Philippians 1: 21-30
Psalm 105
Matthew 20: 1-16

When Life Is Unfair And That’s Good Thing!

Sometimes we read a passage of scripture and we cannot help but think that the original writer “got it mixed up for some reason”. Perhaps it was a bit like “Life of Brian” when one of the mis-heard Beatitudes became, “Blessed Are the Cheese-makers”. Perhaps the writer of Matthew’s gospel had been given the “wrong information”. The person must have heard it wrong. Or perhaps, many centuries ago, before printing presses, when all books were copied by hand, a scribe made a mistake in copying the text and we have been living with this error for generations.

While there is, in fact, a long list of Bibles made famous by notable mistakes, or quirky translations of certain passages, this is not one of them. For interest sake, the one which comes to mind had, I am told., as one of the ten commandments, ‘thou shalt commit adultery”!

When we read or hear this passage though, we stop and think that there must be something wrong. If Jesus did say it, he must have had too much wine for supper or gotten up on the wrong side of the bed.

We have been so steeped in the so-called “Protestant work ethic” that we can be fooled into thinking that it is “God’s work ethic”! In this way of thinking hard work is rewarded in our spiritual lives as well as in our day to day, earthly ones! Those who work more are rewarded with greater pay! Those who have more religious service get more stars in their crowns; and we do know that expression. I use it myself, jokingly!

Well, at least, you can heave a sigh of relief when I tell you that this passage does not have much to do with the specifics of running a business! It is not really about employment practices! However, if you wait till the end of the sermon, I may contradict what I have just said!!!!

This is a passage about the way things work in what Jesus called the “kingdom of God”. The “Kingdom of God” is not heaven, as we might at first assume, but a way of being in this world, and the next, that works according to the basic principle stated at creation: “and God saw that it was good!” This parable asks and answers the questions: What is God like? and how does God treat the faithful and the unfaithful? What is this “world of God like” and what does it have to do with the “price of fish”.

You can rest assured that if there were landowners in Jesus audience this day they would have shaken their heads and said, “Good job that guy is the preacher and not in charge of money!” The day labourers among the crowd that day might well have said to themselves, and one another, “I wish!”. Members of both groups would have known that such a world would never exist. No one would, or could, run a business in that fashion.

But this is about kingdom life and kingdom values, not just the ‘economy’. The ways of God are like this story and so should be the ways of human community.

This is the basic scenario: the owner goes to the labour pool, the town square, early in the morning and hires all the grape pickers he can find and promises them the usual daily wage. $10.40 an hour is the minimum wage for experienced Nova Scotians but in that day the wage was by the day and it was a denarius!

Perhaps the pickers were not getting enough picked so the landowner returns to the town square several more times, promising not, the usual daily wage, but what was fair. It is not likely they would have assumed that they would receive a full days pay. By the way, I have read that a single man needed a denarius to provide for himself - there were no families being raised on that money. With so much at stake, we don’t know why the whole lot of them were not there at dawn, but they weren’t. At one hour to quitting, the landowner is still hiring!

When it comes time to paying the workers what happens is astonishing! He makes those first wait until the last so that they can see what the last receive. There are no brown pay envelopes here guarding the privacy of each worker, and no direct deposit, - what each receives is all very public. No doubt when the first hired see the last hired receive a whole denarius, a whole day’s pay, they would probably have had visions of a big bonus dancing in their heads! Not only would they have bread for supper but also cheese, AND meat AND a little wine! Perhaps even a new pair of sandals!

However when it came time to pay the first ones, they too received what was promised, the basic, simple, daily wage, as they had been promised! They grumbled, probably very LOUDLY, but the landowner simply asserted that they were indeed paid what was promised and that it was his own business if he chose to be generous with others.

Any child among us would be able to tell us that this was not fair! The first had done so much more work. We all have that innate sense of fairness, but fairness does not often leave room for grace. We sing the hymn, “Amazing Grace” with great gusto, but at the same time, we feel that somehow we have earned this ‘grace’, which is, of course, a contradiction in terms!

Those of us who have been faithful church members are generally the worst culprits. Its not that we resent the grace and forgiveness offered to others but its that we deserve more. What stuck in the craw of the first hired, in the parable was that “they” were made “equal” to us! The “johnny come lately” workers had been elevated to the status of those “deserving” a full, daily wage!

This passage challenges all of us “good church people” to ask ourselves why we are here. Why do we follow Jesus? Is the journey a reward in and of itself, or are we here for the prize at the end of the journey? Are we resentful of those who “wasted” their lives and ignored the things of faith and a commitment to the faith community until late in their lives and now they have the same status as the rest of us.

