Towards Sunday, December 8, 2013

Scripture:  Isaiah 11:1-10 and Matthew 3:1-12
Sermon:     How big a tree is God growing out of that stump?

(with thanks to Rev's David and John Shearman for their background analysis of the texts)



In ancient Israel, the king was anointed as Yahweh's representative, responsible in his time for upholding the social order and serving the well-being of God's creation.  Two particular ways in which any king proved his divine appointment was by taking care of the poor and weak (always a priority at the heart of God's will for the world) and by building temples (where all people can be reconciled with God and learn God's way).

Q: What might change today if we tested the rightness of our leaders by examining how, in and through all their work and decisions, they do three main things:

a) serve the well-being of God's creation,

b) take care of the poor and weak, and

c) provide ways and places for all people to be reconciled with God and learn God's ways?




In ancient Israel, even when the last king of the royal line is led off to captivity and the kingdom comes to an and, there remains the hope that from the "burned-out stump" of the royal house (not only cut off, but burned out of the ground!!) God will yet raise up an ideal king to recreate the kingdom and the world as God desires it to be.



Centuries later, when Jesus is raised from the dead, the early church attaches this hope to him.  There is some debate, though, about whether Jesus ever claimed this vision for himself, or whether it is something the early church pinned to him.

 

Did Jesus have a different view of the ancient hope?

The preaching of Jesus's cousin, John the Baptist is interesting in this regard.  On one hand, he clearly sees Jesus as messiah.  But on the other hand, when he talks about trees being cut down to the root so they can grow up again anew, he refers not just to the royal line and household, but to all the people of the kingdom.  Is it more than just a new king being raised?  Is it a new kind of people?  New kind of community?  Is Jesus a different kind of messiah -- not a king, but a community-builder?

It's tempting to think this might mean the Christian church is now the divinely appointed community ... that we as followers of Jesus are now raised up by God to be God's representative for the well-being of Earth.  But can we be that self-centred and self-important any longer, in this age of inter-faith dialogue, respect and co-operation?

Q: Can it be that God's desire for the well-being of Earth, the care of the poor and the weak, and the building of temples is not just the work of anointed or elected leaders, nor just the work of the Church, but the work of all humanity -- or at least the work of a universal community of spirit?  If so, what is our role and calling as a church?

 

By the way, this last image is also, like the two before, a depiction of the Sermon on the Mount.

 

And...one last thing that may in fact turn out to be the focus of our worship this Sunday  ... when John the Baptist says the axe is already laid to the root of all trees not in keeping with God's will, there is an immediate shiver of judgement that we are tempted to feel.  But remember this is spoken in the context of a tradition that believes in God's power to bring new life out of cut off stumps, and in a God who prunes back that new, more abundant life may come.

 

 

Q's:  If we believe any of the above, what signs of "trimming back" and "getting back to the roots" do we see in the world, that we can celebrate and encourage?  What kinds of overgrowth and false growth are being disposed of?  Is there a return to the root purpose of life in our time?  And how do we as a church share in this time of pruning our overgrowth, and encouraging new life from the real roots of our life as a community of faith?

From Sunday, December 1, 2013

Scripture:  Isaiah 2:1-5;  Romans 13:11-14;  Matthew 24:36-44
Sermon:     We interrupt our regular programming ...

This past week Japhia’s mom, Pearl, was in the hospital for 4 days with pneumonia.  She was very weak by the time she got there Monday, and Tuesday evening I went with Tiffany – Japhia’s daughter, to visit her.  

 

The day had been confusing to Pearl, and we found her quite agitated.  That afternoon she had been moved from Emergency through a maze of hallways to the Express Unit where she was to stay until a bed might open up.  She didn’t like being in the hospital, she was upset she was sick, she couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t take her back to her first room, and the sleeve of her hospital gown was wet with spilled water and she really wanted a new gown.  She was waiting for someone – anyone, to come help her, and nothing was going right.  

 

Tiffany, who works as a PSW, took immediate charge.  With her quiet, calm manner in the midst of this crisis, she calmed Pearl down.  She helped her change into a new gown, got her settled comfortably into bed, expertly arranged her pillow, washed her face, offered to brush her hair, and with a few simple words and touches just made her feel good.  Then as we three visited quietly for a while, at one point Pearl said, “You know all those stories of Jesus, how he went around healing people – in all the villages – that must have been something, eh?  How he just healed them all.”

 

There was a quiet calmness in how she said it.  So I don’t know if it was said with a kind of longing as a prayer maybe for Jesus to heal her.  Or if she felt she was being healed, even as she lay there.  And was it said on purpose for Tiffany’s benefit, as a word of witness to remind Tiffany of the faith that Pearl hopes she will have?  Or did the memory of those stories about Jesus rise up in Pearl’s heart because somehow Tiffany’s response to her – Tiffany’s words and manner and touches and actions, felt just like Jesus’ touch and God’s grace in her life? 

