Reflections for Sunday, May 26, 2019 – 6th in Easter
1st Scripture Reading:  Acts 16:9-15 & Psalm 67
Reflection:
          Our readings this morning are rather mystical, as well as being spiritual, aren’t they?  Paul’s vision of a man calling his group to Macedonia follows hard on his being guided by the Spirit of Jesus NOT to go into the town of Bithynia.  Paul and his followers were on a mission to grow and strengthen the fledgling churches in the area.
          We are to understand that Paul’s mission is guided by the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, of whom we will read more later this morning.  Clearly there is more going on here than mere human whimsy.
          The apostle Paul had a huge, over-riding vision of the church of God.  And this vision was to drive him mercilessly until the day he died.  Whatever you might think of Paul, he definitely was listening to the little voice speaking to him from within himself.
          We struggle with this sort of thing, don’t we?  Is that little voice the guiding voice of the Holy Spirit?  Or is it the sound of my own egoic ambitions?  Always, my friends, we must learn to discern what is truly spiritual guidance from what might simply be our own selfish desires.
          One of the ways we do that is by prayer – by making sure we attend to the care of our spiritual nature by prayer, or meditation, or reading holy books.  We must spend time reflecting on spiritual matters in order to build spiritual muscle – to develop the power of discernment.
          God’s face indeed shines upon us, and blesses us in so many ways – but are we taking care of our part of the bargain:  sharing what we know about God and God’s ways with others, and being good and responsible stewards of all the gifts God has blessed us with?
          As we sing together this morning, let our voices ring out with gratitude for all that we enjoy.
Hymn #236 VU “Now Thank we all our God”
 
2nd Scripture Reading:  Revelation 21:10, 22:1-5 & John 14:23-29
Reflection:
          In our reading from Revelation this morning, we see that John has had a vivid and detailed vision of the New Jerusalem.  It is fantastic and mystifying, and it is a vision.  In my experience these mystical dreams or visions are meant to teach or clarify something for us – something that our limited understanding has not yet been able to grasp.  Usually they bear little resemblance to our ordinary reality – but they are no less useful and enlightening for all that.
          And we really don’t know where they come from, or who is responsible for planting them in the minds of our mystics or visionaries.  But in the reading from the Gospel of John, we hear Jesus putting such things into a context his people can understand or at least believe.  He tells them that they should not grieve his passing, because this passing “activates” the coming of the Holy Spirit to live among and in them.  This “Advocate” will continue to teach them and to remind them of Jesus’ teachings while he was with them. 
          So there will be a “voice for God” hovering over every shoulder, reminding us all of God’s ways and the teachings of the Master Jesus.
          What evidence of that might we see around us today?  What came to mind for me as I continued to read about Paul’s visit to Macedonia, was his conversation with the woman, Lydia, who was a dealer in purple cloth.  Lydia was probably a very rich woman, since purple cloth was an extravagant luxury in those days.  But she was also a worshipper of God, the writer says.  I find this a refreshing story behind the history of the early Christian church.  This woman of influence and wealth became a solid supporter of Paul’s mission.  She had already drawn around herself a group of Godly women to pray together outside, by a river – a place of prayer.
          So following our original line of thought, Paul was guided to this group of helpful and influential women who became baptised, and then early founders and promoters of his church.       
          Two thousand and more years later, and we still see that women are an integral and important contributor to the survival of the Christian church, with many now taking leadership roles that had been previously denied to them.
          And this phenomenon is not restricted to the church.  All our modern day institutions are finding they must include more women in leadership positions, as the dominance of a patriarchal system in place for millennia is slowly but surely crumbling before our eyes.
          Women are no longer being guided by fear of male retaliation or punishment, instead listening to the voice of the God of justice, and of righteousness. No longer will they remain silent while their children are abused or their own bodies or spirits violated.  The little voice is getting stronger, people of God.  Our spiritual evolution has been slow but steady, and a Spirit of fairness has invaded our consciousness.  We don’t believe the lies about women’s inferiority and inherent weakness that makes them unsuitable to lead – those lies ring hollow in our ears these days, and this my friends is cause for rejoicing. 
                   God, Holy Spirit, Spirit of Jesus, Higher Power of the Divine, whatever you like to call  our highest spiritual awareness – that voice calls to us, calls us to a life of integrity, of fairness, and of justice for all.
          Listen, children of God, listen to God’s call to mission and to abundant life.  This is our journey, the journey Christ calls us to, the journey of which we are now and have always been a part.
 
