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February 2012 | January 2012
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February 2012

February 5, 2012

Sermon for February 5, 2012

Will our great-grandchildren have faith?
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: Isaiah 40:21-31

Today's congregational meeting is the next and crucial step in the process we began five years ago as we readied ourselves to celebrate our Jubilee, our 50th anniversary as a congregation. It is a good thing that our meeting begins with lunch. St. Andrew's folks love to eat together. It is one of the family kind of things we do.

It is also a very good thing that today just happens to be a communion Sunday. So we break bread together today both literally and symbolically, as we gather around Christ's table this morning. This is also one of our activities as a family – a family of faith. To reinforce this, the communion prayer we will use is the same as the one we said on our Jubilee Sunday in 2008. For more than 50 years we have been a family of faith gathered around these gifts of bread and wine. This is our family table.

Our communing together reminds us, then, that we go into today's vote as brothers and sisters in Christ. We should come out of it the same way. Having opened our hearts to the guidance of God's Spirit, we cast our ballot as an act of faith, and whatever the result we remain a family of faith. After all, the process we been through these last years has been a discernment – a seeking to know God's will for us. And it is a principle of our Reformed church heritage that God's Spirit gives guidance through the gathering of the congregation – of the whole body. That is why in the United Church advance voting and mail-in ballots are not permitted. The people of the church must assemble and interact and speak their hearts if the Spirit is to do her work.

And sometimes the Spirit's work is simply astonishing – as in the often-surprising relevance to our life of the Bible readings laid out by the Revised Common Lectionary. Years ago God's Spirit led churches all around the world to agree on this 3-year cycle of scripture readings to use in weekly worship. What is amazing is how often at least one of the 4 readings suggested for a given Sunday seems to speak so clearly to the particular situation of the congregation, or its surrounding society. I don't know how this happens. It is something of a miracle.

Here it is again today. The Hebrew scripture passage which the Lectionary brings before us today seems to address directly the spiritual challenge that faces this congregation. In fact this is a spiritual question that faces our denomination of the United Church of Canada, and indeed all the "ecumenical" denominations (sometimes called "mainline Protestantism") in North America and Europe.

The spiritually challenging question is this. It is the title of a book by John Westerhoff on my shelf since 1980: Will Our Children Have Faith? Of course since then I have aged, we have aged, so that the issue became "Will our grandchildren have faith?", and indeed might better be phrased: "Will our great-grandchildren have faith?"

"Will our great-grandchildren have faith?" Specifically, "Will they seek to follow the Way of Jesus?" For me this question sums up all the anxieties that currently beset the mainline church, worries that our form of Christianity is becoming irrelevant to the surrounding culture, indeed to our own offspring. This concern is genuine, not just a reflection of our own pride. We should be profoundly worried by the risk that our great-grandchildren might have a hunger of the Spirit for God but lack any pathway to lead them to God.

Now this question of whether future generations will know and love God was precisely one of the burning questions for the Hebrew people in exile to whom the prophet we call Second Isaiah spoke the words we read today. The children and grandchildren of the exiles were attracted away to the bright lights of Babylonian society, drawn to the worship of various idols. The exiles feared that within a generation or two the great bond might dissolve between Yahweh God and themselves, his people, the people of the Covenant.

Anxiety and despair gripped their hearts. Second Isaiah heard their grief as they asked why the faith of their community was fading, why God seemed to have forgotten them. But Second Isaiah did not surrender to that despair. He confronted his fellow Hebrews:

27 Why do you say, [O people of the Covenant], "My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God"?

Or in Peterson's paraphrase:

27 Why would you ever complain, O Jacob, or, whine, Israel, saying, "God has lost track of me. He doesn't care what happens to me"?

Are we not familiar in the mainline church with similar anxieties? Have we not indeed voiced them ourselves – "Our kids and their families don't seem to find time to attend any church! Where did we go wrong?"

Second Isaiah's retort to that despair speaks now as fiercely to our wobbly knees as it did to the fainting hearts of his people. He set the spiritual shakiness of his people, and of us, within the big picture, the much bigger picture. Have the people forgotten that it is God with whom they deal? The prophet cries,

28 Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God… He does not faint or grow weary... 29 He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.

Then the prophet raises directly the question of the spiritual well-being of future generations:

30 Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; 31 but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles.

That is to say: in any generation we human beings are children of God who receive our life ultimately from the Holy One. We experience fullness of life through connection to God, through, as the prophet puts it, "waiting for the Lord". This will be true for future generations, as for our own. This God whom we worship is not only the unfathomable reality from whom the whole cosmos emerges. He is also the loving Parent who cares for his people. This is the Holy One who nurtures all his children, generation after generation. This is the Divine Lover who finds infinitely creative ways to penetrate human indifference and seize the hearts of the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

So the task of faith in any generation is to trust in our God and to act upon every opportunity to nurture faith in God in those who follow us.

How, then, will the story of faith in God be told to future generations of people living in South Calgary? How will the Way of Jesus make its claim upon the hearts of your great-grandchildren, or other people's great-grandchildren who will live in our communities? Your vote today determines how the resources we have at hand will be used for ministries to which the United Church in South Calgary is called. This Lectionary reading from scripture reminds you that your decision today influences whether and how generations to come will hear the claim of God upon their hearts.

Will your great-grandcildren have faith? How will that happen? What do you hear Second Isaiah's words saying to your heart?

January 2012

Janaury 29, 2012 | Janaury 22, 2012 | January 15, 2012
January 8, 2012 | January 1, 2012

Sermon for January 29, 2012

Follow Jesus = Know Jesus
Rev. Shannon Mang
Read: John 1: 43-51

Jesus knows us... REALLY knows us. Jesus saw Nathanial 'under the fig tree'- he was 'at home'- in his comfortable place... Jesus recognizes us before we recognise him. And... a bit of time in Jesus' company changes us... as a community of Christ we are living out our relationship with Jesus.

Today a group of people are saying YES to Jesus- YES to this community of faith through Baptism, Re-affirmation of Baptism and Transfer of Membership... some have been a part of this family for 50 years... others 20 years.... others all of their young lives.... others only a few weeks; some walked through these doors on their own... and others have been invited here by friends ...they're saying yes because this is their 'place' and we are their 'family' whether we've known one another for a few weeks or decades.

We have a major family decision coming up next Sunday- and all those who have declared at some point in the past... or today- that this is their spiritual home and have made a public declaration of their allegiance to this family will have a vote on the future of the house that has held this family. It is an important family decision which is why we have been putting the effort into accounting for the members who will be making this decision.

What is more important than the decision about the house– is the recognition of the importance of this family:

Everyone who will be standing up here today has a unique story of faith- each of us here today has a unique story of faith, and in this family we blend all of these stories into our story... our family's story of our walk with Jesus. The decision we will make next Sunday is an important milestone in our history as a congregation... but it is just a milestone on our journey with Jesus in this city, in this neighbourhood— what is most important is the road we've been travelling and the family we've been travelling with. Travelling companions have come... and gone... and come... and this is our current family following the Way of Jesus. In the experience of this family we are recognised by Jesus who knows us better than we know ourselves, and we encounter Jesus in our family members, who show us the way- who stop and hold us when we're hurting- who go and look for us when we've been gone for awhile- who help us recognise that we live on Holy Ground when we gather to worship and serve others... and when we are living our ordinary lives apart from the family.

Today we celebrate Jesus in our midst.

