Nagging

Good morning, I am so honored to be here!  Of course, it’s been quite a few years, so I will introduce myself anew to you! I am Mrs. Nellie Letitia McClung, but you can call me Nellie. I see that some of you have my books, and I will be quite willing to autograph them after the service.

The last time I was here was back in 1917.  I said at the time that “the conference made a wise choice of a minister when they sent Rev. H. Bosomworth to take charge of Athabasca, for he has the sane optimism which is so badly needed in a town which has been through the hard experiences of this one. He knows how to face difficulties and he has a saving sense of humour which will see him through many trying situations He carries on a splendid work with the boys club, which meets every Wednesday evening in the basement and makes good use of the well-equipped gymnasium. Mr. Bosomworth can do many things. He can put up hay, cut his own wood, plant his own garden, mend the lights when they go out of order, or do a carpenters job if necessary. But he is, above all things, a preacher, a philosopher, and a lover of humanity. (Source: Athabasca Archives, -Nellie McClung, speaking on the qualities of Rev. Η. Bosomworth of the Methodist church following her lecture there in 1917)

What a delightful scripture you have chosen for this morning’s homily!  Some of you will remember that my four friends and I were often accused of nagging like the widow to the unjust judge when it came to getting the vote for all women.  My dear friends Emily Murphy, Henrietta Muir Edwards, Louise McKinney, and Irene Parlby nagged politicians into giving us what was our natural dues, the right to be considered persons, to be senators or even judges like my dear friend Emily, God rest her soul.  There are times when we women, and men too, have nagged and cajoled and written and protested.  We did this because “in Canada we are developing a pattern of life, and I know something about one block of that pattern.  I know it for I helped to make it, and I can say that without any pretense of modesty, or danger of arrogance, for I know that we who make the patterns are not important but the pattern is.” [1]  But although we now have the vote as God intended us to, we come to another grave challenge, my brothers and sisters in Christ.  You may think of the crushing despair farmers in your area are struggling with after so many years of poor crops and dust bowl conditions.  Or you may be worrrying about the rise of fascism and the rumors circulating that our new premier, William Aberhart, is entertaining Nazis in order to learn how to make Alberta prosperous again.  These are indeed worrying.  Bible Bill might promise to take over the banks, and make Alberta only money, and promise everyone $25 a month to stimulate the economy, but his own constituency is gathering signatures to recall him, including farmers and oil workers and I don’t think he will last much longer in politics.  I digress.

No, I am here to remind you that we need to work hard on one outstanding problem that exists right in the midst of this new United Church of Canada we all worked so hard to create 10 years ago.  No, I am not referring to poor Mrs. Dorothea Palmer being arrested last month for distributing birth control pamphlets to people in the poorer districts of Ottawa.  I am going to help with that, as you can well imagine.  Again, I digress.

Sadly, we need to continue to nag our own church leaders about clergy!  Our clergy have been poorly paid because of the dire circumstances, and there were more churches closed than opened since the stock market crash of 1929.  If it were not for the generous maritime churches  and their shipments of food and clothing, I dare say some of you would be showing up in rags or staying home for having nothing to wear or eat.  Someone quipped recently, “the bootleggers have gone, the movies have gone, credit is gone, social life is gone, but thank God the Church remains.”[2] This shows that while we are too poor to entertain ourselves as we did in the 1920’s, we have kept the important priorities.  Our survival as a national church despite all odds proves that Union is a calling from God himself!  And while there is still much to do to help the young people who are not able to find work and the farmers unable to sell their crops, there is also the need to think about leadership in our Church.

