Priorities not politics

Someone very wise once told me that there was nothing we can’t do if we really want it badly enough.  He said that there was always enough time, energy and money for what was truly important.  No matter how tired I was, how broke, or how busy, I could muster my reserves.  I, naturally, was skeptical, but even I had to admit, that if someone came by with two tickets and a backstage pass to meet ABBA live and in person, even if I had just given birth to my first baby, I would probably find the energy to jump on a plane to England to attend their new virtual reality concert next month.  I might not do it for Prince, Michael Jackson, Elvis or even the Beetles, but ABBA?  I have to admit I would dig up all my record albums, jump on a plane and get them to autograph every single one.

ABBA was the music of my teens, and with John Denver, provided many memories of happiness, dancing and joy. Which is what teen age life is supposed to be about.  Finding out what is most important in life is, of course, more than just rock concerts and dancing queens.  But the music we like, the heroes we looked up to in our teenage years, can point to our core values.  

Our scriptures this morning can be seen through the lens of looking at core values.  James and John Zebedee were squabbling for the best seats of power once Jesus dethroned Herod and took his place in the castle and Temple.  They wanted to be the ones whispering into his ear when people came to the foot of the throne and petitioned for Jesus to solve their problems. The two brothers were stuck in a traditional idea of change, that society could only transform through a violent take over, a coup.  They thought about politics first and theology second.

I like the definition of politics I recently stumbled on, “Politics is when people choose their words and actions based on how they want others to react rather than based on what they really think.”  James and John wanted Jesus to treat them as better than the others.  “We want you to grant our request.  See to it!”  Pretty pushy.  We also see politics in 1 Kings reading of the two women arguing over a baby.  One described herself as a loyal citizen, pointing to the other as the evil doer.  Solomon played politics with the women too, manipulating them to reveal which one really cared about the baby.  Note that the passage does not say which woman was the one who cared the most, the one claiming to be the loyal subject or the one first accused.  One subtle nuance to this story is that the women were living in a household without a man as patriarch to arbitrate, and to witness.  Women were not allowed to be witnesses, only men.  So there was no one Solomon could turn to whose testimony would hold up in the court. Solomon had to think outside the box to solve the problem. Solomon tricked them into showing their true intentions, their real values.  One wanted equality and fairness seeing the baby as an object to fight over.  And if both babies were dead, equality would have been re-established. The other simply wanted her baby to live and was willing to sacrifice her right to the baby to guarantee its safety.  When a sword is hovering over something we cherish, our values come to the forefront very quickly.

That’s a good time to look at our values and really examine them, see if they are aligned with the Gospel, or can be tweaked to be lived out in healthier ways. Having a clear focus on why we do what we do is something we need to do intentionally.  So many people talk about the importance of putting first things first, knowing why we do what we do.  Whether it’s Steven Covey’s Seven Habits, Barack Obama’s campaign on hope, Martin Luther King’s dream, Mother Theresa’s ministry, Gandhi’s march for salt, Greta Thunberg sailing to North America, all great people with clear purposes and a focus that they continually remind themselves of.  Movies like “City Slicker” or “Bucket List” or “Last Holiday” tell stories of people who clarify their values when faced with the equivalent of a sword threatening to cut a baby in half.

There are times when our values need to be challenged, re-evaluated, and shaken up.  What we believed in as teen-agers can seem shallow now.  If I had a choice between an Abba Concert and eliminating Global Warming when I was a teen, I would probably have chosen ABBA.  Now, as much as it would be hard, I would let go my craving for hedonism in exchange for saving the whole world.

Jesus clarified the values he expected from his followers.  They were to serve and to avoid politics, not to bully or grab power.  There was to be no competition amongst them, no hierarchy, and definitely no politics.  No arguing over who gets the baby.  Keep the big picture in mind.  

What’s your big picture?  My values that are important to me are being part of a thriving congregation that practices radical hospitality and is a safe, trustworthy space for all who want to learn more about this radical way of thinking.  I also value spirituality, being connected with something bigger than myself, a big dream, a purpose, an intention to be a healing presence in the world.  And I value creativity, whether it’s through drama, scrapbooking, music, dance or art.

