Epiphany and the Season After - Year B -- 2012
Indexed by Date. Sermons for Epiphany Year B
Genesis 1: 1-5 Into the Chaos!
Psalm 29
Acts 19: 1-7
Mark 1: 4-11
When I was much younger I was taught that God created the world out of nothing - absolutely nothing. God spoke and it just happened! (Poof!) Our Genesis passage for today is from the first of two creation stories in the early chapters of Genesis. (I didn’t learn that detail in Sunday School! ) The writer of our passage from Genesis could imagine a world without land, without light, without stars, sun or moon, but it seems this writer could not imagine a world without water. Notice that water was already there, at the beginning. It seems that water represented chaos, the world before the hand and power of God touched it. We are told that God’s Spirit hovered over the waters. I can imagine this as a graceful seabird sailing on the currents of air close to the water. There was no light though; there was no way of seeing.
God spoke and there was light; but it was not always “light” - at that time there was day but also night. As part of this first day of work God had set in motion what we call time: one period of light and one of darkness became what we call a “day”. Eventually people decided that a number of days make up a month and a number of months, a year!
This creation story goes on to say that Our God created the lesser light to rule the night but this was not until the fourth day! Where, I wonder, did the light itself come from, if not from the sun, the greater light! For a long time we have known that the moon, this lesser light, has no light or energy of its own, and is like a big mirror to reflect the sun’s light on what would otherwise be the dark side of the earth.
The more we dig into the story the more logical inaccuracies there are - beginning with the fact that this creation story writes about a flat earth. At this point we must remember that this story is theology and not science! I think that one of the points of this story is that God’s power brought order out of chaos and life where there had been none. It was never really intended to be a “fly on the wall” view of what exactly happened and when. We have to leave that to the scientists whose work is to figure those things out. The people for whom this story was written needed to know that God had - at some point in the past - brought order out of chaos and would again! That’s what they needed to hear.
Sometimes an author writes a series of books - Vol 1, Vol 2 and then Vol 3. Then after the books have become best-sellers, the author writes another volume; but its not a Vol 4 but a Vol “i”. I believe it’s called a “prequel” in the publishing industry! 5 years after the success of “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”, author CS Lewis wrote “The Magicians Nephew”. The magician’s nephew, of course, grows up to become Professor Kirke, the owner of the mysterious wardrobe in the spare room of his country mansion.
in 2008, to mark the one-hundredth anniversary of the 1908 publication of “Anne of Green Gables”, Nova Scotian writer, Budge Wilson wrote a prequel to Anne of Green Gables which explained how the orphaned daughter of Walter and Bertha Shirley came to be sent to Avonlea, Prince Edward Island. It explained what her life was like as she was bounced from family to orphanage and how it was that she came to love classic romantic poetry. Lucy Maud Montgomery is no longer alive so she could not do it! Film maker, Kevin Sullivan wrote a screen version, entirely unrelated to Wilson’s book, but I must say that I felt the Wilson book was much closer to what I had imagined myself. Even though I taped it, I don’t think I’ll bother to watch it again.
Even though the book of Genesis appears to go to the very beginning of time and seems to be an account of the early history of the “people of Israel” and even though it is now at the beginning of the Bible it is really a prequel. Despite the fact that this book, along with some others, claim Moses as their author, Genesis was written many generations later.
A great deal of Genesis was written when the people were in trouble. It could have been when they were in Egypt crying out for freedom or when they were captives in Babylon. While Genesis had not been written down, they probably had heard stories about Abraham and about God’s promise to him. Yet, they were, very clearly, not living that promise! They were “at sea”; they were “drowning in sorrow”; they were being overwhelmed by a chaos which threatened to destroy them. Throughout times like this they struggled with many deep questions, such as the plaintive and heart wrenching cry of Psalm 137: “How could they sing their God’s song in a strange land?” Some were in despair! As an alternative to despair, while in exile, many had adopted the ways and religious practices of those who were around them. They had married non-Israelites and were settled in and had essentially abandoned their past. They were immigrants who would learn the new language and forget the old one! Soon their nation would be but a memory, or worse, disappear altogether.
Wait a minutes, say the authors and editors of the book of Genesis - and there were a number of authors- not only . This passage is a wake up call to remember their story. This passage calls them to remember so that they will know that God had NOT abandoned them; their God had much to say about power over chaos. It is as if someone had handed the people a pamphlet with the title, “for those who feel this chaos will overwhelm them”. If you feel like the waters are closing over your head, just read this - know that God is a God who brings order out of chaos - our God is the very one who created how we mark time itself by making day and night. It is this God who has named us and given us meaning and purpose. It is on this God that we can trust and it is in his care for us that we can live our lives.
Over the life of the Christian church, a lot of people have struggled with Jesus accepting a “baptism of repentance for the remission of sins”. The idea that Jesus was sinless has been around a long time and according to the story in Matthew’s gospel John did not feel worthy to baptize him and felt that Jesus should baptize him instead.
