Love God and love all others: the rest of the faith is only commentary (Sunday, October 29, 2023)

Land Acknowledgement

At Fifty, we acknowledge we are on land that for time immemorial was home to a number of First Nations People, including the Attiwonderonk and the Haudonosaunee.  They lived on it and took care of it together, under the guidance of a covenant called the Dish With One Spoon agreement.  When settlers arrived from Europe, they established an agreement of peaceful and separate co-existence called the Two Row Wampum Agreement.  

All that changed, however, when this land was included in the Between the Lakes Treaty agreed upon in 1792 between the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation and the British Crown – a treaty that effectively gave control of the land to the British Crown.  As heirs of the beneficiaries of that treaty, we commit ourselves to finding ways of truth-telling about our relations with them, and of reconciliation towards a good future together.

And why do we do this?  To be nice?  To be politically correct, and tp fir in with the times?  Will it make people like us?  Will it make God like us?

Or…because it’s fundamentally part of who we are, and what we are about about?  Because it’s part of what it means to be a community of Christ in Canada in 2023, and children and people of God in the world today?  Because it’s part of how we to love God with all we have and are, and love our neighbour as ourselves?

Reading: Matthew 22:34-40, 46

When Jesus was in Jerusalem, just before he was arrested and put to death, he was under constant challenge from the religious and civil leaders of the city.  They peppered him with questions about hypothetical situations, asking him what he thought about different things, trying to get him to say something they could use against him.

They also asked him point-blank the big questions about God, what God wants of us, and what it means to be obedient and faithful to God. 

 

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

 

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

….

No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions.

 

 

Reflection

 

If the Pharisees – or anyone else, were to ask you what is the greatest commandment, what would you say?  If you didn’t already know the story, and the answer that Jesus gives?

 

I’m not sure I would have said it’s to love God with all that I am, and love other people as the way for my own life to be good and worthwhile.

 

 

At one time – and maybe still, my answer would have been, obey your parents.  Honour your father and mother – those above you, do what you are told to do, and don’t bring dishonour on them.  In other words, be a good boy.  Which became be a good student.  Be a good person.  A good minister.  Don’t cause trouble, do what’s expected, and God will love you.

 

That commandment, with its implied necessity of proving myself worthy of God’s love, was planted in my heart early on in my life.  Obeying it was as natural and irresistible as breathing.  And I wish I could say it’s served me well.  It has, in some ways.  And in other ways, it has not.

 

The exercise of naming the commandment that actually guides you in life is not a bad exercise, and is actually a traditional spiritual practice.  It was common among the Israelites – and especially their teachers, writers and prophets, to reduce the Law to a few simple commandments.  The Law was huge and unwieldy with all its varied directions and ordinances about everything under the sun, and it was helpful to have a few simply stated and easily understood commandments that would stand you in good stead, and steer you right in all situations.

 

And, it was common for different teachers and prophets to debate and argue about what the greatest commandment is, and for different schools and traditions of thought to develop – each of them thinking they are more right than the others.  So, it’s not out of keeping with the give-and-take battle for supremacy in the minds of the people that the Pharisees ask, what do you say, Jesus, is the greatest commandment?

 

To which Jesus says, to love God with all you are and all you have; and to love your neighbour as yourself – to find your own well-being in serving the well-being of your neighbour.

 

At which point the Pharisees realize they cannot argue with him.  They cannot poke holes or find fault in his answer.  From then on, they ask him no further question.  And I can see three reasons for their decision.

 

First, Jesus’s answer is thoroughly and concisely scriptural in a way they cannot argue with.  His answer is a quotation of two key verses from the Hebrew Scriptures.  The first is Deuteronomy 6:5 – a passage known to Jews as The Shema, which observant Jews recite every day as the most basic fact and reality of their life – kind of their absolute bedrock statement of faith.  “Hear, O Israel [and that’s what the word “Shema” means; it’s Hebrew for “Hear”] … Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.  These words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart at all times.”

 

And Jesus adds to it Leviticus 19:18, one little verse in a whole box given to an exposition of the Law, which was accepted by the Hebrews as an inspired little summary of it’s all about – at least what the last six – maybe even the last seven, of the Ten Commandments are about – namely, the divine command in all situations and all encounters with other people of any kind, to “love your neighbour as yourself.”