I’ve been in congregations where the “old timers” or members of families who had literally built the church, felt they had earned “extra shares” when it came time to vote or “have a say”. I am aware of some people who saw themselves as the “big givers” thinking that they should have more say at decision time! Sometimes there was resentment of the new members who were perceived as wanting to come and “change things”. In more than one church the so-called “old timers” are hoping and praying for “new people” but feel that these new people should do everything the way “we’ve always done them”. New is equated with wrong, or for “someone else”, certainly not for “us”! The world of church growth is a risky one; because once we have opened our doors there is no telling who might walk through!

In the world of church amalgamations this is a particularly apt passage. I am aware that St James and Juniper Grove amalgamated - one did not close and join up with the other. I don’t really have to tell you that what this means is that all of the former members of both congregations have belonged to Avon United Church the same length of time - no one has been here longer; no one has squatters rights - ((other than the person who knows well the quirks of this building, such as which kitchen cupboards you have to open to keep the pipes from freezing in the cold February winds, or where the things are that are only taken out every other year)) there is no one with more say because of how long they have laboured in the garden. We know this! We have to remind ourselves that there are no second class members or adherents because some were St James and some were Juniper Grove!

I know that this amalgamation is also a work in progress and that there are still many steps to take on the journey - many of them help us to discover who we are becoming because of this leap of faith to work together. Like the honeymoon phase of a marriage, we are discovering more and more about each other and when we know all the good and the bad the hard work of committing to the long haul really begins.

Our Christian tradition reminds us that we are all recipients of the grace of an exceedingly generous God who has given us far more than we could ever deserve. Once we accept that, we are much more apt to be truly welcoming of the other, who has also been a recipient of grace.

Now I get to the point where I said that Jesus was not telling people how to run a business, but that I may just contradict myself at the end.

Perhaps there is an economic lesson here - we note that in this passage each worker received the daily wage, which was what was needed for subsistence living. We live in a world where many people receive far less than is needed for dignity and life. We live in a country where people regularly fall through the holes of our social safety net, and we fear that a shark attack will come at any time and fill it with more holes.

Yet, those of us who have invested time and money on training feel we deserve a good wage, a good living.

But where does that stop? Why do CEOs earn millions in wages and stock options while some of their workers are paid below the poverty line or have no job at all because the jobs have been moved off shore to increase company profits.

Just as the landowner did what he felt was “right”, we are called to look at our world in terms of what is right, and what is necessary for fullness of life - not worrying about what people deserve! That’s GRACE.

Philippians 2:1-13
Psalm
Matthew 21-23-32

Who Says?

You may already know that the lectionary is a list of carefully chosen biblical passages designed to cover the major biblical themes over a year and there are three years of the lectionary: A, B and C. Its been around for many years and many preachers in the United Church embraced it as their guide for worship and eaching long before I was ordained.

The lectionary is a great resource to guide the worship life of a congregation but because the readings aren’t always in the same order as they appear in the Gospels you may miss the importance of a “sequence of events”. This is one of those times. In order to get a handle on what is going on at the first of the passage gospel passage one needs to know what happened yesterday.

Well, yesterday, Jesus cleared the temple. He drove the moneychangers out, upset their tables and called them all thieves. He named the whole temple economy “highway robbery”.

That passage is worth an entire sermon it and of itself and I really cannot get into what he was trying to accomplish. Suffice to say, he was trying to get people to see that the commerce that was happening in the outer courts of the temple was a far cry from what was intended When I was very young some people objected to the sale of church mugs and decorative plates at the back of the church and based it on this event! However, I really don’t think the two can be compared at all.

But, Jesus clearly upset more than the tables that afternoon - he upset the apple cart, in the minds of those who benefited from this “system”, he let their cash cow get loose, and the people in charge were upset.

Yet, with such a popular teacher the religious authoritues had to be careful how they approached him; to take care how they questioned him. They needed to avoid getting egg on their own faces. They began with a question on Jesus’ authority and he responds with his own question about John, the Baptizer. They knew they were trapped- as the gospel outlines. When they refused to answer he refused to tell them on whose authority he was acting. Instead, he tells a parable, whose point was to focus on actions rather than intentions or words. Life in the Kingdom of God is not about holiness it is about faithfulness. Life in the kingdom of God is about repentance, not feeling SORRY for their sin but a desire to change and go in a new direction. This is what, in fact, true repentance is!

