Jeremiah 18: 1-11
Psalm 139
Luke 14: 25-33

Beware the Potter!

When I was leaving the Pastoral Charge I served in Nova Scotia I received one of these mugs as a gift. (show mugs) I went to the artist’s studio a few days later to purchase a second to match. I talked to the potter about the art of pottery and the possibility of having even two mugs exactly the same size. She told me that she was at a show one day and a potential customer had about 8 of them lined up and was carefully studying them from every possible angle because he wanted a set which were exactly the same size. I think it was a frustrating experience for everyone because in looking for the impossible, he was holding up the line of customers merely wanting to pay for their purchases. Pottery is art, it is not assembly line production. I did not have the first of these with me when I bought the second but I was not really all that disappointed when I discovered that they were obviously different sizes.

The modern machinery needed to make many identical copies of something is essential to our modern, mechanized society, but it does not work for hand thrown pottery and it certainly did not exist in previous generations.

I’m not 100% sure but I don’t think pottery making was all that different in the days of Jeremiah, except they did not have electric motors to spin their wheels and perhaps the potter had to make clay from scratch rather than purchasing it almost ready for the wheel. (How are your creations coming along?)

There is quite a process involved with getting a lump of clay ready for the wheel; it involves something that looks a little like kneading bread - called wedging, and it is essential to ensure there are no lumps and no airholes. Both will ruin a piece of pottery.

From centring the wedged lump of clay on the wheel to declaring the piece ready for the kiln, the process requires more skill, strength and practice than first seems evident if you watch someone who is really good at it. Like many things, it’s not as easy as it looks; and it can also be very messy, so wear old clothes! (You can go home and observe the process on YouTube!)

If the clay had human emotions, I wonder what it would be feeling as it is wedged and then formed, carefully and deliberately, but nonetheless forcefully by the skilled potter? Did the vase want to be a teapot, the goblet, a bowl?

What if it likes the shape it has become but that shape does not please the potter and it is formed again into a ball and the process started again? I wonder?

Yet, it is clear that a lump of clay remains just that, a lump of clay, without the artistic strength and vision of the potter.

Four years ago the 40th General Council of the United Church was called to meet in Kelowna BC around the theme and images of the potter. We were asked to use that image as a lens through which we looked at the question, “What is the future shape of the United Church and to what is God calling is in the first decades of the 21st century. At the 41st General Council in Ottawa we continued to reflect on God’s call to us and how God might be shaping our denomination. The Comprehensive Review process currently underway is part of our discernment of this direction seeking. As I said in the announcements each Pastoral Charge and their ministry personnel are being asked to give their input to this process of discernment.

Jeremiah is a prophet in a time of transition. He began preaching before a king came on the scene who tried through his reforms to bring his nation back to the original covenant God had made with their nation through Moses while they were still in the wilderness. Jeremiah took a break - there would be no need to call the people back to faithfulness if they were on the path toward it. Then that king died and the new king seems to have had more interest in forging alliances with Egypt than seeking Israel’s security in God. So Jeremiah took up the prophetic mantle once again and once again reminded the people that their actions did matter. Once again he reminded the people that they were responsible for following the covenant in their own generation.

The potter is an interesting choice for a lesson about God’s relationship with the people. A potter is not just a kind and gentle artist making pots for people to use for their household chores; potters were highly skilled and strong willed creators who had the power to decide the work was ready for the kiln or to see the flaws which necessitated the remaking of it from the bottom up.

Jeremiah’s message is certainly that the people are about to be smushed down and subject to another attempt at making a suitable pot or bowl. That is the power of the potter; that is the potter’s decision!

Yet this is not doom and destruction; neither is their fate is sealed. The people can change God’s mind if they repent and begin to walk in God’s way once more. That is the whole purpose of the prophet’s work. The prophet comes to give the people an opportunity to listen, and then to take a journey of repentance and change. There is still time. Repent. Change your ways.

To use a more modern, health related example: Everywhere you look in hospitals these days there are posters about quitting smoking. “Ask your doctor about quitting smoking”. “The best thing you can do for your health is to quit smoking”. It used to be common wisdom that life-long smokers had already done so much damage to their heart and lungs that it was useless to go through all of the work and stress of trying to quit. Recent studies have shown that this is not true. Apparently the motto for today’s doctors is, “If you help two people to quit smoking, you have saved one life”.

Faith for 21st century Canadian Christians tends to be thought of in personal, rather than corporate terms. This tends to be limited to personal morality or personal lifestyles - if we are a person who follows in God’s way, God will consider us to be faithful.

