There is the expression, often said with an wink and in jest, after an employee makes a mistake, “you can’t get good help anymore”! Perhaps many employers feel it has more than just “a ring of truth”.

A long time ago I read a story about a young man who was hired as a farm hand. When he applied for the job the farmer asked for his qualifications and the reply was, “I can sleep on windy nights”. Puzzled by this self-proclaimed skill. the farmer, who really was desperate for a young, strong and able worker, hired him anyway. The young man seemed to know what to do around the farm and the farmer did not regret his decision!

As fall approached and the leaves were almost all off the trees a fierce late night wind and rain storm roared through the area in which the farm was located. As the wind started to howl the hands were all awakened to go out and batten down the hatches” - at the barns which were at some distance from the large rambling farmhouse. The recently hired young man could not be roused. As the farmer and his ageing sons raced to the barnyard they all decided that he would be “getting fired in the morning!” As they arrived at the barns they found nothing to do! The loft doors were secure. The hens were inside as were all the cattle and horses. All the barn doors were bolted and anything that was light was tied down or otherwise secured. They all returned the farmhouse a little disappointed they had lost sleep over it all. In the morning the young man, instead of being fired was given a raise.

In the passage from today’s scripture there is an assumption behind the words that “you can’t hire someone to care for your business as the owner would”. Of course that is not always true! It is, however used as an illustration of Jesus care for us. I wonder if it is not also a condemnation of the lack of true care some of the religious leaders of Jesus day show for the matters of faith,

One of the Sunday school curriculums that is becoming more and more popular in the Maritimes is “Godly Play”. It is a different kind of curriculum in that, after a story is told through the use of small wooden figures in a bed of sand, the children are invited to wonder and ask questions. For example, after today’s story, the children would be asked to wonder “what makes for a good shepherd”. I talked with the children about that a little bit in the story earlier. Good shepherds work hard, are caring and take risks to rescue sheep from danger. As usual though, Jesus’ message is much more complex than just “be caring as God is caring”!

Shepherds had a long and honourable place in the biblical story. Moses was a shepherd, working for his father-in-law when God appeared to him in the middle of a burning bush. David was looking after his father’s sheep when the prophet Samuel went to the house of Jesse looking for a new king for Israel. Shepherds were among the first to receive the good news about the birth of Jesus.

The farther we get from farm life the less we realize about what farming actually involves, It is not a clean, 9-5 job. In Jesus day it was not a safe job as wild animals and robbers out to get some free meat did not care about the a shepherd standing in their way.

It was hard, yet necessary work! Ironically though, shepherds in Jesus day would be considered among the lower classes at least by the religious elite. They looked after the sheep of other, richer folks, probably including that same elite class of religious leaders. They lived with the sheep and could not always observe the religious rituals required of faithful people. After a time, they probably smelled just like the sheep and their clothes would be far from clean. They may have broken various laws against trespassing as they sought good pastures for their flocks. Yet Jesus calls himself the good shepherd in the same way that God is referred to as a shepherd, especially in Psalm 23 with which we are all familiar. Like many in the service industry today, their labour was necessary but grossly undervalued and those who depended upon them would regard them with disdain.

I wonder what this says about the place of the faith community in society: are we to be found with the business suits around a boardroom table with our perfect clothes and limousines or are we to be found with those whose work is the backbone of the society but who are undervalued and even shunned? Are we a community which welcomes all those who come to us or do we require a certain kind of dress before we are willing to welcome people and make them comfortable?

Do we come to receive the care of the good Shepherd or do we come with the understanding that having been cared for we will, in turn, care for others?

Of course, we know the answer to this - at least intellectually. Yet, we human beings have a knack for justifying all the ways in which we let ourselves off the hook.

Love one another! Seems like a simple commandment. We have so overused that word thought that it has ceased to have any real meaning at all. In the Greek language there are four words for love while we have one! So we can say I love you to a spouse or a child or a friend- knowing that the love we have for and receive from each is very different. We can love a pet and I suppose that pet can love us in return - even if dog love might be limited to wagging of the tail and a very wet “kiss”. We can love our Mom or our Mom’s cooking and its all the same word.

The love we are talking about here is not a syrupy feeling but a way of living so that one gives one’s own self to and for another. Parents understand this - all parents know how much infants and young children take before the relationship can become even remotely reciprocal. This passage goes beyond the giving and receiving of love in return, to the giving of love without expecting anything in return, because we have already received love.

