Reflections for Sunday, July 28, 2019
​Reflections for Sunday, July 28, 2019
This psalm poignantly reminds us of our own dilemma – how strong is our faith? And even if our faith is strong, still, bad things happen. We are all born to die. That is a fact. Sometimes our faith will heal us for sure, but inevitably we will all have to cast off our earthly bodies and pass over to our Maker.
I went to a Celebration of Life for the Rev. Cameron Reid yesterday. That man had a long and faithful life of service to the church. He was not perfect, and would be the first to say so. But his faith was very strong and his God never far from view. He had been ill and failing for a long time, but his attendance at the Powell River United Church was unfailing, tho punctuated by his illnesses.
Cameron was a generous man. He presented me with this stole at my covenanting service here on Texada. He gave me many useful books. He preached here whenever we asked him to. He did his best to live into his calling as part of the Body of Christ. He will be missed.
But not all of us have such strong faith, do we? We struggle with doubts, we fight against temptation, we wonder where God went… I think of the story of the Prodigal Son. God didn’t go anywhere – we are the architects of our own wandering, our own lack of faith. God is always there, always coming towards us at the slightest invitation.
So call out, children of God. God waits right beside you for you to open your hearts and minds to the Holy Presence.
Hymn #559 VU “Come, O Fount of Every Blessing”
2nd Scripture Reading: Colossians 2:6-19 & Luke 11:1-13
Paul says: “holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows with a growth that is from God.” We are One in Christ, and in Christ we grow into spiritual wholeness.
Paul is also at pains to point out to his readers that he is not talking about the physical body – for that has been “put aside” by baptism. It is no longer the primary reality for those baptized, but rather the new body, the spiritual body now becomes the dominant reality for them – for us.
And this new focus brings freedom – freedom from the man-made rules about food and ritual. You don’t need to practice severe ascetism or learn special knowledge to be part of the Body of Christ. The teachings of Jesus are enough, and more than enough for his followers.
Which brings us to Jesus’ words about prayer. Asked to teach the disciples how to pray, Jesus starts out “Our Father…”. In the passages leading up to this reading he has called God “Father” five times. At a time in human history, and in a place of rigid rules and social conformity, male dominance reigned supreme. Male violence and coercion were not contested, according to many sources, and Jesus sought to instil in his largely male disciples, who would carry forward his teachings, a different model of fatherhood: a kind, compassionate, caring father figure who took seriously his responsibility to provide all the necessities of life to his family. In such a setting as Jesus was living and teaching in, a female model of God would not likely have gotten any traction!
But we are not those people, and our society is very different. Many men have embraced the teachings of Jesus in this regard, and we are a better society for it. But as our consciousness grows, as we grow into wholeness in Christ, we are challenged to recognize that male supremacy, other than in the brute physical sense, is over. We are all equal and equally valued children of God. Our hearts and minds are One in Christ, and we share equally in the missional responsibility of members of the Body of Christ.
And then Jesus goes on to tell a story about a man who asks a friend for help – for food to give to his unexpected guests. How the man refuses at first, because he has already gone to bed, but how the person asking needs only to keep asking, because a friend will always give you what he can – eventually. We are part of a family in Christ. Prayer is one of the ways we ask for help from our spiritual parent – our father or mother or Holy Spirit or Jesus – and those prayers will be answered. The answers are not always what we want or expect – but they are always what we need – for a good parent gives a child only good gifts. A good parent provides for the children all that they need.
Carefully, Jesus begins the radical re-definition of who the people think God is, and at the same time, he begins to undermine the existing notion of patriarchy – who they think men are supposed to be in relationships.
Jesus was not a misogynist. Nor is there any evidence he was homophobic. He was a man of peace, and came to teach us how that peace is attainable. He offers us only good gifts – ours for the asking. Indeed – what a friend we have in Jesus!
Hymn # 664 VU “What a Friend we have in Jesus”
1st Scripture Reading: Amos 8:1-12 and Psalm 52
“The time is surely coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.”
A secular society doesn’t sound so bad when you say it quickly – but what does it really mean, and how does it play out? Last week we talked about the plumb line – the gold standard God dropped into the vision of Amos, the standard by which we can measure our own behaviour and that of our communities.
In this weeks reading we see what that might mean – we are alerted to the kinds of behaviour that are not pleasing to God. “Hear this you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, saying, ‘When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and the Sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah small and the shekel great, and practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat.”
