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.

Tiny Faith

Who doesn’t want more faith?  Especially in these difficult times?  I’m with the disciples; I want more!  Measure out a cup or two of faith, please, so I can throw around mulberry trees like they were baseballs!  Sounds like the kind of magical powers that we only see in novels and movies.  Who wouldn’t want that?  And many people are looking for the kind of faith that makes magical things happen.

So how is faith different than magical thinking?  Are prayers different than hocus pocus or getting your tea leaves read. Pray that the airplane ride will go smoothly, that your sports team will win, the list is endless.  And while we are to turn every concern over to God, that’s not what Jesus was thinking when he challenged his disciples.

It's not the amount of faith we have.  It’s not the amount of logical, rational thought we bring to our relationship with God.  Even the saints of old had their doubts, their dark nights of the soul.  It’s not the power of our emotions either.  When people measure their faith solely by the strength of their feelings, that can be where faith gets mixed up with certainty.  Think of how some people have gotten emotionally committed to a cause to the point that they believe all kinds of dangerous things.

Jesse Zink wrote in our study book Faithful, Creative, Hopeful that faith is quote: “A kind of groundedness in our tradition. Faithful means that we need to be able to draw from the wealth of resources provided by our Christian Forebears… we need to be grounded in Christian practices of prayer, service, and worship.” (page xv, 2024).  Sounds like Paul’s letter to Timothy, reminding him of his mother’s and grandmother’s faith.

Jesus saw faith as something that helped us to trust God.  And just like his metaphor, that when we have a boss, we don’t expect to order the boss around, we serve the boss by doing the job that’s expected of us, so too, faith gets us doing one of the core components of the Christian life.  Service.  Service to God because we choose to trust God.  Not lip service, not logical brain gymnastics or emotional responses, but a gift that helps us to act in alliance to what God is calling us to.  Faith is one of the gifts of the spirit, like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, gentleness and self-control.

A story that recently hit the news was the anniversary of a gift of faith that led to action which seemed insignificant at the time.  41 years ago, some young people working in a grocery store in Ireland, making minimum wage, were told by their union to boycott selling products from South Africa.  There were 11 of them, some as young as 17, some were 21.  One girl, Mary, checked the produce aisle and discovered that the store was selling grapefruit from South Africa.  She was at the cash register when a customer tried to buy two grapefruits.  She refused.  The store manager told her to leave.  She and her 10 friends left the store and started a picket line.  The Union paid them £21 a week, and that was not enough to pay the rent.  They didn’t know what apartheid was, they didn’t know anyone of African descent, but they trusted they were being asked to do this for a good reason.  For a year they picketed but it didn’t have any effect.  Then a man came and joined them, the first person of color any of them had ever seen.  His name was Nimrod Sejake and he had been imprisoned in South Africa then went into exile until he ended up in Ireland.  He joined the picket line and helped encourage the young people.  Then Archbishop Desmond Tutu was traveling to receive the Nobel Peace Prize but detoured to meet the young activists.  More and more people stopped buying grapefruits and other products.  They were invited to visit Tutu in South Africa, but the government deported them; that caused a backlash so big that the Irish Government banned all goods from South Africa!  That meant that after three years, the strike was finally over.  Then Nelson Mandala was freed, Apartheid ended and the 11 strikers were invited to meet Mandela.  How did Mandela find out about them?  Turns out Sejake had shared a jail cell with him!  Mandela told the young people that their faithful commitment to show up day after day had encouraged him to have faith while he was in jail.  Their refusal to sell grapefruits because of their faithful commitment made a corrupt and undemocratic government fall.

We are not living in a country where half of the adult population can’t vote because of their skin color.  We’re not needing to boycott our workplaces because of grapefruits.  But we are living in a country that eradicated measles 27 years ago.  And we’re living in a province where a baby died this week because its mom was not vaccinated, and six other babies also in Alberta got measles before they were born.  We’re living in a province where people think that vaccines cause autism.  We are living in the only province to expect people to pay for their covid booster shots, and we are living in and working with people that are putting their faith in conspiracy theories, homophobia and racism.

What does faith the size of a mustard seed look like today?  Or maybe faith the size of a grapefruit?  Maybe it’s as simple as rolling up your sleeve for a vaccination or telling young people your measles story.  Maybe it’s boycotting goods from Israel and calling for a cease fire in Gaza.  Maybe it’s praying for a neighbor struggling with addiction or family violence or bullying.  Wherever God calls us to serve our neighbors, through prayer or action, that’s faith.  And it doesn’t take much for our faith to change the world.  May we work for peace and justice that all may one day know God’s abiding love for each and everyone of us. Amen

The Problem of Hell

Did you know that there are 18 references to Hell in the Bible and 16 of them are in the New Testament?  Heaven, on the other hand, is mentioned 787 times, and is about equally split between the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.  Yet many people today spend far more time thinking about hell than heaven.

