Rise and Shine!

One of the joys of having adult children is that we don’t have wriggly little bodies jumping on the bed at 5 a.m. on Christmas morning, full of excitement about Santa arriving and let’s go open the presents RIGHT NOW!

They have such enthusiasm and joy and it’s so early in the morning!  Rise and Shine with a vengeance.  Whereas the rest of us who are older love to sleep in on a holiday morning.  Rising and Shining is something that we tend to resist the older we get.

Isaiah, which we’ve been reading since the start of Advent, was writing in a time of political turmoil, and the audacity of him, telling people to rise and shine when all around them were wars, poverty, and political shenanigans.  People must have wondered why he was so hopeful when the world seemed so bleak.  Today’s passage is from what Scholars call 3^rd Isaiah. This particular writer was preaching to the people who had returned from the Babylonian Empire, and the first part of Isaiah was writing to people who hadn’t yet been conquered by Babylon.  There’s about 100 years between the two events.  Third Isaiah was writing to the refugees rebuilding the Temple and the city.  They had come with high hopes fueled by the stories of their parents and grandparents of the ‘good old days’ of the glorious temple.  They were living with the legacy dream of rebuilding and restoring those glory days.  When they arrived, they faced the awful reality of a city that had been left to crumble for a hundred years.  The countryside was sparsely populated by the descendants of survivors who had struggled to survive without infrastructure or community.  A hundred years means shifts in language and accent, so probably those that stayed had a hard time understanding the newcomers.  Like a young person who goes away to school at university and comes back home with new ideas and new language, the ones who stayed must have felt overwhelmed by all the plans and idealism of this large group that arrived.  And the folks who were returning with their heads full of dreams, were staggered by the immensity of what had been lost and what needed to be rebuilt.  When faced with rubble and weeds, even the best dreams seem daunting.  Isaiah 60 talks to these people, the discouraged idealists, the frustrated dreamers, the refugees and the survivors who struggled to find common ground and a new hope for the future.  “Arise, your light has come!”  Join together to work for your dream of a city so filled with light and peace and wisdom that nations will flock to learn together about God’s people.  Isaiah wanted to remind everyone to work together no matter where they were born, in captivity or in hardship on native land, and in that cooperation, despite language barriers and cultural differences, they would remember what they had in common, the heritage of a faith in a loving God who would sustain them in a better way that would benefit the world.

We see the same coming together in our Gospel reading with scholars coming to a poor family in an obscure town in Israel.  Now, Matthew doesn’t mention shepherds or a census or a stable.  That’s all Luke.  And we have to be careful to remind ourselves that both Gospel writers were not primarily historians, but theologians.  Josephus was a Jewish historian writing about the same time as Matthew and Luke, and he makes no mention of massacres although Herod the Great had a reputation of being ruthless and murderous in other situations.  Matthew is writing theology to his community of Jewish Christians, the ones who were first converted to following the teachings of Jesus.  He’s also writing to the whole Jewish community because he sees himself as part of the long story of the people of Israel.  So his focus is on Joseph, more than Mary.  And Joseph, like the technicolor dream coat Joseph in the book of Genesis, has dreams and respects what those dreams teach him.  And Joseph takes the mom and the baby to Egypt after a dream of danger.  Just like Moses was saved from a massacre by a powerful monarch, so too Jesus was saved from a massacre.  And just like Moses grew up in Egypt to be a savior for all the people living in oppression and slavery, so too Jesus would grow up in Egypt to free his people.  The parallels were an important reminder that Jesus was rooted and grounded in the traditions and stories of his Jewish heritage.  And just like King Solomon of old, Jesus attracted special scholars from outside the country to come and pay their respects.  This contrasts again with Luke’s theology which talks about Jesus being presented in the Temple as a young infant according to the customs of the time, or staying behind in the temple to debate the scholars when he was only 12, showing that he was a student of Torah, again according to the traditions of the time.  No mention of Egypt because Luke’s theology is a little different.

Both Christmas stories, Luke and Matthew, are not writing a theology of escape. Nor is Isaiah writing a theology of escape.  Theirs is a theology of imagination and courage. It asks us to envision a world ordered not by fear or scarcity, but by building community, compassion and commitment.  Scholars and carpenters, farmers and city dwellers from another land, peasants and rich magi alike come together to rise and shine as one community of hope.

The United Church is at a crossroads.  If we don’t rise and shine, our grandchildren won’t have churches to come to to find hope and healing for the future.  If we don’t build community, compassion and commitment, our country might fragment into small territories that lack infrastructure for all.  If we don’t dream of a better future, our schools and hospitals will become privatized and the rich Herods will continue to hoard trillions of dollars.  If we don’t find ways to work together, our lights will struggle to shine.  We too have hard work ahead of us, both as a church and as individuals.  Do we buy into a theology of Herods accumulating power and wealth and not caring who we hurt as we do so, or do we buy into the theology of Isaiah, Matthew and Luke that cares for each other and helps each other shine?  As Isaiah proclaimed, “Though chaos still covers the earth and conflicts cloud the people, upon you God now dawns, and God's glory will be seen among you!  The nations will come to your light and the leaders to your bright dawn!”  God, help us to see your glory, help us to rise together to be the light of hope to your struggling world this year.  Amen.

