Deep, Bold and Daring Conversations

What kinds of conversations happen in the middle of the night?  Usually secret ones.  Ones that we don’t want the public to know about, ones that may be completely innocent, and ones that may be deeply evil. 

When I wake up to headlines about war and assassination and leaders of countries being bombed, I wonder about the secret conversations that happen behind closed doors in the middle of the night.  Orders given, decisions made, and worst of all, accountability ignored, compassion sneered at, human rights completely disregarded.  It is deeply disturbing that two men, having most of the world’s military power, made a decision that impacts the whole world.  Where is the accountability?  Why do they think they are entitled to take over countries and send the world in a tizzy?  Why do they want to start another world war? 

Today’s scripture reading shows a conversation that didn’t start a war, for all it happened in the night and not in public.  Was Nicodemus sneaking off to talk to Jesus secretly, or was it one of those, “gosh, look at the time” conversations?  We do know that Nicodemus was really struggling to understand Jesus.  He wanted things to be practical and easy to understand.  Jesus was talking in metaphor.

Nicodemus struggled to understand what Jesus was trying to explain to him.  Not just the whole “being born of the Spirit” but all that Jesus was teaching.  The way of compassion, empathy and spirituality.  This way that the United Church has described as “deep spirituality, bold discipleship and daring justice” was not something Nicodemus was comfortable with.  He had heard Jesus talk in scathing terms about Pharisees like Nicodemus. Jesus thought the pharisees who were more concerned about what people thought about them than what God thought, were hypocrites.  The leaders that Jesus challenged liked having a clear rule book of what would bring them closer to God and what would pull them away from God.  Rules were easy to follow on a surface level.  Jesus wanted them to explore at a deeper level what a relationship with God could be like.

For Jesus, a life of faith was centered around loving God, and loving neighbor.  This wasn’t a matter of nice stories or poetic prayers. It wasn’t about compartmentalizing what we believe on Sunday mornings and what we do on Monday mornings.  This wasn’t a conversation that was a fun little exercise in debating skills, but a call to reexamine our lives and our priorities.

It was about what we do in public.  It was about how we live out our God-shaped priorities.  It’s about when do we make a stand, when do we act? When do we make a commitment to empathy, compassion and justice?

Jesus wanted people to live deep bold and daring lives, not secretive ones.  He wanted people to have deep, bold and daring conversations about their faith and their relationship with God.  All too often, we’ve seen how that has been done in abusive ways.  In ways that are more like the Pharisees than Jesus.  Especially now, when Christian Nationalism seems to be the only game in town.  When John 3:16 is used to shame and blame people for not having a deep enough faith.  When conversations are not dialogues where people actually listen to each other’s opinions and try hard to understand them, but monologues spouting whatever conspiracy theory happens to be most popular on social media.

Nicodemus was very brave, even though he came in the dark.  But Jesus called him to live a more honest and open life.  A life of secrecy can cause tremendous harm and stress.  In modern business lingo, it is ‘living below the line’.  Below the line attitudes are like thinking, “I’m right, I will reject new ideas, I’m reacting emotionally, I’m resisting.”  Nicodemus was resisting what Jesus was trying to teach him.   He didn’t like the new idea of being born into a spiritual way of being.  He didn’t want to look at his theology as something to be lived, not just thought about.  But somewhere during that conversation, some time during that long night, something Jesus said made sense.  And his words still resonate today:

“This is the crisis we’re in: God-light streamed into the world, but men and women everywhere ran for the darkness. They went for the darkness because they were not really interested in pleasing God. Everyone who makes a practice of doing evil, addicted to denial and illusion, hates God-light and won’t come near it, fearing a painful exposure. But anyone working and living in truth and reality welcomes God-light so the work can be seen for the God-work it is.”

This Lent, we can see on the world stage what happens when world leaders become addicted to practicing evil, addicted to denial and illusion.  It’s easy to point fingers at them for their behaviors that are leading us into another war.  But we can’t control the men who order armies around.  We can only change ourselves.  Nicodemus was changed by his conversation.  He became public in his exploration of what Jesus was teaching.  He became accountable for his actions, standing up for Jesus to the other Pharisees, and eventually publicly burying Jesus in his own family tomb. This Lent, let us give up living in secret, hiding our lights, being addicted to being right, avoiding hard conversations and being stuck in denials and lies.  Instead, let us remember that God loves us as we are and wants us to live lives that are deep, bold and daring, for the world needs more transparency, more love and more hope.  Let us also remember that when we choose to live deep, bold and daring lives, we will find that we are not alone, we live in God’s world, in life, in death, in life beyond death, thanks be to God. Amen!