Jesus saw this as necessary though. In the light of what I just said about the purpose for writing down the first creation story in Genesis, perhaps he saw it as a way of showing he completely identified with the human condition of the people to whom he had come to minister. As had been the case in the past, the people were in a bad state. They were not in exile but they lived in land occupied by a cruel and foreign power - THE ROMAN EMPIRE. Their lives were not their own, their religious leaders were actually compromising their faith in order to survive. John lived outside the system; John the Baptizer existed outside all religious systems. In the tradition of the aesthetic prophets he lived in the desert - and lived on locusts and wild honey and wore clothing made of camel’s hair. He preached what he saw as the word of God, despite the cost - and we know from other parts of the story, he eventually paid with his life.
So here comes Jesus, out of obscurity to begin his public life. While he sometimes retreated to the wilderness to pray, his life would be lived with the people, among the people, sharing their food, their lives, their joys and their sorrows. What better way to show this solidarity, to experience what they experienced by allowing the waters of baptism to cover his heard. What better way than to allow the symbolic chaos of the Jordan River, the dirty - muddy Jordan, to cover him and name him fully and completely human.
So here we have Jesus preparing to start his ministry by willingly entering into the chaos that limits the lives of so many human beings. In Epiphany we sang the words - “when God is a child there is joy in our song, The last shall be first and the weak shall be strong, and none shall be afraid. “ Hope is A Star, by Brian Wren. There are few creatures more vulnerable than a human child - the reality of the incarnation means that the relationship between God and human beings has changed fundamentally. God was in Christ as a vulnerable baby, just like you used to be, just like I used to be. Jesus came on that day to further demonstrate he was one of us, in all things, willing to enter into the chaos that limited their lives, He came bringing Good News - the news that God was with them as God had always been and would not allow the chaos to overwhelm them.
We all have our challenges from time to time. Whether they are welcome or not we sometimes may feel as if these challenges might overwhelm us - we may be working full time and going to school and doing exactly what we know we need to do and what we want to do OR we may be coping with the loss of a loved one - alone for the first time in our lives - somehow feeling that no one has been this way before and no one truly understands. It is true, all of our situations are unique, but the message for us is that God is with us and God is the one with the power to bring light and order out of utter chaos and life and purpose out of death and despair.
Let us go into the new year knowing that our God is the one who can bring us to light and life and purpose and meaning.
Amen!
1 Samuel 3: 1-10 (11-20)
Psalm 139
1 Corinthians 6: 12-20
John 1: 43-51
Have you ever gone to someone’s house or office and discovered that they were furiously searching for something and you offered to help. Perhaps you had a good idea what that lost item looked like but perhaps they had to describe it before you could begin. Now, what if your friend said she was looking for a zarf! Before you say that you have never heard of a zarf, I will tell you that you all have seen at least one and know what I am talking about, but you probably don’t know it by that name.
In one of my former churches the UCW used disposable plastic coffee cups that were cone shaped. I don’t know where they got them but they had about a million of them on hand. The key to the system was the reusable cup holder that was made of a more durable plastic and had a handle and a little base so the cup would not be too hot to hold and so that it would not tip over. My sister got a cup of coffee at the Sheltered Harbour the other day, picked it up and said to me, “Feel that!” I did and realized that it was almost too hot to carry. Without being asked, the waitress pulled a cardboard sleeve from under the counter and my sister put her coffee cup into it! The cup was no longer too hot to handle.
Apparently the proper name for a coffee cup holder or sleeve is a zarf. It’s a word that comes from the middle east where their zarfs are usually silver and very fancy, and I first discovered the word in a scrabble dictionary when I was trying to find a use for my “z”. I would agree that it’s what you might call a rare or uncommon word.
Our reading from the Hebrew Scriptures for today tells us that in the days of Samuel’s childhood, “The word of the Lord was rare and visions were not widespread”, but it also tells us both that “the lamp of God had not gone out,” and that Eli was practically blind. This lamp would have been used to illumine the sacred “holy of holies” during the night and it went out every morning. Of course, the phrase about the lamp not having gone out simply meant that it was still night, but metaphorically speaking it seems to me that what it is really saying that “while the word of God was rare, and the recognized leader was practically blind, there was still hope”.
At this point a short background might be helpful - to remind us who Eli and Samuel are. Samuel is the child of Hannah and Elkanah. They had not been able to have children until Hannah had prayed at the temple and the old priest Eli, initially thinking she was drunk, was very critical of her. When he found out that she was actually heartbroken over not being able to have a child he promised that God would give her a son. This did indeed happen and the child was named Samuel which means, literally, “God has heard”. When the child was very young he was taken to the temple and he became a servant of old Eli, a name which means, literally, “my God”. We must keep in mind that names and their meanings were important back then.