Our congregation picked out inspiration, empowerment and engagement, which are amazing words to guide us.  They help remind us that we are to be servants to one another and also the world.  We are to work together to build a better, more loving world.  That is needed today as much as it was 5 years ago, 100 years ago and in the times of Jesus and Solomon.  Thanks be to God for the scriptures that remind us who we are and how we live out God’s purpose in this world.  Amen.

Did you know that you can watch the service live on Facebook, or join us on Zoom?  I send out a weekly e-mail with the prayers, hymns and scriptures.  E-mail me at revatauc@telus.net to get our worship resources.

What’s Cooking?

 

Another Thanksgiving is here, and another year of having to hold off on the big family gatherings, the huge turkeys, the pumpkin pies and my personal favorite, the mounds of stuffing full of seasoning and steam and flavor.  Thanksgiving has traditionally been a time to celebrate the harvest and the abundance of food.  It’s the time of year when I like to joke that people in small towns lock their car doors;  they don’t want to come back from shopping to find some freeloading zucchinis in the passenger seat!

I wonder how people managed their thanksgiving celebrations during the Spanish Flu epidemic, when for 3 years, the virus decimated the world’s population in the worst pandemic since the Bubonic Plague.  The Spanish Flu happened in the midst of a world war as well, and it killed more young people than the war did.  And guess when the Anti-mask League of San Francisco was established?  1919!  History is repeating itself.

In the midst of such challenging times, I am hearing more and more stories of anxiety and discomfort.  But not, surprisingly enough, from everyone.  Even here, we have quiet saints in our congregation who are staying calm and centered as people around them worry, debate and fret.  There are folks raising babies or opening new restaurants, there are people exploring bible verses with word search puzzles from the dollar store (who knew there were bible word search books?), there are people sending checks to help the garage sale out and people packing up garage sale items to go from the church to Riddles and Lollypop.

One secret I am noticing with our quiet saints, and you who are those quiet saints probably don’t even recognize that you are one, is that they practice gratitude quite regularly.  In fact, one of my mentors recently challenged my group of ministers to keep track of the times when we are not thinking grateful thoughts and do our best to turn them around.  When we are thinking about our neighbor’s negativity, or our politicians and their latest foibles, or agonizing over what that person really meant when they said that thing at coffee time last week, we are not thinking about God.  And the mentors and saints are thinking about God or gratitude or blessings rather than or as much as they think about their pains and their fears.  One saint comes through the office door so cheerfully you would think that their life is a bed of roses. But they are not hiding the fact that arthritis is frustrating or that their body is not as agile and healthy as it used to be.  They are not denying reality, they are just accepting reality then focussing on the positives they see. 

This is not the magical thinking I see that some folks are using – if only they have the right crystals in the right order or have the right herbal tea or the perfect mantra, their lives will become a steady state of bliss.  This is a different kind of thinking, a Christian kind of thinking.

That kind of thinking, known as “the Way” has had powerful effects over the centuries.  My favorite book describes it this way:

“People converted initially, not because they found Christianity philosophically persuasive but because… it worked. During the… Plague of Galen in 165-180 in which hundreds of thousands of people died in the streets, Christians proved their spiritual mettle by tending to the sick…  Because they did not fear death, Christians stayed behind in plague-ravaged cities while others fled.  Their acts of mercy extended to all the suffering regardless of class, tribe, or religion and created the conditions in which others accepted their faith… on the basis of Jesus’ Great Command to love God and to love one’s neighbor, a quality that was … often missing in Roman pagan religions.” (Diana Butler Bass, A People’s History of Christianity, p 59-60).

Dare I suggest that quality is often missing today in contemporary pagan religions?  Missing in some varieties of current Atheism as well?  And when we are living in times where anxiety is rampant, that quality is always needed. 