In this and the next three years we will be having many 100 year anniversaries of the most well know battles of the Great War, or First World War, as it became known. The most common context for the laying down of one’s life for another is that of war when one soldier dies for another or for their country.

However, most of us will never be called to consider giving our lives in that way. We all live in community and those of us who are here this morning are part of another community, along side of our community of family, friends and political boundaries. Our Christian faith calls us to a community of neighbours without the usual borders or boundaries of gender, class, ethnic origin, nationality or residency. Therefore the people of Hantsport and area are no more or less our concern or responsibility than those living on the streets of Toronto, New York, Bangalore India or those suffering from the massive earthquake that hit the impoverished mountain nation of Nepal just a day or so ago. This isn’t supposed to be Downton Abby here the classes are clearly separate but a community of love where each lives for the other and loves unconditionally.

Time after time Jesus challenged people to break down the barriers that prevented them from expressing care and love to one another. With his own live he challenged all of us to a love that is costly and that is given freely, without promise or hope of reciprocation, because that is the kind of people God’s love in Christ has made us. Because we have received the gift of God’s great love in Jesus we are givers; we are lovers.

We have the best teacher in the world - let us go forward to be loving shepherds of all of God’s lanbs.

Amen.

Acts 8: 26-40
Psalm 22
1 John 4: 7-21

A Welcome for All!

A few years ago the show “LIVE With Regis and Kelly” was enticed to film two shows in Charlottetown PEI. They were given the royal treatment in the hopes of bringing tourists who had never heard of PEI. I know the Google traffic that week was phenomenal but I am not sure if the expected surge in tourism ever materialized. At any rate, there was one segment in which Kelly and her family were filmed horseback riding in “the wilderness of PEI”. We Islanders all laughed at this description.. Anyone can look at a road map of PEI and notice there is NOWHERE that is more than a couple of miles from a road! PEI also has no poisonous snakes, no bears, and only a few coyotes! By contrast in the rest of the country there are vast areas where there few if any roads and where getting lost could put one’s life in real danger. Compared with Manhattan however, any place with more than an acre of woods might as well be a vast wilderness.

In the biblical story the wilderness is both real and dangerous. It is also a place of encounter with the Holy. The people of Israel left Egypt and lived in the wilderness for 40 years, an entire generation. In the wilderness they were transformed from a slave people under the thumb of Pharaoh to a nation under their God. Many prophets went to the wilderness to encounter the Holy and/or to escape from those who were seeking to kill them. When prophets “speak to power” it does not always go well for the prophet! Jesus went to the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry to wrestle with questions which would determine the shape of that ministry. Jesus also frequently went to wilderness-like places to talk with the God he called “Father”.

It would seem to be counter-intuitive to go to the wilderness to experience an opportunity for reaching out to those who might be receptive to the Gospel message. Yet Philip is directed by the Spirit to go there and to place himself in the path of one who was ready to hear the Good News of Jesus the Christ,

A great deal of preaching on the passage from Acts focusses on the openness with which Philip encountered the eunuch from Ethiopia and it is used as a challenge for us, the church, not to exclude people who were on the edges of society.

I can sum that all up in one sentence. As a Christian community we must welcome everyone - not just the people who are like us! We usually assume that if we were to place ourselves in the story we would be Philip and the message to us would be: WELCOME EVERYONE.

I’d like to take a little different perspective on this passage this morning and it is that of the man referred to as “an Ethiopian eunuch.” I would like to challenge us all to see ourselves in this unnamed man.

While his race made him a foreigner who would have stood out because of his darker skin, and perhaps his clothing would have been different as well, that is not really what made him an outsider! The people of Israel would have had political and social interactions with Ethiopians since the well-known liaison between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.

In this story the fact that this man is referred to as a eunuch makes it that fact that is important. In case you don’t know, a “eunuch” was a man who had been castrated. In the ancient, or even more modern world, there were two reasons to castrate a boy or a man. Boys with beautiful soprano voices were sometimes castrated so that their voices would not deepen and change. Men who worked in the King’s harem would be castrated so they would pose no danger to the king’s wives or, in this case, the Queen.

