"Powerful and Empowering" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday September 27, 2026 – 18^th Sunday after Pentecost
Scripture:  Matthew 21:23-32

Most of you know that I’ve gone back to school this year – don’t worry, it is a programme that is designed to be done while we continue to work full-time! – and I’ve started my next course which I’ll be taking online between now and December.  The course is called “Theology and Power” with a subtitle that talks about Political Theology, so I wasn’t surprised back at the beginning of the week when I read the story from the gospel of Matthew that we just heard, the thing that jumped out at me was the question from the chief priests and elders in the temple:  “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”  Because authority is really about power.  When you have authority, you have power; and when you have power, you have the ability to make things happen.

It’s a really interesting dynamic at play here, when you look at this story through the lens of power.  The people who are asking Jesus this question – the chief priests and elders in the temple in Jerusalem – are in a position where they have more authority than anyone else around.  They are the ones who get to decide what is OK and what isn’t for all of the Jewish people whether they live in Jerusalem or not.  They have the power to control the actions of all of the people as the people try to live their lives as faithfully as possible.  They also had the authority to determine who they would share their power with, who they would give power to.

But they don’t have ultimate authority, because the land, at that time, was part of the Roman Empire, and the emperor in Rome had the final say.  The emperor had set up a puppet king, in the person of Herod, and there was also a governor appointed to rule the land on behalf of the emperor – that would be Pontius Pilate.  And those chief priests and temple authorities – they knew that if they did anything to go against Rome, they wouldn’t just lose their authority, they would also lose their lives.

So in terms of power and authority, these chief priests and temple elders were walking a fine line of having and not having power.

And along comes Jesus.   They ask him, by what authority are you doing these things?  These things would refer to preaching to crowds of thousands of people, healing people who had been cast out from their communities, flipping over the tables of the currency exchangers in the temple, maybe they’d even heard about Jesus walking on water and calming the storm.

Here is someone who seems to have even more authority than the chief priests and temple leaders; someone with more power than them.  I imagine that they were worried at this point in time.  “What if Rome hears about this?  What will happen to us if we haven’t been able to get everyone to toe the line?”  Or maybe even, “do we have less power in the world now, because this itinerant preacher from the backwater of Galilee has more?”

And so they confront Jesus and ask him:  “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”

I’ll also add a note here to say that this is going to be the dynamic for most of our readings between now and the end of November when we move into the season of Advent.  In the timeline of the gospel of Matthew, we are now in the last week of Jesus’s life.  This story comes almost right after Jesus entered Jerusalem in the parade that we remember every year on Palm Sunday.  Tensions are high.  The streets of Jerusalem are crowded, as is the temple, as people have come from around the known world to celebrate the festival of Passover.  Over the next couple of months, we’re going to be reading stories that are situated between Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday, and the tension of this setting spills into the stories that we will be reading.  Authorities are questioning Jesus; and Jesus tells some very pointed, provocative parables in response.

Getting back to that question of authority – we know what the answer is.  Jesus’s authority comes from God.  It is implied that his questioners also know the answer to their question, but they are reluctant to say so.  If they admit the truth, they will be admitting that they have less authority and power than they would like to have; but if they lie and say that his authority comes from humans, the crowds are likely to react in a negative way.

The ironic thing is, that their power comes from God as well.  If we understand God to be the Creator and Source of All, then God is the source of all power.  One of those challenging theological questions is, if God is good, and if God is powerful, then why do so many awful things happen in the world.  One way that you can answer this question is that it is because God chooses to share Their power.  God doesn’t hoard power, micromanaging everything that happens on earth, but God empowers us, even though we are merely human.  That whole thing about free will and all.

So the chief priests and temple leaders only have authority and power because God shared it with them.  We might go one step further and say that the emperor off in Rome, only had power because God gave him power; and even though the emperor might think that Herod and Pilate had power because he, the emperor, chose to give them power, God is ultimately the source of all power and authority.

Which brings us to you and to me.  We’re not Jesus.  We’re not the Roman emperor.  We’re not even the chief priests and temple authorities.  We’re just us.  What gives us any authority at all to talk about God, and to act on behalf of God in the world?

