Invite, Invite, Invite!

Ever plan a big event, and send off the invitations in the mail in hopes that everyone you had invited would come?  Planning a wedding is like that, and even setting a number was full of negotiations.  My mom wanted a small wedding with about 8 guests including the wedding party.  Our wedding was much bigger, Tim had 4 brothers and they had partners, children, a grandparent, and that made 11, never mind my brothers and assorted aunts, uncles, and cousins and there were friends we wanted to invite.  One thing that the wedding books said was that it was okay to invite more than what you wanted.  The decline rate is about 10%, and if you want a group of 50, you can invite up to.  Of course invitation lists tend to grow and grow and grow.  That’s why wedding invitations include rsvp details, even in this modern day and age.

But there’s nothing to beat a personal invitation.  It’s one thing to get a pretty letter in the mail, but it’s another to get that letter hand-delivered by a living, breathing human being.

And back then, an invitation from a rich land owner would be like getting the Order of Canada, a once in a lifetime event.  The hospitality code of the day would be very clear; this showed the person that they had been noticed and seen as worthy of respect.

People with Jesus at this dinner party would know that the invited guests would have dropped everything in their eagerness to attend.  Dinner invitations were serious business.  They had to be reciprocated, they had to pander to the rich man in return.

It was a complex back and forth, calculating and measuring who had been honored by whom, who owed who a dinner and favors, and back and forth.  So the shock of this story would have had everyone listening to Jesus scratching their heads in surprise.

First, he’s telling about a dinner while being at a dinner.  He was invited by the top Pharisee to a special supper, which showed that the Pharisee was interested in hearing him, and showing Jesus he could gain some status.  But Jesus turned around and gave him a lecture on how to run a dinner, how to invite guests.  That’s some nerve!  It would be like being invited to the Mayor’s breakfast and then telling the Mayor that he had done it all wrong.  And Jesus had, in the part of this chapter we didn’t read, lectured the guests to not assume they deserved a seat close to the host, but to take a lower seat until the host told them otherwise.  Because even the seating arrangement showed a pecking order.

The twist in this parable is that first there’s the shocking rejection of the invitation.  That it happened once might be understandable, but when none of the guests rsvp, that would have been seen as a dreadful insult.  If someone offers you the Order of Canada or the Nobel Peace Prize, there must be a pretty strong reason to turn it down.  It would have been a real slap in the face, a dishonor to the host that said much about how the people saw him.  Here’s a man that we disrespect so much that we refuse his invitation.  We don’t care if we lose status by attending, we’d rather lose than come for a free meal.

So Jesus describes the landowner inviting the riff-raff instead, the people without status, the people without wealth, the people who will not kiss his ring, the people who cannot invite him back, the people who are sick and desperate and lonely and poor.  They come.  The servant brings them until the banquet hall is full and everyone is fed.  The other people, the high status people who are wealthy enough to be able to marry or buy work animals or land, they are left out in the cold.

Don’t invite people like ourselves, Jesus taught.  Invite everyone who is hungry for something that maybe they don’t even know they are hungry.  We have a very hungry world right now.  People are hungry for their fair share, people are hungry to get ahead, people are hungry for more.  Some of the rhetoric we are hearing around the referendum is around entitlement, like how there are a lot of people talking about how much immigrants are taking from regular Albertans.  Or how there’s a blanket assumption that people on AISH are defrauding the system.  The actual statistics are very different than what people fear.  The number of fraud cases is small, the amount of money spent on immigrant healthcare is small too. Yet people are hungry for someone to blame for how they feel they are not getting ahead as fast as they should.

But they are also hungry for hope.  And hope has been in short supply these past few years.  They are hungry for equality, justice and kindness.  Those things are worthy of hungering for.  But there are better ways than working for justice for only me and my household, but to work for justice for everyone.  This is what the United Church, the Anglican and Catholic bishops are asking us all to think about what is the common good not just for myself but also for my neighbor.  The Common Good is making decisions that show kindness and empathy for people whose stories we haven’t heard yet. That is what Jesus was inviting the Pharisees and dinner guests to consider.  Not who had the highest status, but need to be fed with enough.  The Common Good is here we practice gratitude and generosity and love.  Where we remember to practice gratitude for our needs being filled.  Where we include everyone, even the sick and the lame and the poor.  Where we invite everyone, regardless of their status, to be fed with God’s abundant grace.  May we keep inviting, inviting and inviting our neighbors to feast and know that God is good.  Amen.

