Snakes Alive!

We long for heroes, don’t we? A just king, a root from Jesse’s family tree (Jesse, by the way, was the father of King David and King Solomon), a prophet, a messiah.  And when I think of heroes and the other thing we heard several times in our scriptures, snakes, I think of Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Indiana Jones, the rough and ready explorer, archaeologist and mild-mannered professor could figure his way out of many dilemmas with an improvisational flair that could only work in a comic book or a cliff hanger movie.  As intrepid or resourceful as he was, he still had a weak spot and that was snakes. “Why does it have to be snakes” he moaned as he looked into the Well of Souls and saw 7000 snakes waiting at the bottom for him.

Of course, snakes are not something that people all feel the same way about.  Some people don’t like mice, or bats, and I try very hard not to over-react when I see a spider, but snakes are a common creature that many fear.  Up north here, garter snakes are not a big worry, but in the Middle East, they are often poisonous.

Isaiah’s picture of God’s recreated Eden has children playing with snakes, even babies, is completely unrealistic.  I can’t help but remember the two young boys in New Brunswick three years ago that were killed by a python.  Snakes are not like kittens, and this image of nature so at peace is an incredible picture.  It’s such a peaceful world that our most basic instincts are changed from competitive and survival to co-existance.

Then there’s the snakes of John the Baptist, the Pharisees and Sadducees.   They were coming to see what all the fuss was about, and why he was baptising out in the wilderness, a ritual that belonged in the Temple not out in the bush. 

Why was this John, who frankly needed a better wardrobe and a good nutritional plan if he was going to make it as a preacher, becoming so popular, and was he a threat to their society?

The Sadducees were the Temple leaders, descendants of Zadoc the priest around at the time of King Solomon, and they oversaw all the worship that happened in the Temple.  They were the elites of the day, they had job security and a good pension plan.  The Pharisees were also religious leaders with more ‘middle class’ roots.  They had differing ideas from the Sadducees and both parties probably acted rather like the Conservatives and Liberals, each group having their devoted followers and debating in the temple.  Neither would have appreciated being called a snake.

What an insult that was.  Right up there with calling someone a pig.  Maybe worse.  Snakes were unclean animals, and seen in scripture as the cause of humanity losing our place in the Garden of Eden. But despite that verbal attack, John didn’t bar them completely from being baptised if they wanted, but he did let them know there would be an accounting.  That is something I struggle with.  I want that new garden of Eden.  I don’t want to change my ways though.  I want it to be given to me  at no cost to myself, and certainly no judgement. 

I don’t want to have to face my deepest fears and let go of my need for revenge.  We often think that Peace is built when that other person says they are sorry, or when they agree with us.  But peace is built when justice, impartial justice says that we all have something we need to let go of, we all need God’s help to turn us from snakes and lions and wolves and hypocrites into people who can live with peace with our neighbors, family and friends.

Indie can’t reach his goal, the Ark of the Covenant, unless he goes through his snake pit to find it.  We can’t reach our goals unless we are prepared to face our own demons either.

Indie did it by remembering his true mission, his passion for sharing the past with people.  “It belongs in a museum”, he angrily retorts to the thieves, and so down he goes into the pit of snakes.

John the Baptist knows his goal is to prepare his people for justice, and so he calls out the big shots of his day to repent, to let go of what keeps them from the true goals of the Kingdom of Heaven, to make sure their faith is more than the fancy clothes they wear or the complicated rituals they enact or even the political debates they have.  So John has the courage to dress them down in public despite the fact that they can pass judgement on him and have him executed.

What is our goal?  Our congregation says that we are an inclusive Christian community enabling spiritual growth through meaningful outreach and dynamic worship.

An inclusive faith community, we continue to discover and learn how to walk in the footsteps of the living Christ, to love and serve others.  We try to do this by accepting and celebrating God's unconditional love, welcoming the stranger, recognizing Christ in all life and seeking spiritual wholeness.

So this advent time, let us all continue to walk in the footsteps of John and Isaiah, learning to face our snakes and open ourselves up to God’s transformative, redeeming power.  May it be so for us all.

Lest we forget? We already have.

