A Step nearer to Harmony

 

It is an amazing thing to be a part of a group that makes music together.  Making harmony and melody means working as a team with a specific focus.  It takes time and practice and skill development to hone both physical and mental activities in ways that work into a beautiful partnership.  Music can be the greatest gift we can give other people, a gift of joy that is not dissimilar to the joy that Jesus hoped his followers would have.  That has been one of the hardest parts of the pandemic, losing our ability to make music together.  Singing is a high-risk activity, and choirs, even handbell choirs are not safe when our infection rates are so high.  Masks are needed for any activity that requires breath; even trombones and tubas need masks on them.  This has caused pain for many people.  The loss of harmony is hard to endure.

Our gospel lesson today is about joy and harmony.  The harmony between Jesus and God, the harmony between Jesus and the disciples.  The more harmony there was between them, the more joy there was too.  But Jesus was also acutely aware that when the disciples committed to following Jesus, they committed to being out of harmony with the world.  They they would look at the world through their faith and that would leave a separation that would lead to potential ostracization and disharmony.  They would be feared and hated for their loyalty, and it would not be easy for them.

Such is the world at it’s most disharmonious.  It has led to wars and discrimination, racism, sexism and bullying.  Racism that has increasingly targeted Asian people since Trump started calling Covid by its country of origin.  And that nickname for Covid gave some people permission to act violently in numbers that I don’t remember hearing before.  It is disheartening to see racist flags being flown in our county and know that hatred is here.

Store clerks and health care workers are also being targeted for bullying and abuse.  People are loudly proclaiming that they are doing this because they are Christian and anything that limits their ability to preach the Gospel is an attack on their faith.  The world hates them, they claim, and maybe they are reading this same passage today as a justification for their behavior.

I can’t imagine what it must be like to be the target of bullying because of my ethnic background.  To constantly wonder what kind of behavior I will get when I wander into a store.  Will I be snubbed by store employees or by customers?  Will it be because of my gender or my skin tone?  Will people complain that I talk funny or be shocked to hear how Canadian my English sounds when I look like I have come from away?  Such is the daily lived experience of many people.  It’s not something they can turn off or avoid.

I’ll never forget gathering in Edmonton three years ago and hearing the stories of racism that United Church ministers were facing.  Some of them spoke bravely and boldly about the discrimination and bullying they experienced.  Others were more quiet and reluctant to speak out.  One of the participants was MiYeon Kim, the minister who wrote the prayers we are using today.  I first met her when we were student ministers in Alberta North West Conference, and we attended many workshops together with her fiancé Taylor Croissant.  In a sermon she wrote to go along with these prayers, she said that when she moved to Canada, she had to struggle with her own racist assumptions.  Growing up in Korea, she heard many stories about the atrocities her people experienced during the second world war, especially young girls who were forced into becoming ‘comfort women’ for Japanese soldiers.  She tells us:

I recognize that I also have prejudice and hostility toward the Japanese people in my innermost heart. In Korea I had very little exposure to Japanese people, so my prejudices were not challenged. However, my life and ministry in Canada have allowed me to meet and work with Japanese people in the United Church: Dr. Kathy Yamashita and the Rev. Kyoko Miura.

I met Kathy Yamashita at the final meeting of Alberta & Northwest Conference in May 2018. As President of the Conference, she led the meeting with outstanding leadership and wonderful humour. I was so impressed by her.

When Kathy visited our presbytery in her capacity as Conference President, she shared with us her own family’s story during the meeting. I learned that Japanese-Canadians suffered persecution during World War II; they were placed in internment camps and had their property taken from them. It was a story I had never heard before.

I became acquainted with the Rev. Kyoko in a class I took for my continuing education. In the class, she and I were the only Asians among 15 other students. Whether she knew my buried prejudice toward Japanese people or not, she visited with me every breaktime and lunchtime. Ironically, she was the only one who showed me that much kindness. I slowly opened my heart from politeness to friendship…  it became a new challenge for me to overcome my own prejudice... To open my mind and make harmony with Japanese people today, despite the wrong actions of people in the past… and to live out Christ’s commandment to become reconciled with our neighbours. It is not easy. I may need to fight hard against the stereotypes that I grew up with all around me in South Korea.

For someone as sweet and friendly and kind as MiYeon to admit she needs to fight hard against stereotypes is a real surprise.  But that is part of what Jesus wanted when he prayed that God strengthen and protect the disciples.  To help them resist the teachings of the world that says bullying is a part of life and help them instead find much joy as they follow the way that Jesus taught them.  May we too find much joy as we work to build harmony in our lives with our neighbors through remembering and following the teachings of Jesus, teachings of love, compassion, courage and forgiveness.  And may that building of harmony transform even our inmost hearts until we know abundant joy in all our relations!

