Season After Pentecost - Year B -- 2015
Indexed by Date. Sermons for the Season After Pentecost Year B
Genesis 2: 5-15
1 Kings 19: 1-13
Job 38: 1-7
You know this story; in fact, I would be surprised if you have not also lived this story. I’m talking about Elijah and his wilderness experience.
To make a long story short, Elijah had just had a major conflict with Jezebel, the wife of King Ahab and even though he had won the battle, he was fleeing for his life.
What he needs is a reminder that he is not the only one left, as he is saying to himself in this reading. It’s not the silence that is important in this story, but what comes to him in the silence. The message is, “You are doing exactly what you need to be doing and you are NOT alone.”
We know how easily discouraged children and teens are by small setbacks that we can see as temporary but they see as catastrophic. Sometimes though adults are discouraged, especially when ife is very difficult, and it’s easier to resort to despair, like Job. God’s answer to Job and his friends’ speculations is one of challenging them to take this long and broad view and to trust not in what they think they know, but in the One who actually does!
Elijah also needs to open his eyes and realize that he was not alone AND that he has work to do. There were others who were still faithful; most importantly, there was God.
In each generation there seem to be a situation or situations, captured in videos or photographs, or in personal stories, which speak to tragedy, despair and hopelessness but which also speak they also speak to a strength and a resilience that cannot be squashed.
History gives us many examples of great faithfulness under distress. Christians in Occupied Europe hid Jewish friends, neighbours and strangers from the Nazis and their sympathicizers, often also friends and neighbours. This also happened during the Rwandan genocide, not that long ago.
Remember Terry Fox? After losing his leg to cancer he started a run across the largest country in the world with the goal to raise a dollar for every Canadian in the hopes that“somewhere the hurting must stop”. As we know, just outside of Thunder Bay, his run ended and he died the n ext summer. But we also know that his spirit has not been defeated. Before this year’s totals had been counted, the figure for 24 years of the “Terry Fox Run” stood at over $650,000, 000. I am told that if Terry faced his cancer crisis in the 2000s he probably would not lose his leg and he would probably survive! That is because of the courage of one man in the face of a devastating illness which inspired millions and has funded research which has made real progress. .
It was a silent photograph but the grief it symbolized has echoed around the world; it was a silent wail of despair, of hopes dashed, of pain, a cry for help. It was, of course, the lifeless body of a three year old Syrian boy, who looked almost like he was sleeping, but who had drowned in his family’s attempt to escape to freedom. .
We may sit around and wish for a time in the past: a time of fuller pews, of fuller offering plates, of lower bills, of the energy of our younger years, but that is denying the gift of what is the present. We cannot live in the past or the future, we are called to learn from and be challenged by the past but to live in the present, to be challenged to be faithful in the present and know that this is where God calls us to faithfulness.
When we look at our ministry with children, we might say that it’s important because children are the future of the church (we have all said that and heard that said) but what we need to realize is that children are the present of the church! Isn’t it so good to see them back today? Isn’t it so good to hear the Junior Choir sing? Isn’t it good to see how each one has grown and changed over the summer, to hear their tales of vacation days and starting school again. They are important now - not when they are grown up and paying the bills and sleeping through the sermon!!!!!!!
We look at our second communion table this morning, laden down as it has been for awhile with our peanut butter gifts and at the stack of Kraft Dinner getting ever higher beside it. Of course, it’s our growing offering for the food bank - to feed the hungry of our community. I don’t have to tell you how much this area has lost in terms of “good jobs” and the people and taxes that went with them. The “town status” is gone but we are not devoid of life - we have a church and have a witness to make and a call to answer.
Especially in these difficult times we need to remember that the church is not meant to be a private club looking out only for our own needs; its own members; it’s own property; we are God’s people, who gather and celebrate and then go out to serve.
As God’s people we gather bread for the journey. Today we pay special attention to the fact that we are a world wide fellowship of people who gather around similar tables, with similar words and who are thus part of one body.
One year I collected a list of church names and locations from internet colleagues and on World Communion Sunday that list, many pages long, sat near the communion table. Those churches would also be receiving bread for their journeys. We could easily see that we were certainly not alone as we knew our church name was also sitting in similar locations around the world.
As a people of faith we have been called by the international community to open our doors to refugees from Syria. Our church challenges us to right relationships with our first nations peoples. We are also challenged to share what we have with those in our own communities who do not have enough to eat.
We are challenged to be the church - but lets not be like Elijah, having a pity party and bemoaning what we do not have. Let us work together, as a faith community, together with other faith communities to follow this call. We are here, and we are not alone.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
Joel 2: 21-27
Psalm 126
Matthew 6: 25-33
Before moving to PEI in 2007, I spent 9 years in a region of New Brunswick where the majority of the people were Acadian French. They have a unique language, peppered with phrases and expressions containing a mixture of English and French. One of my favourites was: “worry pas”, or for those who need more literal translation: “Worry not”!
I don’t know about you but when I am told not to worry, I see that as a sign to worry. It’s similar to a child saying to his or her mother, “Mom, I have something to tell you but first you have to promise you won’t be upset!” These days the message I might receive could be- from my mutual fund: the markets are down, but don’t worry, “they will come back”. The hospital calls, “we would like you to come back for another test, right away, but don’t worry, it’s probably nothing, we just need to be sure.” I was driving with my brother one day and his truck was making a loud banging noise and I asked him and he said, “I can’t worry about every noise, I’d be more worried if it went away”. He knows much more about vehicle maintenance than I do, so I supposed it to meant that silence would indicate the part had fallen off!
