Genesis 37: 1-4, 12-28
Psalm 105
Romans 10: 5-15
Matthew 14: 22-33

Once upon a time there was a church that always interviewed its prospective ministers in the same way: they took the candidate fishing. One year they discovered an application from a very qualified woman among the resumes sent to the Joint Search Committee. They decided to take her fishing just the same. On the appointed day they went out in the boat and each one of them threw their lines over the side. After a while one of the men from the committee noticed that his line had caught on something and attempted to release it. The woman candidate got out of the boat, walked over the water to the line, un-snagged it and walked back to the boat to resume fishing. After she had gone back home the committee met and decided that they could not call her to their congregation: it was obvious to them all that she lacked one important qualification in a community tht loved sport fishing: SHE COULDN’T SWIM!

Have you ever noticed the car commercials in which the car is racing around a track at 150 km/h to show you how good it is at cornering or the SUV commercials that imply that you can climb small mountains while behind the wheel? At the bottom of the screen are words that have to be there, legally, but are very hard to seee: “professional driver, closed course, do not attempt.”

Today’s passage from Matthew could also have those warnings. No you should not get out of a boat after surviving a storm at sea and attempt to walk home - unless you are tied up at the dock.

Today’s gospel passage is about a storm at sea, and each gospel writer has a slightly different take on this story. Matthew is the only one to tell of Peter’s attempt to walk on the water.

Jesus has been teaching and preaching and according to Matthew he has just fed well over 5000 people with just five rolls and two fish. He sends his disciples on ahead of him and dismisses the crowd. Meanwhile Jesus goes off to recharge his batteries (to use a modern metaphor!) Meanwhile a storm comes up and the boat is kept from the shore by the strong winds. As they were trying to stay afloat they see a figure walking toward them on the water and Peter calls out “if it is you Jesus - tell me to come to you”.

Jesus says “come” and Peter gets out of the boat and begins to walk toward Jesus. However his common sense gets the better of him and he notices the wind and the waves and he begins to sink. Jesus strong hands reach and rescue him and Jesus says, “You of little faith, why did you doubt”. The wind ceased immediately and everyone in the boat worshipped him.

We all probably first heard of this passage when we were children and assumed that what it meant was that Peter could have walked all the way to Jesus if he had possessed enough faith. But this is a tricky passage and that there is more here than first meets the eye.

If you have not looked at this passage in this way before, I ask you to bear with with me as I explain. What if the comment by Jesus on Peter’s lack of faith is not about his inability to walk on water but in his need to prove Jesus presence with them by being able to do something physically impossible. Why did he need such outlandish proof?

In a lot of ways it sounds like Jesus’ experience in the wilderness when he was tempted turn stones into bread and jumping off of the pinnacle of the temple in order to prove his identity as God’s son.

We know that each of the gospels was written long after Jesus’ death and resurrection and each was written for a different community. I believe that this story is told because Matthew has something important to say to his community about the presence of Jesus in the storms of life.

The disciples knew that they had last seen Jesus back on shore; how could he be out here with them? “Well if it is really YOU Jesus you can fix it so I can walk on water”, says Peter.

Matthew’s community may have come to believe that Jesus had been left back in time, in the “good old days” of their parents and grandparents. Not unlike them we may believe we have left Jesus behind, in the mists of time - 2000 years ago, more or less. But like the disciples, and Matthew’s first readers, we are asked to believe that Jesus is with us, to accompany us and strengthen us on our journey of life. We are asked to believe that Jesus is in the boat with us, in all the storms of our lives, as well as the times of clear sailing.

Yet, how often do we want to test this theory. In so many ways we say, “If you are really with me God and you really love me you will help me out here.” “If you are really with me you will land me this job. - You will make my numbers the winning ones. If you are really here you will make it stop snowing, (or I suppose, if we owned a ski hill, ) you will make it keep snowing”. “If you are truly with me, God, you will not let me be harmed!”

But we discover that this does not work. So when we are in the midst of mild misfortune, and especially of great tragedy we make the assumption that we have been abandoned, rather than look around us and see the presence of the Risen One in the MIDST of the storms of life. When it seems that God has failed OUR test we mistakenly assume that we have been left alone to fend for ourselves.

But Peter and the disciples were not alone. Jesus came to them in their need. Peter and the rest of the disciples were not alone; even though they were all in the same boat (literally); they had each other and in terms of the early church, there was always the community of faith.

So often our lives are full of storms - from within and without and we lose sight of our faith. We know that our faith does not protect us from harm - but we are often stuck in the temptation of believing that somehow it should protect us. What we are called to believe is that God in Christ is with us in the boat, as we navigate the treacherous seas of life.

