Sermon for Reign of Christ Sunday - Nov 23rd 2008

November 23rd 2008 – Radical Compassion …

In the gospel accounts of his life, Jesus’ ministry is framed with two verses. The first verse comes from the scroll of Isaiah and enters the fray when Jesus stand before the congregation of his home synagogue and proclaims boldly – “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because God has anointed me to share the good news with the oppressed, to heal the broken hearted and to announce freedom for prisoners and captives.”

Jesus stands in his home synagogue, among the people who watched him grow up – he was the HOME TOWN BOY, and as he read the text, then handed the scroll back to the attendant, he said – “oh by the way, those word you’ve just heard. … They’ve come true in your hearing …” the implication being that the Spirit of the Lord was upon HIM …

And their response??

They grabbed him, dragged him out the door, and across town and wanted to throw him over the nearest cliff. They were NOT impressed. They were no happy. They were ticked off. And they were ready to do him in for proclaiming the good news …

Then near the end of his Jesus life comes the text we shared earlier where he take this concept of living the Good News and makes it incredibly simple. Forming the bracket of his message from that moment in his home synagogue to the last days of his earthly life, we hear his reminder that came with he same boldness and courage as his words in Nazareth: “Truly I tell you, just as you did for one of these my brothers, and sisters, you did it for me …”

The two texts frame all that Jesus said and did …and they are both passages that we have become so familiar with that we fail to fully grasp the radical nature of these words and the profound impact that they had in his day.

Jesus was proclaiming his commitment and understanding of a ministry that was a departure from anything that went before it … no longer focused on the ritual and practices of the temple, Jesus proposed an world view that was based on action.

How you treat the people around – not just friends and familiar folks like family and aquaintences, but how we treat complete strangers and those who are marginalized – how we live our faith in our day to day encounters is what’s important. The whole idea of “just as you do it for one of the least of these my family,” is the motivating principle in our dealings with the down trodden, the oppressed, the broken hearted and those needing to hear and experience the Good News.

Last week I was privileged to be in attendance at an event in Brandon where author, and activist Tim Huff spoke and offered a new take on the whole concept of radical compassion, that he sees at the heart of what we are as a people and a faith community. Tim comes from a background of working with homeless youth on the streets of Toronto, he came to Brandon to offer words of encouragement to the folks in Brandon who work with youth on the streets of Brandon. Youth who, if it was not for groups like Youth For Christ’s U-Turn, would find themselves homeless on the streets of Brandon …

Tim gave example after example of how he has lived his life and ministry encountering the deeply marginalized and offering them something more than just a band-aid. One of his powerful lessons began with him asking us about our houses.

He noted that we would, if asked – “tell me about your house” note things like hard wood floors, age, type of heating, the number of bed rooms, size of the yard and rooms, and so on. Our house is the physical place we live …

He then asked – “tell me about your home” and noted that we will describe home as the place we are loved and cared for, the place of warmth and welcome, the place we feel safe and secure … Tim spoke in Brandon on one of the nights when the horrid details of Phoenix Sinclair’s death was being reported in the media – Phoenix, a young child who had a house – but never a home … a five year old girl who was utterly homeless as she died cold and alone on the concrete basement floor of her mother’s house …

I thought of Phoenix as Tim spoke and shared his description of “home” and his reminder that the street youth he works with have been HOME-less long before they became HOUSE-less.

Homelessness is not just a case of being without a physical shelter. Too often homelessness is about being without a place of warmth, security, care and love – those very values that we hold to be central to what a HOME truly is …

The challenge of living our faith according to the standard set by Jesus himself is simply this – “how do we respond in faith to those who are homeless? How do we share our faith with those who are cast out, oppressed, and broken hearted ??”

That night Tim shared with us the concept of Radical Compassion, not as something new, but as something that is the very heart of Jesus’ own ministry … Using the text of Isaiah, he notes the call to action that Isaiah’s words represent … “to bind up the broken hearted?”

How shall we bind up the broken hearted?

Through radical compassion … What is radical compassion?

Compassion is the spirit that grips us at this time of year when we hear calls for assistance to those struggling economically and we go to our cupboard and donate food from our larder, then we go to our closet and donate our old coats and warm winter clothing – we donate generously from our abundance – that is compassion …

Radical compassion comes when we go to our cupboard and donate not just our surplus food, but we give from our own subsistence – then we go to our closet and instead of donating the coats we don’t really wear any more and that we wouldn’t really miss, we take our favourite coat – the one we feel that we can’t live without, and we give THAT one to the poor and the outcast …

Radical compassion is no longer stepping over or around the homeless person huddled in a doorway or on a street corner – but seeing them – really seeing them as people – people with a story of homelessness that lead them from a house to here … a few weeks ago I was part of a conversation about the “shelterless” homeless in Brandon. We were trying to determine exactly how many there are, and where they were going when the weather turns bitter and cold.

After phone calls to a number of people including the chief of police, I decided that the easiest way to find out who these people are and how many there are, was to go and visit them myself. So on Friday afternoon as most people were heading home for their weekend, I headed down to the bridge where Brandon’s shelterless homeless tend to congregate.

I found them and began our conversation by saying – “hi, my name is Shawn …” and in the process I learned their names, their thoughts, a tiny portion of their story, and I learned some of the fears and frustrations they experience … I Learned about them as people with names and histories, not as just some homeless guys under the bridge …

Radical compassion is about no longer falling into simplistic easy explanations and excuses for inaction – but taking seriously our call to faith that doesn’t ASK us, but DEMANDS us to do something …

Radical compassion is about living our faith … being the sheep that the prophets spoke of … being generous not just a few weeks of the year – but ALWAYS …

The powerful lesson of our reading from Matthew is that we are called to be present through compassionate – radically compassionate action to those who are in need of care and love of mind, body and spirit … the very least of these our sisters and brothers … people with names like Dennis, David, Bruce, Ozzy, and Phoenix … people who are broken hearted and in need of care and deserving and worthy of love.

And as we care for them – as we open OUR hearts and minds and spirit to them, we live our faith and embody the very principles that Jesus shared in the synagogue of his hometown and in the streets of Jerusalem …

Today as we stand poised on the verge of the season of Advent – a season of generosity when everyone seems willing to help - its important that we of the Church – the people of faith – don’t forget nor lose sight of the foundational lessons that give rise to this spirit of giving an generosity …

Just as you do it for one of the least of these my brothers and sisters you do it for me … if we take THAT lesson seriously why would we not give deeply and generously not just once a year, but every day of our faith journey …

The calling is clear … the choice to respond is ours …

May we have the courage and boldness to follow the path to being a sheep rather than a goat …

May it be so – thanks be to God …
Let us pray …

That which is hurtful ... sermon for October 26th

There is an ancient story about a young man who wants to learn the whole of the Torah, the collected Law of the Jewish people. But the young man is fairly impetuous and more than a little impatient. He approaches his rabbi one Sabbath after worship has concluded and says – "Rabboni, I would like you to teach me the WHOLE of the Torah …"

The Rabbi is very pleased, for it is not often that a young person approaches a Rabbi with such a request. And so he says with a broad smile – "Oh this thing you ask of me is wonderful. I will take you as my student and I will teach you the wonders of the Torah as we study together over the next few years …"

"Years????" says the young man, "No, I’m not interested in taking years to learn about the Torah. I want to learn about it now while I stand here before you on one foot …"

The learned man is insulted, and grabs a broom and begins swinging it wildly, "This is an insult to me, to the Torah and to Our God … study of the Torah is never a frivolous thing and it demands years of devoted study … you mock me …" and he drives the young man out of the synagogue and the town …

The young man then spends many weeks traveling from town to town asking each Rabbi he meets the same request – "Please, teach me the whole of the Torah …"

And each Rabbi responds in the same way … "yes, this is wonderful you will be my student and together we will study the Torah for years to teach you the meaning of the Torah …"

And to each Rabbi the young man says – "oh no, I am not prepared to spend years studying the Torah, I want you to teach me the WHOLE of the Torah while I stand here on one foot …"

Some Rabbis simply slam the door in his face, some shout at him, some hit him with their broom, some chase him from town … they may use a diversity of methods to drive the young man away but they ALL scoff at his absurd idea that he could learn the WHOLE of the Torah – the Laws handed down to Moses at Sinai and added to by the elders and the judges and that are loving preserved in the first Five books of the Bible, and that guide the thoughts and worship and life of the Jewish people … the suggestion that he could learn the WHOLE of the Torah, a document thousands of years in the making, while he stands before the Rabbi on one foot is unthinkable …

And then he meets the Great Rabbi Hillel, who is even to this day, renown for his wisdom … The young, having spent years on his fool hearty quest says to the Rabbi – "I would like you to teach me the whole of the Torah…"

The Rabbi nods, stroking his beard, "uh-huh" he says, "this thing you ask of me is easy …"

"Then I would like you to teach me the whole of the Torah," the young man says excitedly, the weariness from his search has evaporated, "while I stand here on your front step on one foot …"

The great Rabbi laughs – "the Whole of the Torah, everything on which the teachings of our God hinges is simply this – ‘that which is hurtful to another, you simply do not do – EVER’ all the rest is merely commentary …"

That which is hurtful to another you simply do not do …

That which is hurtful to another YOU simply DO NOT DO !!!

