Looking Back, Moving Forward

“Though you see Egypt today, You will never see it again!”  Moses claimed to the heart-stricken Israelites who looked at him like he had rocks in his head.  They looked at the Sea of reeds in front of them, back to the army that was rapidly approaching, with the latest technology for efficient warfare, the chariots, then back at the children, the grandmothers, the pregnant moms, the sullen teenagers, and back again to Moses.  And all that water.

No wonder they complained to Moses.  They had no experience with wilderness living, and plenty of experience with city dwelling.  They had no experience with freedom, and precious little trust in either Moses or God.  Their previous life had been harsh and demanding, and they had become used to following orders.  It was tough and unfair, but it had its familiar pattern.  Following Moses out into the wilderness on a whim lost its appeal when the sparkle of metal swords glinting in the sun and the great noise of a mighty army was growing closer by the minute.

They knew what to expect back home.  Pharaoh’s soldiers might be bossy and bullying, but they also fed everyone, and there was a roof over their heads every night.  Not to mention beautiful sculptures and art, and full employment for all the able-bodied men on the Pharaoh’s pyramid.  No unions or holidays, but hey, it was stable and predictable.  What would happen next was also predictable, certain genocide.  By any logical standard, they were doomed and they knew it.

What wasn’t predictable was God.  What wasn’t predictable was Moses ordering them into the swamp.  What wasn’t predictable was a dry passage to safety.  What wasn’t predictable was a complete rout of the army.

It would be easy to dismiss this as myth or fairy tale without any sound archeological evidence to back it up, but the story is a profound reminder to trust that even when our senses tell us otherwise, even when we are feeling overwhelmed, even when the odds are against us, we are not to discount that God may be in action in ways we just can’t picture or understand. 

Stories we don’t’ understand like the one I read in Scientific American.  Michael Sherman wrote the story of his wedding day. His bride Jennifer was missing her grandfather who had been like a dad to her because he died when she was 16.  She moved to the United States and shipped boxes of possessions to her new home.  Some arrived broken, like her grandfather’s 1978 transistor radio, which refused to turn on.  Sherman did everything he could to fix that radio, but it refused to work.  The day of the wedding, after they said their vows, they heard music coming from his bedroom.  The grandfather’s radio turned on and played a romantic song.  It played all the rest of the day and stopped working that night.  It hasn’t worked since.  What makes this story odd is not what happened, I’ve heard similar stories in my job, it’s who tells the story.  Michael Sherman is the publisher of Skeptic Magazine, which is devoted to debunking and disproving such stories!

But the real point of today’s scripture is not whether or not the parting of the Red Sea or Reed Sea really happened, but that in the midst of the crisis the Israeli people faced, they did what humans still do today.  They mythologized the past.

They told themselves the lie that the ‘good old days’ were really good, and certainly better than their current moment.  They forgot the depression, the hopelessness, the lack of freedom, the oppression, the brutality and the slavery they had lived in. Their previous life was glamorized and exaggerated.

Maybe Moses hadn’t communicated the possibilities clearly enough.  Maybe he didn’t have a clear enough vision to excite the people.  Maybe he glossed over the challenges that would face them.  Maybe he hadn’t realized that Pharaoh would change his mind again. 

Nevertheless, God didn’t look back.  God knew that these people deserved a better future.  God knew that a contingency plan existed.  And like Jesus reminded his followers centuries later, God was willing again and again, 7 times 70 to forgive the people their lack of faith, and their lack of hope in God.

