Exodus 33: 12-23
Psalm 99
1 Thessalonians 1: 1-10
Matthew 22: 15-22

Whose Image Is On You? !

A couple of summers ago I went to New York City and one of the places I visited was the Statue of Liberty. Out on the island on which the statue sits there was a building with a gift shop where you could actually mint your own copper ‘Statue of Liberty’ coin. There was a machine encased in plexiglass and you could see the mechanism that used so many pounds or tons of pressure to place the impression on your very own coin. It notes on the coin that it is the same thickness as the copper that makes up the statue itself: 3/32 of an inch. It was kind of neat but hardly a mechanism for high volume production, and it was only a souvenir. No matter how thirsty I became I could not trade it in for a bottle of water or diet coke or anything else!

The Canadian Mint in Winnipeg has a number of high volume coin making machines and can produce coins at the rate of 13,000 a MINUTE or 14 MILLION coins a day. The quality of our coins is so good that when the mint finishes making Canadian coins they work on contract for many foreign countries.

Coins tell us a great deal about what is important to us. The veterans were honoured with a ‘victory 5 cent coin and a coloured poppy twenty five cent piece. The beaver, the moose, the loon and the polar bear reaffirm our heritage as a land of wilderness and wide open spaces. As far as I know, only one Canadian coin has a person on the ‘tails side’ and that is the “Terry Fox Dollar’.

Turn a Canadian coin to the ‘heads’ side and you will see an image of Queen Elizabeth II and an abbreviation in Latin for “By the Grace of God, Queen”. It’s a far cry from what was on the coins that were minted by Rome in the first century. The inscription on those coins stood for something like, Tiberias Caesar August son of the divine Augustus, high priest. Remember the first two of the ten commandments? Apparently, the only reason for an observant Jew to have such a coin was to pay his poll tax to the Roman government and it was NEVER to be carried while visiting the temple.

We must remember that Palestine was a conquered country under Roman occupation. The requirement to use such offensive money for anything was especially grating so there were other coins developed for common, every day use. These coins had the horn of plenty, or cornucopia, on them or a plant of some kind.

So it seemed that the question about taxes was one which went to the heart of their faith, the heart of their identity as a people. It was also a trick question. If Jesus said “no” he would have been reported to the authorities and arrested. If he had said, “yes” he would have lost his following because the common people hated their roman occupiers. It appeared to be a question with two options; both of them incorrect!

However, Jesus avoids the trap and in his answer he makes his listeners think for themselves about what is required of faithful Jewish people who must live in a territory occupied by Rome.

So he asks for a coin, of the sort used for the tax. Notice, that it was not Jesus who took one of the coins out of his own coin purse, not did he ask one of his disciples, but the hated coin came from one of those asking the question; AND THIS WAS WITHIN THE SACRED PRECINCTS OF THE TEMPLE.

We all know what the answer was: give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. However, before we make the assumption that he divided the world into ‘secular’ and ‘religious’, and never the twain shall meet, I think the way in which he asked his question leads to some important conclusions.

The questions he asked were, “Whose picture is this?” And “Whose title?” Of course the answer was obvious, ‘the emperor’s’. What Jesus did not ask, but what I believe he implied, was ‘whose image is stamped on you?’. The law against making a graven image, or idol, came from their years in the wilderness, from the laws of Moses, but there was another tradition, coming from the story of creation itself. We all know the story, human beings were made in the image of God. You could say that, in a way, each human is God’s coin and bears God’s image. However, unlike the coin’s, that image is easily obscured. We must work at allowing this image stamped on is to become visible and to determine what we do, what is important to us; we must allow this to govern our very identity.

So we have this indelible image; God’s image stamped on us. However, this in and of itself does not let us off the hook. Indeed it may make things more difficult because following the ways of God and living in a wider community is not at all easy, if we take our faith seriously. We are enmeshed in the secular world, and we have both a duty and responsibility to it.

Once upon a time there was a soldier whose face was horribly mangled in a mortar attack and he was visited by a plastic surgeon in the army hospital to which he had been sent. Asked for a picture, he had none so he picked a picture hanging on the wall and asked, “Doctor, can you make me look like that man?” Even though he looked quite surprised, the doctor agreed to do the surgery and after several surgeries and some months the bandages came off and he was the spitting image of the man on the wall.