A century later another Jewish rabbi from the village of Nazareth took Hillel’s teaching and turned it into a more active notion – "love your neighbour as yourself" connected to the foundational notion that you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind, this Yeshua, or Jesus as we’ve come to know him, said boldly and rightly – "on these two commandments hang ALL of the law and all of the prophets".

Jesus was being provocative and BOLD in his teaching … positing the entirety of the Jewish faith tradition on the simple teachings of "Love the Lord Your God with the whole of your being, and love your neighbour as yourself" takes the idea of doing no harm to a bigger broader level …
I wonder though, how good we are as people of faith in the Church at adhering to these teachings much less following them?

Do we live our lives in a way that does no harm to another and instead shows them love and compassion? Or do we find ourselves in a place where we can say – "these are good words to strive for, but they are seriously too idealistic … He couldn’t possibly have intended us to LIVE THEM could he???"

This past week I ended my work week by taking a half an hour and wandering off the beaten path to sit down and have a face to face conversation with some of the shelterless homeless folks in Brandon. Over the last few weeks we’ve heard repeatedly about the people living under the bridge. Then late on Friday afternoon one of my co-workers found an online discussion about the people living under the bridge in Brandon.

The discussion was dancing along the "Just go and get a job and stop welching off of welfare" that too often enters the fray when we’re talking about homelessness and poverty. I read the comments and reflected on the three conversations I had had through the day with the Chief of Police in Brandon, the director of Helping Hands Soup Kitchen and one of the police officers overseeing the down town district and I realized that there are a myriad of reasons why someone ends up living under a bridge … some are created by poor choices … some are created by circumstances far beyond their control … some are medical and psychological in orgin … EVERY person has a story and the guy sleeping under the bridge is first and foremost a person with a story …

So on Friday afternoon as almost everyone else in Brandon was heading to their HOMES for the weekend, I walked off the beaten path and found some of the homeless folks who call a bridge not far from downtown their HOME. I wanted to learn more about who they were as people, and I wanted to hear it from them – "what would help you right now?"

The answer from them was simple – "more money in welfare so we can afford to have a place to live AND eat …"

"Okay," I asked, "someone’s gonna say – ‘we don’t want to give you more welfare, why don’t you just get a job and earn more money yourself?’ how do I answer that."

The one guy laughed and said – "would you hire me? I’m an uneducated, drunk smelly Indian … just try to get me a job … I’d take it and work hard if you could find me one. But I like to drink once in a while and I kinda get lost in it … who’s gonna hire me knowing that ?"

The other guy says – "I can’t work. I’m what you call Mental … I gotta take pills every day to keep me good … who’s gonna hire me?"

We talked some more and they said that it was frustrating to have ALL their stuff taken when they were sleeping in the picnic shelters by the River bank Discovery Centre earlier in the month.

"Guys," I said, "that was a bad place to squat. The people on the north side of the river don’t want drunk, dirty homeless people messing up their park. They don’t want to know you even exist. They’re gonna phone the cops as soon as you show up …"

They laughed and one said – "hey, I like you … you get this …"

We talked for a long time about what is helping them and what is hurting them. The concept of "do not harm" or Hillel’s "that which is hurtful" danced through our conversation. They spoke of being hassled by people, city workers, train workers, and sometimes the police. They talked about the young punks who will come and beat them up for kicks on the weekends if they aren’t hidden away safely and out of view. And they talked about the good stuff that keeps them alive … the staff and volunteers at Samaritan House, the folks at Helping Hands, the kindness of strangers …

As I reflected on the conversation while I headed back to my van I realized that these men – marginalized, outcast, and cast outs – these homeless men represent the convergence of the teachings of the Prophetic voices like Moses, Hillel, Jesus and others, AND the practical engaging of these teachings in a real world – real time setting …

They are a rubber hitting the road moment … Do we see them as people with a story and respond with love – not necessarily like, but a deep seated love that flows from our faith – the love that sees EVERYONE as a child of God … OR do we hold to the stereo types and the rhetoric, and we close our eyes and shutter our hearts and chose to look through another human being and see simply "some homeless guy" and stifle our love and compassion ??

We live in a time and a place where it is too easy to do nothing, and to find a MILLION justifications for our inaction and our complacency … and too often in the Church we hide behind our rules and our regulations and justify inaction by saying – "we can’t" rather than admitting that we simply won’t. … too often in the Church we’ve become a social club where we come to have things comfortable and nice while we wonder and fret over a declining membership and a graying of those who remain …

But then the spirit breaks through in unexpected places … the Drive Away hunger campaign and the amazing response across Westman is an act of generosity and caring that reminds us that at heart we are a generous and giving people (over 1 MILLION pounds of food nationally, the target for Manitoba was 100 000 pouonds of food for the WHOLE province - Westman alone gathered over 100 000 pounds of food, and the provincial total was in excess of 224 000 POUNDS !!!) … the donations of carrots, potatoes, and produce that roll through the door of places like Samaritan House from Hutterite Colonies across the region remind us AND challenge us to look at what we’re about … over and over we stumble across examples of what we SHOULD be doing … the problem, and it is a problem so long as there are children who are hungry, people who are living under bridges, and executives of corporations continuing to rake in BILLIONS of dollars in salaries, bonuses and stock options while the ecomomy continues to spiral into oblivion … so long as the gaping inequity exists that sees people living with next to nothing in a world of overwhelming plenty while too many have too much – it is a problem that should be front and centre in our faith struggles …

Yet, we will too easily shrug and say – "what can we do?"

That which is hurtful to another – you simply DO NOT DO!

Poverty, hunger, homlessness and inequity are incredibly hurtful to many … the response is ours … we can chose to do nothing … or we can be faithful in our response of life and world view …
If we dare to listen to our heart, our soul and our mind and allow the love of God and each other the response will simply flow forth and be how we live and move within the world …

May it be so – thanks be to God …

Let us pray …

Two Simple words ...

I would like to begin this morning with the very non-scriptural opening three paragraphs from the Associated Press’ account of the American Congressional Hearings into the melt-down on Wall Street. A melt-down that will cost American Tax Payers, in excess of 700 BILLION US dollars to slow, but perhaps NOT entirely stop … On Tuesday the Associated Press published:

The now-bankrupt investment bank Lehman Bros. arranged millions in bonuses for fired executives as it pleaded for a federal lifeline, lawmakers learned Monday, as Congress began investigating what went so wrong on Wall Street to prompt a $700 billion government bailout.

The first in a series of congressional hearings on the roots of the financial meltdown yielded few major revelations about Lehman's collapse, and none about why government officials, as they scrambled to avert economic catastrophe, declined to rescue the flagging company while injecting tens of billions of dollars into others.

But it allowed lawmakers still smarting from a politically painful vote Friday for the largest federal market rescue in history to put a face on their outrage at corporate chieftains who took home hundreds of millions of dollars while betting on risky mortgage-backed investments that ultimately brought the financial system to its knees.

The best was yet to come in the article though … in recounting the testimony of Mr Fuld the CEO for Lehman Bros Bank, it noted that just four days before Lehman Bros collapsed there was a pay out to two departing excecutives in excess of 18.4 MILLION dollars, and another executive who was quitting received a compensation package worth in excess of 5 million dollars.

The Republican representatives noted that Mr Fuld was pretty free and loose with “other people’s money” as he headed the now bankrupt company.

But the true topper in the article came with the following exchange …

But while Fuld said he and executives did everything they could to protect the company, committee chairman, Waxman slammed Fuld for earning $484 million in salary, bonuses and stock sales since 2000.

"Your company is now bankrupt, our economy is now in a state of crisis, but you get to keep $480 million," Waxman said, displaying yearly compensation figures on large TV screens in the hearing room. "I have a very basic question for you. Is this fair?"

Fuld said the figures were not accurate and he probably received "a little bit less than $250 million, still a large number, though."

Wouldn’t it be nice to receive over 250 MILLION in bonuses and salary over 8 years ??
But what is even more shocking was the demeanour by which Mr Fuld CORRECTED the Congressmen on the actual number for his compensation over the last 7 tears … 480 MILLION or 250 MILLION – either way, it is way more money that ANY OF US will ever see, even cumulatively in our life time, and this is the NORM for Wall Street.

One commentator I heard this past week pointed out that in a single year, Wall Street would pay out more in bonuses, salaries and premiums to executives than the United States of America would send to Africa as Aid in five years … Africa the continent wracked by diseases like HIV/AIDS, poverty and famine … a continent that is desperately poor and where the average person survives on about a dollar a day … if you can call their life survival …

And half a world away executives are saying – “oh I didn’t earn THAT much, it was ONLY 240 million dollars …”

There is something wrong with your world … and this thanksgiving, it is a good time for YOU and I to pause and to give thanks for what is really important …

As I considered Mr Fuld and the 700 BILLION dollars it will take to begine to address the mess the unbridled greed of he and his cronies, I thought of a poem by poet Ann Weems, that reminds us that it is too easy to lose perspective, and to fall into the error of believing that we need more and more and more …

Ann writes:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
God’s mercies never come to an end.
They are new every morning.
The Lord God gave the peoples of the earth a garden,
And the people said: “That’s very nice, God,
but that’s not enough. We’d like a little knowledge, please.”
The Lord God gave them knowledge,
And the people said: “Now that we have knowledge,
we’d like things.”
The Lord God gave the people things,
But they always said: “That’s not quite enough.”
So the Lord God gave them gifts unequaled:
The Sun
Lightening and Thunder
Rain and Flowers
Animals and Birds and Fish
Trees and Stars and the Moon
God gave them the Rainbow
God parted the Red Sea and gave them Manna
God gave them Prophets
And Children
And Each Other,
But still the people said, “That’s not quite enough.”
God loved the people,
And out of ultimate merciful goodness
God gave them the Gift of Gifts—
A Christmas present never to be forgotten—
God gave them Love
In the form of God’s Son,
Even Christ Jesus.
There are some that don’t open their eyes
or their ears or their hearts
And they still say, that’s not quite enough.
They wander through the stores looking for Christmas;
But others open their whole being to the Lord,
Bending their knees to praise God,
Carrying Christmas with them every day.
For these the whole world is a gift!

