Thorns and thistles

There’s nothing quite so satisfying as spending time in the garden ripping and tearing out the weeds. Especially dandelions choking our petunias and carrots.  Some of us weed with our bare hands, which is fine when we are dealing with chickweed, but thistles are a different matter.  Their sharp edges alert us when we get too close or handle them roughly.  They are utterly useless plants that doesn’t have a place in a civilized and cultivated garden.  Rather like mosquitos, thistles feel like something God shouldn’t have wasted time in creating in the first place.

So of course, when Jesus told a parable about a wheat field, the listeners would be confused with his story.  They would have related to the workers who are upset at the thistles growing with the crop.  Sabotaging food sources was a favorite tactic of war back in his day.  Destroying crops disrupts the food supply the soldiers depend on to defend their land from invaders.

The disciples would have been fine with the story up until the point that Jesus told of the farmer ordering his workers to allow the weeds to grow until harvest time.  Only then would the thistles be sorted out from the wheat.  That didn’t sound fair!

We don’t want to live with thistles, we don’t want to get poked and scratched by thorns.  We like labels, “this person is wheat, that person is thorn”.  We like black and white thinking, “once a thorn, always a thorn”.  We like pointing fingers, feeling righteous, judging people as safe or unsafe.  We like to imagine all the thorny people get punished in the end.  I won’t get burnt because I’m not thorny, I’m the wheat that everyone wants.  And we all see ourselves as the heroes of our own story.  That habit of judging others and congratulating myself without honest self-reflection is addicting.

Until we come face to face with God.  The psalmist wrote that God searches me and knows me through and through. God made me and formed my inward parts; God fashioned me in my mother's womb.  When everyone else was in ignorance of who I was, God knew all of me.  This set of verses has become the bedrock of many people of faith who are born two spirited or intersex.  Intersex are people born with both male and female anatomy.  About three out of every 100 babies will be born ambiguous.  There are many incidents where a doctor was called in to decide a baby’s gender and made a mistake.  Or did surgery thinking they were fixing a problem, only to cause issues for the child once they hit puberty.  Can you imagine discovering you were a boy at the age of 14?  Or a girl?  These things happen.  And scientists are also learning more and more about brain chemistry that changes how they understand gender and orientation.  The boxes we may have grown up with as children are found to be dangerous to those who don’t fit them.

Jesus touched on two things.  That the community of God was to wait on judging and let God do that.  Because we humans are quick to judge.  We’re fast to put people into boxes.  God says, let everything grow and in good time we will have justice.  But justice without mercy can lead to dreadful consequences. A community of faith can end up pointing fingers at each other, and like thistles, can scratch and tear everyone around.  Mercy without Justice can end up just enabling and empowering the thistles to prickle and scratch everyone around.  Both of those extremes are below the line.  Both of these extremes do not help the wheat grow tall and strong.  Both these extremes do not help the Community of God to thrive.

The other thing is that Jesus taught patience.  We are called to wait to see what will happen.  Who knows what time and patience will do?  The only one who knows whether we are thistles or wheat is God who knows us through and through.  That idea is enough to comfort the shyest and scare the boldest of us. 

We all have times when we are both wheat and thistle.  There are times when we might scratch when we least intend to, or times when someone bumps into our thorns and gets hurt.  It happens.  But God gives us tremendous gifts to help us work through those hurts and pain.  The first gift, sometimes the hardest gift to remember we have, is the gift of curiosity.  Turning to curiosity, is, in the mind of Parker Palmer, a famous Quaker, the way to open ourselves up to how God might see the situation.  Parker Palmer says that when the going gets rough, we are to turn to new thoughts and attitudes. 

“Turn from reaction and judgment to wonder and compassionate inquiry. Ask yourself, “I wonder why they feel/think this way?” or “I wonder what my reaction teaches me about myself?” Set aside judgment. Learn to ask honest, open questions which are ones you cannot possibly ask while thinking, “I know the right answer to this and I sure hope you give it to me…” Thus, “Have you ever thought about seeing a therapist?” is not an honest, open question! But, “What did you learn from the experience you just told us about?” is.

Honest open questions, instead of putting people in boxes, is how the Community of God grows.  Letting everything grow until God’s time, finding a balance between justice and mercy.  Remembering that God knows us all, our thorns, our wheat, our growth, right down to our DNA.  It is a gift and a challenge.  It is not easy for us to talk about the times we get scratched and the times we scratch others.  This is true for us both as individuals and also the church.  Not just our local congregation, but our denomination, even all of Christianity.  But such deep honesty is important for growth and health. As the former moderator, the Right Reverend Doctor Carmen Lansdowne wrote,

a community that can carry its hard histories and its holy ones together — that can name the harm and name the grace in one breath — gives the young something no algorithm or feed can offer them: a place to stand. Not a curated highlight reel of heroes, but a real people, with real ancestors, some of whom were remarkable and some of whom were complicit, and all of whom belong to the story the young are now being invited into.

We are invited into the Community of God.  It isn’t easy, it isn’t fast, and sometimes we get lost in the weeds and thistles.  But God reminds us that we are loved, right down to our uncomfortable places, flaws and all.  With that good news, we can trust God to sort out our thistly moments from our lives, when we let God work through us with the spirit to create justice and mercy, compassion and peace.  May it be so for us all!

