Radical Welcome

 

Jesus had a way with words.  He knew how to get at the heart of a dispute and was a master of conflict resolution.  And he wasn’t afraid to wade right in and bring his wisdom into an emotionally laden situation.  In our scripture reading today, he charged in and took the bull by the horns.  None of this whispering behind his back for his followers was going to be tolerated! 

Now, the disciples might have had some excuses for getting all emotional.  Jesus had in the previous chapter, gone to a high mountain, picked Peter, James and John to come up with him where they experienced the transfiguration of Jesus.  They came back down glowing with excitement, full of enthusiasm and energy to spare.  And as much as Jesus tried to caution them not to get too excited about what they had seen, they still were higher than a kite.  So this argument, was it them lording it over the other 9? Or were the nine trying to take them down a peg?  It certainly doesn’t sound like they wanted Jesus to know what they were quarrelling about behind his back.  He bluntly asked them, wanting to have the conversation out in the open.

Then he gave them a concrete visual reminder of what power was supposed to mean for his followers.  Not about dominance, who’s the smartest, the strongest, the most powerful, the richest, the favorite.  But about caring and serving and helping others.  Practicing a different mindset than something fueled by toxic masculinity.  Something fueled by wisdom instead.  Wisdom from God, not wisdom from impulses, hormones, resentments or jealousies.  Jealousy and ambition may have been at the root of the disciples’ argument that day in Capernaum.  Jealous of the ones who seemed to have an inside track with Jesus, jealous of the fact that he could heal people that they still could not, jealous of the influence Jesus had over the crowds.

Easier said than done.  We live in a world where jealousy and ambition fill the air.  Where jealousy and ambition spread racist rumors about immigrants from Haiti that empower people to send bomb threats to children’s schools, or plant explosives in walkie talkies and pagers.  Where wars are justified on the basis of ridiculous rumors or the desire to control lands that are already inhabited by people different than the invaders.  Where people of color or women politicians get threats because of their gender or their shade of skin, and when many of these actions are done anonymously, hidden away where no one can see.  Hidden hypocrisies, talking about valuing lives of the innocents one moment then blowing up children at a funeral the next.  Jesus exposed the hypocrisies of his disciples and reminded them that no hypocrisy will stay hidden forever.  And that radical welcoming of children is a signpost that we are getting this whole servant practice right.

One person who apparently was a member of the United Church, embodied this radical welcoming well.  He was an American carpenter who loved making sets and building backdrops for theatre productions. He also liked doing puppetry jobs and in 1964 came up to Canada with a buddy of his to come to work at the CBC. They worked together there for three years before his buddy moved back to the States.  Of course, puppetry led to children’s entertainment, and he spent many happy years developing his style of communication that was based on gentleness, respect and creativity.  Children of all ages were entranced, so much so that when he addressed university audiences, they would respond warmly and enthusiastically to him as if they were still kids.  One university crowd was given this piece of advice: “Keep your crayons sharp, your sticky tape untangled, and always put the top back on your markers”.

His message of radical hospitality impacted Canadians of many ages, and they recognized his influence on them and children by giving him the Order of Canada and a star on the Canadian Walk of Fame with other famous Canadians like Anne Murray, Alex Colville and Bobbie Orr.  He and his wife even opened a daycare called Butternut Square after the first job he ever had in Canada, a show on CBC.  He went on to work for the CBC for 33 years before retiring in 1996, four years after his wife died in a tragic car accident, and two years after finally becoming a Canadian citizen.  He also became the Canadian spokesperson for the Save the Children Canada; a responsibility he took very seriously.  Although he was never interested in politics, he did often have people tell him they would vote for him if he ever wanted to become the Prime Minister of Canada.  He travelled across Canada doing live shows after he retired, singing, dancing and telling stories.  He even received an honourary Doctorate of Laws by Trent University. His show still has set pieces on display at the CBC studio museum in Toronto, a treehouse and a colorful trunk that would have all kinds of things inside it.

Many people didn’t know him by his name, Ernie Coombs, but almost everyone in Canada who had been a kid between 1964 and 2006 knew Mr. Dress Up.  His show in Edmonton’s Jubilee Auditorium was packed with fans of all ages.  His simplicity and his genuine welcome warmed everyone who met him.  That kind of hospitality of children was meeting them with respect and treating them as equals.

