has, however, been part of orthodox Christian belief almost since the very beginning of the church. I see it as a way of early Christians seeking to explain their experience without compromising their belief in One God. The Trinitarian phrase, “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” developed very early in the church and became “standard” belief by early in the 3rd century.

How do we experience God and how do we describe this experience? While the church councils seem to have settled this issue, long long ago, their explanation is not all that easy to comprehend. Many attempts to make it comprehensible to people not trained in theology have resulted in “heresy” or “bad theology”. If you want a laugh, go home and “Google” “YouTube St Patrick explains the trinity”. I thought it was very funny but maybe I’ve read too much theology that sounded like gobbledygook!

Perhaps it is best to say that the doctrine of “the Trinity” is our best effort, as Christians, to get our heads around the way we experience God at work in the world. Clearly not everyone experiences God in the same way and what we experience, as individuals and collectively, and our capacity to make sense of that experience changes over time.

In my weekly “Preachers Conference Call” this past week, I likened our concept of the trinity to three bungee cords, each attached at one end to a stationery object with other end attached to an object being held in mid-air with only with the tension provided by each of the cords. It holds - unless - unless something happens. The trouble is that once we think we have the trinity nailed down and we think we truly understand it, it falls apart.

Some have likened it to the relationship between several people who are blind and an elephant. Each person can only “feel” one part of the elephant and lacks the sense of sight to broaden their experience. So the woman who feels the elephant’s tail knows for certain that an elephant is like a rope. The child who feels a massive leg knows that an elephant is like a moving tree trunk. The little boy who feels the tusk know that an elephant is long, curved, hard and smooth. The man who feels the trunk knows, beyond the shadow of a doubt that an elephant is like the hose of a giant vacuum cleaner. Yet those of us who are sighted know that an elephant is so much more. That’s not all there is to elephants either!

I was watching an episode of Bondi vet in which that good looking vet with the amazing Australian accent goes to Africa to help some people with the animals on which they depend - some of these animals are elephants. The vet brings new knowledge and insight to them on the care of these massive animals but those who work and live with them all the time know them in very different ways. Each way of seeing and understanding is valid, but incomplete.

Time and time again human beings are thwarted in their attempts to understand and describe the divine mystery we often call GOD. For example, for thousands of years, the Hebrew people, among others, used exclusively male images to describe God while, all the time, paying lip service, at least, to the belief that God was beyond gender.

Many people in the mainline Christian churches were uncomfortable, or even UPSET, when their ministers started using feminine imagery, even though many of the images were biblically based.

Perhaps the people in power held onto the right to promote the images of God that suited them best! It seems to me that we all fall into the tendency to make God in our image rather than marvel that the great variety of humans are made in God’s and that we can never fully comprehend the mystery that is at the centre of our ever expanding universe.

In today’s gospel we hear Jesus telling his closest followers that it is the Spirit who, in time, will help them to understand many things. The immediate context is that Jesus is trying to prepare the disciples for his departure and for the experience of the Holy Spirit we now observe at Pentecost. They do not want things to change; they don’t want their boar rocked. Yet most people can sense impending doom on the horizon. Jesus wants to assure them, and the generations to come that they will not be bereft.

Yet this passage can be seen to have a broader application. We grow in our faith over time and what we can comprehend now, was beyond us not that long ago.

Some of my earliest tv memories are of watching human beings walk on the moon. I would go outside at night and wave at the people on the moon. When I was in Brownies I wrote a story of going to the moon and driving around in the buggy the astronauts had left there! ((I STILL have that story))

Few of us will have the privilege of seeing the earth from space; most of us have to be satisfied with pictures taken by others. In the Bible, the assumption is that the earth was flat. in 2019, no educated person can claim to believe that anymore, but we can still find great value in what the biblical record says about our world - over time human beings grow and change in our spiritualty and our theology and I would assert that this is partly the work of the Spirit. Through the Spirit and the call of Wisdom we are challenged to take seriously the words we can no longer take literally.

To be truthful, for most of us, our experience of this planet is like the blind people and the elephant - each of us has a partial experience at best - and even seeing it from space is only one more perspective.

So our experience of divine mystery is, as the Psalmist says, still beyond us.

On Trinity Sunday let us marvel at the Mystery which surrounds us, eludes our best efforts to nail down and understand, described in tradition in Trinitarian ways, but let us also seek to live in the way of Jesus who showed us, as no other human ever has, what God was like.

Amen.

1 Kings 19: 1-15a
Psalm 42-43
Luke 8: 26-39

After the Storm!

A number of years ago I was visiting with my sister-in-law and the children. The youngest, just a few months old, was in the living room with us and the four year old boy was not having a good day. He kept insisting that he had indeed “gotten up on the bright side” that morning, ((I think it was his version of “getting up on the right side of the bed”)) but finally, after his mom had told him one too many times to “perk up,” he was sent to his room. He stomped up the stairs and slammed his bedroom door, flopped down on his bed and started to complain, LOUDLY about how unfair life was, in general, and how unreasonable his mom was, in particular. Now, because he had a younger brother, there was a “baby monitor” in their bedroom, his mom and I could hear every word! We were in stitches because of his complaints. By and by he fell asleep and when he awoke and came back downstairs he was a completely different child. His mother knew that what he needed was a nap! No doubt it was not the last time that a “time out” solved his problems.

The problem with preaching on a particular biblical passage is that it is sometimes critical to know what has just happened because the story does not “stand alone”. This is true for the story about the prophet Elijah! I’ll try and give you the “Coles Notes” version; or in more modern idiom, “Elijah for Dummies.” About 2,800 years ago Ahab became King of Israel. One of the things that had become important in Israel was to keep their religion free from foreign influences. However, King Ahab was married to Jezebel, a foreigner, an ambitious and ruthless woman, who brought the worship of foreign gods into the palace. At her insistence, Ahab became willing to commit murder to get what he wanted, even if it was just a piece of land.

As a prophet, Elijah’s job was to speak for the God of Israel and part of that was calling people to account for their actions. This call was valid even of the one who was in the wrong was a powerful king or queen.

To prove that the God of Israel was superior and the “local gods”, the “Baals,” powerless, Elijah set up a showdown! To make a long story short, Elijah won and all of Jezebel’s prophets were “put to the sword.” Queen Jezebel was furious and put a price on Elijah’s head.

We now catch up with today’s passage. Elijah flees, first outside of Jezebel’s sphere of influence and then into the wilderness. First, he sits down, under a broom tree, dejected and afraid. Like a child in a tantrum, Elijah moans and complains that he has done everything right and life is so unfair; he is no better than his ancestors and wishes for death.

However, we the reader remember what he seems to have forgotten: his ancestors include those such as Moses who led the people through the wilderness, faithfully. Elijah is fed with water and bread so that he can journey for 40 days and find shelter in a particular cave.

I am told that English is a hard language to learn because we have so many words for the same thing. I would not really know because it is the only language I speak with any fluency at all.

As far as our excess of words go, we know this! To give a simple example, I recently bought a new car. Someone might ask me just that, “Is that your new car in the manse driveway?” Or someone might say, “I see you have a new rig.” ((Although, in my experience the word “rig” is usually reserved for something somewhat larger than a Honda Fit!)) Or someone might refer to it as an “automobile” or “a ride,” or when it is old, and pockmarked from too many gravel roads, “a jalopy,” or a “crate,” or a “bucket of bolts,” or a “beater.”

