OUT AND IN

June 23, 2013
Pentecost 5
1^st Kings 19:9-13
Galations 3:23-29

(prayer)

As our planet makes our way around the sun, the angle that the sun hits our arch of the globe varies. We have just passed the solstice (winter for the southern hemisphere; summer for the northern hemisphere). The longest day of the year for us in the great white north - the most amount of minutes that the daytime sun can potentially been seen than at any other point of the year. Officially we are in the summer season, although (now that we have orbited through the solstice), each day of summer gets shorter than the one before.
When the St. David’s Church Council meets, it is a regular part of our agenda to pause in prayer for whatever the folk around the table would like to pray about: sometimes these prayers are for a particular person or a circumstance. In May, we were moved to pray for rain. Last week, we thanked God for hearing our prayer, but noted that the rain could slow down a bit.
Those of us around the table giggled a bit. And then over the next days, we all witnessed the power of rain and water in the images we have seen in newspapers, online, on TV and in the first hand accounts of friends and families.
Floods are a natural, normal occurrence. Rivers and creeks swell and drop with the rain and snowmelt. What is happening in Southern Alberta happens somewhere in the world almost every day to some degree.
What caught our attention was the sheer number of people affected and the relative closeness to home.
Even those of us far from the Bow River felt it personally because flooding happened in a place familiar to many of us.
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When we feel involved or connected to something, we could describe ourselves as being “in” - as opposed to seeing ourselves on the outside of a situation.
Any number of things affect whether we are “in” or “out”. As I just mentioned, our past familiar experiences can draw us into a situation.
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I was stunned watching the entertainment news this week to hear about the hot water that Food Network celebrity chef Paula Deen found herself in this past week, when documents from a lawsuit she is facing highlighted a history of her using racially charged language. The quotes that got most of the press were ideas she had for her brother’s wedding, where it could be “traditionally southern”, with an all black wait staff.
We have come a long way as a species, but race is still used too often to decide who’s in and who’s out. Pretty much every ism and social phobia we hear about today is rooted in dividing people one from another - who’s in and who’s out.
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Paula Deen’s excuse is that well, she grew up in the southern US in the 1960s and that was a very different time.
We have known for a lot longer than 50 years that there was an inherent “wrongness” to dividing the human race between those in and out - the superior and the inferior.
In only four years, we will celebrate the 100^th anniversary of the Alberta Supreme Court recognizing women as persons under the law. In 1916, Emily Murphy had been appointed as the first woman magistrate in Alberta, but her appointment was challenged on the grounds that women were not persons under the British North America Act. In 1917, in Alberta, at least, women were persons. A few years later, things were national and women were even allowed to run for political office. However, it took until 1929 and an appeal to the Privy Council of England (after the Canadian Supreme Court said ‘no’) before women were considered persons enough to be appointed to the Canadian senate.
And yet, while women have close to equal opportunity in Canadian society, women still lag behind men in achieving those opportunities and getting paid to do the same things when they do.
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There are still some churches I know (United Churches!) that aren’t quite sure they are ready for a female minister.
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The walls separating those in and out is still there.
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And so, how profound it is that in the 0050s, just two decades after the life of Jesus, that one of his most prolific apostles would essentially erase the barriers and walls as a hallmark of the early Christian movement:
Faith has come! In Christ Jesus, we are all children of God, having clothed ourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female.
Wow that is radical thinking. It’s only been in the last 150 years that north America has seen laws passed that said that race and gendre do not separate people as part of a good and free society. Paul wrote to the Galatians more than 1,960 years ago.
Sadly, theory always precedes practice. Even though Paul’s letters and the book of Acts describe both the leadership of men and women, within a few hundred years, Christianity would become a more exclusive movement - where women were barred from significant leadership. This legacy still exists in some very prominent modern expressions of the Christian Church.
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I don’t know if the Galatians (or even Paul for that matter) understood the far-reaching meaning and impact those simple words in Galatians 3:28 - that we are “ALL one in Christ Jesus”.
