The Right Stuff

I learned about pomegranates because a Russian ballerina became beloved by enthusiastic Australians.  “Hold on there, Monica, that’s quite a jump between Aussies and pomegranates, how do you figure that?”

It does sound like chaos theory, the whole “butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazonian jungle, and a storm ravages half of Europe” thing, except both a ballerina and a pomegranate are bigger than a butterfly.  Although the ballerina was supposed to be as light on her feet as a butterfly.  Anna Pavlova was the first Russian prima ballerina to travel around the world a hundred years ago, bringing her dance to people in many countries who had never seen ballet before,
including Australia and New Zealand.  Despite her problems with high arches and gangly legs, she inspired chefs to whip up a meringue dessert that is the proud feature of many Christmas dinners down under.  One benefit is that they don’t have to cook it at a high temperature in the middle of the summer, another is that it is great with fruit, especially pomegranates.  Pavlova is to Australia and New Zealand what pancakes with maple syrup is to Canadians, served up with bacon on the side.  Alberta’s equivalent would be a barbecue with Grade A beef, beans and baked potatoes. Slavic countries would have their piroshky and halopchi, scots would have their haggis and champit tatties, and Newfoundlanders would have their Jiggs dinners.

Great food takes time and tradition to get right.  It’s hard to cook up a great pavlova in Canada, our sugar and flour is a little different than the Aussie stuff. Canadian recipes for dressing or Christmas fruitcake are handed down from generation to generation, with edits and fine tuning according to taste.  Learning how to make a Jiggs Dinner with its all-important garnish of pease pudding has been a real learning curve for us Albertans more familiar with Bannock or perogies.

We like cooking up meals for those we love and care for, but no one recipe will work with every family.  Our tastes and traditions are almost chaotic in the variety we show.  Not unlike love, in a way.  Joseph showed love by planning not to make a public example of Mary, shaming her in front of her friends and family for not showing fidelity to him throughout their engagement.  Sparing her this embarrassment was his way of loving her.  And it was solely his decision.  He was the only authority to decide her fate.  If he had been an angry, vengeful man, he could have had her executed for her infidelity.  There’s no Cousin Elizabeth in the Matthew passage for her to run to.  In fact, about the only thing Matthew and Luke agree on about the Christmas story is that Jesus was born in Bethlehem.  Matthew has no shepherds or angel choirs or censuses or inns, Luke has no wise visitors or trips to Egypt.  They both share long genealogies, Luke focusing on Mary’s lineage, and Matthew has Joseph’s family tree.

That family tree is fascinating, because with the scandal of Mary’s pregnancy, Matthew mentions several other scandalous women.  Bathsheba, whose pregnancy almost destroyed David’s rule over Israel and caused chaos in his family.  Tamar, whose pregnancy was also seen also as a betrayal of her marriage oaths and punishable by death until she revealed who the father was.  Women who were at the mercy of a man’s decision and who had no choice in what would happen to her in that rigid patriarchal system that valued women solely by the offspring they could produce for their tribe.  Joseph was fully shaped by that patriarchy, that cultural expectation of what it meant to be a man and a father in ancient Israel. 

And yet, and yet.  Just as God messed with Abraham and Sarah’s comfortable life, just as God called Moses and Miriam to challenge slavery, God threw chaos into the patriarchal system.  God sent Joseph a dream.

Joseph’s dream wasn’t just about breaking his personal expectations, it was a culture-shaking moment, a major paradigm shift in how women were to be honored and respected.  It was a dream of radical inclusion, a challenge of the status quo, and an inspiration for the future.  Love was not going to be boxed up in a one-size fits all rule for all time.  His dream was a chaotic disruption of a long-standing tradition.  Which is what Advent is all about.  Recognizing when God’s chaos shakes us out of the traditions we may be taking for granted, the traditions that may not be loving or life-giving for everyone in our culture.  The traditions of making shortbread when we’re called to invent pavlova.

One expert put it this way

"Christianity is, at root, an Advent religion. That is, our [faith puts us in a place] where promise and fulfillment don’t quite meet. Our experiences [put] us there, too, as people keenly aware that our [dreams are not our reality] …. We never stop expecting new life to break onto the scene. We have work to do, but we recognize it as God’s work done on God’s terms." - Matt Skinner

Like a Russian dancer God sometimes tiptoes into our lives and ends up helping us shape new cultures, new ideas, new passions, new loyalties.  Sometimes God whirls into our lives with pirouette after pirouette, inspiring dreams and new possibilities.  Our world needs some new recipes for love and compassion. New creations and inventions that help us dance into a paradigm shift of acceptance of diversity, like the Respect for Marriage Act in the states. New taste experiments as we try new things like pomegranates that we never experienced as children. We wait and work in hope that love will dance into even the most cynical hearts, that hope will inspire life-changing dreams, that peace will break into the world, and joy will be in every home.  God, we pray, bring love to us all.  Amen.

And here's my attempt at my first pavlova, with pomegranate and kiwi fruit.  For some strange reason, it evaporated very fast even though it wasn't the most beautiful of things compared to how some folks mix it so beautifully!

Changing hearts and minds

I love pears!  I think that they are my favorite fruit.  But I hate pears, there’s nothing I turn up my nose up more, they are so disgusting.  “Wait a minute, Monica!” you may be thinking, “How can pears be both your favorite fruit and your least favorite fruit at the same time?” Easy!  Pears that are fresh and ripe and just at their peak are incredibly sweet and juicy, their skin is nice and thin, and their flesh is soft and easy to bite into.  What better fruit can there be?  You can’t take a bite out of a coconut or pineapple or watermelon without a lot of work first.  But when we were kids, fresh fruit was very seasonal.  Mandarines at this time of year, apples and pears in the fall if we were lucky, and berries in the summer.  The rest of the year, it was canned fruit.  There was nothing worse, in my humble opinion, than the dreaded can of fruit cocktail that we had for dessert far too often.  The maraschino cherries were fine, the peaches were a little slimy, the oranges were okay, the grapes often were split and mushy but the pears?  They tasted like chunks of jello that had sand sprinkled throughout.  It was like eating a mushy bit of beachfront property, and Mom always knew which bowl of fruit cocktail was mine as I would assiduously eat around every single piece of pear in the bowl.  No amount of persuasion could convince me to eat those little cubes! They were the worst fruit in the world as far as my 10-year-old self was concerned, and even today I will do anything I can to avoid canned pear.  Yuck!

