1 Kings 17: 8-24
Psalm 146
Luke 7: 11-17

There’s Just Enough for One More!

Today’s passage from the First Book of Kings is a long story about the prophet Elijah and even though I read a lot of scripture my focus is only on the second part; Elijah, the widow of Zarephath and the never ending meal and oil. If we had not had a special theme last week we would have heard parat one of that story. That first part from last week involves a dramatic fiery showdown between the priests of Baal, the fertility god of the Phoenicians, and Elijah, the prophet of the God of Israel. Against the laws of his people Ahab had married a foreigner and she brought her religion with her into the palace and her husband, the King was soon worshipping these foreign gods.

As a prophet, a large part of Elijah’s calling was to speak “truth to power”; not to be a “yes man” or a rubber stamp for what the king wanted to do anyway, but to ensure that the King stayed true to what the God of Israel expected of him.

The role of such a prophet is never for the faint of heart but Ahab and Jezebel were certainly a challenge.

Elijah set up a contest to prove that the God of Israel had the power to send fire from heaven and their fertility gods, the Baals, were NOTHING. It is a dramatically told story. Go home, put something in the toaster oven for lunch, and read it.

The Baals lost this contest and Elijah had the prophets of Baal executed. This angered the Queen and she put a price on his head. He announced that a drought would come upon the land and he fled for his life. As the land is drying up he is led to a small body of water and is fed by ravens bringing him bread. When this water disappears he is led the home of the widow, on the verge of cooking a last meal for herself and her son. She has just enough for one last supper, and she intended to make some kind of bread and then prepare to starve.

Most of us can hardly imagine that kind of dire situation. Most of us most of us probably have extra food in the cupboard, freezer or fridge at any one time. The day before “Grocery Day” we may be completely out of fresh vegetables, bread, meat, milk or cheese, but there would still likely be enough to make something quite edible.

Each of you could probably go home at any time and make something, even if it was a rather odd combination of things.

If this widow found herself without food in PEI now there would be a food bank to help her out, or in the days before food banks, an informal network of people would likely make sure she would not starve.

It seems that these networks did not exist then! To make matters worse the regular daily wage of most labourers in that time, as well as in Jesus’ time was just enough for a family to eat. There was nothing left over to help a destitute neighbour as most of them were just a meal or two ahead of her.

We need to remember that this man of God - Israel’s God is in the home country of Jezebel, the one from whom he was running. This widow is asked to trust in him and his God enough to feed him her last meal.

She is asked to trust that her flour and oil would not run out. Lo and behold there was enough, just enough, each and every day to make enough loaves to feed the three of them.

So we have Elijah fleeing from the wrath of one woman of Phoenicia and now seeking help from another. One was rich and powerful; the other, poor and powerless. Clearly the problem for Elijah was not with the people themselves, but was an issue of proclaiming the power of the one true God. His role was primarily to proclaim the power of a God who could bring life where there seemed to be none, and hope where the people only felt despair.

We can only walk in trust if we actually trust the one doing the leading; Elijah was proclaiming that the God of Israel, the God of heaven and earth was indeed trustworthy.

I find this story intriguing for several reasons.

First, this woman she was a Gentile sho trusted this wild man prophet who preached another nation’s God.

Second, the fact that this woman is un-named makes her stand apart from the other woman in the story, Queen Jezebel. It is unfortunate that so many in that age, and even in this one, go un-named. Yet God’s grace came to her and to her son. It leads me to ask questions about the un-named in our society. How do we interact wit those shut out by society? How do we become the good news to them? If we are one of those nameless ones who has fallen through the cracks of our tattered and torn safety new, how do we avail ourselves of the promises of God? The good news is that God wants all people to have what is needed for both life and dignity of life.

Third, I notice that the never ending supply of meal and oil did not mean that her containers were filled to the brim each day but that they always had one more day left when they were opened at the start of preparing the meal. The widow had to trust that there would always be “just enough” the next day if she used it all for each meal.

AA, like other 12 step programs, asks people to work toward their sobriety, or other healing, “one day at a time”. A lifetime of sobriety would be too much to tackle at once, and one would surely fail at a task like that, but one day, that can be handled - and it starts over again the next day.

Quite often we want to have all the answers and have all the resources we think we need, before we begin! The widow was asked to go one day at a time trusting that there would be “enough”. I saw a commercial for the first time a day or two ago - a woman announces to her partner that they are going to have a baby - that she is going to be a mom and he is going to be a dad and then they stop their joy-filled dancing saying to each other, “What do we do now?”

Sometimes we find out what we need to know when we need to know it, and that is time enough! There is no turning back to be sure, but you don’t need to buy a crib this week either.

This leads me to ask the question, “Why are we afraid to give our all to something? Are we willing to trust that we will be refreshed and renewed for the next day?

This passage asks us to see this message both as promise and as calling. We are the widow promised that we will be cared for but we are also the one offering the promise on God’s behalf.

Let us be the church together.

Amen.

1 Kings 21: 1-21a
Psalm 25
Luke 7:36-8:3

Our lives are governed by circles and cycles, many of which overlap and intersect. We have the calendar year from January to December and the school year from September to June. If you have a business your life revolves around your year end. Our church year is July to June while the worship year goes from Advent to Reign of Christ, which is roughly from December to November. Year after year we follow the same cycles, yet our lives are more like a slinky than a true circle because every time we reach the beginning of a circle once more we are at a slightly different place than we were last year.

We come here today to Sally’s beach as we did last year, as the people we are now, as the people we are this year, to acknowledge that we have completed a cycle. Sunday school is over for the summer, for the “year”. In September we start a new year of learning and growing and trying to learn and discern a bit more about what God wants for us. Just like we did in this last year, we will grow and change over the course of the year which is to come.

Today I want to focus on the Gospel reading which was chosen for us by one of those circles of church life, called the “lectionary”. Today’s passage is about Jesus and a Pharisee named Simon who had invited Jesus to supper at his home.

Now, what do YOU do when you invite someone to supper? Maybe you cook something special, or maybe you just pull a slightly bigger chicken or another pork chop out of the freezer and prepare a few more potatoes and veggies. Maybe you even make a dessert. You put an extra plate on the table and may have to get the extra chair from the den. You hide your clutter and tell your kids to be on their best behaviour! Is that about it?

