Whatcha buildin', God? (Need any help?) sermon from Sunday, Dec 17, 2017

Reading:  Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11

(The people of Israel are back in their own land, rebuilding what was destroyed when they went into exile.  The rebuilding is slow and frustrating.  But the prophet assures them God wills a new kingdom for them -- one that will draw the admiration of all the world for the way it re-organizes society according to God's care for the poor and oppressed.

In the reading, the word "liberty" in "liberty to the captives" is a word used to describe the release of slaves in the sabbatical year.  It was one of God's laws that every seven years, any person who had entered into servitude to another because of unpaid debts, bankruptcy or any other reason, was to be freed, all debts cancelled and forgiven, and be given a free and fresh start again in life.

The phrase, "the year of the Lord's favour" is the year of Jubilee -- the 50th year, the year after every seven seven-year cycles, when all property gained at the expense of other people or taken from them is to be returned to its original owner -- again, to give everyone a chance to start over, to go back to square one, everyone on equal footing and on their home square.

Joseph was a carpenter.  Which means he wasn’t really poor.  At least, not the poorest of the poor.

He had his tools.  His trade.  And work for which he would be paid.  Maybe not always with money.  Sometimes with a chicken or two, or some grain for meal, or some oil for heating and lighting his house.  But he had an income he could count as his own.

And his work was portable.  He wasn’t tied to a piece of land, and to the whims of weather, markets and an unjust landlord.  He could go where the work was – within reason.  And with where he was living – in Nazareth, in the northern province of Galilee, an area of considerable unrest and sporadic uprisings against the government in Jerusalem and the empire in Rome, where every now and then the army would have to come in and root out a few zealots, knock down a few houses, burn a few buildings to the ground that would have to be rebuilt – along with whatever normal jobs he had putting on additions for growing families, building chicken coops, making tables, carving door posts, making oxen yokes, maybe even crafting family altars, Joseph was as close as anyone in those days could be to being guaranteed a good living.

Which means Jesus, had he learned the trade from his father, accepted his father’s tools, and taken over the business, could have had a good and comfortable life.  He had a rough start – born in a Bethlehem barn because of the Emperor Caesar’s untimely edict and the absence of Trivago or even a travel agent to book a room ahead, and then a few years in Egypt as a refugee family because of King Herod’s political paranoia and insecurity.  But once that was over and the family settled into Nazareth, Jesus could have had the good and comfortable life that all parents probably want, and spend their lives working for their children to have. 

Except Jesus was drawn to something else.  To being a different kind of carpenter.  Building something else in the world.  Working with a blueprint for something other than houses and tables and oxen yokes.

The Gospel of Matthew tells a story of twelve-year-old Jesus wandering away from his parents on a trip to Jerusalem, to sit in the Temple and chat with the scribes and the teachers of God’s law.  “I must be about my Father’s business – capital-F father,” he said. 

New studies in the historical Jesus suggest he actually went to rabbinical school to study Torah – the Law and the Prophets, and all the traditions around them.  Joseph was well-off enough to give him that opportunity.  But Jesus came to interpret the Law and the Prophets differently than his teachers.  He saw things in the tradition they overlooked.  He took seriously the things about the good will and love of God they explained away.  He grew restless with the rules and restrictions they placed on the people to keep them divided from one another and under control.

Which leads to what we read in the Gospel of Luke – in chapter 4, just 2 chapters after the story of his Bethlehem birth – where we read of the now-adult Jesus, 30 years old, leaving the school and its distortion of the real will of God, to start teaching God’s kingdom in the towns and villages of Galilee, healing and casting out unclean spirits, forgiving people their sins and setting them free for new life, calling them together and creating new grassroots networks of inclusive spiritual community … until finally he works his way back to Nazareth, and one sabbath day in the synagogue, when it’s his turn to read, he reads the Scripture for the day, which was the same that we had today from the prophet Isaiah – the one that includes God’s ancient laws of compassion and freedom for those who fall into unjust debt and servitude, and forgiveness and support for families that along the way lose their place in the world.  Jesus reads the same words we heard David read today:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, [he reads]

because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim

release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free.