In fact, for many people, Christianity has been completely rejected because they have only heard that it’s scary.  God is going to consign them to a fiery eternity of pain and suffering.  Comic books about this punishment for non-believers are available for free and try to convert people to faith.  Fear is preached, the end of the world is predicted as it was this week with another rapture date, and woe to anyone who ignores this message.

The parable Jesus told about Lazarus and the rich man was meant not to scare people away from hell.  The stark contrast between Lazarus and the unnamed rich man and the role reversal it implied was a call to compassion.  That call is a core part of what it means to be the United Church.

Photo: Inaugural Service, 10 June 1925, Mutual Street Arena |Flickr

In 1925, Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Union churches came together to build a national faith of justice and compassion, not fear of Hell.  They developed a document of beliefs they could agree on.  It was called the Basis of Union.  Of the twenty statements, the only reference to Hell was Article 19, “Of the Resurrection, the Last Judgement, and the Future Life” where it said that ‘the finally impenitent shall go away into eternal punishment and the righteous into life eternal.” It doesn’t even mention Hell by name, or purgatory or even Satan.  The last statement, Article 20, says that “God will have all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.  We confidently believe that by His power and grace all His enemies shall finally be overcome, and the kingdoms of this world be made the Kingdom of our God and of His Christ.”

So while tent revivals were happening and people were told about God’s wrath that would punish them with Hell, the United Church was grounding faith in a loving God.  God was seen as compassionate, caring and welcoming all people.  Not a vengeful, angry punisher, rapturing up some while the left behind got punished.  In the book, “The Hell Jesus Never Intended”, Keith Wright says the idea that God condemns us and sentences us to hell, is troubling.  He writes quote:

It’s frightening for many because love that must be bought at the price of a violent death on the Cross hardly sounds like love…the nonviolent God of Jesus becomes a God of unequaled violence, since God not only allegedly demands the blood of the victim who is most precious to him, but holds humanity accountable for a death that God both anticipates and requires… is to paint an awful picture of God, to make God an arbitrary and capricious tyrant.

Given that Jesus taught his disciples to pray using the word ‘Abba’, the Aramaic word for daddy, the idea that God, our loving parent is also fixated on punishing us, stands directly in contrast to God who is the shepherd frantically looking for the lost lamb, the woman seeking high and low for her one missing coin, the mother hen calling her chicks to her, or the Prodigal father, so grateful for his son’s return that he throws his best coat on his son even though the boy is probably coated in pigsty slime!

Since the beginning of the United Church, leaders like our first Moderator George Pigeon, or Louise McKinney from Claresholm Alberta, heard the call not to preach a terrifying God but a reconciling God.  George was the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in 1924, and a professor who worked hard for union.  He tried to persuade all the Presbyterians to join, but 17% of Presbyterians and 10% of Presbyterian clergy voted against union.  George was voted unanimously to be the head of the new denomination and did his best in the two tumultuous years of his term, to settle the many disagreements, hurt feelings, power struggles and turf wars that resulted.  It was complex and heated, but moments of Grace abounded too.  Presbyterian and Methodist seminaries came together peacefully at most theological colleges, and much to many people’s surprise, Newfoundland, who wasn’t even a part of Canada, had all of its methodist churches originally reject Union, but in 1925 they all joined anyways.  Louise McKinney, one of Alberta’s Famous Five women, who had helped women get the vote in 1918, was one of only 5 ladies out of the 350 delegates at the first worship service.  She and other United Church women addressed the struggles of the poor like Lazarus through the Temperance Movement.  They hoped that prohibition would lower family violence and child poverty.  It was both Pigeon and McKinney’s way of addressing the social injustices they saw in their communities, not realizing that causes of poverty and addiction were far more complex than they originally thought. 

That was also the driving force behind residential schools.  Just as Temperance was a simplistic solution to a complex problem, Residential schools also turned out to be simplistic.  One culture assumed it had the God-given right to impose itself onto another singular culture but what was in fact a broad diversity of cultures, languages and spiritual practices.  One General Council Commissioner in Calgary this summer talked about being sent to the most convenient school rather than the closest one; he spoke Haida Gwaii and ended up in Alberta surrounded by Cree children.

When we assume we know best, when we think we have a guaranteed spot in Heaven, we may end up surprised like the rich man.  When we use fear to teach people about God, we may find history judging us harshly.  When we use this parable to inspire us to act justly, we can find the healing that Jesus wanted for us. When we love God like Abba Daddy the way Jesus taught, we can live bold and courageously like George Pigeon and Louise McKinney.  Like them, we may not be perfect, but we are growing in our love of our neighbors and God.  May it be so for us all.