Jesus called us to servanthood and to radical hospitality.  James reminded us to be wise in the ways of peace.  Ernie Coombs showed that it is indeed possible to do so even in today’s angry, divisive society.   Maybe especially in an angry and divisive society.  When we face the temptations of jealousy and ambition, let us remember that it is possible to choose wisdom, peace and kindness instead. May God strengthen us to follow in the footsteps of James, John, Peter and Jesus to do the same.  Amen!

Checking the Polling Numbers

Doesn't today's scripture sound like Jesus was doing a post-debate poll of how his message was going down?  He was trying to find out what the crowds at his rallies thought of him.  Let's check out the undecided listener, let's do some number crunching, let's do a survey and see how our messaging is landing, and if it's making any impact on the folks who are sitting on the fence.

Not too much different than an episode of the West Wing where everyone is wondering about approval ratings and spin doctoring. Is the message getting heard?

For Jesus, the core question he wanted his consultants to ask was 'Who do people say that I am?" He wanted to know if people thought he was the equivalent of a demented cat lady or racist convicted felon. The disciples didn't know those terms of course, but responded with what they heard, prophet, famous teacher, reincarnated baptizer and so forth. Even when Peter came up with the answer Jesus was looking for, Jesus challenged his interpretation of that title. It would be like Jesus saying to us, "it's all well and good to call me your Premier or Prime Minister but I'm going to be living under a bridge, picking bottles so I can buy food, and I'll get arrested on a picket line and stabbed to death in a homeless encampment riot. Wait! What kind of Prime Minister does that?

No wonder Peter challenged him.  What is the point of public opinion declaring that Jesus was an influential person, a political and theological expert, if he was going to use such a ridiculous campaign strategy. It was ridiculous! In fact, in some ways the whole claim he made sounded ridiculous.  Die and rise again on the third day.  What kind of politician would center their campaign on that? Even Paul said that this message sounded foolish.

C. S. Lewis once wrote, "A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said wouldn't be a great moral teacher. He'd be either a lunatic on a level with a man who says he's a poached egg or else he'd be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse."

I don't know about you, but I'm not keen on believing in someone who is delusional. I want to follow someone who shows clear leadership, deep compassion, and determination to consider the welfare of all people, not just his cronies or wealthy friends.

People today are looking for leaders they can trust and don't know where to find such leaders. Some are so cynical that they don't believe that anyone cares at all about them. They have given up on humanity. They've been hurt too much, failed too often or seen their dreams crushed too much. One person claims that 'apatheism’ is the biggest challenge facing Christianity today. Not atheism, not believing in any God, or agnostics who are not sure, but apatheists who are apathetic to the question of whether there is a God or not. Why bother to care? They might be assuming that Christianity is all about saving yourself from Hell and that they know they're going there so what's the point in trying or caring?

Jesus wanted to turn that apathetic attitude upside down. He said that those who tried to save their lives would lose them, and those who lost their lives would find them.  People who only think of themselves, "me, me, me" instead of "you, you, you" or even "us, us, us" would find that they did not have a life of significance or impact. People who go beyond their egotistical attitudes and opinions, who love and serve others, who work towards the common good, they're the ones who will make an impact bigger than they could foresee.

The question Jesus asked his disciples so many centuries ago is still important today. Again, Lewis wrote, "You must make your choice: either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher."

This world has a lot of people promising all kinds of nonsense.  No wonder so many are experiencing apathy, depression, and anxiety.  Teachers talk about a mental health crisis.  Estimates are that 1 in four adults are wrestling with depression, one in five have thought about suicide, and 32% of people are addicted to some kind of substance.  Apathy is a way of letting ourselves off the hook, a way of telling ourselves that there’s nothing we can do to change the world.  We are stuck and life sucks, end of discussion.

Jesus taught a different way.  Those who are trying to be safe, trying to control their world, will spiral down into despair and apathy.  Those who try the way of Jesus, will let go of their own lives, and look at what they can do to help others.  People have found when they start looking for opportunities to help, it makes a world of difference.  Ask any grateful member of AA or Al Anon, and they will tell you the importance of service in their recovery.  Jesus calls us to consider who he is for us too.  Maybe we too have struggled to find hope, maybe we too have struggled to find someone to trust, who cares about us, and who helps inspire us to do better and be better.  Maybe when we answer that big question, “Who do you say that I am?”, our stories will inspire us anew.  May we find the strength to share our stories with those who need to hear them.  Amen.

Asking Questions

One of the hardest things a woman can do is ask questions when she doesn’t like the answers she’s hearing.  It’s even harder if she is from a different ethnic background than who she is talking too.  If she’s poor or desperate, or not fashionable or not pretty, it’s even worse.  Women are not supposed to be uppity, they are not supposed to be loud, and they are definitely not supposed to be demanding or insistent on their rights. 

