Genesis 21: 8-21
Psalm 86
Matthew 10: 24-39

Did I Hear That Correctly?

In some churches, when a reader finishes reading a passage of scripture, he or she may say something along the lines of, “This is the word of the Lord.” With today’s passages, many readers would be tempted to pose it, not as a statement, but as a question: “THIS is the word of the Lord?”

For a number of years now, the reading from the book of Genesis has been dubbed a “text of terror” because of the harm done, by the powerful to the defenceless and marginalized. We often think of Abraham and Sarah as the great-grandparents of the “Hebrew people” and they are usually held up as models of patience, virtue and faithfulness”. Even if Sari did laugh at the thought of conceiving a child in her advanced years, after decades of trying, she is thought of as a great matriarch.

In addition to their admirable qualities though, the biblical story is not hesitant to present its heroes with their flaws; for which you don’t really have to dig very deep.

In this passage Sarah is depicted as a jealous mother. Even in our own time, second spouses are sometimes jealous of the bond shared between a step-child and his or her biological parent. The so-called “blended family” has challenges not found in a family where all of the children share the same two parents. The polygamous family, is another thing altogether! In Canada these kinds of arrangements are rare and illegal, though they do exist! They have even made a reality TV show depicting one such arrangement.

Like many of the men of his time, Abraham was the father of such a family. Sarah was his wife and Hagar, her foreign born slave. When Sara could not conceive she gave Hagar to him to have a son with her. The child conceived by this union was Ishmael. Eventually Sarah and her husband became the parents of Isaac. The two sons were caught in the middle. Even though she had originally blessed Abraham’s liaison with Hagar, once she had her own son, she became jealous and fearful for her own son’s inheritance. She wanted Ishmael out of the picture. Since Abraham was the only one with the authority to do this Sarah had to make this request of him. Abraham, to be fair was reluctant to do this because, in most cases this would have meant certain death for Hagar and for his son. We are told that they are cast out into the wilderness with little water and less food. It is a terrible, horrible, cruel thing for Abraham to have done, even considering the assurance that God has great plans for Ishmael and that he and his mother will survive

While this does not make me feel much better about Abraham it does remind us, a) that even the most faithful are capable of stupid and sinful actions, and b) that the text presents God’s action to be grace and salvation.

The reading from the Gospels seem to be in direct contrast to what most of us feel Jesus would have said, or should have said! “Isn’t the Gospel about love?” we might ask. Why is Jesus speaking as if he came to bring division and fractured relationships?

It is important to note that we, in 21st century Canada, live in a completely different context than the writer of Matthew’s gospel. These days there are not many negative consequences associated with being a practising Christian, at least in Canada. Few of us have relatives who don’t speak to us because we go to church and few of us, or none of us, sitting here today, have cut off relatives who don’t go! Such was not the case in the early church and such is not the case in some parts of the world today. Earlier this month Somalian militants were reportedly going door to door and shooting people who were not Muslim or Somali speaking.

I don’t think we need to know much about the role of the church in the midst of great social changes in the past to discern that our passages for today give us a mandate to be involved in the social and economic changes that are overtaking us each and every day.

It seems to me that the “economy” is the new religion and, in reality, it is controlled by what has been called, “the military industrial complex” The church and its views, unless it supports the status quo, is seen as irrelevant; if it does not, it is meddling where it does not belong!

I think we need to continue to speak for justice, we need to continue to rattle the cages of power, we need to continue to stand up for the Hagars and Ishmaels of the world - we need to be God’s agents for a world where everyone has their fair share of the benefits of the created order that God has called “good”.

Remember the TV show, “The Jeffersons”? George and Louise Jefferson, an African American couple from humble beginnings, had climbed the ladder of success and rung by rung. They had built their dry cleaning business all the way to a “deluxe apartment in the sky”. They had made it! They had “arrived”; they had “their piece of the pie”.

Canadians dreams aren’t that much different. We are supposed to work hard, to save, and to give a better life to our children than our parents were able to give us. In the world of business there is the saying, “if you aren’t going ahead, you are going behind” While it has worked for many, it is a system with deep flaws and many casualties.

At the bottom of the ladder are the unemployed and the working poor who scramble to keep their heads above water. Then there are those of us who have a business that is worth something. There are those of us with a bit of savings or a pension plan. We know that most of our personal savings depend on the companies in which the money is invested, turning a profit.

In a world of globalization regular people are far down the chain of benefits and when a company’s profits do not suit the shareholders the ensuing restructuring usually means “layoffs”, “outsourcing”, taking manufacturing “off- shore” or all of the above. In health care and the public service, cash strapped governments ask fewer people to do more and more. The middle class is disappearing. In some countries it had never existed. The gap between the rich and the poor gets wider every year.

It is as if we are on a treadmill, going and going and going and getting nowhere. While goods may be cheaper our wages are not able to keep up and our standard of living is falling year by year!

We are trapped. Our addiction to fossil fuels is killing us; our addiction to fossil fuels is the only thing keeping our economy alive. We are Abraham forced to cast Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness; we are Hagar and Ishmael, a disposable and no longer needed part of the family.

So what do we do? How are we to live as people of faith in a world where we are caught up in this in some way or another?

The first thing we must realize is that we are both a part of the problem and can be part of the solution. None of us is going to solve all the problems of the world but we can do something. In a democracy we have the advantage of being able to advocate for a more just treatment of those who have been cast out. The wars we hear about on the nightly news are creating refugees by the millions. We can’t stop the wars but we can turn Canada into an oasis for more of them than we have been accepting. Canadian companies can be forced to clean up their acts in developing countries so that fair wages are paid and their communities are not destroyed for our luxury goods. We can seek solutions for the homeless in our large cities. We can welcome into our communities those who are cast out and those who are different.

What Sarah and Abraham failed to realize is that a world of “just us” will not be a world of “justice”. We are called to be on God’s side, the side of justice where all have what is needed for life and health and well being.

Sarah and Abraham thought that shutting Ishmael out was the only way for Isaac to inherit the promise. In God’s world we all inherit the promise. In God’s world no one profits at the expense of another. That may not be the way of the world; but as people of faith we are called to stand up against popular opinion for what is just and right, not for what is popular. We start by seeking to live in faith, instead of living in fear that we must keep others poor so that we can stay where we are.

When we advocate for those who are cast out because of someone else’s greed, ambition or fear, we are on God’s side. When all have enough and no none profits at the expense of another, the words spoken in Genesis will once again be true: God saw that it was good!

