Pentecost Season - Year C-- 2025
Indexed by Date. Sermons for Pentecost and the Season After Pentecost Year C
Proverbs 8: 1-4, 22-31
Psalm 8
John 16: 12-15
Do you remember when gas pumps had clunky analog displays that limited the price to .99 a gallon. When the price went over that the gas stations put a sticker on the pump that said, “actual price is 2X what the display indicates.” Then we all went metric and the price seemed to go way down, though the price of filling up, did not! Surprise, surprise! My dad was filling up the family car one day and said, “I wonder how long it will be before gas is over the $1 a litre? It took a while, but he did live to see that price, and higher! Somewhere I have a picture taken when I was student minister and in addition to the make and model of the car I was driving, the price on the gas station sign is a dead give away that it is an old photograph. I was researching this on the internet and the modern speculation is, “how long it will be before gas goes over $9.99 a litre.” We will need a new display on the gas pump! Or a new source of fuel.
When I was in brownies, we played Kim’s Game in which we were asked to memorize a number of common objects that were displayed on a tray for a short time. The winner was the person who had the longest list - of right answers. Apparently, versions of the game are used to teach observational skills to military personnel and police officers. I’m sure er staff in hospitals have to hone these kinds of skills when multiple traumas roll in the doors and they have to keep various vital signs straight.
Have you ever gone somewhere familiar, perhaps the route to work that you drive every day and you arrived at the office and realized that you didn’t remember going through a certain intersection or past a certain building. Obviously, you did - but the drive had come to be so routine that your car might as well as have been on autopilot. You might check for dents and bloodstains and when there are none, you breathe a sigh of relief! I remember when a pheasant ran into my car on my way to church - that certainly caught my attention, and there was evidence left behind.
I have several apps, or games really, on my phone that ask me to pick out differences between 2 almost identical pictures. One day I was looking at the set of pictures and I noticed that something was off about the shirts. Each picture was identical but something was just not right. Maybe its because I sew and know how to sew on buttons and place buttonholes. Finally, I realized that the button holes placket was underneath the button side and not on top! The shirt, as depicted in the drawing, could not be worn in that way - unless the buttons were on the underside. No one makes a shirt that way! Many things in life, especially sewing, require attention to detail and an understanding of the way these things work!
I have a friend from Theological school who always remembers my birthday. Since we graduated in 1987 or ‘88, until e-mail took over the world, in early June a card would arrive in the mail with her birthday greetings - now it arrives by e-mail. She did not fail me this year; I looked at her animated card on Tuesday evening. It warms my heart to be remembered in this way for so long.
The churches with a liturgical leaning, including the United Church, observe the Sunday after Pentecost as “Trinity Sunday”. The trinity is one of the most difficult concepts to understand in Christian teaching. Do you remember when the breath-mint, “Certs,” was advertised as “two mints in one?” I don’t think Certs exist anymore. I recall reading a reflection on the trinity which referenced Certs and described it was a way of seeing the divine as “three gods in one.”
When the early church began to look for metaphors to explain the ways in which God’s power can be described and experienced by human beings, the concept of the trinity came about. Solidly remaining in the Hebrew tradition of “one God,” the church had to find a way to explain and understand the divine in a way that allowed for humans to experience God as Creator and in Jesus, the Christ and in the Holy Spirit.
There was one family in small town which had three men named John, from three successive generations, living in the same house. The phone rang one day and the caller asked for John. The woman who answered the phone replied, “do you want John the Father, John the Son or John the holy terror?
My supervisor from my first internship in 1985 (whom I plan to meet with over coffee next month and who I have not seen in over 35 years) told me that there was a “beatnik version” of the trinity- DaddyO, LaddyO and Spook. When I was in theological school we explored “names” for the “persons” of the trinity other than “Father, Son and Holy Ghost (or Holy Spirit).” Creator, Christ and Spirit. Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer. And a number of others. Around this time, the World Council of Churches met and decided that Christian baptism, to be recognized across denominations, had to be in the name of the “Father, Son and Sprit” though it did not preclude churches from using additional, less exclusive terms. I was speaking with the local Catholic priest a number of years ago - a family from my congregation wanted to become Roman Catholic and he was confirming that our baptism used the proper “Trinitarian” formula or else the family members would have had to be re-baptized. Other denominations require re-baptism because we practice infant baptism and they do not.
