If it ain't broke ... but how do we know if it is or isn't? (sermon from Sun, Aug 25, 2019)

Reading:  Luke 13:10-21

Another story of Jesus teaching in a synagogue.  What a love / hate relationship he had with his religious heritage and culture.

Of particular interest in this reading are the parables tacked on as an end to the story.  In verse 18 (with the words, "he said therefore...") the Gospel writer makes a point of attaching the parables of the mustard plant and the yeast to the story of the bent-over woman in the synagogue, as Jesus' conclusion about the whole episode.

These two images or parables appear in a variety of contexts in the Gospels, and seem to have been among the favourites of the early church.  Of note is the fact that mustard, in spite of its medicinal properties, was a weak, scraggly plant that in most settings (and certainly in this one -- "in a garden") was seen and treated as a weed; and yeast, far from being the pre-packaged, measured, tested, predictable thing we have made it today, in Jesus' day was a wild, largely airborne thing that people tried to protect their food and flour from, to keep it from fermenting and spoiling.

Last day of Peach Festival!  What a delicious day!

For some it’s already over.  For those whose role was to peel and cook peaches, bake and box pies, prepare the booth, do the background organizing and gathering, and sell pies and panzerollis and jam and home baking Friday night and Saturday, the work is done! 

For others – who are selling this afternoon, taking the booth down and putting it away for another year, and doing the final accounting, the end of the work will be later today, or tomorrow, or in a few days’ time. 

And how wonderful it is when like the woman in the synagogue who is finally able to stand up straight and praise God, we are able to unwrap our fingers from around a sticky knife and wiggle them, unkink our back from bending over a table or the kettle or the peach booth counter-top, turn off the calculator and close the books, stretch out our legs and arms and finally lift our eyes from the work in front of us and be able to say, “Thank you, God!  Thank you, God, that we can do this!  And thank you, God, that it’s over!”  

Some time ago I visited a family to help plan a funeral for their father, and I heard of a job he once had taking care of high-end lawns and gardens.  One client out in the country had a long, winding, cobble-stoned driveway that needed to be cleared regularly of leaves that fell from overhanging trees.  The driveway was long, the leaves were a nuisance, the job had no end, and what the father learned and passed on to his family was that sometimes in life you just have to keep your head down and keep raking.  You don’t dare look up until it’s done.

Sometimes life is like that.  Jobs and commitments come our way that we have to take on, and that for a while just take over our life.  We suffer changes in life, times of financial hardship, or some other anxiety overtakes us that suddenly and severely limits what we can see and do and focus on, and narrows our attention to just dealing with this crisis step by little step until we can start to see our way clear.  It can be something harder as well – an illness or disability, a mental disorder, some terrible thing done that haunts us forever and narrows down the way both we and others around us see us and treat us for the rest of our lives.  And all we can do when this happens is to keep our head down and keep raking. 

The woman in the synagogue suffered 18 years from a spiritual and physical disability.  A spirit of some kind had taken over her life and she was bent over – unable to move easily among others, unable to see the world around her very well or very accurately, unable to look people in the eye and have a clean and clear conversation with them. 

And I wonder, through all those 18 years does she come regularly to the synagogue?  Maybe gets there just as things are starting so she can hobble into the back, not be noticed too much, not have to imagine all the funny, judgemental looks people probably give her?  Just keep your head down, she tells herself, and keep raking.

And what do the others feel and think about her?  Sympathy?  Charity?  Probably also a certain resignation to the conclusion (which is really a judgement) that this is her fate – to be different, bent over, welcome as long as she keeps in her place and doesn’t disrupt what the others are doing – doesn’t disturb what synagogue means for the “normal” ones, the ones whose lives are okay.

Until the day Jesus is there and he makes her and God’s love for her centre stage.  He is front and centre, teaching.  And when he sees her, he calls her forward to make her and her life the real teaching of the day for all who are there.

“Woman, you are set free from your ailment,” he says.  He touches her and immediately she stands up straight and begins to praise God. 

This doesn’t fit the game plan of the leaders of the synagogue.  They are happy with the way things have been and if it ain't broke, they think, why fix it.  For them synagogue is where people come to learn right from wrong, and where the line between the two – between those who are good and whole and God’s favoured ones and those who are not good and not whole and not God’s favoured ones, is clearly drawn and reinforced.  And the Sabbath – remember this all happens on the Sabbath, is a day to honour God by honouring the rules and the laws of God that create those distinctions, differences and divisions among us.

