NUC Comment

January 22, 2012 Reflection by Jayne Slawson

2012-01-23T20:27:00.001-08:00

Let us begin with prayer:

Holy One,
Light of all healing:
Be present with us.
May we become rooted in your love,
And filled with your peace,
May we be illuminated by your grace, and
May our hearts be kindled into quiet strength.
Calm our spirit into restoration, and
Touch our lives into wholeness again
So we can respond to your call to come and follow
In our own very ordinary ways... Amen

A couple of weeks ago I thought I would apply for a new work position. In order to do this I needed to do up a resume. In 34 years as a nurse I only ever had to do one resume and when I went back to review it, I could see that it was very outdated, sounded rather ordinary, and I needed to do something about that.

A resume is a summary of one's past professional or work experience and qualifications. When was the last time you did a resume? Even if you aren't looking for a new job, never worked or are retired, have you done a recent self assessment of your life's accomplishments?

By doing so, or by updating your resume on a regular basis you can see the ongoing changes and new experiences that you have made over time. When I redid my resume I was rather astounded—was that really me on those pages? It sure looked like it, but how surprising!

Writing a resume is sort of like writing your own biography, or like writing a Christmas letter about what has happened to you and your family over the past year. It is rather cathartic and when you are done you feel good, you feel lifted, you feel more than ordinary! You may say that you feel extraordinary.

You have taken the "ordinary you" and in a way have given life to your ordinariness. You begin to feel like you can meet new life challenges and opportunities, new job, new life prospects, or perhaps, for us today, new spiritual disciplines that support our openness to journey the way of God.

Thats kind of what Jesus did when he walked along the sea of Galilee and saw Simon and his brother, Andrew, and James and and his brother, John, casting nets out to sea, and called to them to follow him. He called them to not only be fisherman but to take the extra ordinariness of fishing and become fishers of people. Jesus invited Simon and Andrew, James and John to follow him and join him in God's work in a way that fit for them.

They may have been ordinary fisherman, but they could just as well have been ordinary carpenters, mechanics, physicians, teachers, nurses, ministers, book keepers, electricians, writers, musicians, artists, scientists, or a stay-at-home parent.

Jesus calls us to follow him and join in Gods work in ways that fit who we are too. We don't have to become something or someone that we aren't in order to follow him. Rather he frees us to bring the best of who we are and offer that up to the world, our communities, our friends and families. No matter who you are, where you have been, how old you are, Jesus calls us to use our talents, strengths, knowledge and passions, those things that only you alone possess. Imagine the freedom and purpose Jesus offers each of us by inviting us to be who we are as we reach out to others; calls us to be disciples, to walk with and learn from him. We are also called to be apostles to go forth into our world in the particular way that God gifts us. To minister love, peace, joy, truth, and wisdom, sharing Gods word of forgiveness and hope.

It is not always easy work as it demands alot.

It demands discipline, single-mindedness, determination and resolve. Sometimes it requires us to stretch ourselves and to leave behind things precious and dear to us. It can involve doing things we may not want to do, like in the reading from Jonah were Jonah reluctantly goes to Nineveh or like many of the other great prophets who were sent out to warn and prophesy. Each one initially saying, "God, don't send me, I'm heading the other way, I'm not worthy, they will crush me, Why me?"

Dr. George Darby served as a mission doctor on the Pacific Northwest Coast for 45 years. When Dr. Darby graduated from Medical School in Toronto his professors recognized in him a great deal of surgical skill and tried to persuade him to take up a lucrative practice in the city, but he was determined to minister to people in deep need of his care. And he did—in tiny fishing and logging camps and Native American villages from Alert Bay to Prince Rupert, and under conditions that were frequently harsh and almost always uncomfortable. "I hope that no one will ever say to me that I stuck it out here," he stated, "for I saw it as a privilege and I am forever thankful for the opportunity."

In her first year of "helping the poorest among the poor", Mother Theresa experienced doubt, loneliness and the temptation to return to the comfort of convent life. She wrote:

Our Lord wants me to be a free nun covered with the poverty of the cross. Today I learned a good lesson. The poverty of the poor must be so hard for them. While looking for a home myself, I walked and walked till my arms and legs ached. I thought how much the poor must ache in body and soul looking for a home, food and health. Then the comfort of Loreto my former order came to tempt me. "You have only to say the word and all that will be yours again," the tempter kept on saying. "But of free choice, my God, and out of love for you, I, Theresa, desire to remain and do whatever your Holy will is in my regard. I did not let a single tear come."

When we invest in serving others it means we quit focusing on what we don't have or who we aren't as an excuse for not ministering to others. We don't have to be as rich as someone else, or as smart, as winsome, as successful, as educated, as able to speak or teach in public.

We only need to offer all that we are. Would if we concentrated on these three principles:
    *   Being who we are
    *   Seeing what we have, and
    *   Doing what matters.

How would that free up the call of your heart and response to Gods call to serve others? What impact would that have on peoples lives, on our communities, on our world?

A week ago and for the next five weeks, I and another nursing colleague will and have been a preceptor to a 4^th year nursing student. Both I and my colleague are nearing the end of our nursing careers and here we are expected to mold and nurture this young, keen nursing student, to show her the extra ordinariness of nursing. These days both I and my colleague have been only feeling the ordinariness of our career. One of the great things about being a preceptor is that the energy, the passion, the freshness of these eager spirited students soon to be new graduate nurses surprisingly rub off on us and we again feel excitement, the extra ordinariness of Nursing... we again find the passion that we too once had and actually always had—we just needed someone—this vivacious student to come and show us, to uncover, this passion again.

Thank goodness for nursing students! Thank goodness for all those who inspire us.

It's the feeling we get when after a rain storm a rainbow appears, when the snow disappears and the first flowers of spring appear, when a new baby is born... we are reawakened and the ordinariness of life becomes extraordinary and we are changed forever.

The lesson here is that we don't have to go far to change the world, what we need is an alluring vision that will focus people on changing their own neighborhood. We have no elaborate strategies or rituals to love those who wonder into our lives. We just need to be faithful to those brought before us each day and committed to those who are placed in our care. Jesus didn't stumble upon extraordinary people who became leaders, he took ordinary people and made them into extraordinary leaders. Each one of us is an extraordinary leader in our own right, sometimes it takes an event, sometimes a special person or a simple message or word... for us to see it.

Bruno Serat, a retired chef in California, uses his life long talent for cooking to serve free pasta dinners to poor children who's families live in motels; Robin Lim, whose sister died of birth complications, became a midwife and went to Indonesia to help low income women get free prenatal care and provide safer birth conditions; Derreck Kajongos collects partially used soap from hotels and reprocesses them into bars of soap for 3^rd world communities; Rachel Bechwith, age 9, raised $1.25 millon for clean water in developing countries. We know of Jamie MacBeth working with her Kukua Pamoja program for change with disadvantaged youth in a Nairobi slum. Ordinary people who demonstrate extraordinary service to others.

All of us are called—each in our own way—to follow and serve. All of us are called, each in our own way, to be made new in Christ—to allow Christ to speak through us, to allow God to work within us and to reach out and touch others using our hands, our hearts, and our words. And in this only great things can happen.

Rick Warren, in his book, The Purpose Driven Church, writes:

Small ministries often make the greatest difference. The most important light in my house is not the large chandelier in our dining room, but the little nightlight that keeps me from stubbing my toe when I get up to use the bathroom at night. It's small, but its more useful to me that the showoff light.

Nelson United Church has a new Mission Statement... Can you recite it?
"We dare to live the Way of Jesus, embodying the Love of God."
In there is a call—a call from Jesus—a call from God to come and follow a post-missional, a post- modern approach to life, work and ministry. How will you respond? How will this faith community respond? Our new Church Board needs your hands, your voice and your heart. Our community, our world calls out with the same needs. It all starts with us and how we hear Jesus call to follow and serve. Come, come and follow...

Together let us conclude this message with these words:

Ordinary extraordinary people are you and I.
We meet them at work, in our grocery stores, on a busy street and everywhere.
They come in all shapes and sizes, we only have to look all around us and sometimes simply in a mirror.
They are strangers
They are neighbors
They are us.
They care a lot about other people in our community, in our world.
They have an indomitable spirit and great strength.
They have a lot of faith and courage.
They take pleasure in performing small acts of kindness rather than in grand intentions
They look for the best and give the best, they have.
They inspire
They teach
They share their talents and gifts.
They see a beginning in every end.
They touch lives and leave caring foot prints on hearts.
They change lives forever and are themselves changed forever.
They are ordinary
extraordinary
you and I.

Amen

January 15, 2012 Reflection by Rev. David Boyd

2012-01-15T22:03:00.000-08:00

Our Thursday morning book group is reading A Spirituality of Imperfection. We just read a chapter about the role that mystery and miracle pay in a spirituality of imperfection over against the idea of magic. Magic was defined as the manipulation of reality that gives rise to a false sense of security or a false sense of what is real. Miracle and Mystery point to the wonder and awe that we constantly experience and how each moment has both the immediate fact of that moment as well as the deeper mystery where we meet God. A spirituality of imperfection enables us to accept our own humanity and thereby move beyond the need for magic into the realm of miracle, mystery, wonder and awe, all of which are about seeing. How do we see the world around us?

Let me begin with a story that comes from A Spirituality of Imperfection. Nikos Kazantzakis, among other story tellers, tells this story; Kazantzakis wrote the provocative novel, The Last Temptation of Christ. This story is about a monk who all his life has wanted to go on a pilgrimage to the tomb of Christ, walk three times around it, kneel down to pray, and return to his monastery a changed man. The monk belongs to a Greek Orthodox monastery in the north of Greece. Since monks share communally their possessions, it was difficult for the monk to save enough money to go to Jerusalem, circle the empty tomb of Christ three times, and kneel in prayer. However, the monastery was in favour of this monk embarking on his pilgrimage and so, late in his life, he set out. He took with him the funds he needed for the trip, a sum that was about $100. He took a few belongings, a walking staff and set out of on his journey. After traveling a short distance, he came across a man collecting herbs in the ditch beside the road. The man was very poor and dressed in rags. As the monk was a friendly person, he greeted the herb collector warmly. The herb collector greeted him back and asked where he was going. "To Jerusalem," said the monk. "All my life I've wanted to see the empty tomb of Christ, walk around it three times, kneel in prayer and return home a changed man." "It is a noble pilgrimage on which you are embarked," said the herb collector. "How much money have you for your pilgrimage?" The monk thought this a strange question and yet, being without guile, answered truthfully, "about $100." The herb collector then said, "I am a poor man who raises money to support my family by finding herbs to sell in the market. Give me the $100, circle around me three times, kneel and pray and return to your monastery a changed man." The monk pondered this suggestion for some time. Finally, he fished into his belongings, took out the $100, gave it to the herb collector, walked around him in a circle three times, knelt down and prayed, and returned to his monastery a changed man. The monk in his reflection after this experience realized that when we are able to see, we will recognize others as the Christ and that the empty tomb of Christ is not what is important but the life of Christ recognized in every being.

How do we see the world around us? What would we have seen in the herb collector? The face of Christ? The face of someone in need of charity? The face of someone who should just get a regular job? Or maybe something different altogether.

It seems to me that the function of any spiritual tradition or discipline is that we are helped to see the world differently. Jesus, in the tradition of the Jewish prophets before him, sought to have the Jewish leaders see the Torah differently, from the heart and from the perspective of love. Jesus tried to help his friends and followers see the reality of loveÑthat God loves them, even those who are the poorest of the poor, to let them know that they are worthy of love and that they are part of God's circle of love, the Commonwealth of Love. Jesus tried to help the Jewish leaders also see how grasping after power over had come to affect relationships with others and the proclamation of God's Word. Jesus even tried, although this wasn't his primary intention, to help the Romans see that the motto, "Pax Romano" wasn't really about peace but about assimilation and coercive power.

The Apostle John, from whom we hear the story of Jesus calling Nathaniel and Phillip to be disciples, is an interesting story on many levels. It is a story about the call to all of us to be followers of Jesus. It is a multi-layered story also about how to see. John loves to layer his stories so that as we go deeper into the story, we discover more and more nuances and ideas. John through this telling of the story about Jesus calling disciples raises the question about what it means to see.

The Greek language, which was used for the Christian Scriptures, has at least 6 words that relate to seeing. You know when something is important when there is more than one word for an idea or concept. In our passage this morning, two of these words are used. The first, more commonly used means to see with the eyes, but also has a more spiritual dimension that invites the one seeing to see further into the mystery to recognize something significant. In John's story, it is to recognize Jesus is the Christ. The other word used by John in today's passage has to do with seeing like watching a dream. This is used in the latter part of our passage this morning, the part about seeing heaven opening and the angels ascending and descending.

One of the shifts in thinking in the last 25 years relates seeing to what we believe. We see what we believe we will see. Nathaniel didn't believe anything good could come out of Nazareth and yet when Jesus confronted him with thoughts about seeing differently, Nathaniel changed his beliefs and saw something significant, something of the mystery of God. At a recent meeting of our presbytery executive, a question arose that produced in me a rather visceral response. I reacted from a place of fear and with a certain perspective that wasn't about openness or love, but was from a place of uncertainty and emotion. I believed that the result of a course of action related to this particular question would lead to conflict and tension. In the last couple of days as I reflected on my response, I realized that what I saw or what I might foresee happening is more related to my own fears and limitations rather than new possibilities for the future.

Jesus invites us to see in a way that moves us beyond our fears and our limitations. Rather than look for instant fixes to problems or quick solutions that might compromise us ethically, we are invited to cultivate a sense of wonder and mystery, to realize that there is the reality of a particular moment, but that underneath this reality is also the reality of God's presence, the reality of grace and love. A sunset can be a beautiful thing in and of itself, but a set of circumstances can lead one to see in the sunset a new direction, a sign of consolation maybe, an assurance that we are not alone. I remember shortly after the death some years ago of a dear friend, I was standing on my deck in the dark of a summer night thinking of my friend and right at that moment, a shooting star moved across the night sky leaving a long tail. I saw and felt a comfort regarding my friend that would otherwise not have come.

Jesus not only invites us into a relationship of love and following, Jesus also invites us to see the reality around us with a deeper sense of God's presence. We are called in some instances to see beyond the mere superficiality of something to see the call to justice behind it, or to see the deep need of someone who might be lashing out at something. We are called to see the deep joy in those experiencing a moment's enlightenment or a new direction. We are called to see in each other, sometimes where we least expect it, the face of Christ and summons to know that we are loved and that we are called to love the world that God has made more deeply, more justly, more gracefully.

This is why Jesus continually said, "Those who have eyes to see, open them and look!" Let's look together and see the miracle and wonder of life.

Amen.

January 8, 2012 Reflection by Rev. David Boyd

2012-01-15T21:35:00.001-08:00

Within every religious tradition there is a belief that wisdom comes through foolishness, or at least through what many of the powerful in a culture deems to be foolishness. The apostle Paul in one of his letters to the early church tried to capture this sense, that through what humans define as wise, God sees as foolishness, and what God sees as wise, humans see as foolishness.

The whole Christmas story culminating in today's Epiphany celebration when we remember the Magi, is really foolishness. This was why Herod was so angry; surely God would take on human form in a palace, the son or daughter of a king or a queen. Or at least God would take on human flesh with a great deal of pomp and pageantry. Surely God would become one of us in a wisely conventional way?

And yet the story tells us that God became human in Jesus, the son of a carpenter, a lowly trade in ancient Israel. The birth was shown to shepherds, lower even than carpentry. Angels appeared to these shepherds. Jesus was born in a manger not in a palace or some magnificent place, and not even in Jerusalem, which was a holy city. Now, what about the MagiÑnow we're talking. They were monarchs in their own country, wise people who knew the stars. This was what God had in mind. But the foolishness of the story is that they went looking for a baby. They bowed low to a baby. A baby! What foolishness is this?

And the stories of the other Magi, including the one of Babushka, are about searching for the holy child and sharing wealth, healing and wholeness with the poor and broken people of the world along the way. In order to help the world, in order to ensure justice is carried out, in order to find the holy child, the Magi and the others give away their wealth, teach others the way of the healing arts; this is counter to the ways of the world which is about acquiring wealth, about acquiring knowledgeÑsecret knowledge. What foolishness is this to follow the Christ, the one who died on a cross and yet through that act of selfless love, proclaimed the power of life.

What in life has the potential to reduce even the most reserved of humans to babbling fools? A baby. Cassidy reminds us that through laughter and love, we make a life. We are reminded in this baptism that the way to find a deeper life worth living is to take a child in one's arms and proclaim to the world that riches and power are not what's important—love and this life, the life of all children, the life of every human being and all of life is what is important.

Jackson Browne wrote a Christmas song called The Rebel Jesus. It is about the folly of chasing wealth, riches and power. Truly, Christmas is about love, family and changing the world so that all might have the life that is promised them. It may be folly to gather here this morning and hold up this child Cassidy as a sign of God's presence in this world, for Christ is born in each child. Baptism isn't held the high esteem it once was, but we are here because we affirm, as God does, that life—all life—is vital and important. We hear the story of Christmas and are inspired to seek to live the gift of love that we celebrate all the year long. We call to account that which the world deems important and challenge the powers that be that it is time to transcend hate, fear and protectionism so that we can celebrate the foolishness of love, life, grace and forgiveness.

This is a good way to start the year, to be reminded that in the birth of a baby we witness the miracle of God's presence with us. An Epiphany in Emmanuel. So may it be. Amen.

January 1, 2012 Reflection by Rev. David Boyd

2012-01-15T16:12:00.000-08:00

I was watching a bit of the Morning News on Thursday morning; I was only half paying attention. A technology reporter was being interviewed and my brain registered the word "gamefication." He said that internet companies, because of the hugely popular online gaming, are trying to construct their websites to look like games. You get to a certain level and then you get a reward before you move on to another level. The other phrase that this technology reporter used was "augmented reality." This is the idea that if you are using your mobile phone or smart technology, you can take a view an object—he used the example of the Eye in London, England—and when you view it using smart technology, it will augment your view with fireworks or interesting lighting or something that isn't happening at the time but that did happen before—augmented reality!

I'm not knocking this technology; I don't really know enough about it. I admit to a certain level of fear about where technology might take us and how much it could hide us from the truth of reality. I have a question about how you can augment reality, and there are some ethical questions that we need to deal with in our own lives and in the broader society about technology. Having said all of this, though, I am gradually moving into the digital age; I now have a new iPod and am enjoying it. I am cautious around some of the advances in technology. We certainly can't turn our backs on it—we are human beings after all and we are hard-wired to create new ways to enhance our living.

As I thought about the idea of augmented reality, I found myself thinking about what this morning means both for Rodney and his family and for all of us. What a great way to begin the new yearÑthinking about what is important, affirming the deeper spiritual values by which we choose to live our lives, affirming that we want to help make the world a better place. The reality of this experience of baptism doesn't need augmenting or maybe it's more that technology can't help with augmenting the reality of this moment.

I wonder if the idea of augmented reality isn't more of a spiritual dilemma. A lot of popular culture is what I think of as pseudo-spirituality. There is a spiritual dimension to it, but it is often unrecognized or unappreciated and sometimes even leads us down a path that isn't life-giving, but leads to addictionsÑaddictions to gaming or TV or entertainment or sports or gambling orÉ Sometimes popular culture leads us to think that the virtual world is the real world and this world in which we live isn't all that great. The emphasis on vampires these days is part of this entertainment spirituality that doesn't augment reality in my opinion, but can skew us into thinking our lives would be much more exciting and real if we lived a different way or if reality were different.

For me, this experience this morning, sharing in the baptism of Rodney, is about being grounded more firmly in reality. We use real symbols like water and hands and candles and friends; these symbols do point to something beyond ourselves—to love, to God, to Christ's presence. This action of baptism this morning I believe takes us more deeply into the depths of our humanity where we discover new hope for living more fully. And in plumbing the depths of our humanity, there we meet God and God's creative spark and energy. There is no secret wisdom in this; there is nothing hidden. We come before God naked in a sense, open to a new experience, and the water on our foreheads reminds us that this world is infused with God's SpiritÑit is infused with the divine spark of life that is God's gift to all creation.

All religions have rituals and traditions that enable us to live our lives more fully, that enable us to live the truth of love more deeply. Luke tells us of Mary and Joseph taking Jesus as the first-born to the Temple for the ritual dedication. Jesus was already circumcised as his tradition dictated. Mary also would have participated in a ritual of blessing giving thanks for the birth. Anna and Simenon recognize in Jesus the reality of God's love, the fulfilment of the reality of God's promise of healing and wholeness in the world. Rituals open us to the depths of our humanity, which is where we encounter the depths of God's presence.

With a baby, holding this tangible life, this ball of gurgling, downy softness, it is not hard to know what is real. This life is real. This moment is real. This gift is real. What better to begin the year but with this reminder that life is precious and a gift. While Rod is not a baby, nonetheless symbolically we all are babies in some ways as we mark a new beginning.

John Wesley, the 18^th Century English Reformer who started Methodism, is one of my heroes. Every year on the first Sunday of the year, he would lead a congregation in what he called a covenant service. Wesley, in his long life, constantly fought against the Church of England's classism and disinterest in the plight of the poor and disenfranchised. He fought to reform penal laws, create laws around the easy availability of gin and its consequent horrors for families. Many of the values that Charles Dickens wrote about in his novels were proclaimed by Wesley and his Methodist followers 100 years before. They were decried as "enthusiasts," which was not a popular term; it was a derisive term in 18th Century England. But it was true of Wesley and reflected in his covenant services; "enthusiasm" literally means "full of God," "ent-theosed." Wesley urged his friends to begin the New Year with a new sense of God's presence in their lives and the call to ease the suffering of family and friends.

Part of the covenant reads thus:

Christ has many services to be done:
   Some are easy, others are difficult.
Some make others applaud us, others bring only reproach.
Some we desire to do because of our own interests, others seem counter to our natures.
Christ strengthens us and gives us the power to do these things.
  And so, I give myself to you, O God.
  Assign me to my place in your creation...¹

I'm not opposed to technology for it has its place in assisting in our health and welfare. But I want the reality of water and Spirit. I want the reality of community and face to face encounters. I want the reality of love shared and discovered. I want the reality of peace on earth and good will towards all. If reality is to be augmented, let it be augmented by the truth of love, companionship, grace, friendship, and new beginnings. Rodney, in your courage to declare a new journey of faith, we are delighted to journey with you, to be your companions to discover the beauty and wonder of life.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

________________________________
¹ The Handbook of the Christian Year, Abingdon Press, 1992, pg 82-83.

Reflection by David for a Christmas Morning, 2011

2011-12-31T13:28:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned last night, I regularly read Suzanne Guthrie's website, Edge of Enclosure. She's an Anglican priest who is living with a community of nuns who seek to live sustainably, who seek to live spiritually and who seek to live with intention and integrity working with God to create a world of peace and justice with love. Suzanne wrote a poem for this day based on John's theology of the "Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us":

In the beginning a silent soundscape,
a procession of absolute stillness,
unfolding spheres of mystery
from veiled unknowable
to startling specific,
the Word descends
embeds,
gestates,
unfurls as
grace upon grace,
deep rooted love within love.
And so, heaven and earth unite
in the Word made flesh dwelling
among us. Not then, not now,
not once. But evermore.

The beauty of John's poetic telling of Christmas without angels, shepherds, Magi, and even Mary and Joseph is that it is cosmic in scope and traces back to the beginning when there was only God. This passage, one of my favourites, speaks to my mystically oriented heart. John affirms that the God's influenceÑGod's creative and loving impetusÑis impelled into time and space. God, unknowable and beyond mystery yet experienced in each person, each atom and knowable in the expression of love that we exchange, shares in the humility of our flesh, thus enabling us to share in the mystery of God's being. In other words, God is enfleshed in bodily form in life and the created form is imbued with God's being. We are at once divine and fleshy creatures. The divine spark of life is in each of usÑthe essence of GodÑand we live with all that it means to live, knowing joy and sorrow, knowing peace and fear, knowing hope and despair.

As Suzanne Guthrie said on her website, "The heartrending exquisiteness of the prologue (to John's Gospel) breaks Christmas open in beauteous, heavenly light." The power of Christmas for me has always been the mystical sense of God's presence in life that we affirm most clearly in the birth of Jesus and seek to affirm more positively in all of creation. Jesus came to dwell among us as a bodily form of God's love for all and as an invitation to live lives more fully, more lovingly, more sustainably, more from a sense of justice and hope.

Part of my own experience is that it is easy for me to see God's presence in my experiences in nature—even those where there is danger from predatory animals or from being close to lost. My challenge is to live this presence more fully and intentionally in community with others, here in the city where there is fear and disharmony, where there are different perspectives and understandings of politics and life. The challenge we all face, which Christmas asks each year, is how will we live the enfleshed Word of God, how will we, as our Purpose Statement says, embody the love of God. Jesus became flesh and dwelt among us—and dwells still. But we, too, are flesh and blood people and Christmas invites us to live the fullness of God's love and being in our lives.

Or to put it poetically in the words of Gerard Manly Hopkins,

In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is,
Since he was what I am.

Christmas blessings to you all!

Amen.

Reflection by David for a Christmas Eve, 2011

2011-12-31T13:25:00.000-08:00

I often go to the website of an Anglican priest Suzanne Guthrie who lives with her husband as resident companion of The Community of the Holy Spirit, Melrose Convent in Brewster, New York. The sisters of this community work at Bluestone Farm and Learning Center and live a balanced life reflecting sustainable living, social justice and spiritual fulfilment. I'm indebted to Suzanne for these thoughts tonight.

One of the spiritual disciplines that I've cultivated over the years is the discipline of striving for a new beginning, of letting go, of not letting the past dictate how I live today or how I might live in to tomorrow. Christmas is one of the festivals of the year that helps in this discipline. Every year we retell the story, sing the same beloved carols, celebrate meaningful traditions, sometimes learn new carols and engage new traditions. We know the story and yet we come this night to hear it again with new ears, with an open heart, with new eyes. We begin over and walk the path of life with Christ, newly born in the world and in each of us.

Gerard Manly Hopkins was a Victoria poet and Jesuit priest who was wracked by his own self-doubt; this is partly why I like his poetry. It speaks of humanity and realness. Hopkins wrote a poem about starting over, about not looking back and pressing on into the beginning. It goes like this:

Moonless darkness stands between.
Past, O past, no more be seen!
But the Bethlehem star may lead me
To the sight of him who freed me
From the self that I have been.
Make me pure, Lord: thou art holy;
Make me meek, Lord: thou wert lowly;
Now beginning, and always:
Now begin, on Christmas Day.

The Bethlehem star leads us to see the world with different eyes; the star casts its rays upon the places where there is sorrow, where there is fear, where there is despair, where there is war and violence, where women are raped as an aspect of war and children are turned into soldiers. The Bethlehem star casts its light into the lives of the poor who struggle to make ends meet.

Dorothy Soelle, a German theologian, reminds us that the Bethlehem star appeared to shepherds, considered to be one of the lowliest of trades in the Israel of Jesus' day. Soelle said, "The frightened shepherds became God's messengers. They organize, make haste, find others, and speak with them. Do we not all want to become shepherds and catch sight of the angel?" Soelleinvites us to see Mary among us, poor and in need of shelter to give birth to hope and love in the world. She also invites us to see in every child, especially the children dying of hunger and violence, the face of the Christ Child.

What Christmas invites us all to do is to set aside our fears; or perhaps more importantly, not so much to set aside our fears, but to live in spite of them—for we all have fears. The Bethlehem star appears for each of us—wherever our Bethlehem might be—and the angel proclaims God's intention for a new beginning in the world, and we are invited to live this new gift in spite of our fears. We gather others around us, make a new community and seek to make real in the world this new beginning.

And God is with us every step of the way. Here is the Bethlehem. Here is the Christ Child. Here this very night... Let us live in spite of our fear... let us choose a life of fullness and joy for all in this world. Let us choose a life of peace and sustainable living ourselves, a new community of star-light and love.

A blessed Christmas to you all.

Amen.

Reflection by Rev. Carol A. Prochaska, ret. – December 11, 2011

2011-12-12T07:26:00.000-08:00

Third Sunday of Advent

Title: Led Into Joy

Scriptures: Isaiah 61:1–4, 8–11; Luke 1:46b–55; 1Thessalonians 5:16–24 ; John 1:6–8, 19–28

This past week John and I received our first Christmas card. It came from my cousin Lynne. As adults over the years we have stayed in touch — connecting most often when there is a death in the family — but we always exchange Christmas greetings. Like most of my cousins, Lynne falls into the category of a life-long "non-church-goer." And yet — here's the card she sent:

Outside: Believe. Celebrate with hope and wonder and believe in the spirit of the season.
Inside: "Wishing you peace and joy this Christmas!" Love, Lynne

Well, Lynne, you are right on! Your card includes Hope for the first Sunday of Advent, Peace for the second Sunday of Advent, and Joy — so timely for this third Sunday of Advent.

There's no doubt in my mind that Lynne's wishes are sincere — but I doubt she was thinking of what we in the church call Advent, or that she was aware we be focusing on "joy" this Sunday. Of course — the word "joy" is all over the place at this time of year. We see it on cards and gift tags. In stores we hear recordings of "Joy to the World." There are TV and newspaper advertisements claiming that certain merchandise will bring joy. And then year-round lottery winners are said to be overjoyed! When a favorite team gets to play for the championship — the team's fans are overjoyed. And they're overjoyed again when their team wins the coveted trophy.

But in this place — on this third Sunday of Advent — it seems to me we would do well to ask ourselves: "What is meant by joy in the bible?" This morning we heard in Isaiah: "I will greatly rejoice in the Holy One", and from Mary: "My spirit rejoices in God my savior", and Paul in 1^st Thessalonians: "Rejoice always", and then in John, unsaid, but nevertheless evident, that this Mighty One who is coming will bring joy. (Just so there's no confusion the words "joy" and "rejoice" are interchanged depending on grammar and context.)

In the New Testament there are two Greek words for joy or rejoice. It interesting, I think, that these words are often linked with descriptive words such as greatly / much /exceedingly. You may remember the words of the Christmas angels bringing good news of great joy. One definition includes the phrase "Jumping for joy!" A simple definition for JOY is "Jesus Others You." If we flesh it out a bit, "joy" is feeling good about God, self, and others, all at the same time. So joy — biblical joy is not "a me only" happening: Joy comes because God loves us. God is present. God acts. Mary says: "the Mighty One has done great things for me..." Isaiah speaks of God bringing about deliverance and justice.

So joy has its beginnings in God's love. When this love is exposed, when this love is experienced and acknowledged — something stirs within — there's a kind of breaking apart (maybe something like ice on a lake breaking up in the springtime). There is a cracking open — and something emerges. There is praise and thanksgiving. We feel good about God, ourselves, and others all at the same time! We call this joy!

In the psalm for this morning which we did not read our faith ancestors say: "God has done great things for us and we are filled with joy." And then this same psalm goes on to say: "Those who now sow in tears will reap with shouts of joy;" And sure enough, joy does follow tears: You know those times when you cry that kind of heavy deep convulsing sobbing? Your whole body is weeping and it seems as if you will never stop — and then! Lo and behold! We actually run out of tears! And in their place is calm — rather like the calm and peacefulness that follows a pounding rain storm. Within this calm is a feeling of relief. We feel lighter — it seems to us that a burden has been lifted. We have a quiet confidence that "Yes —we can go on." And once again we feel connected to God and to the rest of the world. A smile may form and we whisper a thank you to God. We may not be jumping for joy but — we know we're loved, we know we're not alone, and we're glad that we're alive.

This morning we heard the apostle Paul saying: "Rejoice always — and give thanks for everything — for this is God's will." Seems a bit of a stretch does it not? (rather Pollyanna and even unrealistic?).

This witness of Paul's makes me think of someone saying "Smile! Things could be worse!" Well yes they could be but at the moment it is worse for me! However! We can be certain that Paul is not being unrealistic when it comes to suffering — he knew suffering first hand. He also knew firsthand God's faithfulness. We heard in his witness: "The one who calls you is faithful..." This is the One who came into the world to be the Light of the world — the Light the darkness has not overcome. So we can sing "Joy to the World" — we can sing it loudly and fearlessly — even in the dark — whatever that "dark" may be for us.

We also heard Paul's admonishment: "to test everything;" I hear in this a warning to be choosy in regards to the messages we heed. Whose witness do we take to heart? Whose words point to that which is Christ—like — that which is goodness and truth and righteousness? Whose words have the potential to lead us into feeling good about ourselves, others, and God all at the same time?

How about this? Every kiss begins with a diamond? Really?? Buy this model of car and on the highway get 8 L/100 km — wow! And this is going to benefit God's creation? How about when we angrily rant about how commercialized Christmas has become? Is this to be our witness to the wonder of the Word Incarnate? To Emmanuel — God with us? Are we taking seriously Paul's witness to "hold fast to what is good?" Is it not up to us to live the Christ in Christmas — to be a witness to the Love-Light that has come into the world for all people?

On page 8 of this month's Observer there is cartoon: The title is "Inherit the Mirth." It could have been "Inherit the Joy." It's a stable scene. Joseph and Mary are looking tenderly on the baby Jesus. The baby Jesus is sleeping peacefully in a trough on a bed of hay. Standing behind is a cow who is speaking to the donkey. The cow says: "I don't care if he's a 'special baby'. He's sleeping on my lunch!"

"Jesus Others You."? Feeling good about ourselves, God, and others all at the same time!?

Yes, Cousin Lynne — I "Believe" we believe. And yes, Cousin Lynne, we can "Celebrate with hope and wonder and believe in the spirit of the season." And yes, Cousin Lynne, we can "Wish [each other] peace and joy this Christmas!" Because? — because these words and their fulfillment come from our faithful God.

Reflection by David for December 4, 2011

2011-12-06T09:26:00.001-08:00

Second Sunday of Advent

Text: Mark 1:1–8

I've been thinking all week about the gospel of Jesus Christ and what it might be for us in 2011 on the brink of 2012, on this second Sunday of Advent in the new church year. "The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ..." I think we need to redefine this Good News for every generation, maybe even every Sunday. We need to hear the Good News as a way of gaining courage to live in a way that is life-giving, life-affirming, loving and compassionate.

I was privileged to be part of the 3 memorial experiences this past week; the first was the memorial service for Lorna Marshall. The second was for my friend and colleague Kent Israel. The third was the World AIDS Day vigil, memorial and gathering. Each memorial sharpened for me the Good News at least for this week. I say it was a privilege to attend and participate and lead in these memorial services because I have found over the years that at such gatherings we cut to the chase; we get to the real nub of what it means to live life. We proclaim the Good News and speak of ultimate and important things.

