The Power of Words

Words can make such a difference in how we hear a story. “Peace, be still!” Jesus says to the storm, then “why are you so afraid?” to the disciples, some of whom had only recently joined the hand-picked team that Jesus had selected.  Jesus sounds so calm, so pastoral in these words.  So kind, so comforting.  Except that’s just a little bit of a disservice to the original Greek language that Mark was struggling to write his gospel in.  Unlike Matthew, Luke and John, his Greek was not smooth,  flowery or poetic. Mark didn’t use big words, and he didn’t get into fancy descriptions.  He was the kind of writer who would say, “The dog bit the man who tried to take away his bone.” Whereas the others might write “The tiny brown dachshund snarled and snapped when the robber tried to grab his meaty bone away from him”.  They paint a picture, but Mark is a plain-spoken, blunt man.

The Greek words he used wasn’t “Peace be with you”, expecting the storm to respond, “and also with you”.  No, the words he chose were much more like a rebuke you’d give to a barking dachshund, “Shut up! Be Quiet”.  Then he turned to his disciples and bluntly said, “Why are you such cowards still?”  And some versions translate their response as ‘great awe’, while other translate it as ‘great fear’.  It would be very easy to be fearful if one minute I’m feeling like I’m going to drown in a storm, then the next thing I know, Jesus yells at the storm to chill out, and then yells at us for our cowardly attitude.  I’m not sure which would be more unnerving, almost drowning, or the unnatural stillness that follows, or the scolding afterwards.  And why did they still struggle to have faith, as Jesus presumed?

Good question.  We’re only in Chapter 4, and yet the disciples have seen healings like Peter’s Mother-in-law, a withered hand, and someone with mental illness.  They’ve watched crowds be healed and heard stories that were inspiring.  But they still waffled in their faith.

They were still new in their roles of being disciples, the 12 that were singled out for special teaching, and yet they waited to wake Jesus until the last minute.  They were still like us, one moment rock solid in their excitement about being the chosen ones caught up in a wave of enthusiasm, like a 5-year-old watching their first Oiler’s game, not really understanding what all the hype was but happy to cheer like everyone else.  Then they try skating for the first time and discover that while the big men make it look easy, it’s not.  It takes practice, discipline, patience and a lot of courage.  It’s not easy.  And coaches that bark at kids, using words like “Why are you such cowards?” are likely to lose their potential recruits before they are even starting out.  Words matter. 

Faith matters too.  When times are good, when everyone around us is happy, it’s easy to feel certain that we can trust God.  But when we’re away from the crowd, when the storms of life come roaring into our lives, fierce and unexpected, it’s natural to feel scared.  The disciples were no fools, they were experienced fishermen, and they knew how dangerous the sea of Galilee was.  They turned to Jesus for support.

Interesting words there.  “Do you not care that we are dying?” they cried.  They had accepted their fate.  Fishermen knew what it meant when a boat started filling up with water.  Death was certain, so certain for people who used boats for a living that even up to the 18^th century, many sailors and naval officers did not know how to swim, partly because of Europe’s cold and dirty waters on land, and  some believed it was better to drown fast rather than try to fight to survive.  They didn’t cry out asking Jesus to spare their lives, they couldn’t imagine that he could do that.  They cried out for Jesus to care about them as they faced death together.

Does someone care about us when we are in the middle of the storms we are facing?  Does someone support us, and calm the situations we find ourselves in, time and time again?  Now, I’m not saying that praying to God will cure our cancers, and protect us from disasters large and small, but something happens when we take our deepest fears and anxieties to the Holy Mystery, however we understand it.  Scientific researchers have often studied the power of prayer. Interestingly, there’s growing evidence that prayer works on us and our relationships!  When we pray that love be in our hearts towards another person, that can have real results on how we relate to them.

Words matter.  We often hear that Perfect Love casts out Fear.  If we turn it around, Perfect Fear casts out Love too.  And that’s what happened to the disciples.  They were in perfect fear.  “Don’t you care that we’re about to die” may have been tinged with anger, often the product of fear.