 

Second – the second thing that scares the Pharisees from asking Jesus any more questions, is that Jesus not only gives them such a good summary of the Law – of truly human living, he also lives it so well.  Even they see that – that in his living, there is no difference between what he says and what he does. 

 

In his healing and his acts of compassion, he reaches out to help anyone who comes to him, no matter if they are a respected synagogue leader, an unclean Samaritan woman, or a pagan Roman centurion.  It makes no difference to him.  When he sits down to eat with people, he is just as likely to be at the table of a traitorous tax-collector or in the home of an unclean leper, as in the house of a righteous Pharisee.  Who they are doesn’t matter.  And when he gathers around himself a kingdom-of-God community, he welcomes with open arms and equal love all manner of men and women who in their “normal” lives in the world have no reason to ever want to associate with each other, or want to work together for good.  He loves and welcomes any and all members of God’s family in the world.

 

And, third – the third reason the Pharisees back away from challenging him anymore, is that in living this way, Jesus actually redeems and heals the world and the people in it in ways that the Pharisees and the priests and the lawyers cannot with all the other laws, commandments and judgments they spend their life trying to enforce.  His law of simply loving God and loving the other as the key to your own life being good, actually changes the world and the people in it in ways that nothing else can.

 

But – the big question for us, and for anyone really – what does it mean in practice, in real life and real time, to love God and love neighbour as Jesus does?  It’s one thing to read the story of Jesus and the way he loved God and neighbour in his world and time of Jews, Samaritans and Romans, of Pharisees, priests, tax-collectors, lepers and prostitutes, of pious and impious Galileans all thrown together for good.  And it’s another thing to know what it means to live out his way of loving God and neighbour in the realities and mosaics and melting-pots of our own time and place in history.

 

I wonder if the image of the cross – a central image of Christ and of our faith in Jesus, may be of some help here. 

 

Image the cross in your mind.  See … and maybe even touch and feel in your imagination the two intersecting parts of it – the upright piece and the cross-piece.

 

 

Think of the upright piece.  See how it points to the sky, to the heavens.  That’s the first direction we are called to know and to nurture in our living – an openness to heaven, loving openness to God, the One God of all that is.

 

And in this love, it’s helpful to pay attention to the preposition of the command.  Prepositions are precise in the definition of what the relationship is between two things.  And what is said – what is commanded about our relationship with God is that we are to love God with all out heart, soul, mind and strength – love God with all that we are and all that we have.

 

Note that our love of God is not to be for all that we have and all that we are.  Love of God is not a means of getting God to bless us. 

 

Nor is it because of all we are and all we have by God’s good will.  Love for God is not just gratitude and good feelings for how we have been blessed.  As good and healthy as it is to be thankful, that is not yet the real life-transforming heart of the matter.

 

Rather, love of God is with all that we have and all that we are.  It’s an act of commitment, over and over, all the time, to use and to give all we have and all we are, to serve God’s purposes in and for the good of the world. 

 

The language of “with” reminds me of the old marriage vow, that “with all that I am and all that I have, I thee wed.”  It’s a commitment of radical identification and total union with an other as the meaning of your life in the world from this point on.  It’s a yes to the invitation and the promise to be a partner in loving union with God – of becoming one with God and God’s good will in the way we live in the world.

 

Which leads to the second direction – the direction we are given in the cross-piece of the cross.  The piece that reaches out to both sides.  And how important is that?  First, to remember that love always is a matter of reaching out?  And that love in the way of Jesus means reaching out to both sides?

 

As one Bible dictionary says, “one cannot say in advance who the neighbour is, but … the course of life will make this plain enough”.  The word used for “neighbour” has the same linguistic root as the word for “encounter,” suggesting the neighbour we are to love as ourselves – the neighbour whose well-being and our own are inextricably linked, is literally anyone and everyone we encounter in the world, especially in need, whose well-being we can help. 

 

And then, the third direction.  Yes, there is a third direction to the cross. 

 

Focus on the bottom of the cross.  The way the upright piece is rooted, planted and firmly fixed in the ground.  In a particular moment of history.  In a particular place in the world.  In a particular web or network of relationships and possibilities.

 

When we read of Jesus, we read of Pharisees, Sadducees and priests, of tax-collectors, lepers and prostitutes, of Jews, Samaritans and Romans, of holy and unholy Galileans.  Those were the people, the web of relationships, and the parties at play in his time – in the time and place where he was planted and rooted to live out love.

