Love over Hate

If you ever want to know how a town or a village or a city is doing, ask a hairdresser or a cashier or a school bus driver.  They have their fingers on the pulse of the community in a way that others might not.  They are the ones who see us at our worst.  Bus drivers see our kids when they are sleepy or after a hard day’s work at school.  Grocery store clerks find one more turkey for the foodbank, or one more toy for Santa’s Anonymous.  They are the innkeepers of the Bethlehem story, the ones who make room for people who show up at inconvenient times.  They are not the star of the show, no one is going to write carols about them, or have saints’ days named after them or give them Nobel prizes or medals of bravery.  They are quiet people who show up, day after day, enduring long shifts, aching feet, and impossible customer requests while on minimum wage. The innkeeper barely gets mentioned in the Christmas story, and yet in some ways, he or she was the first person to respond with generosity and creativity to the Christmas Story.  Welcoming the stranger becomes the first act of the world responding to the good news of Jesus being with us.  Before the shepherds, before the three kings, there is the humble innkeeper, trying to come up with a creative solution to an impossible situation. 

Even though Mary and Joseph ended up in a barn, it was a shelter from the woes of the world that were pressing down on them.  According to Luke’s gospel, they faced a government that made unreasonable demands on ordinary people, ordering a census based on place of birth without regard for where they lived.  They had to travel in a time when the roads were not safe from wild animals or wilder bandits.  They had to travel through a country run by a foreign army speaking a foreign language.  They travelled to a town where there were no hospitals or ambulances if there was an accident, and no police to intervene in cases of violence.  Justice and healthcare came for the wealthy and influential, not for a poor family forced to relocate unexpectedly because of politics.

Today, we live in a world that glorifies powerful people.  We live in a world that promotes fear of anyone that doesn’t look like us or talk like us or live like us.  We live in a world where rumors spread faster than ever before, and stories that teach us to be scared multiply like snowflakes in a blizzard.  This year, we have heard political figures insulting Canadians and threatening our independence.  We’ve seen the return of measles causing many children to become sick.  We’ve seen the notwithstanding clause used to limit people’s fundamental human rights and pitch the public sector against the private sector.  We’ve also seen people responding with elbows up to rally behind our economy.  We’ve worked together to shop Canadian, and to keep Alberta in Canada.  We’ve spent tourist dollars in Canada, learning how beautiful our parks and cities are.  It hasn’t been easy.  It hasn’t been peaceful.  But it has been inspiring to see how we all, working together, do make a difference.

The story of the birth of a baby in a stinky barn with straw and dirt all around, is a reminder that God comes when we least expect it, into the messiness of our lives.  Whether our homes look pretty, and the tinsel and lights are just perfect, or whether there is clutter and wrapping paper everywhere, God shows up.  Or maybe we are struggling to keep the lights on and the heating bills paid.  Even in the direst of situations, God shows up in love. God shows up despite the messages of fear or anger, despite war and violence. God shows up at your door with an unexpected turkey, or at the post office, with a package you didn’t know was coming.  God shows up with a hug or a small box of chocolates.  God shows up in a phone call from someone you hadn’t heard from in a while.  Or God shows up by saying, hey, send a card to Auntie, it’s been ages. Go deliver Meals on Wheels. Help put on a Christmas dinner for folks who may be alone.  Call your family member, not to get into a big debate over vaccines, but just to say, I love you.  Or shovel your neighbor’s walk if they’ve been sick. We’ve seen what hatred and fear can do to a country, but we’ve also seen what love can do.  Even when we feel like we live in a barn, surrounded by animals, God still shows up in love to make a difference.  We can too!  Just like the innkeepers, the hairdressers, the bus drivers, the cashiers, let’s all do our part in 2026 by standing for love, compassion and empathy for all.  Spread the good news that Love is stronger than Hate, and be the love that someone else desperately needs to see.  

Locking Horns

Can you imagine Joe Biden coming to Justin Trudeau to get baptized?  That’s an odd image, isn’t it, two leaders coming together and one, the leader of the bigger country, asking for a blessing ritual from the leader of the smaller country.  This is hard to imagine, but I think it’s close to what actually happened in this story.

When we remember the baptism of Jesus, it points to how Jesus leaded in ways that respected and honored the leadership of others.  

