Oh, Baal! Ye never really left us, did ye? (sermon from June 23, 2019)

Reading:  I Kings 19

When the people of Israel entered the land of Canaan, one of the features of Canaanite religion they encountered was the worship of Baal -- lord of heaven and earth, god of sun and rain who made crops grow, the land fertile, and life good for his followers and their families.  Who could not like a religion like that?  And isn't that what they wanted from their Yahweh-God as well?

So the people combined the two traditions -- worship of Baal and of Yahweh, for a long time.

Fast forward a few centuries, though, and some people (called "prophets") are beginning to see how badly the self-centredness, greed, and other shortcomings of Baalism are crippling the soul of the people and corrupting the kingdom.  Things come to a head when Queen Jezebel, the Phoenician wife of King Ahab (a strong Baalist herself, raised in the official Baalism of Phoenicia), begins a program to oust Yahwism altogether and make Israel an officially Baalist kingdom.

Elijah is distressed at this, and takes on the Queen and her Baalist priests in a public contest of let's-see-whose-god-is-really-God.  In the contest (in which the stakes are life and death) he defeats 500 of the Queen's Baalist priests.

Great victory!!  But then Elijah realizes the Queen is not going to take this public humiliation lightly.  The story of what Elijah does next is one of the more familiar tales of the Hebrew Scriptures.

 I'm glad you’re here.  It’s comforting not to be alone when you’re looking for God.  It’s reassuring to be with others not afraid of the silence.

My name is Elijah.  So is yours.  Sometimes we are made to be Elijah by the times we live in, by the theologies that dominate our culture, or by troubles that overtake us and break us down.

Out there there’s lots of noise – lots of bluster and bravado, PR and praise, commercial marketing and evangelistic messages about being able to have it all.  About being blessed beyond belief, because of belief.  About being happy.  Being successful, effective and entitled to whatever I feel I need.  About being protected from trouble, and rescued speedily from it if it happens.  About being healthy and healed of any disease or disorder that worms its way in and makes me less than I want to be, less than my neighbour is, less than I used to be and feel I still am meant to be.

It’s a wonderful message.  It comes to us from Madison Avenue – where it’s called consumer capitalism and the self-help industry, among other things, and from religious institutions and leaders – where it’s called among other things, the prosperity gospel. 

It feels good to believe it.  To be able to believe it.

And it’s really hard not to, because there is enough of the truth about God in it to catch us and grab hold on our hearts.  God is creator of the world and every good thing in it.  God is generous and self-giving and has made the world to be a place of blessing for all.  God is love, and desires only ultimate good for all creatures and all people.  So the gospel of Madison Avenue and the good news of the prosperity gospel seem true enough, especially when life is good and we seem to be able to get and be and do what we want in the world. 

But it actually sounds a lot like the age-old religion of Baal – the religion that the people of Israel met when they moved into Canaan, that they lived with and struggled with the whole time they lived there, and that Elijah – the ancient Elijah, found himself in the end fighting against for the sake of his own soul and the soul of his people.

In the ancient Middle East Ball was one of the most important gods in the pantheon – the closest there was to a supreme god among them.  He was ruler of the heavens, lord of the earth, god of sun and rain, and thereby god of fertility and of life – god of abundance and of material and physical well-being.  He was the god who would make your land fruitful, your home secure, your family well, and your life happy.

And because this was not unlike at least part of what the people of Israel also hoped for from Yahweh who had freed them from slavery to Egypt, led them through the desert to Mt. Sinai, and then to the Promised Land as a good place to raise their families, they easily combined the worship and the temples of Baal they found already established in Canaan, with their worship of Yahweh.  At first they saw no contradiction between the two.  Their message seemed to be one, and for centuries the people happily amalgamated the two religious traditions and the two experiences and expectations of God.

Until the cracks appeared, and widened into chasms as they did by the time of Elijah – the first ancient Elijah, and as they do at some point in most of our lives, making us into latter-day Elijah’s as well.  Because the gospel of being able to have it all, doesn’t always work and sometimes does more harm than good.

