How to get away with Insurrection

Have you been watching the news lately?  It’s hard to escape the constant stream of debate on the referendum in Alberta.  Whether you are for or against separation, you are probably thinking that there is a lot at stake in tomorrow’s vote.  Many have already voted in the advanced polls or with mail in ballots.  It is good to see so much engagement in the political system that has been plagued in the past by low voter turnout.

This is a delicate topic that has ethical impacts for Alberta residents.  Catholic and Anglican Bishops have weighed in, as well as the Moderator of the United Church of Canada.  But surely churches should stay out of politics, right?  Religious leaders shouldn’t have opinions on the referendum?

This idea of the separation of church and state is important.  And that is the question that the scribes and Pharisees are asking Jesus.  It’s a clever philosophical trap; would he side with the Roman Empire and enrage the folks who were struggling with high food prices, low wages, poor jobs and physical abuse from Roman soldiers?  Or would he speak treason against the Emperor, a crime punished by execution?  The temple leaders must have smiled at the clever problem they had dumped in his lap.

Jesus, as usual, turned the question back at them.  What did they have in their pockets? Temple coins or Roman coins? A Roman coin, with a graven image of a man, in the most holy of holies, threw into question the real loyalties of the leaders.  Let’s not forget that both they and Jesus wanted to be freed of the occupying army and having to worship the Emperor, who had declared that he was a God. They wanted to be able to worship YHWH as commanded in the first of the 10 commandments.  “You shall have no other God before me”.

So, the question of paying taxes had political implications.  But Jesus turned it on its head.  “Pay to Caesar that which is Caesar’s and pay to God that which is God’s.”  In other words, pay your taxes.  But also remember your first loyalty is always to God.  This is not about taxes; it’s about dealing with oppressive government. Which is at the heart of the referendum question.  Some see the Federal Government as the heart of all oppression, others see the Provincial Government as the source of all problems.  Chances are that we will never fully agree.  But Jesus reminds us of our core loyalty.  That we are to focus on loving God, loving neighbor and loving self.  Or as the United Church says, live with deep spirituality, bold discipleship and daring justice.

The Roman Empire was not toppled by withholding taxes.  Nor was it stopped by violence.  In fact, about 40 years after Jesus was executed, Roman forces ransacked Jerusalem, killed citizens and destroyed the Temple for the last time.  Much of the New Testament was written after that event. Christ followers and Jewish faithful alike were thrown into confusion and conflict in the aftermath.

Wait a second, if it was so strong and resilient, why don’t we speak Roman or even Italian around the world?  Was there a successful tax revolt?

Taxes have often triggered revolutions.  Robin Hood is a story of oppressive taxation.  The start of the Protestant split from the Catholic Church was over indulgences, a form of excessive taxation.  Taxes are at the heart of the referendum too.  The government of Canada transfers equalization payments to help provinces provide, and I quote, “reasonably comparable levels of public services at reasonably comparable levels of taxation” end quote so that people of Canada from sea to sea to sea have similar services.  The provinces do not give the federal government transfer payments; the federal budget comes from taxation based on income.  So, people making $40,000 in Newfoundland pay the same level of federal income tax as their Alberta counterparts.

Boycotting taxes seems like an easy way to take power, but Jesus knew it wouldn’t work.  What would work was to focus on what they did have power over, their relationship with God and each other.  Our reading from 1 Thessalonians shows the result of ‘giving to God what is God’s’.  Staying focused on God grew the church of Thessalonica to the point that it was getting talked about in the rest of the country.  It was the first church outside of the Middle East, and the first church in Europe.  It was small, no more than one or two dozen people.  Yet its reputation was spreading, and the letter Paul wrote is the oldest one in the New Testament, the first to be written.  It even predated the gospels by 20 years, because there was no need to write about Jesus when they could learn from eyewitnesses like Peter and the disciples.

Growing their reputation and influence by living out the teachings of Jesus, to care for the weak, the hungry, the sick and the lonely, was why the Thessalonians were lifted up as shining examples of a Christian community.  They put into practice the command to love God, love neighbor, love self.  Deep spirituality, bold discipleship and daring justice.  How might we, like the Thessalonians, be so filled with these three things that our reputation also goes out through the land as people of God filled with the hunger to be the Message?  To be an example to an angry world that feels like there’s not enough?  To send a counter message that God’s love overwhelms and undermines all oppressive systems?  I invite you today and in the days ahead, to dive deeply into prayer for our neighbors, our province and our country, regardless of how you voted, that our witness to love and compassion be inspiring to all who know us.  And may we know the love God had for all creation, the courage Jesus showed in the temple, and the encouragement of the Holy Spirit to give us hope in these contentious times.

