"Untying the Chains" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday September 13, 2020

Scripture:  Matthew 18:21-35

 

 

Jesus’s disciples came up to him one day to ask him about this Kingdom of God that he kept talking about.  What is it going to be like?  Who is going to be the greatest person in this kingdom?  And Jesus, rather than proclaiming any one person to be the king in this kingdom, instead he started talking about community.  He talked about living well together.  He talked about being humble, and welcoming the least valuable members of our current society.  He talked about how to resolve disputes in this community when they eventually arise.  And he promised that he would be there at the center of this community, at the center of this kingdom.

 

Peter, one of the disciples, well, he was listening hard to everything that Jesus had to say.  He recognized that it wasn’t going to be easy, living in this sort of community.  And so he asked Jesus, “When someone does something wrong to me, I can forgive them.  It will be hard, but I can do it.  And if they do something wrong to me again, I can forgive them again.  How many times should I continue to forgive them?  Shall I forgive them seven times?  After all, seven is the number of wholeness, the number of perfection, and so a seven-fold forgiveness is perfect forgiveness.”

 

But Jesus stopped him there, before he could go any further.  Jesus said to him, “Seven times isn’t enough, because what happens the eighth time that they do something wrong to you.  No – instead of withholding forgiveness after seven times, you must forgive them seventy seven times; even seventy times seven times.  Too many times to keep track of, too high of a number to be able to keep score.  Perfection, multiplied.”

 

Now I could stand here today, and preach a sermon about the beauty and importance of forgiveness.  I could quote the bible at you, and cite the tradition of the church, and talk about how forgiveness is central to our identity as followers of Jesus Christ.  I could talk about how, each time when we pray the Lord’s Prayer together, we say, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  I could talk about the Old Testament idea of jubilee, where after 7 cycles of 7 years, all debts would be forgiven and everyone in society could have a fresh start on equal footing.  I could read the parable of the Prodigal Son, whose wrongs were forgiven and he was welcomed home.  I could talk about Jesus, on the cross, calling out to the one whom he calls Father asking for forgiveness for those who were torturing and crucifying him.

 

But I can’t preach that sermon.  I can’t preach it, because forgiveness is hard.  Forgiveness is so hard, that it borders on impossible.  If forgiveness were easy, then it wouldn’t be something that Jesus needs to teach us.  If forgiveness were easy, then there would be no need for Truth and Reconciliation commissions in South Africa, in Rwanda, or here in Canada.  If forgiveness were easy, then philosopher Jacques Derrida wouldn’t have written, “forgiveness forgives only the unforgivable” ("On Forgiveness"), for if something is easily forgivable then it doesn’t require a true act of forgiveness.

 

Forgiveness is hard.

 

When I think of the times when I have had to forgive someone, it brings up feelings of discomfort, of stomach churning.  It is a visceral response.  I’m not going to share any details, but I think of a time when someone in my life betrayed a significant trust.  It hurt.  I lost sleep over it.  That betrayal of trust worked its way backwards, and made me lose my love for something that I had previously enjoyed.  I was sad, and I was angry.  I wanted absolutely nothing to do with that person ever again.

 

Jesus says that we are to forgive someone 77 times, and here I am, struggling to forgive someone just once.

 

I remember discussing forgiveness in a class at AST, and how difficult forgiveness is, and the ethical dimensions of forgiveness. Our faith gives us an absolute imperative to forgive.  Jesus tells us that we are to forgive – no ifs, ands, or buts. We can’t put conditions on our forgiveness – if only that person would do this or say that, then I could forgive them.  No – Jesus tells us that we are to forgive.  Yet ethically, what does it mean to forgive someone who has done something illegal or harmful, and shows no signs of stopping or wanting to change their behaviour.

 

I think that, before we look at what forgiveness is, it is important to look at what forgiveness is not.

 

Forgiveness is not easy.  I think that is pretty easy to understand.

 

Forgiveness is not forgetting.  If something is so trivial that we could forget it, then does it really need forgiving?

 

Forgiveness is not allowing ourselves to become doormats.  Too often, these words of Jesus telling us that we are to forgive someone who has done us wrong 77 times, or seventy-times-seven times – too often these words have been interpreted, often by clergy, to encourage people, especially women, to remain in abusive relationships.  But forgiving someone does not mean that you give them permission to do the same harm to you over and over and over again.

 

Forgiveness is also not the same thing as reconciliation.  Forgiveness is the act of letting go of the hurt.  Reconciliation is rebuilding a relationship.  As followers of Jesus, I do believe that we are called to reconciliation as well as to forgiveness, and I think that forgiveness is the first step towards reconciliation, but they aren’t the same thing.  In order for reconciliation to happen, there has to be a commitment by both parties to rebuild the relationship, and forgiveness is a necessary part of the process so that past wrongs aren’t continually being held against the person.  Forgiveness, the letting go, can happen without reconciliation; but reconciliation can’t happen without forgiveness.  They are related, but they aren’t the same thing.