And of course he did care.  Turning to Jesus, even when we feel swamped by the storms of life, is the way of courage and faith.  It’s not easy, but it is the only thing that calms the trials we face.  We all wrestle with their last words to each other, “Who is this man?” That is the crux, who is Jesus?  For us, Jesus can be the man who inspires us to continue to grow our love for one another in the face of stormy times.  When we choose the word love over the word fear, God over chaos, hope over despair, our faith grows and strengthens in amazing ways. May we all practice such faith until we too are as brave as the disciples became, brave enough to face all our fears with a calm and certain faith in Jesus, our Christ, who always has the last word, love.  Amen.

Surprising Seeds

 Ever wonder why Jesus talked about gardening metaphors to fishermen who knew more about ropes than they did plows?  Why did he talk about seeds to tax collectors and prostitutes?  And did he throw in a wink and a laugh with these stories to keep them from being too dry, too dull?    These stories seem simple and yet they still leave us scratching our heads centuries later.  This particular parable is perfect for us to wrestle with in June.  Many of us are digging in our gardens, pulling weeds that got a good head start from all the rain we’ve had recently, or throwing seeds in the ground so we can eat lettuce, spinach or radishes in a few weeks.  You don’t know which ones will live and which ones won’t. You don’t know which ones will grow fast and which will grow slowly.  Which ones will thrive this year, and which won’t. 

The saskatoons have already set berries, but will they produce fruit?  God knows.  We throw in marigold seeds from last year’s bedding plants, but many won’t germinate at all.  Then there’s sunflowers seeds that can produce massive plants taller than people, and my goodness the birds love them!

And other than weeding, watering, fertilizing, picking bugs off, and covering our prize petunias with netting, (at least here in Athabasca where the deer love to nibble on our bedding plants and everything except crabgrass and dandelions), there’s not much we can do to help the process along.  Sure, some folks start bedding plants indoors with grow lights, or test the soil to figure out what will grow where or read up on everything from companion planting to square foot gardening, but once the seed is in the ground, as many a farmer knows, it is out of our control.  That’s hard for those of us who like to be always doing. Like the kid who wonders when the warm weather will finally arrive so he can go have fun at the spray park, we wait impatiently for the seeds to sprout, the new potatoes to form, the fresh peas and corn to be harvested.  But sometimes, no matter how hard we try, the peas get washed away, the carrots don’t come up, and the raspberry canes don’t root.  It’s out of our hands.

Relax, Jesus said, God is taking care of the growing.  Hard to believe that in times like these.  And yet there are signs of hope we see here and there.  Perth Australia has so many solar panels installed in that city that city officials are asking people to use their appliances during the day to use up that excess power. And this is in their winter season!  The kids who survived the Sandy Lake school massacre are avid gun control lobbists and they graduated high school this month, determined to make a difference.  The British Isles are seeing storks fly overhead again after 600 years of extinction, thanks to careful wildlife rehabilitation efforts, farmers are finding crops like spinach that love growing under solar panels, not to mention sheep grow more wool when they graze on solar farms, and Norwegian researchers are heating homes with renewable energy stored in beach sand of all things.  Times are shifting, attitudes are shifting.  People are living into what Paul described as cheerfully pleasing God. 

Today we please God with a special day of prayer.  Back in 1971, someone somewhere came up with the idea to have an indigenous day of prayer.  There’s very little known about who had the idea, but the United Church formally recognized it at the 24th General Council and the Anglican Church of Canada also passed it in their court that same year. Eleven years later what later became the Assembly of First Nations called for the creation of a National Aboriginal Solidarity Day. Around that time the Sacred Assembly, a national conference chaired by Elijah Harper, also had a similar call for a national holiday to celebrate the contributions of Indigenous Peoples. And the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1995) recommended the designation of a National First Peoples Day. More recently, on June 21, 2017, Prime Minister Trudeau issued an intention to rename this day National Indigenous Peoples Day.