Invite, Invite, Invite!

Ever plan a big event, and send off the invitations in the mail in hopes that everyone you had invited would come?  Planning a wedding is like that, and even setting a number was full of negotiations.  My mom wanted a small wedding with about 8 guests including the wedding party.  Our wedding was much bigger, Tim had 4 brothers and they had partners, children, a grandparent, and that made 11, never mind my brothers and assorted aunts, uncles, and cousins and there were friends we wanted to invite.  One thing that the wedding books said was that it was okay to invite more than what you wanted.  The decline rate is about 10%, and if you want a group of 50, you can invite up to.  Of course invitation lists tend to grow and grow and grow.  That’s why wedding invitations include rsvp details, even in this modern day and age.

But there’s nothing to beat a personal invitation.  It’s one thing to get a pretty letter in the mail, but it’s another to get that letter hand-delivered by a living, breathing human being.

And back then, an invitation from a rich land owner would be like getting the Order of Canada, a once in a lifetime event.  The hospitality code of the day would be very clear; this showed the person that they had been noticed and seen as worthy of respect.

People with Jesus at this dinner party would know that the invited guests would have dropped everything in their eagerness to attend.  Dinner invitations were serious business.  They had to be reciprocated, they had to pander to the rich man in return.

It was a complex back and forth, calculating and measuring who had been honored by whom, who owed who a dinner and favors, and back and forth.  So the shock of this story would have had everyone listening to Jesus scratching their heads in surprise.

First, he’s telling about a dinner while being at a dinner.  He was invited by the top Pharisee to a special supper, which showed that the Pharisee was interested in hearing him, and showing Jesus he could gain some status.  But Jesus turned around and gave him a lecture on how to run a dinner, how to invite guests.  That’s some nerve!  It would be like being invited to the Mayor’s breakfast and then telling the Mayor that he had done it all wrong.  And Jesus had, in the part of this chapter we didn’t read, lectured the guests to not assume they deserved a seat close to the host, but to take a lower seat until the host told them otherwise.  Because even the seating arrangement showed a pecking order.

The twist in this parable is that first there’s the shocking rejection of the invitation.  That it happened once might be understandable, but when none of the guests rsvp, that would have been seen as a dreadful insult.  If someone offers you the Order of Canada or the Nobel Peace Prize, there must be a pretty strong reason to turn it down.  It would have been a real slap in the face, a dishonor to the host that said much about how the people saw him.  Here’s a man that we disrespect so much that we refuse his invitation.  We don’t care if we lose status by attending, we’d rather lose than come for a free meal.

So Jesus describes the landowner inviting the riff-raff instead, the people without status, the people without wealth, the people who will not kiss his ring, the people who cannot invite him back, the people who are sick and desperate and lonely and poor.  They come.  The servant brings them until the banquet hall is full and everyone is fed.  The other people, the high status people who are wealthy enough to be able to marry or buy work animals or land, they are left out in the cold.

Don’t invite people like ourselves, Jesus taught.  Invite everyone who is hungry for something that maybe they don’t even know they are hungry.  We have a very hungry world right now.  People are hungry for their fair share, people are hungry to get ahead, people are hungry for more.  Some of the rhetoric we are hearing around the referendum is around entitlement, like how there are a lot of people talking about how much immigrants are taking from regular Albertans.  Or how there’s a blanket assumption that people on AISH are defrauding the system.  The actual statistics are very different than what people fear.  The number of fraud cases is small, the amount of money spent on immigrant healthcare is small too. Yet people are hungry for someone to blame for how they feel they are not getting ahead as fast as they should.

But they are also hungry for hope.  And hope has been in short supply these past few years.  They are hungry for equality, justice and kindness.  Those things are worthy of hungering for.  But there are better ways than working for justice for only me and my household, but to work for justice for everyone.  This is what the United Church, the Anglican and Catholic bishops are asking us all to think about what is the common good not just for myself but also for my neighbor.  The Common Good is making decisions that show kindness and empathy for people whose stories we haven’t heard yet. That is what Jesus was inviting the Pharisees and dinner guests to consider.  Not who had the highest status, but need to be fed with enough.  The Common Good is here we practice gratitude and generosity and love.  Where we remember to practice gratitude for our needs being filled.  Where we include everyone, even the sick and the lame and the poor.  Where we invite everyone, regardless of their status, to be fed with God’s abundant grace.  May we keep inviting, inviting and inviting our neighbors to feast and know that God is good.  Amen.