This ignores the corporate dimension however. As Canadian Christians we are part of a community, for want of a better word, that benefits from living where we do and in the time and place in which we do. As Canadians we have some amount of influence over our foreign and domestic policies, or at least we feel we should have.

Our nation’s policies, laws and regulations with respect to natural resources, fossil fuels, immigration, and a host of other things have made us who we are as individuals and as a group. We need to speak to the powers of the world in which we live out of our faith perspective. What is it that God calls us to do and who does God call us to be as Canadians and as world citizens in the 21st century?

Some people believe that the church should stick to personal morality and stay out of politics but to do so is to, in effect, support the status quo. The people who say this usually don’t like what the churches are trying to say. We cannot ignore the world in which we live, as political beings or as people of faith.

We live in a diverse multicultural nation and those of us who have been in power for generations must be careful not to try and force everyone into our own mould. This is not about making everyone look like us, worship like we do and think like we do. That’s not what I am talking about. It’s not about making the nation’s policies serve us - in fact, quite the opposite.

The people of Israel were always being told to care for the aliens and the sojourners, The members of the early church were concerned about the widows and orphans, the one who had no one to look out for them, the ones who, as we say, “had fallen trough the cracks”.

We see a news report about a disaster in a far away place and immediately we want to help. All too often international aid has strings attached and the ones sending the aid want something in return. Is that truly caring for those in need.

What is it that God wants for us? I believe that God is calling each of us, individually or corporately to focus on how we can use what we have been given to be a blessing to others and the world.

We are, for the most part, very busy people, with many work and family commitments. How do we balance our time so that we can give time and energy to the neighbour or even the stranger?

When did we last write a letter to our MLA or MP to advocate for some change or program which would not directly benefit us or a family member?

So much of our culture tells us to focus on our own selves and our own families. We are encouraged to think of ourselves first - One of my internet colleagues this past week asked the question with respect to this text, “Are we in the hands of the potter or the politicians?”

Interestingly, if you think about it, even the worst news in this passage is not really about destruction , it is about second chances. When the potter smushes (that’s actually not a word, but I like it) the clay into a lump and starts over, the clay is being given another chance. Are we being formed by the God who calls us into the people God would have us to be?

If we are, who and what is that and what will it look like?

Amen!

Jeremiah 4: 11-12; 12-28
Psalm 14
1 Timothy 1: 12-17
Luke 15: 1-10

God is Our Finder Friend

I lose all sorts of mail, and other things printed on paper, car keys, chargers and cables for my gadgets and I lose books. Sometimes its so bad that I have a list of lost things. Friday night I added a new item to my list of lost things so right now that list is comprised of one purple and white LEFT handed gardening glove - and the bottom two parts of my blanching pot; all I have is the cover. I can’t imagine giving that away or sending it to a yard sale without the lid, but I have looked everywhere I can think it might be, TWICE! I can blame my cat for some losses because she likes to play hockey with just about anything small that will slide on a hardwood floor but I doubt she has much use for a blanching pot.

When I lived in Rexton I had a friend who knew where most of my books were on my shelves and if I could not locate one I could call her and she could tell me approximately where it was (unless, of course she was currently reading it.) I nicknamed her, “my finder friend”.

Being a skilled loser though, I know well the joy of being a finder when I do come across something that has been lost. By the way, if you bought a lidless blanching pot at a yard sale, I have your lid!

Today’s passage from Luke’s gospel speaks of lost things and the joy of finding them. It is a familiar and pleasant story but we forget that Luke sets the story in the midst of a dispute. Some of the religious leaders, perhaps only a minority - (but you know what they say about the squeaky wheel) were upset that Jesus was eating with “tax collectors and sinners”. He told parables to show them a different way.

When I was at Berwick Camp this summer the evangelist, the Rev Dr Anna Carter-Florence, who is a professor of preaching from Georgia said that she teaches her students the discipline of looking at the verbs in the text and using this as the basis for their sermons.

So, who has which verbs?

1) Jesus has the verbs: “welcoming”, “eating” and “telling parables”.

2) The scribes have the verb: “grumbling”.

3) The sheep in the story has the verb: “lost”, it’s likely that it became lost by wandering off; I don’t imagine the shepherd forgot what he did with his sheep.

4) The shepherd: has the verb, “leaves” the 99 in the wilderness and goes “looking” for the lost one. Upon “finding” the sheep he “carries” it home, and he “invites” others “to rejoice” with him.

