Small Sacrifices

 Why do we follow Christ?  Why do we listen to his teachings when he seems to glorify abusive behaviors and torture by embracing his death on a cross?  These are deep, puzzling questions, and the scriptures sometimes help us and sometimes confuse us.

John’s gospel is not for the faint of heart in this regard.  It’s the gospel that almost didn’t make it into the bible back in the time of Constantine.  John was a philosopher, the Steven Hawking of bible writers.  When he described what Jesus taught, there weren’t many down to earth stories like we find in the other gospels, but flowery metaphors and complex images. 

And sometimes, we need flowery metaphors when dealing with the subject of today’s scripture.  Jesus was predicting his death and talking about suffering.  That wasn’t a popular topic back then, and it’s not today either.  Sometimes it feels like a modern slogan for the good life should not be “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” but “Life, liberty and the avoidance of all suffering”.  Our world struggles to know what to do with suffering.  We interpret the good life as being like an Oscar show, full of glittering gowns, fancy tuxedos and cleverly written speeches where everyone looks perfectly happy.  A lot of people put time and effort into looking like they are living the perfect life.  Social media is full of pictures of people living glamorous lives.  Unfortunately, this leads to increasing feelings of isolation, loneliness and depression as people wonder why they aren’t having more successes themselves.  Where are their statues for best actor or best costume designer, best director of the perfect life?  For those who are struggling with chronic illnesses and chronic pain, the push to portray only the happy moments of life can be a cruel expectation.

Jesus had an odd opinion about suffering. Jesus didn’t say that anyone who became his follower would be handed a “Get out of suffering free” card.  Some folks may preach that, and push the idea that Christians automatically get to avoid suffering.  There are people in our community who have turned their backs on Christianity because of that.  A catastrophe happens in their lives, and they take it as a sign that either they are terrible, or that God is angry at them and they don’t know why.  So, they reject Christianity altogether.

Jesus didn’t say that he would save people from suffering.  He did say that he came so that they could have life abundant.  And many of his disciples led very transformed lives that were abundant and fulfilling.  Fishermen became world travelers, tent makers became famous orators, tax collectors became community leaders, and they all followed Jesus’ teachings so passionately that they took his message to the ends of the earth.  Even faced with derision, imprisonment, and even crucifixion, they were so on fire that they kept sharing the good news to all who would listen.

Even Greeks wanted to come and speak with the Rabbi, and Jesus shared his message with them too.  His good news was for everyone regardless of ethnicity.  Often a reference to the Greek people was a reference to the rest of the world, for Greek was the language of intellectuals and philosophers.  Wealthy Romans considered a Greek tutor as a status symbol, like having a child in French Immersion may be considered a status symbol.  And Paul went to Greece, home of Socrates and Plato and schools of philosophy and medicine and was able to plant multiple small communities of faith, house churches with maybe a dozen people across that country that spread until it became a universally embraced way of life.

The disciples did that by making sacrifices.  They left their comfortable homes and their familiar ways and their homeland where everyone spoke the same language.  Now, we may squirm at the thought of sacrifices, but we do it every day.  How many of us sacrifice sleeping in on a Saturday morning because the dog needs to go out for a walk?  How many of us sacrifice our time by volunteering for Meals on Wheels or making lunch for crib players or selling tennis balls for the Lions or raising money for Rotary Club’s international exchange student program?  How many of us sacrifice our money for supporting good causes at the Farmer’s Market or buy fair trade coffee at the grocery store or buy chocolates for a kid’s school fund raiser?  How many of us helped our neighbors during Covid, or supported family and friends when they were going through hard times, or drove neighbors to doctors appointments?  We know how to follow in the footsteps of Christ and we often do it without realizing that we are even making sacrifices.

We sacrifice for others in many ways.  It’s because of those sacrifices, large and small, that we have continued to provide support for so many people for so many centuries.  Peter Drucker, a business guru, would ask industry leaders which organization was the most resilient.  People probably named institutions like the UN, or the Red Cross and the like.  Drucker surprisingly said it was the Church.  It was durable not because it created great leaders but because it allowed ordinary people to do outstanding things. It’s survived plagues, wars, collapses of empires, corrupt leaders trying to produce evil things like crusades and witch hunts, and it keeps returning to its core values of empathy, equality and courage. Or as we say in the United Church, deep spirituality, bold discipleship and daring justice.

Christianity transformed communities over the centuries. It’s easy to forget how resilient it has been and hard to see how resilient it is even now.  We don’t get the big picture when we are wrapped up in our worries and struggles.  When we hang on to our lives tightly, we can get tied up in knots of grief, fear and anxiety.  When we focus on our community and make those little sacrifices that we know so well how to do, we can do bold and beautiful things that make a difference in the world. And God glorifies what we do, saying, “This is my beloved child with whom I am well pleased.”  May our sacrifices continue to glorify God and inspire and empower the world! Amen.

