“Are We There Yet?”

Summer time and the living is easy!  Fish are jumping and the river is high.  It’s a time to pull out the kayaks and canoes, the fishing rods and hammocks, jump in the lake, take a road trip and read a good book. 

Do you remember those family vacations when you were a child, being excited to get into the car, but then the road went on and on?  How when we were seven we discovered the power to enrage adults with the simple question, “Are we there yet?”

How many of us, much to our chagrin, later found our kids or our nieces or nephews doing the same thing to us that we did as children?

How many of us never had that experience, maybe family outings were not something we grew up with or maybe some of us grew up without families, or spent time in group homes or residential schools?  Some of us might have spent so much time in hospitals or refugee camps that trips like these didn’t happen.  But we may all have a memory of longing for something better, for some time when we hoped the cancer went into remission, the visas to Canada finally showed up, the summer holidays started, or the destination reached.

We longed for something different, something better, something more.  We didn’t want to wait, we didn’t want to play another game of “I Spy”, or spend another minute strapped in our seatbelts!

Paul was no stranger to waiting for destinations to arrive.  He grew up in Turkey, went to school in Jerusalem, traveled to Greece, Cyprus, back to Turkey, to Syria, and was planning his next trip to Spain when he wrote this letter to the Romans.  He also knew the disappointment of travel plans going awry - ship wrecked on Malta, thrown in prison multiple times, chased out of towns by angry mobs.  More importantly, he knew that he wanted to bring hope to the Romans, a group of Christians he had not met before.  He wanted his letter to show his good intentions and his amazing trust of hope in Jesus Christ’s teachings.  He did that through an amazing demonstration of vulnerability.

A lot of people, when they are trying to persuade others will pile on the praise of both the listeners and themselves.  Paul had moments when he did just that.  The beginning of Romans is a big celebration of how famous the Roman Christian community had become.  And Paul said he couldn’t wait to meet them as he hoped he would be as inspiring to them as they had already been to him.  But then we get this deeply honest and vulnerable passage that sounds like someone in despair because they have an addiction they can’t beat.  Paul had strong will power, but that was not enough.  Like many of the alcoholics that have met in the basement of churches over the years, Paul had to admit he was powerless over his addiction, which he called sin.

Sin had control over his life, and the struggle was hard.  Just like today, our struggle with addictions is alsohard.  Addictions have become very polarizing.  We hear about the growth in tent cities, the increasing number of deaths from overdoses and wonder why people don’t stop living like that.  Why can’t street people be more like us?  A modern-day prophet, Dr. Gabor Maté, says that the only way we will ever address this is when we recognize the addictive nature of our very society and how almost all humans have addictions to something at some time in their lives.  His work in East Vancouver where he treated many addicts was improved when he began to recognize his own addiction.  Maté had an obsession that cost him hundreds, even thousands of dollars a month.  He would feel an adrenalin rush and excitement and deny that he had a problem.  He made lots of money and could afford his addiction, even though his mind was obsessed with the hunt for his next fix.  The addiction that cost thousands of dollars was not to drugs or cigarettes or alcohol, but of all things, music. While it might seem laughable, at one point he wrote that it affected his relationship with his wife, his children, even his job as a doctor.  He had to go to an AA meeting to get help with his obsessive pursuit of cds. 

The first step was acknowledging he had a problem.  Just like Paul, he had to be truthful to himself and others that he was helpless to conquer his addiction on his own.  The second step, the hardest one, was asking for help.

What are we addicted to?  Video games?  Netflix? Investments in volatile stocks? Fast driving? The shopping channels?  Clutter?  Cleaning?  Food?  Control?  Gossip, judging other people, arguing with them online?  What gives us that unhealthy adrenaline rush that maybe just maybe we’re too hungry for?  I heard the phrase ‘rage farming’ the other day, and I think that there are people who are addicted to the adrenaline rush they get from feeling self-righteous about people who think differently than them.  Some politicians nurture outrage deliberately to get more votes, others pass around petitions that target minorities and share outrageous conspiracy theories.

Addictions are beaten by a higher purpose.  It’s interesting that Paul described the first two steps of an 12 step program in this scripture, admitting that there’s a problem, and turning it over to a higher power as we understand it.  Whether its drugs or classical cd’s the solution is the same.

