Gotta Get them All

Christmas eve 2016 sermon

Interesting how stories and rumors evolve.  Our scripture today is a familiar one, but did you notice, there are no tales of how the sheep and the cows were there.  We assume they were, but that part of the story has been added on over the years.  No talking either, sorry Kermit, but it’s a lovely idea and it points to God’s Dream.

I had a dream this summer.  I wanted to lure in teenagers and young adults to church so that they would find it meaningful to be here on Christmas eve.  I asked one young adult how to make this happen and he said, “make the church a Pokestop!”

For those of you who know what a pokestop is, you know that’s easier said than done. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a place where you can find a wild pokemon and catch it.  What’s a pokemon? It’s a little creature that has been around for 20 years now, a pocket monster, and very cute but fierce when in a fight.

Well, it’s not as old as Star Wars, and certainly not as old as Kermit, but it has a universal appeal.  Who wouldn’t want a cute little creature that is small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, smart enough to not need paper training, and loyal to a fault.  Whether it is the famous Pikachu, Far-Fetched or Mr. Mime, they attracted 231 million people in the month of June alone.  What church wouldn’t like that popularity?

Now I could have spent money and bought a lure for Christmas eve, but that seems rather manipulative and sneaky.  And while all of creation is welcome in God’s dream and so that means all creatures are welcome in God’s church, I wouldn’t want Team Rocket to come blasting in here to battle us all.  Fights are the opposite of God’s dream for the world.

But surprisingly enough, when I thought about it, we already are like the game.  The church is what would be a Pokémon centre, a healing place to recharge.  We are also a Pokémon gym, where people can come to train and strengthen their Pokémon and help them level up. 

But wait a minute, we have no pocket monsters here, right? Are you sure?  Remember that they can be found anywhere, they are loyal protectors, and that they need to be trained and given experience in order to grow and mature.  They are quite small, and are always with you wherever you go.  The more you use them, the better they become at strengthening you and protecting you from the trials and worries of life.

Right now, they are desperately needed.  Our year of 2016 has been a rollercoaster for many of our families and friends.  We could use a little more protection, a little more connection, a team to help us work through the challenges we face.  It seems like that peace on earth, that big dream of God’s, is even rarer than ever.  What could help us get through our days?

They are something rather old-fashioned, that’s been around for a long time, that has been a part of many legends and stories, and has been the inspiration of quests and adventures.  One CBC guest said this week that they are desperately needed to help our world survive.  And they’ve been on the endangered species list for a long time.  Disregarded, disrespected, laughed at, sneered at and generally ignored.  But our best stories have been inspired by them. 

Whether it’s Star Wars or the Star of Bethlehem, they have been at the core of the best of humanity and when people are at their worst, they are conspicuously absent.

They are simply put, values.  Good old fashioned values.  There’s lots of them, you probably know some already.  We light candles in advent to four of them: Hope,  Peace, Joy, and Love.  What about Respect? Kindness? Honesty? Compassion?  Some of them have old-fashioned names like Temperance which could help prevent fentanyl deaths, or charity which would help the food banks.  Some of them were used by the ancient knights, like courage or respect for people who are weak or poor or vulnerable.  Our bible is like a pokedex with many examples, and they are all gifts: wisdom, knowledge, faith, leadership and more.

Values are tiny, and hard to see.  They need to be nurtured and trained to get stronger.  They need to be tested with others.   They need encouragement and support.  And they can grow mightily. 

We need them more than ever.  What would the American Election have been like if everyone had used truth?  Look at the difference compassion and hospitality made to the folks fleeing the forest fires last summer?  If God’s dream is to be realised, where greed and anger and resentment and pride will be defeated, it will be because we remembered to reclaim the gifts we have been given, our own collection of loyal defenders and protectors and guides who help us do right.  It will be because we have respected those guides, trained them, healed them, nurtured them and found places to help them get stronger.  It will be because we have learned how to use them to make this world closer to God’s dream of peace on earth, good will to all.  And that is something all of us can rejoice in!

Hospitality and entitlement and pokemon

With all the excitement in the news of Pokémon Go this summer, I was looking forward to coming back from holidays and interacting with kids in search of their elusive Pocket monster characters.  It has become quite the talking point; young folks are getting off the sofa, going outside and meeting people, especially the generation that has been seen as living lives similar to mushrooms, down in the dark basement playing endless video games.  Yes there have been some silly things associated with it, and some sad and tragic things from people who forgot their common sense, to kids getting lured into a trap and robbed at gunpoint!

I was hoping to provide hospitality to teens and young adults looking for their charmanders, pikachus and bulbasaurs here.   Unfortunately, or fortunately, we are not a Pokestop, but the old brick schoolhouse up the road from us is.  So I went up the road to the library to offer hospitality.  Pokémon were the number one requested by kids getting their faces painted at the summer library program at Alice B Donahue this week.  The motto, ‘gotta get them all’ is very familiar to them.  They appreciated the hospitality of meeting them where they were and respecting what they were interested in. 

Hospitality is one of the calling cards of Christian practise.  It’s a spiritual practise that was shocking when it first was taught by Jesus and Paul, and it still is shocking today.  Think about it a bit.  When was the last time you threw a dinner party and invited everyone to it regardless of whether they could give a dinner party back to you? Or fed people who would never have the ability or resources to bring a potluck dish to a gathering?  In Jesus’ time, banquets were business deals.  You knew how important you were in the community by where you sat at the table, and it was an opportunity to remind people of your power and wealth.  Unlike the free pancake breakfast at the Agricom yesterday, a dinner party was designed to show strength and curry favor.  Jesus suggesting that we have a dinner without political wheeling and dealing would today be more like the bank opening its doors to the vault and saying, “help yourself to whatever you find in here”.

Christian hospitality is a difficult ideal.  How do we manage it? I still struggle – is it safe to have this homeless person in my house for a night? Is that couple okay?  How do I know? When is it hospitality and when is it entitlement?  That’s the flip side of the banquet parable.  There are times we think we are entitled to the best customer service or the best deals at our favorite store.  We deserve to have a break today.  We deserve to know that we are saved and that we don’t need to do anything more to keep our souls as healthy as our bank accounts.  We download the app that says, “I have decided to accept Jesus as my savior” and we are done.  Nothing more needs to be said.

Jesus and Paul would have nothing to do with that kind of entitlement.  Much like Pokémon Go, it’s not enough to have the app on our phones, or the catch phrase on our lips, we are to get out into the big scary world and meet folks.  Talk to them, encounter them.  The game players who search for their characters know that it takes time, effort and training to become a competent Pokémon trainer.  Paul and Jesus too, want us to become not just people who made a commitment one day and figure that was all that was needed.  No, they want us to be people of the way, followers who see themselves as disciples, ever learning, ever experimenting with what it means to be a Christian.  Our church is a training gym for us to learn the skills and practises of being Christ followers.  Our sacraments of communion and baptism are visible signs of how we work together to provide hospitality as part of our Christian faith.  Baptism is a sign that we are choosing to be disciples and that we recognize it is a life-long path that goes best when it goes in community. 

Communion is that banquet where all are welcomed as part of Christ’s family to join together in joy and celebration that we are part of God’s beautiful world.  Both remind us that whether we are first timers, long timers, irregulars or still seekers, we are all welcome here.