Sermon from Sunday, May 28, 2017

Readings:

Habbakuk 1:2-7, 12-13; 2:1-4
(Once-glorious Israel has fallen into corruption, injustice and chaos.  The Babylonians will invade the kingdom and over-run the land.  And when Habbakuk asks God why, and what God will do about it, God says the Babylonian invasion and the end of the way they have been is really God's idea -- stage one of a giant make-over.)

Revelations 21:3b-5
(The Christian church in the century after Jesus is not sure of its future in the Roman empire, and John -- in exile on Patmos, personally feels all the anguish and anxiety of the church, and also personally receives the promise that God is using all that comes, both "good" and "bad", as building blocks for a new heaven and Earth -- a new way of living out, and making possible, the doing of God's will on Earth as in heaven.)

 

In the sixth century before Christ – in the days of Habbakuk, the kingdom is in trouble.  What used to work, doesn’t any more.  Everyone is in it just for themselves.  Old notions of decency, justice, fairness, and the way God wants a society to work for the good of all, have become just old notions.  The enemy of the day – the militaristic barbarians of Babylon, are on the border about to over-run God’s people at any moment. 

But does it even matter?  How many of God’s people still act like God’s people?  They do their best to maintain the rituals and institutions they grew up with, but how long has it been since they have really followed and taught others God’s ways of peace and well-being for all? 

The prophet Habbakuk is mired in sorrow, grief and anger at what life is like around him.  He still has faith enough, though, to bring the problem and his feelings about it to God, and to honestly wait, for God’s answer.

And the answer is that the passing away of what used to be and the sweeping away of what is no longer working, is not just a tragedy of the times, but part of God’s good will.  Because God is doing a makeover.  God is renovating the household to make it, over the next little while, into what is needed to be able to live out God’s good will in the new world that is emerging.

So write the promise down, God says – big enough so you can see it while you’re running for cover.  Write it down so you don’t forget in the coming confusion.  Write it down so you can walk with continuing and sustaining faith through the days to come.

In the first century after Christ – in the days of John the mystic seer, the Christian community is not sure of the future.  At least not their future.  There have been times when they seemed to be gaining a foothold in society and in the culture of their day.  But it also seems whenever some advance is made and they become part of the fabric of a city, they either lose their edge – the critical edge of the kingdom of God for their time, or if they keep that prophetic edge, they soon are not so happily received anymore.

The military-economic empire of Rome still dominates the world.  And Rome does not like the Christian church’s message of allegiance to the way of Jesus instead of Caesar, and Jesus’ insistence on love, compassion, equality, openness, forgiveness and peace as the way to govern the world and make life on Earth good.  So the church’s most faithful leaders are being imprisoned and communities are being persecuted.  John himself is in exile on the island of Patmos, and he wonders how long, O Lord?  We have come so far from the days of Jesus, and is there any way forward?  When on Earth will we see God’s good will being done?

To which the answer is, Behold, I am with you.  History is God’s home.  God lives, and always will live with you and among you – suffering what you suffer, grieving what you grieve, but with this difference, that God also is taking all that is, whether it seem good or bad, and using it as building blocks for a new way of being heaven and Earth.  And it will come.  It always does.  And always will.

Write this down, because these words are true and can be trusted.

Today, in preparation for the annual meeting of Hamilton Conference in Port Elgin, Gord Dunbar, President of Conference for the past two years, wrote these things down in a letter addressed to us and all the congregations of the Conference. 

We often feel [he says, like Habbakuk did, when we see our old ways of being the people of God passing away.]  We look around and see more grey heads and fewer and fewer children and youth.  We scan our balance sheets and note how tight our finances are becoming…  We notice … neighbouring congregations … closing or amalgamating…or using part-time ministry personnel because they don’t have enough resources for full-time.  The resources we give to the Mission and Service Fund have slumped.  Even the United Church Women are diminished.

We remember, though.  Oh yes, we remember.  And we lament [the passing of] what we once had. 

[But I have also seen God’s hand and God’s good work in all this.]  In my travels across Hamilton Conference I have seen promising signs, indeed. 

There’s a small congregation just northeast of Hanover called Crawford United Church.  Like many rural congregations, it is a caring, committed community of faith, but resources are shrinking.  In response to that challenge, the congregation has reached across Conference boundaries to explore a shared ministry with another congregation.  Far more than a survival strategy, the strengths of each congregation seem to be a wonderful fit, complimenting each other, likely leading to renewed mission and refreshed purpose.

I attended the ribbon-cutting and dedication of a community hall nestled up beside Bethel Stone United Church near Paris – another rural congregation with a vision of how to serve the community thanks to a generous legacy donation. 