5) Within the second parable the coin’s only verb is “to be lost”.

6) The woman verbs are: “lights a lamp”, “sweeps the house”, “searches”, “finds”, and “invites” others and “celebrates”.

We have all probably had the experience of being lost, or of looking for a lost child. We know also the relief and the joy when the lost one has been found. Who would leave a six year old in Charlottetown because she was not supposed to have wandered off? Who never bothers to look for anything you lost, no matter how valuable? No one, of course! Jesus is telling the people who have called his behaviour into question that this is how God works and it is his ministry to live out God’s welcome.

So I guess we have to decide which verbs are God’s and could be ours. Some of the religious elites were offended by this picture of God bit we get to make our own decision.

Do we grumble that this kind of God could be seen as too loving, too forgiving, too soft? Are we a “throw the book at them” kind of person when someone has done something wrong?

Perhaps the grumblers ion today’s story thought they deserved God’s love and attention, while Jesus seems to have focussed on the wandering and the lost.

The most powerful verbs come from the rejoicing when the lost has been found, when the relationship has been restored.

Last week I was listening to a report on CBC radio about the problems of street kids who were kicked out of their homes because they were lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered. It is the transgendered youth (simply put, a transgendered person is someone who feels her or she should have a body of the opposite gender); for whom the shelters are not equipped or don’t want to provide appropriate services. There is no return here and no rejoicing.

The reality is that human relationships rarely conform to the “ideal” and we all have some kind of dysfunction in our families and friendships. None of us are perfect.

Any of us, given an unforseen set of circumstances, could become lost. I’m not talking about getting lost in the woods or taking a wrong turn on an unfamiliar road. I’m talking about the lostness of losing one’s way, or of “messing up, big time”. None of us can predict the future with certainty and to say that it could never happen to us, is naive.

The verbs we need to hear here are seeking and finding and rejoicing. God’s love for us does not stop when we wander away, FOR WHATEVER REASON. Our ministry of seeking the lost should not be limited by the mistakes or carelessness of the lost.

Imagine the young people whose lives are in shambles, finding places where they can be safe, where they can be who they are; where they can receive nourishment and protection; where they can go back to school and become qualified for a job so they can get back on track toward contributing to society.

Imagine God’s love finding us in all of our broken-ness, hidden behind our “full time job face”, or behind our “grandmother baking cookies” apron, or our “farmer’s wind-burned skin and weatherd hands” or in the midst of our fights with our kids over bedtime or drugs or “tv versus homework”.

Imagine God finding us and throwing a party, for us!

Imagine a way of looking at life and faith that is about rejoicing - about a deep happiness that we never thought we could ever have again - just because we are a beloved child of God, - not because we have been successful; not because we have the most gadgets of anyone we know in our house, or the best furniture, or the biggest tv or have taken the most exciting vacation, or the newest car or not even because we can boast that when we were young we never gave our parents one speck of trouble and neither did our kids!

It’s not about the coins. It’s not about the sheep. It’s not about the grumblers. Its about God. about truly hearing the music from the party and knowing that we are sharing the joy of God’s boundless love and welcoming grace.

We are lost and we are found; we are part of God’s family.

Amen!

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1
Psalm 79
1 Timothy 2: 1-7
Luke 16: 1-13

Balms Away!

Have chapped lips, try some lip balm. Have chapped hands, try Bag Balm, which is supposed to be used by dairy farmers on cows udders and I believe the package actually says it is not for human use; but they have to say that! There’s a can of it on the counter by the sink in my mother’s porch and some of the humans in the house use it; when my father was milking cows a can lived on a shelf on the wall of the cow barn .

A balm is defined as “something to spread on the skin that has a comforting, healing or restorative effect.” Some balm is a kind of herb. Other balms come from the resin of various kinds of trees.

I am a fan of the tv show Matlock; I never missed it if I could help it. These days I occasionally happen upon a re-run. Ben Matlock, played by Andy Griffith, was a criminal defence attorney from Georgia who seemed to delight in defending difficult cases and lost causes in which the accused was actually innocent. In many episodes the work he does on a case might resemble that of a private investigator. In each episode he and his associates work to find out the truth and then he takes delight in backing the real culprit into a corner on the witness stand and making that person admit to the crime.

The passage read from the book of Jeremiah is part of a larger dispute that, when you break it down, sounds a bit like a scene from that show with Ben questioning John or Jane Scoundrel on the witness stand. The witness begins answering seemingly harmless questions truthfully but ever so swiftly realizes that Ben knows what has happened and soon the accused is set free and a new person is charged.

