Small Sacrifices

 Why do we follow Christ?  Why do we listen to his teachings when he seems to glorify abusive behaviors and torture by embracing his death on a cross?  These are deep, puzzling questions, and the scriptures sometimes help us and sometimes confuse us.

John’s gospel is not for the faint of heart in this regard.  It’s the gospel that almost didn’t make it into the bible back in the time of Constantine.  John was a philosopher, the Steven Hawking of bible writers.  When he described what Jesus taught, there weren’t many down to earth stories like we find in the other gospels, but flowery metaphors and complex images. 

And sometimes, we need flowery metaphors when dealing with the subject of today’s scripture.  Jesus was predicting his death and talking about suffering.  That wasn’t a popular topic back then, and it’s not today either.  Sometimes it feels like a modern slogan for the good life should not be “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” but “Life, liberty and the avoidance of all suffering”.  Our world struggles to know what to do with suffering.  We interpret the good life as being like an Oscar show, full of glittering gowns, fancy tuxedos and cleverly written speeches where everyone looks perfectly happy.  A lot of people put time and effort into looking like they are living the perfect life.  Social media is full of pictures of people living glamorous lives.  Unfortunately, this leads to increasing feelings of isolation, loneliness and depression as people wonder why they aren’t having more successes themselves.  Where are their statues for best actor or best costume designer, best director of the perfect life?  For those who are struggling with chronic illnesses and chronic pain, the push to portray only the happy moments of life can be a cruel expectation.

Jesus had an odd opinion about suffering. Jesus didn’t say that anyone who became his follower would be handed a “Get out of suffering free” card.  Some folks may preach that, and push the idea that Christians automatically get to avoid suffering.  There are people in our community who have turned their backs on Christianity because of that.  A catastrophe happens in their lives, and they take it as a sign that either they are terrible, or that God is angry at them and they don’t know why.  So, they reject Christianity altogether.

Jesus didn’t say that he would save people from suffering.  He did say that he came so that they could have life abundant.  And many of his disciples led very transformed lives that were abundant and fulfilling.  Fishermen became world travelers, tent makers became famous orators, tax collectors became community leaders, and they all followed Jesus’ teachings so passionately that they took his message to the ends of the earth.  Even faced with derision, imprisonment, and even crucifixion, they were so on fire that they kept sharing the good news to all who would listen.

Even Greeks wanted to come and speak with the Rabbi, and Jesus shared his message with them too.  His good news was for everyone regardless of ethnicity.  Often a reference to the Greek people was a reference to the rest of the world, for Greek was the language of intellectuals and philosophers.  Wealthy Romans considered a Greek tutor as a status symbol, like having a child in French Immersion may be considered a status symbol.  And Paul went to Greece, home of Socrates and Plato and schools of philosophy and medicine and was able to plant multiple small communities of faith, house churches with maybe a dozen people across that country that spread until it became a universally embraced way of life.

The disciples did that by making sacrifices.  They left their comfortable homes and their familiar ways and their homeland where everyone spoke the same language.  Now, we may squirm at the thought of sacrifices, but we do it every day.  How many of us sacrifice sleeping in on a Saturday morning because the dog needs to go out for a walk?  How many of us sacrifice our time by volunteering for Meals on Wheels or making lunch for crib players or selling tennis balls for the Lions or raising money for Rotary Club’s international exchange student program?  How many of us sacrifice our money for supporting good causes at the Farmer’s Market or buy fair trade coffee at the grocery store or buy chocolates for a kid’s school fund raiser?  How many of us helped our neighbors during Covid, or supported family and friends when they were going through hard times, or drove neighbors to doctors appointments?  We know how to follow in the footsteps of Christ and we often do it without realizing that we are even making sacrifices.

We sacrifice for others in many ways.  It’s because of those sacrifices, large and small, that we have continued to provide support for so many people for so many centuries.  Peter Drucker, a business guru, would ask industry leaders which organization was the most resilient.  People probably named institutions like the UN, or the Red Cross and the like.  Drucker surprisingly said it was the Church.  It was durable not because it created great leaders but because it allowed ordinary people to do outstanding things. It’s survived plagues, wars, collapses of empires, corrupt leaders trying to produce evil things like crusades and witch hunts, and it keeps returning to its core values of empathy, equality and courage. Or as we say in the United Church, deep spirituality, bold discipleship and daring justice.

Christianity transformed communities over the centuries. It’s easy to forget how resilient it has been and hard to see how resilient it is even now.  We don’t get the big picture when we are wrapped up in our worries and struggles.  When we hang on to our lives tightly, we can get tied up in knots of grief, fear and anxiety.  When we focus on our community and make those little sacrifices that we know so well how to do, we can do bold and beautiful things that make a difference in the world. And God glorifies what we do, saying, “This is my beloved child with whom I am well pleased.”  May our sacrifices continue to glorify God and inspire and empower the world! Amen.