 

This is what forgiveness isn't.  So what is forgiveness then?

 

A wise mentor once told me that forgiveness is about not giving another person permission to take up space in your brain, rent-free.  Or, to flip it around, writer Anne Lamott says that when we don’t forgive, it is like drinking rat poison ourselves and expecting the rat to die (Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts of Faith).  When we hold on to our resentments, our anger, our pain, the person who caused them isn’t affected at all – we are the ones who are harmed when we withhold forgiveness.  We give permission to that other person to occupy space in our brains, and to continually cause us pain.  Forgiveness is the act of letting all of that go.

 

In the parable that follows the teaching, the person who refuses to forgive another’s debts is sent off to be punished, to be tortured.  And while this may seem to be an extreme reaction, I think that often the torture that we experience when we don’t forgive another person doesn’t come from outside – instead the pain that we continue to experience over and over again is coming from inside ourselves.

 

Getting back to my own experience of a betrayal of trust, I ended up working through my pain with a spiritual advisor who was able to help me to let go of this pain and anger.  I don’t think that reconciliation is ever going to be possible in this situation, but if the person who betrayed my trust were ever to express a genuine desire for reconciliation, I would be open to it.  For now though, forgiveness is going to have to be enough.

 

In that conversation at AST about the difficulty of forgiveness, and the ethical implications, my professor, Dr. Alyda Faber, said, “the first step towards forgiveness is a desire to forgive.”  Forgiveness is hard.  If we don’t want to forgive someone, then we aren’t ready to go there yet.  She shared her own story with us, and said that each morning she would wake up and ask herself, do I want to forgive that person yet.  And for the longest time, the answer was no.  She wanted to hold on to her anger and pain.  But then one morning she woke up, and the answer was yes.  She wanted to forgive the person.  She wasn’t able to forgive them yet, but she had taken the first step.

 

And I think that this might be why Jesus tells us that we may have to forgive someone 77 times, or 490 times.  Because it’s a process – it’s not like we can chose to forgive someone once and it’s over.

 

Even in the process of writing this sermon, I dug up my old pain thinking about how I had been betrayed.  And I had to make a conscious decision once again to forgive that person – to not let myself dwell on the pain that had been inflicted.

 

To move from a betrayal of trust to a much more traumatic event, I want to finish with a powerful song by Canadian rapper Shad called "I'll Never Understand."  He wrote this song with his mother, Bernadette Kabango.  She is Rwandan, and several of her family members were killed in the genocide in 1994 – her father, her brother, her sister.  She wrote a poem about the process of forgiveness, and her words and voice are interwoven with her son’s voice.  She talks about the process of forgiveness being like untying the chains that were keeping her bound to the people who killed her family.  Her final words in the poem are:

            “I untied the chains,

            Painfully, purposefully

            Knowing the one who said to do it seventy times seven

            Totally understands the depth of my pain.”

 

(If you want to listen to the song, you can find it by clicking here.  Content warning: the song talks about the events that inspired it.) 

 

And I think that’s maybe the key to all of this.  Jesus tells us to forgive again and again, but he isn’t telling us this in any superficial sort of way.  Jesus knows what it is like to forgive the people who were torturing and killing him.  The one whom Jesus calls “Father” knows what it is to forgive the ones who killed their child.

 

Forgiveness is hard.  But we are called to untie the chains that keep us bound to the past, bound to our pain, bound to the one who caused us the pain.  We are called to untie those chains and move on towards healing and freedom.  And may God be with us as we go, and may the Holy Spirit give us the strength to do so.  Amen.

 

 

Image:  “chained” by Jamie Bradway

CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

 

"Chaos and Clarity" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday March 8, 2020

Scripture:  John 3:1-17

Have you ever traveled to a place where you don’t speak or understand the language that is spoken?  It is a disconcerting experience to be surrounded by words and language and not to be able to understand a single thing that is being said, and to not be able to make yourself understood.

I remember when I first moved to Tanzania, where the national language is Swahili, we as volunteers were given two weeks of language training before being sent out to our placements – mostly to make sure that we wouldn’t starve or insult our neighbours too badly.  And two weeks later, there I was in rural Tanzania equipped with my introductory Swahili lessons, immersed in a rural community where I was surrounded not only by Swahili but also by the local tribal language of LuHaya.  I still remember those first few weeks – surrounded by words that I couldn’t make any sense of.  After a bit, I came to realize that if I was able to pick out an occasional word, the person was probably speaking Swahili, whereas if I couldn’t catch any words at all, the person was probably speaking LuHaya.

As the weeks and months passed, and I used the language more and more, my vocabulary and understanding started to improve.  There was a long stretch of time where I described my fluency as having pockets of language – I had my pocket of hospital and physiotherapy vocabulary; I had my pocket of church vocabulary; I had my pocket of shopping and market vocabulary.  As long as I was in one of these contexts I could manage, but as soon as someone started talking about something else I was lost.

