Genesis 32: 22-31
Psalm 17
Matthew 14: 13-21

Many of you will have watched M*A*S*H*, the 1970s TV show set during the Korean War, which follows a group of surgeons and nurses who try to save lives and their sanity - amid the mayhem that usually associated with war. There are a lot of laughs in this show but also a lot of serious moments, as even the least serious of the doctors rail against the futility of saving the life of a young soldier only to have him return to his unit, serve in harm’s way once again and return injured or not survive at all!

However, this show was written and aired during the war in Vietnam. What they could not say about the Vietnam War, they could say about the one in Korea which had supposedly been over for years by then! While it is a comedy it has some good, solid and meaty “food for thought”.

In a similar way, the stories from Genesis that we have been reading were written at another time. They were written during what is called, “the Babylonian Exile”. The people had been invaded and defeated by a much more powerful nation, and at the people taken into captivity. Their city lay in ruins. As an antidote to helplessness and hopelessness, these stories showed the people in exile that God was still with them, that they had not been abandoned and that they would live in peace and in their own land once again. These foundational stories gave them roots and a reason to hope.

It should come as no surprise that the Gospel stories were also written some time after the events took place; they are not a “year-end compilation” from a series of weekly newspaper articles! They all had reasons for writing as they did and wrote for different communities or audiences. Obviously, everything they knew or had heard about Jesus could not be included and in their “Good News” and each of them sought to show Jesus and his ministry in a certain way!

Each of us has our own faith experience and it is not for me to tell you what the most important story or message should be. If you are 8 the story of Jesus welcoming the children might be meaningful but if you are 88 the stories of Jesus spending time with the people shut out of society because a disability, might be particularly meaningful, and freeing.

Worshipping at home, and celebrating communion at home, might not be your preferred method of worship -then again it might - I am seeing folks online that don’t come to church - and I’m not talking just about my Maritime friends! Welcome to you ALL, especially those who don’t normally attend!

By now we have all heard the news that was released mid-week that there has been a COVID-19 outbreak at the Star City Colony. Because of this you are no longer allowed to visit your people in hospitals here in Niapwin, in Tisdale or in Melfort or in Pineview Lodge except by Facetime or telephone - which leaves people who don’t do well on the telephone and non-Apple people out of luck. It’s all about resident safety but it’s going to be lonely and frustrating once again for families and residents. It may feel as if you have been exiled to a foreign country or live on a different planet.

Yet we have for us stories of struggle and blessing and of abundance, seemingly out of nowhere, in the middle of wilderness. We have stories to assure us of the strength of community. When we read the stories of our so-called “biblical heroes” we sometimes forget that these folks were ordinary folks, who had the same fears and worries we have and who could only tie one sandal at a time. (If they had worn socks they would have only been able to put on one at a time!)

When we look at the story of Jacob nighttime wrestling match and subsequent injury we can see ourselves. Who among us has not lain awake all night wrestling with a decision, with our own actions, or with our own “demons” as it were? Who among us has not wrestled with guild, or with what to do about a wayward child, or even just how you would get what you had to do, done, in the time alotted.

And, who among us has not found blessing AFTER a time of indecision or trial and error and failure. Who among us has not been through a tough time and come out on the other side with a feeling of blessing? Something as simple as graduation, or your children leaving home, is bittersweet - it was always the goal but yet you long for the days that are now behind you.

When we look at the story from the Gospel of Matthew we find one that may have been familiar to us since our childhood. For his own reasons John, another Gospel writer, has the loaves and fishes supplied by a boy. The reading for today does not tell us where they came from! No matter, it seems to me that it is the story of abundance where none was thought to exist. How many times have we started a venture trusting that the needed resources would come, and they did!

Too often, we as Canadians, have picked up the notion of scarcity. We don’t have enough to go around. We cant share what we have with others: not the poor in our own communities, not the people of other countries, not those other provinces!

I am reading a book by a biblical scholar Dr Walter Brueggemann that speaks of the rejection of materialism and of the notion that we must amass as much as we can for ourselves because it is all in short supply: Materiality as Resistance

Whoever it was who supplied the food in today’s story it was a risk. One of them might have thought, “That food might feed one person, but if shared, who knows how many might want some and then, no one would be filled!” Instead Jesus action said, “we can trust and give and discover that all have so much that there are still leftovers.”

Looking at the world in terms of abundance is not a recipe for waste but a recipe for radical sharing and generosity.

My childhood minister wrote new lyrics to a familiar offering hymn. It was published in Gathering many years ago, but did not make it into the anthology but what I remember is this question,

 “after our basic needs are met
how shall we use what God has sent”. 

So much about the last 4 months is about drawing inward. The premier of Nova Scotia made national headlines when he told his province, “stay the blazes home”. But it was not meant to be a “just us” kind of life. We were encouraged to check on others who may have had needs and to use the telephone. No virus has ever been spread by the telephone unless it was the timeless and well known G O S S I P virus!

In theological school I had a professor who would quote the following prayer in jest:

God bless me and my son John,
his wife, my wife, 
us four, no more. 

We are not meant to draw inward, even if we have to stay in.

We must also remember that God’s blessings are not like pie, the more people who are blessed, the more blessings there are. Like the magic penny that Dale VonBieker loves to sing about they multiply as they are spent.

Soon we will have a serious discusion about re-opening but it’s not as simple as it seems at first. We are not all going to get what we want. We won’t necessarily be sitting where we want and with the people we want. We may open up only to be closed again if there is a second wave or there is a serious outbreak here.

Jacob’s journey took him to places he did not expect to go just as the people of Israel went places they did not want to go. They found that God was with them in their struggles. Jesus did not go very far from home, by our standards, in his lifetime but on occasion the Spirit sent him to places he probably did not want to go.

Perhaps the task for us is as it was for Jacob, to seek and know God’s blessing in the midst of our struggles. We may be a little worse for the wear but we will be found faithful if go in trust and hope.

We ask for God’s blessing in the midst of all that we face each and every day and we will receive it.

Amen.

Genesis 37: 1-4, 12-28
Psalm 105
Matthew 14: 22-33

Right Place - Right Time

The story of Joseph is one of my favourite stories from the Older Testament. My favourite stage musical is Andrew Lloyd Webber’s, “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dream-coat”. I’ve been in love with the music since my Junior High music teacher played the sound track of the musical for us, and I just had to have my own copy. I believe that I played the tape so much that it simply wore out. A few years ago I bought the CD. A group performed it at Berwick Camp a number of years ago which was quite a feat considering that the entire operation, from cast selection, to set design, to practices and finally the performance itself, had only an seven or eight day window to complete its work. Tens of thousands of amateur theatre groups have also staged this musical, though most probably had more time to prepare!!!! When I realize that I don’t usually like musicals to begin with, because of the lack of spoken dialogue, it is amazing that I do like it.

In a few short verses this passage from Genesis, tells us a great deal about this family. In those few verses we are reminded that Jacob was from what we might call “an immigrant family”. He was, as we would say on PEI, “from away”. We are told that Joseph, his “favourite” son, was 17. It seems that dear old Jacob wrote the book on raising a dysfunctional family! His actions drove a wedge between his sons. Joseph helped his brothers look after the sheep but he was a tattle-tale! We do not know what the bad report was, that he took to his father, but the text implies that on this day the father wanted to receive another report. The gift of a long and colourful coat was more than enough to make his brothers hate him. I have read that the coat was a sign that he was not expected to do much work, that it was a luxury item as fabric dye was very costly!

If you had followed his story from the beginning you would know that Joseph was “gifted” with dreams and visions but also did not have any reservations about bragging to his brothers about his dreams, or visions! Apparently, one night, he had a dream that showed that he was destined to rule over them . He ignored a whole bunch of their unquestioned cultural norms about younger brothers. Perhaps the other brothers had long thought that they needed to teach that spoiled brat a lesson! Yet, in doing what they did they flouted the primary rule of obedience to the patriarch, the father! This family wrote the book on sibling rivalry.

You see, in that culture the favour (especially if it involved money or perks) was supposed to go to the OLDEST son. The oldest son had the greater privilege because he had the greater burden. He was to take over the most of the land on his father’s death and become the new “patriarch” and inherit all of that responsibility with the land, flocks and money!

In Jacob’s family things were more complicated because he had children with 4 different women; and to boot, he had a favourite wife! We are told elsewhere that the two women mentioned in the passage were not even his real wives but his wives’ slaves - and that he also had two wives, one was Reuben’s mother and the other was Joseph’s. Her name was Rachel and SHE was his favourite. His marriage to the two of them was the subject of many chapters in the already long story of Jacob in which this extraordinary trickster met his match in his father-in-law. It sounds a lot like some made for TV (so called) “reality show”, which emphasizes the insanely ridiculous and manufactures truth for an eager tv audience.

So these grown sons of Jacob see the young lad coming and conspire to kill him. They could easily blame it on a wild animal! It must have happened all the time out in the wilderness! But the eldest, Reuben, suggests a different scheme, one which would have him secretly restore the young lad to their father, and perhaps he would get some “social capital” with dear old dad!