I’m sure other people have similar opinions around fruit, maybe even pears, that might echo either my love for this fruit or my loathing.  Strong opinions are easy to find on a variety of topics.  In fact, to be human is to have strong opinions on a variety of topics, right?

One of the complaints I hear is about how polarized we have become.  That we have such different opinions from our neighbors that we can’t have a civil conversation any more.  Whether it’s vaccine mandates or the causes of earthquakes in Alberta, it is hard to talk about what is weighing on our hearts and minds.  We want to think in binary absolutes – either something is good or something is bad.  Just like pears, are they my favorite or are they my least favorite, make up my mind and stop sitting on the fence, Monica! Take a side, join the club, cheer on the right team!

Isaiah dreamed of a time when this kind of division ended.  The wolf will lie down with the lamb, the wild will coexist with the tame, the carnivore with the herbivore, the poisonous with the helpless.  There will be no more villains and heroes but one creation where all will coexist.  The Green Party and the Wildrose Party will find things they can agree on, and oil workers and environmentalists will be friends. The warmongers and the peacemakers will live calmly side by side in safety and security.  It’s quite the utopian vision and Isaiah sees it as a real possibility worth working towards.

Matthew’s story of John the Baptizer is a similar message.  “Change your hearts and minds,” he preached.  Start looking at the world with different eyes.  John calls us to examine how we think of the world around us, our community, our neighbors, our family and our friends.  Just as he called out the religious leaders who came to see him, he calls us to challenge our assumptions.  How do we see ourselves?  How do we see others?  Are we caught up in either or thinking, us vs them, winners and losers, bad guys and good guys?

John calls us to think in new ways: we are to have a spirit of wisdom and understanding, a spirit of counsel and strength, to stop judging based on appearances, or make decisions because of gossip and rumor. 

What is wisdom, then and how do we think in these new ways?  Some theologians say that wisdom is about changing how we think and act, whereas knowledge is solely about gathering information and data.  Data is easy.  With google, in seconds we know that the experience we had of the earth shifting under our feet wasn’t imaginary, and we can even put a number onto it, 5.8.  That’s data.  Knowledge.  Wisdom is when we stay calm and don’t buy into alarmist theories or wild speculation about why the earthquake happened.

How do we grow in wisdom?  Two things are helping me – reminding myself that an issue might be a ‘both and’ topic like pears.  I can like them and dislike them, it doesn’t have to be ‘either or’.  What if I am right and you are too?  That is helping me stay calmer in the midst of conflict, not perfectly but slowly better.  Another thing I do is a mantra many life coaches encourage their clients to use.  “I tell myself the truth and frequently ask myself what I’m pretending not to know”. I think that is the ultimate wisdom, when we ask deep and honest questions of ourselves and our own opinions.  John sensed that the religious leaders were coming for baptism because they had deep questions of themselves that they didn’t even knew they had.  By visiting John, they challenged their own thinking.  Some may have even joined the Jesus movement, like Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus who buried Jesus in the Tomb on Good Friday.  By asking questions of ourselves, looking for both and, and listening to the call of prophets to work towards God’s vision of Peace on Earth, we can follow the path of wisdom God wishes for us all.  And when that happens, fruit of the spirit come to us, especially Peace, a gift of the Creator for us all.

Got a lovely bunch of Coconuts, anybody?

If you have ever gone wandering along a tropical beach with palm trees, you may have been told not to sit under a palm tree because more people die from falling coconuts than from shark attacks.  That, however, is an urban legend and an exaggeration.  But sitting under a coconut tree can be hazardous to your health.  No one knows the time or day when a coconut falls, and the comparison to sharks started when an emergency room doctor complained about all the injuries he was treating due to falling coconuts.  It created so much kerfuffle that someone wrote a very cheeky song called “Killed by a Coconut”, which is almost as silly as the song “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts” which if you don’t know it is very similar to “I want a hippopotamus for Christmas”. 

Sometimes I feel like hope is just as silly as singing about coconuts and hippopotami.  Our scripture readings don’t seem very hopeful either.  And the news these days discourages a hopeful attitude. Who can be hopeful when their power is off because of bombs or they’ve lost family and friends in a nightclub shooting or they have had to wait for an ambulance for hours and then wait in a hospital for a doctor for more hours.

It’s easy to lapse into apathy when our lives are full of such stories.   It’s also easy to fall into the opposite extreme, anxiety.  Will this time be when the flood comes, or the heat wave or the hurricane or the forest fire? Or just assume that every day will be filled with disaster and there’s nothing that we can do to prevent it?  A third alternative is cynicism, the assumption that nothing good will ever happen.  A lot of conversations start with words like “Don’t”, “I can’t”, “We mustn’t”, “That won’t work”, “We tried that once”, or “no”.  Like a tire that has a slow leak, cynical words can completely deflate us until we feel flat, apathetic, cynical or anxious.  If we internalize all those words, that can lead to serious depression.  The negative, cynical, apathetic, anxious thoughts can become self-destructive mental illness that requires professional help to unravel.  There were times when I needed to reach out to counsellors to improve my mental health, but for many in our world, this is a constant struggle that needs medical and professional support.  Which is in short supply these days.  Social workers are facing the same challenges this year as doctors and nurses did during covid, a rise in demand and in workload.  Burn out, retirement, and a health system that does not fund mental health programs consistently or predictably mean uncertainty for both professionals and those who need the programs.  PRAAC, who raises money to fund thrive workers to help people experiencing family violence, depends on government support as well as our fundraising and organizations like Together Talk have to apply for grants to provide free mental health care on one hand but also struggle to get the message out to people that the service exists and it’s okay to ask for help.  People who have hope are more likely to ask for that help than those without hope.

At our yarn circle we asked the question, “what is hope and how does it differ from wishful thinking?”  Wishful thinking is imagining things will work out the way I want without any effort on my part and may involve an exaggerated hope or fanciful thought.  A ten year old can wish for a real live pet unicorn all they want, but they are not going to get one.  A twenty year old can work in a stable to earn enough to buy a pony that they call ‘Unicorn’ and dress it up with a pointed hat.  One is wishful thinking, based in fantasy, the other is based in the real world and with hard work will come true.  But even better than these two examples is the twenty year old taking her pony to the Stollery Hospital and giving sick children rides on her ‘unicorn’.  That is Christian hope.  It comes from thinking of others, and being alert to opportunities to serve our neighbors. 

