Truth is stranger than fiction

 

Ever watch the movie “When Harry Met Sally”?  At the very beginning of the movie, there are interviews of how people met each other, how they finish each other’s sentences, and some remember as clear as day how they met, some constantly correct each other on the details?  It seems like a fairy tale that only a few people ever achieve.  And yet, all but the last interview with the main characters are based on true stories.  Some of them seem wildly impossible, like the one where both people were born in the same hospital seven days apart, lived one block away from each other, even worked in the same building for six years, one on the 5^th floor, one on the 14^th floor, and met on a holiday in a hotel in another state.  Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

From time to time, we hear incredible stories that are far-fetched.  Like the girl who grew up to marry her grandma’s math teacher’s grandson in Old Strathcona in Edmonton.  Despite the girl’s dad and the boy’s dad growing up kitty corner from each other as children, the girl and the boy never met until they were in university and had no idea how close their families were.  Both sets of grandparents were very committed United Church members, but even though they lived on the same block, they went to completely different United Churches in Edmonton. (For the record, I thought his name was Jim, not Tim!) It’s an example of how truth can be stranger than fiction.  And yet they are true.

The story of the transfiguration is one of the gospel stories that seems too strange to be true.  And for those bible geeks like the Jesus Seminar in the ‘90’s who liked to dissect scripture and analyze it until it was dead and dusty, this was a scripture that they disliked unless they could look at it symbolically.  Matthew’s gospel is drawing parallels between Jesus and Moses as he writes his gospel for Christian Jews who honor and respect both Moses and Elijah as so holy they both saw the face of God.  For those of you who may not remember those old testament stories, Moses was the one who rescued the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt, defying the Pharaoh, and getting the 10 commandments from God who wrote them on stone tablets for all the people to see.  Elijah was a prophet who challenged the followers of Baal to a worship fight and dared them to get their god to burn the sacrifice on their altar, then when they failed, Elijah poured water all over the altar he dedicated to Jhwh God, and God lit the sacrifice on fire anyway.  Elijah also was the one who was described as riding a chariot up to heaven instead of dying like the rest of humanity.  So, Jesus hanging out with Moses and Elijah is a big deal.  It would be like if we ran into a friend and he or she had to take a conference call with Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny, and you knew that it was real and not a fake.  You would think of your friend very differently, wouldn’t you?

That’s what Peter, James and John thought.  All of the sudden, this wise leader was elevated in their eyes to something special, something unique, something unbelievable.  And yet he was still the humble, kind and caring man they had learned to trust while they followed him around Galilea.  And when he asked them to keep their experience a secret, they did.  It kept his followers around him from treating him any differently than just an inspiring speaker and teacher.  But for Peter, James and John, it cemented their trust in Jesus as the leader they desperately needed. The leader who would help them live at a time when their country was occupied by a foreign power, where they had little or no human rights, and didn’t know where their next meal would come from or if their jobs as fishermen would survive the competition from rich Roman fishing companies.

We struggle to know what is true and what is fiction.  Within hours of the incident at Tumbler Ridge, ugly rumors and outrageous claims were circulating.  People were demonizing a vulnerable minority of our society.  They ignored facts, going straight to paranoia and fear.  And now, with artificial intelligence producing videos that look appear real, we are going to need to on our toes.  It’s one thing to watch ninja kittens doing complex and flawless workout sessions but another thing to be able to recognize a video that has been faked so well it looks true.

Leadership that we can trust is important especially now.  When our very province is debating about staying in Canada, we need to be careful who we listen.  At a recent RCMP chaplaincy workshop, trustworthy leadership was described as authentic, purposeful, vulnerable, compassionate, empathetic and putting the needs of others before their own.  Our psalm describes what happens when leaders choose to put their own selfish agendas first.  Their power will collapse and their authority will disappear.  History shows that the psalmists are right, leaders who put their own desires ahead of God’s agenda for a peaceable, community will find that they lose all they desire.  And history shows that when we trust Jesus more than AI, more than leaders who promote fear and hatred for selfish gain, when we trust Jesus transfigured, the world changes for the better for everyone.  We come down the mountain, ready to act with compassion, justice and the assurance that God loves us all in good times and in challenging times.  Truth is stranger than fiction, because when we choose love over hate, we heal ourselves and the world.  May we all trust Jesus as our leader who transfigures our world to become a better place even in difficult times like these. Amen.