When you are reading the Older Testament in the original Hebrew, words are also very important. Biblical scholars pay attention to the use of particular words especially the rare ones.

Apparently, the words used in this passage, for “jar” and for the “hot stones” are rare words, and remind the astute listener of other stories: one where the “widow’s jar of oil” did not run out during a famine and the other where a coal from a fire was used to anoint the lips of the prophet Isaiah. The same word is translated as “hot stone” in this passage.

In addition, the reference to the cave, where Elijah encountered God is made in such a way as to alert the astute listener to the story were Moses waited for God in a cave. These word connections put Elijah and his ministry in a larger context and show the reader that he is “in good company”, in fact, “in very good company.”

So, on this day, to use a military analogy, like so many prophets before him, Elijah wins the battle but feels he has lost the war. Speaking truth to power, especially corrupt power, is not a way to “win friends and influence people”. Future generations are reminded that it is at such a time when a word from God is needed most.

So here we have Elijah, sitting under a broom tree, which, as I understand it, is little more than a shrub, out in the heat of the wilderness having a “pity party of one.” Sounds a bit like my nephew about 25 years ago, the world against him, life so unfair, sent for a “time out”, who really just needed a nap!

Then Elijah gets his needed nap, and enough food and water to sustain him on a journey into the place where he encounters God, not in rage and fury, but in the sound of sheer silence, or in other translations, “still small voice”.

Elijah complaint is right, in a way, the “journey is too much for him.” Elijah is right, “he cannot do it”, on his own! On his own he will quickly run out of energy, both spiritual and physical. It is God’s food and presence which will sustain him in the wilderness and into the final days of his ministry.

Elijah is instructed to go to Damascus, which is in the opposite direction to where he has been and to anoint those who will succeed him.

We have been on a long journey as Bridging Waters. You all know more about that particular journey than I do. As a minister I am called to accompany you for a time: I received the gifts of other ministers who have gone before me and will, one day, hand the role to others.

On Thursday I was taken to a little chapel, some distance from (here) (Codette) where services were once held. The space reminded me of a little church in New Brunswick, not so far off the beaten path as this one, which still welcomes worshippers and is still heated by wood burning stoves. When you sit in such a church and close your eyes you can almost feel the praise and worship of the saints who have gone before. Yet, God’s people must move on.

I believe it was in 1987 that there was a movie made about the resettlement of “outport” communities in Newfoundland in the 50s and 60s, called “John and the Missus”. My friends and I went to see it because one of our group had a brother who was in the cast! The movie stars Gordon Pinsent as John Munn from Cup Cove, Newfoundland where the mine has shut down and the government has offered a small amount of money if they all leave. Munn holds out because he can’t see himself living anywhere else. The most memorable line of the movie, for me, went something like this: “We can’t leave, why, I know ‘every living one of them’ that’s buried in that there graveyard!” I can almost hear more than one friend from Newfoundland saying something just like that! In the movie you can see actually them, these “dead”; still alive, wearing the clothing of a previous era, shaded in sepia-tones - standing on the rocky landscape they are watching in silence as the community which they built moves away and is re-settled. The Munns move as well, in the end, floating their entire house, to its new location.

While we may be living in a time of unprecedented change, we know that there has always been change and people have had to learn how to deal with it. God’s people have had to learn how to respond to change in the context of their faith in a God who hold all of creation in a tender embrace.

There is a lot of truth in the statement, “God’s people have been this way before”. In our passage from the Hebrew scripture, Elijah was seeking to be faithful in a time of fear and unwelcome change. It seemed to him that everyone had deserted the faith of Abraham and he alone was left; he says as much!

We too are living in a time of fear and much unwelcome change. Trade wars and international politics affect individual farm families who cannot sell their crop, or their stock, even while they must plant every spring and keep breeding animals. We have half the country crying, “down with fossil fuels” while the other half can see no viable alternative. Our weather is becoming wackier and more unpredictable. One group promote the “beyond meat” products while other proudly proclaim, “we serve only Canadian beef.” Refugee camps in certain countries are bulging at the seams as very young orphans wait for reunification with families in the west. In some cases Islamic extremism is equated with Islam as a whole and these, and many other, children suffer. I could go on, but I hope I have had each one of you nodding your heads at least once.

It seems to me that the prophetic call is always to try and move the focus from ourselves and our issues, concerns, problem and survival to the broader picture, to the call of God to justice and right relationships. It is a call to rely on the God who called and who continues to call people to faithful action, and to trust in the presence of the one who can give us what we need to overcome all barriers and to build seemingly impossible bridges.

We are still on a journey, still called to be about the work of God in this part of Canada and to support God’s work in the world - with people we will never meet but who are also God’s beloved. Let us never forget that we have been given bread for the journey and a Spirit to guide us on the way.

Amen.

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

“Let’s Stop Looking for Hocus Pocus”

One of the more humorous stories I ever heard was the account of the day that the former Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia, her Honour Mayann Francis, met her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. Apparently all Canadian Lieutenant-Governors get to do that! Of course, she was to bring a gift, but the protocol was that someone was to take that gift from her before actually meeting the Queen. Someone messed up and the gift was still in her hand when she met the Queen who seemed surprised to see her with a package in hand and asked, “what have you there?”

“A gift for you, your majesty”.

“Well, lets have it then!”

Perhaps meeting the queen, or any member of the Royal Family, has one of the strictest sets of protocol there are in our culture. I have seen web-sites evaluating a “curtsy” given to the Queen by granddaughters-in-law Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle! However, I don’t think that if you “mess up,” the Queen can actually order, “off with their head” (That actually comes from the book, “Alice in Wonderland,” and not from any historical account, or not recently, at least!)

The story you just heard (Karen) read from the book of 2 Kings tells the story of a man whose life was, no doubt, also governed by protocol. He was in the military. Like all military personnel everywhere, those of lower rank had to defer to those of higher rank. Naaman was near the top of the chain of command and probably had to defer only to his “boss”, the King of Aram, and perhaps to the King of Israel. He would have been accustomed to those of lesser rank deferring to him - expecting a “yes Sir” and a sharp salute from his subordinates (in whatever form was appropriate at that time).

Naaman had a problem though; a big problem; even with his considerable power and personal charisma! He had leprosy. I’ve read that it was not the kind of leprosy which leads to severe physical deformities - but a skin condition that could have been as simple as eczema or psoriasis.

What was the most debilitating part was though was not the disease itself, but that it made the sufferer an outcast. People with leprosy were considered unclean and they were shunned, BY LAW. While Naaman’s status may have given him some kind of protection from this it is clear that it affected his life and he wanted it “gone”.

It seems that the people of Aram and the people of Israel were in a state of constant friction. Not that long before this there had been a raid and prisoners were taken, from Israel to Aram. One of them was a young girl who became a slave to Naaman’s wife. Perhaps the wives of army commanders got to “pick a captive”.

This slave girl, being young, female, a foreigner and a civilian captive, would have been the lowest of the low in terms of class and status. Yet, she was the source of the information that Naaman needed. His wife may have confided in the girl that her husband had this disease and the girl told her, “I know you can find a cure in the territory of the enemy, my people Israel. You see, there is this prophet ..........” This girl, was, essentially, an evangelist for her people’s God. She pointed out the way of healing, to someone who was the commander of the army of an unfriendly neighbour.