Two weeks ago on Remembrance Day, I went up to the multiplex to pay my respects as a dutiful Canadian to remember those who made sacrifices on my behalf.  In full honesty, I don’t have any personal connection to a veteran.  In my family, the only one I know of that was involved was a great grandfather in England who my grandfather never talked about, so I have no idea what he did or where he served.  My other grandfather, a farmer and coal miner who immigrated out in the 20’s to Canada might have served on the other side but was probably too young to be involved at the time.  still I remember that the things we take pride in, our freedom of speech, our parliamentary system of checks and balances and our legal system that is in theory at least open and available to all, these are things to cherish, not to take for granted.

The sacrifice of brave men and women that served in the wars was not just their lives, for many did return home shell-shocked and broken.  Mentally, emotionally and physically.  The deeds they did scarred them for life.  Killing human beings, no matter how justified, eats at your soul.  My two grandfathers were on opposite sides of the first war and if it had continued, who knows, they may have even been in a situation where they had each other at the end of their guns.  Teen agers filled with noble ideals and propaganda still were scared and traumatised by the reality of looking at each other and seeing someone not unlike them.

We promised never to forget.  And yet I think we have.  Just as Jesus realized his disciples had forgotten when he heard them oohing and ahhing over the beautiful temple.  They looked at this symbol of their faith with pride and a sense that while it was standing, their place in the world was assured.  That Isaiah’s message was a guarantee that God loved them and all was well.  Jesus knew better.  He knew that faith is not easy, that if we depend on outward trappings rather than inward convictions, if we depend on institutions instead of God, we are frail and open to soul-crushing destruction.

What is our modern Jerusalem temple today?  Our false security?  I wonder if maybe it is the United States.  “As long as it stands, the Western World is safe”, we might say.  Or could it be democracy?  We don’t have to worry about terrorism, violence, racism, fill in the blank, because we have democracy.  But that isn’t always the truth, is it. 

Democracy is only as healthy as the people who vote in it and the candidates who run in it.  As someone who was the aide of a female politician, I helped organize an educational workshop for Albertan women interested in politics.  Back in the 90’s they had to face a system that was not aware that women might need extra support or mentoring to get involved.  Men knew they would need mentors, a sparkling resume, a list of non-profits and organizations they had volunteered with, and deep financial pockets to run for office.  Many women had no access to that.  Sparkling resumes are hard to build if you are at home raising a family or only able to find a job as a waitress or day care worker.  Volunteering at schools doesn’t have the same cache as a community league or service club, but they might not know that.  Deep pockets are hard to build when you don’t have wage equality.  And yes, there was sexism in the 90’s, to the point that some female candidates would say, “I’m not a feminist” to build credibility.  The Legislative Assembly was not kind to women, but at least the harassment stayed in that building.  Now with e-mails, Facebook and other technology, the hatred comes right into our homes.

One of my daughter’s friends, sharing her struggles with body image with her close friends got sexually harassed online.  There was also a story on Facebook about a 10-year-old boy grabbing his female classmate by her privates and saying to her, “If the President can do it, I can too.” When the conservative candidates in the province of Emily Murphy, Henrietta Edwards, Nellie McClung, Louise McKinney and Irene Parlby decide to step down from running for leadership because of the sexual harassment they experience, how much progress have we made in 90 years?

Have we learned the lessons we need from the First and Second World Wars?  One of the things we haven’t learned is that gushy sentimental propaganda is dangerous.  It’s how Hitler seduced young people and ordinary citizens around the world that he had a great vision.  Simple answers to complex problems.  The complex problem of national identity shaken since 9/11 can be easily fixed by targeting and blaming minorities, discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation and religion.  Another thing that we haven’t learned is that labelling people as the enemy is destructive whether we are labelling them as Americans, Canadians, Mexicans, whatever.  Labels prevent empathy.

But the big lesson we have forgotten from Remembrance Day is that it takes sacrifice.  Just as Jesus talked about sacrifice, so too we talk about it.  But we see it as something that happened in the past, by other people.  We don’t see it as being needed today.

When I hear a prominent pastor say a prayer that no one may be discriminated against based on religion and yet say nothing even though that same minister discriminated against me because I wasn’t Christian enough to join his organization, I have forgotten.  When I hear that other members of my congregation have also been told that their brand of Christianity isn’t good enough and I say nothing, I have forgotten.  When I hear a joke about gays and say nothing I have forgotten.  When I worry about speaking out against discrimination, I have forgotten.  When I have listened to a rant about how the economy is all the fault of the ruling governing parties and as soon as a real man gets into power to fix the price of oil regardless of how silly it is to think one man can tell OPEC to change their prices, then I have forgotten.  When I have said nothing at the comment I heard that all Muslims are terrorists, I have forgotten.

