Job 38: 1-18

Psalm 104

Luke 5: 1-11

Ocean Sunday - Creation Season One

Seeking Wisdom

Welcome to “Ocean Sunday”; the first of the season of creation which is fairly new to our yearly cycle of readings and themes.

Today we focus on creation’s oceans and in the next three weeks we will look at the flora and fauna, the storms and the cosmos.

This sermon can be a little interactive, so watch for those clues that I intend to ask for responses and comments during this “sermon time”.

In church we begin, usually, with scripture. We begin with the bizarre story of Job. Haave you all heard the expression, The patience of Job”? Well, he wasn’t very patient. Here’s Job’s story in a nutshell! Although it does not say so, the book of Job is really an extended parable, much like Jesus told, only longer. It sets up an odd scenario - God and the accuser (not the devil of later scriptures) cook up this plot to test the faithful “Job” and he is afflicted with the loss of everything he holds dear - his possessions, his children, all except his wife.

After this he sits down on the ground and for the next number of chapters he questions “why” and his so-called “friends” offer their theories. After this God’s anwer is offered. In beautiful prose God’s response basically says, “You think you’re smart, don’t you? Where were you when.....? It sounds like my Mom when were kids and complaining about the unfairness of our lives. You know, things like bedtime and why other kids could do this our that and we couldn’t.

What do you question? You know, the big questions?

The human response to “the world”, long before we knew anything about the big bang, and evolution and genetics and all the science we take for granted now, the common human attitude to the planet was one of awe and, of course, fear!

No matter what science tells us though, the cosmos, the universe is still a mysterious and awesome place. It is still a place we need to respect and approach with caution or we might end up the loser. We’re just a speck in the vastness of the universe - at those are the parts we know about.

What part of the universe makes you stand in awe?

Maybe you’ve seen a picture comparing the planet Earth to the size of those known to exist. We’re small! But, as they say, small is beautiful.

Yet, it is a beautiful and wondrous place , this earth. When the astronauts sent back the first pictures of earth taken from outer space in 1972 the picture was dubbed “the blue marble”. Do you remember when you first saw that picture - on your B&W TV or in a colour magazine?

It was obvious, if we didn’t know it before, that this is a planet of lots and lots of water and some land.

(Referring to the sea shell) Have you been told that you can hear the ocean if you put a large shell over your ear? That shell has sat in the Johnston living room for as long as I can remember! My sister made me promise to bring it back! BUT I’ll tell you a secret - its not really the ocean - but that’s a nice thought. Most Maritime folk like the sound of the ocean. There’s always a sound to the ocean.

What can we say about oceans? Water is one of the necessities of life and some people have far too little of it and some, perhaps, have so much they don’t appreciate it. It’s hurricane season and some people wish the water would stay where they feel it belongs!

We know that some corporations want to turn water, fresh water, into a commodity, for which people have to pay - and are often given rights to take it from places where there is often a shortage. We are told that bottled water is rarely any better than what comes from your kitchen tap.

The Olympics have just finished in Rio de Janero. We were told that some of the water at the outdoor boating venues there was so polluted athletes were told to be careful not to open their mouths and not to swallow that water. Some pictures showed water full of grbage and raw sewage.

Anyone that walks on a beach knows the trash that washes up after a storm, and that its not just the odd bit of fishing equiptment that has become detached - such as nets, buoys and lobster traps - its garbage thrown off of recreational vessels or fishing boats. Or its garbage that for various reasons ends up in the oceans. Turtles eat plastic bags because they resemble jellyfish and they starve because the plastic gets stuck in their digestive system and has no nutritional value. Plastic rings from six packs have proved to be a big hazard to marine life as have plastic micro-beads that come in a number of cosmetic products and are too small for the filters at sewage treatment plants.

Do we think that the ocean has an unlimited capacity to hide all the stuff we don’t know where to put? Where did we get that idea anyway?