Amen.

Genesis 24: 34-38, 42-49, 58-67
Psalm 45
Romans 7: 15-25a
Matthew 11: 16-19, 25-30

Sin Can Sometimes Be Trickee!

Sin is a tricky beast. If you have been raised in a world of clear, hard, fast and unbendable rules and of right and wrong you can easily become convinced that human goodness is possible through human effort alone. If you pay attention to your own behaviour you can avoid wrong doing and you can be free of sin! That’s the theory anyway! That is sin’s first trick.

You see, when a world of hard and fast and crystal clear meets al world of real people or when it meets a world of grace; it can be like the floor has fallen out beneath your feet. You have done everything you were supposed to do and nothing you were not supposed to do and then you realize that you are still captive to sin and human frailty and your life is still not as it could be. We can discover that people have been hurt, injustice has been done and sin has indeed happened. When we have done everything right, the way we thought we were supposed to, and this still went off the rails, we wonder, “how does this happen?” Paul, in the passage from his letter to the church in Rome that I read just a few moments ago is struggling with this. Some might call it, “the law of misplaced confidence” while sometimes it is better termed the “law of unintended consequences”.

You know those events that can happen from time to time which, if filmed, could well make it onto an episode of “Funniest Videos”. Now think of more serious occurrences, those not really possible to film and maybe not possible to result in laughter!

There have been many books written seeking to answer the question, “Just what is Paul talking about in this passage? “ There are no easy answers to this one! I think this passage would be easier to understand if we knew more about Greek rhetoric. He is not talking about a personal failing; this is not a “true confessions of Paul” here, but an argument to show a much more universal conundrum. Perhaps the phrase “the faster I go the behinder I get” works here. The harder I try to live the law the more I realise I am trapped by sin.

I will be the first to admit that I don’t know that much about AA or other 12 step programs except that I do know that the FIRST step is to admit that one is powerless over that which has taken control over his or her life - whether it be alcohol, or narcotics or gambling, to give just three examples. Step TWO is to turn control over to a “ higher power”. The only success in this program is achieved by admitting that the success is not found by human effort alone. One of the mantras of these 12 step programs is “one day at a time”. I can be sober, clean, or whatever for “today” and the journey of sobriety is achieved, with the help of the program, and the other members, and God, day by day.

I love the cartoon series, Family Circus. In the household of this family live two ghost children. When something has gone wrong the mom will ask, “who did this?” The answer is invariably, “I’da know” or “Not me” and through the cartoon reality we see these “ghost children” who have touched and broken things that were supposed to be off limits, tracked mud on the clean floor and done other things the children are forbidden to do.

Cartoonist Bill Keene has it right when those blamed become “personified” as “real” ghost children but this tendency to shift blame is not just a child tendency! When we grow up and become adults we are supposed to own up to our inappropriate, wrong, hurtful or sinful actions when we do them but, as we know, this is not always the case. Sometimes we are Flip Wilson saying, “The devil made me do it”, as if that absolves us of responsibility.

Sometimes, when I have nothing better to do, I catch a few minutes of an episode of “Dr Phil”. It’s on many, many times a day if you have satellite tv! Frequently a guest will explain what is their typical action or response in a certain situation. Dr Phil’s classic rhetorical response is, “And how’s that working for you?” Obviously, not well!

Lets get back to Paul’s letter. To be frank this is not an easy passage! As I was writing the first draft of this sermon on Friday trying to predict when I should stop using my computer in the thunder and lightening and fighting a dying battery in the power outage yesterday, I thought more than once that I should choose an easier passage but for good or for ill, I did not!

At first glance Paul seems to be a poster child for “Sinners Anonymous”. He professes that he cannot control his tendency to sin; he needs the grace of God, in Christ, to help him. Yet, its not quite that simple; we need to dig more deeply. This passage talks about a kind of sin that is much harder to get a handle on. This is not a sin of acts done or undone but a sin of a skewed relationship with God.

As I understand the passage, Paul’s anguish is not so much the rules he breaks, but the rules he keeps and how the forces of evil turn those good actions into sin. It’s the rule of unintended consequences writ large. Trickeee Trickeeeee.

Before Paul met the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, he was someone who prided himself on how well he was able to keep the law - and was - in his own words blameless. Yet as his relationship with God, in Christ grew, he learned that he was embraced by grace. Paul struggles with how keeping the law has led to a skewed view of faithfulness. In his desire to be blameless he has not left any room for grace and in his desire to be blameless he may have harmed the cause of Christ.

This past week was one of national birthdays. July 1 marked the 147th anniversary of Canadian Confederation, when four colonies of Great Britain got together to form the Dominion of Canada. This Dominion would eventually become ten provinces and three territories and stretch from sea to sea to sea!

PEI is getting into the action because this is the 150th anniversary of the Charlottetown Conference - which as we all know from our elementary school history classes was the time when a bunch of politicians from Upper and Lower Canada hijacked a conference called to discuss Maritime Union. PEI did not join, as you know, until 1873 when our railway drove our small colony to the brink of bankruptcy.

Not to leave you who are Americans out; July 4 marks the 1776 declaration of Independence of the so-called “13 colonies” an action which sparked a war with Great Britain. They are now 50 States and a world superpower.

The United States are the land whose reason for being is so that its citizens can enjoy the “rights” of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. Canada on the other hand while our country espouses the goals of “peace, order and good government”. I suspect that entire volumes have been written on how these two perspectives make our countries different from each other.

As a people of faith, particularly in the wake of July 1 (or 4th) we must be careful not to equate being a good Christian with being a good citizen of a particular country. Our call to be Christian is higher than any political or family loyalty.

We are called to a loyalty to the gospel which takes us above and beyond the call to loyalty to country. In both the USA and Canada we have many people who want to be granted “refugee status” so they can make a new life here. There is a great deal of controversy about such people receiving the benefits of our medicare system while they await their hearings.

There is a lot of controversy over First Nations People and their claims to land which are not covered in treaties made with the British Crown and when they have asserted that the treaties that are made are not being honoured, Then there is the scandal and the legacy of the “Residential Schools”

In the years before the church worked out an official apology, in the 1980s, some church leaders and some aboriginal leaders were meeting. The First Nations leaders said something like this, “What we want to hear you say is that you are sorry”. The church leaders said something like this, “Our lawyers tell us we cannot say that”.