I had a cousin who was an oncologist: a medical specialist who treats cancer. Some of her patients would do research on the internet between the time of their diagnosis and when they went to see her. When she gave them her treatment plan they would say they had read different advice on the internet! She then had to explain to these patients how their cancer was different from the one they had read about online.

When you are having cancer treatments, or following any kind of medical advice, for that matter, you have to trust the doctor and his or her authority. A doctor’s authority comes from training and experience but authority is a two way street - authority has to be granted by the other person in the equation. Children are very good at questioning authority and do so at almost every turn. “Why?” they ask again and again. The best response a number of children can give to a request for action is, “You’re not the boss of me”! In other words, “you have no authority in my life!” Eventually, as a child matures, we have to balance what kind of authority others have over us and what kind of internal authority is appropriate.

I remember a few parishioners over the last 27 years who never granted me any authority at all - they had their own list of people they considered their “authority” and against whom I was measured. I usually lost. I was always willing to dialogue but they were certain that their authority knew the truth and I wasn’t preaching it!

The Pharisees and Scribes on this day were not really interested in a discussion; they were “our way or the highway” kind of people. At almost every turn, it seemed to them that Jesus was challenging the ‘status quo’ of their world and as far as they were concerned Jesus was challenging their authority. They had generations of tradition behind them and they were living under the thumb of a hostile government. They had a fine line to walk and Jesus was making things very difficult. He had to go!

We must always keep in mind that these passages cannot be about the Jews being wrong and Jesus, and eventually the Christian church being right. If that tack is taken, the passages loose their power to challenge us to faithfulness in our time. Those of us who have been in the church our entire lives can easily fall prey to the idea that “we” know, and “they” have to become like us.

In reality, each one of us, has the responsibility to hear the call to “repent”. To repent is to turn, it is an action verb; its not an exercise of the mind but of the entire person. It does no good to feel badly about our actions, what counts is a desire to change and go in a new direction.

To be told that tax collectors, prostitutes and other sinners had a better handle on these things would have been very offensive to the religious elites of Jesus’ day but what really counts is how we, who are church stalwarts, hear this message.

I attended the tree planting ceremony in honour of Harley Lawrence last Sunday afternoon. As you probably know, Harley was killed in a fire in a Berwick bus shelter last fall. Perhaps the young people who are accused of this crime saw his life as having no value but it was clear that those who knew him best had seen beyond the first impression one might get of him as a “street person”, To many he was generous and giving and he might actually have been able to teach some of us a thing or two about priorities.

Last week I talked about the amalgamation and that everyone at Avon United was on an equal footing - that there will be no squatters rights recognized here! Well, I think that’s what Jesus was trying to say about God’s kingdom.

Each of us, each and every day, must heed the call to embrace kingdom values and journey in that direction.

Each of us must recognize the authority of the one who calls us and names us “beloved”. The answers of a previous generation will not always work in ours as each and every day we must begin again the journey of faithfulness.

What does God require of us but in our day to day life answer the call with heart and hands and feet. Let us worship the God of life and let us follow in faith and trust.

Amen.

Exodus 20: 1-4, 7-9, 12-20
Psalm 19
Philippians 3: 4b-14
Matthew 21: 33-46

Grounded With Vision?

It is the stuff of a bad 1970s tv crime drama - an unsuspecting tourist is stopped in rural somewhere by a local police deputy for a minor infraction and ends up in the local lockup with bruises and a large fine. The local sheriff is a portly, balding, cowboy hat wearing, white man, with an attitude a bout strangers, a handful of deputies to do his bidding and in his pocket is a middle aged judge with a secret.

When you are learning how to drive you have to learn how to drive in all weather and road conditions but you also have to learn the rules of the road. You have to learn who has the right of way at a four way stop, what to do when passing a slower car, and at what distance you need to use your turn signals. You learn NOT to pass a school bus with red lights flashing In PEI the fine runs from $1,000 to $5,000. Nova Scotia only fines $394.50 for a first offense but the fine rises sharply for subsequent offenses. There are double fines for speeding in construction zones and you have to slow down to half speed when passing a police car which has pulled someone over! Then there are laws against driving while under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Rules of the road help drivers communicate with one another, avoid collisions, and make the roads safe for everyone.

We all know the old car with the big dent in the left hand side turns left where the gas station used to be and that it must have been a tourist who caused the dent because all the locals know that, that car always turns there!

