Indexed by Date. Sermons for Epiphany Year A

February 13, 2011

These texts were not used because of a storm the week before and the week before's texts were used on the 13th.

February 20, 2011

Leviticus 19: 1-2, 9-18
Psalm 119
1 Corinthians 3: 10-11, 16-23
Matthew 5: 38-48

Wouldn’t It Be Nice?

In what kind of world would you like to live? If you buy the bill of goods the advertising industry tries to sell you, the good life, the desirable life, can be had by purchasing the right things. Purchase the right toothpaste, the right deodorant and shampoo, the right vacation locations, the right windows and doors, the right car, shop at the right clothing and hardware stores, and talk to your doctor about a prescription to fix those nagging problems of ageing. If your career is going nowhere, train for a new career while sitting in your living room, while looking after your toddlers, you can do it in your spare time - in no time at all - or, or you could try Lotto 649 - it seems that everyone on these loto commercials wins, and wins big! Wouldn’t that be nice. Wouldn’t you be happy then?

The right look, the healthy body, lots of money - a nice house with the beautiful well rounded, well-dressed, well-behaved children sitting at your dining room table eating the pizza that tastes like delivery but only YOU know it came from your freezer - certain that the savings plan you started when they were born will pay for their education AND your retirement - and if you go to the right bank, it’s guaranteed not to run out, before you do! Now wouldn’t that be nice?

Yet there are other advertisements - advertisements that prompt us to think of the “good life” in other ways. There’s the one with the photographer arranging a school class for a picture and the hungry children are wearing T-shirts pointing out their need. There are the several kids help phone commercials about bullying - with the bullied kids having to hide in lockers and bathroom stalls. These commercials, and others ask you to respond to this need by supporting these causes. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were no hungry children in our Island schools? Wouldn’t it be nice if there was no bullying in schools?

What kind of world do we want? For what kind of life do we strive?

Haven’t we all heard, “God helps those who help themselves”. Surely the kids who are bullied are doing something to antagonize the bully; why don’t they just walk away or ignore it? There are always kids who get “picked on”; it can’t be that bad! Surely the poor would have food if only they were not so lazy, or did not spend their money on cigarettes and alcohol or waste their money on junk food. Surely - as one woman said to me, “they could live on potatoes and oatmeal like my family did when I was a kid.” Maybe we are tempted to agree with the argument, “I work hard for my money - if people wanted to work they would not be hungry.”

You have heard all of those excuses used to “not help”; maybe you have said some of them yourselves. Maybe you believe some of them yourself.

I recall the years when I volunteered at a food bank and sat on the Board. We knew that some people would not give at all because they “knew for a fact” that some of our clients were abusing the system and did not really need the food. As a volunteer I knew what we gave out and it wasn’t a great amount for sure!

As I recall, we had about three categories of family size. I know that many families with children could eat what we gave out in less than a day - especially a family with teenagers. We rarely had fresh vegetables, (we really didn’t have anywhere to keep them in our store room in the hospital basement) we sometimes had no money for the coupons for hamburger, but we usually did have the money for eggs and milk, but how long does 2 litres of milk last a family?) Sometimes when donations fell off, we ran out of something and in those cases we could not give out what we did not have. If a couple had to stretch the truth to get 6 cans of soup, 2 tubes of soda crackers and 4 squares of margarine instead of half of that - they had my sympathy. In some cases of shared custody of children, both parents would claim the same children when the rules said that one parent claimed the children and one had to be in a “no dependants category!” (And would thus received less food). I didn’t like it when we had to “cut people off”, but we had to walk the fine line between what our donors expected and what was needed by those without the means to provide enough food for their families. We had to be fair in the distribution of the food which was donated and ensure that all of the eligible clients received at least some help.

Often we see rules as restrictive and confining. I would suspect that many childen tend to see rules as something mean to ruin your life. Bedtime is meant to prevent kids from seeing the really good tv shows. Curfews are designed to prevent kids from having fun! Teachers make up rules for no reason at all! I longed for adulthood which was, I thought, a utopian existence without rules and restrictions. Despite what I thought as a child of adulthood, I discovered that grownups have rules too and most of us resent at least some of these laws and rules - stop for pedestrians, even before they cross the street; don’t drive and use your cell phone, you only get “points” or “miles” if you spend more than so much money at one time, seniors discount is only on Thursdays, and you have to bring your government seniors ID, etc etc.

When we look at the Bible there are even more rules, some of which (especially those in the Old Testament) to the 21st century ear, sound really, really, useless and pointless - we understand the ones about murder and adultery and jealousy, but why does the Sabbath have to be a day of rest. We need to do stuff because we don’t have time the rest of the week!