Prove it!

How many of us want a sign so that we know our faith is right?  It’s tempting to join the crowd asking for a big spectacle.  We want the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical experience with smoke bombs, strobe lights, falling chandeliers, amazing opera singers and a happy ending.  We want to experience thrills and chills and the greatest show on earth! Give us that old Razzle Dazzle.

That’s what happened in today’s reading from John.  The crowd had just experienced the feeding of the five thousand, where Jesus turned a few loaves and fish into enough to feed the whole crowd.  He took a day off and the crowd searched for him until they found him, not to say thank you but to demand more bread, more fish, more healings, more miracles.  “Gimmee what I want, what I really really want”.

Their hands were out, and they were demanding, not asking.  They were not happy that Jesus disappeared on them in the first place, and now they were going to keep him busy doing what they had decided he should do.  Jesus had left because he knew that they wanted to make him the king and he didn’t want that.  It’s like that scene in the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical, Jesus Christ Superstar, when Herod demands that Jesus prove his identity:

So you are the Christ, You're the great Jesus Christ
Prove to me that you're divine - Change my water into wine
That's all you need do, then I'll know it's all true
C'mon King of the Jews!

Facing the crowds again, instead of tap-dancing to their tune, Jesus decided to address them directly.  And instead of fixing their physical needs, he talked instead about their spiritual needs.  He wasn’t there just to be their grocery store and hospital.  He was there to feed their souls, as well as their bodies.

There’s a real tension here between physical and spiritual needs of the people.  This still happens today.  Folks are struggling, they are working hard on minimum wage and don’t know what they will do to pay the bills and feed the kids.  Jesus wanted to provide a spiritual solution that moved from enabling to empowering.

“I am the Bread of Life”, he said, and for people focused on the concrete needs of life, this must have seemed like nonsense.  Poetry, fancy philosophy, obscure theological game playing, call it what you will, the metaphor of Jesus as food must have been sorely confusing to them, just like it’s confusing to us.  The reality is that survival can be hard, and we need all the help we can get.  Jesse Zink, in the book we are reading called Faithful, Creative, Hopeful, talks about the growing gap between the richest people on the planet and those who are working for them.  The wealthiest people own such huge yachts that they can land helicopters on the deck beside the swimming pool, while many people must work two or even three jobs to keep a roof over their heads.  The economic system that has built this inequality is called Neoliberalism, which is the idea that the state should stay out of the market and individuals can do what they like to make money.  The problem is that not all humans are alike, and what some people like to do to earn money is treat others like slaves.  When government decides that the free market is best, and privatizing schools and healthcare is the only way to operate, it avoids taking care of those who can’t afford the dentist or the doctor or the mental health professional.

Jesus challenges Neoliberalism.  By calling himself the Bread of Life, he used a metaphor to describe how his teaching and example would inspire more than day to day survival.  It’s more than risk management, too; risk management invites us to imagine the worst and plan how to deal with it.  And more than risk management is sustainability, where we trust we have enough to get us through. Jesus calls us to more than sustainability, Jesus calls us to abundance through deep spirituality. Deep Spirituality is one of the three cornerstones of the United Church’s Strategic Plan, along with Bold Discipleship and Daring Justice. The United Church defines it as intentionally drawing closer to God. We do that together in worship as a congregation. But how do we do it the rest of the week? Prayer is one way. Prayer is opening our lives to God. It can be with words or through music or art. For some people, it is solitude in nature. For others, it is quieting and settling themselves with tools like meditation or mandalas, writing in a journal, reading a daily devotional or a bible passage, or practicing gratitude.  It is focusing on thanksgiving, or as Paul wrote, “think deeply about things that are true and noble, upright and pure, full of beauty and worthy of respect.”  This is one of many spiritual practices.

The United Church says that Deep Spirituality is “an experience of intimacy with God, and it is the starting point for each of us. It is grounded in worship and prayer, study and scripture. Deep spirituality is the joy of those who know they are loved and held by God and who long to run into God’s embrace. Deep spirituality is the cornerstone of our identity, not just as a church but also as individuals.”

Deep spirituality, feasting on the Bread of Life, calls us beyond survival, beyond stability, beyond risk management, beyond resilience to deep, lasting flourishing.  This is something the Herods of the world, and the crowd demanding quick fixes, do not understand, but it is deeply transforming. It breaks the monstrous hold of neoliberalism’s focus on individual survival. It invites us into deep relationship to God, ourselves, our congregation and our neighbors, a relationship based on love and compassion that brings us life abundant.  God, help us to practice deep spirituality with Jesus, our bread of life.  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.