We celebrate that we are intimately know by Jesus and that we show one another more and more about what it means to be people of the Way of Jesus.

We celebrate those who are saying YES to this family today- and all of us who have said yes in so many years throughout our long history... and all of us who will be saying yes to our future by voting – either yay or nay in our vote next week– because whichever way we vote- we are doing so for the future of our family... and we will carry on as family whichever way the vote goes.

The German theologian Deitrich Bonhoeffer said that Community is simply our life, in Christ-

"We belong to one another, only through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ." Come and see.

May it be so!!

Sermon for January 22, 2012

Fishes, Fate and Faith
Tracy Robertson, Diaconal Ministry Student
Notes from the sermon

Why the urgency? Why the immediacy? What was it about Jesus that people left their lives and loved ones behind to follow him? They left their nets immediately. No hesitation is implied here. Did they know of Jesus before he showed up there or did they just hear about him? I would have to be sure before I left my job and family to follow some guy to who knows where. I remember how stressful it was moving away from home. I know how stressful it is changing jobs. I can't imagine leaving everything I know and the security that I have to follow some guy that might or might not be the messiah. Or can I? There are some who looked at me like I had two heads when I decided to answer God's call to ministry.

Today, I told you my story of calling towards Diaconal Ministry, but we all know that God calls us to all sorts of things; besides our careers or jobs, God also calls us to respond to various situations in different ways, God calls us to treat one another with respect, and God calls us to love each other and creation. Sometimes those calls are answered immediately, as shown in today's scripture reading, but sometimes we take our time to answer God;s call. The thing we need to remember is that God doesn't stop calling us. God will never grow impatient and God will never give up on us or our calling. At some point, we will trust and take the leap of faith needed to leave what's comfortable and risk entering the unknown; knowing, all along, that God journeys with us.

Sermon for January 15, 2012

Talkin' 'bout our generations
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: 1 Samuel 3:1-20 NRSV

In this month leading up to our decisive congregational vote (on February 5) about our future, Shannon and I are preaching about the spiritual dimensions of this process. Over the past five years you've heard from the pulpit frequent references to our calling as individuals and as a congregation to follow the Way of Jesus in a new form. We are seeking to discern the new way of being church that God calls us to embrace. And the text that the Revised Common Lectionary sets before us today from the Hebrew Scriptures just happens to provide a timely exploration of that idea of a divine calling.

This text from the Hebrew Scriptures is vivid and rich. It focuses upon a young Israelite named Samuel and the calling he received from God to a very special vocation. Samuel's importance to the purposes of God is signalled in the biblical book of 1 Samuel as the opening chapters recount his miraculous birth. His mother Hannah had been presumed to be infertile, and so in gratitude to God for Samuel's birth she dedicated him to God. Today's reading picks up Samuel's story as he serves as a kind of altar boy at the hill shrine at Shiloh. He is at the tender teenage time when one's direction in life begins to become clear; he is ripe to receive his calling.

Let us go inside the story together, that we may hear it speaking to us about our calling. The narrative is set during a great and risky transition in the life of the people of God, the people of the Sinai covenant with Yahweh. An inexorable social transformation was challenging them to embrace a new way of being the people of the Covenant. In this era societies around the Mediterranean were being transformed from tribal confederacies into kingdoms. And the people of Israel were swept up in this transition. They clamoured to leave behind the loose social organization of their tribal confederacy, in which charismatic leaders called "judges" would come forward to give temporary guidance through crisis. But now the people of the Covenant wanted to have a permanent and powerful leader, a king like the monarchs of all the peoples around them. And this raised a great spiritual danger. Israel was supposed to be in covenant primarily with God, not with a king. Who, then, would act on God's behalf to keep the monarchy open and humane and following the ways of God? Who would announce God's opposition to wickedness and abuse of power? Who would proclaim God's fierce promise to intervene in the kingdom's life in ways that " 1 Samuel 3:11 will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle"? Who would take the role of the social prophet who "speaks truth to power"? Who would God choose to undertake that dangerous calling?

The surprising answer: a young boy. The Divine Spirit whispers his name in the night: "Samuel! Samuel!" God knows him by name and addresses him by name. That is where the calling begins, in God's intimate knowledge of each of us. God addresses just this particular person for just this particular role. The calling, then, is intensely individual. The boy accepts this personal calling when he responds, "Here I am!" That is how he gives his "yes" to the claim God is making upon him.

Now notice that the claim upon him is open-ended. God does not reveal at this point the painful future role Samuel will have as the prophet who must speak truth to power. And the young boy doesn't know what he is getting into when he says "Yes! Here I am. Speak, God, for I am listening." A calling from God always has this kind of open-endedness. From our perspective the road ahead of each of us fades into a fog of possibilities. Our vocation might lead us anywhere; only God can see in detail how our calling shapes our whole lifetime.

That leads to the next thought about our calling. It changes and modulates and becomes transformed over the course of our lifetime. The only constant is the character of the God who calls. We will see this if we look at the other main character in the story, Eli. His calling had been to oversee the worship of the Hebrew people who came up to make sacrifices at the shrine at Shiloh. This priesthood was hereditary. Eli had inherited the position from his father and expected to pass his calling on to his own sons. He has not yet retired, despite his great age, so that even now his calling continues.

But things must now change. His former calling must be replaced with a new one. No longer can his family be the prophets at Shiloh, because his own sons have failed him. They have been exploiting their position at the shrine, greedily exppropriating to their own table the sacrificial meals the people bring and sexually exploiting the women who serve at the shrine. Eli has failed to call them to account and require them to change. And so God can no longer use the house of Eli for the work of spiritually disciplining Israel. When God calls in the night to Samuel – not once but three times – the point is hammered home to Eli. The mantle of prophecy must now pass not to Eli's sons but to Samuel. Eli's task in life now is no longer to be the interpreter of God's will to the people; indeed, his job is now to move aside so the new voice who will speak for God can be heard.

Wretched Eli! Surely we can sense the pathos into which this plunges the elderly prophet. It was a hard thing for Eli to acknowledge that he had failed as a father in not correcting his wayward sons. It was a hard thing for him to surrender his family pride and continue to nurture Samuel into the very role that Eli had always intended for his own children. It was a hard and courageous thing for him to insist that Samuel disclose the truth to him, the reason why God was now abandoning the house of Eli. It was a hard and courageous and finally faithful thing for him to then accept the judgment of God, when he said to the boy, 18... "It is the Lord [who has spoken to you of his plan to replace me]; let him do what seems good to him."

Two characters, one young, one old, both with a calling from God. What does this story reveal to us about our calling from God? It says that whatever may be the generation to which we belong, we have a calling from God that requires us to trust in him.

If you are in the generation of Samuel, so to speak, a young person just beginning to make choices about the path you will follow in life, you face so many options that are open to you. Everything, it can seem, will be possible for you! You cannot yet recognize which of the paths that lie before you will lead into your adulthood. It is my conviction and the conviction of your church family that the route into fullness of life for you is the Way of Jesus, a Way we try to teach you in these few years you are among us before you make your own way. Your challenge is to say, like Samuel, "I am here. Speak, Lord, for I am listening." Your challenge is to trust what you hear.