Who’s Right, Who’s Wrong?

Isn’t it great that we have United Church neighbors? And good ones at that.  Not the kind of neighbors where we have to build good fences in order to have respect.  But good neighbors, the kind that care and support each other. When we gathered to worship with the Moderator in May, it was wonderful to see representatives from First United, and to hear that some of you had started driving in the wee hours of the morning to get to church for 10:00 am.  I think poor Isabelle left at 6!  Talk about a caring neighbour, joining in on a joyous occasion.  It was wonderful to see so many come to hear The Right Reverend Doctor Carmen Lansdowne speak about the state of the church and the challenges we face.  She, like Paul, wanted to encourage us to continue to live in faith, hope and love.

That’s at the heart of the good Samaritan teaching too.  Jesus was being tested by a scholar who thought he knew everything about the Bible.  The scholar figured he had all the answers and he was right on everything he wanted to talk about.  He could quote scripture at the drop of a hat and might have sounded a little smug as he did so.  Maybe he figured he would put this country bumpkin from Nazareth in his place.  He knew how to play the debate game to win.

Jesus didn’t want to play the game of “who’s right, and who’s wrong”.  Instead of saying, “I’m a smart person too, and I know the answers better than you, here’s the answer,”, he switched to asking questions.  “What does the Bible say?”  Of course that was something that the lawyer was good at.  Without hesitation, he replied immediately with the Sunday School lesson he had been taught.  Just as one of the first prayers we teach children is often The Lord’s Prayer, the lawyer and Jesus both grew up learning the Shema to start and end every day, “Hear o Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might” from Deuteronomy 6 vs 4 and 5.  For good measure, the Lawyer also threw in a verse from Leviticus about loving one’s neighbor.  Maybe he heard Jesus preach about it before.   Or maybe he agreed with Jesus that loving one’s neighbor was also important. But like a good lawyer, he wanted a dictionary definition, a list of who was in, who was out?  Who was right and who was wrong?

Jesus didn’t want to give a list.  And so, as he often did, he decided to shock the lawyer out of his complacency.  He started with a tale that could have come out of the local newspaper if they had ones back then.  Innocent traveler mugged and robbed and left for dead.  Probably not unusual enough to even make the front page.  Even the people walking by the victim and ignoring him would not have been the story.  The lawyer, and anyone else listening in, would have understood that the priest had more important priorities than to stop for what appeared to be a dead body.  The same went for the Levite, who might have been a scholar of scriptures, like the lawyer.  Priests and Levites knew very well what would make them unclean.  They knew what their priority was, preserving their relationship with God through maintaining the rituals and purity codes that allowed them to go into the Temple, the holy of holies, with obedience to the Law as the way to show obedience to God.  Just like the lawyer, they knew what was right and what was good.  Nothing shocking here, nothing to see, move along.

Then Jesus did it, knocked the socks off, okay the sandals off of everyone listening.  Enter the hero.  Like most fairy tales, it’s the third time that’s the charm, the third little pig that builds a house that resists the wolf, the third brother whom everyone thinks is a fool that kills the giant, saves the day and rescues the princess from the dragon.  Who is this hero we expect, the Arnold Schwarzenegger or the Tom Cruise or the Harrison Ford who wanders in at the nick of time to save our poor fellow lying in the ditch?

I wish I had been there to see the look on the lawyer’s face, or the rest of the followers faces when Jesus named the hero as a Samaritan!  Nowadays whenever we hear the word Samaritan, we immediately add “Good” in front of it and gloss over the Samaritan.  The lawyer would never have thought that.  Samaritans were a break away group of Hebrew people.  For complicated reasons, they worshipped the same God, and read the same scriptures.  The main difference is that they only read the first five books, Genesis to Deuteronomy, and they didn’t go down to the Temple in.  The lawyer would have thought of Samaritans as wrong!  Wrong in how they worshiped, where they lived, and how they talked about God.

It must have been really frustrating for the lawyer to answer that last question, “Who acted neighborly?” because he didn’t say, “The Samaritan”, and he certainly didn’t say, “The Good Samaritan.”  “The one who was kind.”  The one who showed love.  The one who acted not from a rule book but from compassion.

We are living in a world where compassion is seen as silly, where kindness to the ‘wrong people’ is seen as sinful, where being loving is labeled as soft, or woke.  We are seeing outbreaks of childhood diseases like Measles that are easily preventable, or people banning books for children, sure that they are right about censorship and vaccinations.  As one minister in the states wrote this week, “To remain tender in a world like this is an act of spiritual resistance. This is how we will survive this time: not by toughening up, but by staying soft enough to care. By becoming the kind of people who others can turn to. The kind of people who, even in fear, choose to become refuge.”  In other words, we need to double down on being kind to our neighbors, especially when we think we are right and they are wrong.  We are called to choose not being right but being loving.  Love over hate is not easy and it is not weak.  It takes real courage and determination, and it takes faith, hope and love in God who is with us even in the tough times.  We are never alone when we love God with all our heart and soul and strength and mind and love our neighbor as ourselves.  May God give us the courage to stay true to God’s call for compassion.  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.

Belonging to truth, freed from sin

Jesus is amazing in John 18.  He knew his disciples wouldn’t fight to put him in power.  And he didn’t want that either.  What a contrast to what was happening in the states a month ago when their national guard was preparing for riots and insurrections if Kamala Harris had won.  There was to be no civil war enacted by the followers of Jesus, and Jesus never asked for that kind of revolution. 