The rules of the road are, for want of a better term, a covenant we as drivers make with one another, and with society, and are part of the privilege of driving.

My friend’s apartment building locks the laundry room at night so nearby tenants are not disturbed by a neighbour’s late night laundering! Some places have banned clotheslines for aesthetic reasons but then again some places have banned clothesline bans, so you can hang your undies out to dry using the energy of mother nature.

Most laws do not fall out of the sky; they are not created arbitrarily, on a whim! Even though the ten commandments were said to be given to Moses on Mount Sinai, they were just one more step in a continuing journey of faith, begun, generations before when Abraham was called to go on an open ended journey to a new place.

You see, it was not some new and previously unknown god who met Moses on the mountain but the God who had sought to be in relationship with them for generations. It was not just the God of Abraham and Sarah; it was not just the God whose voice reached out to Moses from the flaming bush; it was not just the God who walked with them through the Red Sea. This God would not abandon them once he had read them the rule book. This God would not even abandon them when they broke every rule in the book, but this God had committed to the journey through this set of laws which was just one part of their covenant.

What kind of world would it be if these ten were not rules. Certainly we can have a religiously diverse community where different ways of worshipping God are allowed, but the rest of them are, in many ways, essential to ANY human community.

I was watching one of those talk shows the other day, I think it was Marilyn Denis and she was interviewing a butler who has written at least one book about how to behave in the world where butlers live. Now if you come to my house for supper I really don’t care how you place your cutlery on your plate, after you are finished (though I prefer them to be ON the plate - it makes it easier to clear the table from the other side) or if you eat all your courses with the same fork, but I suppose it would be helpful to know if you are going to done with the Governor General or the Queen!

I was visiting a friend one day and one of the teenagers in the house spoke rudely to her father and she was taken to task for that by her mother. She was expected to be respectful and now that she has her own children I suspect her children will be expected to respect their parents as well.

We know why the laws are there, or at least most of them, but we don’t often think of delighting in the law, but the Psalm asks us to do so.

The laws are there to serve us and to preserve a balanced and respectful society. We must always guard against abuse of the law - an abusive parent should not get away with abusing a child and demanding respect simply because he or she is a parent.

The law about worshipping other gods is just as much about consumerism and excessive ambition as it is about idolatry.

A great deal of the ecological trouble we have caused on our planet is as a result of unbridled consumerism. Always wanting bigger and better things can become the ‘god’ we worship! Getting out of the rat race might be as good for the house the rats inhabit as it is for the rats!

What kind of world do we want to model? What kind of world do we want to give to our children? The question is: how do we live together so that we can depend on things that seem natural and self-evident but in their core have been thoroughly thought out and time tested.

We are communal beings and we are meant to live together in community. We are on a journey together. We covenant together so that this journey can be life giving for one and all.

Praise be to God for the law that helps us to do this.

Amen.

Deuteronomy 8: 7-18
2 Corinthians 8: 6-15
Luke 17: 11-19

Self Made? - Think Again!

A woman was shopping at the local mall and after a few hours she felt the need for a coffee break. She went to the food court, bought a package of cookies, put them in her shopping bag and then purchased a large coffee and then sat down at a crowded table to drink her coffee and read a magazine. After a few minutes she reached out and took a cookie out of the bag on the table. The man seated opposite her did the same. She was surprised but said nothing. She took another cookie a few minutes later and so did the man. This continued until there was only one cookie in the bag. She was downright annoyed by this time, but remained quiet. He smiled at her, picked up the remaining cookie and broke it in half and handed one half to her and popped the other half in his mouth. He folded the newspaper he had been reading and put it under his arm as he stood up and walked away. By this time she was fuming and made plans to tell all her co-workers the next day about the man who ate half of her cookies without even asking. She stood up, opened her shopping bag to put her magazine inside and made a discovery that stopped her in her tracks: in her perse was her own, unopened bag of cookies!

There has been a fair bit of excitement in the press lately about the discovery of the HMS Erebus which sank in the quest of Sir John Franklin to navigate the elusive Northwest Passage. Apparently Erebus and the HMS Terror became ice bound and were abandoned by the crew who attempted to walk the more than 900 kms to the nearest Hudson Bay outpost. It is assumed that both ships, despite being refitted specifically for arctic exploration, eventually succumbed to the crushing ice and sank though the remains of the Terror have yet to be found.

