Rule #6

 

Boy did Jesus ask hard questions!  Who am I?  And he had a new answer for who Simon was, who just two chapters ago, was caught sinking like a stone during a storm.  I suspect that after that event, there may have been some teasing by the other disciples, “Simon, oh he’s great, but whenever he gets in a tight spot, he sinks like a stone!”  Maybe Jesus decided to flip that teasing on its head and give Simon the nickname of The Rock, the cornerstone of the new community of love that Jesus hoped to build.  The new name stuck, and Simon made it a big part of who he was.  As Christians, we too are called to define and redefine who we are, and who Jesus is for us.  We are called to continually renew and explore our faith and our commitment to the teachings of Jesus.  We are to be like the ancient Christ followers who called themselves the People of the Way.  People on a journey.  People learning more and more about their relationship with God and their relationship with their neighbor, which are to be rooted and grounded in love.

One of the first workshops we did as part of the FAB Collab with Fort McMurray, Athabasca, and  Barrhead was where we explored who Jesus was for us.  We looked at a variety of artist’s images of Jesus, traditional ones, new ones, outrageous ones and comforting ones.  We reminded ourselves and each other of what our favorite Jesus story was, that had influenced our lives the most. Just like Jesus prodding his disciples, we were prodded to remember and share how Jesus and his teachings had influenced us.  And we made art to connect us in ever deepening ways to the story of Jesus.  Art about Jesus keeps us getting into ruts.  Humans like ruts.  We like them so much, sometimes I think we decorate them.  But when we get into ruts of who we are, or who we think Jesus is, we can get bogged down into narrow and inflexible ways of thinking.  Our Christianity goes from being a journey of exploration and growth to an institution where the status quo is focusing on maintenance rather than mission.  One person described it this way:

Institutions are driven by sustainability and survivability- neither of which should be a major focus of the church. Churches should not be led by institutional viability but rather inspirational viability. Inspiration means- to be filled with the spirit, always changing, moving, evolving and transforming. Christians are also called to be transforming and renewing constantly discerning what is good, acceptable and perfect.[1]

In other words, we are to keep learning and trying new ways of living our mission to love God and love others.  Easier said than done.  That’s where Rule 6 comes in.  It’s simple, straightforward, and helps us choose intentional love in times of conflict.  What is Rule 6, you might ask?  Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, described Rule 6 this way:

Two prime ministers are sitting in a room discussing affairs of state. Suddenly a man bursts in, apoplectic with fury, shouting and stamping and banging his fist on the desk. The resident prime minister admonishes him: "Peter," he says, "kindly remember Rule Number 6," whereupon Peter is instantly restored to complete calm, apologizes, and withdraws. The politicians return to their conversation, only to be interrupted yet again twenty minutes later by a hysterical woman gesticulating wildly, her hair flying. Again the intruder is greeted with the words: "Marie, please remember Rule Number 6." Complete calm descends once more, and she too withdraws with a bow and an apology. When the scene is repeated for a third time, the visiting prime minister addresses his colleague: "My dear friend, I've seen many things in my life, but never anything as remarkable as this. Would you be willing to share with me the secret of Rule Number 6?" "Very simple," replies the resident prime minister. "Rule Number 6 is 'Don't take yourself so g-damn seriously." "Ah," says his visitor, "that is a fine rule." After a moment of pondering, he inquires, "And what, may I ask, are the other rules?"

"There aren't any."[2]

Of course, as Christians, our first rule is to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves.  But Rule 6 reminds us of Paul’s scripture that asks us to stop measuring ourselves against others:  “not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.” That sounds like Rule 6 in theological language.

What happens when we do that? Great things! Naramata Centre [where Monica was until August 1] found neighbors knocking on their doorstep at midnight August 6.  They suddenly had evacuees, 15 of them, from just across the Okanagan Lake.  The evacuees were from Peachland and Summerland.  The staff didn’t hesitate despite knowing that they would lose all the revenue from the next two weeks, they cancelled all the reservations and became a residence for Evacuee families, finding food, shelter and even activities for kids.  They chose Christian hospitality over budget, no questions.  Naramata Center is one of many United Church Communities which when faced with challenges, have remembered to put love as their main priority.  We do that here too when we provide food for the hungry and comfort for the grieving.  We do that when we open our doors to strangers and feed the hungry.  We do that when we act courageously and renew and explore our faith.  We define and redefine who we are, and who Jesus is for us.  By remembering Rule 6, and following the teachings of Jesus and Paul, we can learn humbly to live lives of action, faith and spirituality.  And Jesus will give us new names too, names like “Beloved, friend, and disciple.  May it be so for us all.