Two Wrongs Don’t make a right (Unless God is involved!)

Isn’t it just a bit shocking that Jesus described himself as a provoker of conflict and not the prince of peace?  We have lovely images of Jesus as being all sweet and kind and healing, but that’s not the way he talked in today’s Matthew reading.  Family strife was something he was familiar with, and some gospels tell of his mother and brothers wanting him to tone down his preaching.  And it was something that the Hebrew scriptures talked about too.  Stories like Hagar and Ishmael thrown out of their home to wander in the wilderness until they starved.

This was a tale of entitlement and competition.  Two women striving to make sure their child would be seen as the best.  Two women who have decided that there’s not enough to take care of everyone.  Two women struggling to see who has the most power over the decision maker of the family.

Not sure why this story gets paired with Father’s Day, quite frankly.  Maybe it’s a reminder that families aren’t perfect, that fathers sometimes get asked to make dangerous decisions, and when it comes to our kids, having a favorite can have devastating results. Or maybe it’s a reminder that biblical marriage, far from being a shining example of how our own marriages should be, was often complex and messy.  You don’t get messier than the emotional triangle we see between Abraham, Sarah and Hagar.

It’s unclear whether Hagar was Sarah’s servant or Sarah’s slave.  It’s also unclear whether Hagar had the power of consent when Sarah gave her to Abraham to have a baby.  But what is clear is that when Hagar’s baby Ishmael was born, she went from being the least powerful person in the family, to the one who had provided the continuity of the family, and that gave her more power and influence over Abraham than she had ever had before.  She enjoyed having more say in how things were going in their community.  Of course, Sarah didn’t like that and complained to Abraham, who told her that she was the boss.  So Hagar was back to scrubbing toilets and washing clothes while Sarah got to do what she wanted.  Which included treating Hagar so harshly, she tried to run away.  Then Isaac was finally born, named “laughter” and this baby did not bring peace to the family but even more jealousy from Sarah.

Abraham was worn down by the bickering and nagging, and he didn’t know what to do. God told him not to worry, and so Sarah got her way again.  Power struggles never end well, and often it’s the children who suffer the most. Hagar abandoned her own child rather than watch it die.  But God intervened again.  It’s interesting that the name Ishmael means “God hears” because consistently God, unlike Abraham, is able to hear Hagar’s prayers as much as God hears Sarah’s prayers.  God provides to both children, regardless of who their parents were, whether the mother was Aramaic or Egyptian.  God saw both boys as children of the promise, the covenant, that God had made with Abraham.  And while Abraham wasn’t able to be much of a father to his boys, God would provide what Abraham refused to do.  Because Abraham was, according to the Genesis reports, a very wealthy man with huge flocks, making deals with kings and winning wars.  But he did not win the war at home.  He did not set Hagar up in a separate household with enough to keep her and her son comfortable.  He sent her out with a bottle of water into the wilderness.

God became the parent Abraham refused to be.  God didn’t take sides, God took care. 

We are living in a world with so much conflict people have stopped watching the news.  We have so much strife that family members are estranged from one another.  People are angrily determined to be right.  Children are suffering and dying in the land that Jesus and Abraham loved, continuing the conflict that Sarah and Hagar started. Parades have been cancelled, Taber has had its corn sales threatened, and it’s hard to keep track of how many lawsuits are happening about the petitions.  First nations chiefs are being attacked by people who don’t understand that we are all treaty people, and who don’t respect or care about our constitution.  U S politics doesn’t help.

Another influence from the United States, Martin Luther King Jr., the father of the Civil Rights Movement, said that the way to change an unjust society was through love, power and justice.  “Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”  I think that’s what Jesus was talking about.  Peace at all costs is not just, powerful, nor loving.  Jesus wanted us to face conflict, as long as it serves justice, love and empowerment.  That kind of conflict could have prevented Abraham setting the stage for centuries of middle east violence.  When we are tempted to rage, ask ourselves if what is making us angry is unjust, unloving and taking power away from those who need it.  There are many ways for us to act for societal change.  This week, the United Church of Canada started a letter writing campaign addressing Bill C-12 which is limiting or even cancelling refugee claims and hearings, threatening families and causing anguish in United Church congregations that support refugees.  There is a letter online that you can fill in if you have internet, or write your MP directly.  Keep phoning MLAs abut the misuse of notwithstanding clauses. Make the call, write the letter!

We have always spoken out when unjust laws target powerless people, and this is one way to do so.  May we be reminded that Jesus wanted us to bravely speak up for those that Society does not love, and that when we do so, we are living the way Jesus asked us to.  Amen.

Passport to Life

When was the last time you looked at your driver's license or your passport? Or if you don't have one of these, ask to look at a friend's or parent's. The last time I got my photo taken, it was taken with strict instructions.  Don't smile. Look up. No glasses. Get your hair off your face. Then the bright flash seems to suck all the color our of your face and the results are ghastly. Pale, dull, emotionless blank look that in all honesty looks way older than you actually are. Boring and lifeless.

