That all may be one?

This week I got into a, shall we say, ‘intense’ discussion on Facebook.  Someone posted about how ‘those parasitical churches ought to pay taxes just like everyone else in the world,’ and I mentioned that churches have a large economic benefit for the community.  Of course, someone challenged that, and I dug for some research and statistics to back up that statement.  Which I found, by the way.

There were a lot of comments that started like “The church is” and described all the evils they had heard of.  Comments like “The Church destroyed indigenous people and their culture”.  That is true on the face of it, but Lutherans, Mennonites, Orthodox (Ukrainian and Russian), Baptists and other groups had nothing to do with residential schools. Should they be blamed for what the Anglicans, Catholics, Uniteds and Presbyterians did?  And other comments developed, I’m sure you can predict them, “All Christians are anti-abortionist,” or “science hates religion” despite the United Church having Nobel prize winning physicists in their congregations. Or my personal favorite “No progressive Christians spoke out against ‘fascist white brethren’s rants” to which I replied, “where were you when I was preaching ad nauseum against a certain red-haired president who didn’t even rule my country?”

And of course, we have the nauseating example this week of a young woman calling out her pastor for having sexually abused her when she was underage, the pastor tearfully confessing and the congregation rushing to forgive him and forgetting her.  And many folks in the states are saying that they are tired of prayers when it comes to school gun violence and racially motivated shootings.  “When do we do something?” they rightly ask.

Churches get blamed for witch hunts, crusades and patriarchy.  Case closed, churches are bad and the sooner we get rid of them, the better.  History proves it.

Or at least one very narrow way of looking at history. It ignores the history of ordinary people of faith whose daily living is shaped and sustained by their commitment to God. Ordinary people like Lydia who are transformed by a casual encounter by the river one day.

Do you remember Lydia?  Not the tattooed lady of Groucho Marx’s affections, but quiet Lydia in the town of Philippi? Not many people do.  There were no crusades in her name, and no cities named after her, no priests that ran inquisitions on her behalf.  But she points to a different kind of Christian history worthy of being followed.

She was a person of status, an independent businesswoman that was in the unusual position of being the leader of a household.  She was a seeker of meaning to life in general, and was looking for a God worth believing in.  She had gravitated to meeting on the Jewish Sabbath with other women, and the mere fact that they met outside the city meant that there were not enough Jewish men in the town to have a synagogue of their own.  It also meant that they were not comfortable discussing faith inside the city walls.  She was used to leading a household and dealing in valuable commodities like the rare dye to make royal purple, and she was a leader in a time and a culture that did not permit women to own things, and treated women as things to be owned.

Enter Paul.  He thought he was looking for a man from Macedonia.  He thought he was looking for a synagogue.  He thought he was looking for his fellow countrymen who were steeped in scripture and who already knew God through the covenantal love shown Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and Leah and Rebecca, Moses and Miriam and Aaron, David, Ruth and Esther.  Instead, he found a seeker who was a gentile and a woman.  She also was the first European to be converted to the new message of love and hope. 

What a hope it was!  From being a seeker in the wilderness, she became a baptized member of a community.  From discussions outside the city, she became a hostess demonstrating unheard of generosity.  From being an entrepreneur, she became a leader of the church of Philippi.  From being an ordinary, non-descript woman, she became a saint!

Paul loved these people and took inspiration from them to continue his mission.  In his letter to the Philippians, he wrote, “As God is my witness, how I long for you with the compassion of Jesus.”  He also thanked them for their generosity, seen in Lydia’s offer of accommodation. Their generosity continued as he also wrote, “You Philippians know that in the early days of sharing the Good News, when I left Macedonia, no churched shared with me… except you alone.  Even when I was in Thessalonica, you sent me help for my needs more than once… I have been paid in full and have more than enough.”

The city of Philippi is now a world heritage site after earthquakes and wars.  There is a lovely little church for baptisms nearby that is named after Lydia, the first person in Europe to be baptized into the Christian Faith.  At times like these where so many awful things are happening around the world and close to home, let us remember humble Lydia’s story.  Her love and hospitality laid the groundwork for a faith that would develop hospitals for the sick, hospices for the dying, schools for children whose parents could not afford private tutors, and compassion for those who were seen as unimportant.  Her faith survived plagues and wars, famines and natural disasters.  Her faith spoke to her neighbors, encouraging them and inspiring them, and transformed her whole household into a family of love.

When we remember the root principles of Christianity, love, hospitality, compassion and service, we strike a chord in the people we talk to.  The people on Facebook are shocked to hear that we care about the well-being of our community, and that we are compassionate to the powerless and the abandoned.  When we are united in love, we can make a difference that withstands the challenges of history and the tragedies that life can throw at us.  In life, in history, in life beyond history, we are not alone.  Thanks be to God!