If that is seen as true, we will always find the walls of exclusion in need of challenge. Every time we take a leap forward in terms of welcoming and invitation and inclusion, we will likely uncover a new wall - fortified even deeper within our unwillingness to truly see all as one in Christ - we know that we still have work to do.
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When the Privy Council of England ruled on the case brought by Alberta’s Famous Five, it said “to those who would ask why the word ‘person’ should include females, the obvious answer is, why should it not?”
We might ask the same question when it comes to the household of God. To those who would ask, why should this person (with whatever uniqueness gives rise to her/his exclusion) be seen and treated as a child of God, the obvious answer is... why not?
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The more I explore the nature of God as 'deep love and unconditional compassion', I realize that the heart of God is great and warm and wide enough to embrace all humanity, in spite of what we think divides.
For those of us raised in a less tolerant and more exclusive environment and society and church (that’s probably all of us), we can be shocked to view God as less judgemental than ourselves.
God continues to surprise - showing us sides and aspects of the divine that continually broaden our understanding of Spirit.
I think of the prophet Elijah. He felt abandoned by God. Elijah preached against the corrupt leadership of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel and it forced the prophet to run away and hide in the wilderness. It gave him cause to question God’s loyalty. Elijah is prepared to just die alone in the wilderness.
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[the following contains material from Seasons of the Spirit]
The first clue Elijah gets to God’s presence is the com­mand to get up and eat, and discovering some warm flat­bread and water. He eats it, and then goes back to sleep. It happened again, and he ate again. This is not only a clear indication of God’s assurance but also a reminder of God’s compassionate care. It is God saying, “eat, and rest, so you will find strength for your journey.” Elijah then carries on, for forty days and forty nights (a Hebrew euphemism for “a long time”). Yet after being fed by God and journeying for all that time, when Elijah arrives at the cave and God asks him "why are you here", Elijah responds, “I’ve been very passionate for you, God, and the people’s response has been violent ignorance of you, O God; I’m the only one left and now they want to kill me, too.” God’s response is amazing. After telling Elijah to stand outside and listen. Elijah observes wind, an earth­quake, and a fire. But God is not present in any of those great, stormy, violent acts. Elijah was expecting to witness a God of power of fearfull violence.  But no.  Then Elijah noticed something else: something the original Hebrew describes as “the sound of fine silence” – “sheer silence” in the New Revised Standard Version; “…a sound. Thin. Quiet.” In the Common English Bible. You might have heard the translation in the King James Version, “a still, small voice.”
The point is that Elijah does not find God in the chaos, or the signs of power and destruction. Rather God is experienced in gentleness, and a moment of silent clarity.
That is so true in my experience as well. I feel God in those quiet, thin times and places. I feel embraced and welcomed and loved.
I wonder if the apostle Paul felt like this and that is why he couldn’t think of a reason to deny that experience to anyone else.
As Paul was asked to mediate in the debates about what the Gentiles followers needed to do to be on par with the Jewish Christians (some argued for adult circumcision, ouch); as he was being faced with comments about the place of women in the church and those from various places on the social scale - rich and poor, slave and free... did Paul simply feel there was no logic in pretending that God loved one more than the other?
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Afterall, Jesus’ life was all about radical inclusion, about welcoming the outcast and the sinner to find renewal as part of the “in crowd”.  Why should the time after the resurrection be different?
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And so, we include in our circles of care, those we may not kow personally, but view as family.  We ave compassion for the people in flooded areas; we visit the sick and help the needy. We celebrate life together because we are all children of God. We are kin in the deepest sense of the word.
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Don’t be discouraged by those who remain fearful of what true inclusion means, especially those who will use a phrase here or there from our sacred texts to justify their need to feel superior.  Don’t be discouraged by those who remain fearful of what true inclusion means.
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The big picture has been with us from the beginning. We are made in the image of God. We are God’s kin. And therefore there is no “in” or “out”.
We are ALL in! Let’s take that message out into the world!
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Let us pray:
God, in the midst of the noise and in the sound of fine silence, be with us always. Amen.

