Sermon from Sunday, January 25, 2015

Scripture:  Jonah 3:1-5, 10 and Mark 1:14-20
Sermon:  The reign of God in daily life is infectious; are we contagious?

It doesn’t take much to make a difference and to help change the world.  Maybe you’ve seen these ads. 

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It doesn’t take much to change the world and help save it from its sin.  Call it the butterfly effect.  Dorothy Day uses the image of throwing our pebble into the pond.  Jesus talks about sowing seed.  Maybe we can call it the infectiousness of good life, and the contagion of converted thinking. 

However we picture the joy of changing the world, we all have a place in it.  We all have a part to play in the holy work of turning the world from sin to more godly ways of being, and this is something the Gospel story makes us think about. 

In Jesus’ time – as today, there is no shortage of religious teachers and leaders and social and cultural authorities.  In the holy city, there are the priests – both high and low, who serve in the Temple and in the royal court.  There are the scribes who study and know the old laws and writings.  There are the Pharisees who know the Law of Moses and all the different ways it has been interpreted over the centuries.  There are the Sadducees – the religious side of the conservative upper crust, who usually see the Pharisees as too liberal.  There are the Essenes, who live in community in the wild on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, for the sake of a separate holiness.  And in every village there is the rabbi, or rabbis, and local elders that everyone turns to for advice and direction. 

There is no shortage of religious teachers and authorities to do God’s work and reveal God’s word for the time.  But in the Gospel when Jesus begins gathering followers to make a difference and help save the world from its sin he turns to fishermen.  He turns to common ordinary labourers, people of the sea and of the street, people in the midst of everyday life with nothing but willing hands and hearts and voices and spirits to offer – the basic things God has given to us all. 

This point is emphasized in the old King James and un-corrected version we read today, about “fishermen” being called to become “fishers of men.”  Yes, there is good reason to change this description of the first disciples by saying they are called from being fishermen to start “fishing for people,” but the old unredeemed translation makes the point even more clearly and poetically – that really it’s in the midst of our daily life, whatever it is, that we’re called into Christian discipleship through only a little change in how we see and describe ourselves – a little change that makes all the difference in the world. 

Parker Palmer, for instance, has written a book called Courage to Teach in which he encourages and helps teachers to understand themselves not just as transmitters and testers of information, but as educators and nurturers of other human beings.  In the same vein a caretaker in a school can be just a worker doing a job and nothing more, or can be a model and a mentor to others.  Last year I met a Roman Catholic priest who grew up without a father, and for whom the caretaker in the one-room school he attended was the man who took him under his wing, gave him and taught him responsibility around the school, and helped him believe in himself.  Anyone who’s been in a hospital knows the difference between a doctor or nurse who really cares for the patients in their care, and those who only care about and treat their symptoms.  And the list could go on.  If Jesus were to appear today and gather disciples, it would be the ordinary and common people of the world he would go to first – as he actually does. 

Discipleship – following Jesus in such a way that we help to change the world, is something we all are called into in our baptism, and are meant to be trained and equipped for in our membership and participation in church.  Maybe one thing to remember is that among the first disciples of Jesus, it was only a few who left their daily lives for good to become church leaders and missionaries and teachers.  Most went back to their day jobs and homes and families and friends and where they came from in the first place, and it’s from there in the midst of the everyday stuff of life that they started to make the difference that really changes the world and helps save it over and over again from its sin. 

The kingdom of God – the reign of God in daily life, comes from the bottom up, not top down.  It comes from where we are and in the midst of everyday life.  It comes as ordinary people agree to see themselves as servants of God and bearers of a new way of life, as people who help spread the contagion of converted thinking and living. 

One other thing that’s necessary, though, in addition to how we are willing to see ourselves, is how we are willing to see other people.  This is Jonah’s issue, and the fact that the fable of Jonah has been saved by the people of Israel and included in their Scriptures, shows that they understand it as an issue for all of us. 

The reason Jonah tries not to go to Nineveh – the capital city of Israel’s arch-enemy, Assyria, and live out the word of God to the people there, is not that he fears for his safety among them, that they will reject what he says and kill him.  Fear is not what he has to get over. 