Great Fear to Great Joy?

"How is everyone doing?"   So often when we are home for the holidays, that’s the question we want to ask and sometimes that’s the question we dread answering.  Sometimes our answer is great, we have lots to celebrate, new job, new home, new friends, new opportunities.  Sometimes the answer is “busy,” lots of tasks and plans and events to check off our schedules.  And sometimes the answer is “doing okay”, and sometimes the answer is “I’m fine”.  Which can often be  shorthand for, “If I didn’t need to be polite and if you were a friend of mine, I’d tell you the real truth which is that I’m freaked out, insecure, neurotic and exhausted.” 

No one likes to admit that they are freaked out, insecure, neurotic and exhausted, and who could blame them?  We live in a society that looks down on people who don’t have their act together.  Obviously, they haven’t worked hard enough, had their priorities straight, or taken responsibility for their mistakes.  And some folks for sure are the makers of their own drama, the creators of their own chaos.

Others, however, find themselves dealing with things they didn’t plan for, or ask for or anticipate.  They never expected the twists and turns life would throw at them, and for many in Canada and around the world, they are one paycheck from bankruptcy, one visit to the foodbank away from starving at Christmas, one pair of socks away from frostbitten toes that will end them up, if they are lucky, in hospital. 

Palestinian Christians, the ones whose ancestors were the first to follow Jesus, are asking for the support of fellow Christians to pressure governments of Middle East countries to put the needs of children first.  Especially the children in Gaza who are being targeted by military from both sides.

It’s not just children in Gaza that we are worried about. At the end of 2023, the United Nations estimated that there were 117 million forcibly displaced people in the world and that 47 million of them—40 percent—were children! In Canada, 1.8 million children go to school hungry because their families can’t make ends meet. Moreover, StatsCan reports that seven in ten children reported being bullied in the past year because of who they are or what they believe.

Far from Canada, a, tradition of the Masai people of Africa. They don’t ask, “how are you” like we do, they ask “Kasserian Ingera,” which means, “And how are the children?” 

The reply is “All the children are well.” Even those without children of their own answer with this assurance, because the well-being of the children is understood as a collective responsibility. If the children are safe, nourished, and thriving, it means that the community is healthy.”

Children don’t care where they are born, what has been planned, what is expected, whether it is an opportune time or not.  Mary and Joseph probably would have wished that the baby would have come in a time and place of their own choosing, but they lived in an occupied country with an army that patrolled the streets looking for troublemakers.  Mary and Joseph may not have had to fear drones overhead or contrails or conspiracy theories or antivaxxers, but they had their own worries.  They had no say in where they had to go for the census, they had no way of knowing if their journey would be interrupted by bandits, and they certainly couldn’t phone ahead to make a reservation.  The extended family in Bethlehem was supposed to take care of them, according to tradition, but for whatever reason, the in-laws and second cousins and great aunts couldn’t make space for a pregnant young mom. How could they neglect her so?

Neglect is easy when we are struggling with bills and taxes.  There’s a lot happening and things get forgotten.  Maybe the letter Joseph sent to his relatives got lost.  Maybe It was his great grandfather’s home, and he hadn’t been there before. Suddenly a baby comes into the world and the only place for it is in the feeding trough.  Poor Mary must have been beside herself in fear and Joseph may have felt embarrassed that this was the best his family could provide.

And yet, despite feeling freaked out, insecure, neurotic and exhausted, there was something special that night.  Maybe it was that first precious meeting between parent and baby. Maybe it was the unexpected visitors, shift workers doing the grubby jobs that were so essential that they were exempt from the census, those smelly shepherds who came to see what the neighbors and family missed.  Maybe it was the sense that there would be a time when corrupt politicians would no longer be able to hide their greed and selfishness from the world.  Maybe it was the idea that even though the worst could happen, a refugee couple with no hope of finding a roof over their heads could still have a warm place to be in their time of trial.

When we are feeling exhausted or lonely or run off our feet, when we feel hopeless or helpless, when we are worried about the children, it’s easy to lose sight of the good news that came to us so many years ago in Bethlehem.  Every year, we remember that what we do matters, how we act matters, and especially how we care for children matters.  Jesus reminds us that all children are gifts, and to be taken care of.  And that even when things seem dark and hopeless, hope comes in the midst of chaos, hope comes when we least expect it, hope comes even when we are freaked out and fearful. The good news is that however we greet each other, whatever language we speak, whether we are fine or good, whether the children are well, God is with us, and keeps gifting us peace, hope joy and love when we least expect it.  Thanks be to God for this wonderful gift!