In this passage, the prophet Jeremiah, often called the weeping prophet, is in utter despair - and of course, the prophet’s despair mirrors God’s.

Jeremiah did not have an easy life; he was a teenager when God called him. His message caused his friends to abandon him and God did not permit him even to have the comfort of a wife and family. Over and over again he called the people to repent but they would not - for 40 years and they continued to ignore him.

Jeremiah began to work during the reign of King Josiah who began to steer his country on the road to repentance but after his death the kings were, more or less, puppets of the stronger nation of Egypt. There ware altars set up to the local fertility gods and they even practised human sacrifice. Jeremiah was not a good news prophet but he told them in no uncertain terms they would suffer for turning their backs on God. He was beaten and imprisoned until his nation was overthrown when the conquering king had him released.

Today’s passage is one of despair. The questions rhetorical. The passage is a protest against cheap grace; when the people’s repentance is only on the surface God is not honoured and their religion a sham.

Two brothers were having a fight and one called the other, “stupid”. Their father took the boy aside and ordered him to say that he was sorry. The boy went over to his brother and said, “I am sorry you are stupid”.

We laugh, Jeremiah was protesting the kind of repentance that paid lip service to “sorry” but did not back it up with changed actions.

The words of Jeremiah echo from the distant past and sound in our own ears. Our issues are different, but in some ways, remarkably similar.

We are living in an age of “Apologies” -as Canadians we have a great deal to apologize for - the treatment of Japanese Canadians during WWII, the treatment of native children in the residential schools system, the many cases in which accusations of sexual abuse in orphanages were covered up and the list goes on and on.

When the United Church issued its first apology to our native brothers and sisters in the mid 1980s, it was “acknowledged” but not “accepted” because our native brothers and sisters knew they would have to wait to see if we were going to live out this apology or put it on the shelf as something “over dand done with”.

I know that in the Maritimes it is difficult for United Church people to connect with this issue, as a church issue, because the majority of First Nations people here are Roman Catholic but that does not absolve us of the responsibility to connect with it in the ways we can. Our church crest has been changed to reflect native spiritual understandings - when we see the new crest, made obvious by the changed colours we are prompted to think not only of the three main denominations that formed our church but of the many first nations peoples whose culture enriches our church. We are reminded that western culture does not have all the answers and that out of our attitude of superiority much damage has been done.

Every-time we turn on the news it seems to be bad news. The event that has been capturing the majority of the world’s attention of late has been the chemical weapons attack in Syria. Many have died, that much is certain but what is not certain is: who is to blame? The US government is certain who is to blame and is ready to act, while others are not. What is certain is that in many nations of the world the conflict between government and opposing forces causes much human suffering.

For some time wound care has been a specialty in nursing. Difficult to heal wounds are treated with antibiotics, as usual, but are also treated in such a way, with specialized techniques, that they heal from the inside out. The worst thing that can happen is that they heal on the surface but not to the depth of the wound which may in fact trap infection inside only to have it flare up later.

In many cases I think some of our solutions to our social problems are putting band aids on wounds that need to be deliberately kept open so that they can be healed from the inside out.

Family violence will not be stopped until we get at its root causes. Sweeping things under the carpet just makes for a lumpy carpet, it does not really clean the house. Why do young men grow up thinking it is their right to hit the women they are supposed to love and why do women feel that this is what must endure?

What about chronic poverty? What are its causes and how do we make the changes we need to address it, rather than just come up with a mish-mash of programs that don’t really change anything

You see, in order to address some of the things that ail our society, our communities and our families, we all have to risk change; we all have to go in new directions.

Whenever we talk about “those people” and get into “us and them” kinds of debates we lose sight of our responsibility for the way things are. Of course, everything that is amiss with our lives and the world is not OUR fault! But we can’t get away with saying that everything is someone else’s fault and problem. If we ignore the problems around us, or we blame them on someone else we are not really getting at the root of what is really going on.

Sometimes what we have to do is to be a prophet like Jeremiah and go to the people responsible and say, “You broke it - now fix it!” Sometimes the fixing will end up costing us, but do we really want to have benefits at someone else’s expense. For example, if we want to improve conditions in the garment industry in countries like Bangladesh, are we prepared to pay more for clothing, or take less on our investments with those companies that profit from the way these things work? We can’t have it both ways.

Are we really following and worshipping the God who calls us to follow Jesus of Nazareth in ALL that we say, do and are? Are we willing to look deep and see where our decisions and choices and attitudes contribute to our problems or the problems of our world? Who or what do we really worship?

