"Who Do You Not See?" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday August 27, 2023
Scripture Reading:  Luke 13:10-17


Oh. Hi.

 

You don’t know me. In fact, before today, you probably didn’t think about me very much. You don’t even know my name.

 

I used to be even more bent over than this. I don’t know why it happened. I don’t know how it happened. But 18 years ago, my back started to ache some bad like you wouldn’t believe, and I just couldn’t straighten up. It got worse and worse, and more and more painful.

 

Eventually it got so bad that I couldn’t look people in the face. I couldn’t see the sky. I couldn’t cook to feed myself. I couldn’t wash myself. I could barely hobble around with my stick.

 

People told me that evil spirits had taken over my body.  That evil spirits were making my spine bend like that. People started to be afraid of me. They called me unclean. If they touched me, they risked becoming unclean too.

 

Nobody had touched me in 18 years, afraid of becoming unclean. Do you know what it is like, not to be touched by another human for 18 years?

 

Some people offered to heal me. There are so many people out there, peddling miracles, willing to take my money in exchange for the promise of a cure. And I went to all of them. Some of them gave me a cream to rub on my back. Some of them told me that I needed to pray special prayers. Some of them told me to travel to a distant land to bathe in the holy waters there. They all had two things in common:  they were willing to take my money, and none of their cures worked.

 

Every day I would drag my body outside, and sit with my begging bowl by the gates to the town. Some days I would set up beside the place to worship.  I usually got more money sitting by the town gates.  The holy people going to pray were usually in too much of a hurry to stop to give me a few coins.

 

People would drop a coin in my bowl and rush onwards. Nobody would look me in the eye.  Nobody would stop to talk to me. Eighteen years without being touched. Eighteen years without speaking with anyone.  Eighteen years without being seen.  Eighteen years with no name.

 

Sometimes on a Sabbath I would drag my poor body into the synagogue to listen to the prayers and the teaching.  I would sit in the corner thinking that maybe, just maybe, even though the people around me couldn’t see me, maybe God could see me.  Maybe God knew how much I was suffering.

 

Really, this wasn’t living.  This was merely existing.  I wasn’t able to take care of myself. Nobody cared for me. I couldn’t understand why God didn’t take the rest of my life too. Maybe God couldn’t see me either.  I was angry with this God who would let me suffer so much.

 

One Sabbath I went to the synagogue and there was a huge crowd there – so many people I had never seen there before.  I heard a whisper that the one who was teaching that day was the son of a carpenter up in Galilee.  He was on his way to Jerusalem, and he had such a crowd of people following him – women and men from all sorts of different backgrounds. The whispers said that not only was he a good teacher, but that he was also doing miracles along the way as he was travelling.

 

Well, I’d had it up to here with so-called miracles.  The ones who claimed to do miracles usually just performed the miracle of making my money disappear.  So I didn’t hold out any great hopes for this miracle-worker. I just settled into my usual back corner of the synagogue to listen to the teaching and pray that God might hear me today.

 

But no sooner had I settled in then this teacher glanced at me.  And then he stopped and looked me in the eye.  And he called me over to the place he was teaching from. I struggled to get up from the floor, grumbling a little bit. Why couldn’t he come over to me? Couldn’t he see how much of a struggle it was for me to get up? But because he had looked at me, because he had seen me, because he had spoken to me, I went over to where he was.

 

And when I had made my way to the front, this teacher, he reached out and he touched me. For the first time in eighteen years, I felt the touch of another human. He put his hand on my shoulder, and he told me that I was set free from my bondage.

 

And when he had done that, I was slowly able to straighten out, and look him in the eye. And I turned, and I was able to see the faces of all of the other people in the synagogue. And I rushed over to the door and looked up, and I saw the blue sky above me for the first time in 18 years. And I threw my arms up in the air and started to sing praises to God. For God had seen me in my suffering, and had healed me. How could I keep from singing?!

 

Now the leaders of the synagogue weren’t too impressed. They told this Jesus that he shouldn’t have been doing the work of healing on the Sabbath. He should have waited until the next day to heal me. Then they chastised me They told me that I shouldn’t have asked for healing on the Sabbath. I should have come on another day of the week to look for healing instead.

 

What hypocrites. I had been living in this place for my whole life. I had known these people since they were born. They knew that I was crippled, even if they chose not to see me. And for 18 years, they hadn’t glanced my way, let alone offered to heal me.