It ain’t Christian to Hate

Dolly Parton once famously said, “It ain’t Christian to hate” and sometimes it seems like
Christians challenge that assumption.  Some preachers get excited about people in minority groups who they see taking away rights and freedoms and resources from those who feel entitled to privalege, without examining the actual facts, and before you know it, they’re saying things that don’t connect to today’s scripture, especially when Paul said that we are bound to love our neighbor as ourselves.  What a lofty goal.  Therefore, Christians have perfect communities that are havens for healing and caring and serving our neighbors.  Right? Well, hopefully.

Jesus wanted everyone to get along but knew it would not be easy.  Human beings have a hard time communicating their wants and needs or even knowing what their wants and needs are.  One image that is often used is the iceberg.  Our conscious selves are like the part of the iceberg that float above the water.  But that part of the iceberg is not what sank the Titanic.  It’s the part under the water, the subconscious, that causes strife and pain.    And when two big icebergs collide, it can affect things for miles.  This year, one iceberg threatened a group of islands at the south pole as it was 3500 square kilometres across!  A polar research centre had to be evacuated, and the iceberg was watched by satellite for months.  Icebergs crashing are serious things.

Jesus didn’t want us to avoid calling out iceberg crashes and conflict.  He didn’t want us to pretend that we were all sweetly cooperative.  He wanted us to protect our sacred community from oppression and manipulation.  Presbyterians have a saying that they are to “take away all occasion for tyranny”.  Church must not empower bad behavior that, like a massive iceberg, crash into everyone.

We crash together over differing values, differing opinions, differing needs, differing politics.  We crash together over control and power.  And if that power is power over, that control is control over, not power with or control with, we forget to be disciples practicing love and healing.  We crash our subconscius icebergs into one another.  We go below the line, where we make decisions based on fear and scarcity.  Fear is everywhere.  Fear is fueling our political anxieties.  Fear is being used to feed conflict leading up to the Referendum.  Fear of immigrants, fear of indigenous rights, fear of judges, fear of losing our human rights to someone far away that we don’t trust.  Fear that is subconscious, uncontrolled, and undisciplined, is a cancer that can kill communities of faith or even societies. Reverend Henri Nouwen put it this way:

Hardly a day [happens] without our experience of inner or outer fears, anxieties, apprehensions, and preoccupations. These...powers have pervaded every part of our world to such a degree that we can never fully escape them. Still it is possible not to belong to these powers, not to build our dwelling place among them, but to choose the house of love as our home. This choice is made not just once and for all but by living a spiritual life, praying at all times and thus breathing God's breath. Through the spiritual life we gradually move from the house of fear to the house of love. –(Henri J. M. Nouwen, p 24, creating change)

Fear is not Christian.  Jesus taught us to move from the house of crashing icebergs to a house of love, a way that protected the dignity of every individual in the conflict.  Talk it out, one on one, first.  If that doesn’t work, take a witness who also saw the situation.  And if that isn’t enough, encourage that individual who is frozen into patterns of fear and anger, to move on to a place where they can melt their underwater ice without hurting the Christian community.  Of course, if there is violence or sexual abuse, one on one isn’t safe, and isn’t what Jesus intended.  These guidelines are for situations where nothing illegal, immoral or life-threatening is happening.  In those situations, Jesus wanted clear consequences for people living in the house of fear, people frozen into habits of anger. If the whole community agrees, they are out.  End of story?

Not quite.

Jesus wanted folks to treat the now outsider not as someone to be shunned permanently, but someone who needed to be treated as a potential new member.  The outsider still needed to be loved and prayed over.  Because when he said, “declare these people to be like gentiles and tax collectors,” he was talking to people who had seen him preaching to gentiles, who were rubbing elbows with tax collectors, who had watched outsiders become insiders, who had seen the excluded become excited to become included.  He was talking to his disciples who had eaten with little Zacchius, and walking beside Matthew, both of which had been tax collectors.  In other words, treat them like folks that need to learn the good news.  To remind them that they no longer need to live in a frozen house of fear, they no longer need to be unconsciously crashing into anyone they feel like.  They no longer need to be addicted to anger and scarcity. That is not the Christian way of love.  It impacts conversations outside the church too.