I imagine that's how Mary Magdalene and the other women looked when they hurried to the tomb that first Easter Sunday. Shocked and maybe even traumatized by the experiences of Good Friday, they would have been going through the motions, numb and empty. Their faces blank, putting one foot in front of the other, doing the traditional mourning rituals that were a part of their culture and religion. Trying to organize the details of what to do next. The community was in turmoil, and rather than a cohesive group looking to a leader to guide all their decisions, they had no one to fall back on. Did James and John make plans to rejoin their dad's fishing business? Did Matthew think about going back to his job of despised tax collector? Would Mary and Martha have felt trapped back into a life where they would only be allowed to cook and clean and never sit with the men as equals? Would Lazarus have thought about going back into his tomb and never dream of coming out again? Would the Samaritan woman plan to go back to her well and her village, doomed to go from one man to the next as she used to, or the man born blind wish he could close his eyes to the pain he saw in the faces of his new friends?

At times of terrible pain, we can go into such a state of numbness, and many of us can relate. Our days feel meaningless and empty. We slip into states of apathy where even getting out of bed seems too onerous. Now in the days of Jesus, life was far shorter and folks might have been more prosaic than we are with our modern medicine and hygiene, we don't know for sure. But even though Jesus tried to prepare his followers, they hadn't listened, they rejected what they heard as gloom and doom nonsense. So Good Friday would have been a real shock to them all.

It also would have been a time of great guilt and shame for the men who had all either run away or denied their connection to Jesus. The women didn't run, but witnessing the ordeal must have been dreadful.  The United Church’s Song of Faith describes it this way, “Because his witness to love was threatening, those exercising power sought to silence Jesus. He suffered abandonment and betrayal, state-sanctioned torture and execution. He was crucified.” It could have become the stuff of nightmares.

The historian Josephus, writing his book for the Roman Empire of the history of his Jewish country wrote that Jesus was executed. This we know is fact. Jesus was real and he was killed in the most public and shameful way possible, on a hill that could be seen for miles, nearly naked in a culture that treasured modesty, and slowly as a traitor, to remind other potential rebels never to question authority.

That should have been the end of the story. This Roman execution should have snuffed out their small movement before it had a chance. End of story. Except it wasn't. The morning when the women came to the tomb, the one thing they weren't expecting was that it would be empty.

Death was not the last word. Now, there are a lot of theories and explanations trying to debunk the resurrection.  Those theories started from day one, trying to discredit Christianity.  Over and over, the detractors attacked, mocked, belittled and even tortured people believing in a Risen Christ.  The Roman Empire and modern Communists alike made it illegal.  Atheists like Richard Dawkins and Carl Sagan wrote book after book ridiculing the Easter Story, and they expected their scientific debunking to end Christianity and all other faiths.  Their motives were sound, they wanted to end violence and religious wars.  But often religious wars are using people’s faith to manipulate and convince people that war is necessary, it isn’t because religion itself is warlike.  Interestingly enough, even with atheists and countries declaring faith illegal, a research project found that the only faith shrinking in 2026 was Buddhism.  Christianity grew by 5%.  Rather like the Monty Python knight, Christians can claim that “I’m not dead yet!”

The truth is that a stolen body can’t inspire a spiritual revolution, a lie can’t inspire people to come together and risk their lives to talk about teachings of respect, compassion and faith.  A scam doesn’t inspire quiet resistance to tyrants, a plot doesn’t embolden people to protest against discrimination.  The Resurrection story has inspired people for centuries.  Without it, William Wilberforce wouldn’t have worked to end the Slave Trade, Charles Dickons wouldn’t have written about the oppression of impoverished children which inspired the establishment of public schools as a human right, monks and nuns wouldn’t have built hospitals and hospices, and people like Martin Luther King would not have preached equal rights even at the risk of their own lives. 

Easter, like God, is Holy Mystery, beyond complete knowledge, above perfect description.  It inspires us to love our neighbors, love ourselves and love that holy mystery whatever we name it.  Easter helps us work in hope for a better world.  Easter brings people to life, giving them purpose and a vision.  We become more than our passport or driver’s licence photos; we come to life.  Easter inspires us to deeper spirituality, both in our daily lives and in community here.  Easter inspires us to engage in learning more about our faith and our world so that we can practice bold discipleship.  Easter inspires us to also work daringly for justice, whether it’s joining in protest rallies, voting in elections or sending e-mails and phone calls to people who need to hear that we believe in human rights and equality for all.  Easter empowers us to speak against racism, homophobia or discrimination.  Easter is the ultimate “No Tyrants” event, not started by Jesus, or the disciples, but started by Holy Mystery itself. Our Song of Faith says, “in love, the one eternal God raised Jesus from death, turning sorrow into joy, despair into hope.  We sing of Jesus raised from the dead. We sing hallelujah.  

Today, let us choose to have the mystery of Easter, however we understand it, inspire us to continue the work for justice and human dignity that Jesus started so long ago.  Because the empty tomb didn’t stop the followers of Jesus back when they knew what Herod and Pilate did, and they followed Jesus anyway.  Not because he was a passport to power or wealth, but because he was a passport to community, love and abundant life.  Thank God for this passport we have that is the Risen Christ.  Christ has risen, Halleluiah!