 

But this Jesus, he knew the law so well that he could out-argue all of them.  He knew that Sabbath was more than just a rest from work. He also knew that the scroll of Deuteronomy also says that Sabbath is in remembrance of our delivery from slavery in Egypt. And if Sabbath honours our people’s deliverance from slavery, then it is right that I should be delivered from my bondage of illness.

 

And he also knew that the law allows for people to untie their animals on the Sabbath in order to give them life-giving water. And he argued that I was more valuable than any farm animal, and therefore could be untied from my illness in order to be given life-giving healing.

 

Can you imagine it? Someone saying that I was valuable! Someone affirming that I am a daughter of Sarah and Abraham. Someone affirming that I am a beloved child of God. For so many years, I was a nobody. Unseen, untouched, unacknowledged. And yet here I was, in front of the synagogue, valuable in the eyes of God and in the eyes of the people.

 

And all of the people in the synagogue that day were rejoicing. Rejoicing that I had been healed. Rejoicing at the wisdom of Jesus.  Rejoicing that God was even more powerful than they had ever imagined.

 

Something has changed in me since I was healed. I think that before I became sick, I was like all of the other people in this town. If I had seen someone bent over like me, I wouldn’t have given them a second glance.  I would have brushed right on past them.

 

But now that I have been in their shoes, my eyes have been opened. Now, when I pass through the town, I notice all sorts of people that the rest of society doesn’t see. Those who are bent over like I used to be. Those who don’t have a home to go to. Those who sit with their begging bowls every day. Those who have been abandoned by their families and sit alone in empty houses. Those who have moved here from other lands and don’t speak our language yet. Nobody sees them. But I do.

 

And so I beg you. As you go about your busy life this week, think of me. Remember me. And when you remember me, look around you for the unseen people in your world. Open your eyes and notice them, in the same way that Jesus, this man that you follow, had his eyes open; so that you can see the people like me that Jesus saw. And like this man that you follow, find a way to give them back their humanity. Remind them that they are beloved child of God. Remind them that they are precious in God’s sight, and in your sight too.

 

Remember me. And look for other people like me. Open your eyes and see the people like me who are unseen. And then love them into wholeness.

“Old Woman Dancing”

Ernst Barlach (1920)

Used with permission

"Created for Community" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
August 13, 2023
Scripture:  Ruth 1:8-22 (The first part of the chapter was summarized in the story for all ages.)

 

 

Ruth and Naomi. There are so many different lenses that you can read their story through.  They are mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, so you can read it through the lens of obligation to care for your family – an obligation that was very strong in that time and place.  Naomi’s decision to send her daughters-in-law back to their families after all three husbands died would have been a very counter-cultural choice as their society said that Ruth and Orpah had an obligation to care for Naomi.

 

You can also read their story as a love story.  Last December we read this story, and in the sermon, I re-told it as a queer love story between Ruth and Naomi.

 

You can also read their story, especially if you read the whole book of Ruth, as a story of going above and beyond what God requires.  The story explores God’s law of levirate marriage – a brother’s requirement to marry his brother’s widow to provide a home for her. The story explores God’s commandment not to harvest your field right to the edge, but to leave some of the harvest so that people without enough food can take what they need from what you left behind.  The story explores what truly loving your neighbour as you love yourself might look like in practice.

 

But this week, I want to look at the story of Ruth and Naomi through the lens of community.

 

Right from the very beginning of the bible, God is a God of Community.  When God created the first human, shaping them out of the dust, then breathing the breath of life into them, God said that it isn’t good for the human to be alone, and God divided that first human into two humans.  Right from the very beginning, we weren’t created for isolation.

 

We see this again and again throughout the biblical story.  So many of the laws in the Old Testament, as well as the writings of the Apostle Paul in the New Testament are all about how to live well together – about how to live well in community.  There are laws in Deuteronomy about how shopkeepers shouldn’t falsify their scales, and how kindness is to be shown to people who are vulnerable – widows and orphans and foreigners living in the land.  And then we have Paul writing his famous verses to the Corinthians about how to live well together – how to live with love that is patient, love that is kind, love that isn’t envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.

 

Even when we consider that we are all made in the image of God, the God in whose image we are made is Trinity, is community. We are literally made in the image of community.

 

So getting back to Ruth and Naomi.  Whether their relationship was romantic or familial, they were together.  We have two women who are grieving – Ruth has lost her husband, and Naomi has lost her husband and both of her children.  In her grief, Naomi tried to isolate herself – tried to send Ruth back to her parents’ home, tried to travel the dangerous road back to Bethlehem alone, tried to go to a place where, if she made it back alive, no one would know the depth of her grief and pain.