#651VU
“Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah”

NOT PLAYING BY THE RULES

June 16, 2013

Pentecost 4 - Father’s Day

1^st Kings 21:1-4

Luke 7:36 - 8:3

(prayer)

Yesterday, the Leduc and Minor Football Association hosted an all day pre-season jamboree for all three age levels of our teams.

For some of the 10-12 year old players on the peewee team (that I help coach), it was their first exposure to game action after just a few weeks of practices.  To help these rookies (and everyone for that matter) ease into the season to come, the rules for this jamboree were a bit different than what will apply in August:

·      The coaches were allowed on the field to call the plays and to help players get into position.

·      There was no kicking (punts, field goals, converts).

·      No first downs.  Everyone got the same number of offensive and defensive plays.  If a team scored a touchdown or if there was a turnover and the team still had offensive plays left, the ball was spotted back at the 30 yard line and we carried on.

·      If someone went offside or was holding, etc., we didn’t call a penalty - we just used it a teaching moment for the players.

//

Most (if not all) sports have a set of rules that govern play.  The rules set out how the games is to be played and lay out consequences when it is not played that way.  The rules set the boundaries within which the fun and competition is to be had.  This is true in organized sports with detailed, published rulebooks; it is also true in card games, floor curling and in the games we make up on the school ground.

And if we use the word “rules” lightly, we must admit that the same is basically true in almost every aspect of daily life - around us all the time are standards and expectations (voluntary and/or obligatory) that govern how we garden, how we behave in fast food line ups, which cupboards the plates go in after they’re washed, what a green traffic light means, whether to put the toilet seat down or not, etc.

At a personal level, the expectations can vary.  I have noticed that when I am out with my mother, and we are ‘people watching’, it is clear that the generation gap between us has informed a different set of expectations in some respects of behaviour, and clothes, and phone use, and... oh, the list is too long to go through here.

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The church is not immune to rules either.  Well we've got those Ten Commandments.  And closer to home, this (hold up binder) is the St. David's United Church Policy and Procedures Handbook.  Last Monday evening, I was in the office watching a live internet seminar (a webinar) to learn about the completely revamped United Church Manual that will take effect on August 1st. 

There are a lot of rules out there.

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When someone doesn’t meet our expectations, when they don’t follow the rules (as we understand them), we notice.  And sometimes, we are moved to highlight the transgression.

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Today’s scripture readings are both about people not following the rules... as understood by someone else.

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The Luke version of the anointing of Jesus is unique from the accounts in other gospels.

The setting is a home where Jesus was an invited guest, not a gathering of his followers.

The woman in question was not supposed to be there.  She crashed the party.

The host of the dinner party (Simon, the Pharisee) clearly noticed the flagrant (and fragrant)  transgressions of “the rules”:

·      First, the woman was not supposed to be there - this was a by-invitation-only event.  And the smell of the perfume - completely spoiled the mood.

·      Secondly, even if it was an open house, she would still not be welcome.  Simon was a respected leader in the community and this woman was a "sinner", unworthy of sharing his company.

·      Thirdly, there was the fact that Jesus did not back away from the woman, that he graciously accepted her actions as a gift and (I’m guessing) enjoyed the soothing ointment (ahhhhhh).  Simon quickly decided that he had misjudged Jesus as a prophet, because a prophet wouldn’t associate with a woman like that.

Clearly Jesus wasn’t playing by the rules.

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Last week, we read about King Ahab and Queen Jezebel of northern Israel and how they scared the prophet Elijah into a self-imposed exile after he criticized the unfaithful leadership of the king.

Today, Ahab shows his colours again.  He decides that Naboth's little farm would be the perfect size and location for a vegetable garden.  He wanted it so bad that he was willing to offer a different plot of land in exchange.  Ahab assumed that this would be seen as a reasonable business deal.  After all, what difference does it make where a farmer farms.  But having your vegetable garden by your house is essential.

What Ahab didn't realize was that it was not the act and practice of farming that was most important to Naboth.  It was the history and legacy that this particular plot of land meant to Naboth.  It was priceless and no offer would be good enough.

This strange way of non-business thinking confused and saddened Ahab.  So, he went home, climbed into bed and sulked.

//

That was where I ended the reading today.  But that's not the end of the story.

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Jezebel saw the king's sadness and she became enraged.  "Are you not the king of Israel? Get up and act like it.  I will get that land for you."

So, Jezebel sent out a decree in Ahab's name proclaiming a ritual fast in Naboth's city. She made sure that Naboth would have a place of honour at the feast where everyone could see him.  Then she arranged for two separate witnesses to accuse Naboth of blasphemy.  On the strength of these men's testimony, Naboth was convicted and stoned to death. 

Jezebel then told her husband that he could now just take the land because the previous owner has passed away.