Many times when two powerful leaders get together, it becomes a battle over who has the most authority or skills or money or followers.  It can become a fight over who is the best.  Like two big horned sheep fighting over a ewe, they lock horns and butt heads and crash together. Two bulls in a pasture, two stallions in a wild herd of horses.  You just know that fireworks are going to ensue.  Leaders often lock horns.  Jesus and John didn’t lock horns, they didn’t do anything that suggested that a power struggle was going on.  Luke’s version omits John’s question to Jesus, “Why are you coming to me to be baptized?” which is in Matthew and Mark.  

Jesus didn’t come as someone wanting to take over from John and steal all his followers.  Jesus didn’t come to push John out of the river and start his own baptism show.  Jesus came with respect, honoring the leadership and ministry John had, and recognizing John’s God-given authority to baptize.  And John was clear with his followers, a better spiritual authority was just around the corner.  John didn’t claim to be a messiah, and he didn’t let anyone call him such.  He knew that Jesus was the one people had been waiting for, who would fulfill the promise that no one need live in fear.  Who would share the message that God claims us all and sees us all as precious. God created us for glory and not for locking horns in power struggles.  

Baptism is meant to be a sign that reminds us of this love.  It’s meant to remind us that God is with us, we are not alone.  All too often, baptism has been corrupted and turned into a ‘get out of hell free’ card.  Although that idea was started in medieval times, it has had a long history of being used abusively. The ticket out of hell idea was originally supposed to assure people, and lower their anxiety.  Instead it increased people’s shame and fear. It was abused to show who was an insider and who was not.

United Church Stewardship leaders say that “Baptism is about the affirmation that there is something sacred about life and that a piece of that sacred goodness is found deep within us. Baptism affirms the inherent worth of each of us and is a physical sign of a spiritual reality—that we belong to a loving God and that the goodness that comes from God is deep within us and serves as a communal symbol of God’s unconditional love.”

It’s easy to brush off this idea or pretend it doesn’t mean much in this world of discrimination, political turmoil, horrendous forest fires, and divisive conspiracy theories.  But the reality is that we need to be reminded of the love God has for us just as we are.  Baptism is not what we do for God, anyone looking at a newborn baby knows that they don’t need to be cleansed of any thoughts or deeds, they are too busy learning what the world looks like and what language sounds like and what food smells like.  They are truly innocent.  And we need regular cleansing of our need to be competitive, of our need to put ourselves down before others do, or our need to hide our flaws, or our need to be right.  And this is something we wrestle with, in community as a collection of flawed but beloved human beings.  Like God’s love, baptism isn’t something earned, or something bought or something won, it is a gift bestowed on us and recognized by a loving community as precious in God’s sight.  It helps us remember that we too are gifts of God to the world.  We are enough as we are.

So how do we respond to this astonishing claim that we are gifts of God to the world?  I think that Jesus and John also model a response to that knowledge.  Instead of locking horns, they looked each other in the eye, and treated each other’s gifts with deep respect.  John acknowledged Jesus and his ministry with profound awe.  “One is coming who will baptize you with fire”, he said, anticipating not just Pentecost, but the burning passion his disciples developed for sharing the healing and compassion that Jesus gave them.  The fire of compassion for one another that would send them around the world with their message of hope and healing and love.  And Jesus acknowledged John by coming and asking for baptism.  Jesus didn’t put on any airs, he didn’t say, “Thanks, John, it’s time to tie up my sandals now and be my personal butler,” he said, “baptize me like you have baptized all these other people.”  

What humbleness, what servant leadership that showed!  Instead of us locking horns with those around us, what if we too looked our neighbor in the eye and saw them as also a beloved child of God, one to cherish and support.  Just as if Biden came, looked Trudeau in the eye and said, “I want to become a Canadian citizen”, we can remind ourselves and each other that we are to see each other as a beloved child of God.  Let us honor and respect the leadership of each other the way Jesus and John honored each other, as God loves us, and as we are called to love one another.

Everlasting Light

We had a six hour power outage last Monday. Peanuts compared to what others have had after a bad storm, but it seemed like a looooong time without heat or light.  We couldn't open our fridge door, and we were in the middle of making soup for lunch when it happened. There’s nothing like losing power for a period of time, especially in the winter, to highlight how important light is for Canadians.  The sky starts dimming before 4 pm, and even with candles, it’s hard to read or knit or play cards as the sun quickly sets.  If it’s cloudy or snowy, there’s even less light. And by 5 pm a bunch of candles won’t make much of a dent in the gloom of the evening. We bundled up as the house temperature dropped, and even tried putting a mirror behind the candles to magnify the light.  We were very relieved when everything started up again. It’s easy to take light for granted in this country when we can have as much as we want, whenever we want, at the flick of a switch.  