The worst thing is that I haven’t just forgotten the veterans and the war dead.  I have forgotten Jesus.  His teaching wasn’t about being nice, or saying that we should just get along and not make waves.  That our faith can be put solely on temples and democracies and let others think for us.  No, he called us to be witnesses to love, truth, hope and that everyone we meet is a neighbor we must love no matter what label they come with.  Love your neighbor.  And by doing that with our words and our actions, by our sacrifice of complacency or reputation forniceness to stand up for truth and equality, Jesus said that is how we show ourselves as true followers.  “You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish.  By your endurance you will gain your souls.” Dear God, help us to face our suffering for your kingdom with endurance and bravery.  Help us to speak up against injustice, racism, sexism, religious persecution, and homophobia as a sign we have not forgotten. Amen.

This is How You Remind Me

(preached two weeks ago before the election)

Yesterday I was at the Antiques Road Show and saw many interesting items that came in through the door.  There were anvils and tiny clockmaker’s jack knives, coin collections and a play tea set of Blue Willow china made in Occupied Japan.  There was a mandolin that had survived being carried into World War I and a Cree-French dictionary written by Reverend Lacombe.  Every item had a story of who it belonged to or where it had come from, and it was that history that added value to it for the people who brought it. 

History is like that, it adds meaning and richness to items that might otherwise be of no value.  I took over my grandma’s lamp and it was worth about what I could buy a replacement brand new.  No market for lamps, even glass ones made in the 40’s.  But it tells me the story of my grandmother and reminds me of who she was.

Scriptures are intended to do the same.  When Jesus mentions false prophets to his people, they would remember the stories of their history books where a lone prophet like Elijah or Naman or Nathan or Michaiah spoke truth to kings and to the people.  He used history to remind his listeners that it’s not the ones who are popular or famous or rich who are the ones who hear God.

My grandma’s lamp reminds me of someone generous with pies, with a great sense of humor, of a woman who worked hard to feed her children and her husband during the depression and war.  My favorite photo of her is dressed in her eldest son’s biker jacket and hat, mugging for the camera, trying to look like a fierce biker grandma.  Grandma was from a generation that was proud to call herself Mrs. Ernest Taylor, known by her husband’s name, not her own.  Even after she had been widowed many years, she still preferred to get mail addressed to her that way.  Women took their name, their identity and their status from the men they married.  The more successful the man, the more they felt successful.  The phrase, “the power behind the throne,” or ‘behind every great man there is a great woman,” was something they took to heart.  When grandpa started losing his sight way before retirement age, and had to figure out new ways to earn a living, that was a blow to her self identity as married to a successful man.  I also remember how angry she was when that oldest son died from a heart attack in his 50’s, and how lost she felt.  Another piece of who she was had been taken away from her.

Who we are is made up of our history and our connection to others, how we think others see us and how we see them.  It’s at the heart of many of our personal struggles and emotional challenges.  If we see ourselves as weak, as unloved, as useless, it can lead us into depression, anger, self-abuse, bullying and more.  How we see ourselves in what one saint called ‘the dark night of the soul’, and what we believe ourselves to be when we are most down can be at the root of much of the conflict that we see in the world around us.  Dr. Gabor Mate said last Thursday that Donald Trump must secretly feel insecure and vulnerable or else he wouldn’t be constantly attacking those that he sees as weak and vulnerable, like immigrants, ethnic minorities and women.  When we struggle with anger, guilt, grief or resentment, this can be a sign that we have a negative sense of who we are that we are trying to mask through hording, eating disorders, bullying and bursts of emotion when we least expect it.

When we lose someone dear to us, it is like we have lost a piece of who we are and we don’t know how to rebuild ourselves a new identity.  Like my grandma, we are uncertain how to go forward and live life without the people we have been used to taking care of or relating to on a daily basis. 

Jesus knew that.  When he said ‘blessed are you’, he was turning our ideas of who we were and who others were on their heads.  In his society, a widow or orphan was seen as having deserved their disaster.  That they had done something to bring God’s disfavor down on them.  The poor were poor because they were lazy or sinful or undeserving.  Jesus stood all these assumptions on their heads.  He reminded the people of their history, of how the prophets that truly spoke for God were the ones who were not afraid of going against popular opinion.  That God often favored the weak and not the famous.  That God sees us with a different yardstick than we do. 

