Rule #6

 

Boy did Jesus ask hard questions!  Who am I?  And he had a new answer for who Simon was, who just two chapters ago, was caught sinking like a stone during a storm.  I suspect that after that event, there may have been some teasing by the other disciples, “Simon, oh he’s great, but whenever he gets in a tight spot, he sinks like a stone!”  Maybe Jesus decided to flip that teasing on its head and give Simon the nickname of The Rock, the cornerstone of the new community of love that Jesus hoped to build.  The new name stuck, and Simon made it a big part of who he was.  As Christians, we too are called to define and redefine who we are, and who Jesus is for us.  We are called to continually renew and explore our faith and our commitment to the teachings of Jesus.  We are to be like the ancient Christ followers who called themselves the People of the Way.  People on a journey.  People learning more and more about their relationship with God and their relationship with their neighbor, which are to be rooted and grounded in love.

One of the first workshops we did as part of the FAB Collab with Fort McMurray, Athabasca, and  Barrhead was where we explored who Jesus was for us.  We looked at a variety of artist’s images of Jesus, traditional ones, new ones, outrageous ones and comforting ones.  We reminded ourselves and each other of what our favorite Jesus story was, that had influenced our lives the most. Just like Jesus prodding his disciples, we were prodded to remember and share how Jesus and his teachings had influenced us.  And we made art to connect us in ever deepening ways to the story of Jesus.  Art about Jesus keeps us getting into ruts.  Humans like ruts.  We like them so much, sometimes I think we decorate them.  But when we get into ruts of who we are, or who we think Jesus is, we can get bogged down into narrow and inflexible ways of thinking.  Our Christianity goes from being a journey of exploration and growth to an institution where the status quo is focusing on maintenance rather than mission.  One person described it this way:

Institutions are driven by sustainability and survivability- neither of which should be a major focus of the church. Churches should not be led by institutional viability but rather inspirational viability. Inspiration means- to be filled with the spirit, always changing, moving, evolving and transforming. Christians are also called to be transforming and renewing constantly discerning what is good, acceptable and perfect.[1]

In other words, we are to keep learning and trying new ways of living our mission to love God and love others.  Easier said than done.  That’s where Rule 6 comes in.  It’s simple, straightforward, and helps us choose intentional love in times of conflict.  What is Rule 6, you might ask?  Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, described Rule 6 this way:

Two prime ministers are sitting in a room discussing affairs of state. Suddenly a man bursts in, apoplectic with fury, shouting and stamping and banging his fist on the desk. The resident prime minister admonishes him: "Peter," he says, "kindly remember Rule Number 6," whereupon Peter is instantly restored to complete calm, apologizes, and withdraws. The politicians return to their conversation, only to be interrupted yet again twenty minutes later by a hysterical woman gesticulating wildly, her hair flying. Again the intruder is greeted with the words: "Marie, please remember Rule Number 6." Complete calm descends once more, and she too withdraws with a bow and an apology. When the scene is repeated for a third time, the visiting prime minister addresses his colleague: "My dear friend, I've seen many things in my life, but never anything as remarkable as this. Would you be willing to share with me the secret of Rule Number 6?" "Very simple," replies the resident prime minister. "Rule Number 6 is 'Don't take yourself so g-damn seriously." "Ah," says his visitor, "that is a fine rule." After a moment of pondering, he inquires, "And what, may I ask, are the other rules?"

"There aren't any."[2]

Of course, as Christians, our first rule is to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves.  But Rule 6 reminds us of Paul’s scripture that asks us to stop measuring ourselves against others:  “not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.” That sounds like Rule 6 in theological language.

What happens when we do that? Great things! Naramata Centre [where Monica was until August 1] found neighbors knocking on their doorstep at midnight August 6.  They suddenly had evacuees, 15 of them, from just across the Okanagan Lake.  The evacuees were from Peachland and Summerland.  The staff didn’t hesitate despite knowing that they would lose all the revenue from the next two weeks, they cancelled all the reservations and became a residence for Evacuee families, finding food, shelter and even activities for kids.  They chose Christian hospitality over budget, no questions.  Naramata Center is one of many United Church Communities which when faced with challenges, have remembered to put love as their main priority.  We do that here too when we provide food for the hungry and comfort for the grieving.  We do that when we open our doors to strangers and feed the hungry.  We do that when we act courageously and renew and explore our faith.  We define and redefine who we are, and who Jesus is for us.  By remembering Rule 6, and following the teachings of Jesus and Paul, we can learn humbly to live lives of action, faith and spirituality.  And Jesus will give us new names too, names like “Beloved, friend, and disciple.  May it be so for us all.

Please check out Naramata Centre's video of their pivot to support evacuees here: (2) Facebook

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[1] Pulpit Fiction, accessed August 19, 2026

[2] Zander, Benjamin and Rosamund, The Art of Possibility, Penguin Books, 2000, p 79

Be generous with your lives!

