Sermon for November 13, 2011 - Interpretation

Scripture Reading: Matthew 25: 14-30

I have to say, I was very tempted this morning to get up here and preach two short meditations, interpreting today’s parable from the Gospel of Matthew in two entirely different ways.  I would have then walked away and let you rummage through the contents of both sermons, trying to discern for yourselves what felt right, or asking yourselves why I would have done such a thing.

As the two stories that we read today during our scripture readings indicate, this passage is open to some very broad interpretation and understanding.  I’m going to read the New Revised Standard Version of the text, just to give you a base to go from.

Read Matthew 25:14-30

Historically in our Western world, I think this story has been interpreted one way.  Jesus is the landowner, and each member of the church has certain gifts that they are called to use on behalf of the Kingdom of God.  Those who use their gifts well, will receive a great reward.  But those who do not share their gifts, who do not go out and make full use of them, will find themselves condemned.

We can easily look at this from the perspective of the church today.  Though we are anxious about the future, this is not a time to conserve our resources, to circle the wagons and buckle down.  We are called to risk sharing everything that we have with the world around us with tremendous joy in our hearts and hope in our souls.  This call goes out to both individuals and communities.

But the second reading we had today, from the Lectionary Story Bible, seemed to look at this passage entirely differently.  It takes an approach that comes out of Liberation Theology, where the landowner is no longer the benevolent giver of gifts.  The Master is someone who “reaps where he does not sow, and gathers where he does not scatter.”  This is not really a nice description, it sounds like the Master is a thief; someone who scavenges off of those who have done hard work.  Furthermore, the closing message from the Master is that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.  Now this seems to contradict a lot of the stuff that Jesus has said in the Gospels.

As I watch the Occupy Wall Street protests, I wonder what they would think.  Jesus, the man who cleaned out the temple of money changers, suddenly telling a story like this?  There is a wonderful image making the rounds online, with a picture of Jesus waving his whip through the temple, with the caption “the original Occupy Wall Street protestor”. 

This parable does seem a bit out of place.  Is it too much of a stretch to interpret this story as Jesus emphasizing that in a world where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, we will encounter the Kingdom of God among those who are cast out?  Jesus taught that we encounter God with the lepers, the widows, the children, the strangers, and generally with those who have been abandoned by society.

Truthfully, I don’t know what the original author intended.  I have my guesses.  I raise this, because I think in many ways, both interpretations are valid.  They both have their points.  I raise this to show that scripture is open to very wide interpretation, and we must caution ourselves from assuming that we have understood everything correctly; or perhaps more accurately, we must caution ourselves from assuming that there is only one correct way to understand scripture.

Give me any argument and a day, and I imagine I can take this bible home, and come back tomorrow able to convince you of either side of that argument.  Does this make scripture meaningless?  Absolutely not.  Instead what it does is invite us to engage the text, engage the world around us, and engage one another in dialogue that would not have been possible if everything were precisely clean cut.  It takes into account the shear complexity of all things rather than assuming that the world is simply black and white.  It says what matters is the struggles we have in our souls trying to figure these things out.

Now there are many different ideas out there about how to interpret things, like scripture, or books, or any media really.  It is a branch of study called hermeneutics.  People devote their whole lives to it, and I certainly don’t have the opportunity to even scratch the surface here.  But I am always willing to talk about it.

What I’d like you to walk away from this sermon with is this: never let yourself get comfortable with a single interpretation of the bible. Because, I think how we interpret scripture says less about the bible than it does about who we ourselves are.  So, always, always, always, ask questions.  Questions about who wrote it, who it was written to.  Wonder what a specific passage would mean to someone who is in an entirely different context from you, someone of a different race, or gender, or sexual orientation, or just in a different situation.  Learn to encounter the holy within these pages from an entirely different perspective, and you’ll begin to see how vast the holy really is.

I do believe God inspires this library of books (and it is a library, it is not a single book – always remember that).  But not necessarily in the sense that God whispered in someone’s ear while it was being written.  I believe, when we read these texts with our hearts open; when we read these texts being truly honest with ourselves about our presuppositions, fears, and desires; when we read these texts prayerfully and with a hunger, I do believe we can be inspired by God through our readings, we can learn to encounter God in our own lives.  And that is good news.  Thanks be to God, Amen.

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.

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.

 

Moses, Layton and a Call to Love

Scripture Readings for this week: Exodus 3:1-15, Romans 12:9-21, Matthew 16:21-28

Moses was the man who would become the greatest symbol of liberation, the giver of the law and the leader of the Hebrews who in many ways goes unrivaled in the history of Israel.  And it is at this moment, which we read in scripture today, standing before a fire, a flame, a burning bush, when he begins to follow that path.

Before he encounters God in the midst of the burning bush, Moses was raised in the lap of luxury.  A palace brat, he was incredibly disconnected from the lives of his people.  He might have known he was not an Egyptian.  With his birth mother as his wet nurse, it is hard to believe she would not have told him where he came from, if only in whispers and songs.  But still as an adopted grandchild of the Pharaoh, Moses was Egyptian royalty.