When Christ said ‘stay ready and alert for no one knows the day’, that is hope – alert and brave and focused on a better future.  Not afraid to face the reality of shoveling manure to get a unicorn.  And Christian hope is also about being honest about the challenges that life throws at us.  We will see disasters, but we are to keep looking and preparing for Christ’s coming. 

The challenge is discerning what is wishful thinking and what is hopeful thinking.  After several days of rain this week, rain in Alberta in November, global warming is becoming more tangible.  Some think it’s wishful thinking to imagine lowering our dependence on petroleum products, and slam environmentalists for such ideas.  Better do nothing than make a baby step towards change.  Yet one person’s wishful thinking is another person’s hope.  It was wishful thinking to imagine the USSR would stop being communist, wishful thinking that the Berlin Wall would come down, wishful thinking that Northern Ireland would be at peace, that apartheid in South Africa would end, that the slave trade would end or that we could have a truth and reconciliation process in Canada, to name a few.  One person’s wishful thinking is another person’s call to hope.  One person may see a coconut as a dangerous weapon, but another person will see it as a fruit that despite its hard shell and brown exterior, is worth the effort of cracking open.  And when we crack that hard nut, we too can be nourished in ways that inspire hope in others.  We are called to choose hope and to work for hope.  Researchers at the U of A in Edmonton are finding that hope impacts our physical health as well as our mental health.  Hope can heal relationships and the world with God being our helper.  Thanks be to God for this wonderful gift!

Patience, young Grasshopper!

I had a classmate at AST who was about 10 years younger than me and who reminded me of my younger brother.  He was rather like a Saint Bernard puppy, full of energy but a little too big.  At times, I would say to him, “Patience young grasshopper!” 

It seems so easy to encourage someone else to be patient, but it’s harder to be patient myself.  I was enthusiastic too, I was going to change the world, make it more honest and loving, and all it would take is my generous heart and a church crazy enough to ask me to step into their pulpit.  I was impatient to get my sleeves rolled up and ready to work.

Together we would solve racism, global warming, homelessness, food insecurity, the exploitation of temporary foreign workers and more.  Look out Canada, here I come!

Luckily for me, I had a wise mentor and a lay supervision team who said to me many a time, “patience, young grasshopper”, as I failed to solve the world’s problems with a snap of my fingers.

Patience, interestingly, is a big part of pineapple farming.  It starts out, unlike apples or cherries, not as one flower, but two hundred flowers.  As they get pollinated, the fruit of all these little flowers meld together. And unlike oranges that go from flower to fruit in a single season, it takes 2 years to go from bloom to pizza topping. Pineapple farmers need lots of patience!

Patience that Jesus talked about, and Paul lived, wasn’t just a flippant platitude that they threw around in abandon.  They lived it every day.  Through trials, prison time, travel, working hard for a living, or walking from place to place not knowing where they would sleep or what they would eat.  They prayed and hoped, they suffered and yet kept on with the big picture in mind. 

And Jesus reminded his disciples as they stared in awe at the beautiful temple, that buildings come and go, countries and nations one moment are stable and the next on the brink of disaster.  We are not to panic in situations like that, but to remember our priority is to love one another, love our neighbors, pray for our enemies and love God.

Destruction of buildings reminds me of a lady in Kiev. The city has lost many of its beautiful buildings due to the war with Russia.  But she talked about living in a subway, doing her part to help the 100 folks sleeping there on cots and bunk beds get along with each other and work together to rebuild.  The small acts of resistance she can do may only be to tuck a blanket under a child’s chin before they sleep, or to help two neighbors stay calm during a disagreement, but she does her part.  The Russians may destroy the buildings, but they cannot destroy the community.  If anything, the attacks are forging a new understanding of what it means to work together patiently for a common purpose.

Jesus also talked about the fragility of nations.  Not unlike the latest political situation in the US.  People speculated about the end of democracy, how the Trump followers would take over states and revamp the elections process in ways that were detrimental to the whole country, not to mention slanting the justice system even more to a narrow agenda.  And I won’t say a word about Alberta politics except to say that there are some who want to stoke the fires of divisiveness and conflict, us versus them fearmongering, entitlement and resentment. 

Then there’s the climate situation.  Catherine Faith MacLean who is the minister in St. Paul’s United Church in Edmonton, talked about going to the World Council of Churches this past summer as a delegate from our denomination.  She told us that youth delegates from around the world addressed the Council specifically and solely about climate justice.  They all expressed the belief that we have already gone past the point of no return with Global Warming, and Rev. MacLean realized that these teens had never known a time in their lives where the threat of climate change wasn’t seen as real and tangible.  Their witness was chilling and challenging.

There was also hope there.  The United Church contingency was sitting right behind the Russian Orthodox representatives who were very careful about what they said but one priest introduced her to his personal friends from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. One could read between the lines of that casual introduction!  The World Council of Churches also were hospitable to the many women clergy, who wore their clerical collars every day, and are commissioning a study on human sexuality.  And although this organization, with members from 352 denominations from more than 120 countries, representing over 580 million Christians worldwide, does not include Roman Catholics, the Pope sends observers to hear the deliberations and conversations.  It was founded in 1948 to build tolerance, peace, justice and respect.  That sounds like a project that needs lots of patience as they identify common ground and continue to learn how to work together.

Patience grows like a pineapple, one blossom at a time.  The Poet Rilke wrote “have patience with everything unresolved in your heart… try to love the questions themselves, as if they were locked rooms. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. Perhaps someday far in the future, you will gradually live your way into the answer.”  Patience, a gift from God, is something we can gradually live into with a little faith, a little kindness, and a little self-control.  May we all find the patience in the face of uncertainty that Jesus and Paul had, and trust that God is still saying with love, “Patience, young grasshopper!”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineapple#/media/File:Flowering_Pineapple_Sept_4_2011.jpg

Quietly shaken or alarmed

I’ll never forget eating supper at Naramata Centre in our kitchenette.  It was our first time there at this marvelous United Church family camp and the children were quite small.  We were eating dessert when I saw red smeared all over the wall behind the dining table.  It was surprising and I was uncertain where it was coming from.  It was too thin to be blood, but I grabbed a washcloth and cleaned it up easily.  I made sure neither of my children were bleeding, but they were both in perfect health.  I sat back down to have some more dessert then looked again.  More red on the wall! Got out the washcloth, wiped the wall, sat down again, and watched my children like a hawk.

