The Love of Power or the Power of Love?

Well, we have made it to another Christmas.  This year it is good to have you in the building, the musicians and choir, the lights and music, as well as you at home or reading these words.  It reminds me of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”, and that the Grinch couldn’t steal Christmas because it’s not about the stuff, the gifts or the food.  They are the side effects of the celebration, not the celebration itself.  Just as Christmas for us is not only about parties and gifts but about something more.  Something enduring.  Something that inspires us to be the best selves we can be.  Something that reminds us of the Power of Love.

There are a lot of examples of the opposite, something the Vancouver School of Theology called the love of power.  We see that in the news about last year’s attempted coup in the U.S., a chilling attack on the democratic process.  We saw that when graves were discovered on the grounds of residential schools in Canada this summer. We are seeing that in Shanghai after their elections of pro-Communist politicians. And we see that here at home in officials who have Christmas parties flaunting the rules of gathering, or that set policies around family gatherings for personal preference, regardless of what the science says.

The love of power is insidious.  It is an infection that is hard to diagnose.  It is seen in politics but also in abusive relationships, in workplaces, in parenting styles, in family gatherings, in classrooms and community organizations.  It is a hard infection to treat because we often don’t even realize we have it.

Its symptoms are hidden in microaggressions, in people rolling their eyes at someone else’s comments, or in anger bursts that are bigger than necessary.  It’s in plain sight in people who wander our stores without masks on, or in complaints to town council or school boards about masks and vaccinations.  It is in plain sight when our health care nurses in Alberta need security guards to make sure they get home safely after work.  It is seen when organizations like CBC deciding not to allow discussions on Facebook because the vitriol has become so ugly.  Sometimes it is heard, as Severna and I had the misfortune of hearing, over the phone as one person yelled and swore at another person when they thought we weren’t listening.  Power over.  From the tiny comments of “Honey, take the garbage out” when honey has already done a myriad of tasks that day, to the big actions of vandalism, like the fires in Athabasca that happened this summer.  Our world is infected with the craving to have power over someone else.

Into this world of Love of Power, Something sneaks in.  Whether you call that something the Deep Mystery, the Great Architect, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the Spirit of Music or Art, I don’t care much, but it sneaks in to vaccinate the world with the Power of Love.  It takes a very nasty and insecure individual to feel threatened by a tiny new baby, and the people who were most infected to the Love of Power were indeed threatened.  But the people who didn’t have much power, the poor staying in a barn, the shepherds living with no fixed address, the villagers and neighbors, they felt the Power of Love.

That moment of fragile vulnerability, a tiny hand waving in the air, a set of new lungs breathing in the aroma of cows and sheep and donkeys and straw, that was a clear sign that something was up, something had changed, and the world would be a different place from that time on.

I see that power of love when I hear that first nations people are rebuilding their burnt down church in St. Theresa Point First Nation in northern Manitoba.  I see that power of love when bags of clothes are dropped off for the homeless without even being asked, and people know they will get to folks in need.  I see that when a Christmas letter with no return address comes for me and I find gift cards to A&W.  It said “because we have decided to cancel all gatherings, we would like to give you the gift cards… if you know of someone who is struggling and could use a bit of sunshine… please gift the cards to them.  We appreciate your dedication to the community.”  That’s the Power of Love.

When we come here, listen to the stories, the music, the words of glad tidings of great joy, we are choosing to be vaccinated with the Power of Love.  We get our booster shots against our most terrible infection, and we remember once again that the Power of Love continues to change lives here and now.  The Power of Love conquers all fear and is the best tiding of great joy the world has ever known.  The Power of Love continues to work in us and others whenever we ponder the Christmas Story deep in our hearts like Mary did so many years ago.  The Power of Love cures our deepest diseases and infections.  May we find hope and courage to choose that love in all we do in the days to come.  Amen.

Hamster Wheels

When my kids were little, they had pet mice.  And what those mice loved doing more than anything was run in their hamster wheels.  Because they were nocturnal, we would wake up to the noise of the mice running as fast as their little paws could carry them, sometimes with so much energy and verve that the wheel would fall over and they had to stop running.  They would be so frustrated that they would chew on their wheel.  As soon as we set it up again, they would ignore it until the next night when the whole cycle would start over.  We should have hooked a generator to that hamster wheel, it went so fast the momentum of the wheel was stronger than the mouse that was moving it. It sent them for a spin upside down and dumped them out onto their soft papered cage floor.  The mice were quite bewildered about what had happened, but they kept on running!