One day a nurse became tired of his swearing and bad humour and told him that she had expected more from him. It was then that he was told that the picture of the man on the wall was Jesus of Nazareth, or at least one artist’s concept of what Jesus might have looked like. This caused a crisis for the soldier because he had not led a very exemplary life since he had left home at an early age. Drugs and hard drinking and reckless driving had marked his life and he had joined the army to straighten himself out. It hadn’t worked.

Now the man had a new incentive to change the way he looked at life and to change his behaviour. He started talking to the Padre and read his Bible a great deal. He became a truly changed man.

As Christians we all have the image of God in Christ stamped on us; even though we do not resemble any artist’s rendering. Each time to make a commitment to the God we have come to know in Christ we seek to take on more of that image, more of that role and more of that ministry.

At our baptism we, or our parents on our behalf, took on the image of Christ, and the name and title of ‘Christian’. When we were confirmed we took that image on for ourselves, on our own ‘say so’. When we had children baptized we took it on again, reaffirming this identity, this calling. This claim is a 100% one and it is up to us to decide how to live that out, day to day, hour by hour.

We could see this as a burden. We could see it as a call to divide the world into God’s things and Caesar’s things. But is not a burden, but rather a calling for which we are given strength and grace in great abundance. It is not that we have to live in both spheres, but that we live as children of God in both spheres.

It would be great if we were given a comprehensive list but no list can be exhaustive and different times call for different measures. A soldier at war has different rules than the average person on the street. And there are some who think war so wrong that they cannot participate and willingly suffer the consequences.

So everything is God’s and under the umbrella of being God’s child, made in God’s image, we are to live our lives in the sacred and the secular, and all the places in-between.

Like Jesus thouygh, we are never alone in this task, we have the Spirit of God who goes with us every step op the way.

The question is asked of us: Whose image is on you and are you giving you all to God.

Amen

Deuteronomy 34: 1-12
Psalm 90
1 Thessalonians 2: 1-8
Matthew 22: 34-46

Loving Neighbour As Yourself

In 1844 a poor Irish couple by the names of James and Johanna Donnelly emigrated to what is now London Ont and set about making a life for themselves. However they were not accustomed to city life so they just went out to the country, selected a piece of land, erected a fence and started to build a house and began to farm. The sign at the road said, “James Donnelly, Esq.” However, they were not renters, they were not owners, they were squatters. They couldn’t afford to buy or rent a farm so they participated in a tradition, not un-common at the time, of assuming possession of some unused land in the control of an absentee landowner. In this case, the neighbours who were paying rent didn’t like it but the personality of Mr Donnelly prevented them from doing very much about it. Eight years later the Donnelly family grew in numbers and through a great deal of work became quite prosperous. That year a man by the name of Patrick Farrell who had paid for the right to farm this particular piece of land, arrived to begin his new life in Upper Canada and found people and buildings that weren’t supposed to be there, on his farm! He took it to court but in the end he was granted only 50% of the land he had paid to occupy. Although the issues are more complex and far reaching that this, as far as we know, this was the beginning of the bloodiest and most violent feuds in Canadian history. I’m told that the famous Hatfield and McCoy feud in the United States has nothing on this bitter feud between neighbours.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is involved in an attempt to test him. Which is the most important law? Jesus, cheated a little bit and chose 2. Love God fully and love your neighbour as you love yourself. It is the second of those two commandments that I wish to focus on today.

LOVE your neighbour as yourself!

Love your NEIGHBOUR as yourself.

Love your neighbour as YOURSELF.

On other occasions the question elicited a story which focussed on the identity of the neighbour, but on this day, in Matthew’s gospel the reader is left both with this command and a reminder of the authority of the one who gave it. We have to answer the question, “What does it really mean, in the context of day to day existence, to love your neighbour as yourself?”

Perhaps the first and most difficult question of all is, “What is love?” I would like to define it as “the desire to seek the best for the other in order to have that person reach her or his full potential”. Love is not an emotional or erotic thing, at least not in this passage. Love is not a feeling. Love is a choice and it is a way of being in the world. So, to love the other as much as we love ourselves is to seek as much good for the neighbour as we seek for ourselves. It is to place the needs of that other one on the -7- level of our own.

Very young children are very self centred and, from their point of view, everything exists for their comfort. Part of growing up is the realization that there are others who have needs must have consideration. So children are taught not to interrupt, to share with other children and that they cannot have everything they want when they want it or everything they see in the Wish Book or on tv.

Part of our maturing in faith involves an awareness of the presence of God and what this God asks of us and an awareness of the others who are loved by God just as much as we are loved by God.