 

And maybe that’s how it happens – how the kingdom of God is revealed in our time, and how a day of frustration, fear and upset becomes a day of the Lord.  In Matthew 24 Jesus says it may come like a flood from out of nowhere, catching up all the world in its gracious flow of cleansing and transformation, taking those who are ready towards a new way of being, with those who are unprepared for a new way, left behind.  But it might also be as quiet, as surprising, and as personal as a thief in the night, breaking open what seemed to be a horribly locked-up, signed-sealed-and-delivered irredeemable situation, to lead those who are ready, out of the dark and into the light. 

 

When we read Matthew 24, often we think all this talk about a flood of new life sweeping over the earth, and locked-up-tight dark houses being broken open so things can come into the light, must be a reference to the end of the world.  And it may prove to be. 

 

But might this also be a way of understanding what happens here and now … time and time again … within the history of the world – all the repeated, unexpected, surprising times when redemption and healing come to this world, to our lives, and to the lives of others we know. 

 

Isaiah believed in it – in the possibility of the worst days we know becoming a day of the Lord … a day of completely unexpected redemption and healing and grace. 

 

On one hand, Isaiah knows what the world is like.  He is a counsellor to the kings of Judah during the final corrupted days of the kingdom.  And in the book that bears his name, he starts right in, in chapter 1 with a long and full recitation of the woes of the day.  The people, he says, have turned their back to God and God’s way for the world.  Their rulers are foolish, and the rules they make up are self-serving and corrupt.  The country is desolate, and even though we appear religious it is not really Yahweh we serve.  The rich protect their own interests; the poor are forgotten and invisible to them.  Judges are bribed and give unjust verdicts against the innocent and powerless.  The government is corrupt, the society is sick, and it can only come very soon to a very bad end.  

 

The tale of woe begins in chapter 1 and continues to the end of chapter 3 – a long lament that is interrupted only for 4 or 5 brief verses – the verses Barb read for us this morning from Isaiah 2:1-5.  These verses really are quite different from all the others around them.  They are an interruption.  It’s as though Isaiah – or maybe a later editor of the book, announces “we now interrupt this newscast and our regular programming with a special bulletin – the days shall come, we are told, when the world will be willing to be taught by God in how we should be; people the world over will learn peace, not war; we will practice justice, not injustice; we will live towards shalom and well-being for all.  And now back to our regular programs.” 

 

Where does that interruption – that vision of life being different than we expect, of our days of lament becoming a day of the Lord, come from?  

 

Isaiah says it’s a word that he saw – a very interesting way of putting it – a word that he saw.  It’s not unique to Isaiah, though.  This same vision, almost completely word for word, is found also in the book of the prophet Micah – 4:1-5. 

 

It makes scholars wonder was this maybe a hymn that the people sang, that Isaiah and Micah have both quoted?  Was it a traditional prayer?  Was it a story told long ago and remembered?  Was it the vision of some unknown prophet that lingered in the people’s memory from generation to generation, and was included by Isaiah and Micah, or by their editors, in their books? 

 

Whatever its source, it doesn’t really seem to belong where it is – smack dab in the middle of a long lament about how irredeemably corrupt the kingdom is.  It really is just stuck there and it sticks out like a sore thumb … or, more to the point, it flickers like a glimmer of hope and real humanity and healing in an otherwise very dark time. 

 

And isn’t that what the day of the Lord is?  Isn’t that how the kingdom of God often appears in our time?  Isn’t that what sustains us, and helps us and others keep going through whatever dark and fearful time may be ours? 

 

This past week in The Spectator, for two straight days the main story on the front page was the outrageous case of Inspector David Doel – a member of the Hamilton police force who has received a half-million dollars in salary while he’s been suspended with pay from the force, pending the investigation of criminal charges against him.  The case has been dragged out for four years on technicalities and delays, and now that it’s finally coming to court, the accused inspector abruptly resigns from the force and the case cannot be pursued.  And if that isn’t bad enough, to add insult to injury, some years ago he also won $1.7 million in a Super 7 Lottery jackpot.  Some guys have all the luck, and it doesn’t seem to be the good guys. 

 

This case has tapped into an outrage, frustration and sense of powerlessness that many people feel about many things today.  In so many ways – big and little, the world seems to be both wrong and beyond our control.  We feel it, and our neighbours feel it.  We feel it out there; sometimes we feel it in here as well.  Sometimes it seems every day is just one more step along a very dark path. 

 

But then there are the glimmers – visions, big and little, of things being different, of a different kind of story being told, of the day of the Lord coming near. 

