Turning to Love

 

How do we adults hear Jesus calling us to become as little children?  It’s one thing to talk about the command to practice radical hospitality to families, but in these days of Covid, that seems to be a moot point.  But what about the idea he gave us of becoming as children ourselves?

I don’t think he meant that we should go back to wearing diapers or to hitting each other when we are fighting over toys or spending our days in sandboxes making castles.  But I do think he wanted us to look at our attitudes towards life.  Children, especially the preschoolers, aren’t interested in politics, they don’t have lofty ambitions, and for the most part, they are open to new things.  Watching a three-year old at the playground with a parent is like watching a yoyo, they slowly go farther and farther from the adult, and then run back to the safety of the adult.  Maybe for a snack or a hug or just the reassurance that they haven’t disappeared.  Then they move away a little further.  This will happen again and again as they balance their need for independence and their curiosity with the security and safety of a grown-up being nearby.  They can also be very creative.  How many times have we heard the story of a Christmas or birthday party with lots of presents where the best toy is an empty box?  I remember my brother when he was two years old, loving climbing into the pots and pans cupboard, closing the door and then bursting out with a ‘ta dah’!  Surprise!  Mom had to take all the pots and pans out until he got tired of the game.  They can be incredibly courageous too, oblivious to the consequences of their actions.  My daughter at the same age watched her 5-year-old brother navigate to the top of a very tall and rickety slide in a neighbor’s back yard.  I never thought she would try to climb it, as the rungs were quite narrow and slippery.  Turn my back for a moment, and the three-year-old was at the top of the 5-foot ladder! 

Curious, creative, courageous are just some of the gifts of childhood that we may have lost as adults, but they are something we can recapture, for both our own mental and physical health and also the health of our institutions.

Kairos Canada sent us a prayer that reminds us of the power of children:

The Great Spirit gave life in a circle, from childhood to childhood. Our children are there to teach us and for us to teach them. Our children were taken out of our Sacred Hoop and our hoop has been broken.

For decades we mourned the loss of our children. They never completely returned home. 

Even today, children are often missing.  Stats Canada data from 2016 reports that of the children in Alberta in foster care, 76% are indigenous.  The circle is still broken.  How do we support the calls for healing that circle?  Even here we can remember to be curious, creative and courageous in asking questions of our church, our province, our institutions that challenge not just what they do for children but how they do it.  From the new education curriculum which has been condemned by parents, teachers and professors alike for removing residential school history, to the upsurge of cases of infections in children under the age of 12, we need to challenge our politicians, our systems and our institutions .

 Paul wrote that our institutions need to be genuinely loving, and hospitable.  Whatever we do should be looked at through those two lenses.  We are being called to re-envision how our society must own up to the damage done to children today.  The times they are in abusive situations, the times they are neglected, abused and bullied by both individuals and systems.  The times when parents are not able to be there to help their children and the times when parents are part of the problem, not the solution.  The times when parents get angry that the schools are rumored to be forcing children to get vaccinations, the times when parents lose their children to easily preventable diseases like measles because they refused to have their children vaccinated.  The times parents have had to hear their children’s’ surgeries have been postponed, the times parents have had to help their children get educated at home. 

It is time to demand accountability from the systems we have.  When we write letters to support our universities, when we wear orange t-shirts, when we put out shoes to represent the thousands of children that never came home from residential school, when we text our local town and county candidates, we are challenging our institutions to live up to Jesus’ high standards.

Here in Athabasca United Church, we have cared for the children in the community for a long time.  There is an article in the town archives that told about Nancy Applebee and Alice Donahue rolling up their sleeves in this church’s basement to make sandwiches for the children’s school lunches before lunch programs existed.  This very building was used as overflow classroom space when the Brick Schoolhouse had no more room for the children.  We helped start the “Food for Thought” thanks to Cam Dierker, to make sure that high school students never had to learn on an empty stomach.  When Covid is over, we have plans for cooking classes with the CAVE outreach school so that every junior high and senior high student will graduate with basic food literacy and nutrition skills, and our cooking circle program is targeted to low income moms who struggle to stretch their food dollars to feed their little ones.

What more can we do?  Keep texting, keep writing letters, keep hoping and praying for the children in foster care, and keep loving hospitality at the core of everything we do.  When we do that, and keep having courageous, curious and creative conversations with our friends and neighbors, we will inspire, empower and engage our community to truly welcome these little ones into the circle of God’s love.  May it be so for us all!