On the simplest level the prosperity gospel does little to curb human greed, possessiveness, competitiveness, and oppression of others as Israel found out in their own society, and as we (and others around us) find in ours as well. 

The equation of material things with spiritual blessing, and the use of material stuff to prove the blessing of God and our own spiritual good standing feeds, rather than challenges and heals addictions and unhealthy attachments that we always are prone to.

And the promise of being able to be well, or at least clearly on the way to well as we understand it – when it doesn’t happen, easily engenders depression, doubt and even unnecessary loss of faith.  Because when trouble strikes your house, disease takes residence, or you suffer loss that you never thought you would, how do you understand this within a religion of Baal – either ancient or modern?

Surely it must mean you are bad, or have done something bad and therefore at least for now don’t deserve god’s blessing.  Or, it means god somehow has just forgotten about you, has taken a bit of vacation, or maybe wasn’t even real in the first place – was just a heavenly Santa Claus of your childhood that now you have grown up not to believe in anymore.  Either way, life suddenly takes a turn toward the empty, the lonely, the hopeless, and the dark.

Which is exactly what Elijah – the ancient Elijah is feeling when he runs from the power of Jezebel, high queen of Baal, who is shaping the faith of so many of the people of Israel.  He flees to the wilderness, finds a tree to sit under, and sits down to die.  In a land where Baal is god, what else is there to do when God – when Baal, no longer works you?

But then God – Yahweh-God, intervenes, sends an angel to feed him, and direct him to go back to the beginning – back to Mt Horeb, the mountain of God, Mt Sinai, where the whole covenant, the whole holy marriage of commandment and commitment between Yahweh-God, and God’s people was sealed. 

Yesterday there was a marriage celebrated here.  At the heart of that marriage were two things – one was the union of two persons who over time have come to know and to love one another pretty honestly and openly; the other was the vows they shared, to live in that openness of knowledge and love for the rest of their lives – 

          to have and to hold [as the traditional vow says] from this day forward

for better, for worse

for richer, for poorer

in sickness and in health

in joy and in sorrow.

When you think of it, that doesn’t sound like the kind of commitment Baal makes or people make with Baal.  Baal is in it, and we are in it with Baal for better, for richer, in health and in joy.  But not so much for the other stuff – the worse, the poorer, in sickness and in sorrow.  For Baal and Baal’s people, those things aren’t accepted and embraced as part of the deal.

Those kinds of things, though, are included in the covenant with Yahweh.  Because Yahweh is not just a god who makes our crops grow, but who also sits with us when drought comes and we don’t know where to turn – and gives us no guarantee the drought will not come.  Yahweh is not just a god who keeps us and our family well, but who also holds us close and helps us grow in some way when disaster or disease or some tragedy overtakes us – and gives us no guarantee we will not suffer such things.  Yahweh is not a god who bends heaven and earth just to make us happy, but who understands that sorrow and fear are part of life, tells us it’s not the end of the world, and says he’s not afraid of living and walking into those things with us and making them his own as well.

Those are the promises – the wedding vows of Yahweh to us, made at Mt Sinai and through all the journey both to there and beyond.

And the promises we make – our wedding vow to Yahweh at Mt Sinai, in the holy place?  It's this: it’s to live in the ways God shows us – the way of the ten commandments, the way of loving God with all our heart and loving our neighbour as ourself, no matter what –

for better, for worse

for richer, for poorer

in sickness and in health

in joy and in sorrow.

Because that’s the way of true life.  That’s how life is made good.  That’s what changes us for the better, day by day as we live these commandments no matter what the circumstances of our life may be.  And that’s how we find our way – our own little way, rich or poor, full or empty, healthy or ill, joyful or filled with sorrow, into being part of God’s making all the world good one life at a time.

I’m glad you’re here.  It’s comforting not to be alone when we’re looking for God.  It’s reassuring to be with others not afraid to leave behind the noise of our time, and to be renewed in the deep, quiet presence of the God who is always with us, no matter what.