The United Church has traditionally referred to the Sunday before National Indigenous Peoples Day as Aboriginal Sunday. As part of acknowledging National Indigenous Peoples Day, communities of faith are invited to focus on prayer, as it was originally intended in 1971. 1971 was the same year that the Anglican Church closed its last residential school (as an aside, we closed our last one in 1968) and that might have been the reason for it.  

As a side note of interest, Elijah Harper who helped organize this, who is also the famous politician who helped block the Meech Lake Accord, went to school in Norway House, a residential school in northern Manitoba that was run by the United Church of Canada until it was closed in 1965.  So there’s a United Church connection on several levels to this date.

Seeds sprout up from a 1971 prayer request.  They seem small and innocuous, but they can grow into a national inquiry into truth and reconciliation.  Seeds sprout up from the frustration and heartbreak of being educated in a foreign language in a school far away from one’s family and parents into the courageous resolve to stand against the political machinery that forgot to consult first nations people.  Seeds sprout up from a simple time of prayer into a National Day of Remembrance.  What seeds are sprouting up even now in this time and place?

When we live lives focused on hopeful intentional values, as describe by Paul, we can find ourselves partnering with God in surprising and wonderful ways.  We can watch for God at work in the world.  And we can focus on living God-centred lives.  We do that best by setting aside time to pray intentionally and regularly, watching for those seeds to sprout up.  They will bloom in ways we may not imagine, but they will bloom because God is with us, we are not alone, thanks be to God!

Power Play

Wow, Jesus was throwing his weight around in the temple that morning!  He got a little hot under the collar, and when the Pharisees tried to blow the whistle and tell Jesus he was icing, he told them in no uncertain terms that what he did fell within the regulations, then skated off and scored a winning goal!  Except that the Pharisees decided to eject him from the league for unsportsmanlike conduct but recognized that they would need to get more people to back their decision.  Everyone to the Penalty Box!

There are three things going on in this gospel story.  First there’s the issue of leadership and who is following whom.  Then there’s the conversation around why the 7^th day is special, the Sabbath.  And lastly, there’s the decision point that is made by the person who the fuss is about.

First, what’s happening with leadership in this story?  Jesus is leading his disciples into the sanctuary where he sees a man with a withered hand.  The Pharisees react to his interest and see it as a threat to their authority.  Now it’s important that we acknowledge that this is not all the Pharisees as there were Pharisees like Nicodemus who are recorded as hosting Jesus for dinner, or having conversations with him.  In light of what is going on in the Middle East, we have to remember that these were some of the leaders, and make sure we do not encourage or imply any kind of antisemitism that could be used to fuel attacks like the one we saw at a Toronto Jewish school this week.  That being said, the leaders are confronting Jesus during a worship service like hockey players getting ready for a face off.  They are determined to control the play and get the puck away from Jesus.  They are calling him out in front of his disciples in a blatant attempt to shift the momentum away from Jesus and back onto themselves where they feel it belongs.  How dare this upstart disrupt worship? How dare he take on the authority that is rightfully theirs?  How dare he defy and defile the Sabbath? 

Then we have the theological debate.  This is the lens through which everyone is looking at the Sabbath.  It’s like if one team has helmets with yellow plexiglass visors, and the other one has helmets with pink visors.  What colors are the referee’s stripes? What color is the ice?  Those visors will shape how the players look at their rink and the other people on it. These particular Pharisees see the Sabbath as something that is honored by abstaining from work.  It is a reminder that no one is to be treated like a slave.  The Sabbath is a gift from God and is kept by following many laws to the letter to show respect to God. That’s something Jesus agrees with, it’s a gift from God to the people of God, but he also sees it as a time to experience God’s presence.  One of the highest principles of the laws protecting the Sabbath as a sacred time, that even these particular Pharisees would agree with, is that the laws can be suspended in order to save a life.  That the sacredness of the Sabbath is not as important as helping someone survive whatever ordeal they are facing. It’s a pragmatic and sensible boundary to the powers of temple regulations.  No high sticking allowed in your attempt to get control of the puck. 