Lorna Marshall wrote her own eulogy and shared words that she wanted to see lived in our lives; she spoke of the essence of what her life was about. And what it boiled down to was that what is important is that we live with others in loving compassion and grace-filled living. Lorna reminded us twice, once in her eulogy and once in words that Jay, Lorna's husband wanted to share as he had me read them, that it is so important to say the words "I love you" often and not just with those with whom we are in a committed relationship, but more broadly with our friends and in acts of courage and generosity shared around the globe.

This message was repeated in the funeral service for Kent Israel in Summerland. Life is too short to get caught up in petty quarrels and jealousies. We wind ourselves up in knots worrying about life, "what we shall wear and what we shall eat," to quote Jesus words in Matthew. I'm as good at this as anyone else. I worry, I see my flaws and faults and get down on myself; I judge myself and others against some perfect standard. A number of us traveled to Kent's funeral from Kootenay Presbytery and we sat together and shared a meal together. It was a sad occasion, but we all realized that we need to speak of love and life more often and cut through the stuff that isn't important. As we returned to our homes, we passed around an email and spoke of the importance of saying to each other, "I love you." On two occasions I stopped on the road home. One of those occasions was at the lookout up from Osoyoos. The sun was setting and the light was catching the mountains in such a way that was awe-inspiring. The other stop was at Nancy Greene Lake under the stars. It was my chance to say to goodbye to Kent and in my way to commend his being to God's love. But it was also an opportunity to reaffirm the importance of life and consequently made a commitment to live more fully. I have been slipping a bit back into my depression; I felt the Good News again of love resound in my heart and in the universe.

And this was again proclaimed at the World AIDS Day gathering last Thursday night. A gay man from Ecuador spoke about how difficult it was as a gay man trying to make his way in Latino and machismo culture. He experienced hate and articulated again the need to love. If we let it, he said, love changes things. Love gets into our hearts to shift us from our self-centred and self-imposed judgments of what is right and wrong. It shifts us to think about sharing life with others and not worrying so much about acquiring things and wealth. The wealth of friends and love is what is important. And this message was affirmed as we remembered people who had died of AIDS and as we celebrated the places where people are working to overcome discrimination and stigmatization from Kenya and Africa to Ecuador and Latin America to Europe and Asia to everywhere around the globe to here at home.

For first century people who longed to feel and experience the love of God, Jesus proclaimed the Good News; he lived it and spoke of what is important. Jesus has worked in people over the generations to articulate again the Good News. Jesus cut to the chase of conflicts and political intrigue, of prevarication and dissembling and power-mongering, and he has helped us do the same. "Greater than these powers," speaks the Good News of Jesus Christ anew for us today, "is the power of love to transform our lives and the life of the world so that all may live." Let us leave this place and speak the words "I love you often and with integrity."

Amen.

Reflection by David for November 27, 2011

2011-11-29T12:47:00.001-08:00

First Sunday of Advent

Scripture: Isaiah 64:1-9; Mark 13:24-37

I wonder if today Isaiah's thoughts would be considered lament or rant. And what about Mark, has he recorded Jesus offering a rant or a lament? Or is it a prophetic word about the conditions of life today?

I find myself thinking about the difference between a rant and a lament. The dictionary says this: a) to rant—to speak in loud, violent or extravagant language; declaim vehemently; rave; b) to lament—to feel or express sorrow over; to feel remorse or regret over. Based on these definitions, I think Isaiah and Jesus both offered lament. Rants, too, though, have their place.

I have to confess that both Mark and Isaiah invited me to lament. I think lament is important in our lives; we need to give expression to our grief, to our regret. We need to express our sorrow at losses we have experienced or at the way things seem to be in the world. To hold our griefs and disappointments inside is to boil and stew and leads to health disruptions and the occasional boiling over, which does no one any good. That is why we have ritualized lament; it is good to gather with others and offer our lament to God and to one another. In the offering, we can learn to let go; we can accept. And so, if you will, let me take you on a journey of lament.

I lament the fact that 22 years ago last Thursday, November 24^th, 1989, to be exact, our Canadian Parliament unanimously passed a resolution that child poverty would be eliminated by the year 2000. On another November 24^th, this time in 2009, the House passed another unanimous motion to create a plan to eliminate poverty in Canada for everyone. Exactly one year ago, a House committee called for measurable targets and timelines to eliminate poverty for the nearly 3.2 million Canadians who live in poverty. BC has a terrible track record with respect to poverty. While suggestions and proposals have been made, nothing has been implemented. Because there aren't the supports for families, the Food Cupboard and our office receive requests for assistance. It is hard for working families to come to ask for help, but when you have children in your home, what do you do? We do what we can, but it is a drop in the bucket to what is needed. There will be a petition supporting a private member's bill to require the federal government to create timelines and targets with respect to reducing poverty; it will be downstairs after church if you should choose to sign.

I lament the state of affairs in Egypt, where we all had such hope for a democracy and change. When you are used to absolute authority, it is so very difficult to leave behind that mindset and establish new patterns of freedom and justice. I lament the deaths and killings and the intransigence of the governments of Syria, Burma, North Korea, Zimbabwe, and many other nations where repression and aggression are normative. I lament the production of arms and the military-industrial complex that gets rich off the proceeds of violent clashes. I lament the discord that exists between the nations of Palestine and Israel. I lament the increasingly restrictive refugee policies of our Western countries, including Canada, where it is becoming harder and harder to come here to escape death and torture for simply calling the government to account or speaking for freedom, human rights or the equality of women. I lament the fact that Uganda is trying to force a law that will require the death penalty for those who are gay, lesbian, bi-sexual or transgender. I lament the fact that greed seems to fuel our need to acquire more and that greed is the motive for companies to pillage the earth. I lament that we can't seem to escape our dependency on fossil fuel and thereby work to clean up the environment. I lament the state of the world and pray God, "when, dear God, when will justice flow down like mighty waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream? When, dear God, when?"

"Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, dear God. Oh that you would!" (Isaiah 64:1)

Do I feel better? Well, truth be told, yes and no. I've said what I've said and there could have been more. It feels good to articulate with you my griefs and disappointments at the state of the world. But my lament isn't finished. Isaiah went on to say: "Yet you are our mother and father, O God; we are the clay and you are the potter, we are the work of your hands." (Isaiah 64:8)

If I didn't believe in the power of Christmas and presence of the holy in all life, I would say that my lament is simply a rant. But because I believe that God has not abandoned us, but dwells within usÑthe Christ light is in each of us and in the life of the worldÑI live in hope. I live in hope that all that I have lamented will be overturned, that death will be swallowed up in life, that the shadows of grief will give way to the open promise of light, that the power of love and compassion and the call of human community is stronger than other forces that would tear us apart. I have hope that we can name those struggles in our world and that we can come together to address them with others to create new life for all. I have hope that we can sing and dance and know the beauty, wonder and awesomeness of life. We light this Advent candle as a light to remind us that hope exists and that our creativity, our energy, and our gifts can be part of the creative energy of God to bring to birth a new reality that is already dawning among and within us!

Today we begin the Advent journey to Christmas, to the affirmation that we are not alone, that God dwells with us. We begin with lament with its curious combination of expressing grief and hope. Advent is our invitation to be mindful and intentional about life. It is our invitation to share the Christ-light in us with others in working with God to create a new world. Advent is our opportunity again to pray, to advocate, to bless, to invite, to be, to live compassion as our Advent discipline and as a means for changing our habits of the heart from rant to lament where hope is rekindled and love renewed. With such energy and with God, we CAN change the world; we can eliminate poverty and create communities and nations of peace, well-being, love and neighbourly grace.

I leave you with a hopeful interpretation of Psalm 80 by Nan Merrill that is my hope for the world this Advent and indeed, all year:

Eternal Listener, give heed to your people,
You, who are our Guide and Light!
You, who dwell amidst the angels, shine forth into the heart of all nations!
Enliven your people with compassion that peace and justice might flourish.
Restore us, O Holy One, let your face shine upon us, and teach us to love!
Gentle Teacher, help us to turn to you in prayer, fasting from our negative thoughts.
In your steadfast love, you weep with our tears, tears that rise from fear, doubt, and illusion.
You uphold us when we feel the sting of pride, when our anxiety threatens to paralyze us.
Restore us, O Holy One, let your face shine upon us, and teach us again to love! Amen.

Reflection by David for November 20, 2011

2011-11-22T00:00:00.000-08:00

Reign of Christ Sunday

Scripture: Matthew 25:31-46

Natalie Sleeth, whose hymn we sang at the beginning of today's worship, "Praise our God with the sound of trumpet," has written a number of hymns in our hymn resources. One has become a favourite at times of remembrance, "In the bulb..." (Voices United 703) Two of the verses are:

In the bulb there is a flower;
In the seed an apple tree;
In cocoons a hidden promise:
Butterflies will soon be free!
In the cold and snow of winter
There's a spring that waits to be,
Unrevealed until its season,
Something God alone can see.

In our end is our beginning;
In our time infinity;
In our doubt is our believing;
In our life, eternity.
In our death, a resurrection;
At the last a victory,
Unrevealed until its season,
Something God alone can see.

Natalie wrote this hymn and dedicated it to her husband Ronald, who was diagnosed with cancer soon after its composition. It was later sung at his funeral. I had also heard that Natalie wrote the hymn as a means for her children to understand something about death and new beginnings.

I think of Sleeth's hymn today because we are embarking on something new, something that before now has been unrevealed and only now seems to have come into its season, something that God has seen and has helped us in this congregation to see. Namely, we are letting go of an old structure and, based on our purpose statement, embarking on a new process, a more open process, a participatory process that has slowly revealed itself to us in due season.

This is also the end of the Church year, Advent being the start of a new Church year, which begins next week. Like any new year change, we are encouraged to let go of the past, or maybe to let the gifts of the past inform how we live today so that we might share our lives more fully tomorrow and be more fully present now. And like I've said many times before, this hymn, this process of trying something new, and this time of new year is also a time to remind ourselves that we are never defined by the past; this moment is a new moment for us to embrace with all its possibilities. This is the moment that God has been revealing... and that revelation is an ongoing process of discovery and co-creation, not a once only thing!

As I was reading and thinking about today's worship, I read the sermon prepared for the online Day1 Organization for this Sunday. Day1 is the voice of mainline Protestant churches on radio and internet. The sermon was prepared by Dr. Greg Garrett, a writer and professor of English at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Dr. Garrett began his sermon by reminding us that "the answer is 42." Who knows where that's from? ... Yes, it's from The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Universe and it is the answer to The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. "42" Garrett goes on to muse about the parable of the sheep and the goats and asks the question, "so what is the question."

There are times when we read things from Scripture in worship and we all squirm a bit. The judgement passages are challenging; the passages that suggest that God is angry make us uncomfortable, just like the passages where violence is depicted in some of the Hebrew Scriptures, or where the interpretation that is offered in parts of the Hebrew Scriptures is that if we only live a righteous life we will reap our reward, but if we live an unrighteous life, we deserve our suffering. These passages, and the bible is full of challenging passages, need exploration, discussion, dissection, and in some cases a declaration, "Well, it's in the bible, but that doesn't necessarily make it true."

Often after worship, I'll be asked about a particularly challenging piece of Scripture, like today's passage. I've been asked before about heaven and hell and whether Matthew believed in this. But, what is the question?!

The bible does not really deal with heaven and hell per se. Some churches have turned the idea of heaven and hell into a full-time ministry with the understanding that our only task in life is to get ourselves into heaven and to avoid hell. Well, this isn't a biblically based interpretation and while eternal damnation appears in several of Matthew's parables, it wasn't about a place as it was a literary mechanism to invite us to think about our lives. Heaven and hell, for Matthew, and for the biblical writers, wasn't about a place. The Commonwealth of Heaven, for Matthew—for Jesus—was about how we are called to live in this world as a co-creator of love, justice, hope and peace. God works through us and is alive in usÑor the Commonwealth of Heaven works through us and is alive in us—as we live our lives in the here and now.

I think the question that Matthew poses is, "how will we live in the face of cynicism, crass and open greed, and self-interested concern?" Or another question comes to mind, "How will we live in the world and make real the transformative power of God's Spirit?" Or even a third question, "How will we live together with others in accepting the blessing offered us and, in turn, pass that blessing on to others?"

The answer is the concept that God is in each of us. The answer is in seeing the Christ in everyone we meet. Or, in language from our Purpose Statement, it is to see the embodiment of God in all of life around us. It is too easy to create categories of us and them, sheep and goats, in and out. We encounter this frequently and it is difficult to resist the language. But Matthew calls us to resist: to resist the judgement of others, resist the easy categorization, or resist the easy dismissal of others without walking in their shoes. Whitey Ford, in a song made famous in 1998 called, What It's Like, raised all kinds of questions about how we label and judge and dismiss.

Jesus invites us into relationship with one another, with those with whom we may disagree, with those of whom we are ignorant. We are invited to make real the understanding that all are our sisters and brothers. Countless parables and stories abound in all traditions about the courage it takes to look people in the eye when we meet them on the road of life, whether in situations of need or not; when we make eye contact, we acknowledge and sister or a brother on the road.

We live in an age when alienation is very real, when people feel alienated from society because some don't have a cell phone, some don't watch TV, some dress and behave differently. When Alanna and Fraser moved to Victoria more than a year ago now, I mentioned how I was concerned because Alanna and Fraser dress differently and look differently than conservative VictoriaÑthey are good Nelson people! Fraser has long dreadlocks, multiple piercings, a studded collar and Alanna has short hair and also piercings. We were walking around Victoria getting some things for their apartment and we received many stares from others. I wanted to shout from the corner, "Look people, we are all human beings worthy of love; or to quote Shakespeare, I wanted to say, Ôif you prick us do we not bleed. If you tickle us, do we not laugh..." I was so thankful that they both seemed rather oblivious to the stares and I was equally grateful when we went into one shop, an alternative lifestyle shop, and the greeter said, "Hey, man! Cool dreads!" I thought, "they'll be ok."

The Church has an important part to play in providing an example where all are welcomed and loved and included and valued! In our society when alienation is very real, there need to be safe places where we can all be together, where we can all just simply "BE."

Our new constitution coupled with our new Purpose Statement taps into some of this understanding that the question is, "how shall we live together" with the answer being, "as sisters and brothers who bear the Christ image in each one, who embody the love of God." As this Church year ends and a new one begins, as we put to rest our old constitution and take up a new one, presuming the vote will be positive, we do so with a new spirit, a new openness, a new energy in living as God's people in this moment and time. While the answer may not be 42, the answer may be LOVE.

Amen.

Reflection by David, November 13, 2011

2011-11-13T18:43:00.001-08:00

Scripture: Matthew 25:14-30 — The Parable of the Talents

This is probably the sixth time I've preached on this parable, known as the parable of the talents. It's a tough parable in a tough section of Matthew's Gospel. Let me set Matthew's literary context for a moment. According to Matthew's telling of the story, Jesus had already entered Jerusalem for the last time. He entered to cries of "Hosanna. Blessed is the One who comes in the name of our God." This provoked the city to ask who this man was. One must understand that Jesus provoked the authorities—namely the Romans—for the Romans were in control of the city, and he also provoked some of the Jewish leaders. In the course of events, Jesus cleansed the Temple, driving out the money changers and the sellers of sacrificial animals saying, "My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of thieves." Jesus, having provoked the authorities even more, having acted in a symbolic form to cleanse the outer court of the Temple, went into seclusion with his friends and spoke to them in parables.

The parables are varied and different; they range from topics about the Commonwealth of God to parables about what it means to live in the world. Many scholars believe that Matthew edited these parables as a means for teaching his own contemporaries how they must live while they await Jesus' return. Matthew wrote his Gospel, so it is believed, sometime after the destruction of the Temple and the sacking of Jerusalem by the Romans in the year 70 of the Common Era. The state of Israel was no more and many Jews scattered to the winds. Matthew and many early Church followers believed that Jesus was going to return before the end of the 1^st Century, and so people needed to know how to behave while they waited.

The last two parables of this section of Matthew's Gospel, before Jesus has the Last Supper with his friends, are the parable of the talents and the parable of the sheep and the goats, which we'll read next week. The traditional interpretation of the parable of the talents is that we should use our gifts wisely while we live—a good and wise motto for living one's life certainly, but not, I believe, the meaning of this parable. I also don't believe it was Matthew's intention to suggest that we should reap economic benefits in a usurious manner. I believe that Matthew included the parable of the talents, which foreshadows Jesus being cast out into the outer darkness where there is gnashing of teeth, as a lead-in to the understanding that the Commonwealth of God is about radical reversal where those who are first, those who are wealthy, will become the servants of those who are deemed last and those who are the poorest. For the very next parable, spoken just before the Last Supper, gives us the famous teaching, "As you have done this (fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited the sick and the imprisoned, welcomed the stranger) to the least of these my sisters and brothers, you have done it to me." In other words, as we have led lives of compassion, hospitality, healing and love in our dealings with our neighbours, we have entertained the Christ and we have lived the Christ-life. The parable of the talents leads us to this place of knowing that love is the power that builds rather wealth or economic gain. Or more succinctly, "money can't buy you love," to quote the Beatles.

Some have claimed that the third salve in the parable is actually the hero of the story. He is the one who refuses to buy into the usurious practices of his brother slaves and realize 100% profit on the master's talents. We are talking about outrageous sums of money here, which is the biblical meaning of talent; with the kind of sums of money that we are talking about, it would have been virtually impossible to make the kind of gains that are described in this parable. The third slave, risking the wrath of the master, decides to simply bury the talent in the ground and not realize any profit from it, thus living by the Jewish teaching of not exacting interest from lending money. There was great dishonor in employing usurious measures to gain more wealth or status. But, the third slave, according to Richard Rohrbaugh and other cultural anthropologists, practiced honour in choosing not to gouge his friends and neighbours any more than they already had been.

After all, the listeners to this parable would have been poor people predominantly. Jesus would hardly have praised the huge gap between the wealthy and the poor. And this is further emphasized in the last parable in which we learn that we encounter Jesus in the suffering, in the poor, or as Ched Myers has put it, "we meet Christ in places of pain and marginality; the 'outer darkness.'"

To me, this is the good news—that we aren't alone out here in the darkness, in our pain and struggle. One who has lived through the greatest struggle of all, torture and death, is with us. In fact, all who have endured torture and death at the hands of oppressors are with us. The One who was taken and cast out in the most horrible of means—crucifixion, where weeping occurs and gnashing of teeth happens, is with us.

While it is comforting to know that we are not alone in a spiritual sense, and this is no small thing, we must live in this world where there is still oppression, where injustice still occurs, where greed and usurious practices go on. We are called to form communities of hope and love where we can come together to not only support one another, but where we can advocate for a different way of being together. Journalists and authors like Greg Palast, Michael Moore, Gillian Findlay, Linden MacIntyre and Bob McKeown of The Fifth Estate, have shown how those with money and power lobby governments to create more wealth and power. The world economic problems are based in part, on greed and the kind of usurious practices that were depicted in the parable from Matthew. And part of the strategy of some government policies and the lobbying efforts of those acting on behalf of the wealthy and powerful, is to utilize that ancient war tactic of divide and conquer. As long as we are lonely voices crying out in the wilderness, not much will change. It is when we come together to speak together of our lives, to share ideas, to forge bonds based on our humanity that we can create change in the world that is fair for all, where no one then needs to be cast out to the places where there is no light and only gnashing of teeth. We are not alone and must come together to speak of the value of life for all.

The Dali Lama put it another way when he said, in response to a question about what surprised him most about humanity, "Man," he said. "Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived."

I think that we are living in a time when new communities are forming, when we are banding together to resist being lonely voices isolated from one another. Whatever you think of the politics of the Occupy movement, or the 99% movement, or the Arab Freedom movement, or the re-energization of unions, they are part of this new struggle to be in community together. The new monasticism movement, which is not about being cloistered and separate from the world, is another example of this desire to be in community together to seek the common good, to seek a new way of living in love, with justice and compassion. The Emerging Church phenomena is partly about living intentionally, with purpose, to seek justice, to live with respect in creation, to seek others out who stand with us so that together we might be the Christ to one another and to the world of which we are a part.

So may it be. Amen.

Reflection by David for November 6, 2011

2011-11-07T13:30:00.000-08:00

TEXT: Matthew 25:1-13

Every time I read this parable of the ten bridesmaids, I get mad. And often when I read the interpretations of this parable by imminent scholars, I get madder still. The sometimes pious finger-wagging that sometimes accompanies this parable has been used to hurt others, to label others, to show that God's Commonwealth is, in the view of some, exclusive, and the parable as it is sometimes interpreted seems to suggest that we, too, should be pious and good in a self-righteous kind of way.

When I read this parable, I say to myself, I'd sooner be on the outside with those so-called foolish bridesmaids. If the doors are going to be locked, I think I'd sooner stand with those who aren't inside, but outside knocking.

And when I calm down, I realize again that this parable may be Matthew's recollection of a story that Jesus told, and he embellishes it a bit with some notes of judgement. This is in keeping for Matthew later tells the story of the sheep and the goats, which may, in turn, be a result of the fact that Matthew the gospel-writer experienced persecution for his beliefs in Jesus as the Messiah. Matthew, wanting to get even with his persecutors perhaps, embellishes a story of Jesus that points to our need to be prepared in general, but that shifts the emphasis to those who are locked out.

What leads me to this conclusion that Matthew has embellished a parable of Jesus, is that early in Matthew's gospel we hear the beatitudes, "Blessed are the poor, blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are the persecuted" and so on. In the Sermon on the Mount we hear a prescription for living life, loving our enemies, living by the golden rule, sharing our talents and gifts as fully as we are able. And in another parable of Jesus about weddings, we hear how Jesus tells the wedding attendants to go out to the byways and highways and bring everyone in; "everyone is welcome to this wedding feast," said Jesus. I have to confess, though, this parable in Matthew's gospel is again an exclusive telling of the story with the emphasis on judgement. When Luke tells the parable, the emphasis is on welcome, especially to those who were outcasts in society. I confess, too, that my bias is showing, but this is the Jesus I choose to follow, the one who welcomes and embraces, the Jesus who gives life and hope.

But then, maybe Matthew has served his purpose in retelling the parable, for here I am provoked by the parable to think about what I believe—the general purpose of parables. I believe in a Jesus who embodied love and openness and hope and who embraced all people, indeed all of life. I believe in a Jesus who leads us more fully to embrace our humanity so that we can discover the Godness within each of us. I believe in a Jesus who lived according to the Jubilee tradition of God's preferential option for the poor and suffering. I believe in a Jesus who embodied God's love in a way that pushes us to seek justice with love in our world and healing for all!

We all must forge our way in thinking about who Jesus is for us, who God is for us and how we will live our lives; how will I embody the love of God as I live the Way of Jesus? This is true for our confirmands this morning, but no less true for all of us no matter at what stage of life we might find ourselves. One of the gifts of the Church, is that we are encouraged to live a spiritual journey with the idea that it is OK to ask questions, to seek community with others, to not have everything figured out, to live with our imperfections and our mistakes because we are NOT defined by them, to come back to hope again and again. I think every parent in every generation since time began has probably worried about future generations. It may not be true that we have to worry, but I join that company of worriers. The world is becoming even more crowded—we just passed the 7 billion mark. We are in the throes of difficult economic times; our environment is in tough shape. I'm not happy with the way we, of my generation, have left the world. But, as I said, this has been a common shared concern as we pass the torch to our children and children's children.

Let me say that I have faith in you because I believe in the power of love. I believe in the power of God-with-us, whom we call Emmanuel—we are not alone! I have faith in all of us together finding a way to keep the flame alive. Like the Peter, Paul and Mary song, "don't let the light go out," as long as there are people who choose to live by a deeper set of values that are about love and hope, who choose to gather with others to keep the flame of justice alive, who put their lives on the line sometimes to make sure that this story in which we believe, a story of love, radical acceptance, justice and hope is carried with excitement and intentionality into the world. The world is not a hostile place; I do believe that at its deepest levels, it is a place of love and joy, but stuff happens and bad things occur and we need to make sense of those things and do our best to share love and peace, and to help the world realize the love and peace that lies at the heart of all life.

Well, I have offered my manifesto of sorts. Yours you need to discover and live out, but I have faith in youÑin all of us together. Live your life fully, lovingly and with justice and peace. And, as my friend has in a prominent place in his bathroom of all places, "dance like no one's watching and sing like no one's listening," for through our sharing of our lives, the world lives more abundantly and the Christ-light burns more brightly.

Amen.

Reflection by David for October 30, 2011

2011-11-01T07:06:00.000-07:00

October 30, 2011
Re-Formation Sunday

If you had lived 500 years ago, what would you be doing? In England, you might be planning to go to Shakespeare's romantic comedy Tempest, performed for the 1st time. You might have heard the word "telescope" used for the very first time. You might have been planning to attend a university in the Philippines, the oldest existing university in Asia. If you were with Henry Hudson, bad news, I'm afraid you'd have been set adrift in Hudson Bay by mutineers. You might have been at the inauguration of Gustaaf the II in Sweden. If you were in China, you might have been at the crowing of a new Emperor. The Protestant Reformation was already 100 years old; Lutheranism was ensconced in a good part of Germany and Scandinavia while Calvinism was in Switzerland and the Anabaptists—the radical reformers—were scattered here and there. Anglicanism had already been established in what was then Elizabethan England, and Presbyterianism was established in Scotland.

One can only imagine what life was like in 1611. We likely didn't live much past the age of 40; women, in Western cultures, had few rights; this was different in other indigenous cultures—Polynesia and elsewhere in the world, including some 1^st Nations peoples in Noth America where women were leaders alongside men. It was a pretty difficult world; the social strata you were born into was the world you knew—it was virtually impossible to break out of your societal position.

I offer this reductionist historical snapshot because tomorrow is Reformation Day, the other holiday opposite Halloween! It was the day Luther nailed his theses on the Wittenberg door as a challenge that began the Protestant Reformation.

Phyllis Tickle, an Anglican Church historian in the US, has put forth the idea that the Church has what she has called a giant rummage sale every 500 years or so. Luther's beginning falls into this 500 year pattern: Christianity's birth around the year 50, a Gregorian re-formation 500 years later, significant changes through the end of the 1^st Millennium and then the Protestant Reformation in the 16^th Century. This "rummage sale" is the same process as we go through in our homes: every now and then we decide that we have too much stuff and we need to downsize. Or we want to move. We need to let go of some once cherished mementos that we have outgrown. We are different today than we were some years ago and we need to let go of some things. We are constantly reforming and being re-formed.

And really, that's as it should be! I've never bought the idea that people don't like change—well, maybe we don't LIKE change, but we are constantly changing. The world around us is changing. We are homo sapiens, and in a biological sense, we are highly adaptive and have changed substantially in an evolutionary sense. I understand the concept that change can be disruptive, but I do believe that we learn to adjust, what psychologists call the "new normal" of our lives.

And because "the world is a'changin'", the problem arises when we want things to remain the same. Problems arise when we want everything to be exactly as it was 2 hours ago, or 2 days ago, or 2 months or 2 years. And they aren't. The world is different even over these past couple of hours spent together.

I have a hunch that Jesus was getting at this issue of some people wanting to stay the same in his encounters with the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Even though 1^st Century Palestine was changing rapidly, they wanted to hang on to the religious tradition as they knew it, as their mothers and fathers knew it, as their grandfathers and grandmothers knew it. It was the only thing that provided any sanity in their world. The Romans were cruel taskmasters and how do you hold the centre together? One theory is that you keep everything exactly the same as it has been for generations.

But is it realistic to hold things exactly as they have been? Again, our own experience today would say no. We are adaptive creatures and need to seek new ways of doing things. The Church today has moved in a short time from being a centre-piece of community life to being on the side-lines. It has moved from being a place where you found your friends and made your business contacts to a place where you seek a religious community and people seeking a spiritual journey in the Christian tradition. Science has challenged some of our notions about theology. Contact with different cultures has challenged the notion that there is only one way to be a Christian in the world. Because we are adaptive creatures, are we in the midst of another re-formation?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer thought so in the midst of 1930's Germany. He was a remarkable leader of the Christian Church who talked about a costly Christianity. Our Christian living costs us something. If we take our Christian beliefs seriously, it means standing up to injustice and oppression, speaking about ethics openly and honestly, and challenging the status quo when the status quo is killing people around you. It was costly to Bonhoeffer for he was murdered by the Nazis a mere month before the end of the Second World War in Europe! A year before he was murdered, Bonhoeffer said this in a letter to his nephew:

"Our church, which has been fighting in these years only for its self-preservation, as though that were an end in itself, is incapable of taking the word of reconciliation and redemption to humankind and the world. Our earlier words are therefore bound to lose their force and cease, and our being Christians will be limited to two things: prayer and righteous action... All Christian thinking, speaking and organising must be born anew out of this prayer and action... any attempt to help the church prematurely to a new expansion of its organisation will merely delay its conversion and purification. It is not for us to prophesy the day (though the day will come) when people will once more be called so to utter the word of God that the world will be changed and renewed by it. It will be a new language, perhaps quite non-religious, but liberating and redeeming - as was Jesus' language; it will shock people yet overcome them by its power; it will be the language of a new righteousness and truth, proclaiming God's peace with people and the coming of the kingdom."

This sounds to me like the same message that Jesus preached. It is the same idea that service to others is the way of life and love. It is the same idea that those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who are humble will be exalted. Jesus was outspoken in his critique of the Pharisees and Sadducees who aligned themselves with power and who sometimes colluded in the oppression of their own people.

Jesus was a reformer who continually found news ways to proclaim the gospel of life and love. He re-formed the message of love because in the midst of change and shifting ground, the one thing that doesn't change is the call to love and to know that we are loved. Our God is the One who steadfastly loves us into life, who works through us and others by the Spirit to create justice and peace in the world.

We are in the midst of a new re-formation, I believe. Our new structure, based on some new concepts from the Emerging Church movement, will help us live out the gospel more fully. The trappings of Church life are not nearly as important as living the message of love—loving others and knowing that we are loved. The essence of our life together isn't about gathering for the sake of gathering; it is to hear that love is the power that can change us and change the world. We long to hear more clearly that love is the power that can mend the world and lead us into a greater sense of community and togetherness. This is the Re-formation of which Luther and Calvin dreamed; this is the new Re-formation of which many today dream. Ultimately, this is the Re-formation, which Jesus embodied and lived and because of that, we know that we can, too.

Amen.

Reflection by David for October 23, 2011

2011-10-25T13:26:00.000-07:00

One of the first life lessons I remember learning occurred when I was 13 or 14. I've told the story before of the Residential School run by the Presbyterian Church in Canada in Kenora where I grew up. Dad had been part of a group who tried to match the students of the school with families in the town. We had taken a young lad into our home, a lad a couple of years older than me, and I had come to know him a bit and considered him a friend. However, when this young lad became of age, he refused to acknowledge me when we saw each other on the street, and he even called me names in front of his friends, other students from the school. I remember feeling hurt at the time.

I also remember thinking that all of dad's emphasis on love in his sermons and his talking didn't seem to amount to anything in terms of changing this young man's life. I had loved that young man, or at least I had tried to in ways that were meaningful to a 12-year old boy. The learning for me when I came of age was that love is difficult if there is no justice to go a long with it. I could love that young lad, but as long as the injustice of the residential school went on unchecked, as long as the dominant culture of the day was trying to destroy 1st Nations culture, and the dominant culture is still active today, the love I had in my heart wasn't enough. That was a tough lesson for a 13-year old boy!

As I have thought more fully about that experience over the years and the need for justice with love to be real in the world, I realized that the kind of love I had in my heart was only part of the love that is required. If we truly love our neighbour as ourselves, it requires of us to go beyond the mere loving into the realm of changing the world to make things right. Love invites us into a new reality, a reality of open eyes seeing the world for what it is. Love invites us to live differently in the world; love explodes our prejudices, exposes our patronizing attitudes, and makes us new. Jesus, and then Paul after him, Mary and the other leaders of the early Church, spoke and wrote about love changing us; this world-changing, justice-making kind of love is what I think they were talking about. They all embodied this love, too, just as we must do.

We sometimes hide behind the word love when something else is going on; love really does change us, the true love that is the essence of God. The book, The Help, helps us learn that love changes us; it calls us to make justice, to work with others in creating a new reality, a new life. For those of you who haven't yet read The Help, it is about a group of women in small town 1962 Mississippi, white and African-American; one of the young white women has learned a thing or two at university about the world; she is unhappy with the state of the world in her hometown and so, being an aspiring writer, decides to write about those African-American women who were domestic workers and the daily prejudice that they experienced. The point is made over and over that the families said they "loved" their "help," but it was a patronizing, "I'm superior to you"-kind of love, if that is love. It was not the kind of love of which Jesus spoke—Â the love of neighbour as we love ourselves. It was a love that didn't create justice, except, as we learn from the story, the dawning of what love means for the white writer and the African-American women in the story who want to publish the stories of domestic workers. It is a powerful story of how true love changes us.

Stan McKay, a former Moderator in our Church in the mid-90's, was a gentle and loving prophet. He grew up in Northern Manitoba, a 1st Nations man. I was at the Fredericton General Council that elected him Moderator back in 1993 and had the privilege of meeting him a number of times when he traveled across our church from Coast to Coast to Coast. His prophetic challenge to us all was that we must walk together, side by side. He taught us that love does change us, but it must be a love that is WITH another. One can't be out in front leading. We must walk together, arm in arm, seeking the path together that we are called to take. This is love with justice; this is loving your neighbour as you love yourself. This is loving God, this action of linking arms and being together across the potential boundaries of our differences. When you are side by side, or in a talking circle, you must listen with openness, talk with humility, and be part of the effort to create a new community.

It is hard work, this loving, this walking side by side, this creating a new community, this call to be vulnerable and open to change. And yet paradoxically, it is not so hard for it involves knowing that we ourselves are loved. The love we experience compels us to share that love. Remember the song in "Godspell" called By My Side? The lyrics have always touched me in that deep place where beauty and life meet and where hope and justice embrace:

Let me skip the road with you
        I can dare myself.
I'll put a pebble in my shoe
And watch me walk
        I can walk and walk!

I shall call the pebble Dare.
We will talk, we will talk together about walking.
        Dare shall be carried
And when we both have had enough,
        I will take him from shoe singing:
            "Meet your new road!"
Then I'll take your hand, finally glad
        That you are here by my side...

As the embodiment of God's love, Jesus created community. He reached beyond boundaries of convention and culture. He embraced the unclean, living out the Jubilee dream of God's call to be a new people, a people of love with justice. The pebble in the shoe, as I've always interpreted it, is the power of love. The pebble in our shoes is the reminder to love, to create justice, to live in hope. Every time we step with that pebble in our shoes, it is the reminder to love. But more than that, it is the reminder that we are loved. Jesus created community, crossing boundaries, because he loved people and assured them that they were loved and loveable.