What if we need all we make; why do we have to share it; why cant they just get a job and provide for themselves, like we do?

When I was in Wallace the government cut down the elm trees on the manse lawn because of Dutch Elm Disease. When the crew left the only hint there had ever been trees there, were the gigantic stumps; it was as if they had sucked up every spec of debris with a giant vacuum!

When crops are harvested some farmers and some machines make a better job than others in getting as much as possible out of the field. After all, why waste good produce to be left for the seagulls or to freeze? It’s a tradition here though that once the potato digger has left the field, the potatoes lying around are free for the taking (and you better get em before they get sunburned). Former parishioners of mine in New Brunswick had to put the boots to people who decided that they were going to exercise this privilege BEFORE the farmer had even started on certain fields.

We may remember the story of Ruth, a widow from the country of Moab who accompanied her mother-in-law on her return to Israel and she gleaned (or followed the paid labourers through the fields which were being harvested so that she could find enough food to eat. There was no honourable work for single women in those days.

In the book of Leviticus landowners are instructed to deliberately leave some crop on the field for this purpose. The great gift of the land was to be for the benefit of all; the great privilege of being a landowner was tempered by the responsibility of providing for the needy. Indeed, the biblical story emphasized over and over again that since God had given the whole land, no one could claim to have gotten it all by themselves, so all people were to be provided for.

Everyone was supposed to have land of their own, but of course, over time, some people got into debt and those who loaned them money were entitled to some compensation or collateral. Eventually they lost their land and had to go and work for others.

Yet this transfer of land was not supposed to be “forever”; in the year of the “jubilee”, all land that had been lost because of debt had to be returned to the original families.

Wouldn’t it be nice? Wouldn’t it be nice if no one became rich because of the misfortune of others! Well I guess that depends of you are debtor or lender! Wouldn’t if be nice if the whole community looked out for one another?

Jesus practical advice, which is obviously counter to the prevailing wisdom of the day, (its counter to ours too) is along the same lines as the rules read today from the book of Leviticus - of justice, of promoting true community, of turning things upside- down for the sake of God’s abundant love.

For generations the “eye for an eye” phrase had apparently been cited as a support for capital punishment, and it may be that, but we forget (and Jesus contemporaries probably did too) that in its intention, it was a limit on punishment. In other words in the days of “an eye for an eye”, a person could not be executed for stealing food. Of the eleven executions carried out in PEI six were for murder, two for rape and three for theft.

Jesus challenges people to go beyond retribution. Jesus asks, “What is the love and the desire for community that lies at the heart of the law.” We humans have a tendency to be “hard of heart”, we tend to want to “make someone pay” when we have been wronged; our sense of justice often tips heavily toward retribution. Jesus teaching challenges this. His call is for the kind of community that wills the best for even the enemy - Jesus’ advice calls us into the heart of God - calls us to allow God’s heart to change ours. This is the same God who created everything and everyone.

Jesus’ call is for a radical kind of community where the needs of everyone are met; where we work for the good of all, not just our own family and friends.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we lived in world like God intended for all of creation.

Amen!

February 27, 2011

Isaiah 49: 8-16a
Psalm 131
1 Corinthians 4: 1-5
Matthew 6: 24-34

Carved (into) in God’s Palm

In my collection of prized possessions is a Haida hummingbird. It was a table favour at a wedding reception. The couple had been married in Duncan, BC - the home of a Haida First Nation Community of which the bride was a member - the groom was a member of one of the congregations I was serving at the time. The bride’s family, some of them well-known Haida woodcarvers, carved and painted a small hummingbird for each guest at the wedding, and there were enough left over for the guests at the New Brunswick reception. About a week before the wedding, the groom had made a passing comment to his future in-laws that it would be really neat if they could give everyone at the wedding a Haida hummingbird which is an important symbol in the Haida culture. It was the kind of wish he never expected fulfilled! The bride’s brothers and cousins stayed up night and day and hand carved and painted them as a gift to and for the couple. It was a labour of love.

In the Haida culture, the appearance of a hummingbird before a journey or activity is a sign of success in the journey. So a marriage visited by a hummingbird is a sign that the marriage will be visited by happiness and joy and the carved birds are a wish for this happiness.

The passage I read a few moments ago, rom the book of Isaiah, was written by the second of several prophets whose work has been gathered into one book, named “Isaiah”.