 

But Ruth doesn’t let Naomi be alone.  She refuses to be sent back to her parents’ home.  She refuses to let Naomi be alone in her grief.  She insists on accompanying Naomi to what would be, for her, a strange land where she would be treated as a foreigner.  Ruth says to her:  “Wherever you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people; your God shall be my God. Where you die, I will die, and that’s where I will be buried.” And then Ruth calls on God’s name to seal the deal, to witness the covenant promises that she is making to Naomi.

 

These two women are now bound together.  Even though Naomi changes her name from Naomi which means “pleasant” to Mara which means “bitter,” the bitterness of her life will be lessened because she isn’t alone – because she has someone to share her grief with.

 

Yesterday, some of us from Two Rivers joined with some people from the other two Affirming churches in this area to walk in the Saint John Pride Parade.  There are so many things that Pride is all about – it celebrates legal gains that have been made over the past decades in terms of rights and protections for LGBTQ+ people; it continues to contain an element of protest, pushing back to make sure that the gains won’t be lost in the current political climate; it is a joyful celebration of authenticity and being your true and authentic self.  And it is also a celebration of community.  It is a celebration of a community coming together to support each other and to celebrate each other.  As humans, we are created for community.  It is not good for the human to be alone.

 

I also think that community is one of the gifts that the church can offer to the world.  In a time when people are becoming more and more isolated, here in the church we recognize the importance of community.  We recognize the importance of celebrating with each other, whether that be at baptisms or marriages or concerts or just gathering on Sunday morning to worship together.  We recognize the importance of supporting each other through difficult times, whether that be funerals or health challenges, or simply praying for each other through the tough times in life.  We recognize that a joy shared is a joy doubled, and that a sorrow shared is a sorrow halved.  The gift of community is one of the gifts that the church offers to the world, for it is not good for humans to be alone.

 

Community takes so many different forms.  Like with Ruth and Naomi, it can come in the form of family, either biological family or chosen family.  It can come in the form of an intentional community – people coming together to both support and celebrate each other, like we do in the church, or like we saw yesterday at Pride.

 

And as Jesus reminds us, wherever two or three… or more… are gathered, he is there with us.  Jesus is present in community, the body of Christ that gathers.  And so God becomes the thread that weaves community together; God, whose very essence is love, becomes the love that glues a community together.

 

And we are never alone, for God is with us and we are with each other.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.

 

 

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge at the Saint John Pride Parade

August 12, 2023

"God Who Sees" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday August 6, 2023
Scripture Reading:  Genesis 16:1-16

(Our scripture reader at the first service said, before reading, that if this reading was a TV show it would probably have to come with a "Mature Audiences" rating.)


So this week, in our exploration of the stories of women in the bible, we have Hagar.  We don’t hear her story very often.  When we talk about our ancient ancestors in faith in Genesis, we talk about Abraham and Sarah, we talk about Isaac and Rebekah, we talk about Jacob and Leah and Rachel, we talk about Joseph and his brothers, after whom the 12 tribes of Israel are descended.

But we have more ancestors in faith who aren’t named in this genealogy; and sometimes we don’t name them and don’t talk about them because their stories make us feel uncomfortable.  Joseph and his brothers weren’t all the children of Jacob’s wives, Leah and Rachel – a third of them were born to Leah and Rachel’s slaves, Bilhah and Zilpah, who were given to Jacob for the purpose of bearing children.  They also had a sister, Dinah, whose story isn’t told very often… probably because it is a story that involves deception and rape and the sons of Jacob don’t come across in a very positive light.  We did read the story of Tamar last year during Advent – she was Judah’s daughter-in-law, the granddaughter-in-law of Jacob; and many people were shocked at her story that involved seducing her father-in-law when he didn’t fulfill his obligations towards her when her husband died.

And today we have another story that is often left out of the genealogy of Genesis – the story of Hagar.  This is another story that has elements that make me uncomfortable… both in how the humans act in the story, and also in how God is shown to act.

Hagar’s story in the bible begins with Abraham and Sarah, as she was Sarah’s slave – we don’t know anything about her life before this, beyond the fact that they acquired her in Egypt. We don’t know who Hagar’s parents were, where she was born (in Egypt or elsewhere), whether she was born into slavery or born free and sold into slavery.  We don’t even know what her name was, since Hagar literally means “The Foreigner.”  But we meet her as the slave of Sarah, who was the wife of Abraham.

