It’s the End of the World as we know it and I feel fine!

Ever notice how things can get twisted and changed as people share stories over time?  We used to play a game where one person would whisper a secret message to the person next to them who would then repeat it to the person beside them until it went all around the circle.  No matter how carefully we listened, the message that was received at the end had very little to do with the message that was started.  For some reason human communication can get bent and twisted out of the original intent.  So we shouldn’t be too surprised that scripture gets twisted into hurtful interpretations that are unrecognizable to the original authors.  How do we deal with scripture like this that have been used to distort and damage what Christianity is about?

Jesse Zink, in his book Faithful, Creative, Hopeful shares the story of a congregation that is preparing a Good Friday joint service that would rather go to a big sale than attend their special worship.  Zink says it’s not that the minister is a failure, but that the Christian faith has been defeated by today’s culture.  Bill McKibben wrote an article in last week’s Guardian, describing how progressive protestant Christian has been distorted by mainstream culture to the point that US politicians use scripture abusively to support their oppressive laws, and I quote:

“relatively obscure passage in a relatively obscure Old Testament story is a good example of what is known as prooftexting – the citing of some verse somewhere to support your predetermined beliefs…[which] is like a restaurant critic who has visited a steakhouse, noted that it has creamed spinach on the menu, and declared confidently that it is a vegetarian eatery.”

Scripture gets twisted like this and Christianity gets twisted like this  into an excuse to bully people who care for others, who are compassionate for outsiders, for the vulnerable and for the powerless.  How many times have we heard people say, “I can’t stand organized religion” because they have experienced twisted uses of scriptures to justify toxic abuses of power.  Power over how people lead their lives, power over legislation that appears on the surface of it to be harmless but isn’t.  All supposedly justified in the name of Christianity but without the compassion and empathy that Jesus taught his disciples to show towards folks less fortunate than themselves.

A case of scripture that often gets twisted beyond recognition is this passage in Matthew.  It refers back to the Noah Story.  You know, the one that has generated all kinds of songs and art like the Irish Rovers singing about ‘green alligators and long-necked geese’ and completely ignoring the tragedy and destruction the Flood story implies.  This is not a cutesy story about animals on an overcrowded floating barn with the chaos of keeping the lions fed and the rabbits from taking over.  This is about heartbreaking tragedy where people are swept up off in a tidal wave of destruction.  Once we see a painting of the people left off the ark, it’s hard to think of Noah as cute.  And here’s the thing.  The Matthew passage doesn’t sound like the persons taken up are raptured into Heaven, it sounds ambiguous.  The ones that are taken, are they taken by the flood waters, sparing the ones left behind? It’s hard to tell.  Yet there has spawned a multimillion-dollar industry of books and movies taking this single passage out of context into a bizarre faith that has people sure they are entitled to special treatment from God.  They proudly put bumper stickers on their car saying, “In case of the Rapture, this vehicle will be driverless” because they know how the end times are going to work in their favor.  It’s nasty and cynical and snobbish.  The opposite of what Jesus taught.

Our Song of Faith, a document in the form of poetry that tries to put into words our best understanding of the United Church’s ideas says that “Scripture is our song for the journey, the living word passed on from generation to generation to guide and inspire, that we might wrestle a holy revelation for our time and place from the human experiences and cultural assumptions of another era. God calls us to be doers of the word and not hearers only... The Spirit judges us critically when we abuse scripture by interpreting it narrow-mindedly, using it as a tool of oppression, exclusion, or hatred.”

All too often it may feel like we have been defeated by toxic Christian teachings that drown out our understandings of following the teachings of Jesus.  All too often it seems like the only Christians we hear about get into the news because they own palaces or private jets or are condemning immigrants or abortion or inflicting the Lord’s Prayer on every school-aged child regardless of what faith they may have.  But when we look at the scriptures as a whole, it seems certain that we are being called not to twist them to allow us to judge our neighbors!  It does not give us permission to oppress others with laws that lock people up.  Scripture instead invites us to live decent lives, sober lives, empathetic and dare I say woke lives.  Lives that recognize God at work in our neighbors, God at work in us to see and call out hatred while inviting God to heal our hearts and minds so we can focus on what is truly important.

