Love: Is There Anything Simpler ... and Harder? (June 6, 2021)

Welcome

All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small,

all things wise and wonderful: in love, God made them all.

This hymn as our opening song for the online worship seems perfect for the time of year we are in.  We feel the spring warmth, already leaning towards summer.  We revel in the world’s greenness and vibrancy, and its variety and diversity.  The world is good, and shows the good will and purpose of God who has called it into being.

But not all is good in the world.  There is much that is wrong, hurtful, broken, tragic and evil.

Just over a week ago, the discovery was made of the bodies of 215 children in unmarked graves in an unrecorded cemetery at the Kamloops Indian Residential School. 

It is the latest of many stories to be added to the history of the residential schools in Canada, and it leaves us surprisingly still shocked, saddened, angry, devastated, searching for ways to respond, hopefully committed to finding ways to live together – as hard as they may be, towards truth and reconciliation.

I confess that having begun a few years ago already to read Volume One: The Summary, of The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, I stalled at page 55 of roughly 400 pages of text, plus endnotes and bibliography.  I also know there are 94 recommendations and Calls to Action, some addressed specifically to the churches – like the United Church of Canada – that were involved in the history of the schools.  But I can’t tell you what they are.

Come fall, and into the new year Fifty United plans to start learning about truth and reconciliation in our relations with the First Nations of Canada.  I expect we’ll be reaching out online with some of it, and I hope wherever you are, you’ll be willing to learn and become involved as well.

In the meantime, knowing that the only way through any difficult situation is simply to do the next right action, let us begin by acknowledging that this place where we gather to worship God is on traditional land of the Anishinabewaki, the Attiwonderonk and the Haudenosaunee peoples.  They lived on this land, and cared for it and for all its life, long before we arrived.  We are grateful, and we seek to know the way towards truth and reconciliation with them.

Let us pray, using the words of one of our traditional prayers, from the old green Service Book of 1969.  But fifty-two years later, it still speaks to our hearts, and calls us into a life of openness to the love and good will of God.  Humbled openness before God is timeless.

Opening Prayer

God the Father (and Mother?), God beyond us, we adore you.

You are the depth and the fullness of all that is.

You are the ground and the guarantee of our being.

God the Son, God beside us, we adore you.

You are the perfection of humanity.

You have shown us what human life is to be like.

God the Spirit, God around us, we adore you.

You are the power within us and others.

You can make us the men and women we are meant to be.

Father, Son and Spirit; God, beyond, beside and around us;

We adore you. 

  

Reading:  1 John 4:16-21 

This letter, dating from around the end of the first century, was written to help congregations of believers to discern between true and false teachers, and to know whether their own fellowship with God was genuine or not.

God is love.  Those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them… There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.  We love because God first loved us.

Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.  The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.

Meditation

That reading is short and to the point.  As quick and to the point as making a donation this year to Wesley Urban Ministries to support all their ministries and programs to help and support children, young people and families living in poverty in the downtown core of Hamilton.

At the beginning of worship, I mentioned the discovery of the bodies of the 215 children buried at the Kamloops Indian Residential School.  It was reported in the Hamilton Spectator on Tuesday, and that same day The Spec also included an eight-page annual report from the Hamilton Community Foundation titled “2021 Vital Signs.”  The main point of the report?

“From the outside, the city’s façade seems strong as ever…  Behind the façade, though, there’s another Hamilton … where people are struggling to hang on 15 months into a global pandemic that has scrambled daily life.  ‘COVID … has exposed … that we are not all in this together,” the report says, “It hasn’t been the great equalizer.  In fact, what it’s doing is compounding the inequality by wealth, by neighbourhood, and by race.

“Some of us who have secure employment and own our own homes ironically will emerge from this in a stronger financial position.  But that will be a very different experience for people who are precariously housed, who have precarious employment, who don’t have food security… COVID has compounded those inequalities, and it’s going to be a very long and difficult recovery for folks who are on the wrong side of that fault line.”

One of the ways we have of making a difference for good in the lives of people in our city on the wrong side of that fault line, is through the work of Wesley Urban Ministries.  And one of the way we have of being part of their work is through the annual Case for Kids campaign, in which once a year we raise funds and make donations of our own to help support and pay for all their programs for children, young people and families – more than 20 different programs in all to tackle hunger and homelessness, addiction and a need for good medical care; to provide support for pregnant moms, early childhood centres for their children, camps for the summer and tutoring for school, gathering places and mentoring for young adults, and help of different kinds to enter the adult world as strong and whole as they can be.

Normally on this first Sunday of June after worship we would go downstairs for coffee and a few cookies, maybe a sandwich, and then a bunch of us would head over to Bayfront Park to join with hundreds of others from churches all across the city, and spend a great afternoon walking, running and riding around the Bay to raise money for a year’s worth of programs and outreach.

With the pandemic, things change.  Not the need, nor the desire to reach out in God’s name and with God’s love.  What changes is how we do it.

It’s as quick and painless as the reading about loving our brothers and sisters was short and to the point.  Go to https://www.canadahelps.org/en/charities/wesley-urban-ministries-inc/p2p/caseforkids2021/team/team-fifty/ and just follow the directions to contribute whatever amount God invites you to give.

The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.   It’s as simple and easy as that.