The Great Debater

Last week we heard about a nasty individual named Saul who had a surprising turn around in his life.  He went from being a hate-filled, angry persecutor of the followers of Jesus to a preacher that travelled all around the ancient world sharing the good news of Easter.  Same passion, same energy, but different focus. 

Paul the passionate, Paul the positive, Paul the opportunist, and Paul the powerful debater.  Paul, who travelled to Greece and Turkey to preach.  What was the secret to his success?  Is there anything we can learn from him?

Like all of us, Paul was not perfect, and some of his writings show this.  He could scold the Galatians and Corinthians one moment and praise them the next.  His writings disrespect women’s roles in the new church in the Timothy letters (probably not authentic Paul), and yet his letter to the Romans ends with a list of strong women preachers and leaders, even naming women as apostles and ordering  the church to treat them with the same respect as himself.  Paul was a complex man but at the heart of his message was a strong conviction that hope and change and renewal was possible.  Transformation could and did happen, and it did so for the better.

In this story, Paul carefully observed Athens.  He looked at how the city decorated itself, what the buildings and streets were like.  He saw statues of Zeus, Hera, Apollo, and of course the bright-eyed goddess of wisdom herself, Athena.  And being named after the goddess of wisdom, Athenians prided themselves in their culture and philosophy.  Acts describes them as being full of Stoics and Epicureans.  Stoics focused on being resilient through the study of ethics and the practice of virtual living, including self-denial.  Epicureans, on the other hand, believed that pleasure was the most important part of life, so let’s eat, drink and be merry. These were sophisticated debaters and thinkers, and yet they were still hungry for new ideas.  There were other peoples as well, of different nationalities and different faith traditions, all ready to debate and discuss.  Paul was an exciting new thinker who was talking about things they didn’t understand.  So, they brought him to the big debate corner, the ultimate soapbox location, where people came to talk about the latest trend.

It would be like getting on the Oprah Show to talk about what Athabasca United is doing here.  Smack dab in the middle of the public eye, Paul had hit the big time.  He cleverly and very bravely started where they were at, talking about the statues they had to the Unknown God.  It was a way of showing that he was seeing what they thought was important. And hearing their search for answers to the questions that their philosophies were not answering.  He wanted them to know he listened to them, saw what they cared about and respected their values and beliefs.  He even quoted one of their philosophers, when he said ‘In God we live and move and have our being’.

It was all about making a connection with his listeners.

Then he talked about his understanding of what they were looking for.  They were uncertain about the Unknown Deity, what God was, who God was, what was God like, what did God hold as important.  Unlike many people whom he had preached to in the past, at synagogues and gatherings of Jewish people, the Greeks were unfamiliar with the Torah, the scriptures Paul loved to quote.   Instead, he painted a picture of God that was very different than what they were used to seeing, not an Athena who played favorites or a Zeus who was a skirt chaser or a Hera that was a jealous wife or an Apollo who was both healer and destroyer.  Not one of many gods, a god who specialized as these other gods did, over some aspect of human existence, but the only God. A simple idea that would have seemed very intriguing to people!  Simple, straightforward, and grounded in a God who didn’t need bribes and fancy rituals, ornate sculptures, frequent parades and complex recipes of offerings to connect with humans. 

Simple

But then he lost his audience.  He talked about Jesus, crucified and risen, our judge and our hope.  Just as today, it’s not logical or rational, it offends the natural order, it is a leap of faith that confronts and challenges cynicism, apathy and depression.  It is not just a call for us to ponder how we live life, it assumes that there will be a time of justice and a time of accountability for the lives we live.  Something the stoics would struggle with, because they thought that the life of virtue would be its own reward, and the same for the epicureans. And it’s not just about how we live our lives but how our lives impact others.

So, Paul thought he had failed.  And indeed, the message of a God of love was resisted by Athens for a long time.  But Paul had planted seeds of faith in his debate with the Athenians.  Two of the listeners, Dionysius and Damaris, founded a tiny congregation with a few others.  400 years later Dionysius was recognized by historians as being the first bishop of Athens as well as its patron saint.  And while Christianity was strongly resisted in Athens for 300 years, now it has many churches, Greek Orthodox and Baptist and everything in between.

Today we can also reach people by sharing the good news with Paul’s simple formula.  First, and most importantly, observe.  Then connect.  Simply share your story, and last trust that the seeds planted here can keep growing in the days ahead.  If this was done in love when Europeans first came to Turtle Island, imagine how much different our history would have been.  Observe lovingly, connect lovingly, share lovingly and trust lovingly.  That is the way to share our story to those who feel overwhelmed by the many gods pulling for their attention, the many spiritual trends that leave people feeling empty and hopeless, and the many people searching for meaning and healing in our challenging world.  May we have the courage of Paul to speak in love to those we meet who hope of a better world and a better life.