When we ask the heart wrenching and sour searching question about God’s presence in the midst of tragedy we are asking one of the most meaningful questions of the human condition.

Alexander, one of the sons of world renowned preacher the Rev. William Sloan Coffin Jr. was killed in a car accident and in a sermon delivered to his congregation ten days later he preached what became one of his most requested sermons, “Eulogy for Alex”, in which he addressed his loss and proclaimed his faith. He emphasized that such senseless deaths are never God’s will and stated very beautifully that when his son died, “God’s was the first of all our hearts to break.”

The early church suffered much persecution and had to maintain their ministry and outreach under some of the most horrible persecution imaginable. For them the message of the gospel was not that Peter walked on the water or that Jesus calmed the storm and made the world a safe place for them, because that did not happen for many of them. The real message of the gospel for them was that they could look at the very real storms of life and know that God in Christ was with them, in the boat, coming to them across the stormy waters, and that because of this presence they would be able to be faithful in fulfilling their call to discipleship.

“The Wreck of the Jule Plante” is a poem about a shipwreck in which the captain of a wood scow and his sweetheart, the ship’s cook, Julie, drowned in a hurricane mere feet from shore. (Despite it’s tragic outcome the poem is meant to be funny.) Its advice to sailors is to get married and take up farming because, after all, “you can’t get drown on Lac St Pierre So long you stay on shore”.

But you can’t stay on shore and be a sailor. You can’t live life to its fullest and experience its greatest joys without taking the risk of being hurt or failing at something. Falling in love is not a safe thing to do. Getting married is not a safe thing to do. Having children is hardly safe; and people tell me that it costs a lot of money too! If you worried about safety all the time you probably wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning; but that is not good for your health either! Being alive involves a variety of risks, some of which can be managed and some of which cannot. Sometimes, despite all of our preparations we are hurt, or suffer misfortune or tragedy of some kind. That is life; the price of being human. We are promised the presence of a God who will be with us, in both joy and sorrow; in hardship and prosperity.

The church cannot do what it is called to do if it “stay on shore”. Too often the church chooses the safe course and ends up reaching no one with any kind of really good news. You cant drown when you stay on shore, that is true, but you cant learn to swim there either. We are called to embraced life and live it to its fullest. We are called to push off from shore and to embrace the call of the gospel to fish for people. We are promised the presence of the God who will never leave us nor forsake us. Really and truly, what more could we ask.

God is good.

All the time.

All the time.

God is good.

Amen.

Genesis 45: 1-15
Psalm 133
Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
Matthew 15: 21-28

I Don’t Like This Jesus!

In the 1700's Charles Wesley penned what became a popular children’s hymn, “Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild” and other hymns speak of a man whose words were full of kindness and deeds full of grace. Other popular children’s hymns portrayed a perfect child; a Jesus who never even cried even when as an infant he was wakened by bawling cattle. How many times have you gone to visit a house with a small baby and you didn’t ring the doorbell because that would cause the dog to bark and then the baby would wake up and start to cry! If Jesus was really human, rest assured he cried at loud noises and when he skinned his knees or bumped his head or when he dropped one Joseph’s carpenter’s tools on his foot and it hurt.

The earthly Jesus was a human being and as such Jesus was limited by his time and place. He could not possibly have known anything about space travel and computers and telephones and all of those inventions we take for granted. And he didn’t need to know either.

He was also a man whose attitudes were at least partially bound by his time just as we are by ours and our grandparents were by theirs.

Even though he was extraordinarily open minded for his day and challenged some of the most basic assumptions about women and foreigners and sinners and pharisees with the message that God’s love for Israel was for ALL the people of Israel, in today’s passage we find that he was bound by at least some of the common prejudices of his day. Though he associated with sinners and women, two categories of folks that were on the fringes of Israelite society, today we discover his otherwise hidden racism. At this point you might say, “what about the Samaritan woman”. That case is a little different in that she had at least “a partial” Jewish heritage, even though the “good Jews” of Jesus day preferred to ignore that little fact and push her to the margins. This woman had no such claim to kinship; she was a Canaanite; a woman of another country. Of course, we don’t know for sure, but she might have been a worshipper on one of the fertility cults of the area.

So there was no connection with the God of Israel nor his people. (Keep in mind that the prophet Mohammed had not been born yet so she could not have been Muslim) She was probably from one of those nations with whom the people of Israel had fought in times gone by. She was a total and complete outsider - pushed far beyond its margins. YET - unlike many of the people of Israel, this woman saw in Jesus the hopes and dreams of the people of Israel. She saw in him the healing power of God and she pursued it.