Many times in our lives, I think, we operate out of the attitude which could be summed up by thinking such as, “I deserve this more than “my sister, or MORE than friend Jenny, or MORE than that person over there whose name I don’t know” but today’s gospel passage calls us to consider another way.

When Jesus talks about loving one’s neighbour I believe he is talking about very real, very practical “life issues”. This is about the day to day, the nitty gritty, bread and butter matters, the sometimes grimy places where we live and dirty our hands and try to earn a living and make our way in the world.

Jesus is not a “head in the clouds”, idealist; this is not a nice concept to talk over on a storm day when one is wise not to venture outside. This is a message with teeth, with substance, a word with a very practical application.

We know that love is not always easy, nor does it always come naturally. We sometimes think that Jesus couldn’t possibly have understood the kind of lives we live, and all of their varied complexities, but I disagree. Jesus may not have been computer literate; he may not have been of the “Pepsi generation” but he knew that disputes between neighbours could escalate and a mountain easily and unfortunately made out of a molehill.

Now we all must admit that it is much easier to love some people than it is to love others. After our families, perhaps our neighbours are the hardest to love. These are certainly the two groups we know best. Of all of the disputes in which we are involved those between neighbours are the probably the most stressful.

One of the things that it is important to learn when moving to a rural community is: who is related to whom. Next you have to learn who “used” to be related to whom. This not only involves fractious divorces but also the splits that result from neighbourly relationships gone bad. I recall many pastoral visits in which disputes with neighbours have been discussed. Some of these are recent, some long ago. Disputed property lines. Dogs and cats that won’t stay home. Noisy teens that won’t go to bed. Car repairing done too early in the morning. Cars parked across driveway. Snow piled where it shouldn’t be. Farmers who spread smelly manure near city-bred neighbours. Neighbours who complain when you make the least noise; neighbours whose noise keeps you awake half the night. Nosy neighbours or uncaring neighbours who don’t even notice when something is very much amiss. The list could go on. There are neighbours who have actually done mean and spiteful things which have hurt us, or a loved one or which have cost us financially.

You see, when you are talking about neighbours in this context they are never a hypothetical neighbour, but a real flesh and blood person with whom we are called to be in relationship. They are real people; not the ideal human who has never really existed in time and in space.

Our call is to place those petty disputes to one side and to undertake a serious struggle with the gospel call to earnestly desire and work for the good of the neighbour as much as we work for our own.

However, all that being said there are cases when I don’t think we can really be expected to love our neighbour or to want the best for that person,.

We have all heard the horrific stories of child abduction and murder and abuse and irresponsible use of firearms, and driving recklessly and the list goes on. Under these circumstances it is quite understandable when the victim or the families of the victims not only hate that person and want no more relationship with them, but they certainly do not want to seek anything good for that person.

I think that in those instances what this passage calls from us is the acknowledgement that while we cannot seek a relationship and while we cannot work for or even wish the good for the other, that we are prepared to accept that fact that God does. God can and does do what we cannot. God wills fullness of life for each of us; and for those to whom we don’t feel particularly loving, from time to time, or on a more permanent basis.

In these cases we are called to give our hurt and pain over to God so that it does not consume us and then allow God’s grace and love to do what it does.

So we are called to be in relationships with those around us which seek for others the best we wish for ourselves. When we cannot wish it on our own we are called to trust that God’s grace will accomplish what we cannot .

Amen.

Joshua 3: 7-17
Psalm 107: 1-7, 33-37
1 Thessalonians 2: 9-13
Matthew 23: 1-12

The history of Canada is filled with stories of danger and adventure and stepping forward into the unknown. The discovery of Rogers Pass in the mountains of British Columbia was an essential step in the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Even though it had to be abandoned later because of the frequency of dangerous avalanches it’s discovery enabled the completion of Sir John A Macdonald’s ‘National Dream’.

For many years the North American continent was regarded as a barrier between Europe and the Orient and it was important for them to discover a way to get from the Atlantic to the Pacific by sea. Sir John Franklin was perhaps the most famous of the explorers who looked for this elusive route. He died trying to find it and the mystery of what happened to his team was not solved for many years. Eventually, an explorer by the name of Roald Amudsen traversed the passage though it never became feasible for commercial shipping.

I don’t know about you, but when I go somewhere I like to have my route mapped out. I want to know how long it will take me to go from point A to point B, and to have my rooms or campsites booked ahead of time.

According to the Bible, the people of Israel spent an entire generation on a journey with only an elusive and vague destination and one with no specific itinerary. It should have taken just a few weeks but it ended up being a journey of forty years, AN ENTIRE GENERATION!.