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Ahab believed that the rules of proper conduct would be for him to obtain the land through a mutually agreed-upon sale.  Jezebel believed that the main rule was that the king can do anything he wants, take anything he wants.  From her perspective Naboth simply wasn't playing by the rules.

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The biggest news stories are always the scandals - catching people not playing by the rules.  Politics is full of them:

·         Mike Duffy's claiming a housing allowance as an out of town senator even though he has lived in Ottawa for years and the Prime Minister's chief of staff giving him $90K out of his own pocket and out of the goodness of his heart.

·         Toronto mayor Rob Ford alleged cosy relationship with a mid-level drug and gun selling street gang.

·         And was Barack Obama born in Hawaii or Kenya.  Even though all of the evidence shows Hawaii, Donald Trump keeps telling me that it is an on-going scandal of rule breaking.  Oddly I haven’t heard The Donald say the same thing about potential republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz of Texas who has admitted that he was born in Canada to US parents... but I’m sure that the same rules will apply.

·         And of course there has been all the talk about the huge amount of routine data that is being mined by US (and Canadian) authorities as part of the war of terror: emails, phone records and who knows what else.  The scandal is not so much that this was a breach of the rules; it's that no one seemed to have noticed that the rules had been changed to make this broad-brush espionage legal.

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The purpose of rules is supposed to be about providing a societal framework to ensure that everyone has the same access to justice, fairness, opportunity, honesty and inclusion.

Sadly, there are people whose sole career is to find ways to get around the rules to give only certain people a competitive advantage.

Maybe you have seen this picture scrolling through the announcement slides before church.

What do you think Jesus would say about that?  And I bet it wouldn’t be “hey, you can’t watch from behind the fence, go buy a ticket!”

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As some of you know, I had the gracious opportunity to visit the city of Boston in early May, barely two weeks after the Marathon bombing.  I walked along the Boylston Street sidewalks where the bombs went off.

There was almost no sign that anything had happened there (except some boards over some second floor windows and obviously new cement in some areas of the path).

I took a picture of a sign on one building near the bombing sites.

The modus operandi for a terrorist is to motivate people to change their lives based on a constant state of fear.  The theme of Boston Strong says that people are going to look out for each other - that community, not fear will rule the day.

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There is a great quote by Mahatma Gandhi that says:

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it – always.”

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So, with that in mind, with-respect-to the story from First Kings, should we model our lives after the rules of Jezebel and Ahab or of Naboth.  Yes, the tyrant king and queen got their way through violence and force, because one of their rules was that the powerful can do whatever they want, no matter the cost to human life or decency.

Or do we see a rule for faithful living in Naboth’s attitude:

The land is not merely a commodity of mine to be bought and sold to the highest bidder - it has a history to be honoured and a future to uphold.

As a private garden, Naboth’s land would satisfy only the royal court.  As a vineyard, it would provide sustenance for many more people than those in his household.

As an asset to be bought or stolen, the land’s purpose is short term.  As a legacy and promise, it is part of God’s creation and the tillers of the soul are more a-kin to stewards than owners.

A rule for faithful living from First Kings is that “the earth the LORD’s and the fullness thereof.”

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Now, what is there for us to think about in the Luke passage?  Do you think we should follow the rule book of Simon, the Pharisee or of Jesus of Nazareth.

Simon’s modus operandi was to wall off the world between the welcomed and the outcast, between the worthy and the unworthy.  He was interested in what Jesus could do for him and his reputation, not what he might be able to do for Jesus and Jesus’ ministry.

When the woman entered, she was drawn to Jesus - his reputation of welcome had preceded him and she willing risked crashing the party to express her welcome for Jesus.

She offers him the gift of comfort - openly extravagant.  Jesus’ focus is not on her alleged sinfulness or a judgement of worthiness.  Jesus looks at her gift, he graciously received it and enjoyed the moment of sharing.  The party could wait - there was a lesson to be learned.

Gratitude is a wonderful thing to express.  The woman was grateful - the implication between the lines of the story is that whatever “sin” Simon knew she embodied had already been set aside by Jesus, even before she met him in person.  That is why she is grateful: because Jesus had already shown her true welcome and inclusion - she knew it would be alright to barge in on his dinner party.  And in turn, Jesus was grateful for her actions.  In the end, everyone present to a lesson away from that evening about what it means to be gracious and forgiven.