Jesus asked for a revolution of the heart and mind, but not a revolution of force and violence.  He was asking for a revolution of attitude and intention.  He was asking for a revolution where we think about truth and compassion and empathy.  He was asking for a rebellion against fear, anger and entitlement.  Where decisions are made based on what is best for the wider community and not what is best for my ego or power.

We spend much of our time being stuck in anger, resentments, fears and worries.  It’s easy to lash out at others instead of recognizing our own hurts that need healing.  In our Christian tradition, it is known as sin, and it produces much suffering and unhappiness.  Jesus came to free us from that suffering, to free us from sin.  But that takes teamwork, that needs our support and co-operation. 

When we live from a place of sin, we pretend we are doing better than we really are.  We pretend to others and ourselves that we have it all together, that we are perfectly happy, or perfectly in control.  Some of us pretend that we are completely helpless to deal with a terrible world that hates us, and we can never do anything to improve our lives.  Some of us pretend that we have all the answers and people who don’t listen to us deserve our righteous wrath.  Some of us spend all our time judging others so that we can ignore the fact that we are judging ourselves mercilessly.  All these kinds of sins arise from us being unwilling or unable to see ourselves as God sees us, imperfect creations that are loved and that are invited to a radical revolution where fear is rejected, and love is accepted.

This brokenness, this sinfulness is why we have a place for confession in our worship.  It is a time to tell ourselves and God the truth of our imperfections.  Telling and admitting that kind of truth is hard.  We don’t like to admit that we aren’t perfect.  We fear that we will be targeted for bullying and abuse if we are honest about our shortcomings.  The very thing we fear is the very thing that sets us free!

Every time we confess, it brings us a step closer to the realm of Jesus.  Every time we say that we aren’t perfect, we witness to the truth.  Every time we ask for help, we are hearing the voice of Jesus speaking truth to our hearts and minds.  When we belong to truth, we are set free from sin.  This truth is so powerful, it is a major focus of recovery programs like AA and Al Anon, who have it as Steps 4 and 5 in their path to recovery.

What a contrast it is from what the world focusses on.  There are many people like Pilate who are in power and who are determined to stay in power.  That is not easy at the best of times, but people in power are often afraid of losing that power.  Pilate knew what it took to get to power, lots of manipulation, political scheming, spreading rumors, and using force to claw his way to the top.  He didn’t say, “You’re fired”, he said, “You’re dead”. And had the power to enforce it too.  Quite often. Pilate was known as a brutal commander, sent in to Jerusalem to keep the Pax Romana, by using a sword if necessary.  He had the power of life and death over a whole city. Usually, he wasn’t afraid to use it either.

Jesus stumped him.  Jesus confused him.  Here was a man, a leader who influenced people by speaking truth to them. By treating them with respect.  By respecting them.  By caring about them.  Everything he did to be a leader, an influencer, was the exact opposite of what Pilate did.  He invited respect, he did not command it or demand it.  He did not bully others into treating him with respect.  He did not use shame or blame or guilt to manipulate them into giving him authority to be the leader.  He was a leader by attraction, not enforcement.

Pilate recognized Jesus to be so far outside his experience that he didn’t know how to react.  He was used to people who took power by force.  Jesus was confusing.  His answers put the onus on Pilate to think about what he was doing in a different way than what he was comfortable doing.  He didn’t want to think about truth the way Jesus talked about truth.  He had lied and manipulated people to get where he was, and truth was something he had long before abandoned in his lust for power.  He didn’t want to think about truth.  Truth was something that he was afraid of.  If this Jesus could become an influencer of others, a leader of others, what did that say about Pilate’s leadership?  That it was cruel and murderous.  The truth was something to be ignored, feared and dismissed.

It takes courage to tell the truth and listen to the truth.  It takes courage follow Jesus.  But the great joy is this is why Jesus came into the world, to build a community of truth and compassion that frees us from the pain of our sins large and small.  May we work together to build that community of Jesus who has created and is creating, our judge and our hope.  God is with us, we are not alone, thanks be to God!

Handing off Power

 

Ever seen a politician working the crowd, shaking hands, trying to have that personal touch to win your vote? Or maybe a celebrity on a book tour when they know they only have a limited amount of time to be in that spot and want to meet as many of their fans as possible? 

I had the privilege of sitting down beside Douglas Cardinal, famous architect and recipient of the Order of Canada last week.  He loved having an audience to tell the story of how he wasn’t allowed to study architecture in Canada but had to go to a university in Texas instead.  The interesting thing is that his assistant was watching the time so he didn’t have to.  Important people usually have someone along who is watching the time, keeping them moving so they can get to their next appointment on their very packed schedule. 

Just like the disciples hustling Jesus to get to the house of Jairus in time to save the life of his daughter.  There wasn’t a moment to spare.  This was an important person, and the fact that he came humbly to fetch Jesus, had boosted Jesus’ importance in the eyes of the crowds surrounding him.  Jesus had hit the big time!

