Sermon for January 15, 2012 - Remit 6

The Scripture passage for this sermon was 1 Samuel 3:1-20, 1 Peter 2:9-10

In Kelowna BC, in August of 2009, the 40^th General Council of the United Church of Canada met and approved a motion to add three statements of faith to the Doctrine section of the Basis of Union.  They are the 1940 Statement of Faith, the New Creed, and A Song of Faith.  Various other General Councils since Church Union in 1925 has approved each of these.  Subsequently, a remit has been issued to all presbyteries and pastoral charges across Canada.  We have been called upon to vote on this matter, and I think this provides an excellent opportunity to discuss this church we claim membership in.

So here’s what the next few weeks will hold for us.  This week, I’ll be talking about what exactly a remit is, and why remits are important.  More importantly, I’ll talk about why I think the polity and structure of the United Church of Canada is messy but wondrous. Next week, we’ll talk about the Basis of Union, about what doctrine is, and whether or not it is important, and I’ll also do a bit of an introduction to the 1940 Statement of Faith.  And finally, the next Sunday I’ll talk about why this particular Remit is important, and what it might mean to have three different statements of faith in our Doctrine.  I’ll also give an introduction to the New Creed, which you are familiar with as we say it every week, as well as the 2006 Statement entitled, A Song of Faith.

I won’t be reading aloud each of the statements.  For the 1940 Statement and the Song of Faith, that would be a sermon in and of itself.  But I will be leaving copies at the back of the church for those who are interested, and I encourage all of you to pick them up. And if we run out, I can print off more, or you can find them all online at the United Church of Canada website.

So I get it.  Some vote, that has absolutely no bearing on our lives is coming down from General Council, a body that is detached from the realities of church life in rural Manitoba.  Let’s just do whatever they want us to do, get them off our backs and stop wasting our time with meaningless measures.  Vote yes or no or whatever, and move on!

Sometimes I agree with that sentiment.  Sometimes I get so frustrated with the bureaucracy of the church that I want to throw up may hands in frustration at whatever form I need to fill out or whatever hoop I need to jump through.  Believe me, when you go through discernment and candidacy process to becoming a minister, there are a lot of those hoops.  I get it.

But while this bureaucracy does get under my skin.  I think the upcoming remit is a sign of incredible vitality within the church.  First off, what is a remit.  When we want to change the Basis of Union, the constitution of the United Church of Canada, a remit is issued to test the will of the church.  When it is a question of Doctrine, of asking what do we believe as a church, that remit has to go to all presbyteries and all the pastoral charges.  Fifty percent of the presbyteries and fifty percent of the pastoral charges have to vote “yes”, for the remit to go back to the 41^st General Council in Ottawa this upcoming summer for final approval.

So.  That’s what is happening.  We’re all caught up.  Onto the far more interesting stuff:  Why I think this is a sign of vitality for our church.

In our Old Testament Lectionary reading for today, we hear the story of God’s call to Samuel.  Three times, God calls, and finally it is the old Priest, Eli, who discerns that it is God, and that Samuel should answer.  It was Eli, the priest who discerned God’s will, who interpreted God’s words.  This was very much a function of priests.

In our Epistle reading today from First Peter, this is not contradicted.  What is different, is the claim that Christians are a holy priesthood.  This was a fundamental part of the Reformation, it is part of our identity, especially as a Reformed Church.  These words from First Peter, along with a few others throughout the bible, inspired the phrase “Priesthood of all believers”.  And though this phrase has meant different things over the course of Protestantism’s 500 year history, it is wonderful to grapple with.

For me, I struggle defining what, “Priesthood of all believers” actually means.  I don’t think it just means that lay people sometimes read scripture on Sunday.  Instead I see it resonate in all the ways that we are living the Way of Jesus Christ, that Way which we would ideally see embodied within the Church.  I see the priesthood of all believers as the myriad of ways we participate in the church, the ways we participate in trying to create a holy community.

In the United Church of Canada, one of the ways that we live this out, is through our grassroots, democratic structure.  Yes, at times democracy can be messy.  It leads to argument, it leads to debate.  It requires a tremendous amount of energy and resources to function, in its own inefficient way.  But in our church, in theory, every single person who wants a voice, can have one.  And it is the cacophony of voices that make us great. 

When we vote on these remits at the Annual Meeting, don’t think of it as another hoop that we’re jumping through.   Think of it as us interpreting God’s call to the Church.  Think of it as us as a large group of people across Canada, collectively trying to discern the movement of the Holy Spirit within all those voices.  Think of it as us fulfilling our role as a priesthood of all believers. 