Six months in, we were offered two more weeks of intermediate language training where we learned the rest of the grammar; and it was probably somewhere between the year and a half and two year point that I really started to feel comfortable understanding and using the language.

But I still remember the chaos and confusion of those first few weeks and months.  I remember the frustration of the neighbourhood children when I just couldn’t understand what they were asking.  I remember the fear that I felt when I had to make a phone call to make a reservation at the guest house in town.  Are they going to understand what I am asking?  Will I actually have a room when I get to town?  I remember sitting in church with the sermon and the prayers washing over me, not able to understand a single thing.

And if I had left at that point in time, if I had succumbed to the confusion and walked away, if I had stopped engaging with people and insisted on speaking only English, then I still wouldn’t understand or speak Swahili.  It was only by plunging in to the confusion, living with the lack of understanding, embracing the chaos, that I was eventually able to understand.

Nicodemus, in this week’s scripture story, is also confused – he just doesn’t understand.  He is one of the Pharisees, a leader of the Jewish people.  This story takes place in Jerusalem.  Jesus and his disciples have come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover at the temple there; but while they are at the temple, Jesus has caused a bit of a commotion when he made a whip out of some cords, overturned the tables of the money changers, and drove the animals that were intended for sacrifice out of the temple.

So, as you can imagine, the temple leaders, including Nicodemus, probably weren’t very happy with Jesus at this point in time.  But Nicodemus seems to be curious about Jesus – curious enough that he comes to Jesus to ask some questions.   But he comes to the place where Jesus is staying at night-time, under the cover of darkness.  Maybe he doesn’t want his companions at the temple to see where he is going; or maybe the literal darkness outside represents the fact that Nicodemus is figuratively “in the dark” about who Jesus is.

He is curious though, and he opens the dialogue by praising Jesus – “Rabbi, Teacher, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”  Jesus replies with a statement that seems designed to confuse rather than clarify – “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born anew.”  And so Nicodemus, confused, asks Jesus to explain.  “How can anyone be born after having grown old?”

And Jesus again seems to confuse Nicodemus even more, instead of offering clarity – talking about being born of water and Spirit, and the wind or Spirit blowing where she chooses.  Finally, in verse 9 we hear Nicodemus for the last time, still confused, asking Jesus “How can these things be?”  And then our dialogue turns to a monologue with Jesus teaching about eternal life.  It is almost as if they are speaking two different languages, neither one being able to understand what the other is saying.

Nicodemus just fades out of the scene.  We don’t hear any more from him, we aren’t told whether or not he has left the room, we don’t know if he starts to understand what Jesus is saying or whether he is still confused – it almost feels like he slipped out the door while Jesus was still talking.

Now the primary focus of John’s gospel is discipleship.  If you flip ahead to the end of John’s gospel, you will read, “These are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”  And so as you read the stories that the narrator is telling, it is always interesting to ask, “What does this story tell me about being a follower of Jesus?”

And on the surface, if I were to read this story of Nicodemus, I would probably have to say that he isn’t a follower of Jesus.  He comes to Jesus in secrecy, at night; he asks questions of Jesus; and then he just seems to slip away, back into the night, still in the dark.

But fortunately, this isn’t the last that we hear from Nicodemus in John’s gospel.  His story doesn’t end here.

If we were to flip ahead from Chapter 3 to the end of Chapter 7, Nicodemus makes another appearance.  The authorities are trying to figure out to do with Jesus, who keeps on kicking up a commotion and challenging the authority of those in charge.  They talk of arresting Jesus, but our friend Nick stands up for Jesus.  Nicodemus says, “Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing.”  Hmmm… Maybe what Jesus has been saying has had an influence on Nicodemus after all.

And we get to see Nicodemus one more time.  At the end of Chapter 19 of John’s gospel, after Jesus has been tortured, after Jesus has been crucified, after Jesus has died; Joseph of Arimathea asks permission to take his body away to be buried.  And when he does so, he is joined by another person – Nicodemus.  Nick shows up for Jesus in the end, bringing a hundred pounds of burial spices – myrrh and aloe – to help prepare Jesus’ body for burial.  Together, Joseph and Nicodemus wrap Jesus’ body along with the spices in linen cloths, and place it in a tomb in a garden.  There, at the very end, Nicodemus serves Jesus with love.

And so, in the end, it seems as though Nicodemus was able to wade through the chaos and confusion in order to become a follower of Jesus.  He was willing to take that first step into the shadowy chaos; he was willing to become even more confused, in order to reach clarity on the other side.

And so this week, I encourage you to be like Nicodemus.  Is there a faith step that you’ve been considering taking, but have been too afraid?  Do you feel yourself called by God to do something new or different, but that something seems too overwhelming and chaotic and scary?  I encourage you to take a page from Nicodemus’ book and step into the chaos.  Ask Jesus your questions.  Don’t be afraid of the confusion.