Welcome to one of the longest stories Mark wrote about Jesus.  Usually, Mark kept his writing simple, straightforward and a bit blunt.  But in this passage, Mark went into great detail.  He described the emotional state of Jairus as well as the woman desperate for healing, and the family members who had started the funeral rites for Jairus’ daughter. Mark quoted what the woman with the hemorrhage said to herself, and even quoted Jesus speaking in Aramaic!  This story made quite an impression on Mark.  

It highlights a contrast between the high-ranking, powerful religious authority and the nameless, poverty-stricken woman.  But there’s also the similarity between them, they both are looking for healing, the woman for herself, Jairus for his daughter.

Both the woman and the girl were considered unimportant in a patriarchal society.  Girls were only potential brides to carry on their future husband’s line, and often had no choice in whom they married. If they couldn’t produce babies, and a woman who was constantly bleeding would not be able to have a baby, they also would be seen as a burden on society.  The woman would be seen as untouchable by both her husband and the rest of society.  That meant solitary confinement, and if she was going to go out in public, she had to stay away from all men, not easy when living in a bustling town. She certainly would not be allowed in a synagogue, nor would she be allowed in the presence of a popular Rabbi or Jairus either, for that matter.  Yet she dared do the unthinkable, leave her house and sneak into the crowd, hoping she could figure out a way to get him to heal her on the sly.  It would not have been easy in the hustle to not get bumped or stepped on, and having the courage to work her way into the crowd to grab the hem of his robe would have taken some effort!

It’s fascinating to note that despite the urgency of Jesus getting to Jairus’ home, he stopped immediately to figure out what had happened.  The disciples, just like assistants to politicians, tried to get him moving, but he wasn’t going to budge.  His priority was not their priority.  He wanted to talk to the desperate person who reached down in the dust to touch his robe.  Much to her surprise, he did not condemn her, he commended her, admiring her faith.  Then and only then did he take off and heal Jairus’ daughter.

All well and good to have lofty priorities and to take time to really care for the people his culture thought were insignificant, but what would that look like here today in Canada?  Do we know anyone who lives or lived by those principles?

As a matter of fact, there was at least one person who we all know of.  He was the son of a United Church minister, grew up in the church, and spent his life caring about the people of Canada who were not necessarily wealthy or powerful.  He became a diplomat and an ambassador for Canada.  He worked for the United Nations in their early days, and his efforts to set up UN Peace Keepers to go to conflict zones netted him the first Nobel Prize Canada had ever been awarded, and it was for Peace.  He came home after being the president of the UN General Assembly, and entered politics.  Sometimes it went well, and he established the Canada Pension Plan; a universal Medicare system; a unified Armed Forces; and a new national flag which took 6 months of nasty arguing and debating before our current flag was accepted by both Conservatives and Liberals.  He also championed women’s rights, bilingualism, immigration, minimum wage and multiculturalism.  Four years after he resigned as the 14^th Prime Minister of Canada, his funeral was presided over by the United Church Moderator.  His friends and family called him Mike, but the world knew him as Lester B. Pearson, and The United Church knew him as a man who could be both conciliatory and dictatorial, but who did his best to live up to the values Jesus taught.

We don’t have to be politicians or famous architects to live out the values that Jesus taught.  Many of us will be volunteering on Canada Day, flipping pancakes, serving popcorn, pouring tea or coffee, riding in parades, and helping our neighbors find a good spot to see the fireworks.  There will be opportunities to make time for someone like the woman touching Jesus’ robe or the little girl.  May we notice when we bring Christ’s healing love to those we meet, through the strength of Jesus, the love of God and inspiration of the Spirit.  Amen

The Power of Words

Words can make such a difference in how we hear a story. “Peace, be still!” Jesus says to the storm, then “why are you so afraid?” to the disciples, some of whom had only recently joined the hand-picked team that Jesus had selected.  Jesus sounds so calm, so pastoral in these words.  So kind, so comforting.  Except that’s just a little bit of a disservice to the original Greek language that Mark was struggling to write his gospel in.  Unlike Matthew, Luke and John, his Greek was not smooth,  flowery or poetic. Mark didn’t use big words, and he didn’t get into fancy descriptions.  He was the kind of writer who would say, “The dog bit the man who tried to take away his bone.” Whereas the others might write “The tiny brown dachshund snarled and snapped when the robber tried to grab his meaty bone away from him”.  They paint a picture, but Mark is a plain-spoken, blunt man.

The Greek words he used wasn’t “Peace be with you”, expecting the storm to respond, “and also with you”.  No, the words he chose were much more like a rebuke you’d give to a barking dachshund, “Shut up! Be Quiet”.  Then he turned to his disciples and bluntly said, “Why are you such cowards still?”  And some versions translate their response as ‘great awe’, while other translate it as ‘great fear’.  It would be very easy to be fearful if one minute I’m feeling like I’m going to drown in a storm, then the next thing I know, Jesus yells at the storm to chill out, and then yells at us for our cowardly attitude.  I’m not sure which would be more unnerving, almost drowning, or the unnatural stillness that follows, or the scolding afterwards.  And why did they still struggle to have faith, as Jesus presumed?

Good question.  We’re only in Chapter 4, and yet the disciples have seen healings like Peter’s Mother-in-law, a withered hand, and someone with mental illness.  They’ve watched crowds be healed and heard stories that were inspiring.  But they still waffled in their faith.