Community and truth telling are essential.  Brene Brown says it only takes one or two people to help us feel connected.  Hate does not build true community.  Hate does not break down addictions.  Hate does not destroy loneliness, despair, or hopelessness.  Only love does that.  Jesus asked us to trust the truth about our addictions to him and to God.  That when we make that choice, take that step, when we experiment with a higher purpose, a nobler cause than just our day-to-day survival, empathy instead of judgement, then we will find rest for our souls.  Are we there yet? No, but that’s what faith is for.  Practicing the patience to know that while we may not be there yet, we are on our way to God’s good dream for us.  May our lives be so filled with our higher purpose that the journey becomes filled with the joy of living into God’s purpose for us.  Amen.

Thirsty anyone?

In the ruins of the ancient City of Rome a few short blocks from the Colosseum, there is a small drinking fountain that dribbles out a thin stream of water.

In Rome on a hot day in September of 2017, the street vendors brought out bottles of water to unsuspecting tourists who paid upward of 8 dollars for a bottle, which can mean a hefty profit for the vendors.  Unbeknownst to the tourists, the fountain on the Paladine Hill was a short walk away from the Colosseum and brings fresh water through a Roman aqueduct built before Christ was born.  Getting a drink of water was as simple as filling up water bottles at this ancient tap.  It was free too.  The tour guide didn't push the water at us like the street vendors loudly did, just gave a gentle invitation to fill up our water bottles and be quenched.

This month we have become very sensitive to the importance of water to our existence.  One moment we were struggling with the smoke of forest fires and praying for rain, the next we were facing flood warnings. Last week in Athabasca, the downtown gazebo had its own moat and the skate park looked like a small swimming pool.  The Athabasca River was filled with large trees speeding down to the Arctic Ocean in a great hurry.  There are still communities in the north hoping and praying for more rain to end the forest fire season for good this year.

Water is easy to take for granted in our climate where snow is plentiful, the glaciers are clean, and the rivers and lakes abundant.  For Jesus, it was another matter entirely. So much of Israel is surrounded by harsh dry land.  A group of United Church friends went on a tour of Egypt, Petra and Israel some 20 years ago, and came back with stories of small towns having their water systems bought up by large corporations.  The corporations would bottle all the water and then sell it back to the townsfolk.  They lost their access to their water supply, and not only that, watched the growth of plastic pollution accumulate in the town as there was no recycling plant for the empty bottles.  Water became a political weapon, and the Jordan River became a source of wealth that everyone wanted to control.

In our own country, clean drinking water is not a given for many Canadians. As of two weeks ago, the Government of Canada reported that 142 long term drinking water advisories had been lifted since 2015, but there are still 28 long term drinking water advisories in effect in 26 communities across Canada.  And as anyone knows who has been to Banff or Jasper lately, the great glaciers that feed the Athabasca and North Saskatchewan rivers, are receding rapidly.  We cannot presume that our water supply is secure and unchanging. Nor should we assume that our experience with water is universal.

According to the World Health Authority, in 2020, 5.8 billion people used safe drinking-water. The remaining 2 billion people had to travel at least 30 minutes or more to get water that was safe or drank untreated water, or even had deliveries of a few cups of water once or twice a week.

Jesus knew the value of water in a way that we who have taps don’t.  He knew that a gift of water was more than a nice thing to do, it could mean the difference between life and death.  Interesting that in this scripture, Jesus is giving instructions to his followers on how they will need to depend on others to survive.  This is part of his long lecture in Matthew on how to be a disciple preaching to an indifferent world.  In some ways, this is not about what we should do, ie give hospitality, although I would never suggest we shouldn’t give hospitality, but more about how we should receive hospitality when we are working on sharing God’s mission.  We like to think that we are the ones to hand out the water and give people what they are thirsty for, but do we ever think what it takes to receive the water we need so we can continue to carry out God’s mission?