We know that the people were living through a difficult time. The hereditary priesthood was dishonoured by the sons of Eli who had behaved abominably. Eli knew that they had conducted the sacred rituals while intoxicated and that they had taken advantage of the young women at the temple, but Eli lacked the courage to confront his sons. The arrival of Samuel, the innocent child of faithful parents was another chance at a new leader, a faithful leader being raised up.
This is a story of God doing something new, or at least of God doing something old in a new way. If things were working as they were supposed to, God would have spoken to Eli, whose name ironically means “my God”, remember, not to the young boy Samuel. But Eli did not get it until he had been awakened by Samuel THREE times. His blindness is more than physical; perhaps, along with his loss of courage, he has lost the ability to discern the call of God itself.
Yet, he isn’t stupid. In the back of his mind he knows its not good news for him, or else he would be receiving the news. It must have been very humbling - to be passed over for a mere child!
We all know that animals, especially dogs can hear sounds humans cannot. People that know these things, tell me that some teenagers have ring-tones and alerts on their cell-phones that cannot be heard by adults. Apparently, as you age, the range of tones the average human can hear becomes narrower.
Has someone ever said something to you and they had to repeat it because you weren’t paying attention - and then when they repeated you realize there WAS a part of your brain that had heard it the first time and you wonder how you could have tuned that out.
When I was a child I loved this passage. When I was exploring my call to ministry this was an important passage. However, this passage is about more than God calling the young, or the one we would least expect. It is also a passage about the message being ignored by those who are supposed to hear it and that message than being brought to us by others.
As I reflect on the relevance of this passage for today, I am led to ask the question: what prophetic messages are we ignoring today, messages that others are indeed hearing.
One of the types of messages that we are called to hear today are environmental ones. These prophets have been telling us for years that we have been consuming too much of the earth’s resources and pumping too much pollution into the air and water. Climate change is being blamed on global warming and we are being told what we can do to try and stop or reverse some of it. We certainly can’t ignore our weird weather, especially when we look at the long term trends in the high arctic.
When we come right down to it, we don’t want to make the changes we are told are necessary. We ask, “how will we get to work without our private cars? In rural PEI there is no public transit at all. We are not the kind of society we used to be when there were fewer cars, poorer roads, but a solid local network to supply our goods and services. We can’t walk to the store and we don’t have a cow, pig and a few chickens in our shed to supply our milk, meat and eggs. We like the standard of living that has come from the global economy – unless, of course, our job has been sent to China or another developing country. We don’t really like it when our young people go to Fort McMurray, but if it means they can come back with a nest egg to settle down, then it must be good, right!?
Every developed country has a tug of war of some kind over taxes and social programs. We want low taxes and good social programs and we have had them for a long time. There are those who say that this has to end, and are trying their best to dismantle as much as they can. However, there are those whose voices are struggling to be heard that say that our riches should not come at the expense of the most vulnerable.
Throughout the biblical record the care of the poor and the vulnerable was the benchmark of a healthy Israel. The early church very quickly set up a system to ensure that widows and orphans were taken care of.
It seems to me that we are bing called to a broad based conversation about how we can structure the economy to meet the needs of the most people - not the wants of the wealthy and powerful elites. That being said we need to realize that most of us are fabulously wealthy compared to the majority of the world. Instead of treating this as an interesting factoid, we need to look at it as a mission statement. About 30 years ago a professor of mine had a poster in his office, “Justice, not just us”.
What are our prophets telling us about gay and lesbian rights, about Aboriginal rights in the wake of the Residential Schools settlements and the conditions in many, if not all First Nations communities.
I think Eli knew at least some of what Samuel was going to report. Perhaps, in his heart he still harboured the memory of his relationship with the God of heaven and earth. In his heart he still knew God and knew what God expected of the people called to be a “light to the nations” - in his heart he knew he had messed up. But he was brave enough and humble enough to hand the baton over to Samuel so that he could lead the people back to faithfulness and become a community of justice and righteousness.
Which prophetic voices and messages are we ignoring? Who is hearing them now? Will we have the courage to listen to them?
Amen!
Jonah 3: 1-5, 10
Psalm 62
1 Corinthians 7: 29-31
Mark 1: 14-20
Imagine that you suddenly find yourself responsible for giving a piece of good news to your worst enemy. Your family and this person’s family have been on the outs for such a long time that there is no hope of repairing the rift. Now, this good news will change their lives for the better but only if they act on it immediately. You dislike this person so much you decide to go to Moncton for an impromptu shopping trip and book a room at Crystal Palace for the weekend. You gas up the car, pick up the grandchildren and head for the Bridge. Confederation Bridge - only way to drive to Moncton in the winter instead of taking this good news to that person who lives just down the road. You take the grandchildren along for good measure because their presence would make turning around much, much harder!
The prophet Jonah did not want to go to NINEVEH! There was nothing good about Nineveh. We know that Nineveh was the flourishing capital of an empire that had defeated Israel as they began to take over most of the known world and they were hated by just about everyone else at that time.