In 1920, in this very pulpit, a new minister stood here and looked at his congregation who had survived the Great Fire, the resulting near bankruptcy of the town, the exodus of residents, the end of the Great War and Spanish Flu, to speak these words to your ancestors in the faith: “The world in general is now at probably the most critical period it has ever known; unrest and change are the order of the day.  This spirit of unrest, however , is a good omen and not a bad one, … caused by a spiritual yearning, and a looking forward to something higher and better…” (Athabasca Archives, retrieved October 7, 2021)

Every generation struggles with its spiritual unrest, but there is hope.  The scriptures today remind us that anxiety is not the great commandment Jesus told us to obey.  Quite the contrary!  Worry, fretting, obsessing about what other people might think, none of these lead to the life Jesus is calling us to. 

Jesus said, “But strive first for the kingdom of God and God’s justice, and all these things will be given to you as well.”  What does that look like?  What does a healthy, thriving community of God look like?  It has spiritual markers such as vision, radical hospitality, joy, accountability, humbleness, open-heartedness, risk-taking, prayerful, missional, generous, witnessing and innovative.  One might even dare sum it up with PIE – Public, Intentional and Explicit, from our affirming education, or even one step further, Public, Intentional, Prayerful and Explicit.  Whether it’s thriving churches or quiet saints, they all take prayer very seriously. They take Paul’s teaching “in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” and they do their best to do just that.  Think realistically but act prayerfully.  Focus on God, and we can weather any storm, survive any plague, endure any challenge, face down any fear.  Even if all we can do is remember the prayer, “Be Still and Know that I am God” or the other centering prayers we have been using in our worship, we will grow in our faith.

So cook up some prayer.  Cook up some peacefulness practices.  Cook up some moments of random generosity.  Cook up a big pot of gratefulness and gratitude, and sip on it as often as possible.  It’s what grows us in our faith and helps our community and our town thrive.  It’s what has been working for two thousand years, and will continue to work long into the future.  May it be so for us all.  Amen!

Turning to Love

 

How do we adults hear Jesus calling us to become as little children?  It’s one thing to talk about the command to practice radical hospitality to families, but in these days of Covid, that seems to be a moot point.  But what about the idea he gave us of becoming as children ourselves?

I don’t think he meant that we should go back to wearing diapers or to hitting each other when we are fighting over toys or spending our days in sandboxes making castles.  But I do think he wanted us to look at our attitudes towards life.  Children, especially the preschoolers, aren’t interested in politics, they don’t have lofty ambitions, and for the most part, they are open to new things.  Watching a three-year old at the playground with a parent is like watching a yoyo, they slowly go farther and farther from the adult, and then run back to the safety of the adult.  Maybe for a snack or a hug or just the reassurance that they haven’t disappeared.  Then they move away a little further.  This will happen again and again as they balance their need for independence and their curiosity with the security and safety of a grown-up being nearby.  They can also be very creative.  How many times have we heard the story of a Christmas or birthday party with lots of presents where the best toy is an empty box?  I remember my brother when he was two years old, loving climbing into the pots and pans cupboard, closing the door and then bursting out with a ‘ta dah’!  Surprise!  Mom had to take all the pots and pans out until he got tired of the game.  They can be incredibly courageous too, oblivious to the consequences of their actions.  My daughter at the same age watched her 5-year-old brother navigate to the top of a very tall and rickety slide in a neighbor’s back yard.  I never thought she would try to climb it, as the rungs were quite narrow and slippery.  Turn my back for a moment, and the three-year-old was at the top of the 5-foot ladder! 

Curious, creative, courageous are just some of the gifts of childhood that we may have lost as adults, but they are something we can recapture, for both our own mental and physical health and also the health of our institutions.

Kairos Canada sent us a prayer that reminds us of the power of children:

The Great Spirit gave life in a circle, from childhood to childhood. Our children are there to teach us and for us to teach them. Our children were taken out of our Sacred Hoop and our hoop has been broken.

For decades we mourned the loss of our children. They never completely returned home. 

Even today, children are often missing.  Stats Canada data from 2016 reports that of the children in Alberta in foster care, 76% are indigenous.  The circle is still broken.  How do we support the calls for healing that circle?  Even here we can remember to be curious, creative and courageous in asking questions of our church, our province, our institutions that challenge not just what they do for children but how they do it.  From the new education curriculum which has been condemned by parents, teachers and professors alike for removing residential school history, to the upsurge of cases of infections in children under the age of 12, we need to challenge our politicians, our systems and our institutions .