As they are eating, Judah, Reuben’s full brother, comes up with yet another plan: “Lets sell him to those approaching traders on their way to Egypt”. The only reason for them to buy him would be so that they could re-sell him as a slave!

Their plan was to return home with the bloodied and torn coat and the speculation that he had been eaten by a wild animal. They could truthfully say that the last time they saw him, he was alive. That part was not a lie - in the fingers crossed behind the back kind of way The wild animals, were his brothers! Maybe they were thinking, “We’ll have some cash or goods and we will be free of that spoiled brat. Dad will get over it!

So, the deed was done and the boy was taken, no doubt bound, to Egypt! In all likelihood they would get their ultimate wish, slaves did not live long. They would certainly never have expected to see him again! How wrong they were and how grateful they ended up for being wrong!

Of course this is just another chapter in this long saga of the children of Abraham - the “bigger picture” view of the story explains how the children of Abraham got from point A to point B. The bigger picture explains how they survived a severe famine that was to come and why it was they were in Egypt for Moses to be needed to lead his people out of Egypt and eventually to the edge of the land of promise, a land promised to the ageing Abraham, many, many, generations before. It is a story with many pauses and twists and turns.

You see, in the story of the people of Israel there are two critical events: the exodus and the exile. These events formed their identity as a people and made them who they were. Yet, in order for these events to occur in the first place, the players had to get to the place where the action was to take place. When Joseph is finally reconnected with his brothers many years later, and invites them to live as his guests in Egypt, he assures them that he believes that he was supposed to go ahead of them to Egypt so that he COULD invite them to be in a place where there was food and pasture. He tells them that God sent him there to save their lives!

It is the story of the people of Israel to be sure but it is really presented as God’s story, first and foremost. It is God who called. It is God who named. It is God who guided the leaders. It was God who saved.

While some people may assert that this story proves the saying, “everything happens for a reason,” I don’t think it’s quite that simple. I do not believe that God is like a puppeteer, pulling strings and causing things to happen against human will - whether those things be bad or good. We each have our free will. We each have choices to act in concert with God’s plan for life to come from devastation and death or to be agents of that death and devastation. Joseph’s brothers had choices and they made some very bad choices which almost led to death for Joseph and for themselves It seems that God’s Spirit was able to guide those involved into the way of life and hope so that life could be brought from what looked like certain death.

We sometimes have the notion that the biblical heroes are saints: perfect people. This is a story that talks about God’s call of deeply flawed people, people who were, in many ways, just like us. Abraham and his son Isaac were certainly not perfect. Neither was Jacob. None of them were flawless and filled with unwavering faith and goodness. In the “good old days” the leaders of the faith could just as easily make the 10 o’clock news for their scandals!

These flawed giants are placed there as somewhat tarnished examples to us. Here is Jacob whose love life was a mess and who did not have a clue how to manage his sons and their jealousies. He let his heart get in the way of his better judgement. He should have known better to treat his sons in such inconsistent ways and appears to have asked the favoured one to be a snitch.

Yet those flawed people were able to push the story just a little further along the way so that God’s saving power; God’s life giving power could be realized and the promise fulfilled. The whole plan was to be a light to the other nations: here is our God - here is your God!

According to the text, the disciples spent all their waking moments with Jesus and experienced his ministry of teaching, healing and other miracles. You would think they would have a rock solid faith, even in a violent storm on a lake, but NO they were totally and completely human. They feared for their lives. Jesus was able to both chide them for their lack of faith but also understand where it was coming from. Who would not be scared after hours of trying to get to land. I’ve been in larger boats in rough seas and can only imagine what it would be like to be in a small boat, powered only by a few oars!

The disciples are yet another example of flawed people following in the best way they could and trusting in God to fulfil the promise.

Here we are, in the dog days of the strangest summer we have ever experienced. Of course, I’m not talking about the weather! In this COVID-19 summer, some things have opened back up but most everything is different than it was. We may be straining at the oars and about to give up or we may be blithely going about our lives as if our boat is unsinkable - resenting the people who call us to account until we hit the iceberg and find out there are not enough lifeboats! More likely though we are somewhere in-between, not knowing who to believe or what to do.

Fear not, God is working through us and others to be our salvation and to bring life and liberty where there seemed to be none.

FEAR NOT. LIVE IN FAITH. FOLLOW THE CURRENT MEDICAL ADVICE. TRUST IN GOD AND FOLLOW IN THE WAY OF JESUS.

Amen!

Genesis 45: 1-15
Psalm 133
Matthew 15: 21-28

Even Jesus Had Something to Learn!

When I was growing up, picking berries was part of my summer life. We had several relatively nearby places we could find wild raspberries or blueberries. We would also pick strawberries but it was much too far to walk and my dad would usually take a couple of us and we’d pick a crate or two. Most of them would go into the freezer for the winter. Strawberry shortcake with fresh whipped cream!!!! In the middle of winter! Yummmmm! When I picked blueberries or raspberries, I would proudly bring them home showing my mom how many I had picked - but THEN they would be divided among the number of bowls necessary for everyone in the house to have some - most of the time that meant at least 8 bowls! I certainly did not get to enjoy them all by myself! There would usually be too many for just my own enjoyment but in my heart I really wanted to get a much bigger share because I had done all of the work, after all. It was all a part of growing up and learning how to live in a big family. I suppose my mom wanted an extra share of many of the things she worked hard to prepare but moms know they usually don’t get to do that!

In today’s passages we have stories of “learning lessons and maturing in life and faith”. The Joseph story is one of learning about reconciliation. The Jesus story is one of having his eyes opened to the innate value of someone just about everyone, INCLUDING JESUS HIMSELF would have shunned and devalued.

One of the books I read and studied in this pandemic summer was titled “White Fragility” and it outlines how white people often shut down meaningful conversations about racism by becoming defensive and hurt. Their defensiveness, fear and tears become a reason against confronting the real issues - or dare I say “our tears”. Another of the books had a rather lengthy title: “Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Indigenous Life.” The book shows how immigrant settlement on the prairies came at a very high cost to many aboriginal peoples. Sometimes the deaths of indigenous peoples was deliberate, and at other times, it was what might be called, “collateral damage” or an “unintended consequence”. Of course, the work of the Hudson Bay Company, the goal of completing the “national railway”, the federal government, the effect of diseases against which the native population had no immunity, and the ever changing tastes of European elites who never set foot in Canada were also a large part of that history.

Watch for an announcement about a study on one, or both, of those books in the autumn. This summer’s study was with a group of colleagues from the Eastern Regions. It met at 10am, ADT!!!!

I clearly remember a conversation I had with my mother and my niece at least 20 years ago. She and her younger brother, who is the silent partner in this story, had come to Grammie’s house, looking for cookies. She asked, “Grammie, can me and Ross have a cookie?” Grammie asked her to ask again! After a few tries at getting her request correct, by adding a “please” and a “thank you”, I decided to help her out but she still did not understand that her grandmother’s issue was that she started that sentence with “me”. The request was simply, “bad grammar”. She was learning that grandchildren with bad grammar did not get cookies from that Grammie. My mother was a stickler for grammar, though he could not always tell me “why” such a sentence construction was wrong, she knew that it was! She believed it was part of her role as a parent and grandparent to ensure proper grammar in her offspring. Even when I was in my 50s and she was in a nursing home, I still dreaded that “look” she gave me when I used a pronoun incorrectly, dangled a modifier or misplaced a preposition! Interestingly enough though, there were two grammar type “errors” (in her mind at least) that the grand-kids’ parents made - and about which she remained totally silent. I DO know what the two were though!

Last week I spoke at some length about Joseph and his relationship with his brothers. A lot of water would pass under the bridge between the time of last week’s text, when they beat him up and sold him as a slave and this week’s text when he saved their bacon - because of his status as “person in charge of food distribution in Egypt”

We have all heard stories, or had direct experience, of family feuds which resulted in retaliation, or the perfection of “extreme social distancing”. Some people go to their graves without any kind of reconciliation happening, when there was plenty of opportunity and people without the opportunity sometimes regret it when they realize it, too late!

I can recall a number of funerals where the family interactions, or the absence of a family member, made it clear to me and to others, that something had happened and that “something” was still hanging around and getting in the way of any meaningful kind of relationship. I cannot be specific but you know what I am talking about!

Corrie TenBoom, a Dutch watchmaker, sent to a concentration camp by the Nazis, for hiding Jews in her house, lost most of her family to the Nazis. She wrote about forgiveness with words like this, “to forgive is to set a prisoner free and then to discover that the prisoner was you”. For her it was the neighbour who tipped off the SS that she was hiding Jews and the cruel guards in the camp who made the lives of all the prisoners completely miserable. Even though she was not Jewish, she knew the pain of losing people to the Nazis and she discovered that forgiveness was the only way to relieve herself of the burden of hate.

Where do we learn our values and form our assumptions about life? I think that it is in our family of origin and our community of origin that we learn many of our values and form many of our assumptions. Without being challenged by other ways of looking at life, it is hard, if not impossible, to have a different outlook.

