Towards Sunday, November 1, 2015 (All Saints Day)

Reading: Isaiah 25:6-9 and John 11:32-46, 53
Theme:  Saints unbound

Why isn't the raising of Lazarus just a good news story?  What is there about the Pharisees that makes them want to kill Jesus for bringing Lazarus back to life? 

Or, what is there about people coming to life again, that brings out the Pharisee in us?

It's interesting this story is chosen for worship on All Saints' Day.  Maybe it suggests that saints -- the persons in our time who practice a certain wholeness of life, are really just those who are un-bound and set free from the kinds of things that hinder and tie up the rest of us.

And according to Isaiah, one place we find something to free us from the things of our time that tie us up and enslave us, is on "the holy mountain" -- wherever we go to worship God, to hear God's Word of good news, to become a community of holy spirit together with other worshippers.  At least, that's where he places his hope in his time.

But when I read the story of Jesus raising Lazarus and setting him free from his grave-clothes, and the reaction of the Pharisees to try to keep this kind of thing under wraps and stop what Jesus is doing, and I remember they are the religious leaders of their time in charge of the places where people most commonly went to worship God, it makes me wonder what our religious place and my own and others' leadership in it is like.

Here in our church do we help set people free from the things that tie us up?  Or do we try to keep things under wraps, tightly tied up, and just a little bit dead?

Sermon from Sunday, October 25, 2015

Reading:  Job 42:1-9 and Mark 10:46-52
Sermon: Disturbing the Peace

“Not now, Bartimaeus!  Can’t you see we’re trying to listen to Jesus?  Be quiet with your hollering!” 

The funeral service was in the church.  It was for a woman who had served the congregation well for most of her adult life – for about 40 years, church secretary; for almost as many years, co-ordinator of the semi-annual church sales.  One of the stories told of her was that as sale co-ordinator she would take it upon herself to inspect all the clothing donated, and take home to wash, mend and iron any articles that needed it, to make them suitable to be offered at a church sale.   

It was those kinds of stories people remembered at the funeral, until the woman’s niece came forward to offer her words of remembrance, and in addition to those kinds of memories that she also had of her aunt, she also took the risk of briefly sharing her feelings of disappointment and even anger at the way her aunt seemed to have been forgotten by the end of her life.  Her aunt lived a good long life but in the end suffered badly with Alzheimer’s Disease, and because people did not know how to relate to her, talk with her, or spend time with her, they stopped visiting.

It was a hard thing to hear.  It raised up a lot of feelings within the congregation.  It created some discomfort in the minister leading the service.  At least momentarily, it disturbed the peace of the occasion. 

I wonder, though, if it maybe opened a way to a fuller peace, if only we had the wisdom and wherewithal to walk through it, and accept its invitation. 

I wonder about that because of my own experience almost two years ago now, when I disturbed the peace of my family and of this congregation when I finally broke down, said I have a problem and I can’t go on doing things the way I’ve been doing them.  I took a leave, received some help, and then was able to come back and try to start living and doing things in new and different ways. 

It wasn’t convenient.  It was the 2^nd or 3^rd Sunday of Advent.  At home, Christmas plans were thrown into chaos.  At church the big Christmas services were coming, and different people had to step in and lead with no warning.   

“Not now, Bartimaeus.  Can’t you see we’re getting ready to celebrate the coming of Jesus.  Be quiet with your needs and your brokenness!” 

 

I’m glad nobody said that.  You were gracious and kind. 

But I wonder if you ever feel like I did before that moment.  Like that niece did for all those years.  Like there’s something wrong, but you don’t feel free to say it.  Like you really want help, but don’t know how to ask for it.  That you try to cry out for something, but you’re convinced no one wants to hear it. 

How many people in the world suffer in that way?  The poor pushed to the edge of public awareness … refugees front-page news for two weeks, then forgotten as the media move on to the next big story … families and friends of hundreds of missing and murdered First Nations women across our country whose calls for a federal inquiry into their fate our government has so far ignored … the neighbour down the street whose family’s hunger and sense of hopelessness go largely unnoticed. 

The Bible has many stories of many people whose cries for help aren’t convenient or welcome to those around them, but which God hears with utter clarity and takes action on. 