The story would be a good one for the repertoire of a stand up comedian! The very description of the city is almost farcical - we are told that it was three days journey across. Three days journey- that would be an enormous city. The ruins of Nineveh have been well excavated and it is speculated that if Jonah walked the streets of each and every neighbourhood in Nineveh it would have taken him three days, but perhaps the task was so onerous to Jonah that the city only seemed that big. We’ve all been there!
Even though it’s not in our reading for today we all remember the part about the fish (though it is sometimes referred to as a “sea monster”, it is never called a whale)! Jonah tries to run away from the call of God and ends up in the belly of a great fish where he stays for three days. After he is vomited out on the beach he gives up on trying to run away from God, and goes and does what God asks. A fast is proclaimed by the king who commands all the people and all the animals to exhibit traditional signs of repentance - sackcloth and ashes and the result is that God’s mind is changed and they are not destroyed.
In the end Jonah is as pig-headed and bigoted as he was in the beginning! The book ends with God giving Jonah a “get your priorities straight” type of talking to!
Jonah just does not get it about God and God’s love. He does not get it about the mission of the people of God. This story was pointed and challenging, if the first listeners had enough courage to hear it!
In the aftermath of any war it is not surprising that the defeated party would have great animosity toward the victor. Even the victors justify how they feel by continuing to see the enemy as less than human! I am told that in the holocaust the only way they could get the people to treat the Jewish population as they did was after many years of portraying them as less than human. The allies also quite successfully made the soldiers in the German and Japanese to appear as less than human.
While you would think that Jonah would enjoy calling down fire and brimstone upon their heads, Jonah knew something about God which made him very reluctant to go! He knew that God would forgive them if they repented. He wanted to see them burn, so he decided not to warn then and thought that this inaction would seal their fate. You may laugh at such convoluted and bizarre logic but he did not want to give them any opportunity which would help them find life! Clearly, Jonah was not a nice person. Clearly Jonah was also very much mistaken about what being part of the “chosen people” meant.
So after all of this has been said, - what does this passage, this long ago and far away tale, have to say to us?
I wonder if Jonah thought that God’s love for them would be diminished by God loving other people? Did he think - do we think that there will be less for us if God loves someone else more than we think God ought to? If we really think that we deserve this love more than others how does this leave room for grace in our lives.
And if we are talking about material possessions, and the earth’s resources we do now realize that not everyone can consume at the rate we do, but does this mean that we are not prepared to give something up so that others may have enough to simply live?
What if we adopted a stance that God’s love for each of us, and God’s call to each of us, demands that we seek the best for each other -east and west; north and south; poor and rich. How would this change our foreign policy? How would it change how we respond to the questions over Palestine and Israel and the situation that has been teetering on the abyss for generations? What if we translate it into our own country - what about the chronically poor. Some people don’t give to the food bank or Christmas Daddies because they believe that everyone could have enough if they only worked harder or did not waste their money. Where is grace in that; where is Christian charity; where is our call to embody God’s love.
This is a story that challenges some of our long held notions of who is worthy and who is not! Jonah had his plans made and his mind made up and then God called him. There is a Jewish proverb that goes something like this, “If you want to hear God laugh, tell him what you have planned”.
I got a great kick out of the Tatamagouche version of “The Week the Women Went”. It was, of course, overblown for television, but like Jonah some of the people did change in positive ways. One young dad was totally, as he put it, “grossed out” by the thought of changing his baby’s dirty diapers. But since he had to do it, by the end of the week he could do it without wanting to throw up!
Last night I was talking to a student in a Social Work program about her work with people incarcerated for various crimes. Some people cannot understand why she spends her time with “people like that”! As we talked, I remembered the times I myself visited the Farm Anex in Dorchester when I was a student at Mount A. In the light of our topic for today I wondered about how many of us write off all people with a criminal record as somehow being less worthy of the benefits of society. When we think of someone whose crime was serious enough to merit 20 years in jail but what about our so called “young offenders”. From the present government I WILL NOT call it the “Stephen harper Government” as he insists!!!! on down we seem to want to distance ourselves from people who have spent time behind bars and convince ourselves that they are NOT like US! If, like Jonah, write all offenders off, and see them as people unworthy of our trust and living in society ever again, then we might as well keep them behind bars.
Someone might say to me that if I had been a victim of a serious crime I might think differently. I may, but we don’t ask those folks to be involved directly in this work. I might also ask if the way you feel might be different if the offender was your child or your close family member!
Jonah is a call to keep and open mind about the worth and value of others. It asks us the question, “who” or “which group do we de-value because of our preconceived notions, of their race, or gender, or sexual orientation? Who do we de-value because of their past or their parent’s past? Are we willing to put this behind us and go forward?
The people of Israel had many reasons to dislike Nineveh, but they were called to show the heart of a loving, forgiving and calling God to everyone, they were challenged to open their hearts to the people in front of them and around them. Essentially the call is the same today.