Actions Speak Louder than Words

 

It’s shocking to see a minister take a police baton in the stomach as what happened this week in Chicago.  She was protesting outside an ICE detention centre with other clergy.  Together, they asked to enter the detention centre to provide spiritual care to detainees, something that clergy regularly do in jails and hospitals across North America.  Not at ICE detention centres.  Instead, they are being shot at with pepper pellets and laughed at when they collapse in pain.  They are being arrested and accused of being violent because they have their hands up in prayer.  This is not just one incident.  These clergy are putting their bodies in harm’s way for the gospel.  They are following in the footsteps of a criminal who was so dangerous, he was publicly tortured and executed on a high hill to be an example to anyone who might try to resist evil.  This criminal’s brave action, his courage and his innocence shocked many who witnessed it.  Even the soldiers and thieves wondered what kind of man had just been killed.  That man was Jesus of Nazareth, and the people who knew him and loved him soon called him Christos, the Greek word for Lord.  Christos meant ‘anointed one’, a phrase used for King David after he killed Goliath and became the new leader of Israel.  So Jesus was seen as the ruler of the new followers of the way, and when they pledged allegiance to Jesus, they pledged resistance to hate, resistance to persecution, resistance to human rights abuses.

The erosion of human rights starts small.  Innocuously.  We don’t aim to lose our human rights, after all.  And it’s easy to ignore or pretend that an issue here and there are not a problem.  It’s not a problem to ban abortions in the 8^th month because that is extremely unlikely to happen.  But then it gets earlier and earlier until abortions are completely illegal regardless of situation or circumstance.  We see this happening down south. Human rights get chipped away gradually and subtly until all of the sudden it impacts us.  Privatization of health care doesn’t seem to be a problem when we are talking about electives, but when it’s a burn victim or someone limping from a bad hip for years because they can’t afford the extra fees, or the person who waits years for cardiologists, the slope is slippery, and we lose the battle by invisible inches.

There’s a famous poem by a German preacher,

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I kept quiet; I wasn't a communist.
When they came for the trade unionists, I kept quiet;
I wasn't a trade unionist.
When they locked up the social democrats, I kept quiet;
I wasn't a social democrat.
When they locked up the Jews, I kept quiet;
I wasn't a Jew.
When they came for me, there was no one left to protest.

What this leaves out is the first few groups that the Nazis sent to places like Auschwitz.  They came for people with medical conditions.  They came for people who didn’t measure up to their standards of physical and mental perfection.  And they came for people, especially men, that weren’t conforming to their assumptions of what masculinity meant.  They came for gay men.  And when Auschwitz was liberated, it was the gay men, labelled with pink triangles, that were left behind in that death camp.

We like to think that Canadians are squeaky clean but our history is sprinkled with stories that prove otherwise.  Japanese internment camps, residential schools, butter box babies, the rounding up of German Canadian farmers, the denial of refuge to the over 900 Jewish passengers of the M.S. Louis in 1939.  There was forced sterilization of people living in institutions as well as immigrants from Eastern Europe and indigenous women, in Alberta and B.C. until the 1970’s.  Violence against the rainbow community was commonplace, especially since it was seen as both criminal and a medical condition.

What would Jesus have done?  What are we as Christians called to do when facing discrimination in all its ugly forms against whatever minorities are currently fashionable?  In Matthew 25 Jesus says “ ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’  Or how about Luke 6:27  ^“Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man”. Or in John 15 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.  No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you”.  Or Luke 6: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has … sent me to set the oppressed free...”

Jesus taught his disciples to choose compassion and love as the true signs of holiness.  He reminded them to stand for those who were seen as unlovable or unvaluable, the leper, the tax collector, the prostitute, the orphan, the widow, the poor, the ones who had no power or authority.  Jesus calls us to do the same.  It is never easy, but when we cry out for justice, when we write or call or e-mail, we are participating in God’s new creation. 

If we want to be the friends of Christos Jesus, there are three questions we need to ask ourselves.

1.  Why do we want to be friends of Jesus?

2.  Who is Jesus calling us to love?
3.  What sacrifice are we able to make for the people Jesus loves?

These questions may be the same, but each of us will be called to a different answer.  May we pray and listen for the voice of the Risen Christ and help bring heaven a little closer to earth by our words and actions and sacrifices. Amen.

What's in your wallet?

Anyone got a membership card to a pottery club?  Or a loyalty card?  Tim Hortons?  There are loyalty cards for grocery stores, fast food shops and more.  All promising extra freebies if only we stay loyal to them.  Loyal to the brand, but not necessarily their loyalty back to us.  It can earn companies lots of profit.

Loyalty is something they research too.  What is the best level of reward that won’t eat into the bottom line?  When is the reward too little, too late, too infrequent to retain customers?

Our scripture this morning has described what happens when a community forgets what they think deserves the most loyalty.  Like shopping at Shopper’s Drug Mart for back to school clothes, or looking for groceries at Staples, Jeremiah pointed out the problem with misplaced loyalty.  He shared a metaphor of God, working away on the clay to make a useful pot.  Like any good potter will, God finds that the clay is a little too wet to hold its form, or maybe it’s a little too dry.  Time to start over, kneed the old clay again, center it on the wheel, and give it another try.  God is loyal to the image of a healthy community, a healthy country, even when the country is not.  God isn’t afraid to get involved in politics, in Jeremiah’s mind.  This metaphor challenges people’s egos, pushes them to realize that God cares when politics shapes an arrogant attitude of superiority.  God is not challenging one person or another, God is challenging the political culture of the day.