So he did what protocol demanded and - went to his king who sent him to Israel’s king who with lots and lots of gifts and a request. “Cure my friend and all this will be yours”. The “prophet” part was lost on these men of power.

Considering their recent history it is little wonder that the King of Israel thought that the King of Aram was trying to start a war! He knew no more about curing leprosy than he knew how to make it rain or stop day from turning into night.

Word always gets around and when the prophet Elisha hears what has happened he sends a servant with the message, “send him to me”.

When Naaman FINALLY arrived at the right place, it seems that he expected the lowly prophet of Samaria to roll out a red carpet, to bow and scrape and salute and cure him with some kind of ritual or bizarre incantation appropriate to his social status. He wanted “bells and whistles”; something “worth the trip”. He wanted an incantation; a “Harry Potter” style spell: “leprosous be gone-us” At the very least he wanted the personal attention of the prophet.

I am told that these days one of the problems that doctors face comes from all the advertisements the patients have seen on tv, or on the internet, for the newest and latest and usually much more expensive medications. People trust “Dr Google”, an entity with dubious credentials, more than they trust a doctor with many years of experience, a diploma or two, and a license to practice medicine.

I know a doctor who told me that she NEVER meets with drug reps from pharmaceutical companies but makes her own decisions about what she prescribes her patients based on her own research and experience.

Ever since I was very small I knew that “Banting and Best” discovered insulin and changed the lives of diabetics the world over. It was not until much later that I discovered that the rest of the story also included jealousy, rivalry and university politics. The ways in which drugs are developed, tested and approved for market has more to do with profit than the desire to truly help people suffering from the diseases the drugs are claimed to cure or alleviate.

Instead of what Naaman wanted, what he received was a simple cure, “go and wash 7 times” - in the Jordan.

“What kind of treatment is this”, he may have sputtered. Why, the Jordan was little more than a “muddy creek” compared to the great rivers Naaman knew; how could it have healing properties?

When doctors trained in Europe arrived in the “New World” very few were prepared to acknowledge the validity of the traditional medicines of the First Nations Peoples.

He said”, “I’m going home.”

Again it is a servant who convinces him to rethink his course of action. “If the prophet told you to do something difficult, you would have done it. How hard can it be to go and wash in the Jordan? It’s right here after all.”!

And so, seeing the sense in this advice, Naaman, washed and WAS made clean.

In this story the people with power, have none, and the lowly are the ones who know how to access the healing power of God. This story turns common notions of power and privilege upside down. The ways that the world accord value to things are not the ways of God.

In smaller churches such as ours we can easily become discouraged when we do not have the resources for the bells and whistles of ministry that we think are common in the bigger churches. I also know that it is all too easy to look at programs and ideas from “head office” and dismiss them outright as being for “bigger churches” - I’ve done that myself. I often have had at my fingertips all sorts of worship ideas that start, “recruit 4 -6 people” for a particular special feature of the service. This is, of course, in addition to the day’s reader, the musicians, and other people involved with the worship service. This does not mean that we cannot so SOMETHING creative but it also does not mean that a “normal” worship service (whatever that means) cannot serve to give the people a medium to worship God and give people a sense of their mission in their own lives.

We can pine for the “good old days” when the church was full and there were lots of people with the time, energy and money for the ministry we wanted to do, or we can be about seeking God’s will for us in this time and place where we find ourselves.

Sometimes, just like Naaman, we discover there is no “magic formula” but rather a simple instruction, “wash and be clean”. If we have been in the church and have been listening to the word preached and have seen it lived out all of our lives I believe we know already what it is that is important. We have heard elsewhere that “love is patient and kind” We have heard that we are to love God, love one another and love ourselves with all that we have.

We are called to do the simple things of gathering around the font and the table and then go out and be the church. We are called to be the best we can be but above all to be the church.

You don’t call a minister to do it al for you but to journey with you in a ministry that is shared. So let us be sustained at the Table and go from here to be the church. It’s a ministry we all share.

Amen.

Amos 7: 7-17
Psalm 82
Luke 10: 25-37

Turning the Question Around!

Michael DeAdder, a political cartoonist, well known to Maritime residents, at least, was recently told that several New Brunswick newspapers would no longer be requiring his services. The cartoon alleged to have been the cause, depicts an American President (who does not need to be named) more concerned about his golf game than the bodies of two people who drowned while trying to cross into the United States! The newspaper has responded by saying that his claim is a “false narrative”.

Most political cartoons are obvious caricatures of public figures and refer to recent events. While most are quite acerbic, a few are heartwarming, especially in the wake of tragedy. The bus crash near here a year ago was a case in point, at least in the Maritime papers.

It has been said that, “a picture is worth a thousand words”. With a few strokes of the pen. a cartoonist can show us “the one who must not be named” - whether that be Justin Trudeau, Donald Trump, Bill Cosby, Stephen Harper or some other public figure, or, lay bare an event in such a way as to make the artist’s point apparent at first glance.

In the gospels, we meet a Jesus who speaks and teaches in parables. A parable is a “word picture” - a story by which Jesus draws a picture of something which would be recognizable by everyone BUT then he adds a little twist, prompting his listeners to think about their faith in a new way. It’s in that “twist” or unexpected ending, where the meaning usually lies.

So in today’s, this nameless man, this “John Doe,” lies in the ditch, valuables stolen, either moaning for help, or passed out. Along come several, upstanding, community members who look at him, and pass on by, perhaps muttering “he should not have been out alone,” or, “the authorities should do something about these thugs”. At this time, I suppose, Jesus’ listeners, most of them common folks, would have expected a “regular Joe” to come along and be the hero, and show up those “stuffed shirt, good for nothing” clerics. But NO, what he says next would have thrown EVERYONE for a loop. No one would have expected the Samaritan to be the source of help!

To give you just a little bit of background, Samaritans were mixed-race AND considered heretics and their relationship with the Jewish community had a long and complicated history. Generally speaking, they did not like the Jews and the Jews did not like them! Jews would go out of their way to avoid travelling through Samaria.

An essential part of this Gospel story is the fact that Jesus told this parable as part of a dialogue which began with a question which, we are told, was not a sincere request for learning or growth, but an attempt at self-justification.

A lawyer comes to Jesus and asks, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” We need to remember that he is not asking, “how do I get to heaven when I die”? That is a fairly modern and much too individualistic idea for the first century Jewish context. The question was more along the lines of, “How can I, can we, as a people, live fully in God’s way and have a deeper intimacy with God?” It seems that the problem was not his question, but his motives. He already knew what answer he wanted to hear; he wanted to be told that he had already made it!

While the “question and answer” method of teaching was quite common in Jesus day, to truly be open to learning one had to be able to entertain all answers! One had to be open to changing both one’s opinion and one’s action!

This was not Jesus “first rodeo” and he responds, “You of all people know the law, you tell me.” He wasn’t going to fall into any traps!

“Love God, love neighbour as much as self.” The lawyer was not the first to have mixed together these two traditions firmly embedded in their scriptures. And really, Jesus would certainly agree, “how could you improve on that?”

“See you did know the answer. DO that and you will have eternal life.” It’s not just theory, it is also practice.

Then, like some folks, this man began to look for what I might call “wiggle room”. He asks, “But who is my neighbour?”