If you are in the generation of Samuel's mother, Hannah, that is if you are in the years when we pursue career and family, you also are challenged to trust. Hannah's experience of barrenness is a fitting symbol for one of the great spiritual challenges of midlife, and that is the need to cope with disappointment. Overblown hopes of our young adulthood must give way to realism about our human limitations, and yet in that we are called still to be faithful, to resist descending into cynicism or despair. Despite the limitations of Hannah's barrenness God was able to give her a child, and she said yes to God by dedicating her son back to the Lord. Your challenge is to continue to say yes to the God who works within your life, despite your limitations, to achieve God's good purposes for you.

If you are in the generation of Eli, that is in the later years, it of course gets harder and harder to meet with grace and good humour the accumulating insults of physical aging. But along with that physical failing can go spiritual diminishment, and in some ways that is a greater challenge. The shadows of past mistakes can haunt you as they did Eli. Like Eli, the spiritual choice you must make is whether or not to acknowledge the sovereignty of God over your life and what you have made of it, warts and all. This is especially important when you recognize that you must let go of your cherished perceptions of yourself and your role, and strive to nurture the generations that will succeed you, and then, like Eli, to move aside. Your challenge is to believe that even as the spotlight moves off you to the younger generations, all will be well. Your challenge is to trust that even in such surrender you can still be a faithful follower of the Way of Jesus.

Now: everything this text tells us about our individual calling as followers of the Way applies to us collectively, as a congregation. Like the people of Israel we are in a time of social transformation that requires us to develop a new way of being people of God, a new model for "doing church". St. Andrew's is challenged to discern a new calling. The results of our efforts to discern that new calling are now being placed in your hands over the next three weeks. Our faith is tested thus. Will we trust in the God who calls?

God calls across the generations in this open-ended way. Our challenge, in whatever generation we reside, is to trust ourselves to "what seems good to God", even if that requires of us an enormous transformation of our expectations and dreams. Our challenge is to say, with Samuel, "Here we are." Our calling is to say yes.

Sermon for January 8, 2012

Baptized Into Christ
Rev. Shannon Mang
Read: Acts 19:1-7

Annie Dillard writes (from Teaching a Stone to Talk, Harper & Row, 1982)

"Does any-one have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake some day and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return."

This reading from Acts took me by surprise- I had never really paid attention to it before. The fact that Paul baptised these 'believers' a second time was a bit shocking... I mean- if John's baptism was good enough for Jesus...???... then the role of the Holy Spirit at centre stage in this story stood out. I took a look at the baptism stories from the four gospels- and in all four of the baptism accounts John says that the one whose way he is preparing will baptise with Holy Spirit– with water and fire. John anticipated the Messiah– his baptism of repentance was significant- it was life changing... but it was a precursor to the power of the Kingdom of God about to be unleashed. The baptism of Jesus would release the Holy Spirit in the world... so Christians- when baptism happens we should be holding on to our hats... or crash helmets as Annie Dilliard says... the Holy Spirit is on the loose.

Baptism of Jesus Sunday gives us the opportunity to dip our toes into the potential storm of Baptism. Mostly, here in this community of faith we practise infant baptism — but we happily baptise anyone – so we do practise believer's baptism when older children, youth and adults step forward and ask to be baptised. The sacrament is the same, except that the person being baptised speaks for themselves – their parents aren't doing the promising on their behalf — and it feels different.

One person in my life requested a second baptism as a young adult- my brother Russell. He'd been baptised as an infant like all of us in our family- then as a teen he did do confirmation. Following the confirmation class he decided to NOT be confirmed as he didn't feel ready— he waited a year, and then he felt some degree of pressure to go through the confirmation, but, looking back, he felt that it didn't really mean anything significant to him and he wished that he'd resisted the pressure to make that confession of faith that was not genuine.

As a young adult at the University of Regina, he made friends with others in the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship and First Baptist Church. He had a spiritual awakening – a 'becoming a Christian' experience, and as a response to that profound change in his life he wanted to be baptised. He wanted to make a public declaration of his intention to live a life with Jesus at its centre. At that point in his life he felt that being baptised was an essential act of obedience and a conscious expression of his commitment to the Christian life. When I was talking with Russell about this (... and getting his permission to tell his story...) he was surprised to learn that others of us in his family were distressed with his decision to be baptised a second time... but we didn't challenge his decision- and we all showed up to support him on the day of his baptism. And I was surprised to learn that the actual sacrament of full immersion baptism was not an especially emotional or spiritually charged event for him... it had been an important choice - it was the right thing for him to do at that point in his life.

Russell didn't really equate being baptised with becoming a 'member' of First Baptist church....and, in fact he didn't remain a Baptist for much longer. My brother is an artist and he realised that his artistic heart was longing for a more creative expression of his faith than the austere environment of the Baptist community. He knew that his soul craved artistic expression in liturgy and architecture. So- he became a practising Anglican. He never felt inclined to become a member of the Anglican church where he worshipped in Vancouver– he never felt the need. He did, however, remember being somewhat surprised by the rights offered to him as an adherent. Similar to our practice of most often offering voting rights to all persons present at congregational meetings- he was given the opportunity to participate. He has gone on to be a 'practising' Lutheran in Calgary and Moose Jaw, but he still hasn't felt the need to declare his allegiance to any particular denomination – but in his heart he knows that he is mostly an Anglican.

Both of my brother's baptisms were 'real'- the first infant baptism opened up the opportunity for him to be nurtured in a community of faith as a child, which started the seedling of his faith and paved the way for the flowering of his spirituality as a young adult and the conscious choice of his second baptism. Which, in turn, paved the way for the maturing of his faith in several faith communities of different denominations.

There is power in public declarations of faith. We don't really encourage second baptisms... but we do strongly encourage adults to reaffirm their faith at different points in their lives. We cannot know the depth and power of the sacrament of Baptism- there is what we see on the surface- but it goes much deeper than what we see. When we are baptised, and when we witness baptisms, we are inviting the Holy Spirit into our lives as individuals and as a community. We are continuously invited to open our hearts and our lives to the power of our own baptism.

In the story from Acts where the group had been baptised into John's baptism of repentance, there must have been something that tipped Paul off to ask the question about whether they had been introduced to the Holy Spirit – perhaps they did not display outward signs of the Holy Spirit. They had not experienced the Word of God, embodied in Jesus Christ. This story really isn't about ineffective vs effective baptism - their first baptism was a form of Jewish ritual cleansing- and with Paul they experience Christian baptism for the first time. Christian Baptism is about the water and the Word– it is about both water and fire – we symbolically die to ourselves by going under the water and we rise with Christ with the fire of the Holy Spirit in our lives – we are named and claimed Christ's own and the Holy Spirit is at work within us.

So, if Paul were to meet us, would he be drawn to ask the same question about whether or not we've been introduced to the Holy Spirit?? Or would he see evidence of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in the life of our church? We are continuously called to LIVE our Baptism — as individuals and as a community - we are called to live with intention — the Holy Spirit is always renewing us, especially if we chose to embrace our baptism... daily!!