Pardoning the Turkeys

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Today there is much to be thankful for. I am so glad to be back home with family and getting my health back slowly and surely.  And I’m sure each of you have something to be thankful for too.  Life can be challenging from time to time, and it is good to remember the positive things in life, the simple things like a warm bed and a working fridge.  Many folks are not as blessed as we are, and struggle to find something to be grateful for.

Our scripture today is about the reason for being thankful.  The Israelites had gone through a lot of trials and tribulations on their way to becoming farmers and towns folk.  They wandered through the wilderness until they found land that they could settle, grow crops, and be free from slavery.  Their sacred story was about coming to a land of peace and prosperity, a land of milk and honey.  Scripture wanted to remind them to be intentional about thanking God for not just the harvest, but the homes and the lifestyles they were able to enjoy in ways that their ancestors only dreamed of.

It's easy to get into a state of grumbling about what we don’t have.  It’s hard work to recognize what we do have and celebrate that.  And it’s easy for someone like me, who has a roof over her head and a fridge that works, to talk about counting our blessings when so many people in Canada and around the world are not so lucky.  When we are warm and dry and do not need to worry about bombs or hurricanes. 

This week I had the very good fortune of spending four days with our moderator and 30 other incredible leaders from across the United Church of Canada.  I also had the very bad luck to waste a day of that struggling with the flu bug.  My community came together in amazing ways to support those of us who got sick.  There were quick trips to the drug store for Imodium, someone had ginger chews, another had electrolyte tablets, and someone had a bunch of cute little Jesus figurines that showed up on top of hand sanitizers, dressers, thermostats and other unexpected places.  Even though we were struggling, we struggled together, to learn, to worship, to sing, and to pray. 

We learned a lot.  We talked about how the brain works and how community works, we talked about boundaries and racism, truth and reconciliation, the stressful times and the joyful times.  We learned how to listen to each other’s stories with compassion and curiosity.  We learned about trust. And we learned about pardoning turkeys.

The US has an odd tradition that the president pardons a turkey on Thanksgiving.  What a job!  Turkeys are not what I would call handsome.  They are just big, awkward, and delicious.  Pardoning a turkey wasn’t official until George Bush Senior did it in 1989, sending a turkey to a nearby petting zoo, and setting the precedent that has continued to today.

This tradition has even made it into television shows, with one particular comic session where a press secretary discovered two turkeys in her office that she had to choose between for the pardon.  It wasn’t as easy as she thought.  They became personalities, and the idea that she had to send one of them to the kitchen and one to the zoo became harder as she got to know them.

It’s not easy to pardon turkeys unless you are a vegetarian I suppose, but we like sorting things out into safe and risky.  We humans have brains wired for recognizing danger in order to survive a wilderness.  Which is fine when it comes to turkeys, but often our brains sort people into safe and dangerous too.  And once we have put a human being into the dangerous category, chances are good that they will stay in that category and everything they do will be seen as reinforcing that decision.  Our brains like to make one decision and stick to it.  Eat turkeys, don’t pardon them.  Judge people, don’t be curious about them.

Except that life and people are even more complex than turkeys.  On our last day, we gathered in circle and were asked for feedback.  One person said, “We should ban cell phones from the classroom.  I hate seeing people scrolling on their phones when they should be paying attention!”  The story their brain had made up was that people only use their phones as disrespect.  Until the four clergy who spoke English as a second language explained that they used their phones to look up words so as not to disrupt the class.  And another said they were texting their parent undergoing their first chemo, and so on.  Pardoning the phone users became easy after those kinds of conversations.

Who are the turkeys in our lives that need pardoning?  What are the stories we are telling about them that might be too simple?  How can we let go of those stories that hurt others?  And especially how can we let go of those stories when they keep us focused on danger instead of thanksgiving?  The Israelis were told to spend more time being grateful to God than they were to spend time being angry at the Egyptians who had enslaved them.  Time and time again, we are called to let the angry stories go, and pardon the turkeys.  Even when sometimes the angry stories are ones we tell about ourselves, and we are the turkeys we need to pardon.  This thanksgiving, let us remember to count our blessings, have compassion on those who are struggling, and to thank God that we are living in a country that values human life, that recognizes that all people of any age, race, ethnicity, ability, sexual orientation, gender identity, family structure or any other factors are to be included in community.  Thanks be to God for the many blessings we have in this beautiful land. Amen.