Not when or where the end times will come but why and how we love ourselves and love our neighbors and love God.  That way, whenever God shows up in our lives, to take us or to leave us behind, we will be ready. Now is the hour for us to wake up and live honorable lives.  That way, whenever the end times come, we will be ready for God who comes in love. May it be so for us all.

Actions Speak Louder than Words

 

It’s shocking to see a minister take a police baton in the stomach as what happened this week in Chicago.  She was protesting outside an ICE detention centre with other clergy.  Together, they asked to enter the detention centre to provide spiritual care to detainees, something that clergy regularly do in jails and hospitals across North America.  Not at ICE detention centres.  Instead, they are being shot at with pepper pellets and laughed at when they collapse in pain.  They are being arrested and accused of being violent because they have their hands up in prayer.  This is not just one incident.  These clergy are putting their bodies in harm’s way for the gospel.  They are following in the footsteps of a criminal who was so dangerous, he was publicly tortured and executed on a high hill to be an example to anyone who might try to resist evil.  This criminal’s brave action, his courage and his innocence shocked many who witnessed it.  Even the soldiers and thieves wondered what kind of man had just been killed.  That man was Jesus of Nazareth, and the people who knew him and loved him soon called him Christos, the Greek word for Lord.  Christos meant ‘anointed one’, a phrase used for King David after he killed Goliath and became the new leader of Israel.  So Jesus was seen as the ruler of the new followers of the way, and when they pledged allegiance to Jesus, they pledged resistance to hate, resistance to persecution, resistance to human rights abuses.

The erosion of human rights starts small.  Innocuously.  We don’t aim to lose our human rights, after all.  And it’s easy to ignore or pretend that an issue here and there are not a problem.  It’s not a problem to ban abortions in the 8^th month because that is extremely unlikely to happen.  But then it gets earlier and earlier until abortions are completely illegal regardless of situation or circumstance.  We see this happening down south. Human rights get chipped away gradually and subtly until all of the sudden it impacts us.  Privatization of health care doesn’t seem to be a problem when we are talking about electives, but when it’s a burn victim or someone limping from a bad hip for years because they can’t afford the extra fees, or the person who waits years for cardiologists, the slope is slippery, and we lose the battle by invisible inches.

There’s a famous poem by a German preacher,

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I kept quiet; I wasn't a communist.
When they came for the trade unionists, I kept quiet;
I wasn't a trade unionist.
When they locked up the social democrats, I kept quiet;
I wasn't a social democrat.
When they locked up the Jews, I kept quiet;
I wasn't a Jew.
When they came for me, there was no one left to protest.

What this leaves out is the first few groups that the Nazis sent to places like Auschwitz.  They came for people with medical conditions.  They came for people who didn’t measure up to their standards of physical and mental perfection.  And they came for people, especially men, that weren’t conforming to their assumptions of what masculinity meant.  They came for gay men.  And when Auschwitz was liberated, it was the gay men, labelled with pink triangles, that were left behind in that death camp.

We like to think that Canadians are squeaky clean but our history is sprinkled with stories that prove otherwise.  Japanese internment camps, residential schools, butter box babies, the rounding up of German Canadian farmers, the denial of refuge to the over 900 Jewish passengers of the M.S. Louis in 1939.  There was forced sterilization of people living in institutions as well as immigrants from Eastern Europe and indigenous women, in Alberta and B.C. until the 1970’s.  Violence against the rainbow community was commonplace, especially since it was seen as both criminal and a medical condition.

What would Jesus have done?  What are we as Christians called to do when facing discrimination in all its ugly forms against whatever minorities are currently fashionable?  In Matthew 25 Jesus says “ ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’  Or how about Luke 6:27  ^“Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man”. Or in John 15 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.  No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you”.  Or Luke 6: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has … sent me to set the oppressed free...”

Jesus taught his disciples to choose compassion and love as the true signs of holiness.  He reminded them to stand for those who were seen as unlovable or unvaluable, the leper, the tax collector, the prostitute, the orphan, the widow, the poor, the ones who had no power or authority.  Jesus calls us to do the same.  It is never easy, but when we cry out for justice, when we write or call or e-mail, we are participating in God’s new creation. 