And trust that Jesus is there somewhere in the chaos, that Jesus hears your questions; and trust that the shadowy confusion will eventually clear until you find the clarity you’re looking for.

For God is everywhere, yes, in the places we expect, but especially in the surprising places, the unexpected places, the chaotic places.  And God is just waiting to welcome us home to love.

Thanks be to God.

Some of the kids who struggled to make themselves understood

when I moved to Tanzania;

but a smile is a universal language!

"Turning Out the Light" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday March 1, 2020

Scripture:  Matthew 4:1-11

I lived in Montreal for 4 years while I was doing my undergraduate degree; and during those years I was a Girl Guide leader with a group that met on the edges of downtown Montreal.  Several times a year, we would take the girls camping – usually once in the fall, once in the mid-winter, and again in the spring.  There were a couple of Girl Guide camps north of Montreal in the Laurentians, and that is usually where we would go, heading up on a school bus on Friday afternoon, and returning to the city on Sunday afternoon.

I remember, several times at one of these camps, coming across one of the girls at night, absolutely entranced by the night sky; standing there staring up at the expanse of stars – the Milky Way, the Big Dipper, Cassiopeia – too many stars to be able to name or count.  And what really struck me was that some of these girls had never seen the night sky before.  Since I grew up in the country, in a part of the country that isn’t too different than this corner of the world, the stars had always been part of my life.  I couldn’t imagine reaching 9, 10, 11 years old without seeing the night sky.  But to these girls, growing up in the city with glowing streetlights blocking out any other light source, this sort of night sky was completely new to them.

This year, as we move through the season of Lent, we are going to be exploring the idea that sometimes we need to turn out the light in order to be able to see clearly.  This can be a literal turning out of the lights, like moving away from the city in order to be able to see the night sky; but it can also be a spiritual turning out of the lights.

The light is such a powerful metaphor in our faith.  We talk about the light of Christ; Jesus called himself the Light of the World; scripture tells us that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness can never overcome it; we like to sing,

            This little light of mine,

            I’m going to let it shine…

But what might we be missing if we only focus on the light?  What might be missing in our lives if we are afraid to go in to the shadowy areas, and instead remain in what author Barbara Brown Taylor refers to as “full solar Christianity”?[1]  Are we missing the awe-inspiring expanse of the night sky?

In today’s scripture story, Jesus ventures into those shadowy places.  He is led into the wilderness, and he fasts there for 40 days.  Now Jesus’ wilderness isn’t the same sort of wilderness that we have here in New Brunswick.  The wilderness that Jesus went in to was a desert wilderness – a brown stony landscape with not much by way of vegetation aside from the occasional oasis; hot and dry during the day with no trees to take shelter under, and so cold at night that the nights are actually more dangerous than the days.

Jesus has left behind him the comforts of a bed to sleep on and a roof over his head.  He has left behind him the very human need for the companionship of other humans.  He has left behind him the pleasure of a meal, getting only just enough food and water to keep his body alive.  He has moved in to the shadowy places.

And as he stays there in the wilderness, he begins to see himself clearly, and he begins to see God more clearly.  Today’s story falls immediately after Jesus has been baptized – immediately after he has seen the Holy Spirit descending on him like a dove, and heard the voice of the one whom he calls “Father” call him beloved.  And at the end of the forty days, he is able to articulate his relationship with God when the tempter tries to draw him away, and he is strengthened to begin his ministry in Galilee and beyond.

We, as humans, are very good at distracting ourselves from our spiritual lives.  Or perhaps I should speak only for myself and say that I, as a human, am very good at distracting myself from my spiritual life.  I carry a phone with me everywhere that lets me play games or scroll through Facebook any time I might have the opportunity to just sit and be.  I watch TV on my iPad as I do the dishes, rather than simply being present to myself as I do the dishes.  I listen to the radio or to podcasts as I drive, rather than being alone with my thoughts.

I wonder why we have this tendency to distract ourselves?  What are we afraid that we might find if we were to go into those shadowy places?

And so as we move in to the next 6 weeks of Lent, I encourage you to consider leaving some of these shiny, sparkly distractions behind.  Like Jesus did, venture into the shadowy unknown.  And as you do, ask God to meet you there in the shadows.  Ask God to show you the things that the bright lights might hide.  And prepare yourself to be surprised at the things that you will be able to see; prepare yourself to be overwhelmed by the night sky, once you turn out the lights.

Thanks be to the God who created both light and darkness.  Amen.

---

[1] Barbara Brown Taylor, Learning to Walk in the Dark (New York: HarperOne, 2014).

The Center of the Milky Way

© NASA – Public Domain

"On the Mountaintop" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday February 23, 2020

Scripture:  Matthew 17:1-9 (with a brief reference to Exodus 24:12-18)

I love the story of the Transfiguration – the story that we read each year on the Sunday before the beginning of Lent – this story that is told in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke where Jesus and three of his disciples, Peter, James, and John, ascend a mountain and Jesus’ physical body is transformed, is transfigured into a body that shines as brightly as the sun, and then is joined by Moses and Elijah, leaders of the Israelite people from many many centuries earlier, and there they hear the voice of God speaking from a shining cloud.