We are in a similar bind.  The past is now seen as the ‘normal’ we can’t wait to get back to.  Normal times when we have a vaccine, when the pandemic is over.  And yet those ‘good old days’ were ones where our economic system was based on the exploitation of immigrant women working multiple low-paid jobs, where people got shot by police for being non-white, where global warming was still not being seriously considered, where our waters and air were being polluted, and where seniors were being warehoused in conditions that were sometimes as bad as slave quarters in Egypt.  Maybe looking back to those ‘good old days’ are not what we should be doing, but looking to the unpredictable future God is bringing us into.  God may have to terrify us into moving into the swampy lands to get to a world we can’t imagine, where there is housing for all, a guaranteed income, lives that are not lived in a blur of non-stop activity, where global warming is addressed and sustainable energy is a reality.  A future where Hong Kong, Beijing and New Delhi citizens can see the stars every night.  A future where families do not have to live in fear of domestic violence. A future where water is cherished as a gift that everyone protects, and a future where we all work together to ensure that no one feels oppressed.  Maybe it’s time to ask God to help us in a situation that is just as scary as an army of chariots.  To stand back and catch the vision God has for us, so we can move forward in hope to a new and better world.  Our unpredictable God is with us in this time of change and transition!  Halleluiah!

Taking Temperatures

 When I was little and feeling sick, my mom would get out a glass rod, wash it, flick it and stick that glass in my mouth under my tongue and remind me not to bite it.  Of course I did!  Not too much mind you, but I do remember a time someone, my younger brother perhaps, bit down on the glass enough to break it!  That caused a flurry of excitement and a worry about mercury poisoning, but the child was okay.  When I was a mom, I was quite relieved to find out that there were now digital thermometers.  What a relief!  It’s actually one thing that in retrospect I am surprised we even thought was appropriate for kids.  Glass, mercury and wiggly little bodies just do not mix!  And last week I went in to get some routine lab work done and there was a thermometer that quickly took my temperature with one quick pass across the forehead.  How the world has changed since Galileo and others of his day first used water to measure temperature, and how much better an electronic measuring device is from Fahrenheit’s glass rod with mercury invention three hundred years ago.

One thing that hasn’t changed is the reason the thermometer was invented in the first place.  Measuring temperature is a useful skill to have, especially measuring children’s fevers to find out how sick they are.  Or now doing a temperature check for everyone who comes into the hospital or health unit, the doctor’s office and more as a way of containing pandemics.

But how do we measure the health of a congregation?  There are no thermometers for that.  Matthew and Moses both were concerned with the health of their faith communities.  Moses recognized that the Israelites were groaning with the oppressive conditions they were under, Matthew recognized that conflict was causing anxiety and tension in his congregation.  Both went back to their sources – Moses went back to wrestle with what kind of God was in relationship with him.  Matthew looked to ways Jesus had encouraged his disciples to work out their many conflicts.

Someone quipped that there was an alternative version of our Matthew passage that reads:

“If a member of the church sins against you, talk about them behind their back, hold a grudge against them forever, post it on social media, and make sure everyone knows what a complete jerk they are, then go talk about them again, then report them to Human Resources, and if anyone disagrees with you, they are evil”, which is the version from the Gospel of Holy Resentments, not Matthew!   It is very human and not at all biblical; while we know that the actual scripture is not a perfect recipe for conflict resolution, it was a huge step in the right direction in that day. 

Just as thermometers have evolved over the centuries to be more reliable, so too the church has evolved ways of thinking about congregational health, especially over the last few months.  Taking our temperature doesn’t just include physical, how many people come and their demographics, but now includes social, emotional, spiritual, financial and psychological health.  We have thermometers like questionnaires, focus groups, coffee time and church consultants, visioning workshops, annual reports, oversight visits, regional staff and other congregations.  We also have a wealth of knowledge and experience through our own connections – how many of us have friends who are nurses or teachers or social workers or mechanics or accountants?  We all are connected with someone who has some area of expertise that can help us.

One such person is Rev. Diane Strickland, a United Church minister from Alberta who is a Certified Compassion Fatigue Specialist and a Community and Workplace Traumatologist.  She worked with the United Churches of High River and Fort MacMurray after their disasters.  She talks about taking our personal temperatures first, checking how we are doing before we look to our community.  We all respond differently.  She recommends a thermometer called SUDS, subjective units of distress, that helps us recognize that it helps us be more aware of our stress.  Others too are feeling more stress than normal.