Hymn #21MV “Open our hearts”
 

Reflections for Sunday, May 19, 2019
1st Scripture Reading:  Acts 11:1-18 & Psalm 148
Reflection:
          “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”
It was not until after Jesus’ death and resurrection that the gospel began to be taken to non Jewish people.  The Jews at that time had very strict rules about what they could eat, how it must be prepared, and who they were permitted to eat it with.  In fact their whole culture was very insular – all their social and religious activities being dictated, shaped, by many rules.
So this vision of Peter’s must have seemed very shocking and counter-intuitive to him.  We Jews don’t mix with Gentiles (non-Jewish people), we don’t eat with them or marry them, or worship with them.
What Peter heard in his dream/vision was that it was time to let go of those man-made, exclusivist rules – rules that separated  the Jewish people from everyone else – that is, from the rest of God’s Creation.
But it was only Peter who heard this message at this time.  Others of the disciples were uneasy with his decision to meet with these uncircumcised people, as he felt guided by his God to do – to go to them, and not to make any distinction between them and his own people. 
After Peter explained to the others why he had taken the good news to these gentiles, and how he had seen how the Holy Spirit fell on them – just as it had on them in the beginning, they believed him and praised God, saying:  “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”
“To repent” is to feel sorry for something you have done or not done – to feel contrition, deep in your heart for having fallen short of the mark.  We don’t like to talk about this much these days, many of us having had enough of shaming and blaming in our lives.  We like to hear the good news of God’s mercy and infinite forgiveness, but we don’t realize that this alone does not absolve us of our guilt.  The key to forgiveness, cleansing, and new life in God and in Jesus, is taking responsibility for our mistakes, allowing ourselves to genuinely feel sorry for what we have done, and to make amends wherever that is possible.
Taking responsibility.  That’s a big one, isn’t it?  So much easier to blame someone else, or the circumstances, or the weather….anything but face the truth of what we have done.
Easy to look at our fallen neighbours and feel superior.  Easy to look at the big problems of our time and excuse ourselves by saying that there is nothing we could do about it anyway.  Too easy,apparently, to prioritize jobs and the economy over the inheritance we will leave our children of a degraded environment, massive climate change, and mass extinctions of other species.
The gift of God, people of God, is the gift of repentance and forgiveness that heralds the beginning of new life.  What God has made clean we must learn to treat with respect.
 
Hymn #178 MV “Who is my mother”
 
 
 