There are a number of different ways of doing this.  If you’re coming to the meeting, great, read these.  Talk about them.  Ask questions.  Questions like, “Does this mean anything to me?  Does it resonate with my experience of faith within the United Church of Canada?”  Questions like, “Why would I include a document from 1940 as a statement of our doctrine if we’ve had two newer documents since then?”  Or, “Is this statement consistent with the way I encounter God through scripture?”  If you’re not going to be at the meeting, then talk to someone who is. 

The words around a remit are that we are “testing the church’s agreement”.  It is not some small group of people, saying “Hey, this is what your doctrine will be.”  Rather it is a small group of people saying, “Hey what is our doctrine?” So what is the church’s will?  You are all a part of something bigger than yourselves, so push yourselves.  Participating in democracy doesn’t just mean voting.  It means understanding what you are voting for or against.  It means listening to different opinions, struggling with new ideas.

You are priests, all of you.  This is what you are called to.  You are ministers, each and every one of you, and so you have a voice in this church.  Yes, I am a paid accountable minister, but the only reason I am is because I was elected to this office by democratic processes by people like you; by this institution which you support through the same democratic processes.  Do you wonder why I need to ask your permission to do baptisms?  Or communion?  You have been entrusted by the wider church to discern when baptism is appropriate, when communion is appropriate.  And again, in this remit, you have been entrusted by the wider church to discern whether or not to include these documents in our constitution.

This is a sacred obligation.  As we discuss this, you are living out your Holy calling.  Do not take it lightly.

Sermon for September 25, 2011 - A River of Creativity

The Scripture Readings for this Week's Sermon are Matthew 28:1-10 and Revelation 22:1-5

I grew up beside a river, the Humber River in Toronto.  As a kid, I remember going for walks and bike rides along its banks.  Watching fish and other wildlife swim in and around it.  Sometimes we’d go to where it emptied into Lake Ontario to watch people fly kites.  The river had little waterfalls, pools and eddies.  It was great.  I went down there for a run this summer.  It smelt awful.  There was miscellaneous brown foam, making its way towards the lake.  And there was garbage everywhere.  Perhaps I’m idealizing what it was like as kid, but I can tell you, it is disgusting now.  It broke my heart.

There are many problems in the world.  There is a lot of brown foam and garbage in the world.  We have significant environmental challenges.  We live in a world divided by war and by economics.  Security, both financial and physical, have become our greatest concerns.  We watch and read about horrible crimes.  The state of discourse between ideologies has degraded to petty slurs and mudslinging at best.  The noble life is openly equated with a life where you look out for yourself first and foremost.  Ego and extreme individualism have been pandered to so that they have become social addictions.  We have become overwhelmed by our problems.  They haunt us as individuals, and they haunt us as a society.  We have become entombed by them.  Systems and structures of society, that we don’t even notice, that we take for granted have control, and we assume there is no other way to exist.  We are trapped in this way of thinking.  We are trapped in this acquiescence to fear.  We are trapped in a spiral and we don’t know how to get out.

This past week a friend of mine directed me to an online video clip (http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html).  It was of Ken Robinson, an educational theorist, giving a talk at a TED Conference a few years ago.  In his discussion he told a true story about a young girl.  She was disruptive in school, her work was often disjointed and turned in late, it was difficult to keep her attention.  The teachers said that she had a learning disability.  So her mother took her to a doctor who listened to the complaints, then told the little girl, “I’d just like to speak to your mother for a moment.”  He invited the mother to leave the office with him, and as he left, he turned on the radio.  He told the mother “just watch her.”  As soon as the adults had left the room, the girl started to sway and move to the music.  The doctor said to the mother, “Your daughter’s not sick.  She’s a dancer.  Take her to a dance school.”  This girl would grow up to become Andrew Lloyd Weber’s go to choreographer.  Her name is Gillian Lynne.  She has choreographed some of the greatest pieces of theatre, Cats and Phantom of the Opera.  And she is a multi-millionaire.

Jillian’s school was entombed in a certain way of thinking.  Trapped behind beliefs about what was normal, about what was the “proper” way to be, about how things always had been and always would be.  And poor Jillian and her mother were brought into that realm, into that space of rigid thinking.  It was not until the doctor was creative enough to realize that Jillian thought differently than the “norm”, that hope was offered.  He did not say she should shut up and listen.  He said that she herself should exercise her own creativity.

And it is creativity that we need in the world now more than anything.  Robinson says that creativity, that ability to come up with new ideas rather than slotting ourselves into the same old ones, will help us function in the world at its rate of change.  He advocates quite strongly that creativity is just as important as literacy.