Our dessert was freshly hand-picked cherries that we had harvested from the orchard. Amber, not quite 2 years old, was biting a cherry then fingerpainting the wall with the juice on her fingers!

I don’t remember how I reacted other than cleaning her hands as well as the wall and moving the cherries away from her.  Not just to limit her artwork, but also because too many cherries can cause havoc on our digestive systems.  Having self-control around cherries is hard!

I admire the self-control Jesus exhibited in this story of the Sadducees.  If we read all of Luke 20, we would hear the religious scholars testing Jesus with conundrums and puzzles.  Paying taxes, John the Baptist’s ritual in the Jordan River, and more.  This question about seven marriages was a mental experiment, rather like the more famous Schrodinger’s Cat in a box.  It was also a very divisive topic between the Sadducees and the Pharisees, subject of a vigorous.  They pulled Jesus into the debate, suggesting a ridiculous scenario that the Sadducees thought would end any discussion of an afterlife.  It reads oddly to our current culture, this is not seven brides for seven brothers, but one bride.  If we look at it from the culture of Deuteronomy, we can understand it better.  The world of Deuteronomy was one of tough survival where the tribe was the focal point of every individual’s identity.  And with no rrsps, tffs or pension plans, widows could be in danger of starving to death.  The patriarchal culture didn’t help either.  With a male-centric society, being disconnected from a male family member to protect her was dangerous for a widow.  So, they came up with Levirate marriage which was designed to protect widows and ensure every male ended up with a male heir to inherit their estate and continue the tribe’s existence.  I’m very glad it is no longer a part of Canadian society.  It does exist in other parts of the world where there is a high level of mortality in both adults and children as well as a patriarchal culture.

But this was meant to be a trick question with an obvious answer.  The Sadducees expected Jesus to say that the wife would obviously not be married to anyone because an afterlife is ridiculous.  The Pharisees hoped Jesus would somehow find a way out of the trap.  Jesus said in effect that the riddle was focusing on the wrong question.  God’s children do not concern themselves with who possesses what, or who is married or who belongs to another.  Ownership, entitlement, even sex is not what God’s children should be focused on.

And God’s children are not to worry about fads, fashions and alarmists who only promote emotional reactions to life’s challenges.  2 Thessalonians says, “don't become easily agitated or disturbed by some prophecy, report or letter falsely attributed to us… Let no one deceive you, in any way. Stick to the traditions you received from us, either by word of mouth or by letter.”

Easier said than done.  It’s hard to know who to trust when we get bombarded by scammers who phone or text us out of the blue. How do we know what to believe any more? The United Church has inherited a simple tool that has been around for a long time, with roots in Greek philosophy and Hebrew faith.  It is to use logic, experience, history and faith to discern what is best.  It generally works well.  Logic is a good first step.  Learning from others’ experiences as well as our own is important too – I hear that people get texts claiming to be me asking them to send a money order and I never do that.  Sharing this experience can help keep people safe. 

History both personal and global is also important.  Orhan Pamuk wrote a book about a fictional Cholera epidemic in Turkey and how that was written before Covid 19, yet it was very predictive of how Covid 19 impacted our society because he knew his history. 

Logic, experience, history and faith can help us unravel tricky issues like Jesus did with the Sadducee puzzle.  They can help us build our resilience in times of challenge and unravel complex issues.  They can help us look at situations more calmly, and they can help us develop self-control instead of being constantly shaken and alarmed as Thessalonians describes.

If self-control is a gift of God, it can challenge how we look at others and ourselves.  This is at the heart of the debate around homelessness in Athabasca, for example.  We are not scared of people who are currently experiencing temporary housing shortage, but we are very nervous about mentally ill folks who act impulsively or illogically.  If we look at them as people who have poorly developed self-regulation, will we have more compassion and understanding of them? People assume that everyone has self-control.  But the more we learn about neurodiversity, addictions and the brain, the more we must challenge that assumption.  Recovering alcoholics and addicts say that only when they let go of the delusion of their self-control can they find their Higher Power helping them grow real self-control.

The Good news is that self-control can be grown with patience and understanding, no matter our age or our neurodiverse brains.  It is a gift that is free for the asking.  My daughter no longer paints with cherry juice on the kitchen wall.  She has learned to paint on canvases, the bigger the better! She has also learned to eat cherries with self-control.  Jesus modelled self-control, nurturing it in himself and others and we can too, with faith, hope and kindness as our guide.  Thanks be to God for these gifts of the Spirit at work in our lives!

“Homestead” by Amber Rosborough, 2022 in mixed media, not cherry juice!

The Shameless Tree Climber

When I was a kid we lived one year at a place that had an orange tree in the backyard.  Sounds exciting on paper, but it wasn't that great in reality.  Mostly because the neighborhood wasps found it before we did and were fiercely protective of it.  Every time we tried to get near the delicious looking oranges, those nasty little stingers were determined to keep us away.  It was frustrating to smell the oranges, see the oranges but never taste the oranges!

I imagine that's what Zacchaeus felt like when he heard stories of the new rabbi coming to Jericho.  He wanted to get to Jesus, to see Jesus and listen to him. Zacchaeus had more than a few wasps barring his way.  Scripture said he was short of stature and we often go to the simplest of translations that he was a Danny DeVito, a short man who couldn't see above the heads of the taller folks around him.  However, it's possible that he was short of stature in the community, more like status challenged rather than height challenged.  Certainly, the description of who he was and what he did for a living adds credibility to this theory.  Last week's scripture described the difference between a religious leader and a tax collector and how Jesus used the disreputable tax collector as an example of humbleness that is to be honored. 

Zacchaeus wasn't just a disreputable tax collector; he was the head of all tax collectors in Jericho.  Like a loan shark who worked for a foreign country, he would have less respect from his fellow countrymen than a CRA agent born in Fort McMurray trying to get carbon tax payments out of oil companies!  He was a traitor not just to the citizens of Jericho but also to the principles of Hebrew scriptures who taught never to accept bribes, charge interest on loans or collect more than his fair share.  I'm sure if he had been asked prior to climbing the tree, he would have said that it wasn't him that was at fault, it was the system.  And it was a dirty job, but somebody had to do it. 

That was enough to folks to treat him waspishly, to feel stung by his greed, and to resent him so much that they weren't going let him get by their blockade.  How dare someone like him want to see someone as amazing as this Jesus was!  They shut him out, turned their backs on him and refused to give an inch to this greedy selfish man. 

