Christmas Eve, 2019 - Joy, Protest and Resistance

Luke 1:26-33; Luke 2:1-7; Luke 2:8-20

When my great-grandmother was a little girl, she and her sister had to attend the funeral of some relative who had died. It was a very solemn affair, of course, over a hundred years ago, if you can imagine it. It was a time when children were seen and definitely not heard, and a funeral was a very serious thing. Dead serious.

Have you ever got the giggles at a funeral? Well, as the story goes, my great-grandmother and her sister got the giggles. Something to do with the old fancy top hats that were collapsible, and if you pressed hard on the top they got flat, but if you accidentally bumped them, they popped up. Well, one popped up at a most inopportune moment. And you can guess what happened. My great-grandmother and her sister started giggling. And trying to cover it up. And of course, the more you try to suppress a giggle, the worse it gets. And so there they were, the two of them, hunched over with their hands over their faces, shoulders shaking, I’m guessing tears streaming down their faces, as they tried not to laugh.

Only guess what everyone else thought. Everyone else thought they were crying. And so the adults around them patted them on the shoulder, told them not to cry, handed them handkerchiefs, and tried to comfort them. It didn’t make things better, it only made the giggling worse. In church. At a funeral.

What strikes me most is that, over a century later, what remains of that story is the laughter. Nobody in my family remembers exactly who it was that died, or under what circumstances. I presume my great-grandmother got away with it, because there’s no part of the story that talks about them being discovered. There’s only this inappropriate laughter. In the midst of what must surely have been a dark time, what we remember is the shared joy.

Tonight, in the midst of a dark time, we too are gathered to share joy, to rejoice with the angels, to lift up our voices, to fill our stomachs with rich food. It is a wonderful time, and yet I sometimes wonder if it’s not a little inappropriate––all this gathering to celebrate and feast when we know that there is so much pain and suffering in the world. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, we kind of block out the world––I’m guessing most of us will make an effort not to check the news tonight or tomorrow. And for some people, that’s a needed break, while for others, it feels kind of odd.

After all, the whole point of Christmas is celebrating that God became incarnate––that God took on flesh in order to be part of the world––to be one of us. God came into the world to experience the darkness and the loneliness and the suffering that comes with being human. To enter into solidarity with the most oppressed and the most marginalized. And so for us to take a break from the world, as it were, by shutting it out and spending the time rejoicing with friends and family, seems not only the height of privilege––that we can actually shut it out when so many cannot––but the very antithesis of what we celebrate on Christmas Eve. It seems inappropriate.

Because there has been a lot of darkness in the world this year––depression and anxiety are on the rise, therapists are overbooked, sales of alcohol have increased (which is funny but also sad, since excessive drinking and drug-use are really attempts to self-treat undiagnosed mental illnesses). Domestic violence is still high, the number of overdoses from opioids are stunning. Our young people, the ones whose future is most at stake, are feeling increasingly alienated by the older generations. Protests around the world, and even here at home, are on the rise, as people struggle against increasing climate degradation, rising totalitarianism, and the reduction of everything and everyone to the almighty god of “the economy.” In the face of all of this, how dare we gather tonight and be joyful? It seems to me that grief, lament, concern for the year-to-come might be a more appropriate response.

But, “the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid ... I am bringing you good news of great joy ... to you (or for you) is born this day a Saviour.””

In the midst of the darkness two thousand years ago, also a time of oppression and marginalization, of looming disaster, of an Emperor who called himself divinely appointed and compared himself to the Son of God, God’s people were called to be joyful. Actually, it’s more that they were given a reason to be joyful. They were given a light. They were ruled by an Emperor who wanted all light to shine on Rome, which left Israel in darkness. Whose idea of peace was to kill anyone who disagreed. They were governed by King Herod who, though one of them, thought nothing of sacrificing them for his own ambition. And into that darkness, that fake peace, that grasping for power came a reason to be joyful. God born as a baby in Bethlehem. The light that would shine in their darkness, the true prince of peace who would bring life, not death. The Saviour who would sacrifice himself for them, not the other way around. Joy, when the earthly powers would have preferred them to despair, to give up, and to give in.

It turns out that joy in the midst of darkness is not inappropriate. Joy in the midst of darkness is protest. It is resistance. Joy in the darkness defies the very powers that have created the darkness because joy insists that there is something more. Joy tonight, and tomorrow, and in the