Sir John Franklin was, however, not the first explorer to attempt to find a passage to the orient through the northern part of the continent. An explorer by the name of Martin Frobisher tried it in the 1500s. He is the explorer credited with the first celebration of thanksgiving by an European, in the “New World”. His celebration of thanks was held, not because he found the passage and not for an abundant harvest, but for mere survival. Considering the fate of Franklin and his men, survival was cause for giving thanks.

Its only been a little over 100 years that the entire passage has been mapped and navigated. The arctic is still a dangerous and unforgiving place for those who are unprepared. It seems that global warming will make the passage more easily navigable for more of the year because of the loss of sea ice, but all in all, it’s NOT a good thing for anyone, except perhaps those who are looking for long lost sunken ships!

This year the study group is looking at the prophets with the help of biblical scholar and theologian, Walter Brueggemann. Last week we looked at Moses and the ten commandments and he commented that the people of Israel agreed to follow the law, of which the ten commandments are a very part, BEFORE they even knew what exactly they were promising.

Brueggemann suggested that they did so because they knew that behind them, in Egypt, on the other side of the Red Sea, lay the law of the Pharaoh who demanded more and more labour from them . They knew that the more they worked more would be expected of them, but in the wilderness they were led by the God who had entered into a relationship with their ancestors Abraham and Sarah and was seeking to be in a relationship with them. . They knew this God sought to truly bless them. They could trust this God.

In the passage read today, the people are told they WILL BE THANKFUL for God’s work in their lives, even BEFORE they had actually entered the land of milk and honey; they were given these rituals of thanksgiving even before they had eaten of its barley, figs and pomegranates.

How many Vicar of Dibley fans are here today? (The Vicar of Dibley is a British comedy set in a fictional English parish and the Vicar of Dibley is female. It is British humour at its finest!) Well, do you remember when the tall, dark and handsome accountant moved to the Parish and took up residence in a cottage near the church. To make a long and funny story shorter, this stranger by the name of Harry Jasper Kennedy, falls in love with the Vicar, the Rev Geraldine Granger, the moment he set eyes on her and he proposes after only a few dates. He comes to her door and says something like this to her, “I absolutely know that we are meant to be together forever and that we will always be happy”.

That is the promise of marriage - life long commitment and happiness. In the good-old days people got married before they made their lives togethere, but I think the same basic principles hold true for all couples - people promise life long love, fidelity and companionship BEFORE the “life together” they are talking about, actually happens.

If I were to say the word “Thanksgiving” I suspect most of us would picture fall colour, pumpkin pie, a roasted turkey with all the “fixins” and lots of family and friends around to eat the food. I had such a dinner yesterday, my family is invited to one this afternoon but I wont make it! Fortunately for me those folks always prepare far more than the people can eat and there may be leftovers! And for tomorrow my sister and I are planning a special chicken dish we call “to die for chicken!”

We think of thanksgiving as an opportunity to have a day off, lots to eat and to, in short, have “a good time”. At Thanksgiving we tend to focus on tangible blessings of the kind that can be counted: food, health, friends, a roof over our heads and so on and so on.

We wonder may how the people who don’t have these things could possibly be thankful. A few years ago a group of friends got together for a special dinner. At the end of the meal each person there raised a glass and said what they were thankful for. Everyone knew that the guest of honour was not likely to live out the year but this diagnosis did not stop their thanksgiving. Perhaps the diagnosis enabled more thanksgiving. Most of us take the celebration of Thanksgiving for granted. We were here last year and will, most likely, be here next year. Yet we know how fragile life is. We hear news of accidents and tragic illness every day.

It seems to me that thanksgiving is not about stuff, or good health, or any blessings one can “count” or “name” but it is an attitude toward life. It is about adopting a way of looking at life that allows for all those factors beyond our control, all those factors for which we can take no credit.

What we need to realize is that we do not deserve all of the blessings we have, no matter how hard we work and how frugal we are. We may teach our children the value of a dollar and to save for a rainy day, to study hard and get good grades, but we also need to teach them that the blessings we have received are not just for our own use but also for the purpose of being a blessing to others. All too often, western Christians, (that’s us) have seen an abundance of blessings as a sign of privilege. This privilege gave our ancestors licence to wreak horrible things upon others. All of the western Christian nations used this feeling of privilege as a licence to conquer the new world and its peoples and take what was wanted by trickery or by brute force if necessary.

Our church has recognized this and we are seeking to right the wrongs of the past and to seek new and right relationships with the first nations people of this land.

In the first part of my sermon was a woman who regarded her cookies as hers, not to share, hers. The man who actually owned that bag of cookies seemed to have an attitude that enabled him to share with a smile.

