Theme:  Christianity is not doctrine
Readings:  I Corinthians 12 and Revelations 1:17-20 (Each and every community of faith is taught and guided by its own teachers, and its spirit or nature is shaped by its own “angel.”  gives each church the teachers and spirit that it needs.)

In his book "What Christianity Is Not," Douglas John Hall argues that because Christian doctrine is complex (for many reasons), we often end up with a divide between “the knowledgeable few” who discuss right and wrong doctrine, and “the submissive majority” who simply go along with what someone else says, without really being able to articulate, explain or defend it themselves. 

This is unfortunate because Christian doctrine at its best is what kind of truth or vision is most trustworthy for our lives.  It's about how we imagine the world and life in it, how we understand what’s really going on and at stake at the deepest level, and how we can live by a wisdom and understanding that heals, rather than further fragments, our soul – and that also heals all life.  

 

When we make doctrine about heavenly or esoteric truth rather than about common earthly life, we end up looking elsewhere – and giving others reason to look elsewhere, for answers about the meaning of life and for guidance in living well in the world.

So it’s important that doctrine be discussed regularly by all members of a church because it’s the only way to achieve both group identity and individual participation in it.  This will require, however, “a far greater emphasis upon personal dialogue, small-group discourse and mentoring than has been the case in many Christian churches heretofore.”

 

So ... a few questions:

Who are “the gurus” today?  

Who do your friends listen to, to help them understand the world, what it’s for, and how to live well in it? 

Where do you find your life-wisdom?  

Who are our church's teachers of what's really true and trustworthy in life? 

Who do we listen to, to understand what’s really going on, on the deepest level? 

What doctrine is really dear or important to you? 

Makes a difference to how you live? 

What doctrine is just mystery or mumble-jumble to you, and you wish you understood better or more fully? 

In “A New Creed “(the 1968 United Church of Canada creed -- below), what line(s) especially touches you and helps guide the way you live in the world?

 

We are not alone,

     we live in God’s world. 

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,

      who works in us and others by the Spirit. 

We trust in God. 

We are called to be the Church:

     to celebrate God’s presence,

     to live with respect in Creation,

     to love and serve others,

     to seek justice and resist evil,

     to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen,

          our judge and our hope. 

In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us. 

We are not alone. 

Thanks be to God.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sermon from Sunday, February 21, 2016 (Lent 2 and Scouting/Guiding Sunday)

Readings:  Psalm 119:9-16 and Psalm 19
Sermon:  Real Scouters, like Christians, live by the spirit of the book, not by the book itself

I used to be a Wolf Cub, and I was okay at it.  I liked the uniform and the pack meetings.  I liked learning the Law, the Promise and the Motto – “do your best,” and the way we’d chant “dyb dyb dyb, dob dob dob.”  I earned badges and learned to shake hands with my left.  I learned other stuff too like knots and First Aid, and was on our pack’s First Aid team at the city-wide Wolf Cub First Aid competition where we missed winning the trophy by only a point-and-a-half.  By the time I graduated from the pack I was a senior sixer, helping teach some of the newer members what they needed to know. 

I didn’t move up to Scouts, though, because even though I was good at learning and doing Wolf Cub things, I didn’t really have a Scouter’s heart.  I think of some of the badges I earned.  There weren’t as many then as there are now, and some had different names.  One was called the Nature badge and in the interview for it, one question I was asked was what bird is a sign of spring in Winnipeg.  I said “the robin” because I didn’t really know, and when the interviewer said, “No, it’s the crow,” I knew that he knew that I didn’t really know very much about nature – and also didn’t really love it enough to really want to find out.  I just wanted the badge.  He gave me a pass, I got the badge, and that was the end of it. 

I see now that Scouting wasn’t really in my heart.  I didn’t have a passion for the Scouting life and its way of exploring and caring for the world.  I learned and did what I needed to learn and d0 to pass as a Wolf Cub, but beyond fulfilling the letter of the law, the Scouting spirit just wasn’t in me.  And I didn’t know how to get it – how to help myself feel it.  