Humans are not as smart as we think we are! We almost fished the Northern Cod to extinction- we thought it was so plentiful that we could not fish it to the point of extinction, but we almost did. WE almost did the same thing to the whales. The beauty of a breaching whale- in the wild was once a rare occurrence due to the commercial whale hunts of previous centuries but they are coming back - slowly.

I love the Bay of Fundy; where else can you walk on the ocean floor! I have a few pictures of Halls Harbour with the same boats, high in the water and then, on another day, low and dry - as if the giant bathtub that is the harbour had the plug pulled. That’s the majesty of this part of the ocean.

We are called to care for this planet which was so long in the making, we now know. But there are many things we don’t know, says God to Job and his friends there is mystery. There is awe.

Next time you go to the beach - or take the ferry, look at the horizon and imagine that picture from space -

Savour the awesome beauty of the ocean.

Watch a sunset or sunrise and picture this small planet from outer space. Respond with your own expression of awe.

Amen.

Job 39: 1-8, 26-30
Psalm 104: 14-23
Luke 12: 22-31

Will We Learn in Time?

In the 60s a popular song, “Where Have All The Flowers Gone” written by Pete Seger and performed by dozens of different artists, repeatedly asks the question, “When will they ever learn?” There were a lot of anti-war songs in the 60s written specifically as a response to the Vietnam War and the social unrest common at that time but these songs seem to me to embody the same sense of loss and longing felt today by those who are concerned over global warming, the economic crisis, the refugee crisis, the rise of xenophobia, and the crazy election rhetoric coming from the USA.

For us, sitting in church on a September morning in small-town Nova Scotia the question is: “how do we respond as a people of faith?”

Long ago and far away, in a time of great unrest and turmoil lived a carpenter turned preacher whose popular following so threatened the powers of his world that he was executed as a common criminal. He was, they thought, dead and gone. However, his followers soon began to proclaim that not only was he alive but that he was, in some mysterious way, the embodiment of God.

The stories about him and his teachings were remembered and repeated and proclaimed and then written down, eventually coming to be seen as inspired scripture.

The passage from today is familiar to many and is part of a larger section known as “The Sermon on the Mount.”

This passage on worry comes directly after a parable, in which he tells people that security cannot come from having enough food and money to last for many years. I preached on that passage in July and titled the sermon, “Set for Life?” NOTE THE QUESTION MARK!

The rhetorical question underlying this part of the Gospel is” “Whom do we serve?” Do we serve God and trust in God or do we “serve and trust in “money”.

If we love God more than we love money, the argument goes, there is no reason to fear not having enouh money, possessions or resources!

When the people of Israel stood on the edge of the land of promise many generateions before this, their leader Joshua said to them, “choose this day whom you will serve”. If we choose gods who are nothing more than projections of our own wants and desires then we will be found wanting and worrying about having enough.

This is a frequently occurring theme in the scriptures - serve God not false gods.

The god “Mammon”, or “money and possessions”, is often depicted in religious art as a ravenous animal, never satisfied with its latest kill. It is a beast that always wants more, newer, better.

In more than one sermon Jesus gives his followers the choice of serving Caesar who had set himself up as a god or serving the true God - the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of heaven and earth. This was the God who gave them a mission to be the “light to the world”.

This is not a “prosperity gospel” in which the faithful are promised an abundance of money and material possessions and the un-faithful are forced to scratch out a meagre existence but it is an affirmation that the intention of the true God is that all will have enough.

There is a lot of talk these days about globalization and the environmental crisis. What we know, as Canadians, is that many of “our” formerly good jobs have gone to foreign countries. We know that much of the clothing and shoes we buy are made in factories in places like Bangladesh in conditions we have not known here for several generations. Every so often a disaster results in promises to make conditions better but very little changes. Our dollars don’t go as far as they used to so we want cheap goods. Corporations want to make a profit (and when we talk corporations we are often talking about shares owned by us or at least our pension plans and RRSP portfolios. Few of us are totally innocent in this regard. It’s a vicious circle. Even with all of these new jobs, people in the developing world are worse off than they were when we took our factories and mines there. It’s a complex and interconnected web; often a web of lies and deceit! Even in this country the gap between rich and poor is growing ever wider.