In a world where someone thinks its okay to stab a professor and students in broad daylight for the ‘sin’ if I can use that word, for discussing the complexities of sexuality, in a world where we are afraid to go to a party celebrating the courage of youth asking to paint a crosswalk, in a world where for a moment it looked like Russia would have another civil war, we need to take care of ourselves and not be too proud to accept offers of hospitality.  I have seen too many people post online that they are struggling with depression and anxiety and fear.  We hear too many stories of overdoses in Alberta.  There are a lot of thirsty people looking for something they can trust, but who will they hear it from?  If we don’t take care of ourselves, how will we help others?  Being brave enough to look at our lives with the honesty that Paul demands is not easy.  Are we living in the freedom of God?  Are we able to look at what we do and whether it waters our souls or not?  A purposeful life that brings meaning and hope and healing to others.  Living a purposeful life takes time and wisdom and prayer and the humbleness to accept hospitality when it is offered.  To be both aware of our thirst and humble enough to accept help when we need it means that we are able to continue to be disciples and messengers that carry good news into the world.  We can also offer living water like the street vendors, pushing prices ever higher, yelling to all around them, or we can simply and kindly point out a free fountain of unending water to those in need.

Now more than ever, people need to know that there is a freedom from the tyranny of despair, a freedom from the tyranny of the many addictions that our consumer society offers up.  Whether we are addicted to dangerous habits like street drugs or small habits like too many computer games, we can hear the invitation to live lives of freedom.  We can accept God’s gift of whole-hearted, brave lives.  That is what Jesus showed us, and is the life we are called to.  May we know the wisdom and the humbleness to accept the living waters that keep our mission and ministry alive and thriving.

Diverse and yet the same

So about six months ago, Mom and I were travelling around Cape Breton Island shortly after the big storm named Hurricane Fiona had gone through the Maritimes knocking down trees and damaging buildings right left and centre. Part of the tour included a Whisky distillery.  For those of you who are connoisseurs, that’s whisky without an ‘e’.  As the oldest single malt brewer on the island, it was one of those places that had some folks on the tour very excited.

Mom and I were not part of that excitement.  I can tell the difference between a smooth milk chocolate of high quality, a chocolate with a cheaper quality, and dark chocolate that should snap satisfyingly when it is broken, and know the importance of a good sheen when chocolate has been tempered well, but I don’t know how to do the same for whiskies, whether they have an e in them or not.  So we drifted around the grounds, admiring the fresh fall air, the beautiful location and the grand view of the region.  It was pretty splendid, with the fall colors!

Much to everyone’s surprise, Mom came back with not a three leaf clover or even a four leaf clover, but a five leaf clover she had found after casually looking at the ground and wondering if she could find a four-leaf clover.  None of us could ever remember seeing a five-leaf clover, but there it was, the genuine article, with all the leaves looking exactly the same size.  We took pictures of it because we figured no one would believe us.  And I think Mom still has it pressed somewhere.  She didn’t go out and win the lottery though, so I’m not sure how lucky it is.  We’re still waiting.

Diversity in nature is an amazing thing.  There’s so much we still do not know about nature. The odd discovery of a five-leaf clover when three is the norm.  And yet, it is still a clover even though it is not a typical clover.  And that’s a good analogy for the Christian life.  We are all human, and very diverse.  Different Christians may believe different things, but there is to be a core of similarity for us all.  We are called to follow Jesus, which is not easy.  We all fall short of the mark, we all haven’t quite become perfect yet, and we all make mistakes.  It’s a comfort to read that even great people like Paul had no illusions about humanity.  We like to keep secrets, we like to pretend we’re perfect, we like to show a public persona to the world that looks polished and professional and above reproach.  Paul says that it’s not about what we do in public or in private, but who we are becoming. 

We are becoming, hopefully, the image of Christ.  Our baptisms, our communions, our confirmations are all ways in which we remind ourselves and each other that Christ works within us and through the Spirit to become ever more Christ-like.  Every renewed and renewing, ever baptized and ever crucified.  Some days we know how sinful we are, how far from perfect we feel.  Other days we feel buoyed by grace in mysterious ways that we can’t quite explain. Or completely oblivious to how we may be acting in ways that are less than holy. 

One of the most inspiring things we hear about Jesus time and time again, is how he met people and saw them in all their messy mixed up ways.  The tax collector, the prostitute, the foreigner, the soldier, the stinky fishermen, you know the list.  And again and again he met them where they were, without judgement, without condemnation but with a deep compassion.  It was as if everyone Jesus met was completely transparent to him.  In our scriptures today, he talked about that transparency being inevitable.  That secrets we keep even from ourselves will come out in the end, and everything is known to God.  This idea of ultimate transparency becomes a fuel for bravery.  If we are no longer afraid of our secrets being used to attack or blame us, revile or shame us, then we can be bold disciples capable of daring acts of justice.