Since then I’ve come to know people who do have the real spirit of Scouting and Guiding.  There’s you in this sanctuary today, and I’m glad you’re here.  Someone else who comes to mind – who isn’t here anymore except in spirit, is Scouter Doug Robertson who with Pat, his wife, was a member of our church. 

Some of you may have known Doug as the Camp Chief at Camp Wetaskiwin, where he lived in the cabin at the entrance, greeted all who came, and watched over the camp and all that went on there.  It was his life, his calling and his deepest joy to be a Scouter, and in the midst of anything else he faced in life and had to struggle with – of all he did right and wrong, Scouting gave his life meaning and good direction, and helped him live in the world in good and healing ways.   

One example – some of you may have known Bandit, the raccoon Doug rescued at camp as a kit, that he and Pat nurtured back to health – even giving it a room for a while in their house, and then successfully reintroduced to the wild back at camp where Bandit got on with a good raccoon life and would visit Doug from time to time on the front porch of the cabin.  There’s nothing in the manual about rescuing raccoons and in fact the manual may have rules against having wild animals indoors.  But when Doug saw Bandit in need of help, everything that he and Pat did for Bandit was exactly what Scouting was all about.

Doug knew the rules and the letter of the Law.  He followed, taught and enforced them as best he could.  So he knew there were probably Scouting and camp rules about taking in wild animals.  He knew that the rules of animal rescue are not to domesticate any animal you plan to return to the wild.   

He knew he was going against some of the rules he knew as a Scouter.  But he did it because he was a Scouter at heart.  He had the spirit of Scouting deep down in his heart, and it was that – that deep-down love of life, of neighbour, and of the natural world that guided him, told him what to do, and helped him do the right and good thing, more than any rules ever could have. 

In Scouting and Guiding there’s a difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the movement – between what’s in the manual that can be learned, taught, obeyed and tested, and what’s in the heart of a real Scouter or Guider that can never really be taught, can only be lived. 

It’s the same with Christianity.  In Christianity we have a book – the Bible, with all kinds of stories, sayings, advice, laws and even poetry and fable written down by people who had different experiences of God in their time.  And all these things can be learned, taught and obeyed.    

And then there’s the spirit of it all – what Christianity is really about and what the Bible is meant to inspire us towards, which is openness to God and real love of the God that the Bible talks about, that can only be known in the living of it. 

The words of the Bible are just words, and knowing the words and even obeying them does not make us God’s people in the world, any more than learning to tie knots and do basic First Aid and earn a few badges ever made me a real Scouter.  What the Bible is for is to point us beyond ourselves to learn something about the God who is beyond us all – enough that we can learn to see God a little bit better in all of life, and then let our lives be guided by a heart-felt love for this God and for all that God loves – even if it means sometimes acting and living in ways that seem outside the rules and the literal words of the Book. 

And this is what the world really needs.  It needs people who know the spirit and not just the words.  The world and the Scouting and Guiding movements need Scouters and Guiders like you to have real passion for what you are, and carry the real spirit of Scouting and Guiding in your hearts to help you know what to do.  And the world and the church needs Christians like us to really have a heart for the God that the Bible tells us about, and to let the Spirit of that God helps us know what to do – that spirit of compassion, forgiveness, justice, openness, healing and peace that make the world good in ways that rules and laws just can’t.   

So I wonder – thinking back at my own short time as a Wolf Cub, and my long up-and-down time as a Christian, what it takes to move beyond just book-learning and fulfilling the basic requirements, to really grow into the heart and the spirit of the movement?  How do we help that happen in our lives?

Towards Sunday, Feb 21, 2016 (Second in Lent)

Theme:  Christianity is not a Religion of the Book

Readings:
Psalm 119:9-16 (Your word, God, is delightful to me because it directs me to the greater goal of pure and good living)
Psalm 19  (All the cosmos is like a book, directing us beyond ourselves to marvel at the wonder and mystery of God)

Summary of chapter 2 of Douglas John Hall's "What Christianity Is Not" 

In the public mind and in many North American churches today, “Christianity” and being “a true Christian” is seen as an ability to quote the Bible about issues, and a willingness to place the literal words of the Bible above other authorities like science.  And “while conservative Christianity in North America has expressed itself in increasingly biblicistic terms, the more liberal churches of the old Protestant mainline seem to have left the playing field.”   