They were still new in their roles of being disciples, the 12 that were singled out for special teaching, and yet they waited to wake Jesus until the last minute.  They were still like us, one moment rock solid in their excitement about being the chosen ones caught up in a wave of enthusiasm, like a 5-year-old watching their first Oiler’s game, not really understanding what all the hype was but happy to cheer like everyone else.  Then they try skating for the first time and discover that while the big men make it look easy, it’s not.  It takes practice, discipline, patience and a lot of courage.  It’s not easy.  And coaches that bark at kids, using words like “Why are you such cowards?” are likely to lose their potential recruits before they are even starting out.  Words matter. 

Faith matters too.  When times are good, when everyone around us is happy, it’s easy to feel certain that we can trust God.  But when we’re away from the crowd, when the storms of life come roaring into our lives, fierce and unexpected, it’s natural to feel scared.  The disciples were no fools, they were experienced fishermen, and they knew how dangerous the sea of Galilee was.  They turned to Jesus for support.

Interesting words there.  “Do you not care that we are dying?” they cried.  They had accepted their fate.  Fishermen knew what it meant when a boat started filling up with water.  Death was certain, so certain for people who used boats for a living that even up to the 18^th century, many sailors and naval officers did not know how to swim, partly because of Europe’s cold and dirty waters on land, and  some believed it was better to drown fast rather than try to fight to survive.  They didn’t cry out asking Jesus to spare their lives, they couldn’t imagine that he could do that.  They cried out for Jesus to care about them as they faced death together.

Does someone care about us when we are in the middle of the storms we are facing?  Does someone support us, and calm the situations we find ourselves in, time and time again?  Now, I’m not saying that praying to God will cure our cancers, and protect us from disasters large and small, but something happens when we take our deepest fears and anxieties to the Holy Mystery, however we understand it.  Scientific researchers have often studied the power of prayer. Interestingly, there’s growing evidence that prayer works on us and our relationships!  When we pray that love be in our hearts towards another person, that can have real results on how we relate to them.

Words matter.  We often hear that Perfect Love casts out Fear.  If we turn it around, Perfect Fear casts out Love too.  And that’s what happened to the disciples.  They were in perfect fear.  “Don’t you care that we’re about to die” may have been tinged with anger, often the product of fear.

And of course he did care.  Turning to Jesus, even when we feel swamped by the storms of life, is the way of courage and faith.  It’s not easy, but it is the only thing that calms the trials we face.  We all wrestle with their last words to each other, “Who is this man?” That is the crux, who is Jesus?  For us, Jesus can be the man who inspires us to continue to grow our love for one another in the face of stormy times.  When we choose the word love over the word fear, God over chaos, hope over despair, our faith grows and strengthens in amazing ways. May we all practice such faith until we too are as brave as the disciples became, brave enough to face all our fears with a calm and certain faith in Jesus, our Christ, who always has the last word, love.  Amen.

Holy Seraphims Batman!

Have you ever woken up from an intense dream that left you shaken and sweating?

Or maybe the glimpse of an idea that surprised you, or a daydream over a cup of coffee?  I imagine that’s what Isaiah was experiencing when in the middle of the church service, the sermon and incense was putting him to sleep. He had a daydream, a vision that would have made Stephen Spielberg or George Lucas or Peter Jackson green with envy.  Winged creatures, not quite angels, and definitely not human.  And a God that is so big, just the hem of God’s robe filled the whole temple.  Even Kate Middleton’s train on her wedding dress was not long enough to do that.  And the temple is tended by seraphim, odd looking creatures with many wings. Some biblical scholars remind us that the word seraph comes from the Hebrew root word for snake, sarap, like the word Serpent, so maybe Isaiah was foreseeing an episode of Game of Thrones with flying dragons, snake-like creatures covered in feathers?   Either way, Isaiah was confused, overwhelmed and astonished at the sight of so much bewildering imagery, the immensity of his God experience that day.  And he was in despair.  Who could look at such a vision without recognizing that they were not worthy for such a thing?  Isaiah experienced profound doubt and shame being in the presence of the Holy. How could he see this when he was so flawed and uncertain, so acutely aware of his imperfections and his faults?  In other words, he was human and he struggled with imposter syndrome.  And he was in deep pain.  Woe is me, I am lost and live with people who are lost like me, in a world that is imperfect.

Can you relate? How many of you are feeling lost?  How many of you struggled with flashbacks when you heard that once again you might evacuate?  How many of you looked around your homes wondering what to pack, what to leave behind?  How many of you waited for that call, that knock on the door?  How many of you felt a lump in your throats or a tightened stomach at the thought of that long drive?  I can’t begin to imagine reliving that potential trauma. 

There are times when we find ourselves up against things over which we have no control.  Fires, floods, viruses and bacteria can disrupt our lives in unexplained ways.  We don’t know where to turn, how to respond, where we can go when we feel at a loss.  One of the hardest things to admit to ourselves is that we are not God.  Despite our best efforts, things happen.  We come to realize that we are not God, and that we don’t always know what’s best.  We say, “Oh Woe is me, I am lost.  I am not God and God is more than I can logically understand.  How can I be in the presence of the Holy?”

That is the question for us frail humans.  We are not God, we are not perfect or pure or almighty.  We have flaws, we make mistakes, we have failures from time to time.  We get hurt, and sometimes we hurt others.  How can we approach God?