 

In the same two editions of The Spec that featured the David Doel story, there was also a story of the capture of three suspects in the 12-year-old case of the firebombing a Hindu temple in Hamilton in the aftermath of 9/11.  One of the two days, the story was front page – right beside David Doel, and even if this not a flood of redress remaking who we are as a people, at least it was a little thief in the night breaking what seemed to be a very dark house – a long-closed cold case, and stealing us away to a place of some light. 

 

On one hand, there was the wonderful juxtaposition of justice in one case delayed and then denied, and of justice in another possibly being done even after 12 years.  But there was even more than that.  The day of the Lord is not just tit-for-tat undoing of every wrong done.  It’s also the creation of something new, some good unimagined before, out of the rubble of what was.  

 

Three things were mentioned in the story.  One is that after the fire there was a groundswell of support for the temple and that it’s been rebuilt even grander than it was before.  A second is that the fire-bombing so shocked the city, that such a hate-crime could occur here, that since the incident there has emerged a very strong and vital inter-faith network committed to peace and co-operation for good.  And a third thing – to me the most amazing of all, is the comment of Narendar Passi, a leader of the Hindu community, when informed of the arrests by the police of the three suspects in the fire-bombing of his temple.  Quoted on the front page of the paper, he says he was shocked by the news.  “We had forgiven the culprits … from our part, (he says) it was done.” 

 

Excuse me?  That isn’t what we expect to hear!  We expect some comment about finally getting closure, feeling relief that justice will be done, of now finally being able to get on with their life, or something like that.

 

But what an amazing and unexpected witness to a different kind of world we can live in – a world of renewal, of reconciliation, of new vision and work for peace, of forgiveness and freedom together from the darkness of the past. 

 

It’s like Isaiah with his remembered vision from somewhere, like Tiffany putting to good use her skills she has learned and the natural goodness of her heart, like Jesus reminding the disciples that the Day of the Lord does come … again and again: 

 

We interrupt our regular programming and the way this day seems to have been, with this special bulletin …

 

Sometimes it’s the start of a flood remaking the world in some good way, that no one really expected would come …

sometimes it’s a little breaking open of some horribly dark  house or heart or situation that we thought would never be broken open …

sometimes it’s just the simplest of gestures and words and actions that can turn someone’s day of anguish and anxiety into a day of hope and healing, of love and joy … into a day of the Lord. 

 

As people of God we live for such moments … to act them out ourselves in what we do and how we do it … and to recognize and give thanks for them in the actions of others …

Towards Dec. 1, 2013 (First of Advent)

Scripture:   Isaiah 2:1-5
                  Romans 13:11-14
                  Matthew 24:36-44

Last Sunday was Reign of Christ Sunday -- the last Sunday of the liturgical year and the end of our worship journey through the past year:

• last December we began with the birth of Jesus
• through Epiphany we looked at Jesus' life and work
• in Lent and Holy Week we suffered through his arrest, execution and burial
• through Easter we celebrated his resurrection
• at Pentecost and after we gave thanks for the gift of the Spirit and the growth of the community of faith through the world
• leading in the end to Reign of Christ Sunday when we look around at the world and rejoice that ... well ... we recognize, if we're honest, that Earth is not yet the kingdom of God, not yet fully the way God desires

So ... we begin the journey again with Advent -- to prepare ourselves and the world again for the coming of Christ to life on Earth.   Lord knows we need it ... again and again.

And as always, Advent begins with readings that are more about the second coming of Christ rather than the first.  They point us to days of judgement and transformation which many interpret as "end-of-the-world" scenarios.  So while the rest of the world is shopping, cooking, decorating and planning for a festive season, should we be party-pooping critics, preaching Doomsday and Gloomsday?

But the readings are not doom and gloom; they are visions of hope and reminders of God's promise to redeem life on Earth.  They are not about the-end-of-the-world and God's destruction of what is (as the fundamentalists would have us believe); they are about the end-by-transformation of the world's incompleteness, brokenness and darkness.

And isn't that what many people are trying to express and to create in their Christmas festivities?  That life need not be as dark and dreary as it often is?  That we can be better and do better -- be more joyful and generous and compassionate as individuals, families, communities and nations than is often the case through the rest of the year?

A questions is, can we be as effective as Walmart, de Boers, the LCBO, and Princess Cruise Line in touching and speaking to that deep longing people feel in their heart for life on Earth to be better?  Beginning with, and working out from our Advent worship, will we be re-lit for another year of witness to new and truly good life from God for Winona and all the world beyond?

From Sunday, Nov 24, 2013 (Guest preaching at St. Paul's, Dundas -- Consecration Sunday)

Scripture:  Hosea 11:1-9 and Jonah 1:1-4, 7-17
Sermon:  What a whale of a wayside chapel

It’s always such fun to preach here -- in part because I end up with the most interesting assignments from your minister.

