The Struggle to Love

(Photo: A Mennonite, a Catholic and a United Church minister finishing a jigsaw puzzle together, 2023)

C. S. Lewis once said that the hardest person to love other than ourselves, is the person sitting beside us in the pew.  They drop their hymnbooks, they pick their teeth, or they drip mud on the carpet.  It’s easy to proclaim love in the abstract for people we will never meet, or in a foreign country far away.  It’s another thing to love the people next to us.

There’s a United Church who was designing a new building.  The congregation became fiercely split between those who thought that it was an important way of telling the community that they were a church, and those who thought a steeple was a sign of patriarchal, hierarchical oppression.  The ones who thought a steeple was a necessity couldn’t agree on whether a cross should be on the building.  Was it a sign of state-sanctioned torture or was it a beloved symbol of hope and encouragement?  Other congregations have split over the color of carpets, pews vs chairs, (and by the way, pews are a relatively new invention developed about 800 years ago and not really spread far until protestants decided they wanted to sit down for the sermon), sung music versus instrumental music, never mind how we do communion and baptism.

But, and this is a sad but, we are not known for our unity and love, but for our diversity and judgmental arguments.  There are denominations that will not talk to each other, and just because someone was baptised in one church, doesn’t mean that they will be accepted in another church.  There are incidents where young people have made plans to get married only to be told by their priest or pastor that they aren’t Christian enough or acceptable enough.  It gives us Christians a really bad name.

In 2012 I went to the fastest growing church in Canada.  It was growing so fast that the pastor got on the cover of MacLean’s Magazine. They had four greeters at the door, and four ushers to help people find their seats.  The place was full, the service was slick, with slides for all the hymns and not a hymnbook in sight, a praise band that got everyone full of emotion with songs that lasted 7 or more minutes each.  People spoke in tongues, accepting Jesus as their savior and getting the pastor to lay healing hands on them.  The sermon was a riveting, dramatic 30-minute reenactment of David’s friend Jonathan sneaking up on the dreaded Philistines with only his trusty servant beside him. Now there’s a passage that doesn’t get preached on very often, but the pastor hammed it up and made it unforgettable. The whole service was closer to two hours and there was even someone in the back of the sanctuary burning cds of the worship service and selling them as people left. 

The next week we went to a Quaker service where there was no music, no organ, no guitar, just silence.  In that service, the first half hour was for complete and utter silence where all that could be heard was the breathing of the person sitting beside you.  30 minutes of nothing but our own thoughts.  Then the next half hour was people sharing what came up for them in their prayers.  They didn’t like it when students came to worship wearing shoes with shiny sequins on them as that was a sign of not living a simple and humble life.  That too was a sermon that was never forgotten, and it was maybe two sentences long.  When everyone had said what had come to their hearts, they said the Lord’s prayer together and then had coffee time.

This kind of diversity and division among Christians is confusing to outsiders.  They don’t understand why there is so much division among people who were commanded to love one another.  It is one more reason for modern, cynical atheists to roll their eyes and dismiss our faith.  Much damage has been done to the Christian witness by folks trying to prove that their interpretation is right and better than others.  And when they mixed politics with judgmental righteousness, a lot of people got hurt, wars got started and trauma was inflicted on generations of people.  All because we forgot that Jesus taught us to love one another with a sacrificial love that was deep, bold and daring.

We forgot to hold close to the source of Love, Jesus, and God.  We forgot to pray for help in loving our neighbors.  We forgot that we are all made in God’s own image which means some of us need silence, some of us need loud enthusiasm, and some of us need something in between.  It’s okay to recognize that we have different ways to connect to God.  An abundance of ways to practice loving God.

The challenge for us, as it has been for Christians for centuries, is remembering that we are not doing this by ourselves.  We do not have to love perfectly for God’s love to be perfected in us.  And we can ask if our feelings towards our neighbors are coming from fear or love.  Fear gets us acting like dinosaurs, doing the classic fight, flight or freeze reactions.  Fear breaks churches down.  Fear withers us, like a dead vine branch.  We do not thrive on fear, we are not resilient on fear.  We do not grow or produce fruit when we are connected to fear.  When we remind ourselves to root ourselves in compassion and prayer, and support each other in love, our Christian witness is strengthened, and God will strengthen us to bear much fruit.

What an amazing witness we would be if we found ways to help each other be less fearful and more loving.  If we could look for ways we are united instead of different.  If we could look beyond my needs to our thriving.  And from my troubles to helping the world be a more resilient, loving place.  When we work together in love, God works in us to love the world too, and the world needs our unifying love now more than ever.