Amen
Deuteronomy 18: 15-20
Psalm 111
1 Corinthians 8: 1-13
Mark 1: 21-28
A man went to a store to complain about a product he had purchased and which was not meeting his expectations. Since the time for returning the item had expired the clerk told him that he would not be able to get his money back. The man, unhappy with this answer, raised his voice and almost shouted, “I would like to speak to someone else, someone with a little authority!”
The manager, who happened to be walking by said, “Well, I guess that would be me. I have as little authority around here as anyone else!”
What is authority?
A cousin of mine was an oncologist/ haematologist and practised in the Toronto area. Most of her patients were understandably distressed at a diagnosis of cancer and wanted to read as much as they could about it before their appointment with the specialist. Their source of choice was the world wide web! She often spent a great deal of time explaining how their case was different and, even if the site they were relying on contained reliable and accurate information, the things they found on those sites did not apply to their kind of cancer or circumstances.
What is authority?
We seem to be hard-wired to resist authority though. Children have many people in their lives telling them what to do, or more often, what not to, mostly for their safety. Somewhere in the toddler brain a question like this WILL arise, “If I touch the hot stove when my mom is not watching, it will be ok AND I wont get yelled at!” So the child touches the hot stove, gets burned and or scared or both, and learns, we hope, without too much hurt, that Mom is right after all! Imagine that!
What is authority?
When I am driving and an approaching car, or a car following me, turns on red and blue flashing lights, I have to stop and pull over. That is the law. Police officers are given the power to enforce the laws of Canada, including the laws in the highway traffic act! That power is sometimes referred to as “authority”.
Sometimes clergy are accorded a great deal of authority, sometimes less. In the extreme case, someone might believe that “if a minister says something, it must be true; if a minister does something, it must be ok.” The other extreme would be the opposite: nothing a minister says or does can be true or trusted.
I can remember times when I had no authority at all and it was hard to provide any kind of leadership at all. Normally I have enough that I can enter into dialogue wit people on a project, issue or problem and we seek to solve it together.
Being given great authority is a tremendous responsibility. One year at Maritime Conference the theme speaker was a retired journalist who had been in charge of religious broadcasting for the BBC World Service based in London England. Dr Pauline Webb She had to be very thorough in her fact checking because she quickly realized that many people looked to the BBC for accurate information. In that time there was no internet!
We all know people who claim to know things but are really just pretending to know. The beginning of the novel, Water for Elephants, is set in an “assisted living facility” for seniors. A circus is in town and the staff make preparations to enable the residents to go. In an attempt to impress his fellow residents, one elderly gentleman, claims that he used to work in a circus and his job was to carry the water for the elephants. Another man, somewhere in his 90's gets very upset and tells him that he is lying: “do you know how much water an elephant drinks?” This second man is a retired veterinarian who has actually worked in a circus and knows that you don’t take water to elephants, you take the elephants to the water.
What is authority?
Sometimes authority had to do with the right of the power to make people do or not do certain things. In other cases authority has to do with power to punish those who do not obey those rules. Sometimes the same people have both kinds of authority. Rarely does someone have absolute power or absolute authority. When people with a great deal of power overstep the bounds of their power they are often called to account for it. We can all probably name several cases which have been in the news recently involving police officers and people who died in custody or while being arrested. In one sense the Shafia murder trial in Kingston Ontario which has just gone to the jury involved authority and power, as well as honour. Does a father have the right to absolute control over the women in the family, either young or old?
What is authority? Where does it come from? Is it absolute?
In today’s gospel story we told that the people’s experience of Jesus’ teaching was different from the teaching of those to whom they usually listened. Mark’s gospel explains that this was because “Jesus taught with authority!” I wonder what it was that made Jesus stand out? Was he more educated and had lots of facts and could quote chapter and verse? Did he yell when he was making a point? Did he pound the pulpit? Did he tell them not to listen to anyone else?
Or, was it that he sought no personal gain from his work of teaching, preaching and healing? Was it that they had a sense that Jesus had a kind of authenticity their official leaders did not seem to have?
The social context of first century Palestine is a very complex subject and in recent years a great deal has been written about how the religious leaders had worked out a very precarious, but nonetheless very lucrative, relationship with the Romans who occupied their land. They did not like it when anyone rocked the boat. Jesus came along and challenged everything and raised the ire of both the civil and the religious authorities. The people were tired of oppression. The people were tired of grinding poverty while their leaders lived in luxury. The people liked him. Perhaps, in Jesus the people saw someone who wanted people to get back to a true relationship with the God of their ancestors. Perhaps in him they saw that faithful religious practise was doable. However, some of the people thought he was the one who was going to overthrow the hated Romans and they were disappointed. In the end, he was crucified.