It is well known that you should never come between a mother bear and her cubs; or an ewe and he lambs even, but I would add to that and say, “never come between any mother and her child.”

Her response to Jesus’ insult signifies that she has a great deal of faith in Jesus. Like the woman with the haemorrhage, she believed that just a minute amount of his healing strength would be sufficient. On this day though, Jesus seems to be the one who learns the biggest lesson.

As I have already intimated, this is a most disturbing passage - in it we meet a Jesus who isn’t meek and mild. We meet a Jesus who is certainly not kind. This Jesus is not open minded, but seems as close minded as those religious leaders who were always being challenged by Jesus’ actions and ministry.

What was Jesus thinking? What did he rally mean when he called her a “dog”? Did he really say that healing her daughter was like throwing good food to the dogs - and remember that people didn’t keep dogs as family pets back then! Was this man who risked ridicule and censure for his association with other groups of “outsiders” really that shortsighted?

Well, as I have already said, it seems that he was. YET it seems that he was also open to learning and growth. He was able to see the need and to respond to it. Now much more can we who are far less perfect learn from him in this instance.

In the very early days of the church many folks had the very strong belief that Jesus’ ministry and message was only for people who already lived and worshipped within the Jewish context. Eventually the church took its message to what was called “the gentile world”. We must remember that if it had not done so, our European ancestors would not have become Christian.

This passage, if it has any meaning today, is not really about Jesus, or the early church learning a lesson and changing, but is about us learning a lesson and answering the call to change. It causes me to wonder who it is that we exclude today? Who is beyond our boundaries of caring? Who is seen as a waste of money and resources?

Gays and lesbians used to be on the outside of society looking in, or deep in the closet, and neither is any place to live. We are not yet at the point of full acceptance but we have made many strides in the last 20 years.

In years gone by a pregnant girl was sent away, “to live with an aunt in the west” and most folks knew why. A friend of mine tells of a friend of hers who was never allowed to come home again. We live in a much more enlightened and kind society but there are still many who are excluded and marginalized.

The Olympics in Beijing are first and foremost on the minds of many. (Last time I checked we had three medals - one of each!) In Vancouver in 2010 Canada will host the world at the winter Olympics. Yet the awarding of the Olympics to any city is not good news to everyone, lest of all the poor. Vancouver’s notorious downtown east side is home to some of the poorest and most troubled Canadians. The Premier of British Columbia has vowed to change this section of Vancouver for the better. Some who advocate for the people who live there wonder if the government’s action to “clean up” the neighbourhood will really help the city’s most vulnerable. In times past cities looking to solve such problems have given the poor free bus tickets, out of town! Trouble is though, they are one way tickets! They wonder if the newly renovated or constructed housing will be affordable and if any extra units will be created and if they are, will they be affordable. And this does not do anything for the problems created and fed by drug addiction. It is well known among church circles that events such as Expo and the Olympics are the hardest on the poor and the dispossessed. They are the people that polite society wants to “go away” and just disappear. They are the ones who are told to ‘fix themselves’ because society can only help those who have some resources already.

But like the Canaanite woman they are asking for much more than a kick out of the door. They are asking for a social policy that helps people not lines the pockets of the friends of the government.

We are facing the possibility of very difficult times in PEI. It was reported on Friday, what many farmers could already have told us, that farm incomes are the lowest they have been in 40 years. The stores are full of imported produce and meat and it is more and more difficult to buy local. I am sure it is blueberry season in the Annapolis Valley, even if it isn’t here yet, but the berries in the grocery store come from much further away.

Yet, we are all wondering what the price of heating oil will do to our budgets this winter and know we will have to cut back ourselves. It is indeed a hard thing to ask people to think of the poor when times are hard but that is exactly when the poor need it the most. Jesus did not have time - given his mission priorities- for the Canaanite woman but when he was forced to see her - to really see her as a person of faith in need, he had to stop and act.

This passage calls us to step out of our own lives, as busy and complicated and worrisome as they may be and to see, truly see the need around us - and then act with the love given to us by God in Christ and the resources we do have, as limited as they may be. In give in true faith we will discover that they will multiply like the loaves and fishes. But that’s another story.

So as individuals and as a community of faith let us extend a welcome to the lonely, love to the unloved, a helping hand to those in need and do it all in the name of the healing love of Jesus who calls us into wholeness.

If Jesus can learn and new thing or two - so can we.

Amen

Exodus 1:8 - 2:10
Psalm 124
Romans 12: 1-8
Matthew 16: 13-20

Faith’s Tough Decisions!

