Reflections for Sunday, August 25, 2019
1st Scripture Reading:  Isaiah 5: 1-7  & Psalm 80
Reflection:
          Isaiah’s prophecy in this reading is both reassuring and heartbreaking.  God sings for God’s beloved.  The people of Israel, the chosen people, are God’s beloved. But the rest of the reading is a poem of disappointment…”What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it?”asks God. “When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?”  (God)”expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry.”
          It begs the age-old question:  why are we, why are people, the way we are?  Why do we do terrible things to each other?  Given free choice, made in the image of the Divine, why do we continue to make bad choices, choices that are hurtful to each other and to God?
          Why does it take us so long to learn that there are consequences to the actions that spring from the choices we make?  As President Trump is demonstrating for the world to see, punitive, nasty treatment of another powerful country will certainly result in equally devastating counter measures, and a trade war that threatens to send the world into a spiral of economic meltdown and domestic hardship, attested to by international experts and markets.
          We are punished by our own actions.  God is not punitive.  We are the beloved, with all our warts and our darkness.  The negative conditions that seem to be closing in on us are not Divine Intervention – those conditions are what we have created by the choices we make – as my wise mother would say:  “We have brought this on ourselves.”
          And so, the Amazon jungle burns, the Arctic ice melts, and we continue to choose or to tolerate bully boy leaders who seem to care only about lining their own pockets.  Leaders who demonstrate little concern for the poor and disadvantaged of the world, and even less for the survival of this planet which exists only to support and nourish us and all other sentient beings.
          I don’t believe we can plead ignorance, people of God.  We have been given the freedom to choose between good and evil, and the knowledge of the difference between them.  We have been given all we need to lead good and happy lives in harmonious communities.  The part of us that rebels against the limitations this knowledge necessarily puts on our behaviour – that part of us – each and every one of us – must be gently reined in and a wholesome discipline applied. Every generation is charged with teaching the children how to do this.  We neglect our responsibilities in this area to our peril.
          We have not been left rudderless in this area.  We are the Beloved of God, and we can be salvaged and healed.  There is mercy, and there is grace.  But there is also responsibility and an expectation that we can learn from the teachings of our tradition, and from the experiences God leads us thru.
          My question this morning to you and to the Church writ large is this:  If we do not share the teachings of Jesus the Christ with others, who will?
Hymn #144 MV “Like a Healing Stream”
 
2nd Scripture reading:  Luke 12:49-56 
Reflection:  “Read the Signs”
          I decided not to read or discuss in detail the reading from Hebrews chapter 11 this morning, because the detailed descriptions of the atrocities inflicted on the early Christians is brutal and once again points to that part of humanity’s psyche that chooses to do evil things. And also because I personally do not believe that the way to please God is to suffer the insufferable, in a vain attempt to emulate the terrible suffering of Jesus.
          Cease to do evil, learn to do good. Speak truth to power. Do unto others as you would have them do to you.  Love one another as Jesus loves us.  Forgive and be merciful to those who persecute you, for this is how God loves each of us.  Live in Peace.  Be joyful in harmonious communities.  Celebrate love and kindness.  Take responsibility for your actions – make restitution if necessary.
          These are the values that govern the Christian life. But we are not there all the time, are we?  Jesus points out in this reading that there will be strife even within families over these teachings.  There will be struggle as old ways must be abandoned to move us closer to the truth about who and whose we really are.  Schisms happened within the early Christian church and many denominational splits still exist. These splits and schisms have disrupted families and broken marriages and destroyed careers.  Many non-religious people point to the violence that is attributable to religious fanaticism  as the reason why they choose not to align themselves with any organized religion.
          The United Church of Canada is going thru a time of massive change, brought on by the changing times.  More and more people are choosing not to join a church.  There has been a precipitous drop in membership and attendance and therefore in income in the last few decades.  Human rights as enshrined in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms seemed to directly challenge the Church’s traditional beliefs about homosexuality and women’s rights.  Slow to change, our church, along with the other mainstream churches, began to hemorrhage.  Far from being seen as a leader in these areas, the church began to look like a dinosaur.  Secular society marched ahead with unprecedented social change and left the churches in the dust of antiquated ideas and too rigid mores.
          Reading the signs, correctly, if a bit slowly, our United Church of Canada began to take the necessary steps to renew and reinvent itself.  We are now ordaining women on par with men, and we have removed all barriers to homosexual persons becoming ministers.
          We still struggle with patriarchal and homophobic attitudes, but slowly, and sometimes painfully we are making the necessary changes in our attitudes, our behaviours, and our language.  Yes, people of God, the words we choose to use do matter.  The exclusivist use of male pronouns and adjectives to represent the Divine is painful to many women.  We shape and structure the world around us by the words we use.  For generations we have been isolating and punishing the LGBTQ community, and our indigenous neighbours by the use of insulting and denigrating language.
          All this must change and is changing – and our church, the United Church is working very hard to meet the challenges that this entails.  And Jesus was very right!  It is hard work, and it divides us as some cling to the old beliefs that have governed their lives, while for others these changes can’t come fast enough.
          But come they will, as surely as the caterpillar becomes the butterfly we are becoming who we are meant to be.  We are the beloved – it is time to step up to the plate!
 