If we want to be the friends of Christos Jesus, there are three questions we need to ask ourselves.

1.  Why do we want to be friends of Jesus?

2.  Who is Jesus calling us to love?
3.  What sacrifice are we able to make for the people Jesus loves?

These questions may be the same, but each of us will be called to a different answer.  May we pray and listen for the voice of the Risen Christ and help bring heaven a little closer to earth by our words and actions and sacrifices. Amen.

Tourist Trap

 

Have you ever gone on a trip to someplace new and been caught up in excitement with how beautiful it is or how exciting or how new it is?  The first time going to West Edmonton Mall, maybe, or the first time at a movie theatre, or going to Redwater for the first time to play a hockey game.  Playing tourist brings out more than our cameras, it brings out a childlike playfulness.  Just like some of Jesus’ disciples in our reading today.

“Wow, look at that!  Look at the gems! Look at the marble! Look at the windows!  Look at the gifts people have given to our amazing temple!”  If they had cell phones, they would have been snapchatting while they took it all in.

They were caught up in the glamor and the glory and probably, if they were deeply honest, a bit of nationalistic pride.  Maybe some of them were dreaming of the day Jesus would become king, move in and take over the whole place.  The Temple, heart of their faith and their spirituality, the house of their God, would one day be their playground.

Buildings can be like that.  A beautiful building with amazing architecture can create a sense of awe when you wander in.  No wonder they were having a childlike response to their sacred landmark. 

The Temple had a long and checkered history.  King David, the one who killed Goliath, had wanted to build it, but God wanted to stay in a tent.  King Solomon, his son, built the first temple, and it was glorious.  One of his many times great grandsons made the mistake of doing a tour for Babylonian travellers, and showing off all the gold and treasures the temple had accumulated.  Next thing they knew, the Babylonians came back with an army, ransacked the temple, stole the people and the gold and destroyed much of the city.  It would take a long time before it was rebuilt.  The temple had just finished being renovated before Jesus came, by Herod the Great, and had a beautiful golden vine carved on the outside.

And yet, this didn’t impress Jesus much.  While the disciples gazed and exclaimed in excitement, Jesus recognized that the second temple was just as fragile as the first one had been.  Jesus knew that the prophets who wrote Isaiah saw the destruction of the first Temple as a sign of how far the nation had strayed from its true purpose, to be in relationship with God.  The temple was supposed to be a place of peace and mercy, a refuge from injustice and quarrelling. A place of calm and stillness, healing and holiness.  A place of joy and music and halleluiahs.  A place where the lion could one day lie down with the lamb.

Jesus wanted to warn the disciples from being too focussed on what the Temple was instead of why it was there. 

We can get focussed on the what instead of the why too.  Our buildings need roofs and furnaces and stoves and heat, which is important, but the why is more important.  We need a place to gather together to heal, to sigh, to learn, to sing, to pray, to hold each other in love and in light.  We need a place to remind ourselves that God is with us, we are not alone.  We need a place where we can experiment with giving radical hospitality to people of all ages and stages, where we can recapture some of the joy and playfulness we had when we were children, the curiosity, and the openness to God in our lives.

Jesus challenged his disciples to look past the glamour of a tourist trap to the real purpose of the Temple, and how the best of buildings, the holiest of buildings can still be fragile and fleeting. And Jesus dared to tell the truth about the Temple, and about his country.  The people were fixated on power and money, and resentments were common.  The ordinary people resented the Roman occupiers, the leaders resented challenges to their power and control, and this meant people were simmering at the brink of violence.  The temple was doomed, they just didn’t know it yet.

Our society, our province and our neighbors to the south are also simmering.  With the release of more Epstein files, with the frustration with the attack on our human rights in our province and our children’s human rights, with the increase of measles and tuberculosis in Alberta, with rising food prices and a global economy that adds up to what is being called a polycrisis, there is a feeling of frustration and helplessness for many.  One minister in the states wrote on Friday, about the politics in the states:

Power is not rooted in goodness. It is rooted in grievance, nostalgia for white dominance, patriarchal entitlement...