Back then men showed their importance by how mature and dignified they acted in public.  The prodigal father, for example, would have scandalized his neighborhood by running to meet his returning son home from big city pig stys, hiking his skirts to do so, and flashing his calves in the process. 

If running was such a shameful act for a man in a story, how much more embarrassing would it be for a prominent citizen to climb a tree in public? 

Now I will confess to climbing the occasional tree even as an adult, but you would never catch me doing it in a long dress.  Can you imagine the scandal of a grown man being so silly as to do such a thing?  I have no idea how easy sycamore trees are to climb.  Was this an easy thing for Zacchaeus to do, or imagining Danny DeVito, again, was this a hot sweaty activity he did while others laughed at him, ignored him or even didn't notice him in the growing excitement of the crowd? 

Regardless, he was so hungry to see Jesus he ignored his discomfort, embarrassment and even further censure of his neighbors if he was that willing to go out on a limb to see Jesus! 

Talk about faith!  Not too different from an orange tree producing fruit that humans can't eat because of wasps. Silly, ridiculous even. 

Faith can be a tenuous thing that seems ridiculous from the outside. It can be an impulsive thing or a well-thought out plan. It can show up when we least expect it to.  When I started planning my fruit of the Spirit theme, I randomly paired faith with oranges without any particular reason.  And when I set out on my adventure to Toronto, I felt a bit silly at the idea of me helping out with a hymnbook project. Everyone else had a master's in music or a doctorate in music, wrote hymns or worked full-time as organists, music ministers and the like.  What could I as a lowly ukulele player contribute?  When I got to my hotel room, I found an old tea bag in my purse that was wild sweet orange tea.  Our first meal out in the General Council Office was garnished with an inch thick slice of orange.  And at the hotel breakfast buffet, I grabbed a couple of packets of what I thought was honey to soothe my singing throat and when I got to the Islington United Church room we were using, I discovered that they were packets of orange marmalade! 

But more importantly, despite not being a professional musician whatsoever, I was treated with dignity and respect and kindness by everyone there.  Bruce Harding, musician and editor of More Voices helped me navigate the subway.  Lloyd MacLean, member of the band who wrote songs like "Draw the Circle Wide" and "My Love Colors Outside the Lines" listened to my comments with respect, and my classmate Alydia Smith who has a doctorate in ministry and works at General Council as the Identity and Mission Network coordinator, was happy to see me again!

They treated me just like Jesus treated Zacchaeus!  Except Jesus went way more overboard.  He didn't just preach about being kind to those we see as less than or other than us, he broke through the mindset of 'othering' people completely.  He saw the silly man perched precariously in the branches and invited himself over for supper.  Just like my orange tea bag gathering dust in my purse, Jesus was found in the embarrassing moments, the lost moments, the impulsive moments and barged in unexpectedly.  Something that continues to happen today when we go out on a limb and climb to get a clearer view.  May we find Jesus in our own such moments of faith!

Invitation to Kindness

 A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (Edmonton), a young lady was planning a picnic on a lovely day with a young man she had met.  She pulled out her grandmother’s cookbook to figure out how to make a delicious and unforgettable salad.  The recipe suggested adding a little zing with fruit like raisins, apples, or mandarin oranges in the salad.  She didn’t have any of those, but she did have some watermelon on hand, so cubed it up, as well as some cheese and mushrooms.  She added several types of lettuce and spinach and topped it off with croutons and bacon bits.  She thought it looked pretty with all the different colors mixed together, and proudly served it to her new beau.  The salad seemed to go over very well, but the watermelon was an odd touch and the bacon bits and croutons clung to them like thistles to a sheep.  The young beau didn’t say anything about the salad, so she was quite surprised a few months later when she talked about watermelon she learned he didn’t like watermelon one little bit!  Here she thought all those months ago that he liked her salad.  The truth was, he was too kind to tell her that he had not enjoyed it at all!

Or maybe he was too nice.  When I talk about picking hymns for our upcoming new hymn resource, I often say that a hymn that is ‘nice’ is not enough to make it into our final cut.  We have close to 2000 hymns that have been submitted and we only have room for a tenth of that.  Many of the hymns are nice but not thought-provoking, comforting, inspiring and engaging.  We can’t be nice if we’re to whittle down our big list to something as slim as the More Voices hymnbook.  We can still be kind as we let folks know which hymns make it into our final selection.

The church leader in the parable today was not nice or kind.  Nor was he a real person. He was a stereotype that Jesus was using.  There were Pharisees who invited Jesus to dinner, who listened to him, engaged him in thoughtful debate, and treated him with respect.  We need to remember them for it’s easy to paint them all as bad guys.  Jesus told this story not to say Pharisees bad, tax collectors good, but to highlight two different attitudes of prayer.  The Pharisee’s prayer was arrogant, yet he would have been nice to the tax collector in person.  Kindness does not stem from an attitude of arrogance!  The tax collector, who would be more like today's version of a loan shark, knew how he really measured up to God’s expectation of justice, was very humble in his attitude, and asked for help from God to become a better person.  As Paul put it in Romans, God’s kindness is a call to us to be humble.  Then once we are humble, we too can practice real honest kindness to our community, and not its shallower cousin, niceness.

I see this principal whenever I meet folks going to AA and Al Anon.  It doesn’t matter how smart they are, how much success they have in their professional lives, it’s the folks who join AA and Al Anon with a humble attitude that will be successful in rising above their addictions.  The ones who think they are better than others, or smarter, or more deserving are often the ones who fall off the wagon.  The ones who are humble, also become very kind.

Letting go of our senses of superiority can even be seen in the debate about what to do for the Athabasca homeless population.  Some see the homeless as lazy, some see them as manipulative opportunists, dangerous folks that should be able to fix themselves with a little hard work and will power.  Others see them as former classmates, friends, 4h members, teenagers in high school, next door neighbors, residential school survivors with tales of horrific trauma.  But how we help homeless people is something that society is uncertain of.  Incarcerate them? Force them to go back to their families?  We even struggle to understand what constitutes homelessness, and lump everyone with shelter security issues into one group.  If we are nice to homeless people, we smile and maybe say good morning, but if we are kind to homeless people, that takes a special level of empathy, time, and patience.  It may take the shape of talking to our politicians to strengthen existing mental health supports and building community infrastructure to house people in the community they grew up in.  I’m inspired by the James Smith Cree Nation and their call to increase the number of drug treatment facilities and beds for indigenous communities.  That’s kindness in action. Or kindness might take shape in the form of intervention programs targeting even younger people.

