What's in your wallet?

Anyone got a membership card to a pottery club?  Or a loyalty card?  Tim Hortons?  There are loyalty cards for grocery stores, fast food shops and more.  All promising extra freebies if only we stay loyal to them.  Loyal to the brand, but not necessarily their loyalty back to us.  It can earn companies lots of profit.

Loyalty is something they research too.  What is the best level of reward that won’t eat into the bottom line?  When is the reward too little, too late, too infrequent to retain customers?

Our scripture this morning has described what happens when a community forgets what they think deserves the most loyalty.  Like shopping at Shopper’s Drug Mart for back to school clothes, or looking for groceries at Staples, Jeremiah pointed out the problem with misplaced loyalty.  He shared a metaphor of God, working away on the clay to make a useful pot.  Like any good potter will, God finds that the clay is a little too wet to hold its form, or maybe it’s a little too dry.  Time to start over, kneed the old clay again, center it on the wheel, and give it another try.  God is loyal to the image of a healthy community, a healthy country, even when the country is not.  God isn’t afraid to get involved in politics, in Jeremiah’s mind.  This metaphor challenges people’s egos, pushes them to realize that God cares when politics shapes an arrogant attitude of superiority.  God is not challenging one person or another, God is challenging the political culture of the day.

Jesus, too, questioned people’s loyalties.  Challenged them to think carefully of what they prioritized.  And the top priority that superseded all others was to be the loving community of God.  Jesus didn’t promise frequent flyer points, he didn’t say that the people who sold enough Jesus merchandise would earn a pink camel like a Mary Kay Cadillac.  His loyalty program didn’t promise perks, but would cost people time, influence, even their possessions.

Our society is addicted to perks.  We like earning free things, not recognizing that the price for those things are included in our purchases.  When I went to Tim Hortons to get coffee, I would flash my loyalty card to earn points.  Then I discovered that to redeem those points, I had to download an app, and I had to pre-order the free item before I came to the store.  This gave them information on where I was, what I liked, and how much money I spent.  Not only that, but my points expired regularly, and you have to buy a lot of double double to earn a free cookie or donut.  We give away a lot of marketing information to multinational corporations who then use it to design even more addicting loyalty programs.  It has become a vicious circle.

Jeremiah saw that the loyalty that people had to power was destroying their relationship with God.  And when that was destroyed, it led to cultural and political chaos.  Babylon was looking at Israel with lustful, hungry lips.  They saw Israel as a potential 51^st state in their empire.  Sound familiar?  Political chaos is dangerous.

Jeremiah could have been writing for us, describing the destruction of societies that are having hospitals and schools bombed or children starving in war-torn countries while dictators paraded massive armies.  He could have been reading the newspaper about cities under military occupation by their own armed forces.  He could have been hearing about massive forest fires, floods and heat waves, or listening to farmers struggling with drought.  He could have been learning about girls, librarians and teachers caught in political upheaval that they never asked for.  And his words are still as pertinent today as they were back then. 

“At any moment I may announce that a nation or a dominion is to be uprooted, pulled down or destroyed. But if the nation I threatened abandons its depraved ways, I will change my mind and not inflict on it the disaster I planned.”

We don’t want God’s disaster to come.  It’s time to turn our loyalty cards in, and remind ourselves that when we are loyal to God, great things happen. We can trust that God is the good potter who shapes our future.  We can turn to God to help us persevere in difficult times like these.

There are many successes we can see along the way, where God is shifting our perspective on creation.  The Thames River in London had developed a large island of diaper wipes and garbage.  Thanks to a persistent grass roots organization, the City of London is removing the island, and the government is looking into banning baby wipes with plastic content.  The bays around New York City are becoming cleaner by the day, thanks to installing artificial clam reefs that purify the water and are restoring the fishery industry.  Even here at home, the upsurge in people shopping Canadian, travelling in Canada and signing the forever Canada petition has made an impact.  Our government is pausing their book ban.  Rather than coming out and saying they want four specific graphic novels removed from the high school libraries, they came up with such vague guidelines that schools would have no ability to teach biology, for example.  And they made it sound like teachers were pushing obscene materials on kids starting in kindergarten.  They are pausing because we are speaking up, taking risks to tell them when they have crossed the line.

Our culture is at a crossroads, our world is asking us to choose our loyalty.  Do we believe in living with respect in creation, and compassion for our neighbors? Or do we continue to choose apathy and safety?  Jesus asked us to think about loyalty to God.  It’s not easy, it’s not safe, but in the long run, when we choose love, we choose a better world for all.  Let us continue to speak up for justice and compassion, knowing that God is with us, we are not alone, thanks be to God. Amen.

