Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Towards Sunday, October 2, 2016

Readings:

Luke 17:5-6 (In the preceding verses Jesus talks with the disciples about forgiveness as a sign of the kingdom of God on Earth, and the constant practice of forgiveness as an element of kingdom discipleship.  The disciples response: "If you want us to do that, Jesus, you better give us more faith!")

2 Timothy 1:1-14 (The letter begins with words of thanksgiving and praise for the strong faith Timothy has shown in God's kingdom of grace, in the way he has helped lead the church.  In this, he is much like his mother and grand-mother.  What a great family heritage.  But!  Always a but, it seems.  Is he beginning to flag and fade in his own faith? Is he beginning to lead in ways that really aren't in tune with the kingdom of God?  He is urged to rekindle the gift -- to not let the true treasure that makes all the difference in the world, be lost.)


On a morning walk I came across this stream just a few blocks from our house.

And my first thought was how small it is.  How little water it carries.  How insignificant it appears.  How ordinary and un-striking it is. 

I was disappointed.

But as I stood on the foot-bridge that spanned it, and looked and listened and paid attention, my heart opened to its quiet beauty, the restfulness of the place, the refreshing flow of the water that is there.  

It's one of who knows how many streams that run through Dundas.  One of how many million streams in Canada and around the world that each do their part in their quiet and ordinary flow, in helping keep Earth alive and well.

"Lord, if you want us to keep practicing the ways of the kingdom of God on Earth, you gotta give us more faith, make us stronger, make us more spectacular, make us more striking and special and powerful.  It's the only way we can make a difference in the world.  And it's the only way we can keep going and not give up."

To which Jesus says, "Hosh-posh!  You've got all the faith you need when you have even the slightest inkling of what the kingdom of God is about.  All you need to do is live it out in your own little way, wherever you are put by God, and you will find yourself part of a vaster network and web of true life than you can ever imagine ... and that will nourish and strengthen you, once you let your little stream of faith actually flow."
  • The first disciples stumbled over the call to practice forgiveness.  They couldn't imagine it doing any good (really changing the world), and weren't sure they could keep practicing it.  Do we hold back on forgiving others because it "doesn't change anything" and just makes us look like fools?
  • What else do we not do just because we can't see what difference it will make, or we think we don't have what it takes to do it as well, or as consistently as others?
  • What if every little stream in the world thought that? And acted that way?

Monday, September 26, 2016

Sermon from Sunday, Sept 25, 2016

Reading:  1 Timothy 6:2-21 (A generation or two into its life, the early church is beginning to lose the intensity of its focus on the life and spirit of Jesus and their own commitment to the emergent kingdom of God on Earth.  In particular, some leaders seem to be in it more for the money and for the way that church leadership gives them a chance to grind their own axes.  The author does his darnedest to steer the ship back on course.)
 

After that Scripture reading, and the warning against people who end up in ministry and even lay church leadership for less-than-the-best reasons, does anyone really think we’re in it just for the money?

With maybe one or two exceptions, I haven’t known ministers who are in it to get rich.  Because really, it pays the bills but the money is not going to make anyone a millionaire.

Of course a million bucks isn’t the only less-than-good incentive to being in ministry.  The benefits are pretty good.  There is also certain amount of job security; I wonder for instance how many ministers sometimes avoid leading their congregations into amalgamation talks with other congregations, or leave it too long because in the back of their minds they know amalgamation will mean the end of their job.  Or, years ago I was amused at the number of ministers from the Toronto and London areas who I met at Theology School, whose first churches were out west or in Newfoundland or up north, and who within two or three years found themselves happily called by God to move, step by steady step, to churches closer and closer to Toronto or London and to old friends and family and stomping grounds.

Of course one of the graces of God we treasure is the way God and the body of Christ meet personal need and hold together the circles and cycles of life that feed us.  But is there also – just because we’re human, a point beyond which meeting human desire and our own felt needs becomes the object of what we do, and not just a benefit of our commitment to the life of the kingdom? 

I remember years ago driving home from worship at All People’s United in Welland, thinking how fortunate I am that I get to talk about God – something I would do for free, and they pay me for it.  Are there times, though, when that turns around to, they are paying me to do it, so I’d better talk about God?  Being human, the answer is probably not simple.

That line, that shift, and that human temptation also exist in church programs and the ministries we engage in. 