Finally, in today’s passage the long, tiring journey ends. At the beginning of this section of scripture the instructions on crossing the Jordan are given to Joshua, the successor to Moses who had recently died. The stage is set for a new generation to take a hold of God’s promises in the new land, but the mighty raging waters of the Jordan at full flood stage lie between them and their destination. At this time of year the Jordan is not some muddy meandering stream that one can cross by skipping from stone to stone, or even by hitching up your robe and wading across, as it might be in the dry season, but we are told quite explicitly that this takes place at the time of the SPRING harvest, the time of the spring floods. It seems to me that the narrator wants to make it quite clear that this crossing is an act of faith, and a result of the power of God in their lives.

And notice that it is the Ark of the Covenant, the ornate box housing the Ten Commandments written on tablets of stone, goes first and, as it were, holds back the raging waters. Note too that those who carried the Ark had to step into the river, not on dry land, but get their feet wet BEFORE the waters piled up in a heap; AND THEY STAYED THERE untill each and every child of Israel had crossed.

So all these years later, several thousand to be precise, God’s people are still being asked to step forward in faith. God’s people are still being asked to brace the raging waters in order to take hold of the promise of abundant life, and enter their own “promised land”.

Of course, this kind of thing is happening all of the time. There are the so called “normal” events of life in which we are called to step forward in faith.

Couples come to me to be married and while most have lived together and are sure they know enough about each other to make a go of it, no one can tell them what will happen in the next years of their relationship, (pause) let alone the next day.

I visit a new mom and dad in the hospital and as we admire the infant, lying new and innocent in the hospital bassinet, we both know that there is an uncharted future ahead for parents and baby and in the longer term as baby becomes an adult and ventures out on his or her own.

Then the career choice must be made by that once upon a time infant. A friend of mine was beginning her last year of her Arts Degree and she had to decide what to do next: become a minister or a teacher. She felt called or drawn to each but knew that since she couldn’t do both, at least not at once, she decided to apply to a school for each program and her decision would be made by whatever school accepted her.

Then as life continues on there are the choices and decisions of marriage and mortgages and children and even second careers and the cycles of life go around for another generation.

Many people in their more advanced years must venture into the uncharted waters of downsizing, and home care and nursing homes. It is, as you know, a difficult time for many.

In our lives as individuals, as families, as communities, as church communities we would like the way to be clearer, we would like guarantees that this or that is going to happen, for sure, when we are promised only that God will be with us. That is what the people of Israel found out and had to be satisfied with.

On Friday night I was watching a short tribute to Rosa Parks, the woman who broke the law and the social code of her State and would not give up her seat on a Montgomery Alabama bus to a white man and in so doing sparked a bus boycott that would end up changing the course of American history. She didn’t know what would happen once she planted her foot firmly on the floor and refused to move. The black people of Alabama didn’t know what would happen or if they would eventually be successful as tehy walked and walked instead of rode the busses, but they knew they were acting in faith. Like their leader Martin Luther King, like Moses, they had seen the promised land and they were going to get there, someday. This they believed.

Political reform often happens when one or more people are not willing to let the status quo have the only say and to propose a different vision. They step into the uncharted waters and trust that their new vision will capture hearts and change lives and will eventually cause the wider change they propose.

Of course many people have to cross rivers much more personal than that of initiating widespread social reform.

Terry Fox attempted what had never been done when he dipped his artificial leg in the Atlantic Ocean and no one would say that he ultimately failed. His run was one step of faith after another. The lesser known Steve Fonyo had not had as much press as Terry Fox and probably handled his fame badly but he did make it on one leg from one side of this country to the other.

But these have become famous people. What of the many lesser known, ordinary people. I think of the thousands and thousands of farmers and fishermen who brave uncertainty in crop and harvest as well as market forces and do what they know how to do, season in and season out: be people of the land and sea.

I think of people whose lives are being limited by Alcoholism or substance abuse. They know they need to do something or they will not survive. Yet to change from behaviour which is sapping their life to new behaviours which are life giving is like stepping into a raging torrent of uncertainty and danger.

I think of people suffering marital who know that they must, for their sake and their children’s sake, make changes in their lives which often means ending the relationship with the abuser. In the vast majority of cases it’s not a spur of the moment thing; its well planned but it does take a ‘first step of faith’. Starting over in their promised land is a scary, scary thing.

