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.