“Are We There Yet?”

Summer time and the living is easy!  Fish are jumping and the river is high.  It’s a time to pull out the kayaks and canoes, the fishing rods and hammocks, jump in the lake, take a road trip and read a good book. 

Do you remember those family vacations when you were a child, being excited to get into the car, but then the road went on and on?  How when we were seven we discovered the power to enrage adults with the simple question, “Are we there yet?”

How many of us, much to our chagrin, later found our kids or our nieces or nephews doing the same thing to us that we did as children?

How many of us never had that experience, maybe family outings were not something we grew up with or maybe some of us grew up without families, or spent time in group homes or residential schools?  Some of us might have spent so much time in hospitals or refugee camps that trips like these didn’t happen.  But we may all have a memory of longing for something better, for some time when we hoped the cancer went into remission, the visas to Canada finally showed up, the summer holidays started, or the destination reached.

We longed for something different, something better, something more.  We didn’t want to wait, we didn’t want to play another game of “I Spy”, or spend another minute strapped in our seatbelts!

Paul was no stranger to waiting for destinations to arrive.  He grew up in Turkey, went to school in Jerusalem, traveled to Greece, Cyprus, back to Turkey, to Syria, and was planning his next trip to Spain when he wrote this letter to the Romans.  He also knew the disappointment of travel plans going awry - ship wrecked on Malta, thrown in prison multiple times, chased out of towns by angry mobs.  More importantly, he knew that he wanted to bring hope to the Romans, a group of Christians he had not met before.  He wanted his letter to show his good intentions and his amazing trust of hope in Jesus Christ’s teachings.  He did that through an amazing demonstration of vulnerability.

A lot of people, when they are trying to persuade others will pile on the praise of both the listeners and themselves.  Paul had moments when he did just that.  The beginning of Romans is a big celebration of how famous the Roman Christian community had become.  And Paul said he couldn’t wait to meet them as he hoped he would be as inspiring to them as they had already been to him.  But then we get this deeply honest and vulnerable passage that sounds like someone in despair because they have an addiction they can’t beat.  Paul had strong will power, but that was not enough.  Like many of the alcoholics that have met in the basement of churches over the years, Paul had to admit he was powerless over his addiction, which he called sin.

Sin had control over his life, and the struggle was hard.  Just like today, our struggle with addictions is alsohard.  Addictions have become very polarizing.  We hear about the growth in tent cities, the increasing number of deaths from overdoses and wonder why people don’t stop living like that.  Why can’t street people be more like us?  A modern-day prophet, Dr. Gabor Maté, says that the only way we will ever address this is when we recognize the addictive nature of our very society and how almost all humans have addictions to something at some time in their lives.  His work in East Vancouver where he treated many addicts was improved when he began to recognize his own addiction.  Maté had an obsession that cost him hundreds, even thousands of dollars a month.  He would feel an adrenalin rush and excitement and deny that he had a problem.  He made lots of money and could afford his addiction, even though his mind was obsessed with the hunt for his next fix.  The addiction that cost thousands of dollars was not to drugs or cigarettes or alcohol, but of all things, music. While it might seem laughable, at one point he wrote that it affected his relationship with his wife, his children, even his job as a doctor.  He had to go to an AA meeting to get help with his obsessive pursuit of cds. 

The first step was acknowledging he had a problem.  Just like Paul, he had to be truthful to himself and others that he was helpless to conquer his addiction on his own.  The second step, the hardest one, was asking for help.

What are we addicted to?  Video games?  Netflix? Investments in volatile stocks? Fast driving? The shopping channels?  Clutter?  Cleaning?  Food?  Control?  Gossip, judging other people, arguing with them online?  What gives us that unhealthy adrenaline rush that maybe just maybe we’re too hungry for?  I heard the phrase ‘rage farming’ the other day, and I think that there are people who are addicted to the adrenaline rush they get from feeling self-righteous about people who think differently than them.  Some politicians nurture outrage deliberately to get more votes, others pass around petitions that target minorities and share outrageous conspiracy theories.

Addictions are beaten by a higher purpose.  It’s interesting that Paul described the first two steps of an 12 step program in this scripture, admitting that there’s a problem, and turning it over to a higher power as we understand it.  Whether its drugs or classical cd’s the solution is the same.

Community and truth telling are essential.  Brene Brown says it only takes one or two people to help us feel connected.  Hate does not build true community.  Hate does not break down addictions.  Hate does not destroy loneliness, despair, or hopelessness.  Only love does that.  Jesus asked us to trust the truth about our addictions to him and to God.  That when we make that choice, take that step, when we experiment with a higher purpose, a nobler cause than just our day-to-day survival, empathy instead of judgement, then we will find rest for our souls.  Are we there yet? No, but that’s what faith is for.  Practicing the patience to know that while we may not be there yet, we are on our way to God’s good dream for us.  May our lives be so filled with our higher purpose that the journey becomes filled with the joy of living into God’s purpose for us.  Amen.