 Paul wrote that our institutions need to be genuinely loving, and hospitable.  Whatever we do should be looked at through those two lenses.  We are being called to re-envision how our society must own up to the damage done to children today.  The times they are in abusive situations, the times they are neglected, abused and bullied by both individuals and systems.  The times when parents are not able to be there to help their children and the times when parents are part of the problem, not the solution.  The times when parents get angry that the schools are rumored to be forcing children to get vaccinations, the times when parents lose their children to easily preventable diseases like measles because they refused to have their children vaccinated.  The times parents have had to hear their children’s’ surgeries have been postponed, the times parents have had to help their children get educated at home. 

It is time to demand accountability from the systems we have.  When we write letters to support our universities, when we wear orange t-shirts, when we put out shoes to represent the thousands of children that never came home from residential school, when we text our local town and county candidates, we are challenging our institutions to live up to Jesus’ high standards.

Here in Athabasca United Church, we have cared for the children in the community for a long time.  There is an article in the town archives that told about Nancy Applebee and Alice Donahue rolling up their sleeves in this church’s basement to make sandwiches for the children’s school lunches before lunch programs existed.  This very building was used as overflow classroom space when the Brick Schoolhouse had no more room for the children.  We helped start the “Food for Thought” thanks to Cam Dierker, to make sure that high school students never had to learn on an empty stomach.  When Covid is over, we have plans for cooking classes with the CAVE outreach school so that every junior high and senior high student will graduate with basic food literacy and nutrition skills, and our cooking circle program is targeted to low income moms who struggle to stretch their food dollars to feed their little ones.

What more can we do?  Keep texting, keep writing letters, keep hoping and praying for the children in foster care, and keep loving hospitality at the core of everything we do.  When we do that, and keep having courageous, curious and creative conversations with our friends and neighbors, we will inspire, empower and engage our community to truly welcome these little ones into the circle of God’s love.  May it be so for us all!

Cutting remarks

 What a wild and weird pair of scriptures we have this morning.  The Exodus passage about Zipporah, and Mark’s heavy-handed amputation text.  Both are about cutting things off physical bodies and are disturbing to say the least. 

The Zipporah story happens after Moses encountered the burning bush and was on his way back to Egypt.  The original Hebrew is so barebones, it’s hard to translate.  Who was killing whom, did Zipporah cast or touch the skin to Moses, why was God angry in the first place, and why did Zipporah have a flint knife in the bronze age?

Imagine, people have written books and essays on those 2 little verses, trying to understand just what was going on.  I certainly had never heard of the ‘bloody bridegroom’ before someone here asked about it, not what I was expecting when I invited folks to submit bible passages or quotes they were curious about.  Some people read this as Zipporah, the daughter of a priest, using a ritual obsidian knife, doing the rite while Moses was sick and recommitting herself to their marriage.  Others hear this as Zipporah being angry at Moses for not having circumcised his son, and throwing down the skin in disgust.

The Hebrew is that vague and that easily mistranslated.  But consensus seems to be that she was cutting off that which she saw was a barrier between Moses and God.  Jesus talked about cutting off whatever was separating his followers from God too.  He was using shocking language that would have upset his folks.  Back then there were no prosthetics and no effective anesthetics. Losing a limb often meant death by blood loss or being condemned to a life of begging, unless a family member would take the unfortunate person in.  Losing a foot or a hand was dangerous!

Jesus didn’t want the disciples to start amputating body parts right and left.  He wanted them to take very seriously what it meant to be his followers.  He wanted them to realize how dangerous their attitudes could be.  Let’s remember what they were doing when he scolded them.  They were getting ready to judge someone who was not part of their inner circle.  Someone who was casting out demons in Jesus’ name. 

Now to put this into context, this is the same chapter which talks about Jesus going up to the mountaintop with Peter and James and John, and when he came back down, the rest of the disciples had failed to heal a child of her demon.  So, to see other people do what they had failed to do must have been downright galling.  They were jealous!  They wanted Jesus to cut the others down and condemn them as outsiders. 