When I was here in the spring for the Presbytery Pulpit Exchange, I was given one verse to preach from.  It was Easter season, Rev. Rick was working through the Gospel resurrection stories, and by the time I arrived in the schedule there was only one verse left he had not yet preached on – the very last verse of the Gospel of John, 21:25: 

 

"But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written

down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written."

 

He’s made up for it this time.  He told me this is your annual Consecration Sunday when you review what you have by the grace of God, and you commit yourself and consecrate a pledge to God for the coming year – what a glorious theme for worship and a sermon.  And then he also mentioned he has been leading you on a sermonic tour of the Hebrew Scriptures, and that what’s left to deal with this week is the twelve Minor Prophets.

 

I did a count.  The minor prophets are Hosea to Malachi.  That’s 12 books of the Bible … 56 pages in my Bible at home … 67 chapters … 1,050 verses in all.  I’m glad – I’m sure you are, too, that Lynn only read as much as she did.

 

Famine or feast, that’s the story.  And no matter which it is – whether only one little bit to work with, or more than we can count and manage, there is the expectation of something fitting and faithful being offered in praise of God, for the up-building of the body and life of Christ in this place, as a sign of the growing expression of holy spirit in me and in us all.

 

And that is what both Consecration Sunday and the Minor Prophets are about.

 

The minor prophets are the twelve books at the end of what we call the Old Testament.  They bear the names of twelve men revered as holy prophets.  Some of the books date from the sixth century before Christ when the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were on their last corrupted legs – about to be overthrown by the Assyrians and Babylonians, and the people taken into exile.  The rest of the books come from the time after that – the time of return from exile and of trying to rebuild what had been destroyed.  In other words, these are books of a matured faith – a faith tested and tried, a faith that has faced a deep dis-connect of people and God, a faith that has come through fire to see the true face and desire of God – a faith such as we need and desire for ourselves today in the struggles and challenges that we face.

 

These prophets were not necessarily wild men of the desert like John the Baptist in the time of Christ.  As we read through the books it seems they are more inside the system than outside.  They know how things work; they understand the inner springs of government and leadership; they speak the language of the day.  They live within the culture, and know what makes people tick.

 

But they see and speak about all this more honestly in relation to the desire of God than others of their time, and this is what makes what they say so compelling and unforgettable to people who have ears to hear something other than the party line or the cultural slogans and public chatter of the day.  In today’s terms these prophets are corporate whistle-blowers, free-thinking politicians, renegade caucus-members, investigative journalists, passionate preachers and activists, auditors-general who take seriously their job of watching the direction of government, cultural critics writing essays and books about where we are headed as a society.

 

Their message is hard, critical and uncompromising.  It cuts like a knife through the veneer of the court, the ritual of the temple, and the public discourse of the day to reveal the rot and misdirection that lie at the heart of the kingdom, and that cannot but result in its collapse.

Hosea puts it concisely in the passage read this morning.   As a people we started out well, he says.  We were God’s beloved child, brought forth from hardship into a land of plenty.  God taught us to walk and carried us along as we needed.  God healed us when we were hurt and made us strong.  God fed us and blessed us.

But the more God calls to us, the more we turn away.  The more God teaches us, the more we don’t listen.  The more God blesses us, the more we serve Baal – the god of prosperity, affluence, a strong economy, national security, home and hearth.  The more God gives us, the more we worship idols.  The more God calls us to be a holy people in the world, the more we become just like everyone else around us … and the more we are fated to suffer the same end other people come to.

And it’s not because we’re worse than others, he says.  We are not especially bad or evil.  It’s that we are exactly the same as all other peoples and nations of the world – just as misguided and corrupt, as short-sighted and self-centred, as closed and unloving, as resistant to the needs of others and of Earth – and as necessary to be brought to an end of ourselves for the sake of the good that God desires for Earth and all its creatures.  

And yet … in the words of Hosea, God then goes on to say: 

            [But] how can I give you up and hand you over?

         How can I make you come to a bitter end like just

            another corrupt kingdom and wayward child?
         My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows
           warm and tender…
        for I am God and no mortal…
        and I will not come in wrath. 

The prophet reveals a radical, fundamental tension within God.  On one hand, judgement is deserved and will come.  On the other hand, God’s choice of the people and compassion for them have no end, and beyond judgement there will be revival, renewal, return and resurrection. 

 

Which is part of the drama we see played out in the story of Jonah.   

 

The Book of Jonah is a story with a prophetic edge to it, about a character named Jonah who in some sense may be a cipher, or a symbol of the people of Israel themselves – of the people of God of any time and place.