There are many very ordinary changes we make in our lives which require the same kind of faith which the people of Israel needed to cross the raging waters of the Jordan.

As we step into those waters that would seem to be strong enough to overwhelm us, we need to be aware of the presence of the God who goes with us each and every step of the way. We need also to be aware that we are the ones who have to do the walking, step by step whether these steps be large or small. The people of Israel were not transported across the Jordan by magic, but they walked emboldened by the grace of God, each and every step of the way.

We are not promised an easy journey all of the time but we are given the assurance that God does care for us and does go with us. And for that we can certainly say, from the bottom of our hearts and with the soles of our feet, THANKS BE TO GOD.

AMEN!

Joshua 24: 1-3, 14-25
Psalm 78
1 Thessalonians 4: 13-18
Matthew 25: 1-13

“Living In God’s Realm”

The late Harry Chapin sang a haunting, melancholy song called “Cat’s In the Cradle”; a song about a man who misses his son’s childhood because he is busy with other things, but sadly, as he enters his middle years he finds himself locked out of his son’s life. We know all too well that sometimes you just don’t get a “second chance”. Sometimes, the times catch up with you and you miss the most important things of all.

The children’s author, Robert Munsch, has written a wonderful book, Ribbon Rescue. In this story, the main character, a girl named Gillian is getting ready for a wedding and had just put on a wonderful ribbon dress made by her grandmother. She goes out to her front yard to wait for her mother. She sees a man running along the street carrying his shoes. Apparently he is going to be late for his own wedding. She tears two ribbons off of her dress to lace up his shoes and loans him her mother’s old bicycle (after all she is a grown up and does not need it anymore) and he can make it to the wedding on time. “Just head for the steeple and everything will be fine” she advises.

To make a very long story short, she helps a number of other people get to the wedding on time by tearing all of the ribbons off of her dress and even crawls around on the sidewalk looking for a missing ring. In the end the dress is ruined. She is not allowed into the wedding because her dress is such a mess; that is, until two of the people she has helped, who are the bride and groom, invite her to be their flower girl.

Today’s gospel passage is a parable, a story told by Jesus to describe God’s kingdom. In the lectionary cycle, the list of readings for Sundays that begins at Advent and ends with the Sunday known as the “Reign of Christ”, we are two weeks away from the end of the year; two weeks away from the fulfilment of Christian hope. Two weeks away from the thing we have been hoping for all year.

What is this “Kingdom of God” that Jesus speaks of in this parable, and many others? A lot of press is given from time to time to attention of predictions of the so-called, ‘second coming’ of Jesus, and the end of the world. Apparently the most popular form of this is the “Left Behind” series, of which I will readily admit, I know next to nothing. Many people try to predict when it will be. Many try to get you to join their organization so that you will be on the ‘right side’ on that day. Maybe it’s just a way to sell books and movies.

I think that it is very important for us to remember that these kinds of predictions have been taking place for many generations. In fact there were people who had known Jesus personally who had expected him to return before they had lived out their natural lives; and some biblical passages seem to support this view. Then there are some who believe that life as we know it will always exist, provided of course, that we don’t blow ourselves up or choke our planet with excessive pollution.

What we need to do is to take a look at the biblical view of these things. We need to pay attention to how they viewed time. In the biblical view of things, from Old Testament times onward, the view was that time was divided into two parts: one was the present age, here and now and other was, the age to come, the perfection of God’s creation, the restoration of Paradise. When Jesus came proclaiming the Kingdom, he was talking about something the people had been hearing about for generations. That’s what the Messiah was supposed to do; bring in the new age. Some saw it as very political age, while others, saw it as very ‘other worldly’. The expectation certainly wasn’t invented by the church!

What the Gospels proclaimed was that in Jesus what happened was that, in essence, the two ages had begun to overlap. It was not that this new age had come and the old had passed away, but rather that in Jesus, the faithful could EXPERIENCE glimpses of God’s reign. The fullness of this was still in the future, and would come by divine intervention, not by human will or work, BUT the community was called to live as if it was already there and in that sense could glimpse it’s fullness. The world withy all of its problems still very much existed, but the people of Christ were called to live in the world with a new hope and vision; they were called to be people of the Kingdom wherever life found them.

So, many of Jesus’ parables liken the life of this Reign of God, to a Forgiving Father, and to a woman looking for a coin, and to a farmer soing grain, and, in today’s reading, to the ten bridesmaids.

