Click below to see archived sermons for each month:

October 2011

October 30, 2011 | October 23, 2011 | October 16, 2011 | October 9, 2011 | October 2, 2011

Sermon for October 30, 2011

Blessed Are You
Rev. Shannon Mang
Read: Matthew 5:1-12

The Beatitudes are much loved, and there is a lot more to them than first meets the eye. We'll begin with some Bible study to unpack this familiar passage.

What does "blessed" mean? The children chose the version of the Beatitudes that translates makarios as 'happy' because they could understand 'happy'—they couldn't understand 'blessed'. How many of us understand what it means to be 'blessed'. We get what it means to 'have blessings' that we can count… 'one by one' or to 'feel' blessed with the circumstances of our life… but the way we use the word 'blessed' or 'blessings' in regular life feels different from the 'blessings' of the beatitudes- most of the eight beatitudes are not what would consider 'blessed' situations.

Blessing is kind of like the word 'believe'- easy to say but hard to understand- we live our belief… and our blessings more than we 'understand' them- we know and live them from our hearts… There is the story of mom who sent her child to school every day after combing her blessings into her child's hair. There is the story of the little racoon whose mom placed kiss on his paw each day so he could have a kiss anytime he needed one.

This teaching comes at the beginning of Jesus' ministry- Matthew is setting out a code of behaviour meant to shape a community that is vastly different from the culture that surrounds it. The teaching cuts against the grain of conventional wisdom, it is counter-cultural in Jesus' time… and in ours. Its goal is not to destroy social order—but to express a new ethic- a new set of values- a new way of seeing our neighbours and friends—it is about forming a new community that will behave very differently from the dominant culture.

The beatitudes are a statement of God's favour; The beatitudes are not requirements that we must achieve to be accepted or acceptable by God… The beatitudes are what happens when we embrace the reality that we start out with God's blessing- and, now matter how difficult our circumstances, God's blessing invites our joyful response. The word makarios starts each beatitude. The literal translation of the word is "O, the blessedness of . . ." This blessedness describes a happiness that comes from a right relationship with God, rather than emotional bliss or good fortune as the word is normally used in everyday conversation.

Let's take the familiar translation of the Beatitudes and unpack them. (from God With Us: A Pastoral Theology of Matthew's Gospel, by Mark Allan Powell) The first four expresses God's favour on those whom society has left behind. :

5.3 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" This refers to the dispossessed and abandoned ones in Israel. However, Matthew's inclusion of "in spirit" indicates something more than just financial poverty, but also spiritual poverty - the loss of hope.
5.4 "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." The ones who mourn are those who find no cause for joy. They are blessed because 'they will be comforted,' a divine passive that implies God will act, so they need mourn no more" [Powell, p. 135].
5.5 "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." Greek can have a positive sense of "humble" or "gentle," but it can also have the negative sense "humiliated" or we might say, "the walked on," "the doormats," "the powerless." They "inherit" their blessing. It is not a reward that one earns, but a gift for which one must wait. …"The praus are ones who have not been given their share of the earth. They have been denied access to the world's resources and have not had opportunity to enjoy the creation that God intended for all people" [Powell, 126].
5.6 "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied." "Continually hungering and thirsting"… A reference to people who continually long for God to make things right, longing for vindication and justice. The images of "hunger" and "thirst" not only depict desire, but also deprivation -- the people who do not experience justice -- the people who know that God's will is not being done on earth.

The people who benefit when God rules, Jesus declares, are those who otherwise have no reason for hope or cause for joy, who have been denied their share of God's blessings in this world and deprived of justice -- in short, people for whom things have not been the way they ought to be. For such people, the coming of God's kingdom is a blessing, because when God rules, all this will change and things will be set right. [Powell, pp. 129-130]

The second set of four express God's favour on those live out behaviours in relation to others that is consistent with the values of the Kingdom of God:

5.7 "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." "The merciful" are healers, people who seek to put right that which has gone wrong. They favour the removal of everything that prevents life from being as God intends: poverty, ostracism, hunger, disease, demons, debt. [Powell, p.131] The blessing pronounced on the merciful is that they will receive mercy. Surely this means that they themselves will be treated with mercy on the final day of judgment, but in a broader sense it may mean simply that they will see mercy prevail.
5.8 "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." the pure in heart are those who are truly pure as opposed to those who are only apparently so … as people who are truly pleasing to God, they have offered the world a vision of what is godly. Those who will see God are those in whom something of God has been seen." [p. 134]
5.9 "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God." agents of God who are actively establishing shalom "peacemaking" is not a passive attitude, but exerting positive actions for reconciliation
5.10 "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." The virtue being promoted is not persecution, but commitment… it is our human activity to participate in what God is already doing… And when we participate in the 'stuff' that God is already all about- it will NOT be an easy road!

The first two sets of four were expressed in the third person- 'blessed are they'- the last beatitude is expressed in the first person:

5.11 "Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.
5.12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you." It would appear as though the author of Matthew is speaking directly to those who are currently undergoing persecution and this beatitude is meant to encourage and fortify the resolve of the faithful ones.

Jesus isn't setting up conditions or terms but rather is just plain blessing people. All kinds of people. All kinds of down-and-out, extremely vulnerable, and at the bottom of the ladder people. Why? To proclaim that God regularly shows up in mercy and blessing just where we least expect God to be - with the poor rather than the rich, with those who are mourning rather than celebrating, with the meek and the peacemakers rather than the strong and victorious. This is not where citizens of the ancient world looked for God and, quite frankly, it's not where citizens of our own world do either. If God shows up here, blessing the weak and the vulnerable, then God will be everywhere, showering all creation and its inhabitants with blessing.

We are already blessed- our calling is to live into that blessing- live in the Kingdom of God and hang out with those we know God is hanging out with. The more we claim our own blessing- the more we become a blessing in the world.

So let's bless one another today- during the offering and the passing of the peace- you are welcome to come forward to Wilma or I and receive a blessing- and then you are also welcome to pass this blessing along to others as you greet them. The more we practise blessing and being blessed the more we live into the message of Beatitudes… Blessed are you!!

May it be so!!

Sermon for October 23, 2011

Everything hinges on this
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: Matthew 22:34-40

A good question.

A Pharisaic "expert in the Jewish Law" asked Jesus, ³⁶"Teacher, what is the most important commandment in the Law?" In answer, Jesus said, "'Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.'" (That is The Message paraphrase.) This was not original or novel. Every obedient Jew is expected to recite this commandment upon rising every morning: and every synagogue service begins with this text (found at Deuteronomy 6:5). It is called the Shema: "Hear, O Israel, the LORD is God, the Lord alone, and you must love the LORD your God with all your heart and soul and strength." Consequently the Pharisee lawyer already knew this commandment to love God. He knew how important it was. But perhaps he had a further question in mind - how do you obey this commandment?

That is a good question, and it is one that is still with us. People don't normally see or hear God. In fact the reality we point to with the word "God" is beyond our perceiving, beyond our conceiving. How do we go about "loving" that which is incomprehensible?

It is not an idle or speculative question. Children everywhere in church schools or religion classes are told that they should "love God". They have every right to say to us, " want to love God. So how do I do it?"

Two commandments, linked.

Perhaps because Jesus sensed that question to be in the Pharisee's mind, he added something. He linked the commandment to love God to another part of the Torah - the duty to love one's neighbour. Then he said, "These two commands are pegs" - another translation might be "door hinges" - and "everything in God's Law and the Prophets hangs from them." When Jesus juxtaposed those two commandments he cast a whole new light on both of them. We can appreciate more fully what it means to love God by thinking about the requirement that we should love each other.

This was completely typical of him. He makes the reality of the transcendent God accessible to us through everyday realities. That is what he did in his parables. You want to know what God's attitude towards us is like? Then, said Jesus, consider a parable about a betrayed father who runs into the streets to welcome home his errant son. This was the genius of Jesus. He could make God available to our minds and hearts through the most pedestrian elements of daily life. And that's what he does here in his response to the Pharisee lawyer. He illuminates love for God by placing it alongside love of neighbour. Love of God and love of neighbour are linked. Love of God and love of neighbour are two sides of one coin.

An example close to home.

Let us explore this through a very tangible and everyday aspect of our life right now in this congregation. Today we are blessing some more of the prayer shawls that St. Andrew's folks have knitted or crocheted. It is so appropriate to bless them in worship, because these prayer shawls are undoubtedly a great blessing to those who receive them. They are a wonderful gift. Now consider the meaning they might have to the persons who create them. Why do our knitters and crocheters create these beautiful blankets?

Obviously not to sell them for a profit. Nor are they just a hobby, a project to relieve boredom. Nor are they created from a belief that by our doing good to others now someday that benevolence will come back to us. "What goes around comes around." That would be mere self-interest, much like in marriages of convenience where each spouse is trading what they give for what they can get. The commandment in the Torah goes beyond self-interest. It does not say "care for others so that you'll be cared for." It says: "Love one's neighbour as oneself". We know quite well how to look after our own interests. We are challenged to move past that, and look out for the interests of others to the same degree.

I am sure that the motive in our prayer shawl ministry goes beyond desire for gain, need for recreation, or the calculation of self-interest. The knitters and crocheters do this out of genuine care for those who will be blessed by this gift. It is indeed a labour of love.

Empathy.

Now one final step. What makes us engage in such a labour of love? What gives rise to the capacity in us to care about the well-being of another? Part of the answer is this. We have an ability to see things from the other person's perspective, to empathize, to "walk a mile in their shoes". Neighbour-love rests upon empathy.

To love God is to empathize with God's love.

These reflections about neighbour-love help us to make sense of the commandment that we are to love God. To love God is to empathize with God's love for the world. To love God is to identify with God's care for creation, and particularly for us. God has a purpose for each and all of us. She wants the well-being of each and all of us. She loves each and all of us, in the sense of having infinite compassion towards us. Therefore she wants us to love what she loves, to love all her children, all her creatures. I can't put it better than one of our staff members did as we were engaging this text: "Love me, love my kids."

And that requires us to see things from God's perspective, as best we can. God wants us to step back from our own small self-concern and look upon our neighbours in need as God looks upon them. In helping our children to develop their relationship with God we can develop a habit of inviting them to ask how God looks upon the situation. "Yes, I know Mandy ruined your school project and I know you want to pay her back, but how do you think God looks at this?"

In our life with God, everything hinges upon this.

A door with hinges; Love God, Love your neighbour

The essence of being in a good relationship with the Holy One is to look at things from God's perspective, to see the world through God's eyes, to align our priorities with God's priorities. These are the two hinges upon which hangs the doorway into blessedness: to love God by seeing things with the compassion of God, and to love others by showing them, in our actions, compassion like that of God.

May it be so.

Sermon for October 16, 2011

Knowing God, trusting God
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: Exodus 33:12-23 NRSV

Emoticons.

I think most of you would recognize this little symbol when it shows up in an e-mail: ☺ It is called an "emoticon". These were developed in the early days of e-mail as a way for the sender to convey emotions. Even now in many e-mail programs if you type ":)" the program automatically converts it into the little smiley-face emoticon ☺. This indicates to the recipient that you intend your words as a joke. Emoticons like this are necessary because words on a screen don't give you nearly as much nuanced understanding of what the sender means as, say, a phone call would. Even better would be a video call over the Internet with a program like Skype. Then you could see the facial cues and clues of the other person. So much is communicated by how you "read" the other person's face.

The unknowable self.

But we can never read another person fully. Even face-to-face we can never fully grasp what another person is thinking or feeling. In a couple who have been married for 60 years sometimes one of the partners can be left wondering what is really going on inside the other person's head. We know this limitation and we live with it.

The hiddenness of God.

The same limitation holds true for God - in spades. We could never expect to comprehend the full reality of God. Of course - for God is, after all, the creator of the universe, and by definition, fundamentally independent of time and space, which are qualities of the universe. This sets up something of a paradox. God is hidden and incomprehensible. God is "other". Yet - and this is astonishing, when you think about it - God is also present, close to us and not distant.

Transcendent and immanent.

To put it in theological terms, God is both transcendent and immanent. That is to say, God is present, available, indwelling, "pervading the universe" (as the dictionary defines "mmanent"). Yet God is also transcendent, greater than anything in the universe, and independent of it. There is a reality to God which is simply beyond our knowing. We can never have a Skype call with God.

The strangeness of conversation with God.

God can be in this world, but never of it. In consequence, when God enters the world and communicates with a human being at a certain time in a particular place the resulting conversation will be very peculiar. Such is the case in the strange dialogue between Moses and God presented in today's text from Exodus.

What is strange about it is the peculiar character of God's side of the dialogue. God never seems to answer Moses' questions directly. In an earlier chapter of Exodus, in the episode of the burning bush, Moses had asked about the identity of this God of his ancestors. This God had appeared and interrupted Moses' life and called him to lead the Hebrew people out of their Egyptian slavery into a new venture with God. But how could Moses trust in this new manifestation of the sacred? It would help if he at least knew God's personal name. But the name God revealed was puzzling: " am who I am" or " will be what I will be". That was both an answer and not an answer. In one way God had answered the question: "My name is I-will-be-who-I-am". But in another sense this had raised more questions than it answered -questions like, "OK, if you will be what you will be - what will you be?"

That was back at the burning bush. Now in this later conversation with God, presented in today's text, Moses is still baffled. He continues to press God for some guidance he can trust. How can he lead the people in the name of God if he doesn't really know the character of this God named ""I-will-be". So he asks: "¹³... Show me your ways, so that I may know you".

God's "presence."

God's response is again puzzling. He does not exactly answer this request to show Moses his ways, but instead makes a promise: ¹⁴ ... "My presence will go with you". This both reveals and hides. It reveals a new idea - the notion that God has a "presence" of some kind, a manifestation that will attend the Hebrews as they cross the wilderness. But the puzzle returns: what exactly what can this "presence" of God be?

It mystifies Moses. To try to understand it, he resorts to an idea about divine beings that would have been more familiar to him from the religions he would have known in Egypt. The gods of the peoples of the ancient Mediterranean world were sometimes described as having a "glory", a radiance, a shining halo around them. (The metaphor probably rests upon the brightness of the sun which will blind us if we gaze upon it.) So when Moses hears "presence" he thinks "glory", and he asks to see the "glory" of God.

God's peculiar "glory."

Once again, God's response both reveals and hides. Yes, says God, I will reveal myself - I will parade my goodness in front of you.

That would have amazed Moses. The concept that the core quality of the divine being is goodness would have been a revelation. All the gods of all the other nations of the Mediterranean world were unethical, amoral, arbitrary in their power, interested in human beings only if we sacrificed to them. But this God whom has encountered Moses in the wilderness is radically different. She is profoundly ethical. She spells out for him the meaning of her divine name, which this time sounds like this: " will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy." This is the "glory" of the Hebrew God and it is very different from the glories of the other gods. It is not a physical luminescence. Instead, it is a moral brightness, God's essential graciousness and her essential compassion.

This revelation is wonderful. The fullness of God may be necessarily hidden from us - ²⁰ [God] said, "You cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live." Nonetheless the essence of God, the key qualities of her character, are fully disclosed to us. God is grace and compassion.

That grace and compassion Moses and his people came to see played out through the "mighty acts of God", as the great "-will-be" led them out of the wilderness and into a place of their own. They embarked on a great and daring venture - to build a collective life focussed around the Torah, the law that God would give them, so that through following Torah the grace and compassion of God would be made real in everyday life. They did not know God completely. No one can. But they came to know God sufficiently to entrust themselves into her care and keeping.

We too can know God sufficiently to entrust ourselves to him. For us who seek to follow the Way of Jesus, we know enough of God's love and caring power. We see it in the teaching and living, the dying and the rising, of Jesus. There we see the transcendent God immanently at work as the Spirit, shaping our world, shaping our communities, shaping our hearts. That is enough for us to give ourselves into God's care and keeping. That is enough to carry us forward into great and daring ventures of the Spirit.

May it be so.

Sermon for October 9, 2011

Thanksgiving - a Way of Living
Rev. Shannon Mang
Read: Deuteronomy 8:1-18

Who needs God? Last week, with the death of Steve Jobs there has been a lot of reflection on his gift of innovation and his impact on the world of computers. Was there life before Windows? How did we use computers without a mouse? or… a touch screen. So many things that we take for granted in our computing lives came from Apple… particularly personal computers and their role in our lives.

In the summer of 1999, my mom and I tagged along with my sister to New York City - we were on holiday, but my sister was working. My sister Laurie, was a computer systems manager for a graphic design company and every year she would go to a Mac World conference. Over dinner she would talk so excitedly about the workshops and presentations she'd gone to through the day. She talked about little hand-held computers that were being developed that would be able to do way more than the sleek and powerful desktop computers that she worked with every day. She died the following summer - so she did not get to see those products come to the mass market. It has occurred to me in the past week that she'd like nothing more than to hang out with Steve Jobs.

In my sphere of family and friends and colleagues there seem to be two types of people: the iPeople who already have an iPod, iPhone, or iPad in their lives… and those who wish they did - the iWannabes. Whether we're iPeople or iWannabes, reality is that we're living with stuff that filled science fiction just a few years ago…

We literally have the world at our fingertips - we can get any kind of information imaginable - if someone asks a question, we can 'google' that right now - on the spot
If someone wants to know 'where' something is - or 'where' they are at the moment - there is no such thing as being lost because we've got GPS and Google maps right in the palm of our hands.
And we can communicate! We can connect with ALL of our friends ALL at once and share the details of our lives from the banal to the profound. And, as we watched the 'Arab Spring' unfold, we saw how this ability to communicate en masse can… and will change the world.

Last week I was particularly conscious of how the new technology has impacted my life. I can quickly text my kids any time just to say hi or pass on one bit of information that can be squeezed into 140 characters. For some time I've had the habit of talking with my girls a couple of times a week… and now I can see them when I talk with them - Skype is wonderful.

We have become like gods:

We see and talk in real time with our family or business colleagues around the world.
We can click on a city web-cam pretty much anywhere in the world and see what the weather is like and what ordinary people are doing.
We think nothing of stepping on to a large metal cylinder to fly somewhere around the world.
A few people will make a decision that will send the world markets tumbling… or will cause a spike in growth.

With such god-like powers is it any wonder that for so many in our culture who are 'plugged into' their devices 24/7 and who are learning to wield such personal power… that God is a quaint old idea? Just don't ask them if they're happy.

Chapter 8 of Deuteronomy is not an iPhone recording of Moses speaking to the people of Israel before they entered the Promised Land. It was written many, many generations after Moses and the words were written into Moses' mouth to give them credibility. There was likely an oral tradition of the teachings of Moses as they stood at the River Jordan about to enter the Land that they'd travelled towards for 40 years through the wilderness. The writer, or writers of Deuteronomy were hoping to get the chosen people of God back on track, so these teachings would have been collected with a specific purpose. The people are told over and over in Deuteronomy to REMEMBER!

the God who delivered you from Egyptian slavery;
the God who led you through that huge and fearsome wilderness, those desolate, arid badlands crawling with fiery snakes and scorpions;
the God who gave you water gushing from hard rock;
the God who gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never heard of, in order to give you a taste of the hard life, to test you so that you would be prepared to live well in the days ahead of you
- The Message

Moses wants them to remember how they were fully reliant on God - God took care of their every need in a harsh environment. Once they came into the land they would become self-sufficient. Which is exactly what had happened! They had forgotten who they were before they entered the land - they had strayed from the laws of Torah - they had begun to assume the religious practises of the conquered people of the land and their neighbours. The writers of Deuteronomy were calling them back to themselves - urging Israel to REMEMBER the story!! They must tell the story over and over to each generation so they would know who they were; so they know how much God loved them and it was from God that all the blessings of the land flows. They were given dire warnings to keep from believing that their wealth and the blessings of the land were of their own doing. They were warned about turning themselves into God.

So what about us - right now. We are a Christian community surrounded with god-like technology and power. We're in our small corner working out what and where God is calling us to serve the community and world. In our celebrating 50 years of ministry in 2008 and through our visioning we have acknowledged what we've had - a history of people serving faithfully in each decade, and… a building that has served us well for 5 decades. And now we're facing a decision about our future. God was a part of the original plan and God's call has been lived out faithfully the past 53 years… and God has been a part of the visioning process the last 3 years… the conversation has been about how to best use the gifts that originated with God… how can we be most faithful in our stewardship of building and land in the second decade of the 21st century.

On this Thanksgiving Sunday, and through the Fall, we are being called to LIVE OUT the gratitude - and to consider the "highest and best use" for the resources we've been given to steward. Lots of research and study has gone into looking to the greatest needs of our immediate neighbourhood, and our city. Today we too are being reminded that everything is a gift from God. The gift of land and building has been given to us in order to live out our calling, and like we have been called so many times over the past 53 years, we are again asked to remember that it is all about living out our calling to be faithful followers of the Way of Jesus - and to ask, in this time and place how will we steward the resources given to us by God to live out this calling.

"Jesus' most poignant prayer - prayed when he knew he was soon to die - was simply this 'Thy will be done.' This is not defeat or resignation, but astonishing faith that there are spiritual forces that will bear him up, regardless of the outcome… Paradoxically, it is often cowardice that makes us hold on our own small solutions, it takes infinitely more courage to surrender."
- Muller, p.170

We're being called to remember over and over that all we have has come from God, so in gratitude, we surrender it, and give it all back to God - without attaching strings. This passage speaks to us about letting God be God and our call is to do the work in quiet - because it is the work God has called us to - not for the glory or recognition it might bring. So, we must let go our need to be leaders and innovators and our desire to be recognised for our leadership and innovation. This is no easy task to surrender our ego needs… but we have examples: Henri Nouwen gracefully said no to an invitation by the Clinton's to be with them through their dark days in the White House - not because he didn't think that their difficulties were important - it was just that the disabled man named Adam who he was caring for needed him more.

Jesus quotes the famous line from the Deuteronomy text about how humanity can not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from God - when he is being tested by Satan following a 40 day fast and was challenged to turn the stones into bread. Nouwen wrote that the temptations that Jesus faced were: "To be useful. To be important. And to be powerful." These temptations will be present for all who desire to do good in the world. We are called to serve the world out of our humility.

"Jesus did not seek worldly power or influence. He spent time with unknown, disliked people. Be faithful in small things, he said, and you will be faithful in great things. He held up models: the Good Samaritan, who goes out of his way to help completely anonymously, and seeks no reward; and the poor woman at the temple, who stealthily puts her two pennies into the collection box. As Mother Theresa reminded us, we do no great things, only small things with great love."
- Muller p.174

We must serve the world… but we're not the one in charge… the God job posting has already been filled!!

Like the people of Israel just leaving 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, we are reminded to be F.R.O.G.S. - Fully Reliant On God's Strength!

May it be so!!

Sermon for October 2, 2011

A christened heart
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: Philippians 3:4-14

I was asked this week an important question, a timely question. How does the stream of Christianity in which we travel - small-l liberal Protestant Christianity - regard the other faiths around us? The questioner had particularly in mind the issue that in the present era is so pressing and so momentous for the geopolitics of our age - what is our understanding of Islam?

That is a big and difficult question. But it is helpful, because it invites us to think about what is essential about our own faith. How then should Christians in our liberal "mainline" tradition regard the faith of our Muslim neighbours?

An immediate answer that is often heard is "there are different paths to the one mountaintop". That is a simple and vivid metaphor and it is a deep conviction held by many people. But in truth it is too simplistic. Within each main "route" to the top of the mountain there are many paths, diverging and converging in complex interplay. It's probably better to talk about the general direction which each of the major world faiths takes. Or to put it another way, God has different ways to approach us and different means to shape the human heart. These are present in all the world faiths, but each religion tends to focus on one way more than the others.

Consider the three "Abrahamic" religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I suggest that each has a distinct focus, a central or unique issue, a dominating orientation. Judaism focuses around a people, God's chosen people, chosen to be "a light to the nations". Islam focuses around a revelation, a discipline, a word to live by, namely the Qu'ran. Christianity focuses around a person, Jesus of Nazareth, whom our contemporary Creed professes to be "the Word made flesh".

Christianity is oriented around the person of Jesus of Nazareth. We can see this understanding at work in today's text from Paul's letter to Christians at Caesarea Philippi. He points out that he was raised a faithful Jew: "10 I am from the people of Israel and the tribe of Benjamin. I am a Hebrew of the Hebrews." But that ethnic identity is not the basis of Paul's relationship with God. If he is in any way in a right relationship, if he has any righteousness, that is not because he belongs to the chosen people. Instead, he says, it is based on his "knowing Christ". Or again, he writes, "5 ...With respect to observing the Law, I'm a Pharisee." He means that he has been scrupulous in following the Torah, obedient to its every detail. Seven hundred years after Paul Islam would appear with its intense focus on obedience to a divinely revealed code of behaviour. But for Paul that kind of ethical obedience is not what secures his standing in the eyes of God. Instead, what connects him to God is that he is included in the "10 …power of Jesus' resurrection". He writes, "10 The righteousness that I have comes from knowing Christ". "Knowing Christ." Another way Paul sometimes puts it is that he lives "in Christ".

This is the clearest way in which Christianity is different from Judaism and Islam. It focuses on a relationship with Jesus Christ - Jesus of Nazareth who is for us the "Christ", the Anointed One of God.

In this way Christianity is different - but not superior. I underline that and put flashing lights all around it. The distinctiveness of the Christian way is not better than the Torah, which distinguishes the Jewish way, or the Qu'ran, which identifies the Islamic way. It is simply a different way through which God comes to us and we go to God.

The intention to "know Christ" or to be "in Christ" is, so to speak, part of the Christian DNA. So if one of our Muslim neighbours were to ask us what is the basis of our faith, we might answer: "Well, Paul the Apostle says it about 'knowing Christ'." Of course, they might then ask us what that means. In fact, we might ask that of ourselves.

We had better ponder that. What does it mean to "know Christ"?

Does it mean to experience some mysterious vision of Jesus? Not necessarily. Paul himself, famously, had a blinding encounter with the resurrected Jesus on the road to Damascus. It was a mystical experience of the Sacred that re-oriented his entire life. But Paul himself would be the first to acknowledge that a person does not need to have a vision of that kind in order to be part of the Christian way.

Do we "know Christ" by becoming part of the Church? Not exactly. Paul himself underwent spiritual transformation when he became part of a particular Christian community. In the first years after his Damascus Road experience he was taken in by the "people of the Way", as they were called. It was quite astonishing that they would welcome someone like him, an enemy who had set out to persecute them. But that was how open-hearted they were. Because they followed the Way of Jesus they were "reborn" people, and in their company Paul too became "born anew". But Paul himself would undoubtedly acknowledge that there is a difference between acting according to the norms of the new community and living in union with Christ. Acting in a Christlike way is one thing, and a very good thing; being a new creature in Christ goes beyond that.

How? I wonder if what Paul means by "knowing Christ" is this. One's personal story, the narrative of one's life, becomes caught up in the story which Jesus told and which he lived. That is the story of the Reign of God coming into force in our world. Jesus announced that the sovereignty of God is making its way into our lives and into the world's life. Then he told parables, stories about that coming Kingdom. Then he went further. He lived out the reality of God's Kingdom by reaching out in the name of God to those who were ill or dying or despised. In a way his life was a lived-out parable of the Reign of God. Jesus' story is the story of God's Spirit transforming the world. And his life-story climaxed in the great final chapter, his confrontation in Jerusalem with the powers of the age, and his dying, and his rising.

In a nutshell: to know Christ is to absorb the story of God's Kingdom into our innermost self and live it out in our world. To know Christ is to have our hearts "christened" - shaped in imitation of him.

That sounds fanciful. But it is eminently practical and concrete. Here is an example. We should hesitate to canonize our friends, but we do need an example. Every time Jan Tollefson visits our congregation (as she did two weeks ago) to keep us connected to her projects in the Dominican Republic, her Add Your Light Foundation, we see a living example of someone who is trying to "know Christ" by absorbing the story of the Reign of God into her heart and living it out as her story in today's world.

That is a concrete, tangible instance of trying to "know Christ". Here is another example of how to "know Christ". It is intangible but very real. Whenever we gather at this communion table, we are seeking to "know Christ". Think of the symbolism. We take into our bodies the "bread of life". That is symbolic of taking the story of Jesus into our story. We expose our deeper self - our feelings, our imagination, our attitudes - to the force of the Way that Jesus taught and lived. We set ourselves anew upon the path of transformation. We risk the christening of our hearts.

May it be so.

September 2011

September 4, 2011 | September 11, 2011 | September 18, 2011 | September 25, 2011

Meditation for September 25, 2011

The New Creed - The Words We Say Transform Us
Rev. Shannon Mang

Since 1989 I have worked with 8 pastoral charges in the United Church of Canada; 3 of those were multi-point charges so I have had leadership in 11 congregations. Apart from the churches I've been employed in, I've worshipped regularly in approximately another 10 United Churches since my childhood. Out of 20 or so churches, St. Andrew's is the first of all those congregations to say the United Church Creed weekly.

How many others here have had the same experience- how many of you have come from other United Churches that used the Creed in worship only occasionally? And how many have come from churches that had the same practise as St. Andrew's- that said the United Church Creed together every Sunday?

The point I'm making is that St. Andrew's United is a unusual in its practise of saying this creed weekly. I grew up saying the original version of the Creed that Liz read: "Man is not alone, he lives in God's world"... every time we had communion... that was 4 times a year. And when there was a baptism or on Confirmation Sunday, either the New Creed or the Apostles Creed was said When Greg and I started in team ministry on Wadena Pastoral Charge in 1988 we used the Creed more often- each time we celebrated either baptism or monthly communion. There was a confirmation resource based on the New Creed that I used for both youth and adult membership classes. I asked the participants to memorise the Creed- so that was when I too, memorised it. So, I was really familiar with the Creed- I liked it. When I first started worshipping with you I thought "Well, that's different!" as I realised that the recitation was a weekly occurrence.... I had similar thoughts about the candle carts..... the candle lighting in the middle of the service was an entirely new practise to me. Familiarity has not bred contempt... I used to like the United Church Creed well enough, but now I love it. The same thing happened with the candle-lighting practise too... now, I wouldn't want to be without either of these practises.

Another quick poll- how many of you would really miss saying the Creed together if we just pulled it from the Sunday service?

Occasionally we do leave it out of the order of worship- unlike the majority of our sister congregations who occasionally include it. We left the New Creed out of our worship during Lent of 2007 in order to introduce you to The Song of Faith- our new Statement of Faith that was approved by the General Council in Aug. 2006. Right now, I use the Song of Faith as I used the New Creed a few years ago- it shows up occasionally in worship and I've used it in faith formation settings, but I LOVE the Song of Faith with the same sort of passion that I currently LOVE the New Creed. Its poetic language articulates my belief so closely- it really makes my heart sing. It is a long poem that tells our story as a church, and my story as a follower of Jesus- unfortunately, its length makes it challenging to use in worship. We develop a relationship with words that we encounter over and over again- whether those words are read in silence, or spoken aloud. Our practise here at St. Andrew's of saying the United Church Creed weekly has altered my relationship with this set of words and made it much more meaningful to me.

Through Sept. As STEPS has been introducing the meaning of the New Creed to the children I've been reflecting on this relationship that we have with these words. I wonder how mere repetition in worship has changed how I relate to this statement? I wonder what makes this important to me- and to us? Here are a few of my thoughts on how my relationship with the New Creed has changed with constant use: Repetition- there is both comfort and challenge saying this set of words each Sunday. When I was on sabbatical last year and I was worshipping in lots of different churches in Calgary and on my travels I came to realise 1. How much I'm influenced by our pattern of worship here- our liturgy... and how much I miss it when it is not a part of worship... and 2. How strange it is for folks who are exploring churches for the first time. Other churches have stripped down their liturgies to a bare minimum of parts... most did not even repeat the Lord's Prayer together. So having the Creed repeated weekly is a comfort to me, but our challenge is to help it make sense to those new to it.

Ritual - rituals are infused with meaning. Rituals that belong to a group help that group step into sacred time. Something as simple as saying a table grace together makes a big impact on the everyday coming together of a family to eat food- saying prayers with our kids or grand-kids before bedtime invites the holy into our daily routine. At worship becoming familiar with the New Creed and the Lord's Prayer helps us participate in sacred space- it tells us that what we are doing is about more than "just us"- and what we are doing is more than "just now". Having a familiar pattern helps us participate and enter into worship in both as individuals and as a group.

Meaning- this set of words is more than just a set of words- it has deeply felt meaning for me- I don't choke on these words! One of the people who took part in the Study time we had with the Creed said "there is nothing here I don't believe". I can say all of these words with integrity- which is something I do not experience with either of the other two historical Nicene or Apostles Creeds. I don't want to discredit the historic creeds- many of you will have the same sort of relationship with them as I have with the New Creed- they form your beliefs and understanding of the Christian faith. And others of you may not have the same sort of relationship as I do with this creed- you may find that you cannot say the words with integrity- this is why it is important to pay attention... and have conversation about the words we say together, and what their meaning is for us. For me, the words and ideas stated simply in the New Creed opens me up- the words invite an exploration of my faith- they don't draw limits around my beliefs.

Identity- saying the Creed every Sunday helps to remind us of "who we are"; and it helps to remind us of "whose we are". With the first line, who we are and the nature of our relationship with God is articulated:

We are not alone,
we live in God's world.

It tells us about hte God we believe in… and in whom we trust:

We believe in God:
who has created and is creating,
who has come in Jesus, the Word made flesh,
to reconcile nad make new,
who works in us and others by the Spirit
We trust in God.

And it tells us about the church we are called to… and become…

We are called to be the church:
To celebrate God's presence,
to live with respect in creation,
to love and serve others,
to seek justice and resist evil,
to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen,
our judge and our hope

and it places our lives, and our deaths, and the mystery of eternal life in the ultimate context - "with God":

In life - in death - in life beyond death
God is with us
We are not along
Thanks be to God

The United Church has often been accused of not knowing what it believes in- of not taking a firm doctrinal stance. The truth is that the United Church has always taken its statements of belief and doctrine very seriously and through its short history of 86 years it has repeatedly re-worked its formal statements to make them meaning-full. If anything, we have not celebrated our words enough. The evolution of this Creed is evidence to this process. The United Church has actively sought to make its formal statements of belief relevant to each generation. This process continues. This year the national church is inviting all congregations and presbyteries into a time of study and reflection on our Words of Faith between Jan.- April 2012. This study time will equip our Council to vote in a national decision about our statements of faith with the goal of taking all of the historic statements and including them in The Basis of Union- which is the constitution of the United Church of Canada. You will be hearing more about this as we get closer to the study and reflection time. The significant point is that as a national church we are continuously articulating our faith and beliefs and this process is always open and inclusive of all.

As St. Andrew's draws close to big decisions about the faithful stewardship of our building and property and about our future mission as a congregation and as one of many congregations sharing ministry together, letting the words that we say together each Sunday continue to shape us will become even more important as we listen to discern God's call for us in the coming years together. We will not go astray if we seek boldly to live out the call to be and become the church described in the New Creed- nor will go stray if we live into the trusting relationship with God that we affirm every Sunday.

In life - in death - in life beyond death
God is with us
We are not alone
Thanks be to God

Sermon for September 18, 2011

The feast at our feet
Read: Exodus 16:1-16
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

Othniel ben Reuben stretches as he emerges from his family's camel-hide tent. His bones ache now after these weeks of wandering in the wilderness of Sinai. He asks himself whether this desert misery is really preferable to the lashes which the Egyptian slave-masters had inflicted upon his back. The supplies he and his fellow Hebrews have brought with them in their flight are, even after rationing, virtually gone. In his belly he now hears the grumblings of the unwelcome guest of hunger pangs. Once again the thought returns to him which he has not yet had the courage to speak aloud: what use is this freedom promised us by our leader, Moses? He says a new life is promised to us by Yahweh, the God of our ancestors. Well, we can't eat a promise.

Othniel lifts his face towards the rising sun. As it warms his limbs, stiff from yet another night of shivering under the desert stars, he remembers how the Sun God of the Egyptian s seemed so powerful. The Hebrews' life in the brick pits had been harsh but at least it had been stable. Their diet had been very poor but at least it had been reliable. But now Moses was leading them into who-knows-what, lured by a God you couldn't see, towards a land that would be their own - or maybe it was nothing more than a hope for such a land.

As Othniel shakes the heavy dew from the travel packs he notices something very peculiar. Under each of the tamarisk bushes in the grove where they have camped there seems to be a hoarfrost. Could it have been that cold last night? He summons his son from the tent and together they kneel down into the thick white flakes. The young lad has sharp eyes. "Father," he says, "this white stuff - it's falling from the tree itself."

[I pause in the story for a parenthetical comment. Here is a probable scientific explanation for the phenomenon that Othniel and son are witnessing.

In the Sinai Peninsula, "a type of plant lice punctures the fruit of the tamarisk tree and excretes a substance from this juice, a yellowish-white flake or ball. During the warmth of the day it disintegrates, but it congeals when it is cold. It has a sweet taste. Rich in carbohydrates and sugar, it is still gathered by natives, who bake it into a kind of bread."
Theodore J. Wardlaw, "Living by the Word; Reflections on the Lectionary (Sunday, September 18, 2011)", The Christian Century, September 6, 2011, Page 19

Now back to the story.]

Othniel's boy says to his father, "Tiny insects are covering the tamarisk fruit. Their droppings are gumming together to make this white stuff. What is it, father?"

Othniel replies, "'What-is-it', indeed. I have no idea." [Another parenthetical comment. In the Hebrew language, the phrase "What is it?" translates as man-hu, from which we get the name used in all English translations of the story in the Bible: "manna". Back to the story.]

The boy gingerly tips his finger in and tastes it. "This man-hu, father, whatever it is - it's delicious!" Othniel snorts: "You'll never find me putting insect droppings in my belly!"

And grabbing his son, he stomps off to the tent of Moses. "What is this? You told us that this God of yours will give us bread every morning. All I'm seeing is some kind of gross I-don't-know-what. What is it?" So Moses follows them into the tamarisk grove, inspects the stuff, tastes it, thinks about it. He thinks about it a long time (because, even being God's special friend, Moses doesn't always get it). Finally he says to Othniel: "You ask, what-is-it? This man-hu is the bread that Yahweh God has given you to eat. Sure, it's not what we're used to. Sure, it may be hard to swallow insect droppings. But be sure, too - this is what we need. Do not be blinded to the feast that lies here at our feet. It is so easy to let the ways that are so familiar to us prevent us from seeing the new ways that Yahweh God is opening to us. This 'what-is-it' is all we need."

This story of the man-hu warns us - that which is so familiar to us that we assume we must have it can obscure for us that which is unfamiliar to us but all we really need.

Another story, to underline the point. In the middle of the London "blitz" during the Second World War a small-shop greengrocer is brought to a physician's surgery by the rector of the local Church of England parish. The clergyman explains the man's situation to the doctor: "Mr. Wardell here claims never to have been sick a day in his life and has had nothing to do with doctors. But he has a severe shrapnel wound in his right thigh which, untreated, has now become infected." Wardell reluctantly agrees to allow the physician to examine the injury. The doctor hands him a sample box of white pills and fills out a prescription for two further weeks of the medication, explaining that he must take two tablets with each meal. Wardell squints suspiciously. "What is it?"

"Penicillin," replies the doctor.

"Peni-what?"

"Penicillin. It's an antibiotic, which will inhibit the growth of the bacteria that's infected your leg."

Wardell snorts, "I don't care if your Auntie Violet made this or not, I'm not taking it if I don't know what's in it."

The doctor tries to be patient. "Look, this is a new kind of medicine. Dr. Fleming discovered it a dozen years ago. It has now been thoroughly tested and it works."

"But what's in it?"

"Well, it's made from bread mold."

Wardell exclaims in terror, "Mold! You'll never get me to put that green slime in my belly! I'll stick with what worked for my mam, and her mam - herbal cures, and maybe a leech to suck out the poison. "

The rector intervenes. "Wardell, man, open your eyes. This is the medicine that our good Creator has made possible for us. Sure, it's not what you're used to. Sure, it is unsettling that something wonderful can come from something as unpleasant as mold. But be sure, too - this is what you need."

Grudgingly, with still more than a hint of skepticism, Wardell takes the pills. And he survives the infection, because sometimes the ways that are so familiar to us must not blind us to the new blessings God has laid at our feet, in something as humble even as bread mold.

Jewish and Christian tradition calls manna "the bread of life". And truly manna, man-hu, is a vital metaphor for our living. The ways that are familiar, the trusted tried-and-true, are our first recourse when we are confronted by challenges. But in the desert places of our lives, such as Othniel ben Reuben experienced, let us remember the man-hu, and realize we must sometimes take courage and leave the familiar behind. In the moments of peril that may overtake us, such as Wardell faced, let us keep in mind the "what-is-it". In such times let us not allow our comfort with the familiar to obscure the blessings all around us from God, who always waits with solutions, with possibilities, with "the bread of life".

Sermon for September 11, 2011

Faith in power, or power of the faith?
Read: Exodus 14:26-30; Matthew 18:21-35
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

On this 10th anniversary of the Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on the eastern United States on September 11, 2001, the significance of "9/11" continues to overshadow us. All the public media, even the sports pages, are remembering and reflecting on the momentous meaning, at least for North Americans and Europeans, of those airliners turned into missiles and of the "war on terror" that has been the response of Western society for the last decade. For once the cliché is accurate: "The world has changed", changed in ways that call for profound reflection.

And so this weekend voices in the religious communities are addressing some of the fundamental dilemmas in which we find ourselves. All the major Christian denominations in North America, including our own United Church of Canada, have produced worship materials to mark this solemn remembrance. And in many mosques also prayers for the families of survivors will be offered and the imams will struggle to deal with the repercussions for the whole Muslim community of the actions of the numerically tiny proportion of worldwide Islam devoted to fanatical and violent jihad.

It is both necessary and daunting, then, to bring the witness of our faith to such reflections. It is necessary because we have not yet learned the lessons of this decade. It is daunting because the issues on the world stage are so complex and the experiences are so emotionally charged that it is hard to say anything significant without lapsing into either simplistic platitudes on one hand or ideological shouting on the other.

But here is one thing that can and must be said. It is something that can and must be said by both the majority of Christians and the majority of Muslims. I offer it in the form of a slogan: the way of God is the way of the open hand, not the way of the closed fist.

Let me explain that. 9/11 and the response to it, the various invasions and counterterrorist actions known as the "war on terror", has often been interpreted as a "clash of civilizations", a contest between an Islamic society perceived as aggressively expansionistic on the world stage and our Western society which is still somewhat Christian and Jewish in its outlook.

This widespread belief about a spreading conflict between these religions is far too simplistic. Each religion is internally complex, composed of multiple strands, different traditions, incompatible theologies. Both Christianity and Islam have internal disagreements In particular, both Christianity and Islam display a tension, even a contradiction, with regard to the matter of violence and God. Both Christianity and Islam struggle with the question of how people should respond to evil. There are two competing answers. One position asks us to put our faith in physical force; we must meet strength with strength, attack with counterattack, violence with counter-violence. Consequently when an evil is threatening our community, or family, or self, that evil must be confronted, with violence if necessary. The deep conviction here is that, ugly as it may be, the reality of "an eye for an eye" is just the way the world is, always has been, always will be. We might call this "faith in power", specifically the power of physical violence or the threat of it. At its most basic, faith in power says that when someone raises a fist to strike you, raise your fist in response.

But the way of the fist is not the only way to respond to an evil that threatens us with violence. There's always the possibility that we might meet a raised fist not with a fist of our own but with an open hand. A hand held up to say no. An open hand that can absorb a punch without throwing a punch in return. We might call "the way of the open hand." It is a daring stance to take, a strategy in life that looks totally foolish to hard-nosed followers of the way of the fist. Indeed, we can embrace the way of the open hand only if we ground ourselves in the daring commitment which is the life of faith, religious faith. The way of the open hand requires us to believe in the power of faith. Specifically, it challenges us to believe that if we pursue the virtues of faith - seeking the wellbeing of our neighbours, being always ready to forgive wrongs done to us - then an alternative and creative way of dealing with the threat of evil will always arise. The way of non-violent resistance to evil should be our strategy in life because it is always God's strategy.

Here before us are the two paths, the way of the closed fist and the way of the open hand. The Way of Jesus embraces the latter. We know this from his teaching. In his parables and other teachings of the kingdom of God, Jesus did not side with those who understand God as potentially violent. That side is well represented in the Hebrew Scriptures, such as in the story which the lectionary gives us today of the drowning of the Egyptian army. That story portrays a God who responds to evil through violent means. But in our other text today, Jesus lays down a principal which reflects more closely the mind of God: if someone within the community of followers of the Way harms another, must the injured party forgive the offender? Yes, says Jesus, not just once but "seventy times seven". That is a figurative way of saying that those who seek to follow the Way of Jesus must be prepared to forgive again and again, indefinitely, never repaying harm with harm.

Jesus did not just teach this, he practiced the way of the open hand. He confronted and challenged the evils of the economic system of the Roman Empire that were oppressing his people; he acted in a way to challenge systems of oppression in all times and places; and he laid his life on the line to do this. His final confrontation with the powers of the age, and his death, and his rising, are a demonstration by God of the power of nonviolent resistance to evil. Remember all the images you have seen of Jesus on the cross. Nailed through the wrists, his hands hang, unclenched. They are open, apparently defenseless, apparently with no power. And now think of all the images you have seen of the risen Jesus, who holds his hands out - wide open - to those who would follow him.

A white supremacist in Dallas, Texas, named Mark Stroman set out in the days following 9/11 to exact revenge against anyone he perceived to be Arab. He shot three people, all of South Asian origin. Stroman later acknowledged that he was motivated by hate. He believed that anyone who appeared to be an Arab was an enemy who deserved to suffer retaliation from his shotgun. Only one of his three victims survived, a gas station attendant named Rais Bhuyian, born in Pakistan but a naturalized US citizen. Although he lost his right eye when Stroman shot him, in the years since then Rais Bhuyian has drawn on the resources of his faith and found a way to respond to the evil Mark Stroman committed. Bhuyian fulfilled the faithful Muslim's duty to make the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. There he thought more deeply about what had happened and began a campaign of forgiveness. Bhuiyan said his Islamic faith led him to realize "hate doesn't bring any good solution to people. At some point we have to break the cycle of violence. It brings more disaster." "If I can forgive my offender who tried to take my life, we can all work together to forgive each other and move forward and take a new narrative on the 10th anniversary of 11 September." Indeed this remarkable Muslim American turned his campaign of forgiveness to the task of seeking a release from death row for his assailant.