One of the things I start doing at this time of year is dreaming of going to Naramata Centre for the summer.  I love the workshops and the fellowship with the big grand family that is the Wider United Church, running into other ministers or lay folks who are involved with the church, sunrise worship on the dock, sandcastles on the beach, great music and potlucks in the campground.  The amazing conversations around a campfire or over a good bottle of wine with intelligent, caring, spiritual folks are unforgettable.  The chance to walk a labyrinth, pick cherries, learn new drum or ukulele techniques, make new friends, share stories and deepen my faith are all things that happen at Naramata.  I can’t wait to look at the catalogue of classes!

Tim likes the crops in the neighborhood.  The first time he learned the art of wine tasting was on a bus tour of the area’s many vineyards.  Whether it’s Township 1775, Therapy, Blasted Church, or some new start-up, he’s sure to come home with a bottle of Gewurztraminer or two.  I prefer the ice wines or something sweet from Elephant Island.  Whatever we bring home, we more importantly bring home renewed faith, courage, enthusiasm and hope for our journey.

I feel my light shining more brightly after time there, like I’ve got my saltiness back.  Even when I was writing this and reminiscing about our many visits, it helped me feel more encouraged and excited about God, faith, and our mission.

One thing grapes are is generous.  There’s not one lowly little fruit like a cherry where it takes quite a bit of time to fill a bucket.  Picking a bunch of grapes instantly gives a big handful of fruit that lends itself easily to sharing.  And grapes are so versatile.  They can be made into grape juice or wine, they can be eaten fresh, they can be pickled, thrown in Waldorf salad, cooked into jelly, and I even found a recipe for pizza on line that the cook raved about.  Raisins go great in cookies, pies, muffins, cereal, you name it.  I won’t wade into the great cinnamon bun debate and whether or not raisins belong in that particular treat, but you get the picture.  It’s a versatile and flexible fruit that can serve many purposes and give great delight.

But!  Many a time I picked up what I thought was a chocolate chip cookie and found it was raisin.  Some even joke that’s why they have trust issues.  More seriously, too much wine can cause all kinds of troubles. We have folks who meet in our building every Thursday evening because they struggle with wine.  That’s why our communion service uses grape juice, to have a safe place that won’t trigger cravings for people recovering from addictions.  Too many grapes when I was a nursing mother could cause agony for my babies, which I didn’t expect.  And raisins have a surprising amount of sugar.  Moderation with grapes is important.

Jesus wanted us to be generous and flavorful and enthusiastic, but was also aware of the need for balance.  Too much salt on food can make it unpalatable, bad for our blood pressure and kidneys.  Too much salt on the land can leave it barren, unable to grow anything.  Too little salt and the wildlife lick highway road salt which causes all kinds of havoc.  Finding the right balance is complicated.

Another analogy of generosity of spirit was seen in the movie many of us watched last Sunday, “Guitar Lessons”.  The main character started out being stingy of his time, his talents and certainly his heart.  He was living the dream many Albertans crave.  Beautiful home, amazing toys but no people in his life.  No community.  He was the ultimate rugged individualist, the successful person who could do what he want when he wanted it.  But he was lonely.  He didn’t know how to connect with others.  It wasn’t until a stubborn, bratty kid walked into his life at a Tim Hortons and refused to leave, that the main character was able to shift to a spirit of generosity.

Generosity is a fruit of the spirit that takes wisdom and discernment to do wisely.  Our mission statement says, “We are called to be an Inclusive Christian Community empowering spiritual growth through meaningful outreach and dynamic, inspiring worship.”  It used to say ‘enabling spiritual growth’ but there’s a world of difference between enabling and empowering.  They are both supportive, generous words where we give people time and encouragement to deal with the issues they struggle with.  But when we enable people, we can actually keep them stuck in their troubles, bailing them out from all their troubles.  When we empower people, we help them come up with their own solutions.  Generosity that enables others can bankrupt us.  Generosity that empowers others can make a huge difference.  There was a scene in “Guitar Lessons” that showed an example of empowering generosity, when the elder gave his nephew a wooden box and careful instructions what to do with it.

When Jesus said, “You are Light, You are Salt”, he used the Hebrew word for the plural of you, like “Vous” instead of “Tu” in French. He was preaching to the whole community, not individuals.  When we grow the gift of generosity together, our little lights gleam together and make a real difference in the world.  May it be so for us all. Amen.

