Neighbours in a Dangerous Time (for Sun, Aug 20/17)

Reading:  Psalm 137:1-6 and Psalm 126 (maybe ... things could change by Sunday)

Two psalms about the pain of being exiled from Jerusalem ... about losing what you counted on as your home, your identity, the place and the way of being you counted on as yours in the world.

Elgin, our Property Chair, dropped by the church yesterday afternoon to fill me in on what's been happening while I was on vacation around the use of our parking lot by a neighbouring business -- a simmering local issue that involves considerable confusion and sometimes a little heat around boundaries (both legal and practical), agreements, new and unfamiliar partners in an old and established neighbourhood, etc etc.

I was glad for Elgin's arrival.  It gave me a break from the bog I was in, trying to sort out this week's sermon.  I am committed to following through on a summer series I set up back in June, in which the theme this week is what it's like to be (and what good news there may be for those who are) in exile from home, longing for return, recovery and new life.  But I have also been deeply moved by the events in and from Charlottesville, by how the issues that have surfaced there relate to us here, and by an interview I heard yesterday morning with a man who is a recovered violent extremist, who has helped form an organization that helps heal others like him of the childhood trauma and undermined sense of identity, trust and self-worth that apparently is a common denominator world-wide among people attracted to violent extremism.  If you want, you can hear the brilliant 12-minute interview at http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-august-15-2017-1.4246788/this-ideology-on-violent-far-right-is-just-as-toxic-as-isis-says-former-white-supremacist-1.4246815

Anyway, when Elgin arrived I happily welcomed him, and told him he had a choice: he could either fill me in on the parking lot saga, or tell me what Sunday's sermon will be (without filling him in on the specifics of the bog I was in on the way towards it).  He sat and thought for just a minute (less, actually), and said simply, "Be a good neighbour."

How brilliant!  And how amazing of him to sum up both the saga and the sermon in just those four words.  Thank you, Elgin. 

In both the ill-defined parking lot around the church and the cultural-economic-social-political chaos of our times, isn't it really about being good neighbours -- what that means, what makes it hard to do and what stands in the way, what we need to learn and where we need to grow in order to be able to live out this so-simple-sounding command?

The man who works with violent extremists says it has to begin with regaining connection with our own humanity -- our basic self-worth, identity, meaning and purpose -- something so many people in the world are disconnected from, usually from childhood.  Because until we really know, accept and love our own humanity, how can we know, accept and love the humanity of others different from us?

And I think maybe the Bible (at least Psalm 137 and 126) might be reminding us of the ways we all feel exiled or dis-connected from Jerusalem -- whatever "Jerusalem" may mean and may be for any of us.  And that until we feel connected with it again, or feel connected to a new Jerusalem -- different and even better and fuller than the old, we just cannot get out of the pit of grief, victimization, and the politics (both personal and public) of grievance and retribution that we so easily fall into and inhabit.

So ... what does this mean for Sunday? For the sermon?  

Not sure yet. 

The first step is probably to spend some time with the question of what it means for me.

Sermon from Sunday, August 13, 2017

Reading: 1 Samuel 22:1-5 and 23:1-5

The reading tells a story from the early years of the Kingdom of Israel.  Saul is the people's first king, and after seeming like a good choice, he has turned out not so well.  So David is chosen by God and anointed to be new king.  But Saul is still on the throne, isn't about to give it up, and every now and then tries to have David killed.  At one point David goes underground, hiding out in a cave in the neighbouring land of the Philistines (Israel's enemy at that point) and then in a forest just inside Israel’s border with the land of the Philistines.  In hiding, he is joined by hundreds of others from "the underside" of Saul's kingdom.

David, for his part, has a number of opportunities to kill Saul and take the throne, but refuses to raise a hand against the sitting king.  Rather, David and his followers just go about the work of helping the people of the kingdom as best they can from where they are.

When I read this story of David, the rightful and future king hiding in a cave in enemy territory and then living in a forest on the kingdom’s edge, attracting around him hundreds of others who are oppressed, in debt or dissatisfied, I think of Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest hiding from the Sherriff of Nottingham and the cruel King John usurping the throne of his brother Richard the Lionhearted, and gathering around him a band of Merry Men similarly dispossessed and creating what justice they can in a hard and unjust time.

I think of alternative communities and underground resistance of any time. 

I think too of Jesus on the fringe of society and power in his time, also gathering a motley crew of disciples, united in their sense of dispossession and loss, united also in their commitment to seeking and helping to create a new world more holy and humane than the one that keeps perpetuating itself.