John Dominic Crossan likes to raise this question of evil, violence, and the ways of God, as one of the central questions of faith for people the 21st century, indeed of any century. Crossan asks: What is the character of your God? When you think about the nature of the divine, do you imagine that God may sometimes resort to a violent response to evil? Or do you conceive God as never resorting to violence and always finding a creative, nonviolent, alternative way of resisting evil? Rais Bhuyian has given his answer, exhibiting a forgiving spirit as part of his moderate form of Islam. Crossan gives his answer: "We are bound to whichever of these visions was incarnated by and in the historical Jesus. It is not a violent but the nonviolent God who is revealed to Christian faith in Jesus of Nazareth". [God and Empire; Jesus against Rome, Then and Now. 2007, page 95]. As we join with people of goodwill all around the world who together confront this great issue of our age, what is our answer?

The question is still open. Evil is not defeated and must still be resisted. The journey to a nonviolent world has just begun. The way of the fist is still being followed all around us. For there is this sad irony: the institutionalized violence of capital punishment is still the policy and practice of the state of Texas. Despite the pleas for clemency from Rais Bhuyian, on Wednesday, 20 July, in a Texas prison, Mark Stroman was executed by lethal injection.

Sermon for September 4, 2011

Put On Christ
Read: Romans 13:8-14
Rev. Shannon Mang

We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord
We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord
And we pray that all unity may one day be restored
And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love
They will know we are Christians by our love
- They'll Know We Are Christians By Our Love
- written by Peter Scholtes ©1966 by F.E.L. Publications, Ltd.

This was one of the songs that shaped my Christian identity in the 70's through my teen years. I would have sung it a couple of times a year in church with the youth choir in my church from the time I was in grade 6 to grade 12 - and it was a song that was sung through the summer when young people gathered or when folks from the church got together to visit- eat- and sit around a fire. By the time I was in grade 12 my church involvement went beyond the youth choir to include being in youth group- being a part of the leadership team for the youth group and becoming the youngest elder on the Board of Stewards - yes - I was a 'church geek'. My church involvement significantly shaped my identity, not only as a Christian, but as a person… who I was… what mattered most… and how I was going to live in the world.

For the most part, my church community was a really positive place to grow into myself. As I was taking on leadership roles in the church I began to have an impatience… a desire for challenge. Being cosy and caring was a good thing, but I felt as though my church was not REALLY making much of a difference in our town. When we sang "They will know we are Christians by our love" - the bold statement of the chorus made me a uncomfortable: "And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love , They will know we are Christians by our love" I had developed a critical eye for my own community and I wondered if "they" really would know that "we" were Christians because of the way we loved so well. I remember turning the chorus into a question instead of a statement… "Will they know we are Christians by our love?"

I am proud to say that the year after I left home my home church was one of several hundred United Churches who sponsored Vietnamese refugees. They became the new family for 5 young adults and teens who escaped Vietnam and came to Canada from refugee camps without their parents. In a very real way my church said yes to a big challenge and they did demonstrate their love to the community in a very profound way. And… they were forever changed.

Paul is writing to the Christian community in Rome and challenging them to be known for their love. Paul is interpreting Jesus' teaching about the Great Commandment: that love is the fulfilment of the law. Paul's passion was sharing the radical message of Christ's love for us. Once people experienced that love of God, through Christ they were forever changed. They came together into communities that were radically different from the culture around them. Paul worked with individuals, and through his teaching those individuals' lives were radically transformed… but the point of the transformation was not about individuals. Paul was creating new communities- the new Christian house churches were, in fact new family units outside of what was normal—these new families were living proof of the Kingdom of God - they were communities 'In Christ'. This went so far beyond their previous experience of either family or religion. When Paul spoke to the new Christians about "putting on Christ" or "being clothed in Christ" he was talking about this brand new collective identity - they literally were a new kind of family.

To 'Put on Christ' was to shed one's earlier identity. Rod and I have often talked about how central family identity was in the culture of Jesus and Paul. This would point to the common experience in the early Christian church of entire households being baptised at the same time. Having an entire family, including slaves and employees become Christian at the same time would have made the transition to this radical new form of family easier than for those who converted as individuals - because if one converted as an individual, they really would be severing their biological family ties… in becoming a follower of the Way of Jesus, both Jewish and Gentile Christians would have shamed their families and they would have been disowned.

The communities of the Way of Jesus- the followers of Christ were profoundly different communities from their surrounding culture. They drew individuals… and family units into themselves because they lived out their lives very differently. They shed their individual and collective identities - and they put on Christ and they became a part of God's dream - they were evidence of the Kingdom of God. In 2 Corinthians 5:17 Paul talks about this new reality saying "If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!".

So much of Paul's letters to the communities he helped bring into being in Corinth and Galatia and Philippi are practical teachings on how to live in these radical new communities of Christ, and to not bend to the pressures of conforming once again to the culture around them. When they were together, Paul said "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28) This really would have been like stepping into an alternate reality for them - it is difficult to get our heads around - we experience differences between cultures and genders and economic class - but the early communities who had shed their identities to "put on Christ" together were bringing entirely different worlds together around table fellowship. Jews and Greeks might have lived together in a town but their paths would only cross on the surface - and the same could be said of the worlds of men and women - or the worlds of owners and slaves - these worlds in ordinary life would rub up against one another but they were very separate existences.

Once all of these very different people had an experience of new life 'in Christ' they had something radically new in common… and it was this radical new experience that they lived out in their new family. In Romans 13 Paul is encouraging and teaching the new family of Followers of the Way of Jesus to continue to strive in their new life to 'put on the armour of light' and to live differently than those around them. Since they have all 'put on Christ' their everyday (and every night) behaviour will be different then those around them who still live in darkness. Their behaviour will be the evidence of their life 'In Christ".

We live in a very different time and place than the first communities of Followers of the Way of Jesus- but our call to be radical communities clothed in Christ really is no different than the call to the first Christians. We too strive to live in a different way than the culture around us- and in striving to 'be clothed in Christ' we work to change our communities and our world. As we work together to envision the future that God has for us, perhaps we come a little closer to experiencing something of the radical nature of those new communities of Jesus followers who had 'put on Christ'. Like them, we are looking beyond the comfortable trappings of being church and discerning a future focused on asking "How then shall we live?" as followers of Jesus today. What is it that matters most? What does it mean for us to put on the armour of light and be clothed in Christ? It is just as radical a call to be a family, gathered around the table of Jesus, and strive to follow in His Way. Will they know we are Christians by our Love??

We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord
We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord
And we pray that all unity may one day be restored
And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love
They will know we are Christians by our love

May it be so…

August 2011

August 7, 2011 | August 14, 2011 | August 21, 2011

Sermon for August 21, 2011

New Life In Christ
Read: Romans 6:1-14
Rev. Shannon Mang

Here are some photos from our recent history:

Photo of London following the August riots
London - district of Peckham following the riots Aug. 6-7, 2011

Photo of Vancouver police car following June riots
Vancouver on June 16, 2011 - support for the police

What struck me with the aftermath of the riots in Vancouver and London was the often-repeated message, "This is not us! This is not who we are!" The collective shock, and shame needed to be expressed- so 'walls of shame' showed up in the communities hardest hit in the aftermath of the riots- places where the neighbourhood expressed its collective grief and anger over the mindless violence of the riots… and in those places the goodness of the communities and the collective love for those communities was also expressed. There was a need to say emphatically that whatever happened on these streets is NOT a reflection of who we really are.

Photo of Vancouver citizens cleaning up June 16
Vancouverites on June 16 - mass clean up effort

In Vancouver, we saw residents step and do much more than write messages on the plywood of boarded up store windows – or the post-it notes on the police cars… Even as the riots were still being brought under control in the early morning hours, there was a massive Face Book phenomenon going on spreading the word to come out en masse the morning after the riot to the areas where the rioting had been the worst and help with the clean-up. There seemed to be a collective need to participate in the cleaning process. City workers were shocked to find the clean-up well under way when they got to work that morning. Their job was to coordinate and supply the 1000's of people who had responded to the Face book appeal with garbage bags and rubber gloves and brooms.

Apparently the grass-roots clean-up in Vancouver driven by social media, inspired similar grass roots responses in the UK this past month. There was mass appeal for communities to come together and express in tangible ways who they "REALLY ARE".

Paul, in the sixth chapter of Romans is doing an ancient equivalent to that social media message following the shameful realities of riots out of control in our time. Paul was writing to the small communities of Jesus followers; he was imploring them to show their world- "who they really are". I like Eugene Peterson's metaphors in the paraphrase of this passage from The Message:

"If we've left the country where sin is sovereign, how can we still live in our old house there? Or didn't you realize we packed up and left there for good? That is what happened in baptism. When we went under the water, we left the old country of sin behind; when we came up out of the water, we entered into the new country of grace—a new life in a new land!"

For the new followers of Jesus Christ, the Cross was a doorway into a new life. Most of the ordinary people in the Roman empire would have found the message of the Jesus followers deeply compelling. Ordinary life was neither easy nor safe. The upper classes may have appreciated some of the benefits that came with Roman rule- a peaceful state firmly under the thumb of a highly efficient army—and an economic system of world trade- also made possible through a highly efficient army, and access to some of the roman innovations like a sewer system and running water, and in-floor heating--- but these benefits were enjoyed by a very small minority of people. Most people suffered under Roman rule. Most people did not have the ability to thrive under the rule of Caesar- the prince of peace—a peace that was maintained by Caesar's highly efficient army.

The death of Jesus by crucifixion is very- very important. Borg and Crossan tell us in The First Paul that death by hanging on a cross was reserved for only two categories of criminal- "those who challenged imperial rule (either violently or non-violently) and chronically defiant slaves." Run of the mill variety criminals would have had the benefit of faster and cleaner death penalties. Political prisoners and run-away slaves were crucified in a public, a painful and drawn-out manner to make an example of them—the manner of death was used as a deterrent in a culture that was seething with suffering and unrest. Jesus was certainly not a chronically defiant slave—so to talk about his crucifixion was to claim Jesus as an anti-imperial figure who was put to death by Rome because of his anti-imperial message. Paul claiming the importance of Jesus' death therefore, was also claiming an anti-imperial message.

The empire killed Jesus. The cross was the imperial 'no' to Jesus. But God had raised him. The resurrection was God's 'yes' to Jesus. God's vindication of Jesus--- and thus also God's 'no' to the powers that had killed him" p131-132

Preaching Christ crucified was the very foundation of Paul's teaching. Jesus Christ was the incarnation of the one living God- his life of teaching and healing were all about expressing the reality of the Kingdom of God whose rules were a polar opposite to the rules of the Roman Empire. His death was a result of threat that his message and movement posed to the Roman Empire- so the powers of his day killed him very publically as a lesson to others who might challenge the status quo. But the story did not end with his death- God's 'yes' was stronger than Rome's 'no'- Jesus was raised to new life. For Jesus, the cross was a brutal reality- but it was also the doorway to Resurrection.

The Christian church has spent most of its history misinterpreting the meaning of the cross. The western Christian church took its lead from Anselm… Borg and Crossan stress that for Paul writing two to four decades following the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus- the cross was absolutely central—but it did not mean that Jesus died 'for' our sins. It meant that Jesus died because of 'sin'- the whole of life under Roman rule was full of sin and suffering- full of greed and corruption- full of violence. That SIN-FULL culture had SIN-FULL powerful, people who publically crucified Jesus as a political prisoner… and that death sentence could not keep him dead. The SIN-FULLness of the world killed Jesus- and God said 'no' to that SIN-FULL world and 'yes' to a new life.

This is why the cross is our doorway into new life in Christ. Jesus died FOR us in order to provide a way into new life--- the new country. Atonement has come to mean a sacrifice "for" our sins… Paul never meant that. Atonement- can be broken down—it means "at- one- ment"—in Jesus' death and resurrection, we are ". at-one" with God. In Jesus' death and resurrection, we get to be a part of God's "YES". In Jesus Christ we live in a land beyond the powers of all the ages- we live in a 'grace sovereign country'.

Baptism is a symbolic death- in baptism we die with Christ when we go under the waters—and we are raised to new life when we come up out of the waters. Gotta say- the symbolic mystery of baptism lost much of its power when we stopped having full-emersion baptisms! Going down to the river and being plunged under the running water- then being lifted up out of the water is a much more graphic depiction of dying and rising to new life in Christ. But- that doesn't take away from the real power of all of our baptisms. As babies or children or adults- when the water is poured on our foreheads in baptism- we become new people in a new land. And every time that we witness a baptism we are told to 'remember our baptism and be grateful'—this is not to bring to mind the time and place of our own baptisms—most of us only have stories of the day we were baptised as infants… it is a way of saying: Remember who you are; you have died to this sin-full world and now you live a new life in Jesus Christ. It is a way of saying: Be who you are.

"Remember your baptism" also means, "Remember who you belong to." Since Jesus died on a cross and God raised him to new life… and since we've been baptised and in our baptism we have died with Christ and we've been raised with Christ, we are a part of Christ's body- we belong to God! For Paul and his readers- everyone belongs to someone or something. To put it even more strongly, everyone is servant or slave to someone or some thing. Before baptism we were slaves to a sin-full world. (Romans 6:6) After baptism we are "dead to this sin-full world and alive to God in Christ Jesus." (Romans 6:11)

Peterson translate Paul saying:

Our old way of life was nailed to the cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin-miserable life—no longer at sin's every beck and call! What we believe is this: If we get included in Christ's sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection. We know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it was a signal of the end of death-as-the-end. Never again will death have the last word. When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us. From now on, think of it this way: Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word. You are dead to sin and alive to God. That's what Jesus did. (Romans 6b-11)

I wish I could go to the Borg and Crossan event in Edmonton where they will be looking at reclaiming Christian language. I'm sure they'll talk about being 'born again'. It is such a powerful turn of phrase that unfortunately has come to pretty much mean that 'Jesus died for your sins' because we are such horrible and nasty sin-ful creatures. Perhaps we, who want to claim a renewed understanding of the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ should claim proudly that "we've died again"- because the REAL life that we live is not our own- it is new life in Christ. We should start a 'died again' movement… every time we claim our death in Baptism and our unity with Christ's death on the cross it is a claim that we have let go of that sin-full country and we've taken up residence in the Body of Christ. We could go door to door asking our friends and neighbours and family members if them- 'died again'? Of course dying again points to being 'born again' in Christ… but we do need ways of re-claiming the concept!! Every time we 'die again' we let go of a bit more of our attachment to this world so full of sin that distracts and disconnects us from the grace-filled country of new life in Christ.

Last week I spoke about my conversation with our previous moderator David Gilliano- and his comment that the fact the United Church of Canada is dying is our greatest gift—it is just so hard to help the people of the United Church really believe that it is a gift. He was talking about the need to let go of way we've been church for the last 50 years—that way of being church worked really real for that time and place but it is a burden to our calling to be followers of the Way of Jesus Christ in our time and place. Of course we must let go of that church- and in doing so we allow room for the new way of being followers if the Way of Jesus emerge. In dying we are raised… not to build more edifices- but to be raised to New Life in Christ—to be the Followers of the Way of Jesus- here and now unencumbered by past personal sins and regrets and unencumbered by our collective past glories … and mistakes.

Like the citizens of Vancouver following the insanity of mindless rioting… and like the citizens of London following the mindless rioting that started out being a peaceful protest over the death of a young man… we say "that's not who we are" to the world full of sin that distracts and separates us from our true home in a Risen Jesus—we are more than this- we live by a different set of rules. So- let's get our shoes on and grab the brooms and garbage bags--- we've got some serious cleaning up to do!!

May it be so!!

Sermon for August 14, 2011

Nothing Can Separate Us From the Love of God
Read: Romans 8:34b-39
Gaile Weekes and Rev. Shannon Mang

Sung: Deep in Our Hearts - Verse 1

Gail's Story - I want to tell you a little bit about my son Stephen Keith Fournell. I had six miscarriages before he was born. I prayed alot. I would get down on my knees and pray to God letting Him know that if could give Abraham and Sarah a baby in their old age. I knew he could give me a baby, too. I believed that and had faith that God would bring me a son. Well it happened and Stephen was born on October, 1965. He was God's child.

In 1994, when Stephen was 28, he relocated from Ontario to Victoria, BC. At that time he started up a waterproofing business with my brother. They worked at it for about three years and then had an opportunity to sell the business. This was a good time as Stephen had decided to go back to school to study engineering.

He had one more job to finish in Nanaimo. It was waterproofing a portable water tank. The night before he left to finish the job he had dinner at our house. As he was going out the door he said, "I have a bad feeling about this job, Mother". I said.. "just walk away from it Steve", just walk away, don't go back tomorrow'. He said I can't I gave my word. That's the kind of guy he was, he gave his word, and then he left for home.

The next day I was getting ready to do my prayers and meditation which I did then from four to five in the afternoon as I waited for Geoff to come home from work. I got ready, lit the candle, and settled in. Then I got the urge to turn on the TV. I didn't really pay any attention to it but then it happened again I got up and walked part way to the TV room and then turned back then I got a real strong push to turn on the TV. This is what I saw on the TV screen. I saw what looked like Steve's truck turned over on the highway with the long waterproofing hose along the road. I knew right away that something terrible had happened to Steve. I tried calling his wife..no answer. I was so sure that something was wrong that when Geoff came home I said something's wrong with Steve. We have to rest. We turned on some classical music and lay down on the floor and just rested and listened to the music. Around six that night the phone rang and it was Stephen`s wife Angie. She said the police had been trying to contact her that Steve had been in an accident and was in the hospital in Nanaimo. There had been an explosion. Angie came to our house with their two children and we drove up to Nanaimo right away. By the time we got to the hospital it was around eight o'clock.

The doctor met us and I knew right away that Stephen was gone. The doctor asked me to identify the body. Geoff and I went into the room and saw Stephen lying on a table. He had only a bit of a singed right eyebrow and a bit of singing around his right ear. He was red all over. No disfigurement. He looked so natural as if he were just sleeping. I knew then that without a doubt God had prepared me by showing me on the TV that Stephen had an accident although it wasn't a traffic accident it was an explosion. I was able to cope. Because of my deep faith in God He gave me the strength to cope with the shock and the sadness.

The next day we were watching the evening news when the story of the explosion came on. I wasn't expecting it. I went hysterical, crying and yelling. Someone called the ambulance. When the ambulance came I said "No" "No. I'll be alright. God is with me and He will help me with this. And He did.

Someone said to me in the St. Andrew's lobby one day. You must have had a happy life because you are always smiling. Well I've had a life of trials and tribulations but God has always been there for me. No matter what I knew I could count on God.

Stephen was a wonderful son. The three years he lived in Victoria. He would call me every night just to say "goodnight". He loved the outdoors and used to hunt but in the last couple of years he would go out in the bush and lay under a tree and just listen to the birds sing and watch the deer. That's where he was the happiest.

Sung: Deep in Our Hearts - Verse 2

Shannon's Reflection: Gail's story helps us reflect on how we have been sustained by our relationship with the Divine through hard times in our personal lives. We heard Gail say that she had an active prayer life before Steve was born, living through 6 miscarriages- yet she continued to ask God for the gift of a child- and when that child arrived she experienced him as God's gift. She also described a continuing prayer life at the time of his death- her prayer practise opened her up to a suggestion- a "divine direction" to prepare for tragic news. Gail's practise of prayer provided her life with a foundation that could not be shaken- even through the experience of such a grief as the tragic death of her son. Gail's practise of prayer makes her a 'practising Christian'.

On Tuesday morning there were other stories shared of how a living relationship with God / Jesus/ the Holy Spirit built personal foundations that gave meaning and shape through one's regular life- and created the stronghold that held life together during crisis's. Being a Christian who 'practises' prayer, or meditation, or mindfulness in the little everyday decisions makes a huge difference when faced with challenges that come out of the blue. Times of real hardship can be experienced as catalysts for change and opportunities to grow, not a time to shut down. Having a Christian practise can help us keep open hearts, and open minds, open eyes and open hands in the midst of chaos- to see and work with the opportunities and possibilities that are being born in the midst of that chaos. The experience of living Paul's teaching that 'nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord' makes a huge difference in our lives and it influences those whose lives we touch.

Telling our stories of how prayer- or mediation- or mindfulness- or gratitude- or questioning- or challenging – or serving -- has made a difference in our personal lives, makes an impact on all of us. Being a community of faith means we are a place where the stories of our lives of faith are shared… and in the sharing we all grow. We have always been called to be a community of 'practising Christians'- individuals who practise their faith— and who live it out in the world. In the telling of our stories we become a community of believers who KNOW that 'nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord'. There is real power in a community lives this out…. This creates a community that is fearless... a community that trusts that God has already done great things 'in and through' us, and trusts that God will continue to do great things "in and through us". If 'nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord' in our personal lives—we can grow into fearless individuals… and if 'nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord' as a community of faith, then we can grow into a fearless church family. Fear-less and faith-full are the same thing—if we practise living this teaching from Paul we are full of faith—leaving no room for fear. The challenges we are living with are opportunities to see what God will do in our midst.

A few years ago I had the opportunity to just hang out and chat with our Past Moderator, David Guilliano in the bleaches of the rec centre where the Annual Meeting of Alberta and Northwest Conference was being held. It was at a point in the meeting where the reporting was deadly boring and I noticed our Moderator sitting on his own in the bleachers. I went and sat beside him and introduced myself--- and I asked him "what's it like being the leader of a national church that's dying?"

Before I tell you how he answered me, I want to give some back-story. David was one of the youngest Moderators to ever be elected. His powerful mantra through the proceedings at the General Council in Thunder Bay where he was elected was "don't be afraid!!". It was a message that the church needed to hear at that moment in our history. Then- shortly into his 3 year term he experienced a recurrence of brain cancer. Suddenly he had to live his own message to not be afraid. He did not step down from his position—instead he invited the entire church to share his journey through cancer treatment. The timing of our personal conversation was nearing the end of his term.

His response to my question of "what's it like being the leader of a national church that's dying?" was "the fact that we're dying is our greatest gift… the problem is that it is very hard to help the church see its greatest gift."

Some individuals become absolutely fearless when faced with their own death--- Lloyd Flood was one of these people- he faced his own death fearlessly- full of faith and confidence. This is the sort of thing that David Guilliano was talking about- having gone through his own rather public facing down of his own mortality and real possibility of death. He was calling the whole church to fearlessly face our own death as an institution--- we can no longer sustain the structure of an institution of the 50's and 60's. We cannot continue to live as that church--- so that church must die in order for the new church to emerge. Our greatest gift is that we are dying--- dying to the way we've been for the last short while if we take the long view of our history. We must allow the church as we know it to die--- it was built to handle the realities of the mid-20th century – not the early 21st century.

This is a gift because we are a community of practising Christians- we pray- we question- we serve and we worship. In our personal lives we live and we learn and we grow in our faith knowing that 'nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord' AND as a community of faith we live and we learn and we grow in our faith knowing that 'nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord'. Nothing needs to faze us—we're going to be OK because we trust in God—who is, after all, in the resurrection business!

May it be so!

Sung: Deep in Our Hearts - Verses 3-4

Sermon for August 7, 2011

It's Not About Us!
Read: Romans 4:13-25
Rev. Shannon Mang

This past week I was influenced by 2 stories of how our Muslim neighbours have helped focus and shape the Christian life of the tellers. The holy month of Ramadan began this past Monday. One of my FaceBook friends posted a blog from the Christian Century site by Chad Holtz who, on reflecting on Ramadan wrote:

Christians need a Ramadan
Aug 01, 2011 by Chad Holtz
My last year at Duke Divinity I sat in on a panel discussion between Sam Wells, dean of Duke Chapel, and Abdullah Antepli, Muslim chaplain to Duke University. In the course of their discussion about Islam and Christianity, Imam Antepli said something that disturbed me a great deal about my faith. It went something like this:
When I ask a Muslim what makes them a Muslim I get an immediate response which includes things like, I pray 5 times a day, I take care of the sick and the poor, I do not eat this or that, I fast on a regular basis and I observe Ramadan. These practices make me Muslim, they would say.
Imam Antepli then said the thing that damned me and I think most Christians,
When I ask Christians what makes them Christian I usually get an odd look, and an uncomfortable silence ensues. At most, they might say that they believe in Jesus.
Believing in Jesus is just fine, I think we can all agree. But Muslims believe in Jesus. Heck, Jesus said that even demons believe.
Our Christian tendency to fall back on belief talk is an indication of just how well the Reformation worked. We swung the pendulum to the other side – completely. And I suspect that Martin Luther would swing to the other side of his grave if he heard our spineless Christian responses to what it means to be Christian.
(http://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2011-08/christians-need-ramadan)

The second story came up during our weekly Bible Study here (usually on Tuesdays at 10:30 but this past week it happened on Thurs) One of us told about having lunch with a Muslim friend, who, at the moment cannot observe the fast because of medical problems... their conversation caused our member to reflect on the core of how we live out our Christian life here at SAUC. Her Muslim friend knows a whole lot more about Jesus and Mary than she confessed knowing about Mohammed. In our congregation's own discernment process towards setting the direction of our future our member passionately asked that we keep in mind and heart the core of the Gospel ...that Jesus' life was all about all about service... compassion... forgiveness... and her plea was "LET'S NOT MISS THE POINT!!"

I am so grateful to our Muslim neighbours for helping us Christians reflect on the core of our Christianity. What is at the centre of our faith? What has driven this religious movement for 2 thousand years, that is so dynamic and powerful, but also ultimately flexible so it can change with the currents of a vast array of cultures and historic contexts? This question touches on the very heart of our family life together as one of the branches of this great family tree we call Christianity. When we come together every week to pray and praise and reflect on our lives and the gift of God's Word, we approach this holy mystery that is at our very core. Because it is a holy mystery- each of us will have a slightly different way of expressing what lies at the core of our faith– and listening to one another helps all of us to grow in our faith. Karl Barth was one of the most influential Christians of the 20th century- When asked in 1962 (on his one visit to America) how he would summarize the essence of the millions of words he had published, he replied, "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so."

Paul is all about what lies at the very core of the Jesus movement– in his time and place... and in our time and place. We'll hear Paul preach and teach about what matters most in a variety of ways over the next few weeks- he uses a number of different metaphors to express the holy mystery of life 'in Christ'.

Today we hear Paul use the story of Abraham to talk about what matters most in our reading from Romans 4. Paul reaches back to the beginnings of his Jewish history to express what God has accomplished in Jesus Christ. Abraham- the father of the Jews (and Christians and Muslims....) was nobody special, says Paul. What made Abraham special was that he believed the promises of God. He had more good reasons to question or reject the promises God made– but he didn't. Romans 4:21 says: "He was absolutely sure that God would be able to do what he had promised". Now... in our study we talked about how Abraham did not perfectly trust in the promises... both he and Sarah faltered in their faithfulness... and the decedents of their long-awaited son Isaac were about as dysfunctional as families can get... yet they are all the heroes of the faith stories of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Abraham, and his doubting, and laughing wife Sarah... and their messed up kid and grand-kids and great-grand-kids had a lively relationship with this strange God unlike any of the other gods they'd encountered in the neighbourhood of their day. And in the midst of that lively relationship- they had the audacity to trust in God's crazy promises.

Abraham was no-one special- what made him special was that he lived in relationship with God and he believed what he was told by his God- whom he trusted and loved. Paul uses this story to underline that it is NOT ABOUT US! It is all about God... right from the very beginning– right from Abraham. What lies at the core is that God is God, and the God who can create a universe from nothing is a God who reaches out to us, who loves us and who yearns to be in relationship with us. So– it's not about us... it's all about God. Paul wraps up this passage saying that Abraham's trust in the promises made him 'righteous' by God and that these promises were not for him alone... but for all of us. Righteous is one of those old-fashioned churchy words... it means to "be made right" or "to be in right relationship"... so- it is in trusting God that we are put into right relationship with God.

This doesn't make us perfect Christians... or a perfect Christian church family. Life happens- like Abraham and Sarah there are ups and downs- serious trials and challenges... and amazing gifts! What makes a difference... ALL the difference, is that as people of faith, we live our lives as individuals, and communities in a relationship with God. We trust God. We believe God's promises. And, as Christians- we are in relationship with God through the other two members of the Trinity- Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.

Paul is all about what lies at the very core of the Jesus movement– in his time and place... and in our time and place. Karl Barth expressed the very core of his faith with "Jesus loves me this I know". The core of my faith comes to me in many ways. If I use words, the words are: I know that I am a child of God, and I walk with Jesus, who shows me the way. Its like writing a love poem- the words are inadequate but they point to something far beyond themselves.

How do you express what lies at the very core of your faith? Does it come to you in words? Does it come to you in images, or poetry, or song? Is it a feeling? Do you know it when you notice an 'ordinary miracle' of nature? Does the core of your faith get expressed over coffee with a friend who is suffering? Or walking in a protest march for justice and peace? Or fundraising for cancer research or feeding the hungry of our world? Or serving the needs of the forgotten ones of our city face to face? How the deepest core of our faith is expressed is unique to each one of us– naming and claiming our unique express of our core beliefs feeds and nurtures us and our faith family.

How does SAUC express what lies at the core of our faith? And, how will we express the very core of our faith in the coming months as we discern God's 20/20 Vision for us and our future? One of the most significant ways we express our faith is coming together to worship on Sundays and at Pathways– being nourished as a family in our worship life. We also express our very core by coming to the Table of our Lord in the sacrament of communion– a gift that we share today. As you prepare to share in this family celebration of communion, take a few moments to reflect on how you experience the very core of your faith and bring that gift forward in gratitude as you participate in the gift of communion.

May it be so!

July 2011

July 31, 2011 | July 24, 2011 | July 17, 2011 | July 10, 2011 | July 3, 2011

Sermon for July 31, 2011

Full
Read: Matthew 14:13-21
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

Over the last several Sundays Matthew's Gospel has been engaging us with some of the parables which Jesus told. Jesus told these stories as a technique for opening the door into "the kingdom of heaven" (as Matthew labels it), that is, the Reign of God, the sovereignty of God, his ruling power, or dominion, or new world order. There are so many ways to describe it; John Dominic Crossan likes to say, "What things would be like if God were Lord and the Caesars of this world were not."

Parables are multi-layered. In order for the stories of Jesus to open up to us the Reign of God we must penetrate beyond their literal, factual meaning to catch their more-than-literal meaning, their symbolic significance, their metaphorical import. Parables are a form of verbal art. Much like jokes. If we understand the art of joke-telling we don't ask the joke-teller whether her story is factually true. "A man walks into a bar with his dog..." We don't ask what was the breed of his dog nor what was the name of the bar – unless we have absolutely no sense of humour and don't understand how joke-telling works. Likewise Jesus and his listeners understood how parable-telling works. Imagine Jesus telling a parable, like the one we read last Sunday, where he compared the kingdom of heaven to a housewife's mixing a little bit of sourdough starter into a big measure of flour. If someone in the crowd had stood up and asked Jesus, "Excuse me, sir, but which housewife were you talking about? I need to check out your story", they obviously just didn't get it.

Now the passage in Matthew 14 to which we come today, after the parables of chapter 13, is not a parable. But it is like a lived-out parable, in that the literal meaning of this episode is not the point. This story about Jesus has symbolic meaning, and that is what Matthew wants his readers to hear.

We could, of course, read it just literally. We could create a video that shows the feeding the multitude "realistically", because we might think, "If only there had been camera phones at the time of Jesus, then we'd know what really happened. Then we'd be able to see exactly how five loaves of bread could turn into enough food for 5000 people." Well, we don't have 2000 year-old videos but we do have "Jesus movies", like Franco Zeffirelli's miniseries, Jesus of Nazareth...

But notice that even Zeffirelli doesn't try to show the mechanics of the miracle. He could have explained it naturalistically by showing us peasants pulling private supplies of bread out of hiding in packs and purses and sharing with their neighbours. But that would miss most of the significance of the story, as Matthew tells it. Matthew interprets the feeding of the multitude as a powerful lesson for the church for which he was writing. This lived-out parable had a more-than-literal meaning that spoke to the early followers of the Way of Jesus. We see this in the details Matthew provides as he tells the tale. For example, how many baskets of leftovers were there? Exactly twelve – the number of the tribes of Israel. That is not a coincidence, but rather a signal sent to Matthew's readers who were Jewish Christians, followers of the Way who were still steeped in the world of Judaism. Matthew is metaphorically signaling that Jesus' reform mission within Judaism will eventually spread to include all twelve tribes of the people of Israel. He is reassuring them that although many of their fellow Jews resist their proclamation that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah of Israel, eventually the gospel will spiritually feed all the people of the Covenant.

That particular issue is no longer on our agenda. But here is another little detail which does still speak meaningfully to us. "19 Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds." New Testament scholars note that these actions of Jesus reflect the liturgy of the early Church. That is, we recognize here the standard pattern of the actions of the worship leader during the Christian communion service: give thanks to God for the bread, bless the bread, break the bread, share the bread.

Picture of tile floor with Fish and Loaves

Here is tangible evidence that the early church interpreted the story of the feeding of the multitude eucharistically, as referencing communion. Here is a floor mosaic from a 5th Century church in Tabgha, Israel, portraying the loaves and fish. The fish are obvious. The pieces of bread are odd-looking: little round circles with crosses on them. These are not loaves, not even rounds of pita bread; they are communion wafers.

In this way the feeding of the hungry crowd is linked to the universal communion practice of the church through the ages. Thereby the story breaks free of its setting two millennia ago on the lakeshore of Galilee, and resonates with us. It resonates with our life as children of God, and our life in today's world.

It touches us personally, addressing our life as children of God. For now the story is not just about hungry Galilean peasants who are challenged by the example of Jesus to share with their neighbours. It also says that in the face of scarcity there is hidden abundance waiting to be released. Do we trust enough in God to live according to the story of abundance rather than under the myth of scarcity?

Jesus himself lived in the story of God's abundance. Matthew in fact hints at this aspect. He locates this episode of Jesus' feeding the crowds in "a deserted place". This seems deliberately to hearken back to the location of Jesus' great temptation at the beginning of his ministry: in the wilderness [Matthew 4: 1-11]. You will remember that the first of the three temptations had been to turn stones into bread in order to satisfy his hunger. Jesus had resisted the temptation. He had kept his priorities straight. He had attended to the Spirit work he needed to do in that desert place. He had trusted that in God's grace he would not starve to death. He had believed in the overflowing love of God for him. He had lived within the story of the abundance of God. And so later, in this other wilderness, as he had compassion on the five thousand, his basic trust in God showed itself again. His first actions were to "look up to heaven" and "bless the bread". That is, he offered a prayer of thanks. Thereby he acknowledged that the essentials we need for life come ultimately from God. In our everyday life this is still true. The example of Jesus urges us, if we are to be faithful children of God, at all times to give thanks, at all times to remember that all comes from God. "Give us this day our daily bread."

The story of the feeding also resonates with our life, in today's world. Jesus' next action was to break the bread and distribute it. He shared the broken bread with his disciples who shared it with all the crowd. Jesus did not give it directly; it was his disciples task to do the giving. Understand that symbolically. There could not be a more clear-cut lesson that our Christian calling in the world is to promote the sharing of the essentials of life for all of God's beloved children.

That motif of bread shared with the multitude vividly connects to our present world situation. Right now our United Church of Canada joins with other churches around the world and with governments who are prepared to offer matching funds to overcome the famine in the Horn of Africa. If we can respond, then we can make our actions of communion (which we will celebrate next week) extend concretely to the world. Next Sunday we will have an opportunity: first, to give thanks to God for the blessings of our affluent life; secondly, to bless the gifts that now we can make in the name of God; thirdly, to break out a small part of our wealth that we can easily afford; and, finally, to share it with those who face starvation.

Furthermore – and here our text lifts us into a glorious truth – because we can in this way link together holy communion with food aid for the Horn of Africa, we can give with joyfully open hands. We can share our food not because of guilt or shame but because of faith. Not because we have to but because we want to. Not because God commands it but because God makes it possible. Remember that our story ends not with the sharing of just five loaves and two fish, but with the provision of food for all. Thus the story of the feeding the multitude witnesses to us: we can live not under the myth of scarcity but within the miraculous story of abundance, God's abundant love for us. In this miraculous story we are filled full, and fulfilled.

May it be so.

Sermon for July 24, 2011

Buried treasure
Read: Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52 NRSV
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

Perhaps you follow the reality show on CBC called Dragon's Den. Hopeful would-be entrepreneurs stand up in front of five "business dragons". The Dragons are 5 hardheaded venture capitalists who – if they can be convinced that there's profit to be made – will take a chance and invest in the entrepreneur's efforts to start a new business. The proposals that people bring in are sometimes intriguing, but other times remarkably unrealistic, and any entrepreneur who pitches a proposal needs to be ready to have their business plan shot full of holes by the Dragons. Sometimes they have their intelligence mocked and their character impugned – usually by the bombastic Kevin O"Leary. For most of the would-be entrepreneurs each Dragon in turn says, "I'm out", and the candidate leaves crestfallen.

But on some episodes one of the Dragons decides to "stay in". The initial proposal seems absurd, laughable, with a very weak business case. But the Dragon – often it is Arlene or Brett Wilson – sticks with the candidate, tries to refine their plans and correct their obvious mistakes, digs for a good idea worth investing in. And sometimes the digging pays off. A hidden opportunity appears and the investment is made.

Indeed the producers sometimes show a follow up clip about candidates whom the Dragons once spurned but who have found other sources of capital and been successful. Maybe it is because I just enjoy cheering for "the little guy" over against a tycoon like O'Leary, but there's something quite delicious when one of these apparently marginal and unpromising projects turns out to flourish.

So notice these two interesting aspects. That which is scorned, denigrated, or laughed at, turns out to be "the real thing". And it is hidden at first. These two themes are also part of Jesus' teaching about the kingdom of heaven. Two of the five parables contained in this selection from Matthew's Gospel today teach us that the kingdom of heaven can arise among us from that which is lowly and hidden, but with perseverance will appear.

Let us start with the parable of the leaven. The obvious point Jesus makes in this little story is that a very small bit of leaven inflates the dough sufficiently to make a palatable loaf of bread. By parallel, the kingdom of heaven, that is the Reign of God, can rise up out of a very small enterprise or effort. But to catch the nuance of meaning here we need to grasp the cultural significance of leaven. The leaven in the parable is not the same as the yeast used in modern kitchens. It was created by setting aside a portion of leftover bread to spoil, in order to create leaven used in future baking. Not spoiled enough, it is worthless and cannot cause the new batter to rise. Allowed to spoil too long, it not only ruins the bread but can result in food poisoning. Leaven can be fatal. [That is why] only a small portion... is needed to leaven flour. [J. David Waugh, in Feasting on the Word, Year A , Vol 3, David O. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors, p 287.]

In other words it is more like the microbial culture that some of you maintain from batch to batch of sourdough bread. But take note how – unlike your sourdough – this leaven was a very mixed blessing. For the rabbis who preceded Jesus it was frequently used as a metaphor for corruption and wickedness within the people of Israel. Jesus' use of it as a metaphor for God's Rule, a symbol of heaven at work on earth, would have been shocking. But Jesus had to push the envelope to make his point: the Reign of God arises among us from sources that are not only small and apparently insignificant but also seemingly unsavoury or even despised.

Now for the second parable I want to consider, and the second point. Jesus' story is brief and condensed again, so let us ask of it some questions. The treasure hidden in the field is found by "someone". Who might this be? Clearly not the landowner. And what is his character? Well, he does not go and find the legitimate owner of the plot and advise him of the discovery – "Excuse me, sir, but did you know you've got a fortune in your backyard?" No, he re-buries the treasure. So his character is somewhat questionable. Jesus sometimes built his stories around protagonists who are ethically sketchy, because he wants to say that even they can recognize a golden opportunity and work for it. In this case, he wants to focus on his protagonist's perseverance and courage. It would take some time for him to sell all that he has and raise the capital to buy the field. And there is a big risk for him – what if the landowner wonders why someone suddenly wants to buy his field?

Draw these parables together and hear what they imply about the Reign of God. The eruption of God's sovereignty into our life can come from things that are hidden, and unpromising. And to help the Kingdom emerge requires effort, gumption, and willingness to risk.

How shall we apply the insight of these parables about the Reign of God? Can we see instances where God's new order of life breaks through in our human experience? Yes, indeed. There are individuals who at first sight would not seem to be agents of the purposes of God. We might think of them as difficult or problematic, people we would never imagine to be "heroes". Yet theyturn out to have hidden within them indeed a will heroically to pursue the good. They persist, and pursue, so that the kingdom of heaven inches closer, and goodness is increased and human flourishing is promoted and life is brought forth even in the face of death.

I noticed something of this in the obituaries honouring Betty Fox following her death in mid-June. Her work of carrying on her son's legacy in the "Terry Fox Marathon of Hope" has been an undeniable boon for research and treatment of cancer. It has been a grand effort to promote life in the face of death. This blessing that she created would have been completely unexpected and unpredictable, for Betty Fox was unexceptional, a "regular gal". The potential for this wonderful work lay hidden within her.

Furthermore, she seems to have had more than her share of rough edges. Although she came to have a public image of maternal love and devotion that led some people to label her "Canada's mom", the accolades after her death were tinged with a little realism. Friends and family of Betty Fox, the mother of Canadian icon Terry Fox, say they will remember her as a caring, spirited woman who kept alive her son's crusade to cure cancer. "Betty was full of beans and a force of nature," said renowned author and artist Douglas Coupland, a friend of the Fox family for the past seven years. "She was always true to herself." "Spirited". "Full of beans". "A force of nature". You get the feeling that she would not be a person you would want to cross. She could be very blunt and perhaps abrasive. Maybe not the kind of person you would choose as a friend.

But definitely the kind of person who makes a difference for good in the world. The kind of person who would devote all the rest of her life to one great possibility, in a parallel to the person in the parable who sells everything in order to buy the field. She saw in the continuation of her son's cause a project aiming at human flourishing, through the conquering of disease. Whether she would put it in these terms or not, she glimpsed the kingdom of God. And she went for it.

We give thanks to God for the Betty Fox's of this life, and commit ourselves likewise to try to be agents of the Kingdom, and seekers after the treasure of God's power and grace that lies within.

May it be so.

Sermon for July 17, 2011

Peacemaking
Read: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

Matthew's Gospel from which today's parable comes also famously presents the Beatitudes. One of the best known of these teachings of Jesus is "Blessed are the peacemakers". Today I invite you to come with me inside the parable where there is a lesson for us about peacemaking.

That is not what the parable appears to mean on its surface. In fact Matthew presents it as a story about something else altogether. He appends an interpretation to the parable that focuses it on the concerns of Matthew's church. So he has Jesus tell the story about the weeds and then describes Jesus giving a further private teaching that Jesus to his inner circle of disciples alone. That private teaching turns the parable into an allegory. That is to say, the interpretation that Matthew places on the lips of Jesus links up each detail in the story to some feature in the life of Matthew's church community.

Sower of good seed = "the Son of Man" (i.e. Jesus)
Field = the world
Good seeds = people who belong to God's Kingdom
Weed seeds = those who belong to "the evil one"
"The evil one" = the devil
etc.

This was helpful for Matthew's community of faith. They were dealing with the issue of spiritual "traitors", you might say, or at least "backsliders" – folks who had committed to follow the Way of Jesus but then turned out to harm their fellow Christians in one way or another. Matthew interprets the parable to make the harsh judgement that those people are like weeds among the wheat. Their fate is not pretty: ⁴⁰ Weeds are gathered and burned. That's how it will be at the end of time. ⁴¹ The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will gather from his kingdom everyone who does wrong or causes others to sin. ⁴² Then he will throw them into a flaming furnace.

But the agenda of Matthew's church and the situation of our congregation are not the same. We don't (I hope) have an issue of "spiritual enemies in our midst". So let us set aside Matthew's allegorical interpretation, and enter the world of this parable with fresh eyes, and hear it anew.

Photo of Bearded Darnell compared to Wheat

For Jesus' Galilean peasant audience the story of the weeds and the wheat was entirely realistic. We might not sense this because at the first sign of dandelions in our lawn our impulse is to reach for the Round-up. But in the agriculture of Jesus's world, pest control was a big headache. Scholars who study the social and historical setting of the New Testament are pretty sure that the weeds described in this parable are a species of grass called "bearded darnell", also known as "tares" and "cheat weed" and "false wheat". And here's the problem with bearded darnell: it is a devil of a weed. It defies Ralph Waldo Emerson's claim that a weed is "a plant whose virtues have yet to be discovered." Known in biblical terms as "tares," bearded darnell has no virtues. Its roots surround the roots of good plants, sucking up precious nutrients and scarce water, making it impossible to root it out without damaging the good crop. Above ground darnell looks identical to wheat, until it bears seed. Those seeds can cause everything from hallucinations to death. [Talitha J. Arnold, in Feasting on the Word, Year A , Vol 3, David O. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors, p 260.]

The source of the darnell is also rendered realistically here. It did not just blow in on the wind. The landowner says that "an enemy" has sown it in the field, and that was a plausible scenario. If you and I discover dandelions in the front lawn we would not immediately conclude that one of our neighbours had deliberately sown the weeds. That would be almost paranoid. But in Jesus' day such behaviour was common: Feuding families... marked the social landscape of the first century Mediterranean world... A family's enemies would make various attempts to dishonour the family. [Indeed], the common purpose of the last five of the Ten Commandments was to prevent feuding". [ Bruce J. Molina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, page 103.]

What this parable is imagining is an ongoing feud between two large landowner families. Call them the Hatfields and the McCoys. Over the years they have been taking petty potshots at each other. The Hatfields and the McCoys find ways to insult each other and provoke each other. They engage in more than mere mischief but less than outright violence. So Jesus' story proposes that one of the Hatfields has snuck into the McCoy fields at midnight and scattered the seeds of the bearded darnell throughout the crop. This threatens to reduce the crop yield of McCoy's wheat. But remember also that Mediterranean societies were strongly focussed on issues of honour and shame. That aspect enters the picture here too. The miscreant Hatfield hopes to make his enemy look like an incompetent farmer who can't tell good seed from bad, reducing McCoy to a laughingstock in the village square.