So, some rules for faithful living from Luke are: to live with welcome, with gratitude, with inclusion; to set aside judgemental grudges, “to love your neighbour as yourself”.

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When the rules of justice and inclusion are not followed, it means we still have work to do.

And they are justice and inclusion are not the rule in many parts of the world and communities in which we live.

People of God, let us take the rules of our faith with us and show them to the world in how we play the game!

Let us pray:

Gracious God, instil your spirit deep within us that we might find the courage to take risks in living your message.  Amen.

#12MV  “Come Touch Our Hearts”

WOULDN'T IT BE NICE

June 9, 2013

Pentecost 3

1^st Kings 17:17-24

Luke 7:11-17

(prayer)

In 1966, the Beach Boys recorded one of their California-based songs of longing and love for the album Pet Sounds. 

“Wouldn’t It Be Nice” is a prayer-like hope of a young person on the edge of a new phase of life:  dropping his date off at the end of the day, longing for the time when they wouldn’t have to part just because the day is over.  The singer looks to the day when they would be married (okay, the “sixties – free love era” never quite made it into Beach Boys music).

Wouldn't it be nice if we were older

Then we wouldn't have to wait so long

And wouldn't it be nice to live together

In the kind of world where we belong

Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray it might come true

Baby then there wouldn't be a single thing we couldn't do

We could be married

And then we'd be happy

Wouldn't it be nice

//

While the hopes and dreams of the song's protagonist were quite realistic (it would not be that unusual for the young lovers to grow closer and wind up living together and married), some of our desired outcomes could be a lot more challenging to bring to reality.  I might long to be able to flap my arms and just fly like a bird, but I'm not all that confident it will happen. 

I might long that my dad had not died six days before Christmas, when I was 19 years old.

But... wouldn't it be nice.

//

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You may have noticed the common theme from today's two readings: in both passages, a widow's son is revived from death.  These are stories of miraculous healings, unexpected recoveries, impossible revivals.  They point to a power beyond the ordinary.  In First Kings, the mother called Elijah "a man of God"; in Luke, it was said that Jesus was "a great prophet". 

People's view of the healer changed - they were seen as having a more direct pipeline to God - when the woman held her living son, she proclaimed that the true word of God must be in Elijah's mouth; and in the wake of Jesus' actions it was said the God had looked favourably on the people.

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I believe in mystery; I believe that miraculous things happen that can't be explained away.  I have faith that the heart at the centre of the universe is moved from time to time and lives are changed in ways that the best of our science and reason cannot explain.  The best word I can think of for such an occurrence is "miracle". 

Because such events are a seemingly normative part of the biblical history, we might be tempted to say that don’t biblical-like miracles are a thing of the past, if they every literally happened at all.

We could site several examples (including our two readings today) throughout the Bible of a prophet or Jesus or a disciple healing a person on a sick bed or even raising them from death.

I prefer to imagine that true occurrences of mystery is as rare today as they ever was – they seem more common in biblical times, because most of the occurrences were committed to some public memory.  And maybe some of the miracles of biblical times, would not be viewed as such in our day.

In fact, if a person of biblical times witnessed the events of a modern trauma centre, the doctors and EMTs would likely be called great prophets and women and men of God as well.  Last week I passed a course on Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation along with Automated External Defibrillators.  I feel confident that if the place and timing was right and the equipment and emergency services were near by that I could be part of bringing a person back from the dead.  But in 2013, that is not a miracle.  It's a healing but it is not mystery anymore.  And it would not make me any more of a prophet or person of God than I am right now.

Would it be fair to say that God engineered the recovery of a person who happened to fall ill near an AED and a CPR trained person?

Does God not care about those who have a cardiac arrest away from such circumstances?

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What about when the twists and turns of a tornado kills children in one school, but another nearby school has no loss of life?  Was that’s God at work – picking a choosing who will live and die?  Was that God guiding the tornado?

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I find it so hard to believe that God picks and chooses when and who to heal in a miraculous way.  If so, the criteria by which God makes these choices seem to have no basis in fairness or compassion. 

In the depth of my soul, I refuse to believe that God (who is said to be the very essence of love) is so heartless to withhold the means to elevate so much pain and suffering in the lives of truly good people, while doling it out to others.  Especially, occasionally, when the miracle and mystery benefits the life of one who lives by creeds of selfishness, oppression and utter inhumanity. 