That is our world; but it is the world of sin and death.

To me this is an almost perfect example of how the laws of nations, the laws of sin and death keep us from fully living the grace of freedom in Christ.

It is not easy to live in these two worlds at once but we must never think that we are doing it so well that we have arrived here by our own efforts. We must remember that we cannot live fully as Christians without the grace of God in Christ Jesus. In Christ is our only freedom.

Amen!

Genesis 25: 19-34
Psalm 119: 105-112
Romans 8: 1-11
Matthew 13: 1-9, 18-23

Calling the Imperfect!

The gospel song, “Why Me Lord?”, by Kris Kristofferson asks, “Why me Lord, what have I ever done to deserve even one of the pleasures I’ve known. Tell me Lord, what did I ever do that was worth loving you or the kindness you have shown.” It is solidly in the branch of the Christian tradition that prays to Jesus for grace and forgiveness.

It would be a mistake though, to assume that the grace of God in Jesus, which forgives and restores, was invented by Jesus. The Hebrew tradition in which he was raised is filled with this way of looking at people and at life.

I remember quite clearly sitting at a picnic table with a group of other teens and the camp director who led the study (the student minister who was here in Dundas at the time, Louis Pellissier) reminded us that in the Bile the heroes of the faith are presented with their faults and are not cleaned up and presented in an unrealistic fashion. Jacob is certainly one of these folks.

Quite often in the biblical tradition the “patriarchs” Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, are regarded as the beginning of the family line. It goes like this: God had a plan to make of Abraham and Sarah a great nation and God told them of his plan. It was clearly a plan depending on a miracle as God chose an old man and his old wife Sarah to be the parents of this great line. When the hoped for pregnancy did not happen, and to be fair they tried for many years, Sarah actually encouraged her husband to father a child with her Egyptian slave. As soon as this child was born Sarah regretted her decision and this regret turned to fear when she herself had her own child and she saw them playing together. In a world where the oldest son had almost all of the rights and a double share of the inheritance she acted to protect her son and his rights. She convinced her husband to cast the Ishmael and his mother into the wilderness to an almost certain death. From our previous weeks’ readings though we know that they survived by God’s intervention and a divine plan was announced to make of them a great family as well.

This son Isaac grew and he had his own son and he is called to prove his trust in the promise by bringing his son to the point of sacrifice. He passed the test and Isaac married and his wife became pregnant with twins. It was not an easy pregnancy and she describes it as if the children are fighting with each other even before they are born. We are told that she has a miserable pregnancy.

I can’t quite imagine a birth where the second twin comes out grasping the heel of the first but that is what we are told. This was only the beginning of the sibling rivalry between the two very different sons. To make matters worse one parent favours the first and the other parent the second.

Eventually Jacob saw a chance to get the upper hand and like he did as he was being born he grasped at it. He offered his older brother a home cooked meal, a vegetarian one at that, for the most important thing he had, his rights as the older son.

In this passage at least the biblical writer seems to cast blame upon Esau for selling off his rights for so little. It was what we might call an example of “short term gain for long term pain”.

That is often the way of life though; as human beings we are caught in complex web of decisions where we are offered exactly what we want at the moment for a very high price.

Many years after this event, King Ahab, wanted to buy a certain vineyard from a man named Naboth and offered him “anything he wanted”; to “name his price” but when he refused to sell his ancestral land, the king cooked up a plot to have him executed and expropriate the vineyard for himself. Naboth was not about to sell his ancestral land, mot for a home cooked meal. Not for a better vineyard. It cost him his life.

We have probably all known children who have taken advantage of a sibling or a friend in the hopes of gaining something for a bargain.

Sometimes when the stakes are high we might call such a situation, “making a deal with the devil”. It might happen when someone is asked to do something shady or illegal for their company and if they do not the company finds a reason to fire them. In the wold of banking, for example, tellers are required to encourage a client to sign up for more and more services and the results of their sales efforts are more important thatn the customer service we used to expect from bank tellers.

I don’t know anyone who likes getting a call from a telemarketer! You pick up the phone and after a very telling silence you hear a voice talking very rapidly introduce themselves and their company, or you think that is what you heard and then they offer to clean your carpets, or your duct-work, for a bargain! They will be in your area soon and you can get a deal if you sign up now.

They are very persistent. When you tell them that you don’t have carpets pr duct-work they offer to clean your furniture. I’ve actually never had the duct-work people call me here, which is the first place I have lived on my own with hot water heat!

Put the shoe on the other foot for a minute. Can you imagine that as a job and being paid on commission; no sales no supper! Imagine that you are a highly skilled immigrant and this is the only job you can get because your training is not recognized in Canada!

I have a former parishioner who is a committed environmentalist and with her training she could have a much better job if she went to a place like Fort McMurray and worked in the oil industry but for her that would be like selling her soul. So she struggles with a much lower paying job in the non-profit sector. Will it be enough though when she is ready to raise a family?

Indeed that is the dilemma we are all faced with: the economy or the environment. I would suggest the oil and gas people and the government are like Esau offering us short term gain for a future which might be worse than we ever imagined in terms of climate change.

This text asks each one of us: What is your price?

You all probably know the song, ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia” by the Charlie Daniels Band. (I told George B yesterday that I was going to sing the song for him but I wont put the rest of you through that! George B is a retired minister from Georgia who comes to the church here in the summer. In it Johnny, a fiddler, was challenged by the devil to a contest. The prize was a fiddle made of gold; the cost for losing was Johnny’s soul. Johnny won!

The violin has long been known as the “Devil’s Instrument”, I think perhaps because some of the most intricate of performances were regarded as impossible unless the musician had sold his soul to the devil in order to be given such talent. I’ve never really understood why such talent could not be regarded as a divine gift, but that’s for another sermon.

While this is a "fun" song it does speak of a not so fun and very serious dilemma we can face - selling our soul, selling our integrity, making compromises for things that really arent worth the price. At such rtimes we are treading on dangerous ground.

To me this passage, and others remind us of two things: we are faced with choices that have far reaching consequences tied to seemingly simple choice and two, we can rely on the grace of God. Jacob was indeed a heel. Jacob was a trickster. Jacob was not someone you would want to hire as an “ethics commissioner” King David had a less than exemplary character. There are many stories which tell us of his faults. Yet. Yet. They are regarded as important and faithful people of our Judeo-Christian tradition.