The Syrophoenician woman was everything she was not supposed to be.  Wrong race, wrong gender.  Brazenly talking to a man without her husband present, which meant that she probably didn’t have one.  Advocating for a child who also was female.  Bold enough to not take Jesus’ refusal personally, and to keep asking for what she wanted. 

This is a hard scripture, and it is one that many people struggle with.  Why did Jesus sound so sexist and racist?  We don’t need that in our fragmented world.  We don’t need women’s voices being shut down, we don’t need women’s opinions being treated with disrespect, we don’t need women’s requests for health care being dismissed or disregarded.

Right now, in this world, women who are working in politics or who are environmental scientists, or who are elite athletes that don’t look stereotypically female are getting attacked through comments, social media posts, and even murdered as seen in the case of the doctor in India, the Olympic marathoner in Uganda or the Turkish-American woman shot by Israeli soldiers. Indigenous women are still disappearing in Canada. Teenagers are at risk of losing their access to sex education in Alberta while cases of sexually transmitted diseases are growing, not to mention what might happen if Covenant Health takes over all hospitals.

We could go on and on with examples, but where is the Good News for us in this scripture?  It does not appear to be supportive of a woman’s right to ask for help without getting push back.  Except that the Syrophoenician did, and she got results.  She challenged the status quo and got what she needed for herself and her daughter.  She got the attention that made for real change. 

Her story was unusual and no wonder it was recorded.  And maybe just maybe she knew Jesus’ story.  Somehow, despite not having an instagram account or a snap chat or facebook or tictoc, she knew about Jesus and even though he was hiding out in a city outside his home country, she reacted the same as some folks here might react if they found out Taylor Swift was visiting next door.  She barged in without permission.  Not to get an autograph, but to get a healing.  Maybe she knew the same scriptures that Jesus did.  His bible had many stories of the importance of taking care of widows and orphans and even foreign women.  Maybe she knew the stories about Elijah healing a foreign widow’s child, or Elisha who saved a widow’s children from being sold into slavery because of debts.  Maybe she had read the teachings of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Malachi and others about how the God of Israel taught that children and widows were to be protected and treated with respect and hospitality.

Jesus pushed back.  Why, we don’t know.  Was Jesus grumpy?  Was he tired and here was someone interrupting him on his holiday? Was he racist?  We don’t know his thinking.  Or maybe this was an opportunity to show his disciples how to go beyond racism.  This event became a lesson of radical inclusion that stuck, and the disciples changed and got over their stereotypical assumptions and chauvinist attitudes.  God was not just for the Jewish people, and God certainly was not just for men or priests or scholars.  God was for everyone!  Everyone deserved to hear the good news that God was ready to change the world for the better.

Our bible states right in the first book that God created all humankind, male and female both in God’s own image.  All humans are.  And there is a thread of women empowered by God to make a difference.  Eve chose knowledge over ignorance, Miriam lead worship with her brother Moses, Deborah was a Judge of the Israelites before there were kings.  There’s Ruth and Ester and Mary who were leaders that spoke out against the status quo.  Women have been speaking out ever since.

Who are the voices we are not hearing from?  Who are the people wanting to be included in God’s community?  There are many who feel isolated or depressed.  News articles abound about the epidemic of mental illness.  One of the prescriptions given is to find a community, but people are reluctant to look for one.  One woman said, “I’d come to church if I knew there was a church that wouldn’t mind me asking questions.  Another person said they didn’t dare come to a church because they knew they would be judged.  Someone else said they were badly hurt by a congregation’s power struggle, or a priest’s cruel remark.  They expect a church will judge them because they have had that experience in the past.  They have been hurt badly.

Our job, like Jesus with the Syrophoenician woman, is to listen and encourage.  When we understand where people are coming from, we can be an agent of healing for them.  It makes a difference.  It made a difference for the Syrophoenician woman.  Tyre developed a congregation that was strong and proud to associate with Paul and the other disciples, and in Acts was mentioned as one of the earliest churches founded by Jesus.

When we, like Jesus, listen with curiosity and let go of our prejudices, amazing acts of healing occur.  God is still healing the ones that are hurting, God is still loving those who are full of despair and God is still speaking to those who are questioning.  Thanks be for a God who loves questioners! Amen.

Armor up!

Did you know that the average slap shot today whizzes at about 160 kilometers per hour?  That’s enough to cause bruises, concussions and broken bones.  It’s a brave person who will step into the crease and be a goalie for a professional hockey team.  There’s a reason they wear so much padding; it can be a lifesaver.  Goalies are brave!