You see the host in today’s story invited Jesus but he didn’t do most of the things a host was supposed to do. It may seem kind of odd to us but in Jesus’ time and place a host was supposed to anoint a guest’s head with oil - maybe it was scented, I don’t know that! I don’t remember anyone ever doing that for me! I’m not sure I would want them to! A host was supposed to give a guest the “kiss of peace”; people sometimes do that for me- sometimes And, this was very, very important, His host was supposed to get a servant to wash his feet. Now sometimes people offer me slippers (especially if it is winter and they think their floors are cold) but NO ONE has ever offered to have my feet washed! Sometimes people say, “there’s the bathroom, you can freshen up if you like, and I might find a fresh facecloth and a nice soft handtowel If it humid and I feel hot and sticky it’s a great thing. In Jesus day everyone walked, everyone wore sandals, not sneakers, and their feet were tired and probably sore.

So while the host was saying that Jesus was a special guest his actions showed that he was not really going out of his way to make him feel welcome.

The fact that a stranger appeared in the room in the middle of the dinner was not all that unusual; she was not a party crasher. When a special guest was at someone’s house the neighbours might just drop over to hear what pearls of wisdom they might hear. Its like a “standing room only” section at a $100 a plate fundraising dinner.

The woman who became part of the evening’s events turned out to be the one who showed Jesus her love by spending a lot of money on the perfume and showing her sorrow at everything she had ever done - she was the one that truly loved Jesus. The host had a hard time understanding what Jesus was saying about love and forgiveness but when Jesus asked him to think about it he had to agree with Jesus.

And who did Jesus hang out with and who helped support him? Not the rich people who tried to impress him with fancy meals where they would probably try to trap him into saying something with which they didn’t agree!

This passage tells us that the women he had helped find healing were the ones who became his true friends and supported his ministry.

Sometimes, I think we are like the Pharisee who invited Jesus to supper. Sometimes we look at other people and we think we know and we judge without really getting to know their story.

I was watching a re-run of a TV show not long ago and one of the main characters was at a parent- teacher interview. The teacher told the dad that there was another child who might have been mean to his son. The man realized that his son had just invited this very boy to his house to play after school. He realized that his son was not going to let one or two events stand in the way of forming a friendship. I don’t know how it turned out in the end but that boy was trying to love everyone, despite some of the evidence to the contrary.

Sometimes we judge people because of the family from which they come, or because of something they or a parent has done in the past, or even just because they are not seventh generation residents of this area.

The reality is that we all could benefit from a little forgiveness; we could all use someone cutting us a little slack once in a while. If we judge others more harshly than we judge ourselves we are like this Simon and not like the women who knew deep down that she needed the kind of forgiveness and love that Jesus showed in his life.

This is a story of welcoming and openness. It’s about us going out of our way to welcome others whose true lives may be hidden to us. This is about leaving the judgement to God and showing to others the same love which has been shown to us.

Most of us will have lots of opportunity to encounter others over the summer -your mission over the summer, should you choose to accept it is to look at people and treat them as if they were dearly loved children of God - which they are. Lets treat people as if they were our dear friends - which they may very well become. It’s our opportunity to open a door and to change a life through the power of God’s love working through us.

Amen.

1 Kings 19: 1-15a
Psalm 42
Luke 8: 26-39

The Deafening Silence

When a preacher follows the lectionary as a sermon writing discipline, as I do, in terms of providing enough material for a sermon it is sometimes a famine and at other times it is a feast. Sometimes I can easily think of several sermons for each text while at other times, I can’t come up with much of anything that sparks my interest, for ANY of the texts offered for that Sunday. For good or for ill, this is a feast Sunday. Elijah, his ministry, his trials and tribulations and his relations with Jezebel and Ahab are ample fodder for many, many sermons. This is the case each of the weeks we have heard a part of his fascinating story. If you don’t think his story is fascinating, well, remember, I don’t get out much!

Likewise, today’s selection from the Gospel of Luke, telling part of the story of Jesus’ ministry of teaching and healing provides us with lots of grist for the mill.

Throw in the Psalm’s peaceful pastoral scenes with a spiritual theme and we have a virtual smorgasbord of texts and sermons for this one week alone.

I have lived off of PEI for so much of my adult life that I sometimes forget the sight of white-tailed deer grazing in a field, drinking from a brook, or shepherding a spotted fawn across a road is something we just don’t see on PEI. While I am indeed grateful for that as I drive home at night, I do miss the majesty of those beautiful animals. I think we are the only province in Canada not to have deer - or moose - or bears, or porcupines or coyotes - oh wait, they came across on the ice one winter and they stayed! The snaring of a coyote in 1983 near Souris was clear proof of their existence and, of course, these days we can hear them calling to each other on quiet nights.

The picture on our bulletin for this Sunday is obviously not PEI but change the background to red sandstone cliffs and the scene would not look contrived.

There is something about summer that seems to elicit the quest for experiences of the holy in the outdoors. I was reading something one day quite a while ago about the importance summer camp in the call of many clergy. I know that my teenage experiences at Camp Abegweit were an essential component of my call.

Ironically, this summer I will be a chaplain at camp this summer and 35 years ago, Louis Pelissier, the student minister in Dundas was Camp Director at that same camp when I went for the first time - not as a camper but as a teenage counsellor.

What can we experience when we get away from the beeping, whirring, chatter, and bright lights of “civilization”? People who live in big cities rarely ever see the stars because there are too many street lights and I doubt if they can ever know real silence with the traffic and human noises competing for attention. Even in the country, in our own houses, think of the moments after the power goes out and how quiet it is. My parents used to have a large generator in the basement and you sure knew when the power was out because it was set up to kick in automatically. It was also set to go off automatically when maritime Electric fixed the problem and when that huge motor shut off, the resulting silence was almost deafening.

What opportunities does the summer provide for us to connect with nature, and through nature, with the holy?

Go to the beach at night and lie on the grassy bank above the beach and listen -

Go the beach at night, after you have put the kids to bed and when the campfire has almost gone out and look at the dying embers, and see how easily you become lost in thought -

Go for a walk at low tide and see what treasures the waters have brought to shore-

Listen to the child voices singing the slightly off the wall songs of the church camp faith and you will changed and amazed and filled -

Elijah was in a bit of a fix; you know those sayings about winning a battle but being in danger of losing the war; he had to get out of town; he had to flee for his life.

Jesus often had to get out of town. They had to get away from the demands and the criticism and the never ending, “to-do” list. Yet, time and time again, when he sought quiet he encountered more requests for help.

Elijah went to the wilderness expecting to encounter God and since he was a prophet, he “knew” what manner God would use to speak - surely it would be thunder of terrifying wind or lightening, yet in the end he was almost disappointed because God was not in the noisy and spectacular things; God was in the silence afterward.

Are we like Elijah? Well, I don’t think any of us are prophets. But I do think that we are like him in that oftentimes we HAVE to try the other things first before we will truly believe that God can best get to us in the silence after the rage and thunder.

