Faithful Prophets

Luke 12:49  "I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! 

So this last Thursday, someone drove a truck into a group of people sitting outside at a protest rally.  They were in Rhode Island.  The protesters were Jewish, and peacefully at a detention center for refugees.  Luckily, more people were hurt by the tear gas police used than the truck and there were no fatalities.  The protester's slogan is ‘never again' and they remember Hitler, concentration camps, and being discriminated against because they or their families were immigrants struggling with racism.  Their fire and passion come from scriptures like the ones we read today.

They see the signs of the times and they stand up against racism.  They mourn the injustices of labelling some humans as less worthy of respect than others.  They fear increased attacks at synagogues and other centres of worship.  They experience the demeaning and insulting behaviours of other people as politicians spout off comments that may not sound racist on the surface but trigger policies that are locking children in cages because of where they were born, the colour of their skin and because their parents dared to dream of a better life for them.  The protesters are burning for Justice.

Such burning is not an easy thing.  Last month I preached on James and John wanting to burn a Samaritan village, and Jesus saying that was not what he had come to teach.  Now we have Jesus talking about burning too, the dangers of hypocrisy and the need for judgment.

This time, Jesus talks about the fire of purification, not destruction.  The need for a reality check, and the litmus test of people’s loyalties to the principals he is committed to.  The principals he heard in the synagogues of justice and equal rights for the vulnerable as so clearly stated in our psalm today.

This is not an easy Jesus or a nice cuddly God.  They say harsh things, they see the cruelty as if it is in broad daylight, they demand better, and they know when our subconscious selfishness is in control.  They call for honesty, and the hardest honesty is when I tell the truth about my own actions in my own family.  Have I been tolerating abuse?  Have I been enabling addiction?  Have I failed to think about the long-term implications of my actions?  Have I taken ownership of my part in conflicts? Have I told stories about myself that only saw myself as the hero and never the problem?

Jesus calls us all to look in the mirror long and hard.  Before we spout our dreams, before we prophesy, before we point out inconvenient truths we see in others, we need to look at ourselves, then we need to look at what God wants.

What is God calling us to do?  That can be as simple as asking ourselves what makes us angry, and as hard as asking how we can turn that anger into love.  The Jewish protesters weren’t in Rhode Island outside a detention centre because they hated guards or government, they were there because they felt compassion for the people and the children locked inside.

Sometimes God calls us to stand up for causes that divides families like the families in Hong Kong are divided over protesting government policies

Sometimes God calls us to do something as complicated as making a pledge to give up flying in airplanes, easy enough if we don’t have money, but one girl is inspiring teenagers around the globe to do just that.  She not only gave up airplane flights to do her part to reduce carbon emissions, but she is travelling from Sweden to the US to talk about the urgent need for action to combat global warming. She’s doing it without vehicles that burn hydrocarbons, including a solar-powered racing yacht.

Sometimes God calls us to change plans and lifestyles.  One lady is deciding to boycott vacationing in Quebec because of what many see as racist discrimination in the new legislation to ban religious symbols in public.  This government action impacts immigrants, refugees and non-Christian faiths in their jobs, forcing them to choose between their religious traditions and their employment.  You can read about that choice in our Broadview magazine.

Sometimes God calls us here at home.  It’s not enough to be nice, kind and hospitable people anymore.  It’s not enough for us to say, “I’m glad I live in Canada and not somewhere else.”  It’s time for us to ask ourselves, how can we be actively anti-racist here at home in Athabasca?  It’s time for us to ask, ‘what’s one more tiny step I can take to use less plastic or pollute less or to waste less food or send less stuff to the landfill?  It’s time for us to ask ourselves how to live out the calls to Truth and Reconciliation.  It’s time to be more respectful of the people around us who are vulnerable and call out the telephone con artists who think that it’s their right to have a piece of the North American wealth we take for granted.  It’s time for us to wonder why they feel the right to con, or why they feel it’s the only way to provide for their families.  It’s time for us to ask what Jesus would want our world to look like, what false gods is our God calling out, and what prophets have empty dreams they want to sell us for a price.

Lex Rofeberg, one of the protesters who saw the truck drive into his friends, said “Jewish texts, Jewish traditions, Jewish history calls on us to make noise. What our society needs right now is for pretty much every day to be a day of noisemaking.”

Whether it’s ‘never again’ or ‘me too’ or ‘climate crisis’, we are all called to prophesy for God’s community of justice that burns.  We are called to purify the world of anything that prevents compassion and fairness for all.  Burn for justice, burn for compassion, burn for God!

The Heavens are Telling the Glory of God.

Have you ever been so lost that you didn’t know what to do next?  I had a moment like that.  As some of you know, I can be worse than the most stereotypical absent-minded professor when it comes to practical matters.  So I was very proud this summer in Vancouver when I figured out how to take a bus from University of British Columbia where I was taking a course, to the science museum.  I was supposed to meet Tim, who had taken the sky train, to the science museum, for a 2 o’clock show.  And for once in my life, I made it without any problem, arriving around 1:30. Half an hour early!  Woo hoo!  So not like me, right?