Christians are also called to be brave.  In Paul’s letter to Ephesians, he talked about the many risks he took as a Christian in a Roman world.  Christians were seen as atheists because the idea of believing in only one God was bizarre and novel to the Roman Empire, and the fact that they were encouraging people outside their faith to join them meant that the number of people worshiping the Emperor was slowly diminishing.  Your average citizen would almost certainly be shocked that Christians and also the Jews of course, did not worship the emperor with the same respect that Jupiter, Venus, Zeus, Athena, Osiris or Isis, or any of the other gods received.  Romans were very clever that way.  When they invaded, they didn’t subtract Gods and Goddesses, they just added to them.  So Christians, by taking away gods and refusing to pray to Caesar, were considered dangerously delusional.

No wonder Paul used such vivid imagery, then to talk about protecting yourself with the daily outfit of people he saw often, who lived dangerous lives of violence.  He used soldiers’ uniforms to teach his listeners how to cope with life’s challenges. When the Ephesians were feeling the pressure conform to the culture of the day, they were to visualize strapping on armor to keep them safe from the pressures that challenged them. 

But what ridiculous armor!  Truth doesn’t really stop arrows, peace is not something that will protect a foot from a hard rock, God’s salvation is not a hard hat, and the only weapon suggested is scripture.  Really?  The armor undermines the idea that we are dressing for war, when it is so, well, woke!  Talking about scripture isn’t going to stab anyone.  Any more than if we glued pages of a bible together to stop a slap shot from a hockey player. Ridiculous!

This isn’t meant for an offensive attack on other people.  It’s meant to remind us, ground us and centre us in what is truly important.

I was listening to an interview of a Canadian who talked about remembering what is truly important in our lives.  He and his brother are well-known fellows in certain circles, and he’s had a very diverse work history.  He graduated in 1969 from Cornell University with a B.A. degree in History.  His first job he wore a lot of protective padding, and interestingly enough, his brother also had the same job but in a different city.  That job took him to Russia in 1972 where he helped make history for Canada.  His next job was as a radio broadcaster, then the manager of a sports team. He became an author who wrote 7 books!  He and his brother went into federal politics and he even ran for the leadership of a National political party.  He served as the Minister of Social Development, cared about youth employment and social justice issues.

On a Sunday morning, he is regularly found in a United Church pew.  Maybe he’s even in church today.  Maybe he’s having communion and thinking about how his faith has strengthened his passion to work for daring justice.  Maybe he’s reflecting on Ephesians and how armor is very similar to hockey equipment.  Maybe he’s remembering the time his helmet protected his head from a stinging slapshot.  Maybe he’s imagining how skates could be like sandals of peace, and if he was 20 years younger, it would be fun to try out figure skates for the Battle of the Blades where burly hockey players team up with figure skaters to compete on CBC for charity.  Maybe he’s remembering when he was on Team Canada and went to Moscow in 1972 full of smug expectations, only to be shocked at how well Russians played.  He said in an interview 50 years later that it changed the way Canadians thought about hockey, and the assumption that there’s only one way to become a great hockey team. The Russians proved that wrong.  And maybe he’s thinking about the 3000 cheering Canadian fans that came to Moscow with them even though going behind the Iron Curtain was a dangerous and unheard of thing, and how those fans showed the power of teamwork, of focusing on the goal of representing Canada and democracy with honor. Maybe Ken Dryden is thinking about his children and grandchildren and how he hopes to build a better world for them, and that may be why he’s sitting in a pew in a United Church in Ontario.

Paul didn’t write about the power of teamwork like Dryden did, but it’s there, between the lines.  A sole Roman soldier was an easy target for an enemy.  The power of the Roman empire was in the discipline, training and focus that enabled soldiers to work and fight together as a team for a common cause.

We are not to be warriors and fighters with actual swords and shields.  We are to be goalies, protecting our team from the pucks and players that swirl around us hoping to score.  What’s in your goal that God calls you to protect?  Children from bullies? The environment from further damage? Towns and buildings from fires?  Civilians from wars that target them unfairly?  Workers and bosses from exploitive or selfish negotiations?  Voters from lies and scams?  Whatever God is calling you to, know that God gives you the team and the equipment you need to build peace and justice for all, and like Dryden and Paul, when you, when we put on the whole equipment of God, we will stand firm and strong against all evil.  Together, we can and do make a difference in this beautiful world. Thanks be to God, Amen!