Light was not taken for granted by ancient people because so much of what they did depends on it.  That dependence explains why people were so aware of what was happening in the night sky. Humans have been fascinated by the stars for a long time. 

The twelve signs of the zodiac were first developed by Babylonian star watchers about 600 years before Jesus.   Outsiders following a star to Bethlehem might not have been that unusual back then.  It may have been their way of doing scientific research.  Did this particular star or planet arrangement mean something significant?  Let’s go test our idea, check out the hypothesis and report back to the others at home. That might have been what the Magi were doing.  There are reports of Magi visiting Nero in 66 AD, and other historic records of similar visits to prominent people, but no records of who the Magi were or where they lived. We still speculate about where the Magi came from and how long they traveled to find Jesus.  One of the reasons for the twelve days of Christmas is that the early church guessed that it took 12 days, a biblically significant number, from the birth of Jesus to the arrival of the visitors in Bethlehem.

This visit by the Magi would have been quite scandalous to Matthew’s listeners.  Matthew and his congregation were steeped in the Jewish scriptures, they would have known the Isaiah passage from frequent readings, they would know the stories of refugees like Joseph’s family going to Egypt to avoid danger, and babies like Moses being targeted for execution by ruthless leaders like Pharaoh.  They would have appreciated Matthew’s family tree for Jesus, connecting him to Abraham and David and Ruth and Bathsheba.  But then Matthew threw his people a shocking thought.  The first people to recognize the royalty of Jesus were not Jewish! Jewish royalty, Jewish spiritual leaders, they were just as surprised as anyone when the Magi showed up on their doorstep looking for a baby and an heir to the throne.

And Matthew doesn’t specify what country they were from, what ethnicity they were, how many they were, or what their names are.  Balthazar, Melchior and Gaspar are first mentioned some 700 years later, not before.  It’s a nice piece of theology to think that they were from three different parts of the world, showing the divergence of the people who were hearing the message of Christ and responding to it so warmly.  The first churches that were established were in places like Ethiopia, Samaria, Egypt, Rome, and India, and that’s a surprisingly broad reach.  The Ethiopian Church prides itself in being the oldest outside of Jerusalem, dating back to the time of Acts.  

So it was foreigners from a different faith tradition who followed a sign, a hunch, a conjunction of planets, or maybe a comet.  Foreigners who came to a palace and went away without meeting the new heir to the throne. The chief priests and religious scholars gave their advice but showed no inclination to check out what may be happening in their own back yard.  Herod didn’t go either, content to stay in his warm palace full of soldiers to keep him safe.  These foreigners found Bethlehem without a tour guide or escort, and found Jesus, their expectations turned upside down, and their assumptions of what made a king was also reversed.  

Many people still go looking for answers even today.  They look for security and safety by travelling far from home when what they look for might be in their own back yards. They go to experts and gurus who are so sure they know all the answers that they won’t try looking with an open mind.  Foreigners and visitors seeking something so astonishing that they will fall to their knees in humble awe in front of something as simple and common place as a baby.

It's easy to be more like the chief priests and scribes, listening to news but not letting it shift our thinking.  Like taking light for granted until we lose electricity. But it’s more life-transforming to hear newcomers with curiosity, to join in their quest, to listen to their surprise and to share in their journey of faith.

What does it take to welcome foreign travelers looking for spiritual meaning?  It takes what the magi had.  Curiosity to ask questions about what they are experiencing.  It takes patience to listen and ask questions, like the Magi did when they went to Herod’s palace.  It takes humbleness; the magi knelt to a baby in a poor household with a dirt floor instead of a palace with marble tiles.  And it takes intuition, recognizing when we are talking to a dangerous Herod and taking the long way home for safety’s sake.

Curiosity, humbleness, patience and intuition are as valuable today for modern seekers as they were for the Magi.  They are tools for a healthy spiritual life and part of the signposts of a healthy congregation.  Curiosity, humbleness, patience and intuition help us grow our own faith.  They also help us make room for both newcomers wanting to find Jesus, and old-timers welcoming others to our community of faith.  They help us invite others to seek the light. May we all seek the light like the Magi did for a more Christ-filled 2025. Amen. 

Who made you the boss?

Sometimes Jesus can be pretty mean.  One moment he’s all sweetness and light, bouncing kids on his knee, healing people that no one else wanted to touch, working the crowds all smiles and pats on the back, going out to dinner with the most unlikely of folks, and then, well, he gets in the faces of people he doesn’t have much respect for.  Matthew 23 is a good example of this.