It is a complex world - but the question is still asked of us, “Whom do we serve?”

“Don’t worry,” sings Bobby McFerrin, “Be happy”. Of course, like most people, if someone tells me not to worry, that is a hint that maybe it is a good idea to start to worry. When I am worried it is almost a slap in the face to tell me “not to worry”. I am entitled to worry - if I have been diagnosed with cancer, have a child in jail, have just been told my job will end, have just had my marriage collapse - or if any of the myriad of other things happen, it is natural to worry. If you weren’t worried, I would worry about you!

But the problem is that we know from experience that worry does not do any good. Worry does not solve anything and it may, in fact, prevent us from useful action.

Someone once said that the trick to avoiding worry was not to eliminate the butterflies in the stomach but rather to work on the art of teaching them to fly in formation.

One of the commentaries I consulted in preparation for this sermon indicated that this text sounds like part 2 of Jesus’ instructions to the disciples as they go out two by two on their “mission”. When looked at in this more limiting context, it makes more sense.

A colleague of mine was thinking of leaving his executive job and going into ministry; his parents were against it. They told him that he had the responsibility to provide a good living for his childen, their grandchilden, and ministry would not do that! (And they were church goers) He quit his job and went to theological school anyway and as far as I can tell he managed to provide for his children, retire and is now helping his parents in their old age. Like many second career clergy he learned to step in faith without the certainty that he once took for granted.

Modern Mormons must have this passage down pat; every Mormon, upon entering adulthood goes on a two year Mission after high school.

When considering the specific issue of proclaiming the Good News or to care in some way for the poor and marginalized, or to change sometehing in our own lives to exercise better care for our planet we are told to retire the excuse that we need first to make sure we have enough! And this passage is about more than just material resources.

The irony is often that you will never have what you need until you take the first step. We need to step out of the boat and risk getting wet. The song, “Outside the Lines” by the Common Cup Company, sings of this.

“We’ll never walk on water if we’re not prepared to drown, body and soul need a soaking from time to time. And we’ll never move the gravestones if we’re not prepared to die, and realize there are worlds outsde the lines.”

Ours is often a culture of fear. We are afraid to share because we might not have enough; and we’re afraid to try new things, fearful that we will not be good enough, fearful that we will fail. Fearful that we will look foolish, fearful even that we will succeed.

Do you remember the TV commercial, for Maple Leaf Bologna. Some kids from Toronto were visiting their grandparents who served Bologna for the first time and the children loved it. Then they found out they were getting “seaweed pie” for supper and when the kids turned up their noses as if to say, “yech”, one of the grandparents said, “You have to be open to trying new things.” Apparently, its quite good.

This passage is a call to go into the new, trusting that our needs will be met. We are called to live our faith, trusting that the message of scarcity is not true.

We will be given what we need for the journey of faith. The whole of creation will be the better for it.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Job 28: 20-27
Psalm 29
1 Corinthians 1: 21-31
Luke 8: 22-35

Batten Down the Hatches !

Almost everyone I know who goes to New York City sees at least one Broadway show and going to Stratford ON is almost synonymous with going to the theatre there. I’ve seen three plays in NYC and one in Stratford!

Like most of you I was introduced to Shakespeare in High School. In the play, The Merchant of Venice, the wealthy Portia agreed with her dying father to marry the man who won a contest which involved choosing among three boxes or “casket” with the “winning” one contained her picture. Of course, her considerable wealth goes with her hand in marriage. One of the boxes was made of gold, one of silver and the last, of lead. The first two “would be husbands” (disliked by both Portia and the audience) did not choose the correct one and everyone, including the audience, is relieved. Clearly, her father was very wise! Bassanio, who is truly in love with Portia, and of course, favoured by the audience picks the box made of lead, finds her picture, and after a few twists and turns, not relevant to this sermon, lives happily ever after with his new bride!