Now Sarah and Abraham – we do know a good bit about their backstory, and part of their story was a promise from God – a ridiculous promise that they would have descendants more numerous than the stars in the night sky; and what makes this promise ridiculous is that they had had no children and were past the age when children should have been possible.  How can we have descendants more numerous than the stars in the night sky when we don’t have a single child?

This is where our story today begins.  The end of Chapter 16 tells us that Abraham was 86 years old, and from elsewhere we know that Sarah is 10 years younger than he is.  And 76-year-old Sarah doesn’t trust God’s promise for her… possibly for good reason… and so she gives her slave Hagar to her husband for the purpose of giving him children.

This is a pattern that has been repeated again and again in places that practice slavery.  Best-known would probably be in the American south where enslaved women with no autonomy over their bodies or their lives were raped by their owners, and often children resulted.  But this story isn’t unique to that time and that place.

In the story we are reading today, Sarah and Abraham have control over Hagar’s life and over Hagar’s body.  Sarah gives her to Abraham, Abraham rapes her, and Hagar becomes pregnant.  The only sliver of power that Hagar might have is the power of her fertility, and even this tiny amount of power makes Sarah afraid of her.  Hagar has done what Sarah has been unable to do, and Sarah is afraid that she might lose her position in the house.  And so Sarah “treats her harshly” – the same word is used here as will be used later when the Ancient Israelites are slaves in Egypt and the Egyptians treat them harshly.  Sarah abuses Hagar until Hagar runs away into the desert.

This is the story that we heard this morning.  Hagar, newly pregnant, having run away from an abusive situation, encounters a messenger from God; and this messenger from God tells her to go back to Sarah and Abraham’s tents for she is going to have a son, and she is going to be the mother of a great nation.

This is the problem I have with God in this story – God is telling Hagar to go back to an abusive situation, to submit to Sarah and put up with her harsh treatment.  I find myself angry with a God who would tell a woman (or any vulnerable person) to do this.

Hagar’s story doesn’t end here – we have to flip ahead to Chapter 21 to find out what happens next.  Fourteen years later, when Abraham was 100 and Sarah was 90, Sarah gives birth to Isaac, whose name means “laughter.”  Sarah said, “God has given me laughter – everyone who hears about it will laugh with me!” But one day she sees Ishmael, the son of Hagar, laughing, and she becomes jealous.  She doesn’t want her son, her beloved Isaac, playing second fiddle to the son of her slave who is technically Abraham’s first-born son.  Not only does she see Ishmael taking over her son’s inheritance, but now she sees Ishmael taking over her son’s identity, the identity of laughter.  And she tells her husband Abraham to get rid of Hagar and Ishmael.

Abraham sends Hagar and her son out into the desert with a meager portion of bread and a flask of water.  These resources are quickly exhausted, and she leaves her son under a shrub and goes a distance away from him so that she doesn’t need to witness her son dying of thirst.  She sits there, in the desert, and cries out her grief.

But for a second time, God sees her and sends a messenger to her, this time not to send her back to the abuse of Sarah and Abraham, but instead to show her a nearby well.  Hagar and Ishmael live, Ishmael grows up, Hagar finds him a wife in Egypt, and she does become the mother of a great nation, as Ishmael is the ancestor of Arabian people and the Islamic faith.

Hagar’s is a troubling story, notwithstanding the happy ending.  It is a story of slavery and abuse and rape and grief.  It is the story of a God who sees her, and who keeps her alive, but it is also the story of a God who sends her back to an abusive situation.

At our Wednesday morning bible study (on summer break at the moment!), we are reading through the Old Testament, in part so that we have an opportunity to wrestle with stories like this one – to wrestle with stories that challenge our faith, and our trust in the bible.

One of the questions that I like to ask the group when we come across a story like this one is:  If you had to preach about this story, what would you say?  If you had to stand here where I’m standing, and you had no choice about what the bible reading was – what is the good news that you would pull out of the story.

Despite the eventual happy ending, Hagar’s story is a very difficult story.  There are challenges on so many layers in this story.  And one of the challenges with preaching about it is that I don’t want to gloss over all of the horrors in this story – I wouldn’t be authentic if I stood here and preached about her happily-ever-after, ignoring everything that came before.  I can’t stand here and pretend that these horrors don’t exist.  Author and theologian Phyllis Trible names stories like this, “Texts of Terror.”