//

Several years ago, I met a woman in a church who had had two children who were in their late teen - early twenties.  She was a very active person in her church; I witnessed (in her) an open and trusting deep faith.  Her husband, who I had met a way from church was (in my experience) a man with a gentle spirit - and there was a honest spirituality about him, but I never saw him in church.  One day, I has learned why.  They had, in fact, had three children.  The youngest had passed away almost a decade earlier from cancer when he was just five years old.  The story is that a friend of the family at the time (who at one time had attended the same church, but after a congregational split now went to the breakaway congregation) had a similar experience with a young child a few years earlier.  Only that child responded well to treatment and recovered. 

"It's too bad that your faith wasn't as strong as mind, or your son would be alive too.  You should have prayed harder"

//

Two things happened with those words, this friend of the family was no longer a friend... and the woman's husband gave up on church.

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It was shocking to hear a story of such cruel and (I would say) bad theology.  It is even more shocking that this theology is still quite common - just pray hard enough and God will bring you the healing you need, or the life change you desire or the riches you covet.  If it doesn’t happen, you just didn’t pray right, or enough, or…

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I find it almost impossible to view God as a holy vending machine, who, when the right amount of prayer and faith is inserted and the right buttons are pushed in the right order, that God is mindlessly required to dispense the desired goodies. 

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I believe in mystery, but I don't profess to understand it.

Bible-like miracles are rare and mysterious and they seem to follow no pattern of prayer or faithfulness.  I won't (and don't) believe in a God whose heart is 'hard' most of the time.

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Is it possible to believe that "mystery" is simply part of a complex relationship we have with the divine, but that God does not micromanage how mystery is made manifest from time to time?  Maybe what is mystery to us is part of an order to God's creation - but my heart and mind tells me that it is beyond our influence.  And I will trust in what John the Elder believed was true: that God is love.

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So, I think that if we only examine today's bible readings from the "prophet performing miracle" perspective, we are selling these rich texts far too short.

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The context of how Elijah met this woman and her son is very interesting.

Elijah ran a-foul of King Ahab of the northern kingdom of Israel and his wife Jezebel.  There was a long drought, which the king blamed on Elijah's God (probably because Elijah kept challenging Ahab's tolerance of Jezebel's worship of the Canaanite god, Ba'al).

Elijah met the woman in the today's passage as he was in a self-imposed exile in the wilderness near the Jordan River (he'd run away to get away from Ahab and Jezebel’s wrath). 

The woman and her young son were starving to death due to the drought.  As a widow, she would normally be cared for by her son, but he was just a child (her husband must have died young).  And she must not have any other family members nearby who could assist her.

The little stream that sustained Elijah for a while dried up and so he went to a nearby town and saw the woman gathering a few sticks of firewood, just outside the city gate.  Elijah was used to being in the royal court: tended to by servants.  So, ignoring her needs, he tells the woman to fetch him some water and something to eat.  She tells him that what she had nearly run out.  She only had enough left for a final meal for her and her son.  The sticks were to cook her last meal.  Then she was resigned to the fact that she and her son would starve and die. 

But - in miraculous selflessness - she is willing to give food and drink to Elijah.

Enter the mystery.  Amazingly, each time she reaches in her jar to fry up a simple grain cake - the last meal - there seems to be enough for just one more.  The little bit of meal and oil fed them all - day after day.  Elijah promised that the little she had would last until the drought ended.

The young widow and her young son were brought back from near death.  Their future, again, could be hopeful.

Until (that is), as we read today, the son caught some illness.  His breath labored until, at last, he stopped breathing.  In the mother's grief, she became angry at Elijah: why save my son from the drought if this illness was going to kill him anyway?

Enter the mystery once again.  Even Elijah is amazed when the boy is revived.  The future for this young widow is hopeful again.

//

That's the real recovery in the story.  In that day and age, a woman rarely could support herself.  She would rely on the resources provided by her father or her husband or her sons: depending on her station in life. 

Beyond the patriarchal responsibilities, the wider society's only real social safety net for widows and orphans (and refugees) was available only at certain times of the year: when there were ritual offerings brought in at harvest times.  And during a devastating drought, there would be nothing to distribute to the needy.  This is why the widow and her son were near-starving when Elijah arrived.