Hymn #606 VU “In Christ there is no East or West”
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Reflections for Sunday, August 18, 2019
1st Scripture Readings:  Jeremiah 1:4-10  & Psalm 71
Reflection:
          In this season following Pentecost – the coming of the Holy Spirit to rest on the followers of Jesus so long ago, we reflect on the different ways God’s people experience the presence of Spirit in their lives.
          The prophet Jeremiah, even as he was “only a boy” had a very strong sense of God’s presence in his life.  He felt strongly directed, called, if you like, to be a voice for God – to proclaim God’s words to the people of Israel.
          Our Bible, our scriptures, are the story thru the ages of humanity’s relationship with God.  And other religions – well, their scriptures are the story of those people’s relationship with God as they see God.
          We humans, created by Holy Mystery, have always been aware of some Divine presence – something bigger than ourselves – something that inspires awe, fear, and devotion.  Some traditions go within to find that something, that layer of reality, while others look outside – beyond our temporal existence to find a God who is totally “other”.
          What I remember from my classes in Montreal, was coming in to the class one day to see a huge pile of cardboard boxes stacked up at the front of the room.  We students were invited to contemplate how big or small a box we would need to contain our own personal image of God.  I have never since that day been able to think about or talk about God without acute awareness that I know of no box big enough to hold the God of my understanding.  From this perspective, I can understand the Rev. Gretta Vosper’s reluctance to even limit this awesome mystery by giving it a name – God.  Which is why you will often hear me refer to the “God of many names”.   Words and language are essential to the way we humans communicate – but we must be very careful not to confuse the word we use to describe something with the thing itself.  The word is merely a symbol – but if we are not careful it can become an idol.
Hymn #92 MV “Like a Rock”
 
2nd Scripture Readings: Hebrews 12:18-29  & Luke 13:10-17
Reflection:
          This reading from Hebrews is very mystical – very esoteric – and likely to be dismissed as incomprehensible by many of us.  But this line stood out for me:  “See that you do not refuse the one who is speaking”….  The writer has been talking about doom and gloom and fire and darkness – consequences, it seems to me, of not paying attention to the spiritual direction being offered.
          And who exactly is “the one who is speaking”?  Sounds like another instance of Holy Spirit, or God, or the Divine trying to guide, or instruct or warn humans against behaviours that are not life-giving.
          Friends, there is something, whether within or without that loves us enough to try to lead us out of the darkness, chaos and fear that can only end in disaster.  Without this force for good, I fear, we would have destroyed ourselves long ago.
          But it is this force for good that gives us hope!  Jesus came to embody that Divine Love for us – to teach us that we must make choices every day about the way we shall live.  We must choose in every moment to be a force for good, or a force for evil.
          This beautiful story of his deep love for a crippled old woman, performing a miracle of healing for her, on the Sabbath, in the synagogue – a demonstration of Divine Love that could not be ignored.  Seen by many, objected to by those whose laws were not about love, and deeply imprinted on the hearts and minds of his followers, this teaching has survived to instruct us here even today.
          We are not without guidance and instruction as to what we shall do and how we shall live.  We need to open our hearts and minds to hear the “still small voice” that speaks to all of us.  It’s not that complicated:  cease to do evil, choose to do good. If you’re not sure or confused – pray about it, ask yourself and then wait. You will be guided. Love one another as Jesus loves us.  Listen, as Mary listened to the angel Gabriel, Listen as Abraham and Moses listened to the voice they knew as God or Yahwe, listen as Mary Magdalene listened to the risen Christ.
          We ARE the Beloved.  The presence is all around us. Have faith, children of God, believe what you have been shown to be true.  Take time to be holy, to know the truth that will set you free.  Embrace the holy mystery who is wholly Love.
 