This is not a political analysis. It is a moral one…

We cannot force the reckoning justice calls for, but we can refuse to pretend that the absence of justice is anything less than a moral failure. We can stop waiting for institutions that have already failed to do what they have no intention of doing. We can choose, in our own communities and families, to name what is true: This is not normal. This is not acceptable. And this is not what a just society looks like.

Jesus refused to pretend with his disciples.  He refused to pretend that the Temple was the vision Isaiah preached about where the lion lays down with the lamb.  God is calling us to trust in a better dream than tourist traps covered with gold or marble.  God is building a world where human rights are valued, where all people, despite their differences, children and adults alike, are treated with justice and love.  God is about to create a world where there is no weeping or distress, where the lion will lay down with the lamb.  May we know and trust in God’s promise for us all. Amen.

Note: Since I preached this on Sunday, November 16, it was brought to my attention that The Economist published two excellent articles in their Nov. 1 2025 edition, "By Invitation" written by Peter York, author of "Dictator Style: Lifestyles of the World's Most Colorful Despots", and "Palace Intrigue" that highlights the parallels between what is currently happening at the White House and what happened in Versailles and other national buildings when in the hands of the dictators. They are found on pages 17 and 78 of the magazine and readily available in public libraries including Athabasca's Alice B. Donahue Library.  Although I had not read them, the conclusions are eerily similar, including a photograph of the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles similar to my photo which I took in 2017.

Lost In the Details

There’s a congregation in the states that had someone ask, “What was the hardest time this congregation ever faced?” The consultant, knowing that the church was established before the Boston Tea Party, thought it might be in the American Revolution when the British shot the minister’s wife.  Or maybe it was something that happened in the civil war, or in the World Wars, or the Spanish Flu, or even the Covid pandemic.  “Nope, sir, the hardest day was when we were flimflammed back in the 1860’s by our new minister. He said that the end times were near so we all sold our farms and put on white robes to go wait on a high hill for Jesus to take us to Heaven.  The hardest part of that was going back down the hill to buy our places back.”  Seems silly, but it happens again and again in the news.  It happened again this September and October, thanks to an enthusiastic TikTok pastor.  He was so convincing that people fretted about how they would find a way to get their pets raptured with them.  The shame and embarrassment they felt after the dates passed was as intense as it was back in the 1860’s.

It's easy to get caught up in the details, to play the prediction game.  It’s easy to go skimming through the Bible, picking a verse here and there until we’ve built up a case that has turned our opinion into cold hard fact.  The Sadducees were masters at analyzing scripture.  They knew their bibles inside and out, and these smart Sadducees were the ones with all the power and the wealth in their society.  They were smart men, however, and realized as they listened to Jesus teaching in the temple, that he was gaining a reputation of being smart, authentic in his faith, and convincing to ordinary people.  They watched the scribes and pharisees question Jesus, and they tried to trap Jesus in a question of their own. A question designed to prove that their belief was right and anyone else who believed differently was childish or even ridiculous.  How could there be a resurrection when it would lead to conundrums like the scenario of the woman with seven husbands?

Jesus didn’t get caught up in their details.  He didn’t step into their trap.  He talked not about verses but about relationships.  Not an analysis of marriage, but of how God is in relationship with human beings.  There is no past, present or future when it comes to God and the tribal ancestors.  If the pharisees wanted to get caught up in the details, they could, but that was not what Jesus cared about.

All scripture, according to Jesus, was about loving God with all our hearts and souls, and loving our neighbors as ourselves.  It goes straight to the heart of our faith.  It’s a big ‘why’ question.  Why do we have faith?  Why do we have church?  Because God loves us, and because we need reminders of that love.  You don’t get a bigger why than that. 

All too often we get caught up in the details, the how questions.  How will we get to heaven?  How will we act in Heaven? How will we know when Jesus will come again?  How will we fix the church?  How will we bring in new members.  And often, we come up with solutions to the how questions that don’t consider the bigger why questions.  It’s like when we have a hammer and we assume every problem can be fixed with pounding a nail in.  That’s great when we have a broken bookcase, but when we are having problems with our furnace, a hammer is not going to help.  Switching from how questions to why questions is not easy, but when we know our why, that can change how we fix our real problems.  It pulls us away from details and helps us see the big picture.  And as Jesus showed the Sadducees, the big picture is where God is.  Not in the details of which man is going to end up with a wife.