 

In the story Jonah – a servant of God, one of the covenant people, is called by God to do something hard but good for God.  He is called to go to the city of Nineveh – the capital city of the Assyrians, his people’s sworn enemy, to preach there a word of judgement that most likely will cause the Ninevites to repent of the way they are, and be saved.  

 

Jonah doesn’t want to do it.  He’s content with the status quo.  He likes the way the cards have been dealt and how the world has lined up for him – with him and his people blessed by God, and others rightly scheduled for judgement.  Beyond his bubble, he doesn’t like the bigger picture of well-being for all that God calls him to be part of, and to help happen. 

He knows he has the power through what God has given him to help save others.  But he doesn’t want to offer it.  The world he enjoys living in is not as large and generous as God’s.  

So he tries to flee the presence of God.  Still claiming God as his God, he tries not to be in God’s presence – to not listen to what God is asking of him for the good of the world.

Like the people of Israel as Hosea describes them, he runs in the other direction.  He ducks out the side door without shaking hands.  As we often describe ourselves, he gets busy.  He fills up his calendar.  He creates important business somewhere else.  He takes a cruise.  He imagines a far-off goal.  Maybe a five-year plan.  Whatever will keep him from just sitting with God, and listening to the one clear thing God is asking of him in the present moment.

And his life goes from bad to worse.  His journey becomes a disaster.  Storms and turmoil overtake him in his heart and in his world.  He becomes a burden to others around him.  Even though he’s one of the covenant people he becomes a liability rather than an asset to the world.   In the end he is tossed overboard  … but not to his death – only to the death of his resistance.

As Jonah falls into the sea “the Lord provides a large fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah is in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.”

What a sanctuary.  What a whale of a wayside chapel.  What a wild place of spiritual retreat.  What a wide-bodied, multi-ribbed, mobile house of prayer.

Three days and three nights Jonah has there to sit in the presence of God, to let his heart really hear the one thing God is asking him to give – time to listen, let go, and let God direct.

Jonah was not going to choose to slow down to sit and listen to God, so God arranges an interruption of rest and silence for prayerful open-ness and listening, as God arranges for us all – on a fairly regular basis.  

And Jonah’s course is changed.  He accepts what God wants him to do, and agrees to offer what God wants him to offer.

Not once-for-all.  Jonah is like us.   Once out on dry land again, even as he does what God wants him to do he has questions and reservations, and he has to re-learn, re-commit and re-consecrate at different steps along the way.

But in the belly of the fish his life is decisively consecrated, and he becomes the servant God calls him to be for the good of the world – hero of a story we still read today.  Is there ever any such thing as a minor prophet?  Or a minor servant of God, whenever we commit to what God asks – as we are asked to do today.

After I finish speaking we will have some time in the wonderful space just to listen.  First, a duet will be offered.  Then we’ll share a time of prayerful silence, to reflect on God’s goodness to each of us.  We’ll end that silence with the Lord’s Prayer, after which I will invite you into a second time of prayerful silence – this time to listen to what God asks you this year to commit to God.  Whether we have only one little bit to work with, or more than we can manage, God calls us all to consecrate some part – some percentage of what we have in praise of God, for the up-building of the body and life of Christ, as a sign of the growing holiness of spirit in each of us.

If you have already filled out your commitment card, the silence can be a time to give thanks that you can consecrate what you have.  If you haven’t, perhaps God will speak to your heart in the silence.  No one has to fill out a card; you are simply invited to spend this time opened to the presence of God.

Then Frederick will lead us out of the belly of the fish, to sing the hymns listed in the bulletin as you come forward – past the baptismal font to help you remember your baptism, to the table where you can place your offering and commitment cards before returning to your pew for the final blessing and the Celebration Luncheon downstairs.

So let us allow ourselves to be swallowed up, and to listen to God.

from Sunday, Nov 17 (Anniversary Sunday)

Scripture Reading:  Isaiah 65:17-25; Luke 21:5-19
Sermon:  “Can Bits and Pieces a Good Thing Make?”

We have read that “some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God.” 

Sounds like it could be us … maybe with the exception of the beautiful stones … but speaking of a wonderful heritage building, well-maintained, carefully renovated … solid and secure … with dark, warm wood … full theatre organ … windows and steeple and … well … I wonder, what part or aspect of our church building most touches you … most speaks to you in some way of God, of God’s love, or God’s power, or anything else?

There is a lot wonderful about this building … 144 years old, and still kicking … or maybe, still standing and speaking and embracing.   A deep, deep sign to our souls of the eternal and unchanging love of God in our life and the life of the world.

And yet … how many changes, how many upheavals, how many shifts have we suffered as a church and as a congregation – both now and all through our history as a community of faith and as a body of Christ?