That’s not quite enough … are we a grateful and thankful people, or do we grumble and say (even if it never passes our lips but rather is lived out in our lives): “That’s NOT quite enough.”

On many levels, that the issue that underlies the story from our Gospel Reading this morning … the people, the descendents of the folks who journeyed into the Promised land, a land flowing with milk and honey had grown profoundly complacent in their faith. They were no longer appreciative nor grateful for things they received, and the words “Thank you” never escaped their lips and it even more seldom arose to their minds.

They simply were no longer a people appreciative of God’s many blessings and bounty that they so easily enjoyed …

And so Jesus is journeying from Galilea, presumably heading south towards Jerusalem and he encounters ten lepers – outcasts, who were no longer welcome in civil society. From a distance they hail him. And from a distance he heals them … he sends them to the priest to not only bless them, but to affirm their return to wholeness.

These men were not only physically sick with leprosy, by virtue of that ailment, they were now ritualistically unclean, and forbidden from contact with the rest of the Jewish people. So the blessing of the priest was the ONLY way to re-enter society and become a member of the community once more …

Yet, in the story – the ONLY man to come back and offer thanks to God, and to Jesus for the healing miracle wasn’t even a Jew … he was a Samaritan.

The problem for us – is that we simply can’t not comprehend how reviled a Samaritan was. There is NO parallel in our world to a Samaritan in Jesus. There is no one as feared and loathed and hated as a Samaritan. The Samaritan was regarded as something less than human for a wide range of reasons – and yet in Jesus’ ministry they keep popping up as the hero in parable and story … and now, THIS – the ONLY one to come back and thank God, was a non-Jewish Samaritan … the very act of HIM thanking the JEWISH God Yahweh was an abomination to the Good Jews of the day … and yet, not one of the other nine, presumably a few good Jews among them – NOT one of them has the decency to come back and thank God – THEIR God …

The lesson is lost on us – but not lost on those who first heard this story as it was passed through what would become the early church. The very fact that it was a NON-Jew thanking God, and even worse than a run of the mill non-Jew, but a Samaritan who turned back – that detail would have caused howls of outrage … yet, in those howls was a profound lesson …

I’ve frequently preached on the lesson my Grandfather taught me of not pointing a finger of accusation at someone else, lest the other three fingers point back at yourself … WELL, in this moment, the howls of – “OUTRAGEOUS !!! How could Jesus let a Samaritan praise God and offer thanks for the healing …” would catch in the throats of the speaker who would realize that AS they protested, the question – WHEN did YOU thank GOD??? Would arise in their own conscience …

“DANG !!” to quote my son …

That’s the point of the story … not that 10 men were healed and only one turned back – but the morale of the story was and remains – the ONE who remembered to turn back wasn’t a Jew at all, yet he KNEW it was important to say two simple words – “THANK YOU” when appropriate. And when you’ve been given your life back as the ten men had … there is perhaps NO more appropriate moment. And it was a contemptible, despised, and reviled Samaritan who no only remembered that lesson – but rubbed the noses of every Good and faithful person in it …

This is a radical and powerful story … the one who turned back reminds us to live our lives with gratitude, appreciation and thanksgiving … is it a lesson we are willing, and that we DARE to live? Or are we people who receive with open hands ALL of God’s blessings and bounty, only to say – “that’s nice, but it’s NOT quite enough …”

We live in a world where it is far too easy to fall into the place of being un-grateful and living our lives by not appreciating what we have around us in abundance: our lives, our family, our friends, our community, our church … food on our plates, a home to live in, and all of the wonderful things that we have around us …

This thankgiving, let’s have the courage to LIVE the chorus of the Raffi song that I shared with our children earlier:

“All I Really Need is a Song in my Heart
Food in my belly and love in my Family
All I Really Need is a Song in my Heart
And love in my family”

We are called by faith to give thanks for what’s important … may it be so – thanks be to God … Let us pray …

Sermon for Worldwide Communion - October 5th 2008

Today is one of the days in the Church calendar when it is worth pausing to consider the implications of who we are, and what we are about as a people, a faith community, and most importantly a Church.

In the moment as we break bread and pour out the cup, the fundamentals of who we are and what we believe and what we live in faith, rise to the fore, and we are confronted with either the celebratory expression of our faith lived in its fullness, or the contradiction of a faith that says one thing and lives another …

We live in a world of abundance and plenty, and despite the new reports lately focusing on the economic turmoil south of the border, there is MORE than enough to go around, and MUCH MORE available to end poverty, disease and homelessness than we realize.

One commentator on the radio this week pointed out that in an average year close to five times more money is paid to CEOs on Wall Street for bonuses and premiums, than is spent on AID to Africa.

Think about that for a moment … in a continent torn apart by violence, struggling with hunger and famine, a continent shackled by HIV/AIDS … a continent where the average person survives on less than 2 dollars a day … we as investors, clients, shareholders and tax payers are PAYING CEOs and Executives of already incredibly wealthy corporations, bonuses that are almost five times what is sent to the entire continent of Africa to help address the poverty driven issues that are killing in excess of 30 000 children EVERY SINGLE day across the planet … and that doesn’t even mention the already obscene wages and salaries these guys are being paid …

We live in a world of plenty and of abundance … but we’re so conditioned to the idea of not having enough that we simply can’t see it any longer … we want to protect what we have … we want to guard what we possess … we want to ensure that we will ALWAYS have enough …

In the Church we speak of the Gospel – the Good News … and when we open the Bible and begin to read the texts, we are repeatedly confronted with proclamations of plenty and abundance and living life with an attitude of thanksgiving.

Easy words to say and think … harder words to live …

Today, though as we prepare to break bread and pour out the cup, the concept of plenty and abundance rest on the table. Not abundance and plenty as defined by the flawed business model that has fettered us – but abundance and plenty that comes from opening our eyes to what exists around us …

Bread – the staple food that comes from the very fields that surround us … wheat, grain, canola, oats, flax … the prices may not be what they SHOULD BE, but one can not dispute that the lumbering grain trucks and the full bins sitting in yards across westman speak to us about the ABUNDANCE that exists around us.

The cup – a staple food that comes from the fruit that surrounds us … grapes, strawberries, apples, blue berries, saskatoons, raspberries … a bountiful gift that comes in seasons – a reminder of the sweetness of these gifts that need only time and patience and an ice cream bucket to gather and savour and share …

The elements on the table are about simple abundance. Taking the simplest of foods and saying – “there’s MORE than enough” for all … then after giving thanks to God for these gifts we gather around a table and celebrate the abundance of community and relationship and family … we break bread and pass it to one another in COMMUNITY.

In this moment we are NOT alone. We are part of a group – a community – a family … we have the abundance of relationships as we break bread from the abundance of creation.

There is MORE than enough to share … yet, we take our tiny piece of bread and our little sip of the cup … and smile … Is THAT living ABUNDANTLY ???

When I break bread I remember a time in Theology College when we were fasting … the only food we were allowed during the fast was the bread served during our weekly chapel service … my classmates and I tore enormous hunks of bread and dipped them in the cup …our stomach aching for food savoured every crumb of the chunks of bread we took … we needed FOOD … and the bread was there for the taking, so we took … we took enormous handfuls of bread to satiate our hunger … we understood the abundance of the table in a very different way that polite little tiny pinches of bread – abundance is about grabbing a handful of bread without reservation …

Later when my now teenaged son was a toddler he came forward in his mother’s arms during communion. At the time his favourite snack was a thick slice of soft French bread spread with peanut butter. (actually it still is a favourite snack for him – except now he could gobble back most of a loaf) That day the loaf of communion bread was the same type we fed him with, so when he saw the bread he looked around for the jar of peanut butter and said – “Peanut butter?” We said “no, later!”

“want peanut butter!”

You deal with these moments, particularly when you are at the front of the church … mom took a piece of bread and dipped it in the cup, but before she could put in HER mouth a little hand reached out and snatched it and stuffed it in HIS mouth with a lipsmacking “YUMMY!!” exclaimed loudly.

For the rest of the service as the bread and the cup sat on the communion table at the front of the church, our son came up repeatedly and tore off hunk after hunk of the loaf and dipped them in the cup, then turned and while stuffing the bread in his mouth with a loud “yummy” returned to the back of the little rural church to continue playing …

At the end of the service when S-- once again came up to claim the last remnants of the loaf left on the table, I commented on the lesson this little person is offering us – if we dare to listen …

Why shouldn’t there be peanut butter, and cheese and a full meal when we break bread? That’s how communion was done that first night in Jerusalem, and how the early church practiced their meal, why do we reduce it to a tiny pinch of bread and a little sip from the cup?