It’s the day after Palm Sunday.  Jesus came in riding on a donkey, then he charged into the temple and knocked over the furniture, scattered decent businesspeople, and took a whip to anyone who got in the way.  It was a mess, a scandal and an uproar.  There would have been a a lot of bruised feelings.  There were probably committees that had emergency meetings late into the night.  Maybe there were signs posted “Please leave your bull whips at home”, or “Table throwers will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law” or “No throwing, yelling, whipping or harassing allowed.”  Who knows, maybe some enterprising youngsters wrote “Nazarenes Go Home” out on the front steps. 

It makes perfect sense then that the temple authorities responded to Jesus by demanding to see his preaching certificate.  What school did he graduate from?  Who were his professors?  Someone was going to get an earful and the sooner the better.

Once again, Jesus threw the question back at them to disrupt their thinking and their assumptions.  Where did John the Baptist’s authority come from?  It’s a stumper that they couldn’t figure out.   Like an impossible escape room puzzle they couldn’t solve, they had no answer that wouldn’t have political repercussions.  Jesus disrupted their game, destroyed their attempts to control his behavior and his teachings, and left them with a zinger.  “You think you’re holy?  Well, the honest people who know they are not holy are going to be first in line to meet God.  You’ll be at the back of the line if you’re lucky”.  Ouch!

This is not the humble Jesus in the Philippians reading who was so obedient to God that he sacrificed himself on the cross.  Or is it?  Humbleness is not about being a carpet for others to walk on, after all, but about letting go of our egos enough to listen to the challenging still small voice that calls us into bold discipleship and daring justice.  That’s not easy.  We face a lot of messages in our daily lives, from commercials to tiktok videos.  In magazine stands and news articles, we hear all kinds of advice on how we should accept ourselves, yet buy this lipstick or this car to have the perfect life.  More and more people are talking about how they have imposter syndrome or trauma triggers or any one of many diagnoses to explain why they are not perfect or performing according to some imaginary standard. We’ve lost the space to think deeply about what we value, what we care about on an interpersonal level.  In some ways Society doesn’t want us to look at our values, but wants us to see ourselves as only responsible to our own selves.  We are our own bosses.  Being our own God, in a way, answerable to no one, well, that’s really living the dream.

Except that we’re still struggling with our addictions, we’re still struggling with our reputations or our weigh scales or that feeling we have when we wake up at 2 am with all the troubles of the world weighing on our hearts.  We don’t make the best bosses of our own lives.  Living completely independently doesn’t work in the long haul.

Humbleness can be a great antidote to all that.  Humbleness is a practice that reminds us to look at deeper values.  We all make mistakes, we all have our flaws, we all have our secret struggles.  Which is where Paul’s words are so helpful.  He reminded his followers that one person perfected the art of being humble, Jesus.  And Paul defined humbleness not as wallowing in our imperfections but as keeping the welfare of the community at the forefront of all we do.  Hear what he said was a recipe for healthy humbleness: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.

This Sunday we celebrate worldwide communion and also honor the stories of residential school trauma, and we may wonder how to humbly work towards truth and reconciliation.  One way we can do that is to learn about an upcoming decision that the United Church of Canada has been asked to make. The indigenous churches that historically have been under our jurisdiction, are asking that they get to be their own bosses.  That they be self-governing.  Humbleness will be needed as we learn and listen together to what will be the healthiest choice for all of us going into the future.  But when we remember how Jesus treated the humble with respect, healed the honest with truth, and loved the strugglers with compassion, we will find ways to live out the call to love our neighbors as ourselves, letting go of our needs to be the boss.

Humbleness matters.  Assuming we make the best bosses of our or other people’s lives lands us in the same boat as the Pharisees, trapped without good answers.  Humbleness allows us the grace of working together in harmony for the greater good of all.  Humbleness gives us space to be open to God’s spirit. Humbleness helps us accept that there are many different ways to live in this complicated world.  By reading the words of Paul, and the stories about Jesus, we can be inspired to live humbly. May we remember to practice humbleness in all we say and do, like Jesus.  Amen

The Outsider Woman: Matthew 15:10–28

Sometimes, all it takes is the lift of an eyebrow to challenge what someone else assumes is a truthful statement.  This sculpture of Mabel Gardiner Hubbard shows her lifting her eyebrow skeptically as if to say to her husband, “do you really believe in the nonsense you spouted just now?”

She was a feisty and intelligent woman who helped propel her husband to fame.  She also lived with a profound disability after developing scarlet fever as a child.  That disease destroyed so much of her inner ears that she not only became deaf, she lost her sense of balance and could not walk around at night without falling over. 