Isaiah showed us how.  Just like an AA meeting, he named his vulnerability, and his flaws.  He recognized and confessed his pain.  “Hi, I’m Isaiah, and I’m a broken, imperfect human.”  And just like in AA, he found himself freed from all that self-centred concern and angst.  Just like in AA, he found himself accepted just as he was.  Just like in AA, he turned his life over and found he had a clean slate, not from any action he had taken, but by the action of God through the strange beings that worshiped God, saying Holy, holy holy.  And just like in AA, he found that he was called to help and serve others.  By being honest and vulnerable in front of the holy mystery that was above and beyond perfect description, he found healing and a new purpose.  Which is what Jesus may have been getting at when he was talking to Nicodemus.  Nicodemus was a man of high standing and influence in his community.  He was a public figure.  He had a lot of power and authority, and yet he was troubled and uncertain.  He came to Jesus for answers and Jesus searched for a metaphor that Nicodemus would understand.  Both scriptures point to the same thing. That the Holy is hard to approach when we are in pain or in trouble, but the Holy is always full of grace and healing for us.  And when we are ready to be as vulnerable as a child, as truthful and honest as Isaiah, we will be approached by God’s healing, purifying love.  It may burn and hurt like a red-hot coal to our lips, but it leaves us able to say, “Send me!” with joy and enthusiasm. 

Our Song of Faith describes God in ways that Isaiah would have loved: 

God is Holy Mystery, beyond complete knowledge, above perfect description.

Yet, in love, the one eternal God seeks relationship.

So God creates the universe and with it the possibility of being and relating.

God tends the universe, mending the broken and reconciling the estranged.

God enlivens the universe, guiding all things toward harmony with their Source.

With the Church through the ages, we speak of God as one and three:

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We also speak of God as Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, God, Christ, and Spirit, Mother, Friend, and Comforter, Source of Life, Living Word, and Bond of Love, and in other ways that speak faithfully of the One on whom our hearts rely, the fully shared life at the heart of the universe.

May we have the courage to be vulnerable to the Holy Mystery, and may we find deep healing and purpose in God’s loving action. Amen

The Struggle to Love

(Photo: A Mennonite, a Catholic and a United Church minister finishing a jigsaw puzzle together, 2023)

C. S. Lewis once said that the hardest person to love other than ourselves, is the person sitting beside us in the pew.  They drop their hymnbooks, they pick their teeth, or they drip mud on the carpet.  It’s easy to proclaim love in the abstract for people we will never meet, or in a foreign country far away.  It’s another thing to love the people next to us.

There’s a United Church who was designing a new building.  The congregation became fiercely split between those who thought that it was an important way of telling the community that they were a church, and those who thought a steeple was a sign of patriarchal, hierarchical oppression.  The ones who thought a steeple was a necessity couldn’t agree on whether a cross should be on the building.  Was it a sign of state-sanctioned torture or was it a beloved symbol of hope and encouragement?  Other congregations have split over the color of carpets, pews vs chairs, (and by the way, pews are a relatively new invention developed about 800 years ago and not really spread far until protestants decided they wanted to sit down for the sermon), sung music versus instrumental music, never mind how we do communion and baptism.

But, and this is a sad but, we are not known for our unity and love, but for our diversity and judgmental arguments.  There are denominations that will not talk to each other, and just because someone was baptised in one church, doesn’t mean that they will be accepted in another church.  There are incidents where young people have made plans to get married only to be told by their priest or pastor that they aren’t Christian enough or acceptable enough.  It gives us Christians a really bad name.

In 2012 I went to the fastest growing church in Canada.  It was growing so fast that the pastor got on the cover of MacLean’s Magazine. They had four greeters at the door, and four ushers to help people find their seats.  The place was full, the service was slick, with slides for all the hymns and not a hymnbook in sight, a praise band that got everyone full of emotion with songs that lasted 7 or more minutes each.  People spoke in tongues, accepting Jesus as their savior and getting the pastor to lay healing hands on them.  The sermon was a riveting, dramatic 30-minute reenactment of David’s friend Jonathan sneaking up on the dreaded Philistines with only his trusty servant beside him. Now there’s a passage that doesn’t get preached on very often, but the pastor hammed it up and made it unforgettable. The whole service was closer to two hours and there was even someone in the back of the sanctuary burning cds of the worship service and selling them as people left. 

The next week we went to a Quaker service where there was no music, no organ, no guitar, just silence.  In that service, the first half hour was for complete and utter silence where all that could be heard was the breathing of the person sitting beside you.  30 minutes of nothing but our own thoughts.  Then the next half hour was people sharing what came up for them in their prayers.  They didn’t like it when students came to worship wearing shoes with shiny sequins on them as that was a sign of not living a simple and humble life.  That too was a sermon that was never forgotten, and it was maybe two sentences long.  When everyone had said what had come to their hearts, they said the Lord’s prayer together and then had coffee time.

This kind of diversity and division among Christians is confusing to outsiders.  They don’t understand why there is so much division among people who were commanded to love one another.  It is one more reason for modern, cynical atheists to roll their eyes and dismiss our faith.  Much damage has been done to the Christian witness by folks trying to prove that their interpretation is right and better than others.  And when they mixed politics with judgmental righteousness, a lot of people got hurt, wars got started and trauma was inflicted on generations of people.  All because we forgot that Jesus taught us to love one another with a sacrificial love that was deep, bold and daring.