The good news is that as people of faith, we have many tools to calm our distress.  Our scriptures remind us of them.

Moses challenged God directly, “why have you added to the oppression of your people?”  We don’t tend to think about getting angry at God as a way of calming our distress, but if you read through the psalms, that was a part of the spiritual practices that the ancient people recorded.  When people felt oppressed, they let God know.  They said that things were unfair, that they felt overwhelmed, that they needed God’s help.  God said, “remember who I am, the God of your ancestors, the God who helped your family get through the Spanish Flu, the First World War, the Great Depression, the Second World War, the Polio epidemic and more.  I am, and I am your God, and I am here with you, ready to act.”  Wow!

Matthew reminds us of the power of community, where two or more are gathered with God front and center, we can trust that God is with us.  We gather to solve our problems and challenges, using the scriptures to test our intentions. 

Rev. Diane reminds us that we as Christians have got this!  When we gather, when we use spiritual practices, when we calm our minds remembering we are beloved of God, we will see God working in us and through us through the Spirit.  Now more than ever, we are needed.  Our provincial parks need our loving action, indigenous neighbors and people of color need our love, our teachers and health care professionals need our love, communities targeted for bullying like Edmonton’s Bible Pentecostal church because they caught Covid, our LGTBQ2S+ community, and yes even and maybe especially our police and politicians need our love.  Our loving action with God’s loving action make a real difference in this world, and we are all called to be a Moses and a Matthew, connecting with God then acting in the world.  Together we have got this! Thanks be to God!

What's in Your Basket?

 

Imagine...

A mom, holding her baby tight, rocking it gently:

“Hush little Baby, don’t you cry,
It’s not safe when there’s soldiers nearby”

She stops and lays him down in a basket in front of her.

“I wish I could sing to you but the tears in my throat won’t let me, you poor dear.  I wish I could find another way but my neighbor reported you to the soldiers and they may be coming at any minute.  I wish I knew a safe place I could put you.  I wish I knew what your future holds in store for you.  I wish I could be there for you and I wish I could make you understand that I don’t know what else to do. I’m running out of options and running out of time. I don’t know if this plan will work, I don’t know if the river currents will carry you to the palace where all the women live, I don’t know if the crocodiles will find you before an Egyptian might, I don’t know if anyone will find you or even if they will care if they do find you.  So much uncertainty.  So much danger.  I wish I could do more.”

We don’t know her name, this nameless Levite mother.  We know the names of the brave midwives who lied their way out of a confrontation with the angry pharaoh, but this woman, making a desperate sacrifice of all she holds dear, is a heart-wrenching story.  She is not that different than modern moms in North America who have to tell their children how to act around the police in case they get stopped because of their skin tone.  She’s not that different from the mom in Athabasca deciding whether to send her children to school, the first nations mom wondering what kind of life her baby will have, the mom who has lost her husband in the explosion in Beirut.  Refugee moms having to sacrifice all that is near and dear to them in hopes that the future will somehow be better than the present.  Abused moms faced with the harsh reality that their current situation is desperate and ugly.  Moms who will be nameless in the history books for the choices they make.

You and I don’t have a baby that we are going to put into a basket and float down the Nile river.  You and I don’t face clear life-threatening choices.  You and I don’t live in constant danger of our worlds turning upside down because of violence that justifies itself with racist assumptions.

But we do have a call to make sacrifices.  We have been asked and begged to give up, to sacrifice, our vacations to other provinces and countries, to sacrifice our freedom to shop whenever and wherever we want.  We have been asked to sacrifice our habits around hygiene and masks, visiting our families, seeing new babies, celebrating weddings, attending funerals, hugging our neighbors.  We’ve been asked to sacrifice going to church and even singing.