“You see, Jesus, if I can define my neighbour as this person or that person, then I am off the hook when it comes to others. I don’t have to love “those people”. You know, “them”. The ones who don’t dress like I do. The ones who live in another part of town or another community. The ones who don’t have a cottage at the lake or a Condo in Mesa, or go skiing in Banff in February. You know the ones who don’t work. The lazy ones! You know “them”.

Jesus responds, “Let me tell you a story. There was this man who went on a journey on a road that was known to be dangerous. He was mugged. He was badly beaten. Despite the fact that two upstanding citizens were going down the same road the only one to help him was one of “them”. It’s so subtle it is easy to miss. He did not tell the lawyer who was his neighbour, or not, he told a story who showed a man BEING a neighbour! He ends by asking the question, Then he asks the question, “who WAS the neighbour.”

Forced to admit the impossible, the questioner answered, “the one who showed mercy!” He could not even bring himsdelf to say, out loud, that, one of “them” was a neighbour.

I used to love watching Matlock. Remember how this TV lawyer would get a witness on the stand who was attempting to testify against Matlock’s client and Matlock would work him or her into a corner, turning their own testimony against them and proving the witness guilty and his client innocent!

You see, it’s possible to be both right and completely wrong at the same time; it’s possible to make it to the dock on time and still miss the boat!

If Christianity was about a “belief system” then you may be able to score 100% but since it’s not a theory you may discover that, at least on occasion, you have flunked, big time.

Love your neighbour as you love yourself. If you have to ask if “so and so” is your neighbour then you already - in your heart - must know the answer. And Jesus will tell you a story of someone who simply WAS a neighbour and allow you to draw your own conclusions.

My friend slid off an icy road and went into the ditch. The first car to stop had four big burly native teens in it. They said hi and picked up her car and put it back on the road, got back in their car and drove off. She did not know them or where they lived but they were her neighbour that day. It was not the kind of help she expected.

CODETTE CHURCH -

How do we achieve the lief of blessing, or eternal life? ((Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Though not a Christian, Mahatma Gandhi’s words bear serious reflection for the Christian community. As Christians, when we sing. “ let there be peace on earth”, we need to remember that the next line, “let it begin with me”, means what it says! If we want peace then we must work for peace. Full stop. No negotiation or wiggle room. Peace for just one group is not true peace. There cannot be true peace without Justice and justice for only one group is not true justice.))

NIPAWIN CHURCH

How do we achieve the lief of blessing, or eternal life? (((The passage from the writings of the prophet Amos uses the image of a plumb line - a plumb line was a mason’s tool, similar in some ways to a carpenter’s level. If we are looking for eternal life, abundant life, seeking to inherit the promises of the gospel, what we need to do, at the least, and at the most is to set the gospel in our midst and to govern our actions by it. We need to live the gospel out in all the ways we are able. On this baptism Sunday we reflect on what it means to be God’s people. It’s simple - but it’s not a part time job. It’s not just for Sunday or for our spare time - it’s who we are. It’s what we do in church and at church but ALSO who we are as we are in the midst of raising our family, earning our living and even relaxing on vacation.

So today let us put this baptismal font in the centre of our lives as a church and not just for today. Let’s all support Triston and Blair and Todd, of course, in this journey of faith. Let us be the kind of church we will profess to be. )))

CODETTE & NIPAWIN

Let us be neighbour to one another because of God’s great love for us all.

Amen.

Amos 8: 1-12
Psalm 52
Luke 10: 38-42

Yes, Justice Matters - Really!

I’m not really a big fan of musicals, ( The Sound of Music being an exceptions) but I particularly liked the overall PLOT of Mary Poppins Returns . The music was, well, not my taste! This 2018 reboot of the 1964 musical, features the original brother and sister duo, the “Banks children”, now grown, dealing with the very adult problems of being widowed and facing foreclosure on their family home. Add to it a bank whose name, Fidelity Fiduciary Bank , ironically hides a smiling, but loathsome, greedy banker whose large profits are made off of unsuspecting clients and then top it off with the re-appearance of a nanny with magical powers and you have 2 hours of suspense and adventure at whose end adult imagination is rekindled, love is found and justice is done!

Toward the end of this adventure/fantasy film the young banker brags to an elderly one that he has been doing a good job because the bank is very PROFITABLE. The elderly banker retorts, that the profit is dishonest profit at the expense of the people who trusted them and he fires him on the spot and informs the young father that he has more than enough money to pay his debt!

We know that real life does not always turn out that way. People lose their assets because of predatory lending practices - as well as the general trend toward easy credit in an increasingly materialistic world with a volatile job market. We have outrageous fees and interest rates charged by “payday” loan companies preying on those least able to incur their higher costs.

In our legal system we have checks and balances to ensure the innocent go free and the guilty are appropriately punished. Sometimes mistakes are made and they often make national, and perhaps even international, news - David Milgaard, Steven Truscott and Donald Marshall Jr being just three of the most well-known. Canada is certainly not perfect when it comes to such injustices, especially for minorities and the economically disadvantaged.

Even though e have legislation, companies find ways to pay women less than their male counterparts in equivalent jobs. The glass ceiling is still very real .

When I was young there was a fish peddler that came to our house on a regular basis in the summer. He usually had fresh cod and mackerel. Mackerel were so much each and cod was by the pound. Sometimes my mother thought the mackerel were not as fresh as he had claimed but she was always sure she was being cheated on the weight of the cod! Her scales (which were actually labelled “not legal for trade”) would register 10lbs when she put a 10lb bag of sugar on top but the cod she bought always weighed less on her scales that on his! But her’s “weren’t accurate”, you see! However, her only option though was to not buy the fish at his declared weight or do without - even if she was right! The passage read today from the book of the prophet Amos talks about the critical importance of seemingly mundane matters of harvest and weights and measures. Of course, we know that honesty in business is important but we may not have seen it as a faith issue, at least not on a corporate level. The thing is though: in Israel, in the time of the prophet Amos, everything was a faith issue - and every faith issue was a corporate issue; very few things were “ private matters”. The practices of which Amos spoke seem to have been widespread and common. As a result, nation would be punished, says Amos.

About 20 years ago my church treasurer were talking and the name of a public figure came across to the public as “squeaky clean”! She used an expression I had never heard before which was, “well, he might be, but I know he would skin a louse for a penny”. For him, profit was the only motive and he paid no thought to ‘mercy’. I think we’ve all known someone like that!

I love summer - as the various kinds of fruit mature and I can get local fruit and produce, sometimes picking it myself, and don’t have to wonder where it came from. However, I also find that time of year a bit “sad” because it means that summer is almost over and the next thing around the corner are howling winds, icy roads and listening to the forecast to find out how many metres of snow is expected. Do you have to do that here? Or is the weather the same all winter - what, MINUS 50!

June 21 is a bittersweet day for me- I love it because it is the longest day of the year in terms of daylight but I also don’t like it because on the 22nd we start the inexorable slide to short days and long cold nights and those howling winds and drifting snow. Then I can’t wait for December 21 because things start going in the other direction once again.

So keep in mind those kinds of mixed feelings when you picture the basket of summer fruit mentioned by Amos. In that image there is a bit of a word-play, or “pun.” Such things don’t translate from one language to another, of course! The implication in the passage is that the basket of summer fruit has been left on the table too long, the fruit flies are circling and it must soon be tossed out. So too, with Israel, God is FED UP. Israel has become rotten and judgement is upon it.