Jesus, too, questioned people’s loyalties.  Challenged them to think carefully of what they prioritized.  And the top priority that superseded all others was to be the loving community of God.  Jesus didn’t promise frequent flyer points, he didn’t say that the people who sold enough Jesus merchandise would earn a pink camel like a Mary Kay Cadillac.  His loyalty program didn’t promise perks, but would cost people time, influence, even their possessions.

Our society is addicted to perks.  We like earning free things, not recognizing that the price for those things are included in our purchases.  When I went to Tim Hortons to get coffee, I would flash my loyalty card to earn points.  Then I discovered that to redeem those points, I had to download an app, and I had to pre-order the free item before I came to the store.  This gave them information on where I was, what I liked, and how much money I spent.  Not only that, but my points expired regularly, and you have to buy a lot of double double to earn a free cookie or donut.  We give away a lot of marketing information to multinational corporations who then use it to design even more addicting loyalty programs.  It has become a vicious circle.

Jeremiah saw that the loyalty that people had to power was destroying their relationship with God.  And when that was destroyed, it led to cultural and political chaos.  Babylon was looking at Israel with lustful, hungry lips.  They saw Israel as a potential 51^st state in their empire.  Sound familiar?  Political chaos is dangerous.

Jeremiah could have been writing for us, describing the destruction of societies that are having hospitals and schools bombed or children starving in war-torn countries while dictators paraded massive armies.  He could have been reading the newspaper about cities under military occupation by their own armed forces.  He could have been hearing about massive forest fires, floods and heat waves, or listening to farmers struggling with drought.  He could have been learning about girls, librarians and teachers caught in political upheaval that they never asked for.  And his words are still as pertinent today as they were back then. 

“At any moment I may announce that a nation or a dominion is to be uprooted, pulled down or destroyed. But if the nation I threatened abandons its depraved ways, I will change my mind and not inflict on it the disaster I planned.”

We don’t want God’s disaster to come.  It’s time to turn our loyalty cards in, and remind ourselves that when we are loyal to God, great things happen. We can trust that God is the good potter who shapes our future.  We can turn to God to help us persevere in difficult times like these.

There are many successes we can see along the way, where God is shifting our perspective on creation.  The Thames River in London had developed a large island of diaper wipes and garbage.  Thanks to a persistent grass roots organization, the City of London is removing the island, and the government is looking into banning baby wipes with plastic content.  The bays around New York City are becoming cleaner by the day, thanks to installing artificial clam reefs that purify the water and are restoring the fishery industry.  Even here at home, the upsurge in people shopping Canadian, travelling in Canada and signing the forever Canada petition has made an impact.  Our government is pausing their book ban.  Rather than coming out and saying they want four specific graphic novels removed from the high school libraries, they came up with such vague guidelines that schools would have no ability to teach biology, for example.  And they made it sound like teachers were pushing obscene materials on kids starting in kindergarten.  They are pausing because we are speaking up, taking risks to tell them when they have crossed the line.

Our culture is at a crossroads, our world is asking us to choose our loyalty.  Do we believe in living with respect in creation, and compassion for our neighbors? Or do we continue to choose apathy and safety?  Jesus asked us to think about loyalty to God.  It’s not easy, it’s not safe, but in the long run, when we choose love, we choose a better world for all.  Let us continue to speak up for justice and compassion, knowing that God is with us, we are not alone, thanks be to God. Amen.

Worship Wars

Jeremiah 1:4–10 The call of Jeremiah: “But I’m only a boy!”, Luke 13:10–17 Jesus heals the bent-over woman.

Can you imagine over 300 people crammed into a space a bit larger than a gymnasium for 5 days, some of which went from 9 am to 9 pm, to talk about all kinds of contentious and complex issues, and which managed to stay respectful and peaceful despite many differences?  That was what happened a couple of weeks ago in Calgary, Alberta.  The topics ranged from unionizing clergy to developing a statement on Palestine.  They heard from international observers, including citizens of Gaza and citizens of Israel.  They heard multiple languages, from multiple ethnic groups.  They listened to elders and to youth delegates, environmentalists and social justice activists.  They talked in small groups and also to the whole council.  They heard from people who predicted that by 2035 there would be only 100 churches left across Canada and people whose churches were thriving and growing and filled with contagious hope.

 It could have been five days of conflict, bickering and rants.  There were people who came with anger in their hearts, and there were people who came with agendas.  There were people who came sure that they knew what was right for everyone, and they were determined to make sure that it was the most important part of the agenda.  It could have been all these, and yet, for the most part, it wasn’t.  There was a lot of consensus built and a lot of respect cultivated.  Halleluia!

 Worship was a big part of the consensus and respect.  Prayers, scripture and hymns were given in many languages with translations instantly available.  English alternated with French, scripture was read in Blackfoot, Korean, Tagalog from the Philippines, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, Swahili and more.  When the Lord’s Prayer was said together, people were invited to speak it in the language that most spoke to their hearts, and it was heard in a multitude of tongues.