Perhaps it seemed to the other “contestants” that the picture of a wealthy and beautiful woman would have to be inside a valuable and beautiful box, but they were both wrong. As I said, her father was wise and as I remember the story, Portia did have her household musicians play a song that could be seen as a “ Possible hint” when Bassanio was considering his options.

It seems a little like a 16th century version of a reality TV show! Of course, it was a story, to fill the theatre seats just as the modern TV shows are aired for the ratings.

Life is filled with choices. We begin each of our days with choices as simple as, “do I hit the snooze button once more or get up now?” what do I wear, have for breakfast, what route do I take to work, and the options continue throughout the day and week. We choose what to do with our free or family time, whom to date or marry, how to respond to the wishes of our children or their problems, the needs of ageing parents, the requests for volunteer tasks, what to eat in which restaurant, how many to invite to the dinner party, what to serve and on and on and on!

Some choices involve little more than determining what seasonally appropriate outfit is still clean this far from laundry day to needing the “wisdom of Solomon” to solve a dicey dilemma.

By the time children are in school many parents have already become experts at “don’t sweat the small stuff” and “pick your battles”. For example, letting your child wear their new clothes on the first day of school likely won’t harm them even though it’s as hot as summer and the new clothes are not for summer weather. It’s likely they will decide all on their own to put those new duds away for a cooler day - and that day will come all too quickly. Suffering the consequences of a poor choice is an excellent teacher of wisdom.

“Wisdom is a virtue, achieve it if you can” said one of my teachers in high school. I always thought she was quoting someone famous but I think SHE tacked on the “achieve it if you can” part to a famous saying from long ago.

Wisdom, like common sense, is not always all that common. Wisdom has very little to do with “book learning” and formal education. It is often personified in the Old Testament as feminine and as the first of God’s creation! Wisdom plays an important role in the work of God in the world.

Be carelful folks, Wisdom, like the wind of the Sprit blows where it will and cannot be controlled to do our bidding.

The chaplain of a prestigious American University received a phone call from an irate father of one of the students who was very involved in chapel life. The father blamed the chaplain for negatively influencing his daughter who had just returned from a mission trip to Haiti. He said, “She’s about to get a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering - it cost us a fortune - and now you’ve got her all excited about digging ditches in Haiti! She’s talking about doing this sort of thing for the rest of her life! I hold you personally responsible for this ridiculous idea!”

The chaplain listened patiently to the man’s tirade - but as he went on the chaplain discovered that the girl’s parents had been life-long church-goers. They had made sure that their daughter was baptized and had raised her in the church. They had read her stories from the Bible when she was a little girl and they had taken her to worship and Sunday school and sent her to youth group and youth events.

The chaplain finally lost his cool and said to the father, “Don’t blame me, you’re the ones who introduced her to Jesus. Just what did you expect would happen when you took your daughter to church for all those years?

The father sputtered, “We didn’t expect her to take it THAT seriously. We didn’t want it to change her life!”

Going to church is about more than being a “good person” or “learning right from wrong” - it is about embracing the wisdom of the foolish, it is about following in the path of the One whose whole orientation was counter cultural, counter intuitive and totally Spirit-driven, it is about letting the Spirit blow in and through us; it is about marching to the beat of a different drummer!

A few years ago I talked to the father of a yound woman I had baptized when she was about seven. She was in youth ministry and involved in environmental issues at the time and was in the process for becoming a candidate for Ordained ministry.

He said, “Did you have any idea what you started when you baptized her?” He was not upset, perhaps a little mystified, but proud of her as a self assured young adult who knew her own mind - despite the cost. Since this young woman made her own request for baptism, I’ve long thought the Spirit was whispering in her ear to follow on a less travelled road. But it wasn’t just me, or my successors. The church community made sure she was welcomed and given things to do that she very much liked doing. Sometimes we even created new tasks to keep her and her brother coming. If she wanted to go to a youth event, they made sure she had some funding to go.