How do we translate love with justice into our political life, into the economics of the world? How do we translate our love into justice in the world? Is the new 99% Movement a new beginning for a new community in our world?

When we were at presbytery last weekend in Fernie, there was no "Occupy Fernie" event there. We maybe should have had our own event, but we didn't. From reading about the 99% Movement, I've learned that it is a broad-based movement, a citizen's coalition that is conveying the message that love with justice is calling us all to live a new reality. Some of the social and economic analysis that is being done has exposed the truth that the 1% wealthiest of our world have access to those in power and put such political pressure on leaders that economic policies are always skewed toward the wealthy and away from the rest of us. Barack Obama, who created such a stir when he was campaigning for the presidency, talked of changing Washington. Well he has not done that; he has surrounded himself with advisors who seek to generate wealth for the wealthy only. Obama has not changed the culture of Washington politics. And people are fed up. People in the Middle East were fed up with the repressive regimes and have done something about it. In Canada, our Prime Minister seems to be leading us in ways that emulate the US, in deregulating institutions that have protected consumers and the average citizen; it is not a truly conserving path, for it does not conserve the interests of all citizens.

As we are loved—and we are loved—love is real in our world—we love in whatever ways we can. As we are loved, we open our hearts to love others as we ourselves seek to be loved. It may be that our energy and our ability is that we love those in our neighbourhoods, those in the communities that we seek out. It may be that we have energy to take that love onto another stage where we seek to love those who we do not know but who live in refugee camps, those who know only cardboard for walls, those who have no walls, those who have been abandoned and left alone. "Love God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul, and with all strength. And love your neighbour as yourself." With love, a deep love with justice, the world can change!

"We dare to live the Way of Jesus, embodying the Love of God."

Blessings and peace to all! Amen.

Reflection by Roy Nelson, October 16, 2011

2011-10-16T12:12:00.000-07:00

I asked god for strength that I might achieve
I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey
I asked for help that I might do greater things
I was given infirmity that I might do better things
I asked for riches that I might be happy
I was given poverty that I might be wise.
I asked for all things that I might enjoy life
I was given life that I might enjoy all things
I got nothing I asked for
but everything I had hoped for.
Despite myself my prayers were answered
I am, among all people, richly blessedanonymous

To-day is recognition of World Food Day. I really wasn't sure how to tackle this reflection. Choosing a scripture was the first obstacle because the lectionary suggestion wasn't about food. Moses and manna and the five loaves and two fishes didn't seem to fit. The world's hungry could certainly do with a miracle but how could I lay the problem at Jesus' feet or God's doorstep when neither of them was the cause of global warming or industrial greed.

Joseph and his dream...seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine comes close since the scientific community tells us we will not see any reversal in climate change until 2050 and that is only if we begin now to correct CO² emmissions. So let me try Ruth's story and deal with the lectionary suggestion later.

There had been a famine in the land of Judah and so Elimelech, his wife, Naomi, and their two sons journeyed to the land called Moab. Here the two sons married one to Ruth and the other to Orpah. About ten years later both sons died and Naomi, already a widow, decided to return to Judah but said Ruth and Orpah should remain in Moab. Ruth stubbornly refused, determined to stay with Naomi saying, "Where you go I will follow and where you are, there will I also be." — you know the rest of the story so I will skip to the end. Ruth and Naomi return to Judah and Ruth goes to the fields with the other women of the community to gather the kernels and stalks of barley left by the harvesters. These were the gleaners. Ruth is noticed by Boaz, the land owner who enquires of her and learning of her kin and relationship orders her protection and freedom to work in the fields gleaning the remnants. This practice was an unwritten arrangement in which the wealthy landowners shared a portion of the harvest with the peasantry.

As a child, there hung on my bedroom wall a print of "The Gleaners", a painting done in 1857 by Jean Francois Millet. It is oil on canvas of three peasant women bending to pick up the loose stalks of grain left in the field by the men harvesting the crop. Millet's work was not appreciated by the french aristocracy who looked on it as a rebuke of their wealth and priviledge and drew attention to the disparity between them and the working people. All Millet was doing was revealing through his artistry the age old custom of sharing a portion of the bounty with the poor.

The old testament stories about moses and joseph are not just abot food. They, like to-day's scripture read by Elaine, are about their relationship with god. Ruth's story is about the relationship between the peasantry and the landowner. Let me substitute the landowner with big business to-day and Ruth with our working class . In many cases to-day's model lacks the unwritten obligation to share more equitably. When ethics and compassion in business are replaced by the rule of maximized profit society is left with a failed union of its components.

As I prepared this reflection I recognized the life we live in canada in contrast to that of those in third world countries and those whose lives are in turmoil because of drought and famine and totalitarian rule. Not to be ignored or trivialized is the plight of some of our own in this country and right here in Nelson, but their need is less savage than that in the Horn of Africa and Somalia. Most of us take our trip to the supermarket as commonplace and sometimes a bit of a drudge. Think about it though in the light of the gift it is. Two weeks ago Charlotte and I had friends from North Vancouver stay with us. elwood was recovering from open heart surgery. For him it was a vacation, a time away from the stress of just being at home and business; for Nancy, much the same and an opportunity to voice concerns to an undersatanding ear. This was an escape for both of them. They walked our place, checked out the flower and vegetable gardens, picked apples and relaxed in a rural setting. The last day of their stay we went to the garden to give them produce. Elwood confessed he had always wanted to be a farmer, growing his own food. He was like a kid finding buried treasure as we dug potatoes and he sifted through the earth searching for hidden ones as I turned the soil. Nancy was pulling carrots with cCharlotte. This was pure ectasy to her. It was like a spiritual experience. She stood there with the carrots in her hands, her eyes alight and a big smile on her face. To think, the earth had yielded this to her. She was dissappointed when I, not thinking, pulled two onions that she had wanted to pull herself. This was a healing time for both of them and we were glad for them, yet to-day I am saddened for others who don't have a similar bounty to share.

We live in a land of abundance. If there is drought in Alberta there is a good crop in Saskatchewan or Manitoba. There is a relationship between our farmers and the land and a relationship between the farmers. These bonds are the keys to our full silos and our willingness to share our bounty with those in need. During the cold war Canada sent wheat to a hungry USSR. We are our brothers keeper. It is about sharing. We no longer live in isolation even though our land is bordered coast to coast to coast and along the 49^thparallel. Our atlases draw borders around the countries of the world, but technology has crossed those with wireless communication, picture taking cellphones and satellite transmissions. We can no longer plead ignorance of world events. So why are we so slow at times to take affirmative action and concrete assistance?

We can move oranges from Africa and pineapples from Costa Rica, lamb from New Zealand, and produce from California to the shelves in our supermarkets but are hardpressed to move food to the Horn of Africa. We can move planes and tanks and armaments and troops any where in the world, but have difficulty in moving food and aid to Haiti.

It begs the question, "Why?" Is it purely a lack of political will? Is it a mindset similar to that of Marie Antoinette when the peasantry were starving for a staple meal and her response was "Let them eat cake." No main course? Give them dessert. Is it that we don't know how to organise transport or a way to feed the masses? I can't accept that. Where there is a will there is a way. Perhaps the idea "it is not my problem" sits with too many people. Perhaps we lack a true relationship with god and an acceptance of our responsibilities to the global community.

These past few months we have witnessed the power of the people as they rallied against tyranny and oppression, first in Tunisia, then Egypt, then Libya and now in Syria and there are rumblings in Venezuela. These were primarily protests which became revolutions. We are experiencing protest gatherings on wall street in New York, on Howe Street in Vancouver and to-day at city hall here in Nelson. T hese are protests , revolutions of a kind but not as savage as the one in France. Ours are revolts against the greed of a few who limit access to a better life for the many. Corporate greed on Wall Street has decimated pensions and jobs and led to the loss of their home for thousands. That same greed filtered down in a domino affect to seriously impair monetary stability in Europe, Spain, Ireland and Greece.

The people have called for reform through the voice of government and the response has been deafening in the sound of silence. It should be no surprise then to the halves that enough is enough. We lost the voices of Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King Junior, Bobby and John Kennedy, the "disappeared" in Argentina and Quatemala, but like a Phoenix, it comes alive again. Is anybody listening? Does anybody care? I believe so.

George Eastman, a modest man who loved music and gardens is one of the greatest philanthroposts of the 20^th century. He and others like him: Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, were born into meagre surroundings which exposed them to hardship and an appreciation of their good fortune. Out of that era we saw the birth of the J.D. Rockefeller Foundation and to-day we see the birth of the Belinda and Bill Gates Foundation and the Stephen Lewis Foundation. Philanthropy is not dead but it needs help. I believe our churches must take a stronger stand against hunger and the exploitation of the working class by aligning themselves with legitimate protest. Mainline churches should be at the forefront to create change in a global economic system that recognises and supports the need for a social awareness that becomes a social democracy. People around the world are concerned about economic collapse and the drying up of money for health, job creation, education and the list goes on. The truth is there is the same amount of money right now as there was before the wall street collapse. It has just gone into hiding and will appear again when confidence is restored in the political arena. Our churches are concerned with the loss of a younger generation in our pews and yet we know with certainty that secondary and university students are seeking a spiritual connection that adds stability and reason to their life. They want a church that is relevant to the world they live in. A church that shares their concern for clean air, clean water and everything in between. Perhaps the church has lost its place in their lives because we do not engage the things that matter most to them.

Let me quote Albert Schweitzer:

"The deeper we look into nature, the more we recognise that it is full of life and the more profoundly we know that all life is a secret and that we are united with all life in nature. Man can no longer live his life for himself alone. we realize that all life is valuable and we are united to all this life. From this knowledge comes our spiritual relationship to the universe."

We ask god for help and god gives us opportunity to help ourselves. So be it.

Reflection by David for October 2, 2011 - World Communion Sunday

2011-10-03T22:34:00.000-07:00

I attended a retreat last weekend at Holden Village, a Lutheran retreat centre in the Cascade Mountain Range of Washington State, directly south of Manning Park by 100 kms or so. It was in a beautiful setting, kind of like that reflected in the Psalm this morning, and had for me many links with the Iona Community on Iona in Scotland. There is a small community that lives in the Holden Village, which was an abandoned mining village that the Lutheran Church bought some 60 years ago. The retreat's theme was "Healing the Planet... Healing Our Lives." It was sponsored by Lutherans Concerned, an LGBTQ and allies Lutheran support network.

The premise of the retreat was that we can't be whole individually without working on the wholeness of the planet. We all need healing and re-creation; and certainly our planet needs it as well. The two retreat leaders were very good, each augmenting the other, one speaking about healing ourselves and the other speaking about the planet... indeed, all of creation. We were all invited to leave Holden Village with a new intention of living in a healing manner in our world.

If we listen to the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr., Ghandi, Mother Theresa, poets like Wendell Berry, Mary Oliver, and prophets like David Suzuki, Walter Brueggemann, David Hallman, the Dali Lama, Lois Wilson, and Mardi Tindall, our current Moderator—even chaos theory and physics makes the point—what happens in one part of our planet affects us all. We are witnessing that at the moment in the terrible conditions of the Horn of Africa.

I sought my soul
And the soul I could not see.
I sought my God
And God eluded me.
I sought my brother... and my sister
And I found all three.

And again,

Pray not for Arab or Jew, for Palestinian or Israeli,
But pray rather for yourselves, that you may not divide them in your prayers
But keep them both together in your hearts.

Both of these anonymous poems (quoted from Bridge of Stars, London: Harper Collins) are about our universal connection.

Well, this is both a day to celebrate the Mission and Service Fund of the United Church and to celebrate the world-wide nature of our Christian tradition. We celebrate the partners by with whom we seek justice with love and peace with freedom. We celebrate the work of the M&S Fund both in Canada to support the work of healing and around the world to support the work of re-creation, disaster and humanitarian relief, justice with love, and to celebrate our common heritage as human creatures who live together in this vast and wonderful world.

And what better way is there than to break bread together. I remember hearing a story of an overseas M&S Fund supported worker, who was helping farmers fight for justice with respect to multi-national corporations and genetically modified foods like wheat and corn. This was in Africa and the worker helped with community organization and food security, which is the modern term for making sure that everyone has a right to access good, wholesome, and nutritious food. The local farming community was successful in fighting against the likes of Monsanto and other corporations who wanted farmers to use their seeds exclusively. The United Church overseas worker's contract had ended and he and his family were preparing to leave; the local village wanted to thank him and so prepared a feast. As happens around the world, and I've heard this story often enough from different parts of the world including here in Canada, when people want to celebrate, they gather for a feast. The fine china comes out, the best foods are prepared, and seats of honour are made. This was the same for this family in Africa who were leaving their friends, people who had become their family. The feast was prepared, the best foods made, the best cutlery and china brought out. But what this overseas worker noticed was that he and his family had the best plates and cutlery; others made do with old knives and a hodgepodge of cracked and nicked plates and bowls. The worker and his family had the best choices of bread, meat and even a dessert. When he looked around to see what others were eating, he noticed that everyone made do with less, some with no meat and some with few vegetables. He knew that if he made a fuss, he would insult the community. He tells of how his daughter, seeing the discrepancy, was going to pass on the foods that were being served onto her plate; he whispered softly into her ear that to refuse would be an insult. It wasn't a huge feast by North American standards where we eat too much, but it was a feast for the village and an important way to show honour and to preserve dignity. It was about hospitality, which at its very heart, is about healing.

As we gather here today around this table, we gather with those African farmers, with women's support centre workers in Latin America, with justice-making groups, with those on the front lines working to ease disaster in the Horn of Africa, Haiti, Japan and other places around our globe, those standing between armies, those speaking of our global human family. When we break bread later and lift the cup, let us celebrate our common humanity and the work of the United Church's Mission and Service Fund—indeed our work together in healing the planet as we heal our lives!

Amen.

Reflection by Jayne Slawson, September 25, 2011

2011-09-26T08:55:00.000-07:00

September 25, 2011

Jayne Slawson
Licenced Lay Worship Leader (LLWL)

Scripture Text: Exodus 17:1-7

Some people find it helpful to journal. To write down their thoughts, questions, tidbits of wisdom from the day or past week. I tried journaling but didn't keep it up. A collegue gave me a book in which she had wrote some quotes and I have since continued to fill it by adding inspirational quotes that have somewhat spoke to me. One such quote was "The wilderness is no place to lose your way, but it's a wonderful place to find it."

I am sure the Isrealites, during the 40 year exodus from Egypt, were not seeing the wilderness that Moses had taken them out into as a wonderful place for they cried out to Moses, "For this you brought us out of Egypt, Thanks a lot Moses. We left a land whose very name meant 'many waters' to come to a land with no water—a place called Rephidim, whereever that is! Where is this God-filled world you promised and spoke of in Egypt? Where is this promised land you visualized? Where are the treasures to be discovered if we have the eyes to see? Is God here or not?"

That's a good question to ask while wandering in the desert... to ask in times of our wilderness.: "Is God here or not?"

In the midst of desolation and waste, harshness and emptiness, unforgiving places without the the things needed for survival and life. Is God really present at all? In the muddles and messes and major disappointments, is God there or not? This is the wilderness that the Isrealites have gone to find their way—a world filled with God. But they weren't initially seeing it!

Poor Moses. Here is a man going about a mundane task of tending sheep when he suddenly encounters a burning bush and the voice of God. His life, his direction, his eyes will never be the same. They have been changed forever.

He ends up in a leadership role he doesn't want—"Why God did you ever send me?" He is blessed and cursed with new eyes with which to see the world, and he's placed in a difficult relationship with people who do nothing but grumble and who do not see or refuse to see with new eyes God's promise. The people grumble to Moses when the water is foul and bitter, when there is no food when there is no water and each time Moses cries out to God for help, and each time God answers, Moses cries. At times Moses even fears the people may stone him to death "What shall I do with these people?" he asks God.

In a relationship with the Isrealites that was often frustrating, trying and even threatening, Moses tries to give the people a sense that they lived in more than a material world. It wasn't that they were wrong to be thirsty or hungry or scared or frustrated. God dealt directly with their physical need. God sweetened the bitter water, God gave meat and manna and produced water from a stone. What the people failed to see was a God-filled world wrought with wonder and wild holiness. They saw only emptiness and missed a God who comes to us in our most troubled moments, a God who comes to provide, not only water, but living water. Instead they turned to Moses and questioned his leadership, his direction. There was no thought of asking or questioning God. Dispite the miraculous breakout from Egypt and the miracles of the past, the people were still not accustomed to looking for God and maybe that is why they asked, "Is God here or not?"

In our wilderness times, in life, when we are confronted with trials and difficulties and challenges, when life gets complicated, we don't know where to turn. When wilderness is being unemployed with little or no future prospects, when it is an illness that doesn't seem to get better, when it is a relationship without love and joy, when it is being stuck in a situation where there are no choices, when it is feelings of sadness or hopelessness and not knowing why, or what to do about it. It is the feeling of having the weight of the world on your shoulders and not having a way of getting out from under it.

When everything around us seems to be against us; when life feels hopeless, harried and disheartening do you not feel like the Isrealite people wandering in the wilderness looking for direction. It is so easy to grumble and lash out, it is easy to doubt God, yourself and others. That is wilderness... ever been there?

So many times we ride a spiritual and emotional roller coaster. There are days when we are flying high, in love with God, and everything that comes out of our mouths is so uplifting, everyone feels it. It is contagious and you don't want it to ever end. Then there are days and times when you don't understand anything. Your "wilderness moments" have you feeling like you are floating through the motions and passing through life. This is the most crucial time to ask questions that cause us to seek and press in. The more we press in, the more it becomes real. The more we fully humble ourselves and hand over our pride is when God can fully move in.

I know that when I have wilderness times I cry out, I get frustrated, I doubt, and I question if God is here. I, like Moses, want to abandon and refuse Gods ways, but when I allow myself to see and listen, it is then that I hear a friend's message to do something that Jesus did when he was tempted, when he struggled, when he became overwhelmed—I allow myself to pray—even if the only word is, "help."

In her book, When God Is Silent, Barbara Brown Taylor writes, "When we run out of words, then and perhaps only then can God be God. When we have eaten our own words until we are sick of them, when nothing we can tell ourselves makes a dent in our hunger, when we are prepared to surrender the very Word that brought us into being in hopes of hearing it spoken again- then, at last, we are ready to worship God." (pg 39). In fact when we are feeling like we're in a wilderness place in our lives, that is indeed, when we are often most inclined to pray—we just need to know that God is there.

Prayer demonstrates our conviction that God exists, God matters, God cares, and God has the final word over every individual life and over life itself. God is there, not necessarily with quick and easy answer, but God is there, offering direction, and clarity, and meaning, and purpose, and hope, and joy, and fulfillment.

Kelly Salter, in her article in the September Observer, called, "My View," writes:

God told Jeremiah, "Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know" ( Jeremiah 33:3). Since the arrival of the digital age, we as a society have become more impatient, demanding information and solutions to our problems right here, right now...[how can I get somewhere by the quickest route, how do I stuff a turkey, misdiagnose myself with untreatable diseases, save my marriage, all at the click of a mouse]... We need to slow down and look within before we take action. When we peel back that superficial first layer of ourselves, what are the tough questions for which we really want answers? Can we find the answers through Google, or are the answers "unsearchable?"

In that moment, I remember, a verse from the United Church's New Creed: We are not alone, we live in God's world. Google could tell me about how to set up my cable TV, or make a great lemon pie, but it could not give me the inner strength to persevere through a challenging time. Only God can answer the questions that truly matter—"great and unsearchable things."

Just as the pharasees thought themselves to be spiritually alive, they were really dead. Their hearts were dead inside and so were their actions of compassion for people around them. Their acts of compassion were non-existent in their lives. They looked good on the outside, when people were watching, but inside, their hearts were corrupt and stained.

Just as the Isrealites thought they were going to the promised land, in their hearts they were stuck in their wanderings, and became so concerned with living out of the past that they sacrificed any ongoing present. They became fixated on their hurt and loss so that they become the enduring center of their existence. They encased it in a bitterness, and then proceeded to want to feed upon it for the remainder of their lives.

Ghandi once said that there are people in the world so thirsty, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of water. God wanted the people of Israel to see that he was there. To listen for Gods presence, to know that God was there for them. Instead, they ran to Moses with their cries and often their anger. They got lost in the wilderness and the very source of living water awaiting their call, they do not see.

A traveler was crossing a vast sweep of desert-like terrain. In the distance she spied a small dwelling. It was remarkable in being the only sign of human habitation in an otherwise empty landscape. Eventually the pilgrim arrived at the house and, out of curiosity, knocked on the door. A weary man answered. He invited her in. Inside she discovered it was decorated as a sort of shrine. And the center point of devotion was a photo of an attractive woman.
The man explained that this was a picture of his beloved, who had become lost in the wilderness and died on this very spot. He recounted many stories of her, and then, looking intently at his visitor with renewed interest, remarked how much she resembled, his lost love. "I have to move on," said the woman. "Why don't you come with me?" But the man looked at her with sadness in his eyes. "How could I?" he asked. "I would mean leaving all this behind." And so he bid goodbye to the woman he had been mourning for for most of his life. (Sacred Journey – Mike Riddell)

Strange as it may be it is in the wilderness moments of our lives where God shakes our world and changes our pathways. It is when we arise pilgrims instead of wanderers. For you see wanderers have no maps. They may be searching for something but have no way to tell whether moving in one direction is better than another. Pilgrims, on the other hand, walk a journey that may include darkness as well as light, but at least they have a compass. God is that compass. God calls to the Isrealites to leave their wandering ways and become pilgrims. God invites all people to call out, ask questions, pray. God encourages us to seek the wisdom of God, to listen. Not passively listen. But actively listen, to the wisdom and insight of scripture, actively listen to the wisdom and insight of people with whom we share a faith journey, actively listen to that still small voice of God, that continues to be present.

What Moses reminds us is that what we seek during fruitful times as well as those times in the wilderness—is God. Is God here or not? "The wilderness is a terrible place to lose your way, but it is a wonderful place to find it... and the way is God."

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Reflection by David for September 18, 2011

2011-09-20T12:15:00.000-07:00

I have a confession to make: in high school, was a math geek. I actually loved math and calculus—can't remember a thing about differential equations, now, though. There was a little friendly competition between a couple of us students to see who had the highest mark on the tests in grade 12. Does that say something about me, loving math the way I did?

So what does math have to do with worship this morning? Well, I have to say that it isn't my idea to relate the parable that Jesus told to math. The connection in mind comes when we ask how the landowner that Jesus talked about did his math. It would appear that the math is a little off. Everyone who was asked to work in the vineyard shouldn't get the same amount, should they? That's just simply not fair! We should get what we deserve.

Part of the problem is that we want a formula. Last week in the gospel reading, we heard that Peter wanted a formula for forgiveness; "I only want to forgive just a few times and then leave it alone," Peter thought. And then there was the rich young ruler who wanted a formula to get into heaven. Jesus told him to sell all his possessions and give himself to the poor. This prompted Peter to ask about what he would get since he had given away everything he had. What formula can help me understand what I'm supposed to get? That's Peter's question. There is a certain basic need that we all have that looks for nice, neat packages—nice, neat formulas for living life. We need x number of calories each day and no more; we need to spend time in meditation or some spiritual discipline. We need to exercise well, get enough sleep, and practice mindful compassion. There are little formulas for all of this. Well, as Jesus so aptly demonstrated, it just isn't so! There are no neat formulas for life. We are human beings and we are subject to all kinds of challenges, joys and our all too human emotions. I know that I for one rebel against neat formulas that might be prescriptive for my life.

Jesus understood our humanity and the fact that have to figure it out as we go. We have to bring the mindful way of compassion and love to everything we do; I suppose if there were one formula that would work it would be about loving God and loving our neighbours as ourselves. Beyond these two simple commandments, the rest is up to us to figure out. It is really about our attitude and a change of heart and there is no formula for that; we all need to experience how to bring about, or how to work with God in bringing about a transformation from our hearts outwards. And this relates to an economy of grace—more about this in a minute.

Part of the background of this parable of the landowner and the workers is that there were three classes of people in the days of Jesus: landowners, who made up a kind of an elite group; those who worked for the landowner; and those who had no land. According to the laws of Jesus' time, no one was permitted to sell their land. All were to live on the land that God had promised them through their families. But the reality, due to an economy of greed and acquisition, was that there were many who were landless—they were forced off the land by ruthless land consumers. These landless folk were likely very poor, living just on the edge of abject poverty. So, the landowner went to the village square to hire workers and did so, paying all of them the same wage, even though some were hired at different times.

And this reality of hiring people on a daily basis isn't all that different today in many countries. People do hang around the marketplaces looking for temporary work; these are often people who are landless and poor. And as usual, a person looking for workers will take the youngest and best-looking workers first. The last to be chosen would have been those probably the most poor and the worst off but who needed the work the most. And so, the landowner in Jesus' parable, when the work was finished came to pay the workers. And lo and behold, each received the same amount, the exact amount for which the landowner contracted with each individual. Now, if you were there, and you were chosen first, what would you feel? Outrage would probably be the first feeling. Anger the second. And a desire to get back at the landowner might be the third thought running through your heads. And as usual, Jesus just left the parable there. What happened? Was there a riot? Was there a fight? Was there a celebration on the part of those who were chosen last and received the same pay?

Now, if you were the last to be hired and yet received the same amount as the others, you would feel a great deal of gratitude and joy. And you'd probably get out of there quickly so as not ruffle the feathers any further of those who were upset.

So, what is the mathematics of this parable? We are so used to the idea that we get what we deserve that we find it difficult to hear of a landowner who decides to settle accounts differently. The basis for receiving a wage isn't so much based on merit as it is on freedom. The basis for receiving a wage is not that we get what we deserve, but the idea that what we get is a gift.

Someone—and I don't know whom—once said: "When we get what we deserve that is justice. When we don't get what we deserve that is mercy. When we get what we don't deserve that is Grace." Sounds like a Lutheran!!

There is no mathematical formula to grace. You can't figure it out in your head. There are no formulas. You have to figure it out in your heart for it is based on love. We just have to live life with this gift of grace. We have to figure it out on a daily basis. And it is a gift. But the thing with this gift is that it has to be shared. The very nature of grace is that it must be shared; we can't hoard it. And I also believe that the very nature of grace is that it can't become some complicated formula for living life. It has to remain the gift that it is, simple, clean—just a gift.

And one of the very practical questions I have is an economic one. What would happen in our world if we got rid of the need to have economic formulas and applied the idea of grace? We are so used to talking about what is deserved that we often blame folk who are poor or on welfare or on some kind of assistance; we often end up blaming the victims because we are so used to the idea that we get what we deserve. But then, the whole idea of getting what we deserve is so skewed by the salaries of sports, entertainment and business people that we can't make any sense of it anyway—do they get what they deserve. What would an economy of grace look like?

Sharon Betcher spoke at Ascension Lutheran Church a year and ½ ago. She talked about an economy of grace and the difference it would make in the world. It would reduce the huge disparity between rich and poor; it would go a long way to ending the continual cycle of boom and bust, drought and fertility that places like the Horn of Africa experience on an ongoing basis. It would reduce the amount paid to entertainment, sports and CEOs of multi-nationals. It would shift our basic understanding of life from one of scarcity to abundance. An economy of grace would shift us out of our vengeance-seeking way of doing justice, too. An economy of grace would cause a huge seismic shift in our economic and social thinking.

God doesn't operate by formulas and neither should we. We are all entitled to life in its abundance, because the gift of grace is real. But we have to make it real. We have to live it out in practical ways. I like the idea of a worldwide economic theory based on grace. Grace is something we need a whole lot more of because it would remove the idea of deserving some reward. That's not to say we lose any incentive. The incentive is the desire to share the grace, and that is how abundance can grow.

It sounds simple, and it is simple. All it takes is for us to grab hold of the gift of grace and hold on for the ride. And it will be an abundant ride, a joyous ride, and a communal ride. God's grace, freely given. What difference can that grace mean for this world and for you, and how can we share in it together more fully?

Amen.

Reflection by David for August 28, 2011

2011-09-20T12:11:00.000-07:00

It has been a tough week in Canada and for the NDP in particular. With the death of Jack Layton, Canada has lost a deeply compassionate individual and truly caring man. The words at the end of his letter will be etched into our collective memory:

My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair.
So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we'll change the world.

Like many people, what I appreciated about Jack was his boundless energy and enthusiasm. He genuinely believed in love, hope and optimism. His death was certainly a shock and will be an inspiration to young people to get involved in politics, and ironically, an inspiration to others battling cancer. I always appreciated, and this is reflected in his letter, Jack's undying hope for a better world.

I recently was sent a reflection that came out of the Iona Community about all of the unrest in the world, including the rioting in the UK. What surprised me about this reflection piece was that it seemed to me to be unduly negative. There is undoubtedly a large disparity in the world between the wealthiest and the poorest, but what the reflection missed is the incredible hope that many in the world are discovering and living out—the hope that things CAN change, the hope that repressive governments WILL topple, the hope that there CAN be a future for young people. The one place I did agree in this Iona reflection was the idea that as Christians and people of faith the world over, we have an alternative narrative.

The alternative narrative is rooted in justice, love, compassion and hope. For many of us it isn't alternative; it is the main narrative by which we try to live our lives. As we are loved, we want to share love with others. But when it comes to the dominant social construct, and it has always been this way it seems, it wants to emphasise wealth and success; our path of faith emphasises service and giving up one's life. Where the dominant culture emphasises power over, the alternative narrative emphasises power with. Where the dominant culture wants to suggest that there is a reward for everything, our faith-based narrative emphasises sharing and mutuality. Where the dominant culture speaks of fear and scarcity, our alternative narrative speaks of hope and abundance.

Another reflection sent to me this week was also very interesting. I had a look at a TED speech given in 2009 by Dan Pink. TED is an online community of individuals who have made contributions to the welfare of the world in the areas of Technology, Entertainment and Design. Dan Pink gave a talk about motivation. According to psychological studies, motivation doesn't work.

Pink cited the research task given to people that involved a candle, a box of thumb tacks, and matches. The idea was that people were timed as they sought to attach the candle to the wall in such a way that it did not drip onto the table below. Usually people would figure it out in 10 minutes or so, and they would start by trying to melt a bit of the candle and stick it to the wall, try to tack the candle to the wall before finding out that you can dump the tacks out on the table, tack the box to the wall, fix the candle in the box so that it catches any wax that might drip. This isn't the interesting thing about this study, though. The interesting thing is that when incentives are applied—promising to give money to those who are fastest, it ends up takes longer for the final solution to be discovered. People get fixated on an idea and can't see the broader issues. Incentives make it more difficult to discover a solution to some problems; when you really, really want that reward, your thinking gets fixated rather than broader and you take longer to accomplish your task. Pink suggested that our whole Western society is built around the idea of rewards, and it doesn't work. It works when the path is fairly clear, and when it is about following the obvious steps ahead of you; but when the steps are not clear and the solution requires creative thinking, the promise of a reward makes things worse.

Peter reflected some of this dominant culture thinking about rewards and incentives when he told Jesus that he wouldn't be put to death. Jesus' glory and power must be protected, for that is the way of the world, isn't it? But Jesus said no. It is not the narrative that we are living. The way of the world is not the story of compassion, self-giving love. "If you want to follow me, you must take up your cross and follow. If you want to save your life, you will lose it, but if you lose your life for the sake of the gospel, you will find it. What will it profit you if you gain the whole world but lose your life?" Peter was stuck in the way of rewards and incentives; Jesus opened Peter and others up to the possibilities of creativity and compassionate living.

So what are the implications for our congregation when we open ourselves to think creatively and from an alternative narrative of compassion and self-giving love? There has been some uncertainty over the past couple of months as we both try to discover a new path for our congregational structure and what to do about additional staffing. I know that I have engaged in some of that fixated thinking that Dan Pink talked about. I can get quite fixated on an idea or a concept and miss the bigger picture. I'm notorious at home for doing cross-word puzzles; sometimes I can't get a clue because I'm too fixated on the obvious solution that doesn't work. And what really drives me crazy is when Janet comes along and says, without batting an eye, that's such-and-such; and the answer is so obvious!

I'm not going to give us any answers here in this sermon with respect to the direction we should take as a congregation; there aren't any obvious answers. I do think we have a real opportunity to try some creative things. And we need to try and not be afraid to make mistakes. A pastoral care giver? A youth worker? A part-time minister? Someone to help with administration? An outreach worker? A combination of possibilities? How do we free up our organizational structure so that we can engage the bigger questions in life and support people as we live our lives in abundance and be together in the living out of Jesus alternative narrative of self-giving love and compassion. Jack Layton is right: when we are loving, hopeful and optimistic, we can change the world. And that's what it's about, being changed, knowing we are loved, living out of a place of love and changing the world one life at a time. Rather than success and reward, may the hope of abundance and the possibility of transformation be our motivators for our congregation this day and in the days and months to come.

Amen.

Reflection by Rev Carol Prochaska (ret.) – September 4, 2011

2011-09-05T07:51:00.000-07:00

Based on: Ezekiel 33:7-11; Romans 13: 8-10; Matthew 18:15-20

As we've already noted earlier this morning newspapers keep us posted on ever-evolving research. Recently in the Vancouver Sun, from Concordia University in Montreal, researchers found that finger pointing can be harmful to one's health. According to the research when people blamed external causes for their shortcomings rather than looking at their own actions they tended to be less healthy. So when we refuse to see ourselves as we really are we might just be putting our health at risk!

And it just may be that the folks back in Ezekiel's time were figuring this out. They were saying: "We are wasting away. How can we survive?" Was their wasting away spiritual? Emotional ? Physical? Or all three? Chances are they had tried blaming the Babylonians, had tried pointing fingers at their own leaders, and had come up with all kinds of acceptable excuses and creative rationalizations. But God had called forth a sentinel. Ezekiel's job is to tell it like it is: "You've strayed from God's way. You've gone your own way—And it's not working!"

In studying this passage from Ezekiel and its companion passage from Matthew I realized that sentinels come into our lives. They come with love—they come loving us as their neighbor.