What he has to get over and have changed inside himself is his lack of concern for their salvation.  What he fears in the job God gives him is that the people will listen, that they will actually repent of their sin and wickedness, that God will then forgive them, and that instead of being an enemy – an “other” against which Israel can comfortably define itself, he and his people will have to embrace these others as fellow recipients of God’s grace, equal to them as people of God’s love, fully part of what Israel claims to be in the world.  It’s easier – more comfortable, for Jonah to see them as “them” than for the line between “us” and “them” to be dissolved.  I wonder if maybe at some point he even would have been happier dying inside the whale, than being spit out to go help convert and save the Ninevites. 

And I wonder what the question is for us in all this.  If good ways of living – God’s ways of saving the world from its sin and making it good, are infectious, how contagious are we?  And how happy or unconcerned are we to help spread the infection to others – to the “them” around “us”?

Towards Sunday, January 18, 2015

Scripture:  I Samuel 3:1-10 and John 1:43-51
Sermon:  Willing and wise enough to be an Eli

What catches my attention in these two readings is the ministry of helping others listen to a new voice or word of God in times of transition in the religious landscape.   Both readings are about times of transition in the religious landscape, and people who are able to help others move into the new religious reality of their day.

In I Samuel, after living in the Promised Land for about 200 years as a loose collection of twelve tribes centrally led only by a family line of priests (a kind of "religious royalty" appointed by God to be leaders of the tribes), the time has come for radical change.  As happens with institutions over time, the priesthood has grown corrupt -- so corrupt that old Eli alone remains as a half-worthy, half-blind priest (kind of like Graham Greene's "whiskey priest"?), with his two sons destined to die in their extreme sinfulness, and no one left to carry on the priestly leadership.  The people as a whole suffer because of this "vacuum" at the heart of their life together, and things have to change.

In this situation the young boy Samuel is entrusted to Eli's care, and in this reading Eli teaches Samuel to listen to a voice of God that Eli himself is not able to hear, even though it inspires young Samuel to help create a new style of leadership for the people (a king!) and bring to an end the institution that Eli himself has been part of, and has tried to serve well.

Are we in a time of transition today?  Can we be as faithful and effective as Eli in helping others (like our children and grandchildren) to listen to a voice of God that maybe we can't hear ourselves?  And even if it may mean the end of things we have loved, and given our lives to?

In the Gospel, the evangelist John emphasizes more than the other Gospels, that some of Jesus's first disciples were first of all disciples of John the Baptizer, and that when Jesus appeared they shifted their allegiance to him because they saw in him the "something" that John, for all his spiritual power and charisma, did not have.  It could not have been easy to make the change, but seeking more than anything to be faithful to God they helped one another do it.

Can we be as good in helping one another embrace the work of God in new ways and places in the world today?  Can we be as open and honest as Philip in helping our brothers and sisters know that we have changed our minds and commitments in light of a new understanding of how God is at work in our midst?

From Sunday, January 11, 2015

Scripture:  Acts 19:1-7 and Mark 1:4-11
Sermon:  Going beyond the A-B-C's and even D's of being a nice church; living into the E, F, G and H of Christian community

Have you ever been to, or been part of a church that just didn’t seem to “have it”?  Where everyone was nice, everything was good, and they did the right things, but something was missing – where some spark or passion, some flow of deeper vitality just wasn’t there? 

A number of years ago – maybe fifteen, I was guest preacher one Sunday at a local church while their minister was on vacation.  I looked forward to it because it was one of the larger and historically more prestigious churches in the Presbytery.  

The day I was there, though, I still remember as one of the darkest and most depressing experiences of church worship I have ever had.  The sanctuary was large and beautiful.  The liturgy was well-thought-out, the lay leadership skilled and experienced, the music well-chosen and potentially inspiring.  The people who were there were nice; more than that, they were good, moral people involved in all kinds of good things in the world. 

But all through the hour of worship I felt something was missing.  In the absence of whatever it was, the sanctuary seemed more dark than light , the people more depressed and tired than joyful, their gathering more yearning and anxious than vital and hopeful. 

That happens in churches – more often than we realize, and I’m sure it happens here at times as well. 

Years before that, back in the mid-eighties when I studied for a year in Boston I worshipped for a while at a church that had been recommended because of their minister, who was regarded as one of the brighter lights and leaders of the denomination – a great preacher and a good leader in thoughtful mission to the world.  I looked forward to it; it seemed Sunday morning as well as Monday to Friday were to be part of my education in ministry. 