Last Wednesday evening, we gathered as Northern Spirit Region to learn about the upcoming Referendum.  We heard that the questions are written at a university or higher reading level.  They paint a picture of scarcity, where immigrants threaten jobs, healthcare and education.  They promote distrust of voters, they tease us with having more power and less accountability.  As one United Church staff person said, “The separatist [rhetoric] is an insult to Treaty covenants. And the whole thing is a distraction from and addition to the malicious targeting of transgender and disabled Albertans, education professionals, healthcare professionals and the whole system.”

If we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, we need to love refugees and immigrants.  We need to advocate for human rights for all, including for education and healthcare.  We need to advocate for treaty rights, and trans rights andrefuse to spread racist comments about first nations and 2sLGTBQIA+.  We need to help people think these questions through, and not just vote as others tell them, don’t vote like an iceberg, frozen into an easy answer.  We need to advocate for people to take the time to read and vote, whatever their position on the referendum and separation is.  Because the loving, brave thing to do is to remind everyone that we are not alone, we live in God’s world and we trust in God’s loving abundance. Fear is not the answer to the challenges of 2026.  Compassion and love and courage and truth is.  Loving our neighbours is the answer.  It is the eternal answer.  Let us commit to being a house of love that puts compassion and equality and respect at the heart of what it means to follow Christ.  Because, as Dolly said, “It ain’t Christian to hate.”  It is Christian to love!

Flip Flop Followers

Summertime and the footwear is easy.  Flip flops are standard issue for beach days and city sidewalks alike.  They are everywhere.

In our gospel reading today (Matthew 16:21–28 for those of you reading my blog), Peter is again front and centre.  Three weeks ago, he sank like a stone in front of Jesus and all his friends.  Last week he became the foundational rock for building a new community of love.  This week he becomes a boulder attempting to trip Jesus up.  What a major flip flop Peter does.  Will the real Peter stand up?  Is he a leader in training, or is he a theological disaster?  Is he a great follower or a great temptation? Is he a good guy or a serious threat to the mission Jesus is on? 

What gives, Peter?  What’s with all the flip flopping?

Just like flip flops allow sand to irritate our feet, Peter’s comment seems to irritate Jesus to the point of name-calling.  Just like flip flops are not good for Alberta winters, Peter’s comments leave Jesus cold.  Just like flip flops are not great for ballerinas trying to swirl like tops, Peter has put his foot in his mouth and doesn’t know which way to turn.

The response, “Get behind me, Satan!” has often been interpreted as a shaming in front of the rest of the disciples.  What if it was different?  What if it is not ‘get out of my way’?  What if it is, “fall in line behind me and listen.”  That puts a completely different spin on what Jesus says, less heated annoyance and more reflection, more thoughtfulness, more invitation to self-examination and self-reflection.  Maybe even a touch of ‘mind your own business’.

The teachings that follow challenge self-centeredness and replaces it with mission.  The world is full of people who know they are right, who are the rule police for a community, a faith group, a family, a town, a culture, a whole country.  We are good at knowing who is wrong and it’s never us.  We fixate on scarcity and hoarding.  We fixate on me first.  Leadership gurus call this “Below the Line” attitudes.  Below the line thinking can be inflexible, certain, and often about controlling others.  It can a form of bullying, where one person wants to have power over others.  It can unconsciously look for ways to be the smartest person in the room.  It is natural, it’s how we survived saber-toothed tigers and stampeding bison.  In the long run, it can leave people cynical, selfish and lonely.  It is an addiction that is just as destructive in its way as illegal drugs.

All addictions are harmful, whether it’s a craving to be the leader like Peter, or gambling or drugs or shopping apps, or food or the determination to be right, or to save for a rainy day that will never come.  I think the addiction to below the line attitudes and thoughts is what Jesus is calling out.  People who put themselves first rather than God get into all kinds of troubles.  That’s why the beginning of 12 step recovery programs is to admit that we are powerless.

Would it surprise you to learn that admitting powerlessness is also the starting point for finding solutions to the world drug problem?  Drug addiction rates are terrible right now, and vary from half a percent of the population in countries like Slovakia and Portugal to 4% of the United States, the worst in the world.  Canada is sitting at about 2%.