The reason: they are shafting the poor and the vulnerable - the foot-long sub is only 11 inches and their pound is only 15½ ounces. When people cannot pay their debts they lose everything and are denied social assistance. Amos’ judgement is harsh because the people who had fallen into these practices had a choice, they knew the difference, and they chose the way of corruption and injustice over the ways that were clearly outlined in their law.

The punishment, this time will be a famine, but not a famine of grain and water but a famine of the word of God. The people will search for God’s word from one end of the country to the other but will not find it. The people will feel desolate and abandoned by their God.

As some of you may have noticed, I use a lot of prayers written by Thom Shuman from Ohio. That’s Thom with an “h”. He is a Presbyterian minister who does a lot of interim ministry and is a member of the Iona Community which is a world-wide Christian ecumenical community working for peace and social justice, rebuilding of community and the renewal of worship. He has a real gift for words and images. For today, he wrote: Canticle 52

seriously?
you're going to go around
bragging about
how you mistreat the vulnerable,
how you plan havoc for outsiders,
how your words cut others to shredobviously,
you choose evil over good,
telling fibs over facts,
and angry accusations that
swallow peoples' hopes up whole!
but you're in for some surprises:
God will run your cruelty through a shredder,
will turn your McMansions into shelters,
will pull up your anger and plant hope;
then, the ones you looked past
will see your foolishness, laughing
out loud when you land flat on your foolishness,
as the safety net you paid so much for
is turned into a trampoline;
seriously!
But for me, I am like that seed
little kids plant in paper cups,
trusting that I will grow,
nourished by the tears of God,
the warmth of God's love,
the fertilizer of God's faithfulness,
and I will stretch my heart to the Light,
rejoicing in the miracle of God
in my life, my heart, my soul,
joining all creation patiently
waiting for the goodness
which is our heritage and hope
©2019 Thom M. Shuman

The United Church is often accused of meddling in politics, and ignoring the things of faith, but I believe it is firmly planted in the prophetic tradition of prophets such as Amos. It has always tried to take the call to justice seriously and to call society to account, through the political structure and through individuals.

Some churches spend a lot of time on so called “moral issues” - and also preach that God’s will is for the righteous to prosper, materially. They assume that wealth is a sign of God’s favour. Yet, I think a lot of what the prophetic call us about is the call to justice and righteousness, to use one’s “benefits or blessings” for the good of the most. The prophets had to remind Israel their call was to be, “a light to the nations” not to soak up as many of the benefits of their “chosen” status as an exclusive benefit for themselves.

Last week I watched Schindler’s List again, for the first time in years. As the film begins, this brash, womanizing industrialist is looking to make as much money as he can from the war. He bribes his way to some very lucrative government contracts and hires Jews, newly confined to the ghetto BECAUSE THEY COST LESS and he can make more money. At some point his eyes are opened to the total cruelty of what is happening and, following the quiet example of his courageous Jewish accountant, he begins to spend money and bribe officials to save lives. As the war nears it’s end he spends every Reichsmark he has amassed, to save and support over a thousand of them. He compiles a list of about 1,000 specific people, including many children, naming them “essential workers” so that they will not be caught up in Hitler’s “final solution”. When one train, carrying women and children is mustakenly rerouted to Auschwitz he goes after it and refuses replacements - he demands those specific people.

The money for the bribes is delivered by the suitcase full. The main antagonist for much of the movie is Amon Göth, a brutally sadistic Nazi who uses children and slow moving prisoners for target practice and claimed innocence at his trial because he was only following “orders.”

Schindler, though certainly no “saint”, was declared Righteous Among the Nations” for his work in saving Jews from Hitler’s killing machine.

As the atrocities of Naz i Germany fade from living memory, it is vital that we remember so that the same type of thing cannot happen again. It is part of the church’s call to stand up against the movements which divide people along ethnic lines and diminish the value of some and the expense of others. It is vital that the Canadian churches take responsibility for their part in the destruction of First Nations communities as our ancestors made a life in this vast country.

Personal morality is not enough on it’s own - it must result in justice for all not just for some.

Amen.

Hebrews 11: 1-3, 8-16
Psalm 50
Luke 12: 32-40

What Faith is NOT!

Just last month there was a great deal of news coverage on the anniversary of the first moon landing. 50 years ago last month the United States succeeded in their long stated goal of sending humans into space and bringing them safely home. They began and persevered in this ambitious program, not because it was easy, but because it was difficult. Some have calculated that this first “moon walk” was the culmination of the efforts of 300,000 to 400,000 people. To be fair they also did it in an attempt to beat the Soviet Union to the moon!

One of the mementos carried by Neil Armstrong were two pieces of the Wright Brothers airplane from their historic 1903 flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

Buzz Aldrin, the other man who walked on the moon that day, was a Presbyterian elder who had received special permission to serve himself communion on the surface of the moon. This was kept secret because of the backlash that happened after the Genesis story was read when humans first orbited the earth in 1968.

In 1969 there was a planned break between landing on the moon and actually going outside. As the men prepared for that phase of their mission, Aldrin sent a message to earth -

“I would like to request a few moments of silence.  I would like to invite each person listening in, wherever and whomever he may be, to contemplate for a moment the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his own individual way.” 

Human history is filled with many ground- breaking achievements and successes. I suppose one could start with the discovery of fire, or at least, the ability to control it. It would continue with the invention of the wheel. Then would come the discoveries and skills characterized by the stone age, the bronze age and the iron age. Through thousands of years, each discovery, each journey, each change, built on the last and civilization advanced. I am told that some of the technology we take for granted was developed for NASA. We sometimes forget that the average “smart phone” probably holds more computing power than that which put people on the moon and brought them back to us in 1969! In fact, many of the calculations needed to land people on the moon and bring them back were done by hand!

At some point in the early Bronze age, when human beings in that part of the world were beginning to make tools out of copper, a man named Abram received a call from God and he and his wife Sari left their home to journey with no clear destination in sight. It was a daring move in a time when clan and place were everything. People did not go off to make their way in the world! Since he had no children of his own and both he and his wife were very elderly he had every reason to discount the outlandish promise - the promise of a number of descendants as numerous as the stars - but he did not. This journey of trust is referred to as one of faith in the Epistle to the Hebrews.

The book we now call the “ Letter to the Hebrews” was most likely written to encourage groups of Christians suffering under heavy persecution and tempted to abandon their faith in the way of Jesus. The author is someone who is steeped in his tradition and understands it at a deep level. He is also committed to Jesus’ way.

This brings us to the question: “What is faith?” What is faith? Some cynics have said that it is believing things we know are not true!

Is it having the “correct” beliefs? Some would say that one HAS to believe all the “tenets” in the great creeds of the church such as the Apostles Creed, in order to be Christian? I often read church web-sites which proclaim “we believe in the Bible as inspired” or “in the historic creeds of the church” or “in traditional families.” In my experience each of those is a “code phrase” for a number of related beliefs and practises meant to define who they are and who they are not!

All I can do, in response, or in contrast, is define faith as I respond to the passage from the “Epistle to the Hebrews” - as a journey of trust, action and openness to the Spirit.

First, I will say that faith and believing the right things are not the same? Part of our problem is how words change their meaning over time and in different contexts. Do you remember when the word “Cloud” had nothing to do with data storage? Do you know that “awful” used to refer to “reverential or respectful fear?” When the reigning monarch toured St. Paul’s Cathedral, during its construction, and told Christopher Wren that his cathedral design was “awful”, he replied, thank you, your majesty.”