Perhaps Elijah’s thunder and violent wind was just as much inside of him as it was in the natural world? He was probably depressed and feeling that no one truly understood him and that everyone was against him.

When I went to camp, many years ago. we had a song for that: “nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I’m gonna eat some worms” and it continues to describe the gooey, squichy slimy worms that will become our lunch!

In this song kids at camp turn an almost universal feeling into a fun (and yes, gross) song, but we all know that this universal feeling, if you are actually feeling it, is no fun, no fun at all.

We have Elijah, the prophet of God, doing exactly what God has asked of him and he became a wanted man. That’s NOT how it was supposed to work; it’s the bad guys who are supposed to make it onto the “Most Wanted” list maintained by the RCMP. Perhaps modern whistle blowers might lose their jobs but they don’t usually end up fleeing for their lives. However this was not unusual for biblical prophets. He and God had some serious talking to do!!!! And God was willing if only Elijah would quiete down first.

So as we slip into summer we have this story of the prophet encountering God in the unexpected silence.

I recall the day I was visiting a young boy and he and his mom were having a fight, mostly because he was clearly overtired. He was sent to his room which was equipped with a baby monitor. It was very, very funny to listen to him muttering to himself how unfair life was, how mean his mother was and on and on and on BUT he eventually fell asleep. A completely different child emerged several hours later.

What do we hear in the silence after all of our ideas and energy have been exhausted?

Shusssssh! Listen!

Amen.

2 Kings 2: 1-2, 6-14
Psalm 77
Galatians 5:1, 13-25
Luke 9: 51-62

Looking Ahead!

With respect to summer and work here on PEI there are two basic kinds of lifestyles - either you have more time off to spend with your family and friends doing touristy stuff or you have next to none as it is a time of much longer hours working in farming, fishing and tourism.

Summer can be a time for reassessing our priorities so that we can resume our fall activities with some clarity. We pick up some new activity or stop doing another activity.

The Christian faith is one which presents following in the way of Jesus as a conscious choice and the making of a commitment to that choice as an essential part of being a faithful disciple.

What does it mean to choose the way of Jesus? It seems that for Jesus everything in life was subject to a re-evaluation in terms of his message of God’s love and call to commitment to this God.

As we sit here contemplating the transition between Elijah and Elisha we know that in the time to come our church will change, as it has changed in the past. We realize that new people will do things in different ways. Perhaps the changes to come will seem greater than in the past, but change and transition has always been a part of any human organization.

In each age the goal is the same, but the ways in which that goal is lived out, on the ground, may look very different from one generation to the next.

Even if we take the summer off from weekly church attendance and only come occasionally, there is no such thing as a vacation from faithfulness - or at least there should not be. Sometimes we do need to take a step back and recharge our spiritual batteries; Jesus and the prophets did this on a regular basis, but it was all for the purpose of returning to the journey with renewed vigour and purpose.

We have picked up the mantle of faithfulness; we have put our hand to the plow - the ministry is ours and God’s together - let us seek what we need to be able to return to it in September with gusto. Amen.

2 Kings 5: 1-14
Psalm 30
Luke 10: 1-11. 16-20

Surprised by Joy

On Saturday, April 11 2009, Piers Morgan, host of Britain’s Got Talent, expressed his joyful surprise to contestant Susan Boyle. Boyle was the very plain looking woman from Blackburn, West Lothian in Scotland who had just received a sustained standing ovation for her rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” from the musical, Les Misérables. The sound and quality of her voice was anything but plain and almost instantly this 40 something, woman with a thick Scottish accent rocketed to fame and fortune and has probably achieved her stated desire to be as famous as Elaine Paige. After Boyle’s performance, judge, Amanda Holden, admitted that she felt the entire audience was cynical, and against her, expecting nothing, but she called the performance, “the biggest wake up call, ever”. Before the performance members of the audience might have been wondering, “WHO is Elaine Paige”., or perhaps “Lady, if you have not had a singing career by your 40's, you’re not going to have one now.” They might well have thought, “She is so plain looking, just like my old gramma from the sticks, how can she be any good? Well, as you may know, that performance opened the right door and now after several CD releases and a number of live performances her net worth is now estimated to be over £22M. She has sung for the Queen at Jubilee celebrations at Buckingham Palace.

Sometimes people surprise us.

Sometimes situations surprise us. For example, sometimes a doctor’s prescription of a “home remedy” surprises us: “how could THAT work?” “You went to medical school and all you can come up with is something my gran could have done.” And, when it does we are surprised, perhaps even overjoyed. There is a medical explanation of why it works but that is often lost in the surprise.

Well known author CS Lewis grew up going to church but became an atheist when he was a teenager. He recommitted to Christianity later in life and wrote a book titled, Surprised By Joy - The Shape of My Early Life” in order to recount his journey. Its title comes from a poem written by English poet, William Wordsworth, which recounts an unexpected moment of joy in the midst of grieving the death of his daughter.

What about today’s passage from the Hebrew Scriptures? How does the phrase “surprised by joy” relate to these words?

Naaman, a commander of the conquering army has a problem. He is a great and powerful man but he has leprosy. What exactly he had, we do not know as the biblical term can be used for a number of skin diseases, some not all that serious, some very much so. Apparently the laws of Aram did not require that he be quarantined as he would have to have been in Israel but it is clear that this illness caused him enough difficulty that his wife’s servants knew about it and a young girl, who was a captive was led to speak to his wife about it.

Here comes the first surprise. This young girl is a mere child and she is a captive. She shows both incredible maturity and an unexpected degree of concern for someone who was her captor.

What are surprising places we can find joy and healing. I thought of 2 prison movies. The first is The Shawshank Redemption. In this movie, the main character, unfairly imprisoned, gives sound financial advice to a particularly cruel guard - just to feel normal! The second is, The Green Mile. In this film, an inmate on death row, who has an incredible gift uses it to heal one of his guards. He refuses to fight his faulty conviction and his guards cry at his execution.

Where would you go for advice on a good doctor? Ask your own doctor about a specialist? You will need a referral from your doctor anyway! Ask someone who was cured of the same ailment?

Where do you go for medical advice? You can find a lot of things on the internet, but depending on who wrote it, the information found there may or may not be reliable.

My late cousin was an oncologist, treating patients with cancer and she had to spend a great deal of time explainign why what they read on the internet did not apply to their type of cancer.

Back to the biblical story. Once the source of healing is identified the power people get into action. We have the long story of the sending of letters and gifts from ruler to ruler. The king of Israel was quaking in his boots because he knows he does not have the power to cure leprosy.