 Worship was first thing in the morning, and the last thing at night.  It deliberately focused on what God was calling the church to do. It was intentional, brave, bold and daring.

 Worship is at the core of what Jesus was about in today’s scripture.  He, like Jeremiah was called to speak challenging words to the people of God.  He, like Jeremiah, was called to speak healing words too.  Did he know, when he he chose to heal the bent over woman in the temple, that he would stir controversy?  Did he do it during the offering hymn? Or the Prayers of the People? Or in the middle of the sermon?  We don’t know.  We do know, for the scripture tells us this, that there was an immediate and loud backlash.  Worship wars had begun.

 What is worship for?  Why do we worship?  How do we worship?  Is worship like a restaurant menu where we should only get to enjoy the part of worship we like?  Or is it more like a potluck where hopefully there’s something for everyone to enjoy?  Jesus was clear what worship was for.  It was for honoring God and helping people connect to God’s healing love.  It wasn’t about standards of propriety or keeping prim and proper.  It was about setting people free from the pain and oppression they were experiencing.

 That challenged the people in charge of making sure the rules were followed.  Rules of what a meaningful worship was.  Now, we have no idea what worship was like, that was 2000 years ago, and if you think of how much our world has changed in those 2000 years, our ways of eating and cooking, for instance, well, there’s probably just as much change in worship.  Worship, ever evolving, ever the same, is a gift of space and time to reflect together and learn together, to practice loving God, loving ourselves, loving our neighbors.  Practice, not rules and laws, love, not certainty.

 Jeremiah preached from uncertainty.  He didn’t know if he was old enough, mature enough, wise enough, and brave enough.  God told him to preach anyway, to speak truth to power in love.  Jesus preached anyway too, about healing and love.  He had the bravery to stand up to negative, controlling, critical and judgmental voices.  The religious leaders expected conformity and compliance.  They spoke out of anger and resentment and who knows, maybe even jealousy of Jesus who had the power and the compassion to reach out to a woman who could not stand straight in her place of worship.

 Today, we are asked to speak out even in our uncertainty, to ask for healing and compassion.  Someone wrote this week, “We are watching a kind of moral erosion unfold in real time. What’s even more disturbing is how numb we’ve become to it. The lies no longer shock us. The cruelty no longer surprises us. The exploitation of people and planet is so normalized that we scroll past it. What allows these leaders to get away with so much is not just the concentration of power—it’s the slow collapse of our collective moral imagination. It’s the voice in each of us that whispers, “It’s just how the world works now.” And so we stop expecting better. We stop holding lines. We start cutting corners.

 To which I would add, we stop speaking up in love, we stop working for compassion, we stop listening to the pain of the bent over woman and we stop asking how we can help with the healing.

 That’s why integrity matters more now than ever, not as a rigid moral code, but as a living commitment.  At General Council, people, inspired by worship, energized by prayer and scripture and song, practiced listening to all voices with respect.  That’s not easy, it takes practice to hear everyone, especially the quiet voices.  Now more than ever, we need the quiet voices to speak against the angry voices in love.  To hear Jeremiah’s reluctance to get involved but know like Jeremiah, the quiet voices are called to share good news of healing, second chances, of being able to straighten up and stand tall.  We can do that at the food banks, the soup kitchens, the picket lines and the election polls.  We can do that by signing petitions and writing politicians.  We are all called to make our quiet voices heard in deep, bold, daring ways that love and serve God who is our strength and our redeemer, the holy one who helps us stand straight and tall in love and hope and joy.  May it be so for us all, Amen.

Rebel Mary full of?

Louise Penny writes of a portrait that one of her fictional characters paints.  It is of an old woman who looks out, bitterly, cynically and tired.  It is a painting of the foul-mouthed, rude and irrepressible Ruth Zardo, a main character in the Three Pines books, and she is painted to be Mary, mother of Jesus, a more unlikely portrait of Mary to ever be made.

It makes sense to see Mary as a woman who will know the harshness of life.  Anyone who has gone through Good Friday knows how incredibly hard life can be.  It’s one thing to have the hopes and joys that new moms have, it’s quite another thing to sustain that confidence for the long haul.  The flush of innocent hope, the excitement of justice restored and equality being proclaimed to all, would have been heady.  No wonder Luke wrote her singing of the world being turned upside down.  And no wonder this is the only speech Luke reported from Mary.  She doesn’t make a speech at the foot of the cross, she doesn’t make a speech on Easter Sunday or Pentecost Sunday.  No, she kicks off the birth narrative, and we never hear of her again.  

Which is sad, when you think about it, because Mary understood Jesus better than his disciples, from this reading.  Jesus wasn’t meant to be a candy-coated, sugary sweet elf on a shelf kind of figurehead.  He was meant to be a real rebel, someone who would turn the power structures of his day upside down with his calls for justice in the name of a loving God who wants widows and orphans to be taken care of and treated with dignity and respect.  Mary understood that.  She understood God’s plan would mean afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted.  She knew that love of those who are weak and powerless is not easy.  It’s more than collecting jellycats to fill an emotional vacuum, it’s more than trying to prove you love your family through expensive presents, it’s more than trying to decorate the house better than Martha Stewart or pack amazing activities into the winter holidays guaranteed to make the kids misty-eyed when they remember it in years to come.  We often get love wrong despite our best efforts.