Winter-walking with God at the Villa Infantil ... or, what better Father's Day gift is there than grown-up children in whom he is able to see the best of himself?

In worship this week, in place of a sermon Pam F shared pictures from an orphanage near San Pedro Tesistan, Mexico where she spends winters, and talked about her experience of volunteering at the orphanage during her vacation time there.  

For more information about the orphanage, go to https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=http://villainfantil.infored.mx/&prev=search.

The readings in worship were Deuteronomy 24:17-22; Psalm 68:4-6; and James 1:27.

The following is the introduction to the liturgy.

 

It's interesting sometimes how a worship service comes together.

Maybe two years ago I heard of how Pam F volunteers every winter at an orphanage in Mexico while she vacations there.  What an amazing way to spend one's winter get-away, I thought; I think we need to hear more about this in our worship here at Fifty.

And so it sat for a while.

Then with this spring's Lenten focus on different ways that members of our congregation have felt individually called into mission in different ways in the world, it just made sense finally to ask Pam to share with us the calling she has answered every winter for a number of years in Mexico.  

We sat down to look at the dates that would work.  Today, June 16, seemed the best of what was open.  We got to planning, and as part of the planning I googled "orphan images" and found this image, which now is the central focusing image for our worship today:

And then ... (how often is there an "and then"?) as this past week unfolded I suddenly realized:  Father's Day!  And I had not planned anything special in our worship, to celebrate Father's Day.  Oops!

But then (and how often is there also a "but then"?) ... isn't creating and maintaining an orphanage, and making a safe, supportive home for the world's children, at least part of what fatherhood -- the fatherhood of God and our own fatherhood, is about?

I think of my own dad.  The first years of his life were spent without a safe and settled home in the world.  As an infant only several months old in 1918 he was carried by his family as they fled Russia with only what they could carry in their hands and on their backs.  The next ten years were spent in borrowed and not-always-happy lodging with his mother's parents in Germany, almost as indentured labour.  Finally in 1929 the family was able to emigrate to Canada -- a good country, but a really bad time for a German immigrant family to try to establish a secure foothold and a settled home.  It was really hard, and took a long time.

Maybe in part because of that experience, one of the dominant themes, imperatives, happinesses and successes of my father's life was to create, provide and maintain a good, safe, comfortable, secure home for his family.  He gave his life, and sacrificed much of himself to do that.  And he did it very well, far better than I have been able to replicate.

So who is to say that the image of a strong, providing, protecting hand extended to a weak, little child is not also a Father's Day image -- celebration of those who do all they can to provide and maintain safe and secure homes for the world's children?

And then, of course ... the surprises for today were not over.  As I looked beyond the secular, Hallmark calendar to the liturgical calendar, I realized today is also Trinity Sunday.

Trinity Sunday?  There is such a thing?

Yes, and it's today.  It's the Sunday after Pentecost's celebration of the giving of the Spirit to the disciples of Jesus.  Or, perhaps not the "giving" of the Spirit, as though the Spirit were not alive or present or poured out prior to this, because Spirit was, and always has been, since the beginning of the world.  Maybe better to call it a new experience of the Spirit by the disciples of Jesus.  A new awareness of the Spirit that always is there, and always is here.  New openness to the holy Spirit as the guiding, empowering spirit of all our lives, and all the life of the world.

Which is why we make this day Trinity Sunday -- a time to remember that we now really know and are open to God not only as transcendent Father/Mother above and beyond and beneath all that is, and as Word revealed in the law and prophets and incarnate in Jesus, the Son who walks with us, but also as Spirit enlivening us, alive within us, empowering us to participate consciously and intentionally in the life and being and work of God in the world.  

To be, in effect, like children now grown up to be taking on and doing the Father's work in the world -- adult heirs of all that the Father has made, and executors of the Father's good will for all that is made.

And isn't this a good image for that as well?  At least to get us started?