Lastly, we have the person who is at the centre of this debate.  Poor guy must have felt like he was the puck about to be dropped into the face off.  I wouldn’t have envied him for the world.  Can you see it?  The Pharisees staring at him, Jesus looking at him too, and then all the spectators in the stands following the play, wondering where he will end up.

But here’s an interesting thing.  Jesus doesn’t touch the man or pray over him or forgive his sins or tell a parable.  Jesus simply invites the man to stretch out his hand.  The man has to make a choice of how to react to that invitation.  How will he keep the Sabbath?  Will he honor it in the narrow legalistic way that the Pharisees define it?  Or will he see it in the focus Jesus highlights? Not as a tool of oppression but a freedom from oppression, and an invitation to full and generous life.  He chooses life.

There are people who still feel oppressed by prejudice, discrimination, and hatred.  They feel crippled by fear and conspiracies.  They wither under the stated and unstated expectations that the world has of them.  There are people who will hate them in the abstract who might not hate them as long as they live their withered lives.  As long as they stay quiet.  As long as they follow the rules that they may be neither seen nor heard, as long as they hide their differences and pretend to be something they’re not.  But Jesus invites them to stretch out their withered hands to receive the love God has for them.  They are fearfully and wonderfully made.  Who are we to judge?  If we stick to rules for their own sake, we may block people from the healing they need.  If we, like the disciples, can wait to see what happens, we may see the miraculous happen right in front of us.  If we, like the Pharisees, find ourselves challenged, can we let go of what we know should happen to see what God is making happen?  And what is happening is as sweet and simple and beautiful as a team working smoothly to pass the puck and shoot a winning goal, or a rainbow shining in the sky after a storm, a sign that we are to make space for God’s healing love.  That is a great goal to have for our sabbath days together.  May we make space for all to experience God’s healing love!

Holy Seraphims Batman!

Have you ever woken up from an intense dream that left you shaken and sweating?

Or maybe the glimpse of an idea that surprised you, or a daydream over a cup of coffee?  I imagine that’s what Isaiah was experiencing when in the middle of the church service, the sermon and incense was putting him to sleep. He had a daydream, a vision that would have made Stephen Spielberg or George Lucas or Peter Jackson green with envy.  Winged creatures, not quite angels, and definitely not human.  And a God that is so big, just the hem of God’s robe filled the whole temple.  Even Kate Middleton’s train on her wedding dress was not long enough to do that.  And the temple is tended by seraphim, odd looking creatures with many wings. Some biblical scholars remind us that the word seraph comes from the Hebrew root word for snake, sarap, like the word Serpent, so maybe Isaiah was foreseeing an episode of Game of Thrones with flying dragons, snake-like creatures covered in feathers?   Either way, Isaiah was confused, overwhelmed and astonished at the sight of so much bewildering imagery, the immensity of his God experience that day.  And he was in despair.  Who could look at such a vision without recognizing that they were not worthy for such a thing?  Isaiah experienced profound doubt and shame being in the presence of the Holy. How could he see this when he was so flawed and uncertain, so acutely aware of his imperfections and his faults?  In other words, he was human and he struggled with imposter syndrome.  And he was in deep pain.  Woe is me, I am lost and live with people who are lost like me, in a world that is imperfect.

Can you relate? How many of you are feeling lost?  How many of you struggled with flashbacks when you heard that once again you might evacuate?  How many of you looked around your homes wondering what to pack, what to leave behind?  How many of you waited for that call, that knock on the door?  How many of you felt a lump in your throats or a tightened stomach at the thought of that long drive?  I can’t begin to imagine reliving that potential trauma. 

There are times when we find ourselves up against things over which we have no control.  Fires, floods, viruses and bacteria can disrupt our lives in unexplained ways.  We don’t know where to turn, how to respond, where we can go when we feel at a loss.  One of the hardest things to admit to ourselves is that we are not God.  Despite our best efforts, things happen.  We come to realize that we are not God, and that we don’t always know what’s best.  We say, “Oh Woe is me, I am lost.  I am not God and God is more than I can logically understand.  How can I be in the presence of the Holy?”