I love this story, but I have to confess that it is almost impossible to preach about this story, because how can I put human words to the holiness of God?  God is so very obviously and overwhelmingly present with and in Jesus at this moment in time – beyond anything that I can describe with human words, and beyond anything that I can even imagine.

This isn’t the only time in the gospel story when we encounter God a bit more directly, but most of the other times we seem to have tamed or domesticated so that maybe they begin to lose their impact.

At Christmas, we encounter the mystery of God who created the heavens and the earth choosing to be born as a vulnerable human baby; and yet we domesticate this mystery by cooing over a cute baby lying in a manger and focusing on feasting and gift-giving.

At Easter, we also encounter the mystery of God who shows us that God has power over everything in the world, even death itself; and yet again we domesticate this story with Easter Eggs and Easter bonnets.

At the Baptism of Jesus and at Pentecost, again we encounter the visible, audible presence of God; and again we celebrate with water and with fire and by wearing red clothing.

But today, on Transfiguration Sunday, we have another encounter with the Holy, annother encounter with Mystery that we can’t explain away or solve.  And we don’t exchange Transfiguration cards today, and we don’t have a Transfiguration feast later on today – or I should say that I have never heard of a Transfiguration feast, but if anyone is hosting one, please let me know! There are no special foods or sweets associated with the Transfiguration, and we don’t decorate our homes for the Transfiguration.

And so the only thing that we are left with is the story.  This peculiar story where Jesus and three of his disciples climbed the mountain and the veil that separates us from God was lifted.

We are left with this story, and we are left with our imaginations.  With our imaginations we can climb that mountain along with Jesus, and imagine what it must have been like to witness his transfiguration.

Can you imagine what it would have been like?  You have started your life fishing on the great lake known as the Sea of Galilee.  One day, this itinerant preacher and teacher and healer came through your village and called you to follow him.  You must have seen something special in him, because you drop your fishing nets and you leave your family and your home, and you join him on his journey from place to place.  You have heard his preaching as he taught people about God’s kingdom of peace and love.  You have witnessed him heal people.  You have even seen him perform miracles, like walking on water and feeding a crowd of thousands with only a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish.

And today he has invited you and two others from the inner circle of disciples to accompany him up a mountain.  I wonder why these three were chosen?  And when you get to the top, you witness this transformation – Jesus shining as brightly as the sun, so brightly that your eyes are dazzled and you need to either close your eyes or turn away.  And then standing with Jesus are Moses and Elijah.  Moses who led your ancestors to freedom and who also encountered God on top of a mountain.  Elijah who was one of the great prophets who never died but was carried up to heaven.  And then you are engulfed in a bright cloud and you hear the voice of the Creator of the universe saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”

How do you feel in this moment?  Are you afraid?  Are you overwhelmed?  Are you filled with joy?  Do you feel loved?  Does the peace of God fill your heart?

We get a hint of how Peter was feeling, based on his reaction.  Peter seems to have been overwhelmed by the encounter – so overwhelmed that he needs to fill the holy silence with babbling words.  Peter says, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”  Peter doesn’t know what to do with the moment and so he fills it with words.  But at the same time he seems to want to prolong the moment by putting up tents there on the mountaintop.

And in a twinkling of an eye – in one of those moments that seems to last forever but is over before you know it – Jesus has returned to his normal appearance, and he is placing his hand on your shoulder, telling you to get up and to not be afraid.

No matter how hard we try, it is impossible to put language to encounters like these; and when we do, our language often contradicts itself.  When the disciples hear God speaking, it comes from a “bright cloud” – instead of casting shadows like a regular cloud, this cloud seems to cast light.  In our reading from Exodus when Moses encounters God, we get a similar contradiction in the description of the glory of God which is both hidden by a dark cloud but burning brightly like a fire that devours everything around it.

Language fails us in moments like these, and we have to fall back on being and feeling.

If we are lucky, once or twice in our lifetimes we might have a mountaintop experience where the veil that separates us from God is briefly lifted; a moment when we are overwhelmed by God’s mystery and holiness.  We can’t make these moments happen, and if we seek after them, they become ever more elusive.

But when they happen, they transform us.

It wasn’t only Jesus who was transformed there on the mountaintop – the disciples who went up with him were also changed by the experience.  They didn’t become perfect after that – remember that Peter is going to deny knowing Jesus when Jesus is put on trial and tortured – but they were surely changed and would go on to be leaders in the earliest church after Jesus’ resurrection.  These fishermen from the backwater of Galilee would go on to lead a church that would eventually encircle the world.  This moment on the mountaintop changed them.

