Sermon for October 30, 2011 - Journey of Faith

The Scripture for this Sermon was Joshua 3:7-17

Once upon a time, I used to run somewhat regularly.  I was a member of my high school cross country team.  I don’t actually remember us doing very well.  I remember us playing a lot of ultimate Frisbee.  And I also remember one year pulling in the last five spots at an All-Colony track meet.  Still throughout my life, barring a time here or there, I have been a somewhat consistent runner.

Well, I didn’t run at all this summer.  I began in the spring with high hopes.  I quickly rebelled against those high hopes, finding a number of excuses which threw off my discipline and any inertia I might have gathered.  That being said, once late summer came around I decided I really wanted to run 5k again.  That’s about 30 minutes of running.  Nothing too significant, but something I would still have to commit to.  So I began very slowly.  I used a program I found online that I put on my phone.  Its called the 5k101 training program.  It is eight weeks, essentially going from the couch to running for 30 minutes straight.

The first week it had me running for two minutes, and walking for three, then repeating that set for a total of 8 minutes of running.  The first time I tried it, I was beat and realized how out of shape I had become.  I had to do that three times that week.  The next week, the running went up a little bit, and the walking down a little bit.  I think it was two and a half minutes of running, followed by two and a half minutes of walking, then repeating over until I had run for a total of ten minutes.  I’m on week five now.  The sets are eight minutes of running, and two minutes of walking for a total of twenty four minutes running.  And it feels really good.  I’m not there yet, but I can see myself getting there.

The most difficult thing about it, is developing a sense of patience.  Being patient with myself.  Accepting that I’m not there yet, that I can’t run for 30 minutes straight anymore.  Sometimes it is hard not to rush the whole program.  Instead I have to learn to let my body, let my legs and my lungs, let my heart, as well as my mind get used to the whole process.  It may surprise some of you (or not) that patience with myself does not come easily to me.

Has anyone heard the Chinese proverb, “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”?  Can anyone think of something else that requires time and energy to accomplish?  Can anyone think of a journey of a thousand miles that starts with a single step?

In our scripture reading for today, we encounter the Israelites entering into the Promised Land.  That place which had been promised to their ancestors hundreds of years earlier.  But this is not the same group of Israelites that first went into the desert out of slavery in Egypt.  Though they were initially excited about leaving Egypt, they quickly grew disgruntled.  They argued with God, with Moses, and with themselves.  They complained about hunger, about thirst, worshiped a golden calf, doubted God’s promise.  And so they wandered in the desert for forty years.

Forty years later, we find the Israelites a completely different group of people.  They have become something else.  They have been changed.  This next generation of Israelites no longer fears entering the Promised Land.  Aware that God is among them, this is a spiritually transformed group.  And so they cross the River Jordan into the Promised Land in much the same way that they crossed the Red Sea.  Only this time they are not driven by fear, but instead by hope. 

This is not a small trickle of a river, this is a river at full flood, and we in Manitoba have seen what a flooding river looks like.  Imagine crossing the Assiniboine or the Souris this past spring, knowing that the only thing stopping you from being swept away was the presence of God.

Where did this trust come from?  Where did this faith in God come from?  How were the Israelites transformed so dramatically?  It came from forty years of wandering through the desert.  Forty years of living in the wilderness.  It did not come over night.  The faith of the Israelites was hard fought.  It was not a momentary, “Hey, we trust in God.  Look at us.”  It takes a long time for that relationship to develop.

And this is a wonderful model for our lives as Christians.  Our lives are a pilgrimage, a pilgrimage always moving towards that promised land of deeper relationship with the holy.  Our lives are a pilgrimage seeking wholeness, moving through our own brokenness.

And here’s the best part!

For me, the joy of running doesn’t come from hitting that end goal.  The joy of running comes from simply doing it.  I feel good about myself when I’m running, when I get out and enjoy the day, when I feel my own heart beat and spend time concentrating on my very breath.  I didn’t pick up the guitar in order to become a rock star (although lets face, you all heard my rendition of Tom Dooley, I’m pretty sure I will become one), I picked it up because I think it will be fun just to mess around with it.