Jesus said that he didn’t want to copywrite his name, or to give the disciples an exclusive franchise on the use of his name.  He wasn’t interested in trademarking his healing skills, and he didn’t want the disciples to think that they could be an exclusive club.  But more importantly, he wanted to turn them away from focusing on what other people were doing wrong to focusing on what they could be doing better.

He didn’t say, cut other people’s foot off, he was saying cut your own foot off.  In other words, instead of being angry and resentful and jealous of other people, of being judgmental about them and flying off the handle at them, stay focused on your own spiritual journey.

We have seen a lot of people expressing a lot of anger and frustration these last few weeks.  There’s anger at the government for not doing enough.  There’s anger at the government for doing too much.  There’s anger at my neighbor for disagreeing with me.  There’s anger at my family member for not agreeing with me.  It seems like we’re caught up in an epidemic of anger as much as anything.  And an epidemic of finger-pointing, resentment, jealousy and frustration.

Jesus said to his disciples that rather than point fingers at someone who was having success, they should look at themselves first.  Why were they feeling jealous of someone else?  Why were they being tattle tales and grumblers?  Why were they sure that they had the right to feel superior or to be the insiders who knew better than the rest?

It is easier to blame others for our frustrations and our anger bursts than it is to look inside at our own pain.  Parker Palmer talks a lot about how we are addicted to fixing, saving, advising and correcting others.  We like to be right, we like to be indignant.  We like to judge and be angry.

But that’s not what a Christian is called to be.  Some of the greatest saints of our faith spent a good deal of time wrestling with their darker nature.  They may not have cut their feet or hands off, but they did circumcise their hearts and minds.  Sometimes, like Moses, they were in so much trouble with their anger and their jealousy that they needed someone else, someone wise and faithful like a priestess’ daughter to help them see the source of their disconnection with God and cut that source off with a ritual practice.  Moses was the big hero, the man with all the tricks up his sleeve that would free his people from slavery, but it was his wife that remembered that faith begins at home. 

What do we need to cut off in order to live more faithfully?  This summer I tried drying my clothes on the line like I remembered my grandma doing.  I wonder about buying a solar panel to charge my phone.  I drive my hybrid car to the city less.  I hope to find ways to lower my carbon footprint, as I’m sure you are too.  I cut off my words and thoughts when they slip into racist assumptions, I circumcise my discomfort when I hear stories of residential schools or oppression or racism or homophobia.  These things are painful for us to face and admit, but they are barriers to our relationships with one another and God as well.  When we look at ourselves first before pointing our fingers at others, we are able to start out on our heroic journeys as Christians and healers.  Let us follow Jesus on the path to building a more loving and peaceful society for all creation.

Writing on the Wall - Daniel 5

Guess how old the oldest graffiti is?

Long before people began scrawling ‘Kilroy Was Here’ or before craft stores had to lock up cans of spray paint, humans were making graffiti. There are examples of graffiti on the walls and streets of Pompeii, put there before Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE.  Some people argue that the cave paintings discovered in France are the first.  Regardless of when it started, graffiti has a long history, and like modern examples, it has been a record of where people have been and what they have been thinking about.

Often what they have been thinking about has been the issues they feel most passionate about – hunting mastodons for the early Cro-Magnons, where to find women of easy virtue in Pompeii or how ancient tourists felt when standing at the foot of the pyramids in Giza.  Early Christians wrote on the walls of their catacombs in Rome, where they were able to worship safely and secretly together during times of political turmoil.

But I think the oldest written story about graffiti is this one in the book of Daniel.  It has become such a common phrase, 'The writing on the wall’ that I suspect most people don’t know or remember that it comes from the Bible.