And that makes me think too, of what might have happened – what might have been asked and answered, each time someone new came to the cave, came to the edge of the forest, came wanting to join the community that was forming on the edge of their time.

“What are you looking for” comes a voice from somewhere up ahead, or maybe off to the side – the voice of someone still skillfully hidden from plain sight.

“I am looking for comfort,” is maybe the first response.  “I have lost so much.  I see no hope.  I don’t know where to turn.  And I have heard that there is comfort to be found here.  That here with your leader there is understanding and healing, encouragement and hope that the world – that the kingdom of our time and that the life and the system and the powers of our kingdom cannot provide.  I am in need of comfort.”

After a pause, during which we wonder if maybe we are now alone – that the one who asked the question has maybe left us, the voice sounds again.  “And is that all you are looking for?” the voice asks, and this time we think we see the outline of a human shape in the cluster of trees where the voice seems to be coming from.

After a moment’s thought, and turning towards the human shape that we think we see, “No.  Not just comfort.  I am looking for community and companionship as well.  I cannot be the only one feeling this way – so powerless and poor, so lost and afraid.  I would like to be with others who feel the same way.  Have suffered the same experience.  Who know it and understand it from inside.  I think that would help heal me and give me strength, more than anything.”

Again, a long pause.  But this time we are sure that the shape we think we have seen really is a person, somewhere there just behind those three trees.  We keep our eyes fixed there and then from that very place the voice comes again.  “And is there anything else you are looking for?  Will comfort and companionship – comfort and community, satisfy you?”

“No,” we say, after another moment’s hesitation.  “I would also like, with the rest of the people here to help make the world anew.  To help it be different than it is and has become.  To help it be the place of comfort and companionship it should be for all.  To make it good, the way it is meant to be in its creation.”

“And how will you do that?”  The voice this time is surprisingly quick in its question.  As though to catch out our real answer before we have time to think too much about it.

And we actually do reply as quickly, saying, “By starting from here.  By letting this be a place where we work together at comfort, community and the world that’s meant to be.  And then seeing, and being thankful for wherever the ripples may lead.”

“Welcome.”  A human figure comes out from the tree.  “Come in,” we are told, and the figure before us turns and begins to lead deeper into the forest, on a little pathway that we hadn’t really noticed before.  And as we follow, we hear the words floating back to hover over us, “Peace be with you.  God’s peace be upon you.  God’s peace flow through you to all the Earth.”

And what if that’s it?  What if that is how the kingdom comes?  Always comes?

Not in any grand battle.  Not in any great revolution.  Not in any triumphal entry or even a grand second coming.

But in an alternative community of comfort and companionship, committed together to living in the ways of peace, and being thankful for wherever the ripples may lead.

Is this enough for us?  Isn’t this what we are looking for?

Photo by John VanDuzer

Towards Sunday, August 13, 2017

Reading:  1 Samuel 22:15 and 23:1-5

It's the early years of the Kingdom of Israel.  Saul is the people's first king, and after seeming like a good choice, he has turned out not so well.  So David has been chosen by God and anointed to be new king.  But Saul is still on the throne, isn't about to give it up, and every now and then tries to have David killed.  At one point David goes underground, hiding out in a cave in the land of the Philistines (Israel's enemy at that point) and then in a forest just inside the border between the Kingdom of Israel and the land of the Philistines.  In hiding, he is joined by hundreds of others from "the underside" of Saul's kingdom.

For years -- maybe all my life, I have been attracted to solitary heroes.  The Lone Ranger, Palladin, the Man With No Name that Clint Eastwood played in those spaghetti westerns, the Preacher that he reprised in "Pale Rider," his own version of those Leone classics.

I trace that attraction all the way back to my childhood image of Jesus as a troubled, solitary man praying at night in a garden, a barren rock his only support, a light-beam from heaven leading him on towards his fate of facing evil and suffering death alone for all the world. 

A larger-than-life print of the picture above hung at the front of my childhood church.  I saw it every Sunday, and to this day I am not free of that image.  And I'm sure that over the years I have only scratched the surface in understanding and learning to live beyond all the ways this has shaped -- and limited, my faith, my self-understanding, and the ways I use my gifts.

I wonder ... what is your childhood image of Jesus?  What image did you have of Jesus as a child, which even now you are not entirely free of?

And how has it ... how does it still, shape your faith, your self-understanding, and the ways you use your gifts?

The reading this week about David gives me a different image, though.  When I hear of him threatened by the king's jealous power, hiding in the cave and then in a forest, and hundreds of others who are "oppressed, in debt or dissatisfied" (Good News translation) joining him there, what comes to mind is Robin Hood and the other refugees from the powers of the day who join him in Sherwood Forest during the illegitimate reign of cruel King John.  Robin is not a solitary or tragic hero but a gatherer of alternative community, and a saviour of the people because of his communitarian vision and practice.