Then we leave home and encounter others who are different and we are sometimes challenged to our core! Many of you have had similar experiences, I’m sure. If it wasn’t from your own experience of starting out on your own, it may have been from a child coming home and having obviously been changed by an experience of encountering someone or something on their journey toward adulthood. It’s not easy for the young adult and it’s not easy for the parent. I recall a discussion that took place in our family kitchen, some time after I had left home and when I expressed a different opinion, my dad said something like, “oh no, not YOU too”. I had obviously slipped over to the “dark side” - but I thought my family was stuck in “the dark ages!”

Many of us have gotten the idea somewhere that Jesus began, conducted and ended his ministry with the same enlightened, loving and universally compassionate outlook on life. We have read stories, time and again, of him challenging the status quo, of challenging the religious leaders to broaden their horizons, and telling his disciples to “wake up to the breadth of God’s love”, but we don’t often think of Jesus himself being challenged or changing his outlook because of justified criticism. He always seemed to have an answer for the Pharisee types who accused him of acting in ways which were inappropriate for a rabbi, or teacher. In today’s passage, his refusal to help someone in need was challenged by that person, an unnamed foreign woman who simply wanted what many others had received: healing for her child.

Like the mothers of many sick children, this mother was “one tough lady”. She asked for help but, in response, Jesus basically called her a dog! “Look lady, it ain’t fair to give you what is reserved for the people of Israel. It would be like giving the children’s food to the dogs.”

Keep in mind dogs were not pets with their own health insurance and a chart at the local vet office! Keep in mind the disciples would have sent her away if she had not been so hard to get rid of. The woman, perhaps accustomed to being pushed around, replied with a statement that showed the depth of her faith. “Even dogs get scraps”. By this she showed her belief that even a leftover scrap of Jesus’ power and attention would be enough to heal her child. She may have heard the stories of touching the hem of his garment being enough to effect healing. Wow! Her retort was quick. She was determined. She was filled with faith.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like this Jesus. Is this the same Jesus who said to OTHERS, “you of little faith,” who healed Samaritan lepers, who told a parable that spoke well of a random, anonymous Samaritan? It seems that Jesus had a blind spot of his won, that even he had growing edges and had to listen to the challenge of the Spirit. An exasperated classmate once said of someone “that lad needs an attitude adjustment” - on this day Jesus was the one who needed that attitude adjustment! Jesus needed to broaden his horizons - to have his own moment of learning and change.

In a way, when I think about it, that Jesus is easier to follow: not perfect like you and me. Not perfect but capable of growth and change. Jesus had his own growing edges and healing became possible when HIS eyes were opened. Life would be a terrible and pointless enterprise if we had no opportunities to grow and change and mature.

There was hope for Joseph’s resentful and jealous brothers and even for the spoiled and self-centred Joseph. Reconciliation happened where none was thought possible.

Jesus had his own growing edges and healing became possible when his eyes were opened.

There is hope for us. God isn’t finished with us yet. Thanks be to God for this good news.

Amen!

Exodus 1: 8 - 2: 10
Psalm 124
Matthew 16: 13-20

What a difference a day makes! You’ve all heard that expression, or even used it yourself, I’m sure! There are days that are like that for individual families - when a loved one dies, or a house burns down, for example. For a country - when the response to CODID-19's arrival in Canada was to shutdown everything but essential services. For a large portion of the world - one such day was September 11, 2001. I’m sure you could list many others!

Sometimes the changes come as the result of a joyful experience such as the birth or adoption of a baby. An elderly parishioner of mine from Nova Scotia described the day they brought their adopted child home for the first time; by the way, a child now at least 50! They went into the house and closed the door and turned and looked at each other. The new mom said to her husband, “Well what do we do now?”

In today’s passage from the book of Exodus much more than a day has passed since we were last in the royal palace in Egypt but the story makes it clear that something has drastically changed. Joseph HAD BEEN the 2nd in command to Pharaoh, the supreme ruler of Egypt but that seems to have been long, long ago!

The memory of Joseph’s “long range plan” was long in the past. Interestingly, a large part of this long range plan was the almost forced exchange of land for food. In the seven good years before the famine the government garnished a portion of the harvest to be sold during the lean years to follow. I suppose it was no different than regular taxes and if there were seven years of bumper crops the people might not have complained that much! When the famine took hold on the land, starving and penniless Egyptians did not get the government food for free. If they had no money they had to turn their land over to Pharaoh in exchange for food, which they may have grown themselves!!! The children’s story versions of “Joseph Rules Egypt”, don’t tell us that part! In this way the Pharaoh would have come to own most of the land in Egypt!

By the time today’s passage begins, we are told that there was a Pharaoh who had either forgotten that history, or was from a different, or rival, dynasty.

Apparently, the descendants of the family of Joseph had done well and prospered in Egypt. I suspect that they may have been given the “best land” when they answered Joseph’s invitation to move to Egypt. While there is no hint in the passage that they were plotting any kind of insurrection, this Pharaoh was afraid and got it into his head that these prosperous newcomers, were a threat to the “real Egyptians”. It would have been relatively easy to turn the “pure Egyptians” against them. It’s happened many, many times, at least many times since that!

Last week I spoke briefly about the TenBoom family from the Dutch city of Haarlem who were imprisoned by the Nazis, who occupied their country, for hiding Jewish people in a secret room in their house. The TenBoom family broke the law by protecting Jewish people from deportation to concentration camps. Of course, they knew they were risking their lives but their faith demanded they do what they could to save lives from the evil that had invaded their country.

In today’s story from the book of Exodus we are first told that the Pharaoh tried to work the Hebrews to death but hard work only made them stronger. He decides he needs a more ruthless approach. Kill all the boys! THEN we meet two Hebrew midwives under the direct orders of the Pharaoh to kill all the boy babies born to the Hebrew slave population. One sure way to kill off an ethnic group would be to remove all the boys - so that they would not grow up to be men and fathers! It would take a few years, but it would work!

We are told that the midwives disobeyed the orders of the Pharaoh. We are told they were rewarded by God for disobeying ole Pharaoh who had to go to plan C. He assigned the task to his the population in general. All male babies were to be thrown into the Nile. He assumed, I suppose, that they would drown or be eaten by crocodiles!

Now enter one family determined to save their child, a fine boy. Finally they could hide him no longer and they cast him into the Nile river themselves - except that they made him a little ark, a carefully made floating basket. Their only hope was that he would be rescued by a kind Egyptian and sister Miriam would see to it that her mom could be hired as a wet nurse. They probably knew that the princess would be their best bet! She would have the power to ensure his survival! What harm could ONE baby boy pose, after all!

The number of women in what we often call, “the Old Testament” who are remembered by name, are few and far between! These two women, Shiphrah and Puah, are remembered for their faith and for their courage. They are people of outstanding importance in the biblical story! .

I recall seeing a poster long ago, when I was in university that asked the question, “If being a Christian were a crime - would there be enough evidence to convict you?” It’s hard to tell from just that sentence what kind of evidence the author had in mind - because Christians don’t even agree - conservative, liberal, Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Evangelical, Independent and so on, all would have differing definitions of what constitutes faithfulness, or “courage”. I can only speak from my own perspective as a person in leadership in the United Church of Canada in 2020. This passage leads me to reflect on the courage of these midwives and look at our own context.

While we may have few restrictions, in Canada, in regard to practising our faith in the obvious ways, this passage does challenge us to act on our convictions with courage and be prepared to accept the cost. We can go to church, or not; in non pandemic times, of course! We can support a church financially, and even get a tax receipt from the government for it. Many of us in the United Church can remember a time in the relatively recent past when we felt we had to be careful expressing opinions that were thought to be political. For example: allieviating poverty was OK while eliminating poverty was not! Think about that one for a minute!

Before you all start to think that the attenders of churches who are already open and flagrantly ignoring the social distancing guidelines and disinfection procedures, are more faithful and trust God more than we who are in closed churches do, I will say that I believe God has given us common sense. To me it is common sense not to leap in front of speeding trains (or even the slow- moving ones) for no reason, and to follow common and agreed upon medical advice. I take my medical advice from doctors and trained epidemiologists, not from politicians, or even clergy. To be a worshipping church and to be church community in this time is indeed harder, but it is what we have to do for the health and safety of the community of faith with whom we are in relationship and who we all love.

There are folks whose answer to everything is, “I support whatever is best for the economy”. I believe that as Christians we are called to support the vulnerable, to ensure the hungry are fed and the naked clothed. People who have no voice must be strengthened and sometimes we mjust speak for them. Justice has been an important part of faith since the prophets were writing to the children of Abraham and Sarah, thousands of years ago. The rich getting richer may be the way of economics, but it is not the way of faith.

In addition, we must express God’s love for all of creation in concrete ways even of we are financially poorer because of it. We may well have arrived at the time when we must, as quickly as we can, transition to other forms of energy so that we do not kill what is left of our planet - but we must also figure out how to feed an ever growing population and give people meaningful work! We must have the courage to choose life - trusting that a way can be found that gives life in all aspects.