In our land today, seniors are being regularly and relentlessly scammed out of their savings by schemes both local and international in scope. Many of the goods we purchase in good faith last just to the length of the warranty period and then fall apart! Forcing us to buy that product yet again, when it could be built to last a lifetime. Our food is corrupted with chemicals we don’t even know the name of, or grown on soil already stripped of all it’s goodness. Clean water and clean air, absolute necessities for life on this planet – these are now commodities to be “negotiated” by the rich and powerful with no regard for the public good. And by the way the”pubic good” is not the same as the “national interest”, which is after all another way of speaking about the economy of the nation.
The prophet Amos could have been talking about us, about the world today. There is a famine going on, friends. The public good, the necessities of a good and harmonious life, are being traded away for profits that benefit only a few, leaving the rest of us to cope with water that is unsafe to drink, air that hurts our lungs, and an environment so degraded that very little will grow. The weak and the old and the poor have become inconsequential – basically an annoyance, an inconvenience in all this, and many are now homeless in one of the richest countries in the world. Affordable housing apparently, is a luxury we cannot afford, preferring to step over the bodies of despair on our way to purchase more and more of things we don’t really need.
And God is doing what God promised: leaving us to it. We have lost sight of the gold standard, caring for one another, preferring to slug it out for the biggest piece of the pie. God is not destroying us. We are doing that to ourselves as we resolutely forge ahead making choices that are not life-affirming.
People of God, if there is a God, God surely weeps.
Hymn #78 MV “God Weeps”
2nd Scripture Reading: Colossians 1:24-29 & Luke 10:38-42
Sermon: “The Heavy Muffin Blues”
A few days ago, as I was thinking about this sermon, and humming the hymns I thought might work, I was also making muffins for my sweetie. I mixed everything up, the flour, sugar, and salt, the spices, mixed in the yogurt and egg and oil – whoops! And don’t forget the raisins! I filled the muffin pan, and as I popped it in the oven I noticed that the muffins didn’t seem to be as big as usual. I did a quick mental check. I had everything on the counter that was supposed to be in the muffins, so I set the timer and started to get ready for my bath. A few minutes later I looked at the muffins and saw that they were about the size of funny shaped hockey pucks - they weren’t rising! I had forgotten --- the leavening! I didn’t put in the baking soda or the baking powder. So they were just sitting there, little solid brown lumps of good ingredients that were never going to rise up to become edible muffins.
I felt terrible. I had a knot in my stomach and I felt the hot flush of shame rising up in me. I had wasted all that good food. I had not paid enough attention to what I was doing. There had been too much “Mary” going on, and not enough “Martha”!
But Jesus said: “Mary has chosen the better part, and it shall not be taken from her.”
Mary and Martha. I often find myself looking at my own behaviour in terms of this story. It seems I struggle daily with how best to express myself in the world. On the one hand I want to be Mary. I want to withdraw from the world and all its concerns and just sit at the feet of the Lord, and drink of his wisdom and love. On the other hand are the calls of service to family and friends, and to those who are ill or needy in some way – making me feel very much like Martha.
Now Jesus loved both Mary and Martha. So why did he answer Martha with these words, “Mary has chosen the better part” when Martha just wanted a little help in the kitchen. After all, somebody had to take care of feeding all those people, and Martha takes this responsibility to heart. Now I don’t know about you, but I sure am glad when somebody graciously receives me into their home and feeds me a scrumptious meal! I mean that’s a kind of love, isn’t it?
So why has Mary chosen the better part? I puzzled over this for days, until the day of the muffin fiasco. Being too much Mary caused me to miss putting in the ingredients that would make my muffins rise and become the delicious treats they were meant to be.
But what if the leavening which makes the muffins rise is really about the awareness of the presence of God in my life – the Presence which raises me up above worldly cares and responsibilities, and fills my life with light and love and joy.
Do you think perhaps that this story was aimed at women and mothers because we are so easily seduced into believing that all we have to do is love and care for our families and friends, and add a little bit of charity work on the side? And it’s not like that isn’t a lot of good work to do! Women do an incredible amount of volunteer work in the community, keep the hospitals and orphanages and churches running – but if we don’t take some time to sit at the feet of our Lord and study his teachings, we’re missing out on the best part – we’ve forgotten the leavening!