Despite her disability, she learned to read lips and speak several languages so well she could pass for a hearing person.  Mabel became a businesswoman, an entrepreneur, and so well known that her sculpture is in this park in Canada.

She wouldn’t take pity and she didn’t shy away from debate or learning.  And she had the kind of character that wasn’t afraid of speaking truth to power.

Remind you of anyone?  It’s easy to put her in the scene with the scripture reading from Matthew.  A woman, one of the dreaded Canaanites who had been at war with the Hebrew people since the time of Abraham and Moses, came to Jesus to ask for help.  Her pleas fell on deaf ears.  No one heard her, acknowledged her, pretended she was even in the same place with her.  Rather like the pan handlers found near tourist sites, she persisted in her calls for help.  No one wanted to make eye contact with her.  They probably all turned their backs on her rather than listening to her.  Nevertheless, she persisted.

Eventually, and doesn’t it almost sound almost reluctantly, Jesus engaged this outsider woman.  As a rabbi, he didn’t have to talk to this Canaanite, he didn’t even need to show her respect.  The easiest thing for him would be to have one of the disciples make her go away, or even simpler, move elsewhere until she gave up.

Lots of articles have been written about this story – was Jesus racist?  Or was he acting out a living parable to teach his disciples a lesson in radical acceptance?  It’s easy to take either side of that debate, and there is no conclusive evidence either way.

One thing that does stand out is the woman’s humbleness.  So often when we engage with someone who has a different opinion than us, we can quickly get defensive and angry.  When we don’t get what we want, we feel personally betrayed and disrespected.  Business experts and social scientists alike are raising concerns about the level of animosity in our society these days, and how social media seems to prevent honest conversations and understandings.  It’s far too easy to get caught up in fights online, and churches are not immune to this.  It is easy to type something at someone that we would never say in person.  And the level of conflict in our culture at this moment is so bad that everyone from politicians to journalists, jurors and judges are getting used to death threats and abusive language. 

It’s in our own neighborhoods, it’s in places where people have lost their homes to fires, it’s in places where people are waiting to return home. It's around dinner tables when global warming is being discussed, it’s in classrooms where concepts like neo-liberalism or political correctness is being discussed.  It’s in stores who have people pitching their tents on sidewalks in busy cities, and it’s on walls in Winnipeg covered in racist graffiti.  We don’t know how to take feedback without getting upset and we give feedback when no one has asked for it.

Jesus and the Samaritan woman had an encounter that could have become a terrible fight.  Jesus said something that was dismissive at best and confrontational at worst.  But the woman didn’t care.  She didn’t let the insult keep her from asking for what she needed.  She didn’t get on her high horse or go off in a huff.  She acknowledged that he might have a point, but her daughter’s health was more important than picking a fight or getting her feelings hurt.  She would do whatever it would take to help her daughter heal.  She didn’t take Jesus’ comments any more personally than the comedians on the radio show, “The Debaters”, which if you haven’t heard it, is worth a listen.  She probably lifted her eyebrow at him when she retorted, “even the dogs get crumbs.”

She knew that when we meet someone with different opinions than our own, it can be a moment for growth if we don’t let our egos get in the way.  And the other person’s point of view may well hurt our egos a little bit when we hear their story. 

But one piece of this story is where Jesus was.  He was not in Jerusalem or even Galilea.  He was in Sidon, a city in Lebanon, founded by Canaanites.  In other words, he was on her land.  Did he go there to hear other points of view?  To teach his followers, as Paul so eloquently put it, “there is no difference between Greek or Jew, all have the same Creator.”  This would be a lesson that they never forgot.  They were called to heal all who came to them, to have conversations with all even when they looked, sounded, or acted differently.

They were to enter into conversations humbly, and ready to have their most basic assumptions challenged.  Like the sculpture of Mabel Gardiner Hubbard, the women they talked to would challenge their stories, their theology, their assumptions about their place in the world and their understanding of God.  Most people have no idea who Mabel was.  But they all know the man in the sculpture, her husband whom she made famous.  Mabel pushed him out of his comfort zone by buying a train ticket for him and packed his bags and his latest invention and took him to a fair.  The invention changed the lives of us all.  That invention was the telephone, and her husband was none other than Alexander Graham Bell.  Without her contrary point of view, our world would look much different today.