When this Isaiah is writing, the people are in exile - they have been defeated and carried off as “prisoners of war” so to speak. They are certain they will never see the land of milk and honey ever again; they are certain that they will never set food on their native soil and what is more they feel so dejected that they are certain that God must have forgotten them. They are alone in a strange and often hostile land. Like they might say in one of the old “westerns”, “they are lower than a snake’s belly”!

Along comes this prophet Isaiah with a “word from the Lord”; along comes Isaiah with a word of hope; along comes this prophet with a word for THEM! One day they will live in that land and they will draw their living from the land that God gave their ancestors - for God has not forgotten - this God has carved them in the palm of his hand, as another translation says.

I suppose we could look at this in two ways. We could see it as if God has carved them, like a woodcarver carves a small object , personally, carefully, lovingly. OR, we could see it like something God wants to remember so he tattoos the name on his palm - even permanent marker would wear off on a sweaty palm - that’s why they put a stamp on the back of your hand when you go to dance or to the plowing match!

Many people acquire tattoos in their youth and in their more sober older age, sometimes literally more sober, they go to great lengths to have removed! Removing a tattoo is not an easy task!

Whatever means of carving or inscribing is meant, it is close, intimate and God is pictured in a very human form - something the Old Testament writers don’t do very often! God is also described as being no more able to forget them than a mother can forget a nursing child. I have no personal experience with this, but I am told that if a nursing mother were to forget to nurse the milk would build up and cause great discomfort and pain.

But the argument of Isaiah does not stop there! What Isaiah is doing is arguing from “the lesser to the greater”; Isaiah takes two human situations where people are least likely to forget and asserts that God’s memory is even better; God’s love is even stronger!

While the situation in which the people of Israel found themselves- exiled to a foreign country, is quite foreign to us, in many ways it does ring true, metaphorically speaking!

In some ways we are a church in exile. The glory days are gone; our children do not have the interest in church that we do or that our parents did. Most of our children have moved away to find their future, if not in greener pastures, then in the concrete jungle of our bigger cities! 30 years ago small farms were being bought up by a farmer looking to grow larger but these days even those “larger farms” cannot provide a living and in many farm families no one wants to stay on the farm. People get tired of the lack of services in rural communities and they move to the nearby towns which just makes the lack of services worse and it becomes a vicious cycle.

Mowing away to greener pastures bas been a common thing for generations (that’s why most of us have cousins “in the Boston States”, but now its practically all of our children! Sports activities take the children who do still live here away fir entire weekends as well as Sunday morning.

Church has become a choice among many and not as many are making that choice. The maintenance of the sheer number of small and often inadequate buildings we are trying to maintain ends up getting in the way of our ministry as it takes all of our time and talents to keep them going.

In the midst of all of this change that seems like so much decay we hear the word of God, - “I have carved you in my hand; I will no more forget you than a nursing mother will forget her child” Let’s stop this “pity party”; I care for you. You are not alone.

God’s people have been this way before - the times are different, but strikingly similar - we are not alone in our perils - they are just different in details - the only thing that isn’t different is God.

Just as the restoration of Israel was not back to “exactly the way it was before” so too we need to keep our hearts and minds open to the ways in which God is leading us in our time and our situation.

The Good News is never that change will not happen; the Good News is that God will be with us in all of the changes; and our God seeks to maintain the relationships that were forged long ago, not as a way of staving off the change but as a way of giving the people what is needed to face the changes with faith and hope.

God is with us, ALWAYS.

Thanks be to God.

Amen!

March 6, 2011 -- Transfiguration Sunday

Exodus 24: 12-18
Psalm 99
2 Peter 1: 16-21
Matthew 17: 1-9

In the movie Titanic, Leonardo Di Caprio, in the role of third-class passenger Jack Dawson, is hanging on the curved rail around the bow of the soon-to-be doomed luxury liner Titanic with the beautiful, but depressed and disturbed Rose DeWitt Bukater and shouts something like, “I’m the King of the World”.

I think of Sir Edmund Hilliary, standing atop Mount Everest - the first human being that we know of to do so. What did he feel like standing there, on the top of the world, quite literally?

Like it or not, many of our young people live their lives on facebook where just about everyone can see both their mistakes and their triumphs. My niece posted a recent picture of herself on her facebook page - she is standing on Citadel Hill in Halifax, arms raised in victory. She was on the women’s hockey team that competed in the Canada Games held recently. Even though her team did not win a medal, she and they were also “on top of the world”!

Behind the small church in West River NB, part of my “Settlement Charge”, sits what we all called West River Mountain - I’ve been to the top once, maybe twice. It used to be a tradition to climb it as a Sunday School outing. It would have been a much easier climb if there were no fallen trees and other such obstacles in the way.