Letting Go

Life changes.  Kids go back to school, hooray! Grownups retire, babies are born, teens get jobs and move out, new relationships are made, jobs are quit, people die, every day some new life change impacts someone.  And that’s just the natural progression of the aging process.  Our favorite car gets rear ended.  Our spouse gives us divorce papers.  We lose our cell phones.  Our jobs get downsized.  Our co-workers gossip about us behind our backs.  Covid hits. Our companies downsize.  Sometimes we make changes, sometimes changes make us. Life! 

Jesus was proposing a radical change.  He was talking about a cultural shift for his followers to help them become intentional in following God’s teachings.  He didn’t want them getting caught up in the hoopla and the excitement of the crowds, he didn’t want people to be joining his community because it was the newest bandwagon to be jumping on board.  He wanted people to slow down and really think things through.  He knew that crowds can one moment be calling out halleluiah and hosanna and the next moment can be calling out ‘Crucify him’!  He wanted people who would commit for the long haul, who would make measured, thoughtful decisions with the full knowledge that it wouldn’t be easy.  That message of careful choice during change is relevant especially today.

Mind you, there are not too many times and examples of modern people letting go all their possessions and family claims for the sake of their faith or.  I can’t imagine letting go of my microwave but leaving my dishwasher behind when I moved to Athabasca was an inconvenience rather than a painful sacrifice.  I don’t want to give up my cozy home, my family or all the yarn I’ve accumulated over the past twenty years, and no way I could live without my Blackberry as Lois reminds me often.

On the other hand, summer holidays had me leaving much behind, books, Wi-Fi, computer, grocery store down the hill in exchange for quiet walks, the occasional paddle to visit loons and time in my hammock.  35 years ago Tim and I left family, friends and our brand-new wedding presents for our honeymoon. Now most normal brides don’t pack much for their honeymoon, but I didn’t pack lacy lingerie; instead, I packed a sleeping bag, nesting pots, and matches while Tim added a tent and cookstove to his backpack.  It was an adventure – over seven months, just the two of us Down Under with no one we knew, backpacking across Australia and New Zealand.  I missed my cross stitching and my ukuleles, and we missed our parents and brothers even more. It was a wonderful time though it was primitive at times, camping where poisonous spiders and snakes lived, hitchhiking from dorm to dorm, and immersing ourselves in the culture.  We came away from that year profoundly shaped by the knowledge that even culture is a choice, not every Canadian has to say ‘eh’ and drink beer while wearing a toque and watching hockey, and not every Albertan has to be a Conservative party member to have a say in who is our premier, or is either a rig pig or a bronc rider with a John Deer hat and cowboy boots.

Culture can be challenged and changed. By a simple letter from one friend to another asking for something that the culture would say was impossible.  The story of Onesimus is such an example.  He was a slave who had run away from his owner and that is why Paul crafted such a careful and passionate letter.  This was more than a reference letter to an employer, this was an emotional appeal to Philemon that would challenge and shake the man’s understanding of his relationship with another human being.  And not just Philemon.  Everyone who read this in that ancient world who were striving to follow Jesus would have poured over this letter and shake their heads in astonishment.  Treat slaves like kinfolk not property?  What was Paul thinking? Throughout history, hearing this scripture in different times and places would have challenged its hearers.  How would George Washington, a slave owner, have felt hearing Paul’s letter asking Philemon to treat Onesimus like an equal instead of a possession? Culture shifting!

 Or how would today’s flood victims in Pakistan or refugees from Ukraine feel hearing Jesus’ drastic teaching about letting go of what we cherish?  Really?  Letting go of our stuff, our relationships, our strongly held beliefs?  They have to let go of all their stuff in order to survive.  Staying alive means not hanging on to material things when living through tragic changes.  Jesus knew more than Marie Kondo.  It’s not about what stuff gives us joy and toss out the rest.  It’s about what helps us live a purposeful, intentional life that helps us love ourselves, love God and love our neighbor.

This Labor Day weekend is a good time to think deeply about our relationships with each other.  How do we remember that everyone we meet is fearfully and wonderfully made?  How do we love the neighbor that plays loud rock music on the river front all day? The neighbor who believes in conspiracy theories?  The one that always beats us at golf or at canasta? The useful person that we think is useless because they messed up something we thought was important? The person who wronged us but now is coming back to make amends? The person we need to make amends to ourselves? We all have moments when we feel like change is overwhelming us, and is being done to us, but when we trust that we are fearfully and wonderfully made in God’s own image, we can build resilient new family and community that is  grounded in the compassionate teachings Paul and Jesus.  It really works! Onesimus went back to Philemon who could have whipped, sold or executed him. And while we have no letter back from Philemon, the people in Ephesus tell that their first bishop of the Christian Church was named, guess what? Onesimus!  From slave to brother to bishop!  Change is possible, and we are part of that great history that challenges oppression and remembers we are all God’s beloved children!

Stuck in our own ditches, Investing in sheep

On this Good Shepherd Sunday, it is helpful to remember the reality of working with sheep.  They can be very smart, especially the bell weathers, and at other times they can be, well, not the cleverest animals you have ever met, and just as prone to mistakes as we humans can be. Here's a video to remind us what sheep can be like: (99) Sheep gets stuck in trench, jumps back in - YouTube. So they can get into ruts and need help getting out, only to fall into bigger and deeper ruts.  Not unlike humans.  We can get caught in emotional ruts and intellectual ditches unintentionally, we can get stuck and not know how to extricate ourselves from the holes we are in.  