But “classical Protestantism does not ask us to believe in the Bible.  The Bible itself does not ask us to believe in it!  It asks us to believe in God…” 

In classical Christian thought the Word of God appears in three “forms” – the word preached (sermons), the word written (the Bible), and the Word incarnate (Jesus); and the greatest of these is the Word incarnate.   

The first two (sermons and the Bible) are provisional pointers – good gifts of a provident God, to help us for the time being to encounter the third.  And the third (Jesus) is a mystery beyond our complete grasp and understanding; even though we know and follow him, we do not own or control him. 

So … it is important to study and know and reflect on the Bible in order to be drawn by it into the fuller mystery of God – but not just to be able to know and quote the Bible in all its literal parts. 

Reflections

Does it seem to you that conservative Christians “know their Bible” better than liberal Christians?  Better than we do?  How do you feel about your “knowledge” of the Bible?

How is listening to the Bible as a trusted guide to the mystery of God, different from believing in the Bible as a book of truths to be followed? 

What parts of the Bible especially help you to know God? 

What ways of reading or studying the Bible help draw you into relationship with God or into openness to God?  Are you part of any Bible study or discussion group that helps you be drawn into openness to God?   

Have you been in the past?

 

Would you like to be?

Sermon from Sunday, February 14, 2016 (First in Lent)

Reading:  Luke 13:18-21 (The kingdom of heaven is like a man sowing mustard in a field that against all experience grows as large as a tree and becomes a haven for all kinds of birds -- and like a woman mixing yeast into three measures of flour all at once, and it being enough to leaven the whole batch!)

Sermon:  Are we leaven, or leavened?

 The story we tell ourselves about the spirit of our time is sometimes pretty negative.   

We worry about the shrinkage of the church – both big- and small-scale.  We fear for our society and culture; it seems in decline and deterioration, and we all have stories and signs of it happening.  We lament the loss of Christian trappings and rituals in our public life – “Happy Holidays” replacing “Merry Christmas” on the mountain brow at the Claremont Access, the end of the Lord’s Prayer and Bible readings in school, the absence of prayer and openness to God at public gatherings and civic assemblies.   

We wonder at, and maybe envy the Binbrook and Rockton Fairs that have a community-wide inter-church worship service right on the fair grounds as part of their Sunday schedule.  It seems a throw-back to an earlier day when we were a Christian society.  Our culture by and large is not dominated anymore by Christian symbols and stories.  We are multi-faith – maybe no-faith, secular and sometimes even anti-religious.  We may even be pagan – given over to the vicious gods of economic prosperity, tribal well-being and consumption – today’s version of the ancient god, Baal, whose only morality is tribal well-being and family gain. 

We may well be at an end of what we used to be.  What we used to know as Christian society and culture may be no more. 

But what does it mean?  Is God lost to us, and is good gone?  Was our society and culture so uniquely godly or Christian that what we are now is not?  Was the old as Christian as we remember?  Or does it depend on who does the remembering? 

I remember some of my parents’ stories.  My dad was an immigrant from Germany in 1929 and my mom a Canadian-born German, and I imagine their experiences of exclusion and of fear for their safety through the Depression and the war years were not uncommon. 

A few years ago, I did a funeral for an elderly Japanese woman who as a child in World War Two suffered the forced removal of her family from a fishing business and relative affluence on the West Coast, the theft of everything they had there, their internment in camps in Ontario, and then the separation of the family to lives of literal servitude in different cities and towns throughout the province. 

We are learning now too of our relations with the First Nations of Canada – the emptiness of the treaties, the systematic destruction of their spirituality and culture, the abuse in residential schools, the apologies we need to make, the difficulty we have in living them out. 

We worry we are no longer a Christian society.  But was the society we were in as much communion with Christ as it seemed to be to some?  And is what we are becoming now, really less so? 