Please check out Naramata Centre's video of their pivot to support evacuees here: (2) Facebook

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[1] Pulpit Fiction, accessed August 19, 2026

[2] Zander, Benjamin and Rosamund, The Art of Possibility, Penguin Books, 2000, p 79

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!

Remembering our story

Isaiah 40:21-31, Mark 1:29-39

I was thinking how cynical we have become in this world.  Between news stories and family drama, political speeches and outrageous tweets, the levels of cynicism are depressingly high.  It is a vicious trap that many people are caught up in, and I hear it often in the lives of people around me who have given up in despair because they can’t see a way out.

But there is a strong message that was intended for people in that situation.

Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning?

These urgent questions are passionately spoken to an audience who has forgotten their story.  And our gospel today also has a feel of urgency.  Today’s translation starts with ‘as soon as they left the synagogue’, but a better translation is ‘immediately they left’, and that word is used repetitively throughout the first chapter of Mark.  Immediately they left the synagogue, where he had just cast out a demon (who had immediately left the interrupting man, by the way), he goes to a house where he then quickly heals a sick woman and she immediately gets up and becomes the first deacon of this new church. And right after that the house is surrounded with folks wanting to be cured of all their problems.  That’s a hectic schedule for one day’s work, and we haven’t even finished Chapter One!

One common thread in these readings is the number of lost and hurting people who do not know who they are and who created them.

Isaiah is writing to exiled Jews in slavery in Babylon to remind them of who they are. 

Come on, he seems to be saying, you don’t remember that your family ancestors were enslaved once before in Egypt? God was with our ancestors back then and God is with us right now here in Babylon.  Remember who God is, so that you can turn to God when we are living through tough times.  But you have forgotten your stories of who God is.

I think Isaiah realized that when we forget our stories, we lose a piece of hope for the future and we get bogged down in soul-crushing demons.

Demons such as depression, anxiety, narcissism and addiction.  Demons who live off cynicism, resentment, apathy, racism, entitlement and pity parties.  Demons that want us to believe we are slaves with no hope of rescue. No wonder people flocked to Jesus to be cured of all that.  No wonder Jesus needed to get away from it all and wander off into the desert.

Can you picture it, a starry black night with the Milky Way painted overhead like a tiara of diamonds too numerous to count?  The flashing streak of a meteor or two.  The deep stillness with maybe a wolf howling in the far distance, and crickets and frogs the only other sound.  The stillness that filled his soul as he waited, remembering the words of Isaiah ‘those who wait for God shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

Contrast that with Simon, filled with excitement who wants to have Jesus in his house first.  He wants Jesus to fix his mother in law, his neighbors, his relatives and even his whole town.  Does he want to be able to say, “look at how significant I am, I brought Jesus to you all, and if it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t be fixed.”  Jesus has a bigger vision.  He’s not willing to become the neighborhood guru setting up a shop of miracles and healing potions.  His vision is bigger than just one family, one town.

Have you not known? Have you not heard? Do you not remember the story? Often we don’t remember, we don’t know who we are.  Simon doesn’t know he is Peter yet, the rock on whom the new church will be built.  The slaves in Babylon don’t know they will return, rebuild their culture and renew their faith in ways that will endure for centuries.  They don’t know that their story will survive kings, wars, and genocides, or provide hope to many who follow after.  We too lose track of who God is calling us to be.  But ours is a powerful, transforming story.

If you think about it, this story speaks to each generation in surprising new ways that outlast many stories.  My grandmother was a Fraser, but I never had a haggis until I was 18.  I never went to a Robbie Burns dinner until I was in my late forties.  My grandmother did not pass on that part of her story, because her family had been in Canada for four generations and intermingled with a lot of other ethnic groups along the way.  They lost the story of their culture and customs, they lost their scots accents, but they kept their faith in God and in the church community, their new clan and culture.  That gave them faith to weather the storms of world wars, revolutions, economic depressions and personal tragedies.  It gave my grandmother a passionate commitment to the Women’s Vote as well as the temperance movement that strived to free people from the slavery of abusive relationships, family violence and addictions.  It helped her have the courage and strength to cope with her British husband’s loss of sight and career.  Her faith story is one that inspires and encourages me to this day.