They see something about us that we can't, or would rather not. They see how something is not working for us—and in fact may be doing harm not only to ourselves but to others as well

I share with you a story about a sentinel coming to me. It was not by any stretch of the imagination a high point in my ministry. At the time I was serving a church of about 200 members in WY. A mother and her daughter were seated in my office. They had come to the church to visit with me about a wedding. It turned out that the 20 year old daughter wanted to be a bride—again. She and her husband had been previously married at the Court House. But now she and her mother wanted a real wedding—a church wedding. "So this would be a renewal of vows," I said. "Oh no!" said the young woman. "Oh no!" said her mother. This was to be a wedding as if there had been no other marriage ceremony. The daughter explained: "I want to walk down the aisle. I want to wear a white dress, a real wedding dress." My reply?—"So this is about the white dress and all the frills!" The discussion came to an awkward halt and they left.

The next day the Moderator of the church came to see me. The previous evening she had received a phone call from a very upset friend who was a cousin of the woman who wanted to be a bride the second time. This being a town of five thousand, or so, it probably meant that 24 hours later some 500 or so people knew what I had said so unkindly—so absent of love for my neighbor.

But - the thing is, I could have come up with 10 good reasons... Five?... Three for sure—I had 3 really good solid reasons why I did not love my neighbor:

1) There was the woman who had called the previous week to have her daughter's wedding at the church—why? Because of the size of the parking lot...
2) How about the couple who came to the church to book their wedding but who insisted on no God-talk and the removal of all the churchy things on the stage—the pulpit, the lectern, the cross, the bible...
3) You can't legally do a wedding as if it is for the first time when it isn't...

Three really good solid acceptable reasons! But! What I truly needed to do was to see myself—in that moment the moderator was a sentinel. She was the sentinel who had come in love—in love for me, in love for the church, and in love for those who come to the church wanting. As painful as it was as much as I longed for it to have been otherwise, I needed to let go of my pride and my excuses and yes even the legal stance. What was a required of me was to see unreservedly how I had not loved my neighbor. How might I have loved my neighbor? I could have said something like, "Let's talk more about this."

Our gospel reading this morning sets out an ideal way for church members to see themselves, to understand how they have not loved their neighbor. The one who has been sinned against—the one who has not been loved—is to go to the one who has done the harm. If that doesn't work then the harmed member takes one or two other members. If the offender still refuses to listen, it is told to the entire church. Still no results? Then treat that one as you would a Gentile and a tax collector, perhaps meaning that that one is to be treated like one who is not or not yet a committed disciple of Jesus Christ. It is, after all, we disciples who have been commanded to love our neighbor.

As was mentioned in the background commentary the church over the centuries has abused this procedure from Matthew. At times it has even led to cruel shunning. It may also have come to your mind those sentinels like the man who can be seen standing at the corner of The Hume Hotel. He holds a religious sign, a warning to those whose theology isn't on par with his. He is not the kind of sentinel we are speaking of this morning.

That being said, the wisdom in Matthew still holds. Truth is most of us—maybe all of us—have need of another to show us how we have not loved as Jesus has commanded.

This past week I've been reading about labyrinths written by an Anglican priest and psychotherapist. In thinking about this morning the following two sentences especially caught my attention:

"We often don't realize that the way to God is generous and error is part of the journey. As soon as become conscious that we are lost we have found our way again."

In this morning's gospel reading we also heard those very familiar words of Jesus:"Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them." This promise has been a source of comfort for the church throughout its history. It's a promise we cling to when we're disappointed with a small turn-out.

But this morning I'd like you to ponder with me another possible angle for Jesus' promise. Could it be that this promise is also meant for those times when a sentinel comes? And comes in Jesus' name? When the church moderator came to me, we came together as two church members, as two disciples of Jesus Christ. Had we been asked, we would have said that we had gathered in Jesus' name.

It seems to me that it is an act of heroism on the part of the sentinel as well as the one who is to heed the words. this is so not easy, so not easy for either one! Both may wish they were somewhere—anywhere else. Both will die a little, but in that dying something will be loosed on earth and in heaven.

Is it not easier to say "I'm sorry" when we believe Christ is right there with us?

Is it not easier to admit to not loving our neighbor when we trust that Christ is right there with us? Is it not easier to commit to a different way the next time when we trust that Christ will be there with us?

When we are the sentinel—when the sentinel comes to us—let us rely on Jesus' promise: "Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them."

I did not ever see the mother and her daughter again. I apologized to both of them on the phone which they seemed to accept—more or less. Several months later when the new Methodist minister was settled, she was able to work something out that was within the law and still allowed the bride to walk down the aisle in a real wedding dress.

C.S. Lewis is an author many of you will recognize. In his book, The Four Loves, he writes:

We may be sure that all of us are receiving Charity Ð we are loved not because [we] are lovable but because [Christ] is in those who [are loving us]. We are loved Ébecause Christ is in those who [are loving us].

reflection by David for August 21, 2011

2011-08-25T20:34:00.000-07:00

On the Occasion of the Baptism of Lillianna

Dear Lillianna:

It seems that it has become a tradition for me to write letters at times of baptism; so I continue that today on the occasion of your baptism, and write a letter to you, which everyone present is able to hear.

In the way of Paul, the apostle, whose letter to the church in Rome we read earlier, I begin with a blessing. May the love and grace of our Creator, the hope and peace of Jesus, and the guidance and open possibility of the Holy Spirit be with you.

You have had a challenging start to life and we all, in your new church family, hope that you are doing well and that you will have a healthy childhood. You have been held in our prayers and our thoughts as your great grandmother has informed us, from time to time, about your recovery. We wish you a long life and many blessings ahead of you. And we hope that the prayer shawl we presented to you, which will keep you warm, will also remind you of God's presence in your life and our hopes and prayers for you.

I wish that I could guarantee that your baptism today and the prayer shawl that we have given you will keep you from all harm. But as you have already learned, although you may not remember, life can be challenging and full of difficult moments. And yet, your baptism is a reminder to us all that God is about life and giving life and creating new life. God is our constant companion, holding us gently and surrounding us with light and love. God does not desire bad things for us. It is not God's will that some should suffer and others not; it is not God's will that some people should face loss prematurely. It is God Nothing is ever truly lost that is shared with others. Knowing this, how can we jealously hoard what we have been given?s will that all live with an abundant and over-flowing goodness, love and hope.

Sometime later in your future, when you are older, you may find out about some of the things that happened in the year in which you were born. This has been a year of unrest in the world. Young people are upset about their lack of future and the undemocratic ways in which governments seem to perpetuate themselves. Many feel hopelessness and so have rebelled against the status quo. While it seems that there are always people who will take advantage of this kind of protest and become violent or want to break into stores and steal, there seems to be a genuine desire for the world to be more fair, more egalitarian, more hope-filled, and more loving. As people of faith, we support efforts to make the world a more loving place in which to live and a more hope-filled place for people of all ages and stages in life, all of which we hope will happen without violence.

And that's what baptism means, in many ways, feeling hopeful when all around us feel cynicism and despair. Being part of a family of faith, being baptised into the Christian Church, plugs us in to the Spirit in a new way and invites us to live life from a place of love and light rather than fear and despair.

The true leaders of our world are people of compassion, understanding and thoughtfulness, and they want to lead us in the ways of hope, love and light; sometimes we don't listen to those voices strongly enough. They are loving people who seek justice for all. I mentioned Paul earlier. He wrote to many young churches and to the church in Rome he said, "do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good, what is acceptable, what is perfect." The true leaders of our world are humble, caring people who seek the common welfare of others, and they aren't always in elected office. They are often in our families, among our friends, in our communities.

So what does it mean to be good? It doesn't necessarily mean that we are supposed to be "goody-two-shoes." We are supposed to be real people who make mistakes and learn from those mistakes. But being good is about making the world a better place. It is about keeping the values of love, compassion and kindness front and centre in our lives and living those values. It doesn't mean that we will always live up to these values—for who of us is faultless; but goodness calls us back to what is important in life—family, friends, loving those as we would be loved, compassion, kindness. That is what it means to be good, to acknowledge our mistakes and learn and grow.

Paul also mentioned the word acceptable. This is the idea that we are a gift in life to the world and therefore acceptable. The word is connected to the idea of accepting a gift or even making a gift. We are all a gift to the world and we all have something unique and special to contribute and so that makes us acceptable. And never let anyone tell you that you don't have a special gift that is all yours. You are a gift, you are precious, you are a child of God and beloved. It is easy in our world to forget that, especially when people call you names or talk badly about you, usually behind your back. One of the important gifts that Jesus gave to the world is the gift of knowing that we are all special in our own unique ways. We have something special to contribute to the world and no one can take that away from us.

And finally, Paul mentioned being perfect. Being perfect can be a recipe for disaster. In my family, we had one who wanted to be perfect and so ended up with an eating disorder. She tried to be perfect but we aren't. I struggle with being perfect, too, and that has led me into some difficult places in my life. But Paul didn't mean the kind of perfection we've come to think about; he meant having a goal or living into maturity. I believe that this kind of perfection is deeply related to the Spirit and the concept of time; there is a kind of time that is called kairos time. It means that there is a fullness, a ripeness, a maturity of time. It is the quality of looking at sunset and feeling the time slip by. Or when time seems to stop because something is so powerful and wonderful—like the birth of a baby—your birth, your first smile, your first crawl, your first sitting up—that's the kind of perfection I mean. Hang on to that! Hang on to those moments when everything seems perfect, when there is a fullness, a completeness, a maturity. Those are the moments—like this one this morning—that are important in life. Share them with your family and you will know love more fully.

Today, we all wish you every blessing in life, Lillianna, for you and for your family, and for the entire world. We pray for children everywhere who experience difficulties and families going through a hard time, like those in the Horn of Africa, and we will continue to pray for you, also, and your family. You are a child of God, blessed and you are loved! If there is one thing to remember in life, it is that: you are loved and when you are loved, you can do anything!

Amen.

Reflection by David for August 14, 2011

2011-08-16T20:39:00.001-07:00

In the town where I grew up, Kenora in North Western Ontario, there was a Residential School. It was run by the Presbyterian Church of Canada I later found out. When I was growing up, it was a little out of town and we were told not to get too close to the area as the "school" was said to be a reformatory for bad boys. When I got a little older, maybe 11, dad disabused me of the notion that it was a reformatory for bad boys and that it was, in fact, a school for native children. Dad was very involved in advocating for 1st Nations people around Kenora, and he was part of a pilot project to bridge the huge gaps between 1st Nations people and the others who lived in Kenora. This pilot project involving the residential school involved families hosting a youth from the residential school from time to time. We hosted a young lad a little older than I. We hung around a bit together and played together while he stayed with us–I don't remember how long. We tried to stay in contact after he went back to the school; mom and dad would have him come for supper and then it all stopped. I remember a couple of years later running into him downtown somewhere in Kenora; I greeted him like a long lost relative and he gave me the cold shoulder. He wouldn't even acknowledge my presence as he was with other 1st Nations older teens. I reluctantly turned away and went home.

I never really understood what had happened until many years later when the abuses of the residential schools were becoming public. I remember asking my dad about that experience with the young man and that was when I learned about the residential school we had in Kenora and the many abuses that took place there and the horrible racism that went on in Kenora.

In fact, the year we left Kenora, 1st Nations people had taken over Anishinabe Park just outside of Kenora–it was a regional park on Lake of the Woods and well used. This was 1974 and just after Wounded Knee in the US. For the most part, the native people were peaceful, but they made it clear that no one was to get too close. I remember reading the letters to the editor at the time and people wanted to bring in the army and just blast away. Dad was part of the negotiations with the 1st Nations people until we left at the end of July. The occupation ended peacefully and the 1st Nations took possession of that land and have erected some housing there and done some other things in Kenora to create a better environment for 1st Nations people in general. However, I was saddened to see that the terrible racism still exists when we spent a little time in Kenora on our way to Matheson for a reunion back in 08.

My experiences with the 1st Nations young man and the reaction to the occupation of Anishinabe Park were my 1st experience with racism. I've often thought of that young man and wondered where he ended up and what he ended up doing. I wish I had spoken to my parents earlier about my late encounter with him–I didn't understand what was happening. I certainly never blamed him, but I understand all of the dynamics that existed then much better now.

How I wish we could have had Jesus and the Canaanite woman as part of a panel to help us deal with relationships between 1st Nations people and those of European descent. Jesus could have spoken of his 1st reaction to the woman who simply wanted to seek healing for her daughter. The Canaanite woman could have spoken of how she decided to push through the horrible response of Jesus and seek an encounter with the holy. It would have maybe prompted some deeper thinking on our part about what it means to live in a world where we regularly bump up against different cultures and different perspectives.

Some well-meaning folk have wanted to dismiss this story from Matthew, which Mark also includes in his gospel but strangely Luke omits. They want to bypass the hard truths and the serious questions that this story raises. Was Jesus really as inclusive as we think he was? Was he really as revolutionary as we claim, especially with respect to valuing women? Was Jesus really open and welcoming to people outside of his clan, his religious tradition? Matthew's story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman would seem to suggest a different picture than the one we typically paint of Jesus.

Some commentators have suggested that this story illustrates how Jesus took the gospel outside of the Jewish tradition into the areas of Tyre and Sidon, which were Gentile lands. But in a very real way, this story is not about Jesus taking the gospel outside of the Jewish nation into Gentile territory. It is about a Gentile woman living out the faith that she intuitively knew could bring healing to her daughter and to herself, as well as to others. The Canaanite woman dramatised what faith really is!

How I long for this un-named Canaanite woman and Jesus to stand here among us and teach us how to be open to one another in deeper ways. How I long to send them to Britain to help ease the tensions that have gripped that nation for far too long. How I long to send them to Libya, Syria and the Middle East. How I long to have these two speak of their encounter and how we might live our faith more fully and more deeply in spite of our differences here in this 21st century world–economic differences, cultural differences, sexual differences, life differences.

At the last BC Conference meeting in May, our guest speaker was Marilyn Legge, who teaches at the Toronto School of Theology. Marilyn challenged us to think about what it means to live as part of a family. She spoke about an economy of grace rather than a traditional economy that is based on scarcity. The good news is that an economy of grace is based on abundance, humility, kinship, common wealth, and common welfare. The good news is that the Commonwealth of God is built, not necessarily from the grandiose down to the particular, but from the particular up to the grandiose. By practicing an economy of grace in the small, every-day things, big changes can occur. There is an urgency to act from love that then builds up dignity and self-respect in all humanity, that seeks to share our diversity positively and openly.

One of the ways that an economy of grace gets lived out is the new direction the United Church has taken with respect to cultural differences. We have moved from an emphasis on multi-cultural responses to the diversity of the United Church and our Canadian society. But what we realized as a church is that multi-cultural means that different cultures live along side one another. Tolerance and cultural distinctiveness is stressed, but power differentials are not addressed and there isn't necessarily an exchange between cultures. We shifted to a cross-cultural identity where there was some reaching across boundaries and some bridge-building; however, experience showed that power was not shared equally. The dominant culture still viewed other cultures as inferior. In recent years, the United Church has shifted emphasis to being intercultural. We strive to be intercultural communities where there is mutuality, reciprocity and equality.

Being intercultural is part of this economy of grace where Canaanite and Jew live side by side, where Palestinian and Jew live side by side, where native people around the world live in mutuality, reciprocity and equality with other cultures, where we aren't defined by the colour of our skin, our sexuality, our economic status, or country of origin, or where we live, but by the fact that we are human beings, kin together.

The Canaanite woman challenged Jesus' vision of God's Commonwealth to become intercultural, more than just tolerant, but to live the deeply integrating and humanising gift of love. That Jesus learned to be more fully human in expressing love is a gift to all of us that we, too, can learn to be open in learning and loving in this world. In this vein, I leave you with part of a prayer-poem by Walter Brueggemann called "While the world says 'not possible.'" It is a hopeful proclamation of living together...

Holy God who moves this day toward peacableness,

God of Jew and Greek God of male and female,

God of slave and free God of haves and have-nots,

God of buoyant and the frightened,

God of the tax collector and the Pharisee,

You God who makes all things new!

We come to you this day in dazzled thanksgiving for the reconciliation you have wrought in our midst,

Some we all know... the strangeness of Gaza and Jerusalem,

.... The new paths in Capetown and Johannesburg,

... the thinkably good option in Belfast;

Some we know secretly, so close to home,

Of transformations and healings and reconciliations

And the defeat of anger, hate and hurt.

We are dazzled and grateful, more than we can say.

God of all newness, we come to you this day in daring hope,

For healings we want yet to receive, believing in them,

While the world says "not possible"

We dare to imagine ... healings in Rwanda,

... and peacableness in Haiti,

... and trustfulness close between conservatives and liberals,

... and caring between those who have so little and those who have too much,

Holy God who moves this day toward peacableness,

God of Jew and Greek God of male and female,

God of slave and free God of haves and have-nots,

God of buoyant and the frightened,

God of the tax collector and the Pharisee,

You God who makes all things new!

We come to you this day in dazzled thanksgiving

for the reconciliation you have wrought in our midst,

Some we all know... the strangeness of Gaza and Jerusalem,

.... The new paths in Capetown and Johannesburg,

... the thinkably good option in Belfast;

Some we know secretly, so close to home,

Of transformations and healings and reconciliations

And the defeat of anger, hate and hurt.

We are dazzled and grateful, more than we can say.

God of all newness, we come to you this day in daring hope,

For healings we want yet to receive, believing in them,

While the world says "not possible"

We dare to imagine ... healings in Rwanda,

... and peacableness in Haiti,

... and trustfulness close between conservatives and liberals,

... and caring between those who have so little and those who have too much,

... healings that can happen only by your good office.

healings that can happen only by your good office.

Amen.

Reflection by David for August 7, 2011

2011-08-08T19:30:00.000-07:00

And Jesus was a sailor
when he walked upon the water
and he spent a long time watching
from his lonely wooden tower
and when he knew for certain
only drowning men could see him
he said All men will be sailors then
until the sea shall free them
but he himself was broken
long before the sky would open
forsaken, almost human
he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone

I have appreciated some of Leonard Cohen's poetry–not so much his singing, I have to confess. And I'll also confess that I don't entirely know what Cohen was getting at in this verse. The snippet I just recited was from Suzanne. There actually was a Suzanne in Montreal in the early 60's that was the inspiration for this poem and then the song. Apparently Cohen was into Jesus in some fashion back then; I think he's into Buddhism these days. And I suspect that Cohen's inspiration for the verse in Suzanne relates to Jesus walking on the water in Matthew's Gospel, the passage that we just heard.

This passage from Matthew's Gospel is about many things, but one of the important messages is that of fear. Peter, emboldened by Jesus, walked out on the water. We don't really know what happened that morning long ago, but something happened for both Jesus and Peter. Peter, overwhelmed by inspiration and courage, stepped out into something he'd never done before. But then his rational mind said to him, "you shouldn't be doing this. This is impossible." Fear overcame him and he sank like a stone into the water.

Fear is like that isn't it? We commonly think that the opposite to love is hate, but in fact, it is fear. John, in his letter to the early church, wrote that perfect love casts out fear. And it does! But when fear invades our mind, love can be pushed aside; the fear comes in like an icy tentacle and grips our autonomic system and produces the fight or flight syndrome that we all have some familiarity with. Fear can cause us to do many irrational things; it can deny our potential and make it seem that everything is impossible.

That was one of the side effects for me last fall when I was on leave–fear and anxiety! I was afraid to do almost anything. When I went south to the desert, that was a challenge to me that fear would not have control over my life. The health care professionals that I was seeing at the time were concerned that I was going by myself, but I had some life-lines by way of the telephone that were necessary to keep me grounded and in touch. Although, with the advent of cell phones–which I don't have–pay phones are harder and harder to find. That trip, where I took some calculated risks and tried to confront my fear, was a very important part of my recovery.

There are a lot of verses in the Bible about not letting fear overwhelm us. The shepherds were told to not be afraid in the Christmas story. "Fear not, for I am with you," said God through Isaiah. David was called to go forth against Goliath. Deborah was called to be a judge and face hostility in those around her. Sarah and Hannah overcome their fear of never having a child.

The trick in our modern psychology-driven world is to not feel guilty when fear grips us. For people of faith, the temptation can be to feel guilty because, we say to ourselves, "If I had enough faith, I would not be afraid." Part of our struggle is that we label our emotions as negative or positive; fear? Bad. Anxiety? Bad. Fear is a natural part of what it means to be human. Fear keeps us from doing silly things that put us or others in jeopardy. One of the tricks is to be able to observe our fear, acknowledge its presence, even befriend it, understand it, and grow and learn from it.

That's what faith gives us; not an assurance that we will never be afraid, but rather an assurance that fear is not the last word. Death is not the last word. God's love is the last word. God's desire for love and life in the world–in our lives and in every life–is the last word. Instead of fear trying to convince us that everything is impossible, God tells us again and again through the prophets and through Jesus that with God nothing is impossible. We can step out onto the water and skip and dance. We can try something new that has otherwise paralyzed us in the past. We can speak words of justice in the face of adversity. We can speak truth to power. We can face health challenges. We can face our grief. We can because Jesus, who walked the way of life, overcame fear and showed us all that life always finds a way. We can because God is the God of love!

Those seeking peace in every part of the world in every age, those in Syria or Libya or Palestine or Israel or Burma or Central America or Somalia or Africa or here in Nelson in Canada, may be full of fear but are hopeful for a new world. And when we are afraid together, there is solidarity; there is comfort. There is a shared pain and therefore a shared power to stand together, to love, to be free!

Alan Boesak, a foe to Apartheid in South Africa, spoke at the 22^nd World Alliance of Reformed Churches in 1989 in South Korea. I came across this piece as I've been sorting through some papers and stuff. Boesak has had to face some of his own fears and demons in recent years, but that does not rob these words of their power. I leave these words with you; it is called "We Are Called."

We are called not to be fearful, we are called to love;
we are not called to be perfect, we are called to be faithful;
we are not called to be fearless, we are called to be obedient;
we are not called to be all knowing, we are called to believe;
we are not called to claim, we are called to give;
we are not called to be victorious, we are called to be coura-geous;
we are not called to lord it over others, we are called to serve others.

For it is in serving that we shall reign;
it is through courage that we shall find victory;
it is giving all that we shall gain all;
it is believing that we shall find certainty;
it is in obedience that we shall overcome;
it is in loving that we shall dispel fear
it is faithfulness that we shall find perfection;
it is in service to Christ and his justice, that we shall find freedom,
now and forever, for ourselves and for the world.
Thank you. God bless you.

Amen.

Reflection by David for July 31, 2010

2011-08-03T20:31:00.000-07:00

What are the three words that realtors use all of the time as the most important aspect of buying a home or a business? Location, location, location. Choosing where to live or even work is all about location.

When you think about it, location features quite prominently in our lives. Many of us have chosen to live where we are. "Where are you from," we commonly ask when getting to know someone. It is as if we can locate someone in our mental geographical landscape when we know where they are from or where they were born. I think we believe that we learn something about someone's character from where they live. Whether we actually do learn something truthful is a whole other question.

Then there's the whole aspect of the landscape of your town. When I was growing up in Kenora–I was born in Hazelton in North-Central BC, by the way–the CPR went right through our town dividing those who lived on one side of the tracks from those who lived on the other side of the tracks. Some parents wouldn't let their children play with other children if they were from the wrong side of the tracks. In Vancouver, people make many assumptions based solely on where you live, and mostly these assumptions are incorrect. We use location sometimes to label and pigeon-hole, which is not a useful exercise at all. Location. Location. Location.

Matthew used this idea of location also. He wanted to underline what the Commonwealth of God is about, that it's not about where you are from, where you live in a town, where you locate yourself in terms of society, or where you live in the world. The Commonwealth of God is an inner and outer dawning location, as it were, of peace, of justice, of abundance, of service, of community, or grace. In terms of physical location in Israel at the time, Matthew's Chapter 13 had Jesus telling a bunch of parables about the Commonwealth of God: the Mustard Seed, the leavening parable, the pearls, and so on. Some of these parables, according to Matthew, were publicly spoken in and around the Sea of Galilee for all to hear in public; and other parables were spoken privately, in a private home or in a grove of trees close to the sea of Galilee, only for the disciples and close followers of Jesus to hear.

At the beginning of chapter 14, the location shifts from this parable-telling about the Commonwealth of God to history-telling of the Empire of Rome and physically to Herod's grand palace. Matthew tells us that John the Baptiser, the fiery prophet who baptized Jesus, was murdered by Herod Antipas. The location is the high court of the king of Israel and all of the intrigues that accompany such a location. This is the location of power and might, the location of suspicion and double-dealing; this is the location of Empire and Rome.

And then Matthew changes the location again in the passage we heard. Jesus, upon hearing of John's death, retreats to the wilderness. His community goes with him, his close followers and many others who want to know more about the location of which Jesus is speakingÉ the location that is the Commonwealth of God. They want to know why, when Jesus heard that John had died, he went out to the wilderness.

I suspect Jesus went out to the wilderness because he needed to regroup; he needed to think things through, to pray, and to be assured that the location of the Commonwealth of God was real and present. Prophecy, renewal and wilderness are often tied together in Israel's thinking. Elijah went out to the wilderness to regroup after his encounter with the priests of Baal, to hear again the still, small voice of God. Second Isaiah spoke of wilderness and God making the rough places smooth and creating a way in the wilderness for the Jews to return home. Amos spoke powerfully from the wilderness about the economic injustices of Israel. Moses led the people as they formed a new identity in the desert, in the wilderness, an identity not borne out of slavery but one born out of freedom. John the Baptiser, came out of the wilderness, wearing a camel hair shirt and eating locusts and wild honey. Jesus himself spent time in the wilderness after his baptism. In the location of wilderness, there is clarity about God's agenda for the world, about compassion, about justice, about love!

So upon hearing that John had been murdered, Jesus went to the wilderness. His community went with him. It was almost as if Jesus was saying to the world around him, we are seceding. If this is the way we treat our prophets, if this is the way we treat one another, we are leaving to form a new society of peace, love and mutuality. We are declaring independence from the empires of fear and hierarchy! God's Commonwealth is not based on the values of empire, power or might but on love, grace, reconciliation, forgiveness and peace, which will be the hallmarks of our new world.

Janet and I have been watching old TV episodes of MASH. It was a wonderful series about the Korean War and a mobile army surgical hospital unit. In this one particular episode that we saw recently, after a long stint of surgery, putting soldiers back together again, Hawkeye and BJ and the crew take up residence in Rosie's Bar, a tavern just outside of the camp. Another soldier, tired of the killing, Sully by name, has walked off the line and has sought refuge in Rosie's as well. They decide to secede from the war and declare their new land, their new location, Rosieland. They have decided that there has been enough killing, enough blood, enough hate, and enough war! Their new location, their new land was going to be about peace and camaraderie, community and mutuality.

The location of the Commonwealth of God, of course, isn't a location. It is where ever we are at the moment. It is based on the values that Jesus taught in his parables. Jesus highlighted the difference in the location of the Commonwealth of God with the Empire of Rome or the intrigue of Herod's court. Empire and King Herod are about death and destruction. They are about keeping order so that only a few will prosper. They are about scarcity.

To make the point, Jesus enjoys a meal with his community. The disciples aren't sure about this, perhaps thinking that the people should go home and eat, perhaps still caught up in the location of empire and power. But, Jesus points to the Commonwealth of God as their new reality; he blesses the small amount of food they have collected and they share a meal together; it's that old Jewish understanding of dayeinu–it is enough! There is always enough. The meal, as we know, left twelve baskets at the end. This is a living parable of the Commonwealth of God and of God's lavish promise of life, love and abundance, a stark contrast to the scarcity of love and grace in King Herod's court.

Sadly, we are witnessing something of this contrast between the location of scarcity and empire versus the location of peace, common welfare, and basic living rights in the Horn of Africa. There is so much of politics in this disaster–factions fighting with other factions, religions being too sectarian, not accounting for climate change, civil war, a denial of human rights. And the people caught in the middle are just simply searching for a location that they can call home, where there is water to drink, food to eat, shelter in which to live and peace to enjoy it all. Our location found within the Commonwealth of God leads us to offer aid–which we are trying to do, but our location within the Commonwealth of God leads us also to advocate for fundament al change in our world, to promote an intercultural common humanity, to stand for justice and basic human rights, to advocate for a world that is not based on coercive empire but on love, kinship with all, grace, forgiveness and reconciliation.

We are in the midst of the Commonwealth of God. And where ever we go, that location is always now and present. And together, with people of faith and hope and love around the world, we can make that a present reality in locations like the Horn of Africa, the Middle East, Burma, Nelson, and in whatever location where ever we might find ourselves. We are called to let our lives–individually and collectively–be living parables of God's Commonwealth of life and love and abundance.

Amen.

Reflection by David for July 24, 2010

2011-07-26T00:20:00.001-07:00

On Christine's "De-covenanting" with Nelson United Church

Let me begin this short sermon time by repeating a poem that Christine and I first learned when we did some team building back in March. I start with this poem because one of the difficult things that comes with being in ministry is that you sow seeds and don't always see the seeds bear fruit. This poem is about letting go of the need for success and trusting in the love of God to nurture seeds to new plants to bear fruit. This is the poem by Dawna Markova.

I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible;
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance,
to live
so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.

So often when clergy get together, not so much in my experience but from the experience of friends and colleagues in ministry, there can be a lot of rivalry. There can be the comparing of the numbers, of size, of programs, of busyness and so on. Some clergy, like any profession, look for signs of accomplishment to feel that their ministry in a congregation has been successful.

What Jesus suggests, though, an idea that Dawna Markova repeats in her poem, is that we are not about success and achievement. In ministry, weÑand I mean all of us in this community of faithÑare about faithfulness, about love, about compassion, about justice. The Commonwealth of Heaven, Jesus reminds us, is like a mustard seed or leavening when making breadÑgluten free, of courseÑor fine pearls or a treasure in a field. Jesus is speaking metaphorically about what we value rather than about what we achieve. And it is important to value one another and the love that we share rather than to be successful as a minister or as a congregation.

Part of the reason that we can't measure the achievement of success of the Commonwealth of God is that it is too unpredictable. God is unpredictable, the Spirit is unpredictable, ministry is unpredictable, life is unpredictable. Mustard seeds were very small and were like the many invasive plants that we have today growing around here. Farmers would not have been happy to find mustard seeds growing in their fields. The mustard seed is hard to see and blows where it will. The other parables mention things that are hard to see. Pearls are hard to find, but rewarding when you do. It is rare to find a treasure in a field, but a real boon if you do. Fishing can be hit and miss. Leavening is a mystery in terms of how it works.

In our world, at all times and ages, we want answers. We want to be able to draw boundaries around the Commonwealth of God. We want neat rows in which to sow the mustard seeds. We want an easy catch of fish, to know for sure that when we dive for pearls we will find some. We want to know beforehand that the field we are interested in will have a treasure in it.

But, as the popular song says in More Voices, "my love colours outside the lines, exploring paths that few could ever find; and takes me into places where I've never been before, and opens doors to worlds outside the line." (More Voices # 138) In the words of another hymn from Voices United that we're singing today, "When pain of the World surrounds us with darkness and despair; when searching just confounds us with false hopes everywhere. When lives are starved for meaning and destiny is bare, we are called to follow Jesus and let God's healing flow through us." (Voices United 598) Or let God's justice flow through us, or God's spirit or God's changes.

All of this is leading me to say that Christine has been good at, successful even!, in holding out this mystery as a good thing. Life's unpredictability is a gift not a curse, even though sometimes it feels like a curse. Christine has kept reminding us that even in the midst of uncertainty, despair, the dark of night, and outside of the boundaries, God's love is ever-present. God's presence is assured. Her favourite psalm is the one we read last week, Psalm 139: "Where can I flee from your Spirit? Where can I escape you, my God? If I flee to the farthest most points of the ocean, you are there. Even if I make my bed in the place of the dead, you are there, too!"

Christine takes this gift of ministry with her and leaves the seeds of love and compassion here for God and all of us to nurture and fertilize and help grow. And I say thank you for your ministry among and with us. And thank God for your gifts that you now take with you to Kimberley. To you and Jody, we say fare thee well and God be with you.

Amen.

Reflection by David for July 17, 2010

2011-07-26T00:02:00.000-07:00

Some years ago we were with some friends. Our children were about the same age and seemed to get along. My friend, the father, was quite intellectual and could get lost in a thought or a concept–sort of like the absent-minded professor. I remember that my friend and I were engaged in a conversation, quite a deep one, and we heard a shout of the name of one his children. I heard the shout and turned just in time to see the child fall–she was 3 or 4–and catch her before she came to harm's way. My friend continued on with his conversation as if nothing had happened or was happening. He hadn't heard his wife call out the child's name. He really hadn't heard me reach out and catch the child. When our friends went home Janet and I both recalled the incident and were very thankful that nothing untoward happened, and we laughed a bit at the whole situation and at my friend's tremendous focus and consequent inability to listen to the things going on around him.

Well, as usually happens, the circle has come around fully. These days I can get so engrossed in a conversation, a TV program, a book, an email, or just looking out at a beautiful vista that I tune out things around me. When our kids are home–and I'm not used to having them around like I used to–they'll speak to me and realize that I'm not listening. Then, they'll go find mom and sometimes I'll find them laughing together; and when I ask what they are laughing at, they'll usually tell me that they're laughing at me. I've become my absent-minded friend!

A lot has been written about listening. We just sang a little verse written by John Bell of the Iona Community, "Listen to the word which God has spoken. Listen to the One who is close at hand. Listen to the voice which began creation; listen even if you don't understand." Linnea Good has written a song that is equally poignant, "Listen in the silence. Listen in the noise. Listen for the sound of the Spirit's voice." This is the kind of spiritual listening that is so key to our spiritual life.

There is what is called active listening, which is a technique of pastoral care. This is the kind of listening in which we engage the other deeply and openly. Our words, when we use them, indicate that we are listening–sometimes we repeat what we've said. There is empathy and a connection that holds the other person in a special embrace of being heard. There is a wonderful parable that I came across when I was a student; it was used as a thesis for a friend's paper on ministry. It is a parable based on this idea of active listening–and it is active for it takes lots of concentration to listen well. The parable is by Nell Morton, a feminist from the 70's. This is a short version of the parable:

A Group of women gathered around a wise and trusted teacher. One of the women asked, "What must I do to serve God?" The teacher replied, "You must love tenderly, act justly and walk humbly but proudly with your God." Another woman asked, "But how shall we do this?" The teacher replied, "Sit with one another and speak together about your lives." And the women thought that this was a strange way to serve God–and they looked at each other somewhat suspiciously, seeing that they were young and old, married, divorced, single, in relationships not always valued and respected by others; they were white, black, native, Asian; university educated and illiterate; they were boisterous and shy; they were rich and poor, courageous and frightened. But one by one, they began to speak... of caring for children and ageing parents; they talked about marching in peace demonstrations and going to prayer meetings; of teaching Sunday School and speaking in governments and councils; they spoke of dancing and studying; of listening and talking; of doubting and trusting; of joy and of pain; of hope and of despair. And as they talked, they began to understand why their teacher had asked them to sit together. They began to see how each of them, in different ways, was serving God. The women began to think again about their own paths and the implications of each step they took, each word they spoke, and each time they remained silent. As they thought about their lives, they thought about the moments when they were "silenced" by outside forces or by their own fear. They thought about how some words are more welcomed than others, especially the words that bring comfort and not the ones that bring challenge. They thought again how they needed to "hear each other into speech." They needed to take themselves and others seriously as agents of love and justice. They went back to their teacher to ask more questions. But they found the teacher prepared to leave. They were saddened that the teacher was leaving. The teacher told them, "The wisdom I impart is born of love, of commitment, of respect, of courage. Its roots are in each of you. The fruit of wisdom is born and nurtured when you come together as agents of love and when you go into the world."