Some people have responded to that request for sacrifice with dismissal and disregard.  Others have responded with resistance, anger, resentment and even rage.  Some have sacrificed their common sense, floating it in their baskets down the longest river in the world, the denial river.  Old joke, I know, but it is still a pertinent joke.

As Christians, we are to respond to the request for sacrifice with, well, sacrifice.  Peter got into Jesus’ face when he told Jesus to stop talking about sacrifice.  Couldn’t following Jesus be fun?  A joy?  You know, the don’t worry bit of the birds of the field and the lilies of the valley?  But no, ‘take up your cross and follow me,’ Jesus replies.  That’s what Christians are called to do.  Make sacrifices of their personal preferences in order to serve the greater good.

I’m not talking the sacrificing of a jar of peanut butter or putting off buying those new shoes.  I’m talking about sacrificing our sense of outrage when we’re asked to wear masks, or our feelings of entitlement when we’re told we need to self-isolate for two weeks in our homes.  Our urge to react angrily when we discover that the store has run out of something we can’t live without.  Our envy and jealousy when we think that someone has gotten more than their fair share of what we deserve. Our need to control others who don’t want to be controlled.

Jesus calls us to sacrifice in a Christian way, with wisdom, kindness and faith.  Now more than ever, we need to sacrifice our assumptions about who we are and learn to practice greater self-understanding.  As Paul wrote,

 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect. Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought to, but with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has given.

What does that look like right here, right now in the midst of our upside down world?  I think it means keeping calm, keeping thoughtful, and keeping kind.  These are the traits that we get when we sacrifice our fear, our anxiety, our anger and our entitlement.

We Christians know that the world can be tough.  There are Pharoahs that we will never meet passing laws that we don’t understand or making commercials that push us to buy things we don’t need.  There are soldiers following orders that we disagree with but that have little choice, like the grocery clerks who get yelled at because they have to tell folks to wear a mask.  But there will be midwives that undermine the bad decisions of others like the nurses who patiently test even the grumpiest conspiracy theorist.  There will be nameless princesses who disobey their fathers to rescue helpless innocents, like the many teachers preparing for the first day of school.  And there will be God, like the mighty Nile river, holding and supporting our baskets of sacrifice until they are transformed into beautiful gifts of hope to the world.  May it be so for us all.

April 26 2020 Pilgrimage Journeys

Putting one foot in front of another can be the hardest thing we can do in times following tragedy.  And yet, often it is the simplest thing or the smallest thing we can do that carries us forward into a new understanding of the world.

I was in a workshop on Thursday for clergy learning to do pastoral care during a tragedy.  Not too many of us studied responses to pandemics in our classes, and the ones who did focused on 9/11 and the 1998 airplane crash just outside Halifax and Peggy’s Cove.  We didn’t have any training in mass social isolation or church lockdowns or internet zoom technology, it didn’t even exist back in 2014.  But one thing I was struck by is that the simple things in life can help us to keep going.  One person who was struggling with depression found that they couldn’t come up with anything they felt they could do until her counsellor asked her if she could brush her teeth.  That was something she could do and would do, and did do, and that became the start of her recovery.

One tiny little thing we can do when we feel numb with fear, paralyzed with grief, shaking with anger, or frozen in depression.  Our words of assurance from the 1 Peter reading today talked about living in reverent fear while we are in exile, and I suspect many of us are living in fear but now is the time to add some reverence.  Some folks have been getting print copies of our worship as they don’t have internet, and I hope they have found some reverence with the little things we tuck in, a rock, a shell, a candle, a doily for them to decorate a space with, a little booklet of prayers to read.  I have an angel and a silver communion chalice and a prayer card on my dresser table that I look at every morning and night before I go to bed.  One little thing we can do might be just lighting the candle we have and praying the Serenity Prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, or just saying, “God I’m scared” or even having a cry.  Sometimes there are no words.  Sometimes there is silence.