Upside Down Kingdom

There’s a puzzle I recently learned about a cat and a piece of toast. We all know that cats always land on their feet when they fall. It’s so amazing and complex that even Physicists have studied it, and discovered that cats have survived falls even from the 23^rd story of high-rise buildings. We also know that toast that falls off the plate falls butter side down, and if there’s any dust on the floor, it will stick to the toast. Scientists tested to find out why the buttered side ends up on the floor so often. It turns out that 81% of the time, the toast will land butter side down thanks to physics and the aerodynamic properties of bread smeared with oil. So the puzzle is what happens when you tie a piece of buttered toast onto the back of a cat and toss them both out the window? Which will happen, the cat land on its feet or the butter land on the sidewalk?  People want to know!

Cats perform a complex gymnastics feat to land on their feet. They twist their bodies to make sure their feet are under them before they land. You can’t see it happen unless you have a stop motion camera recording it in slow motion. It’s worthy of an Olympic gymnast at their peak performance. For those of us who can’t even do a cartwheel, it’s miraculous!

The beatitudes are just as much of a miraculous cartwheel as a falling cat. Think about the people in your life that seem successful to most people. Taylor Swift, Elon Musk, Elliot Page, Connor McDavid and numerous others are measured in terms of their assets, their fame, their talents and their relationships. They are successful by all measures, they have landed on their feet and millions of people idolize and respect them.

All except Jesus. The measuring stick that Jesus used was upside down to anything anyone had heard. It was more twisted than a cat with a piece of toast tied on its back. It upended the idea that the biggest, strongest, richest or most famous people are the ones that are successful. If we look at what the word blessed means, it means fortunate, happy, lucky.

Seems like a pretty big twist in what we think of people who are happy or blessed. And it’s not just any kind of feeling of happiness, it’s supposed to be a deep-seated sense of contentment with one’s self and their place in the world. “You are fortunate when others insult you and persecute you, and utter every kind of slander against you because of me. Be glad and rejoice.”

We’ve seen a lot of persecutions over the years in our world, but it’s been especially vivid to watch the protests in Minnesota the last couple of weeks.  People are feeling blessed when they stand watch over daycares or protect teens on their way out of school or drive around following ICE trucks ready to honk, whistle and record any cases of arrest they might witness. They are feeling energized and full of purpose. They are feeling in their bones the kind of blessedness that Jesus was getting at. Jesus was mindful of Micah's teaching on living a blessed life. It’s not about getting a Nobel prize, or an Oscar or a Stanley Cup. It’s not about great sacrifices or huge gifts or deep financial generosity. Micah, writing in the midst of economic chaos, military powers and leaders who bullied their people into states of fear and apathy, said that the reason for wars and political uncertainty was not that we had to treat God like a king or emperor with an appetite that can never be satisfied. It’s not about stuff. It’s not about bribes. It’s not about bankrupting ourselves to keep a heavenly bully from looking our way. It’s not about groveling in front of a warlord in hopes that he will protect us.

Jesus says it’s not about following rules, it’s about twisting expectations. Seek justice, love kindness and walk humbly in relationship with God. Seeing the people we meet differently than the world does. The happy ones, the lucky ones, the fortunate ones are not who we think.

Jesus was pointing out that the people whom we love to look down on are the ones that God cares about. The ones who need kindness. The ones that may have no more energy for pretending. The ones who survive from hour to hour, living precariously for reasons that we don’t know. The people who we think are the last and least. The people we think don’t deserve compassion. The ones who are so fragile that they don’t care who sees their suffering. Sometimes we are the suffering, we are the ones who are starving for hope or purpose or courage or direction. The last line in these upside-down beatitudes are for us today. “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven.” When we take these words seriously like the people in Minnesota do, we will find ourselves speaking in truth against oppression. Against the lies that try to undermine democracy, the lies that attack our human rights and demonize the meek and the poor and the sick and the grieving. The petitions that pit neighbor against neighbor, that try to make people feel oppressed when they are living in one of the most tolerant democratic countries in the world. God sees us as blessed when we speak up for those who don’t have the skills or abilities to speak out. When we take the sign out of the window that tries to pretend everything is okay when it’s not.  When we speak up against bullying attitudes and people twisting the truth because they are feeling entitled to rage and fearmonger. And God helps us, when we seek justice, love kindness and walk humbly, to land like a cat, lightly, on our feet, with grace and love and joy as we follow in the footsteps of our Jesus, the leader of our upside-down kingdom.

Respecting the Community

Some Sundays the scripture reading is as exciting as a Marvel Movie!  Can you imagine if Jesus was Doctor Strange and John the Baptist was Tony Stark, what an intense meeting it would have been?  Two powerful men with powerful missions coming together to do powerful work for the Glory of God.  This story is describing the same incident that we read last week, John and Jesus meeting at the banks of the Jordan River.  John is baptising people who are confessing their brokenness and looking for a new way to be in relationship with God.  It could have been a civil war between John and Jesus, maybe Captain America instead of Dr. Strange. it could have been a below-the-line power struggle between the two, it could have been a competition to see who was more right than the other, who was the angriest, who was the loudest person in the room.  Instead, it became a time to witness to the power of following Jesus.  John told his followers to join Team Jesus, and they did.  They even brought in new members, and pretty soon Jesus had gone from no followers to a dedicated team of twelve disciples eager to share their excitement with everyone they met.

