Courageous Hope

(Photo: Matthew Rosborough 2025, Vancouver Island)
 Sometimes the bravest person I know is the farmer, who after a year where the land has flooded or the crops rotted on the field or withered away from a heat wave or burned down in a grass fire, looks at the seed catalogue and goes to the local UFA or wherever one buys seeds for, and picks out the crop that they think will do best on the land this summer.  And whether it’s a farmer who rents a bunch of properties or the person with a flower pot in the back yard, when we pick up our seeds and plan to stick them in the ground, we are being courageously hopeful.  Whether it’s sunflowers in solidarity with Ukraine, planted with prayers and hopes, or those impossibly tiny carrot seeds or acres and acres of wheat and canola, the seeds go in the ground as a sign of courageous hope.  This Sunday, which is sometimes also called Rogation Sunday, was a time to ponder the mystery at the heart of life where a seemingly lifeless seed can turn into a green thing capable of feeding many people.

Jesus has been planting seeds of faith, fertilizing them with stories, examples and encouragement, but he knows that just by living by example, he being a role model for everyone is not enough to help his disciples get through the rough times ahead.  The words he has planted, to the best of his ability, is to show people a different way of thinking about God and discipleship.  A way of courageous love and daring hope. A way that breaks down fear and leads to flourishing

Last week there was a gathering of ministers on line with the Moderator Carmen Lansdowne. It was the second last gathering of the (Re)Generate program, a pilot project that brought 31 clergy from across Canada together to learn about the nuances of leadership in our current Canadian Culture.  Affectionately known as “The Blazing Walnuts”, they have studied everything from accounting and sustainability to strategic planning and flourishing faith.  This session was focussed on presenting their ‘capstone projects’, the work each person put together with a team of consulting community and congregational members to focus on one particular experiment that could be implemented for the community in which they were involved.  31 experiments designed to help the United Church of Canada be playful, creative, hopeful and adventurous.

One project developed a very detailed, concrete plan for growth for the next 10 years, to capitalize on what was already working and build the momentum that was already starting to be present. He quoted, “Cities that are growing have no time to plan. Cities that aren’t growing have all the time in the world.  The important point is to use the time to be ready for when the growth happens.” Another minister got a grant to hire a public relations firm and developed a series of tictoc videos and social media ads to share their mission statement and were starting to see the uptake in interest in their congregation. There was a lively video produced for the Maritime region showing the importance of United Church camps and staying connected to the congregations that help sponsor them.  Someone started a dinner church to talk about faith in a casual setting that outsiders might feel welcome to come to.  One growing congregation built clever ‘belonging bags’ that welcomed repeat visitors with a personalized gift and invitation to meet members of the council.  Another congregation has doubled their attendance in the last three years and put in place a detailed plan to be more intentional in their supporting new people to becoming long-time members. Someone else explored the delicate challenges around helping people living in poverty to feel that they were fully contributing members of the congregation without being merely a person who needed charity. Several congregations explored growing intercultural, multilingual churches and the surprising subtle racism that rose up.  As Carmen was told at a World Council of Churches gathering that Christianity is the fastest growing faith in the world at this time, and the norm is a service that is a time of socializing as well as worship, and that it's normal for people to chat with their neighbors while the service is going on. There were lots of projects around children, how to welcome them, how to do all ages worship, and even an app for games and stories!  Sanctuary Star Hunt According to research, retaining children in church as they transition to adults requires them to feel personally connected to a minimum of 5 adults!

One minister in rural Saskatchewan talked about practising hope aggressively and how her little town congregation was expanding since Covid. Another talked about the intersection of faith and the Climate crisis and the need for clergy to learn how to preach about it in biblically faithful ways.

One person even put together a stand up routine that she will be presenting at a comedy festival this summer, which is both hilarious, biblical and evangelical, and promotes the United Church as being very different than the assumptions and steotypes that many Canadians might have.  Another is organizing a trip to Zimbabwe with people 16 and up, which will be an opportunity to build relationships and long-term cultural exchange.  This has brought new youth and new families to the church too.

I presented on the FAB collab and the workshops I had been doing, which was well received.  Much encouragement was given for continuing the project and the workshops despite the cancellations and delays.  There was even some suggestion of making the workshops available to the broader church.  The ministers requested to make art projects like the wooden dice like we made in the “Who is Jesus” workshop when the ministers gather for the last workshop with the Moderator in June!

Jesus said that he would send the spirit to help guide us through our challenging times.  He wanted  us to live with audacious hope, and to live with courage.  “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give you the kind of peace the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”  Easier said than done, of course.