Churches often get caught up in how questions.  People have been absolutely convinced that bringing in an organ will grow a church.  People quit a church because it dared to bring in an organ, I think this was in a Presbyterian church back in the 1890’s.  Some campaigned to get rid of pews.  Some campaigned to install pews and get rid of chairs.  Some pushed to get PowerPoint into worship, some pushed to get it out.  During the Great Depression, a United Church in Edmonton didn’t want Methodists joining them because they would want a honky-tonk piano for worship, and pianos were only for bars.  Some people thought that using overhead slides would appeal to the youth, back in the 1970’s.  All these are hammer solutions to how questions.  They don’t work.

A big how question many Christians are concerned with is heaven and hell. Reverend Doctor Chuck Currie wrote, “Instead, we need to be more concerned with what happens here on earth. Christianity is a faith for the living. But we treat it as a faith for the dead, even when Jesus taught us to pray that the Kingdom come here on Earth. In spending so much time worrying about what comes after this life, we ignore what is occurring in our world today.”

Paul, too wanted to shift his friends in Thessalonia to shift from worrying about the ‘how’ of the second coming. Instead he goes to the why, “Therefore stand firm. Hold fast to the traditions you received from us, either by word of mouth or by letter.  May our Savior Jesus Christ and our Abba God-who loved us and in mercy gave us eternal consolation and hope- console your hearts and strengthen them for every good work and word.”

May we too learn to start with the why.  The why of growing resilient hearts to strengthen our ability to act with healing and compassion in a world fixated on hammering solutions onto each other.  May we find our hearts consoled and our courage to do good works strengthened by God’s almighty Grace and love. Amen.

Out on a Limb

Have you ever wanted to do something crazy or impulsive?  Take a risk? Be adventurous?  Most people may enjoy adventure between the covers of a page, but in reality, it’s not much fun.

Christians tend to get into adventures rather like Bilbo or Frodo Baggins in the books by Tolkien, quietly because they have to, not because they want to.  They take after Zacchaeus, our hero in Luke 19.  Climbing out on a limb, because he just had to see Jesus.  His need for connection outweighed his common sense, and he did something outrageous and scandalous.  Men didn’t have a lot of garments to protect their modesty back then.  It’s one thing to be a child that climbs trees, it’s totally different to be an adult doing it.  Even now, the sight of an adult in a tree, unless they are a logger, would probably have people questioning the sanity of the climber.  It’s noble and daring to climb a mountain as an adult, a tree, not so much.

Zacchaeus was not in the tree because he was a flasher or an exhibitionist with great legs.  He was there because he couldn’t see over the crowd.  He also had the physical disadvantage of being short, but he also had a job that made him an outcast in his society.  He was called a traitor for working as a tax collector for the Roman Government.  People shunned him, ignored him, and turned their backs on him.  It must have been very lonely.

So Zacchaeus went out on a limb to see Jesus, but then he almost fell out of the tree with excitement.  Jesus saw him and invited himself over for dinner.  People muttered their disapproval, and Zacchaeus, like someone meeting Taylor Swift or Tom Cruise for the first time, started babbling with excitement.  “Oh Jesus, this is what I do” and rattled off a list of how he tried to collect taxes fairly.  For those of you who like bible words, the ancient Greek doesn’t have one word for “I did” and another for “I do”, so we don’t know if Zacchaeus did all these good things in the past and is telling Jesus about it, or if Zacchaeus is telling Jesus how he will change his life in the future.  Either way, his words would have surprised the crowd that scorned him.

Was Zacchaeus changing his ways, or was Zacchaeus spilling how he was secretly undermining the system of Roman oppression from within?  We’ll never know, but it does make me wonder what impact his actions had.  He was a leader of tax collectors, and going out on a limb to handle people’s taxes fairly was not just about being a nice guy, it was about being radically focused on abundance, something that Jesus preached a lot about.  It’s at the heart of loving our neighbors, trusting that there is enough so that we don’t have to cheat or steal or lie about money.