We need daring acts of justice.  The last three years we have seen the words of Jesus come true.  Families have become divided, parent from child, siblings from each other, first by Covid, then by our beliefs around covid.  People with attitudes of resentment towards the loss of power and control they felt with the imposition of mask mandates and vaccine passports became so enraged that their family members could not even invite them over for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  This is not new, of course.  How many of us grew up with the instructions not to talk about religion or politics at family dinners?  And how many of us found ourselves in conflict with family members on things like crop circles or whether or not the world is flat?  We are part of a protestant denomination because our ancestors or even our own minds became so disenchanted with the status quo that we got caught up in a little thing called the Reformation, led by Luther, John Knox and other theologians several hundred years ago.  30 years ago we had a major conflict over ordaining people who were not straight.  And while the United Church first ordained in 1936, she actually applied to be ordained in 1925.  It took 11 years of struggles and persistence, division and argument.  And now the Baptist Convention in the states is going through the same divisive conversation almost a hundred years later.  Daring acts of justice like painting rainbows on crosswalks, or bringing friends to a blanket exercise or raising supplies for Ukraine, hosting refugees, putting up campaign signs, speaking out against racist comments and homophobic slurs.  Standing up for people who are being bullied by extremists, or even challenging comments at the workplace with facts. 

Being brave Christians is not easy.  It can hurt us when we stand up for what is right.  I’ve been watching the conversation about the Westlock rainbow crosswalk very carefully.  There’s a bunch of activists planning to keep the crosswalk painting a safe and fun experience for the kids, and it’s been interesting watching the conversation evolve.  The group started out in a very angry place, wanting to hurt and attack the lobbyists trying to sabotage the crosswalk.  They are shifting into a more non-violent stance, focusing on keeping the kids safe from homophobic attacks, making it a fun event to the best of their ability, flooding the place with allies and caring adults.  The only time Jesus talks about coming to bring swords instead of peace was in this passage in Matthew.  The rest of the time he talked about turning the other cheek, and taking up our crosses.  He was prepared to die rather than start a war.  He told Peter not to use a sword when he was being arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane.  Non-violence is what he taught his disciples, even if it cost them their lives.

We don’t have to be Oscar Romeros or Martin Luther Kings.  But we are called to be open to the transformation that works in us and others by the Spirit.  Let us pray.  Dear God, help us celebrate and love the diversity of humans that is far more than four or five leaf clovers.  Help us to become transformed into the image of Jesus.  Let us become Bold Disciples willing to engage in Daring, Non-Violent Justice as courageously as Jesus did.  Amen

Highway Hypnosis

My first really long road trip was to Fort McMurray as a teen-ager.  My dad was a high school chemistry and physics teacher, and the ATA Science Council was meeting with Syncrude for a two day conference.  We lived in Tofield, 40 minutes east of Edmonton, and Dad decided to leave for Fort Mac on Friday right after school.  He brought me along to ride shotgun and prevent highway hypnosis.  Back then, in the seventies, it was a single highway, and I remember that as the sun set, the road looked like a long, unending tunnel with boreal forest rising up on either side.  It was a long journey and we were relieved when we finally reached our hotel.

I felt a strong sense of pride that Dad thought I was ready to handle the responsibility of helping him stay awake on the trip.  But it was a lot longer than I thought, and we were both relieved to finally pull into the little motel where we spent the weekend.

Now of course there are rumble strips and the highway is twinned and there are all kinds of signs along the way to break up the monotony of that long road.  We have learned much about road design and attention spans and driving while tired.

I doubt that Jesus worried about highway hypnosis when he sent off the disciples into the community.  He didn’t have to give them a list like bring a friend, drink caffeine, rest beforehand and so on.  He did give them a list of what to do, go without any suitcases or credit cards, and if someone dislikes what you said, let it go, don’t hang around trying to convince them.  He knew that people might be challenged, targeted, even attacked for taking care of the vulnerable, the outcast, the lonely, the hurting and the sick.  But he called them to be kind, healing presences anyway. 