Snakes Alive!

The things we do to survive difficult times are truly surprising.  Wilderness survival has become a staple on Netflix and YouTube, with shows like Man Tracker being popular.  But the ancient Hebrews, wandering around in the wilderness, didn’t have encyclopedias to tell them how to survive, or what to eat.  They didn’t have an app on their phone pointing to where the nearest grocery store was, and they certainly couldn’t skip the dishes!  Survival was not something they could take for granted.  So when snakes moved in to their campground, no wonder they were upset.  They couldn’t contact Fish and Wildlife and rent a snake trap to deal with the infestation.

They did have a clear understanding that their choices had led to their misfortunes.  Their decision to be negative, to complain repeatedly about the food like a bunch of teenagers in the school cafeteria, was very human.  There are at least 14 instances in the books of Exodus and Numbers, of the people complaining about the food or the water, like a broken record that went on and on.  Despite everything Moses did, finding rocks with water in it, or manna on the ground, or quails in the air, the people still complained.  Slavery where they had no choices and they knew what would happen every day of their lives, was better than the unpredictable never-ending hiking trip that left them all tired and grumpy at the end of every day.  Freedom is not as wonderful as they thought it would be.  They were still part of the slavery mindset where it was always someone else’s fault.  They were addicted to seeing only the negative in every situation.  Surprisingly, snakes are supposed to be better protein than beef, and according to one website, rattlesnake meat is particularly delicious.  And since Moses hadn’t gotten time to write down what was clean and what was unclean yet in the book of Leviticus, snakes could have been a real boost to their diets.  At least, if you don’t eat the poison glands in the heads, and don’t get bitten as you try to catch them.  Maybe Moses or the writers of Leviticus knew something about those snakes we don’t.

Whatever the reason, God and Moses cooked up some art therapy for the Hebrews to get them looking up.  They cooked up a snake on a stick, to remind the folks that they had someone to trust in that was more powerful than snakes.  To remind the folks to go to prayer first, not negativity.  To break their slave thinking which assumed the worst in all situations.  To put God right in the centre of all their calamities and fears and frustrations.

Jesus continued that metaphor and built on it in a night-time conversation with Nicodemus.  Nicodemus, an educated believer, was an expert in the bible.  He wanted to figure out if Jesus was legitimate or just a con man, if Jesus was rooted and grounded in his scriptures or just inventing whatever he felt like.  This was a test of Jesus and his theology by a temple official.  This was not a casual chat about whether or not snakes might be edible, a conversation that was light and fluffy between two strangers wondering if they might be able to become friends.  This was the meeting of two great minds to talk about deep philosophical stuff.  Jesus could throw obscure quotes from the bible at Nicodemus because Jesus had studied it well.  Nicodemus would have been impressed that Jesus knew that odd story, and he would have taken it as a sign that Jesus had done his homework.  From the questions Nicodemus asked Jesus, he was honestly open and curious as to what Jesus was teaching, and was listening hard to understand.  That teaching was surprising on so many levels.  We tend to focus mostly on John 3:16 because that has become the most famous passage of the bible, seen at football games and on billboards.  It also has become interpreted in toxic ways.  One person described John 3:16 as a “believe it or else” warning sign used to divide and discriminate against people that don’t believe in Jesus in just the right way.  Which is ironic, because Nicodemus came with questions and an attitude of curiosity.  Jesus treated him with deep respect, engaging his questions, inspiring deeper questions, and having a rich, metaphorical conversation.  If Nicodemus were here today, would he read John 3:16 as an invitation to deeper conversations or as a condemnation of himself as not doing Christianity right?  Would the people he talked to today condemn him for not understanding, or encourage him to keep questioning?  It’s too bad that we stop at 3:16, because 3:17 is in my mind a much more invitational and hopeful verse.  Jesus came into the world not to condemn the world but that the whole world might be saved.  In some ways, that is the true scandal of this passage.  Our secret deeds will no longer be secret, our actions that we’re not proud of, these will be as evident and as prominent as if we had put them on a stick and marched them in a parade in the downtown on Canada Day.  But the whole world will be saved not only from our faults and mistakes and secrets, but from all that has us feeling scared or angry.  The whole world.  Not just the pretty ones, the famous ones, the straight ones, the rich ones, the powerful ones, but the whole world.

The whole world includes people of all ages, races, ethnicity, abilities, sexual orientation, gender identity, and family structure.  It also includes creation, snakes and all.  Jesus didn’t condemn Nicodemus, who helped care for his body on Good Friday.  Jesus came for all of us, in all our glorious diversity.  Whether we are campers who like our microwaves, or survivalists who want to know how to cook the snakes that are edible, we are part of the world that Jesus came to be lifted up for.  May we find courage and strength no matter where we find ourselves or what we are struggling with, by keeping our eyes on Jesus.  Amen.