Got in, paid admission including the 2 pm show, but that’s when things went sideways.  I texted Tim, saying "I’m here, where are you?"  He quickly replied, "right by the phone booth in the lobby."  "What phone booth", I shot back.  Turns out there’s two science museums in Vancouver, the Telus World of Science next door to the old Expo site on False Creek, and the H. R. MacMillan Space Museum near Grandville Island.  And you guessed it, I was at the wrong one.  Drat!

Well, more than just a drat, actually.  It would take more than the now 20 minutes I had to get downtown and figure out which train to catch, and would miss the 2:00 show no matter what I tried, short of taking a taxi.  So, feeling quite sorry for myself, I went up to the planetarium, and sat down grumpily to watch the 2pm show. 

There’s nothing quite like a tour of our solar system to put one’s problems in perspective, and to come away with a renewed amazement at the beauty and complexity of our Milky Way Galaxy.  We soared over Mars, dove in and out of the rings of Venus and Saturn, looked at the shrinking Red Spot on Jupiter and toured some of the closer constellations in the summer sky.  Wow. 

By the time the show was over, I felt a lot calmer and was able to find my way to the train station, Tim, and even back home where we were staying for the week.  It’s truly breath-taking and still as mysterious as when the folks writing the Psalms and the Book of Job looked up at the sky and saw the Hand of God at work in the music of the spheres, as they called it then.

Planetariums have come a long way since I was a kid.  They could only project stars on the roof of a big domed ceiling and a guide would point out different constellations with a flashlight.  Now with computers and a touch of a button we can be zooming through a colorful kaleidoscope of breath-taking images from the Hubble Telescope.  Our knowledge of space has grown and our computers too.  50 years ago it took computers the size of this church to land people on the moon.  Now we have the same computing power as that room in a device small enough to fit in the palm of my hand.

50 years ago today, the first astronauts to land on the moon finally came out of quarantine and could safely reconnect with their families and friends back home.  Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and command module pilot Michael Collins returned to earth as heroes.  Nasa had managed to do the impossible, send humans into space and back again.  They did it with careful planning, by being prepared for as many different scenarios, and by testing their equipment over and over.  But they also managed to do it with faith. 

Not too many people know that the first food eaten on the moon was bread and wine.  Before Neil Armstrong left the Eagle for his famous walk, Buzz Aldrin opened his tiny box of private items that each astronaut was allowed and pulled out a glass much like this one, a bit of bread and a little vial of wine.  He read from a tiny piece of paper, “I am the vine, you are the branches.

Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit. For without me you can do nothing.”  Then he ate the bread and drank the wine, making Communion the first meal to be eaten on the moon.  The cup is kept in a special case in a Presbyterian Church in Houston Texas that likes to call itself ‘The Church of Astronauts’.  Every July, they celebrate communion on the Sunday closest to July 20^th just like they did in 1969 with Buzz Aldrin.

How often do we hear that science and faith are incompatible?  How often do we hear of Christians scoffing at scientists or scientists writing books about how delusional it is to believe in God?  There seems to be in most people’s minds a sense that we have to choose one or the other.  I’ve even heard stories of Christians telling children not to waste their time on science because it’s not true.

Yet so many people find no such dichotomy.  Dr. Donna Strickland won the Nobel Prize in Physics this year and was featured in Broadview Magazine as a faithful member of a United Church in Waterloo.  She’s not alone.

Here’s a quick quiz for you: Who said this, a scientist, a theologian or a philosopher?

“The question of whether there exists a Creator and Ruler of the Universe has been answered in the affirmative by some of the highest intellects that have ever existed.”

–Charles Darwin, the founder of evolutionary biology

“It may seem bizarre, but in my opinion science offers a surer path to God than religion.”

“People take it for granted that the physical world is both ordered and intelligible... However, even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith that the universe is not absurd, that there is a rational basis to physical existence manifested as law-like order in nature that is at least partly comprehensible to us. So science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview.”  –Physicist Paul Davies

“In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence.” Sir Isaac Newton

“I believe that the more thoroughly science is studied, the further does it take us from anything comparable to atheism.”  “If you study science deep enough and long enough, it will force you to believe in God.”

—Lord William Kelvin, who worked on thermodynamics, the concept of absolute zero and the Kelvin temperature scale.

And last but not least, “The more I study science, the more I believe in God.” by none other than Albert Einstein himself.

These are just a few of the top physicists and scientists who have concluded that there is more to our existence than happenstance or coincidence.  That this big beautiful planet we live on with just the right balance of water and carbon, heat and cold, liquid and solid, spin and tilt is no accident, and that the psalmists were scientists when they said,

When I look to the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you have set in their places, what are we mortals that you should be mindful of us, mere human beings that you should care for us?  You have made us little less than divine, and crowned us with glory and honour.       You have made us rulers over all your creation, and put all things under our feet.