These are worrisome times especially in a country in the final days of election fervour! For many more weeks that most of us want to remember, it’s not just, “elect us because we will do this or that” it’s “elect us or the other party will ruin the country with their policies.”
In a TV commercial a couple are in bed for the night when one says to the other, “did you lock the doors” and the other asks whether or not something else has been checked. The whole point of the commercial is that if you buy their insurance you will be able to sleep soundly. Of course I’d rather prevent the loss in the first place, but you can’t really market something like that!
We might think that Jesus and his disciples lived in a simpler time, one without our more modern worries, but the hard truth was that in Jesus day MOST people lived on the edge of survival – most of the people who flocked to see Jesus were day labourers, usually in agriculture, and a man’s daily wage covered a family’s basic daily needs but nothing else! There were no pensions and those who could not work had to rely for their survival either on handouts from strangers or on family support. Your children were your Old Age Security. Even a casual reading of the New Testament will tell you that the care of widows and orphans was of primary concern to the early church because they had no one else!
Jesus was very critical of some people who would use available loopholes to avoid supporting their own parents in their old age!
In the early 1930s my father’s family left Saskatchewan because they had not had a crop for a number of years in a row and had four children to feed. My grandmother had been born in PEI where such a thing was much less likely and they ended up moving there. During the Great Depression in PEI there was very little money in farming but at least there was food. We know that crops can fail because of lack of rain, or too much rain, or high winds or insects or a number of other things. In many ways farmers are at the mercy of “mother nature” and this is even more true in our current era of the wacky and undependable weather caused by global warming.
The other day I talked with a potato farmer who grows seed potatoes mostly for export and she told me that they have to race to get the crop out of their very wet fields before there is too much frost or more rain or (as happened one year) they are stolen! Then they have to sell and ship them and have them accepted in their foreign destination – there are a great many worries in their business.
Yet, once you have done everything in your power to effect a good outcome you have to “let it be” – you can’t control the voyage of a containership on the high seas, or the fact that the inspector at the receiving end got up on the wrong side of the bed that day or any of the other myriad of things that can go wrong.
Many working people live in a precarious financial situation these days. As globalization changes just about everything many people go to work each day worried about downsizing or having their jobs sent off-shore. The low price for oil has caused layoffs in the oil patch that has been the “go to” location for young Maritimes who want steady work in the recent past.
So in this context we are faced with two seemingly impossible tasks – being told not to worry and the “traditional” celebration of “Thanksgiving” which happens the second Monday in October. It’s a statutory holiday so we have to do it! It’s a rule! Isn’t it?
We all know that the traditional Canadian celebration involves an enormous turkey, so big that leftovers are a pain in the neck. You have to have all the trimmings and lots of desert and a house filled with family and all of that good stuff. What happens though when we are out of work, or have had a family tragedy occur? Doesn’t the “command” to give thanks seem like rubbing salt in open wounds?
When we look at the history of thanksgiving in Canada we find that it began in a time when life was very hard and survival itself was almost a miracle. In the early days of European settlement, even the most meagre of harvests was a reason to give thanks. Since 1957 Canadian Thanksgiving has been celebrated the second Monday in October, but there have been times when it was moved to other dates to give thanks for specific things, other than a bountiful harvest. The end of the Great War in 1918 was one such example.
Thanksgiving should not be about all of the “things” we have in our attempts to own more stuff; stuff that really does not matter in the long run – such as the new cell-phone plan I heard about that will allay your worries about becoming road-kill on the fast paced “information-highway” by giving you the newest iPhone for life! Thanksgiving is NOT about buying into the notion that “the one who dies with the most toys, wins! The one whose goal is to die with the most toys has lived a very poor life indeed!
Thanksgiving is about adopting an attitude of gratitude; we are not self made, we rely on God. Not worrying is about relying on God because our own efforts might well fail us, sooner or later!
True thanksgiving frees us up from the race for more and allows us to share what we have with those in need without worrying if we will have enough as a result! We are freed to commit to the ways of a God who cares for all of creation – ALL of creation. When we commit to the ways of God we can give without counting the cost and participate in the wider vision of peace and shalom without worrying that we will be left behind.
God’s world is indeed a beautiful place and God’s vision for our part in it is a wonderful one. let us go from here thankful that we have been called to foster and bring about his vision for all of creation.
Amen!
Job 38: 1-8, 34-41
Psalm 104
Mark 10: 35-45
One thing is clear: the world loves winners. Everyone knows that Canada is a hockey loving nation! So here is a little test. Who won the Stanley Cup in 1972? Pause
Answer: The Boston Bruins! I thought that some of you would be able to tell me that! I have no doubt though, that many more of you when asked about the year 1972 and hockey would immediately remember that this was the year of the Canada - Russia Hockey Series - which WE won. You could probably also tell me that Paul Henderson scored the winning goal in the FINAL minute of the third period and you can probably PICTURE it in your mind as if it had happened yesterday. Apparently it was not until the Olympic Gold Medal Men’s hockey game in 2010 that more Canadians were glued to coverage of “the big game”. BUT, do you also remember the names of those who scored the other goals or who prevented the Soviets from getting more goals?
Sometimes we think that life is like a sporting tournament and that you only count if you win, if you are “the best”. The Maple Leaf’s fan base apparently missed that memo!!!! We all thought the Blue Jays were a great ball team, when they had “back to back” World Series wins, in the early 1990s, but then they started to lose! It was only their recent winning streak that brought them back into favour! Or is that Blue jay Fever? On Wednesday the sports article said, “it’s do or die in game 5”. They did! When Canadian honour is at stake, we even take baseball seriously!