The United Nations decided to look at the situation in ways that are above the line.  It researches constantly, does not assume it has the perfect answer for every country, and looks for tangible, measurable results that are showing repeatable significant reduction.  In other words, it keeps an open mind and asks questions.  Some of the things the UN has found is that countries like Portugal who have low addiction rates, focus on harm reduction.  Cold turkey does not work.  Abstinence, while a great goal, is not the starting point, harm reduction is.  The UN found that every individual has had a different path into addiction and will have a different path out.  It recognizes that countries that are most successful look at drug addiction as a healthcare problem.  Countries that start prevention programs in schools around the age of 12, which is when most users start, show significant impact on the number of kids staying clean, succeeding in school and having positive mental health. Family supports are crucial.  Countries that decriminalize the use of drugs and provide healthier, cheaper supplies, disrupt the profit level of organized crime and also noticeably reduce the rate of petty crimes.  That’s why countries like Portugal have had such a drop in addiction rates. The expensive constant medical emergencies and policing actions and court caseloads also drop dramatically with harm reduction programs.

The Un says that the illicit drug trade generates hundreds of billions of dollars per year, though estimates vary.  Drug cultivation, trafficking, and use also impact the environment through deforestation and other land-use change as well as air, land and water pollution.  The cost of failing to tackle drug use disorders is steep – over half a million deaths and 28 million healthy years of life lost due to disability and premature deaths in 2021. Just one in 12 people with drug use disorders received any treatment in 2023.  Our provincial government’s push to have involuntary treatment centres goes directly against the UN’s research because the number one factor for success is for the addict to choose it voluntarily and honestly.  One person told me that treatment only works if it focuses on physical, mental, spiritual and emotional recovery.  Another person said that even after 10 years of sobriety, there isn’t an hour or a day where they do not feel the temptation of escaping the hardships of their life through a needle.

Jesus points to another way.  An above-the-line way.  A way that takes seriously that we can’t escape our painful crosses in life, but neither do we have to bear them alone. Paul‘s words, don’t repay evil with evil, don’t be condescending, don’t seek revenge, are also calls to live above the line.  Feed and love our enemies. Tall order.

How does that look in real life?  I am reminded of a certain 80 year old millionaire who told her neighborhood 12-year-olds that she would give them $500 each if they and their teammate graduated from Grade 12 together.  In that school, the drop-out rate went from 33% to 6%! She gave millions of dollars of books to preschoolers.  She donated money to fund research into the Moderna Covid vaccine.  She spoke out against hatred of the 2sLGTBQIA+ community, saying “it ain’t Christian to hate, we all gotta start loving more instead of all this judging.”  Unlike some millionaire 80 year olds, she didn’t flip flop between love and hate, she didn’t pretend to be a Christian one moment while locking up children the next.  You know who I’m talking about.  She lived a very humble and loving Christian life, above the line, brave and committed and curious, open to learning what she could to help build a more resilient world.  She lived out these values that we read in our scriptures, and she did her best to live one day at a time, caring for her neighbors, and following Jesus.  We can’t have a much better role model for leaving the world a better place than Dolly. May we remember and honor her by doing the same. May we learn to follow Jesus rather than ourselves.  May we remember to ask questions, and may we learn not to flip flop over who is in control.  But to consistently remember the God of Love is the bedrock of our faith.

Rule #6

 

Boy did Jesus ask hard questions!  Who am I?  And he had a new answer for who Simon was, who just two chapters ago, was caught sinking like a stone during a storm.  I suspect that after that event, there may have been some teasing by the other disciples, “Simon, oh he’s great, but whenever he gets in a tight spot, he sinks like a stone!”  Maybe Jesus decided to flip that teasing on its head and give Simon the nickname of The Rock, the cornerstone of the new community of love that Jesus hoped to build.  The new name stuck, and Simon made it a big part of who he was.  As Christians, we too are called to define and redefine who we are, and who Jesus is for us.  We are called to continually renew and explore our faith and our commitment to the teachings of Jesus.  We are to be like the ancient Christ followers who called themselves the People of the Way.  People on a journey.  People learning more and more about their relationship with God and their relationship with their neighbor, which are to be rooted and grounded in love.