As I was cleaning up some files in my study, I found a scrap piece of paper with something written on it.  Based on the papers around it, I think it was Shane Claiborne who said it at our Conference Annual Meeting last year, but I’ll stand to be corrected.  “Christians are so often worried about life after death, the we never even think about life before death!”  i.e. We are so worried about the destination, about the end goal, that we never even notice the pilgrimage itself.  How does our faith affect our lives here and now?

Jesus said, the kingdom of heaven is at hand.  It’s not tomorrow, its not a week from now, its not December 21, 2012.  It’s here!  It’s now!  He’s not talking about the afterlife, he’s talking about this world!  He’s talking about today!

There is a wonderful story I once heard a minister tell.  It was about a teacher living in Africa.  One day one of her students, gave her a beautiful gift, a certain kind of shell that could only be find at a beach miles away.  The student, who had no mode of transportation, had walked out there, found the shell and brought it back.  The teacher said, “That’s such a long journey for a gift!”  The student’s reply was “But don’t you see?  The journey is the gift!”

The Israelites could have wandered through the desert another forty years and still would have been in their promised land because they realized that through all that wandering, they remained in the presence of God.  It is the pilgrimage of our lives themselves that are holiness, not some end call that we are constantly striving for.

It doesn’t happen overnight, we never get to that final end goal we think we long for.  Transformation, relationship with God, encountering the holy and embodying Christ is not an on/off switch that we just need to find so we can flick it. And so we must be patient with ourselves.  We must learn throughout our lives that it is the path itself that is the pilgrimage, it is the forty years of wandering that is the promised land, the journey is the gift.  We are pilgrims together, seeking the God who exists within all of our lives and supporting one another in our travels.  In that way, we come to see that God is with us, always and in all ways.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Sermon for October 16, 2011 - Venting

Scripture Passage: Exodus 33:12-23

There is something incredibly endearing and human about so many characters in the bible.  Anyone who tells you the bible is full of saints and angelic people, probably hasn’t read it too closely.  On the other hand, anyone who tells you it is chock full of humanity, I think, gets it.

Moses is one of those humans, and as I read this passage over and over, I find I like him more and more.  I like him, because there is so much truth to him, he is very human, just like you and me.  I love Moses.

So how did we get here?  The Hebrews had been wandering around the desert for three months since being liberated from Egypt.  They are eating manna and quail, they are drinking water that flows from rocks, and they arrive at Mount Sinai.  Moses, their leader, heads up the mountain, and receives a number of laws from God, most notably the ten commandments.  Moses receives the two tablets with God’s testimony on them, inscribed into the rock by God’s finger, and he begins to head down the mountain.

While Moses was up on the mountain, his people began to get nervous.  They worried about what was going to happen.  He’d been gone so long, was he ever coming back?  Mumbles and grumbles began to work their way through the encampment.  Those mumbles and grumbles grew louder until they became a cacophony of noise.  “Oh we’ve been abandoned! We need new gods to lead us now that Moses has obviously been lost to us!”  Aaron, Moses’ brother and the high priest, appeases them with a Golden Calf.  And that’s when everything goes Kaput! 

Violence, disease, punishment, and abandonment.  God sends them away from Mount Sinai, with the words of an angry parent “I’ll decide what to do with you, later!”  Eventually going with, “I will no longer be leading you.”  And that’s when Moses turns to God.

“God, where are you?  Don’t stop leading us now, we need you so much!  We’re lost without you!  I thought I was your friend!  You keep promising things, so what’s the deal?  Show yourself to me!”

This is what I love.  This is the humanity of Moses, as the voice of the people, a voice that we can recognize really carries a strength with it.  “God, where are you?”  This is a question that resonates throughout the human consciousness spanning our history.  “Where are you God?  What’s going on?  Just show me where to go and I’ll go there! Lead me!”

This pleading is at the heart of our religious experience.  It is at the heart of our search for meaning, the heart of our greatest existential questions as people of faith.  “Where are you God?  Please! I don’t know what to do!”