On our individual lives, outside of the sports world, we are no strangers to competition. We compete for a place at our desired university, for a job when we graduate, for promotions. Tomorrow every Canadian citizen who has reached the age of 18 is able to have input into the competition for the job of Prime Minister!
However, if we let this kind of “do or die” competition infuse all aspects of our lives we lose touch with the more important things. We can pin our self-worth on our status as “winner” or “loser” and theologically we need to put on an entirely different set of glasses through which we view the world. I we are not careful, we can come to believe that “God is on the side of the winner and that God does not love losers!”
That is a far cry from what the gospels teach us, time after time. In today’s gospel we read about two disciples who were lobbying for the favourite positions of power; Jesus’ right and left! Who gets to sit next to the Prime Minister in the House of Commons? It’s not accidental; it’s not done by alphabetical order! I remember taking my mom to a dinner in honour of those who had achieved a certain level of giving to the hospital in Charlottetown. I had thought of asking for a seat near the front because my mom has difficulty seeing and hearing. I forgot to ask but after arriving realized that such a request would probably have fallen on deaf ears because the premium seats were reserved for those higher up on the giving ladder. Since my mom has given the “minimum amount” to make it to the “giving wall” we were in the back! It’s the ‘way’ of that kind of fundraising: the more you give the bigger your recognition!
Jesus taught a different way of looking at the world. He taught people not to let their right hand know what the left was doing! He taught those who followed him to “love your enemies and do good to those who persecute you”. He taught about service being the hallmark of a response to his Good News of God’s love. When James and John made their request it seems clear that he wondered where those two had been when he was preaching this counter intuitive message. Distracted students are not a new thing I guess!
You would think that those in his inner circle would have gotten the message right away, but our gospel lesson for today indicates that they certainly did not! While two were bold enough to ask for positions of favour, the rest were disgruntled (probably because they were hoping for the same thing!)
Jesus asks them if they know what is in store – if they knew the kind of “honour” they were expecting was not what actually in store for them!
Some preachers, and some churches, preach a “prosperity Gospel”. I am not that preacher and this is not that denomination. Following Jesus will not make you richer, more successful or even better looking!
As Christians we have been taught that God loves everyone - but somehow some of us have picked up the idea that God loves Christians more than others. Some of us have further refined this to mean that God loves white North American Christians with Western European ancestry the most!
In the last few weeks the right of one or two woman to wear a niqab at their Citizenship Ceremonies, and the Supreme Court ruling that they could indeed wear one, has been questioned and debated from the PMO to private citizens using every form of social media. The most disturbing form of comment has been exhibited in physical attacks on veiled women in several Canadian cities. Our new Moderator, the Rt. Rev. Jordan Cantwell, has written a letter deploring these acts and challenging the attitudes that led to them.
She has said to our church: “As people of faith, we must speak and act in ways that challenge the ignorance and prejudice that fuel such hostility.” She reminded us that words are powerful and called on us to use words of love, tolerance and respect for the human dignity of all people. I have said this in the face of reports of violence against minorities in other places I have lived: “even when we disagree, such violence is UNACCEPTABLE and we must love our neighbours as ourselves.” The Moderator encourages all of us to get to know our Muslim neighbours so that ignorance is replaced with knowledge and friendship.
As Job tried to make sense of all of the misfortune that had befallen him, he tried to understand God in human terms and God’s answer was, in short, “where were you when I was creating things, tell me if you know?” Job’s God was bigger than he imagined possible, James and John figured that the Reign of God was just like that of human rulers, only more powerful. Jesus countered with a much bigger, much more difficult concept to wrap their minds around: “service, not honour and glory” is what it is all about! God was bigger than they ever imagined.
In the 1989 film Dead Poets Society a young student discovers his love of acting which is much to his father’s chagrin, because the teenager is supposed to be destined for Medical School which his domineering father thinks of as a more appropriate career. Unable to deny his passion or to follow his father’s wishes he commits suicide and the unorthodox English teacher is blamed and fired.
Martin Niemoeller, a German pastor, became a prisoner under Hitler because he protested the Nazis treatment of the Jews! He has every reason to hate his captors but later in his life he said, “It took me a long time to learn that God is not the enemy of my enemies. He is not even the enemy of his enemies.” How interesting,
Our world changed immeasurably on September 11, 2001 when terrorists attacked the United States. Despite our fear of that particular type of stranger, our call as people of faith is to live and act in ways of love and justice. Is our God too small?
Generally speaking, as Christians, we were taught that we humans were made in the image of God. In some cases though, western Christians took it too far and we made God in our image. God became a “powerful king” a all knowing giant”, an “old man hovering somewhere above the clouds”; God was definitely on our side and agreed with every one of our social and political positions. We mistook our ways for the ways of God. We misplaced our priorities. Our God fitted neatly inside our box defined by our priorities and our prejudices. Today our scriptures ask us to consider that our God is bigger than our imaginations and our limitations.
Consider this: God is not a “superman” or “superwoman”; and perhaps, just perhaps, maybe God does not even like Hockey!
What God wills for us is humility and service for others – not the grasping of power to ourselves. Jesus tells us that the successful ones are those who have helped stop hearts from breaking; those who have fed the hungry and given water to the thirsty and used what power they had to make life better for the “least of these”. It does not matter how many people come to church on Sunday morning but how this hour makes life better for those who need our sharing of love, support, faith and service.