I have attended Halton Presbytery’s yearly conference hosted at Wellington Square United Church in Burlington…called “Ministry in Motion” where ministry personnel and lay folk gather to consider how to do church differently – a real incubator for those exploring the Holy Shift within which we find ourselves.

I attended a Waterloo Presbytery meeting at Trinity United in Elmira where the congregation is moving toward building a new facility which will feature rental accommodation.  Their building will change significantly, but the new facility will fund their ministry instead of our usual scraping enough together to pay for the building.  And they’ll be forging new relationships in the community and making a difference.

I attended a ribbon-cutting and dedication service for the renovations and expansion of Pelham Community Church in Niagara Presbytery.  Not only is their congregation growing, but they incorporated windows from another United Church in their design, they utilized a legacy gift from a second congregation to help fund the addition and they navigated the transition with the assistance of a neighbouring congregation from a different denomination. 

See what’s emerging?  In the midst of our seeming apocalypse, resurrection is our reality. So when you see things passing away and changing, when you hear the theme “Holy Shift!” think of it as both challenge and promise, for God is making all things new.

In eager anticipation and faith-filled joy,

Gord Dunbar

And then … just to drive the point home, in case I missed it, the same day I read that letter, I also saw and read this story on one of the church-leadership websites I subscribe to:

In January 2016, six months after Kerry Mraz, 38, moved to Houston for his wife’s new job, his marriage ended and he found himself unmoored in a city he barely knew.  While walking one day in a park near his home, he met a neighbor, who invited him to church -- at a Taco Bell.

The next Wednesday, at 7:30 a.m., Mraz went to Taco Church, where a small group of men gathered for breakfast, Bible study, jokes and prayer.  The group, started by an Episcopal priest and a few guys from his gym, shared vulnerability in a way that Mraz had rarely seen. Sometimes he had to step outside the fast-food restaurant to cry.

The priest, the Rev. Sean Steele, told Mraz that Taco Church was part of the newly launched St. Isidore Episcopal, a “church without walls” focused on small group discipleship and community service.  The church didn’t have a building, and it didn’t want one, Steele said.  Instead, it had a cellphone app, linking members to the church’s many parts.

As Steele explained, St. Isidore was one church embodied in many different ways.  It wasn’t just Taco Church.  It would eventually become three house churches, a pub theology group, a free laundry ministry, a food truck and more.  It was all quite unorthodox, except the liturgy and theology, which were decidedly Episcopalian.

Steele holds tightly to Episcopal liturgy even as he brings it into novel settings such as breweries and laundromats.  St. Isidore is aimed not just at unorthodox places, he said, but also at unorthodox people, like the formerly Daoist chicken farmer who now runs the pub theology group. 

“I’m trying to think about the people who aren’t going to a church on a Sunday morning,” Steele said.  “I’m not interested in getting Christians that are already Christian.  There’s a population out there hungry for spirituality and hungry for a community of faith.   While they’re skeptical about a traditional church, they are willing to explore an alternative way of being church.”

And that was only one of a number of stories about churches discovering new ways of being church – churches that both with and without buildings are part of God’s Holy Shift – the great make-over of the people of God for the world that is today.

It’s challenging.  It can be scary.  It’s unsettling.

But do you see what’s emerging, [Gord Dunbar asks us] – that in the midst of our seeming apocalypse, resurrection is our reality?  Yes, things are passing away and shifting, but those things are not God, and can we see their passing away and shifting as both a challenge and a promise from God, who is making all things new?

Write this down, John says, because these words are true and can be trusted – that God is with us in the present ferment, and it’s God – not just history and the world around us who is taking the old pieces apart and helping them come together in new ways, putting heaven and Earth back together in new ways – ways more helpful and appropriate for the times that are, and are coming. 

So write the promise down, Habbakuk says.  Write it big enough so you can see it while you’re running for cover.  Write it down so you don’t forget in the coming confusion.  Write it down so you can walk with continued and sustaining faith in God through the days to come.

Towards Sunday, May 28, 2017

Readings:

Habbakuk 1:2-7, 12-13; 2:1-4
The kingdom of Israel is coming to a terrible end at the hands of Babylon, and Habbakuk is in anguish at what is happening.  So what does God tell him?  That the world is unfolding as it needs to, and that what seems to be disaster is just Act One of God's greater drama of re-creation that waits to be revealed.  Habbakuk's message makes us wonder at the anguish and hope that can dwell together in the hearts of God's people.

Revelations 21:3b-5
In the terrible power of Rome, John sees the power of the beast set loose upon the face of the earth.  But God gives him a vision of what shall come and what God's purpose is, in and through all that is. 
  
