Sermon for April 22 - Earth Day

The Scripture Reading for this sermon is Luke 24:36b-48

Meister Eckhart once said, “If I spend enough time with the tiniest creature – even a caterpillar – I would never have to prepare a sermon.  So full of God is every creature.”  This sounds like a great idea to me.  How perfect is it that I won’t ever have to write a sermon again.  And since, as many of you know, I love watching nature documentaries.  I watch them avidly, I figure I’m a step ahead.

The last time I saw a caterpillar, however, was in December.  And there was something quite tragic about that.  A caterpillar in December in Manitoba.  The little guy was in his full furriness, inching its way across the road.  There was melting snow all around it, but the possibility of spring was still very distant.  I’m not sure how this happened.  I don’t know whether the caterpillar was late in arriving, or whether it was early, hatching from an egg, its body somehow fooled by the warm weather.  Nevertheless, it would not survive until spring.  I pondered the idea of squishing it, I imagined that would be a quicker way to go than freezing.  But I didn’t.  I moved it off the road, and hoped that a hungry bird would see it. 

That I remember a simple encounter with a caterpillar 4 months later, I think speaks to Meister Eckhart’s words.  “If I spend enough time with the tiniest creature – even a caterpillar – I would never have to prepare a sermon.  So full of God is every creature.”  I say this with all seriousness, and all gratitude, but I built a little relationship with that caterpillar.  It was able to evoke feelings within me, feelings of joy and sadness.  That was its gift to me.  And I do still at times wonder what happened to my little friend, knowing full well that whatever it was, it probably was not good.

This seems so far away from our scripture story for today, where we once again find ourselves in the company of Jesus’ disciples.  Rumors are starting to fly among them.  They talk about the empty tomb, they hear about an encounter on the Road to Emmaus.  Excitement is building, but they don’t know what it could mean to them.  Finally, the Risen Christ appears before them, and their response is the most normal response I can think of.  They are terrified.  They think he is a ghost.

As in the Thomas story, Jesus then invites the disciples to reach out and to touch him, to feel his wounds.  He is no ghost, he walks among them, he breathes among them in the fullness of his body.  And sure enough, he eats among them, he physically needs nourishment.  Whoever wrote Luke is really emphasizing that the Risen Christ has a body.  This is incredibly important to the author.  This is not a story about some transcendent being.  This is not a story about an ethereal Jesus, a ghostly Christ who dwells in our hearts and minds, a heavenly presence that whispers from far away.  This is a story about flesh and bones, which we all have.  It is a story about physical bodies, about creation and the world around us where we all live.  It is right here.

So often we want to put God far away.  We want to put God in the heavenly realm.  When we do that, the purpose of Christianity becomes about getting somewhere else, about leaving creation.  This world becomes a sort of proving ground.  It becomes a world that doesn’t really matter in the long run.

But the emphasis on the body in this story, says something entirely different.  Christianity is not a faith about heavenly places and superbeings.  Christianity is about this world.  Christianity says, if we want to encounter God, we can do so right here, right now, in creation, not outside of it.  When I use a word like incarnation, that’s what I mean.  That God is incarnate, to me, means that God dwells here.  That God has a body, that God is physical, that God can be touched, and seen, heard, smelt and tasted.  This is the wonder of the Incarnation.

Today we are celebrating Earth Day.  I think this is an important day to celebrate in the Christian calendar.  It is a day where we are reminded that holiness exists all around us, that to spend time with a caterpillar is to spend time with God.  And so I’m going to invite you to do that.  Spend time with a caterpillar, or a fly, or a shrub, or even a blade of grass.  Take a seed before it is sown and marvel at it.  Just marvel at it.  Today is an invitation to the fullness of our faith as Christians, a faith that does not look for God far away in the future, but a faith that knows God right here, right now.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Sermon for April 1, 2012 - Sexuality

The Scripture reading for this sermon: Mark 11:1-11 and John 12:12-16

A few years ago I was a leader at a summer youth program.  We brought in guests to talk about all sorts of things, views, opinions, and areas of study.  And I remember we brought in one retired theology professor.  A man who was held in very high esteem, but who, as a retired theology professor, had been stereotyped a certain way in our minds.  He came in wearing a three piece suit, I think it was probably tweed.  With those classic professor leather patches on the elbows.  This professor emeritus also wore a bow tie, and any time I have ever encountered him, he has been wearing a bow tie.  It takes a certain type to wear a bow tie with regularity.  Glasses, hair combed pristinely to the side.  He looked the role of the retired theology professor through and through.