God is bigger than my world; God is bigger than my imagination;
Thanks be!
Hebrews 7: 23-28
Psalm 34
Mark 10: 46-52
Since I have been in ordered ministry I have served on several committees which would have yearly meetings in Toronto. I think they had a deal with some of the hotels close to the intersection of Bloor and Young - DOWNTOWN - HEART OF TORONTO. The area is made up of shopping, corporate head offices, investment and law firms, as well as numerous small businesses. For cost savings we were put up two to a room unless there was an uneven number of participants of each gender. One time I had a room with two comfortable queen size beds all to myself for just that reason. One cold drizzly damp morning, as I walked to the subway, I passed by a young person sleeping in a doorway with just a thin plastic sheet covering her and her meagre belongings. Then I passed another, and another! I imagined how damp their clothes and sleeping bags were after the night of rain. There was a man on the committee who was also in a room by himself and we had a discussion before our meeting began about how we felt walking by those folks and knowing that we had all that space to ourselves that was warm and dry. BUT inviting one of them in would not have been acceptable to the hotel, and might not have been safe. I could not do anything and I wished I had not seen what I had seen.
I remember telling one of the General Council staff for Stewardship back in the early 90s that my rural congregation did not see much connection between their lives and the homeless of Toronto thus they did not see any reason to support programs that helped Toronto’s homeless. He said, “Go back and tell them that a number of the homeless in Toronto come from rural Maritime communities.
Back in theological school I took a course titled, “Ministry With Women”. One of the things that has stuck with me all these years is a song we learned in the class: “Sometimes I Wish My Eyes Hadn’t Been Opened”.
Often I wished that I was not in that course because it forced me to see that many more women than I thought live their lives in fear of those who are supposed to love them and many girls do not have the support they need to envision a better life for themselves. Just this past week a human trafficking ring was broken up. Its not something that happens in foreign ans exotic places, but here in Canada.
This kind of feeling can extend to all aspects of life. I don’t want to know that some of the things that I buy, or once bought, come to me at a great cost to the environment, or for the workers who harvest or manufacture them. I don’t want to know about violence in children’s hockey - and I’m not talking about the violence on the ice but the kind that takes place in the car or the family home after the game. A member of one of my conformation class told me that a teammate of his was scared of his father every time he had a bad game. He was a kid! In the past few months I certainly didn’t want to know what some families have to endure in escaping from the violence in Syria, or many of the other trouble spots in the world.
The thing is that once you have seen something, you have to decide what to do about it!
Today’s Gospel passage is about a man named Bartimaeus who was also blind. Let’s not call him “Blind Bartimaeus, please”. Now your may think it is splitting hairs to make sure he is called a “man who is blind” instead of “a blind man”, but it’s really not. One of the other things I learned in theological school was the importance of naming and how seemingly subtle differences in naming, make all the difference. Notice how a child will change his or her naming preference when adulthood is reached. “Bobby” goes of to university in September and come home and Thanksgiving and tells his parents, “call me Bob please!” Names are important and descriptive adjectives sometimes take away someone’s personhood!
We all know the little ditty, “Sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me”. We said it to those teasing us and to ourselves not because it was true but because it wasn’t! We wanted it to be true; the behaviour of others hurt us.
Back in Jesus’ time, life was very difficult, especially for people with any kind of disability or “difference”. We can infer from today’s passage that Bartimaeus was pushed to the margins and that he was almost totally excluded. When he cried out the crowd tried to silence him - which only made him shout all the louder. Notice that it was thye omnly cared when Jesus did.
I would like to make note of three things about this passage: 1) that HE knew who Jesus was, or at least partially. He had no physical sight, yet he knew. Perhaps he had the perfect vantage point to listen to all the discussions and scuttlebutt from the crowds as they returned from hearing Jesus, speak and he took it in and ruminated on it!
2) We are told that he threw off his cloak and went to meet Jesus. It is likely that this cloak is his only possession! Figuratively speaking, Bartimaeus is throwing caution to the wind. He is giving up his old life even before he encounters this Jesus! 3) Notice also that Jesus does not ASSUME he wants to have his sight restored but asks him, “What do you want me to do for you?”
Do you remember that the disciples in last week’s story asked Jesus for positions of honour - but what Bartimaeus wanted was sight, not honour! Ironically, he had more insight, more spiritual knowledge than the disciples who were in Jesus company every day.
I have tried to follow Jesus’ practice, in my ministry. I feel it is important to ask, “What can I do for you?” Pray? Get you a glass of water? Come again? Find me a drive to the hospital? Go away and come back another day when I feel better? Or even, don’t bother me, don’t come back at all!
The United Church’s mission policy reflects this point of view as well. We do not go to a developing country and set up shop to save the lost souls of that place. We form partnerships with overseas churches and respond to their requests as we are able. We try to meet their stated needs rather than decide for them what we think is best. If we, as a church, had done that with Canada’s aboriginal peoples, we would all have been better off!
We all know people with exceptional insight who are, by popular definition, “disabled” in some way. In one of my first congregations was a man who had become deaf at an early age. He was both a farmer and a groundskeeper at the nearby National Park. If you wanted to know what was going on in the Park all you had to do was to ask him, he could tell you - and he could not hear a thing! He could not hear a thing but somehow he knew!
We know that Beethoven, who composed much beautiful music was deaf and Fanny Crosby who wrote hundreds of hymns became blind at an early age as the result of a botched treatment for an eye infection. I don’t know about Beethoven but Crosby did not see her blindness as a disability at all. In fact, she thought that physical sight might have distracted her from her hymn writing.