Remember the movie, The karate Kid. The kid goes to a Mr Myiagi to teach him how to fight. His teaching consists of having the kid paint fences and wax cars. In the end he sees why and learns much more than how to beat the bullies.

Naaman is told to go and wash in the Jordan. Now Naaman is from away; he mmediately got his back up and protested saying that the rivers in his homeland must surely be as good. (Read: Better) He did not come all this way to be told to do something he could do at home (except for the location, of course) He wanted hocus-pocus and, it would seem, personal attention. He was, after all, a powerful man, with letters from the king.

However, his people convinced him that he should do what he was asked to do, especially since he would have done something much more difficult, if he had been asked to do that. He is healed and the people of Israel are reminded that God’s power and their military strength aren’t always the same.

What is it that attracts us? In the Shakeswpeare play, “the Merchant of Venice” the right to marry the lovely Portia was to be given to the person who picked the right box with her picture inside. The unlucky contestants picked the gold and then the silver while the luck suitor guessed correctly and chose the lead. He was helped by a carefully played song. It’s a romantic tale but it is counter intuitive, to find what we really desire in the plain brown wrapper. (We saw that in the children’s story) Sometimes we need to take a risk and go with the plain and that is where we receive joy.

Sometimes like Naaman we need to venture outside of the familiar, to take a step outside our comfort zone in order to find what we have been looking for.

I know of people who cannot worship in a different pew, let alone a different church.

Many years ago one of my churches placed a wooden tent on the front lawn inviting campers from the local park to church. “Come as you are”, the sign said. I tried to get the elderly congregation to give up their formal attire for the summer but mostly they kept the fancy dresses, the suits and ties. We did get a few campers every year who said they came because of the welcome the sign offered them. One pair, a mom and small boy were obviously not your average United Church folks, and she spoke with a thick accent. Her boy was very restless. After church she apologized saying that they were orthodox and the church was very strange to the child, not at all what he was used to. Most o the time though, we adults anyway, can find the quiet centre and worship in an unfamiliar place. If people unfamiliar with our traditions or language come regularly, the differences can be accommodated.

The story of Naaman calls us to look in the unusual and unexpected places for love, healing and joy.

May that be our discovery this summer season.

Amen.

Amos: 7: 7-17
Psalm 82
Luke 10: 25-37

Being A Neighbour

If you watch Vision TV you will see that The Waltons are on again. I have not seen this particular episode lately but I remember it well. Around the time of WWII, the community of Waltons’ Mountain became embroiled in anti-German sentiment and someone had the bright idea to round up all the German books they could find and hold a good old fashioned “book burning” in a public place. Picture this! There is a pile of books in the middle of gathering throng of people which includes their pastor, and someone is ready to set them on fire. John Boy looks at the pile and sees a book he recognizes and picks it up with an expression of surprise and great dismay. While he cannot read German he recognizes what the book is. He looks around at the crowd and then calls on a middle-aged woman who is among those who have gathered and he asks her to read the words to which he points. The look on her face tells us that if she does her secret will soon be known but she approaches John Boy, takes the book and begins to read the words in German. After a sentence or two John Boy stops her and asks her to translate what she has just read into English. You could have heard a pin drop as she recited in English the familiar first verse of the book of Genesis.

The good church going folks of Waltons’ Mountain had almost burned a Bible in their rush to rid themselves of all things German. They would never have thought to make a public spectacle of burning an English one! They had failed to realize that this neighbour who had been a part of their community for many years had a German background. At the end of the episode the pastor of the church realizes that they were wrong and John Boy is entrusted with several German books.

When I need things to be level or straight I use a level or a chalk line (for wallpapering mostly) (Reference the children’s story if we had one)

Compared to what you would need on a construction site though, my stash of tools are mere toys. My oldest nephew was showing me the level he was using as he was framing the opening for an industrial size garage door - (chuckle) - each of the car payments for my first car, 25 years ago, were less than he paid for that one level. He considers this kind of level a necessary purchase and a good investment.

Patterns and guides are a necessity in life. When we came to church this morning we drove on a road, most of which was probably paved, and our journey was governed by carefully placed yellow and white lines .

The last time we made cookies or a cake, we used a recipe, either one on paper or one we had more, or less memorized. Cooks know there are different guidelines for both ingredients and methods for muffins, cakes, cookies, biscuits and bread. If you beat muffin batter like it was a cake, you wont likely be pleased with the results!

Life, in general is like that too. Life works better when we follow certain, what we might call, “best practises”. For example, if we eat a good breakfast we can do a good morning’s work, and that is true whether you pound nails into wood, answer the phone and tap the keyboard of a computer or have to sit in a classroom and follow a teacher’s instructions.

This is a good a time as any to promote the breakfast program at our schools - we know that some children come to school hungry and are disadvantaged for the whole day if they do not have something nutritious to eat before they sit down to learn. We know that some families run out of food long before the next cheque arrives and we try and supply them with some of their needs. We used to have more informal networks for supplying food to neighbours in need but as those informal networks become less and less certain we need the food-banks so that families will not be hungry.

Health professionals tell us to eat according to Canada’s Food Guide and and get enough exercise and we will be better off.

What about guidelines with respect to ultimate questions though. The prophet Amos was speaking to the people about following the ways of God and he used the image of a mason using a plumb line to make sure the wall was straight. The unnamed lawyer in the Gospel stood up to ask Jesus a question; Luke tells us it was a “test” of the kind that the questioner already knows the answer he wants and wants to prove he knows more than the person he is asking.

Jesus wasn’t much interested in tests or in falling into traps but he was very much interested in proclaiming the good news. This man did know the answer to his own question: 1) Love God. 2) Love neighbour as self. The answer had been in the tradition for generations. Do that and you will live.

I feel I must say something here about what the Hebrew tradition AND the gospels mean when they speak of eternal life - they are speaking of a quality of life that can also be experienced before we die - it is a synonym for abundant life, for life in its fullness. It is something which we can glimpse here and now, it’s not just what we might call, “life after death”

Jesus proclaimed the Good news of a faith that informed all of all of life. He was interested in people having enough to eat and meaningful work and that their lives were free from cruelty and oppression. He wanted them to know God as a friend, not as an angry law giver and punishing judge. That upset a lot of powerful people who had a stake in things remaining the same and it was for this reason that he was crucified.

So what this lawyer is saying is that to have abundant life, today and tomorrow, one must live in such a way that one loves God with everything you’ve got and your neighbour as yourself. Sounds simple. Sounds clear.

The lawyer in today’s story was looking for a loophole! This commandment does not say to love everybody - just the neighbour - when I was a teenager in an argumentative mood I would ask the question, “Who is my neighbour?” I would have!