So they argue with Jesus.  They tell him what he’s doing is against all that’s holy and all that’s good for the synagogue.

To which Jesus replies, “You don’t get it, do you?”  With a roll of his eyes and frustration in his voice he says, “Let’s think about this.”  

The Sabbath, when it’s first commanded out in the wilderness at the foot of Mt Sinai on the way from Egypt to the Promised Land, is about two things, depending which version of the commandments you read – in Exodus 20 or Deuteronomy 5.  In one, Sabbath is a day to stop idolizing our own work, as good as it may be, and to celebrate and rest in God instead as creator of all the world as good, and as sustainer of all that is, leading all things by God’s own power to a good and perfect end.  In the other, the point of Sabbath is to remember that God freed, and still frees us from whatever bondage and limitations keep us from living together as God’s beloved children in the world.

Which is why, he goes on to say, setting this woman free from her ailment and her marginalization in the community, and helping her share in the goodness of life with others is exactly what Sabbath – the day of God’s promise, is about, and what synagogue – the gathering of the faithful, is about.  And which is why, as he goes on to suggest in the two parables he follows with, that God’s kingdom comes through the random wild one who comes into our midst like an weedy, uninvited mustard seed, or comes into our ordered lives like an impure bit of wild yeast, and that it’s in our openness to them and our willingness to include rather than marginalize who and what they are, that something miraculously good starts to grow up among us that even we benefit from, and we begin to rise and grow together like never before into a people of God – bread for the world.

Like when we make changes to our heritage building to make it accessible to others, and in the process maybe rediscover what it means to be a church for the community.

Like when a community of faith like Welcome Inn creates circles of support and accountability for convicted pedophiles released to the community, to help them live there in the midst of others in ways that are safe and helpful for all.  In the process the people of Welcome Inn themselves learn things about being in community and being welcoming that they never knew or ever had reason to imagine before they dared to be that closely aligned with the unwanted.

Like when we reach out to people who feel cut off and isolated by grief, by a hard diagnosis, by disaster, or by scandal in their family.  In reaching out to be with them even when we can’t fix it and make it all better, we as much as they find ourselves experiencing God’s love and God’s power to heal in ways we never had reason to think about or know before.

Or when people come to join us who are different from us, with a different take on Christian faith, different gifts to develop than we have known, and different experience to share.  We might expect them just to fit in and bend themselves into the mold of what we already are.  Or we might make room for them to be who they are and share what they have, so we can all grow together towards an understanding and expression of God bigger than any of us know on our own.  Because God’s good news for the world is bigger than just the little patch of driveway we’ve been working on so well for so long.  So thank God for those who help us sometimes to lift our heads and stop just raking the same spot in the same way over and over again.

Which kind of raises a question.  

Who really is in bondage?  Who really needs to be, and is set free?  And how do we “do church” and find Sabbath rest in the fullness of God the way Jesus does?

I wonder who he's marrying (and bringing home with him) this time?

Reading:  Luke 12:32-40

When Jesus taught, healed and gathered alternative communities of all kinds of people, some people saw in him the perfect expression and fulfilment of every good thing about religion and God.  Using the language and imagery they knew, both they and he also called what they were experiencing, "the kingdom of God."

After his death, resurrection and ascension, the early church believed he would return to continue and complete that transformation of the world, and in writing the Gospels they remembered and collected different things he had said about it.  In today's reading, three of these sayings -- or "sound-bites about the kingdom and Jesus' return," are edited together to create a single teaching sequence.

“My little flock,” Jesus says, “Do not be afraid,

for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

Sell what you have and share with others in need;

for where your treasure is, there your heart will be, too.”

Oh, how we count on this!  The promise of the kingdom of God! 

Whether we believe all the time in God or not, or even know what we believe about God at different times in our life, I think we somehow still all the time believe in and hang on to the promise of the kingdom of God.  With all that it means about peace and justice for all; the provident abundance of life; the well-being of all creatures, all people, all creation itself; the balance of all needs and wants; the fulfilment of our deepest potential as persons and as a species; and the expression of the glory, the life and the love of God in all things.

Something in us resonates with that promise, and we count on it being true in some way.

But at the same time, it’s easy to fear.  Because we are so little.  What’s that old Celtic fisherman’s prayer?  “Oh Lord, my boat is so small, and the sea is so big.”  A prayer without the courage to ask for anything while out on the sea.  Not fish.  Not safety.  Not anything but that God be aware of my little boat, and not let me be alone.