Do we really want to repent or just say, “sorry, sorry” like we bumped into someone in the lineup at Tim Horton’s and go on our way thinking we have done all we need to do.

The prophets, and Jesus was a prophet in this respect, call us to renew our call and our commitment. The prophet says, “this is who we are called to be - so now let us all change our ways and BE that people”.

There was a balm in Gilead. It had the power to heal. But the power to heal will only truly work if we truly want to change and walk in new ways.

Amen!

Jeremiah 32 1-3a, 6-15
Psalm 91
1 Timothy 6: 6-19
Luke 16: 19-31

Being People of Hope!

A few years ago there was a “big tree” contest here on the Island. Anyone with a really big tree was invited to measure it, photograph it, and submit the information to the contest web site. I am not sure who won but I know George Wood has a really, really big tree. At my family home there is a very large oak tree, but I am not sure if it would have made the short list. My sister followed the contest more closely than I and said ours was not nearly big enough. My dad used to gauge its size by how many adults or children or a combination thereof it took to span the tree. He remembered being able to span it with his dad when he was young but now it takes more than two adults. That growth took over 70 years.

One might get into growing Christmas Trees or newer varieties of apple trees for yourself for a business, but, in general, you plant trees for your children and your children’s children.

If you want to join a competition for growing the biggest tree you better count on the contest to sill be going 200 or more years from now. If you want to reap the benefits of your own tender loving care - grow a giant pumpkin or squash. I believe the “Dill Atlantic Giant” claims that its seeds mature in only 130 days, and if you want 400 -500 pounds of useable pumpkin, that variety is the one for you! (That’s a lot of pies, or one enormous jack-o-lantern for Halloween!)

Planting a tree is essentially an exercise in and a statement of hope. It is saying that “the work I do will be fully enjoyed not by me or even by my children, but by generations as yet unborn”. The first settlers who came to this country knew they were building for generations as yet unborn. They were able to take the long view and trust in the future.

When I was quite young I occasionally accompanying my mother to a bank where we never went otherwise and then being let into the vault where the safety deposit boxes were kept. I remember that every time we went she had to sign a card and that it took two keys (theirs and hers) to open the box. Once the box was pulled out, we were taken to a private booth so that my mother could take out or put in whatever she wanted. Looking back, I assume these papers were bonds of some kind; they may even have belonged to an organization for which my mother was treasurer, but even at a young age I did know that a safety deposit box was where you kept stuff that was worth money but was not actually money (that you just gave to the teller and she wrote it in a “bankbook”.)

Some of the things people keep in safety deposit boxes are wills and property deeds. Apparently safety deposit boxes of one kind or another have been used for thousands of years - in Jeremiah’s day sealed clay jars would do the trick.

It may seem like an odd thing to outline in a biblical passage, to record the detail of a seemingly common land purchase, but in this passage, the action of the land purchase is far from common and is designed to be a statement of hope and of trust in future.

I don’t know about you, but the last places where I would buy land at the moment are sections of Calgary, or High River AB, New Orleans LA, or especially Damascus, Syria. You would not be wise to buy property on a flood plain or in a war zone, but that is exactly what Jeremiah did. The doom and gloom prophet, the weeping prophet, invested in the future of his people and in their land. While in prison he had his people buy this land and used this personal action as a proclamation of hope.

There are many things in life that are not a short term commitment - like marriage, like having children, like a career, and the life of faith is also one of them. The life of faith is not one in which we always see an immediate return; sometimes it seems as if we aren’t going to get anything at all in return, or see any significant change, depending on what we are looking for.

The rich man in the parable Jesus told could be seen as an extreme example of a “what’s in it for me” kind of person.

Jesus goes to great pains to describe this man’s opulent lifestyle. “Feasted sumptuously”, “dressed in purple and fine linen” and his house “had a gate”. The gate made his house a mini city; he had to keep the riff raff out! At the gate was a poor man, suffering from diseases and conditions common to the poor. His name is ironic: Lazarus means, “God has helped”. A cynic would look and ask, “how has God helped this man?” This Lazarus is like the “Prodigal Son” and the “Good Samaritan”, they are no one in particular and everyone in general; this is a parable, it is a story, “ made up” to make a point. This is a “once upon a time” story; but it is a timeless story because there are still rich and poor living side by side and the some of the rich are still very much unaware of the poor. We must be careful not to confuse this made up character from Jesus’ friend, Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha.