I know that this is a question that I have wrestled with – for 13 years now since I began discerning a call to ministry; for 15 years since I began the Licenced Lay Worship Leader course; for 21 years since I was first invited to preach.  That day, 21 years ago, when I was first invited to preach, my immediate reaction was to blurt out “No!  I don’t have any training or authority to preach or teach about God!”  And a little bit of that sense still remains.  When I or anyone else steps into the pulpit, we are handling holy things, things of God, and what right do any of us, as mere mortals, have to speak of or handle the holy?

But then I remember that all of us do have that authority because we are beloved children of God.  God empowers all of Their children to speak of God and of God’s love.  God empowers us to share in the bread and wine of communion and the waters of baptism because we are all God’s beloved children.  God loves you, and God wants to you feel empowered to share this love with the world.

And if we try to pretend that we don’t have this authority… well, later in November we are going to be reading the parable of the Talents, and when one of the slaves hid his talent in a hole in the ground and refused to make use of it… let me just say that things didn’t end too well for him.

But we do have authority, and we need to decide how we are going to use our power.  And the answer, at least for me, comes down to love.  God empowers us to love the world and God wants us to share the message of that amazing love with the world.  You’ve probably heard me say it before, but let me say it again:  God loves you more deeply than you could ever know or even imagine; and God is equipping and empowering you to love the world!  Thanks be to God.

 

 "Empowerment Sculpture - Lincoln, UK"
Used with Permission

"God Isn't Fair" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday September 20, 2026 – 17^th Sunday After Pentecost
Scripture Readings:  Jonah 3:10-4:11, Matthew 20:1-16

I have two sisters, which means that growing up, I developed a very strong sense of fairness.  One of my favourite stories to tell is that my mother would occasionally bring home cinnamon buns as a treat for us to share.  Whoever divided the cinnamon buns got the last pick of her share, so you’d better believe me that you were very careful to make it fair if you were the one dividing them up.  Rulers were usually involved!  Each of us would get precisely and mathematically one third.

And so reading the story that Jesus told today through the lens of fairness, I’m quick to join the chorus of the workers who had been working out in the sun all day:  “That’s not fair!”  And I can almost hear the voice of my father in the voice of Jesus or the voice of the landowner in the parable, “Well, life’s not fair.”

If you, like me, have a keen sense of fairness, then this parable of Jesus probably rubs you the wrong way.  Surely the workers who worked out in the heat of the day for a full 12-hour shift should receive 12 times the salary as the workers who only came along and worked for the last hour, as the sun was almost setting.

And when I realize that I’m reading the parable this way, I realize how deeply a capitalist mindset has me entrapped.  Maybe it is capitalism, and not fairness, that says that hard work is rewarded, and the workers who were willing to work 12 hours should, of course, be ahead in life, compared with the workers who only worked a single hour.  And the owner of the land who hired the workers – why he must have worked extra hard to be in the position that he’s in now.

But that capitalist mindset misses so much of the nuance, and I wonder if maybe that is what Jesus is trying to point out to us.  I rather suspect that the landowner didn’t work extra hard in order to be able to afford so much land, and in order to be able to pay so many people to work for him.  I rather suspect that he inherited the land from his father, who inherited the land from his father, who inherited the land from his father, and so on.

And what about the question of why some workers still hadn’t been hired at 5pm while others had been working since sunrise?  Capitalism might tell us that they must be lazy, they must have still been sleeping while the go-getters were already out in the marketplace looking for work.  But what if those 5pm hires had been overlooked earlier in the day because they have a disability?  Or what if they had been overlooked because they were immigrants?  Or what if they had been overlooked because they were queer, because they were trans, because their family led an untraditional lifestyle?

The thing about the salary that was negotiated – a denarius – is that it is enough to live on – enough to buy your daily bread – but it isn’t enough to be able to save any for a rainy day.  Those workers who weren’t hired at sunrise, they were probably starting to worry about what was going to happen if they didn’t work that day.  And when they were hired part-way through the day, they probably assumed that they were going to receive a partial salary and were trying to figure out how they were going to make the budget work – maybe pay the rent to keep a roof over their family’s head, but the children were going to have to go to be hungry again tonight.