We are not following in the footsteps of people ho were toogood to be true. These folks are human, just like we are. Some of them are more human than we ever thought of being! This reminds us to cut ourselves some slack and remind ourselves of grace. It also tells us to cut others some slack and remember that God has called some pretty flawed people - and we ourselves might just be some o them.

This does not give us a blank cheque for sin but it does bring us up short and reminds us who is really in charge of the vision.

Amen.

Genesis 28: 10-19a
Psalm 139
Romans 8: 12-25
Matthew 13 24-30, 36-43

About 40 years ago, there was a series of safety commercials and one of them was about the old lady who lived in the shoe; “when her shoe caught fire, she knew just what to do”. She had an escape plan.

It is good to be able to know just what to do if you have a burning shoe-house full of children, or any kind of burning house, filled with children, or not. In an era when weather events are increasing in number and severity the “emergency measures” people have all sorts of advice for living through a disaster including the assembly of a “emergency kit” which contains canned goods and a non electrical can opener, bottled water, cash, several changes of clothing and a long, long list of other items, all ready to go at a moment’s notice. With my luck the seasons would have changed and I’d discover that I have packed sandals and shorts for a disaster that happens in February or I would have borrowed the cash when there was too much month at the end of the money and neglected to replace it.

Sometimes there is a guide book to answer the “what if” questions; sometimes there is not. Jacob’s situation fits into the later category. What do you do if you have taken advantage of your brother’s hunger to obtain his birthright and then tricked your blind and dying father into giving you the blessing also reserved for the oldest son? What do you do if you then get wind of your older brother’s desire to kill you? (As soon as dear-pl-dad has died, that is! )

What indeed! Ask mom! Then follow her advice and run. Do not pass go! Do not collect $200.

Jacob was in this situation; one of his own making! (With some so-called help from his mom!)

So Jacob took off. He didn’t have a GPS or even a map so when dark fell and every bush looked the same, he looked for a good place to spend the night. I don’t know what he would have used for a pillow in his own tent, but out in the wilderness he used a rock which would definitely be “hard on the head”! ) Dear knows what I might dream if I had a rock for a pillow; but Jacob dreamed of a ladder stretching to the heavens and angels ascending and descending and God standing beside him.

What do you do when you encounter the holy? Perhaps a better and more accurate question is, “What do you do when the holy encounters you? Jacob made an altar and, in his own mind at least, changed the name of the place.

v This has been a simply awful week and the ones before it were not much better! This has been a week in which many, many people have responded to what has gone on by, among other things, seeking an encounter with the holy. They have shouted out in grief and anger. They have shouted out the question, “Why?” They have prayed and been prayed for.

To name just a few o the events: We were told that murder charges were filed against a man in relation to the disappearance of a couple from Alberta and their five year old grandson.

On Thursday we heard that a commercial passenger jet flying to Malaysia over the Ukraine had been shot out of the sky and that there are no survivors. Among the dead were dozens of leading AIDS researchers heading to a conference in Australia, two infants and a Canadian. Taking a line from the old, old tv show, someone somewhere, or several someones have “some ‘splaining to do”.

Last week, four cousins, ages 9-11 died when an Israeli warship fired on the beach where they had gone to play, disobeying the orders of the adults to stay inside. They are just four more of the many victims, residents of Gaza, caught between Hamas rebels and the State of Israel. This was, of course, only another page in what seems to be a very long story of conflict in that area of the world. These young residents of Gaza only four more caught in the middle of a fight they neither asked for or participate in. If there is not some way to stop the “eye for an eye” attitude the death toll has not even begun to mount!

And then, there is global warming and climate change.

We are entering an era for which there may be no road map, an era for which there is no one to ask.

Lets get back to Jacob, son of Isaac, grandson of Abraham. If we have an idea that the trio of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were each honest men we are about to be corrected!

Jacob was a not a nice guy. He was a trickster, a man who took full advantage of any opportunity to gain the upper hand over his brother. We think of God reaching out to and encountering holy people; not regular folks and certainly not schiesters and charlatans. However, here in the Bible, in our holy book, the God of heaven and earth comes calling on the most unlikely people including Jacob and promises him great blessing.

When he awakened from this dream he knew that something has changed and he constructed a kind of middle-eastern inukshuk, and re-named the place “Bethel” which means, literally, the ‘house of God”

In this passage, an account of an awesome and memorable dream, Jacob, the imperfect trickster, is reaffirmed as one of God’s chosen, the one through whom God’s purposes to an as yet unborn people will be fulfilled!

Where does this leave us; imperfect Canadians (and American visitors) in the humidity of a Canadian summer - with our own “hungry children and a crop in the field”, with hearts made heavy by the horrible and heart-wrenching events in the news? What does Jacob’s story say to us and to our world in need of some divine inspiration, in need of a “stiff talking to”?

I see in this the clear message that God’s will is for the well being of all of creation. I see that the God of the ages, the God of heaven and earth calls imperfect people to do great things. I see the clear message that God does not abandon us to our own sin but walks with us, nudging us, pushing us, challenging us to be more faithful than we thought we could be and to right actions.

God does not miraculously divert sophisticated missiles aimed at planes loaded with civilians, or a beach where innocent children are playing or intervene directly in a dispute turned to kidnapping and death. God does not do our work for us. God does not give up on us but neither does God want us to continue in our death dealing ways.

In a challenge of the “eye for an eye” theology, Jesus said, “love one another”. Seeking wisdom from other faith traditions we are brought up short by Mahatma Gandhi’s observation: “An eye for an eye can only make the whole world blind”

Of course these are complex problems that cannot be “prayed away”, but we cannot bury our heads in the sand and say that it’s not even a problem or not our problem.

We must pray and work for peace and justice, realizing that we are a world community and that all people must benefit from the solutions that are proposed. Injustice will never create peace; neither will more killing. We must advocate with our governments and with the governments in question to do justice, kindness and mercy on behalf of its own people and the world.

How many must die, how many must suffer before we realize that God is calling us to yell and act STOP. The answer is blowin’ in the wind, the wind from God.

God’s message is to embrace the promise, a promise not only for our people but for all people. We can make a difference if we stop running away and realize that we are a big part of its fulfilment.

Amen.

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

Not Getting It!