N. T. Wright in a Time Magazine on March 30 wrote “In fact, it is part of the Christian vocation not to be able to explain—and to lament instead. As the Spirit laments within us, so we become, even in our self-isolation, small shrines where the presence and healing love of God can dwell. And out of that there can emerge new possibilities, new acts of kindness, new scientific understanding, new hope.”

The disciples walking back home from Jerusalem knew what it was like to have all their hopes dashed.  They could only take one step at a time back to a place where they knew they would be safe.  They plodded, remembering their glorious hopes and dreams, their glimpse of great new possibilities that had all been ended, dashed to smithereens when Jesus had been crucified.  They couldn’t stop rehashing their experience, and when Jesus asked them what they were talking about, I can imagine that their response, “"Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?"  was tinged with a little anger, a little disbelief and even a touch of sarcasm. They didn’t know what to think at the story of the empty tomb even though they too saw it. 

When we face the unimaginable, it’s easy for us to get caught up in what Jungian psychologists call the shadow side of our personalities.  We might be more irritable, more weepy, more apathetic.  We may try to control more in response to being in a situation where we have no control.  We may find our minds full of many words and thoughts that whirl around in our heads especially late at night when we are trying to sleep.  We may say things or do things that we regret, or forget to be kind and gentle.  The hardest person we struggle to be gentle with is ourselves.  But in the first sermon Peter ever preached, he called to the people to repent of those shadow sides.  To turn away from the self-destructive habits and mindsets, to save ourselves from a corrupt generation that thinks only of individual desires.  That is not easy, and not something we can do on our own.  It’s not something the walkers could do on their own either.  They needed Jesus to hear their complaints, their fears, their angers, and then they were able to offer the hospitality that was such a hallmark of what he had taught them.  And it was because of that hospitality that he was able to break bread and feed their souls.  Such a little thing, offering what they had to a stranger, and yet it opened their eyes and their hearts.

So keep on doing the little things, the grace-filled things, the knitting and crocheting, the sewing of masks, and the phone calls.  The delivering of worship services or sharing books, or shopping for a neighbor when you are doing your own errands.  Be as kind to yourself as you know you should be to your neighbor. And don’t be afraid to lament, to cry, to complain to God, because that might just be what God is waiting to hear.  Courage dear ones, and remember, in life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us, we are never alone, thanks be to God!

Scars and Locks April 18, 2020

When I was taking my biology class in Grade 9, it seemed like there were two kinds of students.  The ones who got right into the poking and prodding of dissected frogs, and the kinds (far fewer) who stuck their noses in the textbooks.  I enjoyed the Latin and the lists but not the smells or the sights of squishy things pickled in formaldehyde.  That science class seemed to go on forever, and I was relieved to get to high school where I could safely indulge in physics and chemistry, and the closest I got to biology was the adjoining door between the two science classrooms or the friendly chit chat between the two teachers.  I thought the biology teacher was wonderful, but not her subject matter.  My classmates thought I was weird for having such a squeamish attitude, especially the ones who grew up on the farm.  Even my mom, who hated collecting slimy wet eggs from under the hens first thing every morning was less squeamish than me.  So this scripture passage in a time of social distancing is hard to fathom.  Touching Jesus’ wounds would be hard enough at the best of times, but right now when we are not able to touch anyone, it’s unthinkable.

No wonder Thomas isn’t recorded as taking Jesus up on his invitation.  He spoke rash words in haste to stop the other disciples from badgering him with what he thought were ridiculous claims, and like most rash words, they came back to haunt him.  But also to heal him.  We can relate to Thomas for we too are inundated with claims and con artists, false news and clever phone calls designed to catch us unawares.  I have lost track of the number of phone calls I have recently received on my cell phone, saying that they are from Croatia or Dominica.  They hang up immediately and I fight the temptation to call back because that’s what the scammers hope, then they can charge long distance rates and rake in the cash.  Once it was a crying woman on the line sounding like she was in a panic too.  Turns out this was happening all around mainline Vancouver.  There are even people becoming famous on the internet for taking calls from scammers and playing with them, stringing them along and wasting their time so that the scammers don’t have as much time to get other victims.  The impact is real.  Seniors are especially targeted, and with the internet, it feels like we have to be increasingly diligent.  More like Thomas than otherwise. 