So, happy Father's Day.  Happy Trinity Sunday.  Welcome, Pam.  Let us worship.  And let us hear about, and celebrate one way in which one of our members lives out the good will of our Father in the world.

 

Gone (not), and not forgotten (sermon from Sunday, June 9, 2019)

Reading:  John 14:8-20, 22-23, 27

How often after the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus the disciples and the early church must have said, “If only Jesus were here.”  They must have missed him greatly, and must have wished that the world could have seen and known Jesus the way they did. 

But it didn’t take long for them to see Jesus was not really gone.  They came to see that they now lived in the same communion with God as Jesus had, and that what they had seen and loved in Jesus, the world now saw and loved in them. 

As the Gospels were written – especially the Gospel of John, the community remembered different things Jesus had said about that, and the reading today is part of his final conversation with his disciples before he is arrested, tried and put to death.  The disciples are afraid of having to continue without him, and he talks with them about the mystical indwelling and communion of God, Jesus and the community of faith. 

Aaron was 3 – probably 3 ½ years old the year MacNeill Baptist, the church we were attending at the time, arranged a Journey to Bethlehem one Sunday morning in Advent.  It was planned and talked about for weeks.  Everyone was excited and ready to be part of this special departure from the usual Sunday fare.

That Sunday morning we began in the sanctuary with a few readings, and some carols and prayers focused on the call to come see the Messiah of God promised to be born among us.  After a few minutes of this as a group we got up and out from our pews and began a pilgrimage through the church, stopping at different places in hallways, meeting rooms, and even outside on the public sidewalk beside the church.  At each stage we read one of the promises of his coming, sang a carol of hope, and shared in a prayer for God to come to us and Jesus to be born among us. 

Finally we entered the large fellowship hall at the back of the church.  Off in one corner surrounded by bales and loose scatterings of hay there stood a makeshift structure, inside of which was a manger.  Beside the manger and looking lovingly into it, a man stood and a woman sat, both dressed in ancient Middle Eastern garb.  From a distance, inside the manger we could kind of see a carefully swaddled little bundle. 

We were invited to come to the manger as we wished.  To see, to give thanks, to pray.  To know the coming of the Christ among us.  Aaron went to the manger with me, and for a few seconds – maybe half a minute, we looked in. 

As we all finished the morning with some more carols, Christmas refreshments, and closing prayers, I realized Aaron was no longer with me.  He was sitting alone on the stairs that led up out of the hall to the rest of the church building.  His body was slumped.  His head was in his hands.  Something had happened.

I sat beside him, put my hand on his shoulder and asked him what was wrong.  He looked at me for a second, looked down again, and said sadly, “It was just a doll.”

He thought he was going to see the baby Jesus.  Thought Jesus was going to be born in our church.

I don’t know what I said.  What I could have said at that moment that would have made any sense, or made any difference.

I don’t know if it would have been helpful to quote Mother Teresea at that point: “Do not look for Jesus away from yourselves.  He is not out there; he is in you.  Keep your lamp burning, and you will recognize him.”

But as I think about it now – about the promise of Jesus, the Christ, being born among us, there are so many things about that church that come to mind.  So many ways in which Jesus was born and alive within them, and in which their heart, their hands, their arms, their voice, their spirit, their life really were and still are the hands, the arms, the voice, the spirit and the life of Jesus, the living Christ.

I think of how that church welcomed me when I first came to Hamilton and so easily and warmly opened offered the gift of spiritual home and family.  And not just me, but all kinds of folks looking for a spiritual home they didn’t always find in other churches, to the point where a few years ago that church became “a biblically-based welcoming and affirming community, supportive of the LGBTQ community,” much to the consternation of other churches and leaders in their denomination.   Like Jesus at the gatherings he convened all over the place and called his community of faith and the kingdom of God on Earth, there is a freedom and a radical kind of hospitality and welcome at work in that church.