Sitting there, I was trying to get a sense of the feeling within the room.  A bunch of adolescent young men and women, being lead by a bunch of twenty something young men and women.  We were not participating in this program in order to hear some dusty old man talk about whatever he had on his mind, using language that would fly over our heads.  “Ok,” I thought to myself, “an hour and a half of this.  I can get through it.  I just hope the participants can as well.”

Many of the previous speakers had brought in power point slides and interactive opportunities to engage all of us.  Not this man.  He just went straight to the lectern, pulled out a few pieces of paper, straightened them and looked out at the audience whose eyes were already beginning to glaze over.  I even seem to recall him pulling a pocket watch out and placing it down in front of him, so as to be aware when his hour and a half were up.

“I remember when…” was how he started.  I could feel my own brain synapses starting to shut down.  “…I first met my wife.”  Oh God.  “I couldn’t help thinking about how she was very, very sexy.”  And he paused.  Eyes began to perk up, backs began to straighten.  “Oh sure,” he continued, “I fell in love with her eventually, but oh man, she was hot.”  He closed his eyes, his mind pulling up that image he held onto for however many years, a knowing smile crept across his face.  And he had each and every one of us.  A retired theology professor, with glasses, pristeen hair, and a pocket watch, in a three piece tweed suit, had easily gotten the attention of every single person in that room.

Sex.  All the teenage boys, all the teenage girls caught in that awkward phase of trying to both hide their feelings and explore them at the same time, were able to just release any tension they were holding back.  Any shame they felt around their curiosity, around their questions was momentarily lifted by that impish smile on his face.  It was wonderful.  And the youth weren’t the only ones who sat up and listened intently.  I was just as captivated as them.

It is odd that we don’t talk about sexuality.  Without it, none of us would even be here.  It can create marvelous dreamscapes of joy, of excitement; it can also be the source of nightmares, ruining lives.  It can create that wonderful sense of giddiness, of wanting to dance and sing with joy when we are besotted, while at the same time wanting to throw up with anxiety.  It is woven into our very bodies causing our hearts to race, our breath to gasp.  It can seem an unquenchable fire, it can be a source of tremendous energy.  But we don’t talk about it in an honest and down to earth way.  Why do we shy away from it, speaking only in jokes and giggles?

When we don’t talk about sexuality, the conversation gets hijacked.  It gets transformed into a discussion of a few dos, and a lot of don’ts.  Or it becomes meaningless, plastered across billboards, magazines, movies, and commercials without a thought beyond marketing simplistic pleasure.  Dom Bede Griffiths once said, “Sex is far too important to eliminate entirely, and it is far to important to do lightly.  The only alternative is to somehow ‘consecrate’ it.”

Imagine yourself as one of the people in Jerusalem.  You have heard about this Jesus figure.  His healings, his words, his message have all reached your ears, it has reached everyone’s ears.  One day, word arrives that he, this figure of story, will be coming into to town.  People are filled with anticipation at the prospect.  They all want to be healed, they all want to see him, to touch him, they all want him to transform the world, to change the way things are.  And sure enough, when he arrives, there is a flurry of excitement.  People flock to the streets.  The excitement builds, and soon people are shouting, they are waving palm branches, and they are crying out.  They cry out, “Hosanna!  Hosanna!”  Which means, “Save!  Save, please!”

These people of Jerusalem, they are longing for wholeness, they want that relationship with God, they want a new relationship with the world around them.  They desire it, they seek it, and they are expressing it in their shouts, they are expressing it in their waving of palm leaves frantically in the streets.  They can feel this longing in their very bodies.  The crowd is swept up in that ecstasy of it all, amid cries and heat and sweat.

That desire which dwells within, is more than just a desire for a physical act.  It is a desire for relationship, it is a desire for wholeness. We need to abandon the idea that sex and sexuality are just about certain acts.  Sure, those can be a part of it, but they don’t need to be.  Sexuality is about longing for something, longing for wholeness, it is about desire, it is about seeking relationship: relationship with one another, relationship with ourselves, and relationship with God.  And it is expressed and experienced in our very bodies.

What better way to describe humanity’s relationship with God, than through language of seeking, through language of longing, through language of desire.  And what better way to experience this than through our bodies.  Relationship with God is not just about our heads, not just about some far away transcendent mystical experience.  Experiencing God is about racing hearts.  Experiencing God is about gasping breaths.