Then, he rolls up the scroll.  Gives it back to the attendant.  Sits down – as the teacher for the day would, before beginning the interpretation of the reading.  And with the eyes of all in the synagogue fixed on him, he utters these momentous words, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.  The kind of world Isaiah talked about God building, is being built all around you even as we speak.  The blueprint God has given us to follow, to make the world over into the kind of world God desires Earth to be, is the blueprint that I and others who are with me, are following.”

At which point they run him out of town.

The prophet Isaiah, whom Jesus and we have read, lived in a time of rebuilding.  The people of Israel were back home in the promised land, after years of exile.  Everything they had left behind was in ruins, and they were trying to rebuild the city, reconstruct the Temple, regain the life they had known, restore the glory they used to have. 

And it wasn’t working.  Things weren’t fitting together the way they used to.  They leaders couldn’t agree on what to start first.  People weren’t working together very well.  The rebuilding and reconstruction of the kingdom was not going well.  They were not succeeding in making Israel great again the way they remembered it.

To which Isaiah says, “The problem may be you’re not focused on building what God wants, and what God is doing among us.  God isn’t really into rebuilding what used to be.  Just reconstructing the kingdom the way we remember it, isn’t what God has in mind. 

“Because what God wants to do – and already is doing, is to build a different kind of kingdom, a different kind of social structure, a different kind of community than the old one was.  God has a blueprint for how the world is to work, a blueprint that aims at forgiveness, compassion and support as social norms, and God is calling people – even right here and now, to help build up the world we have into the kind of world God wants it to be – a world, a society, a kind of kingdom, a network of communities that will be good news to the poor, will free the captives, will offer new life for the oppressed, and create hope for all who have been left out and excluded – nothing less than the good will of God done on Earth as in heaven.”

I can imagine that promise, and that vision of God already and always building the world in the way it’s intended to be, being somewhat unsettling to people around Isaiah who were tied to their place of privilege in the way the kingdom used to be.  But to Isaiah and to those who followed him, and many who heard him, the message was joyful.

And isn’t it also, for us, part of the joy of Christmas? 

That in the birth of Jesus we see God coming in with both feet, entering fully into the life of this world to help build it the way it’s to be? 

To show us that much more clearly – in living colour and life-size, really, what the blueprint really is? 

And thus to call us that much more deeply and lovingly into helping to make the world over into the kind of society, the kind of kingdom, the kind of communities God really intends this world to be?

We live it out so happily at Christmas.   

And we know the call to live it out all year.

Thanks be to God.          

Tidings of comfort and joy: connecting the dots (sermon from Sun, Dec 10, 2017)

Reading:  Isaiah 40.1-11

(After many long years, and 39 chapters of mostly woe -- bad news, loss, judgement and remorse, the prophet brings a message of hope -- of not only maybe-in-the-future salvation from God, but a salavtion and a new day that are right around the corner, and already appearing.  The prophet himself seems to find it hard to believe.  But there it is!  Can we believe it?)

 Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her

that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid,

that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.

In other words: enough!  Time for the hurting to stop.  And the healing to begin.

Do you ever get tired of bad news?  Of American politics?  And Canadian?  All over the world, stories of terrorism, civil war, religious and ethnic cleansing, and genocide?  Of environmental collapse and the extinction of species?  Of women abused and assaulted in the name of male privilege and power?  Of how even our newest vehicles of mass communication – Facebook, Google and Twitter, have been co-opted, manipulated and turned into juggernauts of mass mis-information?

And local stories, too.  It’s not just the big picture that scares and depresses us.

This past week most of Hamilton has been paying attention to the story of 19-year-old Yosif Al-Haswani, an immigrant with his family from Iraq, a first-year student athlete at Brock aspiring to be a doctor, who a week ago walked out of his mosque on Main near Wellington where he was attending a religious celebration, saw an elderly man being accosted by two young men, intervened to protect the old man, and was shot and killed.  And as the story has unfolded over the week, his death may have been unnecessary, because medical personnel at the scene did not recognize in time just how seriously he was injured.