Living in Extraordinary Times

There is a saying that is attributed to the Chinese, “may you live in interesting times”, and it is not a blessing but a curse.  And we have been living in historic and interesting times.  There will be many books written on 2020, and it was certainly a relief to hear that last Wednesday’s events were undisturbed by violence.  Could we please get back to being bored and uninterested in US politics for at least 10 years?  And could we please get on to dealing with issues closer to home?

History disrupters like toxic politicians and pandemics are unpleasant to endure, but not all history disrupters are a detriment to society.  Our scripture today depicts Jesus as such a history disrupter, calling the disciples to become fishers of people rather than fishers of Lake Galilee.  Peter, James and the Zebedee brothers knew how to entangle the local fish, tilapia, which is currently my favorite to dine on.  They didn’t know much about catching people.  Yet Jesus came along, and in Mark’s version said a few words and totally disrupted their lives.  

What a disruption!  Not only did he convince them to quit their jobs, but he also convinced them to walk away from their family obligations.  He did it even though his mentor and predecessor, John the baptiser, had been arrested and was being held indefinitely without trial in Herod’s dungeon.

They followed, despite their previous loyalties, despite their secure careers and family obligations, and despite being completely untrained and unskilled in the ways of catching people.  Jesus didn’t care about that.  Jesus knew that they would be able to learn what they needed to learn.  Jesus knew that it wouldn’t be a safe occupation for them or him, but it would be a disruption of historic proportions.  Did he know that they would become so transformed by this experience that they would risk anything and go anywhere for the sake of his message?  Did he know that his teachings would be spread far beyond the shores of Galilee?  Did he know that they would end up travelling, from Israel to Rome, India, Greece, Spain and some say even to the British Isles?  His call was to ask them to commit to following him and learning how to gather people in.  All the rest was not in anyone’s intentions.

Paul’s writing is a similar call to holy disruption. To think of time not as interesting or cursed but as extraordinary, as blessed.  It echoes the idea that the kingdom of heaven is among us right now.  It shakes our understanding of time being not just the minutes, hours and days of our lives, what the ancient Greeks call Chronos, but seconds of significance.  The sense of sacred time, Kairos, is one in which we see God’s presence calling us and disrupting us away from interesting to extraordinary.  To see every moment as a sacred challenge.

How do we live into that sacred challenge?  For starters, not as celibates, despite Paul’s wording there.  Sorry Paul, I’m married and I know that it has transformed me in many God-called ways.  But seeing our marriages as sacred calls into extraordinary love, as God loved us, is one way of living into that sacred challenge.  And it’s not a call to a self-centred life either.  So many folks are tied up in despair because all they focus on is themselves.  Others see life as essentially pointless, without meaning or purpose.  Their depression and cynicism can be contagious, leading again to a focus on nothing but themselves.  Many feel angry at how powerless they are, that the world is conspiring to get them, and they must protect themselves at all costs, with Molotov cocktails, pipe bombs, guns and racism.  Still others are convinced that their job is to convert other people to the truth that they alone possess, by any means possible.  

Many folks in their cynicism and despair and anger and fear do not know that they are living in extraordinary times.  All they experience day after day are interesting times.  Jesus called the fishermen in similar circumstances, and Jesus calls us today to fish for humans who are living in pain and isolation.  How do we do that?

I’m reminded of the Seventh Day Adventists who called the church the other day asking if I read the bible.  They told me that they did good works.  “Us too!” I chirped.  They helped the homeless.  “Of course”, I agreed.  They connected with shut-ins, “so do we!”  And they worshipped God together.  “Every week,” I replied.  They even dropped off books to our front door about the end times coming.  “We give away free books too, and food and even clothing.”  “Really?”  They asked.  “You are talking to a church, you know, and I am the minister here.”  Such ways leave people feeling suspicious and 

One commentator remarked that we can remember how fishermen caught that delicious tilapia in Galilee.  They didn’t use fishing rods.  They didn’t cast lines with carefully tied lures.  They didn’t attach spoons or red wigglers or feathers.  All these trick the fish into thinking they are biting on a tasty treat.  Galileans used nets, straightforward rope constructions with no pointy bits.  Nets that are obviously nets and easily seen.  Nets that can pull people from the chaos of their wild lives into new community.  Nets that disrupt mundane existance in ways that will enrich others.  Nets that pull people out of the murky, muddy depths of despair into new ways of seeing, new ways of seeking, and sometimes new ways of self-sacrificing.

We are called out of interesting times into extraordinary times.  We have been caught up by the nets of God into a new reality.  It is our calling, our opportunity, and our privilege to do the same for those that are suffering in this world.  May we hear the call and answer with fortitude, generosity, wisdom, and courage.