While he may, or may not, have had a choice in the matter, the law of Moses would have strictly forbidden such a man from fully participating in the worship life of the people of Israel. We are told that he was returning from worshipping in Jerusalem - but he would not have been permitted in the court of the men because of his ‘defect’.

This man had enough money to have a biblical scroll of his own and they were very expensive. In this passage he is introduced while he is riding in a chariot, reading out loud, (which was comon in that time period), and Philip runs along beside him and asks him if he understands what he is reading. I don’t know about you but if I were in the wilderness, riding along in my luxury chariot, and a scruffy local comes running alongside I would not wait to hear what he wanted but instead ask my driver to give the whip a good crack and get the horses moving. I would be afraid that his guy was a bandit, as they were common on all wilderness roads.

However, maybe the Spirit was speaking to this un-named man at this point as well, and he invites Philip to ride with him and allows Philip to teach him about the ways in which the early Christian community sees the life of Jesus as reflective of that part of Isaiah!

It is good news for the rich foreigner and he asks, “Is there anything to prevent me from being baptized?” There is no reason so he is baptized and both part company and Philip continues proclaiming the gospel.

Perhaps this passage teaches us that we are not the gatekeepers of the gospel message; we don’t decide who is in and who is not! The Spirit is the one who calls!

Many years ago one of my churches put a sign on the front lawn to welcome the campers at the local campground - “Camper’s church, come as you are.” They had been doing this for years! When you are tenting you don’t usually take your church clothes and might feel uncomfortable going to church when you have not packed your “Sunday best”. It brought out quite a few people who might not have come but who felt welcomed by the sign but I could not convince the locals to dress more casually for the summer so that the campers would not feel out of place, despite our welcome.

Yet, this is about more than what we are wearing on the outside! We all live our lives outside of the church from Monday to Saturday and some of us have come here feeling that we have to keep our shortcomings well hidden or we would not be welcomed or accepted. Or we have stopped coming because something has happened in our lives or our family and we have gotten the idea that we are no longer worthy to be part of the Christian community. The man in the chariot COULD have been reading one of those passages that listed all the people that were excluded, (and most lists would have included him) but he was not, he was reading one of the passages from a section biblical scholars have called, the suffering servant songs’.

Some of us come and put on our church faces, smiling even when we don’t feel like it, or not coming if we are troubled, perhaps because we just might start to cry if someone says “hello” or worse yet, “how are you?” Or perhaps because we are embarrassed with what has happened or worry that others will say over the dinner table, “Did you see so and so at church this morning – they don’t belong there after what they have done!”

One of my church folks once said he found more Christianity at AA than in church! Whether that was true for his congregation or not, it is a stinging indictment of “churchly people”.

There are many things, and some biblical verses, that tell us we are not good enough and that we need to change before God could possibly love us - that we forget that one of the fundamental principles of the Christian faith is grace.

The moment you begin to think you are not good enough remember Jesus and remember grace.

The moment you begin to think that you are good enough, remember Jesus and remember grace.

Christian community is about accepting that grace, welcoming others on the same journey of faith and supporting one another as we seek to be disciples of the one who lived his life fully and completely to show us God’s unfathomable love.

There is no test to pass to earn God’s love and participation in the community of faith except the desire to do so. Grace will take care of the rest.

Amen!

1 John 5: 1-6
Psalm 98
John 15: 9-17

Love is Not a Feeling!

One afternoon over 20 years ago I was spending some time with my nephew and his baby sister. My niece was crawling around as children her age tend to do and at some point he picked her up and unceremoniously dumped her on the landing at the bottom of the steps. Their mom spoke harshly to him and he replied, in his defence, “But MOM she was bovering me”. Children need to be taught that hurting another person is not acceptable, even if they are being annoyed by that person’s behaviour! Children need to be taught to be loving.

One of the mistaken assumptions that we have though is that true love is a feeling. It is not. Love is a choice - we are called to make. In a movie I saw a few years ago a husband, who could NOT have been easy to live with said to his wife, “I wouldn’t blame ye if ye stopped loving me.” She replied, “I may hate ye more but I’ll never love ye less”.

There are a number of war-related observances happening this spring. 100 years ago today the world was at war and VE day was 70 years ago this week.

Most of us would be familiar with the gospel passage being used in the context of soldiers giving their lives in battle for their comrades or for their country yet is is not just soldiers to exibit this love. The many who rescued or hid Jewish people from the Nazis showed such love.