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem …

Tidings of comfort and joy!  Comfort and joy! 

Oh tidings of comfort and joy!

Israel in the Book of Isaiah is in need of comfort and joy.  For years and years, and for chapter after chapter through the first 39 chapters of the book of the prophet, the news has been mostly bad.  Their unfaithfulness that they needed to see.  Judgement and the loss of the kingdom to pagan enemies and empires that they needed to accept.  Exile and alienation from their own heritage that they needed to live through.

Through all those years and those 39 chapters there were occasional optimistic words.  A few hopeful promises of God sending a new kind of king to restore the kingdom and bring peace to the world – promises that we see fulfilled somehow in Christ, and in the body of Christ.

But I wonder if the people and even the prophet himself sometimes found it hard to really believe the promises that were made, and that they would ever see them fulfilled.  Because when the tone changes in the reading today, in chapter 40, from bad news to good, from only-future promise to present fulfilment, it’s almost as though the prophet himself has to be convinced of it really happening.

The way it’s written, it’s like there’s an outside voice – the voice of a stranger, someone standing outside the place of despair, telling the prophet to look – really look, and to listen – really listen, to what is happening and to what God is actually doing in his time.

“Do you hear it?” the stranger says.  “Do you hear the simple message?  ‘Comfort, O comfort my people!’ Your God is saying to you.  ‘Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her penalty is paid – more than paid, and the time of hurting is over.’ ”

“In the wilderness that you’re so afraid of,” the voice goes on, “God wants a road to be built – a road you will make with your own good actions, that will let God come with visions of glory and new life, a road God will use to come as a shepherd to care for his flock, gathering up and carrying the lambs in his arms, gently leading the mother sheep to good pasture.”

Sometimes it takes a while and voices from outside ourselves to help us really believe and to choose to live into the hope of the promise.

One Sunday after worship a few weeks ago Marg Simpson shared with me her happiness after attending a memorial at the hospital, for the families of persons who have died and whose donated organs have been used to enrich and save the lives of others.  Marg said she went to the service with a little trepidation at having to re-live her grief, but once there was surprised by deep joy and gratitude instead for the ways in which Steve’s generosity of life has allowed other people to be able to see and live again.

Shortly after that I had a phone call from Cam Cocks telling me that Amy, Don and Norma Brown’s grand-daughter who for most of her life has been living with a rare blood disorder and for the last few years has been waging a losing battle with time on a waiting list for a kidney transplant, had just received a gift of a kidney from a woman in BC who found out about Amy’s plight on Facebook and fought her way through all kinds of red tape and problems, to make it happen.  A new lease on life just when the old one seemed closer to expiring.

Just a few days after that, a story in The Spectator – on the same day and even the same page as the story of the shooting of Yosif Al-Haswani, a story about a husband and young father saved by a kidney transplant arranged through the Kidney Paired Donation Program run by Canada Blood Services.  Since its inception in 2009 the program has arranged 556 donations and transplants across the country – 21 right here at St Joe’s in Hamilton.

Three separate stories in the matter of maybe two weeks of lives saved through the sacrificial generosity of others – of strangers.  And when you connect the dots, a picture starts to appear.  An image of new life in the face of death.  Of comfort and joy in the midst of darkness and anxiety.  Of human – maybe divine, goodness afoot in the world against coldness and sorrow.

I shouldn’t be surprised, though.  Because here we’re spending most of the Advent season – one of the busiest, most stressful, and most expensive seasons for any of us, doing good and reaching out to others with gifts of compassion and care.  The collection last week of mitts, hats, scarves, food and gifts for the Wesley Christmas and Holiday Store.  This week for a hamper of holiday food and gifts for the Assad family.  And next weekend, preparing and serving a hot meal for the patrons of the Wesley Centre.

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.…

Build a road in the wilderness,

Clear a path through the chaos,

Make a way into the present moment

for the good will of God to come near,

for the healing, nurturing presence of God to be made known.