So their new, newly graduated and ordained female minister arrived. Her sermons were pretty good for a beginner, and most folks agreed that her sermons were better than those of some of the young male ministers that had come their way over the years. However, a few of the older men remained skeptical. When fishing season came several of them decided they had to test her mettle and asked her to go out fishing with them. On the appointed day the three of them went out into the deep water. They dropped anchor and one of the men showed her how to bait her hook and then they sat and waited. The fish were not biting and after several hours she became very bored. So she said she had a sermon to work on and that she would see them in church on Sunday. She got out of the boat and walked to the shore. One of the men looked at her going without much expression, but as she reached the shore he remarked, “Well, that proves that she’ll never work out here. She can’t even swim”.

Unlike that man, when we look that the story of Jesus walking on water however, we do notice, and we tend to focus on that one “feat” itself. We may think that Jesus’ ability to overcome a basic principle of physics is the point of the story. We assume that the point of the story must be, “Jesus can walk on water, he is the son of God! “ When I was young and encountered this story for the first time and saw the picture in my coloured Sunday School take home papers, which had a very literal view of scripture, that is what I think I was being taught - “believe in Jesus because he can walk on water”.

The problem, of course, is when science and reason get the upper hand, we tend to thrown the grown up Jesus out with the seawater. We tend to discount everything because we have been asked to believe the scientifically and physically impossible. If we are to remain “believers”, as adults, we need something else!

To be clear, even in the pre-scientific age of the first century, that walking on water bit is NOT really the point of the story!

Sometimes we are like those weekend fishermen and we ignore the obvious but sometimes what seems to be obvious stands in the way of true understanding and a deeper and more powerful meaning. This is not a story to be dismissed as a fancy tale or a dream. It has a real and lasting truth for those of us who struggle in 21st century waters with 21st century issues.

This passage has very little to do with walking on the water, literally speaking, but everything with the One who helps us to keep our heads above water, metaphorically speaking.

One of the catch phrases of the last 40 or so years is “thinking outside the box”. When we think outside the box we can imagine things that have never been thought of and we can find solutions to previously unsolvable problems! Would be inventors often need to think in that way to overcome obstacles to take their invention from their head to the drawing board to reality. The classic < a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_outside_the_box”> ‘nine dot problem’ is just one example. When we see the solution we might groan and say, “Why didn’t I think of that?” or we might protest, “You broke the rule”. It was, of course, a rule only in our heads!

Before children learn how to do precise things such as make their letters one of the best things to teach them is how to colour. They move from broad, messy scratches, to eventually being able to “colour inside the lines”. In many cases this is a good life lesson; if you don’t make the letter “p” correctly it could look like a number of other letters and no one will be able to understand your printing - or writing. But in the life of faith, the boundary lines that define an object can become limiting and give us the wrong impression of the spiritual truths we are called to live out in our lives.

In much of the ancient world the sea was the domain of dark and dangerous creatures BUT time and again the scriptures assert that the God of heaven and earth is also the God of the deepest oceans and the stormiest seas. The scriptures assert this because it is not always spiritual common sense. Can we run away from God? Can we go where God is not?

We are told that the power of this God enables God’s people to cross large bodies of water which were previously thought to be insurmountable. The disciples on that storm tossed sea may have thought they were outside of God’s reach, but they discovered they were not!

The previous chapter of Matthew’s gospel is filled with teachings but then Jesus is rejected by the people of hos own home town. They then hear of the death of “John the baptizer” and Jesus feeds the crowds who flock to hear him. Jesus sends them on ahead of him, directing them to cross the lake, but he does not accompany them. He goes off to pray by himself. The lake is known for its sudden and violent storms, much like their lives as disciples and much like the life of the early church . That was where we picked up the story.

In the story they see Jesus walking on the water and are afraid. Peter challenges Jesus to give him the same power and, according to the story, he has it, that is until he notices where he is and he begins to sink and is saved only by Jesus quick action.

The disciples were faced with nsurmountable challenges but they learned that God was with them and that in the end the challenges would not be able to stamp out the good news.

During the Second World War, Corrie TenBoom and her family were sent to various concentration camps because they dared to act in the face of the horror of the extermination of Jewish people and hid Jews from the occupying Nazi forces. After losing almost her entire family to this evil she wrote, “There is no pit do deep that God is not deeper still.”

We don’t face those challenges but the challenges we do face in our own lives and in the church are serious. We need to take this passage seriously and know its power and tis truth. We may end up in places where we have never been, places we don’t want to be; we may be afraid but we will not be alone and we will not need to despair.

Our new music resource, More Voices, includes this hymn, titled, “ My Love Colours Outside the Lines” by Gordon Light of the Common Cup Company. Without all the repeats it goes like this click here for lyrics

As the early church grew into maturity their members had to think of their faith in ways that were different than the ones which had become second nature when they were part of the Jewish synagogues. When the Gospel was embraced by people who had never been Jewish, the people had to cross one of those barriers, constructed to keep their lives neat and tidy.

We could say that the gospel is about opening doors to new worlds; worlds which were previously “outside the lines” of God’s love.

In the church of the 21st century we need to be open to the ways in which the holy comes to us in the midst of the real and imagined difficulties we face. We need to look at new ways of reaching people with the good news; new ways of telling the “old, old story”!. In some, if not many, cases the status quo will no longer an option and we will think our little boat will be swamped and sumk, but them we will lift op our eyes and hear, “Keep your eyes on me, you can to it”.

As I was finalizing this sermon last night I received a picture of a hummingbird on Facebook, with this message printed across it: “When you come to the edge, trust in God completely. Only two things can happen. Either God will catch you when you fall or God will teach you how to fly”.

Now that’s what I would call GOOD NEWS!

Amen.

Genesis 45: 1-15
Psalm 133
Matthew 15: 21-28

A number of years ago, at a Presbytery meeting (not PEI) a speaker made an off the cuff, but disparaging comment about “bikers” with their noisy machines and shady reputations. A respected lay member of the Presbytery stood up on a “point of personal privilege” and informed us that he took offence to that stereotype. He was a biker and would not like to be considered shady or untrustworthy.

A few years ago a retired United Church minister was babysitting the “food bank” trailer that had been set up in the parking lot of a Charlottetown Tim Horton’s. Throughout the designated time period, various people would come and drop off groceries. He would thank them and load the donations into the trailer. By and by a burly, very tough looking biker with many tattoos, on a very loud bike roared into the parking lot. He saw him go into the restaurant and he assumed he was drinking his coffee and eating his donuts or donuts inside. Time passed and the man came out of Tims but much to the minister’s chagrin he did not leave immediately, but looked first at the trailer and then walked over to it.