Jesus talks about the kingdom of heaven on Earth as being like a woman who takes yeast and mixes it in with three measures of flour, until the whole of it is leavened. 

I wonder.  Is any whole loaf in this life ever completely leavened?  Or are even those societies and cultures that claim and even seem to be Christian, always at best a mix of leavened and unleavened life, of redeemed and unredeemed attitudes, of clearly godly and just as clearly ungodly actions?   

And if so, how does the godliness get to be in there at all?  How is any culture or society leavened with something that helps it rise at least a little more than otherwise? 

Yesterday here at the church we said goodbye to Edith Furry – a life-long member of this congregation and one of the people who made this church and the community around it as good as they were – and one of the images that seemed to resonate as we celebrated her life was that of yeast – of Edith leavening the life of the community around her with the yeast of God’s word and spirit – or maybe, more accurately, of God leavening its life through what Edith offered. 

There was so much she did in such simple ways.  For years she was an Akela in the local Cub pack.  For more years than that she organized the spring and fall sales at the church, personally and by herself receiving, sorting, cleaning, mending, arranging and pricing everything for the sale.  Through her life she knitted booties and hats for preemies.  And there was so much more she did – all without an official position, without a title or role or official standing, without pay or even recognition sometimes, just out of the openness of her heart, the readiness of her love, and the Christ-likeness of her spirit. 

It was stuff anyone could do, and many of us do.  And the point is that through it, Edith was like leaven.  She helped – and through her, God helped Winona to rise to the best of whatever it could be at that time. 

When I wonder how she came to be that way, and have that effect in what she did, I wonder if one thing that made a difference is the way she let herself be leavened as well by others – the way she let herself be opened up, and affected, and enlarged. 

She came to Winona as a teenager with her parents and brothers from Toronto, and instead of pining for where she had been and what she had lost, she accepted and threw herself into the life of the place where she was.  Over the years, she was open and let herself be opened to needs that she saw and how she could meet them.   

David, her son, mentioned that when she saw someone facing some problem, she would quietly ponder for a while, look off in the distance, and then come up with a solution for how she could help them.  Even with the church sales, for her it was not so much just a fund-raiser for the church as it was a way to offer people in the community a chance to buy good things that they needed at a price that took almost nothing of the little money they had.   

And her grandchildren’s sleep-overs: was the way she enjoyed letting them tear apart her house, really just one more instance of her radical openness to others’ needs and interests, her welcome of their gifts and energies, and her desire that everyone have a place that was good for them even when it meant upsetting and giving up her place in the process? 

I wonder what Edith might say to us today?  What she might do? 

Would she lament the loss of the good old days?  The passing of what and how we used to be? 

Or, after pursing her lips a bit and giving a little shake of her head at some of what she sees going on, would she just get down to work getting to know her neighbours and what they might need, seeing what little job in the community she could help out with, and finding out who might just be overlooked and not taken care of down the road? 

And in so doing, without really caring about whether the culture around her is Christian or multi-faith or Muslim or secular, would she just go about mixing into its life whatever leaven is hers to offer, in whatever way others around her will welcome? 

The story we tell ourselves about the spirit of our time is sometimes pretty negative.  Maybe we just need better stories.

Towards Sunday, February 14 (First in Lent)

Lenten Theme:  What Christianity Is Not

We know we are Christian, or at least we think we are – kind of, maybe.  Yes, we’re sure we are.  We must be. 

Or we know we’re not, because what Christianity is – or what we think it is, isn’t something we can really identify with, or want for ourselves. 

But how well do we really know what Christianity is?  Sometimes it’s hard to know and say what it really is, and maybe one way of coming closer to it, is to get clearer about what it is not. 

Douglas John Hall – the closest thing to an “official United Church theologian” for the last generation – has written a book titled What Christianity Is Not, and the chapters of his book provide the themes for our worship and the sermons for the six Sundays leading up to Easter. Each chapter – and each week in worship, focuses on a common and current misunderstanding of what Christianity is, as a way of trying to find our way towards a little clearer understanding of what it really is.

 

This week: Not a Culture Religion

Scripture:  Luke 13:18-21 ("The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of floor until all of it was leavened.")

