Will the real God(s) stand up?

As some folks know, I have a love of inspirational card decks.  I have ones on leadership, art, labyrinth walking, discipleship and more.  I’ve taken them to workshops and council meetings, scattered them around the Sanctuary with miniature Jesus figures, used them for Coffee time conversations, and even handed them out in worship randomly. 

When I went to the first of the Blazing Walnuts Workshops, the minister that was helping Moderator Lansdowne with the course was Northern Spirit’s Office of Vocation minister, Rev. Laura Fause. She’s responsible for helping ministry candidates go through the discernment and education process that helps them decide whether or not they are being called by God into ministry with the United Church of Canada.  She’s also the author of five sets of inspirational cards that she sells on a website store (Affirmation Cards for Disciples – My Blessing Studio).  There’s one for disciples, there’s one for flourishing, one for pride folks and one for kids.  It’s a playful, joyful way of finding a thought to inspire our day.

At one time, playful and joyful were not words that we applied to Christianity or our understanding of God.  Many times Christianity is painted as a “Get out of Hell free” card, and the literature going out to recruit disciples is all about the torture and punishment of rebellious, wayward souls.  And at one point, the use of shame, fear and guilt seemed to bring people into the church and keep them there.

But since the 1960’s, people have been rejecting that.  They have been deconstructing this rigid understanding of God as the divine grumpy king sitting on his throne, pitching people headlong into fire and brimstone. And to be honest, the Bible is full of a diversity of images and names of God far grander than a miserable bearded codger on a glitzy chair. 

Genesis One is a good example of this.  Anyone who takes the Bible literally might consider looking at the ancient Hebrew names for God.  "Elohim" is now translated by some as plural, and "El Shaddai", used in the song of the same name, can mean both God of the mountaintop or anything cone shaped, especially women’s endowments, "The many-breasted God".  Elohim is the creator of humans in God’s own image.  Then in Genesis 2, we have Yahweh not Elohim, and it tells a different story of creation where humanity is made first before the plants and the animals are made last.  There are references to God as being a baker, a king, a woman in labor, a wind, a still small voice, and something so vast humans can’t even see God’s back side without risking their sanity.  All these images point to the human experience of God being complicated, and God being surprising.  God shows up in wondrous ways, or as our Song of Faith puts it, "above perfect knowledge, beyond perfect explanation, a holy mystery".

Humans have been trying to understand God as mystery for a very long time.  Some were people like Hildegarde of Bingen, and Julian of Norwich.

Hildegarde became the leader of a convent when she was very young, and dabbled in God language that shocked many, especially men in positions of power in the church.  She was a musician, a writer, a dreamer, a philosopher and a psychologist who wasn’t afraid to talk truth to politicians.  She was born 20 years after William the Conqueror took over England from the Anglo-Saxons and had many surprising ideas. She thought that women should strive to be more masculine, and men should strive to be more feminine, in order to become a balanced Christian. God was called Divine Feminine and Divine Wisdom.  She wrote of God speaking surprising words to her, “I am the one whose praise echoes on high.  I adorn all the earth.  I am the breeze that nurtures all things green…  I am the rain… that causes the grasses to laugh with the joy of life.”[1] Her ideas of God were shared throughout Europe even though they were not conforming to traditional understandings.

Julian of Norwich lived in England about three hundred years later and also pushed the boundaries of God images.  She lived through wars, the Bubonic Plague, losing her husband and children in her early thirties, and surviving an illness that nearly killed her.  When she recovered, she had herself bricked into the local church where she was given meals through a slot in the wall and never came out in public again.  She listened to daily worship and many people who came to her curtained window outside.  It makes me wonder if she had neurodiverse characteristics.  Her routine would have been constantly the same, she never had to make eye contact with anyone, and she could write down her visions in solitude.  Even though she had lived through immense personal tragedy, she’s most famously remembered for saying “All Shall be Well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” She said it because she believed that God is Love and as creator, God’s love will triumph. She described God as the trinity God: Maker, Keeper, Lover, or Might, Wisdom and Goodness.  She described Jesus as a breast-feeding mother, explaining it as “our precious Mother Jesus can feed us with himself… with the blessed sacrament,” how the bread and wine is as essential to us as a mother's milk.  She also had a vision that God’s creation is so precious that it is held in God’s hand, who loves everyone and everything in creation.

Whether we use Father Son and Holy Spirit, or as our Song of Faith puts it, “Mother, Friend, and Comforter/ Source of Life, Living Word, and Bond of Love, our old understanding of God the angry emperor is rejected by many people.  They see Christianity as a weapon of control, and a tool of oppression.  We won’t go forth and make disciples if we cling to these feared images of God, more like the Greek god Zeus or the Roman God Jupiter than Yahweh, Elohim or El Shaddai.  But many people hunger for hope.  They still need good news.  They yearn for the tender love of a healing and caring God. They long for a community that will love them into healing.  Maybe it’s time for us to redraw our deck of cards when it comes to describing our God as closer than a loving parent, who feeds us like a tender mother and cares for us with a love that is unshakable.  May God's love, however we describe our higher power, our great mystery, continue to inspire, empower and encourage us and others.  Amen.