So we have amongst and even within ourselves the Marys and the Marthas, don’t we? Too much “Mary” and we spoil the muffins or neglect our friends and families. Too much “Martha” and we have no leavening – no joy or hope or true love in our lives. Men or women, if we allow ourselves to be totally focussed on the distractions and the busyness of life, we will find ourselves wandering far away from any awareness of God. If we allow that to happen.... For in every moment of our day we are choosing to be closer to God, or farther away from God. We are choosing – make no mistake – the choice is ours. God is ever faithful - always right there, longing for our return.
Can we take a quiet moment to look at where we are in our own relationship with God? With Jesus? Pause. How long since we did some Bible reading? Have we prayed a prayer of thanks or of praise today? Hymns are good too –for raising us up!
If we can learn to keep God’s faithful presence front and center in our lives, then we will succeed in doing both parts of what Jesus commanded us to do: first, love the Lord your God, and second, love your neighbour as yourself. For Jesus in this story warned us never to forget, that Mary had chosen the greater, more important part, the first part, love the Lord your God.
We could promise ourselves to find ways to make our love of God more prominent in our lives. We could, each of us, choose to spend more time walking and talking with God, so that the leaven of God’s love can raise us up to be part of the body of Christ. It’s a choice.
And what about me and my muffins? Was I right to feel guilty for forgetting the leavening? Or was Spirit trying to tell me something really, really important: “Mary has chosen the better part, and it shall not be taken away from her.” These days I’m trying to listen harder and not get so easily distracted by the busyness of the world.
Let’s take a moment of prayer.
Ever Faithful and Loving God,
Help us to be faithful too. Help us to want to be near you, to listen attentively to your words and then to act on what we have learned. Help us to be who you intend us to be, and to do what we are called to do in the world. Help us to love one another as Jesus loved us, and to love you, God, the Source of all love. Amen.
Hymn #178 MV “Who is my mother?”
1st Scripture Reading: Amos 7:7-17 & Psalm 82
Last week we asked the question: “Who am I?”. and we tried to look honestly at who we are – a complex mix of potential for good and for evil. But what or who do we measure ourselves against? The prophet Amos tells us that God is the Great Judge, the true standard, and that we are called to “give justice to the weak and the orphan, maintain the right of the lowly and destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy, save them from the hands of the wicked.”
Failing to align ourselves with these standards keeps us wandering around in darkness, separate from the richness of our true inheritance as children of God - not because God has withdrawn from us, but because we have stubbornly refused to be in right relationship to God.
Hymn #288 VU “Great is Thy Faithfulness”
2nd Scripture Reading: Colossians 1:1-14 & Luke 10:25-37
And what, my friends, is right relationship to God? Indeed, IS there a God? Some people say “God is good”, some say “God is Love”, some call God “the Higher Power” or Divine Energy or a host of other names or descriptives. Within all of these, I believe, the same standard is implied.
What if you don’t believe in God? Is there then NO standard? No cry for justice? No need for compassion? No hope of eternal life? Does making this choice sentence us to wandering forever in the darkness without a compass, making more and more bad choices and decisions that are not life-giving?
Accepting that there is a standard, a God, a Higher Power, and that we are the masters of our fate, and can choose to lean toward the dark or the light, that is the beginning of establishing a relationship with God. Sure, it can go either way – but at least let’s be conscious of the choices we are making.
The God of Christianity, the God of our faith, calls us to a life where justice, mercy, kindness, love and compassion are the signposts of our life in Christ. The Apostle Paul calls the people of Colossae to live a life in Christ that “bears fruit”. He prays for them, that they might be filled with the knowledge and understanding of God, and that they might be strengthened to live a life that is pleasing to God – even the patience and fortitude to endure suffering and setbacks along the way.
The theologian and writer William Barclay says that the twin pillars of Christianity are faith in Christ, and love for humanity. Faith in Christ leads us to the Way of Love – to understanding our God as loving and faithful. As we learn to love and be grateful to God, then the overflow of that love leads us naturally to love our neighbours, and gradually to a life of selfless service. As more and more of us choose this path, this way of life in Christ, God’s kingdom becomes more and more evident among us.
I would like to share with you a story I read the other day that perhaps illustrates some of these points better than I can. It’s from a book called: The Parables: Understanding What Jesus Meant, by Gary Inrig (who is a Pastor in Redlands, California). This story is in the chapter called “Loving My Neighbour” in which he deals with the parable of the Good Samaritan in some depth. I’ll read a little of the preamble to the story, just to set it up for us.