The list of oppression is long, isn’t it? Some pretty nasty stuff mentioned in our scripture this morning, possibly what Matthew’s community experienced first hand.  Floggings, betrayals, lawsuits, you name it, they expected it.  And how were they supposed to respond? With one of my all-time favorite Jesus sayings, “be wise as serpents and innocent as doves”  I love that line!  To me it combines a realistic assessment, maybe even a touch of Machiavellian sneaky underhandedness, and yet a commitment and principled dedication to being peaceful and loving.  Jesus knew things wouldn’t be easy, he taught his disciples that working for God’s beloved community, God’s beloved world, would not be easy.  He didn’t sugar-coat it, but he didn’t pull any punches either.  He gave the disciples a clear and honest picture of the cost of discipleship. 

Paul must have learned about this teaching.  He followed up with his famous “suffering leads to endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope.  Really, Paul?  Can’t we skip the suffering stuff and go straight to the peace, hope and love stuff?  That’s much more our style after all. 

Just as we can’t skip the long drive to get from Fort McMurray to just about anywhere else, Paul and Jesus suggests that we can’t necessarily skip the hard work of being a disciple to take a short cut to glory.  If we think it’s easy, we are either fooling ourselves or practicing wishful thinking.  One of my favorite literary characters Albus Dumbledor said it this way, “Dark times lie ahead of us and there will be a time when we must choose between what is easy and what is right.”  People are looking for easy short cuts to peace and while tactics like mindfulness, meditative music videos on YouTube, apps guaranteed to promote a zen state to the most troubled mind, and a plethora of short videos of everything from cute squirrels to pouring paint promising to calm us down. All this while mental health professionals are saying that more and more people are struggling with high levels of anxiety and depression.  It’s not pretty.  We see the fall out daily.  Westlock has become the centre of a toxic and homophobic campaign targeting the teenagers at the local high school because they want to paint a rainbow cross walk for Pride Month.  I can imagine you folks have had some trauma flashbacks yourselves with all the forest fires we are seeing this year.  I think that a lot of the anxiety and even anger we see is stemming from people having lost a sense of security in the basic assumptions that we have.  Assumptions like we are all kind, nice Canadians, or like we all can live together in peace, respecting each other’s differences.  Or that there will always be enough toilet paper to go around or that we’re better at being polite than Americans are, and the only word Canadians say more than “Eh” is “Sorry”. 

The United Church of Canada is also struggling with times of anxiety and depression.  Rural communities continue to shrink, churches haven’t bounced back to pre-covid numbers, and we are struggling with the effects of inflation.  Many congregations are grieving all that the epidemic cost us.  It’s not easy to be church in these days.  It’s not easy to be anything these days.  Other non-profit organizations are also struggling.  Toastmasters had a lot of clubs close.  Rotary, Lions and other service organizations also lost members.  Some Girl Guide groups have still not restarted.  The library boards are looking for members.  Hospitals and schools saw a lot of baby boomers retire or go on stress leave.  It’s not just congregations.

But congregations do have one thing that helps us when times are tough.  We have a caring network of faith communities across the country from coast to coast, even in the territories and Bermuda.  We have supports and connections and teams trying to figure this out together.  We have faith in a God that is greater than we are.  Our wider church has a new motto which is brilliant at addressing what ails our society.  Deep spirituality, like centering songs, candle lighting, meditative prayers.  Bold discipleship that knows we are strong when we work together and learn together.  And daring justice that finds ways to address inequality, racism, homophobia, and not shy away from it because its seen as too political.  Just as fighting highway hypnosis takes good sleep, avoiding heavy meals, having a buddy, hearing the rumble strips when our cars start to drift, so too being healthy resilient disciples means practicing good self-care, keeping our eye on our end goals and following Jesus’ call to be compassionate and as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves.  This is the road to peace, this is the road to a hope and grace that will never disappoint us.  Thanks be to God for such a gift of glory, love and faith to strengthen us for our journeys together.

Being invisible

There’s a picture book about a kid who feels invisible.   Every day Brian goes to school, and no one notices him.  He draws pictures that nobody sees, and he eats lunches all by himself and no one picks him to play on their team in gym class.  Even the teacher doesn’t see him, and he feels safe that way.  Then a new kid moves to town and gets laughed at for bringing his favorite lunch to school.  Brian thinks it’s worse to be laughed at than to be invisible, so Brian draws a picture with an encouraging note and leaves it where the new kids will find it.  That’s the day things start to change.  The new kid starts to see Brian and treats him with the same kindness Brian showed in his note.