But doesn’t every human being deserve the dignity of a roof overhead and food in their belly?  The landowner recognizes this, and pays every worker, whether they had worked a full day or only the last hour, enough to keep the wolves at bay for another day.  And to me, this is a deeper level of fairness.  This is a fairness that says “not what you have earned, but what you need.”

Now it could be, as Jesus told this parable, that he was making a commentary on the economic practices of his time and place… and maybe our time and place too, where so many people don’t have enough to get from one day to the next.  And that is probably part of Jesus's message.  But the thing about parables is that they are never just simple stories.  And when Jesus tells parables, he is usually trying to teach us something about God, and about God’s kingdom.

One good rule of thumb for interpreting Jesus’s parables is that you can usually look for the person in the story who has the most power, and with that person, Jesus is trying to depict God.  And in this parable, the person with the power is the landowner.  And Jesus is trying to paint us a picture of a God who is not fair, but who is generous far beyond fairness.  We don’t need to work to earn God’s love, we don’t have to earn God’s grace – it is given to us freely as we need it.

I think that this connection is made even more clear in the story from Jonah, and I love how cleverly the lectionary pairs these two stories together.  This happens after the famous part of Jonah’s story.  Most people associate Jonah with the whale, but you might remember that Jonah ended up in the belly of the whale because he was running away from God, because God had told him that he was to go to the city of Nineveh and tell the people to change their hearts and lives and turn back to God.  And Jonah was so convinced of the utter depravity of the people of Nineveh that he was afraid to go there, so he ran away.  After escaping the whale, he realized that he was going to have to go there after all, and he reluctantly carried God’s message to the people of Nineveh.  And to his surprise, the people listened and turned back to God.  And to his even greater surprise, God forgave the people of Nineveh for their evil ways.  And today, we get the end of Jonah’s story, where he essentially throws a temper tantrum over God’s generosity, God’s grace, and God’s love.

The thing about God’s grace is that if we accept that God loves everybody, that everybody also includes people that we might, in our heart of hearts, wish were outside of God’s grace.  We’re not going to name names here, but I rather suspect that most of us carry a couple of names in our heart about whom we think:  “Surely God can’t forgive that person.”  But God’s love is for everyone.

If we approach the parable that Jesus tells from the perspective of the workers hired in the morning, we might start to think that God loves us especially, 12 times as much as those people over there.  But if we approach the parable from the perspective of the workers who were only hired at the very end of the day, our response is more likely one of awe at a God who could be so generous and gracious as to love us too.

For God loves you – as I often say, God loves you more deeply than you could ever know or even imagine.

(At Westfield United Church, at this point in the sermon I went off-script and added the following.)

Some of you may have seen the post I made in our Westfield United Facebook group this week, telling you about a church in Hamilton that voted last Sunday to become Affirming, and the post that they made went viral in all the wrong ways.  They have received literally thousands of hateful comments.  And in my post, I invited you to go and share some love and encouragement with them, and I know that some of you did.

I also left them two comments – one under my own account, and one as Two Rivers Pastoral Charge.  And this morning as I was waiting for the ferry – it was a very long wait this morning – I opened up Facebook on my phone and saw that my Two Rivers Pastoral Charge comment had received some replies.  I had written:  “Congratulations on taking this step! God's love is limitless, unconditional, and for EVERYONE!” followed by a row of rainbow hearts; and someone literally commented underneath:  “God’s love is 100% conditional.”

What?!?!  That’s not the God that I know.  That’s not what Jesus is telling us in this parable.  God’s love and God’s grace does not depend on anything that we do or don’t do.  We don’t need to earn God’s love.

(Back to the regularly scheduled sermon.)

To quote author Phillip Yancy, “Grace means that nothing could ever make God love you more; and grace means that nothing could ever make God love you less.”

You don’t need to work 12 hours out in the blazing sun to earn God’s love.  God already loves you!  You are God’s precious child… and so is everyone else.   Thanks be to God!