To relegate “faith” to an act of the mind is to misunderstand what it is about. It’s not about twisting your mind into a pretzel to believe stuff you otherwise would not. Faith is first and foremost a verb.

Today’s passage from the Epistle to the Hebrews attempts to look at Abraham as a person of “faith” in order to give courage to the persecuted church who were extremely discouraged about the future. When people were being hauled away and fed to the lions, literally, they needed to be told that God’s people (ie Abraham) had been this way before and that Abraham’s long view was a sign of his faith - even though he lived long before Jesus of Nazareth in whom they had placed their faith and their lives. To “have faith” is to have the courage to act in accordance with one’s beliefs, AND also not to expect “success” in the short term or even protection from harm.

Going to church is not all that popular these days and we can no longer expect the wider society to make their plans around Sunday morning like they used to. Advances in knowledge about the universe has caused some people to give up their faith as if there are only two options - a biblical literalism or modern science. That is probably the subject of much discussion and many sermons and can’t be resolved today but it is part of our 21st century reality - people abandoning faith because it does not make intellectual sense to them. Sadly, many churches don’t present them with any alternative.

In addition, some people have given up on faith because of tragic life experiences such as the death of a loved one.

When you are flying to Saskatoon from the Maritimes, you have a lot of time to sit, that’s it, to just sit! Trust me; I took that flight this past week! Since the cabin crew only come around with the snack cart once and a dozen pretzels and one can of pop can only last so long, you have to find something to do. Since this is the age of wi-fi and tablets, I watched three episodes of “God Friended Me.” All you really need to know is that being “friended” is a Facebook “thing”. The way this works is that someone who also uses Facebook reads your Facebook profile can send you a “friend request.” If you accept this request they have more access to your page than strangers and can post messages for you. In this show, the son of an Episcopalian minister, Miles Finer, an avowed atheist, who has styled himself as the “Millennial Prophet,” looks at his chiming cell-phone one day and discovers that he has received a “friend request” from God.

Now, most Facebook friend requests allow you to see the person’s name, picture and very basic information such as hometown and places lived. So someone looking for their best friend from grade 6 (who moved away that summer) can look them up and send a friend request. When looking at such a friend request you can see if you have friends in common. I may agree that any friend of them would be a good friend for me. If they turn out to be really weird or annoying I can always “un-friend” them!

Unfortunately for Miles, the only name attached to this account is “God” and despite the best efforts of a “hacker friend” that is all Miles can find out. We discover that Miles is an atheist because of a personal experience of loss. Eventually he takes the leap and accepts God’s “friend request” which sets in motion a series of texts that simply contain the names of total strangers - and his interactions with them and their interactions with one another cause a cascade of “good things happening from helping others” - whereby simply being in the right place at the right time makes a difference in the lives of a number of people. In one episode, God “un-friends” him, because he initially refuses to engage with the person whose name he receives. Then he is friended once again. Gradually his atheism softens a tiny little bit and he begins to be open to conversation on the topic. And, by the way, “God Friended Me” has been renewed for a second season. I suspect it will be lile the journey of Abraham, full of twists and turns.

We live in a time of fast - fast food, driving instead of walking, taking a road with a 110kmh speed limit instead of the one with 90 or 100 - and we want everything instantly - like our internet - we don’t want to wait for that page to load or that attachment to open.

You can even get raw meals delivered to your door so you can cook from scratch with no scratching - all the shopping, chopping and measuring is done for you!

Christian faith is not a “fast food” kind of experience, its like growing your own vegetables and keeping your own animals and persevering - despite unexpected killing frosts, persistent pests and all kinds of predators. It’s being in it for thing itself not for any results it may bring! And of course, it’s about doing this in community - sharing the feast and famine with like minded people who are also committed to the journey.

There was a middle aged man who had worked a small farm his entire life who decided to buy a lottery ticket. When a friend asked what he would do with any winnings his reply was, “I suppose I’d just keep farming till it was gone.”

Is about doing what you believe to be right, living out the love of God as shown in Jesus and trusting that the results will indeed come but not attaching ones feelings of satisfaction to that success.

I will give the last word today to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, French philosopher, palaeontologist, geologist and Jesuit Priest who said,

“Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, (human beings) will have discovered fire.”

Amen!

Isaiah 5: 1-7
Psalm 80
Luke 12: 49-56

There’s A New Sheriff in Town!

It’s become a cliche, from American movies depicting life in the “wild west.” A bunch of gunslingers come to town, rustle some cattle and shoot the sheriff. Next time they come they encounter a hard-looking law man outside the general store or the saloon who confronts them with the words, “Not so fast boys, there’s a new sheriff in town!”

It is supposed to signal a new adherence to law and order, a new time of safety for ranchers, shop-owners and all law-abiding citizens!

In 1983, after a visit to a Guatemalan refugee camp, sponsored by OXFAM, Canadian singer and songwriter, Bruce Cockburn wrote the song, “If I Had A Rocket Launcher” to express qqhow he felt after seeing the misery in the camp caused by the military backed political situation of the day. The first verse goes like this,

Here comes the helicopter, second time today
Everybody scatters and hopes it goes away
How many kids they've murdered only God can say, hey
If I had a rocket launcher, if I had a rocket launcher
If I had a rocket launcher, I'd make somebody pay

Of course, there are still many places in the world where innocent civilians are attacked by military or para-military forces or their own police force. These situations are crying out for the international community to act, not for their own interests but for the sake of the victims of this violence. In some cases this violence is caused by the military and police looking after the interests of multi-nationals whose only goal is profit.

In addition though, the many stories on the news of random people, using military grade weapons to take out their anger and frustration, is so common that we almost tune it out - or - we Canucks give ourselves the luxury of saying, “glad I don’t live in that bad ole USA - and we feel for those who do! I write this knowing there will be at least one “guest” who currently lives in the USA! Yesterday, an internet friend posted a picture on Facebook of a sign outside of a gun range/ gun store -”Back to school sale” 50% off. Apparently it was directly aimed at anxious teachers eager to protect themselves and their students. (I’m not sure if I intended that pun.) Even in Texas though, the store faced some “backlash”.

Right now, though., the big question in Canada is, “why did those two young men kill three random strangers last month?” However, since they committed suicide, we can’t ask them and any answers will only be speculation. We have had our own incidents of violence on a large scale, so we should not be so smug. As our society and our style of politics becomes more “Americanized” we should not remain so complacent or smug!

In some ways, when we read the passage from the gospel it sounds like God is some angry dude with his finger on the trigger of the biggest weapon ever invented! It might sound like God just can’t wait to waste a whole bunch of sinners! It may sound like God can’t wait to load up his flame thrower and do some serious smiting and get people all riled up and disagreeing with one another! Smite is one of those words that sounds just like it means! If you had no clue what “smite” meant, you could probably tell that it would not be a good thing to have happen to you! I actually looked it up and was surprised to discover that the first results were all about a video game by that name! Who knew!

Now we know that some preachers love that kind of sermon, as do some parishioners, mostly, I think, because they believe it’s aimed at “other people.” Of course, we can come up with all sorts of reasons for God to smite others - (loud music late at night, murder, various sexual sins of course, swearing and of course, FLAG STEALING (I had flags stolen from the manse) but when it comes to ourselves, and our own behaviour, it’s a touchier issue.