We’re aware of our time today as a time of great change and of seismic shifts in the world that none of us are spared or given immunity from.  The culture we live in, is not the culture of a generation ago, and all of us – from the youngest to the oldest, are having to learn all kinds of new things just to keep up and fit in, let alone to lead and have anything worth saying that people will actually be able to hear.

The community is changing.  Winona is not what it was even twenty years ago.  And it’s not yet what it will be twenty, or ten, or even five years from now.  We don’t really know what it will be.

The church is changing – the building in some ways – a projector and screen in the sanctuary now, a renewed Lower Hall, entrances and outside siding, a beautifully renovated Upper Room … and the congregation is changing in even greater ways.  About half of our active membership,  including our worshipping congregation some Sundays, is made up of people and families who weren’t even here ten years ago.  Our two-year-old church directory is already out of date – because of the members who have died, but also because of the number of people who have come in over that time.

All these changes make connecting difficult.  We don’t know one another in the church in the same way we used to – a generation ago.  We’re more scattered.  Busier apart from one another.  Community and understanding … and accepting and forgiving and counting on one another, is not as easy as it used to be.  Perhaps a congregation – any congregation, never is a united, single body … but we are less so now.  Sometimes we’re bits and pieces looking to become a body.  Or maybe we are a variety of bodies under one roof.

And in our lives … in our homes and in our hearts … do we often feel the same?  Busy and distracted, rushing from thing to thing?  Disconnected?  Sometimes knocked down and broken into pieces by things that happen, changes that come, losses that are suffered?  Searching for a place of rest, a sense of wholeness, a promise of healing and reconciliation?

We’re tempted to think this is a time like no other – that maybe the world is falling apart, and we are falling apart in ways that have not been known before.  And that may be.

Or it may be just our experience of the universal human condition – that maybe we were shielded from for a short while by the affluence we knew as a society a generation ago, but that now we are growing out of … as we grow into a more universally human shape.

Think of the first members of this church – the first European settlers on the banks of The Fifty.  They were United Empire Loyalists – which sounds great until we realize it means they were families on the losing side of a war who had to flee the wrath of neighbours and former friends in the States after the Revolution against Britain, who settled in the wilderness of Niagara, and who with the help of a Methodist circuit rider, one another, the local First Nations people, and God found and fashioned a new life for themselves here.

In 1796 they were regular enough in their gathering for worship and spiritual education that they were known as The Meeting at the Fifty.  By 1820 they were established enough to build a church – a fine, wooden structure.  They were settled and secure … until in 1869 their church building burned down.  Accident?  Act of God?  Who ever knows why or how some things happen that test and try us, and make us feel that all we’ve built up is for nought?

All that was left after almost 50 years in what they had built, was bits and pieces and charred remains … which they cleared away to erect the brick structure we are still in today.  But even then, have the last 144 years been free of upset?  Have there been no times of turmoil?  Has there ever been a time free of change and conflict and a need for growth, compromise and accommodation?  The building – as stable and secure as it seems, is no insulation against any of these kinds of things, and I’m sure these walls could tell all kinds of stories.

So what is the security of Fifty United Church?  What is the assurance we have?

Not the building, but God whom we remember and whom we worship when we gather in this building.

In the days of Isaiah 65, the people wonder how they will ever rebuild what lies in ruins and rubble around them, and Isaiah tells them it is God who will help them rebuild, who will take the bits and pieces of what is there and of what they will do, and from it create a new world that none of them can even as yet imagine.

In the days of the early church, Christian believers and Jews alike are dismayed in 70 CE when Rome sweeps into Jerusalem, puts down an insurrection, and destroys the Temple in the process.  They had thought God was going to redeem all the world by appearing in the Temple and working out from there.  The fact that Rome destroys it, that it is no more, and that God lets happen shakes them greatly … until they remember Jesus saying something about the important thing not being the Temple, and they include it in the Gospel.  

God doesn’t need the Temple to come into the world and redeem it, Jesus says.  His followers just need to be open to the word and wisdom of God in their hearts and lives, and that is how God will save both them and the world around them.  Temple-blessed or Temple-less makes no difference.  God will make of the bits and pieces of their living what is needed, and it will from them – in whatever shape and circumstance they find themselves, that God will make a new world.

It’s no different today.

It’s not this building – as much as we love it, that’s our strength; it’s God – the God whom we remember and worship when we gather here.  And it’s not our physical stability and material security that makes or breaks us as a church; it’s God who is able to take the bits and pieces of our life – whatever they are, and use them to make something good, to create the new world that needs to come.

And isn’t that what others around us need to see, and are longing to know in their own lives?  Not just a building that they may or may not find their way into – but a God who they can meet here or there or wherever they are, who can make of the bits and pieces of their life, something good?

Praise be to God – God who is known and worshipped by us in this place, God who was known and worshipped here by others before us, God who will be known and worshipped by others after us as well.