That is the question for us frail humans.  We are not God, we are not perfect or pure or almighty.  We have flaws, we make mistakes, we have failures from time to time.  We get hurt, and sometimes we hurt others.  How can we approach God?

Isaiah showed us how.  Just like an AA meeting, he named his vulnerability, and his flaws.  He recognized and confessed his pain.  “Hi, I’m Isaiah, and I’m a broken, imperfect human.”  And just like in AA, he found himself freed from all that self-centred concern and angst.  Just like in AA, he found himself accepted just as he was.  Just like in AA, he turned his life over and found he had a clean slate, not from any action he had taken, but by the action of God through the strange beings that worshiped God, saying Holy, holy holy.  And just like in AA, he found that he was called to help and serve others.  By being honest and vulnerable in front of the holy mystery that was above and beyond perfect description, he found healing and a new purpose.  Which is what Jesus may have been getting at when he was talking to Nicodemus.  Nicodemus was a man of high standing and influence in his community.  He was a public figure.  He had a lot of power and authority, and yet he was troubled and uncertain.  He came to Jesus for answers and Jesus searched for a metaphor that Nicodemus would understand.  Both scriptures point to the same thing. That the Holy is hard to approach when we are in pain or in trouble, but the Holy is always full of grace and healing for us.  And when we are ready to be as vulnerable as a child, as truthful and honest as Isaiah, we will be approached by God’s healing, purifying love.  It may burn and hurt like a red-hot coal to our lips, but it leaves us able to say, “Send me!” with joy and enthusiasm. 

Our Song of Faith describes God in ways that Isaiah would have loved: 

God is Holy Mystery, beyond complete knowledge, above perfect description.

Yet, in love, the one eternal God seeks relationship.

So God creates the universe and with it the possibility of being and relating.

God tends the universe, mending the broken and reconciling the estranged.

God enlivens the universe, guiding all things toward harmony with their Source.

With the Church through the ages, we speak of God as one and three:

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We also speak of God as Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, God, Christ, and Spirit, Mother, Friend, and Comforter, Source of Life, Living Word, and Bond of Love, and in other ways that speak faithfully of the One on whom our hearts rely, the fully shared life at the heart of the universe.

May we have the courage to be vulnerable to the Holy Mystery, and may we find deep healing and purpose in God’s loving action. Amen

Guided into Truth

I’ve had a lot of people telling me stories about the spirit of the times recently, and the spirit of the times seems to be a spirit of grumpiness.  The spirit of grumpiness is so strong that we could even sing “Spirit, Spirit of grumpiness, blow through the wilderness, grumpy and mean”, but who wants to be singing hymns to that kind of spirit?  It does seem to be everywhere.  People are gossiping, or judging, people are complaining and on a tight fuse.  There’s so much fear and anger out there, it’s almost palpable. 

Now some of you might be saying, Monica, you are exaggerating, and you’d probably be right.  Except that there are signs that people are under stress.  The senior’s apartments in town had to lock their lobby entrances after the lobbies were used as bedrooms and bathrooms. We tensed up last week when the forest fire smoke returned, and we remembered how our summer last year was impacted by many days of poor air quality. And how horrible that some of Fort McMurray is once again evacuated because of fire. Although it’s not as bad as the one they called “The Beast” that they fled from 8 years ago, I’m sure they are having flashbacks and that is stressful.  8 years ago, we had people here from First United in Fort McMurray and my goodness, it was hard to celebrate Pentecost that year.

It's not just Athabasca or Fort Mac.  Cold Lake was in the news when they cracked down on vagrancy incidents. According to officials, the unhoused population has increased in two years from 10 local people to 195, including many arriving from surrounding areas.  The bakery here in town is no longer giving free meals to people in need because of angry incidents.