Who has not faced great times of trial and tribulation in their lives?  Who has not been confronted by a difficult decision, a decision they long for guidance in, but when we ask, we find only silence?  It is entirely human for us to turn to God, and say “Hey God?  Where are you in the midst of all this?  I need you!”

This pleading, and yelling, this questioning and venting is present across the biblical narrative.

Not only Moses, but Elijah too.  Alone and lost in the desert, hunted by his enemies, Elijah throws up his hands and says to God, “That’s it!  I’m done!  I’ve done everything you ask, and look where it has gotten me!”  Elijah is mad, and tired, and sad, and afraid.  He’s had enough!

Jeremiah, similar sentiment.  “You know God, everyone says you’re so righteous!  That you are just and good!  But looking around, I have some serious questions about how just and good you are!  Where are you God?”

Even Jesus, in the Garden of Gethsemane, praying to God, asking not to be in the position he finds himself.  Then on the cross crying out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  Where are you God?  I need you right now!”

These are the voices that join with us, when we cry out, “God just speak to me!  I want something solid and tangible.  I want to know where you are in the midst of all of this!  Because right now, I can’t find you!  I can’t hear you!  Give me a sign!  Show me a direction!”

These are not only human questions to ask, human cries to make; they are GOOD questions to ask, they are GOOD cries to make.  They are cathartic!  They help us pour out those emotions that have been created into us.  They are a form of prayer.  But more than that, in asking them we are saying we trust God’s grace, we trust our relationship with God.  When crying out we are saying we trust that God can handle our venting.  And trust me, God can!

Being angry, or afraid, or sad, or lost; and venting that towards God is a Holy Experience in itself.  It was when Moses put his questions to God, that he came into the divine presence, and that the covenant between God and the Israelites is renewed.  It is when Elijah cries out, that he was invited to encounter God at Horeb.  It was when Jeremiah laid into God, that God speaks to him.  It was when Jesus cried out, that he died and the curtain in the temple was torn in two; and the world saw there was no division between God and creation.

Now, none of them got exactly what they want.  Moses only saw the divine presence from a distance.  Elijah encountered God, not in an storm or an earthquake or a fire, but in a whisper. Jeremiah was essentially told, “All those promises you’re waiting to be fulfilled, I’m just going to make those same promises again.  Deal with it.”

God is never what we expect.  Actually, God is often never what we really think we want.  But during those times in our lives when we are overwhelmed;  During those times in our lives when we are lost, or afraid, or angry;  During those times in our lives when we are without hope, without direction; Offering that up to God, in any way, is a sign of our tremendous and awesome relationship with the Holy One, in whom we live, and breathe, and have our being.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Sermon for October 9, 2011 - Something From Nothing

Scripture Passage for this Sermon: Luke 17:11-19

Read Something From Nothing by Phoebe Gilman

You can’t get something from nothing.  These are the words, the little boy in the book we just read, was told.  You can’t get something from nothing.  It seems logical.  Matter cannot be created right?  You can’t have an effect without a cause right?  In general, people get what they deserve right?  But the story doesn’t end there does it?  The little boy does indeed get something from nothing.  He gets a story.

You can’t get something for nothing.  Jesus, called to the lepers, he invited them to lean in just a little bit.  They had been told many times over, “You can’t get something for nothing.”  They were unclean, cursed with an illness that separated them from the world around them.  They could not offer anything to the world, and so they would get nothing in return.  They were nothing, and people treated them that way. 

They leaned in towards Jesus.  Then he invited them to lean in a little bit more, and at this time, all the disciples and the whole crowd was starting to lean further and further away, because, come on, its lepers, and no one wanted to be anywhere near them.  So Jesus began to whisper, he said, “All these people will tell you, you can’t get something from nothing, but you know what?  You CAN!  And somewhere, deep down inside each of you, you believe it, you know it.  You wouldn’t have called out to me if you didn’t.  You CAN get something for nothing.”

The lepers were in shock! Could it be?  Was it possible?  They ran to the priests who confirmed that they did indeed get something for nothing.  They had been cleansed, they had been healed.  And they didn’t have to make promises about what they would do, they didn’t have to be wonderfully good people, they just had to believe that they might get something from nothing.