There are times when we have something as urgent as a world-changing invention or a family member struggling with mental illness.  We may have to lift our eyebrows at people telling us we don’t need or deserve help.  And there may be times when we have someone come to us who needs our help and won’t take no for an answer.  May we recognize in those times that we are all God’s children, and pray so we can humbly hear each other into deeper understanding and deeper healing for us all.  Amen.

Thirsty anyone?

In the ruins of the ancient City of Rome a few short blocks from the Colosseum, there is a small drinking fountain that dribbles out a thin stream of water.

In Rome on a hot day in September of 2017, the street vendors brought out bottles of water to unsuspecting tourists who paid upward of 8 dollars for a bottle, which can mean a hefty profit for the vendors.  Unbeknownst to the tourists, the fountain on the Paladine Hill was a short walk away from the Colosseum and brings fresh water through a Roman aqueduct built before Christ was born.  Getting a drink of water was as simple as filling up water bottles at this ancient tap.  It was free too.  The tour guide didn't push the water at us like the street vendors loudly did, just gave a gentle invitation to fill up our water bottles and be quenched.

This month we have become very sensitive to the importance of water to our existence.  One moment we were struggling with the smoke of forest fires and praying for rain, the next we were facing flood warnings. Last week in Athabasca, the downtown gazebo had its own moat and the skate park looked like a small swimming pool.  The Athabasca River was filled with large trees speeding down to the Arctic Ocean in a great hurry.  There are still communities in the north hoping and praying for more rain to end the forest fire season for good this year.

Water is easy to take for granted in our climate where snow is plentiful, the glaciers are clean, and the rivers and lakes abundant.  For Jesus, it was another matter entirely. So much of Israel is surrounded by harsh dry land.  A group of United Church friends went on a tour of Egypt, Petra and Israel some 20 years ago, and came back with stories of small towns having their water systems bought up by large corporations.  The corporations would bottle all the water and then sell it back to the townsfolk.  They lost their access to their water supply, and not only that, watched the growth of plastic pollution accumulate in the town as there was no recycling plant for the empty bottles.  Water became a political weapon, and the Jordan River became a source of wealth that everyone wanted to control.

In our own country, clean drinking water is not a given for many Canadians. As of two weeks ago, the Government of Canada reported that 142 long term drinking water advisories had been lifted since 2015, but there are still 28 long term drinking water advisories in effect in 26 communities across Canada.  And as anyone knows who has been to Banff or Jasper lately, the great glaciers that feed the Athabasca and North Saskatchewan rivers, are receding rapidly.  We cannot presume that our water supply is secure and unchanging. Nor should we assume that our experience with water is universal.

According to the World Health Authority, in 2020, 5.8 billion people used safe drinking-water. The remaining 2 billion people had to travel at least 30 minutes or more to get water that was safe or drank untreated water, or even had deliveries of a few cups of water once or twice a week.

Jesus knew the value of water in a way that we who have taps don’t.  He knew that a gift of water was more than a nice thing to do, it could mean the difference between life and death.  Interesting that in this scripture, Jesus is giving instructions to his followers on how they will need to depend on others to survive.  This is part of his long lecture in Matthew on how to be a disciple preaching to an indifferent world.  In some ways, this is not about what we should do, ie give hospitality, although I would never suggest we shouldn’t give hospitality, but more about how we should receive hospitality when we are working on sharing God’s mission.  We like to think that we are the ones to hand out the water and give people what they are thirsty for, but do we ever think what it takes to receive the water we need so we can continue to carry out God’s mission?

In a world where someone thinks its okay to stab a professor and students in broad daylight for the ‘sin’ if I can use that word, for discussing the complexities of sexuality, in a world where we are afraid to go to a party celebrating the courage of youth asking to paint a crosswalk, in a world where for a moment it looked like Russia would have another civil war, we need to take care of ourselves and not be too proud to accept offers of hospitality.  I have seen too many people post online that they are struggling with depression and anxiety and fear.  We hear too many stories of overdoses in Alberta.  There are a lot of thirsty people looking for something they can trust, but who will they hear it from?  If we don’t take care of ourselves, how will we help others?  Being brave enough to look at our lives with the honesty that Paul demands is not easy.  Are we living in the freedom of God?  Are we able to look at what we do and whether it waters our souls or not?  A purposeful life that brings meaning and hope and healing to others.  Living a purposeful life takes time and wisdom and prayer and the humbleness to accept hospitality when it is offered.  To be both aware of our thirst and humble enough to accept help when we need it means that we are able to continue to be disciples and messengers that carry good news into the world.  We can also offer living water like the street vendors, pushing prices ever higher, yelling to all around them, or we can simply and kindly point out a free fountain of unending water to those in need.