Now this parable of Jesus is beginning to speak to our world in a more relevant way. Feuds sometimes break out in our communities, between one neighbor and another. Feuding even happens between churches!

Our Lady of Martyrs Catholic Church sign: "All dogs go to heaven".
Cumberland Presbyterian Church sign: "Only humans go to heaven, read the Bible"
Catholic Church sign: "God loves all his creations, dogs included"
Presbyterian Church sign: "Dogs don't have souls. This is not open for debate."
Catholic: "Catholic dogs go to heaven. Presbyterian dogs can talk to their pastor."
Protestant: "Converting to Catholicism does not magically grant your dog a soul."
Catholic: "Free dog souls with conversion."
Protestant: "Dogs are animals. There aren't any rocks in heaven either."
Catholic: "All rocks go to heaven."

Now back to the parable's feuding landowners. How shall McCoy respond to this provocation? There are two options. His hired hands propose the obvious solution of an immediate weeding campaign. But the landowner insists on a different course of action. He understands the problem more deeply.

Notice by the way that Jesus is portraying this landlord as a figure of wisdom. This would violate the expectations of Jesus' peasant audience. They generally resented the members of the landlord class. They regarded them as oppressors of the poor. They would be expecting Jesus to present this landowner as a knave and a fool. But Jesus loved to startle his listeners.

So this McCoy, unlike most people of his class, knows more about agriculture than his field hands. He knows that the roots of the bearded darnell intertwine with those of the wheat. To uproot the darnell would require killing the roots and stalks of the wheat as well. The good and the bad are intertwined. And that is the first lesson of this parable, the first layer of meaning that it offers us. You cannot always remedy a situation directly. Sometimes you have to tolerate the evil for the sake of the good.

Nonetheless, and here the parable goes deeper, the perspective on life that is offered by Jesus' story is not that good and bad are locked in an eternal contest the oscillates back and forth. No; the good will be victorious. The parable ends with a reminder that there will be a separating out of the good from the bad, at harvest time. At the time of reaping it will not matter that the wheat stalks get uprooted along with the darnell.

Knowing this, McCoy resists the temptation to escalate the feud. He does not up the ante. And that, I suggest, is the main point of Jesus' story as it was originally told. It would be just human nature were he to escalate the conflict. Jesus's listeners likely expected to hear that McCoy sends his minions at midnight to set fire to the Hatfields' wheat. But the landowner forebears. Indeed he does not even play tit-for-tat. He doesn't return insult for insult by sowing weeds in the Hatfields' fields, or devising some other elaborate form of insult that would make his rivals look equally foolish in the eyes of their neighbours. He forbears. McCoy is ready to put up with the jibes of his neighbours while he waits for the harvest. He is prepared to tolerate a slightly lower yield from his wheat field. He forbears.

Now, as we come back out of the world of this parable, it has a new relevance for us, a permanent relevance that applies to every human community. We have discovered that Jesus' original parable is about forebearance in the face of insult or injury. It now aligns with his famous saying:

Luke 6: 27 "But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 29 If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.

That is a principle of nonviolence: do not strike back when your enemies assault you. But now Jesus' story about the weeds applies the same principle to less vivid forms of harm than someone punching you in the face. Do not return insult for insult, defamation for defamation, mischief for mischief.

That is a universal ethical maxim. But why should we follow it? Jesus peasant audience must have wondered why the landowner was so forebearing. Why live by the principle of nonviolence? Why continue to promote the ideals (to use modern examples) of Mahatma Gandhi and Rev. Dt. Martin Luther King Jr?

Jesus shows why, in his parable. McCoy says, "³⁰ Leave the weeds alone until harvest time." The landowner trusts in a good outcome. He knows the harvest will come and the sorting will happen and the good will be released from the clutches of the bad. Jesus is assuring us that we can actually live by the principle of nonviolence because at "harvest time" the wrongs of the world will be redressed. In the end any injury we suffer will be overcome by the power of God's Spirit to bring blessing. Therefore we can forebear. We can refuse to strike back when struck, or – less dramatically – decline to return injury for injury, or insult for insult. We can refuse to maintain a feud – all because we can trust that in God's good time the good will be victorious over the bad.

We all have ears to hear; let us listen.

Sermon for July 10, 2011

Ears to hear
Read: Matthew 13:1-9 (NRSV)
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

Jesus had a special way of drawing us towards the Reign of God. He told stories, stories called parables. But over the centuries we have lost sight of how special and powerful these parables are. We have even within the church forgotten how to hear them. As Jesus often said when he was ending a parable, "Let anyone with ears listen!" So let us work today at learning again how to listen to the parables of Jesus.

His technique of story-telling was new to his Galilean peasant audience. He took up the role of a village rabbi, but then changed the game. Our text from Matthew's Gospel indeed portrays Jesus as a rabbi. The story starts: "1... Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake." He sat. That is the traditional posture the rabbi adopts when he is to deliver some teaching. Again, Matthew writes that "great crowds gathered around him". The Greek verb there for "gathered" (synago) is the word from which the term "synagogue" comes – the gathering, or assembly, which of course in our modern context refers to the Jewish house of worship. So Matthew quite deliberately portrays Jesus as a rabbi teaching in his lakeshore synagogue.

But Matthew is also quite clear that Jesus is a brand-new kind of rabbi with a brand-new kind of teaching. The teaching of a typical rabbi would consist of a commentary on verses from the Torah, and commentary on earlier commentaries. But Jesus' story-telling method is radically different, and the difference lies in the nature of its authority.

The people of the Covenant listened to the pronouncements of their rabbis because their words were presumed to have the authority of the Torah itself, the original authority of the Torah's commandments (since they had been spoken directly by God to the people). So what the village rabbi typically did was to take one of the commandments within the Torah, a rule that was authoritative but also general in nature, and apply it to the specific situation of his flock, and tell them what to do.

Jesus' approach possesses a radically different kind of authority. The parables he tells stand on their own. They have their own authority, their own inherent weight. They are self-authenticating.

How does that work? Well, in the first place, these stories are simple and drawn from the life experience of Jesus' audience. The hearers can identify with one or another of the characters or situations. And so the hearers can enter easily into the world that Jesus' parable describes. It would be familiar enough that they would probably interact with Jesus and ask him questions and make jokes with him as he told the tale. So the parables are an invitation to conversation.

But once Jesus has them inside the world of his story, he turns that world upside down. The parables of Jesus are an invitation, in fact a challenge, to see the world differently, to take up a different perspective on the way things are and the way they should be. Jesus' stories unveil a vision of an alternative reality in which God reigns and the powers that be do not.

Here is a clip from Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg in which they make both those points: the parables of Jesus are, firstly, an invitation to conversation and, secondly, a means whereby we are pressed to see things very differently. [FYI: "collaborative eschaton" is Crossan's scholarly term for the idea that God's goal for the unfolding of history requires us to collaborate with God in creating a world that's more just and more loving.]

[Crossan] When we read it in the New Testament it might take about a minute to read a parable. But give Jesus about an hour in front of an audience and it's an oral situation, so it's interactive... with arguing back and forth. A parable is a way of orally raising consciousness. So if you think of Jesus announcing a "collaborative eschaton" – in which we are supposed to collaborate with God – then parable, a mode of interactive discourse, of getting your audience to think for themselves, that is the most appropriate form of discourse... If you are doing collaboration with God, then getting people empowered is the most important way to do it, and that's what parables do.

[Borg] There's a lot of emphasis in the message of Jesus about seeing differently. And parables are basically an invitation to see differently, to see God differently, to see human life differently, to see the interactions of landowners and peasants differently.... They are also in many cases an invitation to a conversation... an oral text for structuring a conversation.

So let's take this parable from today's text as an invitation to you for a conversation. And my hope is that by entering this parable you might see things differently.

Here in outline is the structure of the parable:

A sower went out to sow.
Sowed some seeds ont he path. Birds ate them.
Sowed some on rocky, shallow soil. No rootage, so these withered in the sun.
Sowed some among weeds, which choked them.
Sowed some on good soil. Harvest of 100-fold, 60-fold, 30-fold.

Discuss in pairs in the pew, for about two minutes each, this simple question: where in this story do I see myself? As a seed? As one kind of soil or another? As the sower? [Discussion]

Now one of the traditional ways people have heard this parable is this. It has been interpreted with a focus on the types of soil. The sower is Jesus. The seed is his message. The different kinds of soil are all the barriers within us that prevent us from being receptive to his word. So the focus is on us, and we come away from the parable wondering if our hearts are receptive to being planted. But that is not the only interpretation of the story. If we close our ears to that traditional interpretation for a moment then we might hear a different reading. Like this one, offered by John Petty:

The sower is not Jesus. God is the sower, and God sows the Word – logon, Christ – absolutely everywhere. Jesus is not the sower, but the seed sown. As the fourth gospel puts it, "The Word became flesh."
The four types of soil are meant to signify all conditions of life. Jesus has already been sown everywhere in the world, in good soil and bad, among rocks and among thorns. This sowing of the word into the entire world, and into all conditions of life, has already been done without any participation on our part whatsoever.
See Progressive Involvement's website

To read the parable this way shifts its focus. It is no longer about us and about our spiritual readiness. It's about God. If the sower is God and the seed is the presence of Christ that God has cast into all the world, then although in some places the outcome is disappointing, overall there is a marvelous abundance of results. The grain bears fruit to an astonishing degree, multiplied up to a hundred times. God's overflowing love is that powerful.

Maybe the parable, read this way, is telling us how profligate and generous and hopeful God is. Maybe the parable is telling us that God takes a very small thing, a seed, and from it produces something tremendous. And maybe the parable is inviting us to live that way ourselves, and cast our love recklessly upon the world.

We have ears. Are we listening?

Sermon for July 3, 2011

Bound, but free
Read: Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30 (NRSV)
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

You are a grandparent to whom the suspicion has arisen in the last month or so that your 17-year-old granddaughter is abusing amphetamines to cope with pressures of school. Gentle inquiries on your part have been met with anger and resistance on her part, although you've always had a warm bond with this grandchild. It's quite clear that if you press the issue it may cause a breach in that relationship. And yet you know in your heart of hearts that you are the one person in the family who might make a difference in helping her to get back on track. Do you feel the pressures of your divided heart?

You are the chief financial officer of an international mining corporation that has been growing by leaps and bounds. You stumble upon some correspondence that suggests that a bribe has been paid to a politician in a developing nation where your company is trying to avoid a lawsuit over environmental damage. If this is brought to light the entire overseas operation will likely be shut down, causing the loss of thousands of jobs for the workers. But to fail to follow through and find out the truth here could mean that you are colluding with corruption. Do you feel the pressures of conflicting impulses?

You are one of the parents in a family of Christians living in the north of Sudan. For decades hostility has been growing between the populations of Nubian and Arab Muslims in the north and Christians and animists in the South. Recently a referendum has been held with the result that Southern Sudan will secede from the north this coming week. This will likely accelerate the policies of persecution of you and the others in the Christian minority in the north to accelerate. There has been pressure from your neighbours, and not-so-veiled threats, because you have refused to make a public conversion to Islam. You have very deep roots in your community and have built a successful business, which you would lose, to become penniless refugees, if you flee to the south. But that seems to be the only way open to you if you are to maintain your faith commitment as followers of the Way of Jesus. Do you feel the angst of this decision?

Those are three somewhat dramatic examples of the kind of dilemma that in lesser ways most of us encounter in the course of our daily lives. Sometimes the direction which the Way of Jesus requires us to go stands forth quite clearly, but the cost to us is also quite clear, and we find our natural inclinations pulling us towards a different direction. In such moments the core attitudes which Jesus asks us to maintain can seem daunting. The stance in life that he himself set and to which he invites us can threaten to upset our comfortable normalcy. At such moments we need to hear this saying that our gospel text from Matthew presents: "²⁹Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me ... ³⁰For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

We need to be reminded of that promise because we may find it sometimes pretty hard to believe. A light burden? Our commitment to the Way of Jesus can feelvery much like a heavy yoke that holds us back and drags us down. And yet one of the wonderful paradoxes of life in Christ is that within that obedience – which can feel like bondage – is a great freedom. Let us explore that.

Now, we do not have an agricultural lifestyle anymore. Yoked oxen may not be a very illuminating metaphor for us. But this is Calgary and the Stampede is coming up, so maybe an equestrian image may be helpful. In my childhood Saturday morning TV always included a visit from... The Lone Ranger.

Here's a clip from "The Legend of the Lone Ranger", a prequel that filled in the back story of how he came to be the masked lawman. Our hero is the lone survivor of a group of Texas Rangers ambushed by the evil Cavendish gang. Having been nursed back to health by his loyal sidekick Tonto, the Lone Ranger journeys to the Valley of the Wild Horses to find a stallion suitable for his adventures.

In order to tame the wild horse and establish a bond with him, the Lone Ranger uses a special, and gentle, harnessing technique called the "hackamore". It permits the rider to steer the horse gently, more gently than with a bridle and bit. Of course that requires the horse to agree more or less with where the rider wants to go! And as the Lone Ranger says, the horse wants to be free. So the hackamore harness encourages the development of a bond between horse and rider and an intuitive link between them. Before too long they begin to move across the landscape as one.

And that's a good metaphor for the "easy yoke" of Jesus. The purpose of a yoke is to give direction to the animal. As pointed out by one of our congregation members who joined last Tuesday in our Bible study on this passage, the yoke of Jesus steers an individual – or a congregation – towards an appropriate goal. That goal, that larger purpose, is our seeking of the emergence of the Reign of God in our world. But the yoke of Jesus does notpull us harshly. It steers us gently towards the Reign of God by drawing our attention towards something which we already know in our heart. There is already planted within us, deep in the core of our being, a need for the grace and trust and love which the Reign of God represents. All the Spirit of Jesus does is nudge our head in the right direction, just as the Lone Ranger nudges Silver's nose towards the path between the cacti. That is why the guidance which his Spirit applies to our spirits feels so gentle, so indetectable.

And since it is a form of guidance which simply mobilizes our own deepest desires, the touch of Jesus' Spirit is not alien to us, not an imposition upon us, not a violation of our nature but a fulfillment of it. This is the paradoxical freedom of which I spoke. Constrained as our lives may be by the pattern which Jesus lays out for us, our lives are paradoxically opened out and liberated to become what we most desire – lives of discipline and delight.

And so we are encouraged. We are encouraged to hold fast to our commitment to follow his Way. We are braced up and steadied when our inclinations and impulses draw us off track. Our eyes of the Spirit are turned towards Jesus' vision of life in God even when our anxieties and insecurities crowd out that image. And we live in the strength of that promise from him: "My yoke is easy".

May it be so.

"Hi Ho, Silver! Awayyyyyyyyyyyyyy....."

June 2011

June 26, 2011 | June 19, 2011 | June 12, 2011 | June 5, 2011

Sermon for June 26, 2011

Giving Our All
Read: Matthew 10:34-42
Rev. Shannon Mang
Following the Way of Jesus is not for sissies!

Family Life

Did you break with your family over your religious choices? Are religion and politics taboo topics at family gatherings? Both religious and political beliefs come from the core of our identity…. They're risky to pull out and share—perhaps in your family honest and direct debate is welcome and safe—or perhaps mentioning a religious choice or talking about the election causes awkward silence or all-out fireworks!

My father's family were relegated to the edge of their extended family and small community in Edenwold Sk because my grandfather stopped being a good Lutheran and took up with the Seventh Day Adventists. He emigrated with his brother in the late 1880's from an area that is now Germany- but it had been part of the Austro- Hungarian Empire whose borders kept changing every few years. He likely had pacifist beliefs that contributed to his wanting to emigrate and get out of having to serve a political regime that he had no interest in serving—and those beliefs lead him and his wife to stop being part of the Lutheran fold. They were a long way from their birth families but making the choice to NOT be Lutheran in a tight-knit German community in the early part of the 20th century meant that their 12 children were NOT the right sort of people. My grandmother and grandfather were considered wise leaders and elders in their small Seventh Day Adventist house church, but they and their children had to struggle to have respect in the town. Many of my aunts and uncles gave church a wide berth when they left home and raised their own children.

Religion is one of those areas that will drive wedges through families and it has ever been thus- from what we read in Matthew. This teaching is more descriptive than prescriptive—Jesus is saying that choosing to live in Kingdom of God comes with a cost and that cost can hit very close to home… the cost might well be having to give up what we knew as "home". It is NOT giving us license to be jerks with our family: this is not giving us permission to go all judgemental on family members and try to correct the error of their ways. But it is saying that when we seriously take up the Way of Jesus- it will rock the family boat. If we dig a bit into our families most of us will have stories of pain rooted in religious choices made by foremothers and forefathers… or perhaps our mothers and fathers… or perhaps us… or perhaps our sons and daughters and grandchildren. We live at a time where religious sensitivities have changed drastically in 2 or 3 generations. In my mother's generation to marry a Catholic boy would have meant completely cutting off contact with one's Methodist…then United Church birth family. My sister married a Catholic boy and it barely made a ripple in either family. My sister's children were baptised Catholic to appease the Catholic grandmother but were raised with no real Christian identity at all. Things have changed rapidly.

In Matthew's day changes were not so fast. In many ways the family has not really changed a great deal in the Middle East since Matthew was writing. This teaching about families being torn apart when they make a choice to follow Jesus would still have a greater cost for them than for us in the West. Both ancient and modern Middle Eastern culture holds the family as a distinct unit—it is all about honour and shame in a community. One's identity is entirely tied up in one's family and the family's identity is tied up with the family's position in the community. To choose to follow the Way of Jesus- then and now means choosing to give up one's birth family and become adopted into a new family of Jesus followers. To appreciate the power of what Matthew is talking about we can all take our family stories of pain caused by religious choices and magnify the intensity 10- 20 or 100 fold. Matthew is teaching that choosing to follow the Way of Jesus will cause fireworks… so be clear about our own priorities- even when it comes to our closest family members. Jesus asks us for our all. Jesus asks us to avoid getting side tracked by our family- even our parents and our kids can knock us off track. This teaching is blunt and direct- put Jesus first in our own life and accept the consequences in the family structure because ultimately- as Peterson puts it, Jesus 'cuts through these cosy domestic arrangements (to) free you for God'. And freeing it is!

Taking up one's cross

So- choosing Jesus over anything and everyone frees us….. to take up a cross?? Once again- following Jesus is NOT for sissies! Once again- like the previous verses- it is hard to get into the space of the earliest listeners of the Gospel. The early church of Matthew were experiencing persecution: persecution from their own families—their synagogues – and their communities and government. They were only a few generations from the cross of Jesus and the resurrection event and crosses were very real in their own lives… and deaths. Matthew takes these very real realities and frames it in a new way. To choose the Way of Jesus is to choose the Way of the Cross … which is ultimately choosing the Way of the Risen Christ. Short hand for this choice is to choose to take up Jesus' cross and die to self. In Matthew's day it was willing making a choice to accept the sometimes deadly consequences of breaking with family and community—but that choice was made and consequences accepted while one was alive and prepared to live fully in and with a Risen Christ … ready to accept that physical suffering and death might well result from living fully in and with a Risen Christ.

In the West we are somewhat distant from the realities of persecution. When we were in the Philippines in 1987 we spent time with lots of faithful Christians who were living out this choice to take up their cross daily. One day Greg took a walk with a young priest who was working with indigenous Filipinos who had been displaced from their ancestral homelands long the shores of the island of Mindoro. As he lived out his ministry with them sharing the Good News of Jesus he realised that he could not separate his calling from the need for justice. They had been a fishing culture and they'd been displaced to an inland mountainous area where they could neither fish nor farm. They were destitute- hungry and despairing. He was helping them learn their rights and challenging the both the government and the large land owners who had been given government sanction to displace the tribes—many of whom had their own small personal armies to terrorise and quash any organisation. This priest had had multiple death threats. He was about our age- in his late 20's and he had no illusions about his future—he fully expected that he would be murdered for the work he was doing – for living out his calling and making real the teachings of Jesus amongst those who were considered less than human. He told Greg that he did not live in fear. He said that he had already died. When he chose to put Jesus first in his life he died to himself. So what could the land-owners and their hired thugs do to him?? They could make him suffer. They could kill his physical self but that was nothing compared to the significance of the work he was doing helping those who were experiencing real death in their everyday lives…helping those who had had a sort of death sentence thrust upon them- find new life and dignity in Christ.

Persecution continues to be very real in many parts of the world… but not here- right? Accept, we don't actually talk about how much our faith community means to us in front of the adult children because it makes them squirm…. Or we don't challenge the really awful sexist or racist joke that arrived in your email…. Or we don't rock the boat at work when rumours are flying around about who's sleeping with whom… or we don't interfere with the neighbours whose fights are obviously getting more and more violent… or we don't challenge the niece or nephew who are neglecting or abusing your beloved elderly aunt or uncle. Why don't we??? Because we would experience a more subtle form of persecution… and that's scary and real. Taking up our cross may not mean that we have to accept that paid thugs may take our physical life like the priest in the Philippines—but it may mean that taking a stand where we know we are being called to take a stand will cost us … and in taking the stand we will shine the light of Christ on a situation. We too are asked to die to ourselves—to let go of the fear of consequences and to live in Christ. We too are called to die to ourselves and to experience the joy of finding our real selves in Christ—living a life without fear.

Welcoming the envoy

Wrapping up this section of scripture is another glimpse of life in Christ. Once again- looking at this through the eyes and ears of the first listeners—for Matthew's community people representing other individuals was the norm—messengers carried communication from one leader to another- from one community to another. Their presence required hospitality in the Middle Eastern culture— leaders and communities were even expected to shelter the envoys of their enemies. So for early Christians, for a host to welcome a Christian into their home or community would be to welcome that individual's home Christian community…and it would be to welcome Christ himself- and as Jesus says here— it would also be seen to welcome the one who sent Jesus- God is welcomed into that home via the envoy.

Peterson puts it "Accepting a messenger of God is as good as being God's messenger. Accepting someone's help is as good as giving someone help." Hospitality cuts both ways—as does caring for one another. We are called to welcome the stranger into our midst and make them family… and we are called to accept the hospitality of the stranger and to bring the presence of Christ into their household. We are called to give ourselves away— offering a cup of water to "these little ones"… and we are called to accept the gift of caring from one another in the Christian family and from the stranger too. These are intense teachings. They are meant to be learned and relearned over a lifetime. Following the Way of Jesus is not for sissies! It requires us giving ourselves away to Jesus everyday and learning everyday what that means. Peterson says – 'don't be overwhelmed by it. It is best to start small.' Start with a cup of water for someone who is thirsty. Together, let's learn what it means to give our all- to die to ourselves and to live in the Way of Jesus.

May it be so.

Sermon for June 19, 2011

Risky Business
Read: Matthew 28:16-20
Rev. Shannon Mang

Very often our Tuesday morning Bible Study takes us places with the scripture where we had no idea we were going to go. This was one of those times. As I was preparing the text for the study I was wondering what could be said about the Great Commission... and this was going to be Trinity Sunday which is usually a time to look at the doctrine of the Trinity—this passage shows up on Trinity Sunday because Jesus commissions the disciples to go and baptise in using the 'Trinitarian Formula"- in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Yay doctrine! Now- don't get me wrong—I don't have anything against the Trinitarian Formula, or this passage—it was just that nothing was stirring for me... not a good sign for the preacher!

The first question that is asked in our Bible Study is 'what word or phrase jumped out at you as you heard\read the passage?' For two of us in the circle the phrase that jumped out was 'some doubted'... I had never ever seen this in the Great Commission before. We didn't encounter these words in the passage from The Message- as Peterson has an interesting take on this verse... but what most translations say in verse 17 about the disciples meeting Jesus on the mountain is "When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted" NRSV -In The Message Peterson says "The moment they saw him they worshiped him. Some, though, held back, not sure about worship, about risking themselves totally."

Well now—this was intriguing! How did doubt creep into "The Great Commission"? This is the end of the Gospel story... which is also the beginning of the church's story. These men and women rode that rollercoaster with Jesus—they were in the middle of the Jesus Movement as it gathered steam bringing people into a new understanding of God and experiencing the Kingdom of God in a new kind of caring community. They were in the middle of things when it all fell apart in Jerusalem with Jesus' arrest- trial and shameful death on the cross. The women met an angel at the empty tomb and then the Risen Christ himself—and now they were on that assigned mountain top in the presence of Jesus—they worshipped—and they doubted. Wow! The Risen Christ is commissioning the disciples to go into all the world baptising and teaching... and the gospel story includes doubt?

It got even more interesting when I started to do some digging- the word used for 'doubt' here is not used a lot in the New Testament. It only shows up one other time- also in the Gospel of Matthew in the story of Jesus coming to the disciples walking on the water in the middle of a storm on Lake Galilee. Peter, who is ever impulsive, jumps out of the boat and tries to walk on water too... which he does until he is distracted by the wind and the waves and he begins to sink. Jesus catches him and they both get into the boat- here too- the disciples worshipped Jesus while he asks Peter why he 'doubted'. This is the only other place where this word is used and it is used in the context of worship. This is NOT the word for 'unbelief'... the word is distazo – and it means wavering between two possibilities. Out on the water Peter believed that walking on water was possible because he saw Jesus walking on the water... AND he believed that water, especially windy- stormy water was something dangerous—something that one drowns in. A direct translation of the word is 'two-stand'- to be of two minds- to hesitate between two possibilities. Which explained to me why Peterson in The Message rendered this: says "The moment they saw him they worshiped him. Some, though, held back, not sure about worship, about risking themselves totally." (MSG) In both places where this word is used disciples BOTH hesitate/doubt and they worship Jesus.

I had the Interlinear Bible in front of me--- a bible that takes each word in the original language and gives an English word for it. There was no word for 'some' ... so why do the English translations stick this in? Mark Allan Powell writes about this verse in his book, Loving Jesus.

... I want to note that the word some is not actually found in the Greek Bible. Why is it in the English version? Well, Matthew uses a particular construction here that allows translators to think that the word some could be implied. He also uses that construction in seventeen other instances, though no one ever seems to think the word is implied in those cases. It could be implied here, but why would it be? I asked a Bible translator that question one time and got the following response: "The verse wouldn't make sense otherwise. No one can worship and doubt at the same time." I invited this fellow to visit a Lutheran church. We do it all the time. [p. 121]

Well- so do we! This was a game-changer for me- both in the Bible Study and in while I was digging around with the scholars. What if the closest friends and followers of Jesus both worshipped and hesitated at this crucial moment? This I can relate to! A good deal of the time I am a mixed bag of belief and doubt--- I both hesitate and act.

Jesus gives this group of worshippers—who are also hesitating/ wavering and doubting this most amazing job... to be the bearers of the Good News to all the world— 18-20 Jesus, undeterred, went right ahead and gave his charge: "God authorized and commanded me to commission you: Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life, marking them by baptism in the threefold name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Then instruct them in the practice of all I have commanded you. I'll be with you as you do this, day after day after day, right up to the end of the age." (MSG) In the midst of their worshipping and hesitating Jesus says 'go'! Go just as you are, with your gifts and your faults and be about this great work AND I will be with you always!

This speaks very powerfully to me now. We stand at a cross roads of our brief history as a congregation... and we are part of a much larger picture of faithful Christians standing at a cross-roads of a longer history of Christian witness. We have come to the realisation that the way we've shared the Good News of Jesus Christ worked really well 30-40 years ago, but what worked well 304-40 years ago will not be the best way to share the Good News of Jesus Christ today and tomorrow. So we have been talking and studying and discerning—we have been authentically worshipping--- and we have been of two-minds- wavering- hesitating. We have been moving forward and we have been looking back. In the midst of our belief and our doubt—in the midst of our dreaming of God's 20/20 Vision and our hesitation... the Risen Christ says to us "go"!! We don't have to wait until we've got it all figured out. We have what we need—we have the Good News and we're given the task to share this Good News with all the world. That means our neighbours and our family and those we see who need some Good News in their lives. Jesus doesn't need perfection... Jesus needs us- just as we are. And we can do this great work because the Risen Christ has told us that he is with us to the end of the age. He says GO—so lets go!!

May it be so!

Sermon for June 12, 2011

Open to the Spirit's leading
Read: Numbers 11:24-30
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

One of my favorite comic strips is Dilbert, by Scott Adams. And one of my favourite characters is Wally the engineer. Wally's blatant practice of avoiding work expresses perfectly the overall tone of cynicism about corporate life that has made Dilbert so popular. Here's the dialogue of a recent strip.

Wally is speaking to the Pointy Haired Boss:

[Panel 1] "I couldn't do any work this week because my project doesn't have a charge code."
[Panel 2] "The chargeback group won't answer my e-mails, and our ethics rules forbid me from using a false code."
[Panel 3] "It's another failure of management, but I know you can do better next week."

The Dilbert comics portray both management and employees caught up in the absurdities of bureaucratic systems. And the humour works because most people growing up in the contemporary world understand that organizational life can be full of contradictions. This is part of the folk wisdom of our age – we need the bureaucratic processes of institutional life in government and industry and education and so on, but we also know that such systems sometimes frustrate their own purpose. And this is what I focus on this morning. Sometimes we need an established organization to get something done. But sometimes we need to work outside the system. There is a tension here. We need both sides.

This duality applies, of course, to life in the church. And it is good to think about it on this Pentecost Sunday when we give thanks for the work of God's Spirit within the church. Sometimes God's Spirit needs to work through the organization of the gathered community. Sometimes the Spirit can be found working outside the institution. The trick is to respect both.

This has been true since forever in the life of the people of God. Our text today from the Hebrew Scriptures, in the book of Numbers, concerns the work of the Spirit among the people of the Covenant. As Moses is taking them from their Egyptian bondage towards a new life in the promised land, he begins to share the responsibility of leadership. He picks out 70 among the people to be "elders" alongside him. The number is not important, by the way. Throughout the Bible the number "70" is always just a way of saying "a whole bunch". The exact number of these co-leaders is less significant than the idea of sharing leadership. Notice that this is a biblical example of one of the core values that we have named as the guiding lights for us at St. Andrew's. We call it "shared consultative leadership". Notice also that the leadership of Moses and the Seventy is not just shared and consultative but also "charismatic" – meaning leadership that is based on "charisms" from God, gifts from God's Spirit. They understood themselves to be leading their people because God was leading them, and leading them directly, giving direction for their community through what is called here "prophecy". The text says, "When the Spirit rested on them they prophesied."

Don't be squeamish about that word "prophecy". Don't be misled by the popular stereotype about this gift. Prophecy is not a matter of forecasting the future like some kind of crystal-ball gazer. Prophecy is the gift of being able to read the signs of the times, being able to discern the movement of God in the present circumstances, to see the Spirit at work as our history unfolds.

Observe that the tension of which I spoke earlier appears here. On the one side, Moses is an "organization man". He works with this large group of other leaders, and so he has to engage with the politics that always emerges in organizations. He has established lines of authority and accountability among the Seventy – the text speaks of their being named on "a list" of recognized leaders, having been literally "registered" [in the NRSV translation]. Moses has established for them a process of consultation through which they attempt to discern the leading of God's Spirit – they regularly go off together to gather around the Tent of Meeting which is separate from their camp. [The Tent of Meeting is the symbolic centre of their community. It contains the ark of the Covenant which travels with these nomads, marking God's presence with them as they go. So think of these Tent meetings Moses calls as a lot like the weekend retreats for teambuilding among management groups which is standard operating procedure in large corporations these days.]

But on the other side, Moses also has another gift that is crucial for leadership. He has the humility to recognize that God also works outside the processes that Moses has created. This shows up in the little dialogue that ends our reading.

His right-hand man, Joshua, runs up and breathlessly reports that two of the 70, who for some unnamed reason had needed to stay behind in the camp, were nonetheless engaging in prophecy also. Joshua is offended, as vice presidents and middle level managers often are when the organization's procedural norms are violated."Moses, master! Stop them", cries Joshua. You can almost hear him bluster: "It's... it's... unconstitutional!"

But Moses has the special quality that great leaders possess. He is not as attached as his helpers are to the established organizational routines. In a flash of insight he declares: "Would that all God's people were prophets. Would that God would put his Spirit on all of them." He understands how God cannot be constrained and bureaucratized. God's Spirit will exercise its guiding influence upon the people whether they are among the authorized leadership or not. God is at work on both sides of any line we can draw. Discernment of what God wants can happen in many ways. Sometimes it does emerge as the outcome of a committee meeting. Other times we recognize it in an individual's single moment of insight blurted out in the midst of their daily doings.

The story of the day of Pentecost exhibits God's sovereign freedom in a similar way. According to the end of Luke's Gospel, once the risen Christ had appeared to them, the followers of the Way of Jesus "^24:52 returned to Jerusalem with great joy, ⁵³ and they were continually in the temple blessing God." Notice what this means. To go back to worship at the Jerusalem Temple was to return to the worship practices they were used to, back to the standard operating procedure for connecting to God which they had followed all their lives. Furthermore, as Luke continues his story, at the beginning of his book of The Acts of the Apostles, he describes them as gathering in a room upstairs, the so-significant Upper Room where they had been instructed by Jesus about how to live together community without his physical presence guiding them. They went back to the place they were used to. And he portrays them attending to business. They have an agenda, and the first item is to replace the betrayer, Judas Iscariot, with another disciple to make up the necessary Twelve.

In these ways, you see, the community is acting institutionally, seeking to be guided by God in the normal and regular ways with which they were familiar. But it is that normalcy which the Holy Spirit interrupts and overturns on the day of Pentecost. As the followers of Jesus burst into fulsome praise to God expressed in other languages, "^{Acts 2:12} all were amazed and perplexed," writes Luke, "saying to one another, 'What does this mean?'" The perplexity is understandable. Outside of the normal patterns of institutional deliberation and decision-making, how do we sort out what is guidance from God and what is human fantasy? "What does this mean?" indeed.

On this particular Pentecost Sunday, we as a congregation are in the midst of wrestling with discernment. The Vision Team has been duly authorized by the congregation, following appropriate United Church protocol, to explore concrete options for our future. They are exercising due diligence for us. Their work of information gathering is coming to completion, and the intention is that in the fall concrete options will be presented to a congregational meeting. This is necessary work. Organizational work. It is one aspect of the leading of God's Spirit. But we need also to remember the humility of Moses, and acknowledge that God speaks to our hearts in ways independent of processes and procedures. As we proceed, we need to remain open to the leading of God's Spirit, guidance that might be offered in moments of insight by anyone who cares about our mission as part of the Jesus movement.

God works on both sides of any line we might draw. Let us remain open to both.

Sermon for June 5, 2011

Witnesses to hope
Read: Acts 1:6-14
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

Twenty or so of us, folks from both St. Andrew's and McDougall United Churches, have been engaging this winter and spring in a study course that gives an overview of "progressive" Christianity. Some weeks ago one of the participants posed a question that has niggled at me ever since. The questioner appreciated everything the course has done to confirm their "progressive" reading of how to follow the Way of Jesus; but a question that remains for them is, "Where is the message of hope?"

Our course is entitled Living the Questions, because it encourages us to articulate our struggles with some aspects of Christianity as traditionally presented, to name our questions and to live into them instead of quickly brushing them off with a doctrinal answer. And this is one of the important questions that must be asked: "Where can we place our trust?" The human spirit needs a ground for hope. Otherwise we contract and die, shriveling up from the centre of our being outwards.

And our era is one which offers so many challenges to hope. Our world is shredded by dysfunction, right across the board. Survey the horizons of contemporary life in North Atlantic society, indeed in our global civilization, and there is brokenness everywhere, a broad spectrum of disorder. At one end are the personal threats to us as individuals, such as the vicissitudes of ill health. Contemporary medicine has created many wonders, but as old diseases are conquered new threats to our health emerge. We have almost eradicated polio but now have HIV/AIDS to deal with. We enjoy terrific advances in prosthetics and other technologies of health but see an increase in "lifestyle" illnesses like cardiovascular disease. At the other end of the spectrum of fear are the threats to our collective well-being, such as the threat of thermonuclear terrorism. The end of the Cold War has seen an increase, not a decrease, in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction into the hands of "failed or failing states". Every item along this spectrum of menace, from the individual realm to the international, is painted with the colours of despair, which is the enemy of hope.

So the question is pressing. Where can we tap into a living source of hope? Well, as people of faith we have something to say in response. It would be facile to say we have "the answer". It would be better to say that we have a source to which to turn. Our "good news" as followers of the Way of Jesus has from the beginning offered a ground for hope, a wellspring of possibility. I might have said "a wellspring of optimism" but that is not what we need. Optimism is a personality trait, a constitutional cheerfulness. What our era needs, over and over again, is a witness to a realistic but daring hope. Our age needs people of bold spirit who live day by day out of a conviction that the reality of God secures our future. The letter in the early Church known as 1 Peter urges followers of Jesus to be that kind of witness. "^3:15 Always be ready to make an accounting for the hope that is in you."

An accounting for our hope... a public witness to the source of our confidence... this indeed must be on our agenda as contemporary followers of the Way of Jesus. To that end, it is helpful – if a bit paradoxical – that today is Ascension Sunday. The lectionary for this last Sunday of the season of Easter brings before us this text from Luke's book of the Acts of the Apostles. The passage describes the end of the time in which the risen Jesus abides with his followers in tangible form. It images his being "taken up" from them.

I say that this passage is helpful although paradoxical because this story may seem to take Jesus out of our view just exactly when we need to keep him in sight. Jesus after his crucifixion, alive among them, leaves them with a final promise. They will receive a gift of the Holy Spirit's particular power, a gift that will enable them to be his witnesses into the whole world.. That's a reference to the events of Pentecost, which we will celebrate next Sunday. But between now and then, and indeed during all those times in the life of Christian communities when no dramatic outpouring of the Spirit appears to be happening, where will Jesus be? The text here says, " ⁹ When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight." It would be quite right for those who are having the brokenness of the world rubbed in their face right now to find this to be just another disappointment. It would be quite appropriate for those tempted to despair to hear this verse and find it a depressing reminder that just when we need encouragement and assurance, the resources of our faith can sometimes recede from us. "He was lifted up". We want to cry out, "Wait, Jesus, don't go!"

But look again. He was "lifted up" – perhaps this does not mean he was taken to a place far away from us, as we might suppose. Perhaps it only means that the Risen One now enters a new mode of being in relation to us. The cloud that takes him out of their sight – could this not be a metaphor that refers to the obscurity of everyday life? Could the cloud not represent to us the confusion of daily events in which we live? Could it not symbolize the chaos of our perceptions within which we cannot detect and track the movements of Christ's spirit?

That possibility is suggested by theologian Thomas G. Long in a review of a recent book by Christopher Morse called The Difference Heaven Makes: Rehearing the Gospel as News. Morse makes a meticulous survey of the Bible's understanding of heaven and concludes that it is:

"not about blue skies or life only after death". Rather, heaven is the life that is coming toward us from God, the life "of the world to come", a life that overcomes our present age. If heaven is in this way not sometime to come, but now, then when our text portrays Jesus as being taken up into heaven, suggests Tom Long, this is not a spatial claim, but an announcement that Jesus has been taken up "into the very life that is now forthcoming toward us." Heaven is God's unbounded love breaking into every situation, stronger than any loss, even death. We don't go to heaven; heaven comes to us.
[Thomas G. Long, "Heaven comes to us", The Christian Century, May 3, 2011, 55]

So when we hear the Ascension Sunday text everything depends on how we imagine it. If we think of his disappearing into a cloud as his disappearing from our world, then we are really on our own, and really in trouble. But let us imagine it differently. Let us see it as Jesus' expansion to embrace all of reality. Let us take his "ascension" to signal that he comes to us and abides with us in every circumstance of life. Jesus "ascends" into every next moment that you and I encounter.

It is good that on this Ascension Sunday we are celebrating communion. Our sacrament of thanksgiving reinforces the conviction that Jesus is present with us in every circumstance in which we might otherwise despair. The assurance that Jesus abides with us is given tangible form when we take to ourselves these symbolic elements, the bread of life and the cup of salvation. Think of it this way as you come to this table: Jesus was lifted up, so that he might be shared with all the world. The cup is lifted up, so that it might be shared with all who would receive it. We are lifted up – so that we may share a living hope.

May it be so.

May 2011

May 22, 2011

Sermon for May 22, 2011

Untroubled Hearts
Read: John 14:4-14 (NRSV)
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

It is hardly ever the case that something I say in one of my sermons is guaranteed to be true – to be absolutely certain, impossible to deny. But here's one (and I'm going to savour it): If you can hear me pronounce this sentence then the world did not end yesterday, May 21, 2011!

You will recall that the media the last couple of weeks has been having fun with the prediction made by Family Radio, a little American religious broadcasting network, that the Rapture was going to happen yesterday. The radio preacher, 89-year-old Harold Camping, thought he had discovered a complex mathematical formula to interpret some biblical verses in order to predict the day of judgment, the day that God would snatch the true believers up into heaven while the rest of humanity would be left to perish in a great earthquake.

So here we are the day after the supposed "End of Days," with the sun still shining and the ground still stable beneath our feet. Here we are gathered in church to sing hymns of praise to God who, it would seem, really doesn't want to wipe out most of the human race. The doomsday predictions were mistaken.

Now we could make fun of the prognosticators. CBC Radio had its fun with this story the other day by adding this soundtrack, from the 1987 song by the rock band R.E.M.:

It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

Yet it would be a cheap shot to mock Mr. Camping and his arcane calculations of the end of the world. He's undoubtedly sincere, although misguided. But what is it exactly that is misguided? Many times in the history of North American Christianity people have claimed to "crack the code" and predicted the end and – so far – they've been wrong. What can that teach us? Why do people spend any time at all thinking about "the Apocalypse?"

As we begin to explore that, we ought to clarify the terminology. The word "Apocalypse" is the common term for any horrible cataclysm that might threaten our human race or even our planet. But this common usage is rather loose. If we were more precise we would use the word as an adjective, as in the phrase "apocalyptic eschatology". That is the technical term for these periodic eruptions of end-time angst - "apocalyptic eschatology". That's a mouthful. Let's break it down. In Greek the end stage of history is the "eschaton". NT scholar John Dominic Crossan likes to call the eschaton "God's Great Cleanup of the World", when God returns things to the way they were created to be. If you ask yourself, "I wonder how God is going to clean up the world – and I wonder when?", then you are engaging in that part of theology which speculates about that final state of things. You are doing "eschatology".

But how could you ever know about the eschaton, the outcome of history? Well, in Christian theology there is the concept of revelation, the idea that God's Spirit would somehow reveal in somebody's mind what is going to happen someday. The Greek word for "a revelation" is "apocalypse."

Now bring the two words together. Someone is offering an apocalyptic eschatology when they say in effect, "Here's the truth about the end times as it has been secretly revealed to me by God". Harold Camping and his Family Radio – and all the other exponents of what we can call Rapture theology – are purveyors of apocalyptic eschatology.

Rapture theology claims to be Christian. But here are four reasons why it really doesn't understand what Jesus was about. And therefore here are four reminders of what authentic Christianity is like.

First, Rapture theology seizes upon individual verses in the New Testament but misses the meaning of the larger story. Today's text gives us a case in point. Jesus assures his disciples, "I go and prepare a place for you, [and] I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also." Sure enough, that sounds as if Jesus could be talking about a future moment when the faithful followers will be magically whisked away to some "other place" to be with Jesus (just as Rapture exponents imagine it.)
But in the larger context, when you read through the whole of John's Gospel, you find over and over again concerns about where the "place" of Jesus is. Where may his followers find him? Where is his presence active? And in today's text Jesus specifies where we may find him at work – in the works of his followers. "¹²Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these". So when Jesus says to his followers that "where he is they will be also", the "place" where he dwells includes the depths of their community, among them, in the works they do in his name. And the time when he is with them is right now, as his followers carry out their ministry – not just some far distant moment of ascension. So this reminds us that Jesus is Lord not just of some distant future but of our present times, and our task is not to prepare for escape from this world, but rather to join with Jesus' Spirit in transforming our world by doing the works that make up his Way.
Secondly, Rapture theology imagines a God who is violent rather than compassionate. It imagines God exercising the power of the Creator to tear apart the physical universe in order to bring judgment upon those who have resisted God. As Dominic Crossan insists. we should recognize that this simply and seriously misrepresents the God we see through Jesus. And this, as Crossan points out, has the disastrous consequence of encouraging our human propensity for violence.
The most important question we have to face today, really, is violence... The God who is revealed in Jesus is clearly not violent. Jesus himself says this to Pilate when he says, "My kingdom is not of this world". ... A "kingdom not of this world" is not a kingdom in heaven, it is a kingdom here below which does not use force and violence – which we've never had in the history of the world – yet! What we should imagine is: the God who is revealed in Jesus is not violent. That's the challenge. Now, if on the other hand God is violent, even a God of postponed violence whose "final solution" to the problem of evil is to kill the evildoers (albeit at the end), then we are, I think, really doomed. This is because ... we are called to union with God (Leviticus says "Be thou holy as I am holy"), and if we have a God of holy violence, then we are going to be wholly violent. How can we get away from it?
When we recognize the violence of the God of Rapture theology, we appreciate anew that the One Jesus called "Abba" is compassionate and gentle.
The third way in which I find that Rapture theology is theologically off kilter is that it forgets that in an important sense Jesus has already "ended the world" . The "end times" have already arrived in the life and death and rising of the Anointed One of God. Jesus taught and put into practice the Reign of God. His parables picture for us what it's like when God is at the center of our lives. In telling us those stories of grace and forgiveness, Jesus sets up an alternative reality right beside the one we inhabit. He opens to us the door between our order of life and God's new order. He invites us to enter. The most powerful parable of all, the acted-out parable of cross and empty tomb, represents the decisive moment of change when God acts to recover the creation and restore us human creatures within it. The issue between God and us is already settled.
Exponents of the Rapture have forgotten this. When they hunt for the timetable of catastrophe they seem to be asking, "Things are so bad, what is God waiting for?" That is a wrong-headed question. God is not waiting. She has already acted decisively. And she has also graciously permitted our human history to carry on, because in doing so she creates an opportunity for more and more human beings to enter the Reign of God.
And finally, Rapture theology seems to have forgotten the wonderful verse with which our reading from John's Gospel begins today. Jesus speaks a simple word of assurance to followers whom he knows will be prone to anxieties about their future and the future of everyone else. "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me."