It was not enough that the woman survived through the drought.  As a widow, her future was dependent on having a son who could provide for her.

The big picture of this passage is not that one person was mysteriouly healed, but that a the potential for a good future for a whole family was made possible.

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The exact same big picture exists in the Luke story - the son in that story was older (a man according to the text), but the impact was that the future of the whole family was given new hope and potential.

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This all makes me think one of the most impactful ways mystery can be made manifest is when we can bring something to desperate situation that impacts the hopefulness and good potential of the future.

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In a time where we feel a miracle was deserved and warranted, we can cry the very faithful prayer of lament "why?".

“Why?” is the most desperate and deeply faithful of prayers. It is important to ask because that question can help us discern what might be most true about the nature of God and how God interacts with the world.

When we ask why?, we should also then ask, what now?

//

The truth is that our lives and consciousness are wonders and mysteries in and of themselves.  One of the realities we all know too well is that, at least physically, we are finite beings.

Although resilient and adaptive, our physical nature is fragile.  There is only so much illness or trauma or time our bodies will endure.  Some lives will be long and we celebrate all that has been done; other lives will be short and we will lament what potential is lost. 

Our accumulated knowledge of the arts of healing improves our expectations with each new generation, and situations will occur that we might call a miracle for the moment, but the simple truth that has always existed, still exists: "from dust we came and to dust we shall return" (Ecclesiastes 3:20).

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And so, we owe it to ourselves and to the one who gave us the privilege and potential of this life, to do what we can to improve the good quality of the lives of those in our midst.  Isn’t that basically what Jesus did?

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A wide message of the scripture stories today is that healing is more than a medical miracle.  God's love is boundless and is geared toward the long term, wide spread impact.

May we seek ways to be caught up in this.

(prayer)

#619VU "healer of our every ill"

NEW WAYS

It was such a busy Sunday, that I only was able to preach a very abridged version of the this message.  Here are the full notes.
June 2, 2013

Pentecost 2

Psalm 96

Luke 7:1-10

(prayer)

I love the first Sunday of June at St. David’s.  This Sunday of celebrating learning is so rich with purpose and meaning.

You may hear the occasional person call it Promotion Sunday.  That refers to the long standing practice of this congregation of presenting a Good News Bible to all of the grade three students of our Sunday School.  In a previous style of Sunday children’s ministry, we had different classes for different grade groups and moving from the grade 1-3 group to the grade 4-6 group was a big step.  That significance was symbolized by the gift of a bible for students being promoted to the older class.  We still honour this transition, even though the environment of teaching and learning is different now.

We don’t use the “promotion" Sunday language much anymore because today is more than the move from one grade to another.  Learning is a much wider aspect of church life.  As you have observed it is more than just the Sunday School program.  It is more than children’s ministry – scouting, music.  It is more than youth and young adult ministries.  It is more than study groups, and movie nights and discussions and confirmation.  It is all of that – today, we honoured the sum-total of our parts: a honouring of the fact that we are ALL Life Long Learners.

That means that ‘none of us is done yet’.  We all have new things to discover and work into the person we have become up to this point.

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The 96^th Psalm is based on the belief that there is always a horizon to approach.  Before we get there (which is impossible, literally and metaphorically), we will discover a new things we couldn’t see before – things we assumed were beyond the horizon.

Sing a new song to the LORD!

Every day is a new day and so a renewal of our relationship with the Holy is in store.

Now, I want to be careful that I don’t leave the impression that what we did before is now not helpful, by definition – that the old songs have no lasting meaning.

But, I also don’t want to leave the impression that just because a past expression of faith ‘had’ meaning that it still does.

Of course, ‘meaning’ can be personal, so what worked for someone in the past, might still work for them, but it may not necessarily relate to someone else.

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It is pretty much a universal church truth, that no one likes everything.  And nothing is perfectly relevant for everyone.  Those who expect a faith community to be their perfect match is bound to be disappointed and frustrated.

Playing with the language of Psalm 96, this divergent set of opinions can be seen in discussions about church music – I can’t tell you how many pastoral oversight visit teams I have been on for Presbytery where an issue in the church was which hymns are picked to sing on Sundays.