Clearly the assumption behind the question is that some people are neighbours and some are not! There are neighbours who live next door or across the road or just down the road. If we stretch it out we might include everyone who lives within a certain distance. Most of our neighbours in these rural communities are people just like us and they are related to us to boot!

BUT what about the people who vote the wrong way or refused to sign the petition we were passing around, or go to the wrong church or no church at all or have not been here for at least three generations - what about them?

Once we start trying to define this passage in terms of who is beyond our obligations, we are in need of the parable Jesus tells. It is this story, commonly referred to as the “Parable of the Good Samaritan” that, as a whole, is the plumb line, or the carpenter’s level.

Then after his parable he turned to the lawyer and asked him his own question! Wait! No! He CHANGED the question, ever so subtly, but very significantly. The right question was “Who WAS a neighbour to the one in need?”

So the short summary of this passage might be, “stop wasting time asking who your neighbour is and go out and be one. You know what to do. Be brave and go and do it.”

Hebrews 11: 1-3, 8-16 Luke 12: 32-40

Looking Forward and Back Through The Eyes of Faith

Sitting on my desk when I sat down to begin this sermon was my copy of the Mount Allison Record, an alumni magazine. The magazine notes that the class of 2013 was the 150th class to receive degrees. There was one big difference though; there were just two graduates in 1863, this year there were over 500.

Like all graduations, university convocations are a time for both remembering the past and launching a group of people into the future. Individual students look back over four years of study, of challenge, change, growth, fun and the forming of friendships. They look forward to more study or a career in their chosen field. The University itself usually takes a longer view and this year Mount Allison looked back to a time which is, in some ways, almost unrecognizable. A class of two! Talk about your absence being noticed by the professors if you decide to sleep in! In my final year there I did have two courses with a total enrollment of 4.

So much has changed in those intervening years. Few, if any of the buildings there then have survived and student life would be very different. Yet, I expect that today’s university student has more in common with those first alumni than we might initially think. If a member of this year’s class, born in the last decade of the 20th century, were to enter a time machine and go back to the lecture halls and seminar rooms of 150 years ago would she find anything familiar? First she, if this student were a “she”, she would find that it would actually be 12 years before she could be eligible to study for a degree but Mount A would be the best choice because it was the first University in the British Empire to grant a degree to a woman.

If she were to go back those 150 years she would find people who also went to university to expand their horizons, to pick up a basic degree so they could go to their real life’s calling of law, medicine or theology. Perhaps some of them went to university to meet someone to marry. Perhaps they went to have more freedom, than they did at home, though university rules were certainly more strict in years gone by than they are now.

One of the things our student would find is that in 1863, at Mount Allison at least, church attendance is compulsory. I believe gowned students are marched down the street to the Methodist Church and there were whole sections reserved for them. The building is vacant today because it has deemed unuseable by the fire marshal and the small congregation cannot afford to maintain it.

Today, it seems, it is not just university students who don’t go to worship on Sunday morning. In the year 2013 those of us who do attend church are trying to be Christian in a largely secular world and culture. Many people are at least nominally Christian while, according to census reports and surveys, there are more and more people all the time who are declaring that they have no religious affiliation whatsoever.

Perhaps we have more in common with the early church than Christians have had since the emperor Constantine was converted to Christianity almost 1700 years ago. We in the church are having to come to terms with the realization that we can no longer expect the state to be even nominally Christian or to operate on common Christian principles. (Christians of varying denominations cannot even agree what these principles might be, so how could we expect the state to mirror our values.)

Far from mourning this change, I think we should accept it, because it frees us to be who we should be and because it gives us more in common with the biblical story than the people of the church had for about 1600 years.

The people to whom the letter of the Hebrews was written were finding themselves in hot water more and more often because they were no longer in either the Jewish or Roman mainstream. Where were they to turn for guidance? What did their history have to teach them?

What guidance could be given? They were, essentially, trying to navigate uncharted waters. It was like those days of long ago when Abraham was going forth in faith. He left home on the mere promise that God would give him a family, a lineage, a name. In an era when family was both identity and survival , he left home and ventured into the unknown. What was it that enabled him to do this? It was faith?

Well, what exactly is FAITH? The letter to the Hebrews defines it in this way, “...faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

Faith in this sense is not mere belief but trusting in the one who makes the promises to such an extent that one can live into them, and live them into being despite short term setbacks and evidence to the contrary. Faith is living as if the promised and anticipated future is indeed true and has come to pass.

Abraham and the Hebrew people after him were identified and formed by a journey. This journey was not just a summer vacation, or a series of moves, but one which was generations long and altered not only one generation but an entire culture. This journey became their identity, even when they had settled in the land of promise.

I don’t think any of us have first nations roots so what this means is that we have been in North America for no more that a few hundred years. Considering the age of human civilization, that’s a mere drop in the bucket.

When the early church looked for guidance through the turmoil in which they were living they looked to their ancestors for the example of faith in the midst of change. They looked to those who left home without even a road map, with only a promise. They left on faith.

What is FAITH? Faith is not something intellectual. You don’t do “faith” just in your head. It is not the same as believing something abstract and unconnected with life. Faith is living out what you believe to be true. If I am unwilling to act on my belief, it is not true faith. True faith is being willing to put your money where your mouth is.

I was watching a tv drama one day and the issue was of contaminated water. The CEO of the company accused of polluting the water was asserting that the water was perfectly safe but when asked to drink a glass of it, he waked away in silence!

The chaplain of a large, prestigious American University received an irate call from a parent of one of the graduating class. It seemed that the young woman had decided not to pursue the career goals she had entered the university with but decided to take a few years off to work with an aid agency.

The chaplain’s conversation went something, like this:

Reverend our daughter tells us she is not going to grad school now and that she wants to do aid work in Africa!

Yes. She told me last week. That’s great news,,,,,,,,,,,,, isnt it

No! Its NOT

Why would you say that?

Well she was supposed to become a lawyer, why else would we have saved our money to send her to your university? Its your fault - your chapel services put this idea in her head.

Well, is going to church new for your daughter?

No.

Did you take her to church and send her to Sunday school?

Yes.

Did you have her baptized and promise to bring her up in a Christian home?

Yes.

Did you teach her to think of others and to share with others?

Yes.

Well then, why are you upset with me, YOU started her on the road of faith?

Well, we we we we didn’t expect her to take it this seriously!

We don’t all have to leave our life’s plans and work in developing countries, but we are all called to take our faith seriously.