There are days when we may feel invisible.  And there are days when we feel like we are living under the spotlight.  The election has spotlighted a whole bunch of people who we may never have heard about before they ran for power.  There are people in our world who are terrified of being invisible, of not having their votes and their opinions count.  There are a couple of fundamentalist churches in Canada who are quietly working to make our country more restrictive, with a racist and homophobic agenda to elect politicians and influence both educational and judicial systems, according to a CBC research report.  They want to work invisibly to have their political views imposed on all.  There are others who desperately want to be in the spotlight, they crave the attention they get when they make controversial statements and end up in the media.

I wish I knew what the answer was in our argumentative world where we are all struggling to breathe, never mind argue over who is better than whom.  When the smoke from our forest fires reaches all the way to New York, surely we should all be working together to save our environment?  But no, let’s get upset at how an oppressed and generally invisible minority uses paint in public so they can feel seen as is what is happening in Westlock this week.

Maybe that was the same feeling the Pharisees had when they saw Jesus talking to the tax collectors. People like Matthew would have been seen as irredeemable by the religious scholars of the day, a lost cause, and worthy of being treated as if they were invisible.  And no one asked the question of why they chose such a career that made them invisible in the first place?  Why were tax collectors so shunned?

When we think of traitors, World War 2 comes to mind, especially after the June 6 commemoration we observed this week.  Did you know that for months after the troops landed on Normandy beaches on D-Day, some 20,000 women in France were forcibly attacked by men, often French men, and had their hair shaved off?  This was done so everyone knew that they were collaborators with the Germans.  The shaving was not part of a legal investigation, or a Truth and Reconciliation hearing, but a vigilante action by men wanting to prove their loyalty to France.  Like the medieval witch hunts centuries before, the women who were targeted were often single, widowed or with husbands away in a prisoner of war camp.  Invisible women that no one would protect. No one asked them if they had collaborated or why they had collaborated.  Sometimes they were punished or even killed simply because someone said they saw the woman talking to a German soldier in public.  It’s an ugly and invisible part of the aftermath of the liberation that happened across Europe.  As one novelist pointed out, many of these women had no choice.  The Germans would invade a town, pick out the nicest houses and force the inhabitants to serve them unquestioningly day and night.  If the woman had children, the officers would threaten the children to ensure obedience. 

Going back to Matthew the Tax collector, why was he seen with such disdain? We don’t think of Canada Revenue Agency workers in the same class as collaborators and traitors, though we may like to grumble at bloated government departments and overpaid federal employees; maybe we even make sweeping generalizations about invisible people we may never meet in person.  The tax collectors in the time of Jesus were seen as traitors working with the Roman occupiers.  Not worthy to be seen by Jesus.  Nor were women who had hemorrhages.  They were not to be seen during their monthly menstrual times.  They certainly weren’t supposed to be sneaking out in public to grab the fringe of Jesus’ cloak!  And a little girl who was dead was also seen as unclean, something a good rabbi should never touch.  If Jesus had been a proper religious expert, he would have ignored all three of these kinds of people.  He would have treated them as invisible.

But Jesus didn’t just see Matthew and his co-workers, or the sick woman, he called them to join his new community!  Just as God didn’t just see Abraham in his crowded city, God called Abraham out of safety to start a new society.  Abraham was invisible to his father’s culture as a second-born child who would inherit nothing and would have had nothing to lose by venturing out into the wilderness.  Abraham brought invisible people with him, a wife that had little say in where he would go next and brought who knows how many unnamed slaves.  The country he moved to had invisible people already living in it.  Even though the land was occupied, God chose that Abraham’s family would inherit it, not the indigenous people.  Suddenly this is not a comfortable scripture, but one to be wrestled with.

Still, the tension of who is seen and who isn’t is important to reflect on.  Who do we choose to see?  Who do we wish were more invisible?  Do we feel invisible like Matthew, but are we truly invisible? Do we ask ourselves who God calls us to see? Do we crave the spotlight or crave invisibility?  Do we have the courage to hear God’s call to us, regardless of who we are, to see others as Christ sees us?  Is our church invisible or seen by all? Are we ready to risk being a bold visible community that welcomes all? And how do we do that? 