Why shouldn’t we take a huge hunk of bread? This is the BREAD OF LIFE, how can you sustain life with a few piddly crumbs and a tiny sip of the cup?

Why shouldn’t we come back repeatedly and take enough bread to sustain us through the day?

We sing about loaves abounding, and our daily bread, but … we take little tiny pieces of bread and call it enough …

AND – why shouldn’t we take the bread and the cup and like my toddler son – have the audacity to say – “YUM!!” when we eat???

I also recall one day walking across the village where I lived only to be harassed by the troopers … troopers got their name because together they would troop to the liquor store to make their purchase, then troop back home to consume it … They were sitting on the front step of a house in the sunshine and one of them called out: “Hey, we got the bottle. If you had bread we could have communion …” A couple of weeks later when M—was baking bread I asked her to make a smallish loaf that would fit in my coat pocket. That afternoon while it was still warm, I went for a walk and passed the house. The boys pulled the same drill – “hey, we got the bottle. If you have bread we could have communion…”

Their laughter ended abruptly when I pulled out the loaf of bread and said – “Actually, I have some bread …”

That day in the summer sunshine of a west coast village, we broke bread, passed the bottle and celebrated communion … we celebrated with much laughter the relationships they had with each other, and that I had with them … we celebrated the abundance around us and the radical inclusivity of God’s GRACE AND LOVE.

In an unlikely and unexpected place – bread was broken and the cup poured out in lavish abundance … and I KNOW my life was never the same …

We live in a world of abundance, and we are called to proclaim and share The Good News … when we gather at the table, it is HERE where these values should be most evident and obvious … in this season of harvest and thanksgiving, we need to open our eyes, not to what we think we lack – but what we have … and as we break bread and pour out the cup, let’s be less self-conscious and more thankful …

Loaves abound … cups are full to overflowing … Our God is a good of abundance, plenty and unbound generosity … let’s have the courage to not only say these things, but to live our lives believing them !!

May it be so – thanks be to God …

Let us pray …

Sermon for today ...

An old farmer once quipped to me – “You know in farming there have only ever been two good years.”
“1923 and next year…”


The old guy spoke a truth of sorts. We are very good at looking back and seeing things through the soft rose colour hue of nostalgia and seeing everything as the “good old days” … or we look forward with hopeful anticipation and expectation seeing what will be as better than what has ever been. We are not very good at living focused and present to this moment and what it offers us.

As I thought about this and considered the readings we’ve had before us this morning my mind drifted to the movie “Pay it Forward” that was released a few years ago.

The plot line of the movie involves a young man who is along with his class is challenged to pay it forward. They are to pass on acts of kindness in life – “paying it forward” … The movie has the usual Hollywood twists and turns, along with some tension, some romance, and a couple of cliff hanging scenes … but the core of the story is that the young man Trevor takes on the assignment: think of something to change the world and put it into action. Trevor conjures up the notion of paying a favor not back, but forward--repaying good deeds not with payback, but with new good deeds done to three new people. Trevor's efforts to make good on his idea bring a revolution not only in the lives of himself, his mother and his physically and emotionally scarred teacher, but in those of an ever-widening circle of people completely unknown to him.

Trevor’s concept is simple – rather than paying something BACK, he pays it forward. If someone does something nice to you, rather than “owing” someone one, you take that act of kindness and offer it in kind to three OTHER people, who in turn owe you nothing, and in turn pay it forward to three others … in short order a community begins to be transformed.

It’s a simple concept, but one that in spite of its common sense approach is lone that challenges the way things are in our society … The underlying greed that has created the crisis in the US economy is not about paying anything forward, but is about gathering and accumulating ALL that we can for OURSELVES.

Even scholarship speaks of Social Capital in communities which is the accumulation of an intangible thing like “owing you one’ which in time is utilized for community development. In its simplest form Social Capital is the good deeds of someone shared in a community like a savings account of good deeds that will come back to you – pay back – down the road. Pay back rather than pay forward.

Pay back under girds the whole concept of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” … Being the parent of a teenager who is struggling to find his way in the world I was disheartened to hear him say recently – “I treat people around me the way they treat me …”

On one level that’s a fair statement. If someone used and abuses you – you protect yourself and keep them from using and abusing you further. Or if they pull you down, why would you want to hang out with them at all?

But on another level, the teenaged world is a pretty selfish place. They can only see what works for them … and they block out quite a lot …

Considering my son’s comment I had to wonder – “what would the world be like if ALL of us lived our lives from the perspective of – “I’ll treat the people around me the way they treat me?”

How many people having a bad day would it take in a community to create community wide chaos in the twinkling of an eye?? It could one person, like a grocery store clerk, or a manager at the local bank, that would begin the ripple that moves through the entire community filling it with negativity ...

You roll into the local café and order a coffee and the clerk is having a bad day and she snaps at you … you snap at the librarian on your way home and she rages at the bank manager when she goes into discuss her loan … and he then goes to the Coop and tears a strip off the produce manager, who then rages at his wife over the phone who then yells at the kids who go out to the park and end up in a brawl with half the neighbourhood and your son comes home battered and bloodied and miserable …

Gandhi had a point when he said – “an eye for an eye will only serve to make the whole world blind …” Pay back has bad karma energy and can in the twinkle of an eye unleash a torrent of negativity and conflict that could be incredibly unpleasant …

But what if – in that moment when you step into the local café, rather than meeting the clerk’s negativity with your own negativity, you pay it forward … you remember the kindness shown to you at the gas bar 10 minutes earlier, and you say – “Sounds like you’re having a rough day …” and with a smile you leave a tip and a cheer “THANK YOU” … I can hear it now … “A TIP? The smile maybe, but a tip … outrageous” But if that young mom has bills to pay and part of her negativity has to do with bills piling up – at 50 cents along with 50 cents from 50 other customers that day could help pay for the new shoes that her daughter needs, or buy a bag of groceries that are needed to feed her kids tonight …

Paying it forward is about GENEROUSLY sharing kindness with others unconditionally …

I can’t help but wonder if that was the WHOLE point of the story of Moses and the Israelites in the wilderness? Rather than paying back others the way they treat us, God was setting out to show us how to live life treating others in a generous abundant way …

What would it look like if God really treated us the way we tend to treat God … Take a moment to really consider that possibility on a cosmic scale …

What if God paid heed to us for an hour or so a week?? Or didn’t pay heed to us AT ALL??

The harvest around us is proof of God’s limitless generosity. The circle of family and friend we have is evidence of God’s boundless love. If we dare to live with an attitude of gratitude we will have our eyes and our beings opened to the absolute abundant and breath taking profusion of blessings that are poured out around us – EVERYDAY.

A poet once quipped that God’s blessings are without number and began counting some by saying – the sun, the moon, children, each other … Such is the overwhelming nature of God’s blessing and bounty for US.

God clearly doesn’t live life by paying back – but rather by paying forward … The people are wandering through the desert, pining for what WAS – looking back at the “flesh pots of Egypt” and wishing they could be there rather than dying in the harsh desert, hungry, thirsty and filled with fear.

They grumble and complain about what they lack and look back on Egypt with nostalgia and fondness – remembering what WAS.

Yet God could have said – “forget it” and let them simply wither and die in the desert. But instead God sent them the abundance of manna and quail, and in this week’s reading the gift of sweet fresh water in a harsh barren wilderness.

God could have said – “Forget it – just die” and leave them to perish. But God kept pouring out blessings and bounty upon the people – and instead of saying – “thanks” and being appreciative and grateful, they came to want and expect MORE. As poet Anne Weems says eloquently – “it was never quite enough. The people wanted more.”

The people demanded more …

Rather than paying it forward – they greedily grabbed at what was offered and deemed it “PROOF” that they were specially chosen and blessed by God, and began to build barriers and walls to protect this bounty from OTHERS.

It is the creation of the bureaucracy and hierarchy to protect and covet the bounty and blessings of God that gives rise to the question put to Jesus – “by whose authority do you do these things?”

They weren’t concerned with revealing and reveling in the GLORY of God. They were concerned that the wrong kind of people might get exposed to God and to God’s bounty, and take some for themselves. There are rules you know? We have customs and procedures to follow you know?

Now, I’m a firm believer in rules and regulations, customs and procedures. I have always prided myself on knowing the rules and regulation and so on … my motivation though has never been protection of what it is, but rather learning the rules to help facilitate the necessary transformation that takes what “is” and moves it to what “needs to be”.

You can bring change most effectively if you know and can work from within the structure you’re seeking to change …

But instead of gratitude and appreciation, too often we encounter outright FEAR. “By whose authority?” Is a question grounded in fear.

The people in the wilderness grumbling is an expression of fear.

Pay back is a form of fear.

Paying it forward is about seeing life in its abundance and living accordingly. Rather than dwelling on what we lack or what we may lose, we instead celebrate what we HAVE and what we may gain.

But listening to modern media, we would never imagine that we live in a world of abundance.

Tax cuts, corporate bail outs, rising prices, security concerns, … all of these things are forms of grumbling that resonate and echo with the grumbling of the Israelites who are wandering in the desert complaining and whining …

Our whining and complaining is harder to see from within.

As a faith people – we are to open our eyes to the abundance that exists around us. God has given us so much and yet we will ALWAYS focus on what we think we lack.