And yet Jesus said that we who believe are the blessed ones.  We who learn to trust in something we have never seen, who learn to turn to God with the innocence of a loving child.  Who may not always have concrete evidence or proof pickled in formaldehyde.  We who like Mother Theresa, roll up our sleeves despite our doubts and do the things that God would have us do to make this world a better place.  We who persevere despite what the doubting Thomases of the world might say or ridicule us for doing.

Today we are all locked in rooms of isolation and anxiety.  We do not know what the future will hold both for us as individuals but also for us as a community, a nation, a world.  On one hand, we are coming together for things like the “One World Together at Home” or the Friday night thank you parade honking for health care workers and grocery store employees, on the other hand we are seeing protesting demanding that curfews be lifted and jobs be reinstated.  Or the policies of companies like senior’s care facilities or meat-packing plants.

How do we deal with the doubt and the anxiety?  Sometimes we, like the disciples, need to lock ourselves in our rooms.  But God enters our isolation, God disrupts our assumptions of what the world is really like, God shakes up our understanding of what is real and what is important.  God is present right where you are, in this very moment.  In your space! 

Take a breath, a deep breath into your belly.  Look around you for five things you can see.  A crack in the ceiling, this piece of paper, Five things.  Breathe.  Four things you can touch like the doily or table cloth.  Breathe.  Three things you can hear, ticking clock or maybe a goose flying back north.  Breathe.  Two things you can smell, the smoke from your candle perhaps.  Breathe again and notice one thing that you can taste, not just yet.  Maybe the bread and juice that we will be sharing shortly.

We have an opportunity to practise this simple form of prayer, 5 sights, 4 touches, 3 sounds, 2 smells and one taste whenever we feel locked up and anxious.  We can practise opening ourselves up to God more intentionally in our day.  And we can remember that Jesus became present and real to Thomas not through his perfection, but through his wounds.  When we see wounds, we know the experience is real.  When we share wounds, we have the ability to heal.  When we admit to God and a trusted friend or family member that we are hurting or afraid or anxious, we can learn that we are not alone in our struggles.  There in our locked rooms, God is with us.  In life, in death, in life beyond death, we are not alone, halleluiah!

Seeds of Stubborn Hope

Ever stop to think of how stubborn seeds can be?  They are the deadest looking things.  I have a package of seeds for growing sprouts, maybe alfalfa.  Been in my cupboard for years, back when people bought sprouts in the grocery store all the time.  I have a special box for growing them that hasn’t been used in years.  Well, those seeds have been sitting in a cupboard for I don’t know how long and I thought, why not dig them out and grow some greens for sandwiches again.  I soaked them as per the instructions and you know, they are growing already!  They are sprouting as if they were bought yesterday, and next week we will be munching them between two slices of rye.  Seeds are stubborn like that.

So when I was on the Naramata website listening to a poem prayer by Keri Wehlander who first introduced me to liturgical dance and using actions with hymns, her phrase, “seeds of stubborn hope” rang in my heart as much as my mind.  How dependant we are on seeds can be seen by when we go searching for flour at the grocery store.  Wheat is what brought so many immigrants to Alberta so many decades ago.  Not quite as high as an elephant’s eye, but it was the breadbasket of the world, and still helps feed many people.  And almost as stubborn as seeds are the farmers who plant that wheat.  Year after year, they get their tractors ready and you had better bet that they are waiting for the snow to melt and the ground to dry so that they can start planting their crops as quickly as they can regardless of how bad the weather has been these past few years.  Especially now that everyone seems to be churning out home-baked goods from their kitchens because they have so much time on their hands.  Easter is hot cross buns and braided bread, babka decorated with little birds or maybe cooked with a hard-boiled egg in the centre, and dried fruits in the dough.  Some pysanka beside it, carefully hand-drawn not machinery mass produced, and not needing to be 31 feet long to be a work of art.