It is bizarre to me that Christianity, has so often taken the stance of hating the body and embracing the spirit, when the focus of our faith is where the spirit and the body meet.  These two are inseparable.  We cannot move our relationship with God away from our bodies.  We cannot separate the love of God from creation.  This is the essence of incarnation.  God loves our bodies so much, that God chooses to have one.  God loves creation so much that God chooses to dwell within it.  This is the sign that is Christ.  God is here.  God is in this world.  God dwells within the body.

A healthy sexuality embraces that idea.  A healthy sexuality sees the wonder of bodies, of our own, and of other people’s and cherishes them as God’s creation.  A healthy sexuality invites us to explore a deeper relationship with ourselves, with others, and with God.  A healthy sexuality sees that longing as a wonderful gift, a gift that invites us to wholeness.

Sermon for Covenanting Service

The Scripture for this sermon was Genesis 9:8-17

A few weeks ago I was sitting in my dining room, and I got a phone call.  It was one of the women in my congregation.  “Tim?  You need to go outside right now, and look up at the sky!”

This was the call I had been waiting for.  I have experienced a lot of new things since I moved out to Manitoba a couple of years ago, but this was it.  For some time I had been announcing at church, “I have never seen the Northern Lights, if you are outside, and you see them, give me a call.  I don’t care what time it is.”

I’d received a call here and a call there, and seen a bar or two in the sky for each of those, but this night it was unbelievable.  Did anyone else see them?  Reds, yellows, and greens, shimmering and waving in a dome covering the whole sky, north south east and west.  This was the night that they could see them all the way down in Texas.

When Rachel told me that one of the themes for this covenanting service would be rainbows, all I could think about was the utter sense of awe and humility that was created within me as I sat out there that night looking up at the sky and seeing the lights.  I know, they’re not rainbows, but that was the image that kept flashing to my mind.

Today we’re gathered here to celebrate a covenant.  But I have to admit while I was writing this sermon I really struggled with a lot of terms and ideas, the whole notion of a covenant confounded me.  Who is the covenant between?  What does it mean to have a ministry?  Whose ministry is it?  What goes on whenever a new minister joins with an established faith community?

I spent a long time pondering over this scripture passage, trying to flush out some ideas on what happens, on what exactly we’re celebrating here today.  Because it has to be more than simply, “Hey, great.  Hamiota got a new minister, that’s awesome.  Rachel got a new job, fantastic.”  What exactly are we marking here?

In our scripture reading for today, all but a remnant has been destroyed by the chaotic flood waters.  That remnant has arrived and touched the earth again.  It is then that God makes a covenant. It’s not just a covenant between God and Noah, its not just a covenant between God and humanity, it’s a covenant between God and the remnant of creation that survived the flood.

This covenant does something.  It transforms this rag-tag bunch of drifters into something new, something wondrous.  It unites them into something that is more than simply the sum of their parts, but rather transforms the rag-tag remnant into the new creation. 

Today we are covenanting with each other.  And when we say that, I don’t think we mean that we’re all making a covenant to each other.  Noah didn’t make a covenant with the animals and the birds.  Instead we are all being bound together as one, while God makes a covenant with us.  God is uniting us into something that is more than just the sum of us.

This is why I like the image of the rainbow as a sign of a covenant.  When we look at a rainbow, do we say to ourselves, “Well, I’ve seen all those colours on their own before, nothing too spectacular about it.” Or is there something more to it? 

When I went outside however many weeks ago, I didn’t just look up and say, “Yeah, yellow, green, red.  I’ve seen them all before on there own.  I’ve seen a few scattered bars and waves in the sky.  This is essentially the same, just bigger.”  Big Whoop.  No, it was something new entirely.

This is the basis of covenant.  It is about creation.  When these three groups come together, Hamiota and Kenton as the local faith communities, Rachel as the minister, Assiniboine Presbytery on behalf of the wider church, something new is created.  Something that has never been seen before, and will never be seen again.  It is marvelous and it is holy.  This is the essence of covenant.  We three groups are no longer a band of rag-tag drifters, but suddenly we are a new creation, we are all part of a new ministry, and it is far more awesome than the sum of the three parts.

Something new and exciting has already happened here.  A new ministry began on November 1.  Today we’re celebrating the covenant that God made with all of us.  I don’t know what to expect, I don’t know what to anticipate, but any time a new ministry is formed we should celebrate the wonder of a new creation, and I for one, am excited by the prospect.  Thanks be to God.