Through deep spirituality first and foremost.  Spiritual practices, prayer, humbleness, intentional times to think about our faith and our call will build the deep empathy and resilience that we need.  Then we can practice bold discipleship where we take courageous steps to welcome the invisible and bring healing good news to those who are hurting. And lastly, we can choose to heed the call to step into the spotlight that daring justice needs, in order to heal God’s beloved creation. Like Abraham, we are called to go into an unknown world which needs so much healing.  Like Matthew, we are called to new communities of faith, like Jesus we are called to help the invisible be seen.  May God bless us and keep us on this journey we are called to be on.  Amen.

What does Pentecost mean for you?

 What does Pentecost mean for us? And how does it impact our lives, or is it just another weird day on the Christian Calendar that doesn’t have any way of being turned into a Walmart greeting card?  I was listening to some wise people who said that if we call Pentecost the birthday of the church, that’s all very nice and good, but it makes Pentecost a one-time event in the past that we can remember and celebrate, but it doesn’t really impact us here today.  Which is a sad thing.

Pentecost is more than a time to remember, it’s also a time where the church might allow itself to be open and vulnerable to God’s musings, God’s direction, and God’s call to change.  It’s a time when we celebrate the coming of the most uncomfortable part of the Holy that we call God.  We are a trinitarian faith, which doesn’t mean that we worship three Gods, but we worship three experiences of the Holy.  We mostly focus on Jesus stories, and Jesus as fully human is someone we can relate to and learn from.  Jesus is a great teacher and a wonderful roll model.  He inspires us and challenges us even today.  Jesus the human Rabbi is easy to relate to.  The Easter resurrection is a more uncomfortable Jesus, dipping into woo-woo and weird touchy-feely stuff.  Is he a ghost? A myth?  A story gone wild?  Or something infinite that we can’t put into a simple box?  And that’s nothing compared to the Spirit!

Our Pentecost readings today focus on the many gifts that we have, the breath that we get from an encounter with the divine ‘woo woo’ that should have us squirming a bit.  Whether it is as a rushing wind, tongues of fire or a test to see if Jesus had brushed his teeth that morning, the Spirit is supposed to stir us in new ways.  Pentecost is supposed to continue to happen with and among us.

It's like a balloon.  They aren’t much fun when they come out of a package, because they don’t have any air in them.  And if we blow them up without tying them off to keep the air in them, the balloons can trigger a certain amount of chaos, can’t they?  Let go of a balloon full of air and watch out!  Some people are afraid of the chaos that can result, and certainly, it can cause some problems.  Too often we humans decide that we either want nothing but the chaos, or we don’t want any chaos.  And churches can often err on the side of caution, which isn’t much fun, is it?  But who wants a flat balloon?  It’s not much fun, is it? 

What if we add a cone to the balloon, helping it lower the resistance to the air, streamlining the balloon?  It will go farther, and we could even aim it.  The cone is like God, sometimes known as Good Orderly Direction, which is aiming at the big picture.  Then let’s add the arms of Jesus to it, what happens now?  It would look like an airplane! Instead of a wibbly, wobbly trajectory, our balloon has a much more stable flight path.  It goes places, it has the oomph to make a journey and take a straighter route to where it wants to go.  Purpose, stability and energy.  All three are needed.  And all three can keep things from being a chaotic mess.  Spirit without God, God without Jesus, Jesus without Spirit, all can keep us from moving and being the enthusiastic people we were created to be.  Pentecost is the time to open ourselves up to new possibilities, new ideas, new adventures.  With the wisdom of God, the courageous compassion of Christ, and the enthusiastic energy of the Spirit, we can become people who make a real difference in our world!

Motivation In Challenging Times

What a delight it was to wander downtown this week near a couple of the stores on main street.  I was astonished to see chalk drawings for quite a stretch of sidewalk.  Some of the art looked like it was done by preschoolers, but some of it looked impressive.  And it was very positive and uplifting, a bright moment in an otherwise uneventful week.  

Uneventful other than a smoke advisory almost daily and lots of news about politics.  There is so much that divides us, party platforms, vaccines, chem trails, drug interventions, you name it.  