 

Who are the people of our time and place?  What are the networks of relationships, the parties at play, and the challenges and opportunities to love at work in our time?  Where we are rooted and planted.  At our moment and place in history?

 

A quick scan – literally a 30-second scan of the landscape we live in, yields a list that includes First Nations people and issues; the people of Gaza, Israel and their neighbouring countries; people right around us and across the country who are poor, hungry, and either homeless already or soon to be so; people in our community who are deeply spiritual and intentionally non-religious; the LGBTQ+ community; the Freedom Convoy; and people seeking affirmation of gender and gender identity in ways more true to their own identity and experience.  And that’s only a 30-second scan.

 

Imagine what would come of a more careful, faithful, and dialogical look at the world in which we live, and the place in history where we are planted.  Imagine where it would lead us.  What it would lead us to see and do about loving God and loving neighbour in our time.

 

It’s more than I or we can explore as much as we need to in this one sermon.  In the little time we have right now.  But maybe enough that worship – worship of the one God of all, open us to the task.

 

And maybe this prayer will help us find a way into it.  The prayer is an adaptation of a video meditation by Elsa Anders Cook, titled “Let Us Love.”

A Responsive Prayer (adapted from “Let Us Love” by Elsa Anders Cook)

 

One:    Let us love – comes the invitation.

All:      Let us be a community following Jesus so long

that we come to define our whole being by it.

 

One:    Little children, let us love.

All:      Let us encourage each other,

            as if this is something that is yet unknown and needs to be practiced,

            like a baby carefully watching the footsteps of others

            until she discovers her own feet can move in this way –

            wobbly and imperfect, but still walking, still following in the way.

 

One:    Let us love, little children, not in word or in speech,

            but as if our whole bodies are learning this new grace.

All:      Let us be bold in learning this new movement

            for we will falter and it won’t be perfect, just as we are not perfect.

 

One:    It will feel new and awkward; and it should.

All:      It should feel strange to twist and turn our bodies into love’s possibility,

            to learn how to love in the way of Christ

            who is still trying to encourage us to love one another.

 

One:    Let this be what defines us now in this moment

            not so that “they will know we are Christians’

but so that we know where God’s love abides.

All:      God’s love abides in me.  God’s love abides in you.  God’s love abides in others.

            I am in you and you are in me, and we and others are one in God.

 

One:    And this changes everything.

All:      That is our prayer right now –

            that we will come to believe enough in God’s abiding love,

            that all our being and all other beings are changed.

One:    O Christ, may it be so.

All:      May it be so.

 

Living gratefully probably doesn't incite stomping through the world (from Sunday, Oct 8 -- Thanksgiving Sunday)

 Reading: Matthew 6:24-33

Jesus rarely taught doctrine or creeds as a way of knowing God.  He acted out God’s love, and let people draw their own conclusions about God from what they saw him doing.  He told a lot of stories, usually that make the listener revise what they thought God was like.  And he pointed to life of the world itself as a way of knowing God. 

In today’s reading – part of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7, Jesus directs us to look at the birds of the air and to consider the lilies of the field, if we want to know anything about living well, and living in God’s way in the world.  Many faithful people in his day – as in ours, somehow equate money and material accumulation with faithfulness to God.  Jesus has a different idea:

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

 

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

 

“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labour or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?

 

“So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

 

Reflection

 

Look at the birds of the air … consider the lilies of the field … how God is with them, and howe they are with God, and with the rest of the world that they are part of…

 

It makes me think that in Jesus’ experience, it’s not so much we who teach the world to sing, as it is the world that teaches us, when we let it.  That it’s not we who make the world abundant, but the world that makes us know that “abundance” is even a thing.  That it’s not so much we who make the world work well, as it is the world and all its life – when we are ready to listen to it and learn from it, that helps us know what it means to live well, in healthy and life-renewing ways.

 

Jesus pointed to the birds of the air as teachers for us, about learning to relax into, and live within the natural order of Earth, and the divine good will of God for the well-being of all. 

 

There’s a story about St. Francis, walking in the footsteps of Jesus twelve centuries later, stopping on his way one day to address a great gathering of birds – not so much to tell them what they needed to know, but to celebrate and affirm what they already knew and were living out just by their nature.  St. Bonaventure tells the story this way in his biography of Francis, written just decades after Francis’ death.