As part of my course work, I have read weighty tomes on this topic and was none the wiser at the end than at the beginning and if I go on, I will be in danger of being branded a heretic.
What I will try to do is to explore the topic from the human side, from the point of human experience. One of my favourite passages from the Psalms was in today’s Psalm response, When I look to the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you have set in their places, what are we mortals that you should be mindful of us, mere human beings that you should care for us? It is a humble expression of faith in which the Psalmist realizes the privilege of being human, knowing and being known by creator.
Too often we look at the familiar and take it for granted whether it be mountain, or prairie, or sea coast; sunrise or sunset; fair weather or violent gale. These passages call us to STOP and take notice of what is familiar; the things we take for granted. They call us to stop and reflect on the relationship between human and divine. One of the gifts that native spirituality has given us is an elevation of the non human part of creation - creator can be seen and experienced in so many other parts of creation. Gratitude is and should be expressed for all that sustains our lives - plant and animal, earth and sky.
Humans are not self-made and passages such as these remind us ro take notice and truly give thanks.
One of the things for which Col Chris Hadfield became famous was his photographs from space. One of my favourite photographs, was taken years before Col Hadfield became an astronaut; it would not have been possible before the space age. It is a photo of the earth taken by astronauts in December of 1972 and it is often called the “blue marble.” You can clearly see the east coast of the USA, Mexico and Central America but Saskatchewan IS there somewhere under the blue sky. You can see how much of our planet is made up of water. I have read that it’s actually a number of photos stitched together, not one image, but it nevertheless shows us as we are - but few humans will ever have the privilege of standing outside of ourselves to see it, for ourselves.
I love “surprise” views - such as the one I have when driving into the town of Banff and turning the corner and all of a sudden seeing that enormous mountain right in front of me at the end of the street - or seeming to be so. I know its there, it should be no surprise, but it gets me every time.
I remember flying into Regina for the first time many years ago and it was daylight. Plowed black fields stretched out below me. My first thought was, “why did they burn all the grass?” Then, I realized that the shade of black below was the soil colour, not burned stubble. I had never seen fields that vast before that!
As I drive in Saskatchewan I never cease to be amazed by the fields of canola (or flax, stretching as far as the sky can see and how the sky meets the land at the horizon in its unique way.
I will never get tired of the peace that comes from sitting in a canoe on calm water on a moonlit night. Or going to any fishing port on the Bay of Fundy at low tide and wondering, “how did those boats get here? right now there is not enough water to get your feet wet, let alone bring in a fishing boat.” In a few hours, the water will rise and the captains will take them out once again to check their traps, drag for scallops or haul their nets. Just because it is a daily occurrence should not be a cause for us to ignore the wonder.
We can pick our spot and feel awe and wonder and the hand of a creator who called it into being.
In the Psalm for today, we have the long ago, anonymous writer reflecting on the same sort of thing. God is busy, the fact that people matter to God is amazing. It’s too bad that people got the idea that people mattered more than the rest of creation and creation was abused beyond its capacity to cope and renew itself. As a result we find ourselves in the mess of climate change and we teeter on the brink.
When I was young each worship service taught us about the Trinity even if it could not explain it
Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee.
Holy, holy, holy! merciful and mighty!
God in three Persons, blessed Trinity.
The Trinity is simply a way of trying to explain that which is impossible to explain but is also an invitation to seek a deeper truth and a deeper experience.
As we embark on the journey through the season of Pentecost - which will take the rest of the year, we are reminded that God - Creator, Christ and Spirit, surrounds us in love and care and wishes to be in relationship with us. This God wishes us a fullness of life whereby we are aware to our deepest being that we are God’s beloved AND that we do not cease from singing our faith. As I learned in youth group, “I want the world to know, the God of love has come to me, I want to pass it on.”