From ancient Israel -- probably in the 6th century B.C.E., there is the story of Job, who spends 35 of his story's 40 post-tragedy chapters crying out with increasing anger and vehemence for attention and justice after his life has fallen apart for no good reason.  He says what’s happened to him is wrong and inexplicable.  God has made a mistake, he charges.  Or God isn’t paying attention.  Let me see God and talk to God, he says, and I’m sure God will see my point and make things right. 

And through all these 35 chapters, Job’s friends – good religious folk that they are, tell him to shush, to stop shouting at God, to just learn to accept things the way they are. 

When God finally appears, in chapters 38-41, Job of course is humbled.  He admits he’s been more than a bit presumptuous to have challenged and yelled at God the way he did, and repents of his anger and pride.  But at the same time, God lifts Job up as an example of righteousness to his friends, and tells them if they want to be right with God too, they better ask Job to pray for them – ask Job to put in a good word on their behalf, because as religious as they were, there was something decidedly ungodly about the way they acted towards Job and the advice they gave him, and something more faithful to God about the way Job kept calling out for healing and justice. 

Then from first-century Palestine we have the story of Bartimaeus, a blind man crying out in his darkness for help, with the people around him (all wanting to see Jesus themselves) telling him to be quiet and not disturb either them or the messiah with his shouting for help.

“Not now, Bartimaeus!  Be quiet with your hollering?  Can’t you see we’re all trying to listen to Jesus?” 

Well … he doesn’t see that.  Instead, with greater insight than they have, what he knows is that Jesus is listening for him – that above all the chatter of the religious crowd, Jesus is listening for that lone cry of help from the back row and the outer fringe. 

And we shouldn’t be surprised.  Because the God Jesus lives among us, is the same God whose story with Israel begins in Exodus, where at the end of chapter 2 the story says, “in Egypt, the Israelites groaned under their slavery, and cried out.  Out of their slavery their cry for help rose up to God.  God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with their forefathers.  God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them.”   

And the rest is history – at least the history of God.  That’s how the story starts and that’s the kind of encounter that continues always to propel it along.  And that’s the God Jesus comes to live among us, which is why when Jesus hears Bartimaeus crying out for help, instead of finding some way to just carry on with what he’s doing with the crowd, Jesus says, “Call him here!”  He makes Bartimaeus the focus of his attention and his holy, healing presence.

I wonder how we do that.  How we live in the way of Jesus and that kind of God. 

Two images came to mind this week. 

One is the little bit I know about the Western Wall in Jerusalem, believed by many to be the only standing remains of the Second Temple of the people of Israel built by Herod at the time of Christ and destroyed by the Romans in the year 70 of the Common Era.  The wall is a sacred site to Jews, and thousands make pilgrimage to it every year.  It used to be called the Wailing Wall, because when they got there Jews would wail in lament for the ancient destruction of the Temple, and cry out to God to restore it again.  The name “Wailing Wall” fell into disfavour, though, and now it’s called the Western Wall.  Still, though, the practice for pilgrims is to write their most heart-felt prayer on a piece of paper, and slip it into cracks between the stones of the wall in the hope that maybe God will see their prayer and answer it. 

I wonder what our church walls would look like, if people around us saw our walls as places where they could place their prayers. 

The other image is from last week after worship.  I said goodbye at the front door to people leaving.  Then I went downstairs to see how things were going with the coffee and cake to celebrate Ryker’s baptism.  After a while I happened to come up to the sanctuary and over on one side I saw 10 or 12 people who had stayed behind and were still there at an informal meeting to talk about possible ways we as a church might respond to some of the needs in the Syrian refugee crisis.  No one had any clear answers.  It seems pretty certain we’re not in a position to do any sponsoring of families by ourselves.  We’re not even sure what the best response is.  If we do anything it will probably be in co-operation with some other like-minded churches. 

But that meeting and the interest of those 10 or 12 people seemed a pretty clear sign that we were listening.  Instead of saying:

“Not now, Bartimaeus!  Can’t you see we’re trying to listen to Jesus?  Be quiet

with your hollering!”   

this church once again was acting in the spirti of the One who says, “Listen!  I hear someone crying out.  Call them to me.”