 

We are always tempted to merge Christianity and our way of life, our culture.  Our faith is necessarily expressed in cultural form, with which it then becomes identified, so anyone who wants to be Christian must then also adopt our culture. 

But Christianity at its truest is not a religion and not bound to any culture.  The Bible argues a lot with religion – as in the prophets’ denunciation of self-satisfying religious practice (e.g. Amos 5:21-22), and the way the New Testament contrasts Pentecost where God’s Spirit comes down to overwhelm and transform humans (Acts 2), with the Tower of Babel where humans try to reach up to heaven and control its blessings for their own benefit (Genesis 11). 

Religion is a cultural, human attempt to control the Divine for our benefit (“God bless America”? “Gott Mit Uns”?  “Allah be praised”?), and leads to conflict between cultures over which religion is best – a problem in today’s world.  

Christianity, though, is a “prophetic faith” rooted in the prophetic tradition of Judaism which stands apart from its host society and is free to critique it.  Rather than feeling obliged to prop up or perpetuate any culture, Christianity is about God’s loving and ongoing critical transformation of us and of any culture – something hard for us to learn as long as we live still in the dream of Christendom, and with the idea that our goal is to “establish Christianity.” 

We are tempted to lament the end of Christendom and our disestablishment; but might this be part of God’s good will today?  Does this free us to hear anew what Jesus says about being “like yeast” in the world – like the earliest church was in its time? 

 

Do we see anyone living like “God’s yeast” or as “the yeast of God’s kingdom” in our time and for our culture?

 

Yeast in Jesus' day was not the fine, cultured, nicely packaged thing we have today.  It was actually seen as something impure and unclean because wild yeast spores in the air, when they entered any food or drink, would ferment and sour it, and make it go bad.

 

So what is Jesus saying about how the kingdom of heaven enters the life of our time?

And about the kind of community he gathers, and empowers us to be?   

 

 

From Sunday, February 7, 2016 (Transfiguration Sunday)

The introduction to the reading of Luke 9:28-43

The reading is the story in the Gospel of Luke about Jesus’ transfiguration in front of three of his disciples.   

Jesus and all his disciples are on the road to Jerusalem, and his teaching is increasingly focused on the way of the cross.  One day, leaving the rest behind for a while, Jesus and three of the disciples go up a mountainside to pray.  

Mountains are holy places and two of the people’s greatest spiritual heroes had life-changing encounters with God on mountains.   

First, at the very beginning, Moses was called to go up Mount Sinai to speak with God and receive God’s Law for the people, and when he came down his face shone with such heavenly light that the people could not look at him.   

Centuries later Elijah also met God on a mountainside.  The people had become a kingdom and had wandered into idolatry and what today we call secular paganism, and Elijah felt alone and powerless against the tide of his time.  But when he fled to a mountain, and there was able to see God’s back and to hear God’s still, small voice, he was given all the power he needed to speak God’s truth to his age, and eventually be carried to heaven in a shining chariot without suffering death. 

In the Gospel story, the disciples see Jesus in that company Jesus, before they go back down to the valley, to face the realities of life with him.

 

The sermon:

 

 

I have a vision – a bit of imagining I want to share with you, and invite you to share in. 

I am going up the mountain with Jesus, and so are you.  We are going up in any of a number of ways.  We each have our favoured ways – ways maybe that suit who we are and what we’re good at. 

It’s Jesus who invites us to step away from daily life in the valley, and just let it be for a while.  We follow practiced steps and ways of ascent that he shows us.  At times it’s hard work and takes real commitment – even stubbornness, to keep going.  Sometimes we wonder if the journey up the mountain is worth it.   

But we want to be with him, and he leads us to a special place.  When we get there, when we find that mountaintop place with Jesus, we are glad.   

We see him maybe as we have not before. 

We know God with a closeness we can only marvel at.

We see ourselves in new light, standing at the intersection of human and divine and knowing it is our calling and capacity to be vessels of the holy and of God’s good will in our daily life. 

And we also see … others! 