And we are a little flock, we few summer-folk here today.  But that’s not uncommon for folks who gather around Jesus.  When Jesus first spoke these words his followers were a little flock, a handful of disciples not always sure just what this, he, and they might in the end come to.

The church that emerged after the resurrection was also for the most part small in numbers.  Scattered.  Unsure a lot of the time about their future.  Kind of making it up as they went, following the Spirit’s lead one step at a time, trusting that after each one there would be another.

And aren’t we there again today?  We here in Winona and the church in general in a post-Christian world.  Fewer in numbers than we used to be.  No longer sure of the big picture.  And no longer as convinced as we used to be of our grand scenarios of what we thought God would do.  Having to learn again to follow the Spirit’s lead one step at a time, and to trust that after each one there will be another.

And don’t we feel the same way as individuals?  Small against the powers and events of the day.  Unsure in the face of the world’s problems and dysfunctions.  Anxious about all we have to face in the course of a lifetime.

When my mom died unexpectedly in hospital after heart surgery I flew to Winnipeg as soon as I could to see her body before anything was done to it, and what struck me and has stayed with me is how small she seemed.  In her life she had always seemed so big – strong and capable of doing so much.  But as she aged and suffered accidents and illness, she shrank and in the end was so diminished, such a small echo of what she had been.

But “fear not, my little flock,” Jesus says.  “For it is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”  All the fullness of creation completed, all the joy of a world of abundance, peace and well-being for all.  Without exclusion, injustice or isolation.  Where all have a home and safe place to be, and be together as one.

And how does this happen?

I think of two other passings here within our congregation that show us something of the giving and the living of the kingdom among us.  A number of years ago, Jack Durfey died.  Jack was a pillar and patriarch of this church and of Winona.  By his spirit of public service and personal commitment he helped make this church and this village, good places to be.  He could have left for bigger pastures early on in his life, but he stayed and for the rest of his life he used whatever he had and did whatever he could for the good of others around him.  For many of us it’s summed up in the directions he gave his children from his hospital bed when he knew he was dying.  “Be sure the people get their cherries.”  Every year he shared the fruit of his orchard as much as he could with a number of people around town, and even from his hospital bed he wanted to be sure this was done.

I think too of Marg Aitken, who passed away last Sunday.  For so many years she fought through pain, illnesses and crippling weakness, none of which, though, dimmed her desire to be of use to others, and do good to them.  And even this last time as she grew so ill that she had to go into hospital, one of the last things she did was to follow through on a commitment to her grandchildren that she had begun as soon as they started coming into her life, and that she certainly wasn’t going to stop doing now just because she was dying.

And this is how the door opens to the kingdom God wants to give to us.  It happens when we open the door to others, to do what we can for them, and to share with them what has been given to us and put in our hands.

It’s like Jesus goes on to say, when he invites us to

“Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit;

be like those who are waiting

for their master to return from the wedding banquet,

so they may open the door for him

as soon as he comes  and  knocks.

For, those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes?

I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat,

and he will come and serve them.”

In this passage, the word for “he comes” – referring to the coming of Jesus, is not future tense verb – as though it’s in some time still to come.  Nor is it the idea of a once-for-all coming – some singular event that by itself changes everything.  Instead, it’s a present tense verb, meaning he comes here and now.  And it refers to ongoing, repetitive action, meaning he comes again and again, probably all through our life and the life of the world.

And the way Jesus tells it, he comes not in judgement.  Not in great displays of power and threat.  But more happily, even joyfully.  He comes from a wedding banquet – back home at last at some ungodly hour with his new bride on his arm, ready to bring her into his household, to introduce her to his servants, and to show them who they will be expected now to welcome into their lives, to serve, and even take orders from.

Jesus often speaks of the kingdom of God as a wedding banquet – as that happy occasion when God and what God loves are brought together and made one.  God is the bridegroom, and the bride – the desire of God’s heart, is all people, all creatures, all creation itself that God has called into being.

So when Jesus comes to us – comes home over and over again from some wedding banquet, it’s with some person, some group of people, some creatures, some part of creation that he tells us he loves, that he has bound himself to for life, and that he now expects and invites us as his servants to love and serve as well.

And what can we do, but be ready?  We don’t know exactly when he will come.  Nor do we always know just who he will bring with him this time.  Or if we will like her, or him, or them, or it.  Whether it will be an easy fit into the household as it’s been, or will everything now be changed, maybe even turned upside down.