Our hearts and minds will not be troubled by visions of the cataclysm if we keep them focussed on Jesus, God's Risen One. So I conclude by reminding us that this is the fifth Sunday of Easter. We are still in Easter season. We live, in a way, in an Easter world. We are living a human history has been fundamentally reoriented towards the gracious purposes of God. Let us then tread with a light step. Let us move easily, as those who are untroubled in our hearts. Let us turn up the volume on the song with which this sermon started:

"It's the end of the world as we know it, and we feel fine."

April 2011

April 17, 2011 | April 3, 2011

Sermon for April 17, 2011

Walking this Week with Jesus:
An invitation to Good Friday and Easter
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

Word was spreading... people were talking... talking about Jesus, the peasant preacher from Galilee, the Spirit person from the little village of Nazareth. He told wonderful stories that brought the Reign of God into the lives of everyone he met. And he didn't just talk about God's kingdom. He acted it out, for he healed people, and shared table fellowship with outcasts, and created a community around him of people learning how to resist oppression and injustice without being violent.

So now his work comes to its climax as Jesus and his friends come up from Galilee to Jerusalem. Jerusalem the headquarters of the Roman occupying army. Jerusalem the home of the great Temple, the center of the faith of the people of the Covenant. Jesus and company approach to bring a message of reform in that faith. They are not angry revolutionaries. They are gentle yet insistent reformers.

How will they be met? Will the high priest and council at the Temple welcome Jesus and his message that the Reign of God is in us and around us? Will the Roman governor acknowledge that Yahweh God alone is Lord, and that allegiance to Caesar must take second place to devotion to God?

Word was spreading... people were talking... some talking with fear, some talking with hope, as Jesus and friends walked closer and closer to the destiny God had prepared for them.

You are invited to walk the walk with them by attending our special services this Easter weekend:

Good Friday (a Joint Service of St. Andrew's, McDougall, Living Spirit and Campbell-Stone United Churches) Friday 10:00 a.m. at McDougall United Church, 8516 Athabasca St. SE.

Easter Sunday, April 24th at 08:00 a.m. - Sunrise Worship, followed by Easter Breakfast (at St. Andrew's United Church).

Easter Sunday, April 24th at 10:00 a.m. - Service of New Life, followed by Easter Light Brunch (also at St. Andrew's).

Sermon for April 3, 2011

Heart of a leader
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: 1 Samuel 16:1-13, NRSV

At the recent congregational meeting we endorsed the slate of St. Andrew's members who have offered (or re-offered) to give leadership on our Church Council and committees and ministries. That is the formal leadership group of our church. But every one of us is part of the leadership of St. Andrew's, in this sense: every one of us has a role to play in the ongoing life of this community of faith and in its future direction. This understanding is explicit in one of the core values that we try deliberately to follow: "shared consultative leadership".

This morning's Bible text has something to say about that sharing of leadership. There is a sequence of stories about King David in the first book of Samuel in the Hebrew Scriptures. We all know the vivid tale of David the shepherd lad slaying the Philistine champion, Goliath. [That was indeed the scripture our children focussed upon in February in the STEPS program, and you will remember that wonderful Goliath figure they created and brought into our worship on February 27.] But the Hebrew storytellers recount several other episodes from David's life which are not so well-known. He is one of the leaders of the people of the Covenant who is most often remembered in the Bible's pages: Abraham, Moses – and David.

Why is the life of David such a compelling story? Because he was an archetypal figure. The Biblical narratives about David reveal a very complex man. His life demonstrates dramatically the morally ambiguous nature of our human condition. Consider these contradictions in the man:

David was renowned as a musician and poet (so that the Psalms were traditionally attributed to him). Yet he was also a skilled warrior and a clever battlefield tactician. That is an unusual combination.
He was attractive in appearance. Since polygamy was commonplace in that era, women of the kingdom would have lined up to join his harem. Yet David's sexual ethics were appalling. Even though he already had several wives he lusted after Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, and exploited his power as king to arrange for Uriah's death on the battlefield so that he might marry the object of his passion. The story of David and Bathsheba demonstrates how power can corrupt.
Later in life his own son, Absolom, rebelled against David's throne. The king was forced to engage in a civil war with Absalom, who was consequently killed in battle. David's tears of grief are a potent reflection on dysfunctional families. His weeping for Absalom expresses the grief that comes to parents when their children take a different path in life that has been planned for them.

Nonetheless, God chose David for leadership.

In all these ways the life of David tells us something important about God's ways with us. God doesn't require perfection from us. For leadership in his communities of faith God can use those who are broken, or frail, or… what shall we say…"complicated", like David. God lays a claim upon our lives even if we are not wholly virtuous and well-formed and mature and morally impeccable. We see this truth in the very first of the stories in the David cycle, the one we read today.

It was a time for the people of the Covenant when good leadership was desperately needed. King Saul had failed as a leader. Emotional illness had distorted his judgment. The Philistines were constantly attacking the kingdom. The times cried out for someone who was courageous and consistent and ready to follow God's lead – someone who, despite his flaws, had qualities God could work with.

And in that crisis the divine hand came to rest on… a shepherd lad. David was still almost a child, young and fresh and innocent, not yet in the grip of contradictory emotional tides. Indeed, he was so young, so innocent, that he never crossed anybody's mind as a candidate to replace the failed leadership of King Saul. Yet God selected him rather than his more obviously qualified siblings. Where no one expected it, a possibility for new leadership was waiting. No one expected it – not David's brothers, not his father Jesse, not even Samuel the prophet to whom God had given the task of marking out this future king. Everybody was judging by appearances, focussed on the obvious, but God sees within the human heart. God knows our mind and will and personality. And God saw in David's heart the necessary gifts in the boy which would flourish in the man he grew to be, despite the ambiguities of his character.

This leads me to ask: is there a David inside each one of us? Are there capacities in us that we have not yet recognized – whatever our age – skills and abilities which are needed in our community of faith and in the broader community in these times? If you are inclined to say, "But I'm no leader", I bid you broaden your understanding of what leadership is. It need not be formally recognized. Leadership can be subtle, an influence exercised in the background, a thoughtfulness that is not flashy but is sound.

In that sense there is indeed a little David in each of us. Think of what we do when we come to Communion, as we do this morning. As we gather for this symbolic meal we bring to the table gifts. In the obvious way, the bread and the cup are gifts offered to God. They are ordinary everyday food and drink. But in a less obvious way the physical bread and cup represent the intangible gifts that we bring to this table – our hidden talents and underdeveloped capacities and unexplored strength of spirit. We offer ourselves, flawed but willing, at this table – very ordinary people through whom God can do extraordinary things. Let the bread and cup symbolize the parts of us that are ordinary and everyday and so far unrecognized as the gifts they are, waiting to be used for God's service.

So as we gather at Christ's table, let us think of ourselves as having something of David in ourselves, which we can bring as an offering to the one who has offered so much for us. And let us understand our participation together in this meal as an invitation to us to mobilize our hidden gifts. Let us release the heart of the leader that is within each of us.

May it be so.

March 2011

March 27, 2011 | March 20, 2011 | March 13, 2011 | March 6, 2011

Sermon for March 27, 2011

Jesus Heals! Forgives?
Rev. Shannon Mang
Read: Mark 2:1-12

This story of a paralyzed man being brought to Jesus for healing by a group of friends is a complex and tightly packed account that significantly changes the story the writer of this Gospel is telling about Jesus. As I mentioned earlier, the writer of Mark is usually very economical in the telling of the stories of Jesus… and suddenly we have a story that is dripping with details. There are a number of unexpected things that occur in this story that put flesh on this character Jesus; details that are coming early in this account of Jesus that give the listeners clues about him.

Let's unpack some of these details:

The persistent faith of the man's friends - pistis
- when this word for faith is used in the Gospel of Mark in the context of healing stories, pistis implies persistence
- the friends go to great lengths to overcome obstacles to get their friend into Jesus' presence
- the friends carry him - we don't know how far
- the crowd doesn't let them through
- the decision is made to go up on the roof and break through the ceiling
Jesus does the unexpected twice in this story:
1. everyone expects that Jesus is going to miraculously heal the man- but he is not healed- he is declared forgiven
2. opportunity to claim comparison between forgivness and healing
We are forgiven… and healed in community. Forgiveness and healing are two sides of the same coin. God desires our wholeness and, wholeness of our whole being, our mind/body/spirit comes through forgiveness and healing. Our call is to reclaim our ministry of forgiveness and healing. We are called to persistent faith for others – most churches do this naturally at some level, but I have found that two outward signs of churches that do this particularly well are the presence of 12-Step groups and Healing Touch groups:

Take Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) as an example. Seven of the 12 Steps are about self-examination, willingness to ask forgiveness and changing behaviours that have been self-destructive and destructive of relationships. It's all about learning and practicing accountability with steps 4-10.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

Healing Touch - those engaging in the practice of healing touch are the 'means' for God to do the healing - they are not the 'source' of healing itself. God and God's persistent desire for our healing is the true 'source' of the healing activity. This is an example of the importance of participating in Healing Touch as a group - accountability along with continuous reminders that it is God, and not the practicioners, who is responsible for the healing.

The heirarchy of the church in Luther's time was not at all impressed by his preaching 'the priesthood of all believers' - he was setting out to destroy the church's cash cow of selling forgiveness of sins through indulgences. We need to reclaim this role in our modern times - most of us live with an unreasonable amount of shame - we are in need of forgiveness and God's grace as much now as ever. We are fortunate to have the best Good News in the neighbourhood - the Christian church is one of the few places where people can come and find community across the generations. We are called to remove barriers - we break through roofs and bring people into the presence of Christ... We all experience Grace, forgiveness, healing and wholeness. Let us claim our authority as the Body of Christ to do the unexpected - to live in God's grace, joyfully and persistently declaring the forgiveness of sins and healing in Jesus' name.

May it be so.

Sermon for March 20, 2011

None left behind
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: Genesis 12:1-5 NRSV

The story, read:
^12:1Now the Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. ² I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. ³ I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." ⁴So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. ⁵ Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother's son Lot, and all the possessions that they had gathered, and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran; and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan.

The story, explored:

Lot (angrily throwing his staff to the ground)
I've had it!

Sarai
What is it, Lot?

Lot
It's Uncle Abram!

Sarai
What's he done now? Left the gate of the sheepfold open again?

Lot
Not that. I can cope with his occasional forgetfulness. I mean, he's seventy-five. No, it's these wild ideas he's been getting lately.

Sarai
Now, Lot, you know your uncle's always been something of a dreamer.

Lot
This is more than night visions, Aunt Sarai. This time he wants us all to just up and move!

Sarai
Yes, it is unsettling. I'm struggling with the idea myself.

Lot
You've talked to him about this?

Sarai
We've had some... conversations, yes.

Lot
Couldn't you talk some sense into him, then? I mean, this is nuts! You two are senior citizens and far too old to go galavanting across the hill country.

Sarai
Well, that was my first thought, too. There are mornings I wake up and I am so tired. But your uncle, he can still be a real fireball, you know. I see the glint in his eye and it makes me feel 17 again.

Lot
Well, I need to put my energy into holding things together. I'm just settling in to running our flocks since Abram turned the business over to me. Sure, these are hard times, but we're holding on. Bottom line, Aunt Sarai, is I'm no dreamer. I'm a practical guy. I need to know what it's going to cost before I jump into anything. And here's Abram saying we should convert what little wealth we have, and say goodbye to this district where we are surrounded by relatives, and set off on this, this "adventure"!

Sarai
He does say that God is calling him to do this, Lot.

Lot
And that's another thing. Who is this "God" Uncle Abram says he's been talking to? What's wrong with the household gods we've always honoured in our family? We've been doing just fine with our religion as it is.

Sarai
He says this is the High God, the God beyond the gods.

Lot
Do you understand that?

Sarai
Well, sometimes... I think... sort of...

Lot
Bah! He's imagining things.

Sarai
Well that's right, nephew. It is a matter of imagination. It is about a vision. Sometimes you just have to trust that the vision is true.

Lot
Easy for you to say! Pardon me for being blunt, Aunt Sarai, but you two are well past it - no kids of your own, nothing to lose.

Sarai
And what is it you're afraid to lose, Lot?

Lot
I'm comfortable in this place. I like the people we're living with. I've grown up among them. This is where I feel at home.

Sarai
But what if there's the possibility of an even better home at the end of this journey? Abram says that God is promising us offspring, a legacy, descendants who will be a 33blessing to the whole world. God will take care of our future.

Lot
This "God" needs to take care of the present. What about all the people who depend on us now? There's my wife, and our kids, and the household servants, and the hired hands, and the lads I've been training as shepherds.

Sarai
They're included. No one has to be left behind. That was the first thing I asked Abram, and he says God wants us to ask everyone along. Invite them all to bring along whatever they've been given. Use all our resources to help accomplish something grand.

Lot
I dunno. What have I got that would be useful for a project like this? All I know is how to raise sheep.

Sarai
And there'll be a need for good shepherds wherever we go.

Lot
Sounds like you've made up your mind. You're going to go with the old man.

Sarai
But you can too, Lot. No one needs to be left behind. You can come along. You can give yourself to this vision. You can give yourself to this God. Your choice. Come on.

[Lot picks up his staff and follows Sarai offstage.]

The story, applied to us:
The style of life to which we are accustomed, in which we feel at home, cannot be permanent. There come times when we have to move. Move. That may be a metaphor, as in a situation, say, where an employer puts you in a whole new level of responsibility and you have to hone some old skills or acquire new ones. Move. That may be literal, as in the situation when deteriorating health requires us to leave the home in which we have lived for maybe decades and go into another kind of residence.

When the need to move is imperative, the story of Abram and Sarai speaks wisdom to our spirits. I single out three words of wisdom:
- 1. Recognize God's promise.God's command to Abram to "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house" is accompanied by a promise, the promise that childless Sarai and Abram will have descendants. Indeed they will give rise to a great nation that will bless all other nations. The wisdom here is that God never requires a change in us that is not accompanied by God's promise that we shall beblesed and fulfilled.
- 2. Entrust yourself to God's promise.Verse 4 says, " So Abram went, as the Lord had told him". Abram famously exemplifies faith in God. And the wisdom here is that faith is a matter of trust, not knowledge. Abram and Sarai cannot know the details of what lies ahead, not to the degree that Lot would like. But they commit themselves, entrust themselves, to the guidance and protection of this God who summons them.
- 3. Take what you need. Remember verse 5. "5Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother's son Lot, and all the possessions that they had gathered, and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran; and they set forth". The significance of this is not often noted. They go forth as a family, as a household, as a caravan of people who belong together. They go forth with the blessings they need, the skills and gifts they have developed while living in Haran. The resources they need for the journey are already in their midst. They need to take stock. But then they can go forth knowing what they really need and leaving behind what they don't.
And that implies something really important for us here at St. Andrew's. Whichever option for our future that this congregation chooses in the months ahead, it will challenge us to move – either metaphorically or literally. The word of wisdom for us as we contemplate such change is this. If it is God indeed who is calling us into this change, no one who belongs needs to be left out. Nothing crucial needs to be left behind. The promise of God will be fulfilled one way or another: we will be blessed, and we will be a blessing.

May it be so.

Sermon for March 13, 2011 (Lent 1)

Leaving Eden
Rev. Shannon Mang
Read: Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-13

We have finally made it to the season of Lent this year- it is starting very late. That is because Easter is happening just 2 days shy of the very latest possible date it can land on. Lent is the 40 days and 6 Sundays that lead up to Easter. It is a time for personal reflection and self-examination; it is a time to bring attention to our relationship with the Holy One.

Before moving on to the Sermon proper, I'd ask you to visit the following link, that describes Creation, told as a parable. The Center for Progressive Christianity

On the first Sunday of Lent we go to our beginnings- and this Sunday the readings in the lectionary are all about temptation. The portion of the Genesis story we heard today is matched in the lectionary with the story of Jesus spending 40 days in the wilderness as he prepares to begin his ministry immediately following his baptism- and the Epistle reading is from Romans where Paul compares the stories of Adam and Jesus and sets out the clear Christian interpretation of how sin entered the world through Adam and how Jesus is the solution to that sin. Rod and I tend to look at stories from scripture all on their own instead of lumping passages together to make a theological point. The wonder and complexity of this story is more than enough on its own.

The passage from this story that we're looking at today is just a slice out of the bigger story. The big story is about God making humanity- and how humanity messed up a really good deal…pretty much from the start. The slice of the story we heard is the turning point in the relationship between the humans and God.

This story has tended to be heavily weighted with the ideas of SIN and TEMPTATION- THE FALL of humanity… its inherent humour has largely been lost in translation. Many parts of this story are funny and witty- so I want to highlight some details that have changed how I experience this story.

We didn't hear the first part of the story where God made a clay person and breathed life into it… and we also didn't hear about the woman being made from the rib of the man… but that's not going to stop me from talking a bit about these details.

There is a lovely word play between the Hebrew word for ‘earth' –ha-adam and what God called ‘ha-a-da-mah' :

hā-'ă-ā-māh,            hā-'ā-ām
the human                of the ground
Earth Creature or "A Dust Bunny"

The name ‘Adam' is a description of the human creature made from the earth. This earth creature has no gender. The genders are created at the same time when a second Earth Creature is made from the first Earth Creature- there is no ‘male' until there is a ‘female'. The ‘part' that is taken from the first Earth Creature is usually translated as ‘rib'… it can also be translated as ‘side'. Actually- this Hebrew word is usually translated as ‘side' or as ‘side chambers'- it is translated 30 times in this way in Hebrew scripture- ‘rib' is used 2 times in Hebrew scripture. God took ‘a side' of the Earth Creature and made another one- the same, but different.

Another delightful word play in Hebrew is between the words that describe the nakedness of the woman and the man and the cleverness of the serpent:

'ă-rūm-mîm,    'ā-rūm,
naked              crafty

"they were nude and the snake was shrewd"

The woman and the man were oblivious to their nudity until the shrewd serpent played out its role in tempting them to eat from the one tree that God had commanded them NOT to eat from. They are innocent like infants- and the Garden is like a big, safe play pen for them to play in. Like a good parent, God made a safe place for them, except the tree that posed a danger- and God explicitly told them to NOT eat the fruit of that one tree: "keep your hands off that fruit- if you eat from that tree, it will kill you!". All of us have lived through being 2 years old— and many of us have survived raising 2 year-olds and we know what happens when we say "Stop!" –"don't touch- you'll get hurt" – there is inevitably an ‘owie' that occurs. I remember being 3 or 4 and my mom getting really mad at me for poking things into outlets- "if you stick that in there- it will kill you!". I don't think I knew what ‘kill me' meant- I just knew my mom was pretty mad at me. Did I heed her warning?? …. Nope- when she was in another room a bobby pin got stuck into that tempting little slot and I experienced something – new and different and not much fun. We try to help the wee ones learn without getting hurt, but the most effective way for the wee ones to learn about the dangers of their world is to live through the consequences of pushing their boundaries.

We're not given any insight into the serpent's motivation for playing on the woman's desire to test the boundary that God had given the humans except that the serpent is playing the role of the ‘trickster' that shows up in many myths and folk tales. The conversation that takes place between the serpent and the woman shows the serpent's ‘shrewdness' or ‘cleverness' and the woman's intelligence and curiosity. It also demonstrates the desire that was at work within the woman. The serpent starts off the conversation saying ‘ "Did God say, 'You shall not eat from any tree in the garden'?", and she replies, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.'" She expands on God's warning taking it from – you'll die if you eat the fruit… to we'll die if we even so much as touch that tree! This could mean that she's been thinking a lot about that tree that has been set off limits. The tricky serpent plays her, coming in between her and God saying that God's threat is empty. God's threat of death is to keep her from becoming a god too- "You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." A more accurate translation for the ‘good and evil' might be ‘you'll know everything- good and bad'- evil is heavily leaden with a moral message where the Hebrew word means - ‘adversity, affliction, bad, calamity, displeasure, distress'—bad stuff, but not evil. The woman is curious, she wants more than what she has experienced to date in that safe play pen of a Garden. She is beginning to doubt the threatened consequences her God-parent has used so far to keep her safe, and she is inclined to believe the serpent's assertion that God is just being selfish with knowledge. So she takes another look at the fruit hanging on that forbidden tree- "the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate" She made a choice and she rationalised it- in doing so she crossed a boundary that couldn't be uncrossed- she wanted more and she saw it was in her power to take more… so she did.

And where is the man in the story?? Just hanging out- was he even paying attention to the conversation between the woman and the serpent?? It occurs to me that the man may not have been the most interesting creature to the woman if she strikes up a conversation with a clever serpent. It seems as though he was close at hand, whether or not he was paying any attention to the conversation between serpent and woman and her choice to break the one rule in the garden because he's right there once she's taken a bite: "and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate." He doesn't exactly challenge or question her behaviour.

"Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked;" they had taken a step away from God, they had made a choice to break the one rule of the Garden and knowing everything- good and bad was not fun. They no longer saw themselves with God's eyes, they saw themselves through one another's eyes—and the serpent's eyes, and they experienced vulnerability. Knowing good and bad made them feel like they needed to cover themselves for protection, and it made them feel as though they needed to hide from God. Sewing fig leaves together in an attempt to cover themselves is another joke—fig leaves feel like rough sand paper.

The game is up as soon as God notices that the kids are missing in the Garden play pen. The kids know they've broken the rule, and in breaking the rule they've changed their relationship with their God-parent- they experience fear for the first time and they hide, trying to avoid the consequences of their choice. They hide from God, but the man cannot resist answering God when calls "Where are you?" He said, "I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself." God knows immediately what the problem is and asks straight out about breaking the one rule of the Garden- did you eat the forbidden fruit? The man does not answer the question- he first passes the buck--- you gave me this woman and she gave me the fruit… and then he admits that he ate it. God turns to the woman and asks what she has done… and she passes the buck saying that she was tricked by the serpent.

God can forgive sin… and God does, God does not abandon the kids – God continues to have a relationship with the kids outside of the Garden play pen, the relationship is different. What God cannot live with is the kids not taking responsibility… We've been out of the Garden play pen for a long time. Leaving the Garden had to happen in order for us to grow up. We continue to grow up as we take responsibility for ourselves and our choices… and as we accept God's forgiveness and friendship as we grow in living with the consequences of choices and actions.

As Christians who claim this story as our own, we do bring our own unique flavour to how we face our own responsibilities and grow in faith. We believe in a God that is Tri-une- the Creator God who creates and re-creates us always- who does the forgiving. The Holy spirit who blows God's enlivening Spirit into our Dusty Beings and brings us to life and Jesus Christ- the one whose Way we follow and whose company we keep on our Lenten Journey. May our Lenten journey be Grace-full as we travel this sacred time with our God.

Sermon for March 6, 2011

The Master's touch
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes' communion meditation
Read: Matthew 17:1-9

The two shelties that Marilynn and I have at home are a bit like children. They have interesting individual differences. The older dog loves to be patted, so that if you hold out your hand towards her she will approach with her tail wagging, eager to be stroked. The younger one will have none of that. He shies away from an extended hand. There is a reason for this. I made a mistake with him when he was just a puppy. He was snapping at me, trying to grab a milkbone out of my hand, and in a moment of anger I swatted his nose. It happened just the once but that was enough to make him instinctively fearful of human touch.

One of the reasons human beings keep pets is that they help to keep us in touch with our embodiment as animals. We may be the only species on the planet capable of abstract thought, but we also often behave instinctively, just like other primates, other animals, other living creatures. In particular, while we alone can communicate with each other through language, we connect also through touch. Although so much of what we mean to each other is mediated by our words to one another, there is a more primal level of connection which we make with each other through physical touch. An infant who falls over while learning to walk instinctively reaches out not just for a comforting word but for the parent's hug.

Our embodiment, our physicality, our animal inheritance – these things are not alien to us. We are not imprisoned in our flesh. Rather, our bodies are the vehicle of our personhood. Our bodies are our medium. Words are, too, but our bodies came first.

The Christian tradition never forgets this, because (in the traditional doctrine) it proclaims that Jesus was "God incarnate". Our contemporary creed each week affirms that God "has come in Jesus, the Word made flesh". This is not simply speculative theology. It reflects the way the followers of Jesus experienced him. He touched people, literally. We would also say metaphorically that he touched people, meaning he affected their lives. But he also handled them as part of his healing gift. Usually the Gospels portray his acts of healing people through his laying his hands upon them.

And so even the transfiguration story that we read today contains a reminder of our human embodiment. It is, of course, a highly metaphorical story, packed full of symbolic meaning. Matthew's Gospel here uses visual imagery of an overwhelming experience the disciples had of Jesus: "his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white." Thus he is portrayed as shining with the glory of God. That would have been an extraordinary, mysterious, mind-boggling vision. But when it was over Jesus came up to his disciples and before he said anything at all he touched them. So warm. So human. So like Jesus.

At the physical level he re-established contact with them. Although from that time forward they would look at him in a new way he would still be their friend, their "bosom friend" as it were, because he laid a hand on their shoulders. Having through that touch reaffirmed his bond to them, he can then say to them, "Get up and do not be afraid." His touch and his words reassure them. He will be right beside them, in touch with them, all the way. So they can now go with him, down from the mountain, back into the hurly-burly of his mission, and straight on towards Gethsemane and Calvary.

Matthew told the story this way in order to encourage his readers. That includes us. This story is given to us to encourage us with the touch of Jesus – even though he does not reach out to us literally and physically. He touches us spirit-to-spirit. And as his Spirit embraces our spirit his words shape our life. When we try to follow the Way of Jesus, you see, we are embracing an incarnational faith. We are called always to put our faith into action, because our faith is an incarnational faith, a faith that reaches out to touch others.

This is also why we mark the presence of the Spirit of Christ among us through this ritual of bread and cup, this sacrament of communion. This is a physical communion. The reality of God is conveyed to us through our physical nature, our need for food and drink, as well as through all the symbolic meanings that attach to this sacrament. So come to the table this morning, and be touched by this bread and cup, and – literally – be fed.

May it be so.

February 2011
February 20, 2011 | February 13, 2011 | February 6, 2011
Sermon for February 20, 2011

Perfectly out of balance
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: Matthew 5:38-48 (Contemporary English Version)

"There's no free lunch." "What goes around comes around." "To get you have to give." "You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours." "An eye for an eye". These aphorisms express a stance in life that seeks balance. Keeping things in proportion. Tit-for-tat. This is the common wisdom under which so much of the world lives, and has always lived.

For certain matters it is valid. Balance is vital in the physical sense. Without it we could not walk, let alone ride a bicycle. Balance is important for systems. Here is a picture of one of the remarkable pieces of rock-balancing art created by a San Francisco artist, Bill Dan. Using nothing but his intuition about where the balancing point is for a large rock, this artist creates a system of weights and stresses held perfectly in balance. Balance is vital in another sense, too. It is important to keep the areas of our life in proportion. "Always remember to keep a balance between work and play." What grandparent hasn't offered that little nugget of wisdom to a grandchild? You'll hear such advice frequently on Oprah. And it is a cliché for celebrities and former celebrities: "In therapy I have learned the importance of keeping spiritual life and professional life balanced. I need to regain my balance." (Ironically, that was Tiger Woods).

But on crucial matters Jesus of Nazareth offered a different wisdom. The Way which he taught and lived broke free of proportionality. Jesus went beyond calculation, measure, balance. He took a stance of generous care and extravagant love, parallel to the extravagant, no-holds-barred love for us which he knew in his "Abba", his "heavenly Father". For instance (and from today's reading), Jesus said this:

³⁸You have been taught, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." ³⁹But I tell you not to try to get even with a person who has done something to you.

Now so-called pragmatic common sense has always shaken its head at these teachings of Jesus, regarding them as hopelessly "idealistic". But look more closely here. This wisdom of Jesus is in fact down-to-earth, engaged, and powerful.

Jesus proclaimed that the Realm of God is continually trying to break into our world. He taught his first followers what it's like to live now in that "heavenly kingdom". This was tough business – the Mediterranean peasant world in which Jesus lived and taught was a far cry from the kingdom of God. Taxation upon the peasantry by Roman overlords was severe. The economy of Galilee was being wrecked through the development of huge agricultural states to produce luxury goods for the imperial upper classes. The Roman soldiers who backed up this oppression were efficient in their brutality. Village life was filled with petty injustices on a daily basis. We may think our 21st century Western society has its horrors; but first century Palestine was far worse. It was in that grim social matrix that Jesus said, "The Reign of God has come upon you".

Part of what he meant is conveyed by this teaching in the passage from Matthew that we read today. Look at verse 41. ⁴¹If a soldier forces you to carry his pack one mile, carry it two miles." Here Jesus is pointing to the common practice in which the Roman Legions conscripted local peasant labour. So imagine yourself as a peasant follower of the Way of Jesus who is actually in that situation. What are you to do if a Roman centurion taps you on the shoulder and snarls, "Peasant dog! Carry my gear!"

You are cast in the role of the peasant victim, one of history's countless trampled-upon. The whole Roman system of social organization was radically unjust. It was backed up by the threat of military coercion, that is, the threat of violence. The centurion needs only to draw his sword to solve the problem of a recalcitrant peasant. So what are you to do? Three options seem to be open.

First, you could say no and, picking up a rock, prepare to attack if the soldier draws his sword. We have an almost instinctive belief that a victim has a right to self-defence. There is a principle in the art of war called proportional response. If someone attempts to attack you using a certain level of force you are entitled to defend yourself with an equivalent level of force. But that would be to respond to violence with violence. It might be proportional violence, and that's an improvement over escalating retaliation, but it is violence nonetheless. And Jesus forbids it to his followers. "When someone slaps your right cheek, turn and let that person slap your other cheek."

Secondly, you could simply refuse to carry the centurion's equipment. This would earn you a beating, or worse. It would be courageous. It would be a form of resistance. But it would be an individual act of limited scope. It would do little to disrupt, let alone overthrow, the entire system of injustice under which you are living.

Thirdly, you could agree to carry the equipment for a certain distance; in this translation this is "a mile". That was the commonly-understood solution that peasants and soldiers had negotiated over the years. Peasants would comply with the solder's command as long as it did not take them away from their own work for too long. In this way you could hold off the threat of punishment. Notice that the principle of balance is at work here. The centurion demands a certain amount of labour and you supply it in the exact amount required – going one mile. This would solve your immediate problem. But it would not address the underlying problem. You would have acquiesced in yet another everyday accommodation with evil. The underlying injustice of the system would remain unchanged.

Jesus proposes none of those three responses. He recommends instead a surprising move. If you are his follower you should carry the centurion's equipment for a second mile. I claimed earlier that this would be a powerful move. Here is how.

First, it is public. You might even make an exaggerated show of carrying his bundle the extra distance. That way you could turn this forced act of grudging labour into a symbolic act of political resistance. The exaggeration of the second mile makes a mock of this unjust system of life. You would also, paradoxically, draw some personal satisfaction. You would have demonstrated that you are not really a victim here, but a dignified and self-respecting human being. You have the will and the strength to go the customary distance – and beyond.

Secondly, your response is nonviolent. It meets the systemic threat of violence in a nonviolent way.

Thirdly, it is a form of resistance. It is not acquiescence. It is not cowardice. It is resistance against not the individual centurion but the authority structure under which you and he are living.

And so, fourthly, it is creative. As you walked the second mile you would be pulling off a manoeuver no one would have expected. You would be finding in the situation a possibility no one could have foreseen. Where did you get this idea? From the teachings of Jesus, through which he calls you to travel the first mile and the second mile and all the miles needed to follow along his Way into the Reign of God.

This is how the Reign of God becomes present. This is how God's sovereignty comes to replace the sovereignty of Caesar, indeed to overthrow the dominion of every oppressive regime. Followers of the Way of Jesus live out God's values in the face of the inhuman values of the dominant order. They meet injustice with creativity. They meet violence with nonviolent resistance. They don't give up and passively surrender to the wrong. They do not acquiesce and accommodate evil, but (as they are open to God's Spirit) they look for heretofore unseen possibilities in the situation whereby the oppressive system can be shown up for the failure that it is. In these ways, followers of the Way let go of a balanced approach to meeting life's wrongs and evils. They trust in the power of God's Spirit, and live a life gloriously devoted to Jesus' marvelously unbalanced vision of the Reign of God.

Sermon for February 13, 2011

Co-workers with God
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: 1 Corinthians 3:1-9 (New International Version)

Here is a fictional situation. It's trivial but (I hope) quite realistic. You are asked to set the tables in the church hall for a congregational meal. You know exactly how this is to be done, how many forks and knives and spoons there need to be and where they should be placed. Then someone comes along and offers to pitch in and help. After a few minutes working together you notice that they do it "all wrong". "Excuse me," you say, "but I think the salad fork goes on the outside next to the plate, not the inside." The other person responds, "Oh, no, I'm sure it's supposed to be other way around." Now you have a choice. Do you find a way to insist politely on your customary placement, or do you bite your tongue and accede to their style even if it is not up to your standards?

This appears to be a simple enough dilemma. Even a silly one. Nonetheless it contains an issue that it common to many more serious church fights, such as the conflict that was going on in a very early Christian community -- the church in the city of Corinth, to whom Paul the Apostle was writing in the text we read today.

The problem which that Corinthian church faced was far more severe than a problem about cutlery. The apostle Paul had started the congregation and then moved on, leaving them in the care of a fellow preacher in the Jesus movement named Apollos. We know little about Apollos but he was evidently impressive enough as a leader to attract an exclusive following. In fact the Corinthian church was starting to break up. It was dividing into partisan cliques each focused around a different leader, such as Apollos or Paul himself. Today's passage comes from Paul's letter of exhortation to the Corinthians once he had heard about this problem.

Their problem was the way they were thinking about leadership. Of course, every community of faith needs leaders. You will notice, however, that I used the plural "leaders", not "leader". There is an opinion abroad today that the successful church needs a strong leader-in-the-singular. This reflects in part a belief often encountered in the business world which holds that a company's achievements depend upon the visionary leadership of a single person who has a goal and a plan. [And to attract such superstars the salary must be "competitive", an idea that's part of the current controversy in our city about the multi-million-dollar renumeration the CEO of our city-owned utility.] It's a common belief that the crucial leader at the top determines success or failure. I'm not sure if this is true, not even for the most hierarchically-organized corporations. It is certainly not true for the kind of community of faith that Jesus initiated and Paul was trying to foster.

^{Mark 10:42}"Jesus called [his followers] and said to them, "You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. ⁴³ But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant. Leadership in Jesus' communities cannot involve one leader lording over another. There need to be multiple leaders and they need to function as equals.

In today's reading Paul offers an agricultural metaphor to make this same point. Congregations are God's fields. The work of bringing them to fruition requires various gifts: someone plants the seed, someone waters, someone harvests. In other words, multiple leaders are needed with different but complementary gifts. Since it is God who finally makes things grow, for any one leader to assume to have greater honour and status and reputation than another is to lose sight of the kingdom of God.

If it be objected that it is just human nature that allegiances will develop within the congregation around one leader rather than another, Paul responds by challenging us to transcend and transform our human nature. "³ …Since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans?" The implicit challenge is that we should act not like "mere humans" but like humans who have been transformed by the love of Christ. So Paul instructs the Corinthians that they need to regard both him and Apollos as "co-workers in God's service". Another translation is "partners in God's work". _{[Orr, William F. And Walther, James Arthur, 1 Corinthians, p 168.]}

Co-workers. Partners. Here Paul is articulating the principle of "shared leadership" in the church. Shared leadership is a phrase you have heard us use frequently in this congregation. It is a very biblical idea. Consider all the many examples in which the leaders that God gives to her people work in pairs. For Abraham there was Sarah, his co-progenitor of the Hebrew people. For Moses there was Aaron, his co-revolutionary in the uprising against slavery in Egypt [and Aaron was far the more articulate of the two]. Indeed for Jesus there were not just one or two but twelve other leaders in his movement. He shared his leadership with his disciples. To them he entrusted his mission in Galilee of healing and reconnecting people to God. "^{Luke 9:1} Jesus called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, ²and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal."

In sum: God wants us to be co-creators with him in the great project of making humankind flourish. Why does he work this way? Why does he promote shared leadership so that his communities of faith will achieve his purpose? It's because of God's creativity. God's style in achieving his purposes is to work through what we think of as blocked situations to find some possibility that we have not seen. This is God's infinite creativity. He always finds a way. And the way that God finds almost always involves contributions from God's people, who contribute to the solution out of their own creativity.

God's creativity invites our creativity, and our creativity requires different people working together. Whenever we are giving leadership in the church there are folks around us with gifts complementary to ours with whom we are called to share leadership. Through them unforeseen possibilities arise. It is in their contributions that we are likely to find creative solutions to whatever is blocking our path.

That is a very large idea: God invites us to be co-creators with her. I want to draw some implications. The first is a broad implication for our current discernment process here at St. Andrew's. Your Vision Team has been pursuing discussions with many of the other United Churches in south Calgary. Together with them we are trying to discern a way that we might join together in a regional expression of United Church mission and ministry.

There are different and separate issues in these discussions. One issue for us here at St. Andrew's is that if we entered into some new regional form of United Church what would be the most faithful way for us to use the value of our land and building in support of that regional project. All the other south Calgary congregations wish us well on this and several of them want to talk to us about sharing their space with us – if we decide to go that route. And if we did decide to share space with another congregation there would be so many opportunities to share leadership in mission and ministry. But there would also be so many ways in which the partnering congregations would be challenged not to be perfectionist, not to hold on to our own stuff, not to allow cliques to develop. In other words, not to fall into the problems of the Corinthian church.

A quite separate issue – regardless of the question of shared buildings – is the basic idea of shared ministry. We have had excited response from those other south Calgary congregations about the idea of sharing ministries across several congregations. The leaders in those congregations and in ours recognize that this is how we are called to be together in Christian community – sharing leadership, being co-workers, partners, in the larger, regional context beyond the congregational level. In working out what a shared regional ministry with would be like, folks in our south Calgary United churches would encounter many opportunities to work together and therefore many temptations not to work together. Once again, we would need to remember Corinth.

Which brings us back to the cutlery situation. This is a narrow and specific implication of Paul's metaphor of the seed, the water, and the growth. You see, in my fictional example the person who has offered to help set the table is from another United Church congregation which has committed to a ministry partnership with ours. The meal being prepared is a joint one between the two churches. All the grand plans and fine talk of shared ministry by the leadership in the congregations would finally come down to this kind of pragmatic dilemma: how do we negotiate even trivial differences? The way we make small particular decisions about such trivial matters as the cutlery will make or break any attempt at shared ministry. How we negotiate the conflict between our style and someone else's style will make or break the greater project of bringing a renewed demonstration of living together as communities of the Way of Jesus.

Will we remember Paul's metaphor – ⁶ I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow"? Will we realize that this difference over cutlery between ourselves and this member from the other congregation might create some interesting possibilities? Might we notice that there are enough forks in the cupboard to put two extra ones at each place, one on the outside for the salad and one on the inside – for dessert!

Sermon for February 6, 2011

Turn on the spirit light
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes' communion meditation
Read: Isaiah 58:1-9 & Matthew 5:14-16

Part of the wonderful ferment that is currently happening in North American Christianity is the emergence of communities of Christian faith that "do church" in ways with which we are not familiar. Phyllis Tickle calls these "Emergence churches". Their common life involves the rediscovery of Christian practices. You have heard Shannon and me speak frequently about these ancient faith-practices that Emergence churches are rediscovering: worship, hospitality, discernment, theological reflection, healing, the forming of diverse communities, testimony, and contemplation or other forms of regular prayer. _{[Diana Butler Bass, Christianity for the Rest of Us, p. 306]}

Observe that absent from that list is the ancient practice of fasting. To fast is to voluntarily do without food for a set time, consuming only water. There are in our culture only two echoes of this practice: the first meal of our day we call "break fast"; and the lab requires us to fast overnight before certain blood tests. We may notice that are Muslim neighbours observe the discipline of daytime fasting during the month of Ramadan. But fasting as a spiritual practice has become virtually lost to our church culture.

In ancient societies, however, it was one of the most significant activities by which people of faith expressed their connection to God. This was certainly true for ancient Israel. To this day our Jewish neighbours observe Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement – with a 25-hour period of fasting and intensive prayer.

In ancient societies, however, it was one of the most significant activities by which people of faith expressed their connection to God. This was certainly true for ancient Israel. To this day our Jewish neighbours observe Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement – with a 25-hour period of fasting and intensive prayer.

Of course, like any other religious practice, fasting could very easily become a point of pride for us. Any ritual that any community of faith develops faces this danger, that it can become opaque to God. Opaque to God. What I mean is that although a religious ritual is intended to help us connect more strongly to God, over time it can become an end in itself. We can become so accustomed to it and inattentive to it that it is no longer spiritually transparent. We stay on the surface of the ritual instead of being carried through it into the mysterious presence of the Holy One. And then the ritual no longer functions as a vehicle by which God's grace shines through our words and actions.

This is precisely what happened in the community of faith addressed by the prophet Isaiah. His people's ritual fasting had become opaque to God. They did it superficially as a token behaviour. It no longer reflected a sincere commitment to God in all areas of their life. Specifically, they were careful to fast according to the rules, but they were ignoring God's requirement of social justice. Isaiah voiced God's requirement that Israel's public policy should reflect God's justice – economic, distributive justice, equal access to God's good earth for all God's children. Read again the first verses in today's text:

Tell my people what's wrong with their lives,
face my family Jacob with their sins!
They're busy, busy, busy at worship,
and love studying all about me.
To all appearances they're a nation of right-living people -
law-abiding, God-honoring.
But their fasting is hypocritical:
"The bottom line on your 'fast days' is profit.
You drive your employees much too hard.
You fast, but at the same time you bicker and fight.
You fast, but you swing a mean fist.

To follow the ways of God requires that we accompany our religious practices by a life of justice-making. God says through Isaiah:

"This is the kind of fast day I'm after:
to break the chains of injustice,
get rid of exploitation in the workplace,
free the oppressed,
cancel debts."
What I'm interested in seeing you do is:
sharing your food with the hungry,
inviting the homeless poor into your homes,
putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad,
being available to your own families.
Do this and the lights will turn on.

That's a beautiful image. Do justice and "the lights will turn on". Love the neighbour and God's light will come shining through your prayers and your words and your actions.

That spiritual truth applies to us, of course. We don't fast. But we do come to Sunday worship. And we do gather around the table for communion. We begin the rituals of communion by saying first a prayer of great thanksgiving. That prayer usually speaks of the kind of love and justice that God wants for us and all of God's beloved children. In other words, when we pray as we come to the table we are committing ourselves to seek God's Reign of economic justice, and the sharing of God's good earth. We symbolize this commitment by the breaking and sharing of daily bread.

So as we come to communion today let us focus not on the externals of the bread and the cup but on the inner commitment we are making. Let us renew our allegiance to God's desire for "daily bread" for all God's children. When we commune that way our practice of communion becomes transparent to God. Our lives become transparent to God. And we shine (even if sometimes not very brightly) with the love of God.

Remember the saying of Jesus (in a passage from Matthew's Gospel):
^{Matthew 5:14} "You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. ¹⁵ No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. ¹⁶ In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven."

January 2011
January 30, 2011 | January 16, 2011 | January 9, 2011 | January 2, 2011
Sermon for January 30, 2011

Rev. Shannon Mang
A dialogue sermon on The Lord's Prayer
Read: Matthew 6:8-15

Our Father, who art in heaven

G - Yes, what can I do for you today?

Who's that? And why are you interrupting my prayer?

G- interrupting?—no-no-no—I'm answering you. You’re the one who said 'Our Father'- well, here I am. What was it you were about to say?

You're God?

G- yep

Why haven't I heard you talk before?

G- I don't know, I respond to you all the time when you talk to me, but usually you don't hear me, you rarely seem to be tuned into the right channel. Something is right today.

But, you're in heaven… isn't that, like… a different dimension. I guess I've always assumed that you can hear me from here, because you're God… it never occurred to me that I'd have a connection with heaven… except- when its time to make a permanent move that is.

G- I'll let you in on a little secret--this whole heaven idea, it's a lot closer to you than you thought. It’s a bit like electricity- you take the grid for granted for all sorts of things that make your life comfortable- lights; refrigeration; the Internet… you don't really pay attention to it until you have a blackout—or until you cannot find a power outlet to charge up your laptop battery. It is pretty hard to separate me from the idea of heaven—I'm all around you, and there are any number of switches and outlets for you to plug in to me- prayer is a pretty important way to plug in—and I'm particularly fond of the prayer you are about to pray. Heaven is just a prayer away…

Cool - I am feeling rather plugged in today. Alright then, Our Father, who are in heaven...

G- go on...

Why 'Our Father'? You are bigger than gender. Do you really know how messed up your church has been over you being closed up in a box labeled 'HIM'? How half your children have been shut out of the workings of your church for most of the past 2 thousand years because they're women? And- Do you know about all the children and adults who choke a bit on this prayer because their fathers hurt them so much?

G- yes…believe me, I know. I've been walking with my 'shut-out' daughters through all of history, not just the last 2000 years. And, yes… while both fathers and mothers have always been made in my image, generation after generation has seen too much parental pain inflicted upon the children. When this prayer first landed on the lips of the followers of my Son, saying Abba was a pretty radical thing—it was a real seismic shift to have a close Daddy/child relationship with my human kids. I know that "Our Father" doesn’t work for everyone, but there have always been some of my kids who have found a great deal of healing and comfort in my arms when they've been badly hurt by their human fathers.

Ok... Daddy - Hallowed be thy name. What does that mean?

G- hallowed means to make holy. It's a habit that you would do well to develop. You've been doing some interesting things to my name the last few years.

Ouch- you hear that too?

G- you betcha! You expect me to listen to you when you talk to me in prayer, but somehow I'm supposed to just tune out all of those other colourful ways you use my name?

So, when I say, 'hallowed be thy name' that's acknowledging that you are God and you are Holy, AND its a reminder to me to pay attention to our relationship and be respectful of you in other parts of my life.