 

Image:  The Late-Arriving Workers (JESUS MAFA)
Used with permission.

"Dream Dreams that are Bigger" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday September 13, 2026 – Church Picnic
Scripture Reading:  John 14:12-16, 25-31
Dr. Seuss Connection:  Oh! The Places You’ll Go!

This year, we are having a Seussian Summer – each week during the Story for All Ages, we will be reading a different Dr. Seuss book, then pairing it with scripture to see what wisdom we might find within its pages.

 

The book, Oh! The Places You’ll Go! is often given as a gift to graduating students – especially to students who are graduating from high school or from university as they prepare for their next major step in life.  It is a book that offers both deep encouragement – you’ll get there, I know that you will! – as well as a dose of reality – it isn’t going to be easy, every step of the way.

It is a great book to read at the transition points in life – transitioning from high school to college or university, or transitioning from higher education to proper grown-up life.

And this point in time, our September church picnic, is a bit of a mini-transition point in the life of our church.  The summer is always a more relaxed pace around the church, a bit of a sabbath time for many of our groups and committees.  But September is when we tend to jump back in with both feet, jumping back into the business of being the church.  Even though the new year won’t begin on the calendar until January, and even though the new year won’t begin in the church calendar until Advent, the beginning of September always feels like a new year, a fresh start, a new beginning.  So this is a transition point for us as the church, as well as for all of the students and new graduates out there.

And I think that much of the wisdom of this book holds true for us too.  Oh!  The places we could go, as the church!  Oh!  The things that we could do as the church!  We are only limited by our ability to imagine, our ability to dream, our ability to say “yes” to wherever the Holy Spirit is leading us.

What might us back from this?  Maybe sometimes it is fear – fear of something new, or fear of the work that it might take us to get there. Dr. Seuss points out to us that the path isn’t always easy.

Maybe sometimes it is nostalgia for the way that things were.  But the thing about the past is that it has passed.  We can’t go back to the way that things were, but if we get trapped in cycles of longing to recreate the past, then we’ll never get to experience the beautiful future.

And I thought that Dr. Seuss had another very insightful moment in the book, when our character gets stuck in the waiting room – waiting for something to happen, waiting for someone else to do something, waiting for… anything.  But if we, as the church, are only ever waiting for something to happen, rather than reaching out and grasping our future with both hands, then nothing will ever happen.

But I deeply believe, with every fibre of our being, that God isn’t done with us yet, that God has a future for us, and that this future is going to be new and beautiful and exciting.  Oh! The places we’ll go as we dance with the Spirit.

For the Holy Spirit is our dance partner all the way!  We aren’t on this journey alone.  The scripture passage that Rose read for us today comes from the very end of Jesus’s life – we’re in Maundy Thursday at this point, and after Jesus finishes talking to his disciples, they are going to go out to the garden and Jesus is going to be arrested.

But even on his last night alive, Jesus promises his disciples that he isn’t going to leave them alone.  They are going to have an Advocate, a helper, the Holy Spirit.  And through the Holy Spirit, the church is going to be able to do far more than Jesus, just one person, could do in his short life.

Dear Church, you can do this!
I know that it’s true!
The Spirit is with you
in all that you do!
Dream dreams that are bigger
than ever before;
Imagine a future,
and then dream some more!
Oh! the places you’ll go!
Oh! the things you will do!
The Spirit is with you,
She makes all things new!
Let’s dance with the Spirit;
our future – embrace;
leap in with all gladness;
our fears – let’s erase.
Dear Church – you can do this!
It’s plain, and it’s clear!
God’s love, it will guide us,
for God’s always near.

"We Speak for (And Care For) the Trees" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday September 6, 2026 – Feast of Creation
Scripture Readings:  Psalm 104:10-25 and Revelation 21:1-5
Dr. Seuss Connection:  The Lorax

This year, we are having a Seussian Summer – each week during the Story for All Ages, we will be reading a different Dr. Seuss book, then paring it with scripture to see what wisdom we might find within its pages.