One United Church person had a habit of writing songs about getting love wrong.  He was an active member of the same United Church all his life.  In fact the first time he ever sang in public was when he was 5, and the Sunday School class performed “I’m a Little Teapot” for the church.  That same church was where his funeral was held, far from the pomp and circumstance of many other famous Canadian musicians.  In fact, if he wasn’t touring or playing in Massey Hall, he was usually found singing in their church choir on a Sunday morning.  His songs of love were memorable, intense, poignant and often full of pain.  He had numerous marriages and relationships, and several children by different womeMan, and sometimes those complex relationships ended up inspiring his music.  Songs of heartbreak, anger, betrayal and also humbleness; one of his most famous songs talked about him being the hero but heroes often fail.  He sings, “I don’t know where we went wrong but the feeling’s gone and I just can’t get it back.”  Love was a complex mystery to him, relationships were hard and family dynamics were not straightforward. He was married three times altogether, but the last time seemed to work out finally.  In fairness, he did a much better job loving Canada.  When other Canadians moved to the United States to become famous, he moved back to Canada after only a few years in California.  That didn’t stop his songwriting, nor his growing fame.  His music was covered by all kinds of people: Neil Young, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Barbra Streisand, and Johnny Cash to name a few.  Even in his 80’s he performed across Canada. People remember him as being kind and humble and compassionate; he was so loved that there is a sculpture of him in his home in Orillia Ontario.  He even was the celebrity captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1991–1992.  He was a member of the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Country Music Hall of fame, and even had a Canadian stamp!  CBC thinks he is the fifth best Canadian Song Writer, better than Bruce Cockburn but not quite as good as Leonard Cohen.  He inspired countless young people to make music and keep loving our country.  Some people said he was the first person that ever got them excited about Canadian history when he wrote songs about trains or shipwrecks.  And when Gordon Lightfoot died, the legacy he left was one of love and respect. 

Interesting that Lightfoot who knew first hand the challenges of love, never gave up on being a caring and kind person despite his personal heartbreak.  Through all the ups and downs of grief and health issues, premature reports of his death, a stroke that had him having to learn to play guitar all over again, Gordon persisted in being humble and compassionate to the end.

I can imagine that Mary also persisted.  Her vision of what the world needed was so crystal clear and compelling that it must have survived all the challenges of losing her beloved and gifted son.  Maybe when Mary heard Luke ask her about her son, her soul again cried out with joy. The painting Louise Penny imagined of the old, embittered woman?  She wrote that there’s a dot of white in Ruth’s eyes, the moment when her bitterness is transformed into hope. When she is reminded once again of her powerful vision and conviction and how they are turning the world towards justice.  God is still at work, bringing change and love into the world. May we too feel our spirits sing as we remember God’s promise of justice to all!

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!

What does Pentecost mean for you?

 What does Pentecost mean for us? And how does it impact our lives, or is it just another weird day on the Christian Calendar that doesn’t have any way of being turned into a Walmart greeting card?  I was listening to some wise people who said that if we call Pentecost the birthday of the church, that’s all very nice and good, but it makes Pentecost a one-time event in the past that we can remember and celebrate, but it doesn’t really impact us here today.  Which is a sad thing.

Pentecost is more than a time to remember, it’s also a time where the church might allow itself to be open and vulnerable to God’s musings, God’s direction, and God’s call to change.  It’s a time when we celebrate the coming of the most uncomfortable part of the Holy that we call God.  We are a trinitarian faith, which doesn’t mean that we worship three Gods, but we worship three experiences of the Holy.  We mostly focus on Jesus stories, and Jesus as fully human is someone we can relate to and learn from.  Jesus is a great teacher and a wonderful roll model.  He inspires us and challenges us even today.  Jesus the human Rabbi is easy to relate to.  The Easter resurrection is a more uncomfortable Jesus, dipping into woo-woo and weird touchy-feely stuff.  Is he a ghost? A myth?  A story gone wild?  Or something infinite that we can’t put into a simple box?  And that’s nothing compared to the Spirit!

Our Pentecost readings today focus on the many gifts that we have, the breath that we get from an encounter with the divine ‘woo woo’ that should have us squirming a bit.  Whether it is as a rushing wind, tongues of fire or a test to see if Jesus had brushed his teeth that morning, the Spirit is supposed to stir us in new ways.  Pentecost is supposed to continue to happen with and among us.

It's like a balloon.  They aren’t much fun when they come out of a package, because they don’t have any air in them.  And if we blow them up without tying them off to keep the air in them, the balloons can trigger a certain amount of chaos, can’t they?  Let go of a balloon full of air and watch out!  Some people are afraid of the chaos that can result, and certainly, it can cause some problems.  Too often we humans decide that we either want nothing but the chaos, or we don’t want any chaos.  And churches can often err on the side of caution, which isn’t much fun, is it?  But who wants a flat balloon?  It’s not much fun, is it? 