And it isn’t just Christ’s church that is living this out.  In the same section of The Spec a week ago that carried the first story of Yosif Al-Haswani and of the Kidney Paired Donation Program – just 2 pages on, there was a story about a meeting this afternoon at First Unitarian Church where people of all faiths are invited to a two-hour “Speed-Meet Different Beliefs” event.  It’s like a speed-dating event, except here instead of 15-minute session to find a date, people will move around to have 8 15-minute sessions with different people each time to talk about their different beliefs, to break down at least some of the barriers of misunderstanding that too often keep us from creating real community together

I wonder if some members of the Sikh Temple that recently gave $10,000 to the stem cell centre at the Juravinski (also reported in The Spec) will be there.  Or if maybe some members of Yosif Al-Haswani’s mosque might be there too. 

The story of his death reminds us there is sometimes a price to be paid – a sacrifice to be made, for believing in and living out the way of God.  Maybe always a price and sacrifice of some kind.

But when we grow tired of bad news, there is an answer – to let ourselves see and hear the good news of what God is doing in our time, to take the time to connect the dots to see what kind of new life is appearing around us, and then to do our part in making a way for the glory of God’s good will and love to be seen in our time and in our city. 

And then we, like the prophet Isaiah, can honestly sing:

God rest ye merry, O gentlemen; let nothing you dismay
Remember Christ our Saviour was born on Christmas Day
To save us all from Satan's pow'r when we were gone astray.
Oh! tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy.
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy!

Thanks be to God.

Living in the Kingdom, where the King chooses to be (sermon from Reign of Christ Sunday, Nov 26/17)

Reading:  Matthew 25:31-45 

The people of Jesus' day longed for the coming of God's kingdom -- for the day when God's anointed One, whom they sometimes called "the Son of Man," would appear in glory and set things right on Earth.  They longed for that day, and had all kinds of teachings about what that One would be like.  

I wonder ... when Jesus begins the story he tells with the words "when the Son of Man comes in his glory," did any of the people around him stop listening because they thought they already knew what he was going to say?

This morning the Rev. James Eaton is preaching this same passage to his congregation – the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY.  And I like the way he opens up and imagines what we have just read: 

I love weddings [he says] and I used to officiate at a lot of them.

There’s all the fuss and planning and then on the day itself, little details that seem so important.  I usually enter with the men and they’re always nervous.  We stand at the front, face the back and the bridesmaids sweep up the aisle, more or less as I rehearsed them the night before.  I remember one whispering as she walked past, “Was that ok?”

Then the organ changes, often getting louder, people stand and a woman in a dress she will never wear again sweeps into the sanctuary, walks up the aisle.  It’s regal; it’s that moment which fulfills every time someone called her, “princess”.

When I think about the opening of today’s scripture reading, “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him..”, that’s how I imagine it – that kind of regal entrance, with light and music and everyone standing in awe. “Open the gates that the King of glory may come in”, the Psalm says and because today is Reign of Christ Sunday – open the doors that the Lord of glory may come in.

Then the scene shifts: once the Lord takes the throne, it’s time for business and the business of any Lord is judgement.  So Matthew imagines everyone – all the nations of the world – in one herd before him.  What a crowd!

Here in our church we often say, “Everyone welcome”, but the truth is we’re not prepared for everyone; we’re prepared for about 35 or 40.  What would happen if everyone came? What would happen if one Sunday, we opened the doors and people flooded in, rushed in, so many that some sat even in the pews over there where no one ever does and we don’t have welcome cards and hymnals?

All the nations, gathered.  There are people who don’t get along, there are different races, nationalities, black, white, Asian, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, None of the above, Republicans, Democrats.  The word ‘nation’ is Matthew’s term for Gentiles so “all the nations” means really everybody… even the people at the ends of the earth, which I think is somewhere near Buffalo.

I like to imagine there’s an organist.  I’ve never been to a big assembly like this without an organist, so I assume there is one.  But if you prefer piano music or a full orchestra, feel free to imagine that, the text isn’t clear.