We are called to "hear each other into speech," to actively listen to one another for listening gives life.

Some of you may remember W.O. Mitchell's book Who Has Seen the Wind?. Whenever I hear that phrase or title, what always strikes a chord in me isn't seeing the wind, but hearing the wind. I love listening to the wind, whether it's a storm and howling winds, or whether it's a gentle breeze. When I'm out hiking, especially when I'm alone, I like nothing better than to sit under a pine tree, with its pungent smell, and listen to the wind.

The act of listening isn't related to the physical act of hearing. It is partly, but it is more a sense of recognition. One of the marvels of animals–and we have this capacity, too–is that mothers and fathers can pick out the noise that their offspring make, especially in times of danger. Like the penguin, if your remember The March of the Penguins.

This parable section of Matthew's Gospel is really about listening. Several times in chapter 13, Matthew quotes Jesus as saying, "Listen!" In interpreting the parables, Matthew repeats Jesus' injunction to listen. And it's a multi-faceted listening. We listen with our ears. We listen with our hearts. We listen with our minds. We listen for what's being said. We listen for what's not being said. We listen for inspiration. We listen for learning. We listen out of respect. We listen to change our ways. We listen so that authorities might practice justice. We listen each other into speech and life and love! The story of Ludwig Beethoven is a powerful one in many ways. But what is powerful is that long after he lost his hearing, he could still listen. He could look at a score and hear the music. We could put notes on the sheet and hear how the chords go together; he could hear the soaring violins or the blaring trumpets or the thump of the timpani. He still listened. Elders in extended care are still listening even when they show no signs of having heard; start to play an old song or a hymn or speak a well-known prayer and see what happens. We folk who live in this day and age in the midst of so much sound are challenged to listen. We sometimes have difficulty suspending our need to use words and letting silence gather around us. Or like Elijah, we listen to the wrong things. Was it an earthquake in which God was speaking, or a powerful wind, or the sound of fire? No, it was in the sound like sheer silence, what the RSV translates as "a still small voice." I like the "sound like sheer silence."

Listening is an active way of practicing spirituality. And it is active. It is not a passive thing. Listening opens us up to new experiences in life–to experience the delight of living in new ways, to experience the delight of love in new ways, to experience the delight of friendship or companionship.

As Jesus said again and again, "You who have ears to hear, listen!" Listen to the good news; listen one another into speech. Ultimately, listen so that you might grow in the love that is abundant all around us all, and that the world might experience anew the wonder of peace, freedom, justice and love.

Amen.

Reflection by David for July 10, 2011

2011-07-11T15:02:00.001-07:00

I subscribe to a meditation newsletter that comes from the BC Chapter of the World Community of Christian Meditation, or WCCM as the acronym goes. I don't know if the person preparing the reflection for this week had read the passage from Matthew, but the reflection had lots of parallels to the work of Brother John Main, a Benedictine monk who wrote and taught about Christian meditation back in the 70's and 80's before he died. If you're curious, John Main started a Benedictine monastery in Montreal after being a career diplomat in the British Foreign Service; the purpose of the Montreal monastery was to teach the way of Christian meditation—Pierre Trudeau was one of his patrons.

The reflection in the meditation newsletter was about not trying to make things happen. John Main wrote, "One of the most difficult things for Westerners to understand is that meditation [orprayer, my words] is not about trying to make anything happen." This dovetails with Jesus' parable about the farmer who sowed seeds everywhere. The farmer wasn't so concerned about outcome that he sowed seeds only in fertile ground; the farmer sowed seeds wherever he happened to be, trusting that the mysterious process of seed germination, growth and bearing fruit would happen as it usually does. As I remember some of my farmer relatives, I remember that they were quite philosophical—they would sow their seeds hoping but not expecting that the seeds would bear fruit. These farmer relatives of mine would be quite comfortable with John Main's teaching about trying not to make things happen, but participating in the creative or growing process and letting things happen as they will.

Let me be clear, I'm not advocating a "leave it to fate" kind of thinking. I don't think that is what John Main is saying about prayer and meditation or a life of faith; and this isn't what Jesus is saying, either. (I'm not going to deal with Matthew's interpretation of Jesus' parable.) What John Main and Jesus are saying is that we participate in the creative forces of nature, in the creative forces of God's Spirit, in the creative spark of life in whatever it is that we are doing. But if we attach expectations to this process, we will usually be disappointed. We live in hope for the abundance of life that God promises, but we do not live with the expectation of its coming.

Expectation is tied too much to our own wants and desires. I remember a friend who spent time in South Africa during the apartheid years. He was with the United Church of Canada and was active in pushing both local churches in South Africa and the United Church and our ecumenical partners here in Canada to be actively working in ending apartheid—active in the boycott; active in protesting; active in disseminating information. My friend took some risks in South Africa and put others at risk; eventually he was removed by the authorities. But before he was removed, one of the local church leaders took him aside one day, just shortly before he was expelled from the country, and said something like, "You need to ease up on your pushing and live more in hope; your pushing, your expectation that things should change today, is putting people in danger. Hope is about taking the long view that things will eventually change and that what we are doing here today and in your home in Canada, sometimes quietly and sometimes noisily, will bring about change. We have been at work for many years and things will change and even though not soon enough probably not tomorrow." That's the difference between our own expectation of what should happen and what hope does; hope takes the long view that encompasses a large community and that is about health and wholeness for all.

I get caught up in this tug-of-war between expectation and hope all the time. I expect that humanity should be generous and compassionate. I expect that we should have learned by now that the well-being of all creates wealth and health for the greater number. I expect that freedom should be a reality everywhere, especially, for example, in Burma or Myanmar. In my own selfish demand that freedom should occur because I have wished it be so, I forget the work of the likes of Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma who has patiently stuck to her non-violent, peace-filled protest. Recently, she has incurred the wrath of the generals by asking that the thousands of Buddhist monks and the many citizens who are imprisoned in horrible conditions be set free. I have heard others speak of living in repressive situations, but needing to take the long view; the short view—the view of one's expectations— places too many people in danger. One must set aside one's expectations and live in hope—live with the long view of freedom and peace.

Rest assured Aung San Suu Kyi is certainly not doing nothing; she is actively living her life of hope, speaking about freedom and peace, speaking about the greater good for the many, speaking about grace and truth. Jesus calls us to sow seeds. We sow seeds of justice and love, of freedom and peace, wherever we are. We let the seeds fall wherever and everywhere, and then watch and wait for the harvest. We live our lives as agents of change, quietly and hopefully, knowing that we are participating in something dynamic, something creative, something life-giving.

When we are faced with life-changing situations, whether it be our own health or justice for a person or a people, we are called to align ourselves with God's Spirit, to be receptive soil for the seed of hope to take root and grow and prosper. We live with this hope of wholeness and health for all even in the midst of our fear of the worst occurring. Healing is about living in this hope, full of love. And sometimes this not knowing what will be or what will come is very difficult; we want to know and yet we are called to give up this desire to know for we ultimately can't know. I want to know, but I cannot and need to let that go...

Janet Morley, a theologian and writer in England who was part of the movement to ordain women in the Church of England back in the 1980's. Women were finally ordained as priests as late as 1993—it was 1976 when the first women in Canada were ordained as priests in the Anglican Church. Janet Morley was one of the leaders in the movement for women to be ordained as priests in the Church of England. In 1985 she wrote a litany, which I have appreciated in my own spiritual life and as wisdom when thinking about the world and my part in helping to make the world a place of peace and justice. I leave you with this prayer by Janet Morley:

For the darkness of waiting,
of not knowing what is to come,
of staying ready and quiet and attentive,
we praise you, O God:
For the darkness and the light are both alike to you.
For the darkness of staying silent,
for the terror of having nothing to say,
and for the greater terror of needing to say nothing,
we praise you, O God.
For the darkness and the light are both alike to you.
For the darkness of loving,
in which it is safe to surrender, to let go of our self-protection,
and to stop holding back our desire,
we praise you, O God.
For the darkness and the light are both alike to you.
For the darkness of choosing,
when you give us the moment to speak, and act, and change,
and we cannot know what we have set in motion,
but we still have to take the risk,
we praise you, O God.
For the darkness and the light are both alike to you.
For the darkness of hoping
in a world which longs for you;
for the wrestling and the labouring of all creation
for wholeness and justice and freedom,
we praise you, O God.
For the darkness and the light are both alike to you.
Amen.

From "All Desires Known" by Janet Morley, Movement for the Ordination of Women, 1988, page 30.

Reflection by David for July 3, 2011

2011-07-06T00:06:00.000-07:00

If we cut right to the chase and surveyed 100 people who attend church and asked them, " What does the gospel mean to you," I bet a good 50 would cite this passage from Matthew about "taking my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

I' m not going to say much about the first part of Matthew' s passage this morning, the negative from Jesus—Jesus did get angry from time to time and did castigate some of the people for not listening—especially the religious leaders. But today, on our anniversary Sunday, I want to focus more on the positive part of the reading, the bit about yoke and burden, which is easy and light.

If there was a text that could be the basis of reaching out to those who see the yoke of religion as a huge burden, this would be the passage. Jesus is agreeing with those today who might suggest that the yoke of religion is a heavy burden. Jesus affirmed that there were many in his day and age who were burdened down by the religious bureaucracy of the scribes and the Pharisees. There were many more who were put off by the pretensions of the religions of human beings!

The yoke was a harness that one put on oxen or beasts of burden to have some measure of control when ploughing a field or hauling things. Yoke became a common metaphor in Judaism for servitude and for behaving obediently. For some Rabbis of ancient Judaism, though, the idea of the Torah was not a burden or something that creates servitude, but a joy, a blessing, a means of transformation. Some people seem to have a knack for turning something that is meant to be freeing and transforming into something that is a requirement—that which requires obedience and becomes a heavy burden.

Jesus' yoke, just like the Torah, is a yoke that is easy and light. It is not burdensome, does not require obedience, and does not require servitude! Jesus' yoke, like the Torah, is the yoke of transformation, the yoke peace, and the yoke of never having to be stuck in one' s brokenness or sorrow. It is not an invitation to a life of ease, but a release from the burden placed upon us by our human pretensions toward religion. In other words, the yoke of Jesus releases us from the burden of religiousness (religiosity or religiousnessism—one of those isms) and opens us to the transformative power of love, forgiveness, reconciliation, justice and peace, all of which are part of our religious tradition and many traditions!

Worship, which is one of the things that we do as part of the tradition that follows Jesus, is a case in point. Many people see worship as a burden—"do I have to go to worship this morning?!" And indeed, worship can be boring and unenlightening! (Not here, of course! ?) Instead, worship, through music, symbols, communion and baptism, through word and action, is mean to lead us into a new awareness of the world around us, a new sense of God's presence, a newfound appreciation of love; worship is an expression of our love for the world and our thanks for the gift of life.

Worship, as befits the literal meaning of the word, is about worthiness; it is about affirming the worthiness of each one of us, complete with all of our warts and struggles, the worth of all life, the worth of those especially who face difficulty due to oppression, injustice, grief or hardship. Worship literally means "worth-ship." In worship we discover again and again—each week—that all life is worthy of God' s love.

I was challenged a few weeks ago by someone who said that we United Church people have watered things down to such a degree that we don' t believe anything anymore. Well, I quoted this Matthew passage about Jesus' yoke and burden as a template that the United Church broadly uses to proclaim the message that we are all worthy of God' s love. I said that we don' t focus on the religious burdens of behaving in a certain way or of believing all of the things we are supposed to believe in the same way. "Well," the person said, "what about worship and inclusive language—you' re changing the words!" And I said, "Yes we are because we believe in the worth and dignity of all life and every person, whether a woman or a man." If believing in the basic rights of every individual, the worth of children, women and men, our hope for justice and freedom in the world, a right for forests to be what they were created to be, for animals to live and prosper, for an environment that is fit for all life to thrive, for clean water for everyone—if these things aren't part of our religion, then what is the point?! ( I felt a bit like the "I am Canadian" commercial when I was saying all of this.)

But this is the yoke and burden of Jesus—the transformative power of love that says to us all and to all of life from God, "You are mine, and I love you. I will hold you in the palm of my hand and call you by name. You are my beloved!" We all need to hear that. This is the yoke of Jesus and the burden that he asks us to carry. This is the message that we proclaim and the invitation that we make to the world around us: join us in carrying this burden of love and hope and experience your worth and the worth of all life. This is what we' ve strived for these past 16 years together and this is what we will continue to strive for and proclaim.

That old Spiritual, "Hold On" speaks of holding on to the plough—holding on to the yoke—and the freedom that this yoke brings. This is what we are about—this freedom, this promise of change:

When you plow, don't lose your track,
Can't plow straight and keep a-lookin' back
Keep your hand on that plow,
Hold on.

Keep on plowin' and don't you tire,
Ev'ry row goes higher and higher,
Keep your hand on that plow,
Hold on.

If you want to get to heaven, I'll tell you how,
Keep your hand on the Gospel plow,
Keep your hand on that plow,
Hold on.

If that plow stays in your hand,
Head you straight for the Promised Land,
Keep your hand on that plow,
Hold on.

If we hold on, it is a mighty fine ride!

Amen.

Reflection by David for June 26, 2011

2011-07-01T07:51:00.000-07:00

Some years ago I was at a conference about love. The question was "how do we live love in this modern world?" Various speakers were offering their ethical and theological thoughts about how we respond to the violence and evil—in the broadest sense of the word—in our world today. The basic question was "how can love overcome hatred, fear and violence so prevalent in the church today." This conference took place almost 20 years ago when I was still in Ontario.

What intrigues me is that this question is still very much alive. What difference can love make in our world? There are several routes one can take when assessing this question. One can take the route that Barack Obama has taken, a route that is based on an influential 20^th century theologian and philosopher by the name Reinhold Niebuhr and is known as Christian realism. One can take the cynical viewpoint that love doesn't make much difference and so we should enjoy life as much as we can today for who knows what will happen tomorrow. A third response is that of fundamentalism, whether that is a religious or political fundamentalism. The fourth response is the response taken by the likes of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Oscar Romero and more contemporarily, Rigobertu Menchu, Stanley Hauwerwas and Jean Vanier; this is the school of pacifism or more broadly the school that holds that love does make a vast difference in the world and indeed is the only way of combating evil. You can probably tell which school of thought I belong to!

Reinhold Niebuhr was a rising star in the 1920's theology and academic scene of the Church—albeit not a big scene. He considered himself a pacifist after witnessing the horror of World War I. By the 1930's Niebuhr, watching the rise of Nazism and the change in other world politics, became a Christian realist. He argued that sometimes violence needs to be met with a measured violent response, always based on forgiveness and always as a last resort. He would argue that the evil of Nazism had to be met with a measured response that required the use of arms to bring about justice. Niebuhr wrote about just war theory. Obama is a current practitioner of this school of thinking. There are now more US troops in Afghanistan than Bush had, which ultimately Obama believes will bring about change in that country. Obama sanctioned the death of Osama Bin Laden as a realist way of thinking. In recent speeches to religious types, Obama has cited Niebuhr. This is one route that has a strong following in our world today, and that many followers believe has its roots in the Christian way of life and in Jesus' teachings.

The second and third routes that I named above, the route of cynicism or getting what you can today for tomorrow is uncertain and the route of fundamentalism—political and religious—was witnessed by the world in Vancouver and Belfast these past couple of weeks. The anarchists—political fundamentalists who want to bring about change through a fundamentalist political agenda—had a part to play in the Vancouver riots, albeit apparently a small part. The religious fundamentalists began the riot in Northern Ireland this past week and are still flaming one another. The cynics or the live-for-now kinds of folk are the ones who take advantage of a situation and get caught up in the mob and perpetrate violence or destruction, or who steel something caught up in the moment, but who are usually contrite afterwards. We are seeing this both in the Northern Ireland and Vancouver riot aftermath.

The fourth route in responding to evil in the world is the route that is most difficult and perhaps the most dangerous. This was the route chosen by those who tried to stop the rioters and looters in Vancouver and Belfast. This was the path of non-violence that Gandhi chose and Martin Luther King, Jr. This was the path that the people of Nasreen's Secret School chose. I believe that this was the path that Jesus walked, the way of life that Jesus chose and lived. And of course, he paid the price, giving up his life for this way of praying for one's enemies, loving one's enemies, turning the other cheek, practicing a welcome that was rooted in forgiveness and grace, and embodying the deep, abiding and transforming love of God.

We don't know how we will react in a difficult situation until we are in that situation. I think we hope that our response will be just, fair and full of love. But what I do know is that living a spiritual/religious life is like training for a marathon. In order to finish the marathon, you have to practice; you start slowly and build up your endurance. The religious/spiritual life of love is the same. We have to practice. We have to practice the kind of welcome that Jesus advocated in Matthew's Gospel. We have to realize that that the word welcome used in Matthew's gospel is actually receive. We are called to receive the other as if the other were an agent of the one who sent the person. That was the ancient belief in Jesus' day: if one was sent, you were the embodiment of the one who sent you and you were to be received in that fashion. So, as Jesus taught, we are sent by God into the world to live and to love; when we receive each other, we literally receive God embodied in the other. "The Spirit in me greets the Spirit in you" is one way of expressing this. To welcome the other is to welcome the embodiment of God, quite literally.

And we practice in small and large ways. We learn to see God in each other. We learn to see ourselves as living embodiments of God. We practice how we receive one another, especially in the face of our differences. And we practice loving; we practice forgiving. We practice giving the other a cup of water on a hot day. We practice for in practicing we are living. And when we are called to respond in any given moment—a big moment like a riot or a revolution—we will know how to respond. We will know how to run the marathon. We will know how to receive the other.

To do otherwise, to turn our back on love, is to give in to the way of death and destruction. We practice and in practicing, just like exercise, we get stronger and healthier, and thus we can engage in acts of life and love that have radical and far-reaching implications around the world. We are part of a religious tradition that seeks the way of peace, and we share this Way with others in other religions or spiritual or political paths that are committed to a Way of openness, reconciliation, forgiveness and seeing in the other the embodiment of all that is holy and sacred. This, in my estimation is the Way of love that creates Life in our world.

This is Wisdom for the Church and food for thought as we contemplate our purpose statement after worship this morning.

Amen.

Reflection by Rev. Christine Dudley - June 12, 2011

2011-06-12T13:47:00.000-07:00

Pentecost Sunday

Scripture Text: Acts 2:1-21

Let us pause for a moment to give thanks to God in prayer:

Gracious God,
as a community gathered here today,
we thank you for your spirit of love and faith.
Like a gusty wind that sweeps over the plains,
through mountain passes and city streets,
we pray that you will sweep through our lives
refreshing us with the winds of your creative spirit
and the empowerment of your constant presence.
As we remember the stories of our ancestors in faith
help us realize they are our stories as well
and that our lives are evolving stories
of faith, hope and love.
Inspired by the life and ministry of Jesus,
and people of The Way throughout the ages,
we give thanks and praise to you, O God.
Amen

The dramatic reading which Kevin offered at the beginning of our worship service was a retelling of Luke's Pentecost story found in the Acts of the Apostles. Drawing on the words of the prophet, Joel, Jews in the 1st century (C.E.) believed that one of God's acts would be to pour out God's Spirit on all people. For the early Jewish-Christian community, Joel's prophecy was fulfilled in their experience of a powerful encounter with the Holy Spirit which Jesus had told them would happen when his physical presence was no longer with them.

This encounter happened on the day of Pentecost which was one of three central holy days in the Jewish calendar. Devout Jews came from far and wide to gather in Jerusalem to celebrate and worship together. We don't know everything that happened to the disciples on that day of Pentecost but we do know that it was a powerfully transformative experience for those involved. Timid disciples became bold apostles teaching and preaching and carrying on Jesus' ministry in a way that became their own.

This Pentecost experience is vividly recalled with the symbolic imagery of gusting winds and dancing flames to describe an encounter which was far too mystical and powerful to adequately describe in common language. The experience so entirely energized and united Jesus' followers that they became, what the apostle Paul called, the Body of Christ. So important was this experience as a turning point in the cohesion and growth of the early Christian community that biblical scholars often refer to this event as the birth of the Christian Church. Theologian and author, Jan Richardson, says that, "They are no longer a group of believers but rather a catalyzed community, a body that, enlivened by the Spirit, will endure and continue the work of Christ." (The Painted Prayerbook website)

The image of wind used in the Pentecost story is an important symbol. The word for spirit in Hebrew is ruah, which literally means breath or wind, so God's spirit is like breath to human beings and is everywhere like the winds of creation.

Flames of fire would have recalled God's presence in the Burning Bush (Exodus 3:1-5) and God's guiding presence to the Hebrew people in the pillar of fire (Exodus 13:21) which provided light in the dark night and guided them through the wilderness.

Herman Waetjen, a scholar of the Christian Scriptures, has noted there is a similarity between a first century Roman coin and the imagery of tongues of fire in the story of Pentecost. On the 1^st century coin, "divided tongues of fire appear over the head of Caesar as a sign of royalty - even a sign of divinity. 'Caesar is the Son of God', the symbol proclaims to the first-century world." (Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 3, p.19) Therefore, tongues of fire resting on the heads of Jesus' followers, blessing them with the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, emphasized Jesus' sovereignty and their assertion that "Jesus is Lord" and Caesar is not. This was both a challenge to the Roman Empire and an affirmation of the Reign of God that Jesus proclaimed.

And, the symbolism of the comprehension of every language on the day of Pentecost was a powerful reversal of the ancient Hebrew story of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9) in which there was great division, confusion and lack of understanding caused by many different tongues.

During the Pentecost experience people speaking many languages were gathered and through the transformative power of the Holy Spirit they understood each other and were unified as one body.

This unification of the Spirit encouraged and empowered Jesus' followers. Peter addressed the crowd in the most stirring speech of his life and many (3,000 people) were so impressed by this that they were baptized and welcomed as members of the Body of Christ. The book of Acts notes that these new members "devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and...prayers." (Acts 2:42)

Theologian, Harvey Cox, in his book The Future of Faith, says that "faith is about deep-seated confidence...we place our faith only in something that is vital for the way we live" and that "Christianity...began with Jesus and his immediate disciples when a buoyant faith propelled the movement he initiated. During this first period of both explosive growth and brutal persecution, their sharing in the living Spirit of Christ united Christians with each other...To be a Christian meant to live in his Spirit, embrace his hope, and to follow him in the work that he had begun." (pgs. 3-5)

Cox also argues that, "Christianity, which began as a movement of Spirit guided by faith soon clotted into a catalogue of beliefs administered by a clerical class. But, now due to a number of different factors, the process is being reversed. Faith is resurgent, while dogma is dying. The spiritual, communal, and justice-seeking dimensions of Christianity are now its leading edge as the twenty-first century hurtles forward, and this change is taking place along with similar reformations in the other world religions." (Ibid, p. 213)

The emerging-church movement, Cox believes, is similar to the early Christian movement with its emphasis on following Jesus and striving to actualize the Reign of God. It is about living the message rather than simply proclaiming it. (Ibid, p.219)

Canadian theologian, Gertrude Lebans, in her book, In All Things Goodness: A Christian Vision for the 21st Century, writes, "Our era is an era of faith, rather than belief. It is hard to know what to believe; faith however, is a form of trust. We trust that God will not abandon us; we trust that each door of knowledge we unlock will have as much promise as danger. We trust that no matter how far we may stray, the Holy Spirit will guide us back to a 'truer' vision of life." (pg. 9)

The era in which we live is a challenging time for the Christian Church. There is a pervasive distrust of institutions and organized religion in our society. We see this most often in the "I'm spiritual not religious" comments that are so often heard these days. I believe that we are living in a time of great change and challenge which offers an amazing opportunity to make a positive difference in our world. At the same time as there is distrust and suspicion that organized religion holds rigid doctrines and beliefs there is also a tremendous yearning for spirituality, for living meaningful lives, for experiencing the blessings of community and the desire to share in work that benefits the world.

The winds of the Spirit are blowing. I pray we will be brave enough to let go of the anchors that tie us down and let God's spirit fill our sails and guide us into the unknown future with faith. Let us open our hearts as we pray:

Ever faithful God, by whose guidance
we walk by faith in a wondrous and mysterious universe,
increase now our trust in you,
that in the midst of the many things we cannot understand,
we may not doubt your love or miss your delight,
or fail to offer you our thanksgiving.
Amen

Reflection by Rev. Christine Dudley -June 5, 2011

2011-06-06T16:32:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday of Easter Season

Scripture Text: Acts 1:6-14
Isaiah 58:6-11

Remembering the scripture passages we heard this morning, I'll begin this time of reflection with a poem and a prayer:

We look for you, straining our eyes into the far country,
but our vision is disrupted by the least,
the lost, the littlest, the last among us.
We race after you, trying to catch up,
and turning the corner find only a homeless family in our path.
We wander the streets, yearning to find you,
calling your name, but it is only a single mother
who turns and wearily smiles,
a street person who whispers "hello",
a little girl who pirouettes and takes our hand.
Gone... But you are still here, Christ
Help us to see.
Written by Thom M. Shuman, Fire and Bread, p.146, Wild Goose Publications

And so we pray...

Be with us, O Spirit,
and form us as witnesses
to the love of God in Christ.
Grace us with your power,
so that we may embody this love
for those who long for the gift of presence,
the hope of acceptance,
and the blessing of compassion.
Amen

The theme that has been powerfully present in my thoughts and prayers this week is that of witness. When I was studying theology one of my teachers often used the word witness. She'd declare that as Christians we are called to "witness" and "be witnesses" of Christ's presence in the world. In the first year of my theological studies this made me very nervous. The word witness carried a lot of baggage for me. I shuddered when I thought of standing on a street corner, holding religious tracts, or going door to door trying to convert people to the one true way. But, of course, that wasn't at all what my teacher had in mind.

The word witness simply means "one who testifies to what is known to be true". In Christian context a witness is someone who, by their words and actions, testifies to the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Greek word for witness is martyria from which our word martyr comes from.

In my musings this week I was thinking about some of the meanings of witness in the context of Christian scriptures. What first came to mind was that witness can be passive and experiential such as when Jesus so often invited people to "come and see" for themselves what his ministry and the commonwealth of God was all about. He invited them to observe, to experience, to witness God's spirit empowering people to live and work together for the common good.

Then, I thought about how dynamic and active was the witness of the people that did come and see and whose lives were transformed by their experiences of God's grace and love through the ministry of Jesus Christ. He beckoned them to "come and see" and then to "go and do likewise"; to live the commonwealth of God in the actions of their lives.

On Easter Sunday, when reflecting on the empty tomb, I commented that Mary Magdalene was the first witness to the risen Christ according to the Gospel of John. When she saw that the stone had been rolled away, Mary immediately went to tell others and two male disciples came to verify her finding. You may remember me saying that women, in Jesus' day, were not thought to be reliable witnesses so the law required that two men verify a woman's testimony. After the men left, Mary had an experience of the risen Christ. She quickly went to the place where the other disciples were gathered and boldly proclaimed, "I have seen the Lord". (John 20:18)

One of the stories of the early Christian community, which we heard this morning, recalls Jesus' followers, women and men, who after his death and resurrection were "constantly devoting themselves to prayer" seeking guidance from God. They experienced the risen Christ who reassures and encourages them. Christ said,"you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem...and to the ends of the earth." (Acts 1:8)

Last week, David, Peter, Leah and I, attended a general gathering of the United Church in our region known as BC Conference. The delegates who attend these general meetings represent all the United Church congregations in our Conference. BC Conference has three overarching goals which have been established by Conference staff and executive to address the mission and values of the Conference. These are, Healthy Congregations and Ministries, Effective Leadership, and Faithful Public Witness. I checked the BC Conference website this week and noted that one of the points under Effective Leadership is "leadership whose way of life bears witness to their faith".

The focus theme for last week's four day gathering of BC Conference was Faithful Public Witness. The scripture passage which informed the worship and the theme presentations was Isaiah 58:6-11. (This is the same passage from Isaiah that I chose to include as one of our scripture readings this morning.)

The Youth at Conference focussed on "Be the Change" during their time together and one of the general workshop leaders was a 15 year old who did a presentation on the Kielburger brothers' "Me to We" movement.

The Children at Conference focussed on "Compassion" and one of the highlights for me at Conference was when the two children in my table group asked each of the adults at our table, "What does compassion mean to you?". As we each took a turn to answer they listened carefully. They were, it seems, doing their "homework".

The focal passage for worship at Conference was a phrase from Isaiah 58:10, "...then your light shall rise..." and the Keynote Speaker was the Reverend Dr. Marilyn Legge, professor of Christian Ethics at Emmanuel College in Toronto. Marilyn, as she likes to be called, is also a passionate and committed member of the United Church of Canada. Marilyn spoke about many aspects of Faithful Public Witness. She began the first of her presentations by quoting Frederick Beuchner who says, "Our calling is where our deep gladness and the world's hunger meet" and Margaret Wheatley who claims that, "Bearing witness means being brave enough to bear witness to human suffering". Connecting these quotes with Christian Scripture, Marilyn, reminded us that 1 Corinthians 12:7 says, "To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good."

All of these things have been in my mind, and in my heart, as I have reflected on today's passage from Acts. The risen Christ, encouraging his followers to take heart and continue their shared ministry, told them, "...you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses... " (Acts 1:8)

Reflecting on this, I remembered a time in my life when I witnessed a violent incident and was called by my faith to respond. It was many years ago. I was leaving the dental office, where I was employed, via the back door which faced onto the parking lot. As I opened the door I witnessed a car stopped on the road beside the parking lot. In front of the car, preventing it from moving forward, was a truck. Hanging out of the passenger side of the truck was a man who was in a rage, yelling at a young woman who was sitting in the driver's seat of the car. The man jumped out of the truck and still yelling at the woman, spat violently in the women's face (she'd opened the window to talk with him). He then ripped the windshield wiper from her car and threw it on the street before jumping back in the truck which quickly sped away.

I immediately went to the woman who was visibly shaken and upset. I noticed she was not alone, there was a toddler in a car seat in the back. She was in a state of shock and wasn't able to think what she needed to do so I gently but firmly told her she needed to pull off the road into our staff parking lot. She was able to tell me that she was on her way to take her child to the doctor's office which was below our dental clinic. I suggested she come with me to our staff room, which I knew was empty, where she could clean up and calm down before going to the doctor. I said I would phone and explain what happened and that she would be there soon. I gave her a drink of water and offered to call the police and be a witness for her.

The police interviewed me and in due course I was called as a witness in court. The lawyer for the defence asked me if I'd witnessed the tete a tete between his client and the woman. I was stunned by this manipulation of the facts in an attempt to downplay the actions of his client. Clearly this was not a case of the putting together of two heads in quiet conversation. I was able to tell the court that this certainly was not a tete a tete but a man yelling at the top of his voice in an state of what I could only describe as rage the likes of which I had never before witnessed in my life.

When I think about that experience it's clear that I was a witness, in the public sense of testifying in court. I was able to corroborate the woman's testimony with my own testimony of the incident. Where my faith comes into the story is that in caring for the woman's physical and emotional needs, at the time of the attack, I was bearing witness to the call of my faith tradition to respond to those in need with love and compassion.

Two of the definitions that the Gage Canadian Dictionary gives to explain the word witness is, "a person who is present when something happens; one who has direct or first-hand knowledge of an event, and, a person who gives evidence or testifies under oath before a judge..." It notes also that one of the defintions of "bear witness" is to "be evidence". This is the crux of the matter with respect to Christian witness for me. To "be evidence" that Christ's ministry is alive and well and that in bearing witness as the Body of Christ, in our faith-filled actions, God's love and concern for justice is made known in the world.

A story, like mine, is not what might first come to mind when discussing bearing faithful witness to our Christian faith. But, I believe it is no less a valid and credible offering of Christian witness than when I've marched for social justice causes or preached the good news of the Gospel in worship. There are many ways we bear witness to our faith in Christ. Our very lives bear witness to Christ's ministry. We all have stories we could tell in which our faith has been reflected in actions of compassion, justice, kindness, hospitality and many other ordinary, yet extraordinary ways.

Together we are the Body of Christ, in this time and place. We gain strength from God's presence in prayer and practice and in the many ways we encourage and support the nurturing and offering of the Spirit-given gifts we are blessed to share.

We are also strengthened by the "great cloud of witnesses" past and present. The early Christian church, through sacred scripture, reminds us that, "since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every burden...and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith..." (Hebrews 12:1-2)

May our lives "be evidence" of the Body of Christ; fully human, fully alive, fully dedicated to Christ's ministry of love and justice. And, with gratitude for the faithful witness that Christ calls us to bear, we give thanks for our ancestors in faith as I offer a traditional Celtic blessing:

May the Christ who walks on wounded feet
walk with you on the road.
May the Christ who serves with wounded hands
stretch out your hands to serve.
May the Christ who loves with a wounded heart
open your hearts to love.
May you see the face of Christ in everyone you meet,
and may everyone you meet see the face of Christ in you.
Traditional Celtic Prayer, Voices United 349

Reflection by Jayne Slawson, LLWL - May 8, 2011

2011-05-30T20:55:00.000-07:00

Third Sunday of Eaaster

Scripture Text: Psalm 116: 1-4,12-19, Luke 24: 13-35

Let us enter into worship with prayer:

God of the Way,
you are the road we travel,
and the sign we follow,
you are the bread for the journey,
and the wine of arrival.
Guide us as we follow in your way,
holding on to each other,
reaching out to your beloved world.
And when we stray,
seek us out and find us,
set our feet on the path again,
and lead us safely home.( Voices United, 648)
In the name of Jesus, our Companion on the road, we pray. Amen

I remember when I was about 13 or 14, my sister and I would run home after choir practice Monday evenings so we could sit in front of the T.V. and watch the sensational and electrifying Tom Jones! He was this tall, slim guy in a tight fitting jumpsuit and he swooned young women with his wonderful and powerful Welsh voice. When Music 91 came to our area and I heard that Tom Jones was going to sing in Creston, my Mom and I were the 1st and 2nd people in line to get in to see his show. When an older, short, slightly chubby man came out on stage, I thought that "Oh" he must be the preshow entertainer, but then he started to sing "My My My Delilah," ... were not our hearts burning within us. I would never have recognized this man as the Tom Jones I remembered from my youth, if it wasn't for his voice.