Daniel, for those who haven’t heard of him, is more famously remembered as surviving a night with starving lions, protected by God because even the threat of death would not shake his public commitment to his faith and to God.  Like his friends, Shadrack, Meshack and Abednego who were thrown into the fiery furnace, Daniel was part of the first generation of captives from Israel to be targeted for cultural assimilation into the Babylonian system.  They were chosen from the rest for special education, and special food to enter government service.  Their names were changed from typical Hebrew names to Babylonian ones.  Daniel and Mishael with ‘el’ in their names, another name for God, were to be called Belteshazzar, and Meshach.  They were also told to eat non-kosher foods too, something Daniel was able to foil with a clever plan (Daniel 1). 

They stayed committed to the God of their ancestors, which is an amazing feat of itself.  It was common for conquering countries to brag that their gods were the source of their victories.  When they fought, they believed their gods fought, and when they won, their gods won.  A winning God was worth praying to, and a losing God was either seen as dead or added to the family of Gods.  In Egypt and in Greece there were dozens of gods because of this.  The theology of the time thought Yahweh had failed and lost and was no longer to be honored.

So Daniel, by going out on a limb and speaking for God, was being radically counter cultural.  By reading and interpreting the words written on the wall, he was declaring to the thousand officials that his God was not forgotten, nor had he been assimilated, and even though he was surrounded by people who were the ruling class, he had not forgotten to follow the God who cared about the weak, the down-trodden, the widow, the orphan.  The God who cared for the conquered people living in a foreign land, and the slaves who needed rescuing from the powers of Egypt.  The God who nurtured community and compassion. The God of Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and Joseph, Moses and Miriam, the God of Covenant not conquest.   And when Daniel saw the writing on the wall, he probably knew that God had not forgotten him either.

We too can see the writing on the wall if we know where to look.  We are at a challenging time in the history of humankind, the most challenging in my lifetime, although not for those who lived through the Depression or World War Two.  The extreme heat we experienced this summer, another bad year for crops as well as glaciers dying and permafrost no longer permanently frozen, is a sign that global warming is real and needs to be addressed.  20 years since 9/11 and the Taliban are back in power in Afghanistan.  Surging numbers of Covid cases and hospitalizations in Alberta with vaccination rates plateauing and yet people are surprised that they are being asked to wear masks again.  Like King Belshazzar, we have been focused on the wrong things.  Daniel was focused on different priorities, God priorities.   

Jesus was the same way.  He knew that if he continued to challenge the priorities of the people in power, he would end up in trouble.  He knew that challenging the status quo would have only one outcome.  But he kept his focus on God’s priorities and was prepared to do whatever it took to meet those priorities.

God’s priorities haven’t changed.  Caring for the folks without hope, the people who feel they don’t have power over their lives.  The lonely, the frustrated, and yes, even the folks who think they have all the answers, and the ones who party like kings.  When do we take time to ask what God might think of our society, how God might measure us, count us, weigh us, and challenge us?  The time is now.  The opportunity is there, and the action is simple.  Whether we request a mail in ballot, a trip to the advanced polls, or show up to cast our vote, let’s vote as if we have seen the finger of God writing on the wall of our world.  Vote as if this is the most Christian thing we can do.  Vote as if this is how we follow Jesus even if it looks like it will end up in suffering and challenge and change.  Vote as if we are Daniel, telling a powerful society  that the writing is on the wall.  Because we are called to follow Jesus, and speak truth to power, even if it challenges the culture, even if it goes against what everyone thinks we should do.  And because we are called to see the writing on the wall and tell it to the people even when they don’t want to hear it.  Let’s be brave and bold as we serve Jesus, empowering and inspiring each other to make a difference in the world!

What old bible quote are you interested in hearing a sermon on?  Contact me and I will put it together.  Or leave a comment below.

Favoritism

Favoritism seems to be an inescapable part of human nature.  Last week we heard about how God favored Abel’s offerings over Cain’s, and Cain murdered Abel because of that favoritism.  Today, we have an uncomfortable story about even Jesus, our role model and our teacher, playing favorites.  Not only that, he calls a woman a dog.  That is as offensive today as it was back then.  Why?  Because of her ethnicity.  He judged her because of her race, and this lady wasn’t good enough.  Jesus was playing favorites.

How many times have we been the favorite?  How many times were we singled out as not being the favorite?  How many times have we shown favoritism towards someone over someone else? 