Life can be a chaotic series of challenging circumstances.  We may feel like a pebble tossed into Niagra Falls, wondering if we’ll ever surface again.  When life is like that, we need to remember our stories of Jesus, Isaiah, and the exiles in Babylon, to do as they did and remember the stories of God’s love so that God may renew our strength once again.  May it be so for us all!

Star words to steer by

Mark 1:10-11 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.  And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.  And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

The biggest lie that I was ever told was given to me when I was a child by both parents and teachers.  It went like this: "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me".  Try as I might, I could never find a way not to let words hurt, especially those I heard on the playground, words like ‘four eyes, sucker up to bat, or train-track mouth’.  Back in the 60’s and 70’s, no one seemed to think much about bullying except that it was a fact of life and you either got tough or earned the even worse label ‘crybaby’.

Words never hurting was the idea that it wasn’t what others thought of us that counted, but what we thought of ourselves that mattered.  True enough.  But sensitive children don’t know how to distance themselves from the painful words that others throw at them.  In Grade 7 and Grade 10, bullying was so much a part of the culture that it had a whole week dedicated to it, called Initiation Week.  This was supposedly a time of light-hearted high jinks where the oldest kids in the school had the right to treat the younger ones any way they wanted.  I got to clean out a locker, lucky me, but other kids had their hair washed with shaving cream or were told to swallow raw eggs or dress in drag.  Even the teachers had a form of initiation as it was always the unaware first year teachers who got assigned lunchroom duty that week.

Luckily, that has disappeared from the school system for many years, but it still shows the power of words.  There’s a huge difference between labelling something ‘initiation week’ versus ‘institutionalized hazing’.  Words do matter.  We now know that many children struggle with depression and suicidal thoughts even as young as 6 or 7.  Often it is because of the words that are used on them. 

“You are so slow, why are you so stupid”, and my personal challenge, “you’re not good enough.”  These kinds of words haunt us long after we can remember who first said them to us or why.

That’s one of the reasons why the Hebrew scriptures and the Christian writings are so dear.  They recognize the importance of words, so much that our bible starts with God speaking, “let there be light” – the idea that words can be so powerful when spoken by the right person that great things like light and life can be created from chaos.

Mark’s gospel starts with such a great creation.  No Bethlehem, shepherds or wise magi here.  Two men meeting in the wilderness in a profoundly personal initiation ritual.  Not hazing, but a simple and symbolic act of drowning in the Jordan River, the historical boundary for the Hebrew people between the wilderness of Moses and the promised land of King David.  A moment of connection between two men recognizing the importance of God in their lives and their common bond of connection to the Mission of God.  John the Baptizer meets Jesus the Messiah in an encounter so profound that it will change the course of history forever.

And when John and Jesus meet in that ritual, something amazing happens.  God tears the sky apart and Jesus hears “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.”  It is one of the few events that is written about in all four of our Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  It is right up there with the overturning of the Temple, the Crucifixion, and the Easter resurrection.  It was words that the disciples thought worth repeating, and core to the teachings Jesus handed down to his disciples.  God loves us.

That’s bigger than we might think, and certainly something that Christians might take too much for granted. 

The concept of God for most people was something to be afraid of, that would judge and punish and condemn.  Even now I hear that when people say, “oh, I could never come to church, if I did, I would burst into flames,” and they are only half joking.

That’s not the God we see here, and not the God that Jesus and John saw when they read scripture.  God choses special messengers to comfort the poor and help the children of the needy, as it said in our psalm today.  That’s a loving God, not a punishing one.  Yet all too often we still act and think like God is a punisher who speaks angry words to condemn us.

If we believe that God is a bully only interested in punishing us, we will give up on our lives, ourselves and the people around us.  We will justify acting like a bully because we’re just being like God.  And we will struggle with the words that we speak about ourselves deep in our private hearts.  We can be our own worst bullies.

The Globe and Mail this year published a series of articles about mental health and the tremendous toll this puts on Canadians.  One of the things they wrote about was mental health hygiene.  We are great at brushing our teeth and washing our hands, but lousy at cleaning our minds of negative words.

As Christians, we are called on by our scriptures to practise mental hygiene by remembering the generous and loving acts of our God that led us out of slavery into freedom, into relationship with the loving Divine.  Just as Jesus heard the sky tear, this good news should turn our lives upside down.  When we put star words, God’s words, at the center of our minds, we join in that joyful community of saints that know the profound good news, that we are beloved children of God.  May it be so for us all!