Programs like the Human Kindness Project, a curriculum developed in Toronto for elementary and junior high students which combats bullying.  Winnipeg police developed their “Cool 2Be Kind” project to also build empathy.  In Newfoundland, a volunteer organization, the “Kindness Project”, handed out valentine cards to strangers just as we did during Covid in 2020.  My friend Di who lives in Australia and was impacted by the flood last week, was amazed at the kind offers of support and help she received. Kindness is even seen as the way to break the spiral of divisiveness and polarization we seem to be sliding into in Alberta and around the world. 

Jesus taught his followers that God’s kindness is deep and unending, like a huge watermelon where there is always another slice to be shared.  God is not nice, God is kind, and God’s justice is more than just being nice.  When we humbly recognize that we don’t have all the answers, that we’re not perfect, then God’s kindness will envelop us, grow in us and bear fruit in us.  The fruit of the spirit, kindness, can heal and inspire us all.  Thanks be to God!

How about them apples?

 I’ll never forget the day that someone told me about the secret star inside every apple.  No way, I thought.  We had always cut our apples from stem to blossom end, and it never occurred to me to try any other way.  What a revelation to see that pretty, 5-pointed star smack dab in the middle of my fruit.  Like a little miracle of love, unseen under the delicious flesh, ignored by many, but there none-the-less.

Rather like the first time I realized my parents loved me.  Not something we ever said in my family, and whenever I got into trouble for doing something mischievous, I was sure my parents hated me.  There were times when I did wonder if they could love me when I dropped plates, spilled milk, made a mess in my bedroom and other such monstrous misdemeanors. My parents did love me in their quiet and undemonstrative way, and showed it when I least expected it.  Flying to Halifax to see me convocated or tying up my shoes for me when I was eight months pregnant or quilting a beautiful runner for my coffee table.  Signs of love hidden like the apple’s star, unseen until I looked at their actions in a different way. Many people are not so lucky – the Blanket Exercise reminded me of the disruption of love caused by residential schools and generational trauma.  Parental love is missing from many people’s lives.  God’s love is not, even when it’s hard to see.

Jeremiah knew that it was hard to see God’s love in the midst of tragedy.  He had been preaching bad news for so long, it was unexpected to preach something different to the people.  And preach the idea of God loving us not because we follow a rule book that God gave us.  No, because God was reminding Jeremiah of covenant, like a loving spouse married to a troublesome partner, but not holding it against them when the partner breaks promises and gets things mixed up.  A partnership that God would not end or abandon, and thriving would happen once more. 

Jesus was preaching on a similar vein.  God more loving than a nagged judge, more patient than a wronged widow, in it for the long haul, in it because that’s what the character of God is.  Hard to see that when we are in difficult times, when the world around us seems empty of any sign of God.  How do we keep going with the news from Ukraine, or a premier who insults people facing real discrimination for their race or gender identity or their physical or mental abilities by comparing them to folks who knowingly chose to ignore science and medical best advice?  How do we keep going when the price of an apple at the grocery store is now 1.50/lb or more?

Jesus was also preaching about prayer.  And how important it is.  How we need to persist like a nagging street person at the gates of MaraLago demanding justice from a billionaire who wants anything but justice.

How often do we pray for justice?  How often do we nag God for fair play?  It’s an interesting question.  And how often does it feel like our prayers are falling on a God who can’t hear us?  Probably more often than we think or like to admit to ourselves.  It would be so easy to give up, to assume that there is no one listening, that God doesn’t care, God judges harshly without any love whatsoever.  And yet, and yet.

This week I came across a story about Frederick Douglass.  He was born in 1818 and looked as dignified as Morgan Freeman.  He was brought up on a slave plantation by his grandmother as his mother was not allowed to stay with him, most mothers were taken away from their children when they were very young.  He had four or five masters before he was even 16, and managed to learn his alphabet and to read, mostly without any help from a teacher.  One woman taught him a little before her husband convinced her it was evil to teach a slave to read.  But Douglass persisted and eventually took the Underground Railway to freedom where he changed his name and married.  He became a Methodist preacher and travelled to England and Ireland where he preached against slavery.  He wrote impassioned essays on abolition. He convinced Abraham Lincoln to let blacks enlist in the Union Army to fight against the Confederates.  But just prior to the Civil War, he was feeling frustrated and discouraged.  All his attempts to end slavery had bogged down.  He was feeling depressed and his speech at one conference lacked fire and compassion.  He was tired of praying for freedom, for justice, for equality, for everyone’s the right to vote, including women.  At that moment, in that hall of crowded people hoping to be inspired, another famous lady, Sojourner Truth, also a powerful speaker for abolition, was in the audience.

She heard his lackluster speech and stood up in the middle of it.  She hollered a question so loudly everyone in the room heard her.  She said it over and over until Douglass answered her.  That question changed everything.  Douglass remembered his passion, his love for justice.  He became reenergized and his speech energized everyone who heard him.  And it got him back into remembering why he was there.  The question she yelled at him with so much passion?

“Is God Dead?  Is God Dead? Frederick Douglass, Is God Dead?” “No,” Douglas replied, and that was the answer they all needed to hear.

We need to hear it too.  God is not dead!  God loves us and will hear our prayers for justice.  It’s not easy, it’s not fast, but God will answer.  The world does change.  Slavery does end.  Women do vote.  Love does change everything, maybe especially when it is as tiny as a star hidden in an apple!  

Measuring up?

 How big does faith have to be?  Jesus told his disciples that they didn’t need a big amount of faith.  Size didn’t matter to him, and neither does it matter to God.  Which, I’m sorry, is a hard pill to swallow some days. 

I wish I could throw bushes around with my faith, but that would not make me a Christian.  It might make me a hurricane, hopefully much smaller than Fiona, but certainly a blowhard and a destroyer of forests.  If I want to know I have faith enough to do what God is calling me to, how do I measure up my faith and know I have enough?

I may be looking around at other people and saying – “oh, look at what they are doing, they must have a lot of faith.  I can’t do that because I don’t have enough faith.”  It’s a perfect excuse to get out of doing anything that I might be nervous about. 