Reflections for Sunday, July 7, 2019
Scripture Readings: Colossians 3:12-16 & Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
I’ll bet this is a question the Toronto Raptors team and supporters are asking themselves this weekend as they woke up yesterday the reality that their crown prince, their star performer, Kawhi Leonard has chosen to go home to Los Angeles to play for the Clippers.
The team must now regroup and find a new way forward, looking to the skills and strengths developed while Kawhi was with them. Kawhi himself is a person who believes in teamwork, and who was at all times in Toronto self-effacing, and consistently worked to empower his team mates to be the best they could be. The Raptors are a richer, better team for having had his leadership and we are better people for the inspiring and empowering work that Jesus the Christ did when he was with us.
Anybody here remember the old movie “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”? Maureen O’Hara and Charles Laughton starred in this one, which I watched again after many, many years on Friday night. I was totally amazed at the depth of the moral and ethical issues that were addressed. The nature of good and evil, the futility of revenge, greed, violence, coercion and control – and after watching the mayhem that ensued – a surprise cut to a single image: a grey stone statue of Jesus Christ, his fingers raised in a blessing. You can almost hear him saying, “Peace be with you. My peace be with you.”
The movie was set in 15th century Paris, and raises the question that keeps coming up for me: Who are we? Why are we the way we are? How can we call ourselves followers of Christ and still condone lies, torture, persecution, and intolerance? How are cruelty and murder, and the abuse of children and women ever acceptable in a person who identifies as Christian?
And this is who we are. This, I believe, may be the origin of the doctrine of original sin – the belief that we are all born sinful and there’s no way around it! We, the human race, are born with a complicated mix of drives toward both good and evil. Our history documents this fact pretty much incontrovertibly. We fight, we kill, we torture, we exploit, we persecute. Not every one of us, of course. But enough so that my late husband, Clarence Wood, a historian, often told me, “The history of mankind is the history of war.”
Which leads us to our scripture readings this morning. First off, the apostle Paul in his letter to the Colossians indicates that all is not lost. Paul reminds the early Christians at Colossus that they can be better than this. He reminds them of who they are:
“As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God through him.” Colossians 3:12-17
Paul calls these followers of Christ, these imperfect humans, to make conscious choices about who they define themselves to be. Given that we are born this complex mix of good and evil, we clearly have to become intentional about what characteristics we wish to embody in this lifetime. And we have to do it with LOVE. We are called to love and forgive both ourselves and others because we are God’s beloved children, and without denying that within each of us is the potential for evil and wrongdoing.
Think about it friends – if this were not so – then would there have been any need for Jesus to come among us – to teach us the way out of our dilemma? We were struggling. We are still struggling – but we have been given a better understanding and tools to deal with it. So Paul reminds his followers and us of who we are, and how we are to embody the teachings of Jesus.
But we live in challenging times, people of God. Our numbers are dwindling across North America as our secularism increases. At the highest levels of government most of the talk is about economic growth and jobs, jobs, jobs. We are being defined as cogs in the wheel of economic development – a much different vision than the one of the Kingdom of God as espoused by Jesus Christ.
In the second reading, the reading from Luke, Jesus sends his disciples out to teach about, and to heal within, what he calls “the Kingdom of God”. He wants each of them to fully embody the teachings we heard described so clearly by Paul in the first reading. They go out without any other baggage to throw themselves on the mercy of God and the goodness of the people they encounter. This is the test. This is the proof of the pudding, if you like. Can they live out the teachings of Jesus? Can they carry on his legacy and become the yeast that will leaven the whole loaf? And they did – and it worked – sort of…..
So back to the original question: Who am I? who am I in Christ Jesus? How do I live my life as a follower of Jesus, and how important is that in the general scheme of things?
Brothers and sisters in Christ, we are called to carry on this great work; to hold a mirror to the powers that hold sway in our world today. We are called to speak truth to power, to call out persecution, exploitation, intolerance and untruth. We must refuse to obfuscate, to deny truth, to cover-up injustice. And we must do all of this with love, humility, without violence and in a spirit of forgiveness.
We are not great in number, followers of Jesus, but we are great in the power and strength of God and in our conviction that the Way of Love, the Way of Jesus, is the only way that leads to a better, peaceful world – to the Kingdom of God.
Hymn #353 VU “Tis the gift to be simple”