Have you ever noticed how different things are in reality, to what you imagine them to be. After years of seeing pictures, watching T.V. shows and seeing vacation spots in magazines, you picture in your mind or imagination what things will look like. When you get a chance to see them up close you either do not recognize them or are surprised when they do not appear as you imagined. You might think that the Eiffel tower would be taller, the Leaning Tower of Pizza would be more tilted, the Atlantic Ocean more bluer, that Haggis would be a lot worse tasting...

I have always loved the story of the road to Emmaus. I have heard the story over and over for many years. As a youth in Sunday School we were asked to write some of the bible stories over as they may occur today and I chose to rewrite the story of the road to Emmaus. I always thought that if I ever got a chance to go to the Holy Land I would love to walk the road to Emmaus to see if I would experience the same sense of Jesus on the road as Cleopas and his companion did.

Imagine my surprise when I read that there are actually six towns that have the name of Emmaus and all are about seven miles from Jerusalem. So if you are going to make the effort to go to the Holy Land to walk the road to Emmaus — the same road that the two disciples in our reading this morning walked, you could be on any one of six, depending on your tour guide. When historians have gone back in time they have found no historical reference to a town named Emmaus, except for its mention in this biblical story and its being seven miles from Jerusalem.

When I read this it got me to thinking, what if the road to Emmaus is more than just a road. What if the road to Emmaus holds a deeper significance. How then do we walk the road to Emmaus?

Marcus Borg wrote that "perhaps Emmaus is NOWHERE...and perhaps Emmaus is EVERYWHERE."

Perhaps the road to Emmaus is a road that we all take at various times in our lives, you and I might even be on it now. We may be on it when we move away from the cross, away from Jesus, away from Jerusalem. The road to Emmaus may be wherever our life leads us when we are in dispair, when we doubt, when we have more questions than answers and when we feel like there is no hope.

This was the road Cleopas and his companion were on about three days after Christ's crucifiction. The very person they had hoped would redeem Isreal was cruely crucified before them. Their hopes were dead. Their future no longer makes sense. They become preoccupied with their disappointment, and disillusionment. They had so wanted to hold on to the slightest bit of hope that Jesus was alive, that he was still in control and even though the women said he had arisen, but no one comes back from that tragic type of death. Their hearts were slow to believe. The very things that Jesus constantly sought to dispel from his followers, were now preventing them from seeing Him as one who lives and walks with them.

When we place, or locate, ourselves on the road to Emmaus we are able to experience some of what Cleopas and his companion felt that day. Like them we wait for news about loved ones, relationships, health news, we fear the worst, we question God, we find it hard to cope some times in life when it is all we can do to put one foot ahead of the other, when we grieve the loss of someone dear to us, when life does not work out the way we planned or envisioned, or when we wonder if we will ever feel joy again.

My daughter Kristina went to church camp one year with a close neighbourhood friend. This friend invited another friend to also come along. The dynamics of a group of three girls can often get complicated and Kristina often found herself on the outside of this group whenever they were divided up into two's. One day while on a hike in which she was partnered up with someone other than her friend she remembered later sitting on the beach and feeling lonely, upset that her week at camp was not going so well. While she was feeling sorry for herself she wrote in her journal how she felt that someone was sitting with her and how she felt a sense of peace. She knew that no one was there physically—because she looked, but yet she had a sense of presence. After that experience her attitude changed and she finished the week of camp by making new friends and totally enjoying her camping experience. Was not her heart warmed by this encounter...

Often our encounters with God are like that—short, fleeting, little glimpses at times when we least expect it and are never prepared for. But what is left behind is a warmth, a burning in our hearts as we recognize that encounter for what it was.

God has not changed over the years. God is still an Emmaus God –A God who encounters us along the road. Emmaus being the path through life we are following, the road to wherever life takes us. Along this road God walks with us whether we are aware of God's presence or not. God is ever present. God is always with us, but we are not always with God. When life seems the hardest the thing we tend to give up — is God.

But God never gives up on us and that is part of the message of the road to Emmaus. God through Jesus walks with us wherever or whatever is going on—making sense from what at that moment—might seem senseless. God comes to us and talks to us in common and ordinary ways. In ways that we don't often recognize because it seems so everydaylike. Like when he talks to us through our spouse, our children, a good friend, at an annual congregational meeting when we hear members talk about the word love, and often he talks to us through a stranger.

These unknown encounters with God along the road can leave us pondering and wondering. How often do we pray that we may see the face of God in others and that they may see the face of God in us, yet when we do, we are slow to recognize it as an Emmaus experience and even more surprised when it is us who have passed the Emmaus experience to another.

People who have gone over to Third world countries will often express the sense of power they feel at first because of the way the people treat you, like you are amazing for coming there to help them and secondly because the money, the skills, the technology you bring can fix so many problems, whether it be medical, housing, or water concerns etc. But as time goes on you begin to realize an interesting twist. You think you are helping them, you think you are giving to them, but in actual fact there is something else going on in your heart that you can't even begin to understand. Your heart is burning. You feel compassion welling up inside you and you recognize that you haven't been doing a work on them as much as they have been doing work on you. That is, that in someway, through their smiles, and thankful hearts you have met Jesus and you didn't expect it and it changes you and it changes your outlook on life. It changes your focus on what is important and the whole message of love and compassion and empathy begins to change the shape of your heart. And when you leave that place you leave with burning in your heart—That is an Emmaus road experience.

Our road to Emmaus is a path we seem to take daily and it's not always filled with drama and dispair. Sometimes it can be a rather trivial road where not much is happening but there is a niggling feeling of needing to know we are not alone on this road. I often think of the Footprints poem and picture of two pairs of foot prints in the sand then one pair and then two pairs again, and the author asking why for a period of time there is only one pair of foot prints.

When we think that God has left us we realize that in fact God never left. The road to Emmaus was Jesus saying to Cleapas and his companion, to the other disciples they told, and to us that he is and always will be with us. He is still walking alongside us, listening to our stories, explaining the scriptures to us and breaking bread with us, causing our hearts to burn inside us. He continues to be present to us in our daily experiences, in our failures and disappointments as well as our successes. I have come to define wisdom in my life as how soon I recognize the stranger who comes along side. A wisdom that is not just in the head, not just in the heart but a wisdom designed to be in our hands, mouths, eyes and in our feet.

While Jesus immediately vanishes from the disciples sight when they recognize him as he broke bread, he did not disappear from their hearts. He disappears from their physical sight but he remains present in their midst, in the word and in the fellowship at His gathered table. The fire had not been extinguished by the events of the previous week but rather ignites a flame of new life and love. The disciples realize they have a new story to tell- one of life and hope. They not only see Jesus differently but they see themselves in a different way. They end up going back to Jerusalem, back to a place they were in a hurry to leave to let others know of their Emmaus experience. An experience that recognizes we do not walk alone and recognizes Jesus in the strangers we encounter on our daily journey.

Here is one of my Emmaus experiences:

– 9am: My husband lovingly quizzes me to make sure I have everything I need before I head out the door (you know: house keys? glasses? money?)...sometines I think he knows me better than I know myself... and then he gives me a kiss goodby as I go out the door.
– My neighbour yells out a greeting from his deck chair and assures me that it should be a sunny day as he defies the weatherman and the snow topped Elephant Mountain by wearing his summer shorts on this crisp cool April morning. I walk along.
– A fellow just around the corner and up the hill I need to climb is out with his grandchildren who are skateboarding down the hill and we exchange words about....the wisdom of age and the no-fear factor of youth. I keep walking.
– I hear music coming from one home that has its door open and it is obviously orchastrated music....and the tune sticks in my head as I move along.
– A young mother and father with a baby about 10 months old in a backpack are out for a walk with their dog and as I pass by we nod and smile.
– At the highest point of my walk I see the most beautiful scene of Nelson looking towards the orange bridge and it is just picturistic. I stop and enjoy.
– A friend heading in the same direction as me asks if I would like a ride but I say no thanks because I need this walk. We arrange to meet later. I walk on.
– I walk by a yard and between the row of trees I can see there are two little girls enjoying time on their swing set. One takes the time to yell out "hi" and I reply with a "hi" back as I walk by.
– A middle age man is out mowing his lawn, we do not know each other but he waves and I wave back.
– I come to a corner crosswalk and check the traffic. There is only one car coming and the driver stops anyways to let me cross. I wave, she nods. And we both keep going our own way.
– 0943: I arrive at Nelson United Church for services.

The Emmaus road truly is "everywhere."

The God of Emmaus appears along roads of our everyday existance and like the 2 disciples we too experience the presence of the stranger... "Were not your hearts burning within you while he was talking to you on the road?" I know mine does.

May it be so in yours as well... Amen.

Reflection May 1, 2011 – Rev. Carol A. Prochaska, ret.

2011-05-30T20:10:00.000-07:00

Second Sunday of Easter

Sermon Title: Easter: Real and Personal.

Scriptures: 1 Peter 1:3–9; John 20:19–31

If Easter had already taken place – if the disciples had already been told that Christ was raised why wasn't their first response a celebration? Why were they huddled together in fear? (In a room with the doors closed and locked). The Greek word for their kind of fear is"phobos"from which we get our English word "phobia". It is sometimes translated "exceedingly afraid" or "terrified." So no wonder (!) the disciples had not arranged for a caterer, a florist, a band! When you're stuck in that kind of terrible fear you're doing well just to breathe.

So it is into these barely breathing disciples the Risen Christ comes. The Risen Christ stands in the midst of the terror, breathlessness, and lifelessness and says: "Peace be with you."

Perhaps the disciples remembered Jesus' words to them before his death. He had said to them (John 14) "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. But the kind of peace I give you is not like the world's peace."

And now again Jesus says to them: "Peace be with you." Can you feel the terror dissipating and breath returning and life returning?

And then! THERE IT IS — EASTER! Easter that is real and personal. It's an in–your–face–Easter! And so they are birthed into their inheritance –that imperishable inheritance we heard about in 1 Peter – that inheritance that is "incapable of fading or defilement." This was their inheritance. It is also our inheritance – ours to claim for ourselves!

It was a cold winter evening some many years ago when I made my way through the snow in a Calgary church parking lot to attend my first Al–Anon meeting. I was frightened and anything but hopeful. A couple of months earlier a friend from my church had suggested I try Al–Anon. I had thanked her but had thought to myself "Who me? No. no way. " However when my circumstances didn't change and my fear and desperation grew I called the Al–Anon number in the yellow pages. The voice I heard was kind, non–judgmental and helpful. There was even an offer to find me a ride to the meeting closest to where I lived. It was not unlike Jesus' words, "Peace be with you."

So on this particular night I find my way to the church fellowship hall and tentatively I sit in an empty chair in a circle. About 10 or 12 people are gathering. Most of them are greeting me warmly. In spite of this welcome I really want to run. But by now it's going to be too embarrassing to walk out so I stay. I'm most uncomfortable. I'm wavering between: no one's life in this group is as big a mess as mine to the other end of the spectrum: my life isn't really that bad compared to the one presently sharing. And, as always, I'm thinking the same old over–riding thought – the one thought that had been mine for so long it has to be true: There's nothing for me beyond what is. To say it another way: Easter isn't going to happen for me. I can't imagine the Risen Christ coming into my fear and my hopelessness. I can't believe the Risen Christ could – or would Ð come into the midst of the family disease known as alcoholism.

When my turn comes to say something other than my first name I'm silent. Thomas, the disciple, had the courage to say: " Unless I see... Unless I touch..." But I have no idea what to say. How can I tell these kind folks that I have absolutely no hope of anything good coming out of this for me? The meeting comes to an end. There are words I would come to trust but that night they are just words: Something about the courage to accept what we cannot change, strength to change what we can, and wisdom to know the difference. As I walk towards the door one of the women touches my arm and gently reminds me that before deciding if Al–anon is or is not for me I should attend three meetings.

Well! Like Thomas I came back – a week later – to the same room. I started going to Al–anon twice a week. And in and through the people I was with I learned to work the 12–Steps. I learned something about Easter and the God of Easter. I discovered that Easter can come at any time! In fact Easter has little to do with the calendar but everything to do with every aspect of life in this life.

I didn't know I had wings – Easter wings! I didn't know Easter Power was mine to claim –my inheritance. The good news is that we all have Easter wings. Through God's mercy and love Easter power is our inheritance waiting for us to claim.

Last Sunday we celebrated Easter Sunday. But in reality we are just getting started on a seven–week period of reflection and celebration. Today is the first Sunday of the Easter Season. Sundays following Easter Sunday are designated Sundays OF Easter and not Sundays AFTER Easter. It seems we need all this time to get the hang of Easter and what it means for us. We're quite used to relying on Christ's resurrection when a loved one dies. When we stand at a graveside we are inclined to trust in the truth of the Risen Christ. When we contemplate our own physical death we are also inclined towards this way of thinking. But the truth is we need Easter – in this life – many, many other times.

Some of you will recognize the name Julian of Norwich: a medieval woman mystic and writer who is perhaps the greatest English mystic. She left behind many writings regarding her mystical experiences. In one of her writings she tells how God shows her something small – "no bigger that a hazelnut lying in the palm of my hand" Amazed that that something so small could last she says: "...for I thought that because of its littleness it would suddenly have fallen into nothing." And then – in her words: "And I was answered in my understanding: it lasts and always will, because God loves it; and thus everything has being through the love of God. You and I have being – and always will because God loves us! What an inheritance we have flowing out of God's reckless mercy and unwavering love.

To trust in Easter Power is not without challenges! For one thing our eyes are not much help – our eyes can even be hindrance. Remember Jesus' words about those who do not see but believe and are blessed. Remember I Peter's emphasis on not seeing and still believing. And as we've come to experience before Easter there is so often suffering. 1 Peter speaks of the "distress of many trials." But this scripture goes on to say that we "are guarded with God's power" And therefore there is cause to rejoice and to praise God. Remember how the disciples go from terror to rejoicing. We have already heard that it is our responsibility to be about forgiveness, giving and receiving forgiveness.

So what other challenges? What comes after we know Easter to be real and personal? We are among those who have been commissioned by the Risen Christ: "As God has sent me so I am sending you" So we are Easter people wherever we go. When we vote tomorrow, we vote as Easter people. Easter people make their voice heard. When we wait in a long, very slow line at the store to pay for one item we wait as Easter people. When our teenager rolls her eyes with disgust at our suggestion, when our toddler yells so loud the neighbors a block away can hear – we deal with this as Easter people. When you're the teenager and your parents won't give in and let you go with the other kids, when everyone else is doing a little experimenting with just a small amount of grass – you deal with it as an Easter person.

When we reach the point of believing in Easter or renewed –believing or deeper believing – let us not be arrogant. Let us remember that we too have trembled and teetered at the edge of the nest not sure of our wings. Let us seek out the disbelieving as the Risen Christ sought out the first disciples and let us be gentle and patient. Let us speak words of encouragement. Let us remind them they have wings – God–given Easter wings!

Reflection by Norm Carruthers, May 29,2011

2011-05-30T19:44:00.000-07:00

REFLECTION: What Does God Ask of Us?

TEXT: John 14:15-21

This is my third reflection and I continue to learn and gain fresh insights about Jesus, about the Bible and about myself each time I volunteer. Today I want to try to tie together some of the different elements of the service in terms of the question, "What does God ask of us?"

As Roy said, in the reading from John this morning, all Jesus is asking of the disciples is that they embrace the love he has lived among them as the goal for their own lives. But what is this love? In the dictionary, love is defined primarily as "a strong affection for another, arising out of kinship or personal ties", "a warm attachment, enthusiasm or devotion", or "an unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another." Perhaps understated but this is the kind of love I had, rather lazily, always envisaged from this passage from scripture.

But there is more to love; think back for a moment to our opening prayer:

We open our hearts to one another and in these moments of stillness,
become aware of the warmth, the breath, the life we share.
The Spirit of Christ abides in the shared warmth between us.
May we inhale deeply of this sacred presence and exhale words and actions of godly love.

To me, the actions of children exemplify so simply and easily this shared warmth and shared life. Isaac gave something of himself to his Opa as naturally as he breathes. As adults, we often feel as if we must work at giving naturally but when I do, it is surprisingly easy and I do feel deep spiritual warmth and a special connection with the other person.

The Children's song, The Gentle Face of Love, reflects that same spirit. It was created in 2007 by Walter Farquharson after he and Ron Klusmeier offered a number of concerts with Parksville's Knox United Church Choir. Profoundly moved by being part of this richly caring family of faith, Walter wrote these lines in tribute to these people living out their faith through word, deed and interaction with others.

And certainly, this is an important aspect of Jesus' love. He clearly demonstrates this gentle love Ð he feeds the hungry, heals the sick, and acts and speaks to women and other disenfranchised members of society with care and respect.

But in John 14, Jesus adds the additional promise that God "will give you another Advocate to be with you forever Ð the Spirit of truth."

Throughout his ministry, Jesus advocated, as if driven by the spirit of truth: he fiercely protested against those who abused his vision of the value of every person, and the importance of an ethic of mutual respect and care; he overturned the money table at the synagogue; he challenged the very authority of the empire which sought to impose a hierarchy of military power. The love he asks his disciples to live is also action-based.

As I worked on just what this action dimension of love means, I had my first "aha" moment when I heard a popular song from the 80's replayed and tried to relate it to our service today. "From A Distance" was written by Julie Gold and sung by many performers including Bette Midler and Kathy Mattea. Many people find this a very comforting song. Have a listen...

FROM A DISTANCE — Julie Gold
Sung by Kathy Mattea. Used with permission granted by Julie Gold

From a distance the earth looks blue and green,
and the snow-capped mountains white.
From a distance the ocean meets the stream,
and the eagle takes to flight.

From a distance, there is harmony,
and it echoes through the land.
It's the voice of hope, it's the voice of peace,
it's the voice of every man.

From a distance we all have enough,
and no one is in need.
There are no guns, no bombs, and no disease,
no hungry mouths to feed.

From a distance we are instruments
marching in a common band.
Playing songs of hope, playing songs of peace.
They're the songs of every man.

God is watching us. God is watching us.
God is watching us from a distance.

From a distance you look like my friend,
even though we are at war.
From a distance I can't comprehend
what all this war is for.

From a distance there is harmony,
and it echoes through the land.
It's the hope of hopes, it's the love of loves,
it's the heart of every man.

It's the hope of hopes, it's the love of loves.
It's the song of every man.

(God is watching us, God is watching us,
God is watching us ...)

"From a distance, there is harmony,
and it echoes through the land.
It's the voice of hope, it's the voice of peace,
it's the voice of every man."

The song ends with the chorus, "God is watching us, God is watching us..." echoing in the background and it is as though we can relax; everything is, or will be, alright as long as we live with hope and peace in our hearts. It is as if the gentle love we first talk to our children about, or worse yet, the dictionary-defined love, is sufficient.

When this song was high up the radio music charts, I resented its popularity as it seemed to me that people were looking for – and too easily finding – comfort. Personally, I find this is a very challenging song when it points out the obvious contractions:

"From a distance we all have enough,
and no one is in need.
And there are no guns, no bombs, and no disease,
no hungry mouths to feed.
From a distance you look like my friend,
even though we are at war."

For me, its underlying message is that we can't stand back, disengaged, and at a distance where we can pretend that everything is in harmony! Not only must we get involved to better understand the real situation, but we then must act to improve this world for which we have shared responsibility! I think what the songwriter is saying is that God has given us the ability to act, to love, as Jesus loved – and he is watching us, waiting for us to take up the challenge Jesus made in John Chapter 14.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of hearing Naomi Tutu, the daughter of Archbishop Tutu, speak at a conference. Ms. Tutu is an impassioned and gracious leader speaking out and acting against injustice and inequality – following a similar path to her father. She talked about the many African proverbs that are so popular in North America, such as, "It takes a village to raise a child." She laughingly said there were thousands more but only the good ones catch on. Here's one I liked:

Our gifts are given to challenge those who are comfortable
and give comfort to those who are challenged.

Familiar in other contexts, but is this not a simple, elegant rephrasing of the gift of love that Jesus is talking about in today's scripture?

My second preparation "aha" moment involves the tiny word, "in". Here is Jesus promising to be Òin" the disciples, and we interpret that to mean he will be Òin" each of us as well. But did you know that the Greek words usually translated as "in you" can also legitimately be translated as "among you" with you being the plural you? How does Jesus being Ôamong us' change our understanding of John 14? What if he is more in our shared breath, our shared lives than he is in each of us individually? Are we not called to collective action?

In her book, An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor questions the various reasons people give for the decline in mainline churches -such as the music used in worship, or too much investment in institutional survival. In Taylor's experience we should look more closely at the intellectualization of the church. She believes that people want "Not more about God, but More God!" She argues that from the youngest to the oldest, we experience "more God" through Spirit-filled community where love is given free expression, and I interpret that love to be the multidimensional love we have been talking about today.

God has given us an Advocate who will be with us forever, and to advocate means to get out in the community, to speak out for and to work for change Ð like Naomi Tutu and her father are doing. It means being uncomfortable with our world because it is not in harmony. As a congregation we have been working toward a new Purpose Statement:

We dare to live in the Way of Jesus, embodying the Love of God.

As Roy mentioned we have a Congregation meeting coming up to discuss this Purpose Statement. Please think about what this Statement means to you and, perhaps more importantly, what it calls us, as a community, to do.

And if Barbara Brown Taylor is right, we shouldn't be just thinking! Talk to others about just what is the Love of God that we want to embody. Meditate on daring to get out of our comfort zone to meet the challenge Jesus lays before us to live our lives has he lived. Pray for understanding about the Spirit of Christ that abides in the shared space between us. Practice living out the words! If we all can do some of these things, then together, we will inhale deeply of God's sacred presence and exhale words and actions of godly love!

Amen

Reflection by David for May 22, 2011 - Easter 5

2011-05-25T12:23:00.000-07:00

TEXT: 1 Peter 2:2-10

A few of you asked me a couple of weeks ago about communion: "Is there going to be a May communion?", was the question. Because Easter was so late this year, coming at the end of April, the Worship and Music Committee thought that we might wait until Pentecost, June 12th, for communion; in part this was because Christine and I are and have been away much of May. But a few of you asked about communion.

Lynne is going to give a more expanded view of the communion questionnaire that you filled out a couple of months ago, but most of you were quite happy with the frequency and style of communion that is currently happening. A few of you wanted communion more frequently. I am one who would happily have communion every Sunday. Frequent communion was very important to my recovery last fall when I was away. So, we are having communion today and then again on the 12th of June at Pentecost.

For many people who call themselves Christian, 1 Peter's invitation to "taste and see that our God is good" is realized in sharing in communion. By eating the bread and tasting the unfermented wine, in some mystical and spiritual way, we are made whole—whole beings, whole people, a new people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. In a deeply spiritual way, communion satisfies our hunger for a deeper connection to God, to life and to each other.

Essentially the passage from 1 Peter invites us into a mystical relationship with our brothers and sisters that make up the Royal Priesthood, the holy people, a holy nation—titles that were occasionally used for early Christians. This isn't a call to become nationalists or to affirm that God has replaced all the other holy nations with the people who call themselves Christians. It is rather an affirmation that we are made new in Christ through God's love made known. 1 Peter affirms that age-old proverb that "you attract more bees with honey than with vinegar." It is good to affirm people into change and transformation rather than castigate or demonize, which only inflames. While the titles and affirmations from 1 Peter may be more familiar to a 1st century Christian, we can still appreciate the sentiment of affirmation and thanks.

What 1 Peter clearly affirms is that we are a people shaped around something real and yet something mystical. We live this experience here and now—our lives with all of our ups and downs. And yet we are part of something beyond ourselves—something mystical or spiritual, something that transcends us or maybe takes us more deeply into our humanity where we experience fully God's presence... I don't know exactly... it is a mystery. Being human is a mystery!

But what we know is that these transcendent moments, these mystical moments, this occasion of taking communion, which is at once a physical act and a mystical experience, is that we feel more deeply our relational nature. We feel connected to the universe; we feel deeply the pain of those experiencing injustice and oppression. We feel more deeply our relationship with God. We feel ourselves part of a people, a movement of love, the Way of new life.

Thomas Merton, one of the great but conflicted mystics of the 20^th Century, once said, summing up this connection well:

Only when we see ourselves in our true human context, as members of a race which is intended to be one organism and"one body" will we begin to understand the positive importance not only of the successes but of the failures and accidents in our lives. My successes are not my own. The way to them was prepared by others. The fruit of my labours is not my own: for I am preparing the way for the achievements of another. Nor are my failures my own. They may spring from failure of another, but they are also compensated for by another's achievement. Therefore the meaning of my life is not to be looked for merely in the sum total of my own achievements. It is seen only in the complete integration of my achievements and failures with the achievements and failures of my own generation, and society, and time. (No Man is an Island.)

Thus communion is a paradox of our faith. When we taste the bread and the juice, we experience that deep unity with God, with Christ as the corner-stone, with one another, with the universe, but we also experience the brokenness of the world, the deep despair of those parents grieving the loss of a child, those ravaged by AIDS, those who live in fear and uncertainty in places of war. We know as we take the bread and the cup that in a flash life is wondrous and awe-filled and yet not complete.

This life is wondrous and awe-filled and yet, as we learned at the It's Time for Palestine event last Wednesday night, at the very same time, there is work to do—work that involves other parts of the whole people, royal priesthood, and the holy nation. There is an environment that needs compassion; there is love that needs to be proclaimed.

We take communion and feel whole. We take communion and feel inspired. We take communion and feel part of something larger than ourselves where we have a part to play by praying, by being, by weeping, by laughing, by cajoling, by getting angry, by being a prophet... or as Jesus might say and Merton would affirm, by being human!

May you enter fully into your humanity, where you experience God's presence and a deep unity, as we share in communion today!

Amen.

Reflection by David for May 15, 2011 - Easter 4

2011-05-25T12:22:00.000-07:00

TEXT: Psalm 23

This time last week, Ralf and I were in Hell's Canyon, a canyon of the Snake River that separates the State of Idaho from Oregon. I was thinking of you here and I believe that Jayne was leading in worship—Carol had led in worship the week before. We were enjoying a hot day, low 30's, and a week ago I saw my first rattlesnake on the way back to our camp.

I mention where we were because what opened up this canyon, beyond the fact that it is the deepest canyon in North America—deeper than the Grand Canyon although not as majestic or as wide; what made the canyon famous was the fact that it used to be full of sheep, domestic sheep that were raised for the wool. How people found this rather remote canyon and decided it was a good place to raise sheep, I am not sure. But find it they did and there were likely 10's of thousands of sheep in this long narrow canyon. There were a number of sheep ranches on both sides of the Snake River. You can still see how the sheep had terraced the hills leading up from the River. Apparently the last sheep ranch stopped operation in the late 70's or early 80's. Even though this was desert country and the temperature could get up to the high 40's in the summertime, it was perceived to be a green pasture.

As we were walking the trails on the Oregon side of the Snake River, I kept thinking about Psalm 23, about deep and dark valleys and green pastures. The shepherding in the Snake River would have been very different from the shepherding of Jesus' day. The sheep just wandered within a certain territory without shepherds. They would have been rounded up in the Spring for shearing, and the shepherds would likely have used horses. And I'm not sure it was the greenest of pastures; in the summer it would have been hot and there were predators, not so much Rattlesnakes—they wouldn't have bothered the sheep so much—but cougars, bob cats and coyotes.

Shepherding in Jesus' day was much more about the relationship between sheep and shepherd. Shepherding was a noble but poor profession, but the shepherds were good at what they did. The sheep knew their voice. I've heard some people who have spent time in the Middle East in recent years and they say that the ancient art of shepherding hasn't really changed. The sheep are kept in common pens overnight and every morning the shepherd goes and retrieves his or her sheep to take to pasture. He or she calls them, sometimes by name, and the sheep recognize the voice and follow along. The sheep are pastured in common pasture and intermingle; but when the shepherd calls out, using special words, the sheep will gather around. Apparently, it is quite a sight to see. This cacophony of noise, people calling and sheep blaring, and out of this chaos, order arises when the sheep respond the shepherd's voice. It is a deeply intimate relationship of trust, care and dare I say it, love.

It is no wonder that the image of the shepherd for God or for God's chosen leaders is well used in the bible. Isaiah writes of God, in a famous passage used by Handel in the Messiah, "God will feed the flock like a shepherd; will gather the lambs in arms of love, and carry them in God's bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep." (Isaiah 40:11) This is very much an image of a mothering God, that gentle love with children that can become a fierce defence in the face of danger. This is the idea conveyed in the 23rd Psalm: "God is our shepherd; there is nothing that we lack. God will lead us to good water, to green pastures, through dark and steep valleys, and to an overflowing cup." The images are beautiful and life-giving.

I must confess, however, to the fact that while I have always loved Psalm 23, I've not always been able to relate to it. I did not grow up with sheep, or cattle, ranching for farming for that matter. I grew up in a small Northern Ontario town and the closest I got to sheep or a lamb was when we ate lamb, I hate to say! But that's the truth. We learned about the Good Shepherd in Sunday School, but that was the extent of my knowledge of sheep and shepherding. And yet I also know that the church is full of shepherding images. The word "pastoral" comes from the Latin word that means shepherd. We speak of pastoral care, care that is the nurturing, shepherd-like care of one to another. Although we don't commonly use this title in the United Church—they do in the Lutheran Church, though—ministers are sometimes referred to as pastors–as shepherds. Our congregation, in United Church parlance, is officially a "Pastoral Charge". When we deal with one another gently and in a nurturing fashion, we are said to be pastoral with one another. We talk about shepherding a process or a program. Even though it isn't in the Church per se, there is a form of music known as the Pastorale. Beethoven's Sixth Symphony is known as the Pastoral Symphony. Images of shepherding are rife within our language and our way of being.

Even when it comes to politics, the idea of shepherding is full of meaning. King David was a shepherd and was to use his skills and knowledge of being a shepherd as King of Israel. God's shepherds in the political realm were to lead with compassion, with a sense of justice, with a sense of welcome and hospitality; they were called to find green pastures and good water and to ensure that even the weakest of the flock were cared for. The prophets, those men and women who cried out against injustice and false leaders, often pointed out how the shepherds had blown it. Ezekiel, for example said this, "And they were scattered, because there is no shepherd: and they became meat to all the beasts of the field, when they were scattered. As I live, says GOD, surely because my flock became a prey, and my flock became meat to every beast of the field, because there was no shepherd, neither did my shepherds search for my flock, but the shepherds fed themselves, and fed not my flock..." (Ezekiel 34:5, 8) It was a warning to the leaders, and a poignant one still today that Stephen Harper ought to heed, that to lead politically is to care for the least and lowliest, to ensure that all are nurtured and none left out, to provide clean water and abundance for ALL.

Some post-modern church leaders say we need to recover the image of shepherding in the Church. One woman, Molly T. Marshall, says this, "The church would be helped if it could recover the theological meaning of the shepherding imagery... By the 4^th century Jesus as shepherd was gradually replaced by Jesus as Pantocrator, the elevated ruler over all, as Constantine united the church with the secular state. As the church became an expression of imperial power, the shepherd's staff was replaced with a gilded crosier; a crown of thorns was displaced by the triple tiara of the pope. Recovering shepherding imagery could call the church to simplicity, sacrifice and solidarity—needed in a time when many have lost their way."

While the shepherd image may be perceived to be a hierarchical image in some places—with bishops and so on, it need not be; in fact, it is inherently non-hierarchical. Shepherds, as they were in Jesus' day, are not perceived to have a high status. But, with humility we are called to shepherd one another, to nurture one another with a deep love, to accompany one another through the dark valleys into green pastures, to be with one another in the discovery of abundant water, that water that wells up to new life, to fill each other's cups to overflowing, to be present in the new birth of lambs and life, to call to account those who lead in the world, to dine with our enemies so that we might become friends together, to push beyond our self-imposed boundaries to discover the abundant life promised to all. This is the image of shepherd that belongs to us all!

I leave you with a paraphrase of Psalm 23 by Nan Merrill:

O my Beloved, You are my shepherd,
        I shall not want;
You bring me to green pastures for rest
        and lead me beside still waters renewing my spirit;
You restore my soul.
You lead me in the path of goodness
        to follow Love's way.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
        I am not afraid;
For you are ever with me;
        Your rod and your staff they guide me,
        they give me strength and comfort.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of all my fears;
        You bless me with oil, my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life;
and I shall dwell in the heart of the Beloved forever.

Amen.

Reflection by Rev Carol Prochaska (ret.) – May 1, 2011

2011-05-05T07:30:00.000-07:00

Sermon Title: Easter: Real and Personal.

TEXT: 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31

If Easter had already taken place – if the disciples had already been told that Christ was raised why wasn't their first response a celebration? Why were they huddled together in fear? (In a room with the doors closed and locked). The Greek word for their kind of fear is phobos from which we get our English word phobia. It is sometimes translated exceedingly afraid or terrified. So no wonder (!) the disciples had not arranged for a caterer, a florist, a band! When you're stuck in that kind of terrible fear you're doing well just to breathe.

So it is into these barely breathing disciples the Risen Christ comes. The Risen Christ stands in the midst of the terror, breathlessness, and lifelessness and says: "Peace be with you." Perhaps the disciples remembered Jesus' words to them before his death. He had said to them (John 14) "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. But the kind of peace I give you is not like the world's peace." And now again Jesus says to them: "Peace be with you." Can you feel the terror dissipating and breath returning and life returning?

And then! THERE IT IS — EASTER! Easter that is real and personal. It's an in-your-face- Easter! And so they are birthed into their inheritance -that imperishable inheritance we heard about in 1 Peter - that inheritance that is "incapable of fading or defilement." This was their inheritance. It is also our inheritance Ð ours to claim for ourselves!

It was a cold winter evening some many years ago when I made my way through the snow in a Calgary church parking lot to attend my first Al-Anon meeting. I was frightened and anything but hopeful. A couple of months earlier a friend from my church had suggested I try Al-Anon. I had thanked her but had thought to myself "Who me? No. no way. "However when my circumstances didn't change and my fear and desperation grew I called the Al-Anon number in the yellow pages. The voice I heard was kind, non-judgmental and helpful. There was even an offer to find me a ride to the meeting closest to where I lived. It was not unlike Jesus' words "Peace be with you."