But it doesn’t really matter, does it? 

What matters is that we are called and invited to love and to serve whoever and whatever he loves, and God loves.  And that as we bend and spend ourselves to share what we can, to serve their needs as we are able, and to use the things that have been put into our hands for their well-being, we ourselves will be cared for, be nurtured and fed by him, and will be counted eternally and happily as God’s beloved and faithful servants, part of a greater company than we might ever imagine.

*     *     *     *     *

A few questions that emerge:

• The sermon names two members of the Fifty congregation in whose ways of living and of dying we see something of what it is "to live and to give the kingdom of God."  Is there someone else you could name in the same way?  What about them makes you think of them like that?
• In the sermon Jesus is pictured as the master of the house who goes out to marry the desire of his heart -- some person, group of people, creatures, or part of creation itself he especially loves for some reason.  And we might never know who or what this is, until he brings his beloved home to us, and invites us (as servants of the house) to welcome whoever or whatever it is, serve them, and put the resources of the house at their disposal.  What persons, groups of people, causes or parts of creation has Jesus brought home to the United Church, or even just to Fifty, that we have easily welcomed and served?  Or that we have have found it harder to welcome and serve?
• We all are also his beloved.  Is there a time when you felt especially "led home" by Jesus as his beloved, and then thoroughly welcomed and served (or not) by his servants in the house?

Suffering the winds of time ... or channeling the wind of God

Reading: Ecclesiastes 1:12-14; 2:18-26

The mood of the Book of Ecclesiastes (literally the "Book of the Teacher") is despairing.  What a way to start back after vacation!  But ... do not fear: despair is not the whole of the story.  

"The Teacher" purports to be King Solomon, son and heir of King David, living in the 9th century BCE in the upbeat heyday of the kingdom.  Probably because from where and when he is really living, that seems like "the good old days."  

The book actually dates from the 4th century BCE -- a time of spiritual and moral decay for Israel after centuries of curruption, defeat by their enemies, exile in a foreign land, and the eventual return of some of the exiles to what was left of their once-proud kingdom.  At a time like this, how can any honest teacher not feel and communicate despair.  The lesson of history, both political and personal, is that everything we do, accomplish, learn, work for, and achieve is "vanity" ("hebel" in Hebrew, which means "transitory and insatisfactory, fleeting and transient like the wind).

But just as he looks to the past for a sense of better times, there are also clear signs -- for any with ears to hear and eyes to see, of hope and the presence of the glory of God in the present.

 In the Good News Version of the Bible, part of the reading is translated this way:

What is it all worth –

all you spend your time trying to do all your life?

You work and worry your way through life, and in the end,

it gets left to someone else to do with it as they will

and who’s to know what that will be?

And to worry about it is useless – like chasing after the wind.

And that’s the Good News version!

Barb McMullen and I were talking about this, this week.  Kind of.  She saw my car at the church and stopped in to leave her summer offering.  She knew she wouldn’t be here today and didn’t want to let the summer go by without doing her part to help us get through.  And one of the things we ended up chatting about was all the stuff we inherit and accumulate from our parents and our children, how at first we hang on to everything, and then over time bit by bit let a lot of it go, pass things on to others, or just dispose of it – Rubbermaid binsful of old photos and big bags of keepsakes that we send the way of all flesh, to the dump.

We can’t keep everything, and not everything is worth keeping forever.  We want to remember and hold on to what’s important; it just takes time and a little distance to sort out what’s eternal and will never be lost, from what’s transient, temporary and disposable.

I think of when my dad died.  In his life he was always fixing, maintaining and improving what was around him – in the house he provided us as a family, in the apartment he and my mom moved into in the end, in the apartments of others in their building.  It could be as big a job as turning an unfinished attic into comfortable and roomy bedrooms for us kids or helping his daughter and son-in-law stain their deck, or as small as installing an extra shelf in a closet in an apartment of a woman down the hall.  All his life he happily seized on any chance to help someone out in a tangible, practical way. 

And when he died and I first saw his body – lifeless, my first thought was, “Is that all?  Is that all it is?”  I thought he would always be there building and making things for others.  But now already with each passing minute all he did and all he was, was fading into the past.  Already I could sense him and all he did being lifted and carried away in the winds of time.