Sometimes what the Spirit does, does not make sense to the ways of the world of commerce, prestige and power.

It did not make sense to the disciples who expected some amount of prestige, calm seas, or at least Jesus harnessing the power of God to make their nation great again!

Jesus words were not what they expected but they were to discover that, in the end, his words were the ones which were true.

Today’s overall theme, in this four week season of creation, leading up to thanksgiving is “storm”.

Fall is a time of storms which are almost always synonymous with “wind”. Some time after the leaves turn all their fall colours there will be a wind storm which will strip the trees of their remaining leaves; but we know the same gusts of wind can be more “dangerous.” If the heavy winds come before the leaves fall the trees can be severely damaged. Sometimes its just too strong. Some of you may be aware of the wind storm that toppled a great many of the hemlock trees at the United Church campground in Berwick. A small cottage is no match for a 400 year old hemlock!

I lived in one of the windiest spots on PEI for seven years. The design of the house meant my front door was very hard to open in the wind and if the manse committee had not installed a windbreak and two closures on the back screen door it would have been ripped right off its hinges.

We can’t control the wind of God any more than we can control the natural winds! We know how to turn wind into electricity but sometimes there’s even too much wond for that!

Generally we want to say what we do and when but the Spirit may have other ideas. We can batten down the hatches all we want but the Spirit is out to get us, to blow through our lives and change them irreparably. Watch out, the Spirit wants us to follow - to be - to become.

Amen.

Proverbs 8: 22-31
Psalm 148
John 6: 41-51

Cosmic!

Some people I have met find it next to impossible to say these four words, “ I do not know”. You all know people like that!

I remember that a classmate from my high school debating club found at least one of the sayings attributed to Confucius to be very profound. The saying: “Recognizing that you know what you know, and recognizing that you do not know what you do not know—this is knowledge”

Human beings are, for the most part, hard wired to seek to learn and to know. The early explorers set off into the unknown in search of knowledge. Sir John Franklin and his crew died in their quest to find the “North-west Passage”. . I read that the Inuit claim that if they were asked for their advice they would have survived! I suppose the white explorers felt they knew better!

I remember the first “moon landings” and the excitement that humans had finally found a new place to explore. There is now an opportunity to go to Mars, although the deadline to apply might have passed, but the only caveat is that Mars is so far away, it’s planned as a one-way trip!

When Canadian Chris Hadfield was last on the International Space Station we marvelled at the photographs he took. One was easily recognizable as Prince Edward Island. Almost everyone wanted to see a picture of a place they know - taken from outer space.

As soon as small children are able to interact, older people teach them things such as body parts, colours, names of animals and show delight when the little one gets it right! Eventually children learn to read and print and do math. Some physical activities such as walking seem to come almost naturally to children at a certain age, but others such as learning how to tie shoelaces must be taught. Grade Primary Kindergarten teachers everywhere must have rejoiced when Velcro found a new use in small shoes,

Phrases such as “me do” and “do myself” are both signs of growing up and a frustration to a parent in a hurry!

As I said though, some adults don’t like to admit they don’t know. We also find it hard to unlearn stuff we once knew for certain. To stay with the space analogy, we all remember when Pluto was the planet in our solar system farthest from the sun. Now, it’s not! Oh, Pluto is still where its been for a few billion years, still where it was when it was officially discovered about 1930, but it’s been demoted - and is now just a “dwarf planet” - mostly because its gravity is not strong enough to pull the nearby asteroids and other space clutter into its orbit or its “neighbourhood!” I think I explained it correctly!

Despite our vastly increased human knowledge, the images of the creative work of God woven into the scriptures are no less “true” today than they were when they were first put down on parchment a few thousand years ago - as long as we don’t feel we have to take them literally.

They speak of that gap between what is and what our perceptions of what is, are. They speak of what we “think” we know and ask us to step back a bit and eat some humble pie, because we actually DON’T know everything. As I have said before, the more human beings find out about this planet and the universe, the more we realize we have to learn, the more our old assumptions fall to pieces.