Even God seems to show favoritism from time to time, especially when it comes to the Hebrew people.   Malachi 1 has the famous quote that was turned into a novel about twins and favoritism, “Yawheh says, Yet I have loved Jacob but I have hated Esau;”

It’s hard not to show favoritism.  One of the hardest jobs as a parent is doing our best to be impartial, not favoring one child over another.  Even with the best of intentions, it can still be difficult.  One of the saddest funerals I ever presided over was a twin who had died in a car crash.  She was part of a big family, and one of the younger children.  The family was so large that she was given away at birth to another family, and that act shaped her in desperate ways.  That led to complicated grief all because of what was perceived by some as good intentions but by others as favoritism.

It’s easy to play favorites by judging appearances, or by how articulate someone is.  My grandfather, who was a travelling salesman, used to tell us that the best way to judge a person’s character was from how shiny their shoes were and how clean their fingernails were.  Again, that’s natural.  So natural, James warned his people some 2000 years ago not to do that.

That’s easier said than done.  How do we do that?  As a congregation! When we practice the commandment of “love your neighbor as yourself”, we are countering the addiction to favoritism by replacing it with the ancient art of hospitality.  Parking Palmer describes it in more modern language, calling it “giving and receiving welcome.” He says “People learn best in hospitable spaces… we support each other’s learning by giving and receiving hospitality.”

We have been hospitable in many ways.  Every time we have a guest speaker who has experienced the hurt of favoritism and discrimination, they feel welcomed and supported.  People like Thom’s choir, Phyllis when she talked about Truth and Reconciliation, Debbie with her stories of rejection by churches, and Gill remembering Amber Valley settlers.  Taking prayer shawls to the Chinese restaurants and hotel families for Asian History month.  Cooking meals for the community.  Putting a rainbow flag in our window. Holding forums on wills, estates and legacy planning.  Hosting educational events for LGTBQ and their allies.  Working with PRAAC to put in place funding and programs to tackle family violence.  Providing food, clothes and counselling for homeless people struggling with a variety of issues.  Teaching cooking lessons to low-income parents and Blue Heron members and so much more.

There’s one act of hospitality that particularly stands out in my mind.  A few years back, we had several people in town ask what we the United Church were going to do about Syrian refugees.  I went to the interfaith refugee committee to ask what they were planning and heard one person say that they didn’t think it was wise to bring Muslim people into Athabasca where we only had Christians.  They wanted to bring people in who might join their churches, and they also said they wanted to bring in refugees that were not getting attention from the media, which was a good reason.  But Syrians?

Syrians like the lady Jesus talked to in our scripture reading today, who said even the dogs deserved to eat the crumbs that fall off the dinner table.  Syrians who wanted a chance to bring up their families away from tanks, bullets and bombs.  With the invaluable partnership of St. Andrew’s Zion Church in Collinton, we brought not one or two but eight people to Athabasca, Christians and Muslims alike, and taught them how to survive Canadian winters.  We bought thousands of dollars worth of gift cards to raise money for dentist bills and school clothes, for laptops and education.  One family we brought, the Halawas, are applying for Canadian Citizenship this month, the girls are planning to study nursing and pharmacy, the son is growing up and graduating from high school and hoping to become a police officer or mechanic.  The oldest girl is now married to a husband she picked of her own free will and is very happy.  Everyone is working on driver’s licences and English is no longer a struggle for most of them.  They have jobs and they are thriving.  Why? Because Jesus heard the Syrophoenician woman’s challenge.  He let her disturb him to the point that Jesus changed his mind.  Because of her challenge, her descendants, thousands of years later, found a welcome here among us.  Because Jesus acknowledged her humanity, we too acknowledge the humanity of everyone we meet.  When we turn away from playing favorites and choose instead to empower, engage and inspire the people we meet through giving and receiving radical welcome and hospitality, we bring God’s healing into this troubled world.  May we continue to inspire and welcome those without favoritism.  Amen!

“Am I My Brother’s Keeper?”