But I stopped worshipping there after three or four Sundays.  I found it too tiring because of what I felt about the minister’s burden.  It seemed to me he was so skilled, so in touch with things, so determined that the congregation be led on a journey of faith into greater mission to the world, and so aware of his call to lead them there that the whole of the worship experience seemed to rest on his shoulders, and the success (or failure!) of it seemed to hang on his every word and gesture.  It was so carefully designed and constructed and so dependent on his delivery of what was promised, that I found myself exhausted by the end of it, by the fear that maybe this time it wouldn’t work, something would go wrong, and everything would shatter and fall into pieces because of it.   

In all that minister was doing and carrying on a Sunday morning, and what the congregation let him do and carry, it seemed there was something missing.  That happens among ministers – more often than we realize, and no doubt it also happens with me. 

The problem is not new.  The problem of “something missing” is as old as the church.  In today’s story from the Book of Acts – the book of the earliest communities of Christ, the leaders of the brand-new Jesus movement sense something missing in the new church in Ephesus.  What they diagnose it as is the absence – or at least the not-yet-presence of the Holy Spirit and the congregation’s not-yet-openness-to the flow and the deeper vitality of the Holy Spirit within their gathering. 

Paul says, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?”  They reply, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” 

³“Into what then were you baptized?” he asks.  “Into John’s baptism,” they answer.   

To which Paul says, ⁴“You have to realize John baptized with a baptism of repentance.  He invited people – as prophets do, into moral community – into turning from evil, doing good and trying to change the world around them for the better.  And that is good; the world needs communities and networks of good and moral people. 

“But he also pointed people to One who was still to come with something more and new – Jesus, who would baptize people in a new and deeper way into the life and flow of the Holy Spirit – into a new and more intimate relationship of God and humanity, a new way of being human beings, and a way of being together not only nice and moral in a way that the world always appreciates, but deeply spiritual and holy in ways that are understood only by those who are inside it themselves.”  

⁵On hearing this, the believers in Ephesus are baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, ⁶Paul lays his hands on them, the Holy Spirit comes upon them, and they speak in tongues and prophesy – all twelve of them who are there. 

In many communities of the earliest church, speaking in tongues was seen as the sign of really participating in the life and flow of the Spirit of Christ in the world.  It was a sign of being opened to, and filled with a power and a life from beyond themselves.  It was a language that neither Rome nor Jerusalem controlled or understood.  It united believers across other boundaries and differences that divided them.  It lifted their spirits with a beauty, vitality and hopefulness that was not of their design, but a gift from of God.  It caught them up in something greater than themselves, and helped free them to follow the leading of God in ways that others – even very good and moral people, often were not. 

We’re somewhat leery of this, of course, and even Paul came to see that speaking in tongues is not the only sign – and not the best test of whether a congregation is open to the Spirit or not.  In I Corinthians he says the deepest gift of all, and the greatest sign of a church living deeply in God’s flow, is love – love of God in all we do, say and have; and love of neighbour as ourself.   

And it’s in that vein – in that spirit, if you will, that this morning I suggest a few things we might be on the lookout for today as signs of living beyond niceness and goodness, in the deeper, more holy flow of the Spirit of Christ and of God at work.  I want to mention four things and for ease of memory I offer them as the E, F, G and H of being in deeper community with Jesus beyond the A, B, C and even D of being a good and moral church. 

This is not as a way of testing whether we are Christian or not as a church, or truly spiritual or not.  These are more simply possible elements of deeper spirituality today that sometimes are and sometimes are not true of us, that we can encourage and nurture when we see them emerge in our life together, and that we can seek out and be open to in intentional ways when we do not. 

The first of the four is Ease.  A truly spiritual community – like a moral community, is moral and good, cares about making Earth a good place to be for all creatures, a commits itself to the kinds of actions and programs that make a difference for good in the world.  But it does this with a kind of ease and absence of anxiety that is not always true of good people and moral communities. 

I wonder sometimes about John in the Gospel as he goes about his ministry of prophetic preaching and practice.  He does great and courageous work with his moral preaching, his prophetic critique of the corruption of the government and culture of the day, and his invitation to people of all kinds to clean up their act.  He is the epitome of the moral and prophetic voice of the community’s whole faith tradition. 

But does he sometimes feel it’s all up to him?  Why does he get so harshly judgemental of people who don’t listen and change their ways?  And does he worry sometimes about what he will actually accomplish – maybe create a bit of discomfort among the elite and inspire a little bit of change for a while among the populace, but in the end be gone with the world still carrying on much as it always has? 

Being moral and good can be exhausting.  It makes you hungry for signs of success and open to depression, despair and desperate measures when they aren’t there.   

