Looking for Answers

There are times when grief is in the air, and even more so as we approach Hallowe’en.  There are videos of partiers in Mexico dressed as Catrins and Catrinas, with skull-like make up.  People try on costumes like the Grim Reaper, or other folk characters from horror stories or scary movies.  Kids wear all kinds of outfits of their favorite fictional characters or super heros.  I keep meaning to make myself a Jedi costume one of these days but never quite get around to pulling it off. 

We don’t go all out with the skull facepaints like they do in Mexico, but it is becoming more prevalent even in Canada.  And that might not be a bad thing.  When we think about death rituals here compared to places like Europe or South America, or even New Orleans, they are very different.  We no longer wash or dressing the body at home.  And we’ve also tried to make it invisible. One time we were in the hospital where a family member had passed away, and the hospital staff came up to us and asked to remove the body before other patients started to wake up.  They didn’t want to upset the other patients.  Fair enough, but if it’s being done to hide the reality of death, is that healthy for our society?

A chaplain who served in Afghanistan with the Canadian Armed Forces came home to Edmonton to find that there was a new trend of roadside shrines.  Suddenly whenever a tragedy happened there would be a mound of teddy bears in front of a store or a street corner where strangers would congregate, overwhelmed with grief for someone they had never met.  It was almost like the news story had cracked open a bubble of unexpressed grief that needed to be poured out in a public way.  Dealing with death is not easy.

Ministers, even in the United Church, get called to do exorcisms and house purifications.  That’s not a part of our theology.  But it can be a way of giving voice to grief that doesn’t have any other way out.  We are not comfortable with that kind of ‘woo woo’.  Going to the other extreme is not healthy either.  That’s materialism, when people only believe in what they can touch. That mindset can lead to people competing for the most stuff, the most money, the most of whatever they can control.  It is not what we are called to as a people wanting to be Jesus followers.

Jesus was struggling to communicate a middle way.  He talked to the Sadducees about their beliefs of the afterlife and used scripture to defend his belief.  God is the God of the present, of the living, and still the God of past leaders of the Hebrew people.  He also challenged them to think outside their stereotyped assumptions that the dead live in identical ways to the living, with the same interests, concerns, entanglements and struggles.  Nothing further could be what Jesus thought life after death was.  It wasn’t a continuation of life on earth, but a transformation that was beyond description or definition or perfect knowledge.  And certainly, life after death could not be understood through a materialist viewpoint.

But rather than going into further detail, he then turned to the question that the Pharisees posed.  What is more important than whether the dead are gone forever or live on in eternity?  What is important is not the woo woo, or the stories of things that go bump in the night.  No, for Jesus, the debate on the afterlife is worth only a passing comment.  He recited the ancient prayer that all devout Jews are to recite, “Hear Oh Israel” and that the laws of their faith could be summed up in love.  This was not new knowledge for anyone.  There are over 600 commandments that observant Jews needed to follow, and there were many debates on how to do that.  If we hold the sabbath to be holy and that we are not to do any work or travel, we still need to milk our cows or they will suffer.  Love is the over-arching principle that governs how those commandments are put into practice.

It all comes down to relationship with the Holy, and with each other.  That can be hard, or seem like the ultimate in woo woo, and in our world where bombs are falling and people’s birth certificates are used as weapons against them, when shooters walk into bowling alleys, it is hard to remember to hold onto a relationship with something we can’t see, hear or touch.  Whether we believe like the Sadducees that we end when our lives end, or like the Pharisees that we continue on, Jesus wants us to focus on building a relationship with God.  That relationship is to be centered on love.  When we love God so deeply, it spills out onto our relationships with each other.

Some people are not ready for that.  Their grief is real and raw and all-consuming.  Their relationship with God, if they have one at all, may be one of resentment, of anger, of fear or even rage.  God can handle that anguish and negativity.  In fact many people find that expressing their anger to God is an important part of their grief journey.  It is still a relationship with the divine.  Like our psalm this morning, the scriptures are full of people pouring out their anger and suffering, their pain and fear to God. When we remember that even Jesus suffered and died, God must have grieved too.  But God pulled hope and love out of that tragic time, and we hear so many stories in this place of how God still pulls hope and love out of tragedy.  Grief is hard, but the good news is that God is with us, in life, in death and in life beyond death.  We are not alone, God is with us.  Thanks be to God!