May we learn to be as faithful as scientists and live with respect and gratitude in this beautiful universe that God has created.

Enough Excuses!

Ever wish you had the power to blast a village to smithereens?  One minute everything is peaceful and quiet, the next, boom, There goes Athabasca, or whoops that was Smith, or kablam Boyle, whomp so much for Colinton, and maybe if it’s been a particularly rough day, what the heck, let’s do away with Edmonton altogether.  Who needs them, right?  Or maybe set our sights really high and boom! Toronto is no more.  Good riddance, right?  Who needs them?

There certainly is biblical precedence for such things – Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed in fire, according to the Genesis story because their citizens were angry at the thought of having foreigners in their midst.  Elijah destroyed the messengers of a king he didn’t like, and slaughtered the prophets of Baal when he won a prayer showdown.  So it wasn’t like Jesus and his disciples didn’t know about holy smiting, dare I even say holy hand grenades, but Jesus rebuked his disciples and hurried on.

There are enough stories of Jesus encountering the Samaritans that ended more positively that I wonder why this time had such a negative reaction.  Remember the Woman at the Well?  Some bible scholars think it was Jesus focusing on getting to Jerusalem, and it was this urgency that led to the Samarians rejecting him.  They too worshipped using the Torah, and the teachings of Moses were very important to them.  However, they disagreed vigorously on where to worship.  Jews worshipped at Jerusalem, while Samaritans worshipped at Mount Gerizim, where Joshua was reported to have crossed into the Promised Land with the followers of Moses after their escape from Egypt.  So it could be that the Samaritans were open to Jesus teaching until he turned his face to the Holy City.  Then their gloves came off.

And the disciples, used to warmer welcomes or maybe feeling resentful and scared at having to go ahead of him to a Samaritan village, lost their tempers.  Were they afraid of the Samaritans?  Were they frustrated that their preparations were wasted?  Were they mad that Jesus spoiled it by talking about Jerusalem?  Were they feeling snubbed by not being treated with dignity worthy of rabbinical disciples?

Whatever they were feeling, they certainly weren’t feeling loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, generous, faithful, gentle or self-controlled.  And they certainly didn’t feel like loving their neighbours.  ‘If we hate them, God must hate them too’.  They were feeling quite human!

Haven’t we all been there?  Had those moments of thinking, ‘darn I wish I had something witty to say that would have put him or her right in their place’, or ‘I’ll show them!  Don’t know how, but I will.”  And in a small town, it’s really tricky.  As I only half-jokingly said to Tim when we first drove up to Athabasca, ‘be nice to everyone you meet, they might be related to someone at the grocery store who is packing your eggs for you.  Last thing you want is to find your egg carton under a sack of flour because you were rude to a waitress the night before.”

Small towns are challenging when you are angry at someone.  If you passionately love the River Rats Festival, for example, but can’t stand someone on the board, what do you do when their family works at BuyLow?  Often in towns, people don’t try to work things out, they just quietly stop going to the club or the committee.  They might grumble behind peoples’ backs to their friends but they won’t try to work things out.  They drop out of the Bowling league or the Golf tournament, and never say why.  And sometimes the resentment builds.

It’s a very human reaction.  Unfortunately, it can have some terrible results.  Toronto’s Gay Pride celebration was marred when some people decided to attack others because they felt they had the right to do so, wearing t-shirts with slogans like “read the Bible, repent and be born again”.  And in Hamilton too, there was a deliberate intent to inflict harm during the Pride event.  How people can bring a baseball bat to a parade in the name of Christ who taught us to love our neighbour, forgive our enemy, and pray for those who hate us, is a mystery I am bewildered by.  But it happens.

There have been surveys and studies done suggesting that the average high school student is less empathetic than they were a few decades ago.  That there is a sense among immigrants and minorities that they are less safe in Canada and the USA than they once thought they were.  There are children and infants living separated from their parents in appalling conditions in the US. 

One black pastor wrote that if there was even the slightest whiff that he had approached someone in a sexually inappropriate way, he would lose his job, yet the President of the United States is on record as saying horrible sexist things, has court cases pending against him and still has a high enough approval rating from his voter base that he might get a second term in office.

It boggles the mind.  So many excuses are given as to why we let such bad behaviour go.  It’s especially heartbreaking when it is done by Christians.  Jesus wasn’t calling us to insult our neighbours, judge our neighbours or even attack them.  Yet all too often we fall into an us vs them attitude and have a ready excuse to blow our tempers, get angry, yell or sulk or pout.  These are not gifts of the Spirit.  They are not what we are being called to.

We are called to be transformed into the likeness of Jesus.  We are called to be open to the Spirit’s transforming power that builds love, joy, peace and gentleness and generosity and kindness and self control in our lives.  I don’t know about you, but I’m still working on it, and I humbly pray that it will grow in me and in each of you as well.  Athabasca, Boyle, Smith and even Toronto need us now more than ever before.