I speak as someone who has had her life transformed by cataract surgery. Instead of barely having good enough vision to drive, with glasses, I now have those implanted lenses which means I no longer need glasses except for reading. That part is a bit of a pain but I can now look at the clock radio in the middle of the night, or get up to investigate a noise, without reaching for my specs! For many years that was a dream of mine and I even contemplated buying prescription swimming goggles for sleeping!

In a way you could say that the life of faith is like cataract surgery. We sometimes need to discard the old lenses that may, or may not have served us well, all these years and get a new set.

Many years ago WWJD (What Would Jesus Do) bracelets became popular with young people and some not so young. I heard someone say that it should be WWJHMD bracelets, What Would Jesus Have Me Do. Jesus lived in a totally different time than we do, as did Shiphrah and Puah. Yet the principles that guided their faith decisions can also be ours. We can ask the question, “What does God require of us?” The answer given by the prophet Micah was: kindness, justice and humility before God.” We need to determine for our place and time what it is that is life giving? Can I do something for the promotion of life and justice and hope and love in a world that seems to care more for what you look like, how much money you make, how much power you can amass, or who your friends are? Can i open my own eyes and those around me to the systemic racism affecting people of colour and indigenous folks?

As Christians we must each answer the question asked by Jesus, “Who do YOU say that I am?” And we must answer not only with our mouths but with our hands and feet as well.

Amen!

Exodus 3: 1-15
Psalm 105
Romans 12: 9-21
Matthew 16: 21-28

Becoming A Burning Bush!

One of the things about moving is that you have to leave stuff behind. If you have been in one house for awhile there is usually plenty of stuff you don’t want anymore but there is also the stuff the movers will not take and which you have to replace when you arrive at your new home. Until this move I was always able to put most of that kind of thing in my car, but I discovered that West Jet did not want a whole bunch of cleaning supplies, and other liquids such as antique furniture oil. Then there is the particular property, and the landscaping you have spent a while getting the way you want it. Various perennials and the hedge, a mixture of privet and burning bush had to be left in Nova Scotia just where they were even though I had spent 5 years getting them the way I wanted them! I hope the new owners have not pulled them all out by the roots but they do have the right to want things their way! This spring I replaced my now far away forsythia and my burning bush with new plants.

A forsythia is characterized by “booming” a vibrant yellow before the leaves come out and the leaves of the burning bush turn a beautiful red before they fall off in the autumn. One of each is at the front of the manse.

The United Church Crest has, in one of it’s quarters, a “burning bush”. It was the symbol brought to our church by our Presbyterian forebears whose motto, in Latin, was “burning but not consumed”.

I have always been both fascinated and puzzled by this passage from the book of Exodus. We have met Moses before. The child of Hebrews, raised in the royal courts of Egypt, on the run from the law, is now being called to go back to Egypt to demand the release of a people from slavery.

Part of North American history, as with many colonizers, is the reality of slavery. It is common knowledge that North America did not give up easily when it came to slavery and a deep seated racism was left in its place. As we will see the Egyptians will not give up on slavery without a fight!

The dialogue in this passage is superb.

Moses, a shepherd accustomed to the wilderness and all of its beauty and dangers, encounters a bush that appears to be on fire, but unlike one that was burning from “natural causes” this one was not being reduced to ashes. His inner dialogue and his words are both in the text, which makes it a compelling story. Who would not want to see this thing up close. Who wouldn’t want to see such an odd thing. First responders have to deal with “onlookers” at fires and accidents, all the time.

So Moses finds out that he is being called to lead his people, a people he barely knows, to freedom! I think it would make a really good “Bob Newhart” spot on a comedy show!

To paraphrase - “Who are you really, you fiery bush. If I go to Pharaoh, who really does not want to see me, and tell him to release a large portion of his slave population, he’s gonna say, ‘Who says so’? And if I say, ‘God’, he’s gonna say, ‘God who’. What is your name, God of the weird wilderness bush”

To this question Moses receives one of the most confusing answers possible. God’s answer is not really a name; it’s not a noun, but a verb! I don’t know a lot about Hebrew but what I have read tells me that the word used by God is the “causitive” form of the verb “to be”. I used to think that God’s answer could be translated, “I am” but it is more than that. I gather it is really, “I will cause to be what I will cause to be”.

“I am who I am. I will be who I will be. I will cause to be what is my will,” all in 4 simple consonants! (There are no vowels in written Hebrew.) I am told that when Hebrew is spoken the people know what vowel sounds to add but for this word, no one is really sure, because this name is considered too holy to speak out loud. To know and use someone’s name is to have a power over them or a familiarity with then that would not be proper for a human to have with regard to God.

If I raise my voice and say KATE - she will look at me and wonder what I want, I practically guarantee it. “Hey you there” does not have the same effect. A few years ago I was leading an assembly at a school for a teacher who had died. I was told by a teacher not to refer to her by her first name, as I had done at the funeral, but by her “teacher name”, Mrs. Stephens!

Over the course of the next 40 years Moses will have additional, direct encounters with this acting God of vision and purpose but there will always be the sense that there is a great “divide” between this God and Moses or other leaders.

As the story of people of Israel unfolds the text tries to make it clear that the main actor in all of this is God. It is not ONLY human actions which lead to the freedom of the people and their successful arrival in the land of promise but this calling, enabling, equipping God will both call and sustain them at all times. God tells Moses that the prayers of the people have been heard and God knows their sufferings. God tells Moses that God will sustain the people as God sustained the burning bush. All of this has been happening while Moses is running from the law, in the wilderness. Yet, it seems that God will not act without faithful people who will take the risk of faithfulness.

I recall reading a book a number of years ago in which the author reflected on her life’s work in social justice and she spoke of the Exodus passage, saying, that she BECAME a burning bush.

Have you ever met anyone who has such a passion for something that it was like they were “on fire” for their cause, like they had “a fire in their bones”? Some may disparagingly refer to them as “a dog with a bone”! Whatever others thought, there was no stopping them, no tiring them out when it came to their “cause.” They seemed to find an inner energy, an energy that could not be dampened by a seemingly endless series of failures or roadblocks that seemed to be appear or be thrown up at their every turn.

I think that inventors are a bit like this. They get an idea in their head and they try this and that and the other thing until, one day, “it works”. Many breakthroughs in medicine, for example, wouldn’t have happened if the researchers were easily discouraged. I hope that those looking for a truly effective vaccine for COVID-19 have the same tenacity as the researchers who eventually wiped out polio and other dreaded diseases in the last century. We know that human beings would not have succeeded at the space race if it were not for a burning passion on the part of those who worked and experimented and calculated and learned from what succeeded and what failed. Yet they proceeded with caution because there was a lot at stake human lives and billions of dollars. But we need to be patient as a too hastily developed vaccine for COVID might do more harm than good!

In this time and place, in our community of faith we are struggling to discover how to be the church in a pandemic - perhaps that is our “fire in the belly” these days! If, as a community of faith or as individual people of faith, we are trying to discern where our call to be the church is taking us at this time we can also take guidance from the other two passage chosen for today - as always we are called to consider both the primacy of love and the paradox of losing one’s life to find it. The “fight fire with fire” maxim seems to be operative in the world at large, (several elections are coming up, just wait and we can watch the fur fly) but, as Christians we are called to a different way. When I was in theological school, we characterized this way as, “Let’s do it to them, before they do it to us.” That is NOT what we are called to emulate. It is not the way of Christ, even though it is the way of the world. Being people of faith is not about being right, or about winning at whatever goals we have in mind, but about being the loving and compassionate hands and feet of Christ in the situation in which we find ourselves. It is about being faithful in the circumstances in which we find ourselves,

It is a wide-spread custom to take food to the homes of the bereaved or to someone who is sick and to visit them in hospital. We really can’t do that these days. We cannot greet people with a hug on Sunday morning nor can we even gather and hear the word and sing holy songs together. And golly gee, do we ever miss it! I wrote to the activity director at Pineview Lodge on Thursday evening asking if I was allowed to visit and I am 99.9 % certain the answer will be no, as I have about 20 of their residents on my list. Residents are allowed only 2 visitors, if they come one at a time! I’m sure they miss the singing groups and the traffic coming and going and that works both ways, but wiser heads have determined that the risk outweighs the benefit and I have little choice but to trust that.

All of this does not mean we can do nothing; it just calls for more creativity.

Here at Bridging Waters we are working hard at making our services more accessible so that, at least, people with internet can have as close to an in-person experience as possible. We are lucky that we have the internet and the telephone!

We need to continue to find safe ways we can show people we do care and that we are part of the outreach of our Christian community.

Moses was a reluctant follower, yet God persisted in calling. God had more than one answer to Moses’ excuses. We sometimes give up too easily when we discover that we STILL can’t do something. We’ll just need to find a creative way to do it differently! The persistent question of 2020 is, “How can we BE the church without being IN the building?”

We believe that the God of Moses, the God of his ancestors Abraham and Sarah, the God of Jesus, and the God of all of you folks who are reading and watching and listening today, is a God of life and freedom, and purpose and strengthening and guidance and grace and companionship. This same God would not take no for an answer, but instead gave Moses what he needed to do the impossible - to lead his people to freedom.

