Troubling Questions in troubling times

  Sometimes our scriptures comfort us.  Sometimes they challenge us.  One preacher once said, “Scripture comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable.”  Today we have both comfort and affliction in our Luke and Jeremiah readings. 

Which seems to be the way of the world these days and even this week.  I took coffee down to the RCMP this week. They were all on the road driving around the community responding to alerts and watching for black vans with Saskatchewan license plates.  One more small sign that the world is on edge and people are feeling stress and uncertainty. Losing the Queen of Canada, whether you loved or hated her, just adds to the situation.

We are afflicted or know someone who is afflicted.  We are foolish or know someone who is acting foolish.  And we fall into the blame game too easily.  I can get all indignant at ‘those foolish people’ that are adding to our stress, whether it’s disaster after disaster that leads to disaster fatigue, or people who continue to deny climate change even after California’s heat bubble reached 46-degree weather and Death Valley measured a dangerous 54C! Dry winds like what we read in Jeremiah!  Foolish people determined not to change, not to take responsibility for their choices, for their actions, from the person who starts down the slippery slope to hard drugs to the polluting executives mining heavy minerals and even sand in unsustainable ways that damage the environment even more.  Foolish people who refuse to admit they need help.  Foolish people who don’t ask the hard questions.  One Facebook post said it like this, “why is it always ‘if you can’t pay rent, buy fewer lattes and avocado toasts’ and not ‘if you can’t pay your employees a living wage, buy fewer yachts and real estate”? Foolishness.  Not just by one person, but by whole cultures that lead to floods in Pakistan that have impacted hundreds of thousands of people, triggered in part by glacier melt. Our whole world has been suffering from the poison of wealthy people who are not satisfied with the wealth and power they have accumulated and who are determined to accumulate even more. Who knows, maybe that obsession was also at the root of what went down in Saskatchewan.  It’s not just the rich and famous who struggle, but you and I probably have moments where we wished we had something more.  Sometimes I envy the folks who ride around in their noisy speed boats and seadoos, sometimes I resent how much noise and waves they throw into the environment.  Oh foolish me!

Where is God in all this mess?  Jeremiah has a vision of an angry God, fed up, planning to punish us all for our foolishness, and when I think about the floods, fires and heat, I know it’s not God’s punishment on us, but the natural consequences of an accumulation of decisions large and small that do not treat the environment with respect.  Our actions cause the birds to fly away and the fertile lands to turn to deserts.  The earth mourns and the seas die, choked with islands of plastic, coral in the Great Barrier reef dying from heat exhaustion, our glaciers and icebergs in the far north thawing to the point that polar bears are starving.  Homeless people and those living in substandard housing are struggling to deal with heatwaves.  As the weather cools, we will struggle with high heating bills and food costs.  It’s insane!

But no matter how foolish we are, no matter how lost we are, there is still hope for us.  There is still the good shepherd who goes looking for the one foolish lost sheep, the woman who cleans her house from top to bottom until she finds her lost bride gift. There will be more rejoicing over the foolish ones reconciled to God than the ones who were always safe and wise.  And there are many wise ones working hard to learn how seaweed captures carbon, how to protect the reefs from the blazing sun, how to maintain the oxygen levels in lakes and wean us off our addiction to carbon fuels.

We can make a difference when we remember that all creation is worth loving, and when we remember that we can do amazing things when we work together for the benefit of all.  21 years ago, Frazer Road United Church, about double the size of this church, found themselves entertaining 200 people from the Middle East.  They had borrowed cots from the military base and set out tables loaded with food and necessities for their guests.  Some had to sleep on the pews with only the blanket and pillow they had from their plane. Those strangers had been in an airplane on a runway for over 24 hrs in dangerous heat.  The church had communities and other churches bringing food in from as far away as three hours to feed the stranded passengers.  Casseroles and meals were stored in the community hockey rink on the ice, yet not one passenger came down with food poisoning the whole time they were there.  There was not a single episode of crime or violence despite the stress and tension of not knowing when they would get home.  One of my friends who now is an Ordained Minister in Alberta, was there, in Fraser Road United, Gander Newfoundland, and shared her personal memories with me after I had raved about seeing Come From Away.

We have similar stories of how we helped evacuees from Slave Lake and Fort McMurray.  We know how to love our neighbors.  We know we can pull together and learn how to be wise with God’s help.  It may be as small as a paper straw from a restaurant, or as big as solar panels on our rooves. With God’s grace, we can learn to be wise and loving of our whole world.  It won’t be easy.  It took several generations for Jeremiah’s people to rebuild from the disaster their foolishness brought on them, and it will take several generations for us to do the same.  But if we listen and do our parts, we too can be part of a community that lives into our quest to live with respect in creation.  May it be so for us all.