G- that's a good start...

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

G- do you really mean that??

I think so, you're the one who's God- I like to think that you are in control of what happens here.

G- how much of my will is being done in your life... as it is in heaven?

Whoa- that's getting a bit personal don't you think?? I'm a good person- I go to church, well…. I sometimes go to church, and I pray to you… that's got to count for something.

G- this isn't a virtue competition—it's about my will. If I'm wanting to have my will fulfilled, don't you think it makes sense to start with those of you who are praying for my will to be done on earth as it is in heaven??– it has to start in the lives of my kids who are doing the praying… like you!!

Do you want more of me?? Like the bumper sticker I saw a few days ago… "If God is your co-pilot- it time to change seats"

G-that's a start. I'm feeling pretty cramped in your skin with all the worries about your own kids and your mom, and all those fears … I'd just like a bit more room in your heart—I'll gladly take the worries from you, and I can take care of those fears too. With a bit more room there will be space for joy and gratitude. You'll be surprised at how easy it is to allow my will to be done in your life when there is enough room for me to function.

I'll work on that…Give us this day our daily bread. Actually, could I ask for help in not eating quite so much of the daily bread I have available to me. This middle-aged spread is getting out of hand.

G- you are on to something- that request is made in the plural "Give us"- not "give me." It is my will that all my children have enough for their daily needs- if you are finding that you have more than enough, chances are pretty good that my children somewhere else don't have enough.

Great- food politics in the global marketplace… and here I was hoping for some help with my diet!

G- your diet will take care of itself if you focus your energy on seeing that low income children in Calgary get enough food to eat, and have a home to live in and parents who can make a living wage to provide 'enough' for the daily needs of their children.

Oh... ok... I see a change in priorities in my future. What comes next... forgive us ... our trespasses...

G- go on...

I've said this prayer hundreds of times, I think I’ll take a pass on this next part. Really- this prayer is so much easier to say when I don't think about what I'm actually praying!!

G- so you don't much like being reminded to 'forgive those who have trespassed against you' -me- I prefer the bluntness of the other translations that say "forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us" - the most accurate translation is "forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors"

I'll take trespasses… it makes be think of the wooden signs I'd see along the country roads where I rode my bike… I hardly ever trespassed.

G- when was the last time you spoke with your sister?

I knew you'd bring her up! I've managed quite nicely without her in my life the last 3 years. The last words we exchanged were just too much, there is no repairing that damage. There is just too much water under the bridge.

G- it really hurts doesn't it? Both of you have been carrying that burden for too long… it isn't all about just you two - this is an emotional minefield for your mother and your brother as they try to maintain relationships with both of you- and her kids, and your kids would love to have the freedom to enjoy the closeness they once had.

Do I have to forgive her? ….Do I have to forgive myself? Anger and revenge have not exactly brought me comfort and joy - this has been the root of all lot of the things that are not good in my life. But…Can't I wait for her to make the first move? Please?

G-no-one said that that Christian maturity was easy. You have all of us to do this hard work alongside of you: me, my Son Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Together we can take baby steps. Forgiveness is a process- it takes time. But it won't happen at all without practice. You'll be fine… in fact, you'll be more than fine- as you work on forgiving those who have hurt you, or those who are in debt to you, the joy you will experience through BEING forgiven is truly worth the effort. [singing] A…MAZING GRACE… HOW SWEET THE SOUND! You'll see!

No more holding those "no trespassing" signs in my head and not thinking about the implications of this??

G- you don't really want to go back there.

You're right… of course you're right! You're God!
Now- this last line I have paid attention to over the years because it just doesn't seem right some how: "and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil" I've always wondered why I was asking you to NOT lead me into temptation—do you need to be asked to do this?? Just so you know-- I'm more than ok with being delivered from evil.

G- you're right – this "lead us not into temptation" always makes me giggle when I hear my English kids say this—the original Aramaic is much more lyrical. Have you noticed that the first 3 phrases of this prayer are all about me, and the last 3 phrases are all about you? It is really a lovely form of parallel poetry. All 3 of the phrases about you reinforce how you are dependant upon me- you need me for your daily bread- for forgiveness (in which you have a role to play) and in this last phrase you express your need for protection and care. I love to be needed!

So this isn't some strange hangover from a time when you were seen as a mean and angry God who would just as soon see us suffer as save us?

G- no- that's never been what I’m about! I love this prayer- I love to hear it on the lips of my beloved children everyday- but the prayer isn't about changing my mind about you - it is all about you changing your mind about me! When you invite me into your skin- your heart- your soul- I will ensure that you have enough; I will forgive you; and I will keep your soul safe. And FYI…You might like to know that the original Aramaic had me keeping you safe from the 'evil one'

The devil? You've got to be joking!

G- get to know me better and find out...

Well aren't you coy!
I see that the big ending- "for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, for ever and ever Amen" is not in most translations of the Lord's prayer in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke- but we say it… and how we love to sing it!! Is it in- or out of the prayer?

G- that wasn't a part of the prayer when my Son's followers started saying this prayer with regularity. It came along later- a monk who was copying a manuscript by candlelight one night experienced a power surge of the Holy Spirit and was inspired to add that little "Gloria" on to the end of the prayer. I'm quite fond of it- the Holy Spirit often likes to improve on my originals.

I don't think that I'm going to be able to say this prayer without consideration for what I'm actually saying- and care- and compassion for the rest of the world ever again. I'm ready to see what you can make of me as I learn to pray what I mean -and mean what I pray.

G- welcome to being more firmly plugged into my grid!!

Sermon for January 16, 2011

Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Small things count
Read: Isaiah 49:1-7 NRSV

Prof. Basil Mitchell was my tutor and doctoral supervisor at Oxford during the mid-70s. Just this past year Prof. Mitchell, still remarkably vigorous at the age of 93, published his memoirs, entitled Looking Back on Faith, Philosophy, and Friends in Oxford. It is well titled. Basil Mitchell looks back over his life and times, recounting fascinating characters and episodes from a rich and full life.

Sometimes memoirs like this can become exercises in vanity. Autobiography can turn into whitewashed self-puffery. I think of the words to Frank Sinatra’s hit song, which was certainly autobiographical - I Did It My Way:

Yes, there were times, I'm sure you knew,
When I bit off more than I could chew,
But through it all, when there was doubt,
I ate it up and spit it out.
I faced it all and I stood tall
And did it my way.

Do you sense in those lyrics the pride of the self-made man? The song ends on a boastful note:

For what is a man? What has he got?
If not himself - Then he has naught.

To say the things he truly feels
And not the words of one who kneels.
The record shows I took the blows
And did it my way.

But it is also possible to write autobiography that does not indulge in inflated self-congratulation, but instead includes honest self-evaluation. These memoirs of Basil Mitchell are honest and modest in that way, never turning aside from seeing his own shortcomings and always being generous of spirit when describing others.

It is not just Oxford dons who write autobiographies. It seems to be a very natural human impulse to want to look backwards and take stock. Is there any person who, as he or she moves into the last chapters of life, does not wish to look back over the pages of their days and read there the significant moments and the people who were loved and the stories that mattered?

The ancient Hebrew prophet whom biblical scholars label as "Second Isaiah" certainly felt that impulse to ponder the meaning of his life. He was one of the spiritual leaders of the Hebrew people during their exile in Babylon about 2500 years ago. The Babylonian empire was tottering and about to fall to the armies of Persia under King Cyrus, but the leadership class among the Hebrews was still in bondage. And so, although Second Isaiah does believe that God is about to redeem the people and liberate them and return them to their homeland, he does not achieve such a hope easily. He has had to struggle to find meaning in his own life and the life of his people during their long exile by the waters of Babylon. He has had to conquer his own fear and despair in order to find hope in God.

The passage that we read today from Second Isaiah is the part of his memoirs that reveals that struggle against despair. He begins by recalling how he came initially to be a spiritual leader of his people. God called him to a ministry as a prophet. God commissioned him to be a mouthpiece for the Lord, to speak the unpopular truth to his people about their faithlessness, to interpret to them their failure to be loyal to Yahweh. He writes, "² [God] made my mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me away."

Second Isaiah thinks over the long years he has given to this task of being a "sharp sword" against God’s own people. Perhaps he thinks of the sacrifices he has made. Perhaps he recalls how he has had to endure the anger of his neighbours. Many of them had settled comfortably into the lifestyle of Babylon and become complacent and indeed had accumulated some wealth. They hardly wanted to be reminded that they did not belong there, that they were people of the covenant, that God still made a claim upon their lives. Perhaps he also sees very little enthusiasm in the younger generation for the great promise that one day the people of Israel would be able to return to the Judean homeland. There must have been many a day when he wanted to just throw in the towel. So it is that in verse 4 Second Isaiah blurts out his despair: "^49:4 But I said, "I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity"."

That is a bitter taste for one's soul to have to savour. To look back over one's life, with its trials and challenges, its strivings and setbacks, and to feel that despite a few momentary triumphs the general direction of one's work and one's life has been downhill – that is a grim vista. It leaves a cold feeling of emptiness at the centre of one's self, does it not?

But then Second Isaiah says a remarkable thing. He moves out of this moment of despair and articulates the most hopeful thought: "yet surely my cause is with the LORD, and my reward with my God." "Yet surely..." He moves abruptly from despair to certainty. He affirms unconditionally his confidence in God. His life has been significant, for the cause to which he has given his life, the cause of keeping the flame of faith in God going among a faltering people, the cause that God had given to him – this cause will be successful. His labour will not go unrewarded. His faithful work will be acknowledged when God acts to return the Hebrew people to their homeland..

Do you ever feel that you are slogging along and not doing anything much that makes any difference? Do you ever wonder, "What's the point?" Do you ever reflect on the grand ambitions you entertained as a younger person and sigh inwardly when you realize that those grand designs have not been fulfilled, or not as much as you'd hoped? I expect you have, just as I have: we are human.

Let us then learn from this ancient prophet. Let us hear his affirmation: "Yet surely..." "Yet surely our cause is with the Lord." Second Isaiah can be honest about his life's limitations without wallowing in disappointment and despair. He can admit that his accomplishments have been small without then thinking that his life has been of little worth. Why? Because he understands that small things count. This is my theme today: small things count. It is among the small things that the work of God happens. Is it where we see only disappointment and failure that God sees possibility. It is where we recognize that we haven't really accomplished what we wanted that God accomplishes what she wants.

You see, if we assume that we are masters of our own life then any blot on our record is intolerable. If the theme song for our days is indeed Sinatra's I Did It My Way, no amount of boasting that "I did it my way" can compensate for the inescapable human fact that the way we did do it may not have been right or good, may not have been successful, may not even have been adequate. This inevitably leads to disappointment and despair.

But if we hear what Second Isaiah says – that our cause is with God – then we can acknowledge our shortcomings and move forward with head held high because we recognize that God has been at work in the small things we did accomplish. If we recognize that God works in and through us to achieve his ends then we can believe that despite our shortcomings God's purposes are going to be fulfilled. If we recognize that God works below the surface of our lives then the surface flaws of our lives don’t matter as much as we think.

In his book from the year 2000, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell describes a phenomenon within the social realm that he calls the tipping point. Little changes have big effects. A simple example: fashion fads. For quite a while those rubber shoes called Crocs had only modest sales. Then when a very few people, key people, "fashion mavens," started wearing them, Crocs became all the rage. It only takes a few, the select few, the crucial few, to tip the balance of social change and start – in this case – a fashion epidemic.

Malcolm Gladwell's book is full of examples of this social phenomenon of the tipping point. He analyses the phenomenon to be the result of the personal characteristics of the crucial people who tip the balance. But the perspective of faith bids us to look underneath, to peer below the surface of human character, and recognize that this is the domain where God operates. God's hidden actions among us is what tips human affairs towards the good.

One of the classic examples from the biblical stories is Moses. Moses was a prince of Egypt and therefore not, one would think, well disposed towards the Hebrew slaves. "Yet surely" he turned out to be God’s instrument. He was a man with no oratory skills, as he admits. Yet surely he gave voice to the cry for freedom in the Pharaoh's court until that freedom was granted. Moses was the right person at the right time through whom God worked to tip the balance.

Earlier I said that probably all of us may sometimes be plagued by the thought that we have not achieved our potential, and not done the big things to which we aspired. Let us let go of such anxieties. The daily challenges we face may seem trivial. The mundane opportunities we have to create a little bit more goodness in the world may seem insignificant compared to the huge needs of the larger world. But in such small things God is seeking to tip the balance towards the reforming and flourishing of the world. Surely it is enough for us each day to bend ourselves to that cause, and offer ourselves to be vehicles of God's love and grace, and make the small things of our life count.

Sermon for January 9, 2011

Rev. Shannon Mang
Named and Claimed in Baptism
Read: Matthew 3:13-17

Last Christmas my daughter Hannah introduced me to the poet Mary Oliver with a collection of her poems - I have become a huge fan. Mary's little dog Percy is the subject of a few of her poems… this is one of them:

Little Dog's Rhapsody in the Night (Percy Three)
from New and Selected Poems, Volume 2

He puts his cheek against mine
and makes small, expressive sounds.
And when I am awake, or awake enough
He turns upside down, his four paws
in the air
and his eyes dark and fervent.
Tell me you love me, he says.
Tell me again.
Could there be a sweeter arrangement?
Over and over he gets to ask it.
I get to tell.

To love and be loved unconditionally… this is one of the greatest gifts of having a dog. I've seen reports over and over again saying that having pets prolongs our lives and makes us happier people… so does having a faith community. Could there be a connection I wonder??

The stories of Jesus' Baptism and the story of the Transfiguration are the bookends of the season of Epiphany every year, Epiphany being the time between Jan. 6 when we remember the arrival of the Magi bearing gifts to the Christ Child, and the Sunday prior to Ash Wednesday which marks the beginning of the season of Lent. These are the only two stories in the Gospels where we hear the voice of God, and the voice is saying the same thing, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." Hearing God’s voice expressing this affirmation, first descending like a dove at his Baptism, and second, coming out of the cloud at the mysterious meeting on a mountaintop at Transfiguration brackets Jesus' ministry. This is an expression of the intimate relationship Jesus had with God. These stories give us a glimpse of why Jesus talked about God as his Abba - his Daddy. He was embraced with God's unconditional love before he started his ministry. He knew he didn’t have to earn God’s love at his baptism - there had not yet been any sermons on the Mount - no healing encounters yet - Jesus had nothing to 'deserve' God's praise. God's affirmation was sheer gift at his Baptism, and it was sheer gift at the time of the Transfiguration where Jesus was at the turning point of his ministry and his face was turned towards Jerusalem where the story of his betrayal, trial and death would unfold. Jesus needed God’s voice telling him that "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." to travel that road that would lead to the cross, the grave, and ultimately to the empty tomb.

There is such power in being named and claimed by God. At Baptism we are all born again into Christ - together we are the Body of Christ. In and through Christ we share God's voice speaking to us, as God spoke to Jesus. At Baptism we too claim God's affirmation of being God's beloved sons, God's beloved daughters. We may only be baptised once, but the process of Baptism is life long. We need to hear God's affirmation over and over again, we need to be born again in Christ over and over again - daily letting ourselves be washed in the waters of Baptism because it can be difficult to hear that voice of unconditional love and affirmation. There are a lot of other voices out there, the voices of friends, strangers and family members, the voices of the culture at large that speak with an amplified voice that is impossible to escape. The voice that calls you beloved can be all but drowned out by those other voices that say very different things, like, "You’re not enough, but this product will make you better," “You’re nothing special," "You’re nobody," "You don’t matter, not really." These messages- these voices telling us that we are NOT enough bombard us and it takes real effort - real intention to choose to hear the loving voice of God.

Let's return to those statistics that say that pets and involvement in a faith community can enhance the quality and length of our lives. Could it be that pets and a church family help us hear the loving voice of our Maker? I’ve had the privilege of being an adopted dog person, but the gift of those occasions when we'd be caring for our 'niece-dog' were enough to give me great pleasure. Our dogs greet us at the door saying how incredibly wonderful it is to see us- we are the most important person in the world to them - we're brilliant - we're beautiful… and now, let's go for a walk and we can both see great it is to be alive. And then it will be time for food! Our dogs love us unconditionally - they see our very best selves and they call out our very best selves in the way we love them in return. That love that exists between a dog and its person is a glimpse into the BIG love that exists between our God who calls us 'Beloved.' We don't have to do anything to deserve or earn that BIG love… all we have to do is to say YES to it.

Being a part of a faith family helps us say YES over and over. Every time we experience the sacrament of Baptism, we get to reaffirm our YES to God's unconditional love - every time we come to Communion we get to reaffirm our YES to God's unconditional love - every time we gather to worship - or to provide hospitality to the homeless through food and shelter when we host Inn From the Cold - or when we gather to make sandwiches for the Drop In Centre - or when we take a prayer request on the prayer chain - or when we provide the gift of Healing Touch - or when we nurture our children and youth and young adults- (you get the picture)… whenever we come together as a family of faith to be the people of the Way of Jesus we get to reaffirm our YES to God's unconditional love. By intentionally being a part of a faith family we practise being God's own Beloved, and we turn around and take that experience of being God's Beloved into our homes and our work and friend’s homes and our community and we Belove the world – and through being God's Beloved, and Beloving the world around us we are changed - and the world is changed. We quiet those voices that say we are not enough and we live into the grace of this great gift.

So, let our dogs, our children and grand-children and neighbours and friends and our faith family teach us the lessons of our Baptism over and over again.

May it be so...

Communion meditation for January 2, 2011

Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Wondrous love
Read: John 1:1-5, 14

At a recent funeral, we sang a hymn that was well loved in childhood, in my childhood at least: This Is My Father's World, which we now have made gender-inclusive as This Is God's Wondrous World. I like the new title. It affirms that God has brought into being a world, this universe, which is indeed wondrous. The cosmos is incredible, mind-numbingly incredible.

For me, the sense of awe is rekindled every time a new book or article comes along to convey yet another astonishing discovery in astronomy or scientific cosmology [the study of the origins of the universe]. Astrophysicists enjoy a little game called "Let’s Boggle the Public Mind." They take some pleasure in throwing around big numbers that stun our imaginations. A recent example: back at the beginning of December two astronomers from Yale and Harvard announced an important discovery. [Borenstein, Seth, "Study triples count of stars in universe," The Associated Press, Dec. 02, 2010] In the past astrophysicists have assumed that most galaxies in the universe are made up of the same kinds of stars as our Milky Way galaxy. But it turns out that this was a mistaken assumption. A great many of the galaxies in the universe are not spiral-shaped like our Milky Way but are elliptical, and the elliptical ones turn out to have a far larger population of red dwarf stars than spiral galaxies do. One consequence of this discovery is that the universe has far more stars in it than was previously thought, in fact three times as many as previously calculated. Here is the wonder-inducing number: 300 sextillion . That is a 3 followed by 23 zeros. Or 3 trillion times 100 billion. That is how many stars there are. It almost requires an entire line to type it out: 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

I love news stories like this because such scientific discoveries keep us humble, or they should. The universe is a big place. If there is anything that should induce awe in us it should be this immense scale of things. What a wondrous world!

Yet there is a downside to this. As our picture of the universe becomes more vast and strange two problems arise. The first is that it becomes harder and harder to affirm the core conviction of our faith that this universe has been created by God. With every discovery of astronomy and physics throughout the centuries the picture of our universe has become stranger and stranger to us, in the sense of being so much further beyond the human scale. And in that case, surely, it has become harder and harder to keep a grip on the concept of a God who brought it about. It has become harder and harder to speak with credibility of a universal Creator. When we say to our contemporaries that there is a God who is Creator, the creative source from which this whole universe springs and is sustained, they rightly hear us making the most incredible claim. Our words are pointing to an unimaginable "something," a "something" capable of creating 300 sextillion stars. The only image that can come to them - to us, even! - construes divinity as an impersonal, incomprehensible force.

This brings us to the second problem, and it is a theological or spiritual problem. God becomes not only less believable, but less lovable.

Let me explain this problem, which we might call the "distancing of divinity." The distancing of divinity is not a new problem. It is present even in the earliest reflections of the Jesus movement. There has always been the risk that when we imagine God as creator of the whole world our concept of God begins to float out of the human sphere altogether. The writer of the Gospel of John begins, as we read today: "In the beginning was the Word." The author is attempting to give an account of the nature of reality and of its origin in God. He is not a physicist, of course, but in his own cultural setting he is doing what astrophysicists do in our society - opening up for our imagination a grand vision that explains the realities we observe around us. The scientist uses the language of quasars and supernovae, galactic clusters and red-dwarf stars. The writer of John uses the language of beginnings, of things coming into being, of the "Word-with-a-capital-W." He imagines that it is sufficient for God to "speak" this "Word" - this pattern, this form, this Logos - and things come into being. Now isn't that idea just as strange and as distant from everyday human experience as any concept in the astrophysicists' repertoire?

So even in John's Gospel there is the risk that our understanding of God can get disconnected from our human experience, so that the divine becomes distanced and lacks any point of contact with the reality of being human. If God is an impersonal, incomprehensible force we have to use the pronoun "it" rather than "he" or "she." And if the Sacred, the Holy, the Absolute is an "it," then "it" should appropriately be feared or respected – but not loved.

No God is worthy of our worship who is not a God of love, a God who loves us and seeks to be loved in return. No God is worthy of the label of "our Creator" who stands aloof from the creation and our human predicament within it. No God is a God for us who cannot be a God-with-us.

The writer of John's Gospel knows this. He is fascinated with the idea that the universe was spoken into existence by God. He speculates that part of God is a capital-W Word which is the underlying pattern for all things created. But he also insists over and over again that this Word has "become flesh." John's Gospel underscores, here in the prologue and throughout the rest of the gospel, that God does not stand aloof. "¹⁴ And the Word became flesh and lived among us." The verb "lived" there is stronger in the original Greek. Literally it reads, "made a tent among us." In and through the life of Jesus, God dwells among us. He has gotten fully enmeshed up to the ears in the human experience. Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase is vivid: "¹⁴The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighbourhood."

The human neighbourhood becomes the place where God does her thing. That is the point of the Christmas story as told in Matthew's Gospel and Luke's infancy narrative, with their homey images of the stable and the star. But it’s also the point of John's prologue. The world-creating cosmic Word enters the world, erupts into it, and confronts it at its crux point. In Jesus God moves into the neighbourhood and starts the renovations.

This incarnation on God's part is not a social call. In and through the life of Jesus God is not just having a look around. There is, rather, the most profound purpose at work here. "¹² To all who received him... he gave power to become children of God." This is why the Word expressed itself as Jesus: to enable us to come fully to express what we can be, and that is children who love our divine Parent.

To sum up: As we explore the universe, we discern more and more clearly how vast and wondrous is the creation. Our picture of the Creator must necessarily become stranger and wilder and more wondrous yet. Nonetheless the witness of the Gospels is that the same Creator is the Holy One of Israel and the Abba or "Father" shown to us by Jesus of Nazareth. Through the life and the Way of this Jesus our God remains grounded and accessible and available to us. God is shown to be concerned for us, indeed loves us, loves us enough to dwell among us and break the powers that keep us from being loving children of God.

Through Jesus God is not distanced but brought close, as close as can be. So come to this communion table today. Here in these symbols of bread and cup is a signal that the Maker of All Things loves us, moves in with us, and seeks to draw us ever more deeply into a responding love.

December 2010
December 26, 2010 | December 24, 2010 | December 19, 2010 | December 5, 2010
Sermon for December 26, 2010

Rev. Shannon Mang
Cosmic Praise

Following is an excerpt from the Song of Faith, as read by Rev. Mang during the service.

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

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

So God creates the universe
and with it the possibility of being and relating.
God tends the universe,
mending the broken and reconciling the estranged.
God enlivens the universe,
guiding all things toward harmony with their Source.

Grateful for God’s loving action,
We cannot keep from singing.

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

We witness to Holy Mystery that is Wholly Love.

- From A Song of Faith - read the full version on the United Church of Canada's Website.

View a video on You Tube: A Good Day

Visit the website Gratefulness.org, a site dedicated to the teachings of the narrator of the You Tube video: Brother David Steindl-Rast.

Reflections for Christmas Eve 2010

8:30 p.m. Service, Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Dream time

^{Matthew 1:20} Just when [Joseph] had resolved to [end his engagement to Mary], and angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit."

"...In a dream."

The dog lies on the corner of the bed. Though sound asleep, her legs twitch as if she were running. Perhaps she is remembering the jackrabbit that crossed our path on the morning walk. She dreams of the jackrabbit - and of giving chase. Dogs have no words, but they do have dreams.

We human beings dream too, and in two distinct senses. At breakfast we say, "I had a dream," meaning we remember one of these bizarre fantasies during sleep that we call a dream, a phenomenon we share with dogs and other animals. But we might also say, "I have a dream!" just as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, lifting up racial integration as a noble goal for his society. Of all the animals, we human beings alone are capable of dreaming in this grander sense of imagining our future. Perhaps this is because we along of all animals live in the realm of words. We human beings have the unique capacity to articulate a vision of what we could become. This gift is essential to our will to live - you know the saying, "without vision the people perish." Let no one deny us our dreams.

But our dreams can be problematic. Our grand ambitions to achieve social transformation can turn so very sour. There was a grand moral impulse that motivated Karl Marx's theories of how to achieve a world of equality and fulfillment for all people in a peaceful, stateless, classless society. But when his dream was enacted as a political program in Russia in the 20th Century, it led to the nightmare which was Stalin.

And of course our individual dreams can turn to nightmares, too. A young woman trudges up the steps into the Greyhound bus. Her eyes are red-rimmed from crying. She is fleeing Los Angeles, for all the promises of producers have been vaporous, part after bit part has led to nothing, and her agent seems to offer her nothing but sexploitation videos. She no longer remembers if a movie career was her dream or that of her ambitious parents. It does not really matter, for her dream has turned to a bitter taste in her mouth.

In short: our dreams drive us, but they can disappoint us, indeed dismay us. A dream put into practice can so easily become a nightmare.

That is true for every dream except one. There is one dream which has been put into practice and brings all that anyone could want. Our passage from Matthew's Gospel names it. In Matthew's narrative, Joseph is having a dream, in that mundane sense of a nighttime fantasy. But within his imagining there appears a marvelous dream in the grander sense. A stunning promise is spoken by the messenger of God. And these are the words of that promise: "The child conceived in [Mary] is from the Holy Spirit. ²¹ She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus [which means "God saves"], for he will save his people from their sins."

Joseph awakes from sleep with his life overturned by the astonishing dream of God – God's dream of dwelling among us through the life and work of Jesus. This is the greatest dream of all. It is God's grand intention, his sublime purpose to be among us as Jesus, the Living Word, to save us, to release us from every nightmare, to restore humankind and all of God's world to its original purpose. And that purpose is life, life in abundance, life where nothing ever turns sour. That is God's dream for us, a dream realized in the life whose beginning we mark tonight. The vision of God creates a dream come true, which we name in these hope-filled words:

Christ is born!

Christmas Eve communion meditation
11 p.m. Service, Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Dawn of hope

You are welcome and indeed urged to come to communion this evening. Why?

It's traditional, we might say. We might admit that we are drawn by tradition. By the soft light of candles. By the inherent tenderness of this late hour. Perhaps by a sense that we line up around the communion table not just in the here and now but as part of a crowd of witnesses stretching back almost 2000 years.

And yet to explain Christmas Eve communion as traditional would miss the mark. After all, these years as all church traditions seem to be up for grabs, as the old forms of being Christian are rethought and fresh expressions of the Jesus movement are emerging, we do need to know in greater depth why we come here this night.

So let me suggest that you respond to the invitation to come to this table because to do so if a powerful affirmation of hope.

Tonight is not the moment to rehearse the grimness of our human condition. Mind you, the biblical story of Jesus' birth is not blind to the reality of the darkness that infects the human soul and haunts our human history. After all, the gospel we are reading this year, the Gospel of Matthew, includes that so familiar story of the visit of the Magi, with its so familiar offering of three gifts to the Christ child - one of which is myrhh. If we remember that myrhh was an ointment used to prepare a body for burial, we may find ourselves reminded that the life of Jesus will move inexorably to confront the worst that our human condition can offer.

But that is just a detail, a single allusion within the Nativity traditions which in every other respect speak of hope.
- The Gospel stories about the birth of Jesus proclaim that in him is fulfilled the long-standing yearning of God's original people, the Hebrews, to be renewed and restored in their relationship with God.
- Indeed, Christmas morning brings the dawn of hope for all people in every age, all people who yearn to recover their grounding in a connection to God. For the child born in the Bethlehem stable grew to become God's Anointed One, who opens for us the Way that leads to faithful living with God.
- The Christmas narrative is a promise that brings specific hope to particular situations. Hope, for instance, contained in the way that the story portrays the birth of this child in a stable. This child who will grow to be the man who will change the world is born in a place of abject poverty because there was no room anywhere else. And that speaks incredible hope for all people of all times and places who are impoverished and maginalized and find precious little blessing offered for the world to them.
I invite you to ponder for a moment this question: what is the one thing for which you most ardently hope this night? There may be many superficial desires that you could name. But take your time. Think of what you most deeply desire and hope for. And realize then that you are bringing that hope with you when you respond to this invitation: come to this table of hope. Come to this table of Christ. Come and celebrate the birth of hope into our world.

Christ, the new-born Christ, the Risen Christ, invites you. Come.

Sermon for December 19, 2010

Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Jesus - dangerous love
Read: Matthew 1:18-25

My mother once explained to me that as time went on she became less and less emotionally invested in Christmas and more and more attentive to Good Friday and Easter. I take her to have meant that her spiritual understanding was gradually refocusing away from the Christmas traditions about the birth of Jesus and towards an appreciation of the meaning of the death of Jesus. That is a shift in where our faith is centred: away from the lovely myths surrounding the beginning of Jesus’ life and towards a deeper grasp of the significance of the ending of his life. Indeed we affirm in faith that his life never ends, because he is indeed "God with us".

Here is another way to understand this shift in focus. Matthew’s Gospel interprets the birth of Jesus by invoking the ancient words of the prophet Isaiah, son of Amoz. – ^{Isaiah 7:14} "Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel," which means, literally, "God with us." So much ink has been spilled over the centuries concerning the significance of that phrase "the virgin". Not nearly enough has been devoted to the significance of the name given to this child, a name which is a sign, the sign of Emmanuel, "God with us".

So let us ignore the virgin part and attend to the Emmanuel part. Let us explore the significance of what it means to say that through the birth of Jesus we encounter "God with us". Here is part of the meaning of Jesus’ nativity: his was a dangerous birth.

Obviously enough it was dangerous in the direct and physical sense. At the physical level it was a risky prospect for a peasant girl like Mary to bear a child, far from home, with no decent shelter except a stable, and no midwife close at hand. So much could have gone wrong.

Notice as well, though, the implicit dangers attending this birth. These are risks far beyond the neonatal risks to mother and child. There were social implications for this family, particularly for Joseph. He had risked the censure of his village and the dishonouring of his family name when he had ignored the requirement of the Torah that he divorce Mary, his betrothed, when she was discovered to be pregnant. As Matthew puts it, "an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife.’" Joseph had lots of reason to be afraid. He was putting in peril their future as a family. If his village rejected them where could they live and how could he make a living? Despite such concerns, Joseph was willing to ignore the peril to his reputation. He publicly named the child, which in that context was the way to assert responsibility for the child. This shows that he took to heart the assurance that the angel gave him that "the child conceived in Mary is from the Holy Spirit". He showed that he accepted the requirements of love, a dangerous love for God and God’s purposes. He owned this child as his own, and named him with the name "Jesus", that is "Yeshua", which is to say, literally, "God saves".

This was a dangerous birth in a broader way. It was dangerous politically. If the child lived up to his name – "God saves" – he would be dangerous to the social and political powers of the day. The simple act of naming a child "God saves" could be construed as an act of peasant resistance. This is why Matthew’s gospel goes on immediately after the birth narrative to tell the story of King Herod’s attempt to discover – and eliminate – the child. Herod was a puppet king ruling on behalf of the Romans. Roman Imperial theology insisted that the emperor and the emperor alone was the source of salvation. There were monuments all around the Mediterranean world with inscriptions praising the emperor Caesar Augustus as "prince of peace" or "the saviour of the world", because he had brought peace to the whole Mediterranean world after the bloody Roman civil war. Indeed he was frequently honoured as an offspring of the gods. Against the matrix of that overweening claim to divine authority on the part of Roman power the name of Jesus would have been perceived as deliberate affront. The name "Jesus", that is, "Yahweh saves", makes a clear counterclaim to the spiritual ambitions of the Emperor. If God is the one who saves us then Augustus Caesar is not.

Herod’s fears turned out to be entirely justified. His political instincts were prophetic. Later, when the Roman governor Pilate encountered the adult Jesus and the movement he was leading, Pilate also instinctively recognized that the Way of Jesus posed a great threat to the Roman system. Pilate’s decision to suppress the movement by executing its leader reflected an accurate perception. The Way that Jesus taught and lived gave ultimate authority to God, not Caesar.

And so the angel’s instruction to Joseph to name the child "Jesus", and Joseph’s decision to obey, represented a dangerous move – a symbolic denial of the power of empire issued in the face of the imperial occupation of Jesus’ homeland. Jesus’ birth was a dangerous birth.

The birth of Jesus remains dangerous, for you and me. After all, his name covers us. This is to say that when we are baptized, and when at every baptism service we recommit to our baptism, we take upon ourselves the conviction that "God saves". We embrace a commitment to the ways of God as we experience them in the Way of Jesus. To be given our name formally at baptism in the context of worship, and then to reaffirm it periodically throughout our life, is to declare that however far we fall short of the true discipleship which Jesus asks of us, such discipleship is our life’s fundamental goal. This is dangerous to us, if we think to be in control of our own lives, if we think to be safe and secure through the powers of our technology or culture, if we think to be strong enough to make it on our own. We follow the path set for us by the one named "Yeshua", "God saves". And that is a dangerous path for our ego, because if we accept the label "Christian" we are in every moment subject to the truth that we cannot save ourselves. Only God can. To the extent that this birth marked by Christmas throws its gentle light upon our shortcomings, is for you and me a dangerous birth indeed.

In all of these ways, the birth of Jesus is a dangerous birth.
- Mary took a risk when she acquiesced in the intention of God to create through her a child who would truly be "saviour of the world". But her love for God was strong enough for her to embrace the physical dangers of undergoing childbirth in such marginal circumstances.
- Joseph took a social risk in owning the child, and a political risk in giving the child such a potent name, but he trusted enough in God’s sovereignty to do so.
- The later followers of Jesus would take huge risks in the face of the persecution of the Jesus movement by the authorities of synagogue and state, but their courage and commitment to Jesus’ Way sent them to the lions (sometimes literally).
- And we today take a risk if we embrace the Way of Jesus for ourselves, since it fundamentally asks us to be willing to give ourselves away. To love God that much is a dangerous love.
Indeed, because the birth of Jesus expresses God’s identification with our human condition, it shows us a love of the most daring kind. For in pouring himself into that one human life God takes the risk of rejection. In the freedom God gives us we human beings can always choose to turn away from the path that God lays out for us. We can always choose to live by the powers of the age rather than the power that God wields, which is the power of self-giving love. Therefore, inasmuch as it represents the risk of human rejection of God, we could almost say that the birth of the Christ child was to God the most dangerous birth of all.

But God chooses such a risk because of the depth of God’s love for us. In love God decides to be, through the life of Jesus, Emmanuel, "God with us". Survey the length of that life, from manger to cross. Recognize that in Jesus’ words and actions God confronts the barriers between us and God. God faces the risk of rejection and overcomes it. The triumph of the good, which was promised in the birth of that child in that stable, is achieved in the cross and in the rising to new life that follows.

Such danger. Yes, and such glory. For the risk proves worthy, and the danger is overcome, and the child, who truly and fully shows us that "God saves", is born.

Thanks be to God.

Sermon for December 5, 2010

Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Not keeping up appearances
Read: Isaiah 11:1-10 NRSV

The Bible reading this morning contains words of the prophet we call "First Isaiah". Isaiah the son of Amoz lived in the southern of the two Hebrew kingdoms from about 750 until 700 BCE. Isaiah spoke on behalf of God to his people in a situation of radical insecurity. The northern Kingdom of Israel had been annexed to the Assyrian empire, while the southern kingdom of Judah in which Isaiah lived hung on desperately as a semi-independent buffer state between Assyria in the north and Egypt to the south.

First Isaiah often brings a message of judgment upon his people’s unfaithfulness and lack of justice towards the poor. But in today’s passage he brings a word of hope. He anticipates that even in the face of the threat to Judah’s future as the great empires around them are squeezing them, God will not abandon them. After the grim future that seems to be ahead of them, there will come a time when God will raise up for the people a great leader, a Messiah. This Messiah, this Anointed One, this Christ will restore the "golden age" of the monarchy under the house of David. That is the meaning of the promise in the first line of the oracle:: "^11:1A shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse" – Jesse was King David’s father.

But this great leader’s pedigree will be far less important than his character. I wish to focus on one aspect of his character, one signal virtue. To think on this virtue let us take two steps towards the text. Two steps will bring us close enough to this passage that we may hear it speaking to us in our time and place. The first step is to realize that the virtues which First Isaiah imagines in this Messiah who is to come are in fact the virtues which the Hebrew people themselves must develop. To speak of him as having wisdom, understanding, fear of God, and righteousness is to set these qualities as standards to which the whole nation ought to aspire. As lives the King, so live the people.

The second step is to realize that those ideals for living together apply not just to Hebrew society, not just to the ancient nations of Israel and Judah, but also to us. Since we are called to have faith in God as we live in the insecurities and anxieties of our own time, our community of faith is accountable for living by such high standards.

As I say, let us regard one of these ideals that Isaiah lifts up. The Messianic leader
- ³ ... shall not judge by what his eyes see,
  or decide by what his ears hear;
- ⁴ but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
  and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.
Eugene Peterson's paraphrase in The Message makes the point clearer:
- He won't judege by appearances,
  won't decide on the basis of hearsay.
- He'll judge the needy by what is right,
  render decisions on earth's poor with justice.
It is so natural for us to fall short in this way, and indeed regard other people according to appearances. Remember the British TV comedy, Keeping up Appearances, which many of us have probably seen on PBS. Patricia Routledge plays Hyacinth Bucket— who insists her surname is pronounced Bouquet. She is a social-climbing snob who passes her time visiting stately homes, name-dropping at any hint of an opportunity, and trying to impress neighbours, friends, and important people. We laugh at Hyacinth Bucket because we recognize the dissonance between the appearances she tries to project to others and the private realisty. Behind Hyacinth’s white gloves and Queen Mum hat, she is a very ordinary person. We laugh at her lack of integrity. But perhaps not too hard, for all of us in some way fall short of this virtue.

And integrity is what the messianic King looks for. Part of his wisdom is the ability to look past appearances, and assess people according to their inner being.

Correspondingly, the ideal faith community would demonstrate that quality of integrity in its character. If we aspire to be part of a church which in any way approximates to a messianic community then we will try to relate to each other not on the basis of appearances but discerning each other’s inner reality.

A way to think about this is to take notice of the "codes". I mean the codes of behaviour that we obey, and the norms we use when we talk with each other, and even the unspoken language of the way we dress. Typically we are not conscious of the role these codes play in shaping our acting and our speaking, but they are very powerful.

When I grew up churchgoing meant wearing your "Sunday best", which translated into: pillbox hat and white gloves for mom; dark suit, white shirt and tie for dad; sweater over dress over crinoline for girls; flannel shorts for boys. Now you might think we’ve gotten past that 1950s-style conformity. And yes, over the last 50 or 60 years there’s been a weakening of pressures to conform to a fairly narrow set of expectations in demeanor and dress. But there are still all kinds of ways in which we communicate status, and inclusion or exclusion, and whether we’re the "right kind of people", and so on. Uniforms come in many forms.

Let me explain what I mean. Earlier this year someone who is not familiar with church asked if when they attended they had to obey a "dress code". A reflective answer would be that there still is, in a way, a dress code for church. Or I should say, we are in a transition time between codes. For some people it is so important to come to worship wearing their "Sunday best". This is a matter of showing respect. Part of this is respect for the church as a sacred institution. More profoundly, it is respect for the momentous business of coming to worship God. Respect is important. For other folks it’s important to come to worship in everyday clothes. This is because they value being low-key and casual for the sake of those who are new to church, so that those who don’t know the traditional dress code will still feel comfortable, embraced rather than put off. Inclusion is important.

Yet whichever may be the code we follow in our manners and appearance, God looks right through it. Neither respect nor inclusion is as important to God as is the state of the human heart. God’s Messiah does not judge by appearances; correspondingly, as we try to be a community that follows the way of the Messiah we should relate one to another not according to appearances, but according to our attitudes, and convictions, and inner truth. Always look beneath the surface; that should be a motto for us in Christian community.

Look past the appearances. This principle is symbolized in one aspect of the Christian symbol of the communion table, at least as we practice it. Sometimes we use everyday bread in our Eucharist. Sometimes we use a special loaf baked by a congregation member for the occasion. Sometimes the bread is made of wheat, sometimes multigrain, sometimes rice. The appearances don’t really matter as much as what they point to. What they point to the self-giving love of Jesus.

So come, however you may be dressed, whatever may be your accent, whatever may be your income, whatever may be your ability to give or your need to receive. Come and be embraced by that powerful love of Jesus at this, the table of Christ.

November 2010
November 28, 2010 | November 21, 2010 | November 14, 2010 | November 7, 2010
Meditation for November 28, 2010

Rev. Shannon Mang
First Sunday in Advent: The Desert Blooms
Read: Isaiah 35:1-10

At this time last year I spent a week in the desert between the Salten Sea and the Chocolate Mountain range in southern California. It was exactly what my soul needed at that point in time- I fell in love with the desert. Out of the busyness of a full Fall schedule in the church I was hungry for silence and solitude. My body drank up the Calif. Winter sun- and my soul drank up the beauty of the desert… sitting in hot springs and enjoying my sister’s company didn’t hurt either!

Falling in love with the desert surprised me- dry and barren wilderness places are not usually considered a positive experience. I think it was so healing for me because I needed a place to empty out- I needed to become quiet and still- this was possible in a desert place where I had the gift of time.

I found that the desert was not empty- nor was it dead. It was full of life- different insects and small creatures; a wide variety of plant life that appeared to be dead- but on closer examination I could see that many plants were dormant. If there was enough rainfall through the winter months they would burst forth with colour and life briefly in the spring… and if there wasn’t enough rainfall- they would just remain as they were for another year- or two- or three. The desert is a patient place- it was a place where I felt God’s time- not mine. After a couple of days of walking in the desert I found a new capacity for being surprised. I noticed the strange beauty of a gravel wash carved by a flash flood; or a dead tangle of roots and branches; I noticed clumps of cacti and I felt a bubbling surge of joy when I encountered colour in tiny flowers.

I was reminded of my childhood growing up in rural Saskatchewan. Winter on the prairies is another wilderness experience. It is a long cold wilderness- until the hot wilderness of Calif- but there are similarities where the cold wilderness appears barren of life until one goes to spend time in it. Once out in the cold desert one can see evidence of wild life; out there we find a rich variety of snow and frost. In a winter desert there is also space to empty out- become still- and experience God’s time for awhile. When I was growing up I spent a lot of time outside in all seasons- so I was really familiar with the winter wilderness. While I loved playing out in winter weather we didn’t have the breaks that Chinooks bring- I remember clearly becoming very tired of the week after week of cold and I longed for signs that spring would come. I remember the surge of joy seeing the first crocuses on the sunny sides of hills- sometimes with their fuzzy purple blooms pushing right through the last of the snow cover- but most often the dingy brown left behind from the winter melt turning overnight to a blanket of purple blooms.

This is the joy that is expressed in Isaiah. They did not choose their wilderness of exile away from their home land. But in their wilderness- they too emptied out- became still and experienced God in an entirely new way. They experienced God intensely- on the negative side- they understood the exile as punishment from God for wandering away from the Law and this sort of lament is expressed in Isaiah 34- and they were able to also believe and hope that God would lead them home- with new intense images of life springing forth in the wilderness; wobbly knees made strong and straight highways being made for their return. Out of their wilderness they were able to imagine something completely new.

What about our wilderness? This was an image that came out of our visioning time and it continues to be a very rich one for us. What have we learned about being in wilderness time? I think that there has been some grief that we have to spend some time in the wilderness- I have heard sentiments of letting go of what was familiar in order to discern our future together. This fall we’ve been having conversations with other United Churches, and I feel as though we have found some company in our wilderness place- and we are being looked to as leaders who have had the courage to step out into the wilderness place willingly and not cling to the familiar. Finding companionship with other churches in the wilderness has already meant that we have begun to see surprising burst of growth- unexpected flowers- small refreshing springs.

Wilderness is a different sort of place apart from our ordinary lives. As a community of faith let’s get to know our wilderness place and find its gifts. Lets spend time looking around seeing what there is to see- what is dead- and what is dormant just waiting for refreshing rains of the spirit to bring it back to life. What are the surprising signs of life? What can we see in this place that we never noticed before. There will be blooms in the desert- but we’ll need to be familiar enough with our wilderness to recognize them. Let us embrace the gifts of the desert and be filled with the new life that is springing forth!

May it be so!

Sermon for November 21, 2010

Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Cosmic Glue
Read: Colossians 1:11-20

Good day, Sylvanus. Oh, my friend, do not grumble so. It is a good day. It is always a good day when I can sit here in the courtyard of the villa and let the glorious sun warm my ancient bones. Will you join me in sharing a flagon of last year's vintage? No? Well, as you wish. Let us return to my memoirs, if you are ready to resume taking dictation.

Now where did we get to last time? Oh, yes, I had been talking about the Christ-followers. I had been thinking about the strange way in which my life has been intertwined through the decades with the growth of this strange group that call themselves followers of the Way. It started when I was just beginning my career, just a footsoldier. I was in Jerusalem with the Sixth Legion, nicknamed "the Ironclad". This was back when Pontius Pilate was Procurator. I was there when he executed the leader of that movement, the one they call Christos, the Jewish Messiah. And here we are five decades later, and this pesky movement of Christ-followers, this "Way" as they call it, has not disappeared. Indeed it seems to grow all the faster, and there are gatherings of these people now in most of the main cities around us here in Asia Minor. They seem to be taking over the synagogues, but worse, significant citizens of the Empire are abandoning our Roman gods and defecting to this new faith.