These times are difficult ones for the church, particularly in Canada. Churches that were once thriving have had to sit down and take a hard look at their mission and the resources needed for their mission. Some have had to sell buildings, use rented space, amalgamate or work with others in ways they could not have imagined half a generation ago.

Families have had to pull up stakes and go where the jobs are, despite the feeling that this will be our family home for ever and ever. The question is: how does it go from disaster to journey of faith?

It feels like uncharted territory for many? It sometimes feels like an evacuation with orders to take only what is absolutely necessary; only what we can carry with us.

We live in the midst of great change, yet we can indeed discover what Abraham and those who followed him discovered. We can discover that God calls us forward in faithfulness. God calls us to live into the new in faith. God calls us to live in trust, certain that we will never be alone no matter where we go.

For this we can say: Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Isaiah 5: 1-7
Psalm 80
Hebrews 11: 29-12:2
Luke 12: 49-56

Saving Our Energy For Growing in Faith!

It’s one of those “Canadian Heritage Minutes” that are on TV from time to time. Somewhere on the prairies a couple living in a “soddy” are working in the field. As the woman doubles over with pain we realize she has gone into labour. They speak and we hear a thick eastern European accent. We are told that it was people like this couple who brought western civilization to our country.

Another “heritage minute” is set somewhere in what is now Quebec and shows orphans getting off a ship; many of whose passengers had died of ship’s fever. These children are to be adopted by French families and assigned new names. One well spoken girl insists that their mother told them to keep their Irish names and the concluding voice over indicates that this is how the Irish names came to be spoken and preserved in Quebec.

I heard a question on a CBC broadcast the other day. “Would you be willing to take a seat on a spaceship on a trip to the planet Mars. Before you sign up for the adventure of a lifetime note theat there is one catch! You won’t be coming back.

We know, intellectually at least, that many of our ancestors got on leaky and rat infested boats and came across an ocean in search of a new life. We know that unless they were wealthy they knew that it was almost certain they would never see their loved ones or stand on their beloved soil again. Perhaps it was as a result of the highland clearances and they had no choice or the potato famine and they had few options. Perhaps they chose to come for adventure or the promise of land of their own. There were as many reasons as there were immigrants, I suppose. We know that it was not easy but I doubt any of us, even recent immigrants understand how very hard it was in the centuries gone by. Now that we have telephones and high speed internet the world is becoming, or seeming to become very small.

The Epistle for today is a mini history lesson for the readers of this “letter to the Hebrews”. Like us, they had been in their land for so long they probably felt that their people had “arrived” and did not need to work at their journey of faithfulness, as their ancestors had to in the days of Moses, for example. They had regarded it as their final destination, generations ago.

If I am going on a trip and program my GPS properly, the little voice inside that wonderful piece of technology will indicate that I have “reached my destination”. I bought the Cookie Monster’s voice for my GPS the other day and every time the voice tells me how far it is to an exit or a turn he tells me how much closer we are the ultimate goal, which is “cookies”. The GPS voice will tell me, “in 600 metres turn left; that is a 6 followed by 2 cookie shapes.” Apparently the voice thinks that cookies come at the end of every journey.

One of my vivid memories of childhood is being home sick from school one day and announcing to a man who was at the house to sell accident insurance, “I wish I was in grade ten!” I don’t know why I picked that grade, instead of grade 12, but in my eight or nine year old mind that was the age at which life would be perfect. But when I was in grade ten I had a new destination: High School Graduation. Then it was getting my BA and then my MDiv and then Ordination and settlement - and then I WOULD HAVE ARRIVED. Now that I am on my fourth pastoral charge I have long since realized that they journey is the largest part of the destination.

If we are always living our lives, putting in time, waiting for something to be over so that something else can happen, we are missing a great deal - unless of course it is something short term, like a bout of the flu or laryngitis.

You see, somewhere along the way I discovered that there is no arriving in life; I learned that life is a journey, a journey of trust and faith. We may set and reach goals, and we should, but there is no real arriving! There is no reaching our final destination while we are yet alive, because we are meant to be on the way, to be constantly seeking God’s will for our lives.

I was talking to a busy mom one day a few years ago and her life as a parent of teenagers involved a daily round of much the same things each and every day (get up -make sure kids get dressed - get dressed - get kids to school - get to work - work- come home - cook - clean - do laundry - get kids to activities - get kids to bed - make lunch - go to bed and then get up the next day and do it all over again. For many, life can seem more like a “merry go round”, or even a “Tilt a Whirl” or a “Zipper”, than a journey, but eventually the spiral of going round and round does go somewhere and in looking back it can become more obvious that the journey has its own rewards and in the midst of the round and round we go, there is joy and purpose and growth.

The list of examples in the passage are people whose lives are mentioned in the biblical record; some are more well known than others but each of them is mentioned as a person of faith. Quite often the people of Israel turned away from God and had to be brought back to faithfulness. That seemed to be their cycle and it involved a turning away and a turning back that often took more than one generation to complete. After all the people of Israel were with Moses in the wilderness for an entire generation!

No doubt the leaders mentioned in this passage would have faced resentment and opposition from their own people - as with people in all times and places, the people of Israel did not take kindly to being told that they were not following the path that God wanted. Being the chosen people meant responsibility much more than it meant privilege. That was hard for them to hear and it is hard for most of us to hear.

What is the purpose of life if there is no destination, no point when we can sit back and say that we have “made it”. The point is that the journey of faith is not like that. We are called to a lifelong journey of faithful living - there are no days off; there is no point at which we can say we don’t have to do anything. Each and every day of our lives we are called to a journey of faithfulness which is its own reward.

What we need to do is to focus on the journey and then allow God to sort out the bigger picture, allow God to sort out the results.

We are not the first to run such a race; indeed many have gone before us. We have, as the writer puts it, “A great cloud of witnesses”; these people have finished their journey and cheer us on, not having arrived at our destination but determined to participate in the great adventure which is the journey of faith.

Amen!

Jeremiah 1: 4-10
Psalm 71
Luke 13: 10-17

Wake Up And Smell The Coffee?

I love the TV series made by the BBC some years ago, “The Vicar of Dibley”. First of all I must say it is a show solidly in the genre of British comedy. (It may be a little rough around the edges for the tastes of many church folks) Second of all it was done when women vicars were new to the Church of England. Thirdly, the odd and eccentric men and women who make up the church council are caricatures of the people any minister would find on a church board in any church, anywhere in the world

In this show, the new vicar of the church of St Barnabas in the Parish of Dibley has decided to have a “blessing of the animals service” to which everyone is invited to bring their animals. Her parish council is all for giving the idea a try, except for the chair, the ultra traditionalist David Horton.