 

“When Francis drew near to Bevagna, he came to a place where a great multitude of birds of different kinds were assembled together, which, when they saw the holy man, came swiftly to the place, and saluted him as if they had the use of reason.  They all turned towards him and welcomed him; those on the trees bowed their heads in an unaccustomed manner, and all looked earnestly at him, until he went to them, [and spoke to them thus]:

 

‘Oh, my brother birds, you are bound greatly to praise your Creator [that is, there is little you can do to keep yourself from praising the God who made you], who has clothed you with feathers [showing off his skillful beauty] and given you wings wherewith to fly [living out the variety of his good will for all]; who has given you the pure air for your dwelling-place [making good place and space for all to be in the world], and governs and cares for you without any care of your own [feeding and nurturing you with good things that come to you as pure gift].’ And while he spoke thus to them, the birds rejoiced in a marvelous manner, swelling their throats, spreading their wings, opening their beaks, and looking at him with great attention….

 

“And all these things, [Bonaventure goes on to write], were seen by his companions, who were waiting for him on the road,” and no doubt learning from Francis something of how to live well within the world God has made, and into which God has breathed us to live as well.

 

 

Moving from the birds to the bees, I also had a bit of a schooling recently in living well within the circles and cycles of God’s care.

 

One day last week I took my morning prayer time out to the back deck.  In the early morning light and gentle warmth, I sought an openness to the presence and purpose of the Divine.  And what I became aware of was a number of bees hovering, buzzing and moving quite purposefully among the brilliant yellow blooms of some kind of sunflower that stand tall beside the deck, along the boundary between my neighbour’s back yard and mine.

 

I silently watched the bees there – no more than a foot or three from me, for maybe five minutes.  And as they gathered pollen and nectar from the blooms, I gathered wisdom for living well from them.  And I wonder if this is wisdom – both natural and divine, that appeals to you as well.  Is there anything perhaps in what the bees showed, that may be a lesson for you to reflect on as a way to live in the world with deeper and greater gratitude?

 

The bees came and went with great regularity.  But even with that constant turnover, at any moment there were at least 8 or 12 or 15 of them at work in the bunch of blossoms there – maybe a 5-foot square patch of plants.  No bee was there alone; they worked in community with a shared and common purpose.

 

Even with that number at work, there was not a single instance of two or more bees setting themselves in competition for access to a particular blossom.  There was more than enough to go around, and they quite easily lived within that sense of sufficient abundance.

 

Also, no bee ever stayed over-long at any blossom.  No bee drank any blossom dry, as though it was  intended and given just for them – their special blessing from God.  Over the time I watched them, many different bees visited the same blossom at different times.  Which, really, is how they contribute to pollinating all the world with new life season after season.  If they ever began claiming exclusive right to any one parcel of blossoms and drank it dry all just for themselves, all life on Earth would come to suffer.

 

And, finally, they all flew with great regularity back and forth between blossoms and hive – wherever it was, to deposit and collect together there, for the good of all, what they had gathered.  They all shared in their own way toward the common good of the community.

 

Is there anything there for us to learn about giving thanks and living from a place of gratitude within the circle and cycles of God’s care for all?  About living in a truly spiritual way, in the world God has made the world to be for the good and well-being of all?  Do the birds and the bees and all other manner of our kindred creatures know something about living within, and towards, and by the kingdom of God, that we so often still have to keep learning? 

 

 

One last lesson.  A bonus perhaps, beyond the birds and the bees.  This one from a doe and her fawn.

 

This past Tuesday – just after sunrise, I was walking the forest path alongside Spencer Creek in Dundas – a quiet little refuge in a wooded ravine just steps from the center of the town.  I was alone in following the path, until I rounded one bend and there no more than 20 feet ahead of me, was a beautiful, gentle deer – a doe, standing absolutely stock-still in the middle of the path, looking at me as I also stopped and stood motionless, looking at her.

 

I dared not move.  Dared not reach into my pocket for my camera to take a picture.  And God forgive me for even having that as my first thought!

 

I did not want to startle or frighten her.  I did not want to make her run away to a different safety than the one she had assumed on that trail.  I did not want to make her give way to me.

 

As we continued looking at each other in the still silence, I began to move slowly backwards.  As I held our face-to-face gaze, I began retreating, step by step yielding my place on the path to her.

 

She took a step forward.  It was then I saw the fawn maybe five or six feet behind, waiting to see what its mother would do.