And so we too are changed by our encounters with God.  If you have been fortunate enough to have a mountaintop experience, a moment when the veil that separates us was lifted and God was overwhelmingly present; once you’ve experienced it, you can’t un-experience it.  That moment, that experience stays with you forever.

And yet God is also present in the valleys of our every day lives as well.  God is present in our lives even when we can’t hear God’s voice or see God’s face.  God is present with us when we are sitting here in church, when we are driving, when we are washing the dishes, when we are drifting off to sleep.  These mountaintop experiences – they come and go; and as Peter experienced, trying to hold on to them makes them slip away.  But even when the veil is lowered again, God is still there.

And so my prayer today is that each one of us might have a mountaintop experience at some point in our lifetime, in whatever form it might take – a moment when we come face-to-face with God; a moment when we are overwhelmed by God’s presence.  And may that experience stay with us and change us, even as we return to the valley of everyday life.  Amen.

View From the Top of Mount Sinai 

Photo Credit:  Kate Jones

"Turning Away from Fear" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday February 16, 2020

Scripture:  Deuteronomy 30:15-20

Has anyone else noticed that the world around us seems designed to make us afraid?  Fear seems to be so much a part of the world these days.  These can be global-scale fears like the fear of outsiders that seems to be infecting so many governments around the world; or the fear of the climate crisis that can paralyze people in to inaction.  These days, there is the fear of the new Corona Virus that is making people act in irrational ways, and discriminate against people who look like they or their ancestors maybe came from east Asia.  Or the fears can be smaller scale personal fears like the fear of being bullied, either in-person or online, or the fear of failing at a task that you want to try.

You can see fear used in advertising – a common strategy that advertisers use is to make you afraid of something, then promising that if you trust the person or the company advertising, then you don’t need to be afraid.  One ad that I’ve seen several times recently comes from FCNB – the Financial and Consumer Services Commission of New Brunswick.  And while this is a Crown Corporation that provides needed oversight to the financial sector, their current advertising campaign around preventing fraud is completely fear-based.

The first 2/3 of the commercial has no words as the camera moves through a family’s home; but the music and the slightly wonky filming give you the impression of being in a haunted house. Then the voice comes on to tell the viewer, “It’s scary, how many ways fraud and scams can enter your home.”  There – they’ve built their case by making the viewer afraid.  And then they offer the solution by directing you to their website.

You see the same strategy being used by political parties of all stripes and colours during an election campaign.  The party will choose an issue, whether it be the economy, the environment, national security, or something else, and they will make you afraid of that issue.  And then they will promise you that only their party is qualified to protect you from that fear.

Fear is a very powerful motivator.  Fear can make you act in ways that you wouldn’t normally act.  But do you really want to live your life being driven by your fears?

Last week at our annual meeting, we started exploring the book of Deuteronomy a bit, and I mentioned that this book is set right on the edge of the Promised Land.  The Israelite people had been wandering in the desert wilderness for 40 years, and they are about to cross over the Jordan River to enter in to the land that had been promised to them and to their ancestors.

Think back to the story of Joseph, and how Joseph and his brothers ended up in Egypt in a time of famine, and how they and their descendants stayed there.  And remember that eventually a new king, a new Pharaoh arose in Egypt, one who didn’t know Joseph or remember how Joseph had helped the Egyptians; and as a result of this new king, the Israelite people ended up as slaves in the land of Egypt.

Remember how eventually Moses went to the Pharaoh and demanded that he let the people go; remember how God worked through Moses to part the waters of the Red Sea so that the people could cross over to safety on the other side; remember how Moses climbed to the top of Mount Sinai and God gave to him the Ten Commandments along with the rest of the law.  And then the people set out to cross the desert to the Promised Land.

Then we come to the part of the story that we don’t hear very often.  It doesn’t actually take 40 years to cross the Sinai Peninsula to get from Egypt to the Jordan River, even if you’re traveling on foot.  It took the people three months to get from Pharaoh’s palace to Mt. Sinai, and then they camped out there for a year or so.  And then as they left the camp there, Moses sent 12 people ahead of the group, one from each of the 12 tribes, to scout out this land that God had promised to them.

When they were re-united, these scouts told them that yes, it was a beautiful and fertile land on the other side of the River, but that there were people living there who must be descended from giants, and it was much to scary a land to move to.  And so rather than trusting in God and crossing over the river into the land that God had promised to them, the people listened to their fear and turned away.  They turned back in to the desert.  Because of their fear, they spent the next 38 ½ years wandering through the desert wilderness.

And while they were there, they had to learn to trust God rather than listening to their fears.  God was visibly present with them in the wilderness, leading them as a pillar of smoke in the daytime and by a pillar of fire at night.  God fed them with manna and quails, even though there was no food to be found elsewhere.  God made water flow out of a rock so that they didn’t die of dehydration.  And slowly, slowly, the people learned to trust God – they learned to put their faith in God.