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[1] P. 5, Earth Prayers edited by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon, Harper San Francisco Press, 1991

Courageous Hope

(Photo: Matthew Rosborough 2025, Vancouver Island)
 Sometimes the bravest person I know is the farmer, who after a year where the land has flooded or the crops rotted on the field or withered away from a heat wave or burned down in a grass fire, looks at the seed catalogue and goes to the local UFA or wherever one buys seeds for, and picks out the crop that they think will do best on the land this summer.  And whether it’s a farmer who rents a bunch of properties or the person with a flower pot in the back yard, when we pick up our seeds and plan to stick them in the ground, we are being courageously hopeful.  Whether it’s sunflowers in solidarity with Ukraine, planted with prayers and hopes, or those impossibly tiny carrot seeds or acres and acres of wheat and canola, the seeds go in the ground as a sign of courageous hope.  This Sunday, which is sometimes also called Rogation Sunday, was a time to ponder the mystery at the heart of life where a seemingly lifeless seed can turn into a green thing capable of feeding many people.

Jesus has been planting seeds of faith, fertilizing them with stories, examples and encouragement, but he knows that just by living by example, he being a role model for everyone is not enough to help his disciples get through the rough times ahead.  The words he has planted, to the best of his ability, is to show people a different way of thinking about God and discipleship.  A way of courageous love and daring hope. A way that breaks down fear and leads to flourishing

Last week there was a gathering of ministers on line with the Moderator Carmen Lansdowne. It was the second last gathering of the (Re)Generate program, a pilot project that brought 31 clergy from across Canada together to learn about the nuances of leadership in our current Canadian Culture.  Affectionately known as “The Blazing Walnuts”, they have studied everything from accounting and sustainability to strategic planning and flourishing faith.  This session was focussed on presenting their ‘capstone projects’, the work each person put together with a team of consulting community and congregational members to focus on one particular experiment that could be implemented for the community in which they were involved.  31 experiments designed to help the United Church of Canada be playful, creative, hopeful and adventurous.

One project developed a very detailed, concrete plan for growth for the next 10 years, to capitalize on what was already working and build the momentum that was already starting to be present. He quoted, “Cities that are growing have no time to plan. Cities that aren’t growing have all the time in the world.  The important point is to use the time to be ready for when the growth happens.” Another minister got a grant to hire a public relations firm and developed a series of tictoc videos and social media ads to share their mission statement and were starting to see the uptake in interest in their congregation. There was a lively video produced for the Maritime region showing the importance of United Church camps and staying connected to the congregations that help sponsor them.  Someone started a dinner church to talk about faith in a casual setting that outsiders might feel welcome to come to.  One growing congregation built clever ‘belonging bags’ that welcomed repeat visitors with a personalized gift and invitation to meet members of the council.  Another congregation has doubled their attendance in the last three years and put in place a detailed plan to be more intentional in their supporting new people to becoming long-time members. Someone else explored the delicate challenges around helping people living in poverty to feel that they were fully contributing members of the congregation without being merely a person who needed charity. Several congregations explored growing intercultural, multilingual churches and the surprising subtle racism that rose up.  As Carmen was told at a World Council of Churches gathering that Christianity is the fastest growing faith in the world at this time, and the norm is a service that is a time of socializing as well as worship, and that it's normal for people to chat with their neighbors while the service is going on. There were lots of projects around children, how to welcome them, how to do all ages worship, and even an app for games and stories!  Sanctuary Star Hunt According to research, retaining children in church as they transition to adults requires them to feel personally connected to a minimum of 5 adults!

One minister in rural Saskatchewan talked about practising hope aggressively and how her little town congregation was expanding since Covid. Another talked about the intersection of faith and the Climate crisis and the need for clergy to learn how to preach about it in biblically faithful ways.

One person even put together a stand up routine that she will be presenting at a comedy festival this summer, which is both hilarious, biblical and evangelical, and promotes the United Church as being very different than the assumptions and steotypes that many Canadians might have.  Another is organizing a trip to Zimbabwe with people 16 and up, which will be an opportunity to build relationships and long-term cultural exchange.  This has brought new youth and new families to the church too.

I presented on the FAB collab and the workshops I had been doing, which was well received.  Much encouragement was given for continuing the project and the workshops despite the cancellations and delays.  There was even some suggestion of making the workshops available to the broader church.  The ministers requested to make art projects like the wooden dice like we made in the “Who is Jesus” workshop when the ministers gather for the last workshop with the Moderator in June!

Jesus said that he would send the spirit to help guide us through our challenging times.  He wanted  us to live with audacious hope, and to live with courage.  “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give you the kind of peace the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”  Easier said than done, of course.

But when we turn to God for guidance, when we practice deep spirituality and bold discipleship and daring justice, when we lean into living by flourishing practices, we will find the seeds of courage and hope and peace abiding with us as we work together.  Who knows what will grow from those seeds?  We can’t do it alone, we can only do it together.  Thank God for sending the Spirit to be with us so we are not alone, we do live in God’s beautiful world.  In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us, we are not alone.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.