But in the midst of the terror, I do see a glimmer of good news.  I see the good news here in God’s presence with Hagar.  Even in the midst of her lowest points, God was with her.  When she ran away into the desert to flee the abuse she was experiencing, God was with her.  When Abraham and Sarah banished her from their household back into the desert after the birth of Isaac, God was with her.  Hagar names God “El-roi,” “God-who-Sees.”  God saw Hagar in her distress, and God was present with her.

I’m going to have to put that question about why God sent Hagar back into an abusive situation on my list of questions to ask God when I have a chance to do so face-to-face; but for now, what I will take away from this story is the reassurance of God’s presence. When I am in the pit of grief, when I am anxious about the future, when I face any sort of struggles, I know that the God-who-Sees, that the God who saw Hagar sees me too, and that God is with me just as God was with Hagar in the desert.

And God sees you too; and God is with you too.
Always.
And forever.
Amen.

 

 

Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar

Unknown Artist

Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

"At the Intersction of Evangelism and Stewardship" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday July 30, 2023
Scripture:  Acts 16:6-15 (And yes, I did apologize to the scripture reader at each church for all of the place names in this week’s reading!)

 

 

I’ve got two different study bibles on my desk – one doesn’t include any titles for the stories, but the other one does, and it titles the story that we just heard, “The Conversion of Lydia.”  (I think that’s also the title given to it in the pew bibles.) But when I read this story, I wonder if Lydia is the only person who is being converted – I wonder if there is another conversion going on in this story.

 

Paul has already had his big conversion moment – if you were to flip back to before chapter 9 in the book of Acts, you would find him, named Saul at the time, as the primary persecutor of the early church. But then in chapter 9, he has a dramatic conversion experience where he is thrown to the ground by a blinding light and he hears the voice of Jesus calling to him. And in a few short verses, he goes from being the chief persecutor of the church to the chief evangelist, traveling around sharing the story and the good news of Jesus.

 

And so here we are, at the beginning of today’s story, and Paul has a vision where a man appears, begging him to come to Macedonia to bring them the good news about Jesus.  And Paul and his followers immediately set sail for Macedonia, landing in the city of Philippi.

 

I can imagine Paul, arriving in this new city, beginning to search for this man who appeared to him in a vision, but we don’t have any record of him finding him.  Instead, Paul stumbles on a group of women gathered by the river to pray.  This wasn’t what he was expecting, but he was open to the prompting of the Holy Spirit, and he joins their gathering, and speaks to them about Jesus.  I see this as another conversion moment for Paul – recognizing that women can be leaders in this new movement.

 

And then we come to Lydia’s conversion. The Holy Spirit opens her heart as well, and she hears Paul’s message, and then she and her whole household are baptized there in the river.  But then she goes one step further, and she opens her home to these travellers.

 

We don’t hear much more about Lydia.  She is a dealer in purple cloth, and since purple was the colour worn by royalty, this meant that she was likely moving in some pretty high-class circles.  Her house was big enough to host the visitors, becoming their home base for their time in Philippi, and essentially becoming the very first church in that city.

 

I love this story.  I love how Paul doesn’t question the prompting of the Holy Spirit, but just goes.  I love how he doesn’t question the unexpected presence of this group of women ready and willing to hear about Jesus… I mean, he could have passed them by, determined to find the man who had appeared in his vision, but he was willing to stop and engage in conversation with them.

 

I love this story.  I love how Lydia doesn’t hesitate, but opens her home to these visitors, and to anyone else wanting to hear about Jesus.  I love how she doesn’t resist the nudging of the Holy Spirit, but opens her arms with generosity to share what she has.

 

Because both Lydia and Paul listened to the Holy Spirit, and then, more importantly, allowed themselves to be led by the Holy Spirit, the message of Jesus – the message of loving God with our whole hearts and loving our neighbours as ourselves – this message found a new foothold in a new place.

 

When I e-mailed Bertis earlier this week to touch base about today’s service, I said that I think that this story sits at the intersection of evangelism and stewardship.

 

It is a story about evangelism because it is a story about the message of Jesus spreading in the world.  Now, contrary to popular belief, evangelism isn’t a dirty word!  At the root of the word, it simply means good news, coming to us from Greek, euangelion, literally meaning a good message or good news.  So it’s not a word to be scared of!  Paul is bringing good news to the people of Philippi – good news about a God whose very essence is love; good news about a God who loves creation so much that they chose to become part of creation in the person of Jesus; good news about a way of living that is grounded in love.