Quietly shaken or alarmed

I’ll never forget eating supper at Naramata Centre in our kitchenette.  It was our first time there at this marvelous United Church family camp and the children were quite small.  We were eating dessert when I saw red smeared all over the wall behind the dining table.  It was surprising and I was uncertain where it was coming from.  It was too thin to be blood, but I grabbed a washcloth and cleaned it up easily.  I made sure neither of my children were bleeding, but they were both in perfect health.  I sat back down to have some more dessert then looked again.  More red on the wall! Got out the washcloth, wiped the wall, sat down again, and watched my children like a hawk.

Our dessert was freshly hand-picked cherries that we had harvested from the orchard. Amber, not quite 2 years old, was biting a cherry then fingerpainting the wall with the juice on her fingers!

I don’t remember how I reacted other than cleaning her hands as well as the wall and moving the cherries away from her.  Not just to limit her artwork, but also because too many cherries can cause havoc on our digestive systems.  Having self-control around cherries is hard!

I admire the self-control Jesus exhibited in this story of the Sadducees.  If we read all of Luke 20, we would hear the religious scholars testing Jesus with conundrums and puzzles.  Paying taxes, John the Baptist’s ritual in the Jordan River, and more.  This question about seven marriages was a mental experiment, rather like the more famous Schrodinger’s Cat in a box.  It was also a very divisive topic between the Sadducees and the Pharisees, subject of a vigorous.  They pulled Jesus into the debate, suggesting a ridiculous scenario that the Sadducees thought would end any discussion of an afterlife.  It reads oddly to our current culture, this is not seven brides for seven brothers, but one bride.  If we look at it from the culture of Deuteronomy, we can understand it better.  The world of Deuteronomy was one of tough survival where the tribe was the focal point of every individual’s identity.  And with no rrsps, tffs or pension plans, widows could be in danger of starving to death.  The patriarchal culture didn’t help either.  With a male-centric society, being disconnected from a male family member to protect her was dangerous for a widow.  So, they came up with Levirate marriage which was designed to protect widows and ensure every male ended up with a male heir to inherit their estate and continue the tribe’s existence.  I’m very glad it is no longer a part of Canadian society.  It does exist in other parts of the world where there is a high level of mortality in both adults and children as well as a patriarchal culture.

But this was meant to be a trick question with an obvious answer.  The Sadducees expected Jesus to say that the wife would obviously not be married to anyone because an afterlife is ridiculous.  The Pharisees hoped Jesus would somehow find a way out of the trap.  Jesus said in effect that the riddle was focusing on the wrong question.  God’s children do not concern themselves with who possesses what, or who is married or who belongs to another.  Ownership, entitlement, even sex is not what God’s children should be focused on.

And God’s children are not to worry about fads, fashions and alarmists who only promote emotional reactions to life’s challenges.  2 Thessalonians says, “don't become easily agitated or disturbed by some prophecy, report or letter falsely attributed to us… Let no one deceive you, in any way. Stick to the traditions you received from us, either by word of mouth or by letter.”

Easier said than done.  It’s hard to know who to trust when we get bombarded by scammers who phone or text us out of the blue. How do we know what to believe any more? The United Church has inherited a simple tool that has been around for a long time, with roots in Greek philosophy and Hebrew faith.  It is to use logic, experience, history and faith to discern what is best.  It generally works well.  Logic is a good first step.  Learning from others’ experiences as well as our own is important too – I hear that people get texts claiming to be me asking them to send a money order and I never do that.  Sharing this experience can help keep people safe. 

History both personal and global is also important.  Orhan Pamuk wrote a book about a fictional Cholera epidemic in Turkey and how that was written before Covid 19, yet it was very predictive of how Covid 19 impacted our society because he knew his history. 

Logic, experience, history and faith can help us unravel tricky issues like Jesus did with the Sadducee puzzle.  They can help us build our resilience in times of challenge and unravel complex issues.  They can help us look at situations more calmly, and they can help us develop self-control instead of being constantly shaken and alarmed as Thessalonians describes.

If self-control is a gift of God, it can challenge how we look at others and ourselves.  This is at the heart of the debate around homelessness in Athabasca, for example.  We are not scared of people who are currently experiencing temporary housing shortage, but we are very nervous about mentally ill folks who act impulsively or illogically.  If we look at them as people who have poorly developed self-regulation, will we have more compassion and understanding of them? People assume that everyone has self-control.  But the more we learn about neurodiversity, addictions and the brain, the more we must challenge that assumption.  Recovering alcoholics and addicts say that only when they let go of the delusion of their self-control can they find their Higher Power helping them grow real self-control.

The Good news is that self-control can be grown with patience and understanding, no matter our age or our neurodiverse brains.  It is a gift that is free for the asking.  My daughter no longer paints with cherry juice on the kitchen wall.  She has learned to paint on canvases, the bigger the better! She has also learned to eat cherries with self-control.  Jesus modelled self-control, nurturing it in himself and others and we can too, with faith, hope and kindness as our guide.  Thanks be to God for these gifts of the Spirit at work in our lives!