Letting Go

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where to Sit?

 How many people remember playing musical chairs?  How did it go?  There would be a circle of chairs and there would always be one less chair than there were kids.  We would circle around the chairs until the music stopped then everyone would rush to sit on the nearest chair.  The person who was left standing was eliminated from the circle, another chair was removed and we would do it again until there was only one chair left.  How many of you remember winning?  How many of you remember having to wait a long time on the sideline until it was time to start again?  What did it feel like to win?  What did it feel like to be eliminated?

I don’t ever remember being the winner, although I think I made it to three chairs once.  Winning is not something that we humble Christians are supposed to intentionally go aggressively after.  And maybe that’s why the Christian message has fallen out of favor; it’s not about winning at life against all adversity, or being the best and lording it over all the other contestants.  I know I am a dreadful competitor, I really want to win. Last spring I was in several contests for Toastmasters, and finding my way into a humble mindset was really difficult.  I didn’t like how competative I became, or even entitled and selfish I felt.  In the end I reminded myself that I was doing it for fun. 

So much of life can become a competition.  Where we sit at a banquet can certainly be a part of that.  How close to the bridal party will we get to sit?  Where will our table be at the Rotary Dinner or the Chamber of Commerce awards night? What about the AU President’s Breakfast or the Mayor’s Lunch? Who will we sit beside at the Senior’s pancake breakfast?

They can be ways we measure our status and importance to other people.  That’s what Jesus saw when he was invited to dinner one evening.  He probably was remembering Proverbs 25:6-7, which says “Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence or stand in the place of the great; for it is better to be told, “Come up here,” than to be put lower in the presence of a noble.”  Wise words from the scriptures that he saw in action that day.  Here he was, guest of a pharisee, invited for supper and the nerve he had, reminding them that scripture taught not to be pushy and aggressive.  Not to treat dinner like a game of musical chairs, where you try to win status and importance before everyone else.

I suspect some of you might be saying, “So what?  I’m not going out to dinner parties with famous movie stars or politicians.  I’m not dining with the rich and famous these days.  Even before Covid, I didn’t do that.”

We might not be dining or hobnobbing with important people, but I dare say we may still feel the itch to prove ourselves as worthy or important or influential.  We may feel like we are entitled to being treated as the special individuals that we hope we are.  When I talk to hairdressers, they tell me that the clients who can be demanding and finicky are even more demanding and finicky since Covid.  We hear stories of the ‘mass resignation’ of people in the restaurant and retail industries because they are fed up with being treated like servants to be ordered about.  Others are doing what they are calling a ‘silent resignation’ where they stop going above and beyond in doing their jobs.  No more overtime, no more working through lunchbreaks to prove that they are committed to the company, that’s not happening anymore.  About 24% of employees think that their bosses care for them, which means that most working people feel their bosses don’t care at all.  Getting to be at home for folks meant a break from the hustle, the harassment, the watercooler gossip sessions, the entitled customers.  And they don’t want to go back.

It sounds like they are tired of playing the adult version of musical chairs! Yet it’s easier said than done.  We may be thinking that we’re entitled to more respect than we actually are.  Like the average driver who thinks that they are above average in their driving skills, we may assume that we are better than others because we are us!

Jesus taught us that the game of musical chairs is not what God wants us to play.  This game assumes that there’s scarcity we must compete for, including scarcity of influence. Jesus said our seeking importance can become an idol.  In our craving for status, we can be actually embracing fear, fear of others, fear of the unknown, fear of our own ability to deal with life’s challenges. 

How do we let go of this game of musical chairs? Our reading from Hebrews suggest we do it through worship, community, ministry of hospitality.  We do it through sexual relationships that are not competitive or dominating, and through money decisions free from status seeking and influence peddling.  Perhaps donating to a charity instead of buying a vote. Remembering that God is with us, we shall not be afraid, what can mere humans do to us?  Nothing can separate us from God who loves us, not even our seating arrangement and we sit beside.

Someone wrote: If you are sitting in public and a stranger sits down beside you, simply stare straight ahead and say, “did you bring the money?” Christians have a reputation of saying to strangers, “that’s my pew” or “that’s my chair.” God calls us to say instead, “come sit with me and be welcome in this pew”.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like a game of musical chairs where the music never stops, the chairs face inward so we can see each other and there are always enough chairs for everyone. Thanks be to God for this blessing.