Some people long to be rich and to make as much money as possible; nothing is more important to them. Kevin O’Leary, of Dragon’s Den, makes no bones about it - he wants to make MONEY!

Riches is seen as the key to freedom - eat what you want, wear what you want, go where you want, no need for a budget or having to say, “No, we cant afford that!” to your children. Some think that money will buy happiness and they dope its just around the corner, with the next raise, or the next quarter’s earnings.

As the epistle passage warns though - the love of money and the unbridled pursuit of it can lead us where we should not go. The statement is harsh, “the love of money is the root of all evil” - note not “money” but “the love of money.”

Upstairs Downstairs, which is now back in reruns, is a 1970's tv series, set in the early 19th century in England. It is the story of the Bellamy family of London. They are wealthy and have many servants and a fine house, but their wealth does not make them happy, and it does not prevent tragic events - several family members including “Lady Marjorie” go down with the Titanic.

They exist in a highly structured class based society. Once day the butler, in an attempt to help his employer avoid a scandal that could ruin him, visits Mr Bellany’s private club. Mr Bellamy berates him because such places were supposed to be, a place for gentlemen to go where they did not have to encounter their wives or their servants. Time and again the clandestine relationships between the upstairs folks and the downstairs folks cause great unhappiness and stress. Class divisions prevent these relationships from being welcomed and celebrated. Clearly their money had trapped the upstairs folks in ways not unlike the ways poverty traps the downstairs folks.

The problem with this rich man is no his wealth, per se, but that he has “lost his soul”. He has become extremely nearsighted and arrogant. He does not see Lazarus when he is alive and when they have both died he still has not learned anything, he asks Abraham to “send Lazarus”, to help quench his thirst, as if Lazarus is a lowly servant, there only to do the bidding of Father Abraham and himself.

He does not realize that, in life, he had many opportunities to use his wealth for good, but did not. The parable closes with the ironic statement that some people wont even “get it” if someone comes back from the dead. By the time this gospel was written the early church believed that Jesus did come back from the dead and some still did not listen. Its designed as a dig at the Jews who did not become believers, but I think it works for everyone who needs to be shocked into realizing what this passage is really saying.

How much do you need to have to be considered rich? In Canada we have a “poverty line”; we know that those who are earning only minimum wage, those on social assistance, and those who only have their Old Age Security, fall below this line. Yet, compared to the developing world, even those people are wealthy.

How much do you need to live on PEI ? At Presbytery on Thursday a guest speaker talked about a program that she and a committee of concerned individuals are developing to present to government with the view of everyone being able to live in dignity and have “enough”.

The rich man’s problem was that he just didn’t see Lazarus - no doubt he knew someone was there, at his gate, sick and covered in dirt and sores but he did not see that they had any connection.

What we need to realize that we are all in this together, those rich and poor who live in PEI and those rich and poor who live in PEI and the rest of the world. When we disconnect ourselves and our well being from that of the rest of the community and the world we make the mistake of the rich man - we forget that we are connected - that we are all children of God.

So few of us are truly self-made. So few of us have pulled actually ourselves up by our own bootstraps. We are truly interconnected; we are dependent upon one another. We need to realize our futures are intertwined, in family, in community, in Canada and in the world. One cannot succeed and ignore the needs of the other and still live in faithfulness.

Our hope lies in living in faithfulness and in community where we look after one another and plan for a future where will all benefit from the gifts of God’s good creation and live in peace, love and justice.

Amen.

Lamentations 1: 1-6
Psalm 137
2 Timothy 1: 1-14
Luke 17: 1-10

Not Much At All

How much do we need?

Well, that depends what you want to use and what you are going to do with it. You would not need as much baking soda for a batch of cookies as you would to clean the kitchen sink.

Now, you may or may not have had a tv when a certain men’s grooming product was advertised, even though tvs came to PEI in the mid 1950's. This company’s commercials began as if they were “public service announcements” and assured their male customers they didn’t dare use more that a “little dab”. wait for it now: (vintage commercial will be played via youtube and my cell phone)

	Bryl-creem, Bryl-creem, Bryl-creem
   	Bryl-creem, a little dab'll do ya, 
  	Use more, only if you dare, 
	But watch out, 
    	The gals will all pursue ya,-- 
    	They'll love to get their fingers in
		  your hair.
 

How much do you need? A little dab will do ya!

When we go to the kitchen to cook we know that certain things are measured in cups, some in teaspoons and some in drops.

I got a call from a parishioner one morning, she had started bread without fully assessing her flour supply and she needed enough flour to finish or what she had started would be wasted.