Which brings to mind a very different Clint Eastwood character -- the outlaw Josey Wales, in the film of the same name.  Josey begins as a poor, solitary victim of unjust power on a dangerous, lonely quest to avenge the murder of his wife and only son by government agents in post-Civil-War America.  Along the way, though, without planning to or even wanting to, he attracts a following of other poor souls oppressed and dissatisfied by society at the time -- a motley crew of people with nowhere to go and no good prospects, who attach themselves to him.  And by the end of the film instead of climaxing his quest for justice with a gunfight against evil and a lonely ride off into the sunset, Josey finds himself part of a strange and unlikely community of powerless and dispossessed refugee souls, who settle down and together create a little bit of heaven for themselves and for whoever might come their way, in the midst of a mostly otherwise-barren wilderness.

And I wonder, is this maybe a more faithful image of Jesus around which to shape our faith, our self-understanding, and the use of our gifts? 

Towards Sunday, August 6, 2017

Reading:  Genesis 32:3-21 
(Jacob is on his way back home to find his brother.  Outwardly he has all the signs of success; he's actually quite a scoundrel, but in many ways his life has been charmed, and all he has done has worked out to his benefit.  But inside he still carries the emptiness of broken relationship with his brother and the unresolved guilt of wounds he has caused along the way.  He is afraid of what he has left behind, of what he carries inside his heart, and of what he must come home to.)

We have a Joel Osteen book in our house.  It's the one called Become a Better You: 7 Keys to Improving Your Life Every Day.  

My step-son encourages me to read it because he finds Osteen "so encouraging," and I can see how that can be.  But, at least at this stage in my life, I just don't see good news in Osteen's version of the prosperity gospel of More, Higher, and an always Better, More Improved "Me." 

Two other books that speak more deeply to me right now are Pema Chodron's The Wisdom of No Escape, and Elizabeth Lesser's Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow.  

The first, which I stumbled across in a used book store, is a series of morning meditations offered by Pema Chodron, abbess of Gampo Abbey, a Buddhist monastery in Cape Breton, to retreatants over the course of a month-long retreat.  The second, which I began reading three years ago while on medical leave to deal with a variety of disorders, is a collection of life-stories of people who have found new and more whole life by facing and embracing, rather than running from and "overcoming" whatever darkness they encountered or were carrying in their life.

Both of these books speak of going deeper, rather than higher; of looking inside with honesty and gentleness at who you are, rather than reaching out with aggression, self-determination, and "a plan" to make yourself who you want to be (or think you need to be); and finding the wholeness and goodness of your inner self (in all your light and darkness mixed together), rather than having to prove yourself by constantly improving what you have and seem to be in your own eyes or the eyes of the world.

I wonder if Jacob, in the part of the people-of-God story we are reading in worship this Sunday, is in the midst of a transition from running with Joel Osteen and the prosperity gospel, to sitting with Pema Chodron, Elizabeth Lesser and the wisdom of no escape.

And if what we see, read, hear, pray and sing to God around that story this Sunday, will somehow touch our own longings for a deeper way of facing our own inner contradictions, and of glimpsing gracious wholeness through and beyond the unresolved emptinesses of our lives.  

Sermon for Sunday, July 9, 2017

Reading:  Genesis 15:1-6
(Abram and Sarai have been on the road a long time, following the call to find a place in Canaan, make a home there, and raise a family that will make its mark and leave a legacy of good in a world in need of good legacies.  But the journey has not worked out as they thought it would, and the dream they lived for seems unachievable.)

Theme:  Looking for a legacy

Abram is having one of those days.  It’s not that he doesn’t believe.  It’s just that he is having trouble seeing the value and worth of his own role in God’s plan.

He knows he is part of something bigger than himself – a journey to a far-off land of milk and honey – the land of Canaan, making a home there, and raising a family that will make its mark and leave a positive legacy in the life of a world sorely in need of positive legacies.  The journey began years before in the city of Ur in the land of the Chaldeans – what is now southern Iraq.  And it was his father, Terah, who started it. 

Terah lived in Ur with his three sons – Abram and his wife, who was also his half-sister and was barren; Nahor and his wife, Milcah; and Haran, who died, leaving his son – Abram’s grandson, Lot, fatherless.  And it was Terah who started the whole journey west in search of new life in Canaan, taking Lot, and Abram and the Sarai with him.  It was a grand vision, but Canaan was 1000 miles away and Terah never got there.  He got only as far as the city of Haran – about half-way, where he stopped and decided to settle.