As Christians our authority is generally seen as residing in Jesus of Nazareth. For good or for ill the only source we have for stories of Jesus and his teaching is the New Testament. Primarily found in the gospels, the teachings of Jesus are, of course, also part of the background of the epistles of Paul and the others whose writers gave guidance to the early Christian communities.
Yet, when we say that the Bible has authority for us, we have to be careful. Whenever we read the Bible, newer testament or older testament we need to interpret it because it is not all the same kind of literature. The gospels, while they might appear to be “history” are actually a proclamation of the good news of Jesus. Telling what he said and did accurately and in order, like we would for historical purposes, was not their concern. We need to have some sense of what was going on in the church at the time when Paul wrote in order to understand what he was saying. In addition, when we read the scriptures we cannot read them as if we were not 21st century people living in Canada.
When we speak of the Bible having authority for our lives as Christians we must be careful not to take that as a literal statement that we can find direct guidance for our lives within its pages without first asking these basic questions of interpretation. We cannot be like the woman who thought she could open the Bible and magically find her verse for the day by randomly opening the book and placing her finger on a page. This worked well for a while until, one day the first verse she pointed to was, “Judas went out and hanged himself”. Thinking she would give the Spirit another chance she tried again, this time pointing to, “go thou and do likewise!” She gave up the quest for the magic verse!
The nature of biblical authority is a tricky issue. In 1992, after a couple of years of study the United Church published a document titled, “The Authority and Interpretation of Scripture”. The study concluded a number of things including that biblical authority could only be found in the relationship between an individual and the community; could only be found when taking into consideration both the past and the present and our shared vision for the future. The study also concluded that determining what God’s word for us today is a struggle and that in doing so we can be convicted, liberated and transformed.
In the United Church we have seen scripture as foundational to our lives as people of faith. In addition to scripture we have accepted as authoritative, various faith statements written by church people over the centuries. In the lead-up to union in 1925 those who became United Church of Canada accepted what we now call the “20 Articles of Faith”. They were a faith statement upon which the uniting churches could agree to build the new denomination.
In the years since then the United Church has come up with other statements, explaining and outlining this faith in newer ways. There was one in 1941. In the late 60's there was a so-called “New Creed” which has been slightly revised twice since and about ten years ago, a much longer “Song of Faith”. Within the next few months we will ALL have the opportunity to study these statements to decide if we want to put them into our Basis of Union or constitution to say that they are an official part of what we believe; we are asked to decide if these are statements indicate an compelling interpretation of the will of God in the light of scripture. While the session is charged with the official responsibility of voting, we will all have the opportunity to study the statements.
What words of faith have authority for us ?
Perhaps it is those words which inspire us to become who we say we are ? Is it more than the familiar words that sound good and holy, just like the King James Bible, or is it modern words equally beautiful, which prompt us to express our faith in ways consistent with the world in which we live and the language we use from day to day?
I think that when we encounter the Spirit of the One who proclaimed God’s love with his whole being, we will know what truth is and what is authoritative for us just as those long ago people did when they heard Jesus speak of the life of faith.
Amen.
Isaiah 40: 21-31
Psalm 147
1 Corinthians 9: 16-23
Mark 1: 29-39
We are all, as far as I know, the children of immigrants. Whether or ancestors came as a result of the highland clearances, or the potato famine, or some other unrest in the places of their birth or just to seek adventure and better opportunity, we are not native to this land. We are here for a reason, either political or economic.
Some families are very good at preserving their family stories and some not so much! Some stories become lost as the generation with the experiences die and the children and their children know nothing other than life in the new country. Some children become easily bored and shut out their parents’ stories wishing afterward that they had listened a little more closely.
When I was in high school a number of people fleeing the turmoil after the communist takeover in Vietnam were granted refugee status and moved here to PEI under the sponsorship of various organizations. Few of these people came to places where there was an established Vietnamese community and most did not speak either French or English. For some reason our bus picked up one such student from a house in Sherwood. I believe her name was Lynn. She would try and talk to us in English but her accent was so thick we could not understand her. Lynn carried a fistful of pencils and pens with her EVERY day. I’m not sure why but perhaps she was not accustomed to having access to so many and wanted to make sure they did not disappear. Most of us could not have cared less about pens and pencils as there were usually “more where they came from”.
Lynn had a story of fear and danger and escape and uncertainty and finally a story of being able to live in freedom. I wonder where she is now and if she has children, did she tell them of her escape to a new life in Canada? Does she long for her homeland, even if it was an existence of poverty, hunger, and fear that drove them to run for their lives. Would she go back if she could?
The people to whom Isaiah was writing in this part of the book, were in exile. They were, to use our term, refugees. Their beloved Jerusalem lay in ruins and others were living in what was left of their houses and farming what land was still useable. They could have been excused for believing that their God had abandoned them. They could have been excused for believing that the gods of the Babylonians were stronger than the God of Israel.