The stubborn hope of seeds lies dormant, waiting to grow, resting in the dark, looking quite dead and lifeless.  Then something happens.  The sun’s warmth strikes down and shines on the seeds, they are not alone and solitary, they are scattered, sure, but not as unconnected as they thought.  The rain’s moisture softens their hard protective covering, and little by little, the seeds start to sprout and grow until they can ripen.  And seeds can look very similar – the seeds I am growing for our sandwiches look very similar to poppy seeds, but wouldn’t be very tasty if they didn’t start growing.  Sometimes it’s not until they are full grown that we know if we have planted Kentucky bluegrass or crabgrass.  And sometimes it has surprising properties.  According to Wikipedia, some countries take crabgrass seeds and grind them to make an edible flour, so for you folks out there short on flour, wait a little and harvest your crabgrass!

Yeah, but what’s that got to do with you and me and Easter and all this Jesus resurrection stuff which we’ve all heard about and many are weirded out by.  Well, sometimes we too can be dormant seeds.  Many of us are experiencing a time of dormancy, of a new normal we are slowly adjusting to, and for those who still have jobs, a new time of frantic work overlaid with anxiety.  Things are different.  Things are stressful.  Conspiracy theories abound, according to the fellow who waited his turn to get to the bank machine, and snake oil remedies are legion.  And above all, things are lonely.  We cannot hug one another, we cannot go to Paddymelon’s for a cup of our favorite beverage and a chance to catch up with our friends and neighbors.  We cannot go for Easter dinner with our extended family.  We are having to let our personal connections lie dormant.  We have to stay home except for necessary travel to grocery and drug stores.  We are waiting, stubbornly, for hope, for a time when once again we will be able to meet and greet our neighbors, to give a high five or share a jigsaw puzzle and game of cribbage with friends.  We wait for sunshine and rain and new growth.

This could be a time of resting and learning, not just of facts and figures, but a deepening of character, of our ethics, our values, our morals, and our beliefs.  It may look and feel like we are doing nothing, but we can be growing and preparing to put out new shoots.

One of my favorite inspirational stories is the movie, “Invictus”, the story of Nelson Mandela, beautifully acted by Morgan Freeman.  Nelson Mandela was a young man who grew up going to a Methodist Church in South Africa, and the Methodist Church is one of the founding denominations of the United Church of Canada.  As a young adult, he was arrested and jailed for acts of terrorism against the Apartheid State.  He spent 30 years locked down, often in solitude, and he took this enforced dormant time to practise stubborn hope.  He turned to a poem called Invictus, written I was surprised to learn, for a Scottish flour merchant.  It could be a description of Jesus, the ultimate unconquerable soul:

In the fell clutch of circumstance,
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Easter is when we stand in awe at the foot of the cross, the empty cross, the empty tomb and remember the testimony of women and men from long ago that have inspired people for centuries.  Our Song of Faith says that Jesus suffered abandonment and betrayal, state-sanctioned torture and execution.  He was crucified.  But death was not the last word.  God raised Jesus from death, turning sorrow into joy, despair into hope.  We sing hallelujah.

Even when we don’t have faith in our ability to live in this dormant time, even when we feel no hope that we will grow again, even when we feel isolated, alone and suffering, Jesus points out that at the darkest of times, God has faith in us, God has hope that we will grow again, that God knows one day we will be able to sing hallelujah, because God is with us, we are not alone.  In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us, thanks be to God.

Who is Jesus?