I have just finished reading, “Before Green Gables”, by Budge Wilson. It is a prequel to Anne of Green Gables, now in it’s 100th year of publication. Anne’s life is taken from the time when her parents’ were a young couple, expecting their first child, to the day she walked off the train in Bright River to meet Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert who want a boy of about 11 who can “be useful”. (If we are Anne fans we know the rest of the story) In this book we discover the details of her journey from the death of both her parents to life with the Thomases and the Hammonds and finally in the “orphan asylum”. . We are also told how it was that she arrived on PEI with an amazing vocabulary, a prodigious imagination and a love of the Island.

Plot development is an important skill in writing a great prequel because you have to get the people from some point in the past to the part where the story first began and the real action will happen; and you have to make it convincing and interesting.

This story I read a few minutes ago from the book of Exodus is, in many ways, a prequel to the story of the exodus. If all we knew of the story was the call of Abraham and the exodus we would have so many unanswered questions. Along with the story of Joseph from last week, this story sets the stage for that great event: the exodus. The exodus is a pivotal story in the history of Israel and its importance cannot be overemphasized.

Last week we learned that the people of Israel went to Egypt to escape a famine during the time of Joseph. This week we learn that things eventually went sour. We have answers to some of our questions: Why did the Israelites become slaves when they were invited as guests of the Pharaoh and his second in command, Joseph? If the Pharaoh had ordered that all the baby boys were to be killed, how was there a people to take out of Egypt and how did they have a leader who would have enough political savvy to have the ear of Pharaoh after living in exile?

So, as I said, this story fills in the blanks so the readers are not left scratching their heads and wondering, “How did that happen?”

Yet, there is much more to this story than a “filling in the blanks”. In so doing the author of this story is telling us something about the faith of the people, a faith that overcame seemingly insurmountable obstacles a faith that would sustain them through desert wilderness, living in the land of promise and then exile.

So here we are at our story for today. The memory of Joseph has faded. Most likely there had been a change in pharaoh and power politics being what it was and is; friends of the old pharaoh were no friends of the new one! The Hebrews were now being treated as slaves - and the Pharaoh was worried about a revolt because there were so many of them. He decided that it would be better if they were worked so hard that they would have no energy left for anything else. Who knows: the work might kill them! Yet, for some reason, the Hebrews thrived on this treatment and no matter how hard they were driven by their taskmasters, the population remained strong and vibrant.

So it was decided to try and kill them outright. But why kill a full grown slave: kill the boy babies: no more boys and before long the race would die out - simple as that.

What the Pharaoh did not count on was faith. He did not count on the resistance of those most directly connected to the families at the time of the birth of a baby. He did not count on the disobedience of his own daughter. He did not count on the courage of one family who could not bear to see her son die.

In an era when women had very little importance this story is remarkable in that women are at its very centre. Lets begin with one of those Hebrew mothers. She has no name in this story but elsewhere we are told that her name is Jochebed. We suspect that she and her husband, Amram would have been both overjoyed and horror stricken at the birth of a boy. They had a son!

I don’t think they made babies any different back then: babies cry. When they are wet they cry. When they are hungry they cry. When they want to be held they cry. When they want to cry, they cry! I don’t know how many people can conceal a crying baby for very long. They would know that they could not count on Pharaoh’s soldiers to be as compassionate as the midwives who refused to do the Pharaoh’s dirty work for him. So thus we have a story of love and courage.

The story of the “baby in the bulrushes” is probably in most children’s Bibles but it is much, more than a cute tale about a baby rescued by a princess. It is a story of courage and survival and the power of faith in the midst of great odds.

Lets have a look at the women who saved many babies: Shiphrah and Puhah. They even saved children who were not their own. What is most intriguing about this story is that the midwives have names, while we actually have to search elsewhere in Exodus for the mother’s name. These two are truly women of faith. We don’t know if they were Hebrews or Egyptians or from some other slave population. What we do know is that they deserve to be called heroes.

We are also told that they feared God. What does this mean? Well it isn’t the same thing what children fear when they are certain that there are monsters under their beds. It isn’t the same thing I feel when I go to a house to visit and get halfway to the door and am met by a giant, vicious barking dog, with teeth massive jaws, big teeth and a look in its eye that seems to say, “You aren’t going anywhere - you are my lunch.” It isn’t the same thing a motorist might feel when driving at 120 on a Tuesday afternoon in a school zone and then sees a set of red and blue lights pulling their car over.