“What’s going on here?”

“Well”, the minister said, “we are collecting food for families that can’t make ends meet and need to use a food bank”.

“You mean to tell me that there are people in this beautiful place who need that kind of help?”

“Well, yes there are.”

“Will you be here tomorrow?”

“Yes, I will.”

“Hmmmm. I don’t got no money on me now, but I’ll be back” he promised. He put on his helmet, climbed on his bike and roared out of the parking lot.

The retired minister was actually happy to see him go and was quite sure that he didn’t really want him to come back at all.

The next day came and the biker did return as promised. He roared up to the trailer on his Hog and he said, “A bunch of us is staying at this campground outside of town there and I told the guys what you said and we all decided we would make a donation. He handed the minister a battered KFC bag stuffed with money. On the bag was written something like this, “The world would be a whole lot better place if we all cared a lot and shared a little”, and it was signed by a “Christian Biker Association”.

Sometimes the people we meet surprise us to such an extent that we have to rethink all of our presuppositions and stereotypes.

One of the stereotypes we have of Jesus is “a meek and mild man”, indeed there is a hymn by that name. He was nice to everyone, did not swear and he was always a calm, cool and polite, a perfect gentlemen.

We also think of Jesus as being perfectly mature in his faith, at least from the day he left his self-imposed wilderness time after his baptism by John in the Jordan. Jesus is not someone who needed to “grow” spiritually or become more “mature in his calling”.

Over the past week I have been purging files and discovered a set of evaluations from my first internship in which my areas of needed growth were outlined by my supervisor. That’s a normal kind of thing for student ministers but we don’t usually think of Jesus in this way, do we? We don’t think of Jesus as being downright rude and insensitive, toward someone in need. To think that way would be very presumptuous or even offensive, wouldn’t it?

Yet, Today’s passage presents us with a rude Jesus and a woman who refused to take no for an answer. It presents us with a Jesus who appeared to change his mind after being challenged by a pagan who appears to be in possession of a greater faith than most of his fellow Jews.

You heard me read the passage, but let’s dig a little deeper.

In no particular order there are some observations that can be made.

Since we don’t have the inside line on all the “clues” let it be known that this woman had NOTHING going for her. First of all, she was a woman and women and men who were not related to one another did not speak in public, so for this conversation to even have taken place broke several taboos.

This woman is also a Canaanite. The Canaanites were the original inhabitants of the land who had lived there before Israel came out of the wilderness, crossed the Jordan and won the battle of Jericho! What her religion would have been is uncertain, but she did not worship the God of Israel.. She was a “Gentile” who may have worshipped idols or belonged to a fertility cult. She would have been even lower on the “scale of religious acceptability” than a hated Samaritan, a group who were despised as “half- breeds” but worshipped the God of Israel, albeit in the “wrong place and way”.

For someone to have a demon was a particular kind of illness regarded as a sign of God’s punishment - in a way that another kind of illness would not have been.

To be clear, Jesus calls the woman a “dog”. When I was in school that was how my male peers referred to a girl who was “not very pretty”. It seems that Jesus felt that his healing power was valuable and not to be given away lightly, especially to a pagan. a woman, a dog.

She had so many strikes against her; she would have been regarded as OUT, OUT, OUT. Yet, despite Jesus the umpire, calling her OUT, she steps up to bat for her daughter. She does not take Jesus to task for his slur, but without missing a beat she observes that “even the dogs get to eat crumbs”. Wow! Did you catch that? Do you know what she really said?

What she was saying, in effect, was that “your power is so strong Jesus, all my daughter needs is a crumb; all I am asking for is a crumb. Please heal my daughter, Jesus.” Like the woman who touched his robe, her faith was so great that she knew this would be sufficient.

So we have a passage where Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God, was challenged in his point of view about his very mission and he CHANGED. He saw that there was faith outside of the “children of Israel”; he saw spiritual value in the “other”, in the one who would normally have been “outside the lines”. Wow. That’s a lot to digest in one bite.

The more important question, of course, is what do WE do with this story? Surely in 2014 there are no “out” and “in” groups in hte church of Jesus Christ! Think again!

The early church to whom Matthew was writing was, no doubt, struggling with who was “in” and who was “out”. Some people felt that the gospel was for the Jews and not for the Gentiles while others felt it was for everyone. The question really came down to these two: “ Who is acceptable to God?” and “Are we a people of grace or a people of privilege?”

Do we feel we deserve special treatment, for whatever reason or do we, saved by grace, in turn show that love and grace to others.

This passage from a long ago and almost forgotten time asks of us a question that is very much a question for today. Whom do we welcome? Who is welcome in our community? Who is welcome in our church? It gets more specific. Who would we want as an elder or a steward? What should people wear to church, or does it matter? Are newcomers acceptable, or only so long as they realize that we do things around here in a certain way and we don’t want change. Of course, that’s not truly being welcoming? Jesus was told, and shown a faith far deeper than existed in some of his own people.

Are we more welcoming of some families than others? Why? The Visioning Committee did a survey a couple of years ago and found out that some people do not see those of us at Kings United as very welcoming. Instead of getting our backs up it would probably be best to first take a good look at how we welcome people; at how we value the contributions of others; at how we welcome teens and tots and those who used to come but stopped for awhile FOR WHATEVER REASON.

Lets all remember that we have no reason for smugness. Let us welcome and love as we have been welcomed and loved.

No exceptions. No exclusions.

Amen!

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

Advanced Basket Weaving

A few years ago I read an incredible book titled “Left to Tell”. It is the story of how the author, Immaculee Ilibagiza, survived the Rwandan Genocide which claimed almost her entire family. She was not, like Moses, floated in a basket in the Nile, but rather hidden for a number of months in a small bathroom in someone’s home with seven other women.

Whether it has been 2 decades or more than 2 thousand years, the stories of courageous people who act in faith in the midst of unimaginable horror, can inspire us to our own acts of courage and our own certainty of God’s presence in the midst of great difficulty. Such stories can inspire us to go against the status quo on behalf of another group of people; the cost to us might be negligible or very substantial! However, it is seen as being worth the price!

Not that long ago it was the Copts, one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, who feared for their lives. Even with a change of government life became very precarious for Christians in Egypt.