As a community of faith this passage is speaking to us and our current reality. After so many months of discernment and study and research, there is a very important decision coming before this church family about our church property. It has been a long time coming... but there will be a recommendation for a decision coming to the Council this Tuesday, which, if accepted by the Council, will, in turn be brought to a congregational meeting on Feb. 5. It will then go to Presbytery for approval– as we are all in this venture together! Many of you received an email from Merle Ann May, the chair of council this past week- and those without emails will be receiving it by post very soon. Most decisions that we make as a congregation can include the vote of adherents- those who are present in our congregation and support us but who have not chosen to become members. But- when it comes to decisions about property matters- members-only are able to vote. This is a technical matter- and it is mandated by the Manual of the United Church of Canada – but given that this has been an inclusive visioning process all along, we are wanting the voting process to continue to be as inclusive of everyone who has been on this visioning journey together. Through Jan we want everyone who worships with us regularly to check their membership status – we've been working hard on having an accurate membership list for several months now – but we know that there continue to be errors– so we need your help. If you understand yourself to be a member- please check the membership lists in the lobby and let us know if there is an error with your status. If you know that your membership is still in your last congregation- please talk with us about having it transferred... and, if you have not become a member of St. Andrew's- or if you have never been baptised... but you've been 'practising' your faith with us — please consider becoming a member this month. We want to include ALL of you in our tent as we make the decision on Feb 5 and all the coming decisions in the following months. We will have a big celebration of our tent on the Sunday prior to the Feb. 5 meeting on Jan 29, where we will baptise, confirm and transfer all those ready to declare themselves part of the tent. It will be an opportunity for everyone here to re-affirm our Baptism and our commitment to being followers of the Way of Jesus.

This is so much more than just a technical matter. I believe that the holy Spirit has been VERY active in our midst in and through the visioning process that we've been about here. And now we are approaching many important choices. It is an opportunity as individuals to say 'YES' to Jesus and the gift of the Holy Spirit in our own Baptism. On Jan. 29 we will CELEBRATE who we are- a faithful - prayerful people ready to make faithful, prayer-filled decisions about our future together. We are continuously called to embody Christ and allow the power of the Holy Spirit to flow through us. This is what our visioning has been all about... discerning the future that God is calling us into — discerning the Way of Jesus for our community of faith in our time and place and giving room for the Holy Spirit to speak through us. We have the opportunity to feel the blessing of the HS... and to open our hearts anew to the power that is available to us... so remember your baptism and be thankful... asperges...

Our reflection time will be experiencing a video - this song is written and sung by Brian Doerksen - the words are simple and powerful... you are invited to sing along with it as you feel comfortable...

Today I choose to follow You
Today I choose to give my YES to You
Today I choose to hear your voice and live
Today I choose to follow You

As for me and my house we will serve You
As for me and my house we will spend our lives on You today

Today, and every day, we are called to give our YES to God!

May it be so!!

Sermon for January 1, 2012

Gems in God's Crown
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: Isaiah 61:10 - 62:3 NRSV

One of the children's hymns that we sang frequently in my Sunday School years was When He Cometh:

When He cometh, when He cometh,
To make up His jewels,
All His jewels, precious jewels,
His loved and His own.
Refrain:
Like the stars of the morning,
His brightness adorning,
They shall shine in their beauty,
Bright gems for His crown.

It was a charming song. But I also found it mystifying. As a child I could not imagine where this image came from, comparing children who try to be faithful in following the way of God to gems in a monarch's crown. Well, the metaphor does originate in the Hebrew Scriptures, as I discovered when I read the passage from the book of Isaiah which the Lectionary suggests that we read. The source of the image leapt out at me from the last verse of the reading. "62:3 You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD / and a royal diadem in the hand of your God."

A beautiful image. But what does it mean? In their context these words were a strong word of encouragement. The Hebrew people had now been liberated from their exile in Babylon by the Persian king, Cyrus, and returned home to Judah and the city of Jerusalem. But, as they say, you can never go home again. They discovered that their homeland was no longer as they had remembered it. The city of Jerusalem had been physically destroyed by the Babylonian armies. The remnant of citizens who had escaped the exile and remained in Judah were destitute. It was in this situation of deep disappointment that the prophet whom our scholars label Third Isaiah proclaimed a word full of hope from God. The divine promise was that soon his covenant people would be restored to effective nationhood. Once again they would shine brightly as a people of faith –a crown of beauty in the hand of God. The image of "a royal diadem in the hand of your God" held out to them a noble goal to pursue in their rebuilding of their society.

Our circumstance today is not the same as theirs. But Third Isaiah's image can continue to speak to us. It still can articulate the life of faith and hope to which we should aspire whatever our situation. So let us explore this idea of being "a gem in God's crown".

Of course we should not suppose that Third Isaiah understood any of the technical aspects of gemstones. But it turns out that there are at least three respects in which a jewel can symbolize the life of faith.

Photograph of a royal crown

First, a royal crown will be finely crafted of silver or gold, but the metalsmithing here is really just the support for the jewels. In the ancient world, gemstones were the most valuable of objects that a monarch might possess. He or she would wear them on his or her head as a sign of wealth and power. Through the centuries regal crowns became more and more elaborate and complicated but the jewels remained the centerpiece.

There's a parallel here for any community of faith. A community of faith, such as ours, has of course an important role as an institution within society. A congregation like ours needs an organizational structure. And a church can do important things when it has real estate - its land and buildings. But these things are necessary only as supports to the real life of the church. That real life of the congregation gets expressed through the relationships within it. The people are what really count, and the living faith that they act out with each other. The people are the jewels in the crown.

A second fact about gemstones. I have checked the science of this with "Lewin the Lapidary" (Peter Lewin in our choir who is an accomplished gemologist.) The crystalline gemstones get their colour from impurities – oxides which have bonded with the basic mineral of which they are composed. In its pure form the mineral would be colourless. So what we most prize about a jewel, namely its vivid colour – ruby red or sapphire blue – is the result of the stone's being less than chemically perfect. For example, beryl is a pure mineral and therefore colourless. But when chromium atoms get mixed in as the stone is formed deep in the pressures of the earth, the chromium atoms block out all the wavelengths in the spectrum of light except green – and we have an emerald.

There is a parallel here for anyone who is drawn into a relationship with God. We human beings almost universally seem to assume that we have to please God in order to deserve the blessings of that relationship. This is a mistake. It misunderstands the nature of God's grace. God moves towards us before we are required to move towards her. And God never rejects us but always finds a way to respond to whatever mistakes we make. The upshot: you don't have to be perfect to be a follower of the Way of Jesus. Even with your flaws and imperfections God can turn your life into a thing of beauty, so that you are an ornament in her crown.

And a last fact about jewels. The beauty of these crystals arises when light shines through them. Indeed when they are skillfully cut so that they have multiple facets, light gets refracted inside the gem. This is famously seen in the cut diamond when it is said to have "fire" in its depths.

Correspondingly, we who are called to try to follow the Way of Jesus are challenged to shine with the light of God. Remember: we the people are what make or break the reality of faith in the congregation. And we are called to shine forth lives of faith even through our imperfections. And we can radiate faith in that way when we let the light of God shine through us and be refracted within our hearts.

Like the stars of the morning,
His brightness adorning,
We shall shine in our beauty,
Bright gems for His crown.

May it be so.

December 2011

December 18, 2011 | December 4, 2011

Sermon for December 18, 2011

Favour
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: Luke 1:26-38 NRSV

On this final Sunday of Advent we move towards the so-well-known story of the birth of Jesus. But slightly less well-known, or at least less well understood, is the beginning of the birth narrative: the message given to a young woman in a small Galilean village that she would be the mother of the Messiah. We read about that in our lectionary text today. It is from Luke's Gospel, and one of Luke's themes is that the Way of God which Jesus proclaimed and lived turned the world upside down. Luke includes theme of the great reversal even in his opening chapter as he gives the background to Jesus' birth. God chose a young woman whom no one would have expected to become the vehicle of God's entry into our history. So I invite you to imagine with me how God's choice of Mary of Nazareth would have surprised those who knew her...