It wasn’t just Zacchaeus doing something different, it also challenged the townspeople of Jericho, the ones who excluded Zacchaeus.  The ones who chose to believe he wasn’t good enough or didn’t deserve the attention of someone as honored and respected as Jesus.  The ones who were outraged that Jesus would turn that nasty tax collector into his dinner host.  It would be like if Taylor Swift met up with her fans then asked some stranger who had never heard of her to go partying with her after the concert!

Jesus went out on a limb for Zacchaeus.  He showed with his words and actions that this slimy little traitor was worthy of respect.  And he respected that Zacchaeus wasn’t afraid to look silly to get what he needed.

Most of the people that made a lasting impression on us were not afraid to go out on a limb for what they cared about.  Artists do it all the time, and the braver they are, the more they are respected.  We respect the Group of Seven, for example, because they went out on a limb for their art.  Even though people called their paintings ‘hot mush’ and ridiculed their riotous use of color and their rejection of traditional European styles, the Group of Seven didn’t stop experimenting.  We remember their adventurous spirit that had them travelling all across Canada to explore different landscapes. We remember these pioneers of Canadian art more than we remember their critics.

It's not easy going out on a limb, but when we live in interesting times, we are called to do just that. And today we pay our respects to others we remember who also did just that.  A United Church minister wrote, “While our denomination might not have an official… definition of what constitutes a saint, it is a universal human experience to hold in our hearts and memories people who have… made a difference in our lives... They may be loved ones whom we knew intimately, or they may be public figures we never met. All Souls’ Day contains room for all of us, broken and blessed… they were flawed, complex, imperfect humans who noticed a particular need or issue with piercing clarity and then stubbornly followed that clarity in ways that were inconvenient and exasperating for the authorities of their time and dangerous to themselves. How might we be called to be these kinds of saints?”

We live in challenging times.  God calls us to rise to those challenges, to see our neighbors as potential saints, and to go out on a limb for justice when human rights are being trampled.  When storms rage, when people are hungry, when disasters happen, when people are struggling with fear and anxiety, we are called to be a church of bold, daring and loving disciples. May we hear the call to go out on a limb, and love those who go out on the limb for us, that we may build a more beautiful world for all.

Nagging

Good morning, I am so honored to be here!  Of course, it’s been quite a few years, so I will introduce myself anew to you! I am Mrs. Nellie Letitia McClung, but you can call me Nellie. I see that some of you have my books, and I will be quite willing to autograph them after the service.

The last time I was here was back in 1917.  I said at the time that “the conference made a wise choice of a minister when they sent Rev. H. Bosomworth to take charge of Athabasca, for he has the sane optimism which is so badly needed in a town which has been through the hard experiences of this one. He knows how to face difficulties and he has a saving sense of humour which will see him through many trying situations He carries on a splendid work with the boys club, which meets every Wednesday evening in the basement and makes good use of the well-equipped gymnasium. Mr. Bosomworth can do many things. He can put up hay, cut his own wood, plant his own garden, mend the lights when they go out of order, or do a carpenters job if necessary. But he is, above all things, a preacher, a philosopher, and a lover of humanity. (Source: Athabasca Archives, -Nellie McClung, speaking on the qualities of Rev. Η. Bosomworth of the Methodist church following her lecture there in 1917)

What a delightful scripture you have chosen for this morning’s homily!  Some of you will remember that my four friends and I were often accused of nagging like the widow to the unjust judge when it came to getting the vote for all women.  My dear friends Emily Murphy, Henrietta Muir Edwards, Louise McKinney, and Irene Parlby nagged politicians into giving us what was our natural dues, the right to be considered persons, to be senators or even judges like my dear friend Emily, God rest her soul.  There are times when we women, and men too, have nagged and cajoled and written and protested.  We did this because “in Canada we are developing a pattern of life, and I know something about one block of that pattern.  I know it for I helped to make it, and I can say that without any pretense of modesty, or danger of arrogance, for I know that we who make the patterns are not important but the pattern is.” [1]  But although we now have the vote as God intended us to, we come to another grave challenge, my brothers and sisters in Christ.  You may think of the crushing despair farmers in your area are struggling with after so many years of poor crops and dust bowl conditions.  Or you may be worrrying about the rise of fascism and the rumors circulating that our new premier, William Aberhart, is entertaining Nazis in order to learn how to make Alberta prosperous again.  These are indeed worrying.  Bible Bill might promise to take over the banks, and make Alberta only money, and promise everyone $25 a month to stimulate the economy, but his own constituency is gathering signatures to recall him, including farmers and oil workers and I don’t think he will last much longer in politics.  I digress.