Towards Sunday, October 25, 2015

Readings:  Psalm 34: 1-8, Job 42:1-9 and Mark 10:46-52
Theme:  Hello?  Hello?  Is anybody listening?

The readings today are about people not being heard -- of souls in distress not being listened to by people around them.

From ancient Israel -- probably in the 6th century B.C.E., there is the story of Job, who spends 35 of his story's 40 post-tragedy chapters crying out with increasing anger and vehemence for attention and justice after his life has fallen apart for no good reason, and being shushed by his friends who tell him to just learn to accept things the way they are.

From first-century Palestine comes the story of blind Barimaeus, loudly crying out in his darkness for help, with the people around him (all wanting to see Jesus themselves) telling him to be quiet and not disturb either them or the messiah with his shouting for help.

And there is the psalm in its universal and timeless wisdom, celebrating the experience of being heard and answered by God -- something that Job and Bartimaeus also experience by the time we get to the end of their stories.

But is that happy ending all that common? 

Do we -- do I or do you, ever feel unheard?  That no one is listening, or cares enough to hear us?  Is there something in your heart you wish someone could hear?  Something you wish you knew how to say?

And how many others in the world still and always suffer the same experience?  The poor pushed to the edges of public awareness ... refugees featured by the media for two weeks and then left behind on the way to the next big story ... hundreds of missing and murdered First Nations women in Canada for whom the government refuses to call an inquiry ... church members and neighbours who we stop visiting because they have Alzheimers or cancer or something else that makes us feel uncomfortable if we visit them ... people of other traditions trying vainly to explain to the mainstream why they do some of the things they do?

What good news is offered in the story of Job, the Gospel of Mark and Psalm 34?  What encouragement?  What challenge?

It was 50 years ago that Paul Simon wrote and Simon and Garfunkel recorded "The Sound of Silence," an achingly beautiful indictment of our unwillingness -- or maybe inability, to hear and pay attention to many voices and souls around us.

...in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence.

"Fools," said I, "You do not know.
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you.
Take my arms that I might reach you."
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made.
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming.
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sounds of silence." 

Where is God, and where are we in this story?  

Sermon from Sunday, October 18, 2015

Reading:  Mark 10:32-45
Sermon:  We Are Able

There is good purpose in all of us. 

This is one thing the sacrament – or the ritual – the sign – of baptism is about.  In baptizing Ryker with water – the water of life and of deliverance and of cleansing, this morning we have joyously declared that he is a beloved child of God, born as we all are to good purpose – to live in this world as God does, loving it for what it is, caring for it for what it is meant to be, taking conscious care of the web of life that God has called into being and called Earth. 

With oil we have anointed Ryker with a sign in the shape of a cross – an affirmation that he is part of the community that Christ calls together, and a prayer that he will feel this call upon him, and grow into this identity and this way of being in and through his life – that in himself, he will come to claim the way of Christ as a way of real life. 

And with our hands we have held and blessed him – asked for God’s blessing on him and through him – asked that a holy spirit will grow within him – that he will be blessed all his life in different ways with spiritual company – and that he will be good company, support and encouragement to others in return. 

There is good purpose in all of us, and it’s both harder and easier to live out, and live into, and live up to than we sometimes think. 

It’s harder than we sometimes imagine and count on, because sometimes – maybe often, maybe even always, it runs counter to the way of the world in which we live.  The world does not always live by the values and priorities of the kingdom of God.  It does not always choose what’s best for its own largest well-being.  We live in ways and with goals and priorities that are selfish, short-sighted, fearful rather than faithful and loving and bent towards the good of all life on Earth. 

As Jesus lived his life in the way he felt led and called by God – God above, God within, God all around, the best God of his people’s tradition – he could see where it was leading him.  He began in Galilee – teaching and preaching, healing and feeding, forgiving and gathering people into new and good community, meeting needs and empowering people of all kinds to stand up and live together the way they were meant to in peace and with compassion and with an eye towards justice and the well-being of all.

In Galilee, people responded.  Disciples gathered.  New kinds of community began to form.  As well as opposition to it.  Fear about it.  Hostility against it. 