Bear Traps

Ever hear these words coming out of your mouth, “honey, do these pants make me look fat?" Or maybe you've heard them said to you. This little phrase has been known as a bear trap. No matter what the other partner says, they are going to get in trouble!

Often the question is asked in all sincerity. There's a delightful scene in the Disney movie "The Incredibles" where Helen Parr, known as the superhero Elastigirl, tries to look at herself in the mirror and can't tell if motherhood has expanded certain portions of her anatomy. How is a loving partner supposed to respond? "Actually sweetheart, you have added some weight, but you are still gorgeous in my opinion" is truthful but not likely helpful.  The answer that’s right may not have anything to do with pants or weight gain, because the question may also have nothing to do with pants or weight gain.

Jesus was facing a similar bear trap. The Pharisees teamed up with the Herod supporters and figured out a game plan. The two groups didn't like each other much but had a shared interest in embarrassing Jesus in front of his followers. It was worth working together to put this rabble rouser in his place. What better way to do it than challenging him on the question of separation of church and state?

It's an age-old conundrum that humans have struggled with for a long time.  St. Augustine in North Africa wrote a massive book called “On the City of God Against the Pagans” that is over 400 pages long. He wrote it after Rome was destroyed by Visigoths.  It shocked everyone that hordes of barbarians waltzed in under the noses of the Roman Army right to the centre of Rome, pillaging and stealing as they went.  Many blamed Christians for this terrible event.  They were being punished for forsaking the Gods of their ancestors.  Praying to the false God Christos instead of Jupiter, Mars and Minerva was what had caused it.  Augustine, busy setting up the first refugee camp ever built by Christians, found time to sit down and write his massive book to counter that.

Being a Christian in a non-Christian world is still not easy.  Today, consumption is the most important God and Amazon makes so much money that its owner can build his own floating city to be emperor over. How do we live in this world? We imitate Jesus.

Jesus knew the Herodians and Pharisees were up to something as soon as he saw them.  The question of taxes was also a question of which side he would choose?  Herod’s political side or the Pharisees’ spiritual side?

In it’s extreme form, do we go and live in the wilderness, being completely self-sufficient, or do live in community with all its rules and regulations?  Do we become so heavenly focussed that we’re no earthly good?  Augustine suggested that there are times when Christians were to co-operate with the state, and times when Christians were to resist the state.  He was the first one to come up with the phrase “Just war” to make it okay for Christians to become soldiers and even to kill other humans despite their allegiance to Jesus.  Augustine challenged Christian pacifism for the sustainability of civilization through war.

Jesus was the Prince of Peace, not the prince of hair-splitting or populism.  He didn’t prevaricate or pander.  He didn’t try saying, “now dear, those pants are ugly and they don’t flatter your gorgeous derriere”, nor did he say, “why don’t you go to the gym and work out?”

The only way out of the bear trap Jesus took was to go to the highest principle.  What is God’s priority in the situation?  Jesus was the master of the “Yes And”.  “YES it’s important to live according to societal expectations around things like taxes and laws, AND it’s important to live according the values and principles that a follower of God is called to put into action.  When they clash, we are called to act with steel in our convictions, to live by example with faith and expectation.

Jesus taught us that it was all about God’s priorities.    Paul saw the Thessalonian community putting these priorities into action.  They did it so well that Paul thanked God for that powerful witness and told them it was inspiring others to do the same.

We live in a world where empathy is the last thing on many people’s minds.  On Thursday a teenager told me that many of her classmates were self-absorbed and only cared about what was in it for them.  This was frustrating to witness and no one was inspired and thankful for their lives.  Kids are not the only ones.  We all know of adults who don’t know or don’t care that some people don’t have cars and getting to doctors appointments is a real struggle.  We know of people who have so much mental illness that they can’t hold down a job.  We know of people who have so much fear and anger that they have become addicted to conspiracy theories.

Jesus called the Pharisees and Heriodians to live bigger than bear traps.  He called them to live according to God’s priorities first and foremost even in things as mundane as taxes.  He calls us to do the same.  When we imitate Jesus in all that we do, putting God first, we will inspire others to do the same.  What would it look like if people wrote how grateful they were for our presence, for our example?  What would it look like if we could find ways to be thankful in our lives that inspired others to do the same?  What would it look like to be so courageous and bold in our faith that we made a real difference, and a positive one to everyone who knew us?  May we find the courage of Jesus, the thanksgiving of Paul and the example of the Thessalonians to be a light of hope to all the world.  Amen.