Nickelback sings a song “This is how you remind me of what I really am” a song of struggle in a relationship gone wrong, a song where he is working out who he is after a relationship is lost.  And I think that’s what Jesus is doing with these blessings.  Reminding us of what we are.  Not what we do, as everyone will eventually lose what they do through retirement or illness or life circumstances, nor what we have, power, possessions, or status.  But reminding us that we are blessed children of a loving God.  That is a heritage that helps lone prophets stand up to powerful kings, and ordinary saints in the making like you and I to continue to work together to make a difference in our world.  Remember that you are beloved children of God, no matter what life hands you.  There is no other blessing needed than that.

Doomsday again?

In 1979, I went home from school and told my mom that the world was going to end.  I felt quite sick and frustrated about it, because there was, as far as I knew, nothing I could do about it.  That day, my Social 10 teacher had put up graph after graph showing that the amount of smog was growing, the amount of garbage, violence, greenhouse gasses, pollution, war, and so on, were going to come to a peak that would destroy all life on earth.  It was enough to send my sensitive soul into a tailspin.  And it was supposed to happen in 20 years.  Yes, folks, things were going to spiral out of control so badly that 1999 would be the end of the world as we knew it.

And then there were the days where Tim and I were hitch-hiking on our honeymoon, traveling wherever the winds blew and the busses drove, never knowing from one day to the next if we would have a nice, cockroach free place to spend the night, or where the next job might be found.  It was a real adventure, but my nails never did grow much that whole time because I was too busy nervously biting them.  What a terrifying challenge.

And don’t get me started on my first pregnancy!

So this teaching of Jesus is one that really sticks in my craw.  Don’t worry, be happy, He says.  Ha!  I never really figured that out. 

Being an atheist worrier is a full-time job.  Trying to make sure you have packed everything you might ever need.  Packing the baby seat in the car trunk two months earlier than needed, just in case.  Having a heavy purse with everything from hand sanitizer to 35 cents for a payphone.  Having a glasses repair kit with spare parts as well as a sewing kit with first aid supplies. 

But even I have never been locked up in a jail while a city is being torn apart by war.  Bombs flying, or okay, no bombs in Jeremiah’s day, but there would have been battering rams, for sure, starvation after the blockade was up, and no end in sight for the people of Israel, surrounded by the Babylonian armies.

To do a real estate deal to help out your bankrupt cousin and thus your whole extended clan in the midst of such chaos, is ludicrous but that’s exactly what Jeremiah does.  A wild, bold risky venture in the midst of dangerous times is what he feels called to do.  Such an act might have inspired Jesus, several centuries later, to remind his followers to keep their heads on straight, not to panic, and to focus on what is important.

As Tim likes to point out to me on a regular basis, worry does indeed not add anything to the quality of my life.  As Jesus reminded us, worry does not add a single hour to my life span, nor does it help me to change the things I cannot change.  Worry leaves me fretting about impossibilities that might happen in the future that are beyond my control.  I can’t control how many people will come to tonight’s supper, or how many tickets might sell for it, whether or not there are enough pies, well actually, that’s something I can do.

We need to remember to focus on the here and the now, and not just that, but the why we do what we do.  Why do we have a harvest supper?  To raise money, of course, but it’s more than that.  People don’t go making pies and donating tomatoes and hand crafting meatballs for two hundred people just for the sake of money.  No, it’s far more than that.  It’s because we believe that Jesus came bearing good news that needs to be shared to all.  That the meatballs we make remind us that we are connected to our community and our community is connected to us.

It helps us to sit at the hospital beds of folks who are needing our love and support, it helps us feed kids at school who can’t learn on an empty stomach, that it prevents folks from committing suicide because they know we care, that it reminds people that there is hope for men and women trapped in cycles of domestic violence, that we want to work towards justice for all and living with respect in creation.  It helps us buy environmentally sensitive products from lower-phosphate laundry detergent to energy efficient lightbulbs.  It helps atheists heal, searchers find comfort, and faithful folks go just a little deeper in their prayer lives and in their faith journeys. 

We do the harvest supper because we care about folks, and one of the key identifiers of a Christian community is that it is passionately committed to the people in the community who need a beacon of hope in this scary, worrisome world.  That we dream of a day when all will have enough to eat and to clothe themselves, that no one will live in fear and anxiety.  That we try to show with our actions a vision of a time when we can work together in harmony towards a common goal, the way we come together to put on a delicious spread for the Athabasca friends and neighbors here this day.