Sometimes it seems like I’m running in a giant hamster wheel.  Work, eat, sleep and repeat.  There’s so much to do, especially at this time of the year.  That’s typical of many people.  Except for Christmas parties thrown by British Government staff people, most of us had a much quieter Christmas than usual last year, and we’ll probably do the same this year.  Presents are mailed, visits are curtailed, and zoom calls connect us without the long drives we’re used to.  It’s like our hamster wheels have stopped turning and thrown
us out back on the ground and we’re still a little dazed by everything. Some of us have enjoyed the break, some of us are still on the wheel but just can’t seem to get up to speed, and for those who are working in the health system, they have had to run faster than ever before.  They find themselves doing the loop de loop.  The constant stress has meant that collectively our blood pressure levels are higher.  Probably because of the sticker shock we have when we go grocery shopping and realize how much the price of food has risen.  Or the grief we feel when we hear of the rise in opioid overdoses impacting mostly young people.

We are living in tough times.  Zephaniah, if you read all of the book, which is only 3 chapters long, knew similar times of harsh fear and being in survivor mode.  He called out systemic injustice and would have had no tolerance of food systems that waste billions of dollars of food every year in Canada.  He would have called out oil companies that leave orphaned wells on farmland and impact the quality of the soil we need to grow crops.  He would have called out government curriculums that teach only a colonialist version of history, and pointed out the addictions we have to shopping or Netflix or on-line bullying or drugs.  He would have called out the oppressive employment practices of big corporations.  Just like John the Baptist, coming charging out of the wilderness, filled with a passion to name the hamster wheels we are running in.

Zephaniah heard God’s promise that our shame will be turned to praise, but the shame has to be named and faced first.  It’s specific and individual.  John heard several groups of people who recognized their shame in being stuck in their hamster wheels of oppression.  But John didn’t want to just get them out of their hamster wheels, but out of their cages completely!  His advice, tailored to several different career paths, was designed to get them fired!  If a tax collector only collected what they were supposed to as part of the system of oppression that Rome imposed on all its colonies, the other tax collectors would resent it and complain to the higher authorities about being undermined.  If a soldier stopped taking bribes, the rest of the soldiers would complain that they had gone soft on the locals and was no longer enforcing Roman Rule.  Enough soldiers and tax collectors changing their attitudes to the people they were supposed to be controlling and the system would collapse.  Which eventually it did. 

We can’t escape our hamster wheels or our cages until we recognize that we are in them.  People like Zephaniah and John help us to recognize that.  It’s not until we have heard their call and ask ‘what should we do’, that the cage opens up and we can feel the joy at being able to run like a hamster as God intended.

My favorite example of this is the Sister Act movies with Whoopi Goldberg.  In Sister Act 2, she goes to an inner school where the kids are trapped in a system of oppression.  They don’t want to run like hamsters, but no one is willing to support their dreams.  Sister Mary Clarence comes in, challenges the kids to get off the hamster wheels, challenges the administrators who are intent on closing down the school, and takes the new school choir to state championships where they win the contest and save their school.

This movie was inspired by a real teacher, Iris Stevenson-McCullough, who teaches music in Los Angeles in a school predominantly attended by visible minorities.  Her choirs have risen to national prominence, performing in France and Jamaica, winning many competitions.  At one point she and many other teachers were going to be fired by the Los Angeles School Board.  She publicly spoke against the cuts, inspiring media attention and reversing the cuts.  In doing so, she also inspired the people behind Sister Act 2!  In 2014, she took her school choir to perform at the White House for the Obamas and was suspended for 4 months by the school board for doing so.  Students protested again, and she still teaches as well as leading music at her Church.  She encourages her children, like John the Baptist, to not let them get stuck in cages on hamster wheels.

What can we do?  What cages are we in?  What hamster wheels are we running around in?  Who could we be sharing a second coat with or some food with?  When we break out of our cages of shame and fear, we can feel real joy as God intended us to.  Joy comes to us all, when we answer God’s call!

Open Wide and say Awe

 Ever wonder if dentists are lonely people?  Do they get invited out to Christmas parties and then get shunned because no one wants to talk about their work?  Do they have a hard time dating without staring at everyone’s teeth?  Do they really expect scintillating conversations from us when their fingers and tools are in our mouths?