To “fear God” is to live our lives in such a way that God’s claims encompass our whole lives. To fear God is to realize how great a gulf there is between our abilities and knowledge and the power of God. To fear God is also an experience of grace: we realize that we cannot do it all and we don’t need to. Ironically, this realization frees us to do what we can. To fear God, as we are also told in the Bible, “is the beginning of wisdom”.

These women defied the orders of the Pharaoh and by saving the boy babies by both defying his orders and then lying about it, they laid the foundation for the salvation of an entire nation. For Moses could not have led the people out of Egypt if there were no people to lead, if his father was of the last generation of men! We don’t know how other boy babies were saved because this story moves from the general to the particular when Moses comes on the scene.

Then there is that un-named princess. Of course she would have known that the baby was a Hebrew and that the nurse that the young girl found for her was actually his birth mother. Of course the Pharaoh would have known it was a Hebrew baby. What could one baby do for a nation though? What indeed?

What does this story have to say to our lives as 21st century Christians. It’s more than a little difficult to draw parallels to our own time. We can all recall stories of Christians who hid Jewish families in attics and basements secret rooms during the second world war, but those were specific circumstances and that was long ago!

Maybe not! The call to protect the weak and vulnerable runs throughout both the Hebrew and the Christian scriptures. It’s not a call we can easily ignore or assume is out of date. Yet it is not something that is lightly or easily done.

Some churches are asked and agree to provide asylum to immigrants in danger of deportation: when they are certain that the immigrants are in danger if they are sent home and our refugee determination system has not given them a fair hearing. It is a courageous and often costly thing for a church community to do.

Some have called the kind of life a Christian is called to lead as one of “transformed non-conformity”. Journeys with Jesus website . It has been referred to as “living IN the world but not being OF the world.”

When we hear the call to compassion and to life and what we see around us is dealing death to some - then we are called to act - even at risk to our own self.

This summer our government apologized for our treatment of our first nations peoples in residential schools. Part of a larger legacy of imperialism and our desire to get whatever resources we wanted and felt we needed from this rich land, the residential school system was designed to destroy a culture. What it succeeded in doing was destroying many lives. We will have to walk the long road of reconciliation as we seek healthier relationships with our native brothers and sisters who are seeking to rebuild their culture and recover their heritage.

When our resources are small, and our luxuries few, it is hard to open our hearts and our budgets to the needs of others - especially when our food and heating costs are going up, but the call is there and will be getting stronger.

Most of us know what we should do but we don’t often do it because we think we cannot or because we think that what little we can do won’t make any difference anyway.

When things are going on at our job that are wrong should we just keep silent when the price of speaking up may be our job? Yet, we may need to ask ourselves, what the prie of silence is.

What courageous action is the God of life and liberty calling us to perform? How are we being called to be agents of love and hope and light?

The Good News is that we are all called and the good news is also that we are given he strength we need for the journey.

The odds were stacked against Shiphrah and Puhah and Jochebed and Miriam and the princess but their simple and courageous actions were enough to enable God’s plan of life and liberty to progress to the next step.

That’s all God asks. What is our next step?

Amen!

Exodus 3: 1-15
Psalm 105: 1-6, 23-26, 45c
Romans 12: 9-21
Matthew 16: 21-28

We all know at least one joke about people who grew up “about 100 miles from nowhere”. We all know the answer to the question: “How far can a dog run into the woods?” The answer is, of course, “halfway”. Why? Well after the dog has run halfway, it will be going out, toward the other side!

When we last met Moses he was on the run from Pharaoh. He had escaped to the wilderness because he had murdered an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew slave and Moses became a wanted man. The text tells us that ven tough the the Pharaoh who wanted him dead has died, the oppression of the children of Israel has gotten worse. They have called out to God who has heard and remembered the covenant with Abraham.

Meanwhile, in the relative safety of the land of Midian Moses married and settled down. In today’s lesson we meet him herding his father-in-law’s sheep, “beyond the wilderness” .

If you consider “wilderness” as a term for a place that is “at the end of what is known”, and completely isolated, I wonder just how far you would have to go to be BEYOND that place! ?

I think this is a clue we need to go beyond what we normally know and experienced in order to understand this story; we will need to go far beyond, to the wilderness. This place is named Horeb, or Sinai, and is called “the mountain of God”. In many cultures mountains were places where you went to meet God, because God was understood to dwell in heavens which were above the sky.

Perhaps Moses life was such that he had to go beyond his normal course of activities in order to encounter the divine. Herding sheep can be a lot of boring, hard, repetitive work. You do the same thing day after day, after day. Then you do it again.