So on this particular night I find my way to the church fellowship hall and tentatively I sit in an empty chair in a circle. About 10 or 12 people are gathering. Most of them are greeting me warmly. In spite of this welcome I really want to run. But by now it's going to be too embarrassing to walk out so I stay. I'm most uncomfortable. I'm wavering between: no one's life in this group is as big a mess as mine to the other end of the spectrum: my life isn't really that bad compared to the one presently sharing. And, as always, I'm thinking the same old over-riding thought – the one thought that had been mine for so long it has to be true: There's nothing for me beyond what is. To say it another way: Easter isn't going to happen for me. I can't imagine the Risen Christ coming into my fear and my hopelessness. I can't believe the Risen Christ could – or would – come into the midst of the family disease known as alcoholism.

When my turn comes to say something other than my first name I'm silent. Thomas, the disciple, had the courage to say: "Unless I see ... — Unless I touch ... —" But I have no idea what to say. How can I tell these kind folks that I have absolutely no hope of anything good coming out of this for me? The meeting comes to an end. There are words I would come to trust but that night they are just words: Something about the courage to accept what we cannot change, strength to change what we can, and wisdom to know the difference. As I walk towards the door one of the women touches my arm and gently reminds me that before deciding if Al-anon is or is not for me I should attend three meetings.

Well! Like Thomas I came back – a week later – to the same room. I started going to Al-anon twice a week. And in and through the people I was with I learned to work the 12-steps. I learned something about Easter and the God of Easter. I discovered that Easter can come at any time! In fact Easter has little to do with the calendar but everything to do with every aspect of life in this life.

I didn't know I had wings – Easter wings! I didn't know Easter Power was mine to claim – my inheritance. The good news is that we all have Easter wings. Through God's mercy and love Easter power is our inheritance waiting for us to claim.

Last Sunday we celebrated Easter Sunday. But in reality we are just getting started on a seven-week period of reflection and celebration. Today is the first Sunday of the Easter Season. Sundays following Easter Sunday are designated Sundays OF Easter and not Sundays AFTER Easter. It seems we need all this time to get the hang of Easter and what it means for us. We're quite used to relying on Christ's resurrection when a loved one dies. When we stand at a graveside we are inclined to trust in the truth of the Risen Christ. When we contemplate our own physical death we are also inclined towards this way of thinking. But the truth is we need Easter – in this life – many, many other times.

Some of you will recognize the name Julian of Norwich: a medieval woman mystic and writer who is perhaps the greatest English mystic. She left behind many writings regarding her mystical experiences. In one of her writings she tells how God shows her something small – "no bigger that a hazelnut lying in the palm of my hand" Amazed that that something so small could last she says: "...for I thought that because of its littleness it would suddenly have fallen into nothing." And then – in her words: "And I was answered in my understanding: it lasts and always will, because God loves it; and thus everything has being through the love of God. You and I have being Ð and always will because God loves us! What an inheritance we have flowing out of God's reckless mercy and unwavering love.

To trust in Easter Power is not without challenges! For one thing our eyes are not much help Ð our eyes can even be hindrance .Remember Jesus' words about those who do not see but believe and are blessed. Remember I Peter's emphasis on not seeing and still believing. And as we've come to experience before Easter there is so often suffering. 1 Peter speaks of the "distress of many trials." But this scripture goes on to say that we "are guarded with God's power" And therefore there is cause to rejoice and to praise God. Remember how the disciples go from terror to rejoicing. We have already heard that it is our responsibility to be about forgiveness, giving and receiving forgiveness.

So what other challenges? What comes after we know Easter to be real and personal? We are among those who have been commissioned by the Risen Christ: "As God has sent me so I am sending you" So we are Easter people wherever we go. When we vote tomorrow we vote as Easter people. Easter people make their voice heard. When we wait in a long, very slow line at the store to pay for one item we wait as Easter people. When our teenager rolls her eyes with disgust at our suggestion, when our toddler yells so loud the neighbors a block away can hear - we deal with this as Easter people. When you're the teenager and your parents won't give in and let you go with the other kids, when everyone else is doing a little experimenting with just a small amount of grass - you deal with it as an Easter person.

When we reach the point of believing in Easter or renewed -believing or deeper believing - let us not be arrogant. Let us remember that we too have trembled and teetered at the edge of the nest not sure of our wings. Let us seek out the disbelieving as the Risen Christ sought out the first disciples and let us be gentle and patient. Let us speak words of encouragement. Let us remind them they have wings - God-given Easter wings!

Reflection by David for April 21, 2011 - Maundy Thursday

2011-04-25T14:29:00.000-07:00

Rev. David Boyd

TEXT: John 13:1-17, 31b-35

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

I remember some years ago I attended a summer school course at Vancouver School of Theology, my Alma Mater. It was a week-long course led by Janet Wolfe, a United Methodist pastor from Nashville who had taken a downtown church that was made up of 15 members or so and transformed that church into a community church. It was a mixed community of families who lived in the area, drug dealers and crack houses, sex-trade workers, homeless people, high unemployment, and people with various challenges. Wolf talked about how the remnants of an old long-established congregation worked at inviting the neighbourhood into the church and welcoming them as full members of their congregation—after a process of letting go of the historical significance of the church and a new realization that the congregation was never going to be what it once was. There were various things that they did, but two of the things that they did in worship were to pause at some point in the worship service and have people turn to the person beside them and say, "You are a child of God, beloved, and I love you." The second thing was that after the sermon, there would be time for people to respond in whatever fashion they chose. At this summer course with Wolf, we talked about what it would be mean for our congregations if we made these kinds of little shifts.

Wolf told the story of a young woman, a sex-trade worker, whom she had befriended. The woman would occasionally visit Wolf in her office and sometimes yell and curse at the world quite vociferously. Wolf would always quietly invite her to worship on Sundays. One day this young woman turned up, but she would only go as far as the bottom of the outside steps into the church. She did this for a while, listening. The ushers would try to invite her to come in, but she wouldn't. The ushers got to know her a bit and they would prop open the door so she could hear better. Then, after a while the young woman moved up the steps and sat on the top step close to the door. After a while again, she stood in the doorway; a little while later she had progressed into the narthex. A little while later again, she stood at the back of the church. Finally she was able to go into the sanctuary and join the others, sitting in the back row. When it came for exchanging the peace with the words I mentioned a moment ago, "You are a child of God, beloved, and I love," she almost fled. She, like many others in that congregation, were overwhelmed to hear the words, "I love you."

When Wolf had us say the words during a worship service together, we all go quite choked up. We are good Canadians, after all, aren't we? We are quiet and reserved. We don't go around telling other people that they are children of God, beloved and that we love them. And while we all got choked up hearing those words and saying them to others—sometimes total strangers—that they were a child of God, beloved and that we loved them, we also felt, we discovered in a conversation afterwards, that it was liberating and powerful at the same time as emotional.

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

It is one thing to hear these words and to know intellectually in our hearts that we love others. That we love God with our heart, mind, strength, and soul and that we love our neighbour as ourself is something we understand well and say often in church. It is another thing altogether to take that love and speak it to another person. It is another thing altogether to put our love into action in ways that put us at risk, that put us in vulnerable places, that stretch us out of our comfort zones.

Last Monday night, at the end of our Lenten series at Nelson United, we asked some social justice activists in our congregation to speak about the source of their inspiration to engage the powers and principalities that surround us. They spoke passionately about what inspires them and each, in their own way, spoke of having the courage to essentially put love into action, especially with respect to those who are not loved by the world, those who are cast to the margins, cast aside, left out; the activists who spoke found the courage to speak the words, "You are a child of God, beloved, and I love you" in the actions of their lives. Amazing things can happen in terms of personal transformation and in terms of societal change when the words "I love you" are spoken and heard and lived!

Why are we surprised by that transformation? I know I am when I hear about how these simple words of love can change situations and lives. I suppose in part I'm surprised because these weren't words that we spoke out loud in our family when I grew up. I regret that very much. I tell my adult children that I love them and I tried to do that when they were small. Yet, it continues to surprise me today that those simple words can change so much.

Why am I surprised?! I shouldn't be. I know someone has counted how many times love gets mentioned in the Bible, but I don't remember; I do know that it's a lot! In an interfaith panel that I watched some years ago, one of the defining characteristics named by people of other faiths of Christians is love—a radical, life-changing love of which we are speaking this evening. Jesus was love incarnate because as John said in a letter, "God is love." Why am I surprised by the power of love?

I guess I'm surprised because the world around us can be a callous place and can convince us that the norm is to seek revenge for wrongs done to us; the norm is to look out for number 1. The norm seems to be that you get all you can get and damn the rest. Adam Smith, the Scottish economist who started the liberal economic movement, believed that there are limited goods and we naturally will compete for those goods. The norm of our world sometimes seems to teach that we should be suspicious of our neighbour not love him or her. Like Walter Bruegemann would say, the norm of our world is to be enslaved to our wants and desires rather than be empowered by the abundance of grace, the abundance of the harvest, the abundance of love.

The Gospel-writer John sets us up. In the long readings that we have been hearing this Lent, John sets us up. He sets us up to know and hear that love changes things and that Jesus embodies this love. Richard Rohrbaugh, the delightful scholar who has written so much about the world in which Jesus lived, said that John's gospel is about a community of believers who were pushed to the margins of society where it existed to protest the values of the larger society. We inherit that tradition of protesting the values of the larger society when those values espouse elitism, a rigid hierarchy that defines who is excluded, a rigid authority that dominates. We speak words of love that are sometimes not welcomed.

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

How will we translate our love into action with respect to the election early next month? How do we translate our love into action with respect to the choices we make around food, chocolate, coffee, transportation, and the causes we support? How, indeed?

Well, we have the commandment: you shall love as I have loved. We can say to those around us and to the world, "You are God's child, beloved, and I love you." By this everyone will know that we are Christ's disciples, if we have love for one another.

Amen.

Reflection by Christine Dudley, EASTER SUNDAY, 2011

2011-04-24T15:52:00.000-07:00

Scripture Text: John 20:1-18

I'll begin this time of reflection with a poem by Peter Millar of the Iona Community entitled, The Invitation of Easter:

And across our beautiful,
evolving world
another Easter dawns,
tenderly inviting us
to ponder upon
wider truths
and alternative visions.

Truths of both heart and mind
that find their roots
in the mystery and practicality
of God.

Basic truths
illumining
our often uncertain journeys –
allowing us
to reconnect with the
energies of Christ:

That life does come from death;
that hate is not the final word;
that the broken continue to sing with joy:
that the trees and the mountains clap their hands; that forgiveness resides in the heart of the human condition;
that love, with its multiple faces, remains our companion.

So Christ is risen!
Risen again
in the midst of it all –
that in some amazing way
we too
may be a people of hope
who walk in the light,
imbued with the Spirit.
Fire and Bread, pgs. 66-67, Wild Goose Publications, 2006

I have always been fascinated with drawings that have hidden pictures within them. These kinds of puzzles fascinated and frustrated me as a child. These are hidden pictures which are sometimes very difficult to see but when you do see them, or someone points them out to you, it's hard to imagine how you'd missed them in the first place. When you finally see them they appeared to be "hidden in plain sight", revealed in all their complexity and simplicity.

The stories in the Gospel of John are a little bit like that for me. John's stories are often complex with a lot of details that are sometimes mysterious and difficult to understand at first glance. But, when you spend time with John's stories it's easy to see connections and themes that are both complex and obscure but also beautiful in their simplicity of meaning.

John's Gospel is all about signs that point to the truth that Jesus is the Messiah. The stories he tells are pieces of a puzzle that when seen in their entirity show that Jesus not only was the Messiah but is the Messiah — the living Christ for all generations. John even records the purpose of his account in the 20^th chapter (verses 30-31) of his gospel, "Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name."

According to John, Jesus reveals God's LIGHT, LIFE and LOVE. The statement at the very beginning of John (1:3b-5) is the synopsis for his book, "What has come into being in him [Jesus] was life, and the life was the light of all people. That light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it." This short summary reveals the purpose of Jesus' life, death and resurrection. This, however, would be too cryptic as the only explanation and so John tells a variety of stories about Jesus' life and ministry and gives his account of Jesus' death and resurrection.

During the season of Lent we've heard many stories from John's gospel in which Jesus is the revelation of God's LIGHT, LIFE and LOVE. There is the story of Nicodemus who comes to meet Jesus in the cover of darkness. Nicodemus is a Pharisee and a powerful man and yet he is afraid to be seen with Jesus. He is afraid but he recognizes that no one could be doing the things that Jesus is doing apart from the presence of God. Jesus tells Nicodemus that in order to enter the Kingdom of God one must be born of water and Spirit.

There's also the story of Jesus and the Samaritan Woman. A woman who was an outcast by her own people and yet chosen by Jesus to be the first apostle to non-Jewish people. Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that he is the living waterwhich wells up to eternal life.

And, the story of Jesus healing the man born blind in which Jesus says, "As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world."

And then, there's the story of the raising of Lazarus. Jesus arrives after Lazarus has been dead and buried in a tomb four days. Weeping is turned to shouts of joy when Jesus rolls the stone away from the tomb and calls Lazarus by name and Lazarus rises to new life, made whole by Jesus love. (Sound familiar? Rolling the tombstone away, Jesus calling an individual by name, weeping turned to joy, resurrection and new life.) The story of Lazarus is a hint of the greater glory of Jesus' own resurrection which John tells with great care and detail. John's telling of Jesus' resurrection is the longest of the gospel accounts; 56 verses; (Luke is a close second with 53 verses, Mark offers only 8 verses and Matthew, 20, in their versions.)

John tells us that while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw the stone had been rolled away and so she immediately ran to give witness to this fact. Women, in Jesus' day, were not thought to be reliable witnesses so the law required that two men verify a woman's testimony. Two male disciples came and then left but Mary stayed and kept vigil. She was confused and grief-striken (she'd lost Jesus twice over — first in death and then the loss of his body which had been resting in peace). She wept bitter tears. Then, after an encounter with angels, Mary saw a man she didn't recognize, whom she mistook as the cemetery gardener. It wasn't until the man called her by name, "Mary!", that she recognized it was Jesus. Jesus told her to go and tell the others and again Mary went running and this time proclaimed with confidence, "I have seen the Lord".

Mary, the first witness of the risen Christ. Mary wasn't immobilized by fear, surprise or even joy. She responded by going and sharing her experience with others and by allowing her experience of faith to continue to motivate her actions in the future.

Mary is not unique. She is not the only one who can experience the living Christ and respond to Christ's call to go forth into the world and tell the good news. Mary represents any one of us sitting here this morning. An ordinary person with doubts and fears, sorrow and joy, faith and hope. An ordinary person capable of seeing with the eyes of faith and a heart filled with love. A person who is willing to experience pain, is attentive enough to hear Christ calling and courageous enough to respond with courage and conviction.

I can relate to Mary's pain and confusion and her joy and commitment in listening to Christ's guidance and embodying his ministry. It's not easy responding to Christ's call. Christ's call to ministry can take us to places we never imagined we would go and into experiences we may not feel we have the courage to face. But I have found in my own life, and in witnessing the lives of others, that Christ's call to ministry enables us to have the courage to respond with faith. With trust in the living Christ we can roll away the stones of our fears and complacency, our prejudices and shortcomings, our excuses and reluctance to risk our comfortable lives. Christ calls each one of us by name and coaxes us to be daring and follow him wherever he leads us. And, when we do, we are empowered in ways that are greater than we could ever ask or imagine.

We may not always recognize him but Christ is present in the ordinary experiences of our lives. Recognize him, or not, Christ is present in sacrament and prayer, in the songs and stories of our faith tradition, and in the simple ways in which we respond with faith and love to each other and to our world. We are members of the Body of Christ; the hands and feet of Christ in the world today. Let us be glad and rejoice in it!

Christ is risen!

Christ is risen indeed!

Reflection by David for April 17, 2011 - Palm Sunday

2011-04-18T15:50:00.000-07:00

I looked back on some old sermons that I'd preached—I had a bad cold much of last week and the week before and ran out of time and energy so I thought I'd use an old sermon. As I read a few of them through, I realized that they are published on our website and in all good conscience I didn't think I could use any of them again. So, here are some thoughts based on Paul's little passage about humility and self-emptying that I hope are germane for today.

The short passage from Paul's letter to the Philippians contains the seeds of an idea that is technically known as kenosis in theological terms. "Jesus, though in the form of God, did not count equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in human likeness." It is thought that these words were part of an ancient hymn sung in the early Church; it was a hymn about Jesus as the Christ. Kenosis literally means "self-emptying". There are lots of interesting questions that arise from this passage, but I want to focus on the idea of self-emptying and the model that Jesus embodied for what it might have to say to us in today's world.

I grew up in a family where it was important to put others first. We often heard the quiet acronym from my mom when acronyms weren't readily used, "PHB". For us it meant, "Please Hold Back". This quiet instruction was usually uttered when we had people over for dinner and mom realized that she probably hadn't prepared enough for everyone. It was spoken quietly to us, but it was the way it was to be. And at pot-lucks at the church or anywhere for that matter, we were taught that guests serve themselves first. There was to be no rushing to the front of the line. Manners and hospitality dictated that others enjoy the abundance before us. As I look back on this, I understand this to be a form of self-emptying. We were taught to empty ourselves of our need to be first, of our need to be right, of our need to be the centre of attention. It came from my mom and my dad and the way that they led their lives, always putting others first, always deflecting attention from themselves. It's a quality that I admire and I was quite pleased to learn that it carried some theological weight, as it stemmed from this idea of Paul's about self-emptying.

Actually, it really wasn't Paul's idea. It came from Jesus' own teaching about denying self and taking up one's cross and following. I take that to mean that we love our neighbours as we love ourselves, which sometimes requires some sacrifice on our part. I believe we are called to live this self-emptying, which I much prefer to self-denial for it isn't a denial of the self particularly as it is an emptying of the parts of ourselves that are concerned about being first: the greedy, self-promoting aspects of our selves that want power and control. We empty ourselves of these aspects of our personhood intentionally as we seek to live more fully in community with others and in community with the world around us. Climate change calls for us to give up our over-consumptive ways. Violence in the world calls for us to look at our own means of communication and interaction with others. Cynicism calls for us to give up the luxury of engaging in despair or of being dismissive. These are all part of what it means to self-empty ourselves and live in humility.

But then again, I don't think this idea of self-emptying was Jesus' new idea. I believe it's been around for a long time. Like the essence of the 7 Deadly Sins; they are not an invention of the Roman Catholic Church. They are just basic values that create an imbalance in life. What are the 7 Deadly Sins? There's lust, glutton, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. And what idea are these 7 Deadly Sins based on? They are based on the idea that we must be filled... filled with food, with self-promotion, with longing, with anger, with desire, with lazinessÉ the list could go on and on. I think there is a strong tendency in cultures and societies to indulge and to over-consume. We need to fill ourselves up in order to be satisfied. Think of the advertising that bombards usÉ it is about acquiring, about consuming, about taking and getting and being filled.

And the irony that is taught by the spiritual teachers of history is that only by emptying do we truly experience fullness. Only by intentionally putting others ahead of us, of being emptied of our pride, our anger, our lust, our covetousness and so on do we find in this new self-emptied living a new fullness, a spirit of hope, a lightness and a newfound sense of grace.

To my mind, what the election in Canada is truly about is leadership. It isn't about economic prosperity; it is about trust. What leader, what party, engenders a sense of trust and provides the kind of leadership that is self-emptying, that puts others ahead, and that calls to the best qualities of who we are as human beings? Where is there humility and openness? Where is there humanity?

Richard Rohr, the director of the Center for Action and Contemplation in New Mexico, a writer, speaker and Franciscan monk, is passionate about letting go in our lives. He has written reflections based on the work of Meister Eckhart, who lived between about 1260 and 1327, a mystic in the Church and a philosopher. He was part of what were called the Green Mystics of that period of history. Richard Rohr has taken some of Meister Eckhart's ideas and pulled them together to create a spirituality of subtraction.

Living a deeply spiritual life isn't about adding more knowledge; it isn't about learning more and developing more spiritual disciplines. It isn't about getting the latest book about deepening your spiritual life. It is about letting go of the need to consume more and more. It is about letting go of the need for success and gratification. It is about risking love in the world by stepping out of our comfort zone. It is about being open and willing to dare to live as fully human beings, willing to dare to put others ahead of us, willing to ask the hard questions about who is welcome and who is excluded. A spirituality of subtraction is a life built around gratitude, grace, and love.

This coming week that we call Holy Week is about Jesus letting go. He let go of needing to control the message of love, of directing the movement that he started, and even of his own fears. He let go and let himself go into the hands of people who would crush him. And yet, in this letting go, life was discovered. Life was released and hope was unleashed into the world. In the letting go, life filled the self-emptying, love flowed into the cracks and the openings and was full... abundant love, abundant life, abundant living. Hope finds a way to blossom; love finds a way to grow and flourish. We are not called to exploit our status; but we are called to empty ourselves, as Christ did, of our pretentions and assumptions, of our need to be right or in control, and to advocate for those who have no voice and have no one to speak words of love and to enable the self-emptied places of our world to be filled with love. To help catch this idea of self-emptying, I leave you with a poem by Dawna Markovoa:

I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible;
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance,
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.

Amen.

reflection by Rev. Dr. John Prochaska for April 10, 2011 – Lent 5

2011-04-10T16:30:00.000-07:00

April 10, 5th Sunday Lent, 2011

TEXT: John 11:1-45

Beloved in Christ, may the peace of Christ be with you as we open ourselves to the gospel according to John. Jayne was asking me just before the service started " how long it had been" since I preached. After considerable thought I realized that my last sermon was preached in June, 2008. So it's been a while since " I was in the saddle" but they say it's like riding a bicycle. We'll see.

If you love metaphors – stories about one thing to help us understand another thing – then you already love the gospel of John. John's gospel is packed with truth, light and wisdom many times over worth its weight in gold. All of chapter 11 is a story-metaphor.

In my first life I was a petroleum geologist and one of things we used to do to try and understand what lay beneath the surface of the earth in terms of oil and gas was to construct a cross-section based on what we already knew. What I want to do help you picture a cross-section – a slice – of this story which begins with an event a few days earlier in Jerusalem – then to something the character Martha says a few days later – then John's remarkable description of Jesus upset by what he's realizing about Martha and her sister Mary – and then to a story illustration.

First, the back story to chapter 11: A few days earlier, according to John, Jesus and his disciples had been in Jerusalem in a heated argument with some of the religious leaders in the temple who were incensed by the suggestion that God might to be found co-mingling with human beings. They were so convinced that God wouldn't come anywhere near most human beings that saying something to the contrary was enough to make them nutty...maniacal. Jesus argued politely that scripture allows for different thinking...that it's impossible for us to contaminate God...it's God who improves on human beings.

They were still deeply offended; much like Muslims who hear of someone burning the Koran...just as ready to behead someone preaching God-Human compatibility. They began accumulating stones for stoning Jesus and his disciples to death for blasphemy.

So Jesus and his disciples left the city, going north on the road that took them up thru the village of Bethany where apparently they stopped long enough to tell Martha and Mary where they were going, because later when their brother Lazarus gets sick they know where to send a messenger. From Bethany the road drops steeply to a river crossing at Jericho. From there they could proceed to some hideaway.

Next we slice across the story to a scene several days later where Martha reopens the subject in talking to Jesus after the death of Lazarus. Martha is the one who says, I know that you are the Messiah/Son of God...I know you are a conduit for God coming into our world. Words that could get her and Jesus killed in Jerusalem. Notice the Greek word behind the word Messiah which is Cristos...whose usage in our time has made Messiah/Christian/Portals of God seem interchange-able.
I have always liked the idea myself that Jesus could be a conduit for God, but for a long time I couldn't apply it to myself. I could not think of myself as a conduit for Jesus Christ or God. Now I have learned that my imperfections and impurities do not diminish God or Jesus Christ...I too can be a conduit for Jesus Christ...God through Jesus Christ can live in me and in everyone else.

Here's some more left-brain information about the next part of the cross-section which shows Jesus remarkably displeased with the way things are turning out...not that Lazarus has died but that Martha and Mary and others see him only was a teacher and healer, not a tool for God's deliverance. God for them was a God only in life or the resurrection but NOT in death itself. That they didn't believe is extremely unsettling for Jesus. Look at what the Greek language reveals...the language in which scripture was originally written. A special Greek vocabulary reveals him snorting audibly, expelling air from his nose when he realizes that Martha and Mary don't see him as he sees himself - enebrimaysato.

The word tarrasso reveals Jesus’ inner turmoil… through a picture a wildly vibrating hand plunging a bucket of water, water flying everywhere! Enebrimaysato (embrimaomai) – to snort...noisily exhale through the nose Etaraxan (tarrasso) – agitated or troubled emotions as a wildly vibrating hand inserted into a bucket of water. Look what happens next as Mary and the professional wailers move into noisy grief while Jesus begins to weep silently.
Mary et al (Klaiousan/klaio) – weep & wail loudly (noisy grief)

Jesus (edakrusen/dakruo)–shedding tears (quiet grief) They don't see Jesus as Jesus saw himself...a conduit for God...a portal for God...through whom God could do many things. What happens through Lazarus will NOT be a healing. It will be deliverance by God using Jesus and Jesus' words..."remove the stone, unbind him, come forth".

My life had ended. My marriage of 20 years had died. Suddenly I was a single parent with 3 children. Walking into the Bay department store to buy back-to-school clothes I realized I didn't know my own children's clothing sizes. All the evidence of how bad a husband I had been seemed daily before me. I had resigned as minister of Campbell-Stone United Church in Calgary where I had served 5 years following seminary...taken a job as pastoral counselor and psychotherapist with the Pastoral Institute of Calgary.

My Conference Minister in Guelph, Ontario, had recently resigned too, so there was a vacuum of leadership at the top of our conference...no one to provide the kind of support I needed. It was then that another Ontario minister named Fred came out of retirement...He was 85 at the time...very feeble...walked with a cane...it scared me to see how fragile he was. I didn't know Fred. When he called to say he was coming I couldn't get enthused because I never heard of him. On behalf of the national church he flew from Ontario to Calgary to be with me in my death. I scarcely noticed that this must have been important to someone!

Fred took a cab from the airport to the Pastoral Institute which was located then at St. Paul United Church in Calgary's inner-urban core. He climbed the stairs one at a time to be in my tomb, pulling himself up the stairs one at a time...about 15 steps, similar to the 17 which many climb every Sunday morning in order to be here for worship services. The receptionist guided him to my counseling office. He entered and we greeted each other. He removed his coat, draped it over a chair, removed his cap and scarf and sat down, hooking his cane over the arm of the chair. We talked about the death place I was in. He asked how the children were doing. In the course of the conversation he had the audacity to suggest that I might want to remarry some day. He praised me for my work in the church...which I couldn't hear because I saw only failure. He suggested that someday I might want to return to parish ministry. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

No more than 20 minutes passed in my cave before he started putting on his scarf and cap and coat. I walked him to the stairs and stepped beside him as he let himself down the stairs again one at a time. A cab was waiting for him at the curb which took him back to the airport for the return to Ontario. I walked back to my office with his images and words beginning to take up residence in my mind. Slowly the question began to form in my mind... " Who was that really? What just happened??

That was over 30 years ago and Fred, then 85, has long since continued on his journey as a man of faith, but he detoured briefly to arrive at my tomb and enter.

Now, I look back and see similarities between Fred and Jesus. I have grown fond of the possibility that a very old God/Jesus came by that day to say, " I am going to open your grave, and bring you up from your grave..." At times I think of Fred as the prophet Ezekiel standing in the valley of the dry bones. I smile at the sound of the old song...I think of my own bones connected to the foot bone...foot bone connected to the ankle bone... Over the years Fred's memory has spurred me to enter the deaths of others...just getting these bones of mine to where they might do some good! YES! This be a portal that I'm wearing...This be a conduit...This mouth is for speaking of new life beyond this one.

My favorite picture morphing out of my experience with Fred is a picture of the congregation coming to the end of a worship service, rising up en masse to go out and into the tombs of their neighbors and colleagues and friends and strangers...to be conduits...portals...cristos...God's Messiah...if only for a few moments at a time.

I love the teaching-Jesus. I love the healing-Jesus. I also love the delivering Jesus who put himself at risk by going to be with others in their loss, their imprisonment, their disappointment, their disgrace, their shame, their failure, their death in whatever form it had taken in order to (1) provide a conduit for God and (2) speak words of new life when the time was right.

Reflection by David for April 3, 2011 – Lent 4

2011-04-04T10:17:00.000-07:00

TEXT: John 9:1-41

I've talked about the shift from a modern to a post-modern or a Christendom to a post-Christendom way of viewing the world before; so, I won't go into the details of that shift at the moment other than to think with you about the idea of seeing the world differently and seeing in general and what that has to do with belief.

One of the shifts that has been difficult for us baby-boomers and folk who are older is the shift from the scientific method of experiment and repeat, experiment and repeat until you get a repeatedly verifiable result to a different way of thinking about the world. In other words, the scientific method, which sums up the modern era very well, is "I'll believe it when I see it over and over and over." That's even a slogan, "I'll believe it when I see it." My undergraduate degree was a BSc in Zoology from UBC and that's the method I was trained in.

But the philosophers in our midst, who tell us that we are no longer in the modern era, tell us that this idea of believing what you see has changed. Those who grew up in the post-modern mind-set, people of my children's generation, now understand that we see what we believe. As much as the modern era emphasised science and knowledge and downplayed spirituality and mysticism, thankfully the post-modern era—a rather dry term—has reacquired the teaching of the mystics and tries to see the links between science and spirituality and the deep importance of what we believe and how this impacts the things we see in life.

As we have learned over and over, Jesus was ahead of his time. This long and wonderful story of the man born blind is really a story about seeing. It could easily be a story from our times and the conflict that arises when we forget that we really see what we believe. And Jesus taught also that what we believe must continue to expand and grow. If we stay stuck in our religious mindset in what we believe, we are as stuck as the Pharisees with whom Jesus disputed in the story from John's Gospel.

I think of the religious mindset of the middle ages, when the Roman Catholic Church controlled everything in the Western world—music, science, whether the earth was flat, astronomy and whether the sun rotates around the world or vice versa. Some people like Galileo caved into the Roman Catholic teaching of the day. But others like Da Vinci and Columbus refused to cave into religious convention and allowed their minds to expand and to allow their experience to influence their religious beliefs or how they see the world. Da Vinci was able to speak about anatomy and physical sciences. Columbus, a character of history with mixed views if ever there was one, knew that the world was not flat but round. Galileo really didn't believe in what the Roman Catholic Church taught, but he was kept under house arrest so that his views wouldn't get spread around. The Roman Catholic Church perpetuated the Pharisaic teaching that wouldn't allow seeing the world differently to influence their hold on power and control.

And what of the man born blind story from John's gospel? "Was it the man's parents who sinned," asked the disciples, stuck in the old view of "punishment is deserved." Jesus said, "Neither his parents nor he sinned." John then inserts his own interpretation into Jesus' words, but Jesus was clear that the difficult challenges of life aren't a punishment for our waywardness or our brokenness. How difficult it is to get away from that mindset; we are not the author of our misfortune. Stuff happens in life; we want to blame ourselves, and yes we have to be responsible for our actions, but things happen that produce great suffering that are not about fault. Stuff happens and we have to make sense of life without blaming ourselves.

And when the man born blind is examined by the Pharisees, some don't believe him. They want to see that their spiritual understandings are still valid and in place. So, they reject the man and they reject Jesus because of their beliefs, giving rise to Jesus' words at the end of the story, "those who see do not actually see and those who are told they do not see, do see." That's my translation of it. Jesus is saying that the Pharisees only choose to see what they see because of what they believe about the world and about God, but that the world is bigger than that. God is bigger than that. Religion and spirituality are bigger than that!

Last week at our annual meeting there was good conversation and energy around the purpose statement. But when it came to nominations and getting people to fill the vacancies of Council and committees, there was a noticeable quiet. It has been difficult for us in the United Church to shift from our modern way of thinking about the governing system of our churches. We still see them like a machine or we believe in the machinery of the way we've been doing things for 50 years. And thus we find it hard to see another way. Slowly our beliefs are changing. More quickly now that we know that the system is broken and needs a complete overhaul—we finally believe it and can see more clearly the way to be together in an entirely new way, a way that is life-giving and faith-filled.

I do think that this is the shift that is sweeping the world, this shift to not being cowed by power and authority, especially coercive power and totalitarian authority. Because we believe in the power of people, and we believe in the authority of the common good, we can see the endless possibility for love in our world, and the deeply felt yearning for freedom to express that love. We can see the connective energy of God's Spirit and the infectious desire for hope to be lived.

This is the new seeing which reflects our new believing in life, in mystery and in the wonder and awe of God's love and the love through which we can make the world a better place. And I say, "Let's see with the eyes of love and openness and hope and grace."

Amen.