Jesus called people to see - to make a decision about who he was and what he came to do and then to make a commitment in the light of that knowledge.
A colleague of mine was tending a food bank trailer in the Tim Horton’s parking lot somewhere in Charlottetown and a visiting biker (the kind with tattoos, and leather) could not believe that such a beautiful place had hungry people but when he ‘saw the need” he went back to his campground and took up a collection (in a KFC) bag for the food-bank, in a place he was only visiting) The colleague also saw a different side to his “biker” stereotype.
So the crowd found out that the old beggar on the corner was full of faith and insight. I hope they learned his name. I hope they gave him work when he no longer had any reason to beg!
Sleeping Children Around the World is a charity you will hear about this evening and its purpose is to provide bed kits for children in the developing world so the young people can have a few basic items to protect them from the elements and clothing and supplies so that they can go to school.
So often we feel helpless in the face of so much human need; so often we feel overwhelmed but this is ONE way we can do something for a child, or a number of children. It will not end poverty, but it will help one child in a way that is needed and culturally appropriate rather than sending scads of stuff that make us feel good but have not been requested.
Let us be open to the movement of the Spirit in others. Ldet us see what is in front of us, even if it is just on the TV screen. Let us cast off the cloaks that keep us from responding to the Good News. Let us follow Jesus on the way.
Amen.
Ruth 1: 1-18
Psalm 146
Mark 12: 28-34
Last weekend I went to Sackville NB to serve as the chaplain for Conference Interview Board. I was there to support three people who were seeking to become candidates for the Order of Ministry of the United Church of Canada. It is one of several interviews on the journey toward ordination or commissioning. 30 years ago, more or less, a friend of mine went for her final “conference level” interview. She came bask to the residence and said, “you’ll never believe what one of the questions was!”
As is often the case, each member of the interview team took turns asking questions. When it was his turn to ask a question, an older male minister, with a pronounced southern accent, said to her, “speak to me of love”. (Pause) It’s an interesting request. How would you respond?
Both of today’s passages speak of love and its importance. The gospel passage involves a dialogue between Jesus and a scribe who came upon Jesus in a time of dialogue with others. We all know that there are ten “official” commandments, but in the time between Moses and Jesus, at least 600 additional rules had grown up around them - some seemingly more important than others! For example, what would constitute work on the Sabbath; and thus be forbidden? So, in that context, a question about which was the most important law or commandment seems to be quite logical. Additionally, the question and answer style of conversation was and still is a common way to discuss theology in the Jewish tradition. We need to be clear that the answer given by Jesus was not a “new teaching” but was already part of their tradition - love God and love neighbour as self.
Love is a very much over used word in today’s world. I can say that I love my mom, my cat, and my friends. But I might also say that I love chocolate, cheesecake, chocolate cheesecake, french fries and Swiss Chalet Quarter Chicken Dinner (with white meat). I received a tweet from a Bank on Wednesday telling me it was NationalIloveyouday! While all of these examples employ the word “love” I trust the differing contexts provide several different degrees of meaning.
Sometimes we place boundaries and walls around our love. The passage from the Hebrew Scriptures is a story about Ruth, a person who lived the kind of love that was able to transcend normal boundaries and who, as a result, brought life to Israel. Most of this sermon will focus on the story of Ruth, this woman from Moab.
The story of Ruth begins in tragic irony. We are told that there was a famine in Bethlehem. Readers would know that the name Bethlehem meant, literally, “house of bread”. What the story is saying then, is that the “house of bread” had none!
As a result of the famine, Elimilech and his family were in desperate straits and they left, as refugees, for a country they would normally consider enemy territory. We do not know how they made a life for themselves, and how they were treated but we do know that the sons married local women. We know also that tragedy struck and the men all died. Since there were no jobs for women, decisions had to be made. Naomi decided to return to her homeland and at first the daughters-in-law both intended to accompany her. She persuaded Orpah to stay on the assumption that it would be easier to find a new husband among her own people but Ruth persisted and very forcefully and vowed that her loyalty was to Naomi, her people, her religion; their fates became intertwined. It was a remarkable thing for Ruth to do, and that’s exactly why it’s in the Bible!
There is a lot of debate about when Ruth was written. While it is set in the time of the judges which means BEFORE they had kings to rule them there is good reason to suspect that it was written down much later.
You see, there are several dividing lines in the history of the people of Abraham - one is before there was a king during which time they were ruled by Judges. This is the time of Ruth.
This story concludes by telling us that Ruth was an ancestress of King David which was the next era of their history.
This lasted until they were conquered and sent into exile.
After the exile, they were allowed to return home and one of the “reforms” that were put in place to ensure their future were all sorts of rules against foreigners and foreign influences. The men who had married foreign women were supposed to divorce them and send them packing! It is thought that it was during this time that Ruth was written. The writer of Ruth wanted to balance the “anti-foreigner” sentiment with a story about a foreigner whose love and loyalty was unsurpassed and, to be perfectly frank, saved their nation, long ago. If the “hardliners” realized that David’s great-gramma was a foreigner then they might think twice before shutting out all foreigners!
There is a lot of that in the Bible, the hard line and then a story that softens the hard line, or views it from a different angle. This tale reminded even the hardliners that they were there because of at least one such person who acted in faith and switched her loyalty to her husband’s people.
Every culture has a tradition of story telling as a way of promoting positive social values and dealing with problems.