No, I am here to remind you that we need to work hard on one outstanding problem that exists right in the midst of this new United Church of Canada we all worked so hard to create 10 years ago.  No, I am not referring to poor Mrs. Dorothea Palmer being arrested last month for distributing birth control pamphlets to people in the poorer districts of Ottawa.  I am going to help with that, as you can well imagine.  Again, I digress.

Sadly, we need to continue to nag our own church leaders about clergy!  Our clergy have been poorly paid because of the dire circumstances, and there were more churches closed than opened since the stock market crash of 1929.  If it were not for the generous maritime churches  and their shipments of food and clothing, I dare say some of you would be showing up in rags or staying home for having nothing to wear or eat.  Someone quipped recently, “the bootleggers have gone, the movies have gone, credit is gone, social life is gone, but thank God the Church remains.”[2] This shows that while we are too poor to entertain ourselves as we did in the 1920’s, we have kept the important priorities.  Our survival as a national church despite all odds proves that Union is a calling from God himself!  And while there is still much to do to help the young people who are not able to find work and the farmers unable to sell their crops, there is also the need to think about leadership in our Church.

We have a shortage of young men who can afford to go to theology school because of this great depression.  And if rumors are to be believed, they may once again be needed in Europe to stem the tides of growing communism and fascism.  Now that women have joined men in becoming doctors and lawyers and politicians, and proven skilled in doing so, it is time for us to ordain women, the likes of my dear friend and confidant, Miss Lydia Gruchy.  Thank you all for your hard work in passing last year’s remit on ordaining women with 79 presbyteries in favor, 26 against, and nine abstaining.[3]

It is time, ladies and gentlemen, to raise our voices again.  Our General Council is meeting next year, and there are no more excuses to bar women from the pulpit.  One man said women are too fragile for the horse and buggy trips around the countryside, but dear Miss Gruchy has been doing that since union, and is none the worse for wear.  One preacher said that “women would have to be very attractive before they could qualify”.  To which I respond, It’s a good thing looks were not a qualification for men in the past.  If you don’t believe me look around you at the picked delegates [we are sending to General Council]. I’ll grant you they are all intelligent men, excellent men, but you would never mistake it for a beauty show!” [4]

Saskatchewan Conference is convinced that Miss Gruchy, modest as she is, is worthy of being ordained.  She has been preaching quite admirably for several years.  It is time for our leaders to recognize that women are equal to men in all aspects, including the God given right to proclaim the Gospel.

So, my dear friends, be like the nagging widow with the corrupt judge.  But I would be sadly remiss if I did not remind you that this is not only about bold justice, it is also about faith.  Miss Gruchy has been serving God and the church modestly and quietly working in the vineyard of the Lord for 13 years with deep spirituality and shows through her life that prayers, offered humbly and sincerely, are answered in God’s good time.  Let us pray and nag even God himself for justice and equality across this great land of ours.

[1] Patricia Wotton, “With Love, Lydia”  2012, Pg 120

[2] Don Schweitzer The United Church a History, 2012 P 47

[3] Wotton, p 139

[4] Wotton p 132

Prove it!

How many of us want a sign so that we know our faith is right?  It’s tempting to join the crowd asking for a big spectacle.  We want the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical experience with smoke bombs, strobe lights, falling chandeliers, amazing opera singers and a happy ending.  We want to experience thrills and chills and the greatest show on earth! Give us that old Razzle Dazzle.