But people open to the life and flow of the Spirit, who know themselves caught up in something bigger than themselves and than the world and the powers of the day, can go about the work in a different spirit – not thinking they have make the world good or else, but more simply doing what they can to be part of a future coming by a Power greater than themselves.  It’s not up to them to make the new heaven and earth; they simply answer the invitation to start living it now, as a witness to what is promised and will surely come. 

Which leads to Freedom, and even Foolishness sometimes in what is done – two F’s of the community of God’s Spirit.   

Not everything has to be calculated, or part of some program with a definable end, designed to create a manageable and measurable good outcome.  Rather, sometimes a community of Christ will do something destined to fail or be a waste of time and effort, just because it seems to be part of who Christ is and what Christ loves – like a congregation using well-designed colourful worship bulletins that are more expensive than plain paper; or a handful of elderly women dressing up as Raging Grannies, standing near a naval base to sing funny home-made songs about the evil of war and nuclear weapons; or a Sunday school class cleaning garbage off a section of highway knowing full well that in two weeks there will be just as much and maybe even more garbage thrown back onto it. 

When you live in the flow of the Spirit, not everything is subject to cost-benefit analysis because who knows what seeds sown into the world bear fruit?  Who knows that even the ones that seem to die are fruitless or useless in their being sown? 

Which leads in a way to another F – Forgiveness that’s based on Grace – the G of spiritual community, the Grace of God that passes all understanding.   

In a community open to the Spirit rather than just committed to doing good and being right, there is room for mistakes and error, and room always for forgiveness, learning and growth because we are not always right or good – not in our thoughts or actions, not in the ways we treat one another, nor the ways we think of, and represent God.  We are all here by grace – and a community of the Spirit of Christ and of God remembers this about themselves and about others.  It makes room for all who – like ourselves, make mistakes and are broken. 

Which involves then a fourth thing – the H of truly spiritual community – Honesty, primarily honesty about ourselves.  When we count on being nice and good, and that’s how we sell ourselves, we are not really free to admit mistakes, reveal our warts, or share our questions and doubts.  But when we know that by grace we are part of something bigger and better than ourselves, we don’t have to pretend anymore.  We don’t have to fear our mistakes and try to justify ourselves when we’ve done wrong.  When we hurt one another and act badly together, we don’t have to deny or ignore what’s been done, and just blindly hope time alone somehow heals all wounds. 

Rather, we can talk about these things – be honest about our wounds and our wounding.  Through humble honesty we can grow spiritually and find an even deeper unity that has nothing to do with being right, and everything to do with right relations. 

The world doesn’t often teach us how to do this.  It’s not part of the old way of being human.  But it is part of the new way of being human that the community of Christ at its best is about.  Beyond being nice, good and moral, we are baptized into a new way of living together in the world – the way God has intended people to be all along, and that has been revealed and made available to us now in these days in Jesus.   

So in this season of Epiphany, as we let Jesus lead us deeper and deeper into the light of God’s life, we learn to look for these elements of openness to his Spirit – Ease in the good that we do, Freedom and even Foolishness sometimes in what we find ourselves doing, Grace in our acceptance and embrace of others, and Honesty about who we really still are and what we really still do.  As we see these elements of spiritual life emerge in our life together, we can support and nurture them.  And as they do not, we can choose to seek them out and learn to grow into them.

Towards Sunday, January 4, 2015 (Baptism of Jesus)

Scripture:  Acts 19:1-7 and Mark 1:4-11
Sermon theme:  Beyond Goodness

I wonder how John the Baptizer really felt about Jesus. 

John was doing great and courageous work with his moral preaching, his prophetic critique of government and society, and his invitation to people to clean up their act.  But he also knew the limits of what he and his followers would actually accomplish in the world -- a bit of discomfort among the elite, a bit of cleaning up for a while among the populace, but in the end he would be gone and the world would continue much as it always did.

There was something missing from his program and among his followers -- as there is ultimately in many programs and movements of moral reform, and according to the Gospel John knew Jesus would bring it -- a new spirit that would fill people from within and change the world and our life in the world from the inside out, so real transformation would occur as a matter of new (or mature) human nature, and not because of people's commitment to a program or movement.

What do we do as disciples and Christians when "something is missing"?  When goodness, morality, niceness, charity and commitment to doing good things just don't seem enough?

I ask the question because I think that all churches -- ours included, often find themselves facing it. 

On Sunday, together we'll bring the question to God in worship.