That we testify to a different future, one which cares and works.  In 1979, I couldn’t imagine the future that would lead me here.  In 1989 when we fretted about George Orwell, 1999 when we worried about Y2K, in 2001 when crashing airplanes meant the start of World War 3, in 2008 when the crash of the stock market meant we were all doomed to perpetual poverty, in 2014 and so on.  We are not at our doomsday yet because ordinary folks like you and me care and make meatballs.  Because we remember Jesus telling us to focus on God’s vision, not our worries.  Remember last week’s prayer that was good for the mosquito thoughts that suck our hearts? It’s also excellent at worry wart mind meanderings. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change...

Longing for Healing

Jeremiah’s description in Chapter 8 of his field of dead bodies in the aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem is grim.  It’s very real and his anguish is raw.  Even God is weeping over the carnage.  It’s not just the loss of family, friends, acquaintances.  It’s the death of a city, a culture, a religious system, even some say, the death of God.  Back then gods were territorial, and my God is bigger than your God was seen as a very practical thing.  If one country destroyed another, it was because one God had killed another.  So Jeremiah, even in the midst of his pain is learning something new.  His God is not dead, but grieving.  That in itself is startling, shocking, and a baby step towards hope.

I have never seen a field of dead bodies in real life, unlike folks in New York or Canadian soldiers who have served in Afghanistan.  When I think of fields full of bodies in spring time, I think of baseball.  Spring camp.  Take me out to the ball game, kind of things. 

My dad loved baseball.  When spring came to Alberta, he would have a bag or two of bats, balls, gloves, and catcher’s gear sitting right outside the Chemistry Room’s emergency evacuation door.  If we were ahead on our work, that door would be opened and we’d go flying to the nearest diamond.  Kids would breathlessly ask, can we go play?

I hated baseball.  All the things I learned about in baseball were about me.  Four eyes, easy out, poor looser, sucker up to bat, fumble fingers, slow poke.  You name it, they said it, and I hated my time at bat, I hated when they picked sides and I was last, and I hated being out in field, usually so far out that a ball would never come my way, and even if it did, I couldn’t throw to hit the side of a barn.

By the time I was in high school, my classmates didn’t have to say any of those things because I would say them to myself over and over.  I knew I was a terrible baseball player. Those negative thoughts buzzed in my head like a bunch of noisy mosquitos.

Funny thing about mosquitos.  There is a story of a group of teachers, nuns, actually, coming to Alberta to start a school out in the wilderness.  They travelled by Red River Cart, and along the way, their horse foaled.  It was strong enough that they were able to get back on the trail in short order and everything was going fine until the sisters encountered a swamp filled with mosquitos.  They were so strong and numerous that they killed that colt, despite the ladies best efforts.

Mosquitos in the brain can be just as dangerous.  They suck our courage, our serenity and our hope right out of us.  They leave us feeling weak and disheartened.  They drain our dreams and happiness until all that’s left is grumpy anger that spurts out at innocent folks who don’t even know what’s hit them.  They leave us depressed and sometimes we don’t even know we are depressed.

Baseball depressed me.  Or more accurately, my thinking about myself playing baseball made me feel frustrated, hopeless, klutzy, stupid and a liability.  Except when I was with my dad.  Here’s the thing I didn’t really know about him until I was an adult.  He had been the school’s softball coach for several years.  Right beside his two curling prizes and his statue of the Columbia Space Shuttle he bought when he went to NASA, were two softballs covered with girl’s signatures from games they had won.  If there was a baseball tournament within a few days drive, we were there, returning balls for the 5 cents, eating crackerjack.  He took us kids out for playing catch and practising hitting flies as often as he could.

But that didn’t seem to translate to me.  Klutz that I was, I didn’t get it.  And it didn’t help that a song came out when I was sixteen by Janis Ian about baseball which put my experience to music and fed those mosquitos even more.

One day, however, I knew that I was going to watch the ball and hit it.  All I needed to do was watch the ball.  Nothing else.  No mosquitos bussed in my head, just the words, ‘keep your eye on the ball’.