Deep, Bold and Brave

Can you imagine being so committed to your faith that you would stand all day to listen to the scriptures?  That’s how the people felt when they committed to listening to the stories of their ancestors, the stories of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel and Leah, Joseph and his dreams, and Moses bringing the people out of slavery.  They were listening to the story of freedom, and they were remembering their own escape from slavery, in Babylon for a generation or more.  They didn’t remember the Temple of Solomon, or the great city of Jerusalem, but they remembered the stories of their parents and grandparents who talked about the destruction of the city, the fall of their king, and being carted off to a foreign land to serve at the whim of other people who worshiped gods they did not know or respect.  These were the generation who remembered stories of Daniel in the Lion’s den, or Shadrach, Meshack and Abednego in the fiery furnace, graffiti on the wall that predicted the death of King Belshazzar, ruler of Babylon.  And then when they least expected it, they were returning, full of stories, full of hope, to stand in the ruins and destruction of what had been a beautiful city, abandoned for decades and with only a few buildings not in need of repair.  And when they heard the words of their past, the description of the relationship God had with their ancestors, the dreams and hopes the people had while following Moses and then Joshua into the Promised Land, rich with milk and honey, they wept.  Scripture gave them a reminder.  That when things looked at it’s bleakest, God still was with them, God still cared.

The same can be said about the Luke passage.  Jesus read his scripture passage.  The passage written by another survivor of the Babylon invasion.  Isaiah who could find inspiration even while describing the disasters that the politics of his time was bringing to Isaiah’s world.  Isaiah was like a Jon Stewart or a Stephen Colbert, able to see the trends and the potential problems that might stem from decisions made by egotistical leaders who couldn’t or wouldn’t pay attention to what was happening in the world around them.  And Isaiah was still, despite the craziness of the times, able to find God at work in his life.  And that in turn inspired Jesus, who also could see what the Roman Empire was doing, it’s oppression of common people, its emperor’s whims having devastating impacts on the Sea of Galilea that suffered from overfishing so bad that fishermen had to patch their boats with pieces of other boats.  Where the power struggles between puppet kings like Herod and Roman Generals like Pilot meant a very precarious life for regular folks struggling to pay taxes and put food on the table for their families.  Jesus had grown up in a poor town, with poor people as his friends and neighbors and family.  He saw the despair and fear and hopelessness they struggled with every day.  And he saw a call to be that voice of courage and hope and inspiration, that voice of change and transformation.  That voice which spoke of God’s healing power to turn around those who felt abandoned, betrayed and helpless.  Jesus, the one whom people remembered when he was a kid climbing trees and getting underfoot, would be the one to bring hope to a terrified and discouraged people.  

I spent a week with incredible leaders from the Yukon, BC, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, the Maritimes and Newfoundland.  Some are in ministry, some are regional staff.  Some of us cried, some of us laughed, some of us did both.  Some of us were dual citizens, and had voted in the American Election.  Some of us were descendants of refugees or soldiers who fought in World War 2 or who had immigrated because of poverty and violence back home.  Some were from Korea, Kenya, or Zimbabwe, some were from indigenous heritage.  Some were French speakers, or Hungarian translators or only spoke English.  But we all were inspired by the same thing.  A love of scriptures and a love of God.  And a horror of what we saw happening on the news.  A maybe or maybe not nazi salute.  Trans friends worried about being targeted again for more violence especially those who have to travel to the states for work related purposes.  A president who says that people who attack police should be locked up but then releases people who were videoed attacking police.  And here at home, we have people who think this is progress, which is why many in the 2sLGTBQIA community are scared of what might come.  And when a bishop preaches about tolerance, respect and ethics, which is the gospel of Jesus, she is told that she has no right to preach, she is a woman and doesn’t belong in the pulpit, and that she should stick to the bible, which makes me wonder what people think is actually in the bible if it’s not mercy, compassion and empathy.  Above all, she reminded us at 5 Oaks about the importance of being brave in our faith.  When Jesus read that scroll to his community, it was his declaration of his ministry.  That this was the time to be a bold preacher of the bible.  That this was his mission, to heal, to reach out, to stand up for the vulnerable and the weak.  The spirit of the Lord was upon him.  

Is the spirit of the Lord upon us?  Are we ready to be bold and brave Christians who use compassion and mercy to test the politics we hear in this province?  Are we ready to delve deeply into what our Moderator calls us to do, practice deep spirituality that has us weep when we hear scripture, to choose to be bold disciples who will stand up for the marginalized, and to dare to call for justice for all?  One way we can do that is to send postcards to Bishop Budde in appreciation of the truth she has spoken to power.  Another is to reach out to our trans friends and family and listen to their fears and concerns and offer our support.  Connecting with those who are in need is so important right now.  Community and solidarity will help us all find the resiliency to be the people God needs in this hurting world.