When I was a kid, my dentist seemed scary and rough.  He was always pulling teeth.  I inherited my small jaw from my British father, and sturdy teeth from my Slavic mother.  The British were often lampooned as having the worst teeth, crooked and looking more like a picket fence than a denture.  My teeth were so crooked I couldn’t bite into an apple!  It hurt! 

So teeth got pulled and braces were attached, and even with all that, my teeth are still a little crooked but at least I can bite an apple now without even thinking about it.  No more picket fence!  It was painful and scary, but I was always glad when the dentist would say, “you’re done, time to rinse and spit”.

Prophets were not that much different in some ways from dentists.  They, looked at the culture of the time and took some soul x rays.  Then they would say where the cavities were, where the plaque had built up, where there needed to be more flossing, and where the cavities were. 

Malachi called things as he saw them, and what he saw was rampant corruption of the religious leaders.  They were cutting corners, making excuses, and putting their own interests first.  Malachi said they offered inadequate sacrifices and weren’t providing the best spiritual experience they could.  The priests were probably coping to the best of their abilities.  They were rebuilding the temple after it had been destroyed by the Babylonians and were working with the returning refugees as well as the people who stayed after the war. Two groups of people suffering from generational post-traumatic stress. The priests tried to shape them into a coherent team that could work together in a land where things were rough and bumpy, where things were rutted and crooked.  Every shovel of dirt to clear and rebuild a farm, a road, a home, a shop, had to be done by hand.  It was a time where the worry of another invading army would have been uppermost in their minds.  Where peace was a luxury only to be dreamed of but never attained.  But the priests had gotten a little complacent, a little lackadaisical, a little sloppy.  Malachi called them to repent.

John took his call to repentance a step further.  He didn’t target the priests specifically, he called everyone.  His message wasn’t to the elite but to everyone.  Now John is a puzzling character.  When I picture him in a modern-day context, I imagine him in tatters and rags, a street person standing on a soapbox.  The surprising thing is that people actually listened to John, despite his odd eating habits and bad wardrobe.  They could see that he had lived through tough times and respected him because of it.    He must have been a tough son of a gun.  But why is he in our Advent readings?  Aren’t we supposed to be reading about angels and babies and peace and hope?  This passage sounds more like John is coming as a threat not a blessing.

Did you know that John the Baptist is mentioned in every gospel except John?  He is mentioned more than the shepherd which are only in Luke, more than Mary and Joseph, who are not in Mark, and more than the wise men who are only in Matthew.  Yet we don’t have a lovely statue of toddler John the Baptist at the manger!  John is missing from the picture of Christmas.  But we ponder his words and actions every Advent as we ponder his call to us to make things straight.

Advent is a time to do our yearly checkup and have our spiritual teeth cleaned.  Are our dentures fitting properly, do we need to floss more, why is that tooth hurting?  It’s not easy going to a Godly dentist, but just like going to an earthly one, we head off way more problems when we go regularly.  That’s what our time of self-reflection and confession is, an opportunity to reflect on our souls and scrub them before God.  Get that ungodly plaque off before we start getting cavities of our thinking and feeling.  Some people make a habit of doing this daily, through meditation or bedtime thoughts.  I journal every morning.  Some of you get a daily devotional e-mail. What do you do to keep your spirit clean and sparkly?

If Malachi is the dentist that cleans and scrapes our teeth, maybe John the Baptist does the root canals and the cavity filling.  And Jesus is the one who does the bridgework and builds the braces.

Taking my crooked teeth and making them straight was not easy, it was not cheap, it was not fast, it was not painless.  And it was not something I could do myself.  I needed a dentist and also an orthodontist.  I needed my parents to drive me to appointments.  I needed the Alberta Teacher’s Union who instituted dental plans.  I needed a good anesthetist to put me under so my impacted wisdom teeth could be extracted.  And I needed time.  I could help by brushing and flossing regularly, avoiding gum and popcorn, and getting regular checkups. 

Our spiritual help comes from God, who is calling us to partner together.  Some of us have never brushed our spiritual teeth and just coming to church is enough.  Some of us brush after spiritual sticky stuff get on our souls, a couple of times a month.  Some of us brush daily.  Some of us add floss after eating spiritual corn on the cob, and some of us are diligent at both brushing and flossing daily.  Even that does not always prevent spiritual cavities and pain, but knowing we have a good dentist to turn to when the going gets rough, helps us turn to wonder and awe at the gifts of our loving Dentist who helps us grow straight and smooth.  Thank you God, for your holy checkups that lead to peaceful souls! Amen.