And as Jesus turns his steps from Galilee to Jerusalem –to the holy and the royal city, the seat of religious and imperial power in their world, he sees pretty clearly just how this will turn – how it will have to turn out – how it always turns out.  How does he put it? 

       See [he says], we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man [the real human being, the one who shows what human life is really to be], will be handed over to the religious leaders, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Romans – the imperial and imperious power of our day; they will mock him, and spit on him, and flog him, and kill him … and we will have to trust that if this is really of God, somehow and in some way he will rise again  … that this will not be the end … that there will never be an end of what it is really true.

But the way to get there is the cross.  That’s the consequence of living towards a better, alternate world and of helping to create it and call it into being.  The disciples imagined they were on their way to Jerusalem to take over – that somehow because they were in the right and God was on their side, there would be a coup or revolution or miracle of some kind that would suddenly put Jesus and them in charge of things, to make the world right. 

But that’s not how God works, is it?   

And that’s what makes it hard to really follow Jesus, to live in his way all the way through, to be the kind of people God intends us to be on Earth. 

But on the other hand, it’s easier than we usually fear.  To take up our own cross and follow him doesn’t mean being crucified ourselves the way that he was.  It doesn’t mean literally losing and giving up our last shred of dignity and our final breath on a lonely hillside surrounded by our enemies.  Jesus was clear about this, and when he was arrested he did and said all he could to ensure his disciples got away and were not arrested with him. 

Jesus says, “The cup that I drink you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized.”  But what this means – how it’s lived out and experienced in each of their lives, is different and personal and unique.   

To put it in modern terms: Mother Teresa was a daughter of God who lived out her calling as she was meant to; but we are not Mother Teresa, and the place of her calling and her life of faithful following is not ours.  Jean Vanier, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela and Gandhi are saints and spiritual heroes of our time who inspire us and help us to catch a glimpse of what good and holy life is about today; but we are not them, and the call upon each of us is unique and personal to our own situation and circumstance. 

And we don’t have to be the best in order to hear it and follow it.  We don’t have to be rich or powerful or have a privileged position to be able to live it out.  We don’t have to be on top of the world, or even on top of our game, to be of meaning and purpose.  We don’t have to be most of the things the world tells us we need to be, in order to count and be important and worthwhile. 

It’s a matter of accepting, first of all, that there is good purpose in all of us – in me as well as in you, that comes from outside us, but lives at the deepest part of who we are.  And then it’s a matter of listening – of opening ourselves to the call and good will of God, of seeing how the Word and Way of God intersect with where we are in the world, of letting ourselves be part of a community that seeks to live in the world by faith and hope and love, and learning to recognize and follow the movement of God and God’s spirit in our own heart and at the real heart of the world that we live in. 

And whether that’s easy or hard, and just how hard or easy that is at different times of our life and in different situations of our living, is up to us. 

Andrew King, who describes himself in his blog as “a 60-year-old ‘customer service worker’ for a fast-food restaurant in Oakville, Ontario” and is also a member of Maple Grove United Church in Oakville, posted this poem this week in response to the reading today from the Gospel, and I’ll end with this.  I’ll give Andrew King the last word to us this morning, as we seek to know what it means to drink the cup that he drinks, and be baptized with the baptism with which he is baptized: 

NOT TO BE SERVED BUT TO SERVE
(Mark 10: 35-45)

Is that you, Lord,
changing the diaper in the nursing home,
holding the spoon for the woman in her wheelchair,
wiping down the toilet and the floor;

is that you
serving the dinner at the homeless shelter,
sorting the cans at the food bank,
mowing the aged neighbour’s lawn;

is that you, Lord,
bandaging the wounds of the bomb victim,
erecting the tent for the refugees,
handing out the water and the food;

is that you
driving the patient to the treatment center,
sitting through the night with the family,
making the call to the forgotten friend;

is that you, Lord,
lighting the candle in the darkness,
keeping vigil for compassion and justice,
loving in us and through us and with us

until the world that you love has been changed?

Towards Sunday, October 18, 2015

Reading:  Mark 10:35-45
Theme: We are able

Jesus talks about godly, kingdom-style leadership as servanthood -- contrasting

• leaders of the day, not of the covenant community but to whom the people of the covenant are subject, who rely on power to enforce what they see as the best policy for all, with
• leaders who serve the needs of the people in their charge by becoming "slaves" to their people's needs regardless of what it costs them, rather than masters of the people's lives regardless of what it costs the people.