Florence is a member of one of the churches I served a number of years ago. She told me that when one of her young grandchildren were sad, upset or angry about something she would take him or her onto her lap and tell a story. The stories were tailor made for each of them and it was no surprise that the main character in the story had the same experience as the child - I believe the girl’s stories were all about “Betsy Bunny” and the boy’s were all about “Bobby Bird”. They were her way of passing on her wisdom and helping her grandchildren work through the issues in their lives.
Ruth was able through hard work and a risk taking dedication to the culture of her late husband’s people to secure both her own future and that of her mother in law. In the end she is seen as securing the future of an entire people. Note that the genealogy of Jesus that begins Matthew’s Gospel lists her name as one of the few women so honoured.
As we continue with the story of Ruth we will discover more about her dedication to her mother-in-law and the faith and trust which enabled her to become such a vital link in their chain of faith.
More than one person has said that the test of a society’s greatness is how that society treats the vulnerable.
Canada has long been in the forefront of advocacy for human rights in other countries. However we are in danger of losing our internationa; reputation of advocating on behalf of other people and we are also in danger at home. Amnesty International is an organization which is often involved with investigating human rights violations in countries run by military dictators and it often organizes concerned citizens world-wide to advocate for the release of their victims from jail. I have heard that Amnesty International is now investigating Canada with respect to the high number of missing and murdered aboriginal women in THIS country. That is both shocking and sobering. We should hang our heads. Ironically, we need to remember that, with respect to our “first nations” peoples, most of us are the foreigner and the immigrant!
We can easily criticize police brutailty against people of colour in the USA and we should, but we must also look at the situation in our own country. Considering the latest news about the treatment of aboriginal women in Val d’Or Quebec by some on its police force it seems to me that the whole situation needs a thorough and unbiased investigation.
What does the gospel of love say in our context and in the light of this thousands of years old story of one who saved the future of her enemies?
What is the purpose of the church, the gathered community of faith? What do we do when we lave here? How has the love of God changed us?
Should we not see the “other” in a different light? Should we not rethink the maxims we sometimes use to limit our charity such as “Charity begins at home”? Of course, the trouble is that, the people who say that often mean, “Charity also ends at home!” There seems to be something about an economic recession that tends to make people more in ward looking. Both of these passages challenge our natural inward looking tendencies with the command to love. This passage brings us to places we might not otherwise go.
If we see love of God, self and neighbour as three tensions on us, as if we were in the middle of a circle with three cords, each pulling us in a different direction - and us still able to be upright because the tension then we have a good picture of the kind of balance we need to keep in our lives. Do God and our neighbour get the leftovers after we met our needs AND wants? . Or are we like some, who feel they and their needs should always be last?
What needs are calling to us that we have ignored because “we’ve never done that before? What needs are calling to us that we have ignored because of past “negative” - experiences?
The TWO most important things of all are: LOVE GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, ALL YOUR SOUL AND ALL YOUR STRENGTH AND LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOUR AS YOURSELF.
Amen!
Ruth3: 1-5, 4:13-17
Psalm 127
Mark 12: 39-44
My mother remembers that when she was growing up in the depression she would take a “Tree Cent” to Sunday school as her offering. A “Tree Cent” was a one cent piece minted in 1871, two years before PEI Confederation!. (I have one here, I found this well used sample in the lane to our farm when I was a child. I cleaned it yesterday - it was green all the time I had it. ). They are collectors items now, but I really don’t know what you could have purchased with one during the depression. As we know, Canada has stopped minting and circulating the one cent coin and if you want your stash of coppers to have any value you have to turn them in at a bank. They will even take a .01 ¢ deposit! As the phase out was taking place, lots of charities invited you to dump your copper change in large clear bins in the hopes that your copper clutter would become their cash cow!
Before British currency was decimalized in the 1970s they had a coin called a half penny. It took 480 of them to equal 1£. You might remember the line from the peppy, cheerful Christmas song,
Christmas is Coming.
“Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, wont you put a penny in the old man’s hat; if you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do, if you haven’t got a ha’penny then God bless you.”
The Gospel story talks about two small coins called “lepta” which together equal a “kodrantes”. It took 64 kodrantes to make a denarius which was the pay for a labourer for a day’s work! A labourer on that kind of wage was living on a subsistence basis! There were no frills for those folks. I took our my calculator and divided and multipled and based on the Nova Scotia minimum wage, the widow gave $1.32, assuming an 8 hour day. What can you buy for that? .
But, I’m getting ahead of myself here. Today’s Gospel reading has two related parts and the widow is the main character in part two.
So, back to part one. Today’s gospel needs a careful reading. Unlike our text in English, the Greek text of the New Testament has no punctuation. There are no commas and no periods. We might ask, “What difference does a comma make? “ A great deal, sometimes!
An example I have seen many times is a simple English sentence: “Woman without her man is nothing.” Pausing at the commas, you could say, “Woman, without her man, is nothing.” OR you could pause at differently placed commas and say, “Woman, without her, man is nothing”. As you can see a couple of commas CHANGES the meaning of the sentence.
I had a professor at Mount Allison who wore out a number of red pens, adding them to my essays. Most of the time though, it is fairly clear where those pesky punctuation marks should go, in English and in Greek, but not so here. Let me try and explain - the New Revised Standard Version, usually a very reliable translation renders this text with commas -, ‘Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the market-places, – as if ALL the scribes like to do this. Bit if you remove the commas the implication is that you are told to beware ONLY of those who (as we say in PEI) “put on the dog” Beware of those who like to do those things noted in the text! Beware of those who like to be recognized as important, be given special privileges and who take advantage of widows (who were the most vulnerable people in Jesus’ society). It was after Jesus death that the relationships between the Jesus Followers and the regular synagogue leaders had deteriorated to such an extent that the writers of the gospels read that conflict into the history, where it does not really belong.