I think, too, of when leukemia struck a little boy of one of the families of the church, and that church as a whole was touched and responded in pretty deep ways.  During the most intense and critical times of treatment in the hospital, the church arranged for casseroles, days of house-cleaning and even 24/7 babysitting for the little girl in the family – in 4 or 5-hour shifts, so the parents could be at the hospital as much as they needed.  Collections were taken up to help cover lost wages from time taken off work.  And prayer groups began in which people not used to doing so prayed for the healing of the little boy in their midst.  Like the stories of Jesus, the story of that church is a story of caring community and of the compassionate healing of a family and of the community around it.

I think, too, of that church’s openness to the needs and the healing of the world.  In a time when their denomination was taking a very conservative turn that congregation along with a few others in the denomination resisted the tide and remained open and active in the work of social justice and peace-making around the world.  A number of the members belonged to the North American Baptist Peace Fellowship, the church hosted regional meetings of the Peace Fellowship and supported a number of peace initiatives around the world, and the congregation as a whole shared in local ecumenical justice work in Hamilton that many other Baptists just didn’t have time for.  Like Jesus they believed in the coming of God’s kingdom in the affairs of the world, and opened themselves to be part of it.

I think, too, of when numbers began to shrink – both members and money, and a full-time minister as well as paid musician and office staff became difficult for a while.  They learned to be church together in new ways.  Members took charge of planning and leading worship in teams.  Teams of lay visitors and callers were set up and trained for pastoral care.  Administration and decision-making was streamlined.  They learned to discern and encourage the use of one another’s gifts.  Like Jesus said and like Jesus did, they showed that faith and gifts the size of a mustard seed are more than enough, and that every member of his body has a purpose and a reason for being there.

In the early church, the disciples of Jesus surely missed him after he was gone and no longer with them as he used to be.  How could they not?

But both they and the world around them learned soon enough, that he was not really gone from among them and within them.  In fact, as Jesus says would be the case, he was alive among them, in them, and through them in more ways than were possible when he was just one man walking with them.  In the same way as he was one with the Father and the Father with him, and he was living God’s good will into the world, so through their connection with him they were a holy community in communion with God, living God’s good will into the world around them wherever they were and however they could.  They now were the embodiment, the incarnation of the Christ – of God’s redeeming, fulfilling Word of life on Earth and for Earth.

And that’s sometimes a hard thing for us to get our heads around.  A hard thing for us to understand.  A hard thing maybe for us to be willing to accept and live into.

But that’s the point of Pentecost and the story of the outpouring of the Spirit upon the disciples gathered in Jerusalem – that just as the Spirit descends upon Jesus when he is baptized in the Jordan, and he goes from there empowered to preach, teach and make real the kingdom of God in his time, so the Spirit is poured upon the body of Christ – upon the whole community of faith, empowering it – empowering us, to preach and teach and make real the kingdom of God in our time.

It’s also the point of Jesus’ final conversation with his disciples and his prayer on his last night with them before he is arrested, tried and put to death.  “Let them be one with you, O God, as I am one with you, and you with me.  Let them be empowered, O God, as I am empowered in my union with you, to do your good work for and in the world.  As others have seen and believed in you through me, may all the world see and believe in the coming of your kingdom in and through them – they who are and will be your incarnate Word, the living Christ in and for the world.”

That’s the point of what we do here as a church.  The point of our worship, our pastoral care, our mission and outreach, our Christian education.  The point of our budget, of our building, of our history of being here for almost 225 years. 

It’s the point of our coming here, and of others’ coming here over and over again.  The point of coming to see the manger and the baby in it in Advent and at Christmas.  The point of looking upon the cross and the one hanging upon it in Lent and Good Friday, and raised from it in the season of Easter.  The point of gathering as a family to renew our communion with God at the table of our Lord, taking into ourselves the signs of his life and his way of being in the world.

                                                     

The point is that God comes to us, Jesus is born and is alive in us, and the world is still hoping and needing to see him really still here.