And 38 ½ years later, they once again return to the edge of the Jordan River.  And this is the setting of the book of Deuteronomy.

The book begins with Moses recalling and recounting their journey so far; but then the majority of the book is God speaking through Moses, reminding the people of the law that they had received 39 years ago at Mount Sinai.  As I mentioned last week, there are lots of “Do these things” and “Don’t do those things” here.  Some of them make sense, but others don’t fit with our current context.  When I was at AST, I took a semester-long course on Deuteronomy, and I remember the professor beginning the first class by saying that if we got to the end of the semester thinking that maybe stoning people wasn’t as bad as we thought it was, then she hadn’t done her job properly!

But then we get to the end of the book, to the verses that Pat read for us today.  God is pleading with the people to remember God and to continue to place their trust in God after they cross over the river into the Promised Land.

God says to the people, “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity.”  God is reminding the people that when they turned away from God last time, when they didn’t trust that God was with them and wanted the best for them, they ended up spending 40 years in the desert, and a whole generation passed away.  God is pleading with the people to choose life this time, to not be lead by their fears and insecurities because for them, that choice literally led to death and adversity.

And God pleads with the people to “Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God.”  God is making this final exhortation to the people to choose life and to choose love.  Once they cross over the river into this new land, they will not see God any more in a pillar of smoke and fire, and they won’t have to depend on God for manna and quail to eat, and there will be plenty of water available without God needing to make it come from a rock.  But the people are to remember that God is with them, and to choose life and to choose love.  God pleads with the people to choose to follow the law that God has given to them – the law that Jesus summarizes as “Love God, and love your neighbour.”

God pleads with the people to choose love and to choose life; and I think that God continues to plead with us today.

When we are tempted to listen to the voice of fear that tells us that we should be afraid of and shun the person with skin colour that may indicate that they came from the part of the world where a new virus is emerging, God pleads with us to listen to God’s voice instead and choose life-giving love.

When we are tempted to listen to the voice of fear that tells us that the world is falling into chaos, God pleads with us to choose life and to choose love and to trust that God’s love is stronger than our fears.

When we are tempted to listen to the voice of fear inside us that tries to tell us that we aren’t smart enough, that we aren’t strong enough, that we aren’t pretty enough, that we aren’t enough, God pleads with us to choose to live in God’s love, and that we are to love not only our neighbours but ourselves too.

When we are tempted to listen to the voice of fear that tries to tell us to put our trust in humans and in human institutions, God pleads with us to choose life and to choose love by placing our trust in God instead.

For love is stronger than all of our fears, and God is with us.  God goes before us even as we enter a new land and a new way of being; God travels beside us as a companion on the journey; and God is always within us, closer to us than our very breath, guiding us and drawing us in to the dance of love that is God.

Thanks be to this life-giving God of love.  Amen.

The Jordan River - one side wilderness, the other side Promised Land

(picture from Flickr - CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

"Blessed are you" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday February 2, 2020

Scripture:  Matthew 5:1-12

Who is the most successful person in the world?

I asked that question to Google this week:  “Hey Google!  Who’s the most successful person in the world?”  Any guesses about what answer Google gave me?  (pause)

The first person that Google came up with was Bill Gates – founder of Microsoft.  He was the richest man in the world between 1995 and 2007 (but has currently dropped to the #2 position), and he is currently worth 96.5 Billion dollars.

The current richest person in the world is Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, so maybe he might be in the running for the most successful person in the world.  He is currently worth 131 Billion dollars.

Other names that Google suggested for the most successful person in the world included Madonna (singer), Oprah (media personality), Kylie Jenner (the world’s youngest self-made billionaire at age 22), Mark Zuckerberg (the person behind Facebook), Tom Brady (American football player), former US President Barak Obama (most Twitter followers), and Taylor Swift (musician, and most influential person on Twitter).

It’s interesting to think about what defines success.  In the eyes of Google it seems to be related to wealth and the ability to influence others.

But then we turn to the words of Jesus that we heard this morning, and he doesn’t seem to be holding up the wealthy or the privileged or the influential people in his world.  Instead Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.”  I doubt if any of these people that Jesus names would make it on to Google’s list of the most successful people in the world.

And yet if you look at the way that the world so often uses the word “blessed” it does mean successful or privileged or lucky.  I might say that I was blessed to be born into the family that I was born into, but what I really mean here is that I was lucky.  It was a simple accident of birth – I won the birth lottery – that I was born into a stable middle-class family with loving parents who valued education.  If you were to search #blessed on Instagram, you would come up with other examples of good luck or privilege – wedding pictures and baby pictures and vacations and fancy homes.  But this doesn’t seem to fit with what Jesus was referring to when he called the poor in spirit and the meek and those who mourn “blessed.”

So if “blessed” doesn’t mean successful, and if “blessed” doesn’t mean “lucky” or “privileged,” what does it mean?