We forgot to hold close to the source of Love, Jesus, and God.  We forgot to pray for help in loving our neighbors.  We forgot that we are all made in God’s own image which means some of us need silence, some of us need loud enthusiasm, and some of us need something in between.  It’s okay to recognize that we have different ways to connect to God.  An abundance of ways to practice loving God.

The challenge for us, as it has been for Christians for centuries, is remembering that we are not doing this by ourselves.  We do not have to love perfectly for God’s love to be perfected in us.  And we can ask if our feelings towards our neighbors are coming from fear or love.  Fear gets us acting like dinosaurs, doing the classic fight, flight or freeze reactions.  Fear breaks churches down.  Fear withers us, like a dead vine branch.  We do not thrive on fear, we are not resilient on fear.  We do not grow or produce fruit when we are connected to fear.  When we remind ourselves to root ourselves in compassion and prayer, and support each other in love, our Christian witness is strengthened, and God will strengthen us to bear much fruit.

What an amazing witness we would be if we found ways to help each other be less fearful and more loving.  If we could look for ways we are united instead of different.  If we could look beyond my needs to our thriving.  And from my troubles to helping the world be a more resilient, loving place.  When we work together in love, God works in us to love the world too, and the world needs our unifying love now more than ever.

May we find the courage to love one another as we have been loved.  Amen.

Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.

There’s an old family story about my grandfather who was in the Colonel Mewburn Hospital in Edmonton.  He was waiting for surgery on his eye that had become so affected by glaucoma the doctors told him it had to be removed.  This was a blow to him as he was a salesman travelling across Alberta to show merchants his advertising samples.  He had binders of pens, calendars, mechanical pencils, all labeled “Your business here” that stores could order and hand out to their customers.  He ignored the headaches and the blurry vision as long as possible, then when he did see a doctor, it was too late. His three sons were adults so that was a mercy, but the night before the surgery, his heart was troubled and he couldn’t sleep.

Finally, he dozed off only to have a vision that Jesus was standing at the foot of his bed and told him that he would be okay, and would still have a good life.  He woke up and told his wife and sons of his dream. 

His experience of Christ was as real to him as he was to his children and grandchildren.  That experience didn’t solve all his problems, it didn’t give him his sight back, it didn’t help him to learn braille, it didn’t help him keep his temper when blindness frustrated him, but it gave a sense of comfort that no one could take away.  He also committed to going to church, and it was so important that he went every Sunday.

We view experiences like this and Thomas’ with more than a grain of salt.  The world thinks everything should have a logical explanation, and that facts are more important than fiction.  People angrily attack others on social media for sharing such stories.  They type things like “Religion is evil, it has caused nothing but suffering and the only people who benefit are the con men pushing an unbelievable Santa Claus in the sky.”  The anger is as real as surgery or glaucoma.    It’s hard to have faith in a mysterious God and an even more mysterious resurrection in such a world.

Thomas knew that anger.  The death of his beloved rabbi Jesus was traumatizing.  It went against everything he had hoped for.  The disciples, along with women like Mary Magdalene, had been together for a long time, and learned much from Jesus.  But now he treated their words with distain.  How could they, in the space of a single day, go from grief to enthusiasm?  No wonder Thomas rejected their crazy story.  He felt betrayed by them, and he must have felt lonely and abandoned.  He no longer trusted them.

Our whole society right now is suffering a crisis of trust.  Bridges collapse, charity workers get bombed, civilians and even children are targeted for drone attacks, and there’s unpredictable and catastrophic weather patterns leading the news on a regular basis. Some people turn to shopping channels or bibles being sold by a politician.  Some believe that the UN is trying to sterilize everyone with contrails.  They ignore warnings about measles.  The world is changing, and they want to get back to a time when the world was predictable and there were never empty shelves in the grocery store.

It's hard to know who to trust or what to trust.  Thomas trusted his own senses.  He trusted his Rabbi.  But his friends?  No way would he have trusted them with his possessions as described in our Acts passage. And yet, he had an experience of Jesus that changed all that.

This experience was transformative, just as the vision of Jesus in the Colonel Mewburn Hospital was transformative for the man who lost his sight.  Just as it was for the disciples and followers of Jesus living in Jerusalem.  They became so inspired and so trustworthy that they were able to live together in what sounds like perfect harmony.  They came together in hope and trust and vulnerability and joy, because of the Easter experience of resurrection.

We too are called together to be in community.  This is not easy, and there will be times when we have angry Thomases demanding signs and proof.  They will demand a high level of trust from us.  What a daunting task!  If we think about trust in the way that the 1 John passage from our prayer of confession thinks, if we say we are perfectly trustworthy, we are liars.  The only thing that is perfectly trustworthy is God, and God is both the hardest and the easiest to trust.  Human trust is fragile and easily damaged.  As Brene Brown describes it, trust is made up with little moments when humans do thoughtful things for one another.  The more we are trustworthy in the little things, the more we will be trustworthy in the big things.  Trust, according to Stephen Covey, is made up of integrity and action.  Integrity is caring about equality, justice, and fair play.  Without action, it is useless.  When we commit to doing something that aligns with our values and fail to follow through, we lose trust.  When we follow through, that builds trust. We need to build a pattern of trust in ourselves and others that will stand the test of time.