Raging against the Machine

Anger is a dangerous tool.  It’s intoxicating when we feel we have a legitimate reason to let it all out and pull out our whips, rant at people present in the room and knock over tables.  It feels good.  Or at least for the first 10 or 20 minutes.  Then remorse sets in and we start second-guessing ourselves.  Did we do it for the right reasons?  Was that the only way we could get our point across?  Did it have the results we hoped for?  And when we ask those kinds of questions, often the answer is a resounding ‘no’.

Anger often lowers the trust we have in the angry person.  It can also emphasize our own vulnerability.  The news recently of a shooter invading Edmonton City Hall is a good example of this.  The beautiful glass pyramid was the location of celebrations, heated debates and controversial presentations, but it was open to everyone, adults, children, new Canadians, First Nations, rich and poor alike.  Now because of one man’s anger, that has gone from City Hall.

It's easy to imagine that being the response of the temple authorities to Jesus having his little hissy fit.  Whether we read the Mark version or the John version, the leaders were not happy. They wanted to know why Jesus thought he had the right to pull such a stunt.  It was upsetting enough that his disciples all remembered it a little differently.  Mark’s story has Jesus quoting scripture, John’s has Jesus predicting his death and resurrection.  Mark remembered it happening just before Jesus was crucified, and John told it as happening as the start of Jesus’ ministry.  Either way it was so memorable that it got into all 4 gospels.  Even Christmas doesn’t get into them all.  So, this is right up there with Palm Sunday, Good Friday and Easter.  This is an important story.

It is easy to point a finger at the scribes and Pharisees and say, “boy did they ever get it wrong! At least we don’t worship like that!”  This is problematic on two counts.  One is that it assumes that they were bad, and that assumption has sometimes slipped into anti Semitism.  The other assumption is that we aren’t like them, and that too is not helpful.  It says that the way we do things in our church or our denomination is perfect, and so are we so we don’t have to change.

Worship isn’t perfect.  And maybe it should never strive to be perfect.  Oh sure, there are the churches who have teams of technicians, multitudes of musicians, a preponderance of polished preachers, and a horde of happy hosts clamoring to greet you at the door.  There’s a church near Halifax that went from 20 people to a congregation of over 500 people in the space of three years, whose preacher got on the cover of a magazine!  The church even put out souvenir dvds of that day’s service that they sold to folks as they left the sanctuary.  They were pressing those dvds as fast as others were pouring coffee in the fellowship hall.  It was quite the entertaining event.  For many, it was a powerful spiritual experience, complete with laying on of hands, speaking in tongues and spiritual warfare.  Heaven and Hell were mentioned as both bribe and threat.  The lighting was superb and the slide show was flawless.  Is that what worship is supposed to be?

It’s easy for us to look down our noses or be jealous of that kind of worship, but worship is supposed to be a time when we come together to support each other on our faith journey.  It’s a time when we look and listen for signs of God at work in our our world.  It’s a time when we open ourselves to learning something new, something we hadn’t thought of before, something that may spark new ideas and new insights.  It’s a time where, as one theology writer said, “we are to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”.  So those of us who are in a good space support those of us who are struggling.  And those of us who are struggling will pay it forward to the next person when we can.  All this is happening in worship.  We hope. 

The ancient Latin word for worship was ‘liturgia’ which translates to literally public service or may also be work of the people.  Something we all do together.  Something that helps us all serve each other together and serve the world.  It’s not something one person does to others.  It’s not a stand-up comedy routine or a dramatic monologue. It’s work of the people by the people for the people to serve and love God.

When we read the scripture of Jesus knocking tables over in the temple, it’s a time to ask ourselves how we are doing?  Are there things getting in the way of our worship?  Are there things that we can be adding or taking off?  This is a constant process.  Pews weren’t introduced into churches until the 1200s and there are Alberta churches that had no pews until the 1930’s or later in the Ukrainian tradition.  There was a church in New York that split in the 1880’s when a newfangled organ was put in, others rebelled at the 'honky-tonk pianos or the Methodists that belong only in bars' or even singing.  We substituted grape juice because of the temperance union movement, and I’m sure that annoys some folks, and comforts others.  But however we worship, whatever way we worship, Jesus calls us to focus on God.  Not on our performance of worship.

The temple leaders were shocked at Jesus.  If he came here today, we might be shocked too.  But as we worship, as we wrestle with the scriptures in this place with our community of faith, we are also wrestling with Jesus, who continues to call us to look at why we worship and how we worship.  We are called to celebrate God’s presence here among us. May it all be to the glory of God and to loving our world.  Amen.