Think of Sunday school, VBS, and other Christian education programs for children and young families.  In the beginning – in the olden days, Sunday school and VBS were begun because there was a deep passion and heart-felt desire that the children of the church and of the surrounding community have a chance to hear and learn and know about God and God’s love and the stories of God’s people, so they could grow into that tradition of faith and live it out themselves.  It was passion for others and desire to help them know God that led to the programs, and what came of it was strong Sunday schools and new families in the church and church growth.

So anytime the church starts to falter and growth slows down one answer is to revitalize the Sunday school, get VBS going again, start up some new children’s programs to get kids and their parents into the church, to build up the membership, to serve the needs of the church.

Do you see the difference?

Even church membership, attendance at worship, and leadership can be subject to the same human tendencies and temptations.  We come because we feel a need for something – for connection with something or someone beyond ourselves.  We attend worship because something has happened in our life and we want to give thanks, we want to pray, we want to understand what this greater something is.  And we get involved – we help out and we lead because we want to give back, we want to maintain the good that’s here, we want it to be available for others.

And as we do this we begin to encounter God, we see and meet Jesus in new ways, we feel the holiness of our own spirit being fed.

It feels good.  It feels right.  It feels – we feel, holy.

And is there sometimes, then, a line or a point or a way that it gets to be more about our feeling good, than about meeting God – more about our feeling right, than about serving others’ needs – more about our being able to feel holy, than about giving ourselves to the healing of the world?

Because we’re human, the answer is probably not simple.

So what do we do to stay on the right side of the line, to not slide too far in the direction of our own needs and desires, to not let the church be just like so many other human institutions?

Two things stand out in the reading as maybe a start in the right direction.

One is to constantly be ready to refocus our image of Jesus, since he is the one we follow and the one we see as our window and our doorway into the mystery of God. 

Did you notice the reference to Jesus in the reading?  The author is encouraging the leaders and members of the church of his day to commit themselves again to confessing their faith and living out their belief in the kingdom of God on Earth as they did in the beginning in their imitation of Jesus, and in order to make this real and engaging for them the author points to a very particular image of Jesus living out the kingdom of God on Earth – in his confrontation with Pilate, when he is abandoned and alone, accused and on trial, powerless and about-to-be-crucified, and still proclaiming the message of God’s love for all the world even though it means giving his life for it.  It’s exactly the opposite of what many of the church leaders and members were like a few generations later, as the church became more settled, with more of a place in society, more comfortable, and more willing to compromise with things like unequal wealth, hierarchic power, injustice and corruption .

I wonder in what ways the first images of Jesus and the kingdom of God as he proclaims it and makes it known, may be opposite to some of what we do, how we allow ourselves to be?

And a second thing then, that maybe follows from the first – from really opening ourselves again to Jesus and the kingdom of God, is to let ourselves be guided in our church life by passion -- by the passion of our hearts and souls that’s awakened when we see and look at the world through God’s eyes.  And I wonder what that is.  What is that we really care about – really get excited about – really cry and feel pain about, when we look at the world through the lens of the Good News of Jesus Christ?

I sometimes think the most important part of our liturgy on Sunday morning is not the sermon, not the hymns, not the choir anthem nor offering nor children’s time – although the children’s time may be a close second – but I think the most important thing we do is what we finally come to just before our departing hymn – the Prayers of the People.  Because this is a time each week when after opening ourselves to God, recalling our faith in the hymns we sing, and listening as best we can to God’s Word, before we return to the world we take time to think and pray about its life and its needs -- we open ourselves to the sorrows of the world, to the needs of our neighbours, to the concerns of the community.  And in the silence and quiet of intercessory prayer we have a chance to know what it is that stirs our hearts, what moves us to care and to cry, what draws us out of a safe place into the riskiness of love.

And what would it be like to then structure church – let all we are and all we do, be built around those concerns?  Around the things we discover in prayer we are passionate about?   Around the things in the world that our hearts are moved by God to care deeply about?

I wonder: what is church like, when it’s focused and re-focused over and over again on the first images of Jesus and what he shows of the kingdom of God on Earth, and is built around meeting whatever needs in the world around us he inspires us to really care about?

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Towards Sunday, Sept 25, 2016

Readings:
Luke 16:19-31 (A story Jesus tells of a rich man who has everything, and a poor man at his gate who has nothing and with whom the rich man shares nothing.  The poor man dies and finds himself sitting beside Abraham at the table of the heavenly feast; the rich man dies and finds himself in Hades, looking up at Abraham and Lazarus.  The [formerly] rich man begs Abraham to let Lazarus come and give him a drop of water, and Abraham says, "My child, in life you had everything and Lazarus nothing; and now there is a chasm fixed between you and us that cannot be crossed.")