“Left to Tell” is the story of a survivor of the Rwandan Genocide whose life was spared by being hidden in the bathroom of someone’s home. In this and several similar stories what has struck me is that the ones held prisoner or hiding in fear for their lives do not emerge with hatred for their captors or their collaborators.

While this passage was originally written in the context of persecution and real life and death choices - it can be relevant to us in the peaceful and safe Annapolis Valley in 2015.

While we are peaceful and safe we cannot say that we are as prosperous as we used to be. Good jobs are hard to come by and competition is stiff. I wonder what this passage says in that kind of context: you hear that a company is hiring and you could do that job but you also know that your fellow and equally well educated burger flipper at the Golden Arches has even more qualifications than you have. Do you apply and not tell her or do you apply and also tell her and let the employer make that decision?

There is a great deal of promotion these days about organ and tissue donation - a single person can help many, many people if organs and tissues are offered for donation by the family if the circumstances of a death are “right”. Yet some people cannot bring themselves to offer this gift and some families cannot bring themselves to okay it in a time of grief - yet what better way to make a gift in the midst of a tragedy.

Then there are those who are “living donors” - a living donor obviously cant give a heart, as we have only one but living donors can give bone marrow, as I mentioned, or a kidney of which we only need one if the donor is careful for the rest of his or her life or we can donate a piece of our liver, which I am told will regenerate.

People who have raised their own children take in foster children, who are often very needy and vulnerable. A cousin of mine went to university with someone whose family was very poor. They scraped together enough money to send one child to university and then that child saved enough money to send the sibling next in line and that child did the same. That was back in the days when this a much more realistic venture, but you get the picture.

We are a very individualistic society - or very family based. We share what we can spare and if we have extra we are reluctant to share that because we have been encouraged to see our extra for our own use rather than for sharing with others.

Part of what Christian Family Sunday is about is going beyoond our “blood family” to recognize and care for our family that comes from being God’s children!

I know a minister who has taught his children that a large portion of their “extra” will go to help those who, not only have no “extra” but who don’t have “enough” in the first place.

We all have the tendency to increase our needs when our income increases. We buy a bigger house not because we need to but because we can and then we need all our money because of that choice.

I was visiting someone one day and she was taking a couple of chickens out of the oven and I assumed she was having a lot of people in to dinner but she informed me she had just decided to cook a home cooked meal for a bunch of people so she was getting them ready to deliver them - just because she could and they were not likely to or could n o longer make that kind of meal for themselves.

The “proof is in the pudding” as they say and this has as much to do with life as it does with cooking.

I know of a number of people who have gone back to school to change careers and their families support them in that even though it means less money coming in, more going out and more chores and added responsibilities for the growing children because mom or dad is finally following their heart, their dream or their call.

Giving examples is dangerous because someone may have decided not to “make the sacrifices to lay down their lives” for another because of the circumstances, or often because it has become a recurring pattern - the Gospel is not about beating people up for the choices they have made but about telling compelling stories and allowing people to find their own way to faithfulness and way of expressing love taht gives of self or goes the “second mile.”

Let us all commit to a life of love, whatever that means in our journey.

Amen.

1 John 5: 9-13

Psalm 1
John 17: 6-19

Lessons in Prayer!

Two provinces have just completed provincial elections.

Each party has a set of principles, a set of promises, a list of candidates but on the day after the swearing in ceremony, it may seem like a broken record is playing when we are told by a new government that this or that promise will have to wait because the “books are in worse shape than we thought.” It seems only a “previous government spends too much!”

The life of following Jesus is not that much different in SOME respects. The people expected a messiah who raise up an army, defeat Rome, and make Israel great again ! Jesus words were, instead, of giving up power, loving your enemies, going the second kilometre, and turning the other cheek.

2000 years later, all church-goers have dreams and visions for their church; they, or rather we, have needs, wants and desires.

The new minister should have a way of making everyone get along, allow the “old guard” to step back and inspire a newer and younger set of people to take their place. Whether the people want change, or not, is up in the air.

The stewards and trustees must be able to squeeze full value out of every nickle and do more with less. We have to keep everyone happy.

The choir must achieve the right balance between the singing of old favourites and new pieces.

The Sunday school must be filled with eagre, bright eyed, children who bring their parents.

Does that about sum it up in the “imaginary church?”