Always thanking God Jacob Part 4

What do you do when you can’t get along with the inlaws?  This is no facetious question.  In the October Broadview magazine there is an article of the high cost people experience when they are estranged from their families.  Jacob became estranged from two different families in his life.  The first was his birth family after he cheated Esau and Isaac, his brother and his dad.  The second was his father-in-law Laban.  Modern readers might say that turnabout is fair play, for Jacob, the con artist, learned the hard way that it’s not fun to be conned.  

He had trusted that his father-in-law would treat him fairly, which surprises me, given how his wedding day went.  For those of you who missed last week, Jacob planned to marry Rachel, but Laban switched brides on the wedding night and Jacob got Leah instead.  It sounds like a case of fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.  And we don’t know Laban’s side of things.  Was he intimidated by this strapping young man who impressed the neighbors with his care of the livestock?  Did he notice that Jacob was able to breed sheep to whatever color was needed?  Was he impressed that Jacob was able to keep four women happy (there’s that biblical marriage from last week!) and have 11 sons?

We don’t know.  We do know that Jacob got fed up with all the shenanigans, and lost trust in Laban.  He realized that it wasn’t fun dealing with someone who would trick him at the drop of a hat whenever he felt like it.  He also recognized that even though they were family, the disrespect he was experiencing from Laban and his sons was getting to the point where he was worried about being accused of theft of the livestock.  In the bits we didn’t read, after Laban stole the speckled and spotted livestock, Jacob carefully selected what stock he would breed, and rebuilt the herd Laban had stolen. 

He ended up with a sizable striped and spotted herd and gave all the credit to God.  He wasn’t happy with what Laban did, but he was faithful to God and did not use trickery to get even with Laban.

Jacob’s resolve to play fair must have been sorely tested by all this.  He had, after all, been used to getting his own way as a child and choosing the straight and narrow is not easy.  He kept to his resolve to honor God, to trust in God and to play fair.  Be trustworthy.  Keep being thankful.

But he did something even more astonishing, certainly something that his father and his grandfather didn’t do.  He asked his wives for their opinions.  Up until now, women weren’t consulted about anything.  Sarah hadn’t had any say in where she would live when Abraham was wandering around from place to place, and Rebekah hadn’t even seen Isaac she was going to marry, only his wealth.  Jacob asked his wives what they thought before he made a final decision.  He respected their opinion and knew it would be difficult to leave their father and brothers for a one-way trip to a strange land.  They were ready to go.  They recognized that their father had seen them as only a bargaining chip, and not as humans in relation with them.  They were tired of being treated with disrespect and they were not averse to leaving his shenanigans behind.  No more wheeling and dealing in their households.  Or almost – but you’ll have to read the next chapter yourselves to see what trick one daughter pulled on her dad.

Giving thanks when we are facing family estrangement or broken trust or hurtful relationships is not easy.  Some days we must walk away from unhealthy behaviors.  I am very proud of your church council who set a goal of Zero tolerance for negativity, gossip, triangulation and unhealthy communication patterns. 

Tim McKenna suggested that “We encourage optimistic, positive attitudes and communication styles so that we all have fun and live longer.”  Jacob would have agreed with that idea.

Being thankful at all times was brought home to me by a speech I heard this Wednesday at Toastmasters.  Alfred Beaver shared a story with us that had us all thinking.  He gave me permission to share that story here today.  Alfred had a brother, named Archie, who was born with a unusually large head.  The doctor suggested that the baby be taken to Edmonton to live in a hospital or group home of some sort and said that the baby probably would not live to see his first birthday.  Archie was never able to walk, but he was able to talk and lived into his twenties, despite medical predictions to the contrary.  Every year Alfred’s dad would hold a feast on Archie’s birthday, in gratitude to the Creator for Archie’s life.  When Archie was starting to fail, the family was summoned to his bed.  Archie told Alfred, “you can walk, you can talk, you have two good hands and two good feet.  You can leave this room and go wherever you want.  I have never left this bed my whole life, and I am thankful for my life and my family who care for me.  And yet I have never heard you say, “I am thankful for what I can do.”  Archie died shortly after that visit, and Alfred never forgot those words.  Their dad continued to hold a feast on Archie’s birthday in thanksgiving for the life and the wisdom of his son.