Now more than ever, people need to know that there is a freedom from the tyranny of despair, a freedom from the tyranny of the many addictions that our consumer society offers up.  Whether we are addicted to dangerous habits like street drugs or small habits like too many computer games, we can hear the invitation to live lives of freedom.  We can accept God’s gift of whole-hearted, brave lives.  That is what Jesus showed us, and is the life we are called to.  May we know the wisdom and the humbleness to accept the living waters that keep our mission and ministry alive and thriving.

Grabbing for the Holy

 https://www.magdala.org/duc-in-altum/ 

There is a piece of art in the church at Magdala in the Holy Land that shows the hemorrhaging woman reaching through a crowd to touch Jesus’ hem.  What a surprising image!  We don’t often think about how she managed to make her way through a crowd of people and how she was able to touch his hem.  I have often imagined it being more like touching the back of a suit jacket, and an easy reach that could be surreptitiously done in passing.  But down at the ankle level is a whole other challenge.  Did she get stepped on?  Did she get kicked?  Why didn’t anyone notice her?  How could you not see someone crawling on the ground, squirming through people, past their stinky toes and walking sticks, getting your hands and knees grimy from the dust in the road, wondering if she would manage to make her goal before someone noticed?  Knowing that being in public risked her very life for breaking the taboo laws around women’s blood.

And there’s the desperation of an important man who, when he isn’t busy being an official and leader of the town religious institution, finds himself simply a heartbroken father throwing himself down on the ground, begging for help. 

What kind of desperation does it take before someone is prepared to lower themselves to such a level?  Losing a child is supposed to be the greatest pain a parent can face, and it doesn’t matter whether that child is a miscarriage, a 12-year-old or a 70-year-old.  When my son fell off his motorcycle last year and I got a call from his friend telling me that he was okay but that something had happened, the world stopped for a moment, and I forgot to breathe.

How many parents have gone through this desperation and not had the good fortune to have Jesus come to their rescue?  How many women crawling in their pain to get to Jesus’ sandals didn’t find the healing they prayed for?  The numbers are legion.  This congregation has lost two beautiful people in 2021 already that we prayed hard for.  Sometimes the cure doesn’t come.  Sometimes the healing comes when the cure does not.  Sometimes the community is humbled, silenced in the face of this great mystery.  Jairus came home to chaos, grief, and noise.  He heard mocking, cynicism, and disbelief.  His friends and family told him to turn away from Jesus.  He chose not to.

Just like the storm that Jesus stilled in last week’s reading, the storm of anguish and anger stilled in this story about Jairus.  The storm of isolation that the unnamed woman had endured for years also stilled.  The storm of anger, denial and cynicism stilled.  The pain of the world was not cured, but it was healed.

What is the difference between being cured and being healed? Cured is in my mind more of a physical thing, a relief from symptoms and diseases.  It may be done through scalpels or medication; it may be temporary or permanent. 

Healing can be physical, emotional, spiritual, mental, or psychological.  It is not something that the doctor can do for the patient, or the parent for the child.  Certainly we can help support healing, and encourage healing, but doctors will be the first to say that they are facing a profound mystery when they see their patients regain health.  They will say that they don’t know why one person recovers while another one doesn’t, and that they can’t even predict which person will be which.  I have seen people thrive while very sick, building community and loving family even while failing steadily in health.  And I have seen people who are very healthy tear down their relationships without even being aware of it.

These stories are similar and yet different.  Both feature unnamed females, yet one is on the cusp of womanhood while the other is mature and married.  One female is passive, needing a male to initiate healing on her behalf, her father.  The other is actively searching in many places.  One has Jesus come to her publicly, the other goes to Jesus sneakily.  In both these stories, Jesus did not just heal the individual, he healed the community.  Jairus and his family and friends were healed from their grief and fear.  They were healed from the ridicule of the cynical crowd.  The woman was cured from her illness, but she wasn’t healed until Jesus called her sister and made it safe for her to re-enter society free from stigma, judgement and ostracization.

Where do we see ourselves?  What are we needing healing for?  How can we connect with that healing?  How do we find the courage to ask for that healing?  For those of us who relate more with the crowds, how do we make space for the folks that are traumatized, the ones who need this healing?  Who do we need to support in their search for healing?  What cynicism do we need to let go of to help their healing happen?