We need to take them seriously, Sylvanus. They represent a significant threat to the peace and good order of our society. They deny the divinity of our Emperor, and indeed they are beginning to attribute divine status to their own dead leader, whom they claim is still alive somehow. This movement is worth investigating. I have contacts who know the people inside. Consequently there has come into my hands this document. It is one of their letters. I could get in trouble with the authorities just for reading it. But then what have the authorities ever done for me?

This letter is addressed to a gathering of these people in the little town of Colossae, over near Ephesus. It purports to be from one of the leaders of the movement, a former Roman citizen, Saul of Tarsus. He now calls himself Paul. My understanding is that this Paul is safely locked up in a Roman prison awaiting execution, so this epistle was probably written by one of his followers. But I judge that it closely reflects his thinking.

What astonishes me about this writing is the ambition of its claims. Listen to what it says about this long-dead leader of theirs, this Jesus of Nazareth, to whom they give the title of Christos -- God's Anointed One:

¹⁵He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; ¹⁶ for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers – all things have been created through him and for him.

Blasphemous? Of course, Sylvanus, this is blasphemy to any right-thinking citizen. Only our Emperor Domitian is supposed to be spoken of in this way. It seems patently absurd that such grandiose descriptions should be made of this Galilean peasant.

Do you know – I met him once? Right at the beginning. I had been sent as part of a patrol to an outpost, a backwater near the lake of Galilee, and I had drawn the lowest and most difficult role, crowd control. I had gone undercover, as you might say, decked out as one of those Galilean peasants so that I could keep my ear to the ground. And I heard him teaching in one of the village squares. And this is what I saw – a small fellow, son of a woodworker, which means just one step above a day-labourer. He was dressed coarsely – well, they have no money. Aramaic would have been his native tongue, but he appeared to know some Greek, which he spoke with an atrocious country-bumpkin accent, so I am sure he was not formally educated in any way. In fact I think he was illiterate. Mind you, he seemed to have a gift for telling stories.

As I stood there in the crowd listening to him, he looked like a thousand other peasants. And smelled like them too! There was nothing remarkable or memorable about him – except maybe his eyes. His glance seemed to burn. He met my gaze and despite my careful camouflage he seemed to recognize what I was. It was if he saw through me. He seemed to see right into my soul.

So maybe he had a kind of personal magnetism. But divinity? In the guise of a mere peasant? Yet that is what these Christ-followers are actually claiming for him. They say:

in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers – all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

It seems absurd. And yet I have to admit that something makes me ponder what is going on here. I have gotten to know the character of these Christ-ians over the years. I know these people. They don't seem to be crazy. In fact, they appear innocuous, peaceful. That of course makes them all the more dangerous to our Roman way of life, so potentially disruptive of the order our Empire has imposed upon the world. How can armed Legions defend against evident virtue?

For instance, there is among them no rank. Roman order depends upon rank, people knowing where they belong in the hierarchy of status, and staying where they belong. But these Christ-ians ignore all matters of reputation and honour. They call one another "brother" and "sister" even though not related. Again, they have what looks like an indelible courage, as many a Roman governor has discovered when trying to stamp out their movement. They are fiercely loyal to each other; none of them has to watch his or her back for fear of being betrayed by a neighbour. They are generous towards each other and equally generous towards people in need who are outside their group.

I have to say it, Sylvanus. These are good people. Something strong holds them together. Something I cannot put my finger on. So when this Paul or whoever writes about Jesus, the Christos, that "in him all things hold together", I wonder. I think about my own life as we have been recording it in these memoirs. I ask myself why I feel this need to record my life this way, and I think it is because I yearn to find some meaning in it all. The disappointments in my career, the failed relationships, the compromises I have made to gain advantage that later went sour – I don't seem to have added up to much. I feel like a collection of episodes, and that is hardly a compelling life story. I need something to centre me, at last, something to hold me together, some large meaning, some glimpse of cosmic significance to glue together my fragmented existence.

I would tell you a secret Sylvanus, and I need you to swear on your honour and our friendship never to divulge it. There must be something in this "Way" these Christ-followers talk about, something vital and living about this Jesus of theirs. Something I need. So I have been making discreet inquiries as to where they meet, and I shall go to Colossae, and seek them out.

No, Sylvanus, have no fear for me. I am an old man, with little to lose. And perhaps much to gain – if indeed I can find among them this one who "holds all things together", perhaps he can hold me together, too.

Sermon for November 14, 2010

Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Holy amnesia
Read: Isaiah 65:17-25

Today's Bible reading is a jewel of scripture. Much beloved is its proclamation that God is "about to create new heavens and a new earth". The poetic images in the text expand on what that "newness" could involve, images like "²⁵The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox;" Here is a contemporary visualization of what that longed-for harmony might look like.

But today I would direct us to another part of this famous text -
¹⁷...I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
and former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.

"Shall not be remembered..."

There are three prophets who are known to us by the name of Isaiah, three distinct collections of writing gathered into the one biblical book of Isaiah, three voices that interpret the dealings of God with the People of the Covenant during three successive periods in Hebrew history. To the third of those voices we attend today in our text. Third Isaiah proclaims this promise of God to Israel:

¹⁸But be glad and rejoice for ever
in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
and its people as a delight.

The person who wrote those words, (Third) Isaiah, sits among the ruins of the Temple. From the devastated mount on which the great Temple of Solomon has once stood, he surveys the pitiful vista of the enfeebled city of Jerusalem.

It has been two decades now since he and his people have returned from the Babylonian Exile. After King Cyrus of Persia had toppled the Babylonian Empire and released the Jews from captivity they had returned to Jerusalem with such high hopes. After 60 years of near-enslavement in a foreign land, two generations during which they had lain down by the waters of Babylon and wept for Zion, they had returned to Zion in an ecstasy of expectation.

Since then, however, so little had been accomplished. Nothing had much changed. They'd started rebuilding houses but it wasn't going well. And nothing had been done yet to rebuild the Temple -- the Temple which had formerly been the focal point of worship for the People of the Covenant, the Temple which should have been rebuilt by now as a symbol of the Hebrews' connection to God. The people had expected that once they were back in their homeland God would perform some mighty act to re-establish the Kingdom of David and return Jerusalem to its former glory. But no such restoration was yet visible.

Consequently some of Isaiah's fellow Jews were defecting from the Covenant, returning to the worship of the Canaanite fertility gods. Those who were still faithful to Yahweh seemed devoid of energy. So Isaiah looks out over his unsure people, and realizes they are locked in depression. They are in what we would call a stuck place.

In this they were experiencing a moment universally encountered by human beings. This is a truth about our psychology as a species: if we do not come to terms with our past it locks up our present and closes off our future. If our guilt over our wrongdoings is not removed through some act through which we are forgiven, the guilt eats up our energy for living. If our grief over relationships damaged or destroyed is not expressed and released, then it typically flattens our emotional life and turns everything grey.

The Israelites, Isaiah understands, are tied up in guilt and grief. Earlier prophets had interpreted their surrender to the Babylonian Empire as the result of their surrendering of their faith, their breaking of their part in the Covenant with God. And even now, in their return from Exile, their hearts have not fully returned to Yahweh. This is the spiritual, not just the psychological, truth about them. They have not yet come to terms with their guilt over their failure to live faithfully. They have not yet appropriated the forgiveness God is extending to them through this return from Exile. They have not yet thought about what this second chance they are being given reveals about the character of their God. They have not yet realized how their past has a hold upon their present relationship with the Holy One and how he is willing to free them from its grip.

I invite you to survey your life today. Glance over the state of things in your family. Think of your close friendships. Look at your work environment. Are there places where the past has its hold upon you? Places where regret is blocking the way forward? Places where grief keeps coming back to suck the life out of your life? Places where guilt over your failures still makes it hard to look some people in the eye?

Perhaps Isaiah himself, sitting among the ruins, contemplates the ways in which his own life is as broken as these stones. But now as he looks over the rubble something catches his eye. He sees a small green shoot struggling upwards toward the sun. He recognizes it: a grape vine. Sometime in the past few years a grape has fallen here, and the seed has taken root. The possibility suddenly exists that a vineyard might be developed here, this wasteland might become productive again, and once more the people of Yahweh might drink from the cup of rejoicing. The sight of this vine seizes Isaiah's imagination. He understands it as a sign, a sign that God forgives his people, and will renew the Covenant with them, and will return their life to productivity and prosperity. And he writes:

²¹They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

How can this be? How can there be a future for them with God? Because God says:
¹⁷...I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.

"New heavens and a new earth" – a metaphor for a hopeful future. God now intends to open up again a future with the People of the Covenant – a Covenant restored and renewed. That future will be so grace-filled and strong that "the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind".

Not remembered. This will be a kind of holy amnesia. It is not that the Hebrews will simply forget. It is not that their memories of their betrayal of God will gracually fade into the distant past. They will not just forget; they will surrender those memories, hand them off to God. They will not repress the facts about their behaviour, but will face the significance of those facts -- and then "let it go".

Such holy amnesia is a condition we should aspire to as well. It is the product of living in the light of God's grace. And so should be one of aims as we hope to mature as people of spirit. We can experience holy amnesia if we acknowledge our guilt and regret and grief – and then let those feelings go, and seal our memories of our faults in the grave of the past. Holy amnesia will bless us when we believe in the loving character of God, and trust that God really is a God of forgiveness. She really does not hold our sins against us. And because she refuses to let them ruin our bond to her, we do not have to remember them. She will do the remembering of our sins for us. In other words, God gives us permission to forget.

How on earth can we do that forgetting? How can we stop remembering our broken past in order to move forward? How can we live in grace? By remembering – remembering just this, this verse of Third Isaiah:
¹⁷The former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
¹⁸But be glad and rejoice for ever
in what I am creating.

"Rejoice forever in what I am creating". It is because God is still creating that we can live in the freedom of holy amnesia. It is because God remains the origin of our life and the source of our existence that new possibilities are open to us. Because God is sovereign over the past and the future we can plant our vineyards, and help them grow, and join with God in the great project of whole and holy living, and drink the wine of salvation.

May it be so.

Sermon for November 7, 2010

Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
God of the living
Read: Luke 20:27-38

This morning when we recite together our United Church creed, you might take particular note of this line: "In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us". This affirmation echoes the conviction of Jesus himself when he said, in his argument with the Sadducees, "^{Luke 20:38} He is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive." On the other side of death, we are alive to God.

To affirm that is to move deep into the human spirit. We have an unquenchable desire for life. This is part of our animal inheritance, part of the fact that we are embodied, a physical species among other species. All life forms have a drive to keep on living. I was reminded of this yesterday morning while walking the dog. Tally and I encountered a small herd of deer on the embankment above Fish Creek Park. The does and fawns scattered as we approached but the stag turned towards us, antlers lowered. He stood his ground, as we say. The dog and I gave him a wide berth. We could ask a zoologist to explain his behaviour in terms of herd instincts and so on. But let us anthropomorphize a bit and say the stag was ready to defend the lives that nature had entrusted to his care.

We human beings share with all of the animals that impulse to defend and sustain and further the existence of living things of our own kind. It would seem to be built into our DNA. But unlike most other animals we are self-conscious. That enables us to imagine the ending of our lives. And so that impulse in us to protect and maintain life gives us an innate hostility towards death. We perceive death as "the last enemy".

It is often remarked that our present society tends to deny the reality of death. But even for us the desire to defeat death runs not far below the surface. At contemporary funerals and memorial services we can still hear the hope of conquering death being expressed, even in faint form. We hear folks speak of the deceased person's living on through their good works, through the strong organizations and institutions they have built, through the values they have passed on to their family and friends, through their children. You might recall the 1985 song by Leon Dubinsky, popularized by the Rankin Family: "We rise again, in the faces of our children. We rise again, and the voices of our song". And indeed we leave behind much that is good, and in that there is a kind of immortality.

But it is rather insubstantial, isn't it? That is not a very robust version of "surviving death". Woody Allen gets it right: "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying."

So there is some elementary sense in which the fact of death is an affront to everything that our life means. Would we not erase death from the world if we could? Ask any parent. Ask any mother. Ask this year's Silver Cross Mother -- Mabel Girouard from Bathurst, N.B., whose son died during the Canadian Forces mission in Afghanistan. On Thursday at the National War Memorial in Ottawa she will lay a wreath on behalf of all mothers who have lost children in the military service of our nation. Ask Mme Girouard or any other parent who has lost a child: "Were the power over life and death miraculously to be placed in your hands, would you use it to return your beloved child to life?", and the answer would be an absolute "Yes". For that child was beloved.

Built into the human soul is a yearning for life that continues. It is entirely natural that we yearn for more life, especially for those we loved. It is natural that we want to conquer death.

Natural, yes, but also presumptuous. No human being has such miraculous power. Sovereignty over life and death belongs to God alone – God the Creator, God the initiator and sustainer of life, and God our hope for life that continues beyond death.

God is our hope – because of the invincible love that flows from the heart of God. Think of the love of the human parent for a child who has died. Multiply that by infinity and you glimpse the intensity of love that God has for each one of her beloved creatures. That intensity of love expresses itself in God's esential intention to create and sustain and continue the life of the creatures God loves.

Jesus was pointing to this when he said, "God isn't the God of the dead, but of the living. To him all are alive." He was pointing to a living relationship between God and us. In that relationship God focuses on life, on the pursuit of life and the protection of life and the continuation of life. It is this intense and indestructible purpose in God which grounds our hope.

How does God fulfill that purpose? What is the nature of the afterlife? Again I would point out that our creed alludes to life beyond death but does not explain it. Jesus did not explain it. When the Sadducees came to him with questions about "the resurrection of the dead" he declined to speculate about it. He sidestepped the conceptual puzzles it presents. Instead, he moved directly to the heart of the matter. He proclaimed, "All are alive to God".

And so on this Remembrance Sunday we think of those who have died and those who are dying, and we take hold of hope that they live in God, alive because of the indescribable love of God for each one of us.
- In life, in death, in life beyond death,
- God is with us.
- We are not alone.
- Thanks be to God.
October 2010
October 24, 2010 | October 17, 2010 | October 3, 2010
Sermon for October 24, 2010

Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
To know oneself
Read: Luke 18:9-14

When you look at the mirror what do you see? Do you see yourself realistically, the way the world sees you? Do you see in your face both your fine features and your shortcomings?

Few of us appreciate both. Few of us recognize both the handsome aspects of our visage and the trouble spots of our complexion or the shape of our nose or whatever. Some of us see an idealized image. Others see a face which we fear is unattractive.

Now what do we "see" when we think of ourselves in our imagination? That is to say, all of us have something like an internal mirror which we carry around with us, a mirror at which we sometimes glance. If this internal mirror is accurate it reflects back to us both the "warts" of our personality and our attractive features. We understand both our possibilities and our limitations. And in that case we satisfy the ancient maxim, "Know thyself". That was an aphorism coined by the Greek philosophers. Accurate self-knowledge is essential for a full, mature, human life. If we truly know ourselves we can interact with other people with integrity.

But for many of us the internal mirror is distorted. For some folks their reflection is positive only. Their shortcomings don't show up. On the other hand there are folks whose self-image is all negative. Neither of these represents a healthy self understanding. If we are to be mature and whole human beings we need to be quite realistic about ourselves.

Jesus recognized and promoted such realism. If we could understand ourselves realistically as we stand before God we would move one step closer to the Kingdom of God. So Jesus told this little story that starts with a character who does not see the truth about himself, a Pharisee with a false self-image.

Remember that the Pharisaic party within Judaism at the time of Jesus was in its origins a reform movement within Judaism. It attempted to promote among the common people faithfulness to the Torah, because they believed that on the day that every child of the Covenant carried out the Law of Moses completely then God's purposes for human history would be complete and the age of glory would begin. So the Pharisees promoted scrupulous observance of all the commandments.

That is why this particular Pharisee represents something important for Jesus. He represents a noble impulse that gets corrupted. You see, the Pharisee is not wrong about his virtues. There is much in what he does that is good, indeed more than good. He goes beyond what was required by conventional piety or what we might call good citizenship. Strict Torah observance asked for fasting one day each year, namely the Day of Atonement. This Pharisee does it twice each week. Strict Torah observance asked for 10% of the produce from one's land to be given to the poor. This Pharisee tithes on all his income from any source. He is a paragon of religious zeal.

It is a good thing for us to have an accurate appreciation of our virtues. There's no fault if we take certain amount of pride in the good things that we have done and the habits that make us generous towards others, or forgiving, or tolerant. If we take note of them then we are recognizing their importance.

And if this Pharisee had simply prayed his thanks to God for endowing him with his virtues all would have been well. But no. His actual prayer turns out to reveal a deeply corrupted heart. He carries in his inner being a very distorted mirror indeed. For he thanks God for making him not simply good but better than others – "not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax-collector".

Yes, it is a good thing to give thanks to God for our good qualities. But there's something in our human nature that doesn't want to stop there. There is an urge in us towards an unseemly pride. We move almost seamlessly from patting ourselves on the back to looking down our nose at others. That is how Jesus imagines this Pharisee in his little story, looking down his nose at the tax collector he sees in the distance.

As we turn to the tax collector note two important points about him. First, he is not the equivalent of an employee of the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency. In our day CCRA officials simply enforce the income tax laws of our land, laws which through our Parliament we have implicitly or explicitly agreed to follow as part of our participation in this society. The tax collector in this parable is quite different. He
is a franchisee of a corrupt and byzantine system that charges the poor and enriches the wealthy. The tax collector, by definition a wealthy man, pays the [Roman] empire a set amount for the privilege of gathering whatever he can squeeze from his neighbours. Although he is personally responsible for the money owed by his district [to the Emperor], he is free to collect that money any way he wants, and anything he collects above what he owes is his profit. [E. Elizabeth Johnson, in David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, eds, Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 4, 215-216]

For the peasants in Jesus' audience, tax collectors were generally loathed. They gouged the populace, and used the threat of violence to extort the maximum profit from the vulnerable. So Jesus' listeners would assume that this tax collector in Jesus's story is just as corrupt as the Pharisee. His behaviour has been the complete antithesis of the kind of neighbourly care that God commands the people of the Covenant to show for one another. And the crucial point is – he knows this. He is not inventing imaginary sins in order to make his prayer of confession all the more impressive. He is utterly realistic about himself. That is the second thing to notice about this tax collector. He has a realistic self-image. He has his eyes open to both his faults and his virtues (however few virtues he has).

The parable presses further to its climax – what the tax-collector does when he realizes his own deep flaws. He does not acquiesce in resignation. He does not embrace what today has become the gospel of self-acceptance. He does not walk away saying, "Oh, well, that's the way I am, like it or leave it." Instead he cries out to God for forgiveness: "God, give mercy. Forgive me, a sinner." Here is the crucial difference between him and the Pharisee. This is why the tax collector is the realistic one. He recognizes that he is accountable to God.

The tax collector recognizes that he is accountable to God for his sins. He has violated his obligation to care for his neighbours as if they were his brothers and sisters. He belongs to the people of the Covenant made at Sinai between God and Israel. He is a child of God. He belongs to the family of faith. And, as in any family, while he has been sustained by the parental love of God he is also claimed by God. He is accountable to God for his life and the way he is living it.

It is because he sees this truth about himself, sees himself to be embedded within a relationship to God, that Jesus says "this man went down to his home justified." Or in the helpful paraphrase from Eugene Peterson, "This tax man, not the other, went home made right with God." He was made right with God simply in the act of asking for forgiveness. In that turning of himself away from himself and towards God he made the essential move into right relationship with our Creator.

In effect, then, this parable of Jesus shows us that to know ourselves is to recognize that we are children of God. To live faithfully as children of God begins whenever we turn away from ourselves to the Lord of life. What a happy paradox – we look at ourselves realistically when we look past ourselves to the God in whose grace we are embedded. To know oneself is to know that one belongs to God.

So the next time we look in a mirror remember: what we are seeing, warts and all, is a beloved child of the Holy One. Our face is a face through which the love of God wants to shine. This may well bring a frown to our face as we acknowledge out past failures to shine forth the love of God to others. But it also brings a look of astonishment and delight as we realize that God is all compassion and all forgiveness and all grace, a realization that should light up our face with joy!

Sermon for October 17, 2010

Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Hope that insists, faith that persists
Read: Luke 18:1-8

Jesus told stories that open a window into the kingdom of God. In the last number of weeks several of these parables of Jesus, as they are found in Luke's Gospel, have been our worship focus. Often in these stories the characters are very human. For instance, on September 19 we read (in Luke 16:1-13) of a wily rogue, the manager of an agricultural estate, who acted prudently when he was about to be fired for incompetence. Jesus' lead characters often are not paragons of virtue. This helps us identify with them, and understand how we to can move closer into the Reign of God.

The character of the judge in the parable we read today is another case in point. He is utterly self-centred. The parable describes him as having no respect either for God or for people. Worse, he acknowledges that this is his character, indeed has no shame about it. "⁴ ... Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, ⁵yet ... I will grant her justice".

There is little to admire here. His motivation is crude – he simply wants to avoid the widow's "wearing him out". What is he afraid of? Well, another and more literal way of translating the text at that point is this: "I will grant her request so that she may not finally come and slap me in the face". This may mean that he is afraid she'll do him a physical injury. Or it may mean he fears she will shame him through such a public assault. (Just think of all those sword fight movies where the villain shames the hero in public by slapping him across the cheek with his glove.)

Either way, this fellow is corrupt and calculating, with no genuine interest is overturning what injustice it is that as been done to her (we are not told what). You would not be overstretching the point to say that he's a jerk. And yet this bad fellow, for the wrong reasons, does the right thing. He decides to grant the widow a judgment that redresses her victimization.

What turned him? Her gumption. She "keeps on keepin' on". The widow "keeps bothering" the judge by "continually coming" to his door. There is in her a hope for legal remedy, a hope which insists that her case be heard. There is in her a faith that even this jerk of a judge will do the right thing if she persists.

Persistence. Patience. Determination. These virtues are held up by Jesus in his parable as necessary attributes that will be required of anyone who pursues a right cause or a noble goal. We find a remarkably similar parable in the 1991 movie, What about Bob? Bill Murray plays Bob, a psychiatric patient with all manner of neuroses but who also has a fundamentally loving and courageous heart. His psychiatrist, Dr. Leo Marvin, as played by Richard Dreyfuss, is profoundly messed up himself. This is the irony around which the movie turns. Marvin's relationship with his children is in peril because of his own inner demons that drive him. But Bob is so goodhearted that he cannot see this, and instead attributes almost magical powers of psychiatric healing to Dr. Marvin. Bob can't help himself from wanting to sit at the great man's feet and quite naïvely crosses the line of appropriate doctor-patient behaviour. When the Marvins are at their vacation home, Bob shows up. In this first scene, Dr. Leo Marvin is upset because his young son is too afraid to try diving off the dock…

Bob intrudes. He is so needy that he is making a pest of himself. Dr. Marvin tries to put him off and send him away. And of course Bob doesn't leave. In fact, he gradually begins to connect with the members of Marvin's family, especially the children. Bob turns out to be more of a warm and genuine human being than his psychiatrist. We see this when the children invite Bob to dinner.

Marvin becomes more and more frantic in his efforts to get rid of Bob. But Bob shows such sensitivity and understanding and settled sanity, despite his quirks, that the family embraces him. Marvin's sister, Lilly, develops a crush on Bob. Hilarious catastrophes ensue, until Dr. Marvin finally cracks and becomes the patient himself, hospitalized and catatonic.

A happy ending: Even Dr. Marvin gives in finally to Bob's goofy attachment. All because of Bob's persistence. His persistence results from his capacity to show genuine love for others. And his tenacity is the driving force that brings new wholeness and health to the Marvin family's relationships. Their life looks like it is moving a little closer to what life is like when the Reign of God holds sway.

The "parable" in What about Bob? points to the same lesson as Jesus' parable of the judge and the widow. As we pursue anything worthwhile, we are encouraged not to surrender in the face of obstacles.

There are so many ways in which this encouragement can speak to us. Here's just one. The American religion writer, Phyllis Tickle (who is coming to Calgary in November), analyzes the current state of chaos and stress within the mainline North American church. She proposes that what this represents is a process in which God's Spirit is at work. The established church in the Western world is going through a time of searching and confusion and ferment of the kind that occurs about every 500 years or so. As Phyllis Tickle reads the signs of the times, new forms of Christian life and faithfulness are emerging. Congregations are developing that break out of the tired old contest between "evangelical" and "liberal" forms of church. Her implicit message is that Christians should be open to this Great Emergence as the Holy Spirit draws out of the chaos some new form for the Jesus movement.

Now the visioning process we are engaged in as a congregation (and which you can catch up on today in the presentation after worship) is a small piece of that very big issue. And so as our Vision Team leads our St. Andrew's congregation along through this process, we naturally and understandably will feel at times that the process is too slow. Or it may challenge us to rethink our initial expectations. Or we may wonder if we've got the moxie to achieve something new and vital. At such moments let us remember this story of Jesus. It challenges us to keep a grip on a hope that insists and a faith that persists, and like the persistent widow, to "keep on keepin' on".

Sermon for October 3, 2010

Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes' communion meditation
Lamentations 1:1-4, 3:19-23

A husband and wife are sitting at Reception. They are not looking at each other as they wait for their session to begin with the family and marriage therapist. After nearly 40 years together they have come to a point of crisis more severe than the other storms they have weathered. The ageing parent of one of them is behaving in bizarre and hurtful ways. This is putting a terrible strain on many in the extended family, but particularly on this couple. Their days are being shredded by moments of recrimination, anger towards each other, and cynicism, with accusations and cutting remarks hurled more and more often: "I told you so" and "You always…" And when they're not fighting they endure awkward silences while each wonders where their intimacy has fled. At such moments they survey their relationship and it seems empty.

Empty.

A man sits at his kitchen table eating his breakfast. These days he takes nothing more than half a glass of orange juice and a small bowl of raisin bran. He used to enjoy a much bigger breakfast, enough to fuel a vigorous day, but breakfast was one of the things she did around the house and she's been gone now for – what – 10 months? He tries not to talk to her in the house; he saves that for the cemetery. So he now lives mostly in silence. This morning he puts down the paper, and just listens, listens to the silence. He finds the silence unbelievable. He finds the emptiness unbearable.

Empty.

Most of you know this building. It is just 600 metres from our church's front door. Families that grew up in Haysboro, Kingsland, and the other neighbourhoods around here used the "Y" as one of the centres of their life. It gave them helpful programs. It gave them a focus for family life. It gave them connection . At the end of the summer the "Y" closed permanently because the predicted cost of renovations was just too high. On a normal Saturday morning during its active years, the parking lot would have been full. This is what it looked like yesterday morning.

Empty.

You might keep this image of emptiness in your mind as I read again part of the passage we heard earlier from the book in the Bible we call Lamentations (in the NRSV).
- ^1.1How lonely sits the city that once was full of people!... ⁴The roads to Zion mourn, for no one comes to the festivals; all her gates are desolate, her priests groan; her young girls grieve, and her lot is bitter.
The author of these poems of lament was writing sometime just after 597 BCE. After years of military pressure against the city of Jerusalem or Zion from the Babylonian armies pressing down from the north, the city had fallen. Everyone except the poorest people had been taken away into exile in the Babylonian homeland, so that only a few stragglers remained behind amid the ruined stones. Writing from his bitter exile, the author sees in his imagination Jerusalem the mighty now deserted, its grand Temple empty. He cries out in lament.

Lament was a recognized form of speech in the ancient world. It put into words our human experiences of abandonment, isolation, betrayal, or hopelessness. Poems of lament enable the human heart to cry out to God when we encounter those situations when we reach our limits, when we feel pushed past our limits. Lament gives us a voice when we are trapped, despairing, at our wits end, reduced almost to silence. Lament expresses this essential thought: "O God, why?"

Lamentation has almost disappeared from our culture, except that it survives in one of the forms of popular music that we all know – "the blues." If the author of the book of Lamentations were living today he or she would be seated at a lounge piano in a smoky bar, "singin' the blues". The writer was certainly living the blues.

And when we are living the blues the poetry of the book of Lamentations has the power to name our reality. You and I should let it speak to us of our own experiences of loss and our own encounter with emptiness. To help our hearing, let us listen again to Eugene Peterson's paraphrase from The Message:
- ¹Oh, oh, oh... How empty the city, once teeming with people.
- ⁴Zion's roads weep, empty of pilgrims headed to the feasts. All her city gates are deserted, her priests in despair. Her virgins are sad. How bitter her fate.
But unlike the lyrics of what you'd hear in a blues bar, these poems of Lamentation include something else beyond expressions of grief. They turn to God. They address God, even if it is only in the form of an angry cry that asks why the Creator and Sustainer of life has permitted whatever disaster it is that the poet laments. In the third chapter of Lamentations this turning to God stands out. The tone of the poem shifts. An affirmation leaps forth. After repeating again how utterly bleak things are in his Babylonian exile, the author blurts out:
- ²¹But I call this to mind,
  and therefore I have hope:
- ²²The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
  his mercies never come to an end;
- ²³they are new every morning;
  great is your faithfulness.
Even at the blackest moment, the author of this poem does not lose sight of "the steadfast love" of God.

This book of Lamentations is a wonderful gift to us. It gives us words to express to God our deepest experiences of loss and emptiness. But it also challenges us to remember always that God's compassion is "new every morning".

The book of Lamentations is now part of our Christian Bible. As our Christian tradition has grown out of the Hebrew faith tradition, we also have found over the centuries words that help us, even at the darkest moments, to have hope. We too have words that remember "the steadfast love of the Lord". And we will encounter those words this morning, in our liturgy of the Eucharist, our prayer of thanksgiving at communion. Jesus says, "Take, eat. Do this in remembrance of me." In our emptiness, we come to his table and find that it is full. In our brokenness we seek wholeness at his hand, his bruised hand and pierced wrist. He who has known already any loneliness, any abandonment, any emptiness that we might feel holds out his hand to us. He holds out bread, which he breaks. He says, "This is my body, broken for you". And the wonderful paradox is that as he is broken, our brokenness and emptiness is overcome, our oneness is restored, our oneness with God, and with each other.

Let us come then, come from our losses, come from our emptiness, and taste the fullness of Christ's table, and know the steadfast love of the Holy One.

September 2010
September 26, 2010 | September 19, 2010 | September 12, 2010
Sermon for September 26, 2010

Bible matters; Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes' teaching time

2 Timothy 3:10-17 NRSV

¹⁰Now you have observed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, ¹¹my persecutions and suffering the things that happened to me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. What persecutions I endured! Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. ¹²Indeed, all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. ¹³But wicked people and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving others and being deceived. ¹⁴But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, ¹⁵and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. ¹⁶All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, ¹⁷so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.

Sing, from Voices United #357, Tell Me the Stories of Jesus, vv. 1, 2.

In the STEPS program these weeks our children are learning some basics about the Bible and how to read it. This is then a good moment for us also to step back and think about this book that stands at the centre of church. What kind of writing is the Bible, and what role should it play in our lives?

This children's hymn almost gets it right. It almost lays out for us in the simplest terms all we really need to know about the Bible. Almost.
- Tell me the stories of Jesus I love to hear,
- things I would ask him to tell me if he were here.
But he is here. And in this teaching time I hope to help you understand how the Bible is the vehicle through which Jesus is here. What I shall convey is one perspective, one understanding of the role of the Bible for us. This is by no means the only understanding. Other branches of the Christian community conceive of scripture in other ways. But this is how contemporary liberal Protestantism attempts to treat the Bible seriously but not literally.

It is worthwhile thinking about the place of the Bible in our lives because it plays more of a role than we may realize. For some people the scripture is a daily companion. They read it to become familiar with its varied contents and to allow it to help shape the passing of their days. Perhaps they accompany the Bible with a devotional guide of daily readings to stimulate their reflections. Other folks meet the Bible on a weekly basis. Each Tuesday morning our church staff gathers and engages in a sustained way with one of the Bible passages that the Common Lectionary suggests for the worship on the coming Sunday. (Actually we now work two Sundays ahead, to give ourselves more time to integrate text and prayer and music and media.) And then those who come to worship, perhaps weekly, perhaps less often, encounter at least the one Bible text that motivates that particular service. The church is constituted by worship, and the church's worship arises as we engage the grand story that the Bible conveys.

But even folks who are present in church only rarely are more influenced by the scriptures than they might think. The Bible is a force that shapes our collective lives. As the Canadian literary scholar, Northrop Frye, pointed out, the content of the Jewish and Christian Bible has strongly influenced the great tradition of Western literature. Even now in our popular culture we tell ourselves stories with characters and plots and themes that originate in Biblical story-telling. Look at all the vampire books that have been a recent fad. The Twilight series reflects humankind's ages-old fascination with questions of life, and life beyond death, and good versus evil, and the question whether the good will triumph. These are ancient questions and the way the Bible addresses these questions seems to be deep in the cultural DNA of Western society.

Now notice. I said that the Bible addresses profound questions, not that it definitively answers them. The Bible is not a question-and-answer textbook. Some Christian traditions try to treat it that way, as a kind of encyclopaedia of Jewish and Christian faith. But that is not how most United Church ministers and teachers would see it. We should not expect the scriptures to give straightforward answers to the big questions. It is as much a challenge to understand what the questions are as to hear the "answers" that a Bible passage gives. And it doesn't always "answer" the same way. The Bible is not a single book. It is a library of books. And throughout those books we can hear different voices giving different, sometimes incompatible, responses to life's huge questions about God and our life with God.

So every time we read a Bible passage we have to interpret. We have to interpret the agenda, as it were, and interpret what the passage is saying about it. That requires us to go outside the text and learn about the setting from which the passage speaks to us. To hear properly the different voices that speak through the various parts of scripture we have to interpret what those various voices were saying in their context: their historical place, their cultural traditions, their social norms. Here is an aphorism that sums it up: to understand the text, place it in its context.

So: interpretation is unavoidable. And that always introduces uncertainty. Are we interpreting aright? Now there are streams of Christianity that dismiss such a concern. They hold that no interpretation is necessary because the words in their obvious and plain sense come directly from God. They say the Bible is directly divinely-inspired, as if God dictated these words into the minds of people who then simply wrote them down.

There is one verse in our Bible which has often been taken to prove that the Bible is the direct, literal word of God. It is one verse from the text in 2 Timothy which we read today.
- ¹⁶All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.

Some Christian traditions interpret "inspired" to mean dictated (and notice, this is itself an interpretation). That is not really adequate as a way to understand the whole Bible. For one thing, it says that scriptures are "useful" for guiding, correcting, training people in the Christian community. It makes the scriptures sound like a stern school-teacher. Yet don't the scriptures also comfort people, and intrigue them, and express delight in God? More important, the original Greek phrase "inspired by God" can be understood as a much more subtle process than God's speaking words into the mind of some scribe. I like Eugene H. Peterson's translation (from The Message):
- "Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another."
That paraphrase is (in another sense!) quite "inspired."

Think of that. God "breathes" life into our living though the whole process of our engagement with the Bible. So his influence upon us is indirect and subtle. God's Spirit enlivens our spirits as we struggle faithfully to interpret the texts.

How does that happen? How does God's Spirit inspire us when we engage the texts? When we work together. That's the answer for us in The United Church of Canada. We are "Protestant". That is, we inherit the ideas that drove the Reformers of 500 years ago in Europe. One of those ideas is that the Spirit leads us to understanding through the work of the gathered community It is when the church's various members have dialogue with each other about the meaning and importance of Bible texts that we have the best chance of interpreting faithfully and with relevance. This is part of the meaning of the great Protestant motto, "The priesthood of all believers". So it is really quite important that you who sit in the pews have some ability to interpret the Bible. This is part of your spiritual responsibility. You have a right – and a duty – to wrestle with the text. You should not surrender this work to others whom you might presume have greater authority, whether those be priests and bishops (as the Catholic traditions have in the past presumed) or some charismatic "Spirit-filled person" raised up in the local church (as many evangelical traditions see it). The Bible belongs to you.

You already have gifts that you can use to understand Bible texts. There are other tools you can acquire or sharpen. One tool is knowledge of literature. Ask: what kind of writing are we seeing in a given passage – a letter, a Gospel, an historical record or chronology, a list of Kings and rulers, an elaborate instruction for rituals in worship, a prophetic protest of scathing denunciation, a poem of lament, a song of joy? That is a first step towards hearing more clearly the witness of the text.

Now let us step back and ask of the whole Bible: what is its basic form? What does it do?

Is it a history book? No – that would relegate it to the past. We can say that the Bible records the history of God's gracious dealings with humankind – but that history is not finished. God is still dealing with us! To read the Bible is to encounter a "living word".

Let's sing a song that reminds us that our faith is a living force in our lives. Hymn MV8 And on This Path, both verses.

"Enter in" to the Bible so we can follow the Path of Jesus. Is the Bible then a rulebook for following that "path"? Well, it does contain some moral principles, such as the Ten Commandments. But as Jesus pursued his path towards God he was focused less on obeying God than on loving God and living from a God-centred perspective.

Think of pilgrims on a journey. They'll often sing themselves along the way with songs that encourage them and keep them focused on their goal. The Bible contains many songs and poems of faith. Generalize that: think of the Bible as a whole as kind of like a poem. That gets closer to the heart of it.

Poetry operates through metaphor. And metaphor was Jesus' favourite form of speech. His parables and his aphorisms are metaphors. He said, for instance, "You are yeast. You are the salt of the earth." The image there of yeast, an image that is expressed in words, points towards that which cannot be fully put into words, which is in this case the nature of our life in the world as followers of Jesus' Way. That is the structure of every metaphor. This set of words points to that which cannot be expressed in words.

So we take our cue from Jesus and generalize. We can think of the Bible as one overall, extended metaphor. This group of books and texts points to that divine reality which cannot be adequately expressed in words. The various voices in the Bible testify to what those people experienced as God has dealt with them in judgement and in grace. Their witness, their testimony, their words invite us to look through their words so that we too may encounter that One who is beyond all words.

It is good to think in these ways of how we relate to the Bible. But that's just part of our response to it. The full role of the Bible in our lives is to sustain our relationship to God, to deepen our sense that we are beloved children of God Most High. So let us end by singing that:
- Hymn I'm So Glad

Sermon for September 19, 2010

Street-smarts for the Kingdom
Luke 16:1-13
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

Jesus tells his parables of the Kingdom of God with the aim of opening our eyes to the strange and wonderful shape of life lived within the Reign of God. Often his parables do this by throwing a surprising twist into the story. Today's story from Luke's Gospel pivots upon this technique. Jesus sets up his audience, raises their expectations and then overturns them. He deliberately violates their convictions of what is normal in order to show forth the wonderfully not-normal world of God's new order.

To discern that strategy of disruption within this parable, try to hear it through peasant ears. Imagine Jesus telling the story to a Galilean peasant audience. From that perspective it looks like a classic story of a clever rogue.

A tale of a wily rogue who outsmarts various enemies – such a tale belongs to a common genre of storytelling. It should be quite familiar to us. After all, we all know the story of Robin Hood, which is one of the early examples in English of this genre. And this motif is very popular in our movies. You may remember the film Ocean's Eleven from 1960 with Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr, and others portraying eleven friends who rob five of the biggest casinos in Las Vegas in one night. [There was a George Clooney remake in 2001.] More recent "caper" films would be A Fish Called Wanda (1998 ), or The Italian Job (2003). These movies get their charm by inviting us in the audience to identify with the roguish outlaws. We put our normal ethical standards on holiday for the duration of the movie and cheer for the "bad guys" against their opponents.

So Jesus begins his parable with a protagonist with whom his peasant audience will readily identify – the manager or steward of a large agricultural estate. Notice his social class. He is a middleman. He manages the relationship between his employer, the upper-class, wealthy estate-owner, and the small peasant farmers who rent land from this rich man. So right off the bat the peasant listener will be much more kindly disposed towards this manager than towards his rich master.

Furthermore, his problem as first described is that he is incompetent – not crooked. He is said to have "squandered" his master's property which is not as bad as if he had embezzled it. So perhaps he's a bit out of his depth in his job. The peasant farmers listening to Jesus can identify with that. Things often go inexplicably wrong in their lives, too.

They can also appreciate that he is a victim here. Someone in the village, perhaps a jealous rival, has "squealed" on the manager to his boss. Peasants know well the petty backstabbing that goes on in village life.

You see: within a couple of sentences Jesus would have his audience cheering for this manager. As the story proceeds and the manager manipulates the situation to his own advantage, they would cheer all the more. By the end of the tale the manager would seem to have outfoxed his employer, and peasants love to see the underdog putting one over on "the man".

But just there at the end of the story Jesus throws his curveball. He undercuts the expectations of his listeners. The rich estate owner does not act as anticipated by Jesus' peasant audience, who would expect the land-owner to be furious with his steward. They would expect him to seek greater punishment, not just to fire him but have him arrested and imprisoned, or worse. Instead, the boss praises him. He praises the manager for his practical wisdom, his cleverness, his "shrewdness", as the usual translations put it. The estate-owner is delighted to realize that although the man is unethical he is a brilliant operator.

This would have seemed so out of character, so "unrealistic", so contrary to the peasants' stereotype of wealthy estate-owners, that we can imagine Jesus' listeners crying out, startled, protesting. This was his intent (according to the interpretation of this parable I am offering you). He wanted to rattle his listeners enough to help them understand the power of the Reign of God. He shook them up in order to show them how their normal world would change as God's Spirit reshapes it. To live within the Kingdom of God of course requires us to act ethically. We must be honest and loyal. Jesus does not slight those virtues. As he concludes his story, the manager is recognized as corrupt. "⁸ And his master commended the dishonest manager", says Jesus. So why does the master commend the scoundrel? "Because he had acted shrewdly."

Jesus obviously thought that "shrewdness" was really important. If even an unethical rogue like this manager should be respected for having this quality, it must be in Jesus' view a quality of great importance for the coming of the Reign of God. Following the Way of Jesus seems to require being "shrewd".

I invite you to ponder with me this "shrewdness". Explore it by considering an example. Suppose I am struggling with my lawnmower on a Saturday morning, yanking the starter rope over and over again to no effect. Here come three of my neighbours (imaginary ones, of course) to give me a hand.

Connie lives in a world of concepts. She ponders my situation and proceeds to pontificate about how this is so typical of contemporary humankind's folly in depending so completely upon technology. Now I don't really need a philosophy lecture on Saturday morning; I just want to mow my lawn! But that's Connie's bent. She lives in a world of ideas, and always gravitates towards the concepts at work in any situation.

The next neighbour, Peter, by contrast, is always alert to the human dimensions of the scene. He responds with sympathy to my exasperation with the machine. And he asks, "I wonder who we can get to fix it for you?" Peter is people-oriented.

But while the other two are talking to me my neighbour Thomas has been actually studying the lawn mower. "Hmmm", he says, "perhaps you've got a blockage in the fuel line. Let's see." Thomas is a fixer. Thomas lives in a world of things. Or systems of things, like the mechanical system of my lawnmower, systems which he intuitively understands and successfully manipulates to achieve desired outcomes. Thomas never has trouble for long with his lawnmower! And what does he do for a living? He is an information technology systems analyst.

Thomas could easily have been the manager is Jesus's parable. The practical intelligence that Thomas uses to fix my lawnmower and which he uses to fix computer systems is the same virtue as this "shrewdness" shown by the steward in the story. This is pragmatic wisdom, "know how", the skill of mechanics and engineers and fixers in every age and place.

The manager is not one-dimensional, of course. He has some conceptual skills in that he shows some creativity in coming up with his plan to cook the books, and creativity is the great gift of the conceptual person. He also demonstrates people skills. He knows the character of the landlord's debtors and understands well enough that they will embrace his plan because it lowers their costs, even though fiddling the accounts is dishonest and illegal. But mostly we see the steward's practical intelligence. He demonstrates pragmatic wisdom, alertness, initiative, "street smarts".

Eugene Peterson's translation of verses 8 and 9 of our text helps us understand this form of "shrewdness".
^8-9"Now here's a surprise: The master praised the crooked manager! And why? Because he knew how to look after himself. Streetwise people are smarter in this regard than law-abiding citizens. They are on constant alert, looking for angles, surviving by their wits. I [says Jesus] want you [my followers] to be smart in the same way—but for what is right—using every adversity to stimulate you to creative survival, to concentrate your attention on the bare essentials, so you'll live, really live, and not complacently just get by on good behaviour."

"Streetwise". That's a good way to put it. The manager is streetwise; he knows how to work the system. And he does it. He looks at the situation and sees the different forces at work and he manipulates them. He knows himself, knows what he can do and what he cannot, knows that he doesn't have the physical strength to do manual labour and doesn't have the psychological strength to beg for a living. But he also knows how to bend the rules in his favour, and he does it.

Two large questions may loom in your mind. Why would this kind of practical intelligence be important to Jesus? And why should we encourage it in church? Perhaps because it is necessary for the emergence of the Reign of God among us. And our congregation, as we aspire to be a community that seeks to live in the Reign of God by following the Way of Jesus, needs street smarts.

Jesus recognized that pragmatic people are needed as the yeast in the dough. He knew that if the communities of the Kingdom he was creating should become dominated by conceptual types – the theologians and scholars of religious law – the Kingdom of God would be cut adrift and float off into endless theological speculation. He knew also that if his followers focused entirely on human relationships and the satisfaction of human needs, they could too easily settle into warm, clubby, complacent self-centeredness. So he tells this parable to remind us of the value of those who can work the system; those who can work well with social and political and emotional processes; those who can change this in order to achieve that; those who can see what needs to be done and get it done.

Here then is a word for us conceptual types who love to think through the big picture, and who presume that church life should revolve around us. Here is a word for us who are blessed with emotional intelligence and relate so well to other people, and who presume that church is mainly about successful relationships. The word is this: the Reign of God requires all types. Our churches need thinkers and caregivers – and also people of practical wisdom and effective action.

In a word, in the Kingdom of God make room for the engineers.