I wonder if Jesus sang a hymn in the darkness of his tomb? (sermon from Sunday, June 2)

Reading:  Acts 16:16-34

If “The Book of the Acts of the Apostles” had a sub-title as well as that familiar title, it might be something like “the continuing story of the Gospel of the Kingdom of God on Earth, as the followers of Jesus start looking, acting and sounding a lot like him.”

In this story of the early church, the followers of Jesus – in what they say and do, and even in what happens to them, look and sound exactly like Jesus does in the stories of the Gospels.  Their stories sound alike, over and over again.  Until it becomes clear that really Jesus – or at least, the Christ, is not gone; the Spirit that filled and shaped Jesus and made him who he was, now fills and shapes the community of his followers.

In this reading, Paul preaches the good news and does great wonders in the city of Philippi.  For his efforts he is falsely accused, arrested and shackled in the deepest part of a prison – sealed in a living tomb.  In the middle of the night, though, God hears his prayers and songs and sets him free – raises him up again to live freely in the world, to keep preaching and doing the work of the kingdom.

He slammed the door behind him.  Hard. 

It was a heavy, exterior steel fire door.  I imagined the whole building shaking with the force; the sound of it shattered the Sunday peacefulness of the neighbourhood.

With six quick, angry steps he reached the public sidewalk.  Oblivious to others around him he turned right, strode to his car, unlocked the door, got in, closed the door, started the engine, pulled into the street and drove away.  Not recklessly.  But clearly not stopping or coming back to whatever disappointment, disagreement or conflict he had left behind.

He was a friend.  Still is, I imagine, any time I run into him.  He is also a priest.  It was the side door of his church that he slammed behind him that day.  And some people of his parish that he drove away from in such quiet rage.

That’s not what you expect of a priest and a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  To end an argument or a difference of opinion by slamming a door and leaving.  I knew there’d been ups and downs between him and some of the congregation.  It was not uncommon for him to commit passionately to some cause or other that at least some members of his parish did not support at all, and I wondered if whatever this fight had been about, it might be the final nail in the coffin for his time at that church.

But it wasn’t.  Whatever died that day for him and some of his people, death was not the last word.  Even with whatever human frailty everyone suffered that day, he and his people continued together in ministry and mission for at least another 5 or 6 years.  In the end, they were together for maybe 20 years in total.  And together as parish and priest they did a lot of good, faithful stuff – stuff they honestly and happily celebrated and gave thanks to God for at the end, and still gratefully remember.

When God desires something to be, when God is stirring and leading, when God is weaving the stuff of life – both the nice and the messy stuff, together towards some good end, it’s good to know that our humanity, our frailties and weaknesses, our disorders and dysfunctions and even our apparent dead ends are not a barrier.  Are no hindrance to God accomplishing what God desires to accomplish.  And maybe at times are exactly what God most graciously uses to weave what must be woven.

We worry about ourselves as people who God relies on to get God’s things done in the world.  We know our weaknesses and limitations.  We struggle with what we can and cannot do.  We fret about the smallness of our faith, the thin-ness of our hope, the limits of our love.  We know how “un-Christian” we can be – judgmental and unforgiving, angry and combative, indifferent and self-centred.  We know how dead and lifeless we can feel.  And often it’s we who are our own worst accusers, our own harshest judge and jury, the ones who dig our own grave and conclude it’s all over.

But still God calls us.  Still God puts us in situations of crisis and need.  Still God draws us into relationship with others who are looking for a friend, looking for help, looking for a way through whatever they are stuck in or away from whatever they are bound to, looking for love and someone to help save their life. 

And in those situations and places God uses us as we are – raises us up from whatever tomb we think we are in, to do what needs to be done.

Because the point is not that we be perfect and always good.  Not that we know all the answers and have all that others need.  Not even that we always be nice, polite and well-behaved.  That’s not the Gospel of Jesus, nor is it the kingdom of God.

The point is that in and through us God does good things.  And regardless of who and how we are at any moment, we can be open to what God is doing through us to heal the world where it’s hurting, and to set others free from what binds and enslaves them. 