May we find the courage to love one another as we have been loved.  Amen.

Good Shepherd

When I was a kid, we lived in Australia for a year, and our next-door neighbor had a sheep station.  Sheep are a big thing down under, and as Canadians, we got invited to all kinds of things.  We got to see the sheep get dipped in some kind of medicine in what looked like a tiny dugout.  We got to see the sheep getting penned up for the shearing by the drovers, hard working and tanned, burly men.  We were shocked to see the dogs running over the backs of the penned-up sheep but even more shocked to see the drovers also walking across the backs of the sheep!  They were quick about it, and the sheep seemed none the worse for wear.  We even watched them wrestling the sheep into the shearing shed, pinning their legs and taking the razor right down to the skin of the animals.  It looked pretty traumatizing at first, but once the sheep were firmly held, they seemed to be okay.  We got to help picking off the loose or dirty bits of the fleeces and our hands got really soft from the lanolin in the fresh wool.  Then we watched the workers expertly flip the fleeces into big bins lined with burlap until they were full.  The bins were always in pairs and attached to a machine that would take one bin and rotate it over the second bin and squish its contents into the lower bin, then they would attach the top of the burlap and move it to the stack.  These burlap cubes must have been about three feet square and we kids thought it would be fun to jump on them and see how much we bounced!  We thought it would be soft but it was more like expecting a soft cushy sofa and getting a brick bench instead.  Wow!

It wasn’t our job to take care of the sheep.  And it wasn’t the job of the shearers to take care of the sheep.  That was the job of the Grazier, who owned the stations and kept the dingos away.  He knew that sheep who don’t get sheared can get into big trouble, even though they might like to escape from the shearing shed.  There was one sheep in New Zealand named Shrek, who escaped and when he was shorn, he lost sixty pounds of wool!  Sheep can get so weighed down by their wool that they can’t move to reach fresh pastures where green grass grows, and they can’t lie down by still waters to quench their thirst.

Good shepherds focus on more than just their sheep.  They also focus on the world that their sheep live in.  Shepherds who forget this part of caring for their sheep will allow them to overgraze their pastures.  Spending too long in any one paddock can lead to sheep having worms, or being impacted by drought conditions, or targeted by wolves and coyotes.

Sometimes we can be like stubborn sheep, wanting to avoid what’s good for us, and not recognizing how good we have it.  We don’t want to take the medicine the Good Shepherd provides for our souls, and we certainly don’t want to lose the things that keep us feeling warm and cozy and safe.  We don’t want to be moved from paddock to paddock to let the earth and grass recuperate from our use of the land. But there are times when the Good Shepherd knows we need to be sheared of all the things that weigh us down, fear, anxiety, depression, loneliness, and yes, maybe even too much stuff.  There are times when the Good Shepherd calls us to recognize when we have harmed the environment.  It’s hard to let go of all that, but we need to trust that the Good Shepherd knows what’s best for us.  And when our shepherd cares so much for us that he’s ready to even sacrifice his life for our well-being, that’s pretty amazing and humbling. 

Yesterday, people spent some time pondering the different images they had of our Good Shepherd.  If you talk to a shepherd who takes care of sheep for a living, as I had the opportunity to do just this week, the Good Shepherd is an amazing metaphor that resonates with them in a very powerful way.  But many of us have never touched a sheep or even seen a sheep up close.  The image of Jesus as our Good Shepherd can be as foreign to our lived experience as the image of a skyscraper would have been to a Roman Emperor.  Using this image today may be as enticing as a 1950’s jello salad, once all the rage at church potlucks, but never seen on restaurant menus.  In today’s society, it’s a metaphor that may not work well for us, especially if we think of sheep as docile and dumb.  They are anything but.  They can be tough, stubborn, creative, and easily spoiled by city slickers treating them like pets, as one of my farmer friends has often told me.  What kind of metaphors could we explore for Jesus that might help us feel more connected to him? Jesus is my homeless shelter?  Jesus is my Construction Safety Officer?  Jesus is my fire chief?  Jesus is my Astronaut?  Some of the metaphors that people came up with yesterday were amazing.  

Whatever metaphor we use that works for us today, hopefully it helps us to remember the characteristics of Jesus that can help us expand our understanding of who Jesus is in our lives today. Easter is a time to remember that Jesus had an abiding, unwavering kind of love and commitment to us all. And thanks be to God, Jesus continues to inspire and guide us and lead us into safe pastures.  May it be so for us all.  Amen.

Why are You Surprised and Disturbed?