They had nothing!  They had absolutely nothing.  They were unclean.  They were diseased.  They were on the outside looking in.  They had no access to society.  They had no access to the temple.  They had no access to anything.  They couldn’t offer anything to the world around them.  They had nothing.  And yet they trusted that even though they had nothing, they could get something.  And they were right.  A scandalous thought in the first century CE, and still a scandalous thought today.

This is not a story about miraculous healings.  This is a story about grace.  This is a story about getting something from nothing.  These lepers were not healed, they did not encounter God because they were deserving.  All the rules and regulation, all the laws of the day, in fact, insured that they would NOT have access to God. 

And yet… Sure enough.  They woke up one morning as lepers, as outsiders, as marginalized members of society, as excluded, as unclean.   And they went to bed with the ability to fully participate in the community.  From nothing, they suddenly had something.

This is what grace is.  It is the idea that we can get something from nothing. This is the faith that Jesus compliments at the end of the story.  The faith in God’s grace; a grace that is boundless and that is freely given.  A grace that is something from nothing.  We just get it.  We just get God’s grace.

In our world, we have created a deceptive reality.  Because we ourselves so often struggle with the idea of getting something from nothing (or worse yet – giving something without reason); subsequently, our image of God is one that often demands sacrifice, demands saintly perfection, demands correct doctrinal belief.  God will love us if we believe this… God will love us if we do that…  That’s counter to the Gospel.  Jesus heals first, before anything else happens.  God’s love always, always, always, comes first.  That is grace.

But the story does not end there.  One of the ten lepers comes back.  And he’s all healed, all clean, possibly skipping like the ex-leper from The Life of Brian. And this leper, responds to that grace which all of them had received.  He says, “thank you.”

And though Jesus is saddened that the others have not come back, he is delighted with this one man.  Jesus sees in him the model of his disciples, the model of who Luke thought Christians should be.  We are all recipients of God’s grace.  We are all bound up in God’s love, created and cherished.  To be Christian is not to be loved any more than anyone else.  All ten lepers were healed.  To be a Christian is to respond to that grace with gratitude.  To be Christian is to respond to that grace with humility.  Remember, grace touches everyone, we’re not better than anyone, we are just called to be grateful for it.  To live in response to that love God gives to the whole world.  We are called to live lives within that grace.

The question I’m going to leave you with is, and this Thanksgiving Sunday, is how do we show our gratitude to the God that loves everyone and everything?  How do we live lives that say “thank you”?  How do we fully live lives that embody that grace we are freely given?

Sermon for October 2, 2011 - Community of God

The Scripture Readings for the sermon were Matthew 11:25-30 and Galatians 6:14-18

My favourite image of St. Francis is of him preaching to the birds.  There is something so simple, and marvelous about it at the same time.  They silently watched and listened as Francis walked among them.  “Sister Birds,” he says, “Be grateful that God made you.  And always praise God.”  Then they fly up in the air, heading off in the four directions, all of them singing and chirping joyfully.  For Francis, even the birds deserved to hear the good news.

This story, I think, echoes the words of Jesus from our scripture passage today: “I thank you, God, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants;”  This simple nature that we encounter in the life of St. Francis, that he points to in the birds, and that Jesus finds in young children, is what we are called to model.  But I think this story of St. Francis and this Gospel passage say a bit more than just that.

When I first moved to rural Manitoba, I was touched and amazed at how well you guys do community.  It is hard to describe.  This is why I enjoy going into the community center, or to Dora’s, or to Harrison House for lunch.  There is an attitude, an atmosphere, that says “we’re all in this together, so lets all be in this together.”  In general, you know how to get along together, to support one another through tough times, and very often you know how to disagree with one another.  You know what it means to bring a meal over to someone who is grieving.  You know what it means to help someone with a broken piece of machinery.  You know what it means to enjoy coffee with one another, and you know how important it is to welcome people into your community.  You know what it means to put your trust in the people around you.  That has been a profound blessing for me.