This weekend is the meeting of Hamilton Conference (yes, usually I am there -- don't tell anyone I'm not), and the readings are those chosen for this Sunday's worship service by Rev. Gord Dunbar, minister to Port Nelson United (Burlington) and President of Hamilton Conference for the past two years.  

Gord's theme for the past two years has been "Holy Shift" -- a sign of Gord's unique tongue-in-cheek way of unsettling folks into new ways of seeing things, and more substantially a reference to the seismic and seemingly sudden changes we are undergoing these days both in the world and to the church.  

One of the patterns that students of Israel and the Christian church have noticed recently is that every 500 years or so, God seems to shake up the deck quite radically to bring God's people into whatever new shape is helpful and needed in the changed and changing world around them.  Things that no longer work or have become corrupted over the years are gotten rid of.  New things not part of the old tradition begin to emerge.  And in a very short time, God's people look very different from the way they were just a few short years before.

And guess what?  We seem to be living in exactly one of those once-every-500-years times of shake-up and shift.

As president of Conference for the past two years, Gord has seen first-hand some of this process of dying and emergence in the churches around us, and the confusing combination of grief and hope that's felt as it happens.  He's written about it in a letter to our churches, part of which will probably be read in our worship this Sunday to help us connect with the Conference we are part of.

The important question, though, is closer to home: in what ways are we touched -- or do we allow ourselves to be touched, by God's 500-year shaking-up?

What do we feel grief about, that no longer seems to work for our church?  And is its passing maybe part of God's great shake-up?

And are there new things we see starting to emerge -- different structures, expectations or ways of being church in the community that we can begin to imagine even though they aren't part of our tradition, but that may be part of God's new design for us?

My guess is we don't have clear and firm answers.  But if we have both anguish and hope, and know how to talk about both with one another and with God, maybe that's enough.

Sermon from Sunday, May 21, 2017

Psalm 66
Theme: The power of God that will most inspire the world to faith and hope, is the power to reach out to, and raise up those who have been made less than full members of the global family
 

At some point we’ll have to stop showing pictures of Louai and Israa and their children in worship.

Right now we really need to see the pictures – for seeing is believing, and it’s good for us to see and hear how the story is unfolding – how their need and our good intentions, their struggle and pain and our prayers, their courage and endurance and our persistence and shared work have come to a good end.  It was so good last Sunday to see the first pictures of them safe and sound in the airport in Toronto.  And so good this week to see and hear of them settling into Grimsby, surrounded by loving and supportive community and beginning to find themselves a new place to call home.

At some point, though, we will have to let go of the need to see and hear everything, let them move as much as possible beyond being “the Syrian refugee family” in our community – different from the rest of us because of it, and let them become our neighbours – just that, and we, their neighbours, and all that that means. 

Because that’s the point of it, isn’t it?  The point of them seeking and us helping them find a safe place to live.  The point of them leaving Syria with all its pain and horror, and coming to Canada and the chance to live and grow and raise their family here in freedom and safety.  The whole point of it is for them to be included – as much as anyone, in full and free human community – as much as we are able to realize it ourselves.

That’s also the point of the story and the national memory that’s celebrated in Psalm 66. 

Praise God with shouts of joy, all people!  [the psalm begins]
Say to God, “How wonderful are the things you do!
    Your power is so great
    that your enemies bow down in fear before you.”

And what power is this the psalmist and the people who recite the psalm generation after generation have in mind?  It’s the power God showed – long, long before, in setting the people free from bondage to the empire of Egypt, to become a free people in Canaan, free to take their place and grow as equals among other peoples of the world. 

God led them out of Egypt – first through water in one dramatic act, and then across desert wilderness for forty long years.  The journey was trying, the burdens faced were great, and even when the people reached the promised land the journey was not over.  There were lessons to be learned, mistakes to be learned from, trials to be endured, cleansing to be suffered, and consequences to be borne.  But through it all, in the wonderfully simple and heartfelt words of the psalmist, “God has kept us alive and not allowed us to fall” – so look, all you nations, and give praise to the God who does this kind of thing in the course of human history and among the peoples of the world.

You see, Israel was not any more special than any other people or nation just in and of themselves.  But because of their servitude, their extreme bondage and suffering in the empire of Egypt, the kind of dehumanization and genocide that Egypt practiced against them, God took special pity on them, and declared them to be a people he would set free and raise up, whom he would make a great nation, and show all the world that the power of God in history, the good will of God in human affairs, the constant purpose of God in an age to set free the oppressed and raise up the poor will not be undone nor defeated.

The point of it all is good and true human community shared among all in love.  What else would the Father of all – which the Bible believes God to be, want for his children, but to be family together without division and exclusion, with doors open to one another, and a will to be reconciled, healed and brought back together when conflict does occur, hurt is inflicted, or loss is suffered by any? 