We have a shortage of young men who can afford to go to theology school because of this great depression.  And if rumors are to be believed, they may once again be needed in Europe to stem the tides of growing communism and fascism.  Now that women have joined men in becoming doctors and lawyers and politicians, and proven skilled in doing so, it is time for us to ordain women, the likes of my dear friend and confidant, Miss Lydia Gruchy.  Thank you all for your hard work in passing last year’s remit on ordaining women with 79 presbyteries in favor, 26 against, and nine abstaining.[3]

It is time, ladies and gentlemen, to raise our voices again.  Our General Council is meeting next year, and there are no more excuses to bar women from the pulpit.  One man said women are too fragile for the horse and buggy trips around the countryside, but dear Miss Gruchy has been doing that since union, and is none the worse for wear.  One preacher said that “women would have to be very attractive before they could qualify”.  To which I respond, It’s a good thing looks were not a qualification for men in the past.  If you don’t believe me look around you at the picked delegates [we are sending to General Council]. I’ll grant you they are all intelligent men, excellent men, but you would never mistake it for a beauty show!” [4]

Saskatchewan Conference is convinced that Miss Gruchy, modest as she is, is worthy of being ordained.  She has been preaching quite admirably for several years.  It is time for our leaders to recognize that women are equal to men in all aspects, including the God given right to proclaim the Gospel.

So, my dear friends, be like the nagging widow with the corrupt judge.  But I would be sadly remiss if I did not remind you that this is not only about bold justice, it is also about faith.  Miss Gruchy has been serving God and the church modestly and quietly working in the vineyard of the Lord for 13 years with deep spirituality and shows through her life that prayers, offered humbly and sincerely, are answered in God’s good time.  Let us pray and nag even God himself for justice and equality across this great land of ours.

[1] Patricia Wotton, “With Love, Lydia”  2012, Pg 120

[2] Don Schweitzer The United Church a History, 2012 P 47

[3] Wotton, p 139

[4] Wotton p 132

The Problem of Hell

Did you know that there are 18 references to Hell in the Bible and 16 of them are in the New Testament?  Heaven, on the other hand, is mentioned 787 times, and is about equally split between the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.  Yet many people today spend far more time thinking about hell than heaven.

In fact, for many people, Christianity has been completely rejected because they have only heard that it’s scary.  God is going to consign them to a fiery eternity of pain and suffering.  Comic books about this punishment for non-believers are available for free and try to convert people to faith.  Fear is preached, the end of the world is predicted as it was this week with another rapture date, and woe to anyone who ignores this message.

The parable Jesus told about Lazarus and the rich man was meant not to scare people away from hell.  The stark contrast between Lazarus and the unnamed rich man and the role reversal it implied was a call to compassion.  That call is a core part of what it means to be the United Church.

Photo: Inaugural Service, 10 June 1925, Mutual Street Arena |Flickr

In 1925, Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Union churches came together to build a national faith of justice and compassion, not fear of Hell.  They developed a document of beliefs they could agree on.  It was called the Basis of Union.  Of the twenty statements, the only reference to Hell was Article 19, “Of the Resurrection, the Last Judgement, and the Future Life” where it said that ‘the finally impenitent shall go away into eternal punishment and the righteous into life eternal.” It doesn’t even mention Hell by name, or purgatory or even Satan.  The last statement, Article 20, says that “God will have all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.  We confidently believe that by His power and grace all His enemies shall finally be overcome, and the kingdoms of this world be made the Kingdom of our God and of His Christ.”

So while tent revivals were happening and people were told about God’s wrath that would punish them with Hell, the United Church was grounding faith in a loving God.  God was seen as compassionate, caring and welcoming all people.  Not a vengeful, angry punisher, rapturing up some while the left behind got punished.  In the book, “The Hell Jesus Never Intended”, Keith Wright says the idea that God condemns us and sentences us to hell, is troubling.  He writes quote:

It’s frightening for many because love that must be bought at the price of a violent death on the Cross hardly sounds like love…the nonviolent God of Jesus becomes a God of unequaled violence, since God not only allegedly demands the blood of the victim who is most precious to him, but holds humanity accountable for a death that God both anticipates and requires… is to paint an awful picture of God, to make God an arbitrary and capricious tyrant.