The bounty of creation. The gift of friends and family. Life itself. We have so much to celebrate and revel in. Yet rather than courageously and boldly LIVING it and paying it forward. We instead chose to pay it back … and try to protect and hoard what is around us in such overwhelming abundance …

They asked Jesus – by whose authority?

Instead of answering directly, I have no doubt he shook his head in disappointment, then shared a story that they simply didn’t get … so caught up in the world of “paying it back” they couldn’t conceive of a boundless, limitless place where God’s abundance and grace pours out for all …

Paying forward was an inconceivable concept that stretched their comfort zone … and yet in that moment when Moses’ staff struck the rock and water gushed forth – the lesson was offered …

Our God is the God who causes water to pour forth in the middle of a vast barren wilderness … how can we possibly keep that kind of good news to ourselves??? And why would we even try?

Pay it forward … live with hope and anticipation and most of all GRATITUDE … and in the process – Let’s transform the world …

May it be so, thanks be to God … Let us pray …

Sermon from September 21st 2008 ...

It is said – you are what you eat?

In this season of putting out gardens to bed and harvesting the bounty of our backyard gardens and our rolling fields of potatoes, grains and other foodstuffs, it is a good time to reflect on the fullness of this notion.

With the rise of organic, and fair trade, the 100 mile diet and numerous other initiatives that seek to inspire us to reflect on where our food comes from and what is in it – particularly with the lingering listeria crisis, these notions have gained added momentum as we begin to realize that our food is fundamental to our wholeness and wellbeing.

But even more than that, “you are what you eat” is a reflection of the very values we hold dear as a people and a culture … Take a moment to think about the last major road trip you made … whether it was out to the BC coast for a break from the rolling prairies, to Calgary to visit family, south to the warm climes of Arizona, to Ontario or even a quick dash into Winnipeg to do some shopping … take a moment to reflect on the food outlets you passed along the way …

When I was a child we had favourite stops when we were driving the hour and a half up to the village where much of my extended family lived. Fish and chips, or friend chicken from the little restaurant at the junction just outside of Clifford Ontario was a treat, ice cream for the kids and fresh coffee from one of a dozen road side stops was an even more appreciated treat. It was not that long ago, but it was before the tsunami of fast food franchises washed over the countryside of Southern Ontario.

There was no Mac’s, Tims, Kings or bright neon signs to intice you off the highway – instead there were mom and pop operations that reflected the local flavour and that offered the original “slow food” to a traveling public.

I realized the negative impact of fast food one day when I walked out of a international franchise to find a sign in the parking lot that read simply – “Customer Parking: 15 minute maximum”

15 minutes?

You were to enter, order your food, consume it, and be gone in 15 minutes … Now, the cynic in me recognizes that to maximize the “taste” of the food, it must be consumed fresh and hot, so the 15 minute window was apt … but I come from a family that lingers over the meal, talking, laughing, getting caught up on life … Conversation has been as much a part of meals in my life as the consumption of food … food is secondary to the process actually …

So, 15 minutes is counter to the conversation … you don’t have time to talk, and eat and LINGER when you have 15 minutes … yet, that’s the value system of our modern society … We rush in, grab our meal wolf it back without consideration of where it came from or even what it really is, then we rush back out the door to our busy lives …

We’re caught up in a rat race, and we’ve lost sight of what we’re racing after and even why …

So into our busy lives breaks through the whisper that says – “what is it?”

This bread from heaven – this bounty that was all around them … what is it ?? and the reflection on how we live God’s abundance and bounty in our modern world …

Theologian Walter Bruggeman notes in an essay on scarcity and abundance that:

The majority of the world's resources pour into the United States. And as we Americans grow more and more wealthy, money is becoming a kind of narcotic for us. We hardly notice our own prosperity or the poverty of so many others. The great contradiction is that we have more and more money and less and less generosity -- less and less public money for the needy, less charity for the neighbor.

In our busy world this “truth” becomes more and more real as the gap between the haves and the have nots widens …

We get caught up in the notion of FAIRNESS that Jesus touches on in our Gospel reading – ensuring that we get out fair share of what is offered as pay … it’s the whole Protestant Work Ethic in action – you have to work hard, and those that are hired first should – NO MUST – be made more than those lolly-gaggers who showed up at the end of the day … to pay those hired in the afternoon the same as those hired in the morning is an affront to our beliefs and our values … and yet, here is Jesus saying – “does it really matter?”

The parable is about money – and how incredibly unimportant it really is … what is important is ensuring that EVERYONE has enough to meet their needs … it’s about seeing the world from God’s perspective – NOT ours …

We live in a world of plenty and bounty, yet the words of Bruggemann ring far too true … we are concerned about scarcity and about protecting what we have, rather than sharing with those who have not … We’re all guilty of it – myself included …

We’ve been conditioned to work hard – to be part of the rat race and to chase after that lump of cheese that lies just around the next corner – and in the process we’ve lost sight of what is important … we see ourselves in a desert of scarcity and yearn for the easy life back in Egypt, rather than trusting in God’s generosity and care …

We have become the Israelites complaining in the desert and failing to see the presence of a caring God … Bruggeman writes of the story of Manna:

When the children of Israel of Israel are in the wilderness, beyond the reach of Egypt, they still look back and think, "Should we really go? All the world's glory is in Egypt and with Pharaoh." But when they finally turn around and look into the wilderness, where there are no monopolies, they see the glory of Yahweh.

In answer to the people's fears and complaints, something extraordinary happens. God's love comes trickling down in the form of bread. They say, "Manhue?" -- Hebrew for "What is it?" -- and the word "manna" is born. They had never before received bread as a free gift that they couldn't control, predict, plan for or own. The meaning of this strange narrative is that the gifts of life are indeed given by a generous God. It's a wonder, it's a miracle, it's an embarrassment, it's irrational, but God's abundance transcends the market economy.

Three things happened to this bread in Exodus 16. First, everybody had enough. But because Israel had learned to believe in scarcity in Egypt, people started to hoard the bread.

When they tried to bank it, to invest it, it turned sour and rotted, because you cannot store up God's generosity. Finally, Moses said, "You know what we ought to do? We ought to do what God did in Genesis I. We ought to have a Sabbath." Sabbath means that there's enough bread, that we don't have to hustle every day of our lives. There's no record that Pharaoh ever took a day off. People who think their lives consist of struggling to get more and more can never slow down because they won't ever have enough.

When the people of Israel cross the Jordan River into the promised land the manna stops coming. Now they can and will have to grow their food. Very soon Israel suffers a terrible defeat in battle and Joshua conducts an investigation to find out who or what undermined the war effort. He finally traces their defeat to a man called A'chan, who stole some of the spoils of battle and withheld them from the community. Possessing land, property and wealth makes people covetous, the Bible warns.

We who are now the richest nation are today's main coveters. We never feel that we have enough; we have to have more and more, and this insatiable desire destroys us. Whether we are liberal or conservative Christians, we must confess that the central problem of our lives is that we are torn apart by the conflict between our attraction to the good news of God's abundance and the power of our belief in scarcity -- a belief that makes us greedy, mean and unneighborly. We spend our lives trying to sort out that ambiguity.
The conflict between the narratives of abundance and of scarcity is the defining problem confronting us at the turn of the millennium. The gospel story of abundance asserts that we originated in the magnificent, inexplicable love of a God who loved the world into generous being.

We are what we eat … if our diet doesn’t take time to sit at the kitchen table and reflect – really reflect and converse on issues in our lives that are important, then we will fail to live the abundance that is ALL around us and we will foolishly covet that which is unimportant … Fast food scarf-ed back in less than 15 minutes may feed our bodies, but it will never feed our souls … God calls us to table where the conversation, the relationship – the revolution takes precedence over the simple consumption of food …

I wonder if we dare to hear these words and follow … or will we, like our spiritual ancestors remain hard headed and stubborn, grumbling our way to the promised land that flows with milk and honey … a promised land we walk through every day …

Twenty five years ago travel meant stopping along the way and taking time for our coffee and our meal … today we use drive thrus and fast food outlets that prioritize getting the “food” into our hands and sending us back on our way … it’s up to us to ponder which way is better …

But as I consider my meal choices, I think about poet Robert Frost who said –
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood,

and I--I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

When it comes to food, it would seem the path less traveled, the one with time to converse over the table does indeed make all the difference …

What is it? It is food … but it is much more than simply food … it’s a way of seeing and experiencing the world in God’s vision …

May it be so – thanks be to God. Let us pray.

Today's Service and Sermon:

Welcome and Announcements:

Call to Worship:

Who do you say that I am? The question is asked.
The Son of the living God, we answer.
How do we share this knowledge? The question is asked.
By living our faith, we answer.
Are you prepared to come and follow me?
We come to worship, to follow and to praise you O Holy One.
Let us join together as we follow God,
Let us share our gifts and talents of faith
Together as God’s children. Thanks be to God.

Hymn: 506 Take my Life and Let It Be.

Prayer of Approach and Confession:

Who do you say I am?
The words roll off our tongue, we profess our faith
And proclaim the certainty of our belief.
A living sacrifice, good and acceptable to you O God.
Living the words, being what we believe,
These things challenge us beyond our comfort.
Be with us O Loving One, call us to our faith.
Forgive us, recreate us, renew us,
In the boundlessness of your mercy,
In the abundance of your grace,
And in the endlessness of your love.
Hear our prayers of O Holy One,
And in your love answer … Amen.