“Homestead” by Amber Rosborough, 2022 in mixed media, not cherry juice!

Rooted in the Divine, Not in the Carpet

 

When Tim and I first got together, it was quite apparent that our families were similar.  My grandma was so shaped by the Famous Five and the Temperance Union Movement that she soaked her Christmas cake in Welch’s Grape Juice.  Tim’s grandma would offer great hospitality with shortbread and scotch mints but never had any liquor in the house.  Both our grandmothers were active in Edmonton United Churches, mine at St. Paul’s near the university, and Tim’s at Strathearn United near Bonny Doon.  So when he signed up for a wine-tasting tour one summer while I and the kids were taking camp programs at Naramata Centre, I felt a little nervous.  I never expected it to become a life-long interest for him the way it did.  He graduated from Baby Duck to Gewurztraminer, while I stuck to the occasional chocolate ice wine, not a common vintage.

It made our families nervous, but not enough to denounce us or disinherit us.  Then Naramata Centre had a a course on wine and spirituality.  Tim enjoyed visiting Blasted Church, Elephant Island and Township 7, developing a taste for merlots and other reds.  I discovered a passion for chai tea lattes.  Preferably with a subtle dusting of cinnamon.  It could have led to conflict, but we agreed that we still loved each other despite our different tastes in beverages.

Some people were so offended by the course that was offered that letters were written to Naramata and the Observer Magazine that threatened and blustered.  No more donations were going to go their way for supporting such outrageous attitudes and promoting alcoholism.  I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time, being very busy with raising two active children.  But I know it hurt some people to the point that they pruned themselves away from their church.

Congregations can lose people so easily that way.  And if it’s not about attitudes around alcohol, it’s the color of the paint for the office, or the removal of a banner or something else.  One of my classmates found out that their big split was over carpet color and 20 years later, people were still not speaking to each other.  That’s nasty in a small town, and I’m pretty sure that’s not what Jesus had in mind.  But it may have been exactly what John had in mind when he wrote, “If you say you love God but hate your sister or brother, you are a liar.”

Strong words, John!  How do we love our siblings in Christ especially when they are so not what we expect?  And of course, we’re supposed to practice loving the members of our faith community so we will be able to love our neighbors too.  Love is the fruit of the Spirit that we are supposed to be able to grow. 

This is easier said than done.  We can get caught up in feelings of frustration and concern, even fear when we don’t get the results we hope for.  And we can bend over backwards to be nice Canadians.  But we are not called to be nice!  We are called to be loving.  Sometimes that looks the same, but it is rooted in a different soil.  Being nice can lead to an artificial harmony where everyone talks and acts like we’re a loving family.  We don’t want to say how we feel because it might hurt someone’s feelings, or even worse because we don’t know how to say it in ways that will be kind.  So people turn a blind eye, or pretend they are happy or do their best to ignore the behaviors that are hurtful.  We ignore comments like “people always” or “people never”.  We leave conversations unsettled and unsure why we are feeling uncomfortable.  We say nothing at work when a racist or sexist joke is made. We don’t talk about the family member struggling with mental health issues that is phoning us at all times of night and day that have us feeling overwhelmed or sleep deprived.  Then all of the sudden, the carpet color comes up and boom!

Artificial harmony is like a pot on a stove that has a lid tightly attached and nowhere for the steam to go.  Eventually it explodes and people wonder how it got so hot.  Then we end up with two, three, five, even eight churches where once there was one.  There are towns in Ontario where there are three United Churches in the same block, one that started out Methodist, one that was Presbyterian, a Congregationalist and so on and these happened before 1925.  It happens in modern times too, Southern Baptists are losing prominent leaders, especially women, and the United Methodist Church is splitting for many reasons.

How do we avoid getting caught up in carpet issues and stay rooted and grounded in Christ?  How do we hear the call to bear fruit?  Loving fruit, full-bodied and richly flavored fruit?

We stay connected not to carpet conflicts but to the vine that nourishes us.  We stay connected to God, our Higher Power, Great Architect, Great Spirit, however you want to label the Good Orderly Direction.  We stay connected by being curious about our own emotional reactions when we feel triggered and ask God to care for these tender trigger spots.  We stay connected by confessing to ourselves and to God the times we haven’t stayed connected or even wanted to be connected to the True Vine. We stay connected by caring deeply about the challenges our neighbors are facing and not assuming that they are being deliberately hurtful.  We stay connected by getting coached in that connection.  Coached by this congregation as we practise together how to pray, how to connect to God through song and through ritual, how to be open to hearing God’s word through our scriptures.  When we commit to curiosity, confession, coaching and caring communication with God and one another, the fruits of the spirit are abundant, and we prove ourselves loving disciples of Christ, rooted in the divine.  May it be so for us all!