It is in Egypt that the story of Moses takes place. Egypt has an on again, off again, relationship with the Hebrew people. You may remember that the Pharaoh in the time of Joseph offered refuge to his family in a time of famine. As the story goes, the government has changed. In the generations since Joseph, the Hebrews had become the most numerous of the immigrant populations and were, by royal decree, enslaved. With the wave of a royal hand the commands were: Oppress them till they break! Work them to death! Take away their civil rights! There is work to be done let it be done cheaply! Despite the brutal oppression we are are told they grew stronger. At this point there begin a genocide. Of course, this only works if the people responsible for it, in this case, the midwives, actually carry out the orders.

These two Hebrew midwives took part in what was a very early instance of civil disobedience. They did not hold a “sit in” and refuse to work. They did not carry signs with “every baby is valuable”; or “even a Hebrew boy should live”; they deliberately broke the law and they lied to cover their crimes! Why! It was simply the right thing to do. They could not, they would not, kill healthy babies just because they were boys! It was wrong! Even before the “ten commandments” they knew this! I suppose if they had been found out, they would have been sacrificed to the crocodiles of the Nile as well. Did you notice that these women have names; even Moses parents and sister are not named in this version of the story, but these two midwives are. Clearly their courage is to be remembered!

Yet, as we all know, babies cry - babies crawl and then walk and make themselves known. We are not told how long this rule was in place or how many babies died but we are told that one was saved and for our story that was enough!

The couple hid their precious baby as long as they could, then they decided to follow the Pharaoh’s orders...... well, sort of.

They do put him in the Nile - but not before placing him in a floating basket. Clever! Daring! Desperate? Courageous!

Their plan works perfectly and the baby enjoys royal protection and the mom gets paid to look after her own child to boot.

The stage is set for the next step in the story of the Hebrews journey back to the land of promise.

Interestingly, in the midst of a genocide the princess, a lowly female, was allowed to keep and protect this baby. What could one Hebrew baby matter? Just one! What harm could there be?

Somewhere in one of our family photograph albums is a picture of us Johnston kids playing with a bunch of potato baskets. You all know the kind, they were made of split ash by native people and in the 1960s cost about 1.25 each.

Of course, an expertly crafted sturdy potato basket was probably worth many times more than that but back then we did not value the labour of the first nations craftspeople who made them. As teenagers we thought basket-weaving was something you learned if you could not do anything else! The price quoted me just the other day was $125 -$150 depending on size is a much more realistic and fair price.

You may find it interesting to mote that the Hebrew word used for” basket”, in this story, and the word used for “ark” in the Noah story are the same word. I suppose then you could say that Moses and Noah could be considered the original “basket cases”. Humour aside, each of these vessels served to carry the precious cargo to safety.

In this first part of the 21st Century there are many whose lives are very difficult including many who suffer from great oppression. I mentioned the Copts of Egypt whose lives are far from secure.

In Ferguson MI there is, at present, a great deal of unrest because of the recent shooting of an unarmed African American teenager by a police officer and questions of racism and police are being raised. The US Attorney General has finally promised a probe into racism in the state. Perhaps open and honest discussion and action will quell the violence.

On Friday I heard on the news that the terrorist group known ISIS had shot eighteen Palestinians for suspected collaboration with Israel. A few days ago a foreign journalist was executed. It is alleged the American Government would not pay a ransom to his captors. You may remember the story of Terry Waite who was held as a hostage for years by Hezbollah in Lebanon.

In the past few months Palestinian children have been killed by rocket fire. Israeli soldiers are said to be killing Palestinian civilians for little or no reason. On Friday the first Israeli child died as a result of the conflict.

As Canadians we like to think of ourselves as “law abiding”; and generally there is only popular tolerance for breaking “stupid rules”. I’ll let you decide what those rules are but they certainly do not include theft, murder and manslaughter, assault, arson, etc etc Some feel they also do not include interfering with the rights of another person to engage in commercial enterprises.

There are many people who commit acts of civil disobedience, and break the law, out of a desire for a better world. It is usually done after letter writing and public appeals have not resulted in the change of heart desired.

Idle no More was a movement arose in reaction to alleged abuses of First Nations treaty rights by the present Canadian government. The Occupy Movement began as a university student centred protest to draw attention to the increasing concentration of the world’s wealth in the top 1% of the population. In a world where the rich are getting richer and the poor getting poorer, what is a thinking feeling person to do? What is a person of faith to do?

At the outskirts of the Village of Rexton where I lived before I moved here, there was a protracted standoff this past winter between the police, and a group of mostly First Nations people over the granting of a permit to engage in “fracking” to search for shale gas. They blocked the roads and access to the company’s work-site which was, in an of itself, breaking the law. However tempers became overheated and things got out of hand and property was unnecessarily destroyed and charges were laid. People who needed to get places and engage in their day to day lives and work were inconvenienced and became angry. A lot of division happened as a result. Yet the question remains, “how do you get the community, the government, to exercise due diligence with respect to something that could cause far more harm than good? How much harm do we accept for prosperity?

We Islanders our own protest last year in the form of the camps at the “Plan B” site in the Bonshaw Hills. Our government was determined to re-route the road and a number of people were determined to stop them -in the end the government won. At the end of the day though, I’m not sure the road is really improved.

In a democratic country, with any matter that concerns the voters, one way or another, there is the recourse of the “ballot box”. Governments tend to do the unpopular things in time for people to forget and think about other issues in election hears.

Our current federal government has made it quite clear that they want charities, including churches to stay out of politics. I am told that we are allowed to feed the poor but we aren’t allowed to try and advocate for changes so that we will have poorer people. We can tell people that God asks us to look after the earth but when we get specific and advocate for stricter regulations we are accused of being political. When we advocate for an inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women we are going against our governments insistence that these are simply individual police matters and are being well handled.

I doubt that Shiphrah and Puah were shoplifters or liars but they not at all law abiding, according to Pharaoh. However they knew what their faith demanded of them. They knew that they had to choose “life” for their people’s sons! Of course, Moses’ parents deliberately broke the law to choose life when they made a plan and a basket.

We are called to weave baskets of love, of life, of hope, of faithfulness, even if they are unpopular. Even if they are costly. Even if they are against what is the status quo. We are called to do this because seeking life for ALL of God’s children is our calling, especially when these children have no way to help themselves.

Write a letter to your MP and advocate for those who are hurting the most. Write to the PM and say the same things. Refer to your faith. Refer to the principles of justice and common sense.

If enough people become involved and say that they care, terrible things can be changed; life can be affirmed and the good news of God’s love, can be proclaimed, and lived into being.