They were in danger of losing their story. Isaiah comes in this passage to remind them of that story and to rekindle their faith based in the story. God, their God, is first and foremost the One who created the heavens and the earth. This God is mighty and powerful and over all. This God is also part of their lives, part of creation itself and this God, who was with them in the past, is still with them and in good time, will restore them to Israel.
The language is rhetorical; the prophet cannot believe they have forgotten this. If they have, Isaiah recites the tenets of the faith in beautiful, poetic prose.
Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth
Yet, Isaiah emphasizes, God is not just “all powerful and out there, unconcerned for human beings”; God is with them and UNDERSTANDS what they are going through, perhaps better than they can even articulate to themselves.
We are not a people in exile; we are not living in fear of our lives because of an oppressive and cruel military dictator. Yet, it does not take much to translate this passage to life on our “Fair Island of the Sea” The title of a song written by Lucy Maud Montgomery, extolling the virtues of all things “Island” and often called “the Island Hymn.” I hear these concerns voiced on radio and television and in kitchens and living rooms almost every day. We are living in a time of uncertainty and insecurity of a kind we have not known in a very long time. In terms of employment there seems to be nothing but bad news. It seems everyone is moving to Fort MacMurray! We know that extracting useable oil from the Oil Sands is probably harming the environment but we need to heat our homes, generate electricity and get from point A to point B.
Our farmers can’t make a living, yet our stores are full of the kinds of food they used to grow. There are local options but they are more expensive and we wonder if we can pay any more for our food.
Canadian baby-boomers wonder if the pensions they have been counting on will ever be enough to retire or if the Old Age Security and Canada Pension system will survive until they retire. Our young people wonder how many seniors they can support on lower wage jobs.
Environmentalists are telling us that in order for our planet to survive we must make drastic changes in our patterns of consumption. A major part of our dilemma is that it is these patterns of consumption which keep our economy going.
Gloom and doom. I don’t have to go on - you know as well as I do, perhaps better, what kind of dilemmas we face.
There was once a minister who encountered the same homeless man on his walk to the office every morning. One day he took a $20 bill and pressed it into his hands with the quick assurance, “Don’t despair”. A few days later he encountered the same man, just as dishevelled who approached him and handed him an envelope containing $2,000. The minister opened the envelope looking surprised. The man said, “Reverend, Don’t Despair was the long shot in the fifth race at the track on Saturday, he came in first and paid 100/1.” Of course we all should know gambling is usually guaranteed only to lose you money; its not something you can count on!
There is Good News says this one named Isaiah. The good news is that the people of God have been this way before. The good news is that hope will triumph over despair. The good news is that the people will return to a time of life and prosperity and the land will be fruitful once again.
The good news was not that this would happen by magic. The good news was not that all they had to do was to return to Jerusalem and everything would be restored, as if by magic. The good news was that their God would lift up the broken down. The good news was that they would be borne up as if they had wings like the eagles.
My dad used to love watching the Bald Eagles as they scoured the farm for food. When they spotted something good to eat they would swoop down and without breaking their stride would pick it up with their powerful talons and soar back high into the sky. In modern times there is a smaller eagle which breeds in North Africa which can catch animals 5 times its own weight. The larger eagles can have a 7 or 8 foot wingspan! Their size and power would have been very overwhelming so to compare the strength God would give them was an awesome promise indeed.
When they returned they knew that hard work awaited them but Isaiah assures them that the strength would be given to them and that with that strength they would be equal to the task before them.
I talk with people who have been through difficult experiences and in many cases they speak of a strength which got them through but which they did not know they had before the ordeal came upon them. New moms can testify they did not know how little sleep they could get-by on.
The advice is “tell the story”; “remember the past”; “remember the God who was with us in the glory days and even though we don’t know it, is still with us.”
The good news is NOT that God will restore us to the past; how can that really be “good news”? The Good News is that this God who has been with us, WILL be with us into a new future. The good news is that we will receive the strength we need to do the work we need to do and to make the changes we must in order to bring life, health and happiness out of the new situation in which we will find ourselves.
In that time
“those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.
Amen!
2 Kings 5: 1-14
Psalm 30
Mark 1: 40-45
NOTE : This sermon was never preached, revised for the next week!
I love these biblical stories where the rich and the powerful; the ones who are supposed to be people “in the know” end up having to take direction from the lowly and even the downtrodden. There are a number of this kind of “reversal of expectations” stories in our Bible. You will remember the story of the Magi who came seeking Jesus. They were smart, but were not really as wise as we usually make them out to be. They watched the stars and when they saw a new one, they assumed a new king would be born in the royal palace. Now, that might be an assumption I would make, since I don’t know of anyone who would want to unseat the House of Windsor as the Royal Family of the British Commonwealth, and replace it with some other family! We all know of countries though where the monarch, or the dictator, is far from safe. Sometimes it is the ruler’s own security detail who end up being the greatest threat. A puppet king of the Roman Empire, like Herod, would be in a similar situation. The magi were redirected to Bethlehem and they made their visit and presented their gifts. After sleeping on it they “got out of Dodge” by another route.
This is a story about a unlikely mix of people and situations, but one in which the power of God was found to be working - where it was the least expected. Naaman, the army commander is from Aram: the enemy. The unnamed slave girl, had been taken captive during a raid. He thought he should go to the king but finds no help there, only worry.
Naaman was healed because of his willingness to do a simple act in faith. The best medical minds in his country could not cure him so he went to Israel - a country at the mercy of his own army.
There was once a man who was having trouble keeping his old clunker working and he spent hours and hours working on his car. One day it would not even start no matter whata he did! He called the teenage boy who lived nearby and told him that he was ready to sell it. It was clearly an “as is, where is” kind of sale and he made sure the boy, a newly licensed driver, knew the car did not run and needed a great deal of work. The boy assured him that he had watched his father fix his own cars for years and that he would be fine, and the boy came with his dad and towed the car down the street. Two days later he saw the car approaching him with the young man at the wheel. stopped him and asked him how he managed to get the car going. The reply was simple, “put gas in it!”
Sometimes we look at life as if all of the answers are complicated and difficult. Sometimes we look at faith as if it is too complicated for anyone except ministers to understand. The answers to some problems are indeed complicated and difficult and some are not.
Christian mission and the work of the congregation is like that as well. The question for us is: What are we being asked to do as the people of God? Is it complicated? Or can it be accomplished by common and every day things.
When tragedy happens we think that we can’t do anything to help, but we already do many things, that we may not connect with our faith.
One day a young child was struck by a car and killed. If affected everyone who knew him. One family told their daughter, who was his age what had happened and she sat there deep in thought. Later on that afternoon they were distressed to turn around and find her missing. A few minutes later they saw her coming back up the walk. She told them “I went to see Mrs Jones; her little boy died”
They explained to her that Mrs Jones was very sad and did not need to be bothered.
The little girl said, Oh I know her. I went over to her house, sat on her knee and helped her cry”!
Sometimes all we can do is to share the pain or the joy of those around us. Like Naaman we need to take a risk and to be open to the Spirit and discern how that Spirit is leading us. Lets look for the simple ways, the ways close to home, the ways in which we can use the skills we already have and minister to, among and with the people we already know. We may very well find the healing power of God in places we had overlooked.
Amen.
Today we begin our series on the United Church’s faith statements. I think it could be one of the most important things we have done in many years.
History seems to be one of those subjects that you either love or hate but I will need first to give you a brief history lesson. In 1908, in preparation for Church Union which took place in 1925, church leaders from the founding denominations got together and came up with a statement that all churches could agree upon. It was called the “20 Articles of Faith” and was a carefully worded statement, in the faith language of the day, that was able to balance the various emphases on the matters which were important for Methodists and Presbyterians whose theologies were, in some ways, very different and for the congregationalists.
By 1941 it was felt that the new church, just 16 years old needed a more modern expression of faith. In 1968 there was another statement prepared, this time much shorter and it quickly became used in worship (and it has been revised twice - but its essentially the same statement as it was 40 years ago. Then about 6 years ago, after 6 years of consulting widely across the church a committee wrote a new statement, and “song” was the metaphor which is intended to acknowledge that people often sing in harmony rather than unison and that a faith statement should be the voice of a diverse church.
At the last General Council after much discussion it was decided to test the will of the church on the question of adding these newer statements to our Basis of Union (or our constitution) as statements on which we can come together and work together as followers of Jesus of Nazareth.
We must also remember that in our church the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are our primary source of guidance for our faith and any statement we may make is subordinate.
So since this changes our Basis of Union, representatives of the whole Church must vote; which means our Session and the PEI Presbytery will vote on this matter.
This is one of the reasons we elect to Session and Presbytery members of the church we respect and trust to make these decisions.
So that everyone can hear what we are talking about, over the next 8 weeks we will be reading all of these statements - in bits.
We will also have a study on these statements early in Lent.
Comments or concerns can be taken to a session member, or better yet come to the Study to discuss them.
There are many ways we could do this in worship but I thought a topical approach would be the best and clearest way to go about this.
The three readers (Claire - except she could not come today but will be back next week, Colin and Susan) will each be reading from the same statement all the time. So if you are trying to remember what statement is which - it will be easier because the same person will be reading on a consistent basis.
Today we begin with God, Jesus and the Spirit. What did we say (about God - Jesus - the Spirit - in 1925? In 1941? In 1968? In the late early part of this century?
And do we want these statements as part of our “Basis of Union” (or church constitution)?
Listen?
Make notes? You have some space in the bulletin to do that
Come to the study if you would like to discuss?
How does each or any of these statements resonate with you - heart and soul. How do they speak to your Spirit?
Questions or Concerns you have.
2 Kings 5: 1-14
Psalm 30
Mark 1: 40-45