Old Testament Reading: Exodus 1:8-2:10

Responsive Reading: Psalm 124 (Page 848)

Epistle Reading: Romans 10:5-15

Gospel Reading: Matthew 14:22-33

Hymn: #595 Sister Let Me Be Your Servant

Sermon: Wanna Make God Laugh?

This past week I was thinking about what I could draw from our scripture readings this week to offer as reflection and perhaps inspiration for all of you as I stood here … the second verse in the reading from Romans stood out for me – “Do not be conformed by the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect …”
They are great words to say in church … great words to offer to one another here in this place where it is safe and easy to have such thoughts, and to earnestly believe that we can easily and simply live the notion of being transformed by the will of God … but they are harder words to carry out the door and to put into action in our day to day lives …
As I sat thinking and praying about this idea and trying to find something to say about them I was given a book by one of the people I work with in my capacity as Homelessness Coordinator for the Brandon Neighbourhood Renewal Corporation.
He came into my office between the rain storms on Thursday to chat about some business we had to deal with, then as he got up to leave he smiled and laid a book on my desk with the words – “A gift. I think you’ll like it …”
The book is “Bent Hope” by Tim Huff, and is a collection of reflection pieces he’s written about encounters with street youth mainly in and around Toronto … he begins with a powerful explanation of hope as it is found in the often hopeless context of the streets where homeless youth live … then he begins to tell stories of moments shared with those same youth where holiness is found in abundance, and hope is found in absolutely hopeless situations …
But one story struck me as evidence that even in the midst of hopelessness, that which is good and acceptable and dare we say it – perfect is to be found, if we dare to open our eyes and our hearts to its presence …
The story is about a young man who lost everything, and yet helped others who he felt were in a worse place than he was … Thomas lived on the streets of Toronto and in the summer of 2005, he decided to go down to the Don River for a swim … if any of you have traveled in and around Toronto you may have a familiarity with the Don Valley Parkway … the Don River is the tiny polluted stream that gives that highway it’s name … it is NOT and has not been for dozens upon dozens of years a place where one would really want to swim, but for a street kid in Toronto in the middle of the oppressive heat of summer, its septic waters provide a cool relief … SO, Thomas went swimming …
Unfortunately, that oppressive heat brought with it a massive thunderstorm and an equally massive cloud burst that left cars stranded on the parkway in metre deep puddles of water … The torrential rain overwhelmed storm sewers and drainage ditches, and soon the trickle of the Don River turned into a MASSIVE flood and it thundered its way towards Lake Ontario …
Along the way, the flash flood swept away every possession that Thomas had except for the clothes he had been swimming in … he desperately tried to rescue his backpack, but to no avail … arriving on the scene Tim tried to calm the young man down with the assurance that they could replace all the items lost … but there was one item that could not be replaced – a picture of Thomas’ sister who had like him fled to the streets for safety from a toxic and abusive home … Thomas carried the picture with him because on the back his sister had written the words – ‘one day come and find me. I love you …’ the night she fled … and Thomas was trying to find her …
The shoes, the clothes, the personal items ALL could be replaced, but the precious picture of a missing sister … that was irreplaceable, and Thomas was inconsolable … he had lost even his hope …
Tim went on to reflect on the enormity of this young man’s loss, and he commented on how people could walk past Thomas day after day after day and know NOTHING about him and likely not even notice him on the street, and yet this young man carried an enormous pain … But then the seed of hope sprouted … one day Tim met Thomas on the street and in the young man’s hand was a Tim Horton’s Coffee cup brimming with change – a good haul for a day of pan-handling … but Thomas hadn’t collected the money for himself … in his other hand was a cardboard sign that read – “For Katarina’s Homeless, because it hurts to lose everything”
Tim helped Thomas take the money to the bank to deposit it into one of the many funds set up to help the victims of Hurricane Katarina … a young man who HAD lost everything – everything but hope … helped others because he knew what it was like to experience loss in a real way …
It’s easy to talk about people like Tim and Thomas and hear their inspiring example … it is harder to live and follow THAT example … yet, living our faith is exactly what we are called to do and to be about … to move past the words into action is what we are to be about in our lives, not just in here where it is safe and comfortable, but out there in the streets beyond the comfort and safety of the sanctuary …

Our job as people of faith is to live our faith by facing the hard questions and daring to live out the answers … when the question – “who do you say that I am?” echoes through our sanctuary and our psyche, we face one of the toughest questions imaginable.
Tough because the answer drives to the core of our being, and our understanding of the world and our place in it … Gentle Jesus meek and mild is the answer many of us are comfortable with – clean robes, combed hair, smiling, not stirring things up … a Jesus we can, and DO hang on the wall of our Sunday School rooms … But the Jesus of History steps out of the frame and is anything but meek and mild. Jesus is NOT a gentle soft spoken rabbi, but rather speaks harsh words, asks sharp questions and rocks the boat by questioning the status quo while forcing ALL OF US to look in a mirror and really see what’s there …
It is when we consider or encounter people like Thomas that we are challenged to live out that belief in who Jesus is. If we step around them or don’t see them at all our Jesus is not engaged in the real world … if we plunge into the tired simplistic opinions about why these kids are homeless in the first place, rather than considering the complexity of the crisis that is homelessness, then our Jesus is firmly nailed to the wall forever smiling and seemingly blessing our complacency and our inaction … but if we can pause and consider the story that led Thomas to the streets – a story that often involves abuse, a lack of love, and an absence of home … if we can pause and consider that for these kids there has been no fairy tale life but unknown struggles in a darkness we can only imagine in our nightmares … if we dare to pause in THAT place, our Jesus steps down off the wall, sheds his glowing clean robes and calls us to face our fears and trust in God …

Fear is an interesting thing … in the Church, the place where it has no role to play at all, it is often the underlying issue that motivates us … we want to protect the way things were and carry them forward so they will continue to be thus forever and a day … in the case of street kids, the fear of finding out our esteemed neighbour could be an abusive neglectful parent keeps us silent … in the case of newcomers to our community the fear of change to the status quo keeps us silent … in the case of the Church the easy answers to complex questions keeps us silent …

Fear is the moment in time when we MUST trust in God and dare to take the plunge into the unknown … One writer describes this moment as leaning into your fears:

Fear of fear may lead you to hang back, living a lesser life that you are capable. Fear of fear may lead you to push ahead, living a false life, off-center, tense and missing the moment. But the capacity to feel this moment, including your fear, without trying to escape it, creates a state of alive and humble spontaneity. You are ready for the unknown as it unfolds, since you are not pulled back or pushed forward from the horizon of the moment. You are hanging right over the edge ... By leaning just beyond your fear, you challenge your limits compassionately, without trying to escape the feeling of fear itself. You step beyond the solid ground of security with an open heart. You stand in the space of unknowingness, raw and awake. Here, the gravity of deep being will attend you to the only place where fear is obsolete: the eternal free fall of home. Where you always are.

Modern spiritual guru and counselor Eckhart Tolle (if you have been watching Oprah in the last six months, you’ve encountered him frequently) says simply – in life what happens is what happens … there is no positive nor negative in the moment – the meaning comes later with reflection … By leaning into our fears, or as one writer puts it – by kissing our fears and embracing them as part of our life we free ourselves of them …

In our encounter with Thomas our greatest fears have to do with complacency … could we be doing more to help him? Are we responsible for his problem? … fear of loss – could we end up like him? There but by the grace of God go I … guilt - we COULD do more? Or more ominous – are we the best parent and friend we could be? … and a multitude of other emotions that ebb and flow through us …

Who do you say that I am?

If we are free of fear, Jesus becomes the source of liberation and freedom and LIFE … in that moment we can live our faith freely and without fear …

Looking back over the last three years … I’ve watched as I’ve lost much … my marriage has failed … my reputation has been utterly destroyed … my place in the church has been taken from me … my career – one I have been called to and spent close to 20 years training for and engaged in has been taken from me … my community rejected me … and I lost almost ALL of the people I had relied on and called friends … the rejection piled upon rejection upon rejection … yet looking back, I can, with honesty say – the fear of losing these things was greater than the actual losses themselves … with each successive loss came the whisper of hope that promised a resurrection … a reminder that God’s ways our not our ways, and that even in the darkest moments – God is with us … that when it hurts even just to be breath - things WILL work out eventually …

Like Shiprah and Puah daring to save the Hebrew children … God’s hope and love will find a way … life will triumph …

In the darkness where you have the strength to draw one breath at a time and the hurt is so profound and deep … in THAT place when you’ve lost almost everything you find hope … a faint whisper that defies words … and guides you forward …

That whisper motivated a young homeless man to collect change for the victims of Katrina …

That whisper motivated the followers of Jesus become The Church that proclaimed the resurrection …

That whisper brings a smile to our face when we confront our deepest fear, because in THAT moment when we truly lean into our fear we aren’t asking “who do YOU say that I am?” you are trusting in the answer that goes beyond words and embodies the resurrection in a real way …

May we have the courage to lean into our fears and to trust in the presence of God to be with us in that moment …

May it be so – thanks be to God … let us pray …

Prayers of Pastoral Concern:

Lord’s Prayer:

Presentation of the Offering:

Offertory: #537 Your Work O God Needs Many Hands

Prayer of Dedication:

Hymn: #427 To Show By Touch and Word

Blessing and Commissioning:

Threefold Amen:

Today's Sermon:

Climbing ladders, scattering seeds ….
Faith in Transition ...

