Two
Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday July 5, 2026
Scripture: Isaiah 43:18-21 and Matthew 9:14-17
Dr. Seuss Connection: Green Eggs and Ham
This year we are having a “Seussian Summer” – each week during the story for
all ages, we will be reading a Dr. Seuss book, then pairing it with scripture
to see what wisdom we might find within its pages.
I’m going to let you in on a secret. Did
you know that we, humans, are not very good at change? We like to do the things that we’ve always
done, in the ways that we’ve always done them.
Even when there’s a better option out there, even when there’s a better
way of doing things, we usually prefer to stick with the familiar.
I’m going to let you in on another secret.
Did you know that churches tend to be especially not good at
change? We like to sing the songs we
know and love. We like to do the same
outreach projects that we’ve always done.
Some people even like to sit in the same pew week after week after week…
and if you don’t believe me, ask me about the time, when I was still new to my
church in Thunder Bay and I accidentally sat in Dianne’s pew.
Change is hard. Inertia, or staying
where you are is easy, but change is hard.
This is a law of physics: “a body
in a state of rest or motion will stay in that state of rest or motion unless
acted upon by an external unbalanced force.”
Nothing changes, unless something causes it to change.
If you don’t believe me, you can ask, the protagonist of today’s story, Green
Eggs and Ham. He does not like green
eggs and ham / he does not like them, Sam-I-am.
He has got it into his mind that he doesn’t like them, and nothing is
going to make him change his mind.
Nothing, that is, except actually trying the green eggs and ham and discovering
that they are quite delicious after all.
In the arc of the story, being compelled to actually try them, pestered
by Sam-I-Am to actually try them, is the force that causes him to change, to
veer from his path of green-eggs-and-ham dislike.
Sometimes in our lives, we need a nudge from God to try new things. In Isaiah, the people had been in exile in
Babylon – now there was a traumatic change if there ever was one – the
destruction of their land and their homes by an invading army then being
carried away against their will to exile in a foreign land. You can hear the grief and the trauma in some
of the writings from the early years of exile:
“By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down and there we wept. How could we sing the Lord’s song in a
foreign land?”
But God is a God of newness and new beginnings, and God helped the people to
adapt to a new life and a new way of worshipping in a land that was far away
from the temple that they were used to.
And two generations later, God is about to do another new thing. God is going to work in the heart of King
Cyrus, and the people are going to be allowed to return to their land.
But for the people who will return – I can imagine that this is a scary
prospect. After 70 years in exile,
essentially everyone who is returning was born in Babylon, so they will be
returning to a land that they have never seen with their own eyes, a land that
their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents had seen reduced to
rubble.
Yet God nudges them forward and promises that this change is going to be OK –
there will be rivers in the desert, and a pathway through the wilderness as
they travel to this new-old land. And
maybe they will even discover in the end that they do, in fact, like green eggs
and ham, I mean, the land of their ancestors.
Jesus also has some stuff to say about change and transformation and
newness. In fact, the story that is at
the heart of our faith – the story of crucifixion and resurrection – is a story
about becoming new, the story of moving from life into death and then moving
from death into new life. It’s not a
story of resuscitation or keeping the old life going on life support – instead
it is about an end to one thing so that something completely new can emerge.
I laugh at the image that Jesus shares about patching a cloak with new fabric
that hasn’t been pre-shrunk before using it; and I laugh because I could share
with you a picture of the first quilt I ever made, and after it had been used
for many years I tried to patch it with some of the original fabric. The only problem is that the quilt had been
so faded by the sun that the same fabric that had been sitting in a cupboard
all those years was a completely different colour! Instead of trying to use the still-new fabric
to patch the old, I should have used it to make something completely new.
I wonder what Jesus would have had to say to Sam-I-Am’s friend? Probably something about setting aside his
old dislike of green eggs and ham, and actually trying them, and allowing
himself to be transformed by the experience!
So what is the wisdom of Dr. Seuss – and Jesus – for us today? I think that maybe it has to do with opening
ourselves up to newness – opening ourselves up to be transformed – rejecting
the inertia of same-old same-old, and allowing the Holy Spirit to push us
towards the new. For God is a God of
newness and new beginnings; and God is always doing a new thing in our hearts
and in our lives. And so rather than
stubbornly staying with the old, why not jump in, feet-first, into whatever new
things are placed before us, trusting that God is the one leading us there, and
accompanying us all the way?
Say, I like new ways to be!
I do, I like them, Sam-You-Be!
And I will like them in a boat
And I will like them with a goat!
And I will like them in the rain
and in the dark and on a train,
and in a car and in a tree,
New things are good, so good you see!
I do so like new ways to be!
Thank you! Thank you, Sam-You-be!
Thank you, Dr. Seuss!