 

And as well as being a story about evangelism, it’s also a story about stewardship.  Again – not a word to be scared of!  Being a steward is all about caring for things that don’t belong to us on behalf of someone else.  Our church stewards care for the things that the church has, on behalf of the whole church as well as on behalf of God.

 

And in today’s story, we read about Paul using the gifts that God gave to him – the gift of preaching, the gift of teaching, the gift of explaining, the gift of being able to relate to people from different backgrounds.  He is using all of these gifts that God gave to him on God’s behalf, so that God’s message might spread.

 

And Lydia too – she is using the resources that God has given to her. She is a wealthy woman, well-connected in society, and with a house large enough to host visitors. And she uses these resources to found a church, so that God’s message might spread in her community.  She being a good steward of what she has been given.

 

I love this story.  I love this story… but it scares me just a little bit. Because when I think of what this story might be saying to me, might be saying to the church, there are some serious implications for us.  There are implications for evangelism – like Paul and like Lydia, all of us are called to share Jesus’s message with other people.  And there are implications for stewardship – like Lydia and like Paul, we are called to share freely the gifts that we have been given, recognizing that we didn’t earn them, but that it is only by God’s grace that they have been loaned to us to care for on God’s behalf.

 

What if Paul hadn’t taken the opportunity to share his message with Lydia and the other women?  Would the church have gained a foothold in Philippi?  And what if Lydia had worried about saving her money for a rainy day rather than offering what she had to Paul so that a church could be founded?  Would the church have been able to grow in that corner of the world without a home base?

 

And so like this story, I think that we too are called to live our life as the church at the intersection of evangelism and stewardship.  And I don’t think that this necessarily has to be a scary thing!  Evangelism can be as simple as inviting someone to join you here on a Sunday morning.  Stewardship can be as simple as figuring out which part of the work of the church your skills are the best match for, and offering to share them, whether that be through joining a committee or singing in the choir or organizing a fundraiser or leading a bible study.

 

The life of the church depends on all of us sharing our different resources and gifts so that the church can continue to church, as well as extending the invitation to others to come and see what we’re all about.

 

I do love this story of Lydia and Paul.  And maybe – just maybe – it isn’t as scary as I used to think that it was.

 

 

“Saint Lydia Purpuraria” (Saint Lydia the Purple-Seller)

by Akelda

Used with Permission

(I have only just learned that St. Lydia’s feast day

is coming up this week – August 3!)

"Mother of All Wisdom" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday July 23, 2023
Scripture:  Genesis 2:18-25

 

 

This week, in our exploration of the stories of women in the bible, we heard the story of the first woman in the bible who is named… only did you notice that we didn’t get to hear her name this morning?  It turns out that we only heard half of her story this morning, and she doesn’t receive her name until the end of the next chapter – I just didn’t think that our reader would have been very happy about being asked to read a chapter and a half of the bible!

 

We also have part of the story happening before the part that we heard. In the first part of Chapter 2 of Genesis, we read about God shaping the first human out of the dust of the ground – an earthling created of the earth; a human created from the humus. This earthling was then brought to life by the breath of God and placed in a garden and given instructions to tend and care for the land.  In the centre of this garden grew both the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil; and our earthling was told that they could eat freely of any tree in the garden except for the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, with the warning that if they eat of that tree, then they would die immediately.

 

That’s what came before today’s story – the story of the human, lonely without a companion, the story of God causing the human to fall into a deep sleep, and the story of God splitting the first human into two humans, a man and a woman.

 

And then the story continues from there in Chapter 3, and it’s a story that might be familiar to some of you.  We have a crafty snake who approaches the two humans for a conversation.  The snake asks: “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden?’”  The woman replies:  “We may eat of the fruit of the the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’”  The crafty snake answers back, “But you will not die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

 

And with that, the woman looked at the tree with fresh eyes – she saw that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil delighted her eyes. She saw that the fruit of this tree was good to eat.  She saw that the wisdom that the fruit would bring to her was something to be desired.  And she picked the fruit, shared it with the man, and the two of them ate.

 

Almost right away they were ashamed of what they had done. Together, they sewed fig leaves to cover themselves, and when they heard God approaching, they hid in the bushes.

 

This next part of the story reminds me of when my youngest cousin was little. The rest of us were still sitting at the dinner table, and she wanted to take a chocolate from the side table.  We watched her come in to the room, one hand held up beside her face so that she couldn’t see us, grabbed a chocolate, and left the room the way she had entered… the rationale being that if she couldn’t see us, then we couldn’t see her.