Pointing to Love

 My in-laws have a sturdy little sundial on the deck made out of black wrought iron.  It’s supposed to tell the time by the way the shadow falls. But it doesn’t work unless it is pointing North.  Last summer when I was staying there, I decided to rearrange the deck chairs and the sundial got shifted around.  Since it no longer pointed north, it no longer told the time.

Some days I feel like a sundial that is not pointed in the right direction.  Maybe something unexpected happens, I sprain my ankle, there’s bad news on the radio, a friend’s house burns down, or a photo of a flag with a swastika is spotted in Boyle.  Instead of feeling like a calm grown-up Christian, I feel like a grumpy grouch that doesn’t know how to love her neighbor, especially one with a penchant for flags that are so horrific.

Enter the scriptures.  Jesus has a penchant for fixating not on the north pole, like a sun dial, but on Love.  Love is the true north that Jesus constantly points to.  Jesus is no sundial, but more like a compass that swings to point to the right direction.  Unlike humans and sundials, Jesus is unwavering in his commitment to be loving.  And not just any kind of loving, but one that is willing to take risks that seem irrational and dangerous.

This is no cheap or over-sentimentalized card or poem, this is a robust, muscular love.  In our society, we use love to describe anything from our enjoyment of flowers and chocolate to our sense of profound deep astonishment when we look into the eyes of a newborn baby.  Talk about sentimentalization!

Sentimentalization is not love.  We think that love is just sweet emotions or gentleness.  But real love leads to action and change.  I heard the story recently of a church who had a new person join it for worship.  One Sunday morning the newcomer had a panic attack because someone wore a red shirt.  It triggered memories of a trauma experience she had at the hands of a bully.  The congregation was concerned.  Should they ban red shirts?  Should they say to the newcomer, “I’m sorry but you don’t belong here if you can’t handle a red shirt or two from time to time”?  How would that help her in her day to day life ?

We have had a similar debate for years that flared up online this week with United Church ministers.  Do we call this service “Mother’s Day Service”, “Christian Family Day Service” or just “Sunday Service”?  For some folks the word ‘Mother’ triggers memories worse than any seen in movies like “Mommy Dearest”.  Others struggle because of fertility issues or because of life circumstances.  Or tragedy strikes when they least expect it, and motherhood becomes a memory rather than a lived reality.

When I was growing up as a child, we didn’t know much about grief.  We didn’t have funeral resources for stillborns, miscarriages and infants.  And we thought that the most loving thing we could do for a person in grief was not to talk about it for fear of upsetting someone.  We pretended the tragedy didn’t happen, or that a pregnancy that didn’t end happily was no big deal as one could always try again.  We didn’t treat single women or couples who didn’t procreate with a lot of respect.  We didn’t make space for the many tiny moments of grief that came into everyone’s life. And we didn’t talk about the ways in which people coped with those stresses, the addictions to cocktails, the risky behaviors, the mental illness, the depression, the abuse or family violence and the anxiety attacks that resulted from trying to live as if pain and grief did not exist.

That was not love.  That was supposed to be love, protecting each other from pain and hurt, but it was not love.  It enabled people to keep stuck, keep the grief suppressed, keep the emotions bottled up, keep the pain at home where it belonged, in private.  It kept people feeling isolated and alone.

Real love says, “I am here with you.  I hear you.  You are not alone.  Your pain may be unique, but others have gotten through what you are going through.”  Real love says, “this is going to hurt but I will hold your hand”.  Real love says, “these are birth pangs and I can’t take them away from you, but I can breathe with you”.  Real love says, “let us weep together a while.  We will one day rejoice together too.”  Real love says, “let us have a memorial service for that stillborn” even if it happened 40 years ago.

Dr. Katharina Manassis, a member of St. Mark’s United Church in Scarborough and both a Child Psychiatrist and University of Toronto Professor Emerita said this about such real love by her congregation:

My introduction to a community of faith didn’t come until middle age, after a traumatic bereavement. The minister on call to the local funeral home listened intently to my distraught, guilt-ridden tale of loss and validated my experience. I was reassured that… my emotional response was not unique… I … became a member of his church. I came to understand that in some circumstances compassionate pastoral care is even more helpful than counseling by a mental health professional, because rather than singling out the person as having a psychological problem, it recognizes suffering as part of the human experience.  Within my faith community, I found supportive friends, inspiring role models, and people who were just good fun. Coffee time, whether in person or over Zoom, is a valuable mental wellness activity for many of us. Knowing there are like-minded people struggling with similar challenges can make a huge difference in well-being, especially when we are feeling alone. 

When we love deeply, compassionately and bravely like this, we transform our world.  Whether it’s getting an ugly flag pulled down in our county, letters written to MLAs about racism in the proposed curriculum, or donating to the Mother’s Day Mission and Service appeal this year, together, when we remember that like sundials we must orient ourselves by the true north of love that Jesus taught, we make a real difference in the world.  May it be so for us all.