Such polarization can lead to isolation and apathy.  When we feel alone, we can lose enthusiasm for life.  When we feel unheard, or like our concerns are being ignored, we can feel helpless.  When we have lost a loved one, or a home or a job or a livelihood or even our health, we may wonder what the meaning and purpose of existence is?

The disciples in the story of Acts 1 want to know when the world will become perfect.  When will justice reign? When will peace be universal? When will warring and bullying cease?  When will Christ return?  And Jesus gave his disciples the very unsatisfactory answer that it was in God’s time not theirs.  It was almost like saying, “it’s none of your business when perfection comes, your job is to let people know that we don’t need to wait for perfection to in order to find hope and courage in the face of injustice.”

Ouch!  Gosh, Jesus, it’s not easy being a disciple!  Especially not in the midst of forest fires and election campaigns.  It’s not easy to challenge the stories we tell ourselves of what the world is like.  It’s not easy looking for hope and love and courage in these times.  It’s not easy to be drawing pretty pictures on sidewalks when they are going to be stepped on, ignored or washed away moments later.  It is easy to tell ourselves stories of scarcity and helplessness against all that we face.  But are these stories actually real?  

I am watching one of my family members who is remembering who they really are.  They have told themselves the basic story that they are stupid and have no friends and no talents.  But one of their friends have asked them to preside over their wedding!  And instead of retreating to their basic story, they are asking me for help in planning the wedding service.  They are also remembering the many good times they did drama, sang in a choir, took a role in a high school musical that surprised everyone including themselves. They are remembering the accomplishments they succeeded at, and they are remembering that they have the intelligence and experience to tackle something as daunting as a wedding service!  It is wonderful and beautiful to see them coming to the realization that they have more skills than they thought they did and remembering their accomplishments more than their failures.  

We think in such black and white terms about ourselves and our neighbors, we expect and demand so much perfection.  Someone recently said to me, “Well, the Ukrainians did terrible things too, before Russia invaded.”  Like the Ukrainians were supposed to be 100% perfect in order to be blameless of the invasion?  A much smaller and weaker country is expected to be perfect before we can be outraged on their behalf?  Like if they are not 100% blameless, it’s their fault and the bully is justified in its action?  It’s similar to when I say things like “I love my hybrid car and I hope my next one is an electric”, I hear comments like, “the province isn’t perfectly set up for electric cars so don’t bother.” Or “the technology isn’t perfectly innocent of environmental impacts itself, so you’re not saving anything.” Again, a basic story that says unless the progress is perfect, don’t try to make any changes.  Go back to being a passive victim and don’t think you can make a difference.”

Walter Brueggemann, a world-renowned bible scholar and justice speaker once said that evangelism is the invitation to challenge those stories of hopeless helplessness.  He said that the dominant story of our lives is one of therapeutic, technological, militaristic consumerism.  Where buying the right kind of gadgets, which if you live in Texas, would be a semi-automatic assault rifle, is the only shopping therapy that really makes us feel good about ourselves.  This kind of quick-fix basic story doesn’t require us to do anything except go shopping.  It assumes that happiness is found in a credit card.  If we think our credit cards will solve loneliness or war or division, we are sadly mistaken.  We can’t buy or earn love, we can’t buy or earn perfection.

We can change our basic stories.  Jesus wanted us to become a community centred in love and hope and trust and compassion and justice.  He didn’t pray that we be perfect.  He didn’t pray that we be identical to each other.  He didn’t even pray that we would vote for the perfect party, heck, democracy wasn’t even possible in his time and place.  He did pray that we may become one, become united in the principles of fair play, community and hospitality.  He prayed not that we buy every shade of chalk that can be found on Amazon, but that we take our chalk and draw pictures of hope and courage and inspiration for all to see.  The chalk drawings were a reminder that people do care about how we are being divided by fear and anxiety.  They were a sign that someone wanted to do something to add beauty to our town.  The artists were like disciples sharing a new story of inclusion and kindness.  Whether we chalk it up to inspiration or a careful plan, we can challenge our world to see the hope and beauty that happens when we come together.  Let us do like the chalk artists and Jesus’ disciples, do small acts of beauty to make our world more kind and just and loving for all.