And then all processionals – even those of the eternally awaited King of Glory come to an end eventually.  The king reaches the throne, the followers file into the seats with the “RESERVED” sign taped to them and the last bit of the organ piece rings out and then fades and I imagine the liturgist, in the silence, saying something like what I say here every Sunday, “The peace of the Lord be with you” and then everyone sitting down.

Now the king speaks, everyone strains to listen and this is what he says: move.   Can you imagine if on a Sunday morning you came here, were greeted at the door, you found your usual pew with your friends nearby, you got caught up on the news of the week, the service was about to begin, you settled in just a little bit more, and then the minister says, “Move!”

But that’s what the king says.  He has them divide up into two groups, like a herdsman separating sheep and goats.  Sheep and goats are herded together during the day but at night they are separated and the same thing happens here.  Sheep on the left, goats on the right.  Which are you?  Which am I?

And now he turns to the sheep and tells them they are going to enter into his kingdom for reasons they don’t understand.  They fed him when he was hungry, they clothed him when he was naked, and so on.  Apparently.  They don’t remember doing it.  They don’t remember these acts of charity, they don’t remember their donations to the food pantry, they don’t remember being kind or doing these things.  They did them but they were clueless at the time.  They still are.

Then he turns to the goats and the mirror image thing happens.  They don’t get into the kingdom because they didn’t do these things.  But they don’t remember not doing them. They don’t remember seeing him and refusing him food or clothing or the rest.  They were clueless at the time.  They still are.

When it comes to what they knew at the time, the sheep and the goats here are just the same.  The difference isn’t what they knew, it’s what they did.  It’s how they responded in moments when they didn’t know what they were doing.  The stunning fact about this judgement is that no one understood beforehand what would make a difference.

I like the way James Eaton puts it.

I also like the way Timothy Schmalz imagines and sculpts it.

Timothy Schmalz is a sculptor in St Jacobs, ON who for some time has been creating life-size bronze statues of Jesus based on the ways in which Jesus identifies himself in the Gospel reading this morning.  The homeless Jesus.  When I Was Hungry and Thirsty.  When I Was Sick.  When I Was Naked.  When I Was in Prison.  When I Was a Stranger.  The statues are being installed all over the world.

And a few weeks ago Karen sent me an article about the homeless Jesus that was installed on the grounds of St. Alban's Episcopal Church in Davidson, North Carolina – a wealthy and upscale neighbourhood.

The reaction to the statue was immediate.  Some loved it; some didn't.  One woman even actually called the police the first time she drove by it because she thought it was an actual homeless person.  She called the cops on Jesus.

Another neighbor a few doors down from the church wrote a letter to the editor saying the statue creeps him out.  Many said it was an insulting depiction of the son of God, and that what appears to be a hobo curled up on a bench demeans the neighborhood.

The rector’s response?  “It gives authenticity to our church,” he says. “This is a relatively affluent church, and we need to be reminded that our faith expresses itself in active concern for the marginalized of society.”

Then the story goes on to say that Schmalz offered the first casts of the homeless Jesus to St. Michael's Cathedral in Toronto and St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York.  Both declined.

A spokesman at St. Michael’s said appreciation of the statue “was not unanimous,” and the church was being restored so a new work of art was out of the question.  A spokesperson at St. Patrick's in New York said they liked the homeless Jesus, but their cathedral was also being renovated and they had to turn it down.

They didn’t say no.  It’s just that with the renovations, with what was going on and what they were busy doing, it wasn’t the right time.  There wasn’t a place for it in their current plans.

And I wonder … is that what happens to me some time?  That I don’t say no.  I’m not that hard-hearted or cold.  But there just isn’t time, and I don’t have a place in what I’m doing, for the least of these who are members of Jesus’ family?  To really meet them or see them, or be close enough to them to reach out in any personal way?

I’m busy with other things, and they’re good things.  I live in another place, and it’s a good places.

But it means I’m often cut off and isolated from, protected against, not close enough to these particular members of Jesus’ family to see them, feel what life is like for them, be able to reach out to them, and come to know and meet the King of Glory hidden in the encounter? 