Talking about our faith and trying to bring in new people is something many churches do.  They train their members in how to recruit people, they give them pamphlets and workshops and roll play exercises and demonstrations.  That’s not something the United Church is particularly comfortable with or used to. We didn’t do that because we were the biggest denomination other than the Roman Catholic Church.  We had at one time more churches across Canada than Tim Hortons.  We gave more to Haiti earthquake emergency relief than all the customers getting their double-doubles.  This was happening even though church attendance was already dropping.  This was happening even when it seemed like the mega churches were growing faster than Starbucks into Canada. This was happening when more and more independent bookstores were closing because they couldn’t compete with Amazon even before Covid made so many things go online.  We didn’t know how to invite our neighbors, but we had all experienced the knock on the door from missionaries in suits or gotten the pamphlet in the mail describing the joys of Heaven and the dangers of Hell.  We also were being bombarded with people wanting us to believe in crop circles or aliens building the pyramids or satanists running daycares in Saskatchewan towns.  Televangelists seemed to end up with private jets or universities, then get in the news for abuse.  That builds distrust for all Christian institutions. Religion gets a bad rap for wars, colonialism, you name it, but condemning all religion is like saying we won’t use fire because of the evacuation of Fort McMurray.  How do we heat our houses?  How do we cook if we have gas stoves?  Condemning all religion fails to remember that it inspires great art, great music, great social movements like civil rights, public education and affordable healthcare.  People who attend church regularly are less lonely, their anxiety levels drop, their sense of resilience is increased, and they feel empowered to work together towards positive social good. Women wouldn’t have gotten the vote in Canada without church ladies getting together in Alberta who cared about poverty and family violence.

There’s a right way and a wrong way to invite people to church.  We have to know our big Why. Bums in pews is honest but not healthy or trustworthy. It's not good news for our neighbors, it's based on our scarcity not God's abundance. It exploits newcomers' innocence.  Someone said, “bringing people to church so that they can be busier and poorer is not Christian, but often it’s really why we want newcomers.” Some call it vampire evangelism, bring them in and suck them dry.  On the flip side, when we remember how much we have been transformed by coming to church regularly, it’s rude not to tell people about it.  One minister in the US wrote this week that “When we lose religious and spiritual community, we lose a lot of our power to make collective change. Research suggests that religious behavior and belonging are associated with greater civic and political participation, financial giving, and volunteering. It also indicates that while solitary meditation is good for the soul, it is small group participation that correlates most strongly with social impact. Weekly worship attendance is also strongly associated with increased civic activity…” She added that service clubs and other organisations don’t offer transformation, resiliency and morals the way church does, and it’s part of why her country is in so much turmoil.

Our Northern Spirit Growth Animator, Jordan Cantwell told us to remember that it’s scary for people to come to church.  Every church says it welcomes all but often the reality is different.  Cantwell said, “We assume everyone knows who we are, what we do and that they are welcome. We are welcome to walk into a mosque but don't feel comfortable.” She said gentle humble openness, listening to their questions and concerns, sharing your story of transformation honestly and prayfully is key.  People won’t have a transformative experience if they are going to be told they should go to church, they should be ashamed if they don’t go to church or they are to blame for all the bad things in their lives if they don’t go to church.  Instead, try RESPECT:

R: Recognize - Acknowledge the worth of others.  We are all God’s Children

E: Empathize - Understand and care about the feelings of others.  Jesus came to listen and heal and we are called to do the same.

S: Support - Offer help and encouragement.  Our creed says that God works in us and others by the Spirit.  Support is a team sport and God is part of our team!

P: Promote - Advocate for the rights and dignity of others. The United Church calls this “Daring Justice” we are to seek justice and resist evil.

E: Engage - Involve others in meaningful ways.  We are to love and serve others as part of our healing journey.

C: Communicate - Share thoughts and feelings openly.  Proclaim Jesus crucified and risen, our judge and our hope.

T: Trust - Build and maintain trust in relationships.  This takes deep spirituality and more teamwork. 

Jesus and John trusted and respected each other like Tony Stark and the other Avengers eventually did.  John’s disciples trusted and respected John when he told them to follow Jesus.  Simon Peter trusted his brother when the brother shared his excitement about finding the Messiah.  When we build relationships based on trust and respect, relationships with each other, our neighbors and our God, the invitations will come naturally and from a place of inspiration, encouragement, resilience and healing.  Who wouldn’t want an invitation to that?