I Timothy 6:6-19 (Closing advice to an early church leader -- remember what the treasure and riches of the kingdom of God are: not money or worldly success, status or security, but living the life of God's love for all the world.)


As someone who lives a fairly sheltered and comfortable life in a comfortable community, I'm struck by the chasm that's fixed between the rich man and poor man in Jesus' story.

Who determined there would be a chasm between the two?  That it would be uncrossable?  And when did the digging of the chasm begin?

Recently our church received notice of this year's CityKidz Big Dream Banquet.  (Thursday, November 10 if you're interested).  We know CityKidz.  It's the ministry with children and families living in poverty in the inner city, and this year the key speaker at the banquet is one of the first children who started with CityKidz 23 years ago.  She's going to speak about how she has broken the cycle of poverty with the help of CityKidz.

In her life the chasm has been crossed -- she has crossed from a place of perpetual poverty, to a place of hope, opportunity and achievement.

The chasm between between those who have everything and those who have nothing, is not uncrossable from her side.

Is it as easily crossable from our side?  

Some of our members drive in to the inner city to volunteer at CityKidz.  Others contribute an annual sponsorship.  Once a year we observe CityKidz Miracle Sunday in our worship to raise more support.  For a few years some of our members drove in to an inner-city warehouse to wrap Christmas presents for the children on one of the CityKidz bus routes.

What other ways do we find across the chasm between rich and poor in our part of the world?  

Or across other chasms and divides that exist in the world?

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Towards Sunday, September 18, 2016

Reading: 1 Timothy 2:1-7 (After a long introduction, the letter gets around to the advice and "instructions" that are promised to help the church leaders keep their churches true to their purpose.  And the first thing that's advised is to pray -- in whatever way is appropriate in any circumstance, for the political rulers and leaders of the day, so the church can go about its business freely and quietly.)

The prayer for safety and freedom in practicing one's religion is common to almost all religious groups at some time in their history.  

Christians in 1st-century Rome.  Jews and Christians in 12th-century Spain.  Anabaptists in 16th-century Europe.  First Nations' peoples in 17th, 18th, 19th and even 20th-century Canada.  Jehovah's Witnesses and Quakers in war-time North America and the Confessing Church in war-time Germany.  Buddhists in China and Tibet.  Christians and Muslims today,in different parts of the Middle East and the Western world, respectively.

The reading says the Christian church has an important role in society because of our belief in the reconciliation of all the world by Christ. 

But does the Christian church deserve a "special place" or "special protection" different from that given to any other community of faith today?

Also, the prayer focuses on kings and leaders in authority as the key to whether the church is safe and free or not.  In recent years this has become relevant again even in Canada, as various governments have tried to curtail the activity and mission of religious groups when they become "political" -- i.e. engage in, or support activities contrary to the government's agenda.

But is political ill-will and interference the only -- even the greatest, threat to the church's vitality and survival as a community of faith?  Or is the survival of the church as a relevant and vital witness to God's healing of the world threatened in other ways?  Are there other powers and forces that rule our culture, that maybe we need to pray not to be subverted by?

Monday, September 12, 2016

Sermon from Sunday, September 11, 2016

Reading:  1 Timothy 1:12-17 (Paul has been a faithful man all his adult life.  At first, his faith was narrow, rigid and violent.  But then he met Jesus and had to come to grips with Jesus' open, forgiving, healing, non-violent way as the way of God.  Given his experience of such a radical transformation in his faith, he is well suited to help the Christian church keep true to its calling.)

Sermon:  I thought I was doing the right thing
 
I’m thinking about an eight-word sentence that seems to stand in the background of the reading and shine through it: “I thought I was doing the right thing.”  Or, it might even be, “I thought I was doing what God wanted.”

It’s one of the ways Paul describes the way he lived out his faith in God before he really saw, heard and came to grips with Jesus. 

He was a zealot – a man of deep faith, committed to God, educated to know and defend God’s name, and ready to attack those who were enemies of God’s law for the world.