Towards Sunday, November 17, 2013 (Anniversary Sunday)

Reading:   Isaiah 65:17-25 and Luke 21:5-19
Sermon:   Can bits and pieces a kingdom make?

Interesting readings for an Anniversary Sunday!  Both of them featuring the temple of God in ruins!

In the time of Isaiah 65, the people of Israel -- back home after generations of exile, are wondering what to do with the rubble and ruin they have come back to.  Isaiah  speaks words of hope to them -- telling God will create great (and new!) things of them and their mess.

In the time when the Gospel of Luke was written (after 70 CE), the Temple in Jerusalem has been destroyed by the Romans (in 70 CE).  It was a deeply traumatic event for the people of Israel and for the believers in Jesus, because both communities had counted on the Jerusalem temple being the place from where God would begin the redeeming of all the world.  With the Temple destroyed and God not stopping the Romans from doing it, their faith is shaken.  In writing this chapter of the Gospel, the early church recalls words of Jesus that offer reassurance and hope.

What shape are we in today?  As a church?  As a community of faith? 

Has any part of what we used to be, been destroyed and ruined? 

Are we confident in the power of God to create new, great things here?  To grant us the wisdom to speak and act out God's love in whatever ways make sense today?

From Sunday, Nov 10, 2013

Scripture:    Haggai 1:15 - 2:9 and Psalm 145:2-5, 8-9 and 18-21
Sermon:       Faithful Remembrance, Faithful Hope

Up until I was 12 and I left Clifton School for General Wolfe Junior High, every year there was a Remembrance Day service at the school at 11 o’clock, and immediately after the service we all went home for the rest of the day, to remember.  

The service included a reading of the names of boys who had gone to Clifton and who had grown up – barely, to go and not come home from one of the Great Wars.  There was a Scripture reading, and a reading – maybe even a recitation of In Flanders Fields.  I think the service always began with the hymn “O God, Our Help in Ages Past.”  “The Last Post” was played from a scratchy record.  There was silence.  At the end we offered a fairly restrained rendition of “O Canada.”  We all wore poppies.  

Then we had the rest of the day off to go home and spend it doing our best to remember what we were supposed to remember.  A generation-and-a-half ago, Remembrance Day was a whole day filled for everyone with a sense of the sombre – a day of shared grief, sorrow and deep reverence.  It was a deep and silent day.

Now it’s not so silent, but it remains as deep, and it may be even broader and wider than it used to be.

I understand Remembrance Day services are still held in the schools.  Talking with Tina Farraway about the triplets in preparation for our worship today, I think she said that tomorrow as part of their school’s service, “In Flanders Fields” will be shared by a number of classes – each class either singing or saying a different part of the poem.  It sounds like a good way to make it a shared experience of remembrance.

There will also be services at cenotaphs across the country, with all kinds of people still taking time – maybe, if they’re working, an early lunch – to gather, to see the parade of vets and cadets and policemen, hear the names of those who gave their lives, hear a recitation of “In Flanders Fields,” listen to the bugler, observe silence for a minute, and sing “O Canada.”

They don’t get to go home after the service, though.  Schoolchildren and most people at work don’t have the day off.  As they leave the cenotaph they find their way back into life and daily routine.  

Yet even at that, in the midst of the unstoppable chatter and commerce of our culture, there is still a good bit of attention on the hard lessons and sombre realities of the Day – maybe more every year. 

The Spectator, for instance, on Friday carried stories about Bill Reid, a veteran who every year sells poppies and sings songs of the Second World War in the Appleby GO Station, and the folks of Ainslie Woods in West Hamilton who have written a book about the young men named on the cenotaph in their neighbourhood.  

Almost daily over the past few weeks there have been stories and notices in the paper about Holocaust Remembrance events, so even those who don’t attend still know about them and what needs to be remembered … as well as stories this year about the Holodomor – a Ukrainian word meaning “death or killing by hunger,” which refers to the Russian-directed starvation of 3-4 million Ukrainian peasants in 1932-33 … and about Kristallnacht, or the “Night of the Broken Glass” – when 75 years ago, Nov 9-1o, 1938, Nazi paramilitary groups and non-Jewish civilians went on a planned and co-ordinated rampage against Jewish homes, stores, synagogues, hospitals and schools through Nazi Germany and parts of Austria. 

Ever since the Great Wars of the twentieth century – especially the Second, we have been sensitized to a number of evils in human history that we now do not hesitate to call evil – things like genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic or racial cleansing.  The practice and the effect of these things in human history are among the deeper things we remember now on Remembrance Day, and our willingness to remember has had an effect.

It causes us to lift up the genocide in Rwanda as something we should not have allowed to happen, and from which we want to learn our hard lessons once again.  It affects the way we respond to actions apparently undertaken by the Syrian government against its own citizens.  