 

So here we have the two humans hiding in the bushes, and in walks the all-knowing, all-seeing God.  And God asks, “Where are you?” as if God doesn’t know where the humans are.

 

The humans are compelled to confess what they have done – the man blames the woman, the woman blames the snake, and nowhere do they say that they are sorry for what they have done – to say that they are sorry for disobeying God’s instructions and for damaging their relationship with God.

 

I have lots of questions for this story.  The first one is:  Were they sorry?  I don’t know.  I don’t know if the power, the lure, the appeal of the wisdom that they had gained was stronger than their desire to be in relationship with God.

 

And then what follows is expulsion from the garden. Rather than being able to freely pick from all of the trees that God had planted there, they would have to work for their food, work for their living.

 

It’s interesting to note that God doesn’t carry out the threat of immediate death for eating the fruit – they are about to lose access to the tree of life which means that they are going to die one day, but not today.  This is where we hear the well-known words, “you will return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  Which raises another question:  Because the humans didn’t die as soon as they ate the fruit, does that make this a story about grace, about unearned forgiveness, rather than a story that is just about sin?

 

And only then is the woman named – Eve – her name meaning “Mother of All Living.”  She isn’t named for the wrong that she has done, but rather for the life that she will bring as the mother of us all.

 

I have more questions for this story.

 

My next question is a foundational question.  When Eve, the Mother of all Living, and Adam, named after the “Adam” or dust from which they were made – when they chose to listen to the snake and eat the fruit of the tree that God had forbidden to them, they hadn’t yet eaten the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Which sounds like a circular statement. Before they ate the fruit, they hadn’t eaten the fruit.  But this means that they didn’t yet know good and evil.  They didn’t yet know what was right and wrong.  And so can they truly be blamed for eating the fruit? How could they have understood that it was wrong, until after they ate it?

 

And so I wonder if the expulsion from the garden was a consequence of their actions rather than a punishment.  To have free access to both the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would make humans like God – in the garden, we had access to the tree of life, outside of the garden we have access to the wisdom that comes from knowing good and evil.

 

Interestingly, access to the tree of life which humanity loses so early in the story of the bible returns at the very end of the bible, at the end of Revelation, with God’s re-creation of the earth, and there in the centre of the new creation stands the tree of life.  But that’s a story for another day!

 

Instead, the story of Eve essentially ends as they leave the garden. She is mentioned again only in relation to her children, Cain and Abel.  She goes on to live the rest of her life carrying the memory of the garden and the memory of what they had done, but the story of the rest of her life isn’t recorded.

 

I wonder if she regretted her choice?  Did she regret choosing the path of wisdom and knowledge and insight, longing for the days when she was ignorant and unaware?

 

The expression, “ignorance is bliss” is popular for a reason!  I don’t know about you, but I often think that life would be a lot easier if I wasn’t aware that there was a war going on in Ukraine; if I wasn’t aware of gender-based violence and child abuse; if I wasn’t aware of climate change; if I wasn’t aware of racism and homophobia and transphobia.  Sometimes it feels like I are having so much doom and gloom thrown at us every day that I just want to curl up under a blanket with my cats and a novel and a cup of tea and pretend that none of that is happening in the world.

 

But I can’t.  I can’t do that, because if I pretend that none of the bad stuff is happening, then I wouldn’t have the motivation to try and change the world a little bit for the better.  Or, more accurately, I wouldn’t have to motivation to let the Holy Spirit work in me, empowering me to change the world a little bit for the better.

 

If all of us are ignorant, or feign ignorance, then the evil in the world will be allowed to flourish.  We need to be aware of the evil in order to be able to stand up to it.  We can’t just put our collective heads in the sand.

 

Even in the overall story of the bible, again and again, God pleads for us to seek wisdom rather than ignorance.  We hear this most pointedly in Proverbs, where Woman Wisdom is running through the streets, shouting at people who seem to be choosing ignorance over wisdom.

 

Which brings us back to Eve.  What if, instead of blaming her for the loss of the garden life, what if we could instead thank her for opening up the option of wisdom for us?  What if the Mother of all the Living is also the Mother of all Wisdom (for I think that life and wisdom are very much connected), and we seek to follow in her ways of the fullness of all living, and the seeking of wisdom and knowledge?

 

And may this be so.  Amen.