Maybe that is what the disciples were doing.  They were realizing how difficult it would be to live out these new ideas Jesus was teaching them.  Ideas that were scary, outrageous, challenging and culture changing.  Ideas that pushed against what ‘everybody knows’ or what common sense told them.  Ideas that challenged the belief that insignificant people like them could have a profound difference on the world they lived in.  It challenged the belief that might is right, or he who has the most toys wins, that the person with the most money must have the best life.  That it’s a dog-eat-dog world, kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, and might is right because only the strong will survive.

And those same fears and tensions that the disciples faced are the same fears and tensions we face.  Jeremiah too, struggled with fears and tensions from being a person of faith.  He was uncertain what was going to happen to him, or even that he had the ability to be a prophet to the people.  Certainly, his words of challenge and lament were not appreciated by his peers.  They got so angry at Jeremiah’s sermons that they threw him in the stocks to publicly humiliate him and to stop him preaching any more.  He continued to preach anyway.  He preached that the king’s actions were full of arrogance. He preached that the country’s leaders had lost touch with ordinary citizens.  He preached that the decisions being made by the politicians were trying to make them look more important and powerful than they really were.  And he preached that all these people and their choices would lead to disaster.  Their attempt to measure themselves in terms of wealth, power, and strength instead of measuring themselves by their faith would doom them.

So rather than support freedom of speech, they threw him in jail.  Not unlike the protesters in Russia who are being arrested and sent to jail or worse, Jeremiah’s arrest was designed to intimidate him and stop the unrest.  But it didn’t stop him, and it didn’t stop the Babylonian Army that circled the city. 

Jeremiah had the faith of more than a grain of mustard, then, when he bought a piece of land where the army was camped, not knowing if he would survive or if his family would once again grow crops on their land some day.  But he did it anyway, in a grand public gesture of faith and protest and hope.  In the face of war, in jail for being a dissident, on the brink of having the city invaded by foreign soldiers, he gave hope to everyone who witnessed to this ridiculous real estate deal.

We see similar acts of public faith.  Women in Iran burning their hijabs and cutting off their hair.  Russian men fleeing their homeland in droves.  Ukrainian refugees coming to Canada.  Other Ukrainian farmers and students, women and men doing their bit to protect their homeland.  Astronauts planning a return to the Moon.  Jesus dying on a cross, executed by the state.  We are not called to such outrageous, dramatic acts of faith.  Jesus said we didn’t need to do a huge song and dance to get our message across, to promote our faith, to counter the culture we see around us that hurts so many in the competition for success.  Instead, we can have the faith of a grain of mustard seed.  We may not be familiar with mustard seeds, but we all know sunflower seeds.  We know how they are not very big, but they are delicious when seasoned and cooked.  We know that it would take a lot of sunflower seeds to fill our stomachs, so they are too small to use as our only source of food.  But what a plant can grow from them!  They grow very easily in our climate – I have heard countless stories of people finding sunflowers growing under their bird feeders. 

Faith can be the size of a sunflower seed.  It is not something that needs to be big and strong, weighty and massive in order to grow something marvelous.  It can be as simple as deciding to ask questions at a forum on a proposed shelter for the Homeless in Athabasca or knitting a hat and mitts for the RCMP to give out to people in need.  It can be as small as helping write a grant that helps us sponsor the Blanket Exercise for the One Book One Community program.  It can be as simple as cooking hot dogs at a Pride picnic or being supportive of our new youth group and leaders.  It can be as quiet as cleaning the Lion’s Park up repeatedly after vandals. It can be as simple as coming forward to eat a small piece of bread and drink a small cup of juice in memory of Jesus.  Whatever the size of our acts of faith, Jesus says they are enough.  May we find the courage to live them in our daily lives.

Out of the Ground - sermon on Genesis 2-19 for pet blessing

 Have you noticed the sunflowers in our front flowerbox?  They were all planted at the same time, they all came from the same seeds and yet, they are still all different.  Some have been eaten by the deer and have stalks but no flowers.  They stopped growing once they were chomped and never grew any taller.  Some grew tall and didn’t make a flower bud at all.  Some bloomed two weeks ago, much to the delight of the bees, and now have heads so big and heavy with seeds that they tip over.  Some are small and still slowly opening.  It is a race between them and the frost.  So much difference between each plant even though they are all the same.

Our scriptures today talks about what we can learn from nature. Jesus said, look at the flowers and birds and learn from them. They do not worry about things they cannot control.  Today we also have with us some pets from different houses.  Did they worry as they came to church?  Did they wonder if they were going to the vet?  Did they expect they would be given shots or medicine for worms?  Did they think they were going for a haircut if they are shaggy critters?  If someone brought a snake today, would the car trip cause them anxiety?  Probably not!  Just like our sunflowers, they don’t worry, and they grow to the best of their ability given where they are and who they belong to.  Belonging, for our pets and for us, is very important.  I loved reading Dodie Smith’s “101 Dalmatians” as a child because she talked about the humans being the pets of the dogs! Pongo and Missus, the heroes of the adventure, were the ones who made sure their human pets got out for walks regularly, and even made sure that their human pets Mr. and Mrs. Dearly met each other and fell in love.  Clearly, the dogs were in charge of their pets and found it amusing to let the humans think it was the other way around!

I like to think our Genesis 2 passage is very similar to the flip side of 101 Dalmatians.  It too shows the diversity of scripture.  When I meet someone who is genuinely curious about my relationship with scripture, who tells me that they ‘know’ that scripture is infallible, I often ask them which came first, humans or animals?  In Genesis 1, God is referred to in Hebrew as ‘Elohim’, which we often translate as God plain and simple.  In Genesis 2 there is a switch from Elohim to Yhwh, often translated as The Lord.  Elohim makes the world in seven days, beginning with the chaos of creation and sorting out the light from the dark, first making day, then night, followed by seas and land, sun and moon and so on.  Humans end up being made last, like the cherry on top of the sundae, the finishing touch. 