Today, I don’t think he would have been a suicide bomber.  But he would have been a commander of a religiously-inspired militia with orders to search and destroy, engaged in one of the “holy wars” that trouble us.  In the right circumstances he would have been a fundamentalist sniper or bomber.  He used violence against others -- even lethal violence in the name of God, and he says quite honestly, “I thought I was doing what God wanted.  I thought I was doing the right thing.”

There are different ways, of course, that this can be said – with different emphasis and meaning, and for different purposes.

It can be a statement of self-defence – a way of excusing or even justifying what one has done and the kind of activity one was involved in. 

“I was just following orders,” is a defence we associate with the Nuremberg trials of Nazi officers and soldiers after the Holocaust of the Second Great War.  Good soldiers, they were following the orders of their superiors; good Germans of the time, they were serving the will of the god they were taught to believe in.

Like suicide bombers today blowing up infidels to begin a holy war.  Like Klansmen a few generations ago lynching people who were muddying the pool of God’s chosen people.  Like religious people who cause of the kind of god they believe in, pray for gays and lesbians to contract AIDS.  Or maybe like us a generation or two from now, when our culture’s consumerist lifestyle further degrades the Earth.  Will we say, “We honestly thought God wanted us just to enjoy all this stuff”?

That’s twelve words.  But it amounts to the same thing in the end.  “I thought I was doing the right thing.  I was doing what the god -- or the gods, of my time wanted.”  It’s an attempt to defend what is increasingly indefensible in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary. 

Which can lead to a second way – a second spirit in which this statement can be offered – a spirit of shame for what one has done, when the reality of it really sinks in, and one can only be bewildered at how thoroughly everything is changed.

I wonder if this is the way Paul felt these words – “I thought I was doing what God wanted” – in those first few days and maybe even weeks and months after his experience of Jesus as the Word of God on the way to Damascus.  He was arresting, killing and terrorizing people in the name of God – treating them as less than full brothers and sisters because they believed in and understood God differently than he did.  And after he came to see and know Jesus as the Word of God, and the way of Jesus as the way of God, how could he not be deeply ashamed, wracked with guilt, aware only of his own deep error?

“I used to speak against him, attack his people, and I was proud.  I’m the biggest sinner of all,” he says in the opening sentences of the letter to Timothy.  Echoes of shame persist even years later.

I wouldn’t be surprised if all of us can identify with this – if at some point in our life, maybe more than once, maybe even continually in some way, each one of us feels or has felt this kind of shame for something we did, some activity we were involved in, some way we were or are.  “I was just doing what I knew how to do, doing what I had learned, doing what everyone else was doing … and I’m so ashamed when I look at it now.”

I wonder if this is also where we are at this point in time in relation to what we’re learning through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission about the residential schools, our historical treatment of the First Nations, and the racism deeply rooted in Canadian society.  It’s understandable that we feel shame, and the problem is that shame is paralyzing.  It immobilizes the soul.  Often it leads to denial as the only way out we can imagine.  If we can only deny that it was really that bad – or is that bad, we don’t need to feel so ashamed.

Thank goodness there’s another way, though – a third way of speaking that honest statement, “I thought I was doing the right thing; I thought I was doing what God wanted.” 

It’s the way of grace – of experiencing and knowing God’s grace, and of gratitude – of honestly confessing how limited our first experience of God was, and being truly grateful for the grace of being able to grow in our knowledge and understanding of God.

This is what happened to Paul, and what enabled him to be the leader that he was for the church of his time.  He began as we all do, with a true but limited knowledge and experience of God and God’s good will – a limited experience of God that he made so absolute that he felt justified in dismissing, demonizing and attacking people who didn’t believe and live as he did.  But along the way – on the road to Damascus and for three years in the desert in prayerful and probably guided retreat, he came to see God in new ways, came to grips with the radicality of Jesus as the Word of God in real life, and grew beyond what he had known and been.  And he knew deep down it was a loving and patiently nurturing God who helped him do this.

The challenge for us – as it was for the churches for which 1 Timothy was first written, is to be open in that same way to God and to the way of God in our own life and in the world today.

How many times do we find ourselves saying, “I thought I was doing the right thing” in a defensive spirit.  

How many times in shame, feeling immobilized and paralyzed by guilt and regret?

And are there situations today – either individually or as a church, where we find ourselves saying, “I thought I was doing what God wanted,” or “We thought we were doing what God wanted” in a spirit of honest and humble gratitude for the ways in which God is patiently helping us to grow in our understanding and knowledge of what is right?