As HARD as it is to say while living on the prairie, surrounded by vast weedless tracts of crops – canola, wheat, potatoes, flax, barley, oats … weeds are simply plants out of place … it may be anathema even to suggest that weeds have value …

The most ubiquitous weed around us – the dandelion is perhaps one of the most nutritious and versatile plants imaginable … if you google search dandelions you will find a HUGE number of references to dandelions … last night when I checked it was in excess of 2.1 MILLION web pages about dandelions.

You can make a salad out of the leaves, you can make ointments out of the stems, you can dry the roots and make coffee, you can dry the leaves and make an herbal tea, you can make a fine wine out of the blossoms, young children can create beautiful woven necklaces of the blossoms, bunches of the bright yellow flowers are a rite of passage for EVERY mother, and there is NOT a child alive who hasn’t delighted in making a wish as they blow the dandelion fluff into the wind … even the most die-hard gardener has to begrudgingly admit that the lawn full of blooming yellow dandelions makes a majestic sight in the spring of the year … they may be regarded as a pest or a weed, but they are high in vitamin C, nutritious, quite delicious and filled with incredible potential … they are proof that a weed is simply a plant out of OUR context … they are a blight on the modern lawn because we expect a perfect green vista, rather than the broad green leaves and bright yellow flowers of the dandelion …

The question then is one of perspective …is the problem that the dandelion is a weed, or is the problem our perspective?


Yesterday I recalled a story about a man walking across a parking lot in a rain storm. He was trying to avoid the many puddles that were under foot, and was trying to get to his destination through the driving rain … his mood was grey and dark like the weather. But then he heard a child’s voice say – “look mommy, a rainbow … a rain bow …” He glanced up and could see only grey dark clouds and rain … he glanced over at the child who was pointing at the puddle below her bright yellow rubber boots … on the surface of the puddle was a bright rainbow from the sheen of oil floating on the top of the puddle.

Now, environmental concerns about WHAT those residues could be set aside for a moment – the little girl in the midst of a grey dark rain storm found a rainbow at her feet … and the man learned a valuable lesson about perspective … pausing to consider where the gifts and blessings might be found.

This year’s canola will become next year’s weed in a field of grain or flax, just as this year’s dandelion will be regarded as a weed in the middle of a lush green front lawn … but is this what Jesus meant when he offered the harsh parable of the weeds growing amongst the crop?

If we step back and consider the story of Jacob we have before us today, and the saga of the Patriarch’s life that we are currently moving through in the lectionary cycle, our perspective on issues of faith are challenged in ways we may not have considered.

We have a tight and neat image of Jacob. He is the father of Israel. We will celebrate his devotion for Rachel, but overlook his first wife Leah . We will remember that it was from his sons that the twelve tribes of Israel arose. We remember him as the gentle aged father who warmly welcomes home his son Joseph after the nastiness of Joseph’s brothers sent the young man into slavery in Egypt. We have a warm fuzzy image of Jacob that leaves much out … we tend to forget his conniving ways that tricked Esau out of his rightful inheritance … we overlook the treachery that Laban invoked on Jacob … in short, we will gloss over the bits that don’t fit our perspective of Jacob as a hero of faith.

Yet, a reading of the Book of Genesis – even a cursory reading, will reveal to us a lot of political machination, a lot of posturing and more than just a little bit of conniving and treachery by everyone involved … okay, almost everyone – I remember one of the ministers in my past pointing out that in the life of Jacob the one person who never engages in any form of deception is poor Leah who stands on the margins of the story, yet is central in being the mother of seven children – six sons and a daughter, while the other six sons came from Rachel and two maid servants Bilhah and Zilpah. Loyal and devoted Leah stands, just wanting to be loved by her husband ... But alas, that is a story for another day, for today we are offered the image of Jacob’s dream of a ladder stretching up into heaven.

The image of Jacob’s ladder is one that has become central to our understanding of the linkage between heaven and earth … lined with angels ascending and descending, and the voice of the Living God assuring Jacob that he is being accompanied by the divine promise – the covenant uttered to Abraham when God said – “I will be your God and YOU will be my people …” there is an implied understanding and experience that permeates everything that we are about …

We are chosen by God. We are the select. We are the in group. We are God’s people. … We have a specific perspective that radically defines WHO we are and how we move through the world … we can forget all the uncomfortable bits and see the world through a rose coloured set of lenses that block out the treachery, the deception, the machinations …that dub certain plants weeds, and that focus only on what makes us warm and comfortable and SAFE.

Everything outside the tight definition is to be cast into the fire and burned …

The problem arises when we begin to consider whether our perspective is valid or not …

I remember as a child spending many hours talking about life and faith and all kinds of other issues with my Grandfather … many of his lessons have stuck with me … his challenge to never judge someone harshly because when you point a finger at another, there are THREE fingers pointing back at yourself, has been central in my life … but one afternoon I remember talking to him about Church and the whole concept of who is in and who is out … and he shared with me the experience of growing up in a congregation of the Free Church of Scotland Presbyterian Church in southern Ontario.

He noted that it was a very strict and devote group, and that they had a very firm understanding that THEY were AMONG the chosen of God, and that ONLY those who shared their faith would make it into heaven. Grandpa shared with me a conversation he had had a long time before with a young cousin who was troubled by this … the Young man couldn’t conceive of a heaven without the many good people who populated their small rural village.
How could a loving God make heaven for a small handful of the human family?

My grandfather said – “my view of heaven is that it is a wondrous place filled with all manner of amazing things and people, but in the middle of it is a HUGE wall enclosing a tiny little corner of heaven.”

“What’s inside the wall?”asked the young cousin.

“That’s where they put all of the folks from our church,” answered Grandpa, “so they think they have heaven all to themselves …”

It’s too easy to lose our perspective and to become TOO focused on only that which edifies us and makes us feel good … Life and faith are far more than THAT.

The story of Jacob shows us that God has plans for ALL people, even the likes of Jacob who spent most of his life tricking those around him, and in turn being tricked and cheated … But more than that, the story of Jacob reminds us that even God’s chosen are less than perfect, and that even if we think WE ARE – a change in perspective is a helpful thing …

The image of Jacob’s ladder has often been translated into the self-help processes of groups like AA, who seek to help free us from our struggles … we live here on earth with our burdens and our challenges … and the ladder of healing and wholeness stretches upwards as a gift from God … a Coptic mystic envisioned Jacob’s ladder as an analogy of the spiritual life. The thirty rungs of this ladder begin with detachment – letting go and trusting in the divine presence … and move through a variety of reflections and meditations on ALL aspects of life from money to lying to laziness to pride … until the practitioner through a winnowing of values and understandings stands in a place of spiritual perfection fully enveloped with the Holy.

As difficult and seemingly far fetched as it may sound, the vision of St John Climacus has parallels in the 12 steps of AA, and in numerous modern self-help books like those of Eckhart Tolle, who all begin with an initial step of letting go and trusting in THIS MOMENT.
Naming OUR personal problem or burden is a dramatic shift in perspective, AND is the first step up Jacob’s ladder … trusting, not in ourselves, but in our higher power, in God, or the cosmos (whatever term people chose to use) is the second step that embodies the concept Jesus put forward when he questioned why we are so good at seeing the speck in our brother’s eye, but lousy at seeing the log in our own …

We can point those fingers at others … but we can also ignore the fingers pointing back …

When our foot touches the first rung of Jacob’s ladder and we begin to climb our perspective begins to change … today’s weed becomes tomorrow’s feast … it’s all a matter of perspective.

It’s easier to stand in a place of self-righteous judgement that sees the “weeds” cast into the eternal fire and burned … but …

The difference between a weed and a crop plant is simply a matter of perspective … our faith-filled calling is be open to God’s view of the world, that may not always be in synch with our own.

What we would be so certain to dub a weed may not be one at all … and what we are so convinced is a valuable crop, may in the fullness of time be regarded only as a weed … it’s all a matter of perspective.

If we consider the humble weed – dandelion, we can, if we are open to it, be struck by the versatility of the tenacious and ubiquitous little plant. It may be a nuisance to some, but to others it is a nutritious, delicious and beautiful gift from God’s creation … and when a tiny fist carries in a fresh picked bouquet of bright yellow flowers with the words – “Here, these are for you …” even the most hardened heart has to reluctantly admit to the beauty being offered to them …

And all of this comes from a humble weed …

It’s all a matter of perspective … and our calling of faith is to open ourselves to God’s perspective rather than holding tightly only to our own … when we point to a weed and denounce it as “useless” … my grandfather’s lesson about those other three fingers becomes relevant … it may well be a weed from our perspective … in a world of change, challenges and transitions, what we hold most dearly to may not be what we expect, and we must open our understandings and our beings to more … the lesson of Jacob’s ladder is about trusting in God’s presence, even in the darkest night to give us strength, comfort and wholeness …

In the coming days, may we have the courage, the faith and most of all the OPENESS to the fullness of life, which is a gift from God … and may we be open to the gift of dandelions in our world …

May it be so, today and always - Thanks be to God …

Let us pray …

Our plans ... God's Plans ... the cry of Ishmael ...