Amen.
1 Kings 19: 1-15a
Psalm 42 - 43
Galatians 3: 23-29
It was at the 24th Olympiad in Seoul, South Korea. Ben Johnson, a Canadian, won the 100m in 9.79 seconds and became, by default, the fastest man in the world. Then, three days later, we saw again and again that crushing news conference where it was announced that Johnson had tested positive for the metabolites of a banned steroid and he was stripped of the gold. From sea to sea Canadians were in mourning - most of all we were embarrassed. In 1993 another drug test showed an abnormal testosterone to epitestosterone ratio, apparently a sign of banned drugs, and he was banned from competition for the rest of his life.
Usain Bolt, a Jamaican, currently holds the world record at 9.58 seconds.
Before the Olympics in 1988 Johnson was hailed as Canada’s fastest man and possibly the fastest in the whole world. This Canadian was going to do us proud! This Canadian was going to bring us the gold and indeed he did, FOR THREE SHORT DAYS. But, after that fateful news conference, our media almost instantly began referring to him as a “Jamaican-Canadian”, or “Jamaican-born Canadian.” It seemed like the Canadian media wanted to put as much distance as possible between him and “real Canadians.” Since he was born elsewhere, giving him a hyphenated status seemed to be the easiest way to do it.
Occasionally, I have the privilege of talking with people about their own funerals. I remember one such discussion. I knew that this woman had married a widower with a small child and then they had three children, now with children and grandchildren of their own. I asked her how I was to refer to the children and grandchildren and she said, “ I have four children, there are no steps in my house”. The little girl, too young to remember her biological mother, and long since a grown woman, was her daughter, equally. As we know, for some families there IS conflict and favouritism. It turned out that this woman’s funeral was my last in that Pastoral Charge. There was even a connection between that daughter and my own family; not unusual for PEI.
In the early church there was a controversy about belonging lurking in the background. To make matters simple, there were Christians who had been Jewish and Christians who had come to faith in Jesus from other faith groups, cultures and countries. Since Jesus and his disciples were all Jewish and the belief in a Messiah was a Jewish one, some in the church felt those in the second group should convert to Judaism first and then become Christ followers. For the men this meant circumcision. For everyone it meant a tacit acceptance of a nationalistic view of the world that made everyone else second-class. After all the people of Israel were, “God’s chosen people.” As tensions between synagogue and church increased the distinction eventually became moot, but at the first it was a thorny issue.
In this context Paul tells the people of the community of faith from Galatia that there should be no distinctions between and among them.
This is positively mind blowing! Keep in mind that Paul was a devout Jew. I believe that he even bragged that his following of the law was exemplary - and he was, initially, a vicious persecutor of those who had begun to hang around with the Jesus people. Not only did he come to belief in Jesus but he also recognized that those who had never been Jewish, were to be of equal value to those who had been children of Abraham. That is an amazing turn around.
When I was in High School we studied the works of George Orwell - 1984 and Animal Farm. Similar to the Handmaid’s Tale, they are dystopian tales about the future. In 1984 I was in my last year of my undergrad and had the class sweatshirt - with a large “84" in gold on the front. One of my professors noted that the shirt reminded him of the Orwell novel by the same name. Another Orwell novel, Animal Farm depicts a world run by the farm animals and the pigs are in charge. As I recall the animals overthrow their human oppressors and begin to run things themselves. But as the porcine members of the animal community jockey for top spot, their slogan, “All Animals are Equal” changes into “Some Animals are More Equal Than Others.” Of course, the new slogan is an oxymoron, “more equal” makes no sense, but it is one of Orwell’s critiques of totalitarian regimes.
What if this epistle was written, not to the Christian Community in Galatia but to our churches here in Saskatchewan, here in the Bridging Waters Communities of Faith - two congregations 10kms apart. What would Paul tell us in Chapter 7, if there was a chapter 7?