It comes up all the time because church music can be powerful and meaningful – people tend to notice when it isn’t for them.

But, when we hear Sing a new song to the LORD, let’s not limit it to singing.  It speaks to the broader question – how do we express our faith?

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Some of you know that just this past Tuesday, our congregation received it’s every three years routine presbytery pastoral oversight visit.  A report will be coming back to us within a few weeks (the second or third week of June is my guess).

Because I am in my 13^th year at SDUC, this was the fifth POV I have been here for (one after my first year and every three years since).  I was thinking about how this congregation is not the same one that I was called to in May of 2000.  We have made some physical changes (almost all of which were to improve the ease by which can participate in church) and we have begun new programs, we have made new policies about what we believe and how we will live out our mission, we have grown our wider parish to include both the communities of Leduc and Beaumont.  During my tenure so far, we have embraced a new hymn resource (More Voices) which didn’t exist in 2000.  Our demoniation has continued to evolve in theology and practice.

We are not the same group of people.  Some have passed away.  Others have moved away or moved on.  And we have welcomed new people, some from birth, others who have found a faith home here.

We have to ‘sing a new song’; we have to express our faith in new, relevant ways, because we are an ever-renewing and evolving community of faith.  We are not who we were (as wonderful as that was), we are who we are!  Some of what was is part of what is.  The change is not instantaneous; it is a progression and evolution.  We progress and evolve so that faith continues to remain relevant to the modern world. 

At its best, it always has.

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When Jesus left his life in Nazareth to venture out on a travelling ministry, Matthew 4:13 says that Jesus moved to the seaside town of Capernaum.  It seems to have become his home base.  Several of his first disciples were in the fishing trade; it is said that Peter, James, Andrew and John lived in Capernaum, as did Matthew, the tax collector.  It is also fair to assume that the synagogue in Capernaum became Jesus’ new home church (when he was in town).  Mark and Luke both share a story of Jesus teaching and healing in that synagogue.

The Roman Empire had a small presence in the village.  As we read today from Luke chapter seven, a roman soldier, who lived there, had a kind affinity to the wider community.  It is said that he helped organize the building of the Hebrew synagogue in Capernaum.

This kind of mixing of cultures seems a bit strange compared to most of the biblical record – especially where Roman-Jewish relations were concerned.  I suspect that there were still some lines that people did not cross.
For example going into a foreigner’s house would be a cultural no-no for Jesus.  So, his agreement to go see the Centurion’s servant was already trying something outside the lines (but Jesus did that kind of thing regularly).

What’s odd in the passage is that it is the Centurion that felt uncomfortable in Jesus’ presence.  He wouldn’t even talk to Jesus directly, he sent messengers to talk Jesus.  Jesus’ reputation was so strong or the centurion was so desperate that his servant be made well that the message was that it was believed that Jesus could heal without a touch, without herbs or medicine, but with the power of a word alone.  Even Jesus was astonished by this level of faith.  However it happened, the servant quickly recovered.  The Bible implies and assumes that Jesus did... something.

The old questions of who was worthy or unworthy took a backseat to the faith and needs of the moment.

I think that is what singing a new song to the LORD is all about – allowing the Spirit to move in the moment – letting the faith and needs of this point in time guide us to ways to express what we have come to believe.

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On this day that we are celebrating and appreciating the learning we make, there must be new songs to sing - new expressions of a renewed and expanded faith.

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In a few minutes we will share in the ancient tradition of sharing a loaf and the cup, symbolic of Jesus’ last supper.  It is a grasp to a valued past, but it is an action brought into the present because it is still good for us to know community that sharing a common meal creates.  A word for this church activity that crosses all bounds within Christianity is “communion” – a sharing of something in common.

We don’t all do it the same, we don’t even hold a universal theology of what it means... but we all do it.

 Each month when we share communion, we are intentionally remembering Jesus’ ministry of service and sharing, but we are (at the same time) honouring the relationship we share with each in the moment.  Communion is a new song each time we come to the table.

// (end)

It may be different for each one of us here today, but I hope that (in some way or another), each of our faiths are fresh enough to sing a new song.

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Let the harmony begin!

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Let us pray:

God of wonder and stability, be with us as we grow in our faith.  Challenge us, encourage us and sing with us.  Amen.

#570VU 

“Jesus’ Hands Were Kind Hands”