So then it was up to Abram.  After settling in with his father for some years in Haran and building up his herds and household, Abram heard the call of God to continue the journey – to go west to Canaan, make a home there, and raise a family that would be a source and a channel of blessing for all the Earth.  So Abram did just that.  It was his turn now to play his part in the grand design of Almighty God to make the world good.

And the plan really is bigger than him – bigger even than just his family, because along the way to the land of Canaan, then beyond it to Egypt because he finds Canaan occupied, and then a little while later back to Canaan, he meets people of other cultures and traditions who also are in touch with Almighty God who works to make the world good, and they help and even bless Abram along his way. 

So he knows the plan is a big one.  The dream he is following is as big as God’s love for Earth and all its life.  And just as it started before him, it will go on after him, and it will be done, praise be to God. 

It’s just that right now, Abram is having trouble seeing the value and worth of his own part in it.  Because what has he done?  What has he really accomplished?

He’s continued what his father began; he’s left Haran behind and journeyed with Sarai and Lot as far as Canaan.  They made it that far.  But when they get there, the land is already occupied, so they just stop for a bit, build a shrine at Shechem, and keep moving.

They go as far as Egypt – as good a place as any, but along the way and in Egypt there are a few spots of trouble with some of the kings and rulers in the lands they enter, wanting Sarai for themselves and Abram’s life being a little in jeopardy because of it.

So they head back to Canaan, this time near Hebron where finally there’s a place they can settle.  But once they are there, tensions come up between Lot’s household and Abram’s and they split up and go their separate ways, with Lot choosing for himself the better portion of the land they have, leaving Abram a bit of scrub land to live in.

Then Lot finds himself caught in disputes between rival kings around the land he’s chosen to live in.  He’s kidnapped, loses what has, and Abram has to go rescue him.  Abram also has other kings in the area trying to make him their subject, and he really begins to wonder just how much of a failure he has proven to be.

He knows he is not alone.  He has God and the call of God for the journey he’s on and the plan that he’s part of.  He also has his whole household.  He has built up his herds and increased his servants, and has a lot of resources and support in the world for anything he does. 

So things can and will continue very well even without him once he is gone.  And maybe that’s part of what bothers him. 

Because in addition to all the other problems and failures that he feels, Sarai is still barren.  Lot is a fatherless disaster, but even worse is that Abram is not a father himself.  He and Sarai have no child to carry on the family name.  So Abram really wonders about the value and worth of his own life and life story.  When he dies all that he has will pass to Eliezer of Damascus, his head servant, the CEO of the household he has built up.  And what then will be his place in the story of God’s plan for the world to be blessed and made good?

Like Abram, do you ever have one of those days – or months, or years – when you really wonder about your place in God’s good plan?  You don’t doubt or disbelieve that God has a good purpose for Earth, and will make life good in all the world.  But do you wonder some times about your own place in it – whether you play any important and lasting part at all in its being realized?

Do you find yourself in your own way feeling, maybe even praying what Abram does: “O Lord God, I am childless still – and how shall I not be always?  I have brought nothing good – no new life that I wanted to bring, into this world.  When I die, my heir will be Eliezer of Damascus, a slave born in my house!  O Lord God, is my life really worth anything at all?”

And God says, “Come outside!  Come out from the smallness of what you are feeling and into the darkness of the night.  Look up – look toward the heavens and count the stars, if you can.  So shall your descendants be.”

We know, of course, that the promise came true.  Not right away.  It comes a few chapters, and few more steps and even mis-steps later.  But by the good will of God Sarai does conceive and bear a son, she becomes a mother and Abram a father to Isaac, and in their lives the good will of God for making life on Earth good is fulfilled.

Abram is no hero.  He is not a solitary warrior of faith.  He is much like us – a single person in a long line and great company of God’s chosen people … living out his part as best he can … not really doubting God’s good purpose, but some days wondering if he has any part in it, if his life has any real value or worth in the greater story being lived out beyond him.

But when he brings his self-wondering to God, he believes what God tells him – that yes, his life is important … that his place in God’s good will is one that only he can fill … that what’s inside him and what he is able to express in the world will bear good fruit … and that when the story of God’s good will being done in the world is told, his name and his part in it will not be forgotten.

Can we believe it too?  Those days when we just can’t see the value or worth of our part in God’s plan of blessing the Earth and making life good, can we believe what God and others around us see and affirm of the value and worth of our life, and our part in God’s good plan?