This is not the spirit that we want to have dominate this town, this province or even this world.  But it is incredibly contagious. Seems we are judging everyone for the littlest things.  We point fingers, we get indignant, and we get so self-righteous.

The metaphor I like to use is that it's like we are goldfish swimming in a goldfish bowl where we don't know what the waters taste like. And right now, whether we like it or not, people are tense and stressed, not knowing what the future holds. We can become addicted to snap judgements and prejudices. Interestingly enough, the word prejudice comes from pre and judge. We pre-judge people to be exactly like us, which means we're safe with them, or exactly opposite to us which means we're in danger from them. It's a fast way to make decisions that helped our ancestors escape from sabre-toothed tigers. But now we can see prejudices for what they are, distractions for us goldfish so we don't think about what is happening in the world. We can focus on our grievances and outrage and avoid how we ourselves contributed to the chaos and stress of our neighbors. One thing I don't miss is reading about the vitriol of town council, that had been a good change, and rumor has it that the Athabasca Inn has sold! So even in all the bleakness of both local and world chaos, there are glimmers of hope. We as Christians are called to be bringers of hope. We are called to be channels of God's creativity, God's healing and God's inspiration. 

Peter spoke against prejudice and judgement when he addressed the rumors directly, “People of Jerusalem, we are not drunk!” And Jesus said time and time again, the only judge is God.  The world is wrong about sin and justice and judgement, and the ruler of the world who does the judging, will be the one who is judged.  We are to be given the spirit of Truth, which is uncomfortable at times.  But the spirit of truth is that God did not send Jesus to condemn the world but to love the world.  And we are to love the world too.  Jesus said, “He who is without sin cast the first stone,” “judge not lest you be judged”, and “take the log out of your own eye before you try to remove the speck of sawdust in another’s eye.” 

One of my counsellors said it in this way.  She would tap her nose then her cheek.  That was her reminder to keep her nose out of other people’s business and on her own face where it belonged.  It’s easier said than done.  There are times when the Spirit guides us into uncomfortable truths, and times when we avoid truth as much as possible.  But truth from God is supposed to build us up, not tear us down.  It’s supposed to fill our hearts with courage and inspiration. It’s supposed to improve our mental health not tear it down. The best truth is spoken in love.  It builds our confidence bit by bit.  Jesus spent a lot of time helping Peter and the other disciples develop their confidence and leadership skills and they didn’t even know he was doing it.  He tried to prepare them for his death and let them know they would have comfort from God with the spirit.  Little by little, he built them up.  Little by little, the Spirit would continue to build them up.  Little by little we are also built up by the Spirit.  Little by little, we are healed, one hymn at a time, one prayer at a time, one hug at a time.  Little by little, the Spirit gently grows and heals and inspires us.  I like to joke that we are growing our angel wings one feather at a time, and just like Peter and the rest didn’t realize how Jesus was healing them and forming them into community, we don’t always realize how we are being formed into community.  But we are indeed being continually formed and reformed into ever more loving communities of faith, just as God wants us to be.

The Struggle to Love

(Photo: A Mennonite, a Catholic and a United Church minister finishing a jigsaw puzzle together, 2023)

C. S. Lewis once said that the hardest person to love other than ourselves, is the person sitting beside us in the pew.  They drop their hymnbooks, they pick their teeth, or they drip mud on the carpet.  It’s easy to proclaim love in the abstract for people we will never meet, or in a foreign country far away.  It’s another thing to love the people next to us.

There’s a United Church who was designing a new building.  The congregation became fiercely split between those who thought that it was an important way of telling the community that they were a church, and those who thought a steeple was a sign of patriarchal, hierarchical oppression.  The ones who thought a steeple was a necessity couldn’t agree on whether a cross should be on the building.  Was it a sign of state-sanctioned torture or was it a beloved symbol of hope and encouragement?  Other congregations have split over the color of carpets, pews vs chairs, (and by the way, pews are a relatively new invention developed about 800 years ago and not really spread far until protestants decided they wanted to sit down for the sermon), sung music versus instrumental music, never mind how we do communion and baptism.

But, and this is a sad but, we are not known for our unity and love, but for our diversity and judgmental arguments.  There are denominations that will not talk to each other, and just because someone was baptised in one church, doesn’t mean that they will be accepted in another church.  There are incidents where young people have made plans to get married only to be told by their priest or pastor that they aren’t Christian enough or acceptable enough.  It gives us Christians a really bad name.

In 2012 I went to the fastest growing church in Canada.  It was growing so fast that the pastor got on the cover of MacLean’s Magazine. They had four greeters at the door, and four ushers to help people find their seats.  The place was full, the service was slick, with slides for all the hymns and not a hymnbook in sight, a praise band that got everyone full of emotion with songs that lasted 7 or more minutes each.  People spoke in tongues, accepting Jesus as their savior and getting the pastor to lay healing hands on them.  The sermon was a riveting, dramatic 30-minute reenactment of David’s friend Jonathan sneaking up on the dreaded Philistines with only his trusty servant beside him. Now there’s a passage that doesn’t get preached on very often, but the pastor hammed it up and made it unforgettable. The whole service was closer to two hours and there was even someone in the back of the sanctuary burning cds of the worship service and selling them as people left. 

The next week we went to a Quaker service where there was no music, no organ, no guitar, just silence.  In that service, the first half hour was for complete and utter silence where all that could be heard was the breathing of the person sitting beside you.  30 minutes of nothing but our own thoughts.  Then the next half hour was people sharing what came up for them in their prayers.  They didn’t like it when students came to worship wearing shoes with shiny sequins on them as that was a sign of not living a simple and humble life.  That too was a sermon that was never forgotten, and it was maybe two sentences long.  When everyone had said what had come to their hearts, they said the Lord’s prayer together and then had coffee time.

This kind of diversity and division among Christians is confusing to outsiders.  They don’t understand why there is so much division among people who were commanded to love one another.  It is one more reason for modern, cynical atheists to roll their eyes and dismiss our faith.  Much damage has been done to the Christian witness by folks trying to prove that their interpretation is right and better than others.  And when they mixed politics with judgmental righteousness, a lot of people got hurt, wars got started and trauma was inflicted on generations of people.  All because we forgot that Jesus taught us to love one another with a sacrificial love that was deep, bold and daring.

We forgot to hold close to the source of Love, Jesus, and God.  We forgot to pray for help in loving our neighbors.  We forgot that we are all made in God’s own image which means some of us need silence, some of us need loud enthusiasm, and some of us need something in between.  It’s okay to recognize that we have different ways to connect to God.  An abundance of ways to practice loving God.

The challenge for us, as it has been for Christians for centuries, is remembering that we are not doing this by ourselves.  We do not have to love perfectly for God’s love to be perfected in us.  And we can ask if our feelings towards our neighbors are coming from fear or love.  Fear gets us acting like dinosaurs, doing the classic fight, flight or freeze reactions.  Fear breaks churches down.  Fear withers us, like a dead vine branch.  We do not thrive on fear, we are not resilient on fear.  We do not grow or produce fruit when we are connected to fear.  When we remind ourselves to root ourselves in compassion and prayer, and support each other in love, our Christian witness is strengthened, and God will strengthen us to bear much fruit.

What an amazing witness we would be if we found ways to help each other be less fearful and more loving.  If we could look for ways we are united instead of different.  If we could look beyond my needs to our thriving.  And from my troubles to helping the world be a more resilient, loving place.  When we work together in love, God works in us to love the world too, and the world needs our unifying love now more than ever.

May we find the courage to love one another as we have been loved.  Amen.

Good Shepherd

When I was a kid, we lived in Australia for a year, and our next-door neighbor had a sheep station.  Sheep are a big thing down under, and as Canadians, we got invited to all kinds of things.  We got to see the sheep get dipped in some kind of medicine in what looked like a tiny dugout.  We got to see the sheep getting penned up for the shearing by the drovers, hard working and tanned, burly men.  We were shocked to see the dogs running over the backs of the penned-up sheep but even more shocked to see the drovers also walking across the backs of the sheep!  They were quick about it, and the sheep seemed none the worse for wear.  We even watched them wrestling the sheep into the shearing shed, pinning their legs and taking the razor right down to the skin of the animals.  It looked pretty traumatizing at first, but once the sheep were firmly held, they seemed to be okay.  We got to help picking off the loose or dirty bits of the fleeces and our hands got really soft from the lanolin in the fresh wool.  Then we watched the workers expertly flip the fleeces into big bins lined with burlap until they were full.  The bins were always in pairs and attached to a machine that would take one bin and rotate it over the second bin and squish its contents into the lower bin, then they would attach the top of the burlap and move it to the stack.  These burlap cubes must have been about three feet square and we kids thought it would be fun to jump on them and see how much we bounced!  We thought it would be soft but it was more like expecting a soft cushy sofa and getting a brick bench instead.  Wow!

It wasn’t our job to take care of the sheep.  And it wasn’t the job of the shearers to take care of the sheep.  That was the job of the Grazier, who owned the stations and kept the dingos away.  He knew that sheep who don’t get sheared can get into big trouble, even though they might like to escape from the shearing shed.  There was one sheep in New Zealand named Shrek, who escaped and when he was shorn, he lost sixty pounds of wool!  Sheep can get so weighed down by their wool that they can’t move to reach fresh pastures where green grass grows, and they can’t lie down by still waters to quench their thirst.

Good shepherds focus on more than just their sheep.  They also focus on the world that their sheep live in.  Shepherds who forget this part of caring for their sheep will allow them to overgraze their pastures.  Spending too long in any one paddock can lead to sheep having worms, or being impacted by drought conditions, or targeted by wolves and coyotes.

Sometimes we can be like stubborn sheep, wanting to avoid what’s good for us, and not recognizing how good we have it.  We don’t want to take the medicine the Good Shepherd provides for our souls, and we certainly don’t want to lose the things that keep us feeling warm and cozy and safe.  We don’t want to be moved from paddock to paddock to let the earth and grass recuperate from our use of the land. But there are times when the Good Shepherd knows we need to be sheared of all the things that weigh us down, fear, anxiety, depression, loneliness, and yes, maybe even too much stuff.  There are times when the Good Shepherd calls us to recognize when we have harmed the environment.  It’s hard to let go of all that, but we need to trust that the Good Shepherd knows what’s best for us.  And when our shepherd cares so much for us that he’s ready to even sacrifice his life for our well-being, that’s pretty amazing and humbling. 

Yesterday, people spent some time pondering the different images they had of our Good Shepherd.  If you talk to a shepherd who takes care of sheep for a living, as I had the opportunity to do just this week, the Good Shepherd is an amazing metaphor that resonates with them in a very powerful way.  But many of us have never touched a sheep or even seen a sheep up close.  The image of Jesus as our Good Shepherd can be as foreign to our lived experience as the image of a skyscraper would have been to a Roman Emperor.  Using this image today may be as enticing as a 1950’s jello salad, once all the rage at church potlucks, but never seen on restaurant menus.  In today’s society, it’s a metaphor that may not work well for us, especially if we think of sheep as docile and dumb.  They are anything but.  They can be tough, stubborn, creative, and easily spoiled by city slickers treating them like pets, as one of my farmer friends has often told me.  What kind of metaphors could we explore for Jesus that might help us feel more connected to him? Jesus is my homeless shelter?  Jesus is my Construction Safety Officer?  Jesus is my fire chief?  Jesus is my Astronaut?  Some of the metaphors that people came up with yesterday were amazing.  

Whatever metaphor we use that works for us today, hopefully it helps us to remember the characteristics of Jesus that can help us expand our understanding of who Jesus is in our lives today. Easter is a time to remember that Jesus had an abiding, unwavering kind of love and commitment to us all. And thanks be to God, Jesus continues to inspire and guide us and lead us into safe pastures.  May it be so for us all.  Amen.