Not that his disciples will ever rise or be invited to the position of king, governor, procurator or even mayor of any city of their time (as much as they thought they would).  The point is that they can (and are called to) exercise that kind of servant-hood in their personal and communal lives wherever they are, every day and week of their lives -- and in that way, change the world.

In Toronto at the ferry terminal there's a memorial statue to Jack Layton that offers a striking image of leadership -- a very different image of a political leader than we usually see.  Instead of standing alone on a pedestal, looking uniquely regal or wise or strong, Jack is seated on the back seat of a tandem bike, ready to provide the pedal power to help whoever sits in the front seat, to get to where they need to go. 

This is not to say that only Layton and/or the NDP offer such an image of leadership, nor that this is the whole of what can be said good or bad about Layton or the NDP.  The point is, it is an intriguing image of what servant-hood might mean today for people like us in positions of privilege in the world and in our own society -- providing the pedal power to help others without the resources we have at our disposal, to get to where they need to go. 

Within the Liberal tradition, maybe think of Lester Pearson's creation of the UN Peacekeeping mission during the Suez Crisis -- a new political model for our time by which non-combatant countries use their resources to create time and space for countries in conflict to resolve their differences and meet their own and the other's needs in more constructive ways than war ever allows for. 

Regardless of what else may be said both good and bad about Pearson and the Liberals, and even of the way UN Peacekeeping has devolved, is not this mythic image of Pearson an image maybe of God's way of life in our time that somehow still speaks to our highest self, and that we are called to live out in our own lives and communities?

Among Conservatives, maybe think of Robert Stanfield -- a good and quiet man with sound and compassionate policies, who never got a fair shake in the national media.  Remember the unfortunate and mean-spirited story and image of him fumbling a football? 

It was just one of several instances of a good, compassionate man serving others well and humbly, quietly accepting his fate in the public eye.  And regardless of what else may be said of him, is this image and memory of his public career perhaps not a modern echo of Jesus being portrayed in the media of his day as a bumbler when it came to matters of theology and law, accused in the attack ads of his day as a son of Beelzebul and by the government as a heretic and traitor, in the end quietly accepting his fate at their hands, letting the future of the kingdom of God rest not in his power but in the hands of God beyond him?   Does not this image of a leader's character still speak somehow to our own deepest soul, and remind us of the humble, selfless service of others' needs regardless of our own fate, that we are called to live out ourselves?

Jesus talked a lot about the kind of life we are called to live as God's people in the world, and used the public images of leaders of his day to help flesh out the call.  Are there particular images of servant-leadership today that help you to picture what it means to you to live and serve in God's way in your life, and in the world you live in?

Towards Thanksgiving Sunday, October 11, 2015

Reading:  Matthew 6:25-33
Theme:  Where does the "happy" come from in Happy Thanksgiving?

Thanksgiving is a harvest festival.  What do you do -- how do you celebrate it, when your harvest seems bitter, small, or unusually full of weeds?

Thanksgiving is different in our family this year.

No turkey dinner and an evening of rummoli, euchre and other games with my sister and her family.  She gets a chemo treatment this Wednesday and even with the drugs she expects to feel pretty sick through the weekend.  The most we might manage is a lunch out together before she retires home to rest.

And I know we’re not alone in this.  I think of other families in our congregation struggling with illness and loss right now.  Of families of our area devastated by two recent highway pile-ups on the 401 near Whitby.  Of people in our city living daily in poverty and homelessness.  

What is Thanksgiving, really?  What do we remember and celebrate it in the midst of illness, loss, loneliness, sorrow, injustice and anxiety?

In this Sunday's Gospel reading, Jesus says to consider the birds of the air and the lilies of the field.  Until this year I hadn’t really thought about how birds don’t always have it easy, either.  We speak longingly of being “as free as a bird,” but birds are also exposed to a lot of nasty weather, risks, brutal exposure and sometimes harshly short lives.

I wonder what I can learn from them -- or from the beautiful but unprotected lilies, about living within the goodness and good purpose of God.