Dear Mr. and Mrs. ben Sirah:

As head teacher here at Nazareth Elementary School, I'm adding this note to the usual year-end report card. Your son, Eli, is one of the shining lights of our senior class. You will see that he has exceptionally high marks in memorizing the Torah. And his command of Hebrew poetry is remarkable for someone of his tender years. So I want personally to encourage you to enroll him for further studies at the Jerusalem Temple. Your son's intellect and application to his studies promise a fine career as a rabbinic interpreter. I know that most of the families in our small village have only meagre financial resources, but I might be able to make arrangements with a wealthy family in Jerusalem to board your son, were he to study there. Please give this some thought before our scheduled parent-teacher interview prior to Sabbath this week.

Yours hopefully,
Jacob Eleazer

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Hadad:

In addition to the usual report card which you will see attached to this note, I write to follow up with you on the concerns I raised with you last term about the future prospects of your son, Jethro. The boy is eager to please and almost too polite. But as you will see from his poor marks he really is not the brightest oil lamp on the shelf. Nonetheless I think he could still mature to become a useful citizen here in Nazareth if you could steer him towards a trade, something where he could work with his hands, woodworking perhaps. I know that the ben David family will be expanding their woodworking shop, what with the impending marriage of their son Joseph. Perhaps your boy could become an apprentice there.

Yours with regret,
Jacob Eleazer

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Jehoram:

I am very happy to enclose the report card for this final term for your daughter, Mary. Her marks are quite satisfactory. That is how she has been through all her years here at Nazareth Elementary – quite satisfactory. She is a sweet person and all of us enjoy having her in our school. In fact, Mary is perfectly average in every respect. To all intents and purposes her path in life has looked to be quite the usual path we would have expected: childhood betrothal to Joseph ben David, helping in the family's garden, faithful attendance at the synagogue on Sabbath,. It would have seemed to all of us that her future would unfold in the usual way – completion of her marriage to Joseph, having children and raising them well, and an old age spent weaving at the loom.

Except that something seems to be going on. In the last several months her teachers and I have noticed in Mary something not very ordinary at all. She appears to have been daydreaming during lessons, with a faraway look in her eye. Last week as we discussed in class our hopes as People of the Covenant for the coming Messiah, the promised one from God, Mary seemed particularly intense. She spoke passionately about God's intention to interrupt and change our world through the birth of the Anointed One, the Messiah. And she is beginning to wear her tunic a little loosely! Something is going on here. Perhaps as her parents you ought to move ahead the date of her marriage to Joseph.

When I took her aside privately and asked her about this change that has come over her, she spoke about a "visitation" by a messenger. Then she said, cryptically, that – just as the messenger had promised – the grace of God had "overshadowed" her. When I realized what she might have been saying I was stunned. I feel I must share with you as her parents that she believes she is to be the vehicle for God's Messiah.

My first reaction to this astonishing claim was that the onset of womanhood has unhinged the child. I blurted out my disbelief. How, I exclaimed, how could God's favour rests upon such an ordinary girl? How could such an astonishing destiny be granted to such an unprepossessing person, when there are so many others with higher qualifications? Young women of breeding, from influential families, maidens with both virtue and intelligence, perhaps the daughter of the chief Rabbi. I caught myself short, realizing I was probably hurting her feelings, but no. She just smiled, and said "It is not a matter of what I deserve. It is a matter of being chosen. It is a matter of grace. All I must do is accept God's favour."

"But you are just an ordinary peasant girl," I said. "This is not possible."

"With God," she replied, "nothing is impossible."

Well, Mr. and Mrs. Jehoram, I am stumped. At moments I am fearful for Mary; at other times I feel great admiration for her. I can only trust that God will remove my confusion, and ours. If the favour of the Holy One indeed is to rest among us through your daughter, then we serve a God who is wondrous beyond words.

Yours in hope,
Jacob Eleazer

Sermon for December 4, 2011

Speak Comfort
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: Isaiah 40:1-11

In our era, just as much as in any previous historical epoch, anyone who undertakes the project of following the Way of Jesus is challenged to live faithfully in the moment. The God whom Jesus knew as "Abba" is Lord not just of the past and of the future but of the present. Jesus shows us how to be open to the Spirit of God at work in our present. But it is hard for us to recognize where God is at work among us, because we human beings so easily allow our attention to be diverted from the present. The past casts its shadows over us. Ahead of us we see multiple branching paths that disappear into the fog of the future. We feel guilt about our past and anxiety about our future and thus we so easily miss what God is doing in the now.

It is sometimes said that our civilization is too forgetful, that we do not pay enough attention to our history. But surely our more pressing mistake is our exaggerated fascination with the future. We constantly focus on what's coming, whether for good or for ill. And those two possibilities – a very dangerous future or a very benevolent one – are the two extreme alternatives that the culture presents to us these days. There are two extreme views about what kind of future which awaits us as a species, as a civilization, as a nation, as individuals. Two trails ahead, one leading to despair and the other leading to sunny optimism.

On the path of despair we hear voices that cry out fearfully, such as that of the ecological journalist Clive Hamilton: Over the last five years, almost every advance in climate science has painted a more disturbing picture of the future. The reluctant conclusion of the most eminent climate scientists is that the world is now on a path to a very unpleasant future and it is too late to stop it. Behind the façade of scientific detachment, the climate scientists themselves now evince a mood of barely suppressed panic. No one is willing to say publicly what the climate science is telling us: that we can no longer prevent global warming that will this century bring about a radically transformed world that is much more hostile to the survival and flourishing of life. [Hamilton, Clive, Requiem for a species; why we resist the truth about climate change (Earthscan, 2010). page x ]

On the trail of optimism we hear happy voices promising us a glorious future, such as that of nuclear physicist Michio Kaku, Kaku believes that contemporary science understands the fundamental laws of nature in ways our ancestors never did. As a result: by 2100, like the gods of mythology, we will be able to manipulate objects with the power of our minds. Computers, silently reading our thoughts, will be able to carry out our wishes... With the power of biotechnology, we will create perfect bodies and extended lifespans. ... With the power of nanotechnology, we will be able to take an object and turn it into something else, to create something seemingly out of almost nothing. ... With our engines, we will be able to harness the limitless energy of the stars. We will also be on the threshold of sending star ships to explore stars nearby... Although this godlike power seems unimaginably advanced, the seeds of all these technologies are being planted even as we speak. It is modern science... that would give us this power. [Kaku, Michio, Physics of The Future; How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100.]

So those are two very extreme forecasts of where our highly technologized civilization is heading. But the present moment is not so clear cut. We live day by day in a permanent confusion of competing opinions, conflicting social policies, mixed trends, and (at the individual level) the daily struggle of "just getting by". Life is both hard and surprisingly rewarding. In such a mixed and conflicted world, how do we discern God's Spirit at work in our midst so that we may respond faithfully to it?

Well, let us attend to the people of God in an earlier age who were in a similar circumstance. The Hebrew people of the Covenant, in exile in Babylon in the mid-500s BCE, were the original recipients of the words in today's reading. Their life was in many ways similar to ours. They felt intense guilt shadowing their present life. They accepted the judgment of the earlier prophets – Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and First Isaiah – who blamed their collapse as a nation upon their failure as a people to follow faithfully the ways of God. I say that their past shadowed them because they felt half-dead. Sure, they were adequately fed and clothed and sheltered – they were not slaves in Babylon – but they were not free. And that captivity was for them a living death. To the Hebrew mind exile from the homeland that God had given them was equivalent to being lost in the shadows of death.