One of the first workshops we did as part of the FAB Collab with Fort McMurray, Athabasca, and  Barrhead was where we explored who Jesus was for us.  We looked at a variety of artist’s images of Jesus, traditional ones, new ones, outrageous ones and comforting ones.  We reminded ourselves and each other of what our favorite Jesus story was, that had influenced our lives the most. Just like Jesus prodding his disciples, we were prodded to remember and share how Jesus and his teachings had influenced us.  And we made art to connect us in ever deepening ways to the story of Jesus.  Art about Jesus keeps us getting into ruts.  Humans like ruts.  We like them so much, sometimes I think we decorate them.  But when we get into ruts of who we are, or who we think Jesus is, we can get bogged down into narrow and inflexible ways of thinking.  Our Christianity goes from being a journey of exploration and growth to an institution where the status quo is focusing on maintenance rather than mission.  One person described it this way:

Institutions are driven by sustainability and survivability- neither of which should be a major focus of the church. Churches should not be led by institutional viability but rather inspirational viability. Inspiration means- to be filled with the spirit, always changing, moving, evolving and transforming. Christians are also called to be transforming and renewing constantly discerning what is good, acceptable and perfect.[1]

In other words, we are to keep learning and trying new ways of living our mission to love God and love others.  Easier said than done.  That’s where Rule 6 comes in.  It’s simple, straightforward, and helps us choose intentional love in times of conflict.  What is Rule 6, you might ask?  Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, described Rule 6 this way:

Two prime ministers are sitting in a room discussing affairs of state. Suddenly a man bursts in, apoplectic with fury, shouting and stamping and banging his fist on the desk. The resident prime minister admonishes him: "Peter," he says, "kindly remember Rule Number 6," whereupon Peter is instantly restored to complete calm, apologizes, and withdraws. The politicians return to their conversation, only to be interrupted yet again twenty minutes later by a hysterical woman gesticulating wildly, her hair flying. Again the intruder is greeted with the words: "Marie, please remember Rule Number 6." Complete calm descends once more, and she too withdraws with a bow and an apology. When the scene is repeated for a third time, the visiting prime minister addresses his colleague: "My dear friend, I've seen many things in my life, but never anything as remarkable as this. Would you be willing to share with me the secret of Rule Number 6?" "Very simple," replies the resident prime minister. "Rule Number 6 is 'Don't take yourself so g-damn seriously." "Ah," says his visitor, "that is a fine rule." After a moment of pondering, he inquires, "And what, may I ask, are the other rules?"

"There aren't any."[2]

Of course, as Christians, our first rule is to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves.  But Rule 6 reminds us of Paul’s scripture that asks us to stop measuring ourselves against others:  “not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.” That sounds like Rule 6 in theological language.

What happens when we do that? Great things! Naramata Centre [where Monica was until August 1] found neighbors knocking on their doorstep at midnight August 6.  They suddenly had evacuees, 15 of them, from just across the Okanagan Lake.  The evacuees were from Peachland and Summerland.  The staff didn’t hesitate despite knowing that they would lose all the revenue from the next two weeks, they cancelled all the reservations and became a residence for Evacuee families, finding food, shelter and even activities for kids.  They chose Christian hospitality over budget, no questions.  Naramata Center is one of many United Church Communities which when faced with challenges, have remembered to put love as their main priority.  We do that here too when we provide food for the hungry and comfort for the grieving.  We do that when we open our doors to strangers and feed the hungry.  We do that when we act courageously and renew and explore our faith.  We define and redefine who we are, and who Jesus is for us.  By remembering Rule 6, and following the teachings of Jesus and Paul, we can learn humbly to live lives of action, faith and spirituality.  And Jesus will give us new names too, names like “Beloved, friend, and disciple.  May it be so for us all.

Please check out Naramata Centre's video of their pivot to support evacuees here: (2) Facebook

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[1] Pulpit Fiction, accessed August 19, 2026

[2] Zander, Benjamin and Rosamund, The Art of Possibility, Penguin Books, 2000, p 79

Thorns and thistles

There’s nothing quite so satisfying as spending time in the garden ripping and tearing out the weeds. Especially dandelions choking our petunias and carrots.  Some of us weed with our bare hands, which is fine when we are dealing with chickweed, but thistles are a different matter.  Their sharp edges alert us when we get too close or handle them roughly.  They are utterly useless plants that doesn’t have a place in a civilized and cultivated garden.  Rather like mosquitos, thistles feel like something God shouldn’t have wasted time in creating in the first place.

So of course, when Jesus told a parable about a wheat field, the listeners would be confused with his story.  They would have related to the workers who are upset at the thistles growing with the crop.  Sabotaging food sources was a favorite tactic of war back in his day.  Destroying crops disrupts the food supply the soldiers depend on to defend their land from invaders.

The disciples would have been fine with the story up until the point that Jesus told of the farmer ordering his workers to allow the weeds to grow until harvest time.  Only then would the thistles be sorted out from the wheat.  That didn’t sound fair!