Wedding Invite

 Trigger warning: the scripture includes references to violence, and there are comments about the current Middle East Crisis. 

When was the last time you got a wedding invitation?  Did you get it in the mail?  Did you get it on Facebook, or even through an e-mail?  Now the world is so different that people don’t even have to attend a ceremony in person anymore, they can watch it from the comfort of their own homes.  Things have changed a lot, even in the past five years.

And how did you decide whether or not you were going to accept that invitation? Did you make the decision based on how well you liked the couple, or how well you knew the family?  How did you feel if you heard that a wedding was happening to a family member yet you weren’t invited?

In the parable of the wedding a lot of people were invited but made excuses to avoid the party.  What a curious thing.  How could someone turn down such an invitation?  But the story was about just that.  The ruler got panicky and started bringing in everyone he could find.  Rather like the recent installation of the new president of Athabasca University, the invitation to the community reception was thrown wide to anyone within earshot.  “Fill that Hall”, the king demanded and the servants scurried around to do their best to do just that.

There’s an uncomfortable theme of violence in this story when the King orders servants to retaliate against the city who killed his employees.  Massacres like these are on our news feeds and TVs this week and they horrify us anew.  Jesus throwing this little detail into the story is disturbing to say the least. 

The massacre part of the story would probably not have shocked his listeners though.  Kings were a part of the honor code of the middle east culture of the time.  They had to protect their reputations and show strength at all times.  If someone insulted another person, the insult had to be addressed immediately and aggressively to prevent appearing weak.  If a king was insulted, it would be justification to him for starting a war.  People knew that a war could start at any time and that innocent lives would be sacrificed for the honor of a king they never knew.  An example of this was Herod the Great, in power before Jesus, who had a reputation of being so tough on his enemies, he even executed his wife and sons for treacherous plots based on manufactured evidence.  He was known as a brutal leader who assassinated anyone who threatened his power.  This was normal politics back then.

The shock of the story for the listeners would not have been the violence, but the king’s insistence on inviting everyone else for the wedding banquet.  He may have started with inviting other royalty, people who were the same status of him, but then he got creative.  He thought outside of the box and invited people who didn’t measure up, who didn’t have the appropriate status, who shouldn’t be in a royal dining room bumping elbows with their betters.  It would be like Elon Musk being turned down by Bill Gates, going out to the local Walmart and insisting that everyone in the store come to his gala party.  This is the surprise twist, the punch line that would have surprised the followers of Jesus.  This is the shock that they would have remembered when they shared the story with family and friends.

That picture of royalty eating with commoners predates the Magna Carta by about 1200 years.  It predates the U.S. Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal by more than 1700 years.  It predates the Canadian Act of Union’s call for Peace, Order and Good Government by 1800 years.  And it planted the seed for all those documents, as well as the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in the 1940’s.

Equality was a founding principle of Christianity.  Everyone was to be able to sit and break bread together.  The feeding of the 5000 was a scandal because it erased patriarchal hierarchy at meals.  The early church as described in Acts and other scriptures was a community where all ate together as equals.  Paul’s letter reminds people that God doesn’t want us to hold grudges, God wants us to stay on track, focusing on what is truly important, a community that celebrates and rejoices in fellowship with God.

In Canada, we have been living without murderous kings for a very long time.  We have lived with democracy.  We have universal human rights, we kno that war crimes will be prosecuted, that torture is no longer acceptable, that discrimination is not the hallmark of a healthy society.  We take for granted that the worst of oppressive, bullying behavior can be addressed appropriately in a court of law.  Or I should say, we can take this for granted if we are English or French-speaking people with pink skin.  Even in Canada, not everyone can take these rights for granted.  We need to remember that all are invited to the banquet without regard of their age, race, ethnicity, ability, sexual orientation, gender identity, family structure or any other factors.

How do we respond to the violence and mayhem in our world?  As Dr. Alex Clarke said during his inaugural speech at AU, we need to hold fast to our own North Star, the values we hold near and dear. As Paul said, Stay on track, steady in God.  In United Church words, deepen your spirituality, be bolder in your discipleship and practice acts of daring justice with joy and thanksgiving.  Let other people see your joy and ask how you find it in these challenging times.  Join the Barrhead bible study online.  Take the prayer practices we do here and incorporate them into your days.  Think deeply about what your values are.  And join our faith community in making a difference in the lives of those who need to hear good news.  Draw our circle of love and hope and joy wider with every day.  May it be so with us all. Amen

Who made you the boss?