 

Sermon from Sunday, July 2, 2017

Reading: Genesis 2:15-17; 3:22-24
Theme:  Looking for The Garden

I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, where are you going
And this he told me

I’m goin’ on down to Yasgur’s farm

I’m going to join in a rock-n-roll band

I’ve got to get back to the land

I’m going to try and get my soul free
We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

These words are the first verse to a song Joni Mitchell wrote almost 50 years ago about Woodstock – one of my generation’s attempts to get back to The Garden.  The song is bigger than that, though, because it seems to come from and speak to a larger and more universal longing than just that one event.

The Garden – capital T, capital G – is something deep in the human psyche as an image of something that’s been lost, something we have lost or thrown away, something we deeply miss as we seek refuge – a safe place to be, a placed where we can feel good and be good together beyond our own sin and shame, in the world as it is.

The Garden in that sense is a universal myth – an image that we and other people of vastly different cultures and faith traditions, carry within us about how the world is created to be, how maybe it once was, how it is not now, but maybe still can be at times.

I’m not even a gardener, and I can appreciate this.  Even I feel the lure of the garden and the way it quiets and satisfies something deep within.  Many of you are gardeners – very good ones, and Winona as a place to be has a feel of garden about it.  So you know what I mean.  You live it.  I’ve no doubt you love it – love whatever time you can have in your garden – whether it’s an orchard out behind the house, a vegetable patch, a perennial and annual flower garden surrounding the house you live in, or a little cluster of plants you lovingly tend and enjoy in your house or apartment.

All of these little, individual gardens we enjoy for ourselves are just part of The Garden – capital T, capital G again, The Garden that’s more common and communal, The Garden that’s even global in its size and meaning, The Garden that all of humanity deeply longs to be in as one, enjoying together the goodness of life, the fruitfulness and fullness of Earth, and the endless love and blessing of God for all that is.

Of all the pictures we have seen of the Assad family over the last year and then especially the last few months – of them in hiding in Syria, then hiding but more safe in Beirut, then arriving at the airport in Toronto and being in their new home in Grimsby for the first time with their sponsors and new friends, I think the one picture that touched me the most was of their two children at play on a play structure in a playground in a park right behind their new home. 

That picture more than any made me feel happy and hopeful for them, because that was a picture of their children in The Garden – safe and free in a place in the world that they don’t need to earn or deserve or pay their way in, no doubt bearing the memory and the scars of human sin and evil, but at the same time able to gather with other children and adults of all colours and castes and creeds, open to the heavens and to sun and sky of God’s blessing, each one clothed with signs of God’s endless love for all, every one free to grow in their own way, everyone there free to reach out, love and be loved by others around them.

And isn’t that what The Garden is in our deep sub-conscious, in our archetypal human memory of what life really is, in the holy stories of our own and other people’s religious and spiritual traditions?

I’m happy and proud to be able to say as well that this same vision – this same hope of knowing and living with others in The Garden at least in some way and some time in the world as it is, is also very much part of what Canada is, or at least aspires and tries at its best to be.

Just three quick images from what I saw in yesterday’s all-day TV coverage of the national celebration.  I’m sure each of you has at least that many and more that stand out for you, but these three are among the ones that caught me.

One, from Parliament Hill, is of the teepee of re-occupation that was erected, then resisted, then moved far off to the side, and then moved in closer to the Peace Tower where it became a place of dialogue, of education and sensitization, and of peaceful face-to-face conversation between First Nations and other people of Canada.

A second was from PEI, and a band of young First Nations singers and dancers drawn from every province and territory of the country, offering a song they wrote themselves about their hopes for their future and Canada’s future, their smiles as they sang and danced, and the closing line about coming together now after 150 years with the confident assertion that “this time we’ll get it right.”

A third was a little video montage of individual persons from all over the country of a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds, each singing one line at a time of “O Canada” in their native languages that include Mic-Maq, Ukrainian, Cree, Chinese, Inuit, German, Spanish, French, English and I can’t even remember what others.

Isn’t that what The Garden is?  That way of being in the world – that way of being a world, where you and I and all others of all colours, castes and creeds … are able to gather in safety and freedom …not needing to earn it or deserve it or pay their way in … open to the heavens, to the sun and the sky … aware of human evil, sinfulness and shame … but every one clothed in signs of of God’s endless love of all that is … everyone free to grow in their own way … everyone free to reach out, to love and to be loved by others around them?

Happy Canada Day weekend. 

And even more, happy are they anywhere in the world, who know The Garden in some way in their lives – who are able to know it and enjoy it in the midst of their own sin and shame, and in the midst of the world as it is … and who are able to share it, and invite others into it, to know and enjoy it with them!

We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden