Genesis 9: 8-17
Psalm 25
1 Peter 3: 18-22
Mark 1: 9-15

The Bow of Peace

When I was a younger I was fascinated by rainbows. Like many children, I wondered if there really was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and was dismayed to find out that there isn’t. I was doing some reading the other day and found out that rainbows are what is called an “optical effect” and one of the reasons that we can never find te “end” of a rainbow is that they appear to move as the viewer moves closer. Two people seeing the same rainbow will disagree as to its location. If you were to call someone on their cell phone who appeared to be standing just where the rainbow ended, they may see no rainbow at all or may see it in a very different place. I guess they are meant to be mysterious, as well as beautiful.

I have a number of prisms which cast a spray of rainbows around the room when the sun is shining directly in the window. I have wonderful windows for this at the manse. When I see a nice rainbow outside, I grab my camera and take a picture. With a digital camera I can take dozens and only have to print the ones I want. (It’s the same with the sunsets at the manse- at least I always know where they will be!)

In the time when our biblical stories were being written down the rainbow was even more mysterious. The people who thought about those things connected them with the great flood and with God’s covenant with human beings.

The flood was seen as God’s punishment for the sin of humanity and the rainbow was God’s reminder never to “never do that again”! Notice what I said: It is not there as a reminder of the flood to us, to keep us from sin, but a reminder to God. It is God’s own reminder to never destroy the earth again! Interesting!

We have arrived at the season of Lent. Lent is often seen as a time of self denial, self searching, a time of spiritual and moral self improvement. Sometimes people give things up for Lent, like chocolate. When I was in my first pastoral charge, I attended Easter Vigil at the local Catholic Church and as I was leaving one of my neighbours said to me, “now you can go home at eat all those Easter eggs.” Sometimes people take on something extra for lent, such as a commitment to do a devotional reading every day, or to do a kind deed for an elderly neighbour every day. Lenten disciplines move us from a focus on ourselves to a more faithful and community based perspective.

The Genesis passage reminds us that God’s covenant with human beings made at the time of the flood is not contingent upon our actions or belief but that it is the very nature of God to enter into covenant relationship with human beings.

In the reformed tradition, we sometimes make a not-so-slight mistake when we assert that we are saved “by faith, not works” and that is true, in that the Protestant churches have always taught that there is nothing we can do to EARN God’s love or forgiveness. However, we sometimes turn faith itself into a work when we insist, for example, that people believe the right things, or that they need to have a stronger faith and if it isnt strong enough, they need to WORK at it! You can see the dilemma when we make faith something we have to DO to earn God’s favour. What the reformers actually emphasized, what we actually read in the scriptures, is that we are saved by GRACE, through faith. Our faith, like our works are always secondary to the grace of God which makes our life of faith possible. That is one of our core beliefs that our life of faith is possible, only because of God’s grace.

We know the story of Noah and how he and his family was chosen to be the ones who would carry on the human race after the flood, and how the animals in the ark were to be the ones who would carry on those species. We forget the other parts of this story and how it was not long before human beings were once again living in disregard of any kind of agreement with the divine. Yet the covenant stands.

We know the story of Noah’s ark and know it as a story of Noah’s trust and faithfulness, but the story of the rainbow brings the focus back to where it belongs - the focus is and should be on God and God’s gracious action toward human beings.

I must be clear here: this is not to make us feel worse than we do about ourselves, but so that we will know that we are loved and feel that we can respond to grace rather than try and earn it.

When we know we are loved we are in a much better place to be able to respond in love to God and to our neighbour.

Let us go into the season of Lent knowing that God’s covenant promise is renewed daily and that we can count on it to sustain us as we journey in faith.

Amen!

Genesis 17: 1-7, 15-16
Psalm 22
Mark 8: 31-38

Almost all of the positive change, or true progress in our world has happened because of a few people, or a great many people, dared to hope that a better way was possible. For example, researchers whose hope for a world in which simple infections did not kill people, developed antibiotics such as penicillin. Other researchers believed diabetes should not be a death sentence and discovered insulin and developed ways to replace the insulin in the bodies of people who did not produce their own.

The “audacity of hope” was the theme of a sermon inspired by the work of a Victorian era painter and sculptor and it became the title of a book written by a US Senator of African America heritage who is now the President of the United States. The painting, deeply symbolic, shows a female figure, blindfolded, sitting on a globe and holding in her hands a lyre, a stringed instrument which had only one flimsy string left. She is hunched over as if straining to hear the faint music from her harp. She dares to hope that her battered instrument can indeed make music.

Four years ago many people wondered if it was a pipe dream that a black man could become president of a nation that not too many generations ago had enslaved people of colour. It has happened and the election rhetoric is in full swing once again as that nation moves ever closer to another Presidential election. Who will win this one, only time will tell, but what was thought impossible by some, happened four years ago. Sadly there are many who are inventing outlandish ways to annul the victory and stuff the triumph of hope back into a securely locked box. As a Canadian looking at all of the rhetoric, I just have to laugh. I laugh until I listen to our own news and realize that we have our own problems with politics and power and hope for a system free from manipulation and the fear of manipulation.

The biblical story is one of hope - just read the story if you don’t believe me. Abram was 99 - NINETY NINE years old - and Sari, his wife, ten years younger - EIGHTY NINE and they had been promised children of their own - ten years before that. They had all but given up hope that this would indeed come about. They had once tried to help God out with the fulfilment of the promise, and the consequences left much heartache in their wake.

In end Sarah and Abraham, whose new names was a sign of a promised fulfilled, did have a child and the promise of Abraham that he would become the father of a great nation, remained alive.

What are these stories really about? I find it interesting to note that the Abraham, Isaac and Jacob stories were particularly important, many generations later, when the people of Israel were in exile. They had been defeated in war and they had been taken away as prisoners - or forced into becoming refugees.

The story of Abraham and Sarah was to them a story of hope; it was a story of God’s faithfulness; it was a story which told them that despite all of the evidence to the contrary their God was still graciously planning their future and planning for them life and health.

I am continually amazed by people, such as the people of Guatemala, who live in the worst of circumstances and who are and remain people of hope.

The world over there are people who exist on very little food. There are those who walk miles for water. Many people, such as the people of Syria, are oppressed by their own government and the army does not protect them, but instead enforces the government’s destructive and brutal policies. BUT they remain hope-filled.

Abraham and Sarah were held up as an example of people who rested in God’s gracious and hope filled promises. The people were able to hold onto these examples during trying times in their own generation and learn that the fulfilment of hope often takes longer than we want it to take.

The “it gets better campaign” is aimed at strengthening gay and lesbian young people who are bullied at school and in the community. It is designed to help them to get through the difficult teenage years, which are hard for most kids, but made worse because they are different.

All too often a person or a group who are bullied or harassed by being different end up feeling as if what the bullies say is true, that they are people of lesser value.

v “The Help” is a powerful movie about change in the South - the parts of the United States which had been forced to give up slavery but where people of colour were less than second class citizens. One of the black maids tried to rise above the situation in which she and her sisters found themselves by asking the children she cared for to recite the following - “I is kind, I is smart, I is important”. The people of the South, both black and white, could not have endured what they did if it were not for hope. They had hope that one day the promise of their nation would be available to everyone.

We have our own issues in this country. We know that our First Nations people are asking the rest of us to take seriously the promises outlined in the treaties signed long ago. Our fishers and farmers must find other work as the prices they receive are going steadily down. Our young people find their only solution is to go west, and work in the oil industry. Our environmentalists are telling us that fossil fuels are not the way of the future, if we want there to be a future, and we wonder where all the people will earn a living in the new greener world.

Despair is easy; hope is hard. When my first nephew was born my father expressed his opinion that it was a good thing that young people were the ones who had children! They are the ones with the energy to endure the sleepless nights and chase after toddlers, but notice that it was a nam and woman who were VERY ELDERLY who were told that they were the carriers of the promise. If they were to have children of their own, it had to be a miracle; otherwise it would have been impossible.

Without the wisdom of the elders, the energy of the young and the hope in God to being about the seemingly impossible, we will get nowhere. If we trust in the God who is able to make impossible happen; the God who is able to bring life to a childless couple, then we can be successful.

Let us latch onto the hope that is in the story of Abraham and Sarah and let us live in faith and in so doing live our hope into being.

Amen!

Exodus 20: 1-17
Psalm 19
John 2: 13-22

Rules, Rules, Rules - Or - Common Sense

When we were young children we probably felt that our parents had made the our household rules in order to ruin our lives. When we went to school we may have felt that the school rules were there for a similar purpose. As we mature in life we usually realize that most rules are there for our mutual protection and for organizing society in a sensible way.

As part of our Confirmation Classes the young people and I have been looking at the Ten Commandments and at the passage in which Jesus sums them up in two: love God with all you have and are, and, love your neighbour as yourself.

I was talking with a relative last night and we agreed that the ten commandments were important, but we also agreed that it was possible to be a terrible person and still not break any of the commandments.

In the confirmation class we agreed that the ten commandments, as recorded in the book of Exodus are basic rules that should govern any society. They are broken down into two categories: religious and social. While different societies organized around different religious principles would have a different religious list, it just does not make sense that an ordered society would not outlaw those things mentioned in the last commandments. Adultery, perjury, murder, stealing and coveting.

Yet, there are some people about whom the best thing you can say is: Well she never broke any of the commandments! Indeed, some people say this about themselves. “Well, Reverend, I don’t go to church but I try to keep the commandments ....”

I think that we miss the point of trying to live a faithful life if all we can claim to have done, is not to have done anything terribly wrong. If all we can say is that we have never broken one of these ten - what good is that! Really!

It seems to me that the people should not have been surprised by any of these commandments; they are “no-brainers”.

The law becomes a fence - at the outside of the community - a fence which defines the boundaries beyond which the faithful cannot go without losing their basic identity as God’s people. Within this fence though is much room to move and much opportunity to prolcaim that we serve a God of life and love. This God is the one who brought those people out of Egypt. This God was with them as a pillar of fire by night and as a cloud by day. This God sent the manna which sustained them and this God would eventually lead them into the land of promise.

Having received so much by the grace of this God was it too much to expect a life of faith and justice?

If we turned these laws around and looked at them in a positive way, we may find them much more challenging, much more indicative of what our lives should look like.

We are prohibited from murdering, but what if we are told that we must behave in such a way that we are life givers. Parents give life itself to their children but the responsibility does not stop with childbirth. In our culture parenting is at least an 18 year commitment in which we teach and model life giving behaviour and attitudes to our children so that, they in turn, can raise their own children in this way. As a society we do this so that as many people as possible experience life in all of its fullness.

We are prohibited from committing adultery, but what if we are told that we must govern our primary relationships in such a way that everyone knows that it is this relationship that is the foundation of your lives as a couple and as a family.

Of course in any life people must make choices about how they spend their time. After the honeymoon you have to get out of the house and earn a living. After the children come, there is a great deal to do 0 especially if they are in hockey or other sports. Given all of that though what if those who are married make the health of that relationship their biggest priority. I tell couples who bring their children to me for baptism that the best gift they can give their children is a healthy relationship.

We are told that stealing is forbidden. We would not want to live in a culture where it was ok to take whatever you wanted, from whomever you wanted. What if we turned it all around though and tried to form a society where everyone had enough to live on and (in some cases) this means that no one has too much. Ouch, that one does hurt most of us - if we look at it in a global perspective. As Canadians we are, generally speaking, a wasteful and wealthy lot. What can we do to make our footprint, the marks of what we take from the planet, as small as possible?

We are prohibited from committing perjury - bearing a false witness in court, from simple lying. In most cases the one doing the lying is trying to save himself or herself from some kind of punishment or shame. What if our truth telling involved, not being a tattle-tale against a neighbour we saw doing something wrong, but telling the truth about ourselves and how we struggle with what is expected of us - in community - before God and before our neighbour.

If we look at these rules in this way we will be less likely to spend time iscussing whether or not a certain behaviour is prohibited and more likely to begin a discussion of what we can do differently to make our lives more like the vision that is portrayed in the ten commandments.

Amen

Numbers 21: 4-9
Psalm 107
John 3: 14-21

Facing our Fears!”