Travelling light

The other day, I discovered a beautiful little nest sitting on my newly cut lawn (pictured here to the left). It looked like the adult birds had carefully built it right there and never used it. No eggshells, no feathers. It didn't even look like it had fallen from a tree. Perfect example of amazing architectural design then abandoned to the elements. Birds travel lightly, and do not hang onto their homes. 

Given the chaotic state of airports these days, we can't say the same. Stories of lost luggage and cancelled flights are filling our news feeds and people describe the trauma this has caused them. I had a family member travel to New York one year who lost their luggage and never again will they put all their prescriptions in their checked suitcases! We don't know how to travel lightly. Unlike the birds. 

Paul wants us to travel through life with at a light heart. He wants us to focus on dressing ourselves with peace and love and joy. And part of learning how to dress ourselves in that kind of Sunday best is by singing and praying and building community to get safety. Rather like a nest, we are woven into a place of safety that holds fragile beings growing in their ability to take themselves lightly.

I meet so many people living heavy lives of fear and resentment.  They don’t have a safe space, and they don’t know that they need a safe space for learning to live more lightly.  Often when they find out what I do for a living, they tell me how they left the church and the stories are full of anger and self-righteousness.  It’s like they are saying, “See?  That church was full of mean toxic people who hurt me.  I was right in leaving and I am right in staying away.”

Which is a heavy mindset.  It is stuck in fear, it is stuck in independence and self-protection.  Sure, there are times we should walk away from toxic situations.  And there are churches and groups and communities that people need to leave because they are toxic.

I get it.  We don’t get through life without getting hurt by others, and we don’t get through life without occasionally hurting others, sometimes accidentally, sometimes with good intentions.

But.  That doesn’t help us travel lightly.  All too often people who have turned their backs on church haven’t worked through the anger and fear that life event triggered in them.  They get stuck in resentment and anger.

They remember and retell the hurts over and over.  Psychologists are discovering that when we tell and retell our trauma stories, there comes a point where it is no longer healing but can retraumatize us.  It becomes a trigger for the same fight or flight adrenaline rush that we felt when the incident first happened. It entrenches our anger and self-righteousness. What if we experimented with forgiveness instead?

Both Paul and Jesus talked many times about the feeling of lightness that comes from forgiveness. We are supposed to forgive 70 times 7 and pray for our enemies.  That’s not easy.  Some think it’s about having positive feelings and thoughts about the person we feel wronged by, which I think is unrealistic.  Others talk about the legal interpretation, which is giving up all claims to exacting punishment for transgressions, but we need justice and accountability in our world.  I think that forgiveness can be choosing to let go of the retelling of our trauma stories in ways that hurt us.  And learn how to strengthen ourselves to being more Christlike, with that heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience Paul talked about.  It doesn’t mean becoming doormats.  It does mean letting go of our resentment of the person not being better than they are, situations not being perfect, and justice not being always fair.

Holding grudges, hanging on to old stories of grief and injustice, can be like a rock we put in a backpack.  Every time we look at that rock, it gets a little heavier.  If we start collecting more and more rocks and seeing every little incident as a rock we can’t forget, our backpack gets continually heavier until all we can think about is that backpack and we can’t move an inch.

Jesus invites us to take a rock out of our backpack, say thank you for the learning you gave me, then set it aside.  Start small and work our way up.  Start with the person who drove through that stop sign in a hurry or grabbed the last package of bargain-priced pizza from the store shelf.  The bigger rocks that are really heavy may need help, get the lawyer, go to Together Talk or counselling.  The hardest rocks may be about me – how do I forgive myself for being duped by that scam caller, that con artist on my computer, that stupid mistake I do over and over?  Or bigger yet, how do I forgive God for the tragedy in my life?

Yes, sometimes we need to figure out how to forgive God.  Maybe not for giving us that pony we prayed for, like Robbie did, but for the more serious problems.  As far back as 1942 George Buttrick wrote about forgiving God this way: "If God is not, and the life of man poor, solitary, nasty, brutish and short, prayer is the veriest self-deceit. If God is, yet is known only as vague rumor and dark coercion, prayer is whimpering folly... But if God is in some deep and eternal sense like Jesus, friendship with God is our first concern, worthiest art, best resource and sublimest joy."  Calling God loving parent, as Jesus taught, helps us forgive even that toxic image we have of God.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us is only one part of the Lord’s prayer.  May we pray it with persistence, humbleness and intentionality.  And may we let go of all that weighs us down until we travel through life as lightly as birds. Amen.