There has been a great deal of work done in cosmology and quantum physics in the last few years and I don’t really understand much of it but there are theologians who are seeking to make those necessary connections between the science we know and the nature of God and creation. It’s very much a work in progress.

Back when Charles Darwin made his first discoveries many people of faith were hostile because it threw what they thought they knew into disrepute and they saw it as mutually incompatible.

Theology and science have come a long way since Darwin. As a people of faith we need not fear science but still need to wrestle with what it means for our life of faith.

When we come to the focus for the season of creation - that of caring for the planet as God’s gift and mandate to us.

The certainty of previous generations came with a huge dose of arrogance. As the only sentient beings on the planet, so far as we know, we accorded ourselves higher value and felt we were entitled to far more resources that the planet could sustain. We did not contemplate that we could make something extinct until we did or almost did!

The arrogance of western explorers when our ancestors met indigenous peoples is also another example of western thinking that our ways were better than the ways of others. We have a long road ahead of us to heal the relationships with indigenous peoples all over the world. We made the assumption that we had superior knowledge and a superior culture and we did great damage.

That attitude is not new! The people whom Jesus encountered on a regular basis seemed to have had no room for new theological understandings or growth as his re-working of old images offended them.

I think that it is important that we don’t become like the people who opposed Jesus when we assume that our understandings are absolute and not open to challenge or change.

One of the recurring themes in the biblical story is the tendency of human communities not to learn from their mistakes and to have to make the same mistakes over and over again. I think that people of faith may even be more prone to this than others mostly because they connect their ideas and behaviours to God’s will.

However, when we stop looking for verses and stories to support our thoughts and behaviour and allow the texts to challenge us we will be on a much better footing and on the path to greater faithfulness.

Creation season is about giving thanks for the bounty of creation. Its like a six week celebration of God’s abundance. But its not permission to indulge in a month and a half of self-centred indulgence - it’s a period of time to celebrate this abundance and look at what God is calling us to be and do.

The wisdom texts remind us that we don’t always know as much as we thought we did. In the relatively recent past there were many things we did that ended up with outcomes that were not expected. The early explorers saw so much cod, for example, that it was thought we could never ever possibly fish it out. That was probably true with traditional fishing methods, but once factory trawlers began to sail the seas, the story and the outcome changed.

We rejoiced when penicillin was first discovered and then other antibiotics. No longer would simple infections kill people, especially soldiers wounded in battle. Then they were overused and add a few years and we now have super-bugs. It was an unintended consequence and, you could say, a sign of human arrogance. A similar thing happened when we tried to save the forest industry by killing the spruce budworm and we forgot about the food chain and how the poisons became concentrated and more toxic as they worked their way up.

When it came to societal change some churches refused to believe that just perhaps the Holy Spirit was leading them to new understandings of human life.

In this season of creation we are called, in the words of our Statement of Faith, as prompted by our own indigenous people, to “live with respect in creation”. We don’t know everything and when we realize the gap between what we know and what there is to learn we may respond in awe and humility.

Were we witnesses to the beginning of the cosmos?

Lamentations 1: 1-6
Psalm 137
Luke 17: 5-10

Oh, For The Good Ole Days!

Back in the time when the internet was new we preachers had an amazing sense of connection develop almost overnight with clergy from around the world.

We read and learned from each other’s sermons. We asked questions of one another and sought advice. Somtimes we disagreed or even agreed to disagree! I even got a line on a low cost place to stay on a trip to New York.

We learned that church is pretty much the same everywhere; we have very similar joys, sorrows and challenges, yet the images we might use to convey biblical truths to our congregations were often very different. We also learned about the joys and challenges of working in various denominations and their governance structures.

Nowhere was this sense of connection more apparent than on World Communion Sunday. I found that “World Wide Communin” really meant, “Most of North America Communion Sunday” but can affirm that when WE celebrate World Comunion Sunday what is important is not that EVERYONE is also celebrating it that day but that we acknowledge and celebrate the fact that the church is a world-wide fellowship which gathers around the teachings of Jesus and the command to break bread together.