Are we concerned about our faith - that we don’t have enough to be able to do certain things? Are we afraid that we will get half-way through something and not be able to finish because we think our faith is too small or too weak? Are we afraid the task is too large?

Today’s gospel is a lesson in four parts. Part one warns them that while scandal is inevitable they must avoid it, lest someone who is new to the faith should stumble and fall. In part two the faithful disciples are told about the importance of calling their fellow church members to account and THEN forgiving those who seek forgiveness, even if they have to forgive over and over again; even if it is many times a day. At this point the disciples ask Jesus for In today’s gospel passage, Jesus disciples asked him to give them more faith.

Jesus rhetorical response seems to say that they need not worry about their faith; if they realized it, only a seed sized portion could uproot massive trees. Only a seed sized portion could have the effect of a hurricane!

Then Jesus has a seemingly odd addition that disciples should regard themselves as servants, or even slaves, and discipleship is their duty. They should not expect special recognition for doing what is expected of them.

I’m not sure Jesus read the books on the “care and feeding of volunteers” where thanks and a certain amount of praise and recognition go a long way, but there it is. Disciples serve, not for thanks, but because that is who they are. Disciples serve because that is who WE are!

To me, these sound like the words of a frustrated Jesus. The disciples are not inexperienced in matters of faith, but they need to be reminded that faith is a gift. They need to be reminded that faith is not usually given out at birth, or at confirmation, or at marriage, or at the baptism of your children, or when you become Clerk of Session, or Chair of a board or committee in the church or community.

I asked you last week, if we knew what life would deal us, would we get out of bed? If we knew that we had to forgive our co-worker twenty seven more times before they truly understood what they were doing wrong and how to avoid it, could we do it?

No! I think we are given faith when we need it and in the amount that is needed. According to the text Moses had to step in the waters of the Red Sea before the waters began to part to enable them to cross.

While Jesus tried to warn the disciples of difficulties to come they were unwilling or perhaps unable to truly hear what Jesus was saying. Yet, when the time came, with the exception of Judas, they and many others stepped into the unknown with remarkable faith and courage.

The image of the mustard seed is used by several gospel writers in remembering this or similar instances - in another telling it’s the smallest seed and the plant large enough for birds nests. Well, its NOT the smallest seed and a bird would have to be pretty desperate to nest on a mustard plant - at least the ones we all used to pull out of the family’s grainfields here in PEI, but we get the point.

Last week I talked about big trees and big pumpkins - the average acorn is the size of a table grape and look how large an oak can grow. The average pumpkin seed the size of your thumb-print and the thickness of cent (remember our now defunct copper coloured coin?) and pumpkins can get pretty big!

You see, the disciples thought it was all about them and their efforts; they thought that things would not happen without them! They forgot that faith was a gift and that they needed to act with faith in order to have it.

It is God’s mission.

It is God’s church.

God calls us to step forward in faith.

Will we respond, certain that we will receive what we need to do the task?

Amen!

Deuteronomy 26: 1-11
Psalm 100
Philippians 4: 4-9
John 6: 25-35

Commanded to Thankfulness?

As I think I have told you before, I love the BBC comedy series, the Vicar of Dibley; I have them on DVD so I can watch one whenever I want.

One of my favourite episodes is, “The Handsone Stranger”. In this episode, the Rev Geraldine Granger, the Vicar in the Church of England Parish of Dibley, is depressed and probably on the verge of eating a great deal of chocolate, because, after 100 weddings in the parish, she is always the one, as she laments, “in the cassock and not the pretty white frock”.

Then, a handsome stranger named Harry Kennedy, an accountant from London, moves to the village. They take an immediate liking to each other and begin dating. Things could not be better until a blonde appears in the village and moves in with Harry. They are frequently seen walking hand and hand all over the village.

To make a long story short he arrives at the vicarage one evening and says to her, “I’ve thought about it a lot and talked about it a lot and wondered whether or not you would consider marrying me?”

Being a vicar, she assumed he was asking her to officiate at his wedding to the same blonde she has seen him with recently. The blonde turns out to be his sister.

When that mistake is cleared up he tries again, saying, “Geraldine Granger, I’m asking YOU to marry me, Geraldine Granger, .........I’ve decided that I must follow my heart. .......... I loved you the second I laid eyes on you and I absolutely know we are meant to be together forever and that we will always be happy”.

It was this last line of his proposal came to mind when I read the passage from Deuteronomy for this week.