Yet he must have felt some attachment to his people.  When he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, he killed the perpetrator and hid the body.  One might think this would have made him a hero to the Hebrews.  But the very next day, when he tried to break up a fight, you can almost hear the mocking in his own peoples’ voice, “What?  Are you going to kill us too?”  He’s an outsider.  His people will not accept him, and soon even Pharaoh begins to hunt him for the original murder.  And so he runs away, runs into the desert, hoping to escape his own history, his own identity.

And it is there that he encounters God.  Tending a flock of sheep for his father-in-law, Moses comes upon the burning bush.  And his own fire is lit, a fire deep within his heart.  This is Moses’ moment of conversion.  This is where Moses discovers something beyond himself and within himself.  The voice of God echoes within his soul, telling him who he truly is, telling him that he is one of God’s own, that he is beloved, telling him that he has a place within the world, that he has a place within history.

It is hard to describe a conversion.  For some people it does strike like a burning bush within their hearts, and for others, faith has been with them their whole lives.  Whether it feels like lightning or whether it feels like a warm blanket faith resonates within the heart.  It is that sense that there is something beyond ourselves as individuals, that sense that we are beloved, that we have a place in the world, a place within history.  As Christians that place is expressed in the Gospels.  It is the understanding that we are loved.  It is the understanding that we are not alone, that God, that the universe is on our side, and that we have experienced this love in Jesus Christ.

But it cannot end there.  It does not end there for Moses.  He does not see a burning bush, smile politely and walk away.  The voice of God goes on.  “Ok Moses, you know me!  You have met me!  You have met me within your heart! But you will no longer encounter me in a burning bush, no longer will you encounter me just as a flame inside you!  From now on you will meet me with my people!  You will meet me where my sons and daughters cry out for justice, where my people long for liberation and freedom.  I have touched your very soul Moses, now that you know me, how can you do anything but go?!”

Moses’ conversion did not end at the burning bush.  In our Gospel reading for today, Jesus reminds us that our conversion, our faith cannot end in our hearts. Jesus does not say to his disciples, “Hey hang out for a little while, and think of me fondly.” He says, “Pick up your cross and follow me!” 

In Paul’s letter to the Romans, this path for Christians is quite clearly defined as the path of love, the path of hope, the path of generosity.  It is the path of caring for the poor, of supporting those who are mourning, of seeking peace.  Does any of this sound familiar?

This past week the whole nation has been trying to understand how it feels about the death of the Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, Jack Layton.  People are writing on walls, they are tweeting, they are writing in newspapers, they are crying out that now famous phrase, “Love is better than anger, hope is better than fear, and optimism is better than despair.  So let us be loving, hopeful, and optimistic, and we’ll change the world.”  These words echoed for people because, people long for them.  Regardless of political stripe you would be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t within their hearts want a world of love, hope, and optimism.  But all too often we cynically advocate for something else.

If these words rang true, if these words resonated, if these words sounded familiar, it is because they are incredibly grounded in the Christian faith.  This is Paul through and through. But since the church in many ways has forgotten to preach and to live those words, Canada has turned to someone else for that fundamental Gospel truth.  People long for that message grounded in love, grounded in hope, grounded in generosity.  Jack Layton, a lifelong United Church member who continued to be active within the church through his adult life is offering up his faith to the world.  Trying to live it in the world around him.

This is what it means to be Christian.  It is not just a matter of believing in Jesus and then washing our hands of the world.  To quote Richard Rohr, if this were the case “One could be warlike, greedy, a racist, selfish and vain, and still believe that Jesus is their “personal Lord and Saviour.” The world has no time for such silliness anymore.  The suffering on earth is too great.”  To be Christian we cannot separate our faith from the world.  We cannot withhold that same love which has been so freely given to us from the world around us.  We cannot say Christianity is only about our hearts, when every prophet, every saint, and Jesus Christ has not only held love, but lived it in the world.

We are Christians, we are part of a holy community, stretching back through history to that greatest act of love on the cross.  With a fire burning in our hearts, a fire, like the burning bush that doesn’t consume but enlightens; it is not our duty, it is our opportunity to embody love in the world.  To not hoard that fire, that understanding of grace, that awareness that we are the beloved children of God, but rather to share it with all we meet.  It is our privilege to join with Christ in offering that self-giving love to the world.  It is our privilege to answer Paul’s call to embody faith, hope, and above all love.  It is our privilege, to walk with Moses with that fire within us, going to places where there is only anger, only fear, only despair, to those places where there is injustice, where there is slavery and oppression, and to shine that light in the darkness.  Thanks be to God, Amen.

Sermon for August 14, 2011 - Divisions, Divisions, Divisions

The scripture readings for this sermon were Genesis 45:1-15; Matthew 15:21-28; and Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32

Has anyone else found this summer to be especially depressing in the news?  We have this horrible situation in East Africa, which is heartbreaking.  Even seeing a quick picture of the ongoing suffering and famine can bring a lump to the throat or raise significant questions.  There were the UK riots, and the response to the UK riots.  The ideological squabbles in the US that brought the nation (and the rest of the world with it) to the brink of economic catastrophe.  And there was that horrible day in Norway where a man, on ideological principle thought it would be best to kill a bunch of people from an opposing political party, (a party that has advocated against the exclusion of people from society based on ethnicity or religion), and his murderous rampage included children affiliated with this idea.