I admit that my first reaction to this passage from Luke’s Gospel (where the the details about the smiting are rather mild, I must admit,) is to say, “Jesus must have been having a bad day!” or even to say, “Luke’s source must have gotten the quote wrong; Jesus would never have said anything like that”! It does not sound like Jesus and I don’t like that kind of Jesus, to be honest! Yet, it is consistent with the biblical perspective that the Holy God cannot and will not tolerate unrighteousness, idolatry, and injustice.

The refiners fire, to which God’s anger is sometimes compared, is not primarily a force of destruction, but, like the thrashing machine, or a combine, merely separates the good and the useful from the less useful or waste products. In a line from the familiar hymn “How Firm A Foundation” we hear the words:

 
When through fiery trials your pathway shall lie,
my grace, all-sufficient, shall be your supply:
the flame shall not hurt you; I only design
your dross to consume, and your gold to refine. 

This fire is one of conversion, or to be more precise, change and new direction. Conversion and repentance are not about feeling bad for one’s sins, but are always about a resolve to go in a new direction.

Jesus was beset by a few scribes and pharisees, (always its just a few ruining the whole batch) who seemed more concerned with nit-picking about the finer points of the law (or morals) or pet-peeves, than the grander vision of God for justice and righteousness. In the passage from Isaiah we hear God’s desire for the people he loves - the passage uses the metaphor of the love of a farmer for a rebellious vineyard.

Of course a “vineyard” cannot rebel! It is about a people who refuse to be God’s people. God’s sadness is palpable. God is in mourning! To be clear, it is not just God’s love for a people but God’s profound sadness at a people who have gone astray, for a people who have completely lost their way.

It is, I suppose, the divine equivalent of Cockburn’s reaction to seeing the results of the military campaign against the people of Guatemala. It is the divine equivalent of a parent’s lament of a child who has gone so far from the path the parent had tried to show to the child. Perhaps the child has ended up in jail. Perhaps the child has gotten into some really deep trouble! The lament is: “This is so wrong.” “This is so not how things should be!” “I taught you better than this.”

Turning back to the gospel passage - when we read the gospels we should always be asking the question, “What time is it?”

What time IS it? A woman experiences contractions and knows it’s time for the new babe to come into the world. If the nursery is not ready - then the baby will have to make do - if the diapers have not been bought or the car seat installed, then dad, or a friend, will have to do that before the baby comes home. (I remember well, seeing a new mom, in the hospital lobby, impatiently WAITING, for her husband to install the car seat in their car so they could take their baby home. I guess around 9 months was not enough for him! They are both friends of mine!)

What time is it? Well when I ask that most people would look at their watch, or these days, younger people look at their phone, but this is not so much a question of the time of day, but of season. If I ask a dairy farmer she might say, “Its milking time!”

But it’s not about how close supper is, or whether its time to milk, it’s really about harvest! The wheat is golden and ripe heavy heads bow down and rain is in the forecast. We know the crop has to be harvested, NOW.

In terms of this Gospel passage, in Jesus life, in Jesus time-line, things are ramping up and he knows the cross is near. There is not much time left and he must get his message across and soon! Jesus is despairing that the disciples will never understand what he was trying to tell them.

They will never understand the message that self-preservation is not justice.

We sometimes tell ourselves that we can’t afford to help others when the economy is bad but we know, really, that people who are hurting need others most in bad times. We need to be reminded that the gospel presents us with a view to challenge our tendency to look out for #1

There is a lot of talk these days about sustainable farming methods. In PEI farmers still plow, especially if they grow potatoes, but they have to be forced by law to rotate their crops, so much intensive tilling is killing the soil. In Rouleau, in the 1928 or 1929 my grandparents lost their entire crop on one day. The soil simply could not hold the roots of the tender wheat plants. I suspect they don’t plow the way they used to anymore.

We like to think that the poor are poor because they are lazy or because they have done something wrong but that is simplifying a complex problem without realizing that we can at least do something to help and it is creating an artificial (and convenient barrier) between us and them. The message of the gospel is that we are all in this together, none of us can be smug and say that we deserve our success!

On Friday the following quote from Tommy Douglas popped up on my Facebook page -

“We are all in this world together, and the only test of our character that matters is how we look after the lest fortunate among us.  How we look after reach other, not how we look after ourselves.  That’s all that really matters.” 

There was an older couple living in a large country home. Because it was a larger home and there were only the two of them, they did not have much need to throw stuff out so they just kept it in case they might need it, or for it’s sentimental value. One day, one of the grown daughters, in her 40s, and I suppose, accustomed to a much smaller house, came to help with the spring cleaning. She started to purge and when the mother protested but received this answer. “Mom, - there’s a new sheriff in town - you don’t need to keep all this stuff.”

Here we are, with all the stuff of our lives gathered around us: our actual stuff, our goods and chattels, as well as our ideas, our beliefs, our values - and we are confronted that the time has come, to re-assess, to re-evaluate, to decide if we are on the path of true life, or if we are being weighed down - by stuff that is not really important, by social pressures, or by tradition OR are we following the way of Jesus of Nazareth.

Most people have a love-hate relationship with change - if we like the change we are all for it but if we don’t we wonder why we cant do it like we used to. The call of the gospel is a call to be open to change - to allow the Spirit to blow through our lives with gentle breezes or mighty gusts - and to trust that we will never be alone.

Amen.

Jeremiah 1: 4-10
Psalm 71
Luke 13: 10-17

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten!

“Call the Midwife” has recently become one of my favourite shows and for the past month I’ve been binge watching it on Netflix. In this show, a group of midwives, some of whom are members of the Community of St. John the Divine, a religious order in the Church of England, work in the impoverished East End of London. Each episode features one or more of the midwives bicycling through the crowded cobblestone streets to aid women who are giving birth. The midwives, some young and idealistic, some older and very compassionate and wise under their tough exteriors, deal with an amazing array of issues and the joy and heartbreak that accompanies such work. The advent of oral contraceptives, the tragic consequences of the “miracle drug” thalidomide, still-births, spousal abuse, self-induced abortions, incest and the effects of extreme poverty are just some of the many topics covered.

In most cases the moms are handed a healthy “new baby” that the mom has known for some time - from the first episode of morning sickness to first fetal flutters and finally kicks and other movements by which the infant’s presence was made known.

With all of our modern advances, moms can now know much more about their unborn baby than ever before- and not just the gender. The daughter of a friend of mine is expecting a baby, already greatly loved, already named, but also already knowing she will require at least three surgeries to repair her defective heart. In some cases surgery can be performed before birth to repair certain abnormalities - such as Spina bifida, lessening the severity of some illnesses and which leads to some babies literally being “born twice”.

In the book of Jeremiah, the ageing prophet, looking back on his life, recounts that he received “his call” at a very young age. God’s message at that time was, “I have known you before you were born, before your mother knew you were on the way! Furthermore, he had been called as a prophet before his birth and despite his youth was assured that he would receive the guidance of the Spirit which would enable him to do an otherwise impossible job.

I have a good friend who is a Kindergarten teacher and has been for many years. At this time of year she puts tips for parents new to the school system on her Facebook page. One post: - “your child’s kindergarten teacher has a reason for every request and that reason is coming to school for the first time, very soon.”

She and her colleagues have a monumental task - to take a group of four and five year olds, from a wide variety of home situations, and teach them basic numeracy and reading as well as the importance of routines and basic social interaction that will set them on the right course for life.