We might not be at the kind of desperation that throws us at Jesus’ feet.  But you and I know there are many who are.  People who burn churches down or pull out guns during a backyard birthday party for a child.  People who donate tiny shoes on display.  People who have yet to plan memorial services for loved ones.  People who are wondering just how many graves there are at residential schools.  People who are running over Muslims or stabbing women wearing hijabs. Regardless of where we find ourselves in the story, isn’t it comforting to know that Jesus reaches out to the humble, the desperate, the grieving and the proud and wants to heal us all?  Whether we crawl for it, kneel for it, or don’t even know it is available, healing is with us, we are not alone, thanks be to God.

You turns - Jacob Part 5

I was travelling down a dirt road last Thursday in a rush to get to the Woodbury farm.  Some of you folks know where that is, a mere 20 minute drive away, across the river past the golf course.  Well, it’s been a few years since I had been there last and Tim was the one who drove out more often.  Anyway, I miscalculated and found the road to be muddy and slick from snow or frost or maybe a combination of both.  And I was not comfortable in driving my tiny car 80 klicks an hour.  The slower I went, the later I got and the more nervous I felt.

Just when I thought my turn-off was close, a pick-up truck whose driver was much more used to country roads than me, came barrelling down the middle, charging straight at me, scattering mud as they approached.  I was so busy trying to make sure I wouldn’t hit the truck or the ditch that I completely missed my turnoff and the next thing I knew, I was at an intersection I had never seen before, and the road ahead was marked with the ominous sign, ‘dead end!

Well, the only sensible thing to do was to pull a u-turn and retrace my steps.  It was closer than I thought and I soon was greeting old friends that I hadn’t seen in far too long!

Sometimes the only way forward is to turn around and go back the way you came.  Jacob was in that exact situation.  He had come to an impasse with Laban; after dashing away with his sheep and his wives, Laban chased him down and accused him of theft and cowardice.  The two men decided that good fences make good neighbours, to erect a stone to remind them on whose side of the border they were on and that the trickery and scams would stop between them.

That still left Jacob with the difficult quandary; where to go from here.  His uncle had scammed him repeatedly and he discovered how much that hurt.  So it was time to make a u-turn and go back to where he had come from.  That was a problem, because while Laban had scammed Jacob of wages, Jacob had scammed Esau of his rights!  Now Jacob could have tried a con, but instead he chose to be honest.  He chose to recognize that he was afraid of Esau and what his brother might do.  And that night he couldn’t sleep.

Tossing and turning about what he might face in the morning.  I imagine there are some lucky folks who never experienced that, but I have never met them.  If you are one of those lucky folks, please come teach me how!  There he was, facing every incident, every conversation he had with his brother, and coming to the realization that only the truth would set him free.  Our scriptures talk about the fruit of the Spirit being love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  One could call that being grown-up, but it is not easy to be all those things when feeling so afraid.

Jacob did what any alcoholic would do who knows their twelve steps.  Confess his life was out of control, ask God for help, then a small but not insignificant step of doing what they call an inventory of themselves, a searching exploration of all the wrongs and hurts they had dealt other people, a deep confession of their failings and shortcomings.  A vigorous wrestling with their conscious, their ego, their need to be right no matter what.  That step, which we practise in part every time we join in saying a confession on a Sunday morning, is the kind of reality check that can leave a man limping for life.  It is a constant reminder that maybe just maybe we could do better by our fellow human beings.  That maybe just maybe the con game when we pretend that we are always in the right and everyone else is wrong is just that, and the only ones we are conning are ourselves.

One psychologist says that there are two kinds of people, wise people and foolish people.  When wise people encounter something difficult, they learn from it.  They hear a truth about the world or themselves and they change because of it.  Foolish people hear a truth and ignore it or pretend it doesn’t apply to them and they don’t learn anything.  They deny, blame, or make excuses for their behaviour.  Of course the reality is that there is only one kind of person.  We are all Jacobs stuck with nights of wrestling with angels of truths.  Sometimes we listen to the angels and grow, and sometimes we ignore the angels and don’t.

I made excuses for being late.  Did you hear them?  I underestimated the time it would take to arrive, I blamed the muddy roads and the speeding truck.  All that could have been avoided if I had made an accurate assessment of the time and the weather.  Sometimes the road is bad, sometimes it’s not.  Will I learn from it, sure hope so.  But the good news is there was love and forgiveness at the end of the journey.  That was what Jacob so dearly needed from the angel.  But he didn’t just get that, he got a whole new identity, wrestling God.  No more heel grabber.  Wrestling God.  Powerful.  Sometimes wrestling with God, sometimes wrestling for God.  And it’s his name that came down the ages and still exists today in a country of independence.  Now that’s change!