Was it an easy task? Certainly not.

Was it accomplished on one day, with one request? Nope.

Was he loved and admired and adored by those whose freedom he secured? Nope! Were the people happy with their freedom? Not always! That’s the interesting thing about the Exodus journey. Sometimes they wished they were back in Egypt, the journey was so hard. But you should go and read the rest of the Exodus story for yourself! Did Moses regret his decisions? Sometimes he had his doubts and regrets. Who in their right mind would not?

The more I thought about it as I was writing this sermon, the more connections I saw between the journey of the Israelites in the wilderness and the journey we will face as we journey to freedom. COVID could well have been our Egypt, but the journey ahead of us may well be one of wilderness wandering as the freedom we receive may not be exactly what we were hoping and looking for.

In the end though, he could see the land of promise and be thankful for his part in leading the people on one part of their journey. Each of us is only a part of the wider story of God’s people. Each of us can only be called and equipped for the journey immediately ahead of us- for us it is the last quarter of 2020.

Our burning bush is before us, how will we respond in faith this day?

Amen.

Romans 13: 8-14
Psalm 149
Matthew 18: 15-20

Two or Three!!!

Numbers, numbers, numbers. # # # Many people are involved in the numbers game. Well, sometimes you have to be! I suspect that the greenhouse business, for example, has to rely on certain kinds of numbers. By this I mean the numbers of seeds planted per square inch, how deep to plant seeds or bulbs, what temperature and humidity is needed for proper germination, especially when the number on that column of mercury outside indicates that its -30C. Brrrr! Tell me that that is months away!!!! PULEASE!

When I hire a carpenter or go to the bakery I assume they paid enough attention to numbers in their measurements and such like. I assume that the grocery store cash register has added all my items properly and not charged me for 6 cans of soup when I only bought 5.

One of the things many churches have noticed about this online, pandemic, social distancing, non-contact form of worship is that more people are connecting to worship than there used to be here (or on Codette) sitting in the pews. (People have told me that they like coming to worship with coffee in hand and still dressed in their PJs!) Maybe they do so because they can belt out the hymns like they do when singing to the radio in their cars - loudly and with lots of hand gestures! (Do a little dance routine here!) I am not certain though if the numbers we see are unique individuals or people who watch in several sessions. Or, for that matter, people who think its so good they watch twice!!! If you have to leave to rescue one of the grandchildren from danger or to make lunch and come back later, are you one person, or two? I don’t know the answer to that. I also can’t find out who was watching, whereas if you show up in church, someone will know your name and that you were here - or, at least, you would be that stranger sitting in row three! Almost as soon as the pandemic lockdown began, I began broadcasting using “Facebook Live.” That first week, which seems soooo loooong ago, recording from the Manse on a Saturday, I knew that the majority of the people making comments were friends and colleagues, from the Maritimes who may not even have had more than a basic idea of where Nipawin is! (They knew it had to be somewhere between the American border and the 60th parallel!!!) They are not likely to show up on a Sunday morning even after COVID is just a bad memory! Over the next few weeks we were all trying to figure out how to be better at “Facebook Live” - or YouTube, or Zoom, and what devices to use, how to get other people involved and still practice “social distancing”. A lot depends on what people are willing or able to learn and what kind of internet connection is available.

Clergy often play the numbers game, as if having more people in the pews on Sunday means you have the better church! We in the mainline churches often cite declining membership and attendance as a sign of unfaithfulness or a warning sign of impending doom.

While there is no such thing as a church without members, I don’t think the numbers game is really where it should “be at”!

A church I once knew bribed it’s Sunday school students with chocolate bars. If they brought a friend to Sunday school the inviter received his or her choice of chocolate bar. I was told that they kept them in a big box that looked like a pirate’s treasure chest. A young member of one of my church’s Sunday Schools went with a friend who had invited her, but her reaction was, “Hummmph, all she wanted was the chocolate bar. She wasn’t really interested in me joining her Sunday school.”

Within the area served by my last pastoral charge there were many, many, very small Baptist churches which had been around for 100 years or more. They obviously had chosen to keep going rather than amalgamating or closing. Many of their clergy were so part time that I don’t know how they did anything else but get ready for Sunday. The rest of their work time, they must have volunteered! In one, the minister did virtually all the cooking for the church suppers! (Now, don’t get any ideas folks)

I must say that I do not really know why there are so many different churches here in Nipawin. In some places, at least, it is the result of a long series of church splits where one group leaves a church because they are unhappy with the way things are going! Then, in due course, the new church often goes through the same thing! I think it’s very sad!

I have always been a part of the United Church, and our very origins have a lot to say about how we deal with disagreements. A large part of the impetus behind Church Union was the sparse settlement of the prairies and the desire for a unified Protestant presence which was able to do more for the gospel than a greater number of smaller churches could hope to.

Out of necessity, from it’s very beginning, the United Church has embraced a diverse theology and practice, leaving some things to the local session. The unofficial mantra became something like, “In essentials, unity. In non-essentials, liberty. In all things, love.”

I was reading some material for this week’s sermon and I came across this quote, a take-off on the concluding line of the gospel passage, “Whenever two or more are gathered ... it can be really hard to get along.”

The reality is that in any organization run by people there will be conflict. The reality is that in any organization composed of people there will be disagreements. The reality is that any society or group that deals with very important matters, will have differences of opinion! Indeed, differences and disagreements in a community of faith can be good as they help us to clarify our mission and our ministry but when it gets out of hand it can be divisive and hurtful and just plain “not-Christian”. Even something as mundane as the time of worship can be a cause of friction especially if you are working with other congregations or if you have recently closed a church and the remaining one has more options available than they had before. What works well in one pastoral charge is not even seen as an option in another! Trust me; I’ve been there, done that, bought the T-Shirt!!!!

Somewhere in the early 19th century a divisive issue in some churches, particularly Presbyterian type churches, was the introduction of organs. I’m not sure what they would say about drums sets and guitars or about our 4 piece orchestra in Nipawin, (in non-Covid times, of course). In this new century, many churches, like ours, have stopped using an organ altogether!

Built right into our church’s founding documents is the principle of diversity. That was the only way Presbyterians and Methodists could agree to come together. That applied to church structure as well as to theology. These days a lot of us are missing Presbyteries for more local decision-making and connection, but the Church decided to amalgamate Presbyteries and Conferences into Regional Councils. Originally we had Presbyteries to keep the Presbyterians happy and Conferences to satisfy the Methodists. In 1925 it made sense to have both, but it was seen as no longer sustainable in the 21st Century. We’ve all had a steep learning curve trying to figure out how decisions are made in the new structure - and every Region is different! We don’t do it perfectly, sometimes we can’t hope to.

In the waning days of summer, 2020, we are part of a number of “circles” which are affected by disagreements and different points of view. This is not new, but this year, COVID came along. Now we are embroiled in decisions about masks, social distancing and hand sanitizer. Look at the local social media postings!!!! Why is a certain restaurant open and another, not! Some think it is all a hoax? Who has worked out 100 ways to justify not following the rules? Who is going to home school their children because of the dangers? And on, and on, and on!

I was looking at the website for L.P. Miller which has lots of rules for its students - some of whom are in those difficult teenage years in which perfectly normal children turn into unpredictable alien beings for a few years. The school’s bottom line advice: “be kind”. It needs to be said!

There are instances in the news where disagreements over COVID guidelines have turned nasty, even deadly. Apparently, in France sometime this summer, a bus driver was beaten to death because he told 4 people to put on masks!

Every generation has it’s issues and challenges, but we have been forced to deal with an almost unprecedented one. I don’t know how my grandparents’ generation dealt with the flu that came back with the returning Great War soldiers. To have come through the stress of a world at war - returned men or all of those who stayed at home, only to be struck by an invisible but very deadly enemy must have seemed so cruel. I don’t know how many businesses and churches were ordered closed or for how long but it must have also been very disruptive. Imagine having only the mail to keep in touch: no email, no internet, no telephone.

I keep going back to the advice from LP Miller and back to the advice to of the apostle Paul the early Christians in Rome - be kind, love. All too often we think of love in terms of what Hollywood tries to pass off as love rather than adopting the mind of Christ and the actions of self-giving love. It’s not about being enraptured by physical beauty and starry-eyed ideas of romance.

When I was much younger I thought of faithfulness as keeping my nose clean! If I avoided breaking the commandments and other stuff like drinking and smoking I would be A-OK. Eventually I came to see this as somewhat misguided. I eventually discovered that focussing on keeping rules really missed the point. You could end up doing no wrong, for sure, but you could also end up doing nothing at all, or at least nothing useful!

A few years ago there was a lot of focus on the ten commandments in a number of political jurisdictions in the USA and many thought that returning the law to a following of the ten commandments would solve all of their problems. It was clearly a part of their “tough on crime” strategy! But, of course, they were more concerned with some crimes than others!

Clearly those things are important, but I think Paul would say, “first things first!” If we focus only on rules we will inevitably miss the core of the matter but if we focus on love, then everything else will fall into place.