Now, if you ask someone who ‘knows’ scripture is infallible, which came first, animals or humans, they will invariably say animals of course.  That’s when I spring the trap.  “Then how come in Genesis 2, it says that God made humans first, then plants, then animals?”  One person I asked this of said that I was obviously reading the wrong bible, because that wasn’t what was in her bible.  But it’s there all right.  And Yahweh God gets down on their hands and knees and plays in the earth, Adamah in Hebrew, to make human, Adam.  But a single mud creature is rather boring and rather bored, so Yahweh starts playing some more, making plants to pretty up the dirt.  That’s better, but still something is missing for the dirt creature.  Yhwh gets their hands even more muddy, pulling up animals the way I imagine a potter pulls up pots on a wheel.  This is no “Let there be Light” grand pronouncement by Elohim who sounds like a cross between a wizard and a magician and probably very clean and neat to boot.  Diversity is created.  But mud creature still is not quite able to relate.  Despite the diversity to choose from, mud creature needed something more.  So Yhwh pulled a piece out of earth creature and created Ish and Isha, or male and female.  Isha doesn’t get a name until Chapter 3, after the apple is eaten, and she is called Chavvah (pronounced hava), which means breathe or life, or even community or town.  So we have dirt and air from which all humanity comes.

I think there is a beauty in this story, the celebration of diversity, and the idea that possibly just possibly, earth creature was without gender at first.  Gender was created almost as an afterthought here, and even in Genesis 1, God created male and female in God’s own image so there’s a strong sense that God too is beyond gender.  Both stories celebrate the creation of diversity and variety.  Both stories see that diversity as a good thing.  Elohim saw creation as good, and Yhwh wanted good for the mud creature and so created companions. 

We humans struggle with diversity.  We often assume that all humans will have the same body parts, will have the same capabilities and the same potential.  But just like our sunflowers, some grow strong and big and beautiful and sturdy, and some do not. Some have tragedy that stunts their growth. Some grow to be independent adults, and some need community help to live their lives.  Blue Heron in Athabasca educates us in the broad diversity of human shapes and capacities.  As a church, how do we welcome those who look like us but do not have brains wired like ours?  With curiosity, gentleness, love, and empathy.  Meeting everyone, even the littlest ones as created in God’s own image, an image of amazing creativity and diversity.  And they are, we are all created as Good in God’s Eyes.  Thanks be to God!

Undercover Boss

There’s a reality TV show where the multi-billionaire owner of a franchise voluntarily goes to work as a new employee in their store.  Canada’s version showcased PJ.'s Pets, Second Cup and Purdy’s Chocolates to name a few. Of course, the bad managers get fired and the kind employees who need help with family issues from health insurance crises to childcare get a happily ever after token gift for being so honest and caring.  One employee gets a new truck, another gets a scholarship for their children, and the boss gets a pat on the head for being so caring.  Minimum wage isn’t changed nor is job security, but hey isn’t it a cute story? 

I wonder if they were inspired by today’s scriptures.  Jeremiah was lamenting that things weren’t going as they should, and trying to diagnose what was going. And Jesus was doing his best to produce a head-scratching story that would provoke conversations amongst his followers as well as the religious followers of the day. Both were challenging the status quo of their communities.

It's hard to tell if it was Jeremiah or God, but the speaker in this passage was overwhelmed with grief for what they and their community were going through.  A national political tragedy was going on which impacted the political, religious and personal level of their society.  People were grieving the loss of certainty, the loss of control, the loss of stability.  Institutions and rituals they had taken for granted had been attacked and destroyed.  Families were torn apart; war had risen again after a generation of peace and stability.  Their comfortable faith suddenly developed a sense of urgency, and the people wondered where God was.  They grieved deeply for what had been ripped away from them.  They wondered if they had done something wrong to bring down catastrophe upon themselves.  And they wondered what the future would hold in store after so much tragedy.

It doesn’t feel too different than what some folks are feeling these days. People are talking about feeling overwhelmed with grief.  One person told me that they had lost several extended family members over the past four months.  Others told me about watching the news from England and shedding tears.  They, like Jeremiah, are searching for comfort, for the balm from Gilead that was an export to much of the middle east, valued for its medicinal properties and far more than just something that would sooth their physical injuries.  They need medicine for their souls, for their fear and anguish, for their lost purpose, hope for their future.  Where do the modern Jeremiahs turn to?

Normally I would say, this is where we turn to our gospel.  But the story Jesus told to his disciples isn’t straightforward.  Are we supposed to go out and bamboozle our bosses, cheat our employers, embezzle from our companies?  What gives, Jesus?    Scholars and experts are still scratching their heads, so it’s okay if we don’t get it.

If Jesus was telling it today, I bet it would go something like this.  He’s the guest speaker at the Chamber of Commerce banquet up at the Multiplex, and some folks are not happy that he’s been asked, given his reputation as a politicizing know it all who sticks his nose into everything.  He’s brought a table of his buddies sitting at the back, and it looks like some are reputable, but others look like they’ve slept in their clothes for a week.  Some even smell!  Jesus looks out over the crowd and says “So there was this CEO of the CIBC, or was it the BMO or maybe the ATB, anyway, the CEO sends out a mass communication to all branch managers that they will be audited.  Well, our local bank manager starts to sweat because he’s been doing a little, shall we say, creative bookkeeping, and it's a lot more than pilfering paperclips or stuffing staplers into his pocket to take home.  He knows his goose is cooked but he’s 59 and his resume won’t be improved by a prison record.  He calls in a local restaurateur and asks how much the business loan is for. 1.5 million smackeroos!  The owner fears forecloser and says “Business is slow and we are really trying hard to make it go”. “Quick”, the banker says, “scratch this out and put in 1 mill.  Initial here in these six places, done.”  The restaurateur is ecstatic, and the banker figures he’ll have free meals for life.  Then he calls in a homeowner who got a second mortgage for a basement suite.  “How much is your mortgage,” he asks.  “$800,000” says she, “and money is tight, please don’t increase my interest rate!”  “Nope, cross out the $800,000 and write $500,000.”  She’s in tears, kissing his hand and he figures he has a place to crash.  The CEO shows up and goes, “wow, that’s a great way to build customer loyalty, well done you!”

Imagine the response of the chamber of commerce to that keynote address.  What does it mean?  Jesus goes back to his table of friends and says, “if a white-collar criminal can build community, how much more should you do it?  You can’t have two bosses, the bank and God.  You will end up resenting one or the other, so be careful which boss you put your trust in. One will be there when you are needing a hug, the other could care less.”

Jeremiah is torn because he feels his community has forgotten who the boss is, their God or their rituals.  He grieves that they have put their trust in traditions and institutions, and now they are hurting.  Jesus reminds us that no matter what, God is the best boss we could ever have.  God is such a great boss, that God did the ultimate undercover boss, coming to live with us in the vulnerable and short life of Jesus, not to catch us out and reward the good and fire the bad, but because God loves us and wants to be the healing balm we all need in times like these.  May it be so for us all.