How many of us remember the question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”  Despite being a bit of a bible geek, I did not remember where it was found in the bible and did a google search to figure it out.  Much to my surprise, it wasn’t a trigger that inspired a parable by Jesus, nor was it a question asked by the Pharisees, or even a phrase that Paul had coined in one of his letters.  It was, however, in Genesis 4.

The last time I read that story was as a kid in my illustrated story bible.  ‘Cain and Abel’ is a tale of common humanity.  Jealousy of a sibling is something many people are familiar with although not many will admit it.  Even more common is making an excuse when caught red-handed.  Cain defensively and angrily tried to deflect God’s question. 

God told Cain to let go of his anger and jealousy, but Cain hung onto it, and nursed it, according to the scriptures.  As James wrote in his letter, “let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s justice.”  Cain’s anger did indeed not produce God’s justice.  Cain fed his anger until it boiled over into violence.  And then he refused to take responsibility by deflecting God’s question.

We’re not murderers, as far as I know, but the question of “Am I my brother’s or sister’s keeper?”, feels central to the tension we are now seeing in many conversations.  It is a difficult ethical question to ask of ourselves.  The people who are covid deniers or anti-vaxxers are ready to accuse us of being sheeple and worse at the slightest opportunity.  They promote medications that are proscribed for livestock, as if that is safer than a vaccine developed by some of the most educated and dedicated medical experts in the world.  Their anger does not lead to justice, which at this time would be vaccinations distributed to more than just 2% of the world’s population.  Nor does it build up love and community in this country.

“Am I my brother’s keeper?” is a justification for not taking care of one another, not taking responsibility for how our actions impact others.  Remember the first Star Wars movie when Han Solo delivered R2D2 and Princess Leia to the Rebel Camp after escaping Darth Vader and the Death Star?  She says to him, “It’s not over yet”, and Han says defiantly, “It is for me, sister. Look, I ain't in this for your revolution, and I'm not in it for you, Princess. I'm in it for the money.”

That is where a lot of people are right now.  They are in it for themselves, and no one else.  They struggle to deal with change or with being asked to do something like wear a mask or get a vaccine that doesn’t benefit them or their bank accounts.  They are coming from a place of defensiveness that says “I don’t want to do anything someone else tells me I should do” or “I don’t need to care about others getting sick”.  They are coming from a place of entitlement, or anger or shame or fear or denial.  Ultimately, they don’t want to have to change for someone else.  They fear being controlled by someone else.  And their fear of being controlled is so strong that they do irrational things.

It’s always easy to see when it’s them out there that are stuck in the question of “Am I my brother’s keeper?’  But what about us who want to follow Jesus?

Christians are not called to judge our neighbors, as tempting as that might seem.  Or as widespread as that might appear – judging those who have vaccines, those who don’t, those who are staying home, those who went to the Calgary Stampede, those who have Covid, those who don’t believe in Covid, those who sanitize their hands, those who hug everyone they meet, those who know who they will vote for, those who don’t know if it will make a difference whether they vote or not.

As Jesus said, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”

We are to look within, noticing the times we resort to anger or respond with greed or jealousy or pride or denial or resentment.  The times we lie, or say nasty things about people behind their backs, the times we don’t listen to someone with a different point of view.  The times we lash out or the times we fail to speak up.  Especially now, the times we need make changes and accommodations that we feel are unnecessary or unimportant.  More now than ever, change will be hard and resented and rebelled against.  Clinging to human traditions when they no longer help us connect with the holy can lead to the exact kind of Pharisee thinking Jesus was condemning.

It’s not how our church is set up, or how we feel about wearing masks in church, or being asked if we are double-vaccinated or where we sit that makes us unclean.  It is the anger and resentment, or stubborn clinging to what we think is the right way of doing things that can break down our relationship with God.

Ultimately, we are called to be more than our brother’s keeper.  We are not to enable or abandon them, but to love them.  Jesus taught that we are to love our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength, and with all our mind; and love our neighbor as much as we show compassion to ourselves.  That is what is truly important.  Loving God, loving neighbor, loving self.  We can do this, and when we do, we are following the way Christ calls us to be, turning back on what makes us unclean and worshiping God in ways that make a difference in the world.  May it be so for us all.