That’s what happened in today’s reading from John.  The crowd had just experienced the feeding of the five thousand, where Jesus turned a few loaves and fish into enough to feed the whole crowd.  He took a day off and the crowd searched for him until they found him, not to say thank you but to demand more bread, more fish, more healings, more miracles.  “Gimmee what I want, what I really really want”.

Their hands were out, and they were demanding, not asking.  They were not happy that Jesus disappeared on them in the first place, and now they were going to keep him busy doing what they had decided he should do.  Jesus had left because he knew that they wanted to make him the king and he didn’t want that.  It’s like that scene in the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical, Jesus Christ Superstar, when Herod demands that Jesus prove his identity:

So you are the Christ, You're the great Jesus Christ
Prove to me that you're divine - Change my water into wine
That's all you need do, then I'll know it's all true
C'mon King of the Jews!

Facing the crowds again, instead of tap-dancing to their tune, Jesus decided to address them directly.  And instead of fixing their physical needs, he talked instead about their spiritual needs.  He wasn’t there just to be their grocery store and hospital.  He was there to feed their souls, as well as their bodies.

There’s a real tension here between physical and spiritual needs of the people.  This still happens today.  Folks are struggling, they are working hard on minimum wage and don’t know what they will do to pay the bills and feed the kids.  Jesus wanted to provide a spiritual solution that moved from enabling to empowering.

“I am the Bread of Life”, he said, and for people focused on the concrete needs of life, this must have seemed like nonsense.  Poetry, fancy philosophy, obscure theological game playing, call it what you will, the metaphor of Jesus as food must have been sorely confusing to them, just like it’s confusing to us.  The reality is that survival can be hard, and we need all the help we can get.  Jesse Zink, in the book we are reading called Faithful, Creative, Hopeful, talks about the growing gap between the richest people on the planet and those who are working for them.  The wealthiest people own such huge yachts that they can land helicopters on the deck beside the swimming pool, while many people must work two or even three jobs to keep a roof over their heads.  The economic system that has built this inequality is called Neoliberalism, which is the idea that the state should stay out of the market and individuals can do what they like to make money.  The problem is that not all humans are alike, and what some people like to do to earn money is treat others like slaves.  When government decides that the free market is best, and privatizing schools and healthcare is the only way to operate, it avoids taking care of those who can’t afford the dentist or the doctor or the mental health professional.

Jesus challenges Neoliberalism.  By calling himself the Bread of Life, he used a metaphor to describe how his teaching and example would inspire more than day to day survival.  It’s more than risk management, too; risk management invites us to imagine the worst and plan how to deal with it.  And more than risk management is sustainability, where we trust we have enough to get us through. Jesus calls us to more than sustainability, Jesus calls us to abundance through deep spirituality. Deep Spirituality is one of the three cornerstones of the United Church’s Strategic Plan, along with Bold Discipleship and Daring Justice. The United Church defines it as intentionally drawing closer to God. We do that together in worship as a congregation. But how do we do it the rest of the week? Prayer is one way. Prayer is opening our lives to God. It can be with words or through music or art. For some people, it is solitude in nature. For others, it is quieting and settling themselves with tools like meditation or mandalas, writing in a journal, reading a daily devotional or a bible passage, or practicing gratitude.  It is focusing on thanksgiving, or as Paul wrote, “think deeply about things that are true and noble, upright and pure, full of beauty and worthy of respect.”  This is one of many spiritual practices.

The United Church says that Deep Spirituality is “an experience of intimacy with God, and it is the starting point for each of us. It is grounded in worship and prayer, study and scripture. Deep spirituality is the joy of those who know they are loved and held by God and who long to run into God’s embrace. Deep spirituality is the cornerstone of our identity, not just as a church but also as individuals.”

Deep spirituality, feasting on the Bread of Life, calls us beyond survival, beyond stability, beyond risk management, beyond resilience to deep, lasting flourishing.  This is something the Herods of the world, and the crowd demanding quick fixes, do not understand, but it is deeply transforming. It breaks the monstrous hold of neoliberalism’s focus on individual survival. It invites us into deep relationship to God, ourselves, our congregation and our neighbors, a relationship based on love and compassion that brings us life abundant.  God, help us to practice deep spirituality with Jesus, our bread of life.  Amen.