I think that it is good to go back to those old childhood experiences and revisit them.  The story, “Shoeless Joe” written by W. P. Kinsella, did just that.  It went back to the day that a baseball team lost its vision and chose Money over the game.  It found a way through to healing that loss of baseball innocence.  It was so powerful that it became the movie, Field of Dreams staring Kevin Costner.  It wasn’t just about redeeming ourselves and remembering the good old days of baseball, it became a metaphor for healing our childhood wounds, reconciling ourselves.  In the end, Costner’s character was able to reconcile his childhood memories about his relationship with his dad.

When we go back in time to those original memories with the help of a coach or a mentor like Shoeless Joe or a spiritual director or a psychologist like Glenda, we can kill our mental mosquitos.  Not by swatting them, but by remembering Jesus’ call to set our priorities straight.  You cannot serve God and mosquitos.  You have to choose.  And when we choose to do so, there is a simple prayer that drowns out their noisy buzz.  Just like hitting a baseball, it takes practise, but it will eventually drown out the loudest mosquito.  Guaranteed.  It may take a hundred repetitions or a million, but it works.  It is the balm that God wants us to have.  And it’s simple to remember.  God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.  Amen.

 

Lost and found

I have a guilty secret! I love movies, and not just any movies, but kids’ movies, especially Disney movies.  These folks seem to have big hearts for the human condition, and they are brazen in their exploration of tough issues.  Want your 8-year-old to learn how to manage their feelings and talk about what bugs them, try Inside Out. Want them to be educated on techniques to combat racism? Sit them down to watch Zootopia.  All kinds of topics that we adults might hesitate to discuss because we’re feeling discomfort, they have worked on.  They even have worked on environmental commentary.  I was fascinated by the latest Pixar Disney movie, Finding Dory.  It tackles several topics, dealing with everything from physical disabilities, like Nemo’s fin to mental challenges, like Dory’s lack of short term memory, which causes her and her friends no end of problems.  Dory says, “nothing in my noggin” to explain her disability, which is quite untrue of course.  There is more than meets the eye in Dory, and more than meets the eye in the movie of a quest for family through the wide ocean from the Great Barrier Reef to the California coastline. 

This movie shows three fish on their adventure through the ocean stumbling repeatedly through a sea floor littered with cars, garbage, plastic and so on.  It’s subtly done, and the fish characters never make a big deal of it except when Dory gets tangled up in plastic and has to be rescued by a marine biologist.  It’s sad that we have known about the giant island of plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for years and no one has done anything about it.  It’s sad that Victoria still dumps raw sewage into the ocean, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia online.  CBC reported last year that Montreal dumps untreated sewage into the St. Lawrence, and that roughly 185-million litres of raw sewage have been dumped into Winnipeg's rivers since 2004. 

That’s about 74 Olympic sized swimming pools.  I don’t know how that compares to our town pool here across the street, but that’s a lot of water.  And when Toronto has a big storm or Halifax’s aging pipes break down, well, let’s just say that it’s not pretty.

Water is a part of us, and a part of our world.  It is changing faster than we realize, and it shouldn’t take a cruise ship sailing the North West Passage to get our attention, and to encourage us to encourage the politicians to do something.

We’ve lost our way.  We’ve forgotten that we are what we drink and that if we completely mess up our water systems, it’s going to make Jeremiah’s description of desolation come true.  The devastation of the fruitful earth is a desecration and a reversal of Genesis 1 when God’s breathe, Ruach, blew over the world and God saw that it was good.  Jeremiah reports God seeing what foolish humans have done, and it is definitely not good.   Is this what God wants for creation? Is this what we call good stewardship?

Jesus talked about going after and rescuing the insignificant, the least and the littlest.  Making an effort to hunt for that tiny coin, abandoning the herd of sheep to go looking for a lost lamb, the 1 percent.  The tiny insignificant things do matter.  When we monitor the quality of water in the Athabasca River, when we invest in a low-flow shower head or a dual flush toilet, when we change the way we brush our teeth to conserve the water more carefully, when we drink water straight from the tap to remind ourselves that water should be clean and potable and not controlled by multinational corporations, when we keep asking our politicians, when will first nations children in Canada all be guaranteed clean drinking water, when we remember to not take for granted what we pump up from our wells, when we remember to be careful when we clean up after an oil change or a painting project, it does make a difference.  It may be a drop in the bucket, but it matters, folks!  Those little actions, those attitudes and questions will add up over time.  A drop of water, millions of times over, can carve out the Drumheller river valley, or even the Grand Canyon.