Except, there are moments, aren’t there?  And there are ways – in which I am – we all are, confronted and interrupted … in which we are touched and moved to action … in which we are surprised and opened up to reach out in compassion and love … and even if I am not, even if we are not aware of the significance of what we are doing, even if no one else see or ever knows, even if we aren’t even sure ourselves just what good if any we have done, the King of Glory sees how we have responded and opened our life to him … and to the members of his family … and to the way his kingdom comes into our world.

 

Meeting Jesus as Jesus chooses to be (towards Reign of Christ Sunday, Nov 26)

Reading:  Matthew 25:31-46
(Jesus talks about the coming of the kingdom, and about who will find themselves in and out of God's favour when all is revealed at the end.  According to Jesus, the test is quite simple: do we or do we not see, love, and reach out to Jesus in the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the imprisoned people of our time?)

Timothy Schmalz is an almost-local (Kitchener, ON) sculptor whose life-size and small-replica statutes of the hungry, homeless, naked, imprisoned and otherwise very human Jesus are showing up all around the world.

Homeless Jesus

  

On his website, Schmalz says, "I am devoted to creating artwork that glorifies Christ.  I describe my sculptures as being visual prayers.  It brings me happiness when my sculptures are installed outside; three dimensional bronze works of art are excellent advertisements for any Christian Church."

 When I Was a Stranger

He goes on, "Saint Gregory the Great wrote that 'art is for the illiterate'; the use of images was an extremely effective way to educate the general population.  Our contemporary culture is in the same state today, not because of illiteracy, but because people are too busy to read.  In this world of fast paced schedules and sound bites, Christian art creates 'visual bites' that introduce needed spiritual truths in a universal language."

 When I Was Hungry and Thirsty

He says further, "Christian sculpture acts for many as a gateway into the Gospels and the viewer’s own spirituality.  After looking at an interesting piece of art the viewer is curious. 'Who is this man on a cross?  Why does he suffer?'  The more powerful the representation of the art, the more powerful the questions become."

When I Was Naked

 When I Was in Prison

"...excellent advertisements for any Christian church..."

"...an extremely effective way to educate the general population..."

Can you imagine any of these sculptures (which one would you choose?) on the front lawn of our church?  

How would you feel being greeted by it on a Sunday morning?  What would it say to you?

What might it say to people in the community?

And are there ways in which we communicate that message to others -- even without the statue, by what we do and how we act as a church, and as individuals in the community?

  
If you wish, you can learn more about Schmalz and his work at his website:  https://www.sculpturebytps.com/large-statues-monuments/

Happy partners: or, I like what you've done to the place ... (sermon from Sun, Nov 19)

Reading:  Matthew 25:14-30

(In his last days before he was killed, Jesus and the community of people he brought with him from Galilee spent most of their time in the Temple in Jerusalem.  Some who came with him were awestruck at the Temple’s size and grandeur.  But not Jesus.  What he saw was how wasteful and unfaithful to God the Temple was, and he was convinced that when the kingdom of God would come, that kind of Temple and tradition would have no place in it.  And, of course, he was not shy about saying so ... and the reading is one of the stories he told to make his point.)

Earlier this year – back in mid-February, we almost lost our church.  The building, anyway.

During worship there was a short or overheating of some kind in the cable feeding power to the blower motor for the organ, which heated the plywood casing to the point of burning, so that by the end of the worship service, just as the last people left were beginning to get ready to go home the smoke alarm went off, the fire was discovered, a call was put in to the fire department, and before they arrived Dave Durfey and Elgin McEneny had the fire extinguished. 

Fortunate timing?  Quick action?  The providence of God watching out for us?  We came that close to losing a lot -- if not all, of the building.

Now, nine months later – yes, it’s nine months, a normal gestation period – we are opening the building up in a way it’s never been opened before, with a lift to make all three levels accessible.  Now everyone can get into, and all around the building to activities anywhere in it, regardless of physical ability.