Again, as they looked forward at the geopolitical trends of the age, and saw the growing power of the Persian Empire beginning to assail the gates of the Babylonians, the exiles were deeply anxious. What would be their fate as the Mediterranean world descended into the chaos of a clash of empires?

Consequently a subtle kind of hopelessness had fallen upon them. They were paralyzed by uncertainty and stuck in gloom. Perhaps their most pressing worry was the defection of many of their young people to the ways of Babylon, and to the gods of Babylon, who appeared to have been so much more successful than Yahweh, the God of the Covenant.

So, to these guilty, anxious people (so much like us), God sent a message through the prophet whom scholars label Second Isaiah, from whose utterances today's reading comes. "40:1 Comfort, O comfort my people". That was how Second Isaiah understood his commission from the Holy One – to bring comfort to his people in their exile.

Let us hear his words comforting us as well. But as we do, let us be careful. Comfort is not complacency, at least not the kind of comfort that a message from God brings. Second Isaiah's message is not a bland bromide that simply reassures the people about their security. It's not like the title of that popular book from the '60s, I'm Okay You're Okay. Second Isaiah begins with a blunt acknowledgment that the people of Israel had done wrong, had violated their covenant with God. Israel had indeed misbehaved in ways that deserved a penalty, a term of punishment. But God moves immediately past the infidelity of her people towards her, the worship of other gods which had damaged her relationship to her chosen people. She declares, through Second Isaiah, that the people's "iniquity is pardoned". On God's behalf, Second Isaiah shifts the conversation away from any focus upon rampant sinfulness. This prophet "puts aside blaming and accusing speech, bursting out, instead, into lyric poetry of comfort, hope, and joy." [Kathleen M. O'Connor, Feasting on the Word; Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year B, Volume 1, 27]

Instead of judgment, Second Isaiah proclaims grace. And nowhere does he proclaimed the grace of God more vividly than in the strong image that ends our reading:

11 [God] will feed His flock like a shepherd;
He will gather the lambs with His arm,
And carry them in His bosom.
Israel is imagined here not as a wicked horde of evildoers deserving of destruction, but rather as a flock of sheep, lost and confused, needing a shepherd, a guide, a pathfinder to take them into green pastures.

This proclamation of grace has indeed brought comfort to people all through the ages who have been trying, as we are trying, to be faithful in their present. To follow the way of God in the here and now by imitating the example of Jesus. We live daily with confusion, with feeling lost, with the struggle between guilt and hope. We are pulled this way and that between voices of despair and voices of naïve optimism. Let us hear only one voice, the voice of the one who comes in grace not judgement, the one who has always been called "the Good Shepherd", the one who invites us to come to the green pasture of this feast, and be fed at his table, to our spirit's nourishment – and comfort.

November 2011

November 27, 2011 | November 20, 2011 | November 13, 2011 | November 6, 2011

Sermon for November 27, 2011

Prepare the Way
Rev. Shannon Mang
Read: Mark 1:1-8

Have you ever seen John the Baptist in a nativity scene? He'd be the hairy, unkempt, wild-looking guy wearing camel's hair. There'd be a piece of locust caught between his teeth and sticky honey in his beard. No? Mark's John the Baptist seems all out of sync with Christmas. Luke starts out with the story of John the Baptist—but the story is about John's miraculous birth and it is set in parallel to Jesus' miraculous birth. The beginnings of the gospels of Matthew and Luke are all about the birth of Jesus: Mary, Joseph, angels, manger, shepherds, wise men; a child is born unto us. Glory to God in the highest! That is what Christmas is all about. Jesus is the reason for the season!! What does John the Baptist have do with Christmas?

For the writer of the earliest gospel of Mark, John the Baptist is about beginnings. The story of Jesus' begins with a prophet preaching and baptizing in the wilderness of Judea. John the Baptist has always called followers of the Way of Jesus to 'stop'- turn around and prepare for Jesus' coming. Its called Advent. Advent means "coming." Two thousand years ago, in a place called Bethlehem, lying in a manger, God came to us in the weakness of a baby. God entered our world, put on our sandals, lived, breathed, and walked among us. He taught, loved, died on a cross, and rose again. God came to us; and we get ready for it every year - in Advent.

John the Baptist is all about "the one coming". He is the forerunner, the one who comes before the Messiah to prepare the way. The writer of Mark asks us, "Do you want to understand the good news? Do you want to know what God is doing? It starts right here with John the Baptist." Mark introduces John the Baptist and the coming of Jesus Christ with a statement about beginnings. This is "the beginning of the gospel (good news) about Jesus Christ, the Son of God."

Now it is the beginning, it is the new creation all over again. This is the beginning of good news, about a whole new creation God is creating for all. It is a new creation that births a Kingdom and new lives. God is creating salvation. John the Baptist says, "After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie … he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."

The one coming after John is the fulfillment of the prophetic message of hope. He is God's salvation enacted. He will literally change us from the inside out! John proclaims that Jesus is coming to create a new beginning in human hearts and it will usher in a kingdom of God in this world. So here stands John the Baptist, a voice of one calling in the desert, "Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him."- John is calling out to all who will hear, "The Lord is coming. Let's get ready. The Lord is on His way. Everything that would be life for us, healing for us, restoration for us, redemption and forgiveness for us, He is creating. He is bringing. He is coming. Let's get ready to receive the gift of His coming." In order to receive the coming of Christ, John preaches in the wilderness and the people are attracted to his message- they go out to hear him - in the wilderness. That is the locale where John is baptizing. That is arena in which he carries out his prophetic ministry. Wilderness is much more than a geographical reality in the Scriptures. Wilderness is the place where the people of God get back in touch with God.

The children of God go into the wilderness so they may orient their lives once more around God's presence, revelation and law. In the wilderness prisoners are set free and people get to know their God—and they become God's people. John the Baptist called the people of his day to get ready for the coming Christ by making the trek out into the desert. And we begin the season of Advent once again hearing the cry of John the Baptist calling us out into the wilderness. And… like all the generations before us, we are deeply in need of John's message. A colleague says that we suffer from 3 D's:

So John the Baptist invites us into the wilderness. If we are going to receive Christ's coming, we must be made ready by stepping away from distractions and stepping out of the pace and pattern of pre-Christmas craziness as it's celebrated by our culture. It is time to go out into the stripped-down simplicity of the desert where we learn again that we live not on bread but on the word of the Lord; not on stuff, but on His presence.

The wilderness prepares us to be an alien people, different from the world. We would become counter-cultural enigmas, choosing the calm of His presence over scurry and noise, valuing relationships over money, position or power, and taking the attitude of a servant over the need to be in control. Christ is coming. John calls us into the wilderness to step away from distractions, and turn our focus on receiving Him.

John the Baptist calls us into the wilderness to hear a message. It is a message particularly suited to the wilderness. It is a message of repentance. And repentance lies at the heart of what it means to receive the coming Christ, who has come, and is coming, and will come again. Repentance is how we move from hopelessness to hope. There can be no good news about Jesus Christ for us apart from the message of repentance. Repentance means we do an "about-face." We turn away and turn toward. We make a 180-degree change in direction. When John the Baptist calls us to repentance, what are we turning away from and turning toward? We "turn from" everything that hinders and entangles, and "turn toward" the Jesus who is coming to us. This is repentance. Sin is the clutter that keeps us from following in the Way of Jesus.