Maybe we can get a hint if we look at how we use the word bless or blessing in the church.  At the end of each worship service, we offer a benediction, which is just a fancy way of saying “blessing” in Latin.  We end each service by saying, “God bless you.”  Sometimes our blessing is more general:  “May the blessing of God, Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit, be among us and remain with us always.”  Sometimes our blessing is more specific:  “May the love of God embrace you; may the peace of Christ sustain you; and may the breath of the Holy Spirit inspire you, today and always.”  But no matter what words we say, the intent of the blessing is the same – when we leave worship, we are asking for God to go with each one of us.

Also in worship, sometimes we bless things.  Since I have been here at Two Rivers Pastoral Charge, we have blessed choir chairs, pets, prayer shawls, and the former Saint John Presbytery stole; and soon we will be blessing the Westfield United Church kitchen.  Other churches have also offered house blessings, backpack and briefcase blessings, bicycle and motorcycle blessings – anything that could be blessed probably has been blessed at some time somewhere.

And when we bless these things, we are usually asking for God to work through them.  We are asking that their use might be dedicated to God.  We are asking that God’s love might be made known through them.  And so we bless them.

We also bless individual people – I’m thinking here especially of people at their baptism when we lay hand on them and say, “May the Holy Spirit, God’s power of love, guide you, inspire you, and work within you all the days of your life”; or at a wedding when the couple and their marriage is blessed.  Sometimes too, when I or others are visiting people in hospital or at their home, we might simply say to them, “God bless you.”  And this blessing of individual people has the same purpose as the general blessing at the end of our worship – we are asking for God to be with them.

But here’s the catch.  Any words that we say, or any actions that we do, they can’t make God be present in a place or a person.  Because God is already there.  When we bless a person or a place or a thing, we are naming the presence of God that is already present.  We are affirming the sacredness that is already there.

Getting back to those blessings that Jesus offered in Matthew’s gospel, when he was sitting there on the mountain teaching, he wasn’t teaching the successful or powerful or privileged people of his time and place.  In a world that was ruled by the Emperor in Rome and by the Roman army; in a hierarchical society where all of the land was owned by a wealthy few while the majority of the people lived in abject poverty, Jesus wasn’t speaking to the governors or the landowners here.  Jesus was speaking to people who lived with uncertainty, who lived with hunger, who lived in a world where no matter how hard they worked, they may or may not be able to feed their family.

And Jesus tells them that they are blessed.  Not the sports stars.  Not the wealthy.  Not the influencers.  They already seem to know that they are blessed.  But Jesus reminds the rest of the world that we are blessed too.

Blessed are the poor in spirit;

            you who question your faith,

            you who carry doubts,

            you who struggle to pray –

                        you are blessed.

                        God is with you.

Blessed are those who mourn;

            you who are grieving the loss of a loved one,

            you who grieve the injustices in society,

            you who struggle to find hope –

                        you are blessed.

                        God is with you.

Blessed are the meek;

            you who have been pushed down,

            you who have been disempowered,

            you who have lost your self-esteem –

                        you are blessed.

                        God is with you.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness;

            you who are literally hungry and thirsty,

            you who long for everyone to be well fed –

                        you are blessed.

                        God is with you.

Blessed are the merciful;

            you who turn the other cheek,

            you who extend a helping hand,

            you who feed the hungry –

                        you are blessed.

                        God is with you.

Blessed are the pure in heart;

            you who believe the best about others,

            you who love wholeheartedly –

                        you are blessed.

                        God is with you.

Blessed are the peacemakers;

            you who extend forgiveness,

            you who ask for forgiveness,

            you who long for reconciliation –

                        you are blessed.

                        God is with you.

I want to end with a story from author Diana Butler Bass.  Four years ago, she started writing a book about gratitude.  And then in November 2016 the US election happened and she fell into a deep depression and her writing ground to a halt.  Some of you may remember that in January 2017, the day after the inauguration, there was a worldwide Women’s March, and so she took the train from northern Virginia to Washington DC to march with a group of clergywomen.  When she got there, she found that they were carrying signs proclaiming the Beatitudes:  Blessed are the poor.  Blessed are the peacemakers.  Blessed are those who mourn.  Blessed are the merciful.

And to the beatitudes that Jesus teaches us, they had added their own.  Blessed are the women.  Blessed are the uninsured.  Blessed are the immigrants.  Blessed are the LGBTQ+.

As they spoke with other women attending the rally, she realized that all of the beatitudes could be summed up in one phrase:  “Blessed are all of you who are disregarded by the powerful, for you are God’s beloved community.”[1]

God blesses all people.  God is with all people.  God is with all of us.  Everyone is blessed, but just as Jesus did, sometimes we need to pay extra attention to blessing those whom society doesn’t see as blessed.

May God bless you today and always.  Amen.

"Dorothy Day with Homeless Christ" by Kelly Latimore

Used with permission.

 

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[1] Diana Butler Bass, Gratitude: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks (New York: HarperOne, 2018), 135-139.