Given that Jesus taught his disciples to pray using the word ‘Abba’, the Aramaic word for daddy, the idea that God, our loving parent is also fixated on punishing us, stands directly in contrast to God who is the shepherd frantically looking for the lost lamb, the woman seeking high and low for her one missing coin, the mother hen calling her chicks to her, or the Prodigal father, so grateful for his son’s return that he throws his best coat on his son even though the boy is probably coated in pigsty slime!

Since the beginning of the United Church, leaders like our first Moderator George Pigeon, or Louise McKinney from Claresholm Alberta, heard the call not to preach a terrifying God but a reconciling God.  George was the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in 1924, and a professor who worked hard for union.  He tried to persuade all the Presbyterians to join, but 17% of Presbyterians and 10% of Presbyterian clergy voted against union.  George was voted unanimously to be the head of the new denomination and did his best in the two tumultuous years of his term, to settle the many disagreements, hurt feelings, power struggles and turf wars that resulted.  It was complex and heated, but moments of Grace abounded too.  Presbyterian and Methodist seminaries came together peacefully at most theological colleges, and much to many people’s surprise, Newfoundland, who wasn’t even a part of Canada, had all of its methodist churches originally reject Union, but in 1925 they all joined anyways.  Louise McKinney, one of Alberta’s Famous Five women, who had helped women get the vote in 1918, was one of only 5 ladies out of the 350 delegates at the first worship service.  She and other United Church women addressed the struggles of the poor like Lazarus through the Temperance Movement.  They hoped that prohibition would lower family violence and child poverty.  It was both Pigeon and McKinney’s way of addressing the social injustices they saw in their communities, not realizing that causes of poverty and addiction were far more complex than they originally thought. 

That was also the driving force behind residential schools.  Just as Temperance was a simplistic solution to a complex problem, Residential schools also turned out to be simplistic.  One culture assumed it had the God-given right to impose itself onto another singular culture but what was in fact a broad diversity of cultures, languages and spiritual practices.  One General Council Commissioner in Calgary this summer talked about being sent to the most convenient school rather than the closest one; he spoke Haida Gwaii and ended up in Alberta surrounded by Cree children.

When we assume we know best, when we think we have a guaranteed spot in Heaven, we may end up surprised like the rich man.  When we use fear to teach people about God, we may find history judging us harshly.  When we use this parable to inspire us to act justly, we can find the healing that Jesus wanted for us. When we love God like Abba Daddy the way Jesus taught, we can live bold and courageously like George Pigeon and Louise McKinney.  Like them, we may not be perfect, but we are growing in our love of our neighbors and God.  May it be so for us all.

Surprising Views

Ever noticed how addicting excuses are?  We can’t try that, it’s been done before.  It’s too risky, it’s too new, nobody will like it, the community won’t care, people are too busy, life’s not like that, we don’t have any power over the situation, people don’t change, and on and on.  The excuses are legion, and we all have endless supplies of them that we can whip out at a moment’s notice.  Risk is often seen as scary, especially when we are anxious about the state of our world.

The continued presence of smoke from forest fires, the rising cost of groceries, the challenges of renegotiating mortgages, and the sticker shock of school supplies do not help.  We can feel like we are laboring on giant pyramids for the sake of folks like Jeff Bezos who reported earning $75 billion dollars in 2020 while the average warehouse worker for Amazon won’t be a billionaire any time soon.

New pharaohs are in our world, and the poverty of the folks that support their pyramid or yacht building schemes are also real. The view is bleak. But Exodus tells the tale of a God who has a different and surprising view of the world, “I have seen the affliction of my people in Egypt, I have heard their cries under those who oppress them; I have felt their sufferings.” That is as true today as it was several thousands of years ago.

Of course, Moses came up with a million excuses as to why he couldn’t help.  He was a nobody shepherd doing the worst jobs for minimum wages.  He was even a convicted murderer who had left Egypt after killing some Egyptian overseers for abusing their workers.  He was a poor public speaker. He knew he was the wrong man for the job.