Reflection by David for March 27, 2011 – Lent 3

2011-03-30T15:18:00.000-07:00

Presented as a dramatic monologue

TEXT: John 4:5-42

Hi!
My name is Ezekiel.
You know, like the famous prophet who was also a priest; he was the strange one in recorded in our Scriptures. My mother was a little on the religious side; she thought I needed to be named for a prophet-priest. I think she wanted me to be a priest—you remember those days of our mothers. I don't know if she thought that I was a little odd even when I was born, but she must have. And I didn't disappoint her. I do seem to be different from others in my village; I could never seem to do things the way other people did them. You know... normally. I could be a bit cranky... and cynical.. angry... rebellious.
And whenever Jews were around? Watch out. Remember, we Samaritans didn't like the Jews; well, they didn't like us either. They kept accusing us of perverting the Torah and mixing in other religious ideas and rituals and things. We didn't like that, being told that God wasn't with us. Fortunately, we usually don't mix—Samaritans and Jews, but when we do, things can get a little conflicted to say the least. I liked to provoke back in the day. I'm ashamed to say that now.
Let me back up just a bit. I'm Ezekiel. Oh yes, I said that, didn't I? Well, more importantly, I'm the one you read about in John's Gospel... you know, the beloved disciple of Jesus who wrote the gospel about Jesus? Oh, I'm not named in the story, or at least not directly. I was the husband—well, not legally—of the woman that Jesus of Nazareth, the Jew from Galillee, met at the well. Or more to the point, he accused my wife—I call her my wife—of not being legally married, she who had been married 5 times. Well, I'm that guy! I was the guy she was with when she met Jesus at the well. I guess we were a bit of a scandal at the time.
You know, she went to the well at mid-day when no one else was around to avoid people. She did that so that she wouldn't encounter the town gossips. And here was this man, this Jesus! He asked her for a drink. He, a Jew, asked a Samaritan woman for a drink! Scandalous.
Well, you know the story. Jesus confronted my wife, and me indirectly, and well, she had a conversion to make a long story short. The water that she gave to this Jesus seemed to stir something in her. Or stir up, rather. We always felt a certain amount of shame about living together as we were, but what Jesus said to her and what she said to me is that water washes shame away. Jesus said that God, blessed be, wasn't concerned about what we did, but was concerned about who we are. That was new. People used to make fun of us because we danced to our own rhythms. God loves us for who we are. It made my wife weep, it did. And me too, if truth be told. She told me what was going on and how it made her feel—this idea of being loved by God for who we are, not because we fit in or don't. That was radical stuff. We never fit in, my wife and I; that's why we got along so well. But we still felt shame. And then Jesus changed everything.
We decided to go to our families, my wife and I. There was reconciliation. Even with my mother whom I had disappointed so! You should have seen my mother! She danced and pinched my cheek. She said that now I was truly living according to my namesake Ezekiel. I was now living with honour rather than shame—that was God's doing. And so, we had a great feast; Jesus even said a few words and we got married. We were blessed by God, my wife and I! And the whole village! Imagine what a little love can do. That's what happened with me; instead of being beaten about the ears—well, not literally—more figuratively with a sense of judgement, I finally felt accepted for just being me. I wasn't proud of everything I'd done, but at least I didn't feel like the past was always in the present. I felt that I could let go of my mistakes and think about being different in the future. That was pretty radical, in my estimation.
Well, that's my story in a nutshell.
I hear you're followers of Jesus and that you're having an annual meeting. That sounds pretty serious. And at this meeting, you're going to celebrate who you are? That's good! Celebration is good. I also understand that you're going to talk about what it means to dare to be followers of the Way of Jesus, embodying the radical love of God? Is that right? I hope that you'll have a good turnout for this meeting.
It's good to look back and celebrate. You've had a hard year in some ways I've heard; both of your ministers were away for different reasons and yet you kept on. In fact, people came forward to do some things they've never done before. That's pretty exciting. This Jesus person does get us doing things we thought we could never do, doesn't he? Like change. Who me? Change? Well, yes; it wasn't that hard, actually. Especially knowing that I'm not alone!
And what about this purpose statement you've got happening? That's pretty exciting, too. I gather in your day and age it is rather daring to be people of the Way of Jesus. It sounds like you live in the same kind of conditions that I lived in; wars, conflicts, judgement. But Jesus teaches us that we can live in a different way, a way of peace, a way of accepting one another, a way of love. And we can embody that radical love to each other. That's pretty powerful stuff. Listen to me; I sound like that Zealot Simon!
It seems strange to speak of love and radical at the same time. Let's face it, any love is radical. All love is radical. It's easy to have fear and to live with suspicions. Just ask us Samaritans. We didn't get along well with anyone; we were generally suspicious of people who were different from us. And Jesus came and quietly talked about love. He accepted us all for who we are not for what he wanted us to be. He embodied God's love to us and we felt different; we felt changed. That can happen all over the world if we let love be more real in our lives and in the lives of people. And what we know is that we learn to fear and be suspicious. Love is really what we are about, deep in our hearts. We are born in love and out of love, but somehow because life can be challenging at times, we learn not to love; we learn to be afraid. Well, Jesus came to remind us that at our deepest levels, we are love, and we don't need to be afraid! So, embodying the radical love of God isn't that challenging after all. You just need to be who you are at your deepest human core!
Well, I won't keep you from your worship and your annual meeting. I wish you God's blessings as you celebrate the past and look to the future. Just remember that there are many of us who are with you. You are not alone. God is with you, but so are we, Jesus' friends and disciples! We've been down this road of change and transformation, this journey of love and it is life-giving. It will empower you to share that love in all you do with friends, with family and with all your neighbours in your community and around your world!
So know that you are blessed by God, and by those of us who live in God's love. We are with you.
Have a good meeting.

Bye.

Reflection by David for March 27, 2011

2011-03-30T15:16:00.000-07:00

Reflection given at a Presbytery Sermon Writing Workshop

I subscribe to Richard Rohr's online daily meditations. Friends were sending me his short daily meditations often enough that I thought, "this is a clue; maybe I should just subscribe to them myself." And that's what I did. I subscribed. Richard Rohr is a Franciscan monk who is the director of the Center for Action and Contemplation in New Mexico; he writes and speaks around the world about spirituality and justice. His daily meditations are short inspirational thoughts that help set the day on its right courseÑthe path of love, the path of grace, and the path of hope.
As I get older, I find it harder to recover from meetings and things. We had a presbytery meeting this past weekend and although it wasn't particularly taxing in terms of business, there were 2 solid days of "being on." You have to be attentive to what is going on. And then there are all of the conversations and networking that happens around the coffee pot or in short walks during breaks or longer conversations over a glass of wine at day's end. As a good introvert, I find it all a little too extroverted and I need to recoup some energy. Unfortunately, with Christine off this week, a Lenten study group to prepare, our annual meeting on Sunday, and this preaching workshop, there wasn't much time for rest, let alone some renewal.

Into the busyness of this week, along came Richard Rohr's faithful daily meditation. Rohr's meditation on Tuesday was entitled, "Grace is everywhere."¹ That's been the theme this week; Rohr's thoughts brought me to a full stop. Grace is everywhere. Grace is even in my tired heart. Grace is even in my need for a little alone time to recharge my batteries. Grace is even in Japan in its tragedy. Grace is everywhere. It was a word of comfort that I needed just then.

For some reason grace is a word that we don't use as much as we used to in the United Church. I'm not sure why that is; it may be because we've made a conscious effort in recent years to get away from churchy language. We don't use the word sin so much, or the word evil. We like words such as inclusive, community, loveÑall good words. But grace is a good word and should come back into daily vocabulary. We are, after all good Protestants. We inherited Calvin and Luther's injunction about living by the grace of God. Ironic that it's taken a good Catholic to remind me of grace. The Apostle Paul liked to talk about grace; that's the way he began his letters, wishing people God's grace of the grace of Christ.

Think of all the ways we talk about grace, aside from a religious meaning; we can get a full sense of what grace means without even setting foot in the churchÑand that's a good thing. We talk about the grace of dancers who can do extraordinary things with their bodies. We speak about the grace of certain people and we usually mean people who are poised, self-confident without being pushy, accepting and welcoming, approachable and polite, wise and giving of themselves. Grace-notes in music are the extra notes that give the melody or accompaniment a little extra excitement, a little extra beauty, a little extra flair; you could play the melody without grace-notes, but it doesn't quite have the same exquisite beauty. You sometimes get a grace period to pay a debt. We say grace at meals as a way of saying thank you. Grace is closely linked to beauty, to joy, to generosity, and ultimately to love.

For the Reformers of the 16th century, to give grace a churchier context, grace was a gift of God freely given. And this is the sense in which Rohr referred to grace in his daily meditation last Tuesday. Grace is the love of God that is given to us and to the whole world. Grace is the work of God to create beauty in our lives. Grace is the mystery of life that frees us from our own self-doubts, our self-condemnation, our worry about mistakes and errors in judgment. Grace takes us beyond ourselves to fly with the eagles, to rise with the sun on a new day, to twinkle on a clear night sky. Grace is the gift of God becoming love in our midst in the mystery of Jesus. Grace is the gift of life that came and comes through Jesus even though he died on the cross.

Grace is the assurance that even in the difficult times of our lives, love is still present. We are hearing horror stories coming out of Japan as a result of the earthquake, the tsunami and the radiation contamination. Daily we are inundated with the bad news of that disaster. And surely, it is a disaster; economists are saying that it will be the most expensive disaster in human history. And it is still going on.

The struggle with making sense of disasters is that we wonder where God is in the midst of the difficulties. I always think of a story that Elie Wiesel told about a young man in a concentration camp; Wiesel was a survivor and is a wise Jewish writer. In this little story that he wrote, a young man is hung by the Nazis and another Jewish prisoner, feeling great despair and abandonment by God, asks the narrator of the story, "Where is your God, now?" The narrator responds, "Standing there on the gallows about to be hung."

Wiesel speaks of God's presence in the hard moments of life, the moments when all seems lost, the moments when there seems little hope, like the disaster in Japan. But make no mistake; because we believe in grace, God was there in the horror of the disaster, dying with those who lost their life, crying with those who lost their homes, grieving with a nation, with a world.
I subscribe to Ode magazine; their motto is that it's a magazine "for intelligent optimists." The magazine and the website are full of good news stories, of hopeful stories that don't often get told in the usual news outlets. A letter was written and sent from Japan to the Ode online website; in this letter, by one Anne Thomas of Sendai, Japan, we hear these words, "Things here in Sendai have been rather surreal. But I am very blessed to have wonderful friends who are helping me a lot. Since my shack is even more worthy of that name, I am now staying at a friend's home. We share supplies like water, food and a kerosene heater. We sleep lined up in one room, eat by candlelight, share stories. It is warm, friendly, and beautiful." At the end of her letter, she says, "Somehow at this time I realize from direct experience that there is indeed an enormous cosmic evolutionary step that is occurring all over the world right at this moment. And somehow as I experience the events happening now in Japan, I can feel my heart opening very wide. My brother asked me if I felt so small because of all that is happening. I don't. Rather, I feel as part of something happening that is much larger than myself. This wave of birthing (worldwide) is hard and yet magnificent." ²

That's grace. That's sheer gift. That's God's presence at work in life, embodied in the love that can arise in human community even in the midst of great tragedy! That's the grace that the Samaritan woman experienced, the one Jesus met at the well as told by John. That's the grace that cracks people open to experience the wonder and mystery of life in a new way... in a way that makes people appreciate the preciousness of life, and of not taking things for granted. The grace the Samaritan woman experienced was articulated in Anne Thomas' letter, "I can feel my heart opening very wide."

We need more grace in our world. What would grace say in the midst of the partisan politics that came with the federal budget this week? What does grace call forth in us when we are in conflict with a friend, a family member, a neighbor, a nation?

Grace opens our hearts wide to experience love in a new way, to experience life in a new way, to know that we are valued for who we are, to know that life is beautiful even when it is scarred by tragedy. Grace is flowing to the Japanese people, and the Haitians and the Kiwis, whom the world seems to have forgotten. Grace is flowing to you and me because... as Richard Rohr says and as Jesus affirmed to the Samaritan woman, to Nicodemus, to the Syro-Phonoecian woman, and to the whole world... grace is everywhere!

Amen.

––––––––––––––––––
¹ Richard Rohr, Center for Action and Contemplation, Daily Meditation, Tuesday, March 22, 2011. (Go to www.cacradicalgrace.org for more information and to subscribe.) return
² http://www.odemagazine.com/p2/Anne%20Thomas/blogs return

Reflection by Christine for March 13, 2011 – Lent 1

2011-03-13T18:49:00.000-07:00

During the season of Lent we often speak of being on a journey of faith. As Christians we accompany Jesus through the stories we read and hear in the scripture passages we share during Lent and in the stories of our lives and our experiences of faith in Christian community.

In Lent, we are encouraged to be intentionally reflective and be more aware of God's presence and guidance in our daily lives. We strive to discern what God is calling us to be and do as individuals and as a community of faith. It is a time to think seriously about what it means to be people of the Way; people of faith who gather together and are inspired by, and seek to exemplify, the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. It is a time to ask ourselves what it means for us to follow Jesus' footsteps in the joys and sorrows of his journey to Jerusalem, to the cross, and to a new and transformed life.

Author and wise woman, Christina Baldwin, calls this awareness of God's presence and intentional discernment, "moving at the pace of guidance". Her simple and yet profound book, The Seven Whispers: A Spiritual Practice for Times Like These, has become a new and beloved companion to me in this reflective season of the church year. Christina explains "moving at the pace of guidance" by saying:

"In a world of speed and distraction, pace of guidance invites us to combine the practices of measured movement and listening. Speed is some guy running through the airport shouting into a cell phone. Pace is going around the block with a three-year-old and noticing everything the child is noticing. When we move at pace, we have time to question and time to listen for answers before moving on. When we move at the pace of guidance, it occurs to us to wonder what plans the Divine might have for us, in the midst of the plans we have for ourselves." (Pages 23-24, New World Library, 2002)

Christina Baldwin's description of moving at the pace of guidance describes very well my sabbatical experience which began at the beginning of Lent a year ago. To move from a very busy work schedule into an intentional and sustained time of spiritual practice, study and exploration of faith was a shift that required a break from the old routine to cultivate an openness to spirit and create a change of pace.

The first week of my sabbatical I stayed in San Francisco. I spent time walking around the Mission District, was inspired by the beauty and boldness of the murals on the walls of the Women's Centre; sat in quiet meditation in many churches (mostly Roman Catholic); walked the labyrinth at Grace Episcopal Cathedral; and worshipped with United Methodist and Anglican congregations.

This time is not comparable to Jesus' experience in the wilderness before his public ministry but it was a time that enabled me to break the habits of routine and open myself up to the spontaneity of listening to God's voice within me and responding "as the Spirit moved". It was a liberating experience and helped set the tone for the rest of my sabbatical. It enabled me to listen to the voice deep within me that was guiding me in a different direction than I'd thought I'd go in my sabbatical learning.

During my sabbatical I immersed myself in reading about Celtic Christianity in preparation for visits to religious sites in Ireland and time spent with both the Northumbria Community, in North-Eastern England, and the Iona Community in Scotland. I nurtured myself spiritually with time spent in silent retreat and intentional spiritual practices, time with Spiritual Directors, and time immersed in the beauty and wonder of Creation and in the beauty and wonder of a variety of humanly created religious artistic expressions.

One of the ways that I was intentional during that time was to look carefully at what was around me, recognize God's presence and give thanks. I had a very small digital camera that fit easily in my pocket and I carried it with me wherever I went. Sometimes there were awe-filled moments which needed to be experienced and not seen through the lens of a camera and I carry those profound experiences in my heart and in my memories. But I did take hundreds of pictures and learned how to catalogue them on the computer and put them into a slideshow format.

Last July I shared some of my pictures during Storytime. In August I was asked to give a brief sabbatical report to our Church Council. It seemed a daunting task to be concise in giving an account of a four month experience which was, and continues to be, a transformative time in my life. I chose to prepare a five minute slideshow accompanied by a piece of music which had played an important role in my sabbatical experience.

As we begin this season of Lent many of these experiences are close to the surface of my memory as I continue to learn and grow as a person of faith. I continue to learn from the wisdom of our faith tradition; from current writers and those who lived long ago. And, I continue to explore and integrate the experiences and the learnings that were fostered in that blessed time of sabbath recreation.

For the remainder of this reflection I'm going to share with you the slideshow that I presented to our Council. I offer it with thanksgiving for the precious gift of time and for your blessing while I was away on Sabbatical and your welcome when I returned.

Slideshow accompanied by music:

Ubi Caritas, arranged and sung by Connie Dover, Celtic Spirit CD

Reflection by David for March 6, 2011

2011-03-11T21:41:00.000-08:00

TEXT: Matthew 17:1-9

This story about Jesus transfigured on the mountaintop always raises more questions than it answers. For instance, one of the questions that inevitably arises is, "Is this a story in which the three disciple, Peter, James and John had a common vision? How can three people have the same vision?" Another question is, "Is this a story about Jesus' resurrection that has been inserted into the middle of Jesus' life?" And the most common question is, "What does this story mean?"

The story is consistent with Matthew's story telling content elsewhere in the gospel. Matthew likes dreams: Joseph has a dream in the birth story of Jesus; the dream is that he should wed Mary after all, that she has not been unfaithful to him. The Magi who visit Jesus in this story have a vision of Jesus as a special child, a holy child. The Magi are warned in a dream not to return to Herod to tell him what they found in Bethlehem. And Joseph has another dream that he should flee to Egypt and take his family for Herod intends on doing them harm. Matthew likes to record the dreams of the people in the Jesus story.

Dreams were an important portent in the ancient world, as were visions and strange visitations. Strange voices proclaiming that this or that person is a beloved Child were not without precedence; it wasn't an everyday occurrence, and it was treated as something very special, but it was part of the spiritual experience of that day and our day.

So Matthew used the vision as a way of furthering an understanding of who Jesus is. A voice is spoken, "This is my beloved Child; listen!"
What we know is that Jesus is linked to Moses and Elijah. Moses was the bringer of the Law, the Torah of the Jewish people, and Elijah was the prophet par excellence; Elijah single-handedly fought against the prophets of Baal. Both Elijah and Moses performed miraculous deeds—God was with them and they were revered by the Jewish people as the pinnacle of their tradition. And besides, any Messiah would have to be Moses and Elijah wrapped up together.

What we also know is that Jesus was God's beloved. This is the same voice using similar words as at Jesus' baptism. "This is my beloved Child." Jesus is God's beloved, and by extension, all humanity, all creation, is God's beloved. God declares God's love for Jesus and for the world.

And further, what we know from this mountaintop experience is that Love and Torah and healing are about freedom, or at least that's the way I interpret it. For Jews, contrary to what many of us think, the Torah is a path to freedom rather than prescription for keeping all of the 100's of laws. Many people think of the Jewish Law as a burden, but the Torah is about freeing oneself from the burden of living and knowing joy in life. Love, too, is a freeing thing. Think of what you feel when someone tells you he or she loves you. That first kiss. That first declaration of love. But it is more than romantic love; it extends to all of human relationships. A parent telling a child, I love you. A child telling a friend, I love you. An adult telling a friend, I love you. Many years ago, I remember being told that I was loved. I was a much younger man, we were moving out to Ontario away from family and friends, and my dear friend Kevin told me that he loved. I said it back to him as well. It is hard for men to say those words, I love you, but it was very freeing.

Our latest Thursday morning book is called Storycatcher by Christina Baldwin, who, by the way, will be leading a workshop in Trail in the second weekend in April; she tells the story of an African tribe–the Babemba. In this tribe, when someone does something against the morays of the tribe, the people gather around the perpetrator of this misdeed and then one by one tell the stories of the things that this person has done right. The idea is to appreciate the person back into the better part of him or herself. (Baldwin, page 18-19) Love is freeing.

And the reference to Elijah is about the possibility of healing, the healing that can come to nations when injustices are overturned and the healing that can come to individuals once diseases are acknowledged and treated. There is an obvious sense of freedom that comes with being released from oppression. There is an equal release when one comes through a difficult disease. There is a sense of new life, a sense of new beginning. There is a sense of freedom!
But what do the disciples decide to do, as voiced by Peter, when they have their vision of Jesus, Elijah and Moses? They decide to build three tents, one for Elijah, one for Moses and one for Jesus. They want to make permanent this vision and make a monument. They want to freeze this moment and preserve it; they want to memorialise it, create traditions around it about how to approach this monument on the mountaintop, how to behave when one is around it, what to say, what not to say. In short, Peter, James and John want to create a religion.

But that wasn't Jesus' intention, nor was it God's. Sacred moments are to be cherished and celebrated for what they are, but not hoarded and hardened into monuments. We must let the freedom that comes with these sacred moments lead us more deeply into life, in our humanity and into the humanity of others. And Jesus said as much when he took his friends down the mountain and into the valleys. Life is lived in the valleys and we must share the freedom of this moment with others where they live, where our lives intersect in the meaningful places of the world.

There is a temptation in life to preserve forever some experience, to create a little religion out of the something complete with rules and regulations. But then the experience itself becomes the end rather than freedom, rather than being open, rather than love. And the temptation of religion is to create all kinds of unwritten rules about how to behave, what to do and what not to do, what to say and what not to say. The rules may define us in some way or the religious tradition that we find important, but they can also inhibit the Spirit's movement and the sense of welcome and freedom that comes from truly engaging one another on a deeply human level.

To be sure we are part of a religion, the Christian religion. We are followers of Jesus; we are people of the Way of Jesus. That is, we are followers who choose life and freedom; we choose to challenge the status quo. We choose to engage one another at a deep level. We choose to say, I love you to the world and to one another. We choose to live in freedom and be part of a movement that is free: free to be, free to engage, free to love, free to change the powers of domination. We choose to throw a monkey-wrench into the works whenever the Spirit's freedom is denied or inhibited. We choose freedom because to be free is to live. And we choose to live in the valleys with visits to the mountaintop every now and then. We choose this path, this path of freedom, because it is the path of transformation where the entire world can be free.

Let me leave you with a brief snippet from a song from South Africa about freedom:

Reflection by David for February 27, 2011

2011-03-01T15:56:00.000-08:00

(This was preached as an "off-the-cuff" sermon.)

TEXT: Psalm 131

Let me begin with Nan C. Merrill's rendering of Psalm 131:

Most gracious Presence, let me not be arrogant, nor boast of my virtuous deeds; let me not seek fame or set my heart on riches of the world. Help me to calm and quiet my soul, like a child quieted at its mother's breast; like a child that is quieted, be still, my soul.

I shall hope in You, O Breath of my breath, from this time forth and forevermore. Amen.

When I was away last fall, I struggled with a lot of anxiety—when I was away from here on Restorative Care but also when I went south to the deserts of Utah, Arizona, California and Nevada. I was anxious about travelling by myself. In part this was because of the state of my mind, because I didn't have a lot of self-confidence. Yet, when I crossed the US border and traveled down into Idaho and stayed the night at Couer d'Alene, I felt much more secure. There were still moments of anxiety when I was uncertain about what I was doing and what I was hoping to come out of the two weeks that I spent south in the deserts; I went without an agenda or without a particular destination in mind.

I remember stopping during my sojourn—I spoke about this is December when I spoke about my experience in the desert of Southern Utah where I took one of the backroads and had stopped for lunch and experienced something of God's presence and that whole moving and profound experience. One of the things that kept floating through my mind during this trip was the Sermon on the Mount, especially part of the passage we heard this morning: "Don't worry about tomorrow; let the worries of today be enough for today." That's one of the passages that I've always struggled with as we live in our modern context, in our Western world. Some have suggested that we live in the age of anxiety. W.H. Auden, in the wonderful poem The Age of Anxiety in 1947, lamented the industrialization of the British Isles and the real anxiety that the workers were experiencing because the machines were taking their jobs. The worker's families had been doing the work for generations; but who were they and what were they to do now that the machines and mass-production had taken over their jobs?

Paul Tillich, the great liberal Protestant theologian in the middle of the 20th century, escaped from Nazi Germany. He, too, spoke about the age of anxiety. He spoke of this anxiety as non-being. Non-being. Anxiety has a way of robbing us of a sense of our humanity, of who we are, of who we are called to be, of the gifts that we might have that we can share in the world. It leaves us with this sense of non-being. Tillich spoke a lot about anxiety and non-being. In his book, The Courage to Be, he addressed this head on and referred to God as the Ground of Being.1

Back to this place where I had lunch in Southern Utah. Where I had lunch and had this revelation, there was this rock—a big bluff, actually—and on this rock you could see all these intricate lines. Obviously the lines were where the water had run down the rock over thousands and thousands of years; the water had created rivulet lines in the rock bluff. It was an intricate pattern that was absolutely beautiful.

What I imagine of Jesus when he preached the Sermon on the Mount, with friends gathered around him, is not a fiery sermon but a quiet reflection, challenging the status quo—turning the other cheek and what that meant, walking the second mile, offering your tunic. But I imagine there were moments on the mountain during this "sermon" of quiet and silence during which Jesus invited people to look around... from the mountain top to see the beauty of the world. Not just to see the beauty of the world, for there is a powerful beauty in desert lands, but to look around to the people around. "See the people who are in this with us together," Jesus might have said. "We are not alone no matter how much the domineering elites might want to divide and conquer and make us feel that we don't have enough. God has proclaimed that we do have enough if we share together."

And so as I was looking at these lines in the rock bluff, all I could think about was that I am not alone. I felt somewhat lonely at various moments, but not right then. Not only that this rock had been there for thousands and thousands of years, but I imagined that people had been coming to this rock bluff because it had such intricate beauty—a rock bluff out in the middle of nowhere. I imagined myself joining the pilgrims who went to this rock, with my own prayer shawl that I wore thinking of you folks and thinking of others back in Nelson—Janet and friends—and other friends scattered across the country and around the world. The night before my revelation in the desert I was standing under a clear night sky—in the desert you see the big sky—and saw the stars. I thought of an African proverb that comes from one of the African nations that says when a star falls in the sky, a life-story has been told. As I was walking back to where I was staying that night, a star fell leaving a great tail blazed across the night sky. I was reminded of this proverb and I thought of the many people whose lives we have celebrated over the years. I thought of the story of those lives, thinking, "No, we are not alone." And I saw the jet trails and lights and the steady lights of the satellites, thinking that there is no way we are alone. And thinking more deeply, I wondered that out there in the universe there is some other species, perhaps like us, looking up into the night sky wondering if there is other life. I wrote a poem that night about how we are not alone—more than just that God is with us. In the depth of the starry night, in the warm, hot desert, looking at the rock bluff with all its intricate beauty with its lines woven by God, and time and water, I realized that we are not alone.

As I stood there that night, taking in the starry night sky, I recalled how I had learned to meditate. Back in my early 20's, one of the images that was left with me was that as you are settling into your posture for meditating, imagine that you are leaning on the arms or leaning into the arms or leaning into God. Somewhat of an allusion to the hymn Leaning on the Everlasting Arms. That's how I learned to meditate and that's what I do as I begin my meditation. I imagine myself leaning into God where I can be, where I can know that God is my mother and I am the weaned the child and I can return for solace and for comfort and strength, leaning into God, knowing that I am, that I have being and meaning and purpose and that I am part of this wondrous world that God has made... where I can share, then, my gifts so that others may know that they, too, are precious in God's sight, that they, too, have meaning and purpose whether they be in Libya or Egypt or Tunisia or Burma or in the Congo or in Nelson or in London or wherever folk might be.

Most gracious Presence, let me not be arrogant, nor boast of my virtuous deeds; let me not seek fame or set my heart on riches of the world. Help me to calm and quiet my soul, like a child quieted at its mother's breast; like a child that is quieted, be still, my soul.

I shall hope in You, O Breath of my breath, from this time forth and forevermore. Amen.

____________________________________________
1 Paul Tillich, The Courage To Be , New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952

February 20, 2011 Rev. Christine Dudley

2011-02-20T00:25:00.000-08:00

Scripture Text: Matthew 5:38-48

With thanksgiving, for God's strengthening and sustaining presence within and among us, let us pause for a moment in prayer...

Gracious God, your presence is known to us,
in sacrament and song, in prayers of the heart,
in the face of a stranger, in stories of faith,
in the mystery and wonder of life on this earth
and in many ordinary ways each and every day.
In the harsh realities of our world we pray for your guidance
and persistence that we may be carriers of the gentle touch
of your love and your deep and abiding peace.
With faith and hope, we pray. Amen

As is often the case there is an abundance of themes and issues
which could be explored in the scripture readings today. I've chosen to focus on one short passage from the gospel of Matthew which concerns the topic of retaliation. These brief sayings of Jesus have been largely misunderstood when they have been interpreted from a European or North American perspective. Without going into a long explanation of the history of biblical scholarship, suffice it to say that greater emphasis is now being place on understanding the context (historical, social, religious, political...) in which texts in the Bible were written.

Many eminent scholars have studied the Christian Scriptures and have offered commentaries on today's passages from Matthew's gospel and many refer to the work of Walter Wink whose insights I'll be sharing with you today. Wink has written numerous books regarding systems of power and domination which are present now and were also prevalent where Jesus lived. Wink's book, The Powers That Be: Theology For A New Millennium (Augsburg Fortress, 1998) is an easily accessible distillation of his earlier more complex books and I commend it to you.

Jesus' sayings, in the Gospel according to Matthew, are familiar to most of us; especially the sayings about turning the other cheek and going the second mile. What has been "lost in the mists of time" is the subversive nature of these statements. In our North American culture they sound either merely passive or as a simple encouragement to try harder; extend yourself a little bit more.

Jesus did encourage his listeners not to be passive victims but rather to be active purveyors of God's way of love and justice. Jesus and his contemporaries lived under the oppressive and violent weight of Roman military occupation. The social, political, and religious systems of the day were rife with corruption and abuse of power and there were particular social dynamics such as the "culture of honour and shame" which were active factors in the everyday life of ordinary people.

Jesus' sayings concerning retaliation are brilliant examples of Jesus' radical subversive non-violent action in the face of the oppressive forces of domination and hatred. But, to understand that, we need to know a bit more about why this is true.

In the first of these sayings: "You have heard it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other one also" (Matt. 5:38-39) Jesus refers to the common practice and conventional wisdom of the religious and social system of the day. The "law of retaliation" found in Exodus 21, Leviticus 24 and Deuteronomy 19, say that it is fair to retaliate in equal measure for the wrong committed. For example, Leviticus 24:19, "Anyone who maims another shall suffer the same injury in return: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; the injury inflicted is the injury to be suffered." This is what, in today's language we'd call retributive justice; punishment which matches the severity of the crime.

In response to this mandate, Jesus says, "I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also" (Matthew 5:39) One commentary I read this week says that a more accurate translation from the original Greek text is, "do not resist with violence an evildoer." That's quite different than simply saying, "do not resist".

Jesus' commendation to turn the other cheek supports the claim of non-violent resistance which makes a profoundly defiant social statement. In Jesus' day a person with higher status could strike a servant or someone else of lower status, with the back of his hand to the other's right cheek. This act showed the dominance of the superior and humiliated the lesser person. If a person of lowly status was to follow Jesus' advice that person, by turning the other cheek would change the physical dynamics making it impossible to use the backhanded method. To use a upright punch was only done between equals so in a clever but non-violent action, the victim claims equality as a person in their own right.

Jesus' second example refers to a creditor's right to hold a debtor's long outer cloak as collateral to insure they didn't default on their loan. The average person only had one piece of clothing and one outer cloak which doubled as a blanket.To do as Jesus said and give the clothing as well as the outer cloak would leave the debtor naked and would effectively shame the one viewing the nakedness. This would be a startling action for someone in an inferior position of power to take.

The third example that Jesus gives is about going the second mile. This is a very familiar saying and in our North American culture where it has come to mean someone who goes over and above what it expected of them. Jesus and his contemporaries lived in a land which was occupied by the Roman imperial army. It was common practice for Roman soldiers to commandeer citizens of occupied territories to carry their heavy packs for them. So widespread were these coercive practices that Roman army officials set a rule that a Roman soldier could only make a peasant carry their pack for one mile. The soldier was within his rights to expect one mile but to make a civilian go over the mile would make the soldier vulnerable to disciplinary action. So, when Jesus says, "If anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile" this is meant as a subversive way of taking back the power of choice and putting the perpetrator in an awkward position. Can you imagine how bewildering it would be for a Roman soldier to have to talk a peasant out of carrying his pack for more than one mile all the time conscious that his superior officer would hold him responsible for the infraction. After all who'd believe that an oppressed person, who had everyone reason to hate the Roman soldier, would happily and voluntarily carry their enemy's pack.

In the context of Jesus' day, all of his recommended actions subvert power structures and offer a creative and non-violent way of claiming the power of one's own worth and value as a human being within an inhumane system of domination and oppression.

In any domination system there are two common ways to respond: fight or flight. Jesus is recommending what Walter Wink calls Jesus' Third Way; the way of non-violent resistance which is not passive but rather is an active challenge to systems of violence and domination. One commentary I read this week referred to this Third Way as "active non-retaliation"; "non-adversarial defiance" and "radical resistance". (Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 1, pgs. 383 and 385)

Many people in the twentieth century learned from Jesus' teachings and created non-violent resistance movements in response to unjust social and political systems. Two that easily come to mind are Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr.

Mahatma Ghandi was of the Hindu faith but was profoundly influenced by Jesus' life and teachings. The impetus for his program of non-violent resistance came from the passage from Matthew's gospel that we read today. There are many examples I could give of Ghandi's creative use of Jesus' Third Way in his efforts for social justice in India. One example which Wink gives, which I hadn't remembered, is that
"Ghandi insisted that the British had a moral obligation to arrest him when he broke their laws, even when it was politically expedient for them to let him go. Once, when Ghandi was in jail, his followers held a celebration congratulating the British for imprisoning him. Demonstrations were illegal, but how could the
government arrest well-wishers?" (The Powers That Be, p. 116)

Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist minister, was deeply grounded in Christian faith and was inspired and motivated by the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. In his leadership of the Civil Rights movement in the United States he was also profoundly influenced by Mahatma Ghandi's modelling of non-violent civil disobedience. King travelled to India as a guest of Prime Minister Nehru to study and learn more about Ghandi's philosophy and non-violent resistance strategies. King incorporated what he learned from Ghandi's experience into his own leadership of the Civil Rights Movement.

There are many other examples I could give from different places around the world where Jesus' Third Way has been implemented effectively to reveal injustice and to press for social justice reforms.

In Canada, many of us admire Nellie McClung whose creative actions with others worked to change Canadian law to recognize women as "persons" with the right to vote in political elections. I could do a whole reflection on McClung's interpretation of her Christian faith and how it motivated her passion for social justice. For now I'll share with you an example, from our current Canadian context, of a creative response to the oppressive forces of prejudice and abuse of power. On September 19, 2007, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, two young men, David Shepherd and Travis Price, decided to stand up for another student who had been called a homosexual and threatened by bullies for wearing a pink shirt to school. David and Travis went to a discount store and bought 50 pink tank tops, sent out the message to schoolmates that night and the next morning handed them out to students to wear. When the boy who had been bullied came to school Travis said, "It looked like a great weight had been lifted off his shoulders. The bullies were never heard from again." Pink Shirt Day has been adopted in many schools since then as a non-violent anti-bullying protest. This coming Wednesday, February 23, has been designated as 2011's anti-bullying Pink Shirt Day.

God's way is the way of love and peace and justice. If we pay heed to Jesus' example we will fill our lives with love rather than resentment, hatred and prejudice and we will find creative and non-violent ways of subverting injustice and working for the peace of God's commonwealth.
May we be creative and courageous in our response to Jesus' life and teachings.

I'll end with an adapted excerpt from a poem by Ted Loder, entitled "Strengthen Us to Answer with Brave Hearts", found on pg 64 of his book, My Heart in My Mouth: Prayers for Our Lives:

God of grace, as you did with Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr., Nellie McClung, David Shepherd and Travis Price
...strengthen us to answer with brave hearts your call to help shape a world not of death and oppression but of life and hope.
...strengthen us to help shape a nation where diversity is a source of enrichment, compassion is common
...suffering lightened through sharing, justice attended, joy pervasive, hope lived
...and together with you and with each other we build what is beautiful, true, and worthy of your generosity to us, and echo of your
commonwealth.

With the passion of the prophets, and in the insistent spirit of Jesus, we say, Amen and Amen.