Advent is the time, and repentance is the way we go about clutter-busting. It is impossible to be ready to fully receive the gift of Christ if we remain attached to our clutter… if we remain entangled in the sticky web of sin. So, John calls us to the wilderness to get away from the distractions and focus on clearing away the clutter and the roadblocks that keep us from following the Way of Jesus. John the Baptist calls us to repentance. Repentance prepares us to receive. Without preparation… without time in the wilderness to turn around and notice the roadblocks and clutter… without the time to leave the hustle and bustle and distractions of the season behind and refocus - we could well go through this holiday season and miss His coming. We will enjoy the lights and the greenery, we'll have a lot of fun with gifts, but we'll miss Christ, who's coming to us.

John invites us out into the wilderness to join him, to join Jesus, in the way of the cross, where we discover that we really save our lives when we lose them; where we learn that we gain purpose, meaning, and significance in our lives when we stop trying to create our own way- we turn around - repent, and follow the way of Christ.

Jesus is coming. He came 2,000 years ago as a babe in a manger. Jesus is constantly coming to us. He will come again to bring all things to fulfillment. Are we ready? John the Baptist calls us out into the wilderness to get away from all the clamor and distraction, so we might focus on Christ.

Jesus is coming. Are we ready?

Sermon for November 20, 2011

Join. Follow. Learn
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: Matthew 25:31-40

Our focus in worship today is a shift in thinking. It's a shift in the way we understand what a church basically is. The shift is happening in all the mainline denominations in North America. It's happening in our United Church of Canada.

Over the centuries the Christian Church has always faced the danger of becoming a kind of club for the initiated. During the 20th century many mainline Protestant congregations came to think of themselves that way. But we have now entered an era when it is really important for churches to resist that temptation to turn inward. We should rediscover our sense of church as a movement of the Spirit - a movement of the Spirit outwards to bring the good news of God's love and grace to people in our society who are hungry for that message.

This outward movement of the Spirit within the congregation amounts to a rediscovery of the mission of the Church. This is what the Church was at its very earliest stage: it was "mission-focussed". It was focussed on the task Jesus had sent it out to do. The very word "mission" comes from the Latin word for the act of sending someone out.

A number of congregations in denominations across North America and Europe are recovering their focus on the mission of the Jesus movement. Our United Church of Canada is trying to promote this development. The General Council has started a project called The Edge. The Edge is a network of people and churches who have a common intention to rediscover their mission focus. Today in worship we'll take a couple of peeks at congregations that are becoming "mission-focussed". They are not focussed on issues of decline or of growth (leaving that in God's hands); they attend instead to what they are called to be doing in and with the communities around them.

For a few minutes I will share one important part of making the shift towards being a mission-focussed church.

I know this from my own experience. How did I come to be part of the church and how did the church come to be part of me? Well, as I grew up in the second half of the 20th century I was shaped by mainline Protestant church life. I absorbed the norms and attitudes and style of spirituality that we have now come to call the "United Church ethos". The expectation about how you became part of the church went this way.

Learn the beliefs; follow the behaviours; join the community. That was the accepted sequence - only it wasn't how things actually went. The Christian practices, for instance, the behaviours I was supposed to follow - I was learning those all along, as I grew up in the church and was socialized into its culture. Or again, the doctrines I was required to endorse did not have much meaning for me until much later in my life, long after I "joined the church" - and some of those doctrines still don't work for me.

So there has been a recent realization that the actual sequence is the reverse. Here is how we in fact become followers of the Way of Jesus. First, we join; we connect to the community. Second, we follow; we embrace the Way of Jesus and gradually absorb the attitudes of a grace-filled life. Third, we learn; we learn more and more deeply the story of God, through a lifelong journey towards understanding, which we must undertake in the company of others in the community of faith. So it's not learn, follow, then join. Rather the reverse:

Join, Follow and Learn

And it's a mistake to ask at which of these steps you have achieved faith. Faith is growing with you, all along, because faith is a matter of basic trust, and you need that trust everywhere in the process.

Let me show you those three steps at work in our reading from Matthew's Gospel. Matthew portrays Jesus telling a parable that points to the heart of what it is to follow Jesus' Way. So first, notice that the parable imagines a great judgment being laid upon "the nations" or "the peoples". You might even say that whole societies are being judged - or communities. That is the basic framework assumed here: people belong to communities. Joining comes first.

And the question is: how do those communities behave? Do they respond to the needs of people within their circle and outside of it? "I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me". If they respond this way, they are blessed. And this astounds them. They did not understand that their helping the needy had any larger significance. They were simply responding intuitively and impulsively to the needs of others. They were simply imitating others in their community who showed charity to the poor and advocated justice for the dispossessed. Joining the Christian community, then, entails embracing the attitudes and actions of the Way. Following is the second step.

Finally they learned the deeper meaning of what they had done - that their service to others had, mysteriously, amounted to service to Jesus himself. So here finally they learn. They see revealed to them the silent work of God in their midst. They learn a new chapter in the story of God with them. Learning is the last step.

The work of God's Spirit is wonderful. It pursues a method that is wise and deep. It leads us in this surprising way, from joining through following through learning, to move to become more and more a mission-focussed community of the Way of Jesus.

Thanksgiving and praise to God.

Sermon for November 13, 2011

Sustained by the light
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11

clay sculpture

On the coffee table in the office corridor, and at the centre of many of staff meetings, you will see this small piece of clay sculpture. It's called the "Circle of Friends". Notice two aspects. The figures gather around a flame, so the light emanates from within the circle as well as falling upon it. Secondly, figures have their arms about each other's shoulders, supporting one another. This is a visual form of the message that I bring to you in this communion meditation.

It is a message which comes from a letter that Paul the Apostle wrote approximately 1960 years ago. Scholars are pretty sure that 1 Thessalonians is a genuine letter of Paul's, indeed likely his first that we know about, which makes it the oldest writing in the New Testament. In it Paul comforts and encourages a congregation that he had started in the city of Thessalonica, in what is today Greece. (Perhaps in these days of anxiety about their debt the Greeks should be reading these words of encouragement themselves.)

The Thessalonians needed comfort because they were anxious. Along with Paul they believed that Jesus would return as the climax of what John Dominic Crossan likes to call "God's Great Cleanup of the World". But they also believed it would come soon, within their lifetime. And yet it had not arrived. Why not? What was God waiting for?

In the centuries since then, the question why the return of Christ is delayed has faded from Christian consciousness. In fact, the question has shifted for us. We no longer ask when it's coming; we wonder whether it's coming. That is, why do we still live in a world that is untransformed? Why does injustice rule instead of God's Reign? Why does hatred shout in the streets instead of neighbourly care? Why does our fear of death - not death itself but our anxiety about it - drive us from one contemporary idol to another?

For the Thessalonians those kinds of anxieties took the form of a question of when Christ would return. In his letter Paul addresses their "when" question by dismissing it. There is no timetable. You Thessalonians don't have to waste time thinking about this, he writes, because you "know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night." That is, God's timing is beyond our knowing.

What he says, however, also addresses our more skeptical expression of these underlying anxieties. We are not sure about the credibility of the Reign of God, because things seem not to be turning out the way the Christian proclamation declares they will. And so we wring our hands. Is the world economy heading for a prolonged period of distress? Indeed can the planet sustain our civilization for much longer? Will religiously-inspired warfare plague the coming century? And more personal anxieties: Will our children and grandchildren turn out to be good people? And for us as individuals, there is a last question to be asked: is death our finale?