One of those early years, someone decided that it would be a great idea to compile World Wide Communion Greetings via e-mail and eventually I received an e-mail with hundreds of names, locations and greetings. .

Since it was back in the days of tractor feed printers, (do you remember them?) I had this stack of hundreds of greetings – but I did not separate the pages at the perforations - so there the pages were, all stuck together, spilling off the edge of a table near the communion table like a runaway roll of paper towel.

I hear about disaster in other places and often I have an “internet colleague” from there. It puts a human and, at least somewhat, known face on the world and the news.

There are so many stories in the news that remind us that the world is not as it should be. Violence, unrest, natural disasters and catastrophic accidents abound. A commuter train accident in New Jersey on Thursday has injured over 100 and killed one 35 year old woman who was just waiting for her train. Last Tuesday night there was a piece on the news about the appalling state of the domestic water supply in northern first nations communities. Bombs go off. People get shot. I don’t need to go on; you have heard these and other stories!

In the midst of all of this it is easy to lose faith in the goodness of God and God’s plan for the world. It is easy to focus on what is wrong with our lives rather than see the blessings in life. It is easy to wish for a kinder, simpler time.

One of the beauties of scripture is that it gives voice to all thoughts and feelings - to both the deep felt sorrow and turmoil felt in the midst of trying circumstances, to faith and to doubt, to love and to downright revenge and hate. Taken as a whole the biblical text gives voice to the gamut of human experience.

The people for whom the Lamentations and Psalm passages were written were in a situation of utter despair. Their lives had, literally, fallen apart and they were in exile. To put it in modern language, they were refugees in a far off country, and the locals made fun of them and taunted them by asking them to sing the songs of their beautiful country that once was. They could even have been told to “go back home and stop taking our jobs”. It was like rubbing salt in open wounds.

Yet, this part of the tradition does not exist in isolation from the ones which speak of strong faith; a faith that can “move mountains”. It never fails to amaze me when the most unlikely people end up being the most thankful and the most generous in a time of another’s need. When the Fort Mack fires were at their worst a group of refugees families from Edmonton sent help because they knew what it was like to lose everything and were so grateful to have been welcomed to their new country.

When we gather around this table we are reminded that we are joined in faith by a fellowship of people around the world. We hold these people in prayer as they hold us. When our faith grows dim they hold the light for us as we do for them.

Let us come to the table to receive strength and light and hope and love so that we can be and proclaim those things in our lives.

Amen.

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

Gratitude as an Approach to Life

How many of you have ever seen “The Vicar of Dibley”? This British comedy follows the ups and downs of parish life in a sleepy English parish near London after the bishop sends them their first female vicar. As far as I know it started to air before the Church of England actually ordained women!

There are both hilarious and touching moments as they all become adjusted to the meeting of old and new. The episode I am thinking of at this point is the one called, “The Handsome Stranger” and the scene is the “marriage proposal”. A short time after a “handsome stranger” bought the house not far from the rectory and moved to the village for the weekends, he and Geraldine, the vicar, start to date. She is completely and utterly smitten but she is not sure the feeling is mutual. He arrives at her door late one night, obviously very nervous, and asks her to marry him saying, among other things, “I absolutely know we are meant to be together forever and that we will always be happy”.

We all know though that this was just a tv show, and a comedy at that, and real life is never that simple. Things happen in a marriage that can tarnish, or destroy, those intentions for marriage and sometimes they were never truly there in the first place! Yet, marriage, like many other things in life is supposed to be entered into with the intention of making a happy life together - till one of the couple dies. The couple promises to love, honour and cherish, to use traditional language, in all of the varied circumstances that might come their way. It’s a tall order, but for some reason many people still take those vows and start their their married life with those intentions.

This is Thanksgiving Sunday and we just heard a text that tells people what will happen next in the life of their “rag tag” group and that, in essence, “they WILL be thankful.”

What’s going on here anyway?