When we gather in community for discussions, to make decisions, or for fellowship we need to keep the commandment to love one another first and foremost. If you consider that the Ten Commandments are a common sense guide to healthy and respectful spiritual social groupings, they are ALL taken care of by the commandment to love the other as one loves the self. Murder is not loving, nor, for that matter is adultery or stealing or coveting. Each is a brach of the command to love, or leads to more serious ones. If I covet my neighbours lawn chairs long enough and strong enough then that may lead me to steal them!!!!!! Maybe that’s what happened to my flags last year!

Perhaps these passages are about first things first - love one anther and all else will fall into place and it wont matter if two or three or two hundred or three hundred are gathered together to be Christian community. If we love with all our being then all necessary rules will be covered and our community will be more like God’s vision for us.

When we do come back together in our worship spaces and start doing things together, as we can, let us remember to love God, love ourselves and love others.

Amen.

Romans 14: 1-12
Psalm 103
Matthew 18: 21-35

Seventy Seven Times and NOT Counting !!!!

Two children are playing and as sometimes happens, an argument develops. Finally, in exasperation, one says to the other, “Why should I have to listen to you, you are just stupid?!!!”

The mom, hearing this, comes into the room and orders an apology, “Dear, in this house we don’t call people stupid. You have to apologize.”

Indignantly, the one turns to her sister and after a very long pause, says, “Sissy, I’m sorry you are stupid.” It was not quite the apology the mother was intending, and there was certainly no feeling of remorse!

How many exasperated parents have said to one of their children, “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times, not to leave your coat and your book-bag on the floor. Hang them up!” Of course, it has not been a million times; it may seem like it to the mom, but we all understand that the exaggeration is simply for effect! She is getting tired of reminding her child, every day, to do what should have long since become automatic.

The passage from Matthew’s gospel is part of a longer series of short, and not so short, teachings and parables about problems in relationships within the Christian community. The passage from the letter to the Romans is filled with practical advice about what has become a source of tension in the community of faith for their community life. Sometimes issues arise within faith communities, over which some people wanted to expel others from the fellowship of the church. Paul’s advice is, “Don’t”!

When I was in university I knew a faith-based group whose members who were very concerned about the “don’ts” of faith. There was a long list of things that they avoided doing at all costs. While they talked a good line about “grace” it seemed to me as if they did everything they could to earn God’s approval. Think about the contradiction involved in that! They were very concerned to have “right beliefs” as well. Most of them were determined to get their university education without it affecting their religious beliefs!

I recall that I was invited to a Bible study one day because a member of the group was questioning certain beliefs he had held since childhood and they wanted me there to bolster “their side”. They clearly wanted me to agree with them and tell him to “believe” what was “in the Bible”. I chuckled to myself when I was asked to come because I knew what was going on and I knew was likely to happen! When I began to agree with him and said things such as, “I no longer believe that either,” the group members looked at me as if I was a traitor to their cause!

The United Church has found itself at odds, over the years, with other churches over issues such as homosexuality, ordination, creationism vs evolution, reproductive choices, the authority of scripture, Sunday work and acceptance of other faiths. Sometimes we find ourselves on the same side as more conservative churches, but for very different reasons.

A former parishioner told me that she was in the United Church because she and her husband had been “invited to not return” when they began to question some of what they saw as the more rigid beliefs and practices of their former denomination. Upsetting the apple cart was not acceptable in their church - they were to come to church, learn the right beliefs, accept them without question, and that was that! They parted company with that church because they could not sit there, without asking deep questions!

Paul seems to be advocating for a spirit in the community that allows for one to be solid in his or her faith but still are able to embrace those who hold differing views.

Last week I mentioned that organizations with people always have some sort of differences of opinion or conflict. It is inevitable! This week, Jesus speaks to Peter about the need to forgive. Ita seems that there was a specific situation behind his question; it’s not a hypothetical situation! Perhaps Peter had some long-standing difficulty with someone and this was causing a rift in the community of faith.

This “church problem” was Matthew’s reason for bringing Jesus’ teaching to mind as he wrote to his church many years later. Perhaps Peter was tired of forgiving the guilty party - and he was probably keeping count. Jesus was ready to tell him to keep forgiving and stop counting.

Most likely, people in Matthew’s church were also having difficulty. We are not told any details about the infraction and that is good for the reader because when the story is not specific it makes it easier to apply it to more types of situations.

The parable told by Jesus centres around a monetary debt. In a society of people who lived from day to day, literally, substantial monetary debt was one of the greatest fears. Apparently debtors prisons were used to deprive people of their freedom and extract their labour until their debt was paid - along with their room and board in the prisons, of course. You may remember a reference to “workhouses” in the Christmas Classic, “A Christmas Carol” based on a story by Charles Dickens! They were seen as a way to deal with poverty and unmanageable debt!

Considering that the minimum wage of Jesus’ day was at a subsistence level, a time debtor’s prison would be a very long sentence indeed!

Then, as now, there were absurdly rich people who had many, many servants and slaves working for them who were forced to exist below the poverty line. I read somewhere that this slave owed the equivalent of 200,000 years pay at minimum wage.

This exaggerated, impossible to imagine amount was an effective literary device to ensure everyone was listening.

On the third last day of Grade 7, someone named David borrowed .25 cents from me. That was when you could actually buy something, maybe a can of pop, for .25 cents! I told him that if I did not get it back “tomorrow” it would be .50 cents and if not that day it would be 1.00 dollar - and so on. He agreed to my terms before I handed over the .25 cent piece! By the last day of school I lost hope of seeking my .25 cents again. Let alone my interest! I think David moved away as I do not recall seeing him in the school the following September. Even if the summer break was not counted, in the calculation of interest his debt to me would have increased to an enormous amount in the intervening 44 years. Maybe one of you bankers can tell me what the rate of 100% daily compound interest would come to by September 1 of this year. I’m just curious really; I actually, wrote off the debt long ago!

This anonymous man receives forgiveness of his enormous debt, but the crux of the whole parable is that he then refuses to forgive someone who owes him a much smaller amount: ONLY 100 DAYS pay. Clearly this man at the centre of our story has learned nothing about forgiveness and grace and the ways of his master! When the master hears of it he reverses his decision and the the punishment is severe - far worse than debtors’ prison; how could torturing someone would enable them to pay any kind of debt, let alone 200,000 years wages!

Although the financial focus of this parable would immediately resonate with Jesus original audience, and many generations of folks since, this parable is not just about money and debt. It is, essentially an argument, “from the lesser to the greater.” -

Like many Canadians, I watch a lot of American television. MY favourite shows are the “police procedural”, crime dramas. Yet, the one thing I find most disturbing about these shows is the glee and effort with which some prosecutors seek convictions in “death penalty cases”. They want to see these criminals die! Of coursde, they are playing to their death-penalty loving audiences!

While we are a very different country in this respect all you have to do though, is to mention the names of Allan Legere, and Justin Bourque, whose murderous rampages terrorized an entire province and I can say that I don’t want either of them to see the outside of a prison again!

I’ve mentioned Corrie TenBoom before - she and her family, residents of Haarlem, in the Netherlands, were sent to a concentration camp for hiding Jewish people from the Nazis. Most of the men in her family who were arrested, died due to the harsh treatment they received. Corrie survived but her sister died in the camp! After the war she travelled around Europe, preaching the Christian gospel of forgiveness and reconciliation. She writes of an encounter with a former guard a few years after the war. He came up to her after her speech and told her that he had become a Christian, that he knew God had forgiven him, but he wanted to ask for her forgiveness. I believe she had remembered his cruelty. He held out his hand but she felt nothing but anger for him.

She wrote, “I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion—I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. "Jesus, help me!" I prayed silently. "I can lift my hand, I can do that much. You supply the feeling."
	And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.
	"I forgive you, brother!" I cried. "With all my heart!"
	For a long moment we grasped each other's hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God's love so intensely as I did then.” 

TenBoom was to write later, “to forgive is to set a prisoner free and then to discover that the prisoner was you”.

Unless you are very unusual, I think I can assume that you all have had an experience of being wronged in some way. The more egregious the offense, the longer you may have carried those negative feelings around with you, unable, or unwilling, to let them go, to put them aside, to forgive.

Let me be clear! To forgive is NOT to say that “What the other person did was OK”. If that were true forgiveness would not be needed. It is to say instead, “I am not going to let this action take over my life and define it”.

Yet, sometimes, perhaps often times, restoration of relationships is neither possible, nor desirable. I know many women who have left abusive husbands and partners, for them forgiveness has not meant a restoration of the relationship because, in some cases, it would simply be a return to the same situation. This passage is NOT about those situations.

This passage relies on the one immediatelly preseding it in which the community seeks to settle disputes by ensuring both that the perpetrator knows his or her behaviour is hurtful AND can resolve to find a new and non-hurtful way forward. The community of faith does not fare well when people hold grudges but it is also not healthy when others are allowed to be abusive, or manipulative or bully everyone else without calling them to account. It works both ways.

We are called to speak the truth in love; to forgive, to trust in God and to seek to walk in the way of Jesus as we continue our Christian journey. We follow one who loved us first and forgave us. What else could we do in response?