Sermon for September 12, 2010

In Deep Waters
Luke 5:1-11
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

⁴... (Jesus) said to Simon, "Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch."

"Deep water". It's only a small detail in the story, but it is significant.

How many of us went swimming this past summer? I know – what summer? So let's take the last six months and ask: how many of us went swimming, in pool or lake or tropical cove? Perhaps quite a few. We enjoy our pond or pool or Hawaiian beach because most of us know how to swim. We learned as youngsters, just as we learned to ride a bike.

It seems almost un-Canadian to say it but I admit to you that I don't really like swimming. I can do it, but it's not my favourite kind of exercise. Summer swimming lessons were for me an ordeal. Even on the sandy beach at Sarnia's Canatara Park, Lake Huron could be rough and cold in late August, as it was the day I had to take my test in the Red Cross swimming course. To go the required distance around the course marked by floating buoys I had to fight against three-foot waves and water of maybe 12 degrees centigrade, so I only made it to the two thirds point before they had to haul me out and into the rescue boat. To this day it's very hard for me to relax in the water.

If some evolutionary biologist suggests that we human beings have an innate fear of deep water I'm going to agree. In terms of evolutionary history all land creatures originally evolved out of species of fish. Human beings, unlike dolphins and whales, are mammals who have not adapted back into an aquatic environment. The ocean is not really where we belong. Technologies like boats and scuba gear allow us to visit or exploit the sea, but it can never be home to us. Just think of the panic you felt the first time you got in over your head and couldn't touch bottom.

If like me you feel this kind of visceral knowledge that deep water can be treacherous then you can appreciate the courage of ancient fishers. Simon and the other Galileans in this story probably did not know how to swim, at least not well enough to be able to make it to shore if their boat capsized in deep water. And that could easily happen on the Lake of Galilee which was infamous for its dangerous sudden storms. "Push out into deeper water", Jesus suggested to them. They did so because they were used to it, but that doesn't reduce the risk they were taking.

On the other hand the deep waters are full of life. That's where the great haul of fish was to be found. But they were not visible. Despite having a working knowledge of the lake and the practical wisdom handed down from one generation of fishers to another, Simon and company could not count on success. Galilee's depths were still a mystery.

The mystery of life in the deep waters remains today. The sockeye salmon run this summer in BC reminded us of this fact. The unpredicted surplus was an embarrassment of riches. It was a mixed blessing, because it's hard to earn a livelihood with a resource that fluctuates between oversupply and scarcity. It was an embarrassment for Fisheries Canada, for it reminded us that even the fisheries experts do not fully understand the deep water ecosystem and the lifecycle of the sockeye. A great deal of what goes on beneath the waves remains hidden to us.

When you hear this story in our Gospel reading today do not detain yourself too much with questions of its literal truthfulness. Don't bother asking how Jesus knew where the fish were. Luke tells this story for symbolic purpose, and the details have metaphorical import rather than literal veracity. The guiding metaphor here is that to follow the Way of Jesus is to engage in "fishing for people" – working to connect human beings in their confusion and need with the grace and love of God that makes up the Kingdom of God or Reign of God.

These Galilean fishers have not caught anything all night because they have not taken the risk of going farther out, of daring the deeper waters. So let us understand Jesus' instruction to push out farther as a metaphor. It brings home a truth to us: we shall not experience the fullness of the Kingdom of God if we will not take the risk of venturing into a place of both threat and promise. That is a truth of the spiritual life. It is in the place where we are at risk that God's Spirit is at work below the surface. It is where there is danger, danger to our life or to the way we are used to living our life, that possibilities of new and abundant life are hidden.

It is in the deeper water that the fish are to be found. That truth of the spiritual life applies to us as a congregation, of course. We at St. Andrews seek for possibilities of new and renewed life. As we do so it is important to remember this aspect of the image. The fish are not visible from the surface. The real gifts that will come to us when we move into uncharted waters as a congregation will not be foreseeable ahead of time.

It is in the deep water that the fish are to be found. That principle governs also our spiritual life as individuals. Many of the world's religious traditions incorporate wisdom about how we human beings can live fully, abundantly, and authentically. Part of that wisdom teaches us that unless we will take the risk of doing "deep work" we will remain in the shallows for much of our life. We can paddle along in routine ways from day to day, but if we yearn to feel fully alive, to be in touch with all aspects of our nature, to live vividly, we have to take the risk of examining ourselves, our assumptions, our fondest self-images. We may have to summon the courage to unveil the wounds in our spirit. We may have to acknowledge our limits and confess our mistakes.

But the promise is that in such deep waters of the spirit, God has waiting for us an abundance of new possibilities. Just as there was in the hidden depths of the lake an uncountable school of fish, so there awaits us in the mystery of our human spirit an abundance of opportunities for renewal and human flourishing, all gifts of the generous Spirit of God.

So join Simon and company. Do as "the Master" asks. Push out farther into the deep.

Today's question for "Conversations That Matter"
^{Luke 5:4} (Jesus) said to Simon, "Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch."

Today's sermon included this comment:
Unless we will take the risk of doing "deep work" we will remain in the shallows for much of our life. We can paddle along in routine ways from day to day, but if we yearn to feel fully alive, to be in touch with all aspects of our nature, to live vividly, we have to take the risk of examining ourselves, our assumptions, our fondest self-images.
Are there times and places in your life that take you below the surface of the everyday, and challenge you, give you insight, help you cope?
Can you share with those at your table a time when that happened for you?

August 2010
August 29, 2010 | August 22, 2010 | August 1, 2010
Sermon for August 29, 2010

Being the Hands of Christ
Hebrews 13: 1-8, 15-16 & Luke 14:1, 7-14
Rev. Shannon Mang

The passages from Luke and Hebrews jumped out at me this week. There are parts of each of these readings that speak clearly about being in relationship with people who were on the outside margins of Jesus' culture and the culture of the early church. These were the parts that hooked me. In the Gospels, when we hear Jesus talking to his host about inviting the poor to dinner - those who cannot return the favour- he REALLY does mean "the poor." He REALLY was telling the rich host to ask those people who were at his garbage dump, outside his wall, searching for scraps of food from this table... Jesus was asking the host to invite "those people" right to the table as guests. Likewise, the writer of the letter to the Hebrews REALLY meant it when he or she wrote that the Christian way is to extend hospitality to the stranger- and to be relationship with those in prison and those suffering torture. The author of the letter was not just writing colourful prose when speaking about the followers of Jesus being called to live "outside the gates" of the city.

The history of Christianity has seen the Church live along a continuum of just "talking the talk" on the one end of the spectrum, and REALLY "walking the walk" on the other end. There has been a historic resistance to actually living the radical call to live with those on the fringes of every culture- this resistance has been particularly present when the Christians have been the ones with the economic, political and social power. It was much easier when the Church was suppressed and persecuted to "walk the walk." When the church has strayed far from this difficult call, there have been, over and over again across history, reform movements to pull the church back into living that calling out in the real world. It has impacted how Christians are seen in the world. For example, Ghandi was known to say that he really liked the Christians' Jesus, but there were very few Christians that he liked, because it seemed that the Christians didn't really live what Jesus taught. Or, as the author of Hebrews puts it, historically there haven't been that many Christians who have chosen to 'live outside the city gates.'

I want to share with you what I witnessed in my time visiting churches in the United Kingdom and the United States and Canada's Lower Mainland. Today, I'll speak particularly about a couple of churches in the UK. There is again a reform movement going on, and the swing along that continuum in the thriving and lively Christian churches, is back towards "walking the walk" - taking the call of Christians to live their lives in a manner that actively brings the Good News of Jesus to the people living on the margins of cities and towns. Now, in the UK this tends to happen more in the urban setting; those in the rural setting tend to look like us. Church buildings are a dime a dozen in the UK, a Church building on nearly every corner in the cities in particular. This is because Britain was very much in the middle of "Christendom", it was a Christian country and each community, each tiny little parish had its own Church. They are about 10-20 years ahead of us in the process of becoming a Christian presence in a culture that is no longer Christian. When everyone was a Christian in Britain and Scotland, Wales and Ireland, there was the parish system; now, most of those Church buildings have ceased being Churches. They are art galleries and community centres, restaurants and theatre venues, condos, and I saw one of the big edifices transformed into a climbing wall. But - the churches that are still churches are very different places from the dying British churches of 10-20 years ago. The remaining Christian communities, particularly in the urban centres of Britain and Scotland are bursting with life. I went to visit one ancient edifice, 13th century, which has been completely gutted to increase the seating area since they were bursting at the seams. They're needing to change their insides to accommodate all the people and all of the ministries that are taking place. Most of the people coming through their doors are between the ages of 20-40 and they are deeply engaged and involved with their Christian families.

There are three key features of these thriving Christian communities, which I saw over and over again, that indicate for me these thriving Christian Communities. Individuals really are a part of a faith "family" - they are the family that they don't have because they are separated from their actual family. They know one another deeply and care for each other very deeply. Worship is simple, lively, joyful. Everyone, everyone, is intimately engaged in some sort of ministry that is making a difference right in their local community

Thriving churches are bursting with life because they are about the business of "giving themselves away" - they are walking the walk, they are living out the message of Jesus Christ. Individuals are given the space to explore their passions and opportunities to "give themselves away" wholeheartedly to their passions.

Time for a few examples: Holy Trinity Brompton in London is the birthplace of the Alpha program- you've seen the signs and posters? (Again, there is a bit of a time difference between what is going on in Britain and what is going on here, but I assume the Canadian Alpha program is likely going in the same direction.) The purpose of the Alpha program was to try to find a way to introduce regular unchurched folks to Christianity in a non-threatening environment. It started out as a program to grow church members and to build community through the small group experience. Many people found that the deep hurts from their own lives were knit together in the small Alpha group process. For several years Alpha was a mostly a spiritual program, but something funny seems to happen when lots of people start taking the Bible seriously and start asking what the scriptures have to do with real life. A turning point came with the Alpha program when a person in one of the Alpha programs was in-between jail sentences and got sent back to prison to serve another sentence. He challenged his group to continue to meet with him- in prison after all, Jesus seemed to have something real to say about visiting the prisoner, right? Alpha went to prison- and it has never been the same since. That opened the door to a prison ministry that has radically changed the lives of thousands of prisoners worldwide. Once Alpha entered prisons, the folks who had found freedom in becoming a part of the Christian family felt the call to leave the church basements where they were meeting and take the good news to their communities, not just the prisons. Not in a "soap box" preachy sort of way, but in a wondering, curious and open sort of way. They were going into the neighbourhoods and looking for the people and places where there was suffering. They sought out the hurts- and built relationships with other social agencies and looked for ways to heal hurts; they looked for the holes in the systems and found ways to fill those holes in practical, real ways. Recently, Holy Trinity Brompton has purchased another (empty) local church building to house all of the services to the homeless and the local low income housing projects, and, since they started out looking to partner with the government social service agencies, they are welcomed and appreciated by both those they serve and the different levels of government, who are also seeking to serve these people.

Another church is St. Anselm's; this was the local Church of my host in London. It's a Church of England congregation that has been a part of a project very similar to the direction that St. Andrew's is beginning to explore. They are one of 3 churches that came together a few years ago to create an urban multi-point parish… so there are three "points" and a shared ministry staff, and there's different ministry that takes place at each of these three sites. They are in an area of London that has become home to many immigrants from Africa, so the church is full of folks recently from Africa and on a Sunday it is lively with lots of children and teens along with their parents catching up on one another's lives, with a smattering grey-haired white people who are treated like special grandparents. Each of the three sites maintains a separate congregation- but St. Anselm's is about to launch a very big reno project. They're preparing to build a bistro in their 13th century church. What is this about? They have had a relationship with a local prison for some time and together with the prison they have committed to provide a training site with this Bistro for prisoners who have gone through a food services training program. Given the challenges of ex-cons to find work on the "outside", this is a practical way for prisoners to look forward to getting on-the -job training along with a supportive community of care found in the members of the congregation, and the local community that lives around them.

What I've seen at work in these churches, and many others in my travels, is the power of building relationships directly with those who have a hurt that requires healing- a need that is aching to be met. When there is a face to face relationship between the giver and one receiving, there is something very powerful that happens to both the person who has the need and the person who is seeking to meet that need. Through the power of relationship, the lines become blurred between who the giver is and who the receiver is- because the one who is giving ends up receiving at least as much. When there is a real, respectful relationship, everyone is changed.

Many of you already know this. I have spoken with several of you who have not only prepared dinner for Inn From the Cold but gone and eaten dinner with the Inn From the Cold guests, and you have spoken with me about how that has changed you... and hooked you. Jesus was not kidding when he was talking to the host of the dinner party - challenging him to invite guests who were not part of his social circle, and to turn the culture=s social expectations upside down. Having dinner with a homeless person or family will change us in ways we cannot begin to imagine.

St. Andrew's is at an interesting cross-roads as we explore this vision of becoming a church family without walls - as we discern what God's 20-20 vision is for us. We have a history of being a VERY generous church. We always step up to the plate and respond to real and present challenges, as we saw last week – the beginning of our urgent appeal [for Pakistan] brought in more than $1000. That's amazing! There are not that many Church communities that can boast that kind of giftedness in generosity. We abound in it!

You may notice that the brown, black and beige stones that were on the walls since May…I took those down, partly because I wanted to get a good close look at what they were. I got the history on it – it was part of the service that Church in Society and Integrated Worship and the STEPS and youth did all together on May 16th and there were questions asked about "what is something you are doing currently" and "what is one small step that the Church family can do" in terms of working to alleviate child poverty in Alberta. Somehow I'm going to hare them on the website, or on paper out here, because it was very illuminating to me. What I saw is that many of you have hands-on, face-to-face experience making a difference in the community. Many of you, through your local breakfast and lunch programs; for Habitat for Humanity; some of you have professions that involve you working directly with parents and children making real and tangible difference in their lives. And for others it is clear to me that giving financially to charities and to the Food Bank and special appeals to Add Your Light, Mama's Orphanage and NeighbourLink are important parts of your faith commitment, and your commitment to working on child poverty, both here at home and around the world.

So where do we go from here? We had lots of conversations amongst the staff the staff this past week - Wilma, was it you that said, "we tend to hide our light under a bushel"? There's a lot of you doing this face to face work, we need to hear how it's changed you. And somehow there may be a sense that Church in Society or Inn from the Cold are somehow doing the work on our behalf. In the Churches that are thriving and lively, everyone has a role. Now, not everyone has the gift to have face to face contact; but you don't know if you have the gift unless you try it. And, if you don't have the gift, there are other administrative gifts that are needed. One way or another, all of these ministries that are taking place in some way or another, it would be really nice if we could ALL own it, if we could all celebrate what is already happening.

And, there is another piece you need to know about. There was a change that took place with Inn from the Cold – it was a year or two ago? We went from hosting homeless guest two Saturdays a month to one Saturday a month, and there has been a group that has gone on another day to the second stage housing… which means that for our Inn from the Cold ministry, the opportunities for service and face-to-face contact have actually diminished at this point. We'd like to see that change. Another change that has taken place is the function of the community ministry fund. For quite some time now, Rod and I have been your front line people, and for many years we have been able to respond directly to people who have come to St. Andrew's and have been in a financial or food crisis, working with NeighbourLink to vet those requests.

We needed to change that before I went on sabbatical, because for three or four months Rod and I recognized that, the way things were going, we were sliding into doing a whole lot of social work that we're not trained for, and we realized that we weren't doing it well. Even though we were vetting the requests through NeighbourLink, there were indications to us that we were perpetuating the problems, we weren't necessarily solving them, or helping people on their way. And so, that piece of our work with the community ministry fund ended… and we asked people to go through NeighbourLink first, and then NeighbourLink could contact us. Rod and I were no longer having those initial first conversations. Frankly, my heart is a little broken, because I think for me, those conversations continued to change me and "keep me real"… but, the cost was too great. It was no longer healthy and helpful. My hope is to have a further conversation with NeighbourLink about how St. Andrew's can be engaged in face to face relationships with the people that NeighbourLink is engaged with. We have continued to be able to support people, but our ministry to folks has changed: from providing the 20, 50, or $100 gift cards or a book of bus tickets; to the fund now being used primarily to help households struggling to stay solvent, who need rent relief and utility relief. That continues to be a very valuable ministry - we are one of only two or three congregations in the city that can provide assistance in this way . But our face to face opportunity to serve has changed.

So… how do we coordinate our efforts? How do we grow face-to-face relationships that are going to change us, and the world? One of the things we could do in the next year, as we explore and discern God's call to our 20/20 vision, is, how can we take baby steps to learn what's really going on with the groups who are already coming in? We assume that everyone who's coming in is doing OK, but that's not the case. There are a lot of people who are unemployed with the economic downturn. So how could we build stronger friendships with: Jamie's Preschool; St. Andrew's Pre-School; Scouts; Best Beginning; maybe the Tai Chi group; we have four 12-step groups that are now meeting at the Church, are there ways that we could be developing more relationships, more intense relationships; there's Heritage Time Out; Know Your Neighbour; the people who come twice a year for the Rummage Sales, lining up for the doors to open, is there a way that we can actually have a relationship with those folks? Are there others? There continues to be Inn From the Cold ... My hope is that you will take this question with you, of how we can continue to take further baby steps in building relationships with those who are already coming through our doors. Give me a phone call or drop me an email, I really would like your feedback and input on this.

We are all challenged to be changed, and we are changed when we become friends with those who have a need that must be met or a hurt that needs to be healed. May we joyfully grow as we continue to learn, as a community, how to "give ourselves away," in Jesus Christ.

May it be so! Amen

Sermon for August 22, 2010

Get a Life!
Rev. Shannon Mang

Shannon's sermon was centred around a Powerpoint presentation, featuring slides from her visit to the community of Iona. The Powerpoint file is located HERE. Additional notes for each slide are located HERE.
If you are having trouble viewing the Powerpoint slideshow, you may visit Open Office to download their free Productivity Suite.

Sermon for August 1, 2010

The cry of God
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: Hosea 11:1-11

Listen for God. Listen in, as Hosea, the ancient prophet of the people of God, lets us hear the unfolding in words of the majestic grief which is the love of God. In the course of this amazing poem Hosea conducts us into the very soul of God.

Listen for God as Hosea first presents the voice of God. It is a cry, a heart-wrenching cry, words such as a parent would utter for a child who has turned away.
- ^11:1When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.
- ²The more I called them, the more they went from me
Every parent who has had a child run away, literally, knows the shock of that breach. Every parent who has suffered alienation from a son or daughter, or even contemplated the possibility of such a breach, must find these words are devastatingly true: "The more I called them, the more they went from me."

Hosea's insight here is astonishing. He speaks of God the Creator of all things, God who forms and rescues the Hebrew people, God the great high power; yet his poem opens a window into the very heart of that God, and we see there the anguished spirit of a parent who has lost a child.

Israel has betrayed God, who begins to remember what is now lost through that betrayal. In words befitting any loving mother God pours out this tender sentiment:
- ³Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them.
And that rings true. So often children do not recognize, let alone appreciate, let alone say thank you for the myriad blessings with which their parents embrace them daily.

But Israel is not just indifferent. The people of the covenant have turned away from God with a cold calculation that they may do better worshipping the gods of their neighbours. They have chosen to worship the fertility gods of the Canaanites, honouring Baal and not Yahweh. From God's perspective it is as if they had died.

Listen for God. The pathos here is intense. God experiences the infidelity of Israel as a vacuum, an emptiness which she now fills with tears as she remembers the former times when her people were like faithful children,
- ⁴...I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks.
I bent down to them and fed them. These are verses of lament and mourning. They are very much like what we do at funeral services nowadays when we show a video tribute that reminds us of our good times with the deceased. Here in Hosea's poem we have God's slide-show remembrance of Israel's childhood.

Then, in a change of heart that feels psychologically fully authentic, God's anger flashes forth.
- ⁵They shall return to the land of Egypt, and Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me.
Listen for God. His anger is a perfectly natural response to betrayal. It is not unseemly. It is not inappropriate. It does not represent psychological immaturity. Rather the fire of God's anger pays tribute to the beauty of the past relationship with Israel that has now been betrayed. God had embarked on a great project of building Israel into a holy people; the enterprise seems now to be in ruins. And so we hear in these words the wrath of God. It is holy wrath, for its indignation is morally justified. The intention forms in God's heart to undo the history between God and his beloved Israel. He vows to return them to Egypt. Since they were nothing as slaves in Egypt he intends to make them nothing once again. If they have made themselves dead to him he will let them become dead to themselves as Egyptian armies carry them back into slavery.

But how can God let that happen? How can God let them go? To do so would be like a parent standing still while his or her child wandered onto traffic
- ⁸How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? ...My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender
The anguish in God's words is born of the absolute contradiction between the impulses that here vie for control of the divine heart.

Listen for God. It will not do to imagine here two kinds of God, a vengeful God versus a caring God. No, both impulses are part of God's love. On the one hand, the holy wrath comes from God's perception of what these Israelites could still become, glorious possibilities from which they are turning away. On the other hand, God's compassion comes from his elemental relationship to them as Creator. The whole point of the human project was to create beings with whom God could be in relationship. For him to let them go, to abandon them to death, would be to undo his own self.

So God remembers her own self. She remembers who she is. She remembers that she is God, not a mortal creature. Which is to say: she and she alone can hold together both wrath and compassion within the same heart. She decides: she will act from compassion:
- ⁹I will not execute my fierce anger... for I am God and no mortal. God feels anger but does not act on it.
Listen for God, as Hosea adds a brilliant touch. God does not wrestle silently with the contradiction between wrath and compassion. The deliberation within the soul of God does not result in a cool, reasoned decision to hold on to dangling Israel's hand, a decision passed down to the angels like a corporate memo about a policy change. God roars. God roars like a distant lion, shaking the world with an expression of the divine struggle. God trumpets a new calling to the people of God. It shouts: here I am. Here is love. Come back to it.

Listen for God. Hosea concludes his vision with an image of the people of God indeed listening, listening and returning:
- ¹¹They shall come trembling like birds from Egypt, and like doves from the land of Assyria; and I will return them to their homes, says the Lord.
Listen for God. Beyond the horizon of Hosea's vision, God's leonine roar echoes forever. We hear it in the words of a man from Nazareth pinned to a cross, who cries out, "Father, forgive..." In those words we hear once again the fearsome contest that goes on within God's love, the struggle of destruction versus creation, vengeance versus forgiveness.

And in the rising of that man from Nazareth, in the words of the witnesses who exclaimed to the world, "He has risen", we hear God's decision of forgiveness being pronounced. "He has risen"—the words are a shout of triumph. And they are an invitation to us all to return home, trembling as birds perhaps, in answer to the roaring love of God.

As you approach this communion table this morning, think of it as our returning home. Listen in the words and the music and the silence that surrounds this holy meal for the inviting cry of the Holy One who calls your heart home. Listen for God.

July 2010
July 25, 2010 | July 18, 2010 | July 11, 2010 | July 4, 2010
Sermon for July 25, 2010

Someone's prayin'
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: Luke 11:1-13

At countless campfire gatherings the evening ends with someone suggesting the singing of Kum Ba Yah. Everyone seems to know it: Its third verse is:
- Someone's prayin', Lord, Kum ba yah!
- Someone's prayin', Lord, Kum ba yah!
- Someone's prayin', Lord, Kum ba yah!
- O Lord, Kum ba yah.
80 or 90 years ago this spiritual was discovered being sung by African-Americans along the coast of South Carolina and Georgia . It was sung in Gullah, the creole pidgin dialect spoken by the former slaves living on the Sea Islands. The Gullah phrase "Kum ba yah" means "Come by here". So this campfire spiritual is a prayer asking God to "Come by here".

In the song's four verses it names four acts of speech that are essential to being human: laughing, crying, singing – and praying. "Someone's prayin', Lord, Lord, Kum ba yah!". At all times someone, somewhere, is praying.

So it was entirely appropriate for Jesus' followers to ask him to teach them how to pray. Presumably they meant pray better than they already knew how to do. There was a lot of praying going on in their world. There were any number of gods on offer in the ancient Mediterranean world, any number of religious traditions. There was Ahura-Mazda (the Persian high God), Baal and his sister/consort Astarte (the old Canaanite deities), Chemosh (god of the Moabites), Dagan (the Philistine sea deity) – and that only gets us through the first four letters of the alphabet. There were 69 further gods and goddesses just in the Middle East, to say nothing of the pantheon of Roman deities and the mystery cults like that of Mithras whom many of the Roman legionnaires worshiped. And in our Bible text the disciples mention that John the Baptist had instructed his followers in some specific prayer practices. Consequently there were any number of religious practices available to Jesus' contemporaries, any number of rituals that could be learned and liturgies that could be memorized. The ancient near East was saturated with religiosity. So his disciples needed to know: what, Jesus, do you have to add to all that? Or rather, with what do you say we should replace all that?

Jesus' response? Approach God with three succinct requests.
- Give - give us enough bread for the day.
- Forgive - forgive us the debts we ow you, God (and we know this means that we have to forgive the literal, tangible debts others owe to us).
- Deliver - deliver us from evil; do not bring us to a time of testing of our faith.
The Canadian (indeed, United Church) theologian Douglas John Hall writes:
- The prayer Jesus taught his disciples is so wonderfully refreshing... It has remained one prayer that even lapsed Christians remember. It does not require of us that we become anything we are not already. It is a deeply human kind of prayer. It is a prayer for human beings, that is, for creatures in need. _{[Bartlett & Taylor, eds, Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol 3, 288]}
Hall points out how radically simple and how pragmatically tangible is this prayer of Jesus. It is the cry of a creature of God who asks God to give the essentials of what the creature needs.

As Hall also points out, the asking or requesting is so straightforward and blunt that it is almost rude. It is almost a command issued to God. "Give us our bread!" No "please and thank you". No wheedling, sycophantic, unctuous attempts to butter God up with words of praise. The first verses of the prayer might seem that way but they are not. They are not ascriptions of praise. They aren't saying, "Oh, Lord, you're so wonderful!" No. The prayer is not an act in which we hallow God's name. Instead, it is another request. It is asking God to hallow his own name – to make his name holy, to demonstrate who he is, to reveal himself for what he is, and to do this in the most obvious way – by bringing his kingdom fully into view, that the Reign of God might be seen in its fullness "on earth as in heaven". That is why Eugene Peterson's translation of the first part of the prayer is correct: "Reveal who you are."

So the prayer of Jesus is simple and direct, to the point of being demanding. That takes a lot of chutzpah! How can anyone have the temerity to make such bold requests of God? Only those who understand that they are creatures of a loving God. Only those who trust completely in the benevolence and power of God. Only those who turn to God as a loving parent. This not a prayer through which people are brought to God; it is a prayer for those who are already embedded in God, or who are trying to be.

And so it is understandable that it has become the prayer of the church through the ages. We use it as the common prayer of the worldwide people of the Way of Jesus. That has brought a risk, the risk that it can become a ritual, a set form of words to say to God. Jesus never intended it to become a routine, almost like a magical formula. Rather, he gave it as a model, a pattern to guide our particular hearts' cry to God for our particular needs.

How shall we pray, they asked Jesus. His reply was this: as trusting children of God, tell God your needs.

But not just any needs, let alone any wants that we happen to have. The focus of our prayer with God needs to be on the essentials. That's what the three requests in this prayer of Jesus were: three essential needs of the peasants in the communities from which Jesus came.
- Daily bread: food security was the number one pressing problem that a Mediterranean Jewish peasant faced everyday.
- Debt forgiveness: most peasant families at the time of Jesus were going deeper and deeper into debt to large-scale and absentee landlords. They needed literal and material forgiveness, the canceling of these debts, which was something that God in the Torah had commanded should happen every seven years. To pray the prayer of Jesus was to ask God to make that Torah ideal a reality.
- And deliverance: they needed protection from persecution and arbitrary arrest and torture by the occupying troops. They needed God to prevent them from having to go through such a time of testing.
Here then is Jesus' model for prayer: with trust in God, name your essential needs. How shall embrace this model of prayer for ourselves? We do not want to let it remain as merely a memorized ritualistic formula. See it instead as a template. Use it as a guide for, let's say, a daily time of reflection and connection with God. Think of prayer time as a discipline and practice for the reforming of our desires.

The reforming of our desires. There are so many claims upon our time. So many allegiances pulling at our heartstrings. So many products and services, good in themselves, held up to us as objects to pursue, as blessings to desire. So many potential paths to follow in family and work. So many things to desire. But then prayer on the model of Jesus' prayer invites us to sort through our priorities, to refocus our desire:
- through self-examination and thoughtful reflection;
- and by naming to ourselves what we're really doing;
- and by holding up our behaviour to the light of God's bright pattern for good living;
- and by discerning what we really need from God.
That last point is perhaps most essential of all. Our prayer is our acknowledgment of what we really need from God. It is more than just deciding what we really should do with our gifts and abilities and resources. It is our recognition that we can do nothing without God. It is our confession that everything we might do with our gifts and abilities and resources rests upon God's grace and God's loving power. In the words of the spiritual, prayer is to say to God: Kum ba yah.

Come by here.

So may we pray. Amen.

Sermon for July 18, 2010

Hot and bothered
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: Luke 10:38-42

For several years now our sermons here at St. Andrew's have been focusing upon the Way of Jesus. We have been exploring the attitudes we should have and the actions we should do if we are to be followers of Way of Jesus. The goal is to be shaped more and more as disciples of Jesus and to move more and more into the kingdom of God. It is a spiritual journey.

In the central chapters of his Gospel (starting at 9:51) from which we are reading these recent weeks, Luke explores that motif of a journey. He portrays Jesus as being literally on the way to Jerusalem with his followers. But each stop on the way becomes a moment for Jesus to teach his followers the norms of faith by which they should live. And so Luke begins the little episode from which we read today with the journey motif once again: "³⁸Now as they [Jesus and his disciples] went on their way, he entered a certain village". A new place, a new issue in our journey of faith.

And what is that issue? Is the story saying that what Martha does in the kitchen is less important than what Mary does as she listens at the feet of Jesus? For centuries that has been the standard interpretation. But that is not the point of the dialogue here between Jesus and Martha. We can see this if we contemplate the social context of this story. Let us shine the spotlight on two details in this episode, two features of the social life of a Mediterranean peasant village.

"³⁸... A woman named Martha welcomed [Jesus] into her home." Presumably Jesus does not know them already, or not very well. And so Martha's welcome would be a formal performance, the fulfillment of a social duty, and a very strong obligation at that. The social code of Jesus' day required that you offer hospitality to any guest who requested food and shelter in your home. And the expectations would have been even greater in the case of an especially-honoured guest like Jesus, whose reputation as a great spirit-person preceded him. For such an important personage, Martha would be expected to pull out all the stops. Her busy scurrying about would have seemed to everybody to be normal and proper. In fact she would have brought shame on her family if she had not tried to provide the most elaborate feast she could afford.

Now Luke elsewhere in his gospel applauds people who provide service to Jesus. [4:39; 8:3; 10:40.] It would be inconsistent for Luke to portray Jesus as scolding Martha simply for offering hospitality. That should make us wonder what Jesus meant when he said, ⁴¹..."Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; ⁴² there is need of only one thing." What could the "many things" be?

One way to read it is this. Martha was rushing about trying to provide an elaborate meal with many courses and many dishes. Jesus reminded her that his needs were very simple. One dish would do. Something like: "Martha, just make up a pot of spaghetti." It was a teaching moment: followers of the Way need to develop a lifestyle of simplicity.

The second little detail to highlight is the intimacy of Mary's sitting at Jesus feet. Norms of behaviour between men and women in Jesus' day forbade as shameful any close physical proximity such as Mary and Jesus established. It was quite respectable that his male followers sat at Jesus' feet, for that was the stereotypical posture of the disciple who comes close to the master to be taught. But that a woman invaded that circle would have brought great shame upon the household. The neighbours must have been scandalized.

What then do these little details in the story tell us about being a follower of the Way? A number of things:
1. Jesus is crucial. What he has to tell us is worth risking any shame or public embarrassment. Mary is honoured in this story not because she listened rather than worked, but because she was willing to risk public humiliation in order to take this wonderful chance to be taught and shaped by the great Spirit-person from Nazareth.
2. The Way of Jesus is a path of counter-cultural simplicity. It is counter-cultural because it ignores social expectations. Mary violated the social norms that sideline women. Jesus invited Martha likewise to free herself from social expectations of "the good host", and embrace the simple life.
3. Gender is irrelevant to discipleship. Luke includes Mary within the circle of disciples at Jesus' feet. This suggests that in the churches for which Luke was writing, women may well have been leaders. They played a much larger role among the followers of the Way during the early decades than they were subsequently allowed to do as the Church became established and socially powerful. (It is so sad that the full equality of women within the worldwide Church is not yet fully present. This past week the Vatican decreed that it is "one of the greatest crimes under church law" for any Catholic bishop to ordain a woman to the priesthood. The appropriate response to this error is to point to this story of Mary among the disciples.)
4. Beware distractions. This is a point that needs elaboration because it is a particular challenge in today's culture for anyone who commits to follow the Way of Jesus.
Martha allowed the prevailing social norms to make her "worried and distracted". "Distracted" is a word that should ring loud for us. We live in an age of distraction. To underline this aspect of contemporary life, consider these two TV commercials. They are from the same car company but more than 50 years apart. I invite you to compare the speed of sensory inputs between the two ads. Count with me the number of times the visual image changes, that is, the number of edits...

Now by my count, the Ford commercial from the mid-1950s had about 10 cuts over the course of one minute and 40 seconds. The Ford commercial from this year was significantly different in two respects. It was much shorter – 30 seconds long. And in that short time, we were bombarded with 20 different images.

This acceleration of sensory inputs is happening everywhere in the ocean of information in which we daily swim. It may seem to be exhilarating. But in fact it also reduces our capacity to reflect, to make judgments, to ask critical questions, and to see the big picture. Technology author and consultant Linda Stone has written that the disease of the Internet age is "continuous partial attention". [ http://lindastone.net/qa/continuous-partial-attention/] She says:
- Continuous partial attention ...contributes to a stressful lifestyle, to operating in crisis management mode, and to a compromised ability to reflect, to make decisions, and to think creatively.
We see with only one eye, as it were, hear with only one ear, think with only half our brain – or less. This makes it increasingly difficult to give the good news of Jesus the attention it deserves. Consequently, if we are going to be faithful followers of the Way we will need to be counter-cultural. We must resist the blandishments of a hyped up cyberspace that purports to be the life-space within which emerging generations will inevitably live. We need to discover and develop ways – in this "wired world" – to give our spirits space in which to breathe. Our children and grandchildren sense this intuitively. As Linda Stone points out, on a hopeful note, most young people find phone calls intrusive and distracting. They prefer to use text messaging, which makes them better able to manage their time, or rather, to manage their attention.

There is much wisdom in our Christian heritage upon which we can draw in order to resist distraction. The ancient traditions of the monasteries have something to teach today's emerging generations about how to develop and maintain a spiritually focused life. As the world-wide Church goes through the re-formation that seems to be happening, and as followers of Jesus have to re-think the discipline of their lives, this will be one of the challenges: how do we welcome the Spirit of Jesus into our "household", into the hurly-burly of our daily lives, and give him the attention he deserves? How do we stay open to the one thing that is needful – Jesus' word of grace and love in God?

Sermon for July 11, 2010

God-wannabees
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: Psalm 82

On its surface this Bible passage presents a puzzle, a challenge even, to people of faith. As Psalm 82 begins it envisions God standing up in the midst of "the divine council". But who are these council-members? Translators of the Bible with a conservative bent interpret them to be "judges", men within the people of Israel to whom God has given authority. But the New Revised Standard Version translators are more daring. They give a literal reading here. "¹In the midst of the gods he [Yahweh] holds judgment." This is a frank acknowledgement of what mainline Bible scholars have long recognized. There are elements of polytheism – belief in many gods -- throughout the Hebrew scriptures. The image found in this Psalm of a Council of heavenly beings who accompany God is also found in the book of Job: "^1:6 One day the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the LORD". People of faith usually resolve this embarrassment by adopting a theory of progressive revelation. AS the Hebrew people progressed through the centuries their religious reflection became more and more clearly monotheist.

And so today we might tend to dismiss this Psalm as primitive and irrelevant. That would be unfortunate. Psalm 82 lays upon us a claim: that we must pursue divine justice. We should attend to and reflect upon the command of Yahweh God to these gods – however we understand them. They have a responsibility to promote justice, and are failing in it:
- ²"How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? ³Give justice to the weak and the orphan; maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute."
That is the blunt message. God chastises the gods. They have the power to affect the lives of the weak, the parentless, the lowly, and the destitute; then God expects them to care for such marginalized people, protecting the vulnerable members of the people of the Covenant from exploitation "at the hand of the wicked". They have failed to do so. Not only have they failed to secure justice for the oppressed but indeed they have favoured the exploiters.

My simple message this morning is that we in the Western world in the 21st Century need to understand ourselves to be those small-g "gods". We have the power – the technological, organizational, social power – to affect the lives of the weak, the parentless, the lowly, and the destitute. We have such extensive power that to the ancients we would seem to have godlike status. If time travel were possible and we could bring the writer of this Psalm forward to our day he or she would undoubtedly describe us that way. The Psalmist would look at our skyscrapers, taller than any mountain he or she had ever seen, and be drop-jawed in awe. He or she would track the passage overhead of a passenger jet taking off from the airport, bigger than any bird he or she had ever seen, and would likely exclaim: "You are as gods!!"

With false modesty we might "tut-tut" such accolades. But in truth we take a lot of pride in the technical accomplishments of our civilization. Over the last 400 years North Atlantic society has girdled the globe with the machinery of the industrial economy. The emerging postindustrial world economy of Microsoft and Nike is now a colossus that stands astride the whole planet. We have come to expect our understanding and control of nature to be deepened and expanded. In effect we are seeking to achieve the status that once was attributed to the gods. As a society, we are god-wannabees.

But then the writer of the Psalm might begin to notice the destitute people digging for scraps of food in the dumpsters in the alleys between the skyscrapers. He or she might learn that air travel is a privilege affordable for only a very small proportion of the planet's population. In that case the writer could justifiably ask us, "Where in the midst of your astonishing affluence and power is the justice of God to be seen?" The Psalm writer could appropriately repeat his or her poem to us, particularly verse 3, which expresses a central expectation that God has of us: "³ Give justice to the weak and the orphan..."

What is this justice God requires? Notice the verbs that express it: "maintain the right of the lowly", "rescue the weak", and "deliver them". If our lives were to reflect the justice of God we would be devoted to the liberation of people in bondage, the rescue of those in chronic peril, the promotion of basic rights for all human beings. God's justice happens when human beings who live together follow the divine game plan. God's justice happens when we treat each other with fairness, generosity, compassion – that is, love. Divine justice is, in other words, right relationship – right relationship between us and each other and between us and God.

If the justice which God desires is the ideal of right relationship, then we can identify very quickly three areas of life that are always in need of reform: three expressions of divine justice.

First, we can speak about emotional and spiritual justice. That is to say, a right relationship should exist between us and God, where our deepest attachment is to what God wants for the world. Secondly there is economic justice. That is to say, a right relationship should exist between neighbours, between classes of people, and between nations, with regard to the provision of the basic material things of life for all of God's beloved children. And thirdly there is what we might call ecological justice, a right relationship between human society and the ecosystem of this planet. The details of what constitutes rightness in the relationship in each of these three types will vary, but the core idea remains in all of them: justice is achieved when our human reality comes back into line with what God understands to be the good life for us.

[Philosophical aside: this understanding of justice is substantive, not merely formal. That is to say, divine justice is more than fairness, more than simply an equal offer of the good life to all human beings; it is a substantive picture of what this good life is to which all human beings should aspire, and to which all human beings deserve access simply by virtue of being beloved creatures of God.]

The first two expressions of divine justice should be familiar to you. Right relationship with God in the first sense of emotional and spiritual justice is well represented in our 2000 years of Christian tradition. The second form, economic justice, has been raised up as a divine imperative across the global church in the last number of decades. But now the third form of God's justice, ecological justice, is coming more and more into view as an requirement for us as people of faith.

For a local and pertinent example during this Calgary Stampede week, take note of the commitment to conservation that is part of the tradition of ranchers in southern Alberta. Googling the relevant terms led me to a website of the OH Ranches in Longview and other southern districts. [ http://www.ohranch.com/ranchbackgrounder.html ] The OH Ranches have obtained a provincial "heritage rangeland" designation. This program aims to develop an economically viable ranching operation that also preserves environmental sustainability. So as we celebrate the pioneer spirit during Stampede week let us celebrate the farsightedness of efforts, like the heritage rangeland program, to live responsibly and in right relationship with God's good earth.

Indeed let us celebrate the efforts within our own congregation to do so. Let us give thanks for the work of the group that has formed under the name of "the Gleaners". For several years now the Gleaners have looked for ways for us to re-use, recycle, and repair. They have promoted our use of washable dishes instead of disposable cups, for instance. That is a small change, to be sure, but one which expresses growing awareness of our responsibility as stewards of God's creation. Each project however little points towards greater concern for ecological justice. Let us then encourage the Gleaners, and work eagerly with them, and take home the lessons they can teach us.

May it be so.

Sermon for July 4, 2010

Outriders
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

Peel back the layers of 2000 years of church history. Work down through the immense conceptual framework of Christian theology that has tried to understand Jesus' relationship to God and with humankind. Strip away all the social norms that have accumulated around church congregations and their relationship to the larger society. Clear all that away and we are left with the shining vision at the heart of Jesus' life and work. This is Jesus' vision of the Reign of God. This is what he lived for and died for -- the kingdom of God, or Dominion or Sovereignty or world-embracing authority. However you want to translate it, it was Jesus' core teaching about what the world is like when God is in charge and the Caesars and Kings and Presidents are not. It was the core teaching of Jesus. It was also the pivot point around which revolved his prayer and his healing. It was in pursuit of the Sovereignty of God that he developed the spiritual practices of the community which he created. This core teaching and lifestyle is summed up in a single phrase which occurs in today's reading from Luke's Gospel. When you get close to Jesus then "the kingdom of God has come near".

You and I are invited to enter the kingdom. When we come to the table of Jesus today we are invited once again to live within that Reign of God. But that is not our only spiritual work. The reign of God is so powerful, so necessary for human flourishing, that we need to share it. We must offer it in turn, as it has been offered to us, to anyone who needs it.

We are a little hesitant to do that. It would seem to be hard enough to work out what it means to live within God's sovereignty. It is a whole further task and quite daunting to go forth as witnesses to God's Reign to a needy and hungry world. But that's part of what it means for us to be communities of the Way of Jesus. Jesus never kept his joy to himself. He never constrained his love for the spirit within a closed circle. He shared these at every opportunity. So likewise must we.

And so Luke's gospel presents us this story in which Jesus commissions his followers to share the grand adventure.

We are almost at Stampede week here in Calgary. This gives us a useful image that comes from local history. Picture a cattle drive. A cattle drive is a cooperative effort. The trail boss cannot round up all the herd himself but needs the help of outriders. So think of our responsibility to spread the Way of Jesus this way. We are called to function as outriders in the Jesus movement.

Jesus set his face towards Jerusalem. He carried his movement from its start in the Galilean peasantry into the very heart of the Roman Imperial system and the power structure of the collaborators in the Jerusalem Temple. As he moved towards this goal, he sent his disciples out as, as it were, "outriders" to draw in those he couldn't personally touch. That's still part of our role as followers of his Way.

We're not used to thinking of ourselves this way. Most of us have grown up within the church as an established institution. Christianity as we have experienced it did not really have to go out of itself very much. But the new realities around us require us now to find ways to take our good news about God's love as shown in the Way of Jesus to those would respond to this blessing. That requires from us new skills. After all, if a group of friends from the city go to a dude ranch and sign-up to become outriders for a cattle drive, they too would need to learn new skills. That's exactly the setup in these scenes from the 1991 movie, City Slickers.
- Lesson 1: Mounting up
- Lesson 2: Lasso practice
- Lesson 3: Rounding up a stray
Just as Mitch and Phil and Ed have to learn new skills in riding and roping so also must we learn some new techniques and new attitudes. The instructions that Luke's Jesus gives the ones he sends out point towards these new attitudes and skills. I will mention three that remain pertinent to us.

"⁴ Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals". This is a requirement that we should travel light. It's good to have physical structures and political processes and organizations that can support ministries. But how much do we really need? We can bring the joy of the Way of Jesus to people without much by way of buildings or technologies, as long as we bring them our one true gift -- which is the joy in our own hearts that comes from living with God.

"¹⁰ But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ¹¹ 'Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you.'" This may sound like a something of a hard saying. But it is in context a mature way of handling rejection. The disciple is not to get angry at those who do not welcome the good news. Instead, he or she should symbolically distance themselves. Shaking the dust of that place from off their feet was a way metaphorically to declare that the rejection of Jesus' message would not stick to them, would not linger with them or make them resentful. In this way Jesus reminds them not to take rejection personally. There is wisdom in that for us, when we want to tell others about the Way of Jesus. If our delight in it runs into a stone wall, that's not our problem. We have to remember our boundaries. We are only vehicles of God's Spirit.

On the other hand, we need to remember to be utterly sensitive to the needs of others, to their receptivity, to the ways in which they may be different from us and therefore will require us to be very careful about how we communicate. Jesus said to those sent out, "⁸ Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is before you." Table fellowship was utterly central to Jesus ministry. And to be willing to share in the diet of those who offer hospitality, however strange or different it might be, is symbolic of your readiness to approach them within their own cultural framework.

There is a thread that runs through all these pieces of advice. A follower of the Way of Jesus who sets forth as an outrider of the kingdom must remain humble. Here she must always remember: "It's not about me; it's about God, and about God and this person to whom I'm witnessing." We are not centers of spiritual power. We are merely conduits for the Spirit.

It can help us to maintain that humility if we regularly come to this table. For what happens here is not that we feed ourselves, but we are fed. In this simple bread we remember that we need no feast to sustain us for our work. In this cup of thanksgiving and blessing, we remember that it's not really about us, about our ability to "win souls for Christ". It is really all about joy, the joy of life with God.

May it be so.