In reading about Paul’s time in Philippi, I’m struck this week by how the commentators struggle with Paul’s outburst of anger at the slave girl following him around in the first part of the story.  The girl is possessed by a spirit of divination, and her owners are using her to make money off people who want their fortunes told.  With this spirit she is able also to see that Paul is possessed of a holy spirit as well, so every day when he goes into the market-place to meet people and preach she’s there at his side telling people to listen to him. 

To the point she’s becoming quite a nuisance.  The kind of help you don’t really want.  So finally this one day he turns around in anger, orders the spirit out of her, and frees himself of the distraction she has become.  We hear no more about her.

But what are we to think of Paul’s anger?  He seems to show no concern for the girl because there’s no follow-up conversation with her, no help for her to live now without the gift that at least made her useful to her owners, and no invitation to join the Christian community free of her former way of life.  He just wants to be rid of her, and he is.  She disappears. 

And Paul, for the upset he causes and the damage he has done to her owners’ business, is thrown into jail.  Along with his colleague Silas.  The steel door of the cell slams behind them as the end to a not-very-good day for the apostle Paul in Philippi.  The new community of faith that was gathering around them is shaken, and suddenly under suspicion and close scrutiny themselves.  Paul did not act very well that day, and both he and the community around him suffer the consequences.

Except, when you continue to the end of the story none of this is a barrier to God doing what God desires to do in Philippi.  God is bringing liberation of life and of spirit to the people of Philippi.  And the very human mess that Paul creates is exactly what God uses and works through to get the job done – to start touching people’s lives with the good news of the kingdom of God at work in the affairs of the world.

A turning point in the story from being mired in human mess and misery to being open to and embraced by divine mystery seems to come when Paul and Silas starting singing hymns.  In the dead and dark of night and from the innermost pit of the prison – buried alive, you might say, they sing hymns to God and God’s servant-son, Jesus.  And it’s thus that in spite of the mess they have made of things, they open themselves and others around them  to the power of God to make something good of what they have done and where they have got to. 

Because the Gospel of Jesus is not that we are perfect, that we know and have all the answers, or even that we’re always nice, polite and well-behaved.  The Gospel of the kingdom of God on Earth is that God is at work to heal the world and set people free, and regardless of who and how we are at any moment, we can be open to what God is willing to do in us and through us.

I wonder what hymns Paul and Silas sang that night that opened them to the power of God – opened up everything really from the chains on their feet, to the doors of the prison, to the heart of the guard and his family, to the city of Philippi itself in its willingness to make room for the Gospel and the new community of faith that was growing up within it.

I wonder if one of them was the early Christian hymn that Paul actually quotes years later in the letter he wrote to the Philippian church (2:6-11) and that he seems to assume they know well.

Messiah Jesus [it says],

though he was in the form of God,

did not consider being equal with God something to exploit.

But he emptied himself

by taking the form of a slave

and by becoming like human beings.

When he found himself in the form of a human,

he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death,

even death on a cross.

Therefore, God highly honoured him

and gave him a name above all names,

so that at the name of Jesus everyone

in heaven, on earth, and under the earth might bow

and every tongue confess

that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

In other words, the way God saves the world and the way Messiah Jesus shows us to follow, is not the way of perfection, of power and of impeccable reputation, but is instead a way of humble brokenness, of powerlessness, and of radical reliance on the power of God to raise up all the loose ends and broken bits of service we offer at his command, and to weave them together toward some good – even glorious end.

I wonder, if the next time we doubt our usefulness to God, the next time we question what we have to offer anyone, the next time we accuse and judge and close ourselves into a tomb of our own design, what hymn might help us remember the power of God to heal us and set free, if we were only to sing it? 

What hymn do you know that speaks of the presence of God hidden in our ordinary, struggling humanity and the power of God to weave what we offer into something good, if we only obey the call that comes to us?  

Whatever it is, we should sing it some time and let God set both ourselves and the world around us free.