We don’t want to live with thistles, we don’t want to get poked and scratched by thorns.  We like labels, “this person is wheat, that person is thorn”.  We like black and white thinking, “once a thorn, always a thorn”.  We like pointing fingers, feeling righteous, judging people as safe or unsafe.  We like to imagine all the thorny people get punished in the end.  I won’t get burnt because I’m not thorny, I’m the wheat that everyone wants.  And we all see ourselves as the heroes of our own story.  That habit of judging others and congratulating myself without honest self-reflection is addicting.

Until we come face to face with God.  The psalmist wrote that God searches me and knows me through and through. God made me and formed my inward parts; God fashioned me in my mother's womb.  When everyone else was in ignorance of who I was, God knew all of me.  This set of verses has become the bedrock of many people of faith who are born two spirited or intersex.  Intersex are people born with both male and female anatomy.  About three out of every 100 babies will be born ambiguous.  There are many incidents where a doctor was called in to decide a baby’s gender and made a mistake.  Or did surgery thinking they were fixing a problem, only to cause issues for the child once they hit puberty.  Can you imagine discovering you were a boy at the age of 14?  Or a girl?  These things happen.  And scientists are also learning more and more about brain chemistry that changes how they understand gender and orientation.  The boxes we may have grown up with as children are found to be dangerous to those who don’t fit them.

Jesus touched on two things.  That the community of God was to wait on judging and let God do that.  Because we humans are quick to judge.  We’re fast to put people into boxes.  God says, let everything grow and in good time we will have justice.  But justice without mercy can lead to dreadful consequences. A community of faith can end up pointing fingers at each other, and like thistles, can scratch and tear everyone around.  Mercy without Justice can end up just enabling and empowering the thistles to prickle and scratch everyone around.  Both of those extremes are below the line.  Both of these extremes do not help the wheat grow tall and strong.  Both these extremes do not help the Community of God to thrive.

The other thing is that Jesus taught patience.  We are called to wait to see what will happen.  Who knows what time and patience will do?  The only one who knows whether we are thistles or wheat is God who knows us through and through.  That idea is enough to comfort the shyest and scare the boldest of us. 

We all have times when we are both wheat and thistle.  There are times when we might scratch when we least intend to, or times when someone bumps into our thorns and gets hurt.  It happens.  But God gives us tremendous gifts to help us work through those hurts and pain.  The first gift, sometimes the hardest gift to remember we have, is the gift of curiosity.  Turning to curiosity, is, in the mind of Parker Palmer, a famous Quaker, the way to open ourselves up to how God might see the situation.  Parker Palmer says that when the going gets rough, we are to turn to new thoughts and attitudes. 

“Turn from reaction and judgment to wonder and compassionate inquiry. Ask yourself, “I wonder why they feel/think this way?” or “I wonder what my reaction teaches me about myself?” Set aside judgment. Learn to ask honest, open questions which are ones you cannot possibly ask while thinking, “I know the right answer to this and I sure hope you give it to me…” Thus, “Have you ever thought about seeing a therapist?” is not an honest, open question! But, “What did you learn from the experience you just told us about?” is.

Honest open questions, instead of putting people in boxes, is how the Community of God grows.  Letting everything grow until God’s time, finding a balance between justice and mercy.  Remembering that God knows us all, our thorns, our wheat, our growth, right down to our DNA.  It is a gift and a challenge.  It is not easy for us to talk about the times we get scratched and the times we scratch others.  This is true for us both as individuals and also the church.  Not just our local congregation, but our denomination, even all of Christianity.  But such deep honesty is important for growth and health. As the former moderator, the Right Reverend Doctor Carmen Lansdowne wrote,

a community that can carry its hard histories and its holy ones together — that can name the harm and name the grace in one breath — gives the young something no algorithm or feed can offer them: a place to stand. Not a curated highlight reel of heroes, but a real people, with real ancestors, some of whom were remarkable and some of whom were complicit, and all of whom belong to the story the young are now being invited into.

We are invited into the Community of God.  It isn’t easy, it isn’t fast, and sometimes we get lost in the weeds and thistles.  But God reminds us that we are loved, right down to our uncomfortable places, flaws and all.  With that good news, we can trust God to sort out our thistly moments from our lives, when we let God work through us with the spirit to create justice and mercy, compassion and peace.  May it be so for us all!