I think rivers are the perfect symbol of creativity.  Civilization was created by rivers.  The Fertile Crescent, the cradle of civilization, exists because of two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates.  Subsequently, human imagination has turned to rivers for creative inspiration.  The Egyptian Empire saw the Nile River as the source of life.  By its seasons of flooding they survived, as it carried in nutrients to fertilize their flood plain fields.  Our own biblical creation story, describes the Garden of Eden as the source of four great rivers that water earth.

Even beyond the human realm, rivers are the source of some of the greatest acts of natural creation we have seen.  Rivers twist and turn, chaotically charting and carving their course across the land.  When they come up against a rock, the go around it, and over time, they wear it down.  When they come to a ledge, they are not afraid to go over it, creating some of the most dramatic natural images we can think of.  And knowing that it is the littlest trickle that can eventually bring down a mountain, that a single river can create Niagara Falls, or carve into the earth a mile deep as in the Grand Canyon is a tremendous source of awe and marvel.

In our scripture from the book of the Revelation today we read about the River of life.  This flow of creative energy that comes out from God is the source of life and peace in the world.  Echoing the book of Genesis, this river is the source of re-creation.  Ezekiel describes this same river, writing “wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be many fish, once these waters reach there.  It will become fresh; and everything will live where the river goes.”  This water will create fruit for food, and leaves for healing.  This is the creative energy of God, and it exists within our own creativity, that great action inspired by the Holy Spirit.

And yet for some reason, in times of trial and tribulation, often it is our river of creativity that we abandon first.  As I spoke about last week, guided by fear, we try to gain control of everything, turning our backs to the creative power of the Holy Spirit.  I don’t know what it is, maybe we just want some sense of stability.  We just want to hold on to something we know and understand, and the Holy Spirit is NOT stable.  Creativity is NOT stable.  Rivers are NOT stable.  They twist, they turn, they carve.  To paraphrase Heraclitus, “You never put your foot in the same river twice.”  It is constantly flowing, it is new water each and every time.  We don’t want to hit a rock, or go over any ledges.  Creativity, the Holy Spirit, riding the River becomes a great risk.  And it is one we often feel we cannot afford to take.  But I would argue, we cannot afford NOT to take it.

In his CBC Radio One show, the Age of Persuasion, Terry O’Reilly describes a man, Hal Wallis, who took a great risk in making a movie.  The script was based on a play, but the screenwriters hired to adapt it left when they were about a third of the way through.  He could not get the director he wanted.  The stars spent their time on set talking about how to get out of making the movie, and found the process of making the film so difficult, they wouldn’t even talk about it with their friends.  Everyone thought the dialogue was unrealistic, and the story itself was not believable.  While filming, the script had no written ending, so they decided to shoot two alternatives, hoping to pick which one they liked.  Unfortunately, they ran out of money after they shot the first ending, and had to wrap production.  The movie was declared a flop when it was previewed.  If Hal Wallis had backed down at any of these points, if he had been afraid of failure, Casablanca would never have been released.  It would never have been nominated for 8 Oscars, winning the big three, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Picture.  It would not be regarded as one of the greatest movies ever made. 

O’Reilly then offers a famous quote, “Ships are safe in the harbour, but that’s not what ships were made for.”  Rivers were made to smash into rocks, to go over ledges.  It is in doing things like this, that they garner their true power.

We were made to be creative.  When the bible says we are made in God’s image, I would argue that in many ways, it is our creativity that resonates with divinity.  Pablo Picasso once said, “All children are artists, the problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” 

It is not a matter of children being quiet so we can teach them.  It is a matter of them laughing, and giggling, and playing, and dancing, and singing, so that they can teach us.  They can remind us what that River of creativity is like, they can direct us to the Holy Spirit.  Robinson, uses another wonderful story to illustrate the free spirit of children, who are not worried about getting things wrong.  A little girl is drawing a picture.  The teacher comes up to her and asks what she’s drawing.  “I’m drawing a picture of God.”  The teacher responds with, “But no one knows what God looks like.”  The girls replies “They will when I’m done.” 

We should not be afraid of being creative, even though we might fail, we should be free to be creative.  We should not be afraid to let the Holy Spirit course through us, hitting obstacles, twisting and turning one way then another, going over ledges from which we cannot see the bottom.  This is the power by which we will remake the world.  We cannot allow ourselves to be stopped up.

In our Gospel reading for today, there was a big rock in the way.  It was forced out with the words, “Be not afraid.”  The vision of hope offered in the book of the Revelation, is creative power flowing from God.  It is the Holy Spirit in action in our world and in our hearts.  It is this creativity innate within us that we must tap in order to irrigate the world, so that something new and wonderful can spring forth.  Thanks be to God, Amen.