So what about this story are we to take as a sign of God’s reign? What does it tell the original listeners and the modern readers about life in God’s kingdom . I think that this is a story of the importance of being prepared. The energy crisis experienced by the so-called “foolish bridesmaids” was a sign of their lack of preparedness. The reign was delayed, they were not prepared to have it delayed as long as it was. It is more than Girl Guide and Boy Scout theology; it is realizing that we must trust in the timing of God and live as fully as possible in this interim time; this time of already and not yet.

So many of us have busy lives; schedules to keep, places to be. Yet, of course we know about flexibility, about being ready for unexpected things. I talked to my sister-in-law not long ago about a hockey tournament one of the kids was involved in. “How many games will there be?”, I asked. I wanted to find a game I could fit into my schedule. I was told that it depended on how well they did. The more games the team won, the more games the team would play. So the weekend was unpredictable, and could not be planned with precision.

Many things in life are open ended; For example, raising children is not just an 18 year task, when going to the doctor the time you’ll get in cannot be predicted with certainty.

The arrival of the groom in today’s parable could not be predicted; it was not unusual for something to have come up and there to be a delay. Since the bridesmaids were am important part of the occasion , it was expected was that they would have enough oil, enough ‘power, or energy’ to be able to last until the guy showed up and the real celebrations could begin. It wasn’t that they slept, but that they were not ‘awake’ to the various possibilities of delay and change of plans.

The biblical story is very much the story of a journey; there is very little in it about ‘arriving’ and saying that it was finally completed. As the hymn, “Lead On O Cloud of Presence” says, using images from the wilderness wanderings,

“Lead on, O fiery pillar, 
we follow yet with fears,
but we shall come rejoicing
though joy be born of tears.
We are not lost, trhough wandering,
for by your light we come,
and we are still God’s people.
The journey is our home.”   

The people to whom Joshua spoke as they prepared to take full possession of the land of promise had to learn about this. He reminded them that though their physical journey had reached its destination, there was still a spiritual journey. They had to grow in faith; they had to develop as a nation of God’s people. The God who had led them continued to demand loyalty and service. This God was not one to share the people; they had to have a clear focus and anticipate resolve to follow God alone.

The faith of God’s people has never been like some regard university graduation; an opportunity to burn the textbooks and say, “Whew! That’s over.” Arrival is not an end to the responsibility for faithfulness, the end to the journey, but at the most, a time of reorientation, refocusing and re-evaluation.

What does God require of us? That is perhaps the most important question there is in life. What does this God require of the people of Israel: “To put away their other gods” and to worship the God who brought them to the land of promise. The statement of the leader Joshua thunders out over the crowd and across the generations between then and now, “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

Now I don’t know about you but I don’t know many people who worship idols; and I don’t know many people who worship the fertility gods of Mesopotamia of whom Joshua spoke. Yet, I think his words are as relevant today as they were back then.

Somewhere in the back of my head I recall reading the work of a theologian that defined religion in terms of ‘ultimate concern’. What is our ultimate concern? When we get right down to it, after all that we say we believe, where do we place our ultimate trust and what do our actions say about our beliefs.

Do we strive for money? For success? For that promotion, above all else? For public image? For the house and the car and the adult toys and the other things that seem to exude the ‘good life’.

I find it very interesting to watch how having children change a couple’s values. All of a sudden, the clean floor and the dust free living room takes a back seat to two hour feedings, watching the child grow and making sure there are enough clothes to fit the growing body. The sports car is replaced with something safer and life insurance and RESPs become a part of the financial plan.

In the same way the Christian faith is something which is meant to alter our priorities and to provide an overarching perspective to our lives. Just as children alter a couple’s priorities the Christian faith puts on us the demand to broaden our perspective from OUR family, OUR goals, OUR friends to GOD’S world, GOD’S priorities and GOD’s call to ministry in a hurting and broken world which is waiting, as we are, for glimpses of God’s reign.

I recall a scene from early in the movie, “Anne of Green Gables”. Their expected boy has turned out to be a girl and Matthew and Marilla are having a discussion about sending her back. Marilla says, “A girl is no good to us” and Matthew retorts softly, but firmly, “But we may be some good to her!”.

One of the most important messages of the gospel, as I see it, is that we prepare for the Reign of God by living as if it were already here, as if the ways of Jesus ware the ways of the world. We are to live as if they are the way of our world; for that is what following Jesus is about, living according to Kingdom values and ways.

We follow a Saviour who waled with us to show us the way of God’s Reign. Let us follow and live in expectation and true hope and leave the rest to God.

Amen.