Surprise! Another gospel, another shocking surprise!  Jesus pops back into the disciples’ lives when they least expect it.  Luke, John, and Matthew have Jesus popping in and out of their Easter Sunday stories like a jack in a box or a game of whack a mole.  Not just once, but several times.  On the road to Emmaus, behind locked doors, on the Galilee beach with a fish fry, and making sure that the disciples know that he’s no ghost or zombie.  Again and again, he is physically present to people described as reliable and trustworthy witnesses who are completely bewildered at the turn of events.

Not for long, according to our scripture reading this morning.  Peter has transformed in a few short days from someone full of grief and guilt into one who speaks with confidence and authority.  This is not the man who denied Jesus three times.  This is not the man who scolded Jesus and being told “Get behind me you Satan!”

Peter speaks not about himself and his grand ideas but God’s healing power.  The verses before this talk about a man born with weak legs.  He was a beggar at the door of the temple in Jerusalem, dependent upon the generosity of passers by.  Everyone knew him.  To see him standing on his own two feet, hanging on to Peter and John, would have been a surprise and shock.  Impossible!

Peter gave his first sermon spontaneously, and it was powerful because of the beggar standing beside him, a little wobbly perhaps, but a living example of a surprising God in action.

It's amazing to hear that both Jesus and Peter don’t make these extraordinary events about themselves.  Even though Jesus talks about being the Messiah, it is all in service of reconnecting people to God.  When we think that only perfect humans can connect with God, how can anyone feel comfortable approaching the sacred mystery that guides us?  Peter firmly told people he was not the one with healing powers.  Only God had that power, and only through following the teachings of Jesus could Peter help the beggar.  Peter knew that what he had learned from Jesus was rooted in his devotion to God, his understanding of scripture, his participation in worship and prayer in the temple.  Surprise! God wasn’t only found in the scrolls they read, in the old stories of their ancestors, but also in the lives of the people right there in front of them!

Surprise, Jesus was still there.  Even though authorities had done everything physically possible to silence Jesus by killing him, it had not killed the healing stories and actions that Jesus had done.  If death could not stop his message of love and grace and hope, what could?

Who needs that kind of surprise in 2024?  Who is the lame beggar in our midst?  There are many reports of Millennials and Gen Y adults struggling with despair and apathy.  The winter edition of Orion Magazine whose cover is the picture for this sermon, was about the struggles young people are having with dating around the world.  China is struggling with a sharply plummeting birth rate.  Canada’s birth rate has been dropping since 2009.  Young adults struggle to find stable long term relationships.  Some give up on romance altogether.  It’s easy to forget that this is the generation that saw the twin towers explode when they were in elementary school.  They’ve grown up in a world that has been talking about climate change since before they were born.  My children were learning about recycling and caring for the environment as early as Grade Three, and knew that car exhaust and pollution were causing global warming. Australian kids had wide-brimmed hats added to their school uniforms in the 90’s because 80% of cancers there are skin cancers.  Many young people experience climate anxiety that impacts their emotional health.  They wonder where they can turn to for hope.  Between Covid, 9/11 and global warming, who can blame them?

They have grown up in a world of contradictions.  A world that claims that there is no God.  There is no reason to plan for the future because at any time a gunman can walk into their schools, or a terrorist can fly a plane into a building or someone can get a cough in China that shuts down a university in Toronto or a cruise ship in Hawaii.  There is no safety in this world. 

Surprise! God is still up to something.  This is as hard to believe today as the resurrection was for the people listening to Peter.  But there are lots of little signs of grace and hope showing up when we know what to look for.  There are websites like Fixthenews.com that report on the drop in violent crime in the US, the shrinking of the Japanese Mafia, the increase in the number of countries that are making same sex marriage legal despite the pope’s latest news release.  Or Optomistdaily.com with stories like Medellín, Colombia, once the most dangerous city in the world planting so much greenery that they are lowering the average temperature of their city at the same time that they lower their carbon footprint and their crime rate.  Or the United Church’s Faithful Footprints program that aims to lower our carbon emissions by 80% by 2030, who have worked with over 400 United Church properties. Faith communities are the second-largest property owners in Canada after the federal government, and the United Church of Canada, alongside the Mennonite Church of Canada, is one of only two faith communities with a national-level grant program, and our example is inspiring the Anglican Church of Canada to develop something similar.  We also now have so many people wanting to become candidates for ministry that we have had to put a cap on how many students are going into our programs! Because no matter what, God is with us, we are not alone.  God is still surprising us, inspiring us, healing us so that we can stand, wobbly, leaning on each other for support so that we can dream with God of a healthier more loving world for the future.  May it be so, Amen!

Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.

There’s an old family story about my grandfather who was in the Colonel Mewburn Hospital in Edmonton.  He was waiting for surgery on his eye that had become so affected by glaucoma the doctors told him it had to be removed.  This was a blow to him as he was a salesman travelling across Alberta to show merchants his advertising samples.  He had binders of pens, calendars, mechanical pencils, all labeled “Your business here” that stores could order and hand out to their customers.  He ignored the headaches and the blurry vision as long as possible, then when he did see a doctor, it was too late. His three sons were adults so that was a mercy, but the night before the surgery, his heart was troubled and he couldn’t sleep.

Finally, he dozed off only to have a vision that Jesus was standing at the foot of his bed and told him that he would be okay, and would still have a good life.  He woke up and told his wife and sons of his dream. 

His experience of Christ was as real to him as he was to his children and grandchildren.  That experience didn’t solve all his problems, it didn’t give him his sight back, it didn’t help him to learn braille, it didn’t help him keep his temper when blindness frustrated him, but it gave a sense of comfort that no one could take away.  He also committed to going to church, and it was so important that he went every Sunday.

We view experiences like this and Thomas’ with more than a grain of salt.  The world thinks everything should have a logical explanation, and that facts are more important than fiction.  People angrily attack others on social media for sharing such stories.  They type things like “Religion is evil, it has caused nothing but suffering and the only people who benefit are the con men pushing an unbelievable Santa Claus in the sky.”  The anger is as real as surgery or glaucoma.    It’s hard to have faith in a mysterious God and an even more mysterious resurrection in such a world.

Thomas knew that anger.  The death of his beloved rabbi Jesus was traumatizing.  It went against everything he had hoped for.  The disciples, along with women like Mary Magdalene, had been together for a long time, and learned much from Jesus.  But now he treated their words with distain.  How could they, in the space of a single day, go from grief to enthusiasm?  No wonder Thomas rejected their crazy story.  He felt betrayed by them, and he must have felt lonely and abandoned.  He no longer trusted them.

Our whole society right now is suffering a crisis of trust.  Bridges collapse, charity workers get bombed, civilians and even children are targeted for drone attacks, and there’s unpredictable and catastrophic weather patterns leading the news on a regular basis. Some people turn to shopping channels or bibles being sold by a politician.  Some believe that the UN is trying to sterilize everyone with contrails.  They ignore warnings about measles.  The world is changing, and they want to get back to a time when the world was predictable and there were never empty shelves in the grocery store.

It's hard to know who to trust or what to trust.  Thomas trusted his own senses.  He trusted his Rabbi.  But his friends?  No way would he have trusted them with his possessions as described in our Acts passage. And yet, he had an experience of Jesus that changed all that.

This experience was transformative, just as the vision of Jesus in the Colonel Mewburn Hospital was transformative for the man who lost his sight.  Just as it was for the disciples and followers of Jesus living in Jerusalem.  They became so inspired and so trustworthy that they were able to live together in what sounds like perfect harmony.  They came together in hope and trust and vulnerability and joy, because of the Easter experience of resurrection.

We too are called together to be in community.  This is not easy, and there will be times when we have angry Thomases demanding signs and proof.  They will demand a high level of trust from us.  What a daunting task!  If we think about trust in the way that the 1 John passage from our prayer of confession thinks, if we say we are perfectly trustworthy, we are liars.  The only thing that is perfectly trustworthy is God, and God is both the hardest and the easiest to trust.  Human trust is fragile and easily damaged.  As Brene Brown describes it, trust is made up with little moments when humans do thoughtful things for one another.  The more we are trustworthy in the little things, the more we will be trustworthy in the big things.  Trust, according to Stephen Covey, is made up of integrity and action.  Integrity is caring about equality, justice, and fair play.  Without action, it is useless.  When we commit to doing something that aligns with our values and fail to follow through, we lose trust.  When we follow through, that builds trust. We need to build a pattern of trust in ourselves and others that will stand the test of time.

Trust is seen in acts of bold discipleship and daring justice, but it is fed with deep spirituality by reflecting on the integrity and purpose Jesus had.  When we practice deep spirituality, we find the energy to be bold disciples who do daring justice.  Thomas’ encounter with Jesus was so transformative that he traveled far and wide to share good news to many people.  The blind man’s encounter gave him the courage to keep on living despite his many hardships and struggles.  May it also give us the courage to keep growing, trusting and praying for our own Easter experiences of the living Christ so we can make a difference in the world!