But when we turn to God for guidance, when we practice deep spirituality and bold discipleship and daring justice, when we lean into living by flourishing practices, we will find the seeds of courage and hope and peace abiding with us as we work together.  Who knows what will grow from those seeds?  We can’t do it alone, we can only do it together.  Thank God for sending the Spirit to be with us so we are not alone, we do live in God’s beautiful world.  In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us, we are not alone.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.

Surprising Seeds

 Ever wonder why Jesus talked about gardening metaphors to fishermen who knew more about ropes than they did plows?  Why did he talk about seeds to tax collectors and prostitutes?  And did he throw in a wink and a laugh with these stories to keep them from being too dry, too dull?    These stories seem simple and yet they still leave us scratching our heads centuries later.  This particular parable is perfect for us to wrestle with in June.  Many of us are digging in our gardens, pulling weeds that got a good head start from all the rain we’ve had recently, or throwing seeds in the ground so we can eat lettuce, spinach or radishes in a few weeks.  You don’t know which ones will live and which ones won’t. You don’t know which ones will grow fast and which will grow slowly.  Which ones will thrive this year, and which won’t. 

The saskatoons have already set berries, but will they produce fruit?  God knows.  We throw in marigold seeds from last year’s bedding plants, but many won’t germinate at all.  Then there’s sunflowers seeds that can produce massive plants taller than people, and my goodness the birds love them!

And other than weeding, watering, fertilizing, picking bugs off, and covering our prize petunias with netting, (at least here in Athabasca where the deer love to nibble on our bedding plants and everything except crabgrass and dandelions), there’s not much we can do to help the process along.  Sure, some folks start bedding plants indoors with grow lights, or test the soil to figure out what will grow where or read up on everything from companion planting to square foot gardening, but once the seed is in the ground, as many a farmer knows, it is out of our control.  That’s hard for those of us who like to be always doing. Like the kid who wonders when the warm weather will finally arrive so he can go have fun at the spray park, we wait impatiently for the seeds to sprout, the new potatoes to form, the fresh peas and corn to be harvested.  But sometimes, no matter how hard we try, the peas get washed away, the carrots don’t come up, and the raspberry canes don’t root.  It’s out of our hands.

Relax, Jesus said, God is taking care of the growing.  Hard to believe that in times like these.  And yet there are signs of hope we see here and there.  Perth Australia has so many solar panels installed in that city that city officials are asking people to use their appliances during the day to use up that excess power. And this is in their winter season!  The kids who survived the Sandy Lake school massacre are avid gun control lobbists and they graduated high school this month, determined to make a difference.  The British Isles are seeing storks fly overhead again after 600 years of extinction, thanks to careful wildlife rehabilitation efforts, farmers are finding crops like spinach that love growing under solar panels, not to mention sheep grow more wool when they graze on solar farms, and Norwegian researchers are heating homes with renewable energy stored in beach sand of all things.  Times are shifting, attitudes are shifting.  People are living into what Paul described as cheerfully pleasing God. 

Today we please God with a special day of prayer.  Back in 1971, someone somewhere came up with the idea to have an indigenous day of prayer.  There’s very little known about who had the idea, but the United Church formally recognized it at the 24th General Council and the Anglican Church of Canada also passed it in their court that same year. Eleven years later what later became the Assembly of First Nations called for the creation of a National Aboriginal Solidarity Day. Around that time the Sacred Assembly, a national conference chaired by Elijah Harper, also had a similar call for a national holiday to celebrate the contributions of Indigenous Peoples. And the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1995) recommended the designation of a National First Peoples Day. More recently, on June 21, 2017, Prime Minister Trudeau issued an intention to rename this day National Indigenous Peoples Day.

The United Church has traditionally referred to the Sunday before National Indigenous Peoples Day as Aboriginal Sunday. As part of acknowledging National Indigenous Peoples Day, communities of faith are invited to focus on prayer, as it was originally intended in 1971. 1971 was the same year that the Anglican Church closed its last residential school (as an aside, we closed our last one in 1968) and that might have been the reason for it.  

As a side note of interest, Elijah Harper who helped organize this, who is also the famous politician who helped block the Meech Lake Accord, went to school in Norway House, a residential school in northern Manitoba that was run by the United Church of Canada until it was closed in 1965.  So there’s a United Church connection on several levels to this date.

Seeds sprout up from a 1971 prayer request.  They seem small and innocuous, but they can grow into a national inquiry into truth and reconciliation.  Seeds sprout up from the frustration and heartbreak of being educated in a foreign language in a school far away from one’s family and parents into the courageous resolve to stand against the political machinery that forgot to consult first nations people.  Seeds sprout up from a simple time of prayer into a National Day of Remembrance.  What seeds are sprouting up even now in this time and place?