 

Perhaps it was the movement of my eyes.  Maybe my retreat was too slow.  The doe changed her plan as well.  Easily and gracefully, without alarm, without fear, without undue haste the doe went off the path a feet into the woods, kept coming in my direction, but through the woods and with five or six feet of brush between us.  The fawn followed, and I stood still as they slowly, contentedly walked around me, and then eight or ten feet behind me, regained the path and continued quietly and slowly on their way into the warmth and the growing light of the morning.

 

 

It reminds me a line that Rainer Maria Rilke, a poet, writes about love.  “Love consists of this,” he says, “two solitudes that meet, greet and protect each other.”

 

Is that perhaps a love that we can live out in our relations not only with one another, not only within our families and the global community, but also within the family that is all the natural order.  Is it possible for us to love creatures – animals, plants, all living things, even water, air, Greenbelt, a field, a mountain – in this way, whenever we meet them?  And in some way … for them also to love us?  In the way of two solitudes that meet, greet and protect each other? 

 

Could that kind of love – one for the other, in all our relations – be one way of seeing and being in the kingdom of God?  A way that Jesus invites us to learn from our kindred creatures, about living healthily and gratefully within this world that we and they are given to be our home?

Under the authority of God -- rather than the authority about God (World Communion Sunday, Oct 1, 2023)

Reading:  Matthew 21:23-32

 

In this reading Jesus is in Jerusalem, soon to be arrested and put to death.  His triumphal entry to the city and the overturning of the tables of the corrupt moneychangers in the Temple are done and over.  Now he is coming every day to stand in the Temple and teach.  He is talking to the people about the true kingdom of God.  And he is fielding questions and challenges from the Temple authorities.

 

Jesus entered the temple courts, and, while he was teaching, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him.

 

“By what authority are you doing these things?” they asked. “And who gave you this authority?”

 

Jesus replied, “I will also ask you one question. If you answer me, I will tell you by what authority I am doing these things. John’s baptism—where did it come from? Was it from heaven, or of human origin?”

 

They discussed it among themselves and said, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will ask, ‘Then why didn’t you believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin’—we are afraid of the people, for they all hold that John was a prophet.”

 

So they answered Jesus, “We don’t know.”

 

Then he said, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.

 

“What do you think?  There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’ “‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.

 

“Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go.

 

“Which of the two did what his father wanted?”

 

“The first,” they answered.

 

Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.”

 

Reflection

 

So, the chief priests and the elders of the Temple wanted to know by what authority Jesus was doing and saying what he was about God.  The problem was they thought they were the authorities on God, and Jesus could see that tax collectors and prostitutes he knew were living more in accord with the will of God for the well-being of all, than they were.

 

I talk from time to time with a friend – also a minister, who’s been a member of a Twelve-Step group for a number of years.  He talks about how humbling and encouraging it is for him to be there, particularly in his experience and knowledge of living under the authority of God in his life.

 

Every week the group spends part of their meeting discussing one of the twelve steps – working from 1 to 12 for 12 weeks in succession, and then after 12 weeks starting the cycle over, again and again.  And when he first started, he especially looked forward to the weeks for Steps 2 and 3, because at least these two steps were about God, and that – he thought – was his specialty.

 

Step 2: We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Step 3: We gave our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood God.

 

Each time these steps came up he thought, “At last!  “God ... Higher Power”.  Something I know something about.  Finally, I can show off what I know, and be of help to them.”

 

Except, as he listened to what the others – these “unchurched” people, these broken strugglers, had to share, he was amazed at what they had experienced, had come to know, and were able to articulate about God, God’s love, and God’s healing power at work in their lives.  He had thought this was his turf, his territory, his area of expertise – that he was the authority.  But he saw very clearly that it was by God’s authority – and their giving themselves to it, that they were doing what they were doing, saying what they were saying, and recovering as they were recovering.

 

And that it was their very brokenness and their clear need for healing and wholeness from beyond themselves, that allowed them to give themselves over to the care of God as they understood God – and let themselves live under the authority of loving Higher Power who could and would help them when they gave their will and their lives over to it.

 

My friend says that the other Twelve-Steppers are teaching him what it means to accept the authority of God in his life, and to find a level of recovery and healing that he never knew just on his own, as the authority about God.  As Jesus says to the chief priests and elders in the Gospel story, “tax collectors and prostitutes – the very people who you think and who know themselves that they are not fit to enter the Temple, are entering the kingdom of heaven – are learning ti live the way of the kingdom of God on Earth, ahead of you,” and it’s not a bad idea to let them lead you into it as well for a bit.