Rooted in the Divine, Not in the Carpet

 

When Tim and I first got together, it was quite apparent that our families were similar.  My grandma was so shaped by the Famous Five and the Temperance Union Movement that she soaked her Christmas cake in Welch’s Grape Juice.  Tim’s grandma would offer great hospitality with shortbread and scotch mints but never had any liquor in the house.  Both our grandmothers were active in Edmonton United Churches, mine at St. Paul’s near the university, and Tim’s at Strathearn United near Bonny Doon.  So when he signed up for a wine-tasting tour one summer while I and the kids were taking camp programs at Naramata Centre, I felt a little nervous.  I never expected it to become a life-long interest for him the way it did.  He graduated from Baby Duck to Gewurztraminer, while I stuck to the occasional chocolate ice wine, not a common vintage.

It made our families nervous, but not enough to denounce us or disinherit us.  Then Naramata Centre had a a course on wine and spirituality.  Tim enjoyed visiting Blasted Church, Elephant Island and Township 7, developing a taste for merlots and other reds.  I discovered a passion for chai tea lattes.  Preferably with a subtle dusting of cinnamon.  It could have led to conflict, but we agreed that we still loved each other despite our different tastes in beverages.

Some people were so offended by the course that was offered that letters were written to Naramata and the Observer Magazine that threatened and blustered.  No more donations were going to go their way for supporting such outrageous attitudes and promoting alcoholism.  I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time, being very busy with raising two active children.  But I know it hurt some people to the point that they pruned themselves away from their church.

Congregations can lose people so easily that way.  And if it’s not about attitudes around alcohol, it’s the color of the paint for the office, or the removal of a banner or something else.  One of my classmates found out that their big split was over carpet color and 20 years later, people were still not speaking to each other.  That’s nasty in a small town, and I’m pretty sure that’s not what Jesus had in mind.  But it may have been exactly what John had in mind when he wrote, “If you say you love God but hate your sister or brother, you are a liar.”

Strong words, John!  How do we love our siblings in Christ especially when they are so not what we expect?  And of course, we’re supposed to practice loving the members of our faith community so we will be able to love our neighbors too.  Love is the fruit of the Spirit that we are supposed to be able to grow. 

This is easier said than done.  We can get caught up in feelings of frustration and concern, even fear when we don’t get the results we hope for.  And we can bend over backwards to be nice Canadians.  But we are not called to be nice!  We are called to be loving.  Sometimes that looks the same, but it is rooted in a different soil.  Being nice can lead to an artificial harmony where everyone talks and acts like we’re a loving family.  We don’t want to say how we feel because it might hurt someone’s feelings, or even worse because we don’t know how to say it in ways that will be kind.  So people turn a blind eye, or pretend they are happy or do their best to ignore the behaviors that are hurtful.  We ignore comments like “people always” or “people never”.  We leave conversations unsettled and unsure why we are feeling uncomfortable.  We say nothing at work when a racist or sexist joke is made. We don’t talk about the family member struggling with mental health issues that is phoning us at all times of night and day that have us feeling overwhelmed or sleep deprived.  Then all of the sudden, the carpet color comes up and boom!

Artificial harmony is like a pot on a stove that has a lid tightly attached and nowhere for the steam to go.  Eventually it explodes and people wonder how it got so hot.  Then we end up with two, three, five, even eight churches where once there was one.  There are towns in Ontario where there are three United Churches in the same block, one that started out Methodist, one that was Presbyterian, a Congregationalist and so on and these happened before 1925.  It happens in modern times too, Southern Baptists are losing prominent leaders, especially women, and the United Methodist Church is splitting for many reasons.

How do we avoid getting caught up in carpet issues and stay rooted and grounded in Christ?  How do we hear the call to bear fruit?  Loving fruit, full-bodied and richly flavored fruit?

We stay connected not to carpet conflicts but to the vine that nourishes us.  We stay connected to God, our Higher Power, Great Architect, Great Spirit, however you want to label the Good Orderly Direction.  We stay connected by being curious about our own emotional reactions when we feel triggered and ask God to care for these tender trigger spots.  We stay connected by confessing to ourselves and to God the times we haven’t stayed connected or even wanted to be connected to the True Vine. We stay connected by caring deeply about the challenges our neighbors are facing and not assuming that they are being deliberately hurtful.  We stay connected by getting coached in that connection.  Coached by this congregation as we practise together how to pray, how to connect to God through song and through ritual, how to be open to hearing God’s word through our scriptures.  When we commit to curiosity, confession, coaching and caring communication with God and one another, the fruits of the spirit are abundant, and we prove ourselves loving disciples of Christ, rooted in the divine.  May it be so for us all!