But then the second thought was that, yes, that is all there is – in a more positive sense.  That his constant attention to another’s need and his willingness to do what he could to meet it, is all there is to life – at least to a good life, a life that survives the mere passing of time.  Even though the things he made will break down, in time will also need to be fixed or improved, and in the end be thrown away, the underlying love for others that was expressed in what he did, will never die or be lost.  It will and it does survive.  

Because unlike stuff that gets swept away in the winds of time, his attention to the needs of his neighbours was how he became an instrument of the good will of God, and a channel in his time and in his way of the one wind – the one Spirit, of God always wanting to be breathed into the world in some way.  And how can that ever be lost?

Henri Nouwen has written:

[We spend much of our lives, it seems, preparing for] questions that never will be asked.  It seems as if we are getting ourselves ready for the question “How much did you earn during your lifetime?” or “How many friends did you make?” or “How much progress did you make in your career?” or “How much influence did you have on people?” or “How many conversions did you make?”

Were any of these to be the question Christ will ask when he comes again in glory [or we come to the gate of Heaven], many of us could approach the judgment day with great confidence.  But nobody is going to hear any of these questions.  The question we all are going to face is the question we are least prepared for.  It is: “What have you done for the least of mine?”  As long as there are strangers; hungry, naked, and sick people; prisoners, refugees, and slaves; people who are handicapped physically, mentally, or emotionally; people without work, a home, or a piece of land, there will be that haunting question from the throne of judgment: “What have you done for the least of mine?”

How much money we amass, how many friends we make, how successful we are in our career, and how many people look up to us, in the end will all disappear and be swept away in the winds of time.  What lasts and what counts is the ways we care for the stranger, help the poor and the hungry, sit with those who are imprisoned and disabled, and reach out to love those who are in need and who are different from us.  Because this how we become channels of the wind and the Spirit of God being breathed into and through our time.

And it might be something big.  God’s desire to be with “the least of these” might lead us to to create programs, support projects, build institutions and agencies.  And it might be something small, the simplest thing, the merest gesture, the most common kind of kindness.

This year as vacation approached I was worried.  I wanted vacation to be meaningful and memorable for both Japhia and I.  I wanted us to plan something we would remember after it was over, and make it “a real vacation.” 

And we had only week planned at a cottage – which was great.  But the rest -- the other three weeks, were just going to be at home and I worried that with nothing special planned, it would just come and go like an empty wind, with nothing left after to show for it. 

But you know what happened?  One of the best parts of our vacation happened during those three weeks at home.  During those weeks there was a stretch of about a week when each and every day for five or six days in a row, Japhia and I made a little trip to our neighbourhood Metro just to pick up a few little things for dinner that evening.  And each and every time we were there we ended up in the check-out line of a cashier named Val – not my sister Val, but another Val just as warm and personable.  So day by day and bit by bit we had the most delightful week-long conversation with her about vacation – ours at the moment and hers coming up, about grandchildren – her one and our seven, and other little tidbits of personal and family stuff.

We didn’t plan it.  It started by accident; the first two days Val’s line was the shortest.  But after that, when we became aware of what was happening, it was by choice we stood in her line no matter how long the line or the time required. 

Because, you see, we have known Val as a cashier at the Metro for a few years, but a couple of years ago one night we ran into her in the ER.  We were there on one of our visits with Japhia’s gastroparesis and she was there with her married son.  That meeting deepened our connection and our awareness of what we each were dealing with in life.  So for one week this summer when we had a chance to deepen it even more, we happily did. 

And it was wonderful.  For us, for her, and I think for a few other cashiers who noticed what was happening.  The store was the same, the shopping was the same, the groceries were the same, the prices were the same, we were all the same people.  But somehow it and we were also all new, more real and vital than before, with a deepened spirit of community and caring. 

We can, and often do, just blow through this world, doing and building and making and amassing what we can, and then blow out if it like an empty wind.  But we can also choose, in big and little ways, to be opened to others around us, to be attentive to their needs, and to let ourselves become channels instead of the one good wind – the Spirit of the loving God, always wanting to be breathed into the world of our time.

And then we ended our sermon time with this little exercise:

• create groups of 2 or 3 in the congregation
• in the groups, each person take a turn saying to the other(s) in the group (looking at them as you say it): "I am glad ... you are here"
• still in the separate groups, all the group members say together (while looking at one another): "When we are opened to others ... we are a body of Christ"
• all the groups say together: "We can be part ... of the flow of God's Spirit in our time