And then there are also the first-Thanksgiving stories of our country's three founding peoples. 

On the English side is Martin Frobisher.  In 1578 on his third expedition to the New World, he ran into trouble he had not faced before – freak storms, extreme cold and drifting ice.  One ship was lost and those that remained were scattered.   When finally they were reunited and able to land together on the shore of Frobisher Bay (now so called), the expedition’s resident priest led all hands in a service of thanksgiving.

A generation later and on the French side of our heritage, in 1604 Samuel de Champlain was leader of the new French colony in Port Royal struggling to survive an unexpectedly harsh winter.  His solution was to create the Order of Good Cheer, by which the members of the community took turns in groups preparing and hosting a feast and an evening’s entertainment for the entire community, including their First Nations neighbours.

Passing through adversity … reconnecting after separation … struggling with hardship and anxiety … creating and enjoying community against the cold and across boundaries.

Anything there relevant to our time?  And Thanksgiving?

And then there's the third (really the first) of our founding nations’ thanksgiving stories -- no once-a-year-holiday, but repeated rituals in the course of ordinary life. In the potlatch of the West Coast First Nations, for instance, it’s interesting that the emphasis is not so much on giving thanks for and celebrating how much you have, but on demonstrating and enjoying how much you are able to give away.

I wonder ... anything there similar in spirit to what Jesus says about not focusing on what we will have to eat and drink and wear, but on “striving first for the kingdom of God,” within which all that we need will be given?

I trust our worship this Sunday will only deepen our Thanksgiving spirit.

Sermon from Sunday, Oct 4 (World Communion Sunday)

Reading:  Mark 2:2-26

"Broken ... and blessed" 

Bill was a retired furniture factory labourer.  He was a good, kind man – soft-spoken, and he and his wife, Reta were members of a small-town Baptist church, one of the two that made up my first pastoral charge up in Bruce County.  One day Bill asked me the question that was weighing on him: “Is divorce a sin?”

His son – his and Reta’s son, was in the process of divorcing and it upset them.  It was a new, hard thing for them to take in.  They worried about their son, the hard road he was on, the decisions he was facing, the fall-out in his life.  They didn’t know how to advise him, were not sure how to support him, and didn’t know how to talk about it with their friends.  What was happening with their son put them outside – or at least made them feel outside the circle.

I tried to be a good pastor to them – to reflect God’s understanding and compassion for their son and them, and I said much the same thing then that I would still say now, to try to help them see themselves and their son and his soon-to-be-ex-wife within the embrace of God’s unconditional love and a flow of healing grace.   Thirty years later I have no reason to wish I had said or done anything differently in terms of theological, biblical and pastoral response.

But all these years later, now that I am divorced and re-married myself, I think I understand the real personal anguish of Bill’s question a little better and more deeply.  Because there really is pain in divorce for all connected with the break-up.  No matter what the reasons for it and reasonability of it, dislocation is involved, brokenness is felt, and ripples of consequence are felt in other people’s lives and never completely disappear.

Which is why I like the way Jesus answers the test cases the lawyers and nit-pickers of his day bring to him. 

In his day there was difference of opinion within the religious community about divorce – whether it was allowed or not; if it was, on what grounds; and if it was granted, whether or not a divorced person was still a full member of the synagogue and the covenant community.  That’s what it’s really about – both then and now.  It’s a question of who is in and who is out of the covenant community;  who is in community and right relation with God and God’s people, worthy of care, consideration and privilege, and who is not. 

And I like how Jesus answers it.  He says at one and the same time two things that like the two different sides of a single coin form the currency of the kingdom of God.

On one hand, he faces head on the brokenness of divorce and the disorder it brings to people’s lives.  God’s good order for human life on Earth, he says, is for lifelong commitment and covenant faithfulness.  Whether it’s the marriage covenant, the commitment of families to care for one another, the social contract of cities and nations to care together for all people within their borders, our covenant with the earth, or the covenant God makes with all humanity and all creation to love and sustain us, the basis of life from the personal to the cosmic is covenant faithfulness of one party to another.  And when covenants are broken or can no longer be maintained in their old form, the pain and upset are real.

And Jesus doesn’t just dismiss it.  Doesn’t say it doesn’t matter.  Doesn’t minimize the effect by saying, “it happens to everyone…no one’s perfect…don’t worry, just get over it.”