We in the United Church like to preach about a God who loves us, and I do believe in that God.  But there were times when my children were small that I got exasperated with them.  Sometimes they wandered off in the store when I was trying to shop for something.  A few seconds later, I would be searching for them frantically until I would hear ‘would the mother of the little child please come to the jewelry counter’.  I would feel frustrated that they hadn’t listened, that I hadn’t watched closely enough over them, that it took only a moment for them to move so fast.  If God is the creator of this beautiful blue planet, surely there is a need to honor that creation by whatever little steps we can take to cherish it.  Because from all accounts, there isn’t a lot of water nearby and even if we harvested clean water on Mars and brought it back here, I’m not sure we could get it here fast enough to help the fish and the whales and other creatures in the ocean and rivers.  They don’t have a voice, unlike Dory and Nemo and Marlin, and we do.  May we do our best to keep doing our best to speak up for this beautiful world before it is lost into the vision Jeremiah painted so bleakly many centuries ago.  God help us find the vision, the words and the backbone to speak for the lost ones, confront the foolish ones and challenge the complacent ones, especially when we are the lost, foolish and complacent ones.  God have mercy on us all.  Amen.

Hospitality and entitlement and pokemon

With all the excitement in the news of Pokémon Go this summer, I was looking forward to coming back from holidays and interacting with kids in search of their elusive Pocket monster characters.  It has become quite the talking point; young folks are getting off the sofa, going outside and meeting people, especially the generation that has been seen as living lives similar to mushrooms, down in the dark basement playing endless video games.  Yes there have been some silly things associated with it, and some sad and tragic things from people who forgot their common sense, to kids getting lured into a trap and robbed at gunpoint!

I was hoping to provide hospitality to teens and young adults looking for their charmanders, pikachus and bulbasaurs here.   Unfortunately, or fortunately, we are not a Pokestop, but the old brick schoolhouse up the road from us is.  So I went up the road to the library to offer hospitality.  Pokémon were the number one requested by kids getting their faces painted at the summer library program at Alice B Donahue this week.  The motto, ‘gotta get them all’ is very familiar to them.  They appreciated the hospitality of meeting them where they were and respecting what they were interested in. 

Hospitality is one of the calling cards of Christian practise.  It’s a spiritual practise that was shocking when it first was taught by Jesus and Paul, and it still is shocking today.  Think about it a bit.  When was the last time you threw a dinner party and invited everyone to it regardless of whether they could give a dinner party back to you? Or fed people who would never have the ability or resources to bring a potluck dish to a gathering?  In Jesus’ time, banquets were business deals.  You knew how important you were in the community by where you sat at the table, and it was an opportunity to remind people of your power and wealth.  Unlike the free pancake breakfast at the Agricom yesterday, a dinner party was designed to show strength and curry favor.  Jesus suggesting that we have a dinner without political wheeling and dealing would today be more like the bank opening its doors to the vault and saying, “help yourself to whatever you find in here”.

Christian hospitality is a difficult ideal.  How do we manage it? I still struggle – is it safe to have this homeless person in my house for a night? Is that couple okay?  How do I know? When is it hospitality and when is it entitlement?  That’s the flip side of the banquet parable.  There are times we think we are entitled to the best customer service or the best deals at our favorite store.  We deserve to have a break today.  We deserve to know that we are saved and that we don’t need to do anything more to keep our souls as healthy as our bank accounts.  We download the app that says, “I have decided to accept Jesus as my savior” and we are done.  Nothing more needs to be said.

Jesus and Paul would have nothing to do with that kind of entitlement.  Much like Pokémon Go, it’s not enough to have the app on our phones, or the catch phrase on our lips, we are to get out into the big scary world and meet folks.  Talk to them, encounter them.  The game players who search for their characters know that it takes time, effort and training to become a competent Pokémon trainer.  Paul and Jesus too, want us to become not just people who made a commitment one day and figure that was all that was needed.  No, they want us to be people of the way, followers who see themselves as disciples, ever learning, ever experimenting with what it means to be a Christian.  Our church is a training gym for us to learn the skills and practises of being Christ followers.  Our sacraments of communion and baptism are visible signs of how we work together to provide hospitality as part of our Christian faith.  Baptism is a sign that we are choosing to be disciples and that we recognize it is a life-long path that goes best when it goes in community. 

Communion is that banquet where all are welcomed as part of Christ’s family to join together in joy and celebration that we are part of God’s beautiful world.  Both remind us that whether we are first timers, long timers, irregulars or still seekers, we are all welcome here.