What kind of God are you?

 Thou Shalt Not!  Don’t you dare! Don’t even think about it!

When I hear the ten commandments, my first response is a little nervous, I have to confess.  I don’t remember watching Charlton Heston as Moses but there were enough illustrated bibles in every waiting room when I was a child that the intimidating image of the old man carrying stone tablets down the mountain in time to see the Israelites partying hard around the Golden Calf left an indelible image in my mind. 

It has left many with an indelible image of an angry judgmental God throwing laws at us like the bad guys shooting at Tom Cruise Mission Impossible climax, determined to get a bead on us and take us down, squishing us like the worms we are.

So not a healthy theology, or a helpful image, is it?  And yet many folks still wrestle with that as their primary image of God.  Especially folks who may never have engaged with church as an adult other than weddings and funerals.  They don’t know any different, they may not understand what is good about God or our supposed Good News.  Especially when our Gospel reading today (Gospel means good news, by the way) is such a violent, bloodthirsty story of people working in a vineyard they do not own, enjoying the local improvements the landowner has done to the farm, and resenting the requests the landowner makes.

Some days it is easy to slip into resentment.  Whether it’s against Moses and those inflexible laws carved into stone, or paying taxes or rent, and especially now with restrictions and rumors flying around, when even so-called civilized leaders calling people they disagree with clowns, or refusing to let other people take turns in conversations or debates, resentment seems rampant.

Rebellion is in the air, and we can’t even walk into a grocery store in town without seeing people rebelling against the new rules.  Even I have gone the wrong way down an aisle at Buylow on occasion.

Other people like to have rules chiseled in stone.  They like the feeling of security and predictability from knowing what will happen every day or at every event.  It’s the unpredictable that is upsetting and discomforting.  They like the certainty of something that will not change ever.

Neither is helpful when you are wandering around in a time of upheaval that is demanding new responses to the way the world is.  When we have to adapt to too much change too fast, we can respond in many different ways.

We can be caught up in denial.  It’s just a conspiracy by big Pharma or government corporations or some ethnic group or another that has developed an elaborate plot to control the world.  Nothing is trustworthy except my opinion and the opinion of my friends who think the same way.  Facts and figures are not real, all that is real is that I alone have the inside knowledge and the smarts to understand what is really going on.  It’s about no one being able to tell me what to do.  And that I don’t need to have a shred of empathy for anyone but myself.  I can interrupt anyone I want, I can talk over anyone I want, I don’t have to listen to anyone and I don’t need to change a single thing that I’m doing because I know I’m right and everyone else is not worthy of respect.

When we put ourselves at the centre of our belief systems, when we decide that we are the only ones who have the right to etch things in stone, we put ourselves ahead of God.  That is dangerous, and we are seeing that in the debates to the south of us.  When we do not have empathy for anyone but our own lives, we can become like the tenants, sure that they can get away with whatever they want, even murder.  When we rebel against community guidelines, we end up destroying community and destroying communication.  We destroy the opportunity to listen and to learn.

The 10 commandments were not perfect.  They were patriarchal and lumped women in with possessions except the part about honoring both mother and father.  They were very simple and straightforward, about not taking what we don’t own, and having empathy for our neighbors.  They were written for a people in chaos who had lost the structure and authority of overseers and didn’t know how to live in community.  In the wilderness there were no police officers, no rules, no expectations, no whips, no jails, no state executions, no structure.  History shows us that when an enslaved country becomes freed of an oppressor, they look for ways to enslave others.  George Orwell’s Animal Farm told that chilling tale, based on what was happening in Russia after the Tsar was deposed.  The Statue of Liberty was inspired because Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte loved being the President of France so much that rather than allowing a peaceful transition of power to a new president, he declared himself as Emperor Napoleon the Third, and turned his back on democracy.  The French rejected that loss of democracy and built a statue to remind them not to lose it again.

God didn’t want the Israelites to become another Egypt.  God wanted a people that would remember their time as slaves and empathise with others who were enslaved.  God wanted people who would be compassionate and not driven by envy or jealousy.  The 10
commandments were God’s attempt to reshape the people into a caring community who would celebrate freedom and love.

We are called today, more than ever, to hear God’s call to be reshaped in a time of great fear, anxiety, resistance, denial and anger.  To remember that we live in a beautiful vineyard and are asked to respect that vineyard, take care of it, and live with respect in creation with our friends and neighbors who also are worthy of freedom and empathy.  Love God and love our neighbors is the call to freedom that God sends each and everyone of us.  Thanks be to God for that freedom, which is truly Good News!