And isn’t this why we reach out as we do in such joy and love to this particular Syrian family, because it’s our way into this work of God in our time – of liberating people from brokenness and fear to find healing and hope?  And why it does it so much good at least for now to see the pictures and hear the reports?

Isn’t this why many members of this congregation still remember so fondly this church’s sponsorship of a family of boat people from Vietnam 40 years ago, because it too was a way of being part of God’s work in that time, and knowing first-hand both the power and the joy of it? 

“Let no one resist or rebel against God,” the psalmist says, because any time the world as a whole or any little part of it is divided into rich and poor, privileged and dispossessed, included and excluded, inside and outsider, we know where God’s preference is, and what God’s purpose will be.

And isn’t this also, in more seemingly mundane and ongoing ways, why we as a church bring food at different times of the year for the Stoney Creek Food Bank, why we have supported City Kidz for over 10 years now, why we still do what we can to raise money for Case for Kids and all of Wesley Urban Ministries’ work with children, young people and families living in poverty in Hamilton? 

Isn’t it also – thinking closer to home, why we take time to remember those in our own circle who are not here because of age or illness, why we reach out to those who feel the isolating effect of cancer or other disease, why we are doing all we can to make our building as accessible as possible, why we feel guilty when we forget or overlook those who have been hurt in some way or left behind on the wrong side of some disagreement or conflict?

There are so many ways in which community – God’s family, large or small, is fractured, and people are divided into winners and losers, higher and lower, included and excluded, powerful and dispossessed. 

And there are at least as many and more ways of reaching across those divides and of being part of God’s good purpose of giving all a place that they can call home in loving community with the rest of God’s children.

We celebrate the arrival of the Syrian family, and in the good news of their safe arrival we are reminded of the larger and eternal good purpose of God in all human affairs, and of the place we can choose to have in it.

Towards Sunday, May 7, 2017

Reading:  Psalm 23 

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

He makes me lie down in green pastures; 

he leads me beside still waters; 

he restores my soul...

(New Revised Standard Version)

 The Lord is my shepherd.

I lack nothing.

He lets me rest in grassy meadows; 

he leads me to restful waters; 

he keeps me alive. 

 (Common English Bible)

 You, Lord, are my shepherd.

I will never be in need.

You let me rest in fields of green grass.

You lead me to streams of peaceful water, 

and you refresh my life.

(Contemporary English Version)

It doesn't matter what version we read.  Is there any other passage of Scripture more soothing and comforting for the tired or anxious soul than the 23rd Psalm?  Even if we don't believe, the familiar sound, pastoral images and warm cadence of the psalm can draw us into believing we believe.

Increasingly these days, though, I find myself wondering what we ... what I, really believe.  

There are times I recite this psalm to myself in the middle of anxiety-ridden nights (you know those 3 and 4 a.m. waking times?) as a soothing mantra, a prayer and a blessing all rolled into one.  A kind of charm to soothe the fearful, overwhelmed spirit -- especially the lines that follow the ones quoted above, about the Shepherd leading us -- leading me, through (yes, there is a way through!) the dark and deathly valley.


It's easy, too, to hear in the psalm a promise of having our needs met, our life blessed by God's good will, "a good life" guaranteed.  Not that I believe in the prosperity gospel, or a "name-it-and-claim" kind of prayer life.  But which of us has not ascribed moments of good fortune and our privileged place in life to the providence of God who "maketh our cup to runneth over"? And really who are we to doubt, and not give thanks to God for the good that comes our way?

And this week, a new reading begins to emerge ... because of the presentation that Robyn and Elizabeth will be making in worship about their trip to Bolivia in February with Medical Mission International.  

Going on a mission trip to Bolivia is not something most of us have on our wish list for life.  It's not part of our picture we carry of the good life we aspire to.  Nor one of the things we have in mind when we ask God to bless us and our children and grand-children.  In other words, when we comfort ourselves with the promise of green pastures, still waters, and a table spread for us in the midst of a scary world, we don't see a mission trip to Bolivia (or anywhere else for that matter) as the place where we will find these things and our soul will be restored.

But what if that's part of the picture, too?  Part of what the psalm is saying?  That not only does God provide the things we know we need (actually, whether we follow God or not -- see for instance what Jesus says about this in Matthew 5:45), but that when we truly follow God we also find ourselves led by God into places we would never have thought of on our own -- into strange and alien pastures, to drink from foreign and unknown waters for a kind of nurture, refreshment, joy and meaning that we would never have even imagined in our own more limited vision and experience of what makes life good? 

I don't know about you, but I'm looking forward to Sunday.