Amen.

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

Are We There Yet?

Have you ever gone on a long road trip with children and had to listen to repeated choruses of “are we there yet”. A friend of mine used to babysit a young boy who had not yet developed a sense of “time” - so, as his babysitter, she would tell him, “your mom gets off work in two Sesame Streets”; the concept of “two hours” meant nothing to him.

When I was young I was often very disappointed by how long my father thought, “just a few minutes was” and how long those minutes seemed to be to me to be when I was lying in bed, trying not to go to sleep and waiting and waiting for him to tuck me in and give me a “good night kiss.” He was doing chores in the barn!

Did you ever notice that time passes so slowly when you are a child waiting for the end of the school day, or supper, but so quickly when it comes to things you don’t want to happen, like homework and bedtime!

Usain Bolt is considered to be the fastest man on the planet. The benchmark race for this title is the 100m event. He has run that in 9.58s; Florence Griffith Joyner, the fastest woman, ran the 100m in 10.49s. The 100m is a sprint; a longer race cannot be run at the same speed. The record for the 400m is more than 4X the 100m. A marathon, at 42.195kms, needs a different pace yet again!

When this 2020 COVID pandemic started we were all warned that it was going to be a marathon and not a sprint. We were told to pace ourselves for the “long haul”. Little did we know that the finish line would keep getting harder and harder to bring into focus as it seemed to move further and further away!

Moses and his people could relate to that! The story of the people of Israel in the wilderness is the story of a marathon, lasting 40 years, meaning an entire generation! Technically, the journey should not have taken very long at all. I suspect that the people who followed him out of Egypt expected a much more direct route.

Of course, the story was not written down until much later and the purpose was to tell them how it was that the desert experience was what formed them as a people and gave them their identity. Free from the influence of foreign powers they could become who the God of their ancestors was calling them to be.

Many of us grew up on stories of how our families came to live where we do. If we are not “First Nations,” the reality is That we came from somewhere else; we have an immigrant identity of hard work, moving into the unknown and overcoming adversity in a new and promised land.

The story of the people of Israel in the wilderness could be seen as a story of praying for something but not being satisfied when the prayer was answered! It is the story of a leadership which failed to live in total trust . It is the story of transition; from the life of slavery to the overlords of Egypt to a life of freedom under God.

But, of course, it is a freedom with limitations. This is not what some people see as freedom.

When I was a child I saw adulthood as a time of great freedom - doing what I wanted with no one setting out rules for me. As I grew up I learned that adults had to follow all sorts of rules they had to follow! Even a short trip in the car made me aware of the rules of stop signs, traffic lights and speed limits; in PEI in my childhood there was a slower on for night time! You had to pay for stuff before you took it out of a store. You had to wait your turn at the bank and when you picked up the telephone you had to check for a dial tone, or a voice - the neighbour may have been using the party-line!

In today’s passage the people who had been very tired of the life in Egypt, actually began to long for it, because it seemed to be better than what they were going through in the wilderness. Their rose coloured glasses saw the misery of their past as better than their wilderness misery. In their misery they cried out to God.

What they received, on this day, was quail and manna. Quail are little fat birds that came in great quantities that they covered the ground. When I was a child, I think there was a silly quail on Looney Tunes who had to keep “poofing” to get his little drooping feather on the top of his head from falling over his eyes! It was very silly and meant to be.

We don’t really know what the manna was. The online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, offers several theories, including a kind of “lichen” or a “plant lice. ” Any kind of lice does not sound that appetizing to me! It apparently spoiled in a day, unless it was the Sabbath, when its shelf life doubled. Its arrival was both God’s test and God’s provision! “Do you trust me?” “Do you trust me”. You will need to gather it six days a week and don’t bother to try and save it because it won’t keep. Perhaps the grandmothers of the community tried to “put up” the manna in Mason jars but they discovered it would spoil, unless it was the Sabbath!

From the perspective of those who wrote the book of Exodus, God was seeing to it that they did not starve. He provided for their needs - but just! They had to trust in God’s provision and live that trust EVERY DAY.

We are not a culture that wants to live from pay cheque to pay cheque. Yet, we have a lot of debt, mostly on high interest plastic! Financial planners have been telling us for years that we should at least 6 months expenses in our savings account, “for a rainy day”. I don’t know about other working people, but I’m not sure I’ve ever had that much outside of my retirement savings! The “COVID epidemic” has been one of “those rainy days” for many people who have been laid off, or otherwise unable to work. The CBC program, The Current was discussing that on Friday, especially with respect to rent and evictions.

In Jesus’ day it seems that the vast majority of people lived from one day’s pay to the next. That’s the way things were. A day’s pay, on the pay scale of a day labourer, was enough for survival, but nothing more! But many people did not have a “regular employer”. Imagine, if you will, a local “job bank” at the town square, for day labourers! This was where a farmer with a crop in the fields hooked up with the many men who had four hungry children! “I pay a denarius for the day”. That was the going rate, and the would-be labourers all signed on, and made their way to his vineyard!

As the day wore on it became apparent that he was going to need more people and he went and hired the men who were there at that time. Where were they several hours earlier? We are not told. Maybe it’s not important! He goes back to hire workers three times. These times though, he appears to have simply told them that he will pay what “was fair” - not a specific amount.

When the end of the work day came, the men lined up to be paid. The early birds got to see what the latecomers were paid! Those hired last, having worked only two hours, were paid very well - a full day’s pay. They could provide for themselves and their families for another day! Their employer was very generous! The same thing happened with the next group as well. The ones hired at the beginning of the day were likely wondering, “surely we have a bonus coming, we’ve been here all day and worked hard in the heat of the sun.” But NO they were given a day’s pay, no more, no less. The employer was mystified that they were upset - they had agreed to it, after all! Why should they be upset if he ended up being generous with someone else!

Today’s parable leaves us scratching our heads and wondering just what Jesus’ purpose in telling it, really was. Is this his first lesson in vineyard management? Is he encouraging lazy workers to do as little as possible and still expect to be paid. Is he scaring the living daylights out of the vineyard owners promoting this as the Christian way? What IS it that is going on here.

Jesus parables are frequently puzzling and sometimes infuriating. We have become so accustomed to the forgiving father in the so-called, “Parable of the Prodigal Son” that we forget that his behaviour went against all of the social norms of Jesus day. That parable would have offended many, many people. A good father should not have been in that situation and he should not have done what he did at any of the steps along the way. His behaviour was downright scandalous! Yet, we have grown to love this parable.

What is Jesus really telling us in today’s parable? If parables are supposed to tease the mind into active thought, I began to wonder what thoughts were a most appropriate response.

We often look at this parable with the assumption that the landowner represents God, in some way. Yet, I wonder what would change if we set that aside and look at it from the point of view, first, of the labourers who were there all day long, in the heat of the day. They did a hard day’s work because it was required of them, and someday when the work was short, they might be hired over someone else, with a less stellar reputation! They knew that they could never hope to change their lot in life, They could take pride in a good day’s work but would never, ever own land of their own. They would have just enough for survival. It was the way things were.

Yet this landowner was a little different. His actions and attitude give us pause! It was not unusual that he hired more and more workers as they day went on, perhaps he would not wait because of the condition of the crop or the weather forecast. We don’t know. What was unusual was the rate of pay the latecomers received.

Was it fair? NO! Was it the right thing to do? Well, that’s the question for me. There are so many factors in how people are compensated for their work that it is hard to determine what a job is worth.

As part of the research into this sermon I looked up information on the concept of a “minimum wage.” In one article a government person defended a low minimum wage as being intended to be compensation for an entry level position where supervision was needed and from which the employee quickly made a transition to higher paying forms of work. Students work for minimum wage and mostly live at home while they save money for school. Yet, the calls for a higher minimum wage these days presume that the people receiving the wage need to live on it because it is no longer just an “entry level” wage. These days many of the people who earn minimum wage are indeed trying to live and raise families on those wages. Peach farmers in Georgia are very happy that their minimum wage is the lowest in the country but I doubt that the peach pickers feel the same way. When North American farmers are competing in a global economy against products grown by workers who are paid far less than ours, we need to have a wider conversation about what is the just thing, for those working and those paying.

We also need to ask, “what is it that we as a society values in a person?” Do we value them as a human being with basic needs to be met, or do we value them only for what they produce? To use just one example, Why is the work of a lawyer or a dentist valued much more highly than a day care worker? Is the care of our children not something of very high value? How do we value and care for those in long term care, whose earning and producing years are over? What about the permanently disabled who have never been able to work at a meaningful and independent job? Should they not have enough money for a dignified life?

This parable offends my common sense yet it warms my heart and tugs at my soul.

We far too often feel we have earned what we have, AND MORE. Yet the Gospel points out that we all live by grace. God is generous to all; the just and the unjust. The manna and the quail, came to everyone. The vision of the parable is of a generous God who gives to all based on need, not on merit - or ability, or social value.

It may be no way to run an economy or a world, but it should give us an idea of how to make it a little better for those who fall through the ever widening cracks.

We are not there yet! But it is certainly something to think about!