30 years ago now, Unitarian Minister, Robert Fulghum, wrote All I Really Need to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten - a series of essays which are observations on life. I was one of 7,000,000 people to have bought a copy of the original and I now have the updated and revised edition on my tablet! I think the original copy did not survive “the cull” before I moved here. (Rick) Believe me, I once had a lot more books than I do now!

Criticized by some as being overly simplistic this book touts the importance of lessons such as: play fair, share, don’t hit people, put things back where you found them, clean up your own mess, don’t take things that aren’t yours, say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody, wash your hands before you eat, flush, and my favourite, warm cookies and cold milk are good for you!

While we could never get along in life with a kindergartner’s level of knowledge of most subjects it would seem that most, if not all, of the ways by which a civilized society are governed, can be boiled down to those tenets listed above.

In the 2011 movie, The Help, black Nanny, Aibileen Clark, takes the blonde child in her care and puts her on her knee and whispers to her “You is Kind, You is Smart, You is Important”. She wants the child to keep these things in mind so that the obstacles in her life do not seem as large! Ailileen feels Miss Mae needs to hear this because even her own mother does not treat her all that well. But I think she says it also for herself and (of course, for us, the audience). It’s a message we all need to hear. Some time ago people raised children in the belief that praise would give them a “swelled head” and was bad for them. I heartily disagree.

Who IS qualified for the vocation of a prophet? I was reading comments on the Jeremiah passage last week and one quoted an old saying, “If someone wants to be President that person should be immediately disqualified.” (By the way, the article WAS written well BEFORE the current president decided he wanted to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it, or offered to buy Greenland, or even before he ran for the highest office in the USA!)

The same advice could well be said of anyone who wanted to be a prophet. In today’s passage Jeremiah objects to the call because of his age and lack of experience.

Jeremiah is in good company! We may remember that when Moses encountered God in the burning bush he objected to God’s call to lead the people out of Egypt because of his lack of eloquence and the prophet Isaiah also felt himself inadequate and indeed unworthy. The prophet Jonah hated the people of Nineveh so much that he went in the other direction in order to avoid delivering his message to them. In each of these cases, and many more, the holy God gives the person what is needed for the task and the prophet then goes ahead and follows God’s call. In each case, a large part of the message is that the work of God does not come about because the prophet is especially holy, extra smart and extremely capable but because God gives what is needed for God’s work.

What does this tell is? It tells us that the word and work of God is God’s alone. Time and time again God calls the unlikely, the ones no one else would have picked for the task.

(Have you seen those commercials where you, as a busy business owner, can (for a fee, I presume) have an outside group whittle down your list of applicants for a job posting to just a few of even just one “lucky candidate?”

Quite a few years ago I read this piece which imagines what might have happened if Jesus had hired a consultant to choose his disciples:

The answer he receives goes like this:

TO: Jesus, Son of Joseph, Woodcrafters Carpenter Shop, Nazareth
FROM: Jordan Management Consultants, Jerusalem

Dear Sir: 
Thank you for submitting the résumés of the twelve men you have picked for managerial positions in your new organization. All of them have now taken our battery of tests; and we have not only run the results through our computer, but also arranged personal interviews for each of them with our psychologist and vocational aptitude consultant. The profiles of all tests are included, and you will want to study each of them carefully. 
As part of our service, we make some general comments for your guidance, much as an auditor will include some general statements. This is given as a result of staff consultation, and comes without any additional fee. 
It is the staff opinion that most of your nominees are lacking in background, education and vocational aptitude for the type of enterprise you are undertaking. They do not have the team concept. We would recommend that you continue your search for persons of experience in managerial ability and proven capability. 

To be specific -

Simon Peter is emotionally unstable and given to fits of temper. Andrew has absolutely no qualities of leadership. The two brothers, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, place personal interest above company loyalty. Thomas demonstrates a questioning attitude that would tend to undermine morale. We feel that it is our duty to tell you that Matthew has been blacklisted by the Greater Jerusalem Better Business Bureau. James, the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddeus definitely have radical leanings, and they both registered a high score on the manic-depressive scale. 
One of the candidates, however, shows great potential. He is a man of ability and resourcefulness, meets people well, has a keen business mind and has contacts in high places. He is highly motivated, ambitious and responsible. We recommend Judas Iscariot as your controller and right-hand man. All the other profiles are self-explanatory. 
We wish you every success in your new venture. 
Sincerely yours,
Jordan Management Consultants 

Well, we know how that turned out!

Of course, some see this passage from the book of Jeremiah as a perfect passage for us minister types who have claimed they felt God’s call from a very early age, but it’s NOT limited to professional religious types. NOW I MUST BE DIRECT - It’s for “youse guys”; for ordinary men and women, everyday children and youth who have all been called to live out their faith in a variety of ways.

It’s for retired folks who visit in special care homes, the folks who organize things around the church or help out in the community, the busy mom who puts extra peanut butter in the shopping cart for the food-bank or to feed all those perpetually hungry teenage boys who hang around with her own two, for the senior who can do nothing but listen to the lonely teenager who just needs to talk, to harried moms who take on a Sunday school class, or farmers who grow grain for the Foodgrains Bank, or take extra potatoes and vegetables to neighbour that might need them or the folks who find the time to carry tables and make salad and flip burgers for a barbecue.

In my 30 plus years of ministry I have had many, many people turn down offers of a committee position or other work in the church. For those who said “no” and gave a reason, I could put the reasons into three basic categories!

ONE: I have no time.

TWO: Oh, I couldn’t do that, I am not qualified. or

THREE: I don’t want to do that - I just want to come to church, when it suits me, and go home.

I won’t comment on the first and the last but the second one is directly related to this passage.

In Kindergarten children learn that they can’t have everything they want, when they want it, and they learn to share the three red crayons among the seven kids colouring, and the importance of considering the needs and feelings of others. Sharing is not always about stuff; sometimes it’s about “burdens”. It’s not always easy for children and it’s not easy for grownups either. Often the way ahead is not “a no-brainer” but requires discernment, prayer and discussion.

There’s an election coming. What do WE want and need? How can we share with those who don’t have what we do? How do we use our electoral voice to make a difference in our communities, province, this country and the world.

Jeremiah had, through the power of the word, the ability to both build up and break down, to create or to destroy. In terms of our faith, God calls us out to our comfort zone to work for the healing of the world. I read somewhere that the church is the only institution that exists for the benefit of those who aren’t its members - but perhaps this quote was just wishful thinking. One of the tendencies of churches, when personnel or finances are in short supply, is to build a virtual wall and to focus solely on keeping the doors open as long as we can, while forgetting the reason we are here in the first place. Too often such churches are not even service clubs, but private clubs who only want to increase their numbers in order to lessen the work for the tired old folks who now want only to sit back and enjoy the fruits of their labours.

Small churches cannot have the programming and outreach of large congregations with lots of facilities but size does not always matter - what we are called to do is to take our faith seriously and wherever we are speak words of life.

Mr Rogers (yes, the one from the pre-schooler’s tv show), was also a Presbyterian minister, and he said, re>‘I believe that appreciation is a holy thing, that when we look for what’s best in a person we happen to be with at the moment we are doing what God does all the time. So in loving and appreciating our neighbour we are participating in something sacred.“

Let us go forward as God’s peope to love and appreciate our neighbours in all the ways we are called to do so.

Amen.