 

 

“The Temptation and Fall of Eve”
(Illustration for Paradise Lost by John Milton)

William Blake

Used with Permission

 

It is interesting, with this story and others, that so many of us

remember, not necessarily the story, but what we have

been told about the story. The words “temptation,”

“sin,” and “fall” do not appear in the story of Eve.

"Martha vs. Mary vs. Both" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
July 9 and 16, 2023 (Annual Flower Services)
Scripture:  Luke 10:38-42

 

Today, as well as being our annual Flower Service, is also the first Sunday of our summer exploration of stories in the bible about women.  Each week we will be looking at a different story, and to kick things off this week we have a short story about two women, sisters Mary and Martha.  (And my apologies to anyone who was here last week/two weeks ago and is now getting two services in a row about the same story!  I planned out the summer back in May, and I had no idea that Linda Watson was going to be reading the same story with you just a week ago!)

 

So here we have Jesus and his disciples, his followers, his students, travelling through Galilee, teaching and healing as they go.  They are on their way to Jerusalem at this point in the story, and if you are familiar with the Good Friday and Easter story, you will know that Jesus’s death and resurrection aren’t too far in the future at this point in time.

 

They enter an unnamed village, and a woman named Martha welcomes them into her home as a guest.  This is the first detail that makes my ears prick up.  There is no mention of a father or a brother or a husband – Martha is welcoming Jesus into her home, into the home that she shares with her sister, Mary.  In a time and a place where women were the property of men, this is an interesting detail.

 

So Martha and Mary welcome Jesus into their home, and then they take on very different roles.  Martha bustles around the kitchen, getting a meal ready to serve to Jesus and to his friends.  Mary, on the other hand, has joined that group of disciples and is sitting on the floor with them at Jesus’s feet, listening to his teachings.

 

Two different women, each taking on a different role in welcoming Jesus to their home.  One serving, the other listening and learning.  It is the difference between these two sisters that many writers and preachers like to grasp on to – are you a Mary or are you a Martha?  Do you feel called to serve the world, or do you feel called to quietly listen and learn?  Show of hands – who feels more like a Martha, living your life to serve others?  What about Mary – who feels called to a life of quiet contemplation?

 

I remember a decade ago, when I took the Licensed Lay Worship Leader course back in Ontario, we spent one of our weekends exploring this story of Mary and Martha.  One of our activities was to make a mask – we were told to make a mask that would express either our Martha-ness or our Mary-ness.  And I remember sitting there, looking at the blank page, not quite sure what I was going to do with it, because there are times when I feel more like Martha, and there are times when I feel more like Mary.  I am both Martha and Mary.

 

Like so many things in our world, I don’t think that this has to be an either/or question.  You don’t have to be either Mary or Martha, pigeonholed into an expectation about how you are going to live your life.  I suspect that most of us would find ourselves somewhere on the spectrum between Mary and Martha, with a bit of both in us, or maybe even moving to different points on that spectrum depending on the day.

 

I suspect that the same is true for all of the loved ones we are remember today at our Flower Service.  Maybe he was a do-er, always willing to lend a hand to a neighbour the way Martha did, but he also appreciated a quiet time of prayer.  Maybe she was someone who never missed bible study or a UCW gathering, and loved talking about her faith like a Mary, but when sandwiches were needed for Romero house, she was always willing to make a loaf.

 

The thing is, the church as a whole needs all of us, Marys, Marthas, and all of us who find ourselves somewhere in the messy middle.  Keeping the church being the church isn’t the responsibility of one person, but depends on all of us sharing our gifts.  In order for the church to be a community in which we can grow in our faith AND a community that serves the needs of the world, we need all of us.  We can’t have the Marthas in the church complaining that the Marys aren’t helping to stock Ida’s Cupboard with food for our neighbours, or helping with the Mission and Service fundraiser.  But at the same time, we can’t have the Marys complaining that the Marthas aren’t coming to bible study, and are missing worship more often than they are present.  Because in order for the church to be the church, it takes all of us.

 

And I also wonder if, as we spend time in a community that values both the gifts of Mary and the gifts of Martha – as we spend time in a community that values both spiritual nurturing and serving the world – as we spend more and more time in a community like this, maybe all of us will shift closer to the middle of the Mary/Martha spectrum and find ourselves identifying with both of these women.

 

And may it be so, in our individual lives.  And may it be so in the life of our church.  Amen.

 

 

 

“Martha and Mary”
JESUS MAFA
Used with Permission