It also causes us also to look back at the past – even our own own past, with new eyes and new sensitivities ... at the way we treated First Nations and the kinds of racial cleansing and medical experimentation that were official government policy towards them, and at the way we treated Japanese Canadians, even the families of First-World-War veterans, during the Second World War.  The government has publicly apologized in both cases, naming our sin and mistakes.

So we know now that great evils are done in human history, and we know their names.  We study their causes, their ways of infecting a society, and their ways of being acted out. 

We also know there are no such things as “good” and “evil” nations in any simple sense.  Such language is usually just propaganda shorthand for “us” and “our enemies,” because we know no nation is all good or all evil, that there is good in each, evil in all, and people in all nations need to be empowered to speak and work for good, for justice and peace, for the protection of others, and for the protection of planet Earth where we work out our shared destiny.

All of that is now part of Remembrance Day – a remembering of more hard lessons than we can sometimes manage, and a remembering of the hope that we will learn from the past to make the future different and better for all.

Faith communities have a part in this.  We especially are called to be part of this global work of remembering and hoping.

In our reading this morning we’ve heard words of Haggai – a prophet to Israel five centuries before Christ, who also lived in a time of trying to move from remembered hard lessons of the past, towards the hope of a different and better future.  

Haggai lived in a time when the people were rebuilding their kingdom after its destruction in war – which came to them because of their sinfulness, and after exile in Babylon – where they had time to reflect on why such bad things had happened to them.

Back in their land now, they need to rebuild.  Homes and farms, towns and cities, even the royal palace and the temple of God in Jerusalem are in ruins when they return.  So for twenty years -- from 539 BCE to 520, the people begin putting their world back together.

And after twenty years, Haggai is disappointed, frustrated and anxious because in all that time they have not yet begun to rebuild the temple of God.  Their homes and farms are well-restored.  They have attended to their own needs, their comfort and leisure, as well as their commerce.  But Haggai can see that none of it will go very far, last very long, or amount to more than just short-lived personal comfort because God and God’s good will are not at the heart of what they are doing.  Not even just not at the heart – God and God’s good will – what they really are -- are not even on their radar.

And how then, Haggai says, do we expect to get beyond self and the old self-centredness?  How do we expect not to fall into the same sin and blindness as undid us before?  How do we expect to prosper, for the future to be different and better than the past, if we don’t begin with what we’ve learned through our history about God, God’s real desire for the world, and ourselves in relation to it?

So get to work on the temple, he says, and God will turn the world and its resources towards a different and better future.

Now … thinking of the rebuilding our world needs after the horrors of the last century, sometimes religion can be part of the problem … when religion remains sectarian and self-centred, when people think God wears only their name tag or secret ring, and intends to bless and save them instead of, and even against other people.

But as it says in Psalm 145, “The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made.”  It’s not just us instead of them, nor is it even humanity over and above other creatures and the whole of Earth.  God’s love and compassion are directed forever to all, and with this kind of faith that we have grown into in the last generation, the faith communities of the world have a place and a role to play in the building of a future for the world that is different and better than what we remember.

And it’s happening.  

Ten or so years ago the United Church established a mission initiative called “To Heal the World,” in which they invited co-operation among people of all faith traditions – and no faith tradition, to share their understandings of the good will of God and their gifts of God’s Spirit to help heal the world together.  

Separate from this, religious teachers are moving in this direction -- like Japhia’s brother Philip Newell who in the past decade has moved from studying and teaching traditional Celtic Christianity, to creating and sharing in interfaith dialogue and activity among Christians, Jews and Muslims towards peace and the healing of our relationships with one another and with Earth. 

Pope Francis has startled some – especially in his own church, with statements that all people, regardless of their faith or un-faith, should live to resist evil and support good as they see it … and that the church’s traditional dogmatic concern to make all people Christian is an unhealthy obsession we cannot afford anymore. 

And here at home, this afternoon from 3:30 – 4:30 people in Hamilton from all faith traditions as well as people who claim no faith tradition, will sit in peace and silence at First Unitarian Church to reflect on, pray for, and commit themselves to peace for all in the Middle East.

We remember what we have learned from the hard lessons of the past, for the sake of a different/better future God helps us envision.

As Psalm 145 says, 

You, God, are near to all who call to you,

to all who call to you in truth.

You fulfil the desire of those who revere you;

you hear their cry and you save them.

You watch over all who love you,

but the wicked you will destroy.

My mouth shall speak your praise, O God.

Let every creature bless your holy name forever.

 

And as Haggai says:

 

Remember what was, work for what will be …

because we know God’s desire that the world be healed  

remember what was, work for what will be …

                because it gives God something to work with

remember what was, work for what will be …

                because this is how we find our way into the world God is creating.