Amen.

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

Stability in the Midst of Change

Moving to Saskatchewan has renewed my interest in the parts of my family story that are connected to this province.

Additionally, during these days of COVID and the Exodus readings I see many connections between the three! I do a lot of wondering about the many transitions they had to make in their lives. Both grandparents had moved from other places; she from PEI and he, from near Ottawa. After the war the school teacher and the handsome “returned man” married and settled into life on the farm raising their family and, no doubt, dreaming of a bright future.

The “perfect storm” of the drought and the Great Depression ended those dreams! I wonder about my grandparents deciding to move to PEI, drawn east instead of north, primarily because of the presence of my grandmother’s family.

I wondered, “How does one make a 2,500 mile drive in 1932, with 4 children, one of whom was under 2 and start over with next to nothing. !

How DO you make all of those transitions. I wonder if, after their arrival in PEI, and settling in, did they pine for the good old days in Saskatchewan! Things in PEI would not have been very rosy. There was still a Depression with very little money - but there was normal rainfall, and food and family were fairly close. My grandfather - in a new and unknown land for the second time in his life, might have felt like a fish out of water. This time though, they had their own small ones looking tho them for stability and hope.

I was talking with my cousin the other day who reminded me that part of this story involves getting stuck in the mud on a PEI road not that many miles after driving off the ferry (it was April after all) . The irony in this, perhaps, was that my grandfather had survived the mud and the shells of the trenches in war-torn Belgium only to get stuck in yet more mud upon his arrival in the place of new beginnings! This time though, no one was shooting at him!

Yet, he found a new extended family, learned to farm in a new climate, run a saw and grist mill and settle into his new neighbour-assigned identity as “the Mr Johnston from away”.

We probably all know immigrant families who struggle to make their way in their new home. Looking back at their early years they can laugh or shake their heads at some of the things that happened. A woman from the Caribbean married a farmer and moved to PEI in January. She and I laughed together as she told me the story of taking her husbands jeans off of the clothesline on a bitterly cold day and thinking she had “broken” them when she brought them in and they “cracked”. Apparently he tried to look angry until he burst into laughter at his new bride’s worried expression.

We welcomed a refugee family from Myanmar to our small community in Nova Scotia, early in 2019, and they lived there for about a year, learning English and Canadian customs, and making friends. It was not altogether unsurprising when, early in their second year they moved to a community in Ontario where other refugees from Myanmar seemed to be gathering. They felt they needed community from their own culture and who spoke their own language to help make their transitions easier. Even though we wanted them to stay in Nova Scotia, they went with the understanding and best wishes of the sponsorship committee.

Most of you have family stories of similar journeys, of coming to this area of Saskatchewan from the south or eastern Europe; of breaking and clearing new ground, and of change after change. Since this is a newer province, those stories are only a few generations old. As a province we honour that pioneering spirit, that venturing into the unknown, that living in trust.

We can suppose then that they, at the very least, knew what the people in the book of Exodus felt like. It might not have been fresh water that our pioneers yearned for but I expect they were often yearning for something vital.

As 2019 drew to a close, we began to hear news of a mysterious and deadly outbreak of a new virus affecting many, many people, in Whuan province, China - the other side of the world! Do you remember the stories of building entire hospitals from scratch in just a couple of weeks! Yet, in the age of jet travel and globalization, the other side of the world is not that far away anymore. By March of this year, in the middle of the liturgical season of Lent, we cancelled the rest of our Lenten Lunch serries and then meetings, programs, Sunday morning worship and Sunday school. We began to learn how to worship over the internet. First, I recorded the service from the manse on Saturday - but on Easter Sunday I broadcast from the almost empty sanctuary! It felt really, really weird! Clergy began to meet over Zoom many times each week for support, advice and to learn the ways and rules of the new normal.

All of Canada was in lock-down mode. Businesses closed. Flights were cancelled. AND THE STORES RAN OUT OF TOILET PAPER! The premier of Nova Scotia made the national news with his frank advice to fellow Nova Scotians, “stay the blazes home”.

For months now, many of us might have felt as if we are living in a foreign land, or at sea with no paddle! Use whatever metaphor you will. Most of us want to get back to the way things were! Yet, we are being told that life may never return to the way it was before the outbreak and that a new normal will come about but we have no idea how free or how restricted this will end up being.

Tuesday night we had a Board meeting in Codette and we noted that the special events and fund-raisers part of our budget had taken a heavy hit! We will have to plan for not having that money, at least for next year!

On October 8 the Bridging Waters Board will be discussing a date for reopening but we already know it will NOT be business as usual in our worship life. There will be no singing, even if the piano is playing your favourite hymn, no sitting with friends, no coffee time or lunch after church and everyone has to wear a mask, sit 6 feet from those who aren’t in their bubble and people with compromised immune systems will be encouraged to stay home. (I tried to say all of that in one breath!) There will be no planning your fall schedule around church suppers and your Christmas shopping and entertaining goodie purchases around the bazaars and Christmas bake sales! Health Departments across the country are warning us to remain vigilant, to limit group sizes, to mask and to remember that life is not like it used to be. If we don’t the second wave may be much bigger than the first.

According to the story from Exodus, the people of Israel had been slaves in Egypt for generations. There was no living memory of the famine that drove their ancestors to Egypt in the first place. The friendly Pharaoh who know Joseph was long gone and there was, as they say, “a new sheriff in town”. There was only the experience of slavery and their own persistent prayers for deliverance. No slave population is well fed but, when they were struggling in the desert, their memories of Egypt grew fonder and that former life looked so very good.

They forgot about the reasons for all of their prayers. They forgot about the attempt at ethnic cleansing, with the murder of male babies in their grandparents generation. They forgot about being forced to make bricks without the proper supplies. They forgot about their hard taskmasters! They were cranky and frustrated and thirsty! Even after they received quail and manna they cried out for water and were ready to stone their leader. It must be Moses’ fault. It had to be his fault. If they had a better leader there would be no problems at all! Does that sound familiar!

Life is almost always about change. In at least every generation there seems to be a period of great change. In the local paper the other week there was an article honouring the farmer responsible for the promotion of the practice of no-till farming. I don’t know for sure but I doubt my grandfather would have thought it possible - to plant wheat without plowing - yet it is now common and accepted practice. He intended to make a living on four quarters, now few, if any, can manage that!

As far as many people are concerned, climate change is the biggest crisis facing our world. Scientists are calling us all to make changes that no one claims will be easy but we are faced with credible evidence that we NEED to reduce our footprint on the planet.

We resist! We blame the people who are telling us these truths! Farmers may wonder how they can plant, spray and harvest even one quarter of canola let alone dozens! We can’t turn back the clock, but perhaps we need an innovator with a much lower greenhouse gas producing solution! More likely it will be a many step process of many innovations. And it will cost money before it evens out and the economy adjusts!

On PEI the big issue seems to focus on chemical runoff from potato farms which results in fish kills in rivers and endangers the household water supply. The issue has pitted those who have no up-to-date connection with farming to farmers who are out in their fields, day in and day out, struggling to farm and pay their bills. And even the non-farmers like their french fries, steak on the bbq and fresh local milk among many other things. Farmers markets, with their organic food and higher prices are not the answer for many.

As individuals, we don’t want to scale back our “luxuries and needs”. We argue that the economy depends on us doing and buying these things. We don’t want to go back to the “good old days,” if it means that long distance travel is difficult and rare. I would not have moved here if I thought it would not be possible to visit my family every summer. An unlimited long distance plan helps but it’s not the same as “being there”.

Yes, with family spread out, we need to get places and get together. We also like our forms of recreation - boating - snowmobiling - and driving the kids all over everywhere for sports activities.

Of course, we cannot go back to the 1940s and 50s- in any aspect of our lives but we need to have the conversation of how to move forward. What technologies are less polluting, less damaging? We can no longer afford to see the planet as a limitless supply of more - more oil, more wood, more land for housing developments and highways and more of whatever we are wanting. We can no longer ship our worst polluting industries to the north or overseas because we won’t allow them in our backward. We need to stope investing in and profiting from companies that do! It is obviously a whole lot easier to get used to having more, but much harder to make do with less. Metaphorically speaking, we will soon strike the rock, and no water will come out at all or it will be polluted!

Like the people of Israel trying to make their way in the arid desert, we have picked up the idea that someone else is responsible for fixing the problem. We obviously have the wrong leaders. They blamed Moses and demanded that he had to fix the problem. If you remember the story Moses had fled to the desert as a wanted fugitive and he learned how to survive there. He was perhaps the only one who was able to ensure their survival. They NO SURVIVAL skills for desert life ate all!

But before they entered the promised land the people had to learn that it was THEIR OWN responsibility to be faithful and to walk in God’s way. The parable told by Jesus seems to tell us that lip service to faithfulness is no good, what counts is positive action, even if it is grudging and full of grumbling.

Like the people in the wilderness, like the early church we sometimes need to pause, to count our blessings, and to move forward into the unknown in trust and faith. Like the people of Israel who found the water from the rock, we need to trust that we will receive what we need for fullness of life.

Amen!