 

Now, just an aside so we don’t misunderstand.  In talking about the kingdom of heaven, Jesus is not talking about heaven that comes after death, beyond the veil between this world and rhe next.  It’s like Jesus teaches us to say in the Great Prayer:  “O God in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven.”  It’s about learning now to live in the kingdom of heaven, under the rule of God’s love for all, putting into practice God’s desire for the well-being of all – in this this life, and in this world, on this side of the veil.

 

So, it’s not necessarily that the tax collectors and prostitutes will be going through the pearly gates into life-after-death ahead of the priests and the scribes.  It’s more that the tax collectors and prostitutes Jesus has come to know – even though they’re seen by all, even themselves, as unfit to be in the Temple, are way are ahead of the Temple folk in learning to live in kingdom-of-God kinds of ways here on Earth.

 

Thinking of prostitutes in this way reminds me of our dog Jack – the dog Japhia and I had, loved, and took care of together.  Jack was a dog that Japhia found and adopted online from a rescue shelter in Athens, Greece, through a Canadian organization called Tales from Greece.  What we were told is that the shelter is located in one of the red-light districts of Athens, and that it’s prostitutes on the streets at night who, when they see a stray dog sick or wounded and in need of care, gather it up and carry it to the shelter.  I have no reason not to believe that Jack was one of those rescued from death on the street by a prostitute.

 

 

And I wonder, is that a kingdom-of-God kind of act?  A living-out of God’s love for all things, and a breathing into the life of the world a breath of God’s desire for the well-being of all?  One case among many of people who are broken down by life, being broken open enough to be servants of the kingdom and the authority of God in the world?

 

But of course, this doesn’t mean we have to become tax collectors and prostitutes to learn to live under the authority of God’s love and good will.

 

I think of members of our church.  So many who are engaged in holy and god-like ways in the life of the community – active members of the Lions Club, the Men’s Club, the Grimsby Benevolent Fund, volunteering in hospitals and clinic and schools.  I think of the relationships of care you maintain, sometimes at great cost to you, with family, friends and neighbours.  I think of the prayers you offer for people in need next door and around the world, and of the causes and the charitable organizations you support – and we support together as a church, as much as we do, out of our limited means.  I think of people here in personal recovery, committed not only to your own healing but also to being of service to others in need of healing as well.

 

I think, too, of ways we use our building not just for our own needs as a family home, but for the needs of others as well, letting it be a welcoming home for others in the community as well.  Families in the community rent it at a pretty easy rate for family gatherings and celebrations.  It’s home to book studies and spiritual growth groups that don’t require church membership or a promise to become a church member in order to attend – just a desire to grow in God’s good care, however they understand God.  We host Fingers and Toes for community charity at Christmas.  We hope to keep hosting community events aimed at the issues of truth-telling and reconciliation in our society’s relations with the First Nations.  We’re currently trying to arrange accommodation for a Qi-gong meditation group to meet weekly in the Lower Hall.  And so on.

 

Because we are not the authority on God.  At our best, we are one of many communities of people who try to live under the authority of God in what we do, and in what we do with what we are given.

 

Yesterday I happened to stop in at a bake sale being held by a small church up on the escarpment.  I was one of two customers they had yesterday.  They’re small, a little off the main roads, and they don’t command much of a presence.  One might think they are in the process of dying.  Except, what they have decided is to live by living under the authority of God.  So, this year they are committed to beginning the process of study and discernment about becoming an Affirming Congregation, intentionally welcoming and affirming of persons of all sexual orientations and identities.  Just because.  Because they want to live under the authority of God as they understand God.

 

Today is World Communion Sunday – a day to remember and give thanks for the communion of all who live under the authority of God in the world.  Who in their lives and their lifestyles, seek to bring God’s Word to life in the world.  Who in their day-to-day and their once-in-a-lifetime decisions, seek to be open to the way of God’s Spirit in the movements of the time.  Who in their relationships and the kinds of community they help to nurture, seek to make real the kingdom of heaven on Earth, where God intends it to be.

 

What is it we say in our Creed?

 

That we are not alone.  That we live in God’s world.  That we believe in God who has created and is still creating, who has come in Jesus – the Word made flesh, to reconcile and make new, and who works in us and in others by the Spirit.

 

As long as we don’t see ourselves as the authority on God, but seek to live under the authority of God, we are not alone.

 

Thanks be to God.