You know how it is; you drive to work in Charlottetown every day - and you are driving along through Dunstaffnage and you realize that you don’t remember going through the construction zone in Mount Stewart - but, of course, you know you must have ! Charlottetown is west of the area in which I live and work. Travelling west from Dundas or Souris, Mount Stewart comes first and then a couple of differeent communities and then Dunstaffnage , which is about 8 miles from Charlottetown. Whenever I travel the subway system in Toronto I marvel at the folks who step on the subway, seem to fall sound asleep until their stop, and then wake up and jump off, right where they want to! I guess it’s human nature to go on autopilot through things we do so often we could almost do it when we were sleeping.

This event woke Moses up though and features at least three unusual aspects: a fiery bush, an angel and the voice of God.

God calls to Moses by name, (getting his attention) and tells him to “stay back and take off his sandals because he is standing on holy ground”.

Considering that this was an encounter with God, these were reasonable commands. Both “keeping a distance” and “removing one’s shoes” were signs of reverence and respect in the presence of holiness”. God tells Moses that he has seen the plight of the slaves in Egypt and that Moses will be the one to free them. Furthermore, when that is accomplished, they will all come back to that place to worship.

I can imagine what may have been going through Moses mind. “Back to Egypt, no way! I have a price on my head. That is the LAST place I would want to go. I do have a passion for my fellow Hebrews but come on now, it should be obvious that diplomacy isn’t my thing - I think I have proved that - I do have a bit of a temper!”

Moses then takes another tack. He asks God, “Who are you? I need to be able to tell the people who sent me? The ‘God of your ancestors’ thing isn’t going to work God, they will want a name.”

First of all, Moses was raised in a culture where there were many gods and his father-in-law was some kind of priest, but not worshipping the God of Abraham. Besides, it was time this God had a name!

Knowing someone’s name gives us some measure of power over that person. (At this point I will call out the name of someone sitting in the congregation). You see how that works so much better than calling out and saying, “hey you there”.

It seems though that this God is not really willing to be named and not willing to be controlled because the name he gives to Moses is not really a name at all, it is a verb - IAM. It seems that part of what God is implying is that God will be whatever God wants to be. It seems that what God is saying is that he is being and existence itself. It makes sense that the creator of heaven and earth will determine for himself who is in control.

At this point our lesson ends but the story continues on to tell us that Moses came up with various excuses as to why he would not be able to do this but God, the great I AM counters each one of them with what might be called “ a solution”.

We know that Moses does go to Pharaoh and to make a long, long story short, the people of Israel leave Egypt.

But what does this part of the story have to say to us today?

I suppose you have all heard the story about George Bush. (Pause) He died and went to heaven and was met at the pearly gates by St Peter and granted admission. As he walked along the golden streets he noticed a familiar looking elderly man with a long white beard, carrying two tablets of stone and using an ancient walking stick. (George bush probably had the same children’s picture Bible you did - and he probably saw Charlton Heston in the Ten Commandments”!) He called out, “Hey mister. Are you Moses?”

The elderly man just man kept walking.”

Mr Bush called out again and again the response was the same; rather the non-response was the same!

At this point, Mr Bush, who was not accustomed to being ignored, ran after the bearded figure and tapped him on the back.

“You look like Moses but no matter who you are, you sure aren’t very friendly.”

The man replied. “YES, I am Moses, but look here - the last time I talked to a bush, I ended up wandering in the wilderness for 40 years.”

Now we are not likely to hear God’s call come to us out of a burning bush; that was what it took to get Moses to stop in his sheep-herding in the wilderness. Our call can come in a myriad of ordinary or extraordinary ways.

A number of years ago I read a book written by Shirley Jane Endicott about her own personal journey. In she describes a certain transformation as “becoming a burning bush”. Her encounter with women who had been horribly abused by their husbands, and the realization that both church and society pressured women to stay in abusive relationships, caused a fire to burn within her - an experience that she likened to “becoming a burning bush”. She knew she was on fire with a zeal for change, but that she was not consumed by that fire.

Moses, in his earlier life, had felt the rage that came from the oppsression of his people but it had destructive consequences. His encounter with the holy on this day will enable him to channel this rage into a sustained request for freedom.

On The Current on Friday there was a repeat broadcast of an almost year old documentary about a tradition in south-east Turkey that results in a cycle of revenge for violent crimes. Honour demands that the killing of one person requires the death of the perpetrator. The episode told the story of one man, Sight Shanla, a retired butcher from Diabacur, who is trying to change this and because of his work of diplomacy and negotiation thousands of lives have been saved.

I think that we encounter the fiery bush in many different ways. Ever time we encounter hurt or injustice and say to ourselves, or to a friend, “that is terrible, someone should do something!” we may well have encountered the fiery God of freedom and justice and we may be the one who is called to do that something.