Thanksgiving is an opportunity to go against the grain and be and embody true thankfulness. None of us is self-made. None of us! What we have is gift; what we are is gift; let us respond by thankfulness and being gift to others.

Amen.

Exodus 33: 12-23
Psalm 99
Matthew 22: 15-22

Whose Image?

This is a participatory sermon! Get ready! Please tell me what the Prime Minister’s name was in 1984?

History buffs amongst us may have said that this was the year we had three Prime Ministers: Pierre Trudeau, John Turner and Brian Mulroney but any of those is the wrong answer - our Prime Minister was born with the name Stephen Harper so that was his name back in 1984.

Tricked ya!

A teenager goes to his mom. “Mom what are you doing tonight?”

“Northing, as far as I know I’m home all night. Why?”.

“So, you don’t need the car then! Can I use it?”

Some teenagers have very creative ways of trying to trick parents, backing them onto a corner so, in the teenagers mind, the parent will have no reason to refuse the hidden request. A wise parent will probably learn that the more prudent response would probably be to say something like, “I’m not sure yet, what did you have in mind?”

If you believe the gospel writers it seemed that there were a few people, or a few groups of people who went out of their way to attempt to trick Jesus into saying something incriminating. Unlike the first part of my sermon, it was not in “good natured fun”! It may or may not have been as bad as the gospel writers portray, but the important lessons in the Gospel stories are not really about the sneaky Pharisees and Herodians, but about you and me, in our day to day lives here in Nova Scotia.

These folks are presented as a serious pain in the back pew; they were the “old guard”; they were “against change”; they did not like it when someone “rocked the boat” - especially when that someone was popular! Today, it’s their disciples who go to Jesus to test him.

The question is clearly loaded! “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not”?

Seems like a no-brainer! You MUST pay your taxes whether you like them or not! Of course it is lawful; in fact it is not lawful to do anything else! The question seems more nuanced than that though - I’ll rephrase it just a littel - “According to the Jewish law should we pay our “Roman taxes?” We must remember that they were living in occupied territory and under the rule of a very cruel and oppressive power. Roman rule was an affront to their faith.

Either a “yes” or a “no” answer would have landed Jesus in hot water! If he said “NO”, they would, no doubt, have passed this information to the authorities and Jesus would have been arrested for sedition, and put in jail. Problem solved!

If, on the other hand, Jesus said, “YES”, he would have raised the hackles of everyone who had no option to pay the hated taxes and the everyday folks who flocked after him, may may well have said, “Well - we thought he was on our side - I guess I’m not running all over the wilderness following after him any more”! Problem also solved!

Jesus, though, had other ideas.

He asked for a coin with which the tax was paid. They had no trouble presenting this ROMAN coin.

We need to know that strict Jews only carried Roman coins for tax purposes; the rest of the time they were supposed to use other coins. Roman coins were offensive to their faith because they had a picture of Caesar on them with an inscription that proclaimed he was divine - in short it broke at least two of the ten commandments - the one about graven images AND the one about worshipping other gods. I am told that since money has to have something printed on it, Jewish money had the images of plants instead of human faces to get around this.

Sooooo, the leaders were already breaking their own rules about using Roman money for their everyday purchasing. Despite having the appearance of rigid adherence to the law they themselves were already compromised on this matter and they knew that Jesus knew this. The tables are starting to turn!

He then asks them an obvious question” whose image was on the money and whose title and they answered the only way they could, “Caesar’s”. What’s the point Jesus?

Perhaps Jesus shrugs as he says, “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s”. The ball is now in their court!

There is a play on words here, almost lost in English. Jesus asks whose image is on the coin and the obvious answer is Caesar’s but the word used is the same one used when the biblical text speaks of human beings as created in the image of God.

The challenge for people of faith is not about taxes, per se, or rigid adherence to a list of laws as much as it is “how to honour the God in whose image we were created”. .

I know a mom who has said something like this to her teenage children, “don’t embarrass me by letting the neighbours think you were raised by wolves!” She was talking about basic table manners and the use of “please and thank you” and making sure they took off their muddy shoes at the door - she didn’t want her kids behaviour to reflect badly on her parenting.

When I was at Atlantic School of Theology one of our professors said that he sometimes wondered if some of his former students had slept through theological school, they came out with such odd ideas.

As a people created in the image of God we are called to give our whole selves to God in such a way that we honour that image of the divine within us!.