He really understands and accepts the reality of the situation which means with him and in his company we don’t have to hide and pretend when we feel the pain.  It can be admitted and talked about.

It also means when he says the next thing, when he shows the second side of the coin, we can trust what he says.

And the other side of the coin is, is that God’s Law – the Word and Way of God (like the part of the Law that permits divorce) is really only God’s way of dealing with human weakness.  It’s God’s way of making it possible at different times and in different situations for each of us and for society as a whole to continue to move ahead and grow together in good and healing ways as imperfect as we all are.

God’s purpose is always compassion, healing and redemption.  It’s always bent towards the inclusion of people however they are within the bounds of the covenant community, for the sake of their healing and the healing of the community itself.  It’s never the rigid exclusion of them for the sake of their punishment and an imagined purification or protection of the community from them.

Just think of another story where Jesus is tested with a case of marital breakdown – the story of a woman actually caught in adultery.  The lawyers want to cast the sinner out and stone her.  But Jesus says, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”  And we all know how that turns out.

Jesus refuses to single out any one sin or any one kind of life or covenant breakdown as worse than others.  Like Paul came to see, and as he wrote in his letter to the Christians in Rome, we all have sinned and all fall short of the glory of God. 

And then to drive the point home, Jesus ends this little episode with one of his famous sayings about children – that “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”

The disciples, sharing a culture with him, would have got the point.  We need to work at it a bit. 

And one thing I found out in my reading this week is that in antiquity a child was radically dependent on the pater familias – on the head of the household, for their very belonging in the household because there was no natural right of belonging for anyone.  When a child was born if the father accepted the child as his, he or she was in; if the father said no, the child was not – not accepted and never acceptable as a member of the family. 

We are here because in Jesus God calls us beloved daughters and sons.  In grace God gives us a place at the table

·         which we do not have by right,

·         which we do not earn by being good or rich or generous or powerful or nice or gifted or right,

·         and which we do not lose by being wrong or broken or in need. 

None of us earns our place, nor do any of us set the conditions for others to have a place beside us.

It’s hard to remember this, because in here it’s so nice isn’t it?  Once we’re in here, it’s easy to feel good about ourselves – and that’s surely one of the reasons for church, and for being part of it – to bring out and nurture that which is good in us. 

I sometimes wonder, in some of my more honest moments, if that’s one of the reasons I became a minister – why I was as open as I was to the call.  It was a way against whatever evidence I felt the contrary, to make or to prove myself good, and right and maybe even perfect.  It was a way of living with or within a certain image.

And mostly it works, until what’s beneath the image comes out, and it’s clear that I’m not perfect, not always right, and sometimes not even good.

And then it’s awkward time.  Apologies are offered, forgiveness is given.  But it’s clear we’re not all that comfortable with it.  We’d rather just forget it, let it die down, and get on with more usual business.

There’s something else I read this week, though, from David Lose, the President of Lutheran Theological seminary in Philadelphia, and I’ll end with this.  In a reflection on the reading for this morning, David writes:

“The church in its origin was a place for all those who knew their brokenness in life and their powerlessness in the world, who came to see in the crucified Jesus a God who met them precisely in their vulnerability, not to make them impervious to harm but rather open to the brokenness and need of those around them…

“In the church being broken isn’t something to be ashamed of.  Rather, it is our common identity.  Our gatherings on Sundays – here and all around the world, are local gatherings

·         of the broken and loved,

·         of those who are hurting and also healing,

·         of those who are lost and are being found,

·         of those who know their need and seek not simply to have those needs met but have realized that in helping meet the needs of others their own are met in turn.

“We are, in short, communities of the broken and blessed – a hard message that runs contrary to the conventional wisdom

·         of what we should try to be

·         and how we should try to sell ourselves,

·         and sometimes contrary too to how we want to see ourselves. 

But it is life-giving – it’s like a breath of fresh air and an opened door, to those who know themselves to be broken and to those of us still in denial, seeking relentlessly to make it on our own and prove ourselves worthy, even if it kills us.”

Jesus says, “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”  Then he takes us up in his arms, lays his hands on us, and blesses us.