Trust is seen in acts of bold discipleship and daring justice, but it is fed with deep spirituality by reflecting on the integrity and purpose Jesus had.  When we practice deep spirituality, we find the energy to be bold disciples who do daring justice.  Thomas’ encounter with Jesus was so transformative that he traveled far and wide to share good news to many people.  The blind man’s encounter gave him the courage to keep on living despite his many hardships and struggles.  May it also give us the courage to keep growing, trusting and praying for our own Easter experiences of the living Christ so we can make a difference in the world!

Searching and knowing

There is a t-shirt that used to be in bible stores with a caption of “Moses was a murderer, Noah was a drunk, Jacob was a con man, Isaiah preached in his birthday suit, Job went bankrupt, Rahab was a prostitute, Martha was bossy, Mary Magdalene was mentally ill and Mary, Jesus’ mom was an unwed pregnant teen who became a refugee.  If God called them, how do we know that God isn’t calling us?

It's a great t-shirt.  We often may struggle with the idea that God is calling us.  How can God call me when I am not whatever I think God really needs?  Surely someone else, anyone else is better than me.  And we put off answering that still small voice, that nagging sense of being lured into a bigger vision, a bolder idea, a stronger stance.  “No, not me! I’m not called to run for town council, join the library board, speak up about racism, knit mitts for homeless people, buy Tylenol for Ukrainians, attend a rally in support of school boards, fill out a survey about pensions, put solar paneling on my roof, drive an alcoholic home, sit next to a hurting person, sign a petition about the environment or get out and vote on a contentious bylaw.  Somebody else is being called to do that.  Not me.  And yet every day people here in this space do exactly this.  They buy that cup of soup on a cold day for some stranger they just met, they buy granola bars for folks who have no homes to go to, they jumpstart stalled cars or push them out of snowbanks.  Ordinary people called to do what seems like something insignificant, yet what may be insignificant to us may be huge to those who see it or experience it.

How do we know we are called?  How do we know what we are called to?  Knowing is complicated, and when we hear the claim that God knows us can be both a gift and a challenge. 

If you have ever tried to study a foreign language, the word “to know” can be tricky. In French, they have two different words for knowing, connais and sais – connais is more about relationships with people and places, and sais is more about facts and skills, knowledge.  Hebrew is the same way, there is “Yada” which is know, and “Bantah” which is understand. So if you hear someone saying "yada, yada, yada", it means, "I know, I know, I know".

It’s one thing to know someone or something, it’s another thing to understand them. When we read Psalm 139, it is both yada and bantah.  God knows of me and God knows me.  In detail.  In depth.  Right down to the dna level and right up to how I will respond to anything that happens.  The thought of God knowing me both Yada and Bantah is, well, quite honestly, more than a little unnerving.  There’s a limit to how much I want anyone to know me.  Even spouses don’t know each other at that level.  Parents find their children to be mysteries, and siblings who have known each other all their lives can be surprised by choices and thoughts.  No one we know are in our lives from sunup to sun down.  No one we know have been in our lives since we were conceived.  It’s an extraordinary claim for an extraordinary faith in an extraordinary God.

That much transparency is uncomfortable.  We humans have been hiding from being known like that as long as we’ve been telling stories.  Some rabbis say that the day God wandered into Eden looking for Adam and Eve and realized that they were hiding from him, trying to cover their nakedness from him and each other, that’s the day God cried.  We even hide from ourselves.  M. Scott Peck wrote a book about people who lied so much they started to believe themselves!  He said that those kinds of people are really hard to help because they are so committed to their own lies.

That’s very different than Nathanael, the one Jesus praised for his honesty and transparency.  Nathanael had no guile in him, which means he was not sneaky or underhanded or manipulative.  He was honest to the point of rudeness when he said, “can anything good come out of Nazareth?”  Nathanael was described by Jesus as a model citizen, the kind of person we would think deserved to be called to some kind of holy ministry.  He’s special, he’s honest, he’s transparent.  And yet, he’s not mentioned again other than that he was in a group that saw the resurrected Jesus.  He didn’t write any books, he didn’t found any churches, he didn’t go on any missions, he didn’t have any hymns written by him or about him.  This perfect paragon of an Israeli disappeared from the bible completely.

Instead, Peter with his wishy washy faith, the big stinky fisherman who denied Jesus before he died, and Paul who hunted Jesus followers down in order to lock them up and torture them, these are the people that were called to turn the world upside down with.  Once again, the perfect people, the beautiful people, the people who had in their yearbook “most likely to succeed” were not the ones God turned to.  God called the ones who didn’t know their own potential, ones with self-doubt and insecurity.

God called, in other words, people like you and me.  Flawed, imperfect, impatient humans.  God still calls us because God knows us and wants to be in relation with us just as God once had a relationship with Adam and Eve.  God sees us just as we are, as beautiful creatures that can share love and hope and joy to everyone we meet.  God calls us to share our light of hope in daily acts of random kindness, to stranger and family alike.  God calls us to tiny acts and large acts alike.  May we have the courage and the faith to trust that God calls us because God sees us as we really are!