One of the people our study group is going to look at is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian, whose particular struggle was “to be Christian in Nazi Germany”. His choices ended up costing him his life.

Being Christian under an oppressive regime is a very hard thing but we should not fool ourselves into thinking that it’s a piece of cake in a country which purports to be fee and democratic. All too often such countries, including our own, are in fact run by Caesar’s dollar and you had better be able to “get with the program” or fall through the cracks. We know that all over the world the rich are getting richer and the poor are having a harder and harder time. We may protest this until we realize that our pension funds and our investments are benefiting from the profits of corporations that are probably downsizing and outsourcing to increase their profits or even to stay afloat.

Our General Council and the Trustees of the Pension Plan are at loggerheads over investments in GoldCorp which has questionable mining practices in Guatemala. The list of companies with questionable human rights, labour, or environmental practices goes on and on, making ethically responsible purchasing and investing very complicated.

The early church was very concerned for the welfare of widows and orphans, two groups which had fallen through the cracks in the Greco-Roman world. The vision of the Hebrew tradition of which Jesus was a part was deeply steeped in social and economic ethics. You see, faith involves social issues and economic issues as well as the “moral” issues. Or issues of belief, with which we sometimes think the church should be limited to. What we do in every aspect of our lives., and how we treat others matter.

Recent words of Pope Francis challenge all of us, even if we are not Roman Catholic - “It is increasingly intolerable that financial markets are shaping the destiny of peoples rather than serving theor needs, or that the few derive immense wealth from financial speculation while the many are deeply burdened by the consequences.”

It used to be that the church was relegated to commenting on issues of “simple morality”, while world finance was left to others. I contend that the two cannot be separated. If it is wrong to break into your neighbours house to steal their TV, it is equally wrong to steal the livelihood of hundreds so shareholders can buy more with their earnings.

It is wrong to allow human rights abuses in other countries by our companies that we would not tolerate on Canadian soil.

I read a news clip recently that indicated that a professor received death threats because she dared to challenge what she regarded “the anti-woman nature of video game culture”. VIDEO GAMES - These violent video games are obviously earning someone a lot of money and those someone’s are afraid of the possibility that she might be right.

Jesus comments are meant to be a little unsettling. We should be putting more thought and faith struggle into our economic decisions, but also into all our decisions.

The world has never been one of clear choices, of right and wring - the world has always tried to trick us into thinking wrng was right - and sure some choices are like that but for the most part we live in a world of gray where we have discern which path we should take. Perhaps there is no better criteria than the question, “How do I render honour to the God in whose image I am created”.

Amen.

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

The Difficult Choice: Love

A number of years ago I told one of my classmates I was going to have some blood tests. She said, “make sure you study tonight” and it became a standing joke. Of course, as students we had become all too accustomed to exams and tests. I was at the Service Nova Scotia office the other day waiting to get my new licence and plates and one of the people waiting was the mother of a girl hoping to pass her driving exam and become a licenced driver.

In today’s passage from the gospel of Matthew we are told that some Pharisees, came to Jesus to test him. Apparently he had gotten the better of members of another religious group, the Sadducees, and they were there to see if they could catch him up. Their question was on the commandments and, as you noticed, his answer did not mention one of the “ten” but two others which had also been a part of their tradition for many generations. Jesus did not invent them. The further, somewhat confusing, dialogue about David seems to be to be asking them to think outside the literal meanings of some of their most cherished hopes and expectations.

Jesus says that there are two commandments upon which hang all of the rest. The FIRST is: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” The SECOND is:“You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”

In my sermon this morning I thought that it was important to reflect what is meant by the command to “love”: to love God and love neighbour! What exactly is love?

Well, in our culture, we THINK love is a feeling. We often equate it with romantic love - in childhood cartoons it would be depicted with little valentine-like hears popping out of someone’s chest when they “fall in love”. We might say we love our partner, our child, our parent, our pet, our school, our favourite song or movie, our -5- family members or a certain food or geographic location. Unfortunately the English language does not have enough words for love.

English writers and poets have never used that shortage of words as a reason for silence. In the second last sonnet of the book “Sonnets from the Portugese” Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote,

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height 
My soul can reach” 

It is generally agreed that she was writing of her love for her husband, Robert.

In Romeo and Juliette, a play by William Shakespeare, the love of two teenagers is thwarted by their feuding families.

Scottish poet, Robbie Burns penned,

“O my Luve's like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve's like the melodie
That’s sweetly play'd in tune” 

In the movie, “War Horse”, Ted Naracott, a veteran of the a South African War whose heavy drinking is a result of what we could call PTSD, says something like this to his wife, “I wouldn’t blame you if you stopped loving me”..