Sometimes Jesus can be pretty mean.  One moment he’s all sweetness and light, bouncing kids on his knee, healing people that no one else wanted to touch, working the crowds all smiles and pats on the back, going out to dinner with the most unlikely of folks, and then, well, he gets in the faces of people he doesn’t have much respect for.  Matthew 23 is a good example of this.

It’s the day after Palm Sunday.  Jesus came in riding on a donkey, then he charged into the temple and knocked over the furniture, scattered decent businesspeople, and took a whip to anyone who got in the way.  It was a mess, a scandal and an uproar.  There would have been a a lot of bruised feelings.  There were probably committees that had emergency meetings late into the night.  Maybe there were signs posted “Please leave your bull whips at home”, or “Table throwers will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law” or “No throwing, yelling, whipping or harassing allowed.”  Who knows, maybe some enterprising youngsters wrote “Nazarenes Go Home” out on the front steps. 

It makes perfect sense then that the temple authorities responded to Jesus by demanding to see his preaching certificate.  What school did he graduate from?  Who were his professors?  Someone was going to get an earful and the sooner the better.

Once again, Jesus threw the question back at them to disrupt their thinking and their assumptions.  Where did John the Baptist’s authority come from?  It’s a stumper that they couldn’t figure out.   Like an impossible escape room puzzle they couldn’t solve, they had no answer that wouldn’t have political repercussions.  Jesus disrupted their game, destroyed their attempts to control his behavior and his teachings, and left them with a zinger.  “You think you’re holy?  Well, the honest people who know they are not holy are going to be first in line to meet God.  You’ll be at the back of the line if you’re lucky”.  Ouch!

This is not the humble Jesus in the Philippians reading who was so obedient to God that he sacrificed himself on the cross.  Or is it?  Humbleness is not about being a carpet for others to walk on, after all, but about letting go of our egos enough to listen to the challenging still small voice that calls us into bold discipleship and daring justice.  That’s not easy.  We face a lot of messages in our daily lives, from commercials to tiktok videos.  In magazine stands and news articles, we hear all kinds of advice on how we should accept ourselves, yet buy this lipstick or this car to have the perfect life.  More and more people are talking about how they have imposter syndrome or trauma triggers or any one of many diagnoses to explain why they are not perfect or performing according to some imaginary standard. We’ve lost the space to think deeply about what we value, what we care about on an interpersonal level.  In some ways Society doesn’t want us to look at our values, but wants us to see ourselves as only responsible to our own selves.  We are our own bosses.  Being our own God, in a way, answerable to no one, well, that’s really living the dream.

Except that we’re still struggling with our addictions, we’re still struggling with our reputations or our weigh scales or that feeling we have when we wake up at 2 am with all the troubles of the world weighing on our hearts.  We don’t make the best bosses of our own lives.  Living completely independently doesn’t work in the long haul.

Humbleness can be a great antidote to all that.  Humbleness is a practice that reminds us to look at deeper values.  We all make mistakes, we all have our flaws, we all have our secret struggles.  Which is where Paul’s words are so helpful.  He reminded his followers that one person perfected the art of being humble, Jesus.  And Paul defined humbleness not as wallowing in our imperfections but as keeping the welfare of the community at the forefront of all we do.  Hear what he said was a recipe for healthy humbleness: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.

This Sunday we celebrate worldwide communion and also honor the stories of residential school trauma, and we may wonder how to humbly work towards truth and reconciliation.  One way we can do that is to learn about an upcoming decision that the United Church of Canada has been asked to make. The indigenous churches that historically have been under our jurisdiction, are asking that they get to be their own bosses.  That they be self-governing.  Humbleness will be needed as we learn and listen together to what will be the healthiest choice for all of us going into the future.  But when we remember how Jesus treated the humble with respect, healed the honest with truth, and loved the strugglers with compassion, we will find ways to live out the call to love our neighbors as ourselves, letting go of our needs to be the boss.

Humbleness matters.  Assuming we make the best bosses of our or other people’s lives lands us in the same boat as the Pharisees, trapped without good answers.  Humbleness allows us the grace of working together in harmony for the greater good of all.  Humbleness gives us space to be open to God’s spirit. Humbleness helps us accept that there are many different ways to live in this complicated world.  By reading the words of Paul, and the stories about Jesus, we can be inspired to live humbly. May we remember to practice humbleness in all we say and do, like Jesus.  Amen