Given the long and not so pretty history of the church with respect our Jewish sisters and brothers, it is important that we take the entire context into consideration and that we not tar all scribes with the same brush because some of them were sincere and tried to live according to the best teachings of the law. Some are recorded as having meaningful conversations with Jesus! Anti Semitism belongs in the past.
Now that we have that out of the way, we need to consider some questions.
When Jesus sees the widow giving the smallest of gifts and comments on it, we must be careful not to read this as PRAISE of the widow. He does not do this. We have been told this for generations but I don’t think the text bears this up.
In Jesus day, as in our own, there is a vast discrepancy between the disposable income of those at the upper end of the economic scale and those at the very bottom. The text tells us that the wealthy people put in large sums and the widow put in two of the smallest coins in circulation.
We know that what two people might spend these days in one meal at a fancy restaurant would feed another person’s family for a week, or more. (I’m told it depends on the price of the wine!) The comment seems to be “look at the fact that she is giving everything, not at how little she puts in”. That changes things!
A colleague of mine was the minister of a church undergoing an expansion. A wealthy man who was once a member of that church came to his office and said. “I want to give to the campaign”. He took a $20 bill out of his wallet and handed it to the minister and smiling said to the minister, “I know it isn’t much but Jesus himself praised the widow’s mite”. This was probably in the 70s when a $20 was worth far more than it is today but it was certainly no where near to qualifying as a “widow’s mote”; it was not all he had to live on.. He had lots left over. As this minister told the story we could see how irritated he was that the man manipulated the text in this way. It was not the smallness of the gift that irritated him but the way in which he heaped Jesus praise upon himself, where it did not belong.
You may remember the ice storm of 1998 that caused a great deal of damage to a great many areas but certain areas of Quebec were hit especially hard. Churches in Truro Presbytery organized a food and supplies drive and opened one of the churches to receive the donations. The organizer got a call from someone on social assistance saying that her taxi voucher would only take her so far - could she leave her donation somewhere else? No matter how much she brought she was giving far more than the folks who brought in full bags of donations. She was even giving a precious taxi voucher to get the food to us. She was sharing even if most of us could not have lived on what she was forced to. There are more fascinating stories to tell of that shipment of goods to Quebec, but that’s another sermon!
A man was giving his testimony at a gathering and testified that God blessed him with great riches in his life BECAUSE he had given away 100% of everything he made in his first summer job. At this point he was interrupted by an elderly man in the front row who called out, “I dare you to try it again”.
This passage calls us t take a deeper look at our giving, our level of giving, at the ways in which we make use of our privilege, whatever that may be. It does not offer us pat answers to complex questions.
The reality is that giving is a spiritual discipline NOT an investment scheme. Buy a Canada Savings Bond or a GIC if you want a sure investment or go to Scotia MacLeod or the Credential Funds at the Credit Union and ask for some sound advice for your money if you want it to grow.
The gospel challenges us: Give to others if you want to grow in faith. I will NOT become richer financially because I give but I will be richer spiritually because I know that I do not depend on just me and my abilities and resources to live and be secure. I know that grace is part of my life and that I can be blessed by being a blessing to others.
We need to be clear that there is no blessing in poverty - the poverty of some is an indictment on the rich, in fact. Sharing helps me to participate in something larger than myself; in something that does not benefit me directly.
Someone once said that the church is the only institution in society that exists for the people not its members but I would say that the church has lost sight of that over the past few centuries. Each and every congregation needs to ask how we can avoid the temptation to be nothing more than a club, by reaching out to those beyond our walls and sharing the love of Christ is real and tangible ways.
In the context of Remembrance Day, - which we will observe this week, we will remember and honour the “giving” of thousands of Canadians who lost their lives in service of Canada and those who served and were fortunate enough to return. We know that for some of those who returned PTSD was an unwelcome companion, although previous generations called it by other names. Their families knew, their friends knew - that their invisible sacrifice continued for the rest of their lives. We also know the war effort took in many more than those who enlisted - young lives lost its not just the names we see on the stones and on lists, it’s the parents, their children and families and communities who would be forever altered by their absence.
Next time you are in Ottawa go to the Memorial Chamber in the Peace Tower and look at all those names - each one a small but precious gift.
So this Gospel story should not be a challenge to give as little as possible or even to be at the top of the list, but to make a conscious decision about our giving as a part of our faith. Of course this giving may include other “charitable” causes for which we are passionate. We are called to give from the heart as a way of giving thanks for the blessings of God and as a way of participating in the healing of the world God loves.
Amen
Hebrews 10: 19-25
1 Samuel 2: 1-10
Mark 13: 1-8
One day many years ago I was spending some time with my nephew and niece. He was three, three and a half, and she was crawling. For some reason she frustrated him and he picked her up and carried her across the room and dumped her on the landing at the bottom of the stairs. His mother, not surprisingly, told him not to do that again. His protest, “ But Mom, she was bovvering me”.
For a three year old, a crawling baby was a “bovver”. A more grown up word might be, “provoked”. “I was provoked” or “She was provoking me”. “Provocation” is a legal term in Canada and is a “reason” to have a murder charge reduced to manslaughter.