The tabloids pick up the news and make fun of her project and she fears the worst. Mr Horton, a friend of her Bishop, has told her that if the service turns into a fiasco, she will have to find another parish. Mr Horton elects not to go to the service.

As the time for the service draws near there is on the horizon a never ending stream of cars and trucks bringing animals large and small, about four or five horses which come with riders and someone has set up enclosures on the church lawn for various farm animals. Instead of praying for the Queen as they always seem to do in the Church of England, they pray for her corgis and instead of praying for the shut ins they pray for the animals who are their companions. Every animal and its owner, young or old, is offered a personal blessing and the music is appropriately chosen. As they leave the church everybody is smiling and apparently no one made a mess on the floor and not one of the worshippers ate another of the worshippers. It was, as they may say, a smashing success! As Mr Horton arrives to gloat over the colossal failure he had predicted, he has to change his mind and concede that it was a good thing to celebrate the non-human animals in God’s creation.

The woman in today’s gospel had been suffering from her ailment for 18 long years. There is no way to tell what her diagnosis might be were she to show up today and receive all of the diagnostic tests and treatments we take for granted in 21st century Canada. All we know is that she was “bent over” and really, that is all we need to know. For 18 long years she faced life and its events by looking up, awkwardly, instead of being able to meet them head on. Her life was not what it could have been; it was not what it should have been.

On the day mentioned in today’s Gospel story, she encountered Jesus who immediately healed her with the result that she began to praise God.

Now, you would think that everyone would be rejoicing. What an amazing power this man had! Everyone would have known her and would have wondered how she managed for all these years.

Think again! This is one of the “curve balls” this passage throws at us. Someone had a big problem, not necessarily with who he had healed but with the fact that he had healed a woman with a chronic illness on the Sabbath, which was supposed to be a day of rest.

When the objection is voiced Jesus responds with “oh give me a break, even the strictest of you will lead your animals to water. So how can you possibly complain when this human being, this child of God, who has been captive to her illness for EIGHTEEN LONG YEARS is now free to be who she was created to be.”

I doubt that many of the people in the crowds that flocked around him would have cared that he had broken the Sabbath. It was only the privileged classes who were able to keep the Sabbath to the letter of the law anyway; there were so many fine points of what was allowed and forbidden on the Sabbath.

It’s not that Jesus saw the Sabbath as un-important, though; far from it. Jesus was not breaking the Sabbath because of laziness or for his convenience nor was he benefiting in any way - he was extending his love and power to release a child of God who had lived in bondage long enough. It was unimaginable to him that she should have had to wait one more day which the Pharisees seem to have thought since her condition was chronic and not life threatening.

Now is the day of salvation.

Now is the day for us to act with God’s grace and power, when the need and the solution is so clear.

Last weekend I was listening to an interview with the Carter family on CBC Radio about mental health issues in young people in New Brunswick and the programs and services offered for them or rather the kinds of programs which are lacking! The Carters, a mother and son, had struggled with the boy’s mental illness and autism and the lack of services offered. They have fallen through the cracks, to use common image. Despite the promises of the government this young man and his mother are waiting and waiting for a therapy which has proven to beneficial and healing for him.

In the Durham Peel region of Ontario within the last few weeks a letter was slid under the front door of a grandmother who looks after her autistic grandson on summer mornings because the child’s mother has MS. The letter suggested in rather strong language that the family either move or have the boy euthanized because he was a “nuisance” to the normal children and adults in the neighbourhood.

The strong language of this typed and anonymous letter has shocked the neighbourhood and the nation. Many people find it difficult to relate to the mentally challenged and disabled but are at a loss as to what can or should be done to support families coping with children with these types of special needs. Yet, in the face of this very hate-filled letter most people have had to re-think their attitudes toward “those children” and have begun to think about more helpful and compassionate supports. Sometimes we need to hear others voice such strident opinions for us to revisit our own ideas and rethink them. When we hear someone else say out loud what we might have thought ourselves, at least partially, we realize how wrong the attitude is.

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia is a political and commercial powerhouse in Africa. It is the centre for many governmental organizations. The area rises from a low of 7,500 feet above sea level to a high exceeding 10,000 feet in the mountains. (By contrast, the highest point of land here on PEI is 466 ft.) Note that altitude sickness commonly occurs at heights in excess of 8,000 ft.

There are a large number of women and girls in Addis who earn their living carrying firewood from the mountains down to the city. They work 12 hour days and walk barefoot in the heat and thin air carrying bundles of eucalyptus saplings about 7 feet long and weighing 75 pounds. The area where they harvest their sticks is about ten miles from where they live and sell their bundles for just enough to feed their families for just a couple of days.

I wonder how many years it takes for such work to take its toll on the women and girls who have no other options for supporting their families? I wonder how long it takes them to be “bent over” in a way similar to the woman Jesus encountered in today’s gospel reading. I wonder if there is anyone like Jesus who sees a new way, a way to enable these women to work and earn a living without being bent and broken as they must be.

The thing about chronic pain, chronic poverty, chronic oppression, is that after a while one cannot imagine a life without it; after a while, the condition becomes normal and a life free from it becomes almost unimaginable. It is normal until, that is, someone says, “wait a minute there is something wrong with this picture”; until someone hits the people in power over the heads with the newspaper and shouts, “wake up people! Smell the coffee”!

Jesus came into this woman’s life; sees her condition and gives her the acceptance and the blessing that enables her to straighten up and rejoice in her status as a daughter of Abraham.

I wonder what would happen if the people on the Ontario grandmother’s street and the parent’s street, offered support to the family of the autistic boy who could only act out his frustrations by being a nuisance.

I wonder what would happen if we advocated for more supports for families with young people who have fallen through the cracks of our mental health system - not because we want anything for ourselves - but because it is the right thing to do?

I wonder what would happen if we changed the unofficial rule books on sexual assault, social media and the relationships between teenagers of the opposite sex? Perhaps Rehtaeh Pasrons will be remembered as the last one who felt her only option was to end her own life?

I wonder what would happen if we supported the organizations who work for culturally appropriate solutions for some of the most demeaning economic situations faced by people in developing countries.

The call of the gospel is clear - love your neighbour as yourself. The stickers for the law, or custom, or whatever, need to be challenged as we seek to proclaim this life giving, freeing love, to all people bent over and in bondage.

This is the day.

Lets wake up and be people who proclaim God’s b=freeing love, in word and in action..

Amen.