Swords and Dishes

Ever been embarrassed in public by a family member?  I will never forget the day someone in my family asked my cousins how to teach me to dress properly.  I’m sure I turned bright red with embarrassment.  I couldn’t have been more than 6 or 8 years old, but that incident stuck in my memory.  

Family gatherings can be like that.  “Can you tell so and so how they should behave?” can sound like an innocent comment but is really an attempt to shame the other person in public.  How embarrassing it is to hear that.  It is also very common.

Which is why the Mary and Martha story is so relatable.  It sounds like a typical argument between two sisters.  I imagine that Martha was the first-born child, used to acting in a parental role, taking charge and making sure everything got done just right.  And Mary was the youngest child who got spoiled by doting parents and was not good at the practical aspects of day-to-day living.

It came to a head when Jesus showed up for a visit. Martha was determined to show good hospitality.  That was a core value of her faith.  Stories going back as far as Abraham and Sarah taught about the importance of hospitality.  Without hospitality, being a wanderer in the wilderness could easily lead to starvation and even death.  But Martha was also focused on herself and her tasks.  She mentioned herself several times, “My sister, me, and me.”  The only thing she wanted Jesus to do was join her side and use his authority to correct her sister’s inappropriate behavior.  And she claimed Jesus was being uncaring, hoping to get him to take her side.  This is classic manipulation and triangulation.  Trying to get a third party to do the communication that she would not have with her sister.  Some psychologists would go even further and describe this as bullying behavior.

It's subtle bullying that leaves the target feeling shamed and embarrassed and uncertain how to react.  Mary never said a word in her defense, she might have been as shocked and ashamed as I was at my family gathering.  Words like these can leave us speechless!

We have no idea of why Mary did what she did leading up to Martha’s comments.  Was she rebelling against Martha’s expectations, deliberately sitting down with the men, and daring Martha to complain?  Was she putting Jesus on the spot by acting like an equal to the disciples?  Or was she just mesmerized by what he was saying, forgetting what she should be doing and dropping everything to sit and listen? 

Even today, the Marys and Marthas of the world can experience deep shame around housekeeping and expectations.  If you watched the CBC show “Back in Time for Dinner”, you may remember the mother saying that the 1950’s with its expectations of domestic perfection made it the worst decade for women.  And there is still a lot of shaming around housework.  This week I read, “How to Keep House While Drowning” by KC Davis.  She is a psychologist and a mother of two; the youngest was born during Covid lockdowns.  She struggled with post partum depression with her first, so wanted to prevent that by having a friend help with cleaning, other moms with babysitting swaps and so on.  All that fell apart when Covid struck.  And when she shared how she was doing, she was told that she was lazy because she didn’t get the dishes and laundry done every day.  There was no sympathy for living with depression or mental illness.  So, she wrote a book about housekeeping and talked about the outer messages that fed her inner bully. It lives in our heads and can be louder than real people because it doesn’t stop. It can trigger depression, anxiety, and shame.  That inner bully which sounds a lot like Martha, can leave us vulnerable to mental illness. 

And lest we think this is a problem that only women face, there’s a wonderful book called “Becoming the Kind Father” by Calvin Sandborn.  He also writes about the inner bully who shames men for showing emotion, vulnerability, gentleness, or any number of things our society has decided men shouldn’t be.   That toxic idea is probably what led to the sword attack we heard about in Athabasca this week.  Both Sandborn, Davis and others like Brene Brown write about how destructive the inner bully is. 

Comments like “Tell my son he shouldn’t cry”, or as in today’s scripture, “tell my sister she should be helping me in the kitchen” feed the inner bully until it destroys souls, families, and marriages.

Jesus says to all of us, “You are anxious about many things.   But it’s time to quiet the inner bully and love yourself and your family instead of feeding shame and blame.

We are called as Christians to convert our inner bully to an inner Christ.  A gentle, loving voice that changes shame and blame words into love and support.  It takes time, but it is possible.  We do that when we admit that we are not perfect, that we feel overwhelmed at times by all we feel pressured to be and do.  Martha was called to be hospitable, but not to the point that she forgot the love she had for Mary.  Her sister was called to learn from Jesus, but not to the point that she neglected her sister.  Both were called to listen to Jesus’ message to love each other, pray for each other and not to lose track of their relationship with him.  We too are called to listen to Jesus’ message of love and compassion.  It’s why we say a prayer of confession and hear words of comfort and assurance on Sundays, to calm our inner bullies. When we replace those inner bullies with Christ’s peaceful, loving words and vision, we can heal ourselves and our world.  May it be so for us all.