The weather today was sunny and warm ... the Congregation that invited me to lead them in worship had gathered in an outdoor "sanctuary" created by the towering trees of a parishoners backyard backing on to a lake ... The birds were singing, the geese were honking, as we began the children of the congregation were bouncing on a trampoline and kicking an ENORMOUS soccer ball ... I couldn't have envisioned a more perfect setting to step back into a "pulpit" and reclaim the ministry of preaching ... something that has been denied me for almost a year ...

It felt so good to stand before a Congregation and lead them in worship ... it is what I have been called to do, it is something I've been blessed to be able to do well, and today I realized that it is something I miss ...

Perhaps my wanderings in the wilderness are finally drawing to an end ... for now - today's sermon:

The readings for today were:
Genesis 21: 8-21
Psalm 86: 1-10, 16-17
Romans 6: 1b-11
Matthew 10:24-39





It is safe to say – the church doesn’t like conflict.

We want the church to be a bastion of calm, peace, and serenity in our world. We’ve named where we gather – a sanctuary for a reason. We want the Church to be that to the world – a sanctuary, a place of peace and calm and serenity in the face of everything the world can and does throw at us … given that we are sitting outside with the sun shining upon us, with birds singing, the lake glistening and the geese honking in the distance, we WANT this kind of experience to be what church is about – peace, serenity, and NICE … we want to have one place where we can gather together and have a sense of the Holy present and manifest in our world …

But then we keep having these pesky conflicts over money … sex … politics …



Why do we have to talk about these things?



Why can’t we just say our prayers, sing our hymns and worship God like we always have ?



And in our comfort we then we look around and wonder why the church is in decline, and why our young people by and large simply stay away and find their spirituality and their meaning some where else …

Our Gospel reading is not an easy passage to hear … it is an even more difficult passage to wrestle with … What was Jesus thinking when he started saying things like “I do not come to being peace to the earth, but to bring the sword”?



This is not gentle Jesus, meek and mild saying that he has come to set man against his father, daughter against her mother … to divide families and make foes of a single household … what’s up with that THIS is about conflict, and we don’t like conflict ?



How can this wonderful warm and welcoming Jesus come to bring such conflict to us? That’s NOT what faith is about … that’s not like the Jesus we have smiling from the walls of our Sunday School rooms …



Then we step back and hear the cries of anguish uttered into the howling desert wind by Hagar watching her son die … They’ve been cast out and out cast by the great Patriarch Abraham who could no longer abide a usurper who cast a shadow over his chosen favoured son Isaac. Ishmael and Hagar HAD TO GO … so they were driven out for the sake of peace in the community … peace MUST be maintained !!



Sadly, and perhaps not surprisingly, these stories and these ideas are not unique … Maintaining the peace of a community by casting out the troubled one, is a long standing tradition. Sacrificial religious practices were based on the idea that if we appease the gods by offering up an innocent victim, the rest of us would be freed to continue …



In ancient Judaism the concept of the Scape Goat arose and became a regular occurance in the life of the community and nation. The sins of the people would be recorded on scrolls – ALL the sins of the people were written down, then placed PHYSICALLY on the back of a goat and then with great pomp and circumstance the goat is driven out into the wilderness to DIE … and with its death comes the freeing of the people from their sins …



With the Goat goes their sins … in its death comes freedom …and they can continue on the same way because … well, because the sins and misdeeds are all gone …

If only it worked that way … if only freedom from sins and conflict and misdeeds was THAT simple …



Grace isn’t about just letting go of our sins and walking away … Grace isn’t about dumping our conflict on the back of a goat, driving it out of the city gates and pretending that everything is





ALL better now … Life doesn’t work that way …



Grace is about wrestling with life in its fulless …



Grace is about facing change and uncertainty without flinching nor running away …

But in the Church we generally don’t do a very good job at that … we are PROGRAMMED to have a gentle calm and peaceful faith – we don’t want conflict … “why can’t we all just get along?” becomes our mantra … “why can’t we all just agree?” we cry … why does it have to be SO HARD???



We push out our Hagars and our Ishmael’s and restore calm … but in that moment, we’ve lost something …

This past week at a workshop exploring the possibility of non-profits and churches getting involved in addressing the housing crisis in the city of Brandon, one of the participants said – “we live in a time of great abundance, yet we focus on the short comings and the perceived scarcity …” he went on to talk about how we complain about minor details like taxes and wait lists rather than taking stock of how many incredible things we simply take for granted, and how much we really have … Walk into a grocery store and really look around, he noted … you can’t say we live in a place of scarcity when you stand and look at the variety of breakfast cereal alone …



Another voice chimed in and agreed but then spun this perspective of scarcity versus abundance to a different place … as a leader in the Church he noted that we talk about wanting something, but too often in the Church when we get it we realize it isn’t really what we wanted …



We want more kids in our Church, but then on Sunday morning when they show up and do what kids will do we harp about how disruptive they are and even worse – we say things like – WELL, back in my day children NEVER behaved like THAT … and we are left wondering why they never come back …

We want more people in our pews, but then when they offer their time to serve on committees, stewards and the Board, we get uncomfortable because they are trying to change things too fast, and they don’t understand that “we don’t do things THAT WAY around here …”



We need more bodies to help with the work of our declining groups, yet when new folks step forward to help out at the potluck supper they get snapped at for not putting the dishes out properly, or not knowing that “that’s how we always do this …” or worse – we offer only the icy glare of judgement that leaves the newcomer feeling unwelcome and judged …



The list of Hagars and Ishmael’s in our midst is very long … we could spend hours and hours discussing examples of where and how as a Church we’ve picked up the welcome mat and not only rolled it up, but taken swings at visitors as well … I could show you the bruised I’ve experienced at the hands of supposedly warm and welcoming Congregations across Canada that have simply and utterly failed to live their faith and their welcome …



But to what end?



To inventory the shortcomings, we would be rubbing our hands together and lamenting OUR shortcomings and our failures and achieving nothing … it would be an intellectual exercise in scape goating …



What is needed is the NAMING of this process of driving out the unwanted and the unwelcomed – the Hagars and the Ishmael’s and an owning of the wrongness of it all …



THEN – in a place of Grace – as a people of faith – as disciples of the Gospel – the very thing that Jesus speaks to us of in our reading from Matthew – in THAT moment and place we need to commit to a better way of seeing the world around us, and living out our faith …



Our sanctuary is not about creating an oasis free of conflict and strife, but rather creating a place where we can come to resolve and heal ourselves and our conflict and strife … a place where


Grace abounds … a place where conflict is healed!



Poet Ann Weems talks about the Church being a place where people come with the tattered remains of their lives in their arms as they seek the healing that comes from Grace and Faith … they are easy words to speak – harder words to live …



Saying – ALL WELCOME is a radical concept … what happens when they show up?



What happens when the immigrant arrives? Or the full coloured Biker? Or the stinky homeless person? Or the neighbour you’ve been fighting with for years?



But all is NOT hopeless … so long as there are one or two gathered, we still have a Church, and we have the potential and possibility of the Spirit to bring about a resurrection …



We live in a time and place of enormous change and uncertainty … yet, looking back over the history of the Church and even our Scriptures, we can see that in these moments, there is an openness to the transformation that God offers … Our collective history is filled with example after example of life altering change coming in a time of great uncertainty and fear …



Modern thinker and writer Eckhart Tolle, whom some of you may be familiar with thanks to Oprah – says that change is inevitable I life – change is what life is – and that when we are willing and able to not only accept that change, but to live with it and know that uncertainty is just the way things are, we will finally find a true peace …



The funny thing for me is that this is perhaps the oldest teaching we have as a Church … it is part of the very fabric we share and have shared since the beginning …



Abraham cast out Hagar and Ishmael, and in that moment when ALL seemed hopeless, God stepped in and offered transformation and change and HOPE …



To the disciples feeling the sting of rejection by their families and friends, the words of Jesus broke through and reminded them that walking a path of faith is NOT about acceptance and calm nor serenity … it’s about walking a path of faith for a higher and better ideal … and it WILL mean conflict … but it will mean a deeper peace, knowing that we are living our faith … and we are disciples …



Even to Paul and the other early followers who faced horrid persecution, torture and even death … in the face of the world, God’s presence WILL break through … be alive to God through Christ …



In the moment of hopelessness – God WILL break through!

We have all around us Ishmael’s … the challenge before us, if we see the Church as the heirs of Isaac, is to finally make peace with our brothers and sisters, and rather than continuing to cast the out – to welcome them home, and in the name of the Risen One, to claim our unity by recognizing and celebrating our diversity …



Faith calls us to face life in its fullness … to offer hope in the face of despair – to proclaim the light of grace in a dark world – and to embrace ALL OF GOD’s children, not just some – they are easy words and concepts to speak of – they are harder words to live … but thanks be to God, we have examples of HOW to live those words all around us … if only we dare to listen …



The transformation of Grace begins with us … it begins here … when we mindfully welcome in the outsider and the stranger and accept them as they are … the transformation of Grace begins as we lean into our fears and embrace our uncertainty and allow the winds of change to blow over and thru us … Jesus said – have no fear … and that my friends is where it begins … fear is just being closed to the possibilities around us … faith is about seeing uncertainties as a place of possibilities and potentials …



We are called to Faith … we are called to be disciples … we are called to live the simple concept – ALL WELCOME!!



May it be so … thanks be to God … Let us pray …