Read scripture. Pray. Discern in community. Discuss and debate. Make the changes you can to choose life for as many people as possible. Ask those who lead us to choose life and refuse to take no for an answer!

Amen.

Exodus 3: 1-15
Psalm 105
Matthew 16: 21-28

Here I Am! DON’T SEND ME

If Moses had lived in the 20th century, and did not herd sheep in the wilderness, I wonder how his story would have been written? How would God have appeared to him? What if this new Moses had a regular job; was a man with a family for example, and just a regular “Joe” or “Jane”? What if?

Well, in the 1977 movie, Oh, God, God, played by a cigar smoking Nathan Birnbaum, otherwise known as George Burns, came to Jerry Landers, a young and earnest manager at a small grocery store. Landers, played by John Denver, first receives a typed invitation requesting his presence at an “interview with God”. Landers dismisses it as a hoax! I seem to remember that God eventually appears in person while Landers was in the shower. God’s call to this young man is to spread the message that God really and truly does exist and has spoken to Landers. God wants to be taken seriously and Landers’ is the reluctant messenger.

A group of theologians think that Landers is faking it and lock Landers in a hotel room with questions for God, written in Aramaic! Eventually, God does appear to answer them and eventually comes to court to prove his existence. If memory serves me correctly he disappears during a speech and as he walks across the courtroom his invisible feet still make impressions in the courtroom carpet.

While a little “off-beat” some churches have used this movie as a discussion starter for teens who would not normally be discussing theology. While some of the “one liners” are more profound than others, many can be used to get people talking about very important matters.

But what about the real Moses; lets get back to him; you know Moses.

Moses! Son of Hebrew slaves but adopted by a princess and raised in the Royal Court.

Moses! Schooled in both the Hebrew culture and language and the culture and language of Egypt.

Moses! Who identified so much with his birth family that he killed an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew slave and hid the body.

Moses! A murderer in exile turned sheep herder who encounters a burning bush, and has a conversation with God.

He becomes Moses, the questioner. He asks God, “What is is your name?”

In a world accustomed to many gods this is not as dumb a question as we might think at first. Remember this is BEFORE the idea of ONE God was really developed. You may have noted that his father-in-law was the “Priest of Midian, but of his religion we know little or nothing.

“Who are you?” “Give me a name!” Any god worth following has to have a name! Think about it; how do you call on a god, who has no name: “Hey you there, how about some rain down here! Nope! That’s not for the God Moses encounters.

The answer is actually not a noun, it is a verb. Notice this: God is not any old verb at all, but the most important verb any language has, “to be” and it is the first person singular form: I AM! “So, Moses, When they ask you tell them that ‘I am’ has sent you. It may make for confusing grammar, but the book of Exodus is telling us that this God’s name, this God’s character, is BEING itself. God IS. God WAS, God will be!

To know someone’s name is to have a certain amount of control over that person and it is also to have some insight into who that person is, and is not! This God will not be controlled or defined. This God is existence itself! This God is not to be measured against anything else; everything else is measured in comparison to this God!

In addition to taking off his shoes, a sign of respect and reverence, Moses hides his face because he is afraid to look at God. This fear is a mixture of what we would term fear and a profound sense of one’s unworthiness when confronted with the utter holiness of God. We can’t fully describe God, we can’t name God and control God, we can only stand in awe of God’s living being.

This God is a God who hears and answers.

This God calls ordinary people, fallible people to do the work of justice and freeing the oppressed.

This God equips those who are so called to give them what they need for the task ahead.

This God promises freedom to those who are enslaved. This God promises justice to a people who have been wronged and presented from fulfilling their God’s given potential.

So here we have Moses, now a family man, safe and sound in Midian, being called to “go home again”. While there has been yet another change of Pharaoh in Egypt Moses cannot be that anxious to return, when he had left with a price on his head!

Yet other stories tell us that Moses is a person with a concern for the other. He was not someone who could walk by a situation and say, “it’s not my problem!” Like that long ago event that led to his exile, Moses had to get involved; the burning bush was the push he needed.

Until it hits home some people are unconcerned for the plight of others. The ALS ice-bucket challenge may be one exception, but it’s a couple of minutes of extreme discomfort and $10 - its really not going out of your way to do something hard!

To follow this call would take Moses the rest of his life and change his life completely. Moses could not ignore the plight of his own people once it had been presented to him. He was, after all, a person of faith. He learned of the call of Abraham and Sarah at his mother’s breast. It was, in his blood and in the air he breathed, even in the palace and even in Midian. So he had to go. Despite what he said to the bush, he could not say no!

So this is where I tell you what this passage is saying to each one of us.

One of the things that I firmly believe is that our faith calls us to see all of life in relation to our faith commitment. There is nothing that is not relevant - well perhaps the decision between Rice Crispies and Corn Flakes may be!

I love “take Off Your Shoes”, a hymn by Jim Manley which puts Moses’ call into more modern language and concerns - I won’t sing it (don’t worry). Here’s one verse.

Well, the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof
from the waters beneath to the heav’ens above,
so take, take, take off your shoes,
you’re standing on my holy ground,
you’re standing on my holy ground.
On the eighth day of creation, well, the Lord looked around  at the power stations, freeways and the junk on the ground,
the factories with their waste-dumps and their chimneys so high,
you couldn’t see the sun for all the smog in the sky.
Well, kids, you really filled the earth and then you subdued it,
but there’s nothing in my book that says you’ve got to pollute it.
So, Take, take off your shoes… 
Take, take off your shoes,
you’re standing on holy ground;
take, take off your shoes,
you’re standing on holy ground. 

Each one of us has been called, is being called, and will be called. Each one of us is called to have a part in proclaiming God’s love for all of creation. Each of us has a part in proclaiming the good news that God wishes joy, peace and justice for all of God’s people. It is not God’s will that one group oppress another, or profit at the expense of another.

As Christians we are called to community, to mutual support, to the topsy turvy world of Kingdom values. Sometimes it’s hard to wrap our heads around but we are called to follow and live the Good News the God of heaven and earth, the God of past, present and future embraces us, calls us and asks us to participate in a mission for the healing of all of creation. As the United Church of Christ in the US reminds its members, “God is still speaking”.

What are we going to say? “Here I am! Don’t send me.” Or are we going to join that long line of prophets and ordinary folks who say, “Here I am. Send me”? Its up to us.

Amen!