June 2010
June 27, 2010 | June 20, 2010 | June 6, 2010
Sermon for June 27, 2010

Seize the day
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: Luke 9:51-62

Some of us think of ourselves as pragmatists or realists. Others would be quite happy to wear the label of the idealist. We tend to have deeply held convictions about these different ways of standing in the world. Pragmatists will tend to scorn the idealist as a "head in the clouds" daydreamer. Idealists will tend to denigrate the realist as narrow-minded and dull. The fact that this distinction between pragmatism and idealism is pretty crude doesn't seem to stop us from using it.

As the gospel writers portray Jesus to us he embraces both orientations. He was an idealist; while that would be an understatement. He was utterly absorbed by God's calling upon him. He was entirely focused on the Reign of God. He advocated and acted out the discipline and the beauty which human life can display when it flows in the direction that God intended in our creation. He was, in a phrase, God-intoxicated. [That phrase comes from the Sufi mystics within Islam. They cherished people who pursued such a vision . The Sufis spoke of them as being "Mast-Allah" (pronounced ‘must Allah') – "intoxicated with God". As John Dominic Crossan is fond of saying, Jesus was a perfect exemplar of a God-intoxicated person.]

And yet he could be utterly pragmatic in pursuit of the ideal of the kingdom of God. Jesus knew our human nature to its core. He understood the dynamics of relationships in family and village and among nations. So he was more than a "visionary". He could be very "hands-on". In a number of the sayings attributed to him in the Gospels he gives quite practical advice about what the Reign of God looks like and how to pursue it. That is what we have in our text today from the gospel of Luke. We see Jesus as the pragmatic idealist in three ways.

First, Jesus could see the right moment to act. In the first verse of our text Luke writes, "51 When the days drew near for him to be taken up". "Taken up" here alludes to Jesus' being taken up on his cross – and ultimately taken up in his ascension into God. Jesus could see that he was at a turning point. As Luke's Gospel lays out the chronology, Jesus has just been acknowledged by his disciples as the Messiah, the Anointed One of God. And they have had experience of him on a mountaintop in which he seemed to be to then transfigured by the glory of God. Those peak experiences imply that the ministry of Jesus in Galilee had now come to its climax. Now it was time for Jesus to take his campaign for the kingdom of God up against the powers of the age centered in Jerusalem. The time was ripe. The moment was now. ⁵¹ "The days drew near" and so Jesus "set his face to go to Jerusalem." Thus he was no daydreamer. He kept his ear to the wind, read the signs, saw the tide rising. Then he made his move.

Secondly, he was under no illusion that his message would be immediately and widely accepted. ⁵⁷ "Someone said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go. But Jesus responded that ⁵⁸ "the Son of Man" – in Luke's Gospel a phrase Jesus applies to himself – "has nowhere to lay his head." That implies pretty clearly that he knew he would be rejected in many places, as indeed the Samaritans in today's passage reject it him. Still he kept at it for the sake of those places that would accept him. He was not aiming for popularity. He was aiming for transformation, transformation of individuals and of society. In this way he showed the wisdom of understanding what his goal was and what it was not.

Thirdly, he kept his followers focused on the right priorities. One of his potential followers responded to Jesus' invitation to follow him by saying, ⁵⁹ "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." That was the call of duty, the requirement of familial obligation under the Torah. But Jesus advised him to let someone else fulfill that duty, because he had a more important and more pressing duty – the duty to the kingdom of God. Jesus could see in that person the capacity to be a witness to the kingdom. He must be true to that gift, and pursue that calling as a higher priority.

Another potential follower wanted to delay responding to Jesus' call in order to say farewell to his family. Now this was the call of something stronger than duty. It was the requirement of love, arising out of the bond of affection and respect among brothers and sisters or parents and children. But even that, important as it is, should not deflect any follower of Jesus from responding with urgency to the need of the wider world to encounter God's Reign. And Jesus expressed that importance in a very pragmatic agricultural metaphor: if you turn your head around while plowing, your furrow goes out of line.

In sum: Jesus the pragmatic idealist recognized the moment. He kept a clear focus that his task was transformation and not popularity. He worked through his priorities and helped others stay focused on what really counted. In all these ways he acted pragmatically to advance God's Kingdom.

He challenges us to practical action in the same way. I like how Eugene Peterson paraphrases the last verse of our reading.
- ⁶² Jesus said, "No procrastination. No backward looks. You can't put God's kingdom off to tomorrow. Seize the day."
Seize the day. Seize the moment to act for God's Reign.

Such moments come every day. They come quickly and disappear. They come in the midst of all our allegiances and duties. They arrive in the midst of the welter of our priorities. Be pragmatic enough to grab them before the moment passes.

Here's a simple example. In an encounter with one of your friends something has gone wrong and you have ended up with hurt on both sides. You may not even know really why it happened. Then you find yourself at a dinner together standing next to each other in line at the buffet. The moment presents itself. Will you speak pleasantly and politely, even in a friendly manner to suggest that there's no issue, even though you know there is. In other words will you let the moment lapse? Or will you say something that opens up your conversation with your friend to a deeper level, taking the risk of rejection and further anger, taking that risk because you are seeking honesty and forgiveness?

That is a Reign-of-God moment. It is a kingdom moment, because God's kingdom is a place of forgiveness, honesty and forgiveness, open communication and forgiveness. And at that moment you can act for the kingdom – or fail to do so. Seize the moment. Seize the day. Seize the chance to say yes to what Jesus is calling your heart to do. For God's kingdom arrives on Earth through a million small, practical actions just like that.

Sermon for June 20, 2010

Mad Pig Disease
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: Luke 8:26-39

The one essential thing which the first followers of the Way of Jesus insisted on saying to their neighbours was this: "Jesus is Lord". This did not make them popular. Proclaiming that "Jesus is Lord" would bring disbelief, or derision, or angry rejection, or (at certain periods during the first two centuries CE) arrest and execution. Such reactions are unlikely today. If we were to say, "Jesus is Lord" with anything like the conviction and urgency of the first Christians we would probably be met with a patronizing smirk or a rolling of the eyes. But it still is a core conviction of our faith tradition. When I say that we are called to follow the Way of Jesus the implication is that he is "Lord" for us. If we are sincere in our desire to follow his Way then we must seek more and more to understand and embrace what his Lordship means for us.

The passage from Luke's Gospel which the Lectionary sets for us this week takes us into the meaning of the Lordship of Jesus in a number of ways. Luke never here writes the actual phrase, "Jesus is Lord" – because it was dangerous to do so. Nonetheless that is the central affirmation of the story at several levels.

We have here a story of an exorcism. Set aside any qualms you may have about whether it happened just in the way reported here, or any doubts about whether such mysterious healings ever actually happen. Marcus Borg, our favourite New Testament scholar, believes there is enough evidence to affirm that Jesus indeed had a gift for liberating people from their illnesses, especially since Jesus and his contemporaries regarded every illness as a spiritual crisis. You were ill because you were suffering from an evil spirit. But, as Borg always points out, to wonder whether the stories of Jesus' healings are fictional rather than historically true is to miss their point. Their truth is metaphorical, not factual. The point of this story of the Gerasene demoniac, its metaphorical impact, is that when Jesus is present among the people they are liberated from every bondage and every wound.

The specific bondage in which the man among the tombs was enmeshed was some form of what we would call emotional illness or a brain-chemistry disorder. Such illness is as common among us now as it ever was and remains a form of illness that so often is still intractable to the arts of medicine. Furthermore, just as in Jesus' time, this brain-chemistry disease carries a multitude of negative meanings, social stigmata, and ruptures in relationships. Elaine Heath writes that the Gerasene man
- is not unlike homeless people today, who wander the urban wastelands of bridge abutments and alleys. Many of them are mentally ill, unable to live a normal life with a job, family, home, or basic necessities. Homeless people are at much greater risk of being victimized by assault, rape, and murder, the demonic legions that plague our streets. The homeless are "unclean" and unwelcome in most communities.
From all this horror, the story says, Jesus delivered the Gerasene man. The man's neighbours "¹⁵ came to Jesus, and saw the demoniac sitting there, clothed and in his right mind... and they were afraid." [NRSV]

Afraid indeed. They felt suddenly confronted with a blunt enactment of divine power. Within their world-view it could only be God who has the power to do such a healing. Only God has command over the spirits. The story implies, then, that "Jesus is Lord" in the sense that in some way Jesus is God.

Here is a second level of meaning through which the story affirms the Lordship of Jesus. Consider the ways in which the Gerasene man is a complete outcast. The internal disintegration of his personality drives him out of the community; who could long abide daily life with a person with such symptoms? He tears off his clothes; no one can look upon him without shaming themselves. He is violent; no community can tolerate that kind of unpredictable physical threat. But he is most vividly an outsider to Jesus' hearers because he is a Gerasene. Luke is very careful to locate this story "in the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee". The first readers of this story would have implicitly understood that Jesus has gone across alien territory. He has moved beyond the limits of the Jewish homeland and out beyond the limits of Jewish community and faith which they assume are the limits of God's providence and care. Because he thus brings God's grace and power to those "beyond the pale", Jesus is the movement of God into the lives of everyone who has need regardless of the barriers and boundaries and lines of demarcation through which we order the world. The story implies, then, that "Jesus is Lord", in the sense that he is a source of spiritual authority potentially for every human being.

Thirdly, the story has an unspoken but very clear political implication. Upon encountering the Gerasene man,
- ^30-31 Jesus asked him, "What is your name?" "Mob. My name is Mob," he said, because many demons afflicted him.
That is Eugene Peterson's paraphrase. "Mob" conveys well the sense of the unruly inner impulses and contradictory voices that haunted the man. But unfortunately it loses sight of the impact of the name the man gives himself in the original Greek of this story:
- ³⁰ Jesus then asked him, ‘What is your name?' He said, ‘Legion'; for many demons had entered him. [NRSV]
The basic organizational structure in the Roman army, which was occupying Judea and Galilee and fighting the insurrection of Jewish zealots throughout the first century, was the Legion. From the Jewish perspective, that foreign Gentile invading military force was indeed "demonic".

Furthermore, the story imposes on that Legion of demons a fate that would have warmed Jewish hearts. Cast out of the man and into a herd of pigs – ritually unclean animals, remember – the demons are carried down to drown in the sea. Ancient peoples believed that demons could not survive in water. They also believed that pigs could not swim, an erroneous belief as this picture demonstrates, but common enough in Luke's readers that the drowning of possessed pigs in the Sea of Galilee would have been seen as the sure-fire way to be rid of them.

And further again, it may not be too fanciful to suggest that the Gospel writers had their eye on the Roman occupation of the Jewish capital Jerusalem. Luke was writing after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE. As William Harwood writes in Mythology's Last Gods, Jerusalem had been occupied by the Roman Tenth Legion [X Fretensis], whose emblem was a wild boar or pig. [Notice also that in the NRSV translation the herd is enumerated -- two thousand pigs, which would have been the size of that occupying Legion.]

Taken altogether these elements in Luke's telling of the story represent a near-treasonous critique of the Roman imperial power. When the Reign of God that Jesus initiated comes to fullness the ungodly forces of empire, represented by the Roman Tenth Legion , will be driven back into the sea. In this subtle but deliberate political sense, then, Luke implies that Jesus is Lord – meaning that the Roman Caesar is not.

We have now immersed ourselves in the thought-world of the story from Luke's Gospel. We have seen three ways in which the story holds up for us the Lordship of Jesus. Our task – and it is one which I leave to you to do for yourself – is to ponder the continuing relevance for you and me of that claim that Jesus is Lord.

Because Jesus is Lord the Caesars of our age are not. Can we discern how following the Way of Jesus sets us on a different path from the destiny that the powers of our age would impose? Can we see how we are called in our private and public life not to follow the herd?

Because Jesus is Lord he has spiritual authority for any human being, not just those who are the insiders. Luke was saying, metaphorically, that you don't have to be Jewish to be Christian. Can we understand in similar terms that a person doesn't have to be "churchy" to be a follower of the Way.

Because Jesus is Lord for us he is "God" for us. As we follow his Way we must spend our life trying to understand fully what that means. Let us say this much: Jesus is for us the window into the shining reality which is God. Jesus is for us the door through which God illuminates our life. Jesus is Lord.

Sermon for June 6, 2010

"No purse, no bag, no sandals"
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes' meditation for
the 85th Anniversary of the
United Church of Canada
Read: John 17:6, 17-23, Luke 10:1-12

One of the impulses that led to the creation of the United Church of Canada in 1925 was entirely pragmatic. Across Canada, but particularly across the prairie provinces, Union churches were springing up. The settlement of the Canadian west was in full swing. But it made no sense to duplicate in those new communities the denominational divisions familiar from the European Protestant world. The divisions between Lutherans and Mennonites and Methodists and Presbyterians – the list goes on and on – weakened the spiritual life of those who were struggling to build a new society in the west. The pragmatic and creative solution was to create Union churches. The model they demonstrated of unity despite diversity spurred efforts to create a nationwide united church for Canada.

For many decades after its formation the United Church of Canada thought of itself as a movement more than just another denomination – "a united and uniting church". This self-perception lies behind the motto we chose for ourselves, a scripture text that was obviously relevant, the verses in John's Gospel which portray Jesus praying for his followers that "they may all be one". That text was the centrepiece of the inaugural worship service of our Church, which is why we read it again on this Anniversary of that service, 85 years later– to the day.

To gather the scattered many into a unifying "one". That was the task back then. It presented not just pragmatic but profoundly spiritual challenges. Cradle Methodist and born Presbyterians and families of Congregationalists had to let go of some of their idiosyncrasies. They had to let go of traditions of both church life and theological conviction they were used to thinking of as essential. They had to discern instead an essential agreement and a common identity beneath the differences that had theretofore been part of their distinct identities.

There was a paradox at work. The most urgent projects which had animated the partnering denominations could not be pursued unless they surrendered their denominational differences. The paradox was that they had to let go of what had been life-giving and sustaining in order to receive the new form in which God's Spirit was seeking to bless them. Gradually, they did so. Slowly, a new ethos emerged in the new "united and uniting church". Over time, the most faithful way of preserving their separate heritages turned out to be transformation into a new tradition.

This so often has happened in the Jesus movement. In order to carry forward the best of what they have been, followers of the Way of Jesus have to let go of what they have been. That same paradox stands before us now. As we are propelled into the 21st Century – how quickly it overtakes us – the agenda for the United Church of Canada may be different than in 1925 but the paradox is the same. We need to let go of what gives life in order to receive new and greater life.

In 1925 the agenda was focused on the prospect of growth, of an expansion through which we hoped to accompany – and shape – our young nation's emergence as a great power in what was then called "Canada's century". When you think about it, though, to grow in social power and influence should not really be the goal of Christians. At best numerical growth is but a by-product of other goals closer to the Gospel, such as helping people become God-intoxicated as Jesus was. Jesus was not into "church growth"; he was into Spirit-connection.

In 2010 our denomination's agenda focuses on survival. Like all the other formerly-mainline denominations in Western society, we are shrinking in members and resources. But let us stop fretting about survival. For Western Christianity is not dying. The Jesus movement is taking a new direction in the culture of the North Atlantic or Euro-American or Western nations. The Spirit is provoking new expressions of "church", new forms in which people together follow the Way of Jesus, transformations and sometimes recoveries of ancient traditions, methods that better fit the cultural capacities of Generations X and Y and the "post-Millennials". The identifying label that has emerged to cover this phenomenon is in fact that very word "emerged". The Emergent Church is a multiplicity of different kinds of community. Some meet online. Some gather in storefronts and empty warehouses. They are incredibly varied. But they all seek to get past the divisions and oppositions that have plagued Christianity's history.

We in the United Church feel the tug of those currents. Five years ago our then-Moderator Peter Short recognized the hope presented by the Emerging Church movement, and convened what was labeled as the Arnprior Assembly of our United Church. The Assembly aimed to re-focus our agenda away from anxieties about survival and onto trust in the Spirit's power to make something hope-filled emerge among us. A Bible passage that guided the Arnprior Assembly is the text we read today from Luke's Gospel. Note particularly the instructions of Jesus as he sends out his followers to spread his good news:
- ³..See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. ⁴Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. ⁵Whatever house you enter, first say, "Peace to this house!" ⁶And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you.... ⁸Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; ⁹cure the sick who are there, and say to them, "The kingdom of God has come near to you."
No purse, no bag, no sandals. That is to say, when you walk the Way of Jesus, travel light. We are still challenged to travel light, and it is a challenge because we accumulate so much stuff, stuff that gets in the way sometimes of keeping our channels open to God.

But it is possible for us. We can travel light because God provides what we really need, no more, no less. We symbolize this in the ritual meal that we celebrate as a way of marking our togetherness in the Spirit of Jesus. It is simple bread that we share. All we really need. That's why bannock, the basic bread of our forebears, the stuff of life for explorers and pioneers across the West, is the loaf we break today. It is all we really need, no more, no less.

So I bid you: come eat of this bread today. Eat of it as a signal that we can let go of what is not essential. Partake of it as a sign that we can live together in the unity of what is essential. Come and be fed by the Spirit of Christ.

May it be so.

May 2010
May 30, 2010 | May 23, 2010 | May 2, 2010
Sermon for May 30, 2010

Hope happens
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: Romans 5:1-5

Jamie's marriage.
Jamie has finally had enough of her husband's outbursts of physical violence towards her. In the three years of their marriage the abuse has been becoming more frequent, the intervals of regret and self-recrimination on his part less convincing. He now refuses to attempt any further marriage counseling. She knows that she continues to love him in the sense of seeking his well-being, but he seems to have moved out of reach. Fortunately they do not have children. Still the decision to end the relationship is wrenching. She doesn't know if she has the emotional stamina to carry through. But she remembers that her parents, particularly her father, has always told that "their door will always be open to her". She understands what this means. They love her intensely and accept her unconditionally. So she approaches them. They help her with the business of breaking up her home and returning to live temporarily with them. They give advice and support that shows care for both her and her estranged husband. They help her deal with the sleepless nights and fear-filled days. They don't turn away from her feelings of shame and failure. Three months later her husband tells her he has entered an anger-management program at a day-treatment psychiatric clinic, and asks if they might, perhaps, sometime down the road be reconciled.

Suffering.
The process Jamie is going through has three phases. I will start with the middle phase, which is the suffering that this marriage crisis visits upon her, and her husband, and her parents. We need to be quite clear-eyed about how painful this process is. If we were Jamie's friend we would need to be careful not to suggest she look for a silver lining. If we were to say, even with the best intentions, "Hey, cheer up; what doesn't kill you makes you stronger", she would be entirely justified in accusing us of being superficial and dismissive of the depth of her suffering.

Hope.
The third phase of what Jamie is going through is the outcome. It is not yet decided, is it? There is a glimmer of hope. Her husband's apparent willingness seriously to reform himself is indeed the first sighting of a new possibility in this situation. Again, we need to be clear-eyed. We must not expect a Pollyanna quick-fix as the assured outcome. But we do know what is at stake here, at the broadest horizon. Jamie, her husband, her parents, her friends, are struggling through the typical quagmire of family relationships. But in the background, beyond their individual needs and dreams, there is a wider issue at stake. Will what they do contribute to or detract from the ideal of loving human community?

Unconditional love.
And the first phase of the process? Well, that started long before this marriage crisis. It started with Jamie's birth and upbringing. Her parents' marriage and the family they nurtured have been part of that same great project of increasing the love in the world. Her parents tried to surround her with unconditional acceptance, with unshakable love. And that unconditional love is what she falls back upon. That unshakable readiness to stand by her and to stand for her well-being is what carries her through the heartbreak. It is perhaps the greatest gift any parent can give any child. It is too rare in our world.

A three-phase process.
So note the pattern. A foundation of unconditional love carries someone through a time of emotional distress, carries them enough that they may hope for the possibility of a broadening love. To repeat: a foundation of unconditional love – the first phase – carries us through testing and difficulty – the second phase – and eventuates in the third phase of the spreading and building of love in the world. I want to call this three-phase process "God's Grace Program".

Paul's experience of God's Grace Program
God's Grace Program was joyfully proclaimed by Paul the Apostle. In our Bible reading today he was writing advice to a community of the followers of the Way of Jesus gathered at Rome. Paul believed with all his heart that God's Grace Program had seen him through all the trials and difficulties of his own ministry. He writes to assure the Roman Christians that they could count on it as well. (I owe this insight to Donna Betts, visiting our staff meeting this week in her role of "repertoire expert" for the Band. She noticed that this passage from the Letter to the Romans expresses the threefold process that we see in Jamie's situation.)

Paul looks back over the middle phase, remembering the sometimes life-and-death struggles he has gone through. In retrospect he sees the hidden blessings that may be present as we struggle against the barriers and difficulties that come when we try to live out the gospel: " ³ We ... have joy with our troubles, because we know that these troubles produce patience. ⁴ And patience produces character."

Living out the victory of love
But he actually understands himself to be living in the third phase of God's Grace Program. He lives each day in the knowledge that he is living out the victory of love. Consequently, those who commit themselves to follow the Way of Jesus can take heart. God's great cause of refurbishing the world with love will succeed. Paul writes: "⁴... Character produces hope. ⁵ And this hope will never disappoint us, because God has poured out his love to fill our hearts."

Why is Paul totally sure that what we ultimately hope for shall be achieved? Why does he believe that God's project of love will bear fruit around us and will "fill our hearts"? Because he has experienced the first phase of the process. Gods Grace Program started before the particular sufferings Paul endured in this ministry. It started prior to any struggles the Roman Christians face. It is what we call "the Christ event". He writes, "1 We have been made right with God by our faith...through our Lord Jesus Christ". What God has done through the living and teaching and dying and rising of Jesus of Nazareth expresses the unconditional love of God for every human being, anytime, anyplace. This unconditional and unshakable love of God has been there in the background and underneath all along. Paul has been able to rely upon it in the face of every challenge. It is what any followers of the Way of Jesus can rely upon when they face difficulties. Indeed, the threefold pattern is at work in the lives of Jamie and her parents, carrying them as they work through this dreadful time, even if they do not recognize it at work. The foundation of unconditional love which her parents knew how to express carries them through their time of emotional distress, carries them enough that they may hope for the possibility of a broadening love. God's Grace Program has been running the whole time.

God's Grace Program for us at St. Andrews
The threefold pattern is running for us, too. Here at St. Andrew's, as we go through our present process of trying to discern God's calling to us, God's Grace Program is at work.

We are in the middle phase. We experience anxiety about losing aspects of church life that are precious to us. We feel confusion about what the realistic options for our future really are. We are tempted to despair, to throw up our hands and say "Pack it in". We may feel too tired to attempt any very ambitious transformation. We may see glimmers of a transformed future and doors opening to possibility but wonder how we get from here to there.

It is a trying, testing, difficult time. I share it with you. When I contemplate each of the realistic options open to us, I can see that they carry risks of real loss.

The risk of turning inward
For instance, the whole process of transition to some new model of being church carries a risk we could turn inward and forget the gospel we are called to live out. St. Andrew's has a wonderful tradition of charitable care for neighbours. This church also has an openness, I think, to recognize the claims of economic justice which the Way of Jesus lays upon us. That means we have to keep remembering the purpose of God we are called to serve. This is what we may hope for: to continue to participate in God's great work of rebuilding the world in love.

The focus of our future
So we are in the middle phase, just like Jamie is, just like Paul the Apostle was. We are in the in-between time in God's process of grace. We yearn for the third phase. We get only little glimpses of it, but they are clear glimpses. Any future we have in God is a future focused on rebuilding the world in love. And I've been trying to articulate that focus for you over the last 10 years in an expression of Christian faith that is called "following the Way of Jesus."

No matter how you vote today, I know that if we are trying to follow the Way of Jesus, then the unconditional love of God for us will carry us through. I know that if we are trying to follow the Way of Jesus, then God's Grace Program is going to unfold around and through us. I know that if we are trying to follow the Way of Jesus, then in the words of Paul, "God is pouring out his love to fill our hearts". We just have to live in that love.

May it be so.

Sermon for May 23, 2010

In His Name
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: John 14:8-17

I would like to start with folks we might call the people of the "but".

I've encountered many people through the years who have said something like that. "I wouldn't call myself a Christian, but I do try to live a good life." Or "... but I am spiritual." Or "... but I'm on a quest to discover the sacred quality in life." The people of the "but" will quickly say "I wouldn't call myself a Christian, but..."

If it's a genuine conversation into which I am invited, I usually suggest that the label isn't nearly as important as the person's character and the quality of their living. But I appreciate their reticence. I try to respect their "but". They know that to wear the label "Christian" has to make a real difference in the way you live. To call yourself a Christian has to make a real difference in the stance you take in life. They are saying they haven't made that commitment and as a matter of integrity they won't pretend.

If I'm in a genuine personal encounter with someone who says "I'm not really a Christian, but..." I sometimes offer this further observation. The label of "Christian" has become so associated in the contemporary public mind with rigid, doctrinaire, graceless, legalistic, me-and-God, Bible-and-flag religion that the term is so misleading as to be useless now. Better that we should use a different label if we want to emphasize a faith stance that is open, not rigid; curious, not doctrinaire; generous of spirit, not graceless; focused on an ethic of love, not legalistic; communal rather than individualistic; engaged critically, not blindly with the biblical witness; and resistant to the idea that our nation has a special mandate from God. You know well the label I prefer as a description of that kind of generous faith stance: we are "called to follow the Way of Jesus". So my suggestion is that even if the person isn't comfortable with the label "Christian", their actual faith stance may be very close to that of a follower of the Way of Jesus. All they have to do is recognize that and start connecting again to the name, Jesus.

Mind you, even that may be a more specific commitment than they can make. Yes, they try to follow a way of goodness and humane virtue. But no, for whatever reason, they don't take Jesus – at least as they so far know about him – to be the guide for that path. Since they do not want to be hypocrites they are not here with us.

But we are here this morning in this worship place. This means that to some degree and in some fashion we have come to terms with our own "but"s.

Perhaps we are here because as children churchgoing was ingrained in us. But we have stayed. Perhaps we are here because we once had a powerful experience of the grace and love of God and we keep coming back hungry to taste that bliss again. But we keep coming. Perhaps we are here out of some very vague sense that Jesus is important as a person of spirit. But we keep turning to him. If those are our motivations – good. They may be like little first steps – but they are steps in a certain direction. They are steps towards Jesus. They reflect the recognition that Jesus is more than a merely generic "spiritual" person. His name in the phrase "the Way of Jesus" is momentous. It means something. We are following his path and not some other.

So let us drop the label "Christian" – as long as we will openly say of ourselves instead that we are trying to follow the Way of Jesus.

If for some reason that does not work for you here's another alternative. You could say that you are trying to live "in Jesus' name". That phrase comes from our passage from John's Gospel. John's Jesus talks about life "in my name" three times in the verses we read. In the NRSV translation:
- I. ¹³I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
- II.¹⁴If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.
- III.²⁶... The Advocate,* the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything".
"To live in Jesus' name". That would have really meant something to the readers of John's Gospel. In the cultural matrix surrounding Jesus and his movement, a person's "name" was a powerful thing. You may recall that when Moses encountered a manifestation of God at the burning bush he asked what was God's name. To know the other's name was for them to know much of the essence of the other. Even by the time of Jesus, to act "in the name of" someone else was still very significant. For a son to make a contract "in his father's name" bound his family to that contract just a strongly as if the father himself had been present to make the deal. And even today there is a sense of one's "name" is an extension into the social realm of one's being. The cult of celebrity reminds us of this. Look at the tabloid headlines in the supermarket. They specialize in recounting gossip about various celebrities and as we say "dragging their name through the mud". People still launch lawsuits for libel in an attempt to preserve their "good name".

So Jesus conceives that his followers will live "in his name" – praying to God in Jesus' name, teaching one another in his name, seeking wisdom from the Holy Spirit in his name. Eugene Peterson's paraphrase of verse 13 captures this well. Jesus says, " ... whatever you request along the lines of who I am and what I am doing, I'll do it. That's how the Father will be seen for who he is in the Son.". If we live according to who Jesus is and what he does, we are living in his name.

In fact that's a pretty good description of what it is to be church. Church is a community trying to live in Jesus' name. As Jesus speaks to his disciples about how they should live carry on after his death, he promises that the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, will be there for them. The Holy Spirit will subsume their life under his name. He will live in them and they in him. And so as we celebrate Pentecost today, the occasion that we think of as the birthday of the church, we should appreciate the work of God's Spirit in creating the church as a community living in Jesus' name.

Preacher and theologian Fred Craddock observes that Pentecost "symbolizes the coming of the Spirit, which gathers, constitutes, and empowers the church". Let us take each of those verbs in turn.
- Constitutes. The spirit constitutes the church, says Craddock. Having tugged at our heartstrings and luring us into place, God's Spirit seeks to transform us, to shape us, to brand us with the name of Jesus, if you will. This isn't something that happens overnight. It takes time, for example, to dig into the stories Jesus told about the Reign of God. It takes time to recognize our own attitudes in the attitudes of those in his stories. It takes time to practice living from a different stance. It takes time to learn to wear the name of Jesus.
- Empowers. The Spirit empowers the church. This is the point of being the church, after all. We do not come together just to satisfy our own needs. We are not constituted as the church to be just a collection of spiritual superstars,. Instead, we are commissioned to "do the works that Jesus does and in fact do greater works than those" [verse 12]. This is most fully and most explicitly what happens when we live "in the name of" Jesus. People look at what we do and see him at work.
"In the name of Jesus." You and I are challenged to live exactly in that way.
May it be so.
Sermon for May 2, 2010

The Spirit's Homecoming
Read: Revelation 21:1-6 NRSV
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

Homecoming weekend is a regular event in the fall at many Canadian universities. It's often linked to a home game for the football team and intended to attract college alumni back for a weekend of nostalgia – and fund-raising – at their alma mater. Homecoming weekend allows the university to tap into a yearning that is pretty common among human beings. We long for home. Especially as 21st century life becomes more fragmented and more complex and more stressed we long for that imagined point of stability and security that we call "home." This is quite true even for those whose actual childhood and youth was not a very happy time for them. Perhaps they might acknowledge that they wish they could return to "the home they never had."

We all want to "feel at home." "Home" is a place, a time, a circumstance where you really belong, where you can be true to your core identity, where you can find your potential fulfilled. Growing up with us in my neighbourhood in Sarnia there was a boy – let us call him Wilson – whom everyone regarded as strange, an outsider. There was just something different about Wilson. Now, looking back we all recognize that Wilson was homosexual in orientation, but this was before any of us -- including Wilson himself -- knew what "gay" meant. Years later during my seminary training in Toronto Marilynn and I were with a group of United Church folks who'd been invited to a supper and service at the Metropolitan Community Church. The Metropolitan Community Church is a denomination that actively welcomes gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people. And there among the MCC church people serving us our supper was Wilson. We were appropriately amazed to meet each other again. In a conversation I learned that he was now out of the closet and contentedly so. More important, he was committed to working out what it means to be faithful as a Christian gay person. Wilson spoke of the acceptance and care he had received within that Metropolitan Community Church congregation. He spoke of feeling finally "at home."

I think we all understand what Wilson meant. When we reflect on that, I want to say, we can see that one great strength of the Way of Jesus to which you and I are invited is that it transforms where "home" is. When you set yourself to become a follower of the Way of Jesus this makes a difference in what you regard as the place, the time, or the circumstance in which you really "belong."

We can see this when we ponder one part of our reading today from the Book of Revelation. The passage comes from part of the vision that the author received in his retreat on the island of Patmos. It is a vision of the triumph of God within history. The author writes, "I saw a new heaven and a new earth." The phrase is well-known, in fact is the first line in one of our most well-loved hymns. It doesn't mean that God will re-do Creation, wipe the world out and start over again. The newness consists instead of the transformation of our human history by the grace of God operating through life, death, and rising of Jesus. Because of the Christ-event "4 ...the first things have passed away." By "the first things", the writer means the normal order of life, the standard pattern of human relationships, the everyday political and economic realities which John Dominic Crossan calls "the normalcy of civilization." This normalcy has "passed away" in the sense that it is superseded by what Jesus has made possible. The Way of Jesus opens up a whole new way of life, a pattern of human interactions that are peaceful, caring, loving.

Now that sounds like the home for which we are all yearning, doesn't it? Who would not want to live in such a "new heaven and a new earth"?

So how do we get there? Well, we can't. This is the surprising implication of what the text says in this verse:
"See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them;"
A home for our spirits awaits us in Christ. But we cannot get ourselves. We cannot make our way to that blessed state, because it has to make its way to us. It can only be a gift of God not an achievement of ours. In the life and teaching and passion and resurrection of Jesus God is moving in to the human condition, entering into our dislocated state and dwelling with us. All we have to do is welcome God to make her home with us. Then we will be truly at home. Then we will be in the place where God makes her home with us. Then we will be in within the embrace of Jesus, as he is for us now, the Risen One who is our living Lord, walking beside us as we seek to follow his Way.

Our true home is the "Way of Jesus." It is:
- a path more than a place
- a direction more than a location
- a community more than an organization.
Today we live this out symbolically. We come to Jesus' table. After all, when the family comes home, one of the first things we do is share a meal. You are invited to this communion feast. Come on home!

Yes, indeed. Our human need to be truly "at home" is met by God's gracious impulse to make his home with us in Jesus. Let us open ourselves so that the Spirit of Jesus might make his home in us. That will be our true homecoming.

April 2010
April 25, 2010 | April 11, 2010 | April 4, 2010
Sermon for April 25, 2010

Take Heart Read: Mark 6:45-51
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

There comes a point where you feel like giving up. The long slow slog seems like just too much.

This moment may come to those undergoing yet another round of chemotherapy, who endure daily the wretched side effects that make them question whether this effort to recover their health is worth it. This moment may come to those who continue to make overtures to a sibling who has cut off the relationship over a misunderstanding that masks a deeper dysfunction, overtures that have been rebuffed often enough that the question arises: is our family worth this constant humiliation? This moment may come to the Board Chair in a little rural church who is trying yet again to find enough volunteers within the congregation to perform the bare minimum number of functions to keep the church afloat. This moment comes in such situations and indeed in just about any human enterprise that strives with difficulty towards the good. It is the moment when one asks oneself: why not give up? Pack it in. "Shut 'er down". Accept the inevitable. Surrender to the negative.

It is for such moments that today's reading from Mark's Gospel stands ready. These are the moments when we should almost literally pull out this story and read it. We might even print it out and carry it in our wallet or purse. For this is the story of Jesus that we need to have in our minds as we walk into the therapy suite at the Cancer Centre. This is a story it would be good to remember when we pick up the phone to call the hostile relative. This is the bible text to read as the devotional at every meeting of the church nominating committee – even and especially when the nominating committee is composed of the Board chair and herself.

This story in Mark is really about such moments. We might miss its significance because on the surface it looks like a "miracle story". It reads as a fabulous tale that portrays one of the wonders Jesus performed during the early days of his ministry in Galilee. Taken in that superficial way, the story is easily dismissed by today's readers as a silly tale or absurd fantasy. But that is only on the surface. Fully grasped, this is not a tall tale about a stormy night on the lake and a man who walks on water. It is much stronger. It is a powerful witness about the reality of Christ.

Mark has told the story of Jesus' stilling the storm in such a way that it gives witness to the reality of Christ for Mark's specific church. The story expressed a stirring truth for the particular community of the Way of Jesus for whom he wrote his Gospel 40 or more years after the death of Jesus. Mark's church was struggling in its own "storm". It was facing a storm of persecution. But Jesus, the Risen Christ, was present among them. Mark's message to his people was that they should expect the Risen Christ to be with them in their difficulties. They should look for the ways his Spirit would speak to their spirits, encouraging them to keep going. In that way Mark made a link between the storm on the lake and the gale of difficulties his church endured. He made a symbolic link between Jesus' coming to his disciples over the waves and Jesus' abiding risen presence among the members of Mark's church.

It is as if what Mark is dong is relocating the reality of the Risen Christ in his own time and place back into the life of Jesus. He does this several times in his Gospel. The Transfiguration story is another example. He projects the resurrection back into moments from Jesus' ministry. As he describes certain episodes in the life of Jesus he shapes them so that they reflect and illuminate and express his current experience of Jesus, Risen.

In that way, Mark's telling of this story of Jesus' stilling the storm is a testimony. It testifies to Mark's church – and to ours – that when we face difficulty as we try to navigate the Christian life, the Risen One comes to us and abides with us. Let us look at five little details in the text that constitute this witness to the Markan community, and to ours.

"⁴⁷ When evening came, the boat was out on the sea." "The boat" is a significant detail. Already by the time Mark was writing the communities of Christ were using the symbol of a boat to signify the Jesus movement. All through subsequent Christian history the boat or ship has stood for the church.

"⁴⁸... He saw that they were straining at the oars against an adverse wind." And isn't that exactly how it feels? When you encounter a roadblock around every turn, when folks let you down, when unexpected expenses threaten to derail the project, when you fall into bed at night both exhausted and anxious – for sure you are "straining ... against an adverse wind".

"He intended to pass them by." What an odd detail! Can't Jesus see that his followers are in obvious trouble and need his immediate assistance? But maybe what Mark is saying – metaphorically – is that the Risen One has his own purposes, his own direction, his own agenda not just for the church but for the world, his salvation not just for those in "the boat" of the church but those still lost at sea. We should not expect to understand clearly and immediately what Jesus' Spirit is doing. He may well "pass us by", waiting for us to catch up to him.

"⁴⁹... When they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost". Opponents of the early church laughed at the witness of followers of the Way, and dismissed their testimony that Jesus was alive in their midst, and accused them of, in our terms, "telling ghost stories". But in all the resurrection accounts Jesus is described as no ghost, no apparition, no mere vision, but a tangible presence with powerful effect. Perhaps what Mark is saying is that it took some time for even those in the church, those "in the boat", to work this out. At first some of them also thought the Risen One was only a figment of their imaginations. It took some time before they comprehended that he was as real after his rising as before, that he was indeed with them "in the boat".

"⁵¹ Then he got into the boat with them and the wind ceased." A zone of calm surrounds the Risen One. Can we see the promise in this, that if we will place our trust in the power of his Way then the forces that oppose his purpose will dissipate?

Finally and most importantly, at the centre of the story, words of the Galilean Jesus that are really words of the Risen One: "Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid." Take heart, yes, take heart Galilean fisherfolk caught in an evening squall on the lake. But take heart also you followers of the Way at the end of the first century, recipients of Mark's Gospel, hunted and hated by those who cannot see through Jesus to the peace and joy and justice of God. And take heart again any who face a long series of cancer treatments, and any who are haunted by family dysfunction, and any who are struggling to maintain an organization of care and grace like a church. Indeed let us receive and embrace, with thanksgiving, the assuring words of the One who comes to us in the storms of our life and our times of struggle, and says, "Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid."

Sermon for April 11, 2010

God - open 24/7/365 Read: Revelation 1:4-8
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

Is your

Click below to see archived sermons for each month:

October 2011

Sermon for October 30, 2011

Blessed Are YouRev. Shannon MangRead: Matthew 5:1-12

Sermon for October 23, 2011

Everything hinges on thisRev. Dr. Rod SykesRead: Matthew 22:34-40

A good question.

Two commandments, linked.

An example close to home.

Empathy.

To love God is to empathize with God's love.

Sermon for October 16, 2011

Knowing God, trusting GodRev. Dr. Rod SykesRead: Exodus 33:12-23 NRSV

Emoticons.

The unknowable self.

The hiddenness of God.

Transcendent and immanent.

The strangeness of conversation with God.

God's "presence."

God's peculiar "glory."

Sermon for October 9, 2011

Thanksgiving - a Way of LivingRev. Shannon MangRead: Deuteronomy 8:1-18

Sermon for October 2, 2011

A christened heartRev. Dr. Rod SykesRead: Philippians 3:4-14

September 2011

Meditation for September 25, 2011

The New Creed - The Words We Say Transform UsRev. Shannon Mang

Sermon for September 18, 2011

The feast at our feetRead: Exodus 16:1-16Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

Sermon for September 11, 2011

Faith in power, or power of the faith?Read: Exodus 14:26-30; Matthew 18:21-35Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

Sermon for September 4, 2011

Put On ChristRead: Romans 13:8-14Rev. Shannon Mang

August 2011

Sermon for August 21, 2011

New Life In ChristRead: Romans 6:1-14Rev. Shannon Mang

Sermon for August 14, 2011

Nothing Can Separate Us From the Love of GodRead: Romans 8:34b-39Gaile Weekes and Rev. Shannon Mang

Sermon for August 7, 2011

It's Not About Us!Read: Romans 4:13-25Rev. Shannon Mang

July 2011

Sermon for July 31, 2011

FullRead: Matthew 14:13-21Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

Sermon for July 24, 2011

Buried treasureRead: Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52 NRSVRev. Dr. Rod Sykes

Sermon for July 17, 2011

PeacemakingRead: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

Sermon for July 10, 2011

Ears to hearRead: Matthew 13:1-9 (NRSV)Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

Sermon for July 3, 2011

Bound, but freeRead: Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30 (NRSV)Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

June 2011

Sermon for June 26, 2011

Giving Our AllRead: Matthew 10:34-42Rev. Shannon MangFollowing the Way of Jesus is not for sissies!

Family Life

Taking up one's cross

Welcoming the envoy

Sermon for June 19, 2011

Risky BusinessRead: Matthew 28:16-20Rev. Shannon Mang

Sermon for June 12, 2011

Open to the Spirit's leadingRead: Numbers 11:24-30Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

Sermon for June 5, 2011

Witnesses to hopeRead: Acts 1:6-14Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

May 2011

Sermon for May 22, 2011

Untroubled HeartsRead: John 14:4-14 (NRSV)Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

April 2011

Sermon for April 17, 2011

Walking this Week with Jesus:An invitation to Good Friday and EasterRev. Dr. Rod Sykes

Sermon for April 3, 2011

Heart of a leaderRev. Dr. Rod SykesRead: 1 Samuel 16:1-13, NRSV

March 2011

Sermon for March 27, 2011

Jesus Heals! Forgives?Rev. Shannon MangRead: Mark 2:1-12

Sermon for March 20, 2011

None left behindRev. Dr. Rod SykesRead: Genesis 12:1-5 NRSV

Sermon for March 13, 2011 (Lent 1)

Leaving EdenRev. Shannon MangRead: Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-13

Sermon for March 6, 2011

The Master's touchRev. Dr. Rod Sykes' communion meditationRead: Matthew 17:1-9

Blessed Are You
Rev. Shannon Mang
Read: Matthew 5:1-12

Everything hinges on this
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: Matthew 22:34-40

Knowing God, trusting God
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: Exodus 33:12-23 NRSV

Thanksgiving - a Way of Living
Rev. Shannon Mang
Read: Deuteronomy 8:1-18

A christened heart
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: Philippians 3:4-14

The New Creed - The Words We Say Transform Us
Rev. Shannon Mang

The feast at our feet
Read: Exodus 16:1-16
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

Faith in power, or power of the faith?
Read: Exodus 14:26-30; Matthew 18:21-35
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

Put On Christ
Read: Romans 13:8-14
Rev. Shannon Mang

New Life In Christ
Read: Romans 6:1-14
Rev. Shannon Mang

Nothing Can Separate Us From the Love of God
Read: Romans 8:34b-39
Gaile Weekes and Rev. Shannon Mang

It's Not About Us!
Read: Romans 4:13-25
Rev. Shannon Mang

Full
Read: Matthew 14:13-21
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

Buried treasure
Read: Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52 NRSV
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

Peacemaking
Read: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

Ears to hear
Read: Matthew 13:1-9 (NRSV)
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

Bound, but free
Read: Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30 (NRSV)
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

Giving Our All
Read: Matthew 10:34-42
Rev. Shannon Mang
Following the Way of Jesus is not for sissies!

Risky Business
Read: Matthew 28:16-20
Rev. Shannon Mang

Open to the Spirit's leading
Read: Numbers 11:24-30
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

Witnesses to hope
Read: Acts 1:6-14
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

Untroubled Hearts
Read: John 14:4-14 (NRSV)
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

Walking this Week with Jesus:
An invitation to Good Friday and Easter
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

Heart of a leader
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: 1 Samuel 16:1-13, NRSV

Jesus Heals! Forgives?
Rev. Shannon Mang
Read: Mark 2:1-12

None left behind
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: Genesis 12:1-5 NRSV

Leaving Eden
Rev. Shannon Mang
Read: Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-13

The Master's touch
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes' communion meditation
Read: Matthew 17:1-9

Perfectly out of balance
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: Matthew 5:38-48 (Contemporary English Version)

Co-workers with God
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: 1 Corinthians 3:1-9 (New International Version)

Turn on the spirit light
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes' communion meditation
Read: Isaiah 58:1-9 & Matthew 5:14-16

Rev. Shannon Mang
A dialogue sermon on The Lord's Prayer
Read: Matthew 6:8-15

Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Small things count
Read: Isaiah 49:1-7 NRSV

Rev. Shannon Mang
Named and Claimed in Baptism
Read: Matthew 3:13-17

Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Wondrous love
Read: John 1:1-5, 14

Rev. Shannon Mang
Cosmic Praise

8:30 p.m. Service, Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Dream time

Christmas Eve communion meditation
11 p.m. Service, Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Dawn of hope

Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Jesus - dangerous love
Read: Matthew 1:18-25

Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Not keeping up appearances
Read: Isaiah 11:1-10 NRSV

Rev. Shannon Mang
First Sunday in Advent: The Desert Blooms
Read: Isaiah 35:1-10

Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Cosmic Glue
Read: Colossians 1:11-20

Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Holy amnesia
Read: Isaiah 65:17-25

Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
God of the living
Read: Luke 20:27-38

Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
To know oneself
Read: Luke 18:9-14

Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Hope that insists, faith that persists
Read: Luke 18:1-8

Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes' communion meditation
Lamentations 1:1-4, 3:19-23

Street-smarts for the Kingdom
Luke 16:1-13
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

In Deep Waters
Luke 5:1-11
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes

Being the Hands of Christ
Hebrews 13: 1-8, 15-16 & Luke 14:1, 7-14
Rev. Shannon Mang

Get a Life!
Rev. Shannon Mang

The cry of God
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: Hosea 11:1-11

Someone's prayin'
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: Luke 11:1-13

Hot and bothered
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: Luke 10:38-42

God-wannabees
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: Psalm 82

Outriders
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

Seize the day
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: Luke 9:51-62