Clique bait

There is a photo going around on the internet that is generating clicks for the United Church.  It’s a recreation of Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous painting “The Last Supper”. This new picture is designed to stir some controversy, and that’s what it’s done.  First of all, instead of a bunch of male disciples with pale skin, unlike people from the Middle East, and Jesus looking sadly pensive, the photo is of people who are anything but ethnically uniform.  There is a minister who lives with disabilities, there are several immigrants, a francophone, a retired clergy, a drag king wearing white face paint, and way more ladies than the original.  Everyone is part of the United Church of Canada.  And there are only 12 people in it.  Who’s missing?  Jesus!  As the Rev. Doctor Catherine Faith Maclean explained, “Jesus is not there in an individual person.  That’s essential. Because we believe that post resurrection… Jesus is everywhere.”

The picture sends a message to the world that everyone has a place at the table.  That we are a vibrant, inclusive and inspiring denomination. At first, this isn’t surprising.  I doubt there’s any church anywhere that posts a list of who’s not welcome.  But again and again, we hear of people who said they thought they were welcome until.  Until they realized that they were the only person who had a disability or the only one with noisy toddlers or no suit to wear, or nothing to put in the offering plate.

Jesus wanted better than that. He wanted us to practice generous hospitality like Abraham and Sarah, welcoming and feeding strangers without expecting anything in return.  We are to show hospitality to all, for as the scripture says, “by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” (Hebrews 13:1–8, 15–16).

Of course, that’s easier said than done.  It is so easy to form a clique, a group of insiders who roll their eyes at newcomers.  It’s easy to get possessive of a pew and glare daggers at a stranger who takes our spot.  As far as I can tell, no visitor has telepathy to read minds and figure out what is okay.  It’s like the church is littered with traps to navigate.  Don’t know which hymn book is which? Snap! Don’t know what to wear? Trap! Don’t know when to stand or sit?  Gotcha! No wonder so many people are nervous about coming to church.  There are a lot of obstacles in their way, the unspoken rules, the unconscious regulations.  True, we do want to have some obstacles.  There are some very angry hurting people out there, and the latest tragedies like the Minneapolis church shooting or the Gaza church bombing do remind us that we need to be discerning.  But most people we’d like to have come to our congregations are not like that.  And they don’t know that they are welcome.

Someone might say, “Shouldn’t they know?” How?  Who has told them?  Unless we make it easy to ask, they may never know.  That takes gentleness, humbleness and openness on our part.  And enthusiasm, too.  Are we like the fans of K-Pop Demon Hunters or the latest Hollywood blockbuster meeting, talking about our church with a fan’s kind of joy and authenticity? Are we inviting people to come to church like we invite people to a new restaurant we’ve discovered or a new book we like?

Jesus challenged the wealthy to give invitations not to their friends or the people they wanted to impress, but to invite those most unable to give back.  Dinner parties shouldn’t be about keeping score of who was in and who was out, who was socially and financially skilled and who was not able to make a brisket to feed a fancy dinner for 12.  Invite the ones who can’t cook, who don’t have dining rooms, who can’t afford a fancy steak or a caterer.  I’m sure a lot of us squirm at the idea of having a dinner where we invite street people, but that’s in the bible.

Someone once asked, “how do we get rich people interested in coming to our church so that they will donate money and keep us financially stable?”  I wonder what Jesus would say to that!  Who would he tell us to invite?  And how would he want us to invite?  The Right Reverend Jordan Cantwell, former moderator of the United Church of Canada and also our Northern Spirit Regional Growth Director, led a workshop last May.  She said, “Bums in pews is honest but not healthy. It's not good news for our neighbors; it's based on our scarcity not God's abundance. It's exploiting the newcomers' naivety.”

Cantwell suggests four steps:

1. Gentle openness -wait for curiosity, no agenda

2. When asked why, talk about the transformation in your life with integrity and honesty

3. Pray for openness, courage, and for our neighbors that you might learn what they need.

4. Be open to the divine in others, with them not at them, it transforms our faith as we share with them.

How do you hope God will transform the lives of those you invite and help transform our own spiritual lives?  When we ask these questions in honesty and humbleness, we will be inviting all to the table where they will be fed with God’s abundance and grace.  As much as it’s great having a photo that shows our diversity, posters don’t bring in people, Facebook messages or cute sayings don’t bring in people, events don’t bring in people.  People bring in people.  Humble people who have been transformed by God’s love, and who know the power of hospitality to make a real difference when we break cliques and practice radical, humble hospitality.  God, fill us with humble authenticity and enthusiasm for sharing the good news of how you have filled our lives with abundance, hope, faith and love.  Help us practice that love with everyone we meet, and live into your teaching to welcome our neighbors. Amen.