Every time we are prompted to do something and then think up some excuse as to why we cannot do it, we could be Moses arguing with the Presence in the bush.

Yet when we encounter this presence we are given what we need to go forward with the task. We are told that we will be blessed with God’s presence. And like Moses most of us will not have to do it alone. He was given Aaron to be his “assistant”. We will find that there will be people who will share our passion and together we will be able to do much for those needs of which we have been made aware.

God calls us by name and promises that we will not be alone in the work we are called to do. Praise be to God.

Amen!

Exodus 12: 1-14
Psalm
Romans 13: 8-14
Matthew 18: 15-20

Before You Leave

The fire alarm went off in a university residence that had a number of apartments for married students. A newlywed student realized that there was a fire alarm at the residence and went to find his wife. She was sitting in a chair in the designated assembly area, looking worried, and clutching only their wedding album.

In 2000 there was a storm surge and the people living on the three streets on the easternmost edge of the town of Rexton were as evacuated, in what seemed like the middle of the night. I was awakened from a deep sleep, by a ringing doorbell and greeted a very wet looking member of the fire department and given a warning that I might have to leave. I decided to shower and pack a bag, just in case. Halfway through the first shampoo the doorbell rang and when I eventually got downstairs the firefighter told me, “leave within the next few minutes, the water is rising fast.” After the disaster was all over I heard that the only thing they plan to do differently if it happens again is not to make 2 calls to each house but simply to make the decision, knock on doors and tell people to leave immediately.

We were all worried about the hurricane that was to hit us last night. Would the power go off, or not? What crops would be further damaged; we were pretty sure there would not be any serious property damage; we just don’t live in a place like that. Not like New Orleans!

BUT what WOULD we take with is if a we had just a few hours to evacuate our community or the entire Island. With a population of 136,000 that would not be easy considering there is one road off the Island and one ferry and if the wind is bad enough both might be closed! Would you load up your car with clothes and electronics and family albums? What if you had to go on a school-bus and could only take one suitcase?

What would you do? Would you check with your neighbours to make sure you knew where they were going? What would you take if you knew you would never see your house or your community again.

When you got hungry during all the frenzied preparations would you throw something in the microwave or toaster oven or would you stop and invite the neighbours to a big dinner of meat and potatoes? Would you stop for a special church service or other liturgical celebration?

Well, there was one group of folks who were instructed to stop, and not only that, to institute a ritual that was supposed to take place every year, after they had reached the safety of this promised land; the land none of them had ever seen by the way.

According to the biblical story, they had been in Egypt for a little over 400 years. That is far longer than living memory; I mean, how many family stories do YOU know from 1608? Their ancestor Jacob was probably nothing more that a bittersweet legend. In the course of telling the story of Jacob and his family the biblical writers imply that the family would not likely have survived without an invitation from Joseph to move to Egypt but here they are, slaves. They had been suffering for that very survival for generations. In the day to day struggle to survive under hard labour, gratitude for a long ago favour did not have much power to sustain.

Since this Moses guy (the Egyptian reported to actually be the son of Hebrew slaves) had come back to town, the hopes of the people had risen and then crashed to earth a number of times. I read somewhere that Moses had been knocking on Pharaoh’s door for 40 years! This last time, as the story goes on to say, they did manage to leave. The last plague, mentioned in this passage and associated with this Passover ritual would have particularly devastating consequences for the Egyptians. The loss of the firstborn represents a loss of the greatest value and a particularly cruel blow.

I don’t know about you, but I have a great deal of difficulty with the idea of God going around killing the first-born of the Egyptians. However, that is how the Hebrew tradition remembered and interpreted the events; from the point of view of the victors. I think that we can affirm that God is on the side of the oppressed and that our God is a God of freedom and justice.

The real point of this story is not the death of the Egyptian children, but the journey into freedom, a journey of faith and courage, a journey into the unknown, a journey with God.

As a people of faith we are journeying into the unknown. We live here because of our own decisions but also because our ancestors made various choices. We worship in this building, and the three others on this Charge, because of the choices and hard work of those who have gone before us.

Some among us would argue that we have become slaves to their choices; slaves to buildings that are too drafty and too expensive to maintain and heat. We live in a world where most people travel many kilometres for just about everything.

I was listening to a program on the CBC the other day and it was on the history of education in PEI. Of course the story was in response to the problems of declining enrollment. I learned some things that I had not known before, and I have had an interest in PEI history for many years!