Who wants to cheat a Millionaire?

If I saw you in a bank one day, paying your rent or your utilities or whatever, and asked you, “How would you like to cheat a millionaire out of their money?”, how many of you would say, “thanks but no thanks, cheating is not according to my Christian values.”  Which, for the most part is very true.  On the other hand, movies like “Oceans 11” and “Now You See Me”, that glorify cheating millionaires, are very popular.  So in some ways, we really do like going after millionaires.

In today’s passage from the prophet Amos, God is going after millionaires who have cheated the system.  People did not have access to coins in those days, and so everything was bartered using weights like shekels and ephahs.  How did they figure out how to swap a lamb for sandals or grain for their families?  Weigh it out.  Except some people threw in the poorer quality wheat and hay in with the good wheat, or made false weights.  Millionaires, according to Amos, complained about the holidays they had to give their workers, saying, “When will the new moon be over, when will the Sabbath be over so we can get back to what really matters?  Money, money, money!”

God takes a dim view of such greed.  And Jesus did too, we think, until we hear the parable of the sneaky steward.  When we think of people stealing from the rich, we think of good guys, the Robin Hoods figuring out convoluted plots to grab the loot and give to the poor.  But the manager in this scripture is not a nice guy, nor is he a fair dealer.  He cheats at cards, he cooks the books, he knows how to play games to put people into emotional debt to him while lowering their financial debt to their boss.  And when the millionaire shows up, he doesn’t say, “You’re fired!” he says, “you clever shyster, you!  Well played!”  What?  Wait!  Jesus, how does cheering a loan shark who cheats his employer Good News for the people?

Jesus pointed out that the manager did the right things for the wrong reason.  The manager wanted to make sure that he would be taken care of.  Then he figured out the easiest way to make people want to take care of him was to do them a good turn when the boss wasn’t looking.  And since he was getting fired anyways, it was all about securing his comfort.

In many ways, Jesus was describing a person acting with narcissist behaviors, someone who was most concerned by what people thought of him.  He wanted to be in somebody’s good books, building an audience of people who would think he was a decent person.  Just like the rich profiteers in Amos’ time only thought about building up their own personal wealth and didn’t care who they hurt or how they abused the land by harvesting every last piece of grain off it, this narcissistic thinking didn’t care about anyone or anything except as a tool to get ahead of other.  Compassionate farmers would leave ‘sweepings of the wheat,’ the extras behind for the wildlife or the widows like in the story of Ruth.  Like AISH or a unified guaranteed income, those sweepings of wheat were vital to taking care of people before there was healthcare or employment insurance.  The greedy owners wanted everything down to the last stalk.  Nothing left over to build community, to take care of neighbours.  Nothing left over for compassion.

Today we have food banks and pantry programs.  We have social services.  We have AISH for people whose bodies and brains are different from what we think of as normal.  It’s easy to take these programs for granted.  Just as we take for granted the price of bread, or the labelling of grocery store products.  Jesus warned us humans that if we put money before God, we can do much harm in our narcissistic greed, harm to neighbors, harm to the environment, harm to our social services. We need to be as smart and diligent as the dishonest steward.

We still have dishonest stewards today. Loblaw’s recently was ordered to pay money back to consumers because of price fixing on bread.  Grocery stores across the country are mislabeling products as being from Canada when they are from the US.  Together we Canadians, with our elbows up, are making a real difference.  Airlines have had to drop flights to Los Vegas and add flights to Europe and the Caribbean.  Here at home, many people are signing petitions and talking about the changes to AISH that are worrying their friends and family.  One social worker explained that the paperwork needed to apply for AISH is so complex that the level of fraud is almost non-existent.  The amount of fear and worry that people are experiencing at the government’s plan to make everyone reapply, is real.  Things we took for granted like fair wages and fair access to healthcare are coming into question.  The narcissistic, greedy managers and land owners seem to be everywhere. 

Jesus wanted us to be as smart and as clever as the dishonest manager to prevent the widespread abuse of power we see. He taught us to focus on God’s priorities not our own obsessions with accumulating wealth at other’s expense. 

What are our priorities? Do we worship God or wealth?  Do we speak out when we recognize narcissistic, greedy people?  It’s comforting to see many people calling out greed and evil in this province, in this country, and this world, and that is what God calls us to do through the words of Amos and Jesus.  We can work together like we are in a heist movie challenging millionaires.  May we find the wisdom and courage to work peacefully and cleverly for a more just world.  Amen