Testing Jesus

One of the things I seem to be accumulating is a collection of hymn books.  I have the red hymnbook from the 1970’s, the green hymn book from the 90’s, Voices United and More Voices.  I even have the 1950’s Songs of the Gospel which was the first hymn book I ever sang from as a child.  And now that I’m on a subcommittee helping with the new hymn book with over a thousand submissions we’re wading through, I’m very aware of the hard work that goes into putting it together.  And how much compromise and testing goes into selecting hymns. And how no matter how hard we work, there will be someone unhappy with the decisions that were made. 

Cecile passed on this little gem to me (pictured on the right here) when they were getting packed up for their move.  It is a Methodist hymnbook, (Methodists were part of our founding congregations, where we get the dove in our crest), and the preface described the need for a hymn book for the newly amalgamated Methodist Church of Canada of 1874, between the Wesleyan Methodists and the Methodist New Connexion of Canada. They wanted a Canadian hymnbook that would unify them in song.

But there’s something about hymn books that have the critics hunting for all the problems they can find.  When Voices United came out, I went through the Green Hymnbook to see which were kept and which were included.  There were a few, like “Give me Oil in my Lamp” that I was surprised didn’t make it.  So, it was amusing to see someone wrote in this old copy, “Why omit Charles Wesley’s ‘Rejoice the Lord is King?’”

Testing the decisions of the hymn committee.  We do that.  We test.  We challenge.  We question, especially anything that is new.  Maybe because we are in a grumpy mood, or because we have a level of expertise that is higher than what we think the other person has. Or because we have an idea worth contributing.  Or because we are coming from a less than humble attitude of superiority.  Or because we find someone else’s idea threatening.  Or even worse, because we find that person themself threatening.

The lawyer felt threatened by Jesus’ new approach.  Maybe he distrusted the charisma or the leadership skills, the new ideas or the sense of authority or the growth of new disciples and followers.  Maybe he had a toothache that day, or his supper hadn’t agreed with him.  Regardless, he didn’t like what Jesus was doing, and he was determined to test Jesus.

So Jesus pulled out a story that has become so famous that as soon as we hear the words “Good Samaritan”, we know it.  Folks who have never heard the story may still know the phrase, and it’s interesting that when I got my Naloxone training, I was told about the ‘Good Samaritan’ law, which was put in place so that if one addict tries to save another addict’s life from an overdose, they will not be arrested.  Good Samaritan was even used this week for a CBC story of people helping pull a man out of a burning car in Ontario. It’s a familiar phrase and there may be people who have no idea that Jesus invented it in response to being tested.

It was a shocking story, deliberately challenging the lawyer so badly that he could not answer Jesus’ question of who actually acted like a neighbor.  If Jesus was here today, the story would be about a Ukrainian civilian who was hurt in a missile strike.  A Ukrainian Orthodox priest walked by and crossed to the other side instead of taking care of the wounded civilian, then President Zelensky also walked by and again crossed to the other side.  Then a Russian soldier walking by found the Ukrainian civilian, dug them out from the rubble of what was left of their house, and carried them to the nearest hospital.  The soldier gave the hospital money for antibiotics and promised to take care of any additional expenses on their return.  The shock of the Russian being the one to help is like the scandalized lawyer’s inability to even say the word ‘Samaritan’.

Jesus tested him, "Which of these three was the neighbor?"  The lawyer answered, "The one who showed kindness."

Jesus challenged his tester to move beyond wordsmithing and legalese, logic puzzles and abstract philosophy which put following God into an intellectual exercise for abstract arguments.  Jesus wanted his tester to see the debate about defining neighbor more than mental gymnastics, but something that challenged the emotions as well as the logic.  And not only moving it from an ethical debate to an exercise in empathy, ultimately moving it into the realm of action.  As one Maritime song put it, move from the head to the heart to the hands.  How do we get our faith to move in that direction?

Someone recently joked that the difference between the Methodists and the Presbyterians is that when you tell a Methodist about a problem, they will say, “I will pray for you”.  When you tell a Presbyterian, they will say, “I will think about you.”  We who are United can combine the best of both worlds, think, pray, and see what we can do, not to take over and fix things for people which just enables them, but what we can do to empower them, help them come up with their own actions and support those actions as best we can.  Our hymns can help us do that.  When we read the words of the hymns, we engage our thinking.  When we hear the music, we engage our feelings.  When we sing the words, we engage our bodies in acting on the words and
feelings.  Test, empathize and act in compassion and love.  The more we do that, the more we become able to think of and respond to the neighbors we are called by God to love. May it be so for us all!

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!