When we live lives focused on hopeful intentional values, as describe by Paul, we can find ourselves partnering with God in surprising and wonderful ways.  We can watch for God at work in the world.  And we can focus on living God-centred lives.  We do that best by setting aside time to pray intentionally and regularly, watching for those seeds to sprout up.  They will bloom in ways we may not imagine, but they will bloom because God is with us, we are not alone, thanks be to God!

Sow Seeds, Trust the Promise

 

I love the Canada Day weekend!  Severna gets busy and starts bringing over pots and bouquets, the bedding plants are blooming and spreading, and the seeds are sprouting and growing.  This year, Severna planted lots of sunflowers as they are the symbol of Ukraine.  We know that not every seed will grow or even bloom.  I once saved the flower heads of marigolds and was surprised at how few of the seeds germinated the next spring.  Which may be why marigolds produce such an abundance of seeds in the first place.  Not like the poppies in the back yard of the church who reseed themselves prolifically. 

Tim and I planted tomato seeds back in March. We didn’t have any special starter mix, so they didn’t grow too strong or fast.  Then we bought a can of tomato soup this week and it had tomato seeds as a freebie give away stuck on the can.  It even had a link to a website on how to grow the seeds.  We might just try again with these free seeds.

We know, as all gardeners do, that if we plant tomato seeds, we won’t harvest zucchinis. We are going to reap exactly what we sow.  No exceptions. Paul knew it too.  He was the master of metaphor, something worth reminding folks who take the bible more literally than it was intended.  He knew the use of clear images was how Jesus got his teachings to stick.  And he also knew that not every seed would sprout and grow.

Jesus knew it too.  When he sent out the seventy, he gave them instructions that reminded them of this.  “Expect that some people will be open to your message and hang out with those folks.  If they aren’t open, move on. Shake even the dust off your shoes.”

In other words, when we plant our seeds, ultimately, we need to trust that some, not all of our seeds will sprout without us hovering anxiously over them day or night.  And not to take it personally if our seeds don’t grow.  This is very hard for us all.

I know I have been bombarded by people who do take their seed planting very personally.  They are not content to just plant the seed, but it’s like they take a backhoe to dig a deep pit before throwing the seed in.  Then they hover.  And watch and insist that the seed of faith sprouts as they wait.  It’s like being at a time share – ding ding, another soul saved, and you get salesman of the year award for your two hundred people brought to Christ!  Yikes!  Sounds desperate, like their own salvation is based on how many converts they can make.  And competitive. That doesn’t sound at all humble, does it?

I wonder if we are thinking about planting our seeds the wrong way.  We say things like, “You should come to church” and wonder why people get angry at that comment.  Firstly we started with “You” and topped it off with “Should”, which never sounds loving, humble or trustworthy. And Jesus didn’t tell his disciples to say that either.  They were not setting up churches or doing membership drives.  He said, “go and be with people.  Eat their food even if it’s a nasty looking guacamole that’s been in the fridge too long (okay, I wouldn’t go quite that far).  Go and be a healing presence with them.  Go and help them with their emotional challenges and mental anguish.  Not with an aim of fixing, saving, advising, or correcting them.  That is not humble.”  Jesus wanted his followers to go and love their neighbors. Help them learn to build their health and stability and resilience for themselves.  If the disciples were selling anything, it was a deeper relationship with God.  Not coming to church. Or saving souls.

Be humble.  If the residential school missionaries had come with a humble mindset, how might that have changed the course of history?  If they had come with love and compassion and listened and sat and eaten together and lived in teepees first before they built schools and farms, how much different could they have been when instituting the Indian Act?  If they had focussed on trying to empower indigenous people instead of intimidating and enculturating them, how would our truth and reconciliation needs be different today?  And if we came to everyone we met, listened first, and then did our best to be the healing presence instead of the expert, how could that have shaped the very ethos of what Canada is today?

What would happen if we never tired of doing good, planting seeds?  What if we remembered that it’s all about the love of neighbor and love of self?  What if we worked hard to root out any possible accidental weed of selfishness or superiority from every relationship?  What if we remembered that it’s not about bringing people to church but helping people connect to God? And remember that Jesus had spent time first healing and teaching his followers before he sent them out.  We may not be ready yet to heal if we have not first been healed ourselves and that’s okay. Take time to let yourself grow and sprout before you start planting.

Then let God do the rest!  Ultimately, we and God wants a world filled with people of compassion, courage and kindness.  If we can plant seeds of that for others and they can learn that from us in this church, that’s great, and I hope that’s what we are about. Our mission is to be an inspiring, engaging, empowering community that comes together to worship in all our diversity.  So let’s plant our seeds of love in confidence and courage and hope, then rejoice that God does the hard mysterious stuff of getting our seeds to turn into zucchinis, tomatoes and sunflowers. God loves us, guides us and grows us into resilient people one step at a time, in love and humbleness. May it be so for us all!