Against All Expectations

Easter was a disaster, at least according to the Gospel of Mark.  Three women came to a gloomy tomb to do a distasteful task by themselves.  There were no undertakers, no funeral homes, or no caskets.  If anyone was to take care of a corpse, especially one who was the product of a shameful torturous execution, it was family members who loved the deceased.  So the ladies, in this oldest of Gospels, made their way in the dark of the early morning, grieving and stumbling on the rough road to the outskirts of town where they expected to cry and hold their beloved rabbi one more time.  They knew what would happen next.  They knew that it was going to be stinky, stomach-churning business.  They knew they were alone in this distasteful task.

It's easy to gloss over this when we think of Easter.  Chocolate, colorful pysanka, flowers, fancy hats, it’s a bright colorful celebration of the return of spring.  And most people prefer the sugar rush of sweet chocolate to the heavy perfumes and ointments that the two Marys and Salome were carrying.  Let’s have fun after a long winter!

It's good to celebrate, but what are we celebrating?  The resurrection, of course, in all its illogical, implausible and unscientific glory.  Despite the Da Vinci Code and other conspiracy theories, some that are even debunked by Peter in our scriptures, something surprising and shocking happened that Easter Sunday.  It was such a news item that even a Jewish Historian named Josephus wrote about him some 50 years afterwards, saying:

Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man. For he was a doer of startling deeds, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. And he gained a following both among many Jews and many of Greek origin. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.

A Roman historian also mentioned Jesus in his records as well, Tacitus, as did several other writers.  What’s interesting is that they didn’t think Christianity would last, but it persevered despite all odds.  When Peter was executed in Rome, people must have thought it was the end.  Peter’s story had spread too far to let his death stop the message of Easter.  Peter spoke so often about the life and death and life after death of Jesus, his beloved rabbi that it spread everywhere.  Today’s scripture showed that at first he preached to people who only spoke his language.  Then he was summoned to another town to visit a powerful Roman commander and he didn’t know what to think. 

Roman army leaders didn’t ask people to show up for a visit without a very good reason.  I can imagine that Peter was nervous about the invitation.  Would the trip be a trap or a test?  Would he be arrested, thrown in jail, executed?  Instead, much to his surprise, he found himself welcomed, with the whole large household of Cornelius, soldiers, slaves and all, waiting on every word.  It was the last thing he expected.

Peter still thought that Jesus was the Messiah for his own people, for those who were faithful to the Torah, who went to the Temple, who prayed to the God of Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and Leah and Rachel, Moses and Miriam and Aaron.  But Jesus had never turned down a conversation with Samaritans or Phoenicians or Romans.  And Peter had forgotten that.  Peter needed to relearn a lesson of hospitality and welcome, a lesson of courage and boldness, a lesson of inclusion and daring.  The experience of the first Easter shattered his understanding of who God was and how the world worked.

This shattering experience continued to have ripple effects to everyone who knew Jesus.  The women at the tomb broke their silence and shared their news to Peter.   He found the courage to spread his experiences of Jesus and that first Easter.  “Now I understand that this message is for everyone, the amazing message that Jesus lived and died and still lives.” This shattering experience that defied all logic would inspire new understandings and new courage.  Christianity continues to be impacted by the ripples of that first Easter.  It continues to inspire new bold and daring and deep acts of justice and compassion.

Josephus must have thought this tribe of Christians would soon be relegated to the history books as a small footnote.  In his four-volume history of the Jewish people, Josephus only writes a few sentences about Jesus, the doer of startling deeds.  But Jesus wasn’t stopped by even death, and his followers continued to do startling deeds.  They opened schools and hospitals for everyone regardless of any age, race, ethnicity, or ability.  They took care of the dead with tenderness and love regardless of whether they were rich or poor, jew or gentile, slave or free, something that was anathema to cultured Romans of the day. We as followers are to continue to recognize that God knows no partiality, and that we too are called to join this courageous tribe of Christians.  Easter is more than chocolates, it is an invitation to join Peter, Mary, Paul and the others in deep spirituality, bold discipleship and daring justice that the world so desperately needs right here and right now. 

They had Courage because they discovered that God transformed even the ugliness of death into life.  The deepest grief and fear can be transformed by God.  Nothing we can do can stop God.  We too can find ourselves doing startling deeds of inclusion, love and acceptance.  We can still inspire others by our loving example.  We can also do acts of daring courage.  We can chose to include others that seem as distasteful as Peter saw the centurion. May we be as bold, as deep and as daring as the tribe of Christians that the world has always seen as insignificant but that has through the centuries changed the course of history.  May it be so for us all!