I believe it happened on was the series premier of The Bob Newhart Show; (amazing the things you can check on the internet, and in just a few minutes have way more information than you can ever use) , the show’s main character, Dr Robert Hartley, a Psychologist, is doing therapy with a group of people who are afraid of flying. For their “graduation from therapy” they are all flying from Chicago to New York. Dr. Hartley invites his wife to go along but it is only at this point in their marriage that he discovers that she is afraid of flying.. As I recall the episode, it is his wife who runs screaming from the plane instead of going up the steps to board the flight.

Facing our fears is an age old method of conquering them. If we are afraid of water, we take lessons and learn to swim. If we are afraid of public speaking, we join a group such as “Toastmasters” and learn how to do by doing!

Some people are afraid of bugs, or mice, or spiders, or snakes. As far as I know, in PEI there are no dangerous bugs or snakes or spiders to be found in the wild. You might encounter a Black widow spider who has hitched a ride to PEI in a box of grapes, but that is about it! In PEI you aren’t even allowed to own some kinds of exotic animals such as a “Siberian Tiger”. Even though I was living in Nova Scotia at the time, I lived in an area served by Charlottetown radio stations and I knew as much as most Island resident about the “tigers of South Freetown”!

In other parts of the world there are certainly dangers lurking out there, your backyard, the local park and especially in the wilderness or desert.

Today’s story from the journey of the people of Israel through the wilderness is one which might initially leave us scratching our heads and wondering, “Where is God in this story?”

Initially, it sounds a bit like Moses has even broken one of the Ten Commandments by making a bronze serpent and lifting it on high for people to look at, and when they had done so, they were healed.

Born in the 4th century, St Patrick has long been regarded as the Patron Saint of Ireland because, legend has it, that he drove the snakes out of Ireland. Since yesterday was St. Patrick’s Day there was a cartoon making the rounds on the internet which depicted St Patrick driving a car-load of snakes who were complaining in the same way only a carload of children can complain and go on during a long car drive.

As the story goes the people of Israel had been grumbling, once again, and because God was fed up with them they were bitten by poisonous snakes.

Well, I for one, was always sympathetic with those long ago people. They were used to living in slave housing, and even with the meagre rations usually given to slaves, it was probably better than what they found in the desert. And have you noticed that the grass is usually greener in the past.

I recall going to a bridal shower or some community event in what used to be the Grade 1 & 2 classroom of my old elementary school in Dunstaffnage, which has been turned into a community centre. I said to someone, or no one in particular, “Isn’t this room smaller than it used to be?” A woman I knew turned around and said, “No, you were smaller when you went to school here!”

That is simply a human tendency in the midst of change - to look at the past with “rose coloured glasses” as the expression goes. We know that it’s easily done but we also know if we dwell on it, it does us no good, and keeps us from moving forward.

Yet, sometimes we do have to come to terms with things or events from our past so that we can move into the future. Sometimes we just have to confront whatever it is that frightens us so that we can put it behind us.

I think that this was part of what was happening when Moses lifted up the snake on a pole and it was why Jesus used this story as a biblical image to relate to his crucifixion - or at least those are the two events we think he is connecting in the passage from the Gospel of John.

The people in the desert had to confront their own lack of trust in Moses, and more importantly, in God. We forget that Moses had spent many years in the wilderness after his exile from Egypt. Who could be a better leader at this point in their lives than Moses!

All too often when we encounter difficulties in our lives; when we have been suffering from some of our own bad decisions, we want to forget about them and we hope that, by ignoring them, they will just “go away”! This is rarely the case!

One of the things that this incident taught the people was that their only hope of survival, their only hope of getting to the Land of Promise, was to place their trust in the God of their ancestors - Abraham and Sarah - and those who had come after them.

The wilderness was not primarily a place of punishment, but a place where God had the people to himself so that they could learn what they needed to in order to grow into the people they needed to become before they entered the land of promise.

They looked back at Egypt and from the vantage point of the desert they saw how good it had been. We look back from our vantage point and see a people who were more faith-filled than we are! We need to know that their story informs ours and we can find ourselves back there in those stories if we look hard enough.

The lenten journey is about coming to terms with the gap between our words and our actions. We are called to confront this, and relying on the grace of God, we are called to undertake the journey or renewal so that we can be more like the people we are called to be.

We don’t have to get it perfect, we just have to journey in faith; we have to journey in trust. A loving and faithful God is there to guide us and will never leave us alone in the desert times of our lives.

Amen.