Cue the shepherd, and not just any shepherd, the good shepherd as mentioned in our scriptures this morning.  One thing I learned this week was the word for ‘good’ used in the original Greek might be better translated as ‘model’.  So, although the shepherd in our scripture is contrasted with a hired hand who doesn’t have a relationship with the sheep other than their paycheck, it’s not so much that the shepherd is ‘good’ and the hired help is ‘bad’.  It is that a model shepherd, an ideal shepherd, the kind you want to hire to take care of your flock, invests more than time into the flock.  It’s not just about the paycheck, it’s about where the heart is invested.

Both our scriptures talk about Jesus, our model shepherd, as being so invested in the flock that he was ready and willing to sacrifice even his life for those sheep.  To be so into a loving relationship that the gospel writer later wrote, “greater love has no one than this that someone lays down their life for another”.  Our model shepherd loves so deeply that they will risk their body for not just another person but a whole community.

That is quite the model to follow.  That’s quite the inspiration, that’s quite the big shoes to step into.  Jesus said that this love was so big that it encompassed others who were not a part of the inner circle, the disciples and followers that were part of the flock.  Jesus specifically spoke about the other sheep that were also needing a shepherd.  The ones who were lost, the ones who had wandered off, the ones who were isolated, the ones who were in pain or in danger.  Jesus wasn’t there just for the 12, or just for the people of Israel.  Jesus was there for the big picture.  Jesus was deeply, emotionally invested in the wellbeing of each and everyone in the world.  That’s quite the model.

We see plenty of examples where people are not following the model of being invested in the wellbeing of everyone.  Anti maskers who want their businesses reopened and so what if a few old people die here or there.  Racists who think it’s fun to use a microphone with a noose attached to it during a public demonstration in Northern Alberta.  Politicians who don’t support their own party’s stance on health regulations.  A legal system that throws out tickets issued to people flaunting the health regulations. Police officers who think it’s okay to kneel on someone’s neck for nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds.  Plenty of stories of people who are more like hired hands than role models.

We too are called to listen for the Shepherd’s voice and become loving, invested role models for our community.  This is not easy work.  How do I love the person who thinks that I am bad or political when I wear a mask or sign up for a vaccine?  How do I love the person who tells me I am a sheeple, and stupid for believing doctors, scientists, and politicians?  How do I love the neighbor who thinks it’s okay to pollute the world with facemasks?  Or the family member who promotes conspiracy theories every time we call?  Sacrificial love is not easy in these situations.

Where are the role models who care to the point of sacrificial love?  I recently learned about a movement in Minneapolis that started after the George Floyd murder.  One lady courageously donned her clergy collar, e-mailed her colleagues, and went out into the riots to listen and support protestors.  She became part of a growing team who wear bright orange t-shirts with the word ‘chaplain’ on it in bold letters.  They hand out everything from bottled water and pizza, but mostly they listen.  They listen to trauma, fear, anger, frustration, racism, injustice and more.  And day by day, they are modelling what it means to be a caring and loving presence in the world.  It is not easy work, it is not safe work, but it is work that they have felt called to do.  To bring healing in a time where the world feels out of control.

Sacrificial love for ordinary sheep is the model shepherd’s highest intention.  The model shepherd is not me, and not you, but we can become inspired to imitate that model to our best abilities.  Just as Jesus had very clear intentions centered around loving his flock, we need to wrestle with our intentions.  Why do we feel the need to pick up that phone, write that letter, talk to that person?  Is it out of love for our community or is it out of anger or fear?  Can we see that individual as part of our flock that we are called to guide?  There are some sheep that are in a deep hole of anger, distrust and fear because that’s how they are meeting their needs for safety.

And we need to be aware that we can feel more like the hired hand than the shepherd.  Our ability to love that sacrificially might not be there yet.  We may not be as healed as we’d like from our own feelings of fear and anger.  We may not be invested in their welfare as much as our own.  This may be the Model Shepherd’s voice calling us to rest patiently until we gain our own strength and safety before we try to rescue others.  It’s very easy to think we can fix things and people when we are stuck in our own ditches.  And trying to fix other people because we know best is the very definition of colonial oppression which led to residential schools and other racist interventions; because we did not have our intentions grounded in sacrificial love. 

And maybe we need to recognize that we are not the shepherd called to help them out of that hole, or that this is not the right time for us to help. Our most loving action may be to rest and pray that we be pulled out of our own ditches and that they may find someone wise and patient who has the skills to pull our neighbors out of their ditch too.  There are many resources that we can refer people to. But we can choose to invest in the most loving outcome for people who are struggling, just like us, to make sense of the world.

We are not Jesus, the model shepherd who is deeply invested in our welfare.  But we can listen for Jesus and remember to do our best to love others as we have been loved, deeply, unconditionally, and love ourselves as well especially when we feel like we’re caught in a ditch like a silly sheep.  We are loved, even then, and thanks be to God for that sacrificial investment of love!