A little biblical refresher might be helpful here. The people of Israel had been slaves in Egypt. They cried out to God for release from the torment of captivity and God called Moses, an Israelite raised in the Egypian palace, but on the run from the law, to go back to Egypt and convince the Pharaoh, or King, to let the people go. Well, he did go back and to make a long story short, they were released from captivity. However, instead of going straight to the land they were promised, they got distracted and it took about 40 years to arrive on the riverbank from which they could see their final destination. That’s today!

The reasons for this delay are numerous and not really relevant to this sermon! However, 40 years is a long time! 40 years is a LIFETIME. It’s a long time, especially when you know that you aren’t settling down here in the wilderness; this is not meant to be your home! Many, if not most, of the people who had been in Egypt and had been slaves and felt the sting of the overseer’s whip, were now dead and their children knew nothing but the wilderness, the boredom, the monotony of the diet of manna and occasional quail and the leadership of Moses and his closest associates.

No doubt, they had been hearing stories of the land of promise, the land “flowing with milk and honey” their entire lives. No doubt they heard stories of the “bad old days” in Egypt. Sometimes, life in the wilderness was so rough the days in Egypt were seen to be ”good old days”. I suppose some of them did not truly believe that the stories of this promised land were true or that they would ever actually get there but here, in this passage, just BEFORE they enter the land, \ BEFORE they harvest their first crop, they are commanded to celebrate a thanksgiving ritual.

There are two things which strike me about this ritual. One, is that it is given to them BEFORE they enter the land. They are about to cross the threshold of their future and they - and they are told what they must do when they are harvesting their first crop. They haven’t even planted it yet!

Second, this is a festival of first-fruits. This not a “we’ve had a good year and more than paid the cost of seed and fertilizer and such” - this is a “here are the first products of our crop and we are thankful.” That is an exercise in trust - trust that the birds wont get to the rest of the ripe grapes before they do, trust that the weather won’t turn bad and ruin the rest of the harvest.

So thankfulness is the attitude they start with, BEFORE they even plant and it is the attitude as they begin their harvest. Thanksgiving is an attitude that they are not solely the authors of their own success and they need to acknowledge this from time to time.

We tend think of Thanksgiving as a celebration which involves feasting and plenty. How many of us will sit down to a dinner with more food than we need, more food than we can possibly eat?

However, how many of us have had a death or tragedy happen at this time of year and then be reminded of that each and every year?

I was interested to read an article in the most recent issue of the United Church Observer titled “the Gratitude Effect”.

From this article we learn that, being thankful is good for you! Being grateful is good for those around you.” Apparently this is not just anecdotal evidence. There have been studies which have proven it!

Think of the cup half empty people you know! For them, there is always something wrong. For them, there is always something missing. For them, it was better at some other time in their lives.

Then there are the glass half-full people who are much more delightful to be around. They may have problems, indeed they may have many problems, but they count their blessings, express thankfulness and don’t focus too much on what they could have, but don’t. They are much easier to be with in community, much easier friends.

THEN there are the people whose glass may be very small, but they’ll tell you that it’s full to overflowing! If the sun isn’t shining right now, it will in the morning and they are thankful for the sunshine they have enjoyed in the past. There is always something for which they are giving thanks and expressing appreciation.

FINALLY, on Facebook the other day, I was reminded that “the glass” can always be re-filled! Think about that one!

I can recall a visit I did recently and I would expect the people to be “woe is me” but they weren’t - they were expressing gratitude, thanksgiving and a feeling of real blessedness.

A lot of you lived through the “Great Depression”, (the one in the 1930's) and that changed the attitude of many people toward money and possessions. I read an article on the internet the other day which was about how people got through this time.

Don’t waste anything, grow as much as you can, stick together, and fear not. Those who got through “the depression” best were those who knew the strength of community and sharing and seeking blessing, not in material possessions but in community, together and sharing.

Let us be thankful and live in thankfulness all our days. Let it be our first thought in the morning and the last thought at night.

Amen.