Parable of the Crazy Gardener

How many of you have ever planted a garden?  Tucking the seeds in the ground, watering them, watching them sprout, trying to figure out if the leaves poking out of the soil are weeds or what you hoped you grew?  And it’s one thing to bury a few pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds, it’s another thing to depend on a harvest for income.  Jesus was preaching to people who planted crops that was their only source of income.  So why did this parable feature a gardener that any farmer with common sense would see as either ridiculous or downright crazy?

We are not crazy gardeners.  Oh, sure we might have spent $2 for a packet of zucchini seeds and planted every single seed in that packet.  Most gardeners have made that mistake at least once.  But none of us, experienced or inexperienced, would throw a bunch of seed on the highway or on the sidewalk or in the ditch like Jesus had his crazy gardener do.  What a waste! Most of those seeds fell in ridiculous places where they had no hope of growing. Crazy! Where is the good news of this parable?  How does it speak to Alberta in 2026?

On the face of it, the parable is about sharing the good news of God’s heavenly realm, the yoke that is easy and the burden that is light.  It is comforting to know that even the best preaching by Jesus himself was described as a disaster.  Think about it, if the seed was shared equally amongst the birds, the rocks, the thorns and the good soil, only 25% of the seed fell on fertile ground.  That’s a terrible rate of return.  But from the point of view of talking about our faith, it’s probably accurate. 

Talking about our faith is something United Church folks struggle with.  We don’t want to come across as pushy or judgmental or hypocritical.  We don’t want to push a fear-based Christianity either, the kind that intimidates people into coming to church so they may be saved from eternal damnation and hellfire.  That’s not who we are.  But we too have a blind spot.  We might assume people will figure out how much better we are than other denominations and naturally be drawn to us.  After all, we were the first to ordain women, coming up on 90 years ago.  First to apologize to residential school students, first to ordain members of the 2sLGTBQ+ community, first to have women and indigenous people as our national leaders in the Moderator roll, first to arrive to the protest rallies, last to leave, first to write letters for justice and so on.  But that isn’t enough in this day and age.  As someone said to our moderator once, “Your church is so proud of being progressive that it has forgotten how to be Christian.”  We may have fixated on Daring Justice so much that we’ve let the ideas of deep spirituality and bold discipleship take a back seat.  Other denominations might be better at that.

We may think that we don’t have the skills to talk about our faith.  That’s the minister’s job, or the worship leader’s job.  Actually, it’s everyone’s job.  That takes deep spirituality and bold discipleship.  That takes asking ourselves, how do we experience God, and how does it help us live better lives?  If we don’t take the time to ask these deep bold questions, we won’t have the daring courage to share our stories.  And our world needs our stories more than ever before.

Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II wrote in an article about white poverty and the battle for democracy that:

When the prophets [denounce] the evils of political leaders and cultural systems… they always tell the people that God doesn’t need everyone to stand up against injustice. God needs a remnant, just a small number. If a community will come together to declare that another way is possible, they can change the conversation in a society. If even a small group bears witness to the fact that the way things are is not the way things have to be, then everyone who is dissatisfied and questioning their circumstances has somewhere to look for an alternative.
Harvard University’s Erica Chenoweth calls this phenomenon the “3.5 percent rule.” After studying people’s movements across the globe in different cultural contexts and at different moments in history, Chenoweth has concluded that a social movement that wins the active support of around 3.5 percent of a society’s population wins its demands.

3.5% of the population.  That’s how many people in Athabasca?  96 people.  That’s not that many.  If we think of how many people each of us know in this place, through work or church or organizations, 3.5% is a tiny number.  And yet, if we can get 3.5 percent of our town to care about human rights or food security or helping people on AISH or ADAP, or seniors or visible minorities, that’s all that’s needed.  And chances are we don’t need to get these people to care, they already do.  We just need to help them find each other and know that they are not alone.  We need to listen with compassion and understanding and prayer.  We are the soil that Jesus plants seeds in.  When we practise deep spirituality, praying, worshiping, learning hymns and bible verses that sustain us, it’s like we are fertilizing ourselves.  When we think about our faith, try to put into words who or what God is for us, read inspiring words, that’s discipleship.  That’s the weeding of our soil.  And then Jesus said, when we have good, weed-free soil, the abundance of harvest will surprise us!  Oh God, help us to fertilize and to weed like wise gardeners so we may help in your amazing harvest.  Help us be the 3.5% that will change the world.  Help us have the courage to share our stories to the rocks and the road and the birds and the thistles so that we don’t miss the good soil by accident.  And help us to remember that no seed that we plant is truly wasted, your world needs our abundant and wasteful crazy gardening.  Amen.