Every year we read similar biblical stories, beginning with the wait for Jesus Birth and every year, but may seem as if nothing has changed! .

On a long car trip a new highway can make some difference but it isn’t going to love Sydney Mines any closer or the flight to the Disney Resort much less tedious!

Yet, as Christians, we are meant to be at home on the journey - its not about arriving as if nothing else is important. I have heard it said, only half in jest, that “some Christians are so heavenly minded they are no earthly good!” I’ve known some of them!

On this day, this Sunday before we celebrate the “Birthday” of the Church at Pentecost, we “overhear” a prayer by Jesus on the behalf of the faithful, on the night before he is killed..

What is he getting at underneath all of that fancy, flowery language? It can leave us scratching our heads as to its meaning. What IS Jesus getting at here? Jesus is praying FOR those followers and, their successors. In this prayer Jesus pours out his heart to God and, in so doing, gives us instructions in prayer.

FIRST: He prays for the faith community. He speaks to God on their behalf. He ALSO turns the community over to God.

In this prayer Jesus is turning the lives of his followers to God. It was not his ministry anymore; he could not do everything. So often we pray for insight and perhaps some “marching orders” but we leave little room for God to steer the whole enterprise in a new direction! This is an important point: THE FUTURE OF THE CHURCH DOES NOT DEPEND UPON US, BUT DEPENDS ULTIMATELY, ON GOD.

Jesus is not leaving us alone to fend for ourselves as best we can, but is trusting in God to care for his flock as he did. We too can overhear the same message; that God will be present in our life and work as a faith community. We need to remember that we cannot do anything worthwhile apart from the grace and power of God.

The SECOND thing we hear in this prayer is the closeness between Jesus and God. This is no casual acquaintance. This is no occasional relationship. Jesus knows he will be heard; Jesus knows he is being heard as he is speaking. Throughout the gospels we are told that Jesus goes off by himself to pray; on this day we hear that life of prayer.

Jesus is not like the whining child who says, “but daaaaad, you promised” but rather the child who is able to say, “I am expecting that your promises will come to pass. I’m not expecting them to look like I want them to , but what you want!”

The THIRD thing we hear in this passage, is, in a way, what we don’t hear. It seems clear in this prayer that there are NO LIMITS to Jesus’ trust. There are no limits to this relationship. There are no conditions here; (We may tell our teenager - if you clean your room without being asked, or get better marks, I will take you to the mall). There are no limits and no conditions here There are also no time limits - because Jesus is able to place his future in God’s hands, even as he faces death, we too can contemplate the idea of a limitless future with God and we can do so with joy.

The News Interpreter’s Bible, Vol 9 (1995), Abingdon Press, has been the basis of my sermon this week.

So as the community faces the prospect of a life without the physical presence of Jesus their teacher and guide, they are assured that God’s care and grace will see them through.

Well, that was 2000 years ago, more or less. We never knew the living, breathing human known as Jesus of Nazareth, in the first place; what relevance does overhearing this prayer have for us?

The reality of life is that our greatest fear is NOT change; it is LOSS. The disciples were facing losses of great . They had come to depend on Jesus so much for he had shown them the heart of God in a way they had found so amazing and so compelling, that they could not imagine anything else than listening to Jesus forever. But here he is, telling them that he is going to be leaving, SOON, but then praying for them.

All Pastoral Charges are, in some way, facing uncertain futures. Across all of the mainline churches, attendance and participation is declining. Things aren’t like they used to be. The church just isn’t as important as it used to be. Even those who want to, cannot peel and cook a zillion bushels of potatoes, onions, and the dozens of eggs needed for the potato salad for the church supper. Everything we do seems harder and harder.

For generations, we in the church had been accustomed to church being part of the social fabric. Everyone went to church. When the church spoke, decision makers listened. In terms of commerce nothing much conflicted with Sunday morning worship. This is no longer the case. We are now a minority in society and even in our own quiet, rural towns and communities.

This is probably closer to the situation faced by the early church that we have been in generations. It seems that we need to get used to it, but perhaps it will be better in the end. The situation frees us to be prophetic and speak truth to power when we need to.

God cares for us as Jesus cared for those who were his closest friends. God’s care and power makes our lives of faithfulness possible. We can go into an uncertain future knowing that we do not walk alone for past, present and future are all in God’s hands.

Amen and Thanks be to God.