We become aware of another company of pilgrim climbers beside us.  They are wearing yamulkas and some of the men have ringlets of hair.   

“Praise Moses, the friend of God and our saviour” one says.  “Blessed be Elijah, God’s servant and our prophet, now and forever,” another says. 

They are Jews, and they have followed their calling to be here, have traced the steps that are made known to them, and like us are resting gladly in what they see and feel and know beyond themselves on the mountaintop. 

And then we hear, “Praise to Allah and his prophet, Mohammed” and other voices repeating the same, with the same measure of humble gratitude and holy awe that we feel.  Muslims are here, too, guided by their prophet and pathways in their five pillars of faithfulness to Allah. 

We talk together freely and gently.  We realize we have a common father and mother in Abram and Sara.  We realize we climb one mountain by different pathways.  We realize that this mountain is our way and our place of really knowing who we are as human beings, and how we are to live in the valley.  We realize how hard it is for us all at times to sort out the truth and heart of our tradition from its perversions and corruptions.  We also realize our shared place in the world, and shared importance to the life of the world. 

And then as discussion of the world turns our gaze from upward and inward to outward, we see other mountains.  Not just the one mountain we are on with different pathways, but different mountains with their varied pathways all leading upward like ours to touch and be touched by the stratospheric mystery of the Divine that both covers and embraces us all from above invisibly and completely. 

And on those mountains with their pathways, are people like us, climbing to special places to see and know and feel something of that mystery in their own way.  Hindus.  Buddhists.  Confucians.  First Nations.  And many others. 

We see them.  They see us.   

And we look down together at the valley between us.  One valley ringed by all the mountains with pathways upward to help humanity enter the realm of the higher mysteries, and then downward again to lead us to return enlightened and empowered for new life down below.  One valley called Earth where at our best we dwell together in the light of what things we see and feel and know at these heights. 

We come up this particular mountain with Jesus, and we see something that he especially brings to light.  The world needs to know what it is.  If life on Earth is to be made good – if there is to be real peace in the valley for all, the world needs us to bring back to it what we see and learn here from him. 

And what really is it?  What is it that Jesus helps us to see of the Divine mystery that makes life good?

 

The communion prayer:

 

L:        The God of mountaintops be with you.

P:        And also with you.

L:        Come, People of God, to the One who will transfigure your hearts.

P:        We offer them to God, who will make them dazzle with grace.

L:         Let us join in giving praise to our God.

P:        Our voices rejoice in glad thanksgiving to the One who comes to us.

You came down into chaos, Lord our God.

In the beginning, now, and probably to the end of time

both all the world and each one of us

are so often in chaos 

created so good,

so full of potential,

so blessed with enough and more than enough,

so many expressions of your good will

and yet we are so often at odds

with you, with others, and within ourselves

 

You come in so many ways

to show us The Way

the one way of your own heart

the way of forgiving, redeeming, self-giving love

that tames the chaos within and around us

and helps make Earth and our life in it

a good and glorious thing  

We trust that this way, your way of love,

is found at the heart – the truest and deepest heart,

of other faith traditions

We know that Love is what you breathed

between the lines and into the words

of the Law you gave to Moses 

Love is what you spoke and acted out

in the words of the prophets 

Love is what you lived and made come to life

in Jesus, our messiah

the one in whom you came to tame the chaos

to heal the world we are

to lead us into living your way of Love

for our good and the good of all Earth

as we take and live out our place in it

This table is our temple

our special and holy place of transformation

as we remember Jesus

and see in him your way of love 

As we take this bread we remember him

and the way he shared himself with others 

As we take this cup we remember him

and the way he poured out his life and your love for all the world

 

We give you thanks, O God,

and lest we be too hasty and not actually live out

what we celebrate and remember here,

we take time now to pause,

to consider the world and others around us,

and to pray for others:

 

And now we do remember

how Jesus on the very night he was betrayed,

took bread, broke it,

and gave thanks for being able

to share his life with and for others

And how he also took a cup, poured it and shared it,

and gave thanks for being able

to pour out his life and your love for all the world

Do this in remembrance of me, he says. 

This is your way

of living the glory of God into the world.