While provocation almost always has a negative connotation, in today’s passage from the Letter to the Hebrews it takes on a positive one. “And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds”.
With respect to the “blood” language in this passage some background might be helpful. In the temple sacrifices were mandated for a number of things that were regular occurrences in the lives of the people such as childbirth. Then there was the yearly Passover lamb. All of this was ritual performed by a priest who was the only one who could say the right prayers to make the sacrifice work. And it was the spilling of the blood that was crucial; a necessity in the killing of any warm-blooded animal. In the New Testament the death of Jesus was seen as a once and for all sacrifice for everyone - to cover their sins- so that from the time of Jesus animal sacrifices were no longer seen as necessary for those who followed his way.
But this begs the question, “now what?” “What are the faithful supposed to do instead?”
This passage tells us that one of the things we can do in community is to provoke one an other to love and good deeds. I don’t know about you but I find it interesting how it is much easier to provoke anger and violence than it is to provoke love and good deeds.
Except for the printing of this sermon it was finished Friday night. A few hours later I knew I had more work to do.
As you all know, on Friday coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris caused the death of about 120 people and the serious injury of many more. The news has covered little else! France is in shock and most of the world is standing in blue, white and red solidarity. Facebook and Twitter lit up with shock, horror, mourning and yes, vengeance. There were many calls for a moratorium on immigration from Syria but a church I follow noted that their group was meeting in Toronto, working with others, continuing to make plans to welcome refugees. Some tweets reasoned that those who feel their lives are in danger need our help now, more than ever.
In such a situation it is easy to provoke a negative reaction, or incite a fortress mentality, against all people who are similar in any way to a member of ISIS (to use this event as just one example).
It is very easy to get someone riled up - much harder to get someone to go out of her or his way to douse the flames of anger and to open or participate in a broader or more reasoned conversation. In the midst of the chaos and confusion residents of Paris who were able to give refuge to stranded citizens or tourists were invited to tweet that invitation through a certain hashtag! How brave, how open! In such a situation it would be very tempting to bar the doors, turn out the lights and lie on the floor.
After Friday evening there has been even more worry expressed over the new government’s goal of bringing 35,000 refugees from Syria to Canada by the end of December. Before Friday some argued that it was too many; some that it is too many too soon; more now that we may let in terrorists!
Yet there ARE groups that are raising money, filling out applications, getting accommodations ready and forming support committees in order to welcome families with nowhere else to go. Some, without the resources to sponsor a family, are doing other practical things that will, when added to other efforts, make the world of difference to someone or to some family now waiting for a word of hope and life.
I was talking to a member of Presbytery yesterday about the refugee situation and she recommended the work of the Canadian Foodgrains Bank. They qualify for matching grants whereby the government which multiply the efforts FOURFOLD of individual Canadians up to 25 million dollars and they are already on the ground and able to feed people who, like most of us, need to eat each and every day. If it turns out that refugee claims will be delayed (and that may be necessary) we can work to feed people in the interim.
As we approach the season in which we celebrate the birth of Jesus we should remember that the first trip he is recorded as having to take was not to visit the grandparents but to flee to Egypt from the wrath of Herod. Jesus was a refugee. I will provoke you to an action today - put those words on your fridge; on top of all your fridge magnets and the clutter that gets attached there and every time you go to the fridge to prepare a meal, or get a cold drink, or a bowl of ice cream you will see them - JESUS WAS A REFUGEE! I wonder what that small sentence will provoke?
It is difficult to ascertain what life was really like for the members of the early church because our lives are completely different. We live in an era when no one much cares whether we go to church or not but being Christian could turn into a death sentence in the first century as it can in some places in the world, even today.
This passage tells those folks to gather together and incite one another to love and good deeds, practising mutual encouragement. Not hiding! Not staying silent! But provoking one another to love and kindness. That is simply amazing!
What would it look like, I wonder, if this were a major focus of our time together and our reason for being church? How can we can use our resources, our building, our finances, as a vehicle for the purpose of living out our call to practice love and good deeds.
We may worry about “keeping the doors open” but perhaps we are asking the wrong question or at lease need some better questions. .
How do we use church property, both real and financial, for the good of the community? Why do we keep the doors of this building open? If it is for just “us folks” that are coming through those doors then we are truly missing something?
Just as Jesus freed the community from patterns that were no longer life giving we need to take a look at what how we spend our energy to see if there are better ways to proclaim the gospel with the resources we already have.
The UCW already visits seniors with care packages at certain times of the year. We have an ecumenical prayer shawl ministry that meets here, mostly. We have a box in the basement for the food bank and we had a wonderful success with the Kraft dinner and peanut butter challenge. In the winter we will be looking for the “forte for cereal” - we have to work on a more catchy title - lets bring enough cereal that we can build a big “fort” around the communion table.
What other ideas are out there that we can come up with and provoke one another to? (sorry about the sentence ending in a preposition) How do we, as a community and individuals, create an environment where people of all ages are truly welcomed and feel ,love and care.?
Its not about laying a guild trip on one another; it’s about gathering together to celebrate our blessings and then looking through these windows to see how we could be a blessing to others.
How can you bless someone today? It does not have to be big to make a big difference; talk to someone who has received a prayer shawl, or a box of fruit, or even a visit to break up a lonely afternoon or knows that you wrote a letter to support them in their struggle - they know what difference small actions makes! Provoke, not to grumpiness, and to doors slammed in the face of need, but to good deeds and to the possibility brought about by the good news of Jesus.
Amen.