What I did not know was that PEI’s system of hundreds of schools which were free for all students was actually very progressive. In an era when most families had to pay if they wanted their children to learn ‘reading, ‘riting, and rithmetic, PEI brought in a free and public system. Part of this system involved rules which limited how far a child should have to walk to school. Hence, the hundreds of schools to educate the far flung population of this tiny Island.

Then came the education reforms of the 1970's under Premier Alex Campbell. Busses had been invented and children did not need to be limited to an easily walked distance and more children the same age could be brought together. Technology improvements and a move away from fishing and farming, which could be taught at home, meant that students had more to learn a greater variety of things. In order to be proficient in their subject matter, teachers had to specialize for teaching the upper grades. Thus we went from hundreds of schools to fewer, larger schools. There were also administrative changes that accompanied this school consolidation. The Guardian has run many stories in the last few weeks dealing with our declining enrollment and the cost of maintaining and staffing these large but now half empty schools.

The churches are in much the same position, for a variety of reasons. While school is free and compulsory, church attendance and involvement is not. Many of you have told me something like this, “On my road there used to be 20 families who went to the United Church, now there are 10 families, and half of them are Catholic and half of the rest don’t have any interest in our church.”

Families with parents who both work outside the home, and especially single parent families, are busy with many other activities for their children and busy with all those things necessary for running a household, and sometimes Sunday just has too much in it. We know that rural communities are having a volunteer crisis in many aspects of life.

Young people, in general, are looking for different things from church than their ancestors. Young families are willing to drive farther to give their children an opportunity for a children’s choir or a Sunday School where there are more children the same age.

Five hundred at church may be too big and impersonal for many rural folks but when you only have 25 or less, how big can you expect the choir and Sunday School to be? When all of the people who come on a Sunday could fit into one of the bigger churches and have room for Sunday school besides, many people have been wondering if it is the faithful thing to do, to continue separate services and maintain separate buildings?

Just because our buildings and our individual communities are the result of much sacrifice and hard wok on the part of our ancestors, or ourselves in years gone by, does not mean that they have to be kept open out of respect to our ancestors. They may well have served their purpose.

I remember a minister telling us of a man who locked the door of his beloved church building for the last time with tears in his eyes and noting that he was one of those who had voted for closure because he knew it was the right and faithful thing to do. It did not take away the pain and the sense of loss, but he was able to vote the way he did because of his vision of the future.

When I was a child I learned the hymn, “I am the church”, and one line of that hymn goes, “the church is not a building, the church is not a steeple. ..... the church is a people.” Yet worship space is and becomes very important to people. This worship space reminds us of significant spiritual milestones in our own lives. This space reminds us of those who have gone before us and one of the ways in which we remember them, is sitting in this space, praising God with us. I believe these folks built these churches and worked to support them to show their faith and to give a gift to their children and their children’s children. They wanted a building which pointed to the place that God had in the lives of those who were part of the community which gathered week by week. I do not believe they wanted to burden the generations as yet unborn.

We are faced with sustaining a ministry in buildings which have become more burden than gift. Make no mistake these are not easy decisions, they are hard, hard, hard. Do we wish these churches were full?

Yes.

Do we wish money was no problem and the cost of oil and repairs not going up and up and up?

Of course!

Do we live in the kind of world where all our wished could be granted?

No, we know we don’t.

The question is: How do we live in faithfulness in the world in which we find ourselves, and not the ideal world in which we wished we lived?

I was reading the comments and sermons on the Exodus passage yesterday and someone commented that the Hebrews had to do all of this quickly because if they sat down and made their lists of pros and cons they would have stayed in slavery. If they had to call and book a moving van they probably would have gotten up the next morning and gone to the quarry to chip out yet another rock for yet another pyramid.

As it was, when they got to the desert they regretted their hasty decision- every time they had a conflict or difficulty. Yet, they were on their way to the land of freedom as difficult as the journey was.

The call of God is often to spend a great deal of time on the journey; the call as a Christian is to walk in faith. We are about journey and not about arrival. We are about celebrating and recognizing the presence of God, despite the circumstances and disappointments of not always being where we had hoped to be. This is true for our personal or family journey as well as the journey of our community of faith.

We have been together as a Pastoral Charge for almost four years and we have talked and thought and prayed and hoped things would get better and we would not have to make any more changes. I don’t think we have been successful at turning back the tide of change we can do nothing about. We are faced with making conscious choices and taking some charge of our future.

We will need to make decisions; but whatever we decide we must remember that we are not on this journey alone. Using an image from square dancing, God is both the caller and the dance partner.

Are we ready to dance to the caller. Are we ready to leave on the next part of our journey together?

Amen!