I found my heart being wrenched wide open practically every time I opened the newspaper.  We live in a divided world.  A world that is drawing more and more lines.  White and black, Christian and Muslim, Conservative and Liberal, Rural and Urban, the human world and the natural world, the economy and the environment.  There are so many that it is exhausting just to think about.

Divisions. Divisions. Divisions.  We live in a bitterly divided world, and this is not a new phenomenon.

This theme of division runs throughout our scripture readings for today.  In our Genesis reading, a division exists between Joseph and his brothers.  A division brought about by jealousy, Joseph’s brothers having sold him into slavery.  In the Gospel, there is a division between the Jews and the Gentiles, a division which Jesus initially advocates.  In Paul’s letter to the Romans, he describes a division between the Jews and the burgeoning church.

This divisive nature has continued on through the history of religion, certainly through the history of Christianity.  The church has often emphasized who is on the inside, and who is on the outside.  Who is saved and who is damned.  What is holy, what is unholy.  We have survived and thrived on the idea that we are the gatekeepers and none shall pass but those we deem fit.

We live in a divided world.  Divided on grounds of race, religion, ideology, gender, sexuality, wealth, nationality, even species.  Does anyone else find this tragic?

All of our scripture readings for today describe, not just divisions, but reconciliation.  Through forgiveness, Joseph is reunited with his family.  Paul explains that Jews and followers of Christ are bound within the Grace of God.  Even Jesus, has his mind changed.  He is taught a tremendous lesson from a Canaanite woman, as she reminds him that even Gentiles are not excluded from God’s love.  This is Jesus, remember!  Our Psalm for the day caps it off beautifully, “How lovely it is when kindred live together in unity.”

Every reading for today is a quite simple call to unity, a call to reconciliation.  And this is a call that resonates throughout the bible, throughout the gospels, embodied in the life of Christ, and the call which is made to the church throughout the epistles.  We are a reconciling church.  We are called to embody Christ who came to reconcile the world.  We are called to reconcile the world.

The church has not done well in its mission.  Rather than ending divisions, rather than ending hatred, oppression, ostracization and various bigotries, we have throughout our history advocated for them.  No wonder people are starting to question the legitimacy of the church when we don’t stand by our founding principles!  In many ways I’m surprised it took people so long to start saying, “Wait a minute!”  Because unity, bringing everyone together, seeing the whole world as the family of God, as one creation, is what defines us!

The life that Jesus lived, the life of God is the life that goes out and sees all people, all things in their fullness.  It is the life that says “Anyone who thinks they are morally superior, or better than someone else, MUST… MUST see that God is present in the other.”  He argued to the Pharisees that God was present in the unclean of the day.  He showed to the zealots that God was present in the tax collectors.  And in the lesson from the Canaanite woman, he showed that God is present even outside of Judaism.  This was radical, and it remains radical today!

If there is anyone in the world we think we are better than, the life of Christ invites us to know them intimately and see that God is present.  This is the Torah, the prophets, this is Paul, this is Christ.  If I think I am better than someone because I am able bodied, and they are disabled, I need to see that God is present in disability.  If I think I am better than someone because I am straight and they are gay, I need to see that God is present the LGBT community.  If I think I am better than somebody because I am white and they are first nations, or I have never committed a crime and they are in prison, or because I have one political view and they have another, the life of Christ invites me to see that God is present in them.

Here’s a pop quiz.  Does anyone know what words are written on the United Church of Canada crest?  Ut Omnes Unum Sint.  Does anyone know what that means?  That all may be one.  It’s a line taken from John.  That all may be one.

This vision, held up as the United Church of Canada’s mission in 1925 when the Methodists, the Congregationalists and a large portion of the Presbyterians joined together, today is so important!  And it goes beyond the vision of all denominations coming together.  That all may be one, should be the rallying cry of Christians everywhere, it is a call that we need to embody in our daily lives.

Paul said in his letter to the Galatians that “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”  And that message continues today: In Christ there is no liberal or conservative.  In Christ there is no sinner or saint.  In Christ there is no Muslim or Christian, white or first nations, old or young, wise or stupid, cool or uncool, criminal or citizen, able bodied or disabled, human or animal.  All of us are sisters and brothers before God, all of us are of one creation before God.

As we move forward in an ever more interconnected and globalised world, this message of unity must be preached loudly, and must be embodied with great courage.  This is where the church must be present.  This is our tremendous opportunity to shine the light of Christ into a divided world, a world that is struggling with encountering new cultures and different ideas, a world that is trembling under the weight of division and fear.  Now is our time to claim our glorious heritage, to see the union of all things under one holy creation, and to declare that union with tremendous love in our hearts.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.