 

This summer, there have been some weeks when I have acknowledged that the Dr. Seuss book we were reading was new to me – that it hadn’t been part of my childhood repertoire.  But that’s not the case with The Lorax.  This book was very much a part of my growing up.

In fact, this book was one of the major influences in my youngest sister choosing to become an environmental engineer – she now spends her professional life speaking for the trees, and for the animals, and for the birds, as she coordinates the clean-ups that are required when corporations make a mess.

When I messaged her earlier this week to confirm that my memory was correct, and that The Lorax had been one of her major influences, she replied with a quote that has followed her through the decades:

“UNLESS someone like you
cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better.
It’s not.”

In planning out the summer, I chose to read The Lorax today, on the first Sunday in September, because earlier this year the Consultation on the Common Text, the international and ecumenical body that is in charge of the lectionary readings that we follow through most of the year, they named the Sunday on or following September 1 as the Feast of Creation, sometimes called the Festival of Creation in Christ.

This didn’t happen overnight.  The Feast of Creation is a day that has been recognized by the Eastern Orthodox church since the 8^th Century, and the Orthodox leaders have been advocating for other churches and denominations to recognize the day since 1989.  The first Sunday in September, 2026, comes at the end of decades of advocacy.

When we celebrate creation, we are worshipping the God who created everything that we can see and everything we cannot see.  We celebrate the ways that creation can reveal the image of the Creator.  The diversity of the Truffula trees and Bar-ba-loots and Swomee-Swans, and Humming Fish reveal to us a Creator who is endlessly creative and imaginative, and who celebrates diversity.  The immensity of mountains reveals a Creator who is bigger than we can imagine.  The fury of a thunderstorm or a good nor’easter reveals a Creator who is more powerful than we sometimes like to think about.  The hardness of rocks reveals strength; the busyness of an ant colony reveals continual activity; the flow of the river reveals cleansing; the abundance of trees and plants reveals a living God, who lives again after every winter.

There is so much that creation can reveal to us about the Creator of All, and yet the message of the bible and the message of the Lorax doesn’t end there.  Both the bible and the Lorax call all of us to tend to creation and care for creation.  If we lose the riotous diversity of Creation, then our image of the Creator will lessen.

But more than that, if we harm creation, then we are harming our relationship with the Creator.  If we say that we can cut down all the trees and build a factory to make Thneeds (because why else were the trees placed there if not to make Thneeds) then what are we saying about the Creator of those trees?

It is a difficult conundrum to be in, because we know that we are not able to tread the earth so lightly so as not to cause any harm at all to other parts of creation.  We are trapped in systems that exploit creation for human benefit, and we can see how the earth is groaning under the pressure.  We humans – and I’m speaking about humans on a global scale – we urgently need to find our place within the interconnected community of creation, and find a way to be in true community with the rest of creation.  Because I honestly don’t know how much longer our planet will tolerate the current stress.

But we aren’t left without hope.  There is always hope.  Both the Lorax and the bible offer us hope.

We heard part of Psalm 104 this morning – a psalm that celebrates the goodness of God’s creation and the goodness of God the Creator of All.  But we also read from almost the very end of the bible, from the end of the book of Revelation.  And God promises to renew the earth and the heavens.  Even when we humans mess up so badly that it seems beyond repair, nothing is beyond God’s ability to restore.  The resurrection of Jesus at Easter is just a foreshadowing of the resurrection that is part of God’s very nature.

And The Lorax also holds the promise of resurrection.  Even when all of the trees are gone and the animals and birds and fish have abandoned the place, and the landscape looks more like a wasteland than anything else, there is still hope.  A Truffula seed remains, and with people willing to tend and care for it, a Truffula forest can return, and provide a home for all of the creatures.

For God is Creator
         Creator of all!
God’s heart will be broken
         to hear a tree fall.
But we are God’s people,
         who care for the earth,
we will tend and keep it
         and nurture re-birth.
For we can be people
         who care a whole lot,
and things WILL get better,
         it’s NOT a long shot!
God’s Spirit will guide us,
         and show us the way,
to be God’s good stewards.
All this, we do pray.
Amen.