God had other views.  God knew that Moses had grown up in an Egyptian palace and had an insider’s knowledge of Pharaoh’s court.  Moses also had an insider’s understanding of the religious system, the priests, the court officials, the racism that had been institutionalized from before he was born.  As an adopted child, he would have experienced a disconnect, on one hand, he would have learned his family’s culture, but on the other hand he would have been pampered and set aside from them.  He would have been a member of both the elite and the oppressed, and not fully comfortable in either.  No wonder he attacked the Egyptian overseers.  Like most middle managers, they didn’t think about what the system was doing to the people under them.  They went with the status quo and didn’t question orders from higher ups.  Curiosity, empathy and imagination were not part of their mindset. And they certainly were quite happy with their place in the world.

Peter was also happy with his place in the world.  In last week’s reading, he said Jesus was the Messiah, the anointed one specially chosen by God to bring about change for the oppressed people, a new Moses.  And Jesus was happy, calling him the rock on which he would build his new community, his new network.  And then Jesus took Peter down a peg when Peter tried to be his image consultant.  Peter wanted Jesus to tone down his rhetoric, keep things positive and light, stop talking about sacrifice and pain.  Jesus unequivocally rejected that.  Watering down the message was not on, and that if Peter wasn’t on board with that, Peter could find another rabbi to follow.  Harsh words, and a difficult criticism to accept.  But crucial for the vision Jesus had in mind, establishing a movement that was so radical it would have ripple effects for centuries. He didn’t want to hear Peter’s excuses as to why that couldn’t be done or couldn’t be said.

The famous rebuke, “Get behind me, Satan!” would have been a real shock to Peter’s ego.  It would have startled and surprised him, like an emotional burning bush.  He would have had to rethink all his assumptions that he held about what a messiah was, what Jesus was up to, what the future held in store, what he was prepared to sacrifice in order to live into the expectations Jesus had of him.  It shocked him into a new sense of mission, and a new sense of purpose.  It was both humbling and hurtful, and reminded Peter that he still had a lot to learn.  Shocks hurt.

Shocks like the burning bush.  Moses didn’t expect it, and his curiosity got the better of him.  Rabbis often say that there were many shepherds wandering by, but only Moses got curious about what was happening.  How long had God waited for someone curious and humble to come along?

Many people long for a new Moses to come along and fix things, a new Jesus to end their suffering.  They look for strong people that will do their thinking for them.  It’s hard work being open to the shocking divine mystery, to hearing the surprise, to learning to be humble and open, to letting go of the sure-fire easy answer that they know will quickly fix everything.  They don’t want to think about the systems they are caught up in or the oppression they are perpetuating.  Unfortunately, there are no easy answers.  We will need to use our curiosity, empathy and imagination, while sacrificing our excuses, our safety and our comfortable habits in order to bring about the real change God is calling us to.  But when we have a clear and noble, God-given purpose that is centred on love of neighbor, we can work together in joy!  We are called, after all, to be the Church: to celebrate God's presence, to live with respect in Creation, to love and serve others, to seek justice and resist evil, to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen, our judge and our hope.

In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us. We are not alone. Thanks be to God!

Prove it!

 

Sounds like Jesus was having a bad day.  First, he was tested by the Pharisees, then by the lack of foresight by his disciples.  He was speaking about faith and using a metaphor to do so, and his disciples completely missed the point and took his words literally.  Not only that, but they were coming from a very defensive position, assuming that he was blaming them for their lack of preparation.

Nobody was getting it.  The Pharisees wanted signs, the king wanted absolutes, the disciples wanted their bellies full and no one wanted to think about God or mission or higher purpose.  Here they were in the presence of Jesus, and had seen and experienced marvelous things, but all they could do was stay fixated on their own perceived needs and their own sense of what was proper.

Like a mobile, the three groups were used to a certain way of living.  Herod was used to having uncontested power over the country and influence with the Roman Empire.  He was a figurehead and knew it.  He was also plagued with guilt over the death of John the Baptist and wondered if Jesus was John reincarnated.  He had been manipulated by his wife and stepdaughter into executing John, from which we get the phrase, “serve his head on a platter”.  He was a dangerous and volatile man, easily swayed, and a wily politician.  He was not afraid to kill people to keep his power.