Mountains are mysterious and awesome places - they take effort to climb; sometimes great effort and a great deal of special equipment. Sometimes the climb involves great danger.

While standing on a mountain, it is as if you can see forever - if there are no clouds in the way, or if you aren’t up so high you can’t see anything anyway.

I wrote to my colleague on Facebook, “Come to Dundas for supper and for the best sunset in PEI - the manse in Dundas is high enough and in the right location to have spectacular and unobstructed sunsets - yet most sunsets last only a few moments. One day I could not find my camera and by the time I had located it, the spectacular part of the sunset had passed.

Mountaintop experiences are those moments in time when we have absolute clarity - absolute certainty - yet they pass almost too quickly, almost before you know you have had one - and you are left with a memory - and you don’t have to be anywhere near the rail of a cruise ship, or a mountain.

A friend of mine had one a very powerful one when we were students at Mt A - I think he was just walking across campus! The fact that he could not capture it and stay there was distressing to him. If he could have pitched a tent and stayed in that euphoria forever he would have.

This passage is partly about the identity and purpose of Jesus and partly about the purpose of following. The similar proclamation at Jesus’ baptism did not reach everyone, and some gospel writers present it as a revelation for Jesus alone. This time the revelation is to be secret until after the resurrection. Who would believe them anyway!

The skeptic in me wants to ask, “How did they know it was Moses and Elijah? Of course we cannot answer that question and it overshadows the real questions - Why Moses? Why Elijah?

Well the standard interpretation is that Moses was the representative of the lawgivers; most of the laws in the Old Testament are attributed to him and the revelation he received on Mt Sinai. Elijah was the most well known and perhaps the most courageous of the prophets. His ministry of speaking “truth to power” in confronting King Ahab and Queen Jezebel and the royally sanctioned “prophets of Baal” was a classic example of the courage required of the prophets of Israel. For Jesus to have been conversing with both of them has been taken to mean that in Jesus the law and the prophets have come together. Prophets, of course, don’t really predict the future, they speak of the consequences of not following in the way of God; Prophets are “forth tellers”, speaking FOR God rather than fore tellers, speaking of the future as if they had a crystall ball.

The disciples are in shock and awe and want to preserve this moment; Matthew tells us that they were scared silly - practically speechless. They could think of nothing else than to build tents - a place for the honoured three to stay so that the moment would last forever and they could figure out what it meant.

What was needed though, says Jesus, is to wait until after the resurrection (which held yet more surprises, both terrifying and marvellous at the same time).

What was needed was for the disciples to go down the mountain to where the people lived and to minister from among them.

When I was ordained in 1988, the preacher, the Rev Nancy Price, who had known all of us from her time as Chairperson of Education and Students Committee of Maritime Conference, spoke of being on Citadel Hill in Halifax one day during a time of heavy traffic. She could see the traffic snarls developing and could have communicated a better route to many of the drivers if she had a way to communicate it to them - but it was before cell phones and besides, she did not have everyone’s number. I think she related this experience to ministry in that “ministry from on high” does not work; a minister needs to drive with the people, to work and live with the people with whom they minister; sometimes getting in the same traffic tie ups they do and ministering from that same life experience.

Neither Peter, James or John, would have done the people any good had they stayed on that mountain and neither would Jesus have been able to do much if he had accepted the offer of a tent in which to live. They had to be with the people, as uncertain as that was and as dangerous at it turned out to be for all of them.

It does us no good either to save our religious experiences, or our beliefs, for the time when we are in church on Sunday or for the times when we are gathered with like minded individuals. We are meant to live and be in the world, as disciples, sharing what we believe with others. We are meant to share with others what we have experienced about the benefits of what we have learned and experienced from our faith and from Christian community.

We are not meant to hit people over the head with it, but meant to invite people to join us, to invite people to see for themselves, invite people to join us on the journey of faith - a journey that changes our lives day by day, most often in ways less dramatic than the journey of the twelve disciples, but life-changing just the same. Someone once said that Christian evangelism is about one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread. When we have tasted this bread and especially when we know that there will be enough for everyone, no matter how many eat of it, why wouldn’t we share that news.

We know about the rest of the Christian story; we know the story is continuing to unfold. We can hardly keep that to ourselves can we. Invite a neighbour to church this week. Start easy, invite someone who used to come. Offer to pick them up on your way to Bay Fortune - Offer to take them to the pancake supper on Tuesday - show them how much fun we can have in working and fellowshipping together - its like the song,

“I’ll shout it from the mountaintop, 
I want the world to know, 
The Lord of Love has come to me, 
I want to pass it on.” 

Amen.