So what are we thankful for?  How can we say thank you?  May we find ways this busy weekend to stop and be thankful for our hands and feet, our wise friends, our trustworthy family members, and our God who loves us no matter what.

Truth is a two-edged sword

How many of you had to carve the turkey last week?  What kind of knife did you need?  A sharp one.  A heavy one?  What would have happened if you had used a double-edged knife?  I was very surprised when I looked up the word sword in the New Testament, which is Machaira, which is the root of machete, to discover that it was not the Gladius used by Roman Soldiers and Gladiators, but more of a general word that could mean a weapon but also a butcher knife.  I’ve never seen a butcher’s knife with two edges, but I can imagine that it would hurt the person using it if they weren’t careful.

Our faith is like that.  If we use it as a weapon, we are likely to get hurt.  Or to hurt ourselves if we use it incorrectly.  On one hand, it is a great comfort to believe in a God who loves us.  On the other hand, there are times when our belief leads us to throw up our hands and cry, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

The young man found this out the hard way.  He wanted a quick trick, an easy list from Jesus, a tweet or maybe one of those websites that promise 5 easy steps to erase stretch marks or 7 ways to pay off your mortgage faster, something he could do that would guarantee God was on his side. 

Jesus looked at him and carved him up from the inside out, saw the truth of him for what the young man was looking for, and rather than answer him with something easy straight out of an Oprah magazine, he went straight to the heart of the matter.  Obey the laws about loving your neighbor.

The young man wasn’t happy with that, he wanted more.  Maybe he was struggling with a sense of something missing in his life, maybe he was dealing with a string of bad luck that left him struggling with his faith.  We don’t know.  But for whatever reason, being a good person wasn’t enough to fill an emptiness he felt in his soul.

I think we often get caught up in being good people with good intentions and friendly and nice to everyone we meet, but there are times when being good is not enough and we need to have someone who can look past the surface of our good lives to the real issues that are at the bottom of our discontent.  Maybe there are times when we think we’ve got it all together and can serenely go through life with a sense of satisfaction until we hit a bump that bewilders us.  When we realize that our goodness is only skin deep.

Jesus challenged the young man with that very question.  “Why call me good?  Only God is good.”  To be human is to be aware that we are not as good as we might like to think.  That’s what confession is about.  We do our best to be real, honest and truthful to who we are underneath all the surface stuff.  We’re not afraid in church to say, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

As C. S. Lewis once wrote, “Many things—such as loving, going to sleep, or behaving unaffectedly—are done worst when we try hardest to do them.” Sometimes we have to stop focussing on what we are doing and look at how and why we are doing them.

The young man wanted a checklist of what to do.  Instead, Jesus gave him an idea of how to be.  Be wise with your possessions and let what you own benefit others and not only yourself.  Don’t be a slave to your stuff or your bank account or your status or your Rsps or your Freedom 55 plan.  Be intentional about all you have and do in terms of God’s vision for the world.

That’s not the most important thing about this story, though.  The most important thing is that Jesus, our high priest, our two-edged sword, who can cut to the deepest soul sicknesses we have and carve them out of our lives like a piece of gristle on a turkey bone, looked this young man squarely in the eye and loved him.  Just as he was.  How many times have we spoken truth without love.  How many times have we thought we knew all the truth but found out later we only had a piece of the truth and the people we were arguing with also had a piece of the truth.  We do not own the truth, and we need to be humble when we think we know the truth.  That kind of attitude too easily falls into arrogance and pride.

The truth is that life can hurt.  Jesus also knew what it was like to suffer doubts and fears.  The reason that the first few words of Psalm 22 sound so familiar is that we read them on Good Friday.  They are among the last words Jesus spoke, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”  Or as the writer of Hebrews puts it, “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses.”

Jesus said that all things are possible with God, even a rich man can enter into the realm of God.  I don’t know, but I like to think that the young man found his way.  I wonder, because Paul, when he talked about himself, would sometimes say, “I know a certain man who had visions” when he wanted to talk about himself without appearing to brag.  Who knows, maybe that certain young man was Mark himself! I like to think so, for them it means that even he, who thought it would be impossible to find faith by following Jesus, managed to do exactly that.  May we all find our way into the realm of God by opening ourselves to the Loving Word who loves us no matter what.