The Pharisees were, as Robbie the Dragon said, the ‘status quo’.  The religious people who ran the temple.  They were used to being upper managers in the institution of religion, which was a big thing in Jerusalem.  They liked their systems, their debates, their logic and their many rules. 

They liked the superiority they had in knowing that they had the truth all wrapped up and that they were better than the rest of the people they saw.  They were sure they were right.  They ‘knew’ they were in God’s good books.

Then there were the disciples.  Fishermen, farmers, day laborers.  They knew their place in the society’s hierarchy.  It was at the bottom.  They knew the constant struggle to find enough food to eat every day.  They knew grinding poverty, and they knew that they were not good enough to deserve the best seat in the temple.  Like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, they only dreamed of one day having a seat of honor in their most sacred institution.  Survival was the best they could hope for.

Imagine that this society was like a mobile with the strings and sticks balancing the different people at each level.  You remember the kinds we made with our kids as school projects, or maybe hung a store-bought one over a baby’s crib.  I had one festooned with plastic butterflies that entertained my children, especially when they realized the butterflies moved when they kicked their feet on the crib mattress.

The mobile that was the society of the people was committed to being still, calm and static.  It hadn’t been that long ago that there had been two nasty sieges of Jerusalem that had led to wholesale massacres of people hiding in the Temple, less than 100 years earlier.  Power imbalances had led to civil wars and thousands of people dead. So status quo and peace was very precious to all.  It was a matter of life and death.  People didn’t want more war, more death, and more disaster.  They wanted stability.  They wanted safety.  They wanted security.

Jesus wanted equality.  He wanted people to share their abundance with people who didn’t have abundance.  He wanted fair play and justice, so that poor people wouldn’t be the oppressed and the marginalized.  He wanted healthy community, where all, young and old, were treated with compassion and respect.  Where status was not based on what one owned or who one controlled, but on how well one served, and loved the people who could least repay a kindness.

He wanted a community that laughed together, played together, worked together and experienced God together. A community freed from the fear of not having enough or being enough.  A community of love and joy.

To get there would take much change.  The mobile would have to move and bounce and whirl to get that change.  Herod and the Pharisees were not having it.  They wanted the mobile to stay still and peaceful for them.  They were prepared to sacrifice the people under them to maintain that peace.  They certainly weren’t going to let some upstart Galilean preach to them how to practice their faith and upset the peaceful mobile.

So they demanded signs, not because they wanted signs, but because they wanted to keep the mobile from moving.  And Jesus realized the game they were playing.  Jesus realized they kept moving the goal post and would keep moving the goal post as a way to discredit him in front of his followers.

When he tried to communicate this to the disciples, once again, they didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.  They were fixated on their assumptions that there wasn’t enough food around because they could only believe in that which they could touch or taste.  They didn’t trust in this new community, they only trusted in what they knew.  They needed bread, not just once in a while but daily, like the rich folk could afford.  And that need was enough to erase their memories of the loaves and fishes that were in abundance whenever they met in community in the presence of Jesus.

Where do you find yourself in this story?  Are you worried about your daily bread? Are you worried about upsetting the status quo?  Are you stressed out about what other people might think if you do something different than everyone else?  Have you forgotten the special moments in your lives when you had a sense of community, of support, of the divine awe that inspired you and connected you to something bigger than yourself?

I hope amidst the challenges and the shifts of our world, that we remember to hold to the vision of a community and a society where all are valued, where all have found a bigger purpose to hope in, where all are committed to spinning the mobile until all know the joy and the glory of being beloved children of God.

Nestar from Uganda

"When two elephants are fighting, it is the grass that suffers"

Nestar from Canadian Foodgrains bank.

Nestar has been working in Canada for 11 months. She grew up in war torn Uganda. She lost 3 brothers and 1 cousin when she was 5 years old.

If the link is still good listen to her speak on GodTalk.com

Note: Our Wonder Mill has no affiliation with GodTalk. Their views are not necessarily our views.