Matthew 21: 9-11 The crowds—those who went in front of Jesus and those who followed—were all shouting, “Hosanna to the heir to the house of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Most High! Hosanna in the highest!”  As Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred to its depths, demanding, “Who is this?”  And the crowd kept answering, “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth in Galilee!”

The heart of the scriptures today is the central question, who is Jesus?  And why was he so special that a spontaneous parade could build up so fast and so memorably?

The Sunshine Coast is a lovely place to visit in the spring, and travel there is very efficient.  The ferries were efficient, and the boarding was smooth until I noticed a cavalcade of bikers driving up the ramp in impressive formation.  I nervously pointed them out to my dad, wondering if we were about to be inundated by a Hell’s Angels convention, but he said that they were probably there for my uncle’s funeral.  I found that hard to believe until I ran into the bikers on the top deck of the ferry.  They were pulling off their helmets to reveal not toughened thugs but lovely grandpas and grandmas, white hair, perms, some of the men with bald heads and Santa Claus beards.  Anything but what I had first imagined.

My uncle had been the president of the local Harley Davidson bike club and they had decided to pay homage to him with an honor ride for his celebration of life.  Later that day they made a spectacular sight driving down the hill to the community hall where the service took place.  Parades to honor special people can be very stirring and inspirational.  The parade for Jesus would have been that way too.  With a heartbreaking twist.  “Save Us, save us!” they cried.  People like you and me living in poverty, living in uncertainty, living with a government who had little respect for human rights, who allowed only full Roman citizens access to public justice systems, who had no foodbanks or schools or daycares or health services, a high infant mortality rate and widespread poverty.  “Save us, Jesus” was a desperate cry, and a prayer from the heart.

Jesus was seen as someone who would help them, heal them and listen to them.  Over the ages, many people have felt the same need to call out for him to save them.

One young lady 800 years ago also called out for help.  She was in her thirties, and was extremely ill.  While she lay on her deathbed, she had a series of visions, powerful images of Jesus.  She recovered and out of gratitude, she had herself locked up in a room of a church in the English town of Norwich, the ultimate in self-isolation, and lived there for the rest of her life, surviving the Bubonic Plague, civil war and religious persecutions.  While there, she wrote the first English book written by a woman, and became known for her image of Jesus as the mother of us all, who weeps when we are in distress, who comforts us when we are scared, and who loves us with a deep motherly love.  She had a little window in her room, and people would come to tell them of their troubles.  They would leave feeling comforted and encouraged.  Some psychologists see her as the first person to be a professional counsellor for the people in her town, the poor and the politician alike. She gave them hope not in herself, but in Jesus who inspired her.  Our own United Church author Ralph Milton, wrote two books about her, and said, “it’s hard to believe that such an open, eloquent, optimistic, joyful book could have been written in such a dark and painful time.”  Her name was Julian of Norwich, and she wrote some words that you have probably heard from time to time, “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”  Sometimes those words seem empty and naïve, but when we remember the context she was living in, the state of violence, the rampant sicknesses, the levels of poverty and the lack of basics like food or shelter, her words become a signpost to keep the faith.

Jesus was not just mother to this lady, but inspiration.  Julian of Norwich, locked in her tiny room for more than forty years, over half her life, was comforted and sustained by her faith and shared that comfort to all who came to her.  The parade of people that showed up at her window made her a famous name and in turn she has inspired many.  We are isolated as she was, locked in because of a dreadful illness, and unsure of what lies ahead for us all.  Some of us are coping better than others.  Some of us have a strong faith that helps us pray, others are still new at this faith business, and unsure of how to pray, what to pray for and how it helps.  Regardless of where we are on our faith journey, let us remember that Jesus was a powerful inspiration to everyone who knew him and even those who only knew him through scriptures to turn to acts of love and compassion for one another.  Like Julian, let us listen in love to our neighbors, let us care for each other as best we can, but let us also remember to put our faith in Jesus, our teacher, our role model, our inspiration and our source of hope.  Amen.