 Thanks to Cam Dierker for sharing her photos of Greece!

The Big Thaw

 Just a week ago I walked down to the river. for me it’s a short trip, but it was amazing to see that there was still a lot of ice.  It was just starting to show water in places here and there.  And now a week later, it’s all thawed with nary a speck of ice or snow.

And we can see how fast it runs now that the ice is gone.  It is moving swift and silently once again.  The geese are nesting, the fish are biting, the flies are hatching, the bulbs are sprouting, and the grass is greening.  The season is changing before our eyes and another winter is behind us.

When we still had snow and ice, it seemed like nothing would change and spring would never come. Saul was frozen into such an attitude.  He had built an ice jam of cold fury towards people he saw as a threat.  He would not be moved from that position that these new-fangled ideas were an abominable twisting of the Torah. The more he heard them, the more he listened to them, the more of a threat they seemed, and the more icy he became to their ideas.

He became so obsessed with the followers of ‘The Way” that he asked for special authority to deal with them.  He wanted that ‘double 0’ designation that gave him licence to arrest and kill.  And he was willing to walk all the way to Damascus in Syria!  That’s 275 km away.  At the average speed of most humans, Saul was willing to go on a two week journey to round up and arrest malcontents so they could be punished.

All he could see was the threat.  All he could think of was preserving the status quo.  All he wanted to do was hurt.  He was frozen in his attitude towards people he hadn’t even met in person, condemning them without a fair trial.  Even helping with their execution.  He was the one who held the coats of others while they executed Stephen, he was the one described as ‘ravaging the church by entering house after house; dragging off both women and men to put them in jail’.

But he wasn’t the only one frozen into a particular opinion and attitude.  The real hero in this story, I think, is Ananias. He also was stuck in the attitude that Saul was a threat to his family, friends and his new faith.  He didn’t want to deal with this dangerous man.  He only saw the danger and not the opportunity that lay before him.  No way he wanted to go and be nice to Saul!

But Ananias was a follower of the Way and knew that Jesus taught them to pray for their enemies.  He knew that the resurrection had turned all their assumptions about the way the world worked upside down. He knew that he might not be the greatest at preaching the gospel to cynical people, but he was the ‘johnny on the spot’, the one God could connect with and send.  He was the one who healed Saul’s deep, frozen soul.  He was the one that started the river flowing, and what a river it was!

Saul who was so frozen in his ways and his attitudes and his hate, broke down in front of humble Ananias.  He realized his stubbornness and anger had been not only so unhealthy it impacted him physically, it also pushed him into behaving in ways counter to the faith he honored.  His extremist mindset pulled him into what today’s psychologists call ‘cognitive dissonance’.  Instead of honoring God and studying the Torah, he was persecuting people he didn’t know, breaking the Torah’s command to love God and love neighbor.

Who do we connect with?  Are we a Saul, stubbornly frozen in sure we know what is right and best for our neighbors, and willing to do whatever it takes to prove that we are right, and certain they deserve punishment?  Are we an Ananias, wondering how on earth we can talk to someone as angry and hurting as Saul?  Are we Saul’s companions, helping guide him to the support he needs?  Are we the followers of the Way, wondering what we can do to keep ourselves safe during the threat Saul is bringing?

If we are honest with ourselves, there are times when we are frozen in resistance to God’s message of compassion.  There are times when we are called to help someone in pain, and we feel like we don’t know where to start.  There are times when we can speak a word of comfort, not realizing how thawing simple words can be.  Ananias was not one of the twelve, and we don’t have letters in the bible from him to the other teachers.  This is the only sermon he preached.  This is the only story we have of him.  A simple man, following a simple message, speaking in faith and hope and courage to someone he never dreamed he could influence.

On this Christian Family Sunday, when we honor the many people in our lives who have been sources of love and healing, may we find the courage to speak out to the Sauls in our families who are frozen in cognitive dissonance and hurting enough to recognize their need to change.  May we find the honesty to face our own stubborn blindness and know it persecutes not just family and friends, but even and especially our Holy God.  May we help guide those who are in pain to safe places where they can thaw and find healing.  And may we find God’s healing presence taking the scales from our eyes and bringing us back our sight and energy to flow like a mighty river in God’s plan to end conflict and hate for all.  May we continue the story of ‘The Way’, one step at a time, one story at a time, one thawing river at a time. Amen.