People will say that the problem with our world is that we don’t know how important community is.  I disagree.  I think we know how important it is.  I think we either a) don’t know how to do it, or b) don’t know how large it is.  My experience out here is that you guys know how to do community.  That is a huge leg up on so many in the world.  The next step is seeing how big community is.

This was the message of Christ.  He was not simply saying, “Community is important!” People knew that, people understood that.  He was saying “Look at how big community is!”  He would say, “You have no idea who all is included in it.  Not just the clean, the saintly, the powerful, the rich; but the lepers, the sinners, the oppressed, and the poor.  They are as important to the community of God as anyone!”  Or as in our Gospel reading, “The community of God is not just for the wise and learned!  It is for the child who may know far less, but gets it far more than any of us.”  The Apostle Paul added to this, he looked around, he saw the divide between the Jews and the Gentiles (even in the church) and he said, “Hey, wait a minute!  We can’t draw our own line around races.  We need to include more than just a single group in the community of God.  Jews AND Gentiles are a part of the community.”  And our Brother St. Francis included even more, he would go out and he preached to a wolf, he preached a sermon to birds, “We can’t just say, the community of God includes only people, but rather it includes all of creation!  All that is, is a part of the community.  And so I say ‘Hello Brother Sun, and Hello Sister Moon! Hello brother wolf and sister swallows.‘ We are all one family, united in the community of God.”

Modern science tells the same story.  It does not contradict the message of Christ, it simply proves it with a different language.  In biblical times, people could look to scripture, and say, we are all related through Noah and his family, or through Adam and Eve.  Now, we can look through the lens of evolution, and see that it is true that if we go back far enough, we are all related.  But if we go back even further, we can see that we share a common ancestor with every animal, and further, with every plant, and fungus, that our family includes all life on earth.  And if we really want to stretch our boundaries, we can see that every rock, every drop of water, every piece of soil, much of the gas in the air, we all descended from Supernovas that forged our elements in their cores.  We all come from that same moment of creation, the earliest reckoning of history, as descendants of the Big Bang.

This message is just as unpopular today as it was when it got Jesus killed.  God’s community does not end at those doors, at these walls.  God’s community does not end outside of town, outside of Western Manitoba or rural Canada.  God’s community does not end at people who look like us, or think like us, or believe in the same things we do, or act the same way we do.  God’s community does not end with the people we might like.  God’s community does not end along national or racial or ethnic or religious borders.  God’s community does not end with humanity.  God’s community does not end with animals, or with life, or with earth.

Those are our communities.  Those are our boundaries, our definitions, our lines. Those are the divisions we are constantly bombarded with in the media, in politics.  Those are our kingdoms.  But Christ was not calling us to our kingdoms, Christ was calling us to the Kingdom of God.  Christ was calling us to the community of God.

God who sent Jonah to meet his enemies, and who told him, “Don’t you dare say that these people are not a part of family!”  God who went and lived with the poor, the outcasts, the sinners of Judea and Galilee, and who said to everyone “Don’t you dare say they are not in my family!”  God who sent St. Francis to meet with a wolf and some birds, and to remind the world, “Don’t you dare say that the animals, that the natural world, are not in my family!”

The kingdom of God IS at hand!  It is everywhere, with everyone we meet.  Saint or sinner.  Farmer or politician.  Straight or gay.  Rich or poor.  Aboriginal or white.  Conservative or New Democrat.  Even Human or snake, or tree.  The Kingdom of God IS at hand!  It is we who choose not to live there.

World Communion Sunday is a day when we celebrate how vast our community is.  It is a day when we join with Christians around the world, and say that we are indeed one body; that we are indeed sisters and brothers in Christ.  It is a day that symbolizes our hope that one day we will come to see ourselves as a part of a much larger community; that we will see ourselves as united in creation, sharing the same blood of Christ with all that is.

You guys here in Strathclair, in Newdale, in Cardale, know how important Community is.  The world desperately needs to hear your message about community, about how to actually live in community.  About what it means to support one another, to love one another, to help one another out, and to disagree with one another.  Now is your chance to fully embody Christ in the world, to move the way of community that is etched into your very souls, to encompass the world, to find within its grasp not just those who are near and dear to us, but all that is within the depth and breadth of God’s community.