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!

Deep Spirituality. Bold Discipleship. Daring Justice

Today’s sermon has been adapted from a message written by David Sparks that the United Church of Canada is sharing with all congregations that are part of our denomination:

“The church, our church, The United Church of Canada, has deliberated, the church has wrestled with some different concepts, the church has come to a conclusion, and now we have a Call and Vision, endorsed by the 43rd General Council.

Here it is: “Deep Spirituality. Bold Discipleship. Daring Justice.”

These six words are our call as a United Church. And they go with a vision:

Called by God, as disciples of Jesus, The United Church of Canada seeks to be a bold, connected, evolving church of diverse, courageous, hope-filled communities united in deep spirituality, inspiring worship, and daring justice.

Sounds great, sounds challenging, but whatever has it to do with Transfiguration Sunday, the mountaintop experience of Jesus and the disciples?

Well, we celebrate the last Sunday of Epiphany, which is the season of ‘a -ha’ or eureka moments, the season of light coming into the chaos of this world and giving new insights, new visions of what it means to be a Christ follower. Today we reflect on what it means to be a disciple.  The mountain top encounter was a hugely important experience in the lives of Peter, James and John, almost as important as the easter resurrection.

Wait a minute, “hugely important,” but was this a historical incident, were there historical incidents where God actually spoke on mountaintops, or has another story about how Moses talked to God been modified by the gospel writer Matthew?

Wrong question!

This is not just a story of some guys going on a hike. It became supremely important to them, to get to understand who Jesus was, what he was about, and what his mission was.  It was so breathtaking that Peter, James and John didn’t know how to respond, they were filled with questions, excitement and adrenalin with their new experience.

To go back to the new United Church Call and Vision, the story is reminding us that it isn’t the state of the economy that matters most, or our financial or workplace success, it is what we have going for us in the realm of spirituality, deep spirituality. The followers found Jesus to be unlike anyone they had ever met, and he became central to their quest for spiritual learning.  They became inspirations for our own spirituality. And more than that, we are united in our spirituality. We find it, we are silent with it, we pray it from the bottom of our hearts, and we share it in the faith community. The spiritual is a hopeful faith-shared sphere of our existence, and it matters hugely.  There are times we talk about it, like in our first reading today, and there are times we have to process it, waiting for the right time to share it, just as the disciples were told by Jesus not to share just yet.

This may be a deep spiritual experience, but how did they move from spirituality into boldness?

Okay, remember you are not dealing with history. This is likely a very good story, and we only have read 1 Peter to see that he went from confused tent raiser to ardent writer and speaker.

Throughout Matthew’s gospel the training and work of the disciples has a prominent place. Not far into the gospel of Matthew (Matt. 10:9‒15) there is an account of the training program for the disciples, and it even includes a section on what to do when rejection comes your way.  That’s great training!

The Call and Vision talks about bold discipleship. Bold―not perfect!―and that is what is made clear in the gospel record. As the early church finds its feet, disciples emerge and grow, sometimes not very expertly in their committed following of Jesus.

But what about now?

If ever there was a time for developing a bold program for local evangelization, using Facebook and other social media, it is today (or maybe yesterday!). If ever there was a time to go out in twos and knock on doors and tell people, “The church is alive; this is what the church is really about, not what the media often says it is about,” it is now! You could try it!

Fair enough! But what about “Daring justice”? Do we have some daring justice stories that tell what the church has been up to recently? Our local church or the national church with Mission and Service stories?

Actually, we have. We help raise money for Lee Thunder’s headstone, and we are building safe space for youth in our community who are isolated and alone. We have talked about and advocated for homeless initiatives in Athabasca, and started a youth group for kids who need a safe space to be kids. We helped kickstart food programs for kids at the high school and are a part of Athabasca PRAAC.  We talk about racism, sexism, homophobia and other forms of discrimination.  We partnered with the Library to bring back the Blanket Exercise to Athabasca.

So to sum it all up, what emerges from the ancient story of transfiguration as it relates to the Call and Vision statement?

What we have in this story in the Epiphany season, what we as church people have in the mountaintop experience, is of huge fundamental importance.

It calls on us to take the Call and Vision statement seriously.

It calls us to deepen our spirituality. It calls us to be emboldened as disciples. It calls us to be daring as we strive for justice.

Are you up to the challenge? Am I? Amen

© 2022 The United Church of Canada/L’Église Unie du Canada. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike Licence. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ca. Any copy must include this notice.