To this she replies, in a very matter of fact way. “I may hate you more but I will never love you less”.

We romanticize love all too often. We think it is a feeling. It is something we can “fall into” and “fall out of”. In fact the love that Jesus speaks of is a choice, it is a conscious decision. Yes you can decide to love someone; you can decide to love someone you don’t like!

Moncton, NB. June 4, 2014. What do we remember about that day? Justin Bourque, recently graduated from marijuana to harder drugs, shot and killed three RCMP officers and wounded two others which resulted in a 28 hour manhunt, virtually paralyzing a city I know fairly well. Bourque will be sentenced tomorrow and legal experts have been debating if he will be sentenced to three consecutive 25 year life sentences, or not. If he is, the 24 year old will be 99 before becoming eligible for parole. The judge will have to weigh many factors before pronouncing the sentence. One of the fundamental principles of justice is that the victims don’t try the accused, or sentence the convicted. While victims and families have input, that is the job of the justice system.

Ottawa. Wednesday October 22, 2014. What will we remember? Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a man with a $160 a day heroin habit and a long gun shot and killed an unarmed ceremonial guard as he stood at attention at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. This man was later shot dead by the Sargent-at-Arms as he ran, shooting, through the main corridor of the Centre Block of the Houses of Parliament.

The government was quick to tie this incident to Islamic extremist terrorism.

These two shooters had similarities and differences. One hated soldiers and the other police officers. One was raised in a strict Catholic family and home schooled, the other a Muslim who attended an exclusive private school for his first three years of high school. Both were addicted to drugs and had mental health issues.

In the aftermath of events such as these there are a number of different reactions. Because Mr Zehaf-Bibeau was a member of an identifiable minority group one or more people in Cold Lake Alberta, targeted the local mosque with ant-Muslim graffiti. The words “go home” and “Canada” were spray painted on the mosque. Early in the morning a group of more thinking people, including military personnel from the local base in uniform arrived to clean up the grafitti and replace the words with posters indicating that these folks were home and were welcome. They showed by their actions that we cannot blame all Muslims or Islam in general for the actions of someone who was unstable or radicalized. .

In the aftermath of these shootings those who knew these two men are going over their previous encounters with them to try and find the signs that should have been noticed but were not in time to stop the event.

The reality is that not everyone who is addicted to drugs, or has anger issues in regard to people in authority, becomes an dangerous gun- wielding criminal. Not every devout Muslim who prays the requisite five times a day becomes radicalized and a danger to their country and the public.

Our first tendency though might be to to want to round up and jail all the people on “terror” watch lists. Sober second thought tells us that this is neither wise, nor practical and it is an affront to our system of democracy and justice.

We rightly mourn the death of a reservist whose task it was to stand as a ceremonial guard, in honour of our war dead. The well received Chronicle Herald cartoon depicting the bronze soldiers from the monument coming to live and rendering him aid, expresses the comradeship of soldiers doing their duty.

We may think the reaction of many in the last few days is the only sane reaction to these events but I simply want to offer the challenge of a couple of true stories.

Edith Cavell was a British nurse who saved the lives of wounded soldiers on both sides during the first world war. She refused to look at the uniform, seeing only a wounded soldier in need. She was executed by the Germans for helping allied soldiers escape from German occupied Belgium to the then neutral Netherlands. The evening before her execution for treason she said to the Anglican Priest who was allowed to give her Holy Communion, “Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone” You may know that a combined elementary -middle school in Moncton bears her name.

Malala Yousafzai from Pakistan, is, at age 17, the youngest ever recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. As far as the Taliban members who shot her in the head and neck concerned her crime was advocating for the education of women and girls. She recently told the world, “do not send weapons, send teachers”. To her, education, would overcome the problems in her country. She also said, “I do not even hate the Talib who shot me. Even if there is a gun in my hand and he stands in front of me, I would not shoot him,” To me that is quite an amazing statement.

There are other I could name who have been able to rise above the hatred which some would assume they would and should feel. They are all a challenge to us.

In the gospel Jesus challenges us to live lives of love, despite the feelings that might be send us in other directions. No matter what someone has done, we ca n love that person and seek the best for them. This does not mean that criminals should not be put in jail to protect society but it does mean that our system must consider many facors before sentencing.

On the cross Jesus gives us the example of forgiveness which is a sign of love, not of hatred.

Amen.