This Deuteronomy passage appears to be an instruction on a ritual of thanksgiving for “first fruits”, a harvest festival of thanksgiving. In an agriculturally based society, this sort of festival would have been a common practice even of the pagan peoples of the area. Such a ritual recognizes that human beings do not grow and harvest crops all by themselves; there are many factors beyond human control which affect the harvest which sustains human life. As the people of Israel came into contact with their neighbours they would have become familiar with these rituals and practices.

Thanksgiving for harvest is one aspect of this ritual, but there is much more than that here! This is a ritual specific to them, to their history, to their place in the world.

This ritual includes a recitation; a recitation of the salient points of their history. God called their ancestors and gave them a promise, a promise that took generations to fulfil. God was with their ancestors when they went to Egypt in order to be saved from famine. The Egyptians turned against them and imposed hard labour on them, they cried out to God and, through Moses, God delivered them and they became a mighty nation, through their desert wanderings. In God’s good time they entered the land of promise, a land promised generations before to Abraham and Sarah and now, says the ritual, they are bringing the first fruits of the harvest.

As this passage is presented, it is presented as future instruction. Its something like telling your child who is going off to a birthday party, “Remember to say thank you to Sammy’s Mom”. You will grow your crops and when you harvest them, you will bring them in thanksgiving. At this time you will also say out loud, which is a great way of forcing yourself to remember, the high points of our journey as a people of faith. The recurring theme, of course, is that God’s hand was guiding them and it was to God they owed thanks, not just for the harvest that season, but their entire lives.

It placed the life of each individual child of Israel, it placed the lives of each family and each generation in the context of the wider story. Such a ritual forced the people to remember and bring to mind the “bigger picture”.

It told them that the appropriate response to God’s grace is “the attitude of gratitude”. According to the text they are given this instruction while they are still in the wilderness. They are given this instruction before they have taken possession of the bountiful land. They are given this instruction before they even plant their first crops, let alone harvest them. In a sense they are told, “When you get there you will be thankful for the bounty you will receive from the hand of God and you will celebrate”.

Remember they are in the wilderness living on field rations! In that situation they had to trust God completely for they were literally only given enough food for each day as the day came.

They are also instructed to remember that God is not like a taxi driver, dropping them off at the door of the promised land and ending all responsibility for their future. -11- God had been with them in the past, yes, but God would also be with them in the future, in each and every year, in each and every crop, in each and every year. It is this never ending presence of Almighty God that was the greater reason for thankfulness.

It was hard to maintain this attitude though. The contrast to the desert wore off after a while and it was necessary to be reminded of the story; it was necessary to be reminded that God was with them in the present as he had been in -their people’s past.

I remember my student days. I earned money in the summer, got my loans and bursaries and more or less had to live on that until the next summer. I looked ahead to the bountiful reality of a steady pay-cheque with my debt decreasing and new money coming in EVERY month. It was going to be wonderful. And it was.

Then I began to look for the next raise which would come in three years; or to the time when my car loan was paid off and I would have extra money; or when my student loan was finally gone; or when I finally had enough money to buy the things I thought I needed - a microwave, a vacuum cleaner, new clothes, some new furniture (mostly I collected antiques) maybe a trip, but with everything I took off the list I added one more including another car when my paid for one threatened to cost me a lot of money.

In our world of needs, financial goals and plain out and out wants, we must remember the command to be thankful. We must especially remember this command when we are in a situation of hardship; perhaps there is an illness or perhaps we don’t have the money we want to have.

I cam across a happiness study through Facebook yesterday. In a study by “upworthy.com”, it was proven that happiness comes from the expressing of gratitude. In an experiment involving a number of participants, it was found that the biggest increase in happiness came to the person who was the least happy of the subjects going into the study. The task in the experiment was simple: write a letter to one person who has made a difference in your life and tell that person what they did for you and thank them. Then, when the letters were written they were instructed to phone that person and read that person the letter they had just written. The whole thing was videotaped; it was very touching.

Yes, we can be commanded to thankfulness; like love its not a feeling, it’s a choice. Thankfulness is a response to life, not something we feel when and if we have more than enough.

As the ritual outlined in the biblical text also implies, thankfulness involves sharing with the Levites and the aliens. I believe the Levites did not own land, therefore could not grow their own food, and had to rely on the thanksgiving offerings of the people. The aliens, (are not from Mars) they may have been what we call “temporary foreign workers” - we aren’t sure - but they were “the other” for sure.

Let us be a thankful people.

Let us share our bounty with others.

Let us always remember that we are not in this enterprise alone - we depend on God and on one another.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.