What if we add a cone to the balloon, helping it lower the resistance to the air, streamlining the balloon?  It will go farther, and we could even aim it.  The cone is like God, sometimes known as Good Orderly Direction, which is aiming at the big picture.  Then let’s add the arms of Jesus to it, what happens now?  It would look like an airplane! Instead of a wibbly, wobbly trajectory, our balloon has a much more stable flight path.  It goes places, it has the oomph to make a journey and take a straighter route to where it wants to go.  Purpose, stability and energy.  All three are needed.  And all three can keep things from being a chaotic mess.  Spirit without God, God without Jesus, Jesus without Spirit, all can keep us from moving and being the enthusiastic people we were created to be.  Pentecost is the time to open ourselves up to new possibilities, new ideas, new adventures.  With the wisdom of God, the courageous compassion of Christ, and the enthusiastic energy of the Spirit, we can become people who make a real difference in our world!

Invitation to Kindness

 A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (Edmonton), a young lady was planning a picnic on a lovely day with a young man she had met.  She pulled out her grandmother’s cookbook to figure out how to make a delicious and unforgettable salad.  The recipe suggested adding a little zing with fruit like raisins, apples, or mandarin oranges in the salad.  She didn’t have any of those, but she did have some watermelon on hand, so cubed it up, as well as some cheese and mushrooms.  She added several types of lettuce and spinach and topped it off with croutons and bacon bits.  She thought it looked pretty with all the different colors mixed together, and proudly served it to her new beau.  The salad seemed to go over very well, but the watermelon was an odd touch and the bacon bits and croutons clung to them like thistles to a sheep.  The young beau didn’t say anything about the salad, so she was quite surprised a few months later when she talked about watermelon she learned he didn’t like watermelon one little bit!  Here she thought all those months ago that he liked her salad.  The truth was, he was too kind to tell her that he had not enjoyed it at all!

Or maybe he was too nice.  When I talk about picking hymns for our upcoming new hymn resource, I often say that a hymn that is ‘nice’ is not enough to make it into our final cut.  We have close to 2000 hymns that have been submitted and we only have room for a tenth of that.  Many of the hymns are nice but not thought-provoking, comforting, inspiring and engaging.  We can’t be nice if we’re to whittle down our big list to something as slim as the More Voices hymnbook.  We can still be kind as we let folks know which hymns make it into our final selection.

The church leader in the parable today was not nice or kind.  Nor was he a real person. He was a stereotype that Jesus was using.  There were Pharisees who invited Jesus to dinner, who listened to him, engaged him in thoughtful debate, and treated him with respect.  We need to remember them for it’s easy to paint them all as bad guys.  Jesus told this story not to say Pharisees bad, tax collectors good, but to highlight two different attitudes of prayer.  The Pharisee’s prayer was arrogant, yet he would have been nice to the tax collector in person.  Kindness does not stem from an attitude of arrogance!  The tax collector, who would be more like today's version of a loan shark, knew how he really measured up to God’s expectation of justice, was very humble in his attitude, and asked for help from God to become a better person.  As Paul put it in Romans, God’s kindness is a call to us to be humble.  Then once we are humble, we too can practice real honest kindness to our community, and not its shallower cousin, niceness.

I see this principal whenever I meet folks going to AA and Al Anon.  It doesn’t matter how smart they are, how much success they have in their professional lives, it’s the folks who join AA and Al Anon with a humble attitude that will be successful in rising above their addictions.  The ones who think they are better than others, or smarter, or more deserving are often the ones who fall off the wagon.  The ones who are humble, also become very kind.

Letting go of our senses of superiority can even be seen in the debate about what to do for the Athabasca homeless population.  Some see the homeless as lazy, some see them as manipulative opportunists, dangerous folks that should be able to fix themselves with a little hard work and will power.  Others see them as former classmates, friends, 4h members, teenagers in high school, next door neighbors, residential school survivors with tales of horrific trauma.  But how we help homeless people is something that society is uncertain of.  Incarcerate them? Force them to go back to their families?  We even struggle to understand what constitutes homelessness, and lump everyone with shelter security issues into one group.  If we are nice to homeless people, we smile and maybe say good morning, but if we are kind to homeless people, that takes a special level of empathy, time, and patience.  It may take the shape of talking to our politicians to strengthen existing mental health supports and building community infrastructure to house people in the community they grew up in.  I’m inspired by the James Smith Cree Nation and their call to increase the number of drug treatment facilities and beds for indigenous communities.  That’s kindness in action. Or kindness might take shape in the form of intervention programs targeting even younger people.

Programs like the Human Kindness Project, a curriculum developed in Toronto for elementary and junior high students which combats bullying.  Winnipeg police developed their “Cool 2Be Kind” project to also build empathy.  In Newfoundland, a volunteer organization, the “Kindness Project”, handed out valentine cards to strangers just as we did during Covid in 2020.  My friend Di who lives in Australia and was impacted by the flood last week, was amazed at the kind offers of support and help she received. Kindness is even seen as the way to break the spiral of divisiveness and polarization we seem to be sliding into in Alberta and around the world. 

Jesus taught his followers that God’s kindness is deep and unending, like a huge watermelon where there is always another slice to be shared.  God is not nice, God is kind, and God’s justice is more than just being nice.  When we humbly recognize that we don’t have all the answers, that we’re not perfect, then God’s kindness will envelop us, grow in us and bear fruit in us.  The fruit of the spirit, kindness, can heal and inspire us all.  Thanks be to God!