Many years ago, I was talking with one of the Stewardship people who worked at our General Council Offices in Toronto. He was meeting with our Conference Committee somewhere in Nova Scotia. He had a hard time with “tradition”. He said, “in the church I attend, we pay very little attention to the past; all our time is spent looking to the future. What are we going to do in the coming year? What are our goals? His congregation was a new church development and few people, if any, were second generation. For the most part we were trying to provide leadership to congregations whose members had been there for generations. In such cpngregations, “we don’t do it that way” is a common response to a new idea.
About 25 years ago one of my retired church members was thanked for helping with the church suppers they had in the summer, with these words, “Thank you- it’s so nice to see the new people taking part.”
Later on, she sounded off to me, “new - new, we’ve lived here all summer for 20 years. I go to church almost every week.” One young adult was spoken to harshly in the kitchen because “that’s not the way to do it;” when she worked as a cook for the University President and was competent and capable.
Of course there are food preparation rules that we must follow - but as far as I know, none govern the way carrots are cut or potatoes are peeled.
I was looking at church ads a few years ago and one ad boasted, “we sing all the old hymns!” I was speaking with a minister in another congregation who said, “we are trying to have the vast majority of our hymns be ones that were written in this century.
I was speaking with new parishioners who had retired and moved in with their daughter. They told me that their old congregation, in another province, had frequent informal fund-raisers. The church pillars would decide that they wanted something that was not in the budget and would pass around a pledge sheet on a clip board. The well-heeled members of the congregation were usually very generous, but this working couple felt intimidated - they felt like they never really belonged because they could not keep up with that kind of generosity.
Some churches have no time for new music, but as I said, some are just the opposite. My experience is to teach the new music to the children. Also, if you want to teach new music, in a foreign language, have a peppy tune and bring it out for VBS. I remember when we had a smashing success with the song, “amigos de Christos”, in other words “friends of the Lord”.
Bruce Harding is a well known United Church musician, based in BC, who travels often. One day he was taking a taxi to the airport and he asked the cab driver, a person of colour with a heavy accent, where he was from. Upon hearing the answer the white, balding, red-head, who knows More Voices inside out, began to sing a hymn from that new hymn book. He said the cab driver’s head spun around like he was an owl. He was hearing his faith language sung by a balding redheaded white guy thousands of kilometres from his native land. They hapily sand that and other hymns for the rest of the drive to the airport. Instead of creating divisions among the two, the words of faith united them across barriers of language, race and culture.
There are some people who consider the King James bible to be the only version of any value. It is a beautiful translation if you also love the works of Shakespeare but understanding it fully required a very high reading level. In addition that long ago translation is actually not as accurate as more modern ones. Better and older original manuscripts have been discovered and hundreds of more years of experience with the English Bible has improved the work. I have heard it said, in jest (I hope) “If King James English was good enough for Jesus, it is good enough for me!”
To begin with, Jesus did not speak English; neither did the people in Britain at that time. English It would not take over in Britain for about 500 years.
We can easily extrapolate the passage to mean those who speak different languages. In addition to Greek being another language, it was also totally different culture and way of thinking. When quill was put to parchment, the gospel writers wrote in Greek.
When we look at the face of another, it is a common to pick out differences rather than look for similarities. We have a great opportunity when we encounter someone who is different in any way, to welcome a friend in Christ.
I am currently reading a book by Bishop Mariann Budde, who is the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. After the death of George Floyd the American psyche began a long overdue reckoning with the racism that was simmering just under the service. As they say, “if looks could kill,” President Trump would have struck her down, as she said very little more than we are called to love and value all of God’s people and God’s beloved world. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion seeme to be on the chopping block as the backlash from dissatisfied white voters seems to be cheering their president. Even though we are not American we do have concerns, other than tariffs as this kind of thinking, this kind of racism, this kind of “hate of the other,” gains a greater foothold.
As people of faith we need to pause and reflect on the question, “what actions and attitudes do our faith call from us” and then we need to go forth to do and be that kind of people.
There is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no male or female, for all are one in Christ.
Amen.