Nine months after almost becoming the former Fifty Church, is this the birth of a new day for us, and a new way of being who we are?

Thinking of almost losing what we have had for a long time as a church, and now having something more … according to the Gospel reading and the story Jesus tells about the kingdom of God, it seems God does not mind redistributing the gifts of his kingdom among his servants from time to time, depending on how they are used.

Some of God’s servants, Jesus says, are given lots to work with – all kinds of resources to do good things with, in the world.  Others have less, but still quite a bit.  Others yet have only a little.  Sometimes fearfully little.

For each one, though – for each servant, each Christian, each church, each community of faith, whatever they have is enough.  Because the standard for all is the same.  It’s to use whatever you have for growing the kingdom of God wherever you are in the world, or run the risk of losing it.  Of having it taken from you, and given to someone who will use it more faithfully than you.

We know churches go through cycles – natural life cycles of birth, growth, maturity and decline, and then either renewal and new birth, or death.  Within these cycles there are ebbs and flows, natural rhythms of expanding and contracting, of things going up and things going down.  The story of this congregation is over 200 years old; we know about natural rhythms and cycles.

But there is also something more – not just natural, but supernatural or spiritual growth and decline.  Not just natural, but also spiritual ebb and flow, that has nothing to do with numbers and size, is not dependent on being big, is not deterred by being small.

It has to do with knowing, doing and sharing in what God wants done, in what God is doing in the world around us, and in what God is happy to bless and to prosper.

There’s a really interesting phrase in the story Jesus tells about being a servant of the King.  It doesn’t appear in the translation we used this morning (The Message), but maybe you remember it from the more traditional translations we normally read.  It’s the phrase, “enter into the joy of your master.”

It’s part of what the master says upon his return and his settling of accounts with the first two servants – the ones who did well with what was given to them.  “Well done, good and faithful servant!” he says to each of them.  “You have been faithful in a few things; I will put you in charge of many.  Enter into the joy of your master.”

In The Message that last sentence is translated, “From now on be my partner.”  So maybe it’s something like, “Be my partner; share in what makes me happy.”

And isn’t this why we’ve done what we’ve done? 

Was it the law, and the need to comply with provincial standards around accessibility?  Was it other churches becoming accessible, and the need to keep up?  Was it our own members, and the need to help ourselves get around in our building more easily? 

Or was it also – and maybe most of all, our love of God and the deep happiness that comes of being part of what God is doing in our time to make all the world a good place to be?

“Be my partner,” God says.  “Share in what makes me happy.”

I know how happy I feel when I come here on a Thursday morning because that’s the morning I’m not here alone.  The Quilt Club arrives for 9:30 and all through the morning they’re in the Upper Room just outside my office door.  It makes this building a happy place to be.

I imagine the Upper Room is a happy place Wednesday evenings as well, with both the Joy and senior choirs practicing for Sunday mornings.  And with the NOW group there every fourth (or it every last?) Monday. 

And the Lower Hall?  Last night it was a pretty happy place with church members and other people from all around sharing the noise and nourishment of a Spaghetti Supper.  In a few weeks it will be happy again when we come in on a Saturday morning to prepare the dinner for the Wesley Centre the next afternoon – with Fingers-n-Toes drawing people in the week before, and the Scout’s Breakfast With Santa a week later.

A few weeks ago it was fun to spend a Saturday morning and afternoon all around the building and inside and out with a group of confirmands and one of their friends that we’d never met before.  As much fun as opening all the doors in the summer for summer day camp.

Good things happen here – things that make the rest of life good for us and for others. 

And can it be God’s desire that it be just us, and just those who can navigate barriers and inaccessibilities who can get in on things here? 

Or is God happy with nothing less than that the good things of life be opened to all? 

So … when the master returns and starts the accounting of what we’ve done with what we have, what will he see?  And what will he say?

Maybe … I love what you’ve done with the place. Well done, good and faithful servants!  You make me happy. 

And now tell me, what do you have in mind for what we’re gonna do here together for the good of the community around us?