 
2nd Scripture Reading:  Revelation 21:1-6  & John 13:31-35
Reflection:
Two things struck me from the reading from Revelation 21 this morning:  “Then I saw a new Heaven and a new Earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.” And:  “See, the home of God is among mortals…”
I find hope in these phrases.  I don’t read doom and gloom into this reading, but I do read a whole lot of change!   A turning the world upside down kind of change!
I do believe we have profaned and are still profaning virtually every other part of God’s creation – including leaving our space garbage floating around in the heavens.  I think of the barge loads of our Canadian garbage the Philippine leaders are demanding we take back from their shores, the massive floating islands of garbage in our oceans, the destruction of habitat of so many other species without concern for their well-being, and the tightening up of our immigration laws, as so many other lands are rendered uninhabitable by climate changes and exploitation by wealthy corporations.  So let’s add the cruelty of exclusion of those children of God who are fleeing the ravages inflicted on their own countries to our list of profanities.
This is not easy to grapple with folks.  I know I am probably overwhelming you, just as I myself am feeling overwhelmed at times by the evil that we do that is all around us.  But Jesus warned us not to go back to sleep, and to open our eyes to the reality of what we have created. 
Which brings us to the second phrase that struck me today:  “The home of God is among mortals.”  Created in the image of the Creator, we are very creative – that is very evident in our technological and agricultural advancements in the last few decades even.  What I believe we have not done is take responsibility for the effects of our inventiveness on a global scale.  We have acted irresponsibly, in my opinion, as stewards of this great planet, this web of life of which we are a part. 
Look around you, folks.  Can we survive without gardens to grow our vegetables and fruits?  Without pollinators to ensure a crop?  Without water to sustain those plants?  Without animals for meat?  Do you want to live in a world without birds and butterflies?  How about a world where there is not enough of anything, and we are constantly at war to protect what little we have left?
I have been painting you a picture, as I see it, of the old world – the world that is passing away.  But God promises us a new world – that God who lives in and among us knows that we are capable, if we take responsibility, of creating with God, the new world that will come.  In that new world we will demand peace, and justice, and we will love God and our neighbours as ourselves. And God will wipe away every tear from our eyes.
 
Hymn #713 VU “I see a new heaven”
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Reflections for Sunday, May 12, 2019
1st Scripture Reading:  Acts 9:36-43, and Psalm 23
Reflection:
Read from Ralph Milton’s Lectionary Story Bible:  “Dorcas and Anna help each other”.
Hymn # 747 VU “The Lord’s My Shepherd”
 
2nd Scripture Reading:  Revelation 7:9-17 and John 10:22-30
Reflection:
          Sometimes things aren’t what we think they are. Sometimes things don’t look like we think they should. 
          I mean the whole book of Revelation doesn’t fit into what most of us would call reality!  In fact, seriously, the whole of our Bible is full of stories and poetry and accounts of events that many of us find frankly unbelievable.
          And yet….  There is truth here.  There is truth that is living water for those of us struggling to understand why we are here, how did we get here, and what are we supposed to be doing.
          The Jews had been expecting and praying for a Messiah to show them the way out of oppression and slavery for a very long time. So when Jesus shows up, some folk recognize him as someone very special, some even call him the Messiah – but many are sceptical.  In this reading from the Gospel of John we see this drawn out for us very clearly. “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah tell us plainly.”
          We know what we see, what we hear – what we can touch. It is sometimes very hard to see what we have never seen before, or to understand words we have never heard before.  Jesus brought humanity an invitation to a new way of seeing, a new level of understanding – a huge shift in consciousness that would take all humankind in a new direction for the next several millennia.
But he didn’t look like the Messiah to the Jews.  We can only guess what they expected him to look like – maybe a strong military leader seated on a gloriously adorned white horse.  Maybe a king with a fabulous golden crown and sceptre.  We don’t know.  What we are told here is that they did not expect him to look like the itinerant preacher that he was, the son of Joseph the carpenter – a local boy, if you will.
Shaking people awake, opening their eyes to a new way of understanding their world, their reality – that is a very big challenge.  It requires stretching our minds, opening our eyes to possibilities we hadn’t entertained before.  That’s why the miracles of healing were such an important part of Jesus’ teaching. He even says so in this reading:  “The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me.”
And then there is the Book of Revelation.  So mysterious, so outside the realm of anything the Jews encountered as their everyday reality. So magical!  This mystery, this mystical vision is so different from ordinary seeing that to grasp its meaning at all requires that we stretch our longing toward the heavens, toward God.
I find this reading so hopeful, so encouraging!  All peoples of all nations shall stand before the throne of God – all will be welcomed into the kingdom.  All suffering will end, and all will be fed the living water of God that is our salvation.
God’s great love, as demonstrated to us by Jesus, colours outside all the lines!
 
Hymn #138 MV “My Love Colours Outside the Lines”