Jeremiah 2: 4-13
Psalm 81 13: 1-8, 15-16
Luke 14:1, 7-14

Things That Don’t Hold Water

One day a number of years ago I went into my kitchen and upon picking up the kettle I discovered a pool of water on the counter. I wiped it up and put the kettle back on the counter. Later on in the same day I had the same experience so I emptied the kettle, turned it over and noticed a number of little fuzzy circley shaped things on the bottom. I scraped at one of the spots and discovreed a hole. The same thing happened with all of the fuzzy circley spots on the bottom of the kettle! My plain, no bells and whistles, aluminium kettle went in the garbage and I walked down to the hardware store and bought another one. This new one was a sturdy, corrosive proof- plastic one - the only thing you have to remember is to have enough water in it so the element does not melt the bottom! It has now lasted much longer than the aluminum one!

In 1837 in Copenhagen Denmark a writer named “Hans Christian Andersen” wrote a book of short stories, one of which “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, has become so well known that the point of the story has entered popular culture around the world. In this well known tale two weavers offer to make the conceited king a fine suit out of an exquisite and magical fabric which would be invisible to anyone unsuited for his or her job, or to someone who was just plain stupid. He hires them on the spot and they make a fine show of weaving this fabric and then cutting out and sewing the garments which they assure the king are very rich and very beautiful. When the king puts on this invisible suit he cannot admit that he can’t see it, and he certainly can’t cancel a parade thrown for the purpose of showing off his fine new clothes. The awful truth of the weavers’ trick is obvious to everyone but no one in the crowd dares to say anything about the “new clothes”. No one says anything, that is, until a child calls out the obvious, “he’s not wearing anything at all!”

He had been tricked by the crafty weavers, but it is clear that his ego had made him an easy mark.

Canadian actor, Al Waxman, in the several years immediately prior to his death, starred in a TV series, “Twice in A Lifetime” which was based on the premise that many people, if they could do it over, and had the opportunity to go back to a specific point in their past, could indeed convince their younger selves to make better choices and change the course of their lives. Each episode begins with an untimely death, followed by a trial, in which Judge Othniel, played by Waxman, sentences the recently deceased, now full of regret, to three days of living in their past with the goal of changing the mind and actions of their younger selves. I’m not sure I’ve seen all the episodes but in many it has been “nip and tuck”, though there has never been a failure on the show.

St. Irenaeus, a 2nd-century Bishop of Lyon wrote: “The glory of God is man fully alive, and the life of man is the vision of God.”

When I was in high school one of the more popular spiritual type programs on TV was “Man Alive”; you may remember it? The host of “Man Alive”, for most of its run, was a journalist by the name of Roy Bonisteel who died recently. At a church anniversary in Weyburn Saskatchewan many years ago he said, "We are moulded into a materialist world where we do a lot of eating, drinking and making merry until we ask the basic questions 'Who am I? Where am I going? What is our purpose in life?'"

What is it that is important in life? What is important in the life of a nation, particularly a nation that regards itself as the “chosen people”?

The passage I read earlier from the book of Jeremiah is a forceful statement against a people who have lost their way. Despite God’s saving actions for them in the past, the people have abandoned the God of their ancestors; the God who had brought them out of Egypt and had given them an identity and a purpose. At the time this passage was written, even their religious leaders have been sucked in by the popular culture. The result of this was that they had abandoned the worship of the God of Israel for the gods represented by idols. Jeremiah’s image of these “gods that weren’t even real” is that of a cracked cistern; a large container for holding water.

We all know the song, if you can actually call it a song, “There’s a hole in the bucket”. (Go home and google the Muppets version of the song, which runs a few seconds under five minutes. Have a good laugh while your lunch is cooking”) We know a bucket with a hole in it is pretty much useless. We know that unless you really want a colander, a bowl that is cracked or has holes in it is pretty useless, if you want to make a cake or a batch of pancakes, for example.

Jeremiah is telling the people of Israel to wake up and notice that their lives have strayed from what God intended for them. They have traded what is good and true and solid for what only looks good but will not hold water. He is telling them that the waters of life are flowing out as fast as they are being poured in because of their cracked cisterns. The water in these vessels will not sustain them when the going is rough and the way is hard and they are dry and parched and in need of true refreshment.

As the saying goes, “the more things change the more they remain the same”. As Christians we are surrounded by a very materialistic culture. Every time we turn on the tv the ads we see promise us happiness and fulfilment through acquiring the right kind of stuff. The right kind of dishwasher detergent will prevent the heartbreak of cloudy drinking glasses; the right kind of vehicle will remove from you the unbearable hardship of putting down your groceries to use your free hand to open the lift-gate. If you don’t have room for a dog and really want one, buy a lottery ticket; a few million should be enough for a dog and a house to put it in.

A retired minister I know went to a UCW meeting early in his career and came in on a conversation the women were having about a certain couple’s family problems and it was a very intense conversation - everyone had an opinion. He asked if he should visit them to see if he could offer the church’s help. They all laughed; they were discussing a couple from one of the then popular soap operas. I don’t think their popularity is as strong as it used to be. These days the power to claim the attention of viewers seems to lie in the genre of so-called “reality tv”. Survivor , whose motto is “outwit, outplay, outlast” has been renewed for the 27th season and is the focus of many a workplace betting pool. Ever since 2003 The Amazing Race has won all the Prime Time Emmy awards for their category except for 2010 when they were beaten out by “Top Chef”. These shows are carefully scripted and marketed to hold our attention and loyalty.

They present a version of reality that sucks us in and dupes us into unquestioning acceptance of the underlying values upon which they are based. Everything comes down to the saying, “He who dies with the most toys, wins”.

The gospel might counter with, “He who dies with the most toys, dies.” Jesus came, in part, to tell us that life is not to be about getting the best seats in the house, and having the most cars in the driveway. Life is not about the size of your bank account, or backyard swimming pool, list of exotic vacations, or the number of awards on the wall of your den. Of course there is nothing wrong with possessions, or prestige in and of itself, but when it becomes what we live for, says Jesus, our lives are truly cracked. When these things become our goals in life so much so that we have little or no room for self-giving service, then we have missed the boat, our lives are full of holes and we will, in the end, have nothing of real value. Life, says Jesus in today’s gospel, is not about schmoozing with those who can return the favour, but it is about the care of those least able to pay us back. It’s not about making deals which will be a “win-win” but about reaching out in love to those who need the cup of cold water, the piece of bread, the meal given without any strings attached. What is truly important is not how much we have but how much we can, by God’s grace, give.

If this does not sound quite right to you, remember that Jesus, and the prophets before him, were about turning the values of his world upside down. Give, share, love, be that generous presence of God which the world so desperately needs - because it is in the life of self-giving love that true meaning and purpose can be found.

Amen.