Paul's advice to the Thessalonians, although directed at their particular anxiety, speaks to all these anxieties of ours as well. In following the Way of Jesus, he says, "5 you are all children of the light and children of the day". He goes on: "8... Since we belong to the day let us... put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation." Those are military metaphors but notice that they are entirely defensive. Let faith be our defense against insecurity. Let love be our defense against the cruelties of the world. Let hope for salvation, that is hope for healing, be our defense against the brokenness of life. Faith, love, and hope are the attitudes we should nurture because they ward off anxiety and despair.

And so Paul encourages encouragement. He encourages the Thessalonians to encourage each other, "building up each other" in faith and love and hope. We too are encouraged by Paul to encourage each other. With those of us who feel overshadowed by life's anxieties let us "share our light", by inviting them to stand with us, as it were, around the candle flame which is the presence of Christ in us and in our community. For those who are anxious about the economic future, let us remind them that both within the church and beyond it, in those agencies in our society which people of faith have created over the years, there is a profound resource for seeing us through tough times. To any of us in our congregation who may be wondering where we are going, let us remind ourselves that this is God's work to which we are called. God's Spirit is at work below the surface of our confusion and hesitation. And to any who quail before the shadow of death, let us put our arms around their shoulders like the figures in the sculpture, as a silent witness to them that the bonds of love that Christ creates cannot be broken even by death itself. For we follow the Risen One.

Come and taste that encouragement today. Come and share at Christ's table. Come and be sustained by the light of life.

May it be so.

Sermon for November 6, 2011

Long-distance love
Rev. Dr. Rod Sykes
Read: Hebrews 11

"One generation plants the tree, another generation sits in the shade." This is an old English proverb, or perhaps an even more ancient Chinese saying. Let us think about the wisdom in this aphorism.

Another version: "The wise man plants trees under whose branches he does not expect to sit". (This form of the saying is variously attributed to the English mathematician and philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, or to a pundit named Nelson Henderson.) Indeed, the prudent woman or the wise man will sacrifice and invest for the long-range benefit of family. A case in point: Alanson Harris was a farmer and mill owner who founded his implement business in 1857 at Beamsville, Ontario. Harris produced such successful mowers, reapers, and binders that the company became preeminent in the marketplace by the end of the 1800s. Harris then made a daring and astute decision: he merged with his main competitor, the Massey company, to form the Massey-Harris Co. This brought great wealth to the Harris family, enough to give Alanson Harris's grandson, Lawren Harris, enough independence to pursue a career as one of Canada's great landscape painters. Alanson Harris was a wise man indeed, whose thrift and ingenuity paid off in blessing for later generations of his family - trees under whose branches he indeed did not expect to sit. Prudence takes the long-range view.

Farsightedness is required also when we act not just prudently but morally - that is, when we seek the welfare not just of our immediate family but of people within a larger scope, A case in point: yesterday's Globe and Mail reported the story of Sam Terry, a 15-year-old from Barnwell, Alta., just outside of Taber. Sam Terry, while still in elementary school, created a fund-raising drive that netted enough proceeds to build an entire school for Sherpa children in Nepal plus equipment for a second school. Like other teenage philanthropists such as Craig Kielburger, who co-founded the youth-driven global initiative Free the Children, Ms Terry recognizes how greatly blessed we are in the North Atlantic societies. Sam's message is straightforward: "My theory is that life is like a lottery and we got the winning ticket, but you could share your prize with everyone." So she acts to bring necessary aid to a community far away. She will likely never meet the Nepali children who will grow up to sit in the shade of her philanthropy. Moral behaviour like that takes the long-range view.

That larger perspective is part of not only prudence and morality, but also of that noblest of actions - when one human being gives his or her life so that others may live. That is self-giving love. Life that gives itself away for the life of others: this is the widened spirit that motivated deeds of courage and hope on the part of the men and women we remember today. Men and women who died during the great wars of the last century, and in peacekeeping projects, and in attempts at peacemaking such as Canada's presence in Afghanistan, gave the ultimate gift - love for others one can never know.

A case in point: during the Second World War, Robert Sykes of Winnipeg, Manitoba, volunteered for service in the Royal Canadian Air Force. He became a Pilot Officer in an Allied medium bomber, a B-25 Mitchell. As his plane's munitions wrought destruction across the German homeland, he thought frequently of the huge job of reconstruction after the war that would be needed for the whole of Europe. In his last letter home, to the family it turned out he would never see again, he wrote of his intention to remain overseas to work in the reconstruction. He knew that would be a decades-long task. But self-giving love takes the long-range view.

So this capacity to look beyond one's immediate horizon is an essential aspect of the virtue of prudence. It is a necessary constituent of the moral point of view, which always seeks to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" with no limitation to just those you know and love. And those who sacrifice themselves for the sake of others likewise recognize that the life of others is just as significant as their own life, and worth saving, even at the cost of their own life.

And now let us recognize that this long-range love is part of faith. A case in point is again my uncle Bob. His final words reveal that his motivation was more than moral, and more that noble: it was faithful. He believed it was his duty as a Christian to stay behind to help with the rebuilding. As a follower of Jesus, caught up in a terrible war, the uncle I never knew gave his life as the planting of a tree under whose shade he would not sit.

That is the kind of faith spoken of in the text from the Letter to the Hebrews which we read today. It begins "11:1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." The writer in those words seeks to interpret the underlying force and inner meaning of the actions of the heroes of faith that he goes on to enumerate. What was it, for instance, that led Abraham to say yes to God's call to travel to an unknown place that would become his home? It was faith, faith in the sense of a fundamental trust in God, and trust in the leading that God would give him. I like Eugene Peterson's paraphrase of the verse: "1-2 The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living." But in addition to that trust, notice, Abraham began to look at his future from a wider perspective - as the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews puts it, "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen". He began to understand his life from God's point of view. He began to think in a new way which recognized that Abraham's narrow set of personal concerns were only part of a much larger picture, the purposes of God. God intended to take the impossible dream of Abraham and Sarah to have children in their old age and from that grow a future people who would become bonded to God in Covenant.

This faith which the Letter to the Hebrews celebrates involves at its heart a special act of imagination. It involves a kind of love, what we might call long-distance love, and which our imagination and our feelings - our heart - must reach beyond our immediate concerns, reach across the distance of time and space, reach for the perspective of God's great purposes - and act for the blessing of others whom we will never know.

Faith in God asks us to see as God sees. In the case of my uncle Bob, faith in God took the form of a subtle prompting, probably intuitive and only half conscious, to recognize that people who had been his enemies needed now to become, as it were, his neighbours, his neighbours in need, whom he had a duty to help. For that is how God sees them. The Holy One sees every human being on every side of every issue and every conflict from one perspective - God sees us all through the eyes of divine compassion and love.

That kind of faith is still required of us today. As we are called to follow the Way of Jesus we are challenged to think big, like Alinson Harris. We are challenged to want to help, like Sam Terry. But crucially, we are dared by the Spirit to look at our circumstance and that of the world around us from the perspective of God. We are called to make our decisions by moving outwards from our proximate needs towards God's great intention to bless all of creation with compassion. We are commanded to live with long-distance love.

May it be so.