Hymn # 161 MV  “I have called you by your name”

​Reflections for Sunday, August 11, 2019
1st Scripture reading:  Isaiah 1:1, 10-20  and Psalm 50
Reflection:
          The reading from Isaiah starts out with the prophet’s proclamation of what is NOT pleasing to God:  God does not want any more bloody sacrifices of innocent animals.  God abhors corruption, injustice, cruelty and murder.  God is not impressed by the hypocrisy of empty ritual and high ceremony.
          This is what God wants, according to Isaiah:  “cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, and plead for the widow.”  I invite you to notice what is not in that list:  go to church every Sunday, wear your finest clothes, speak dishonestly to your neighbours, ignore the obvious needs of some of them, and think yourself better than most.  Instead, wherever you find yourself on Sunday morning: “cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, and plead for the widow.” 
          And there is always hope.  No matter how far you have fallen, no matter how scarlet your sins, if you are willing and obedient, they shall be “white as snow”  - cleansed from you, purified.
          Refuse and rebel against this way of life, Isaiah proclaims for God, and the consequences will be dire:  more violence, more injustice and cruelty, war without mercy, and “you shall be devoured by the sword.”
          My mother, raised in the Baptist church, used to warn me as a rebellious teenager, that “if you live by the sword, you will die by the sword.”  As we look around our world today, a world bereft of these teachings it seems, we might change the wording a little but the message is the same:  “If you live by the gun, you will die by the gun.”  Our young people are dying by the gun in ever greater numbers it seems, and their elders who should know better are reluctant to restrict their access to them, or to teach them how to live.
          And even so, many young people are themselves speaking out against the gun culture, demanding that their governments step up and do more to protect them and to restore peace and harmony to their communities.
          God speaks thru the prophets, in the psalms, and thru children these days it seems.  But make no mistake – God still speaks, and the purifying fire still happens as a direct consequence of our own choices.  God’s ways are not our ways, but we are blind if we choose not to see the importance of the decisions we make for our families and for our world.
 
Hymn #299VU “Teach Me God to Wonder”
 
2nd Scripture reading:  Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16 & Luke 12:32-40
Reflection:
          This reflection is about faith.  What IS faith?  Paul’s definition in his letter to the Hebrews is this:  “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
          Let me give you a really mundane example:  every time we get on the ferry to Powell River we have faith that it will get there safely, and we have faith that we will get back the same way and usually the same day.  We believe that, we don’t doubt it and we don’t worry about it.  And yet….we don’t know how competent is the crew, we don’t know the dangers of weather and sea conditions, we don’t know the ship is mechanically sound and we don’t know the intentions of the head office re medical emergencies, etc.  But we have faith that all will be well.  And ninety-nine percent of the time it is.  Our faith is justified.
          Our faith as Christians, and as described by Paul, is in a world created by the word of God – made visible from something invisible. I don’t believe this faith is incompatible with what scientists are discovering about the origins of the earth – new knowledge they call “the Big Bang Theory” – which is incomplete at best, and full of lots of anti-spiritual rhetoric.  I am personally in awe of the work of astro-physicists, astronomers, and mathematicians, but I am much more in awe of the creative force behind all that they do and all that they learn.
So people, like Abraham, who step out into new territory are like strangers or foreigners in a new land.  People inspired by God’s call to “Cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, and plead for the widow”, in world of gun and gang violence, government corruption, and blatant disregard for human rights, those people are as strangers and foreigners in a new land.  They are striving to establish God’s kindom amidst drive-by shootings, destruction of other species habitat, reno-victions of the poor and the sexual exploitation of minors.
 But they have faith – faith in the righteousness of their calling, faith in  the love of God for all Creation, and faith in the redemptive power of that love.  They believe that this is the Divine Plan for human life on this planet, and they believe that there is a place prepared for them, either in this land, or after death, or both.  We all know we may not see the Promised Land, just as the saints who have gone before us did not see the realization of God’s promise, but we also believe, many of us, that there is more to come.
 We believe the words of Jesus who said in our reading from Luke this morning:  “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s (God’s) good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”  He told us not to cling to earthly possessions, or to power or reputation.  You don’t need anything else except your faith in his teachings and your orientation to a more spiritual, just and humane life as the way to that kingdom. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  And where your heart is, is what matters to God.
And where does the God of Love live, people of God?  The God who is Love lives in our hearts – in our goodness, in our kindness, in our love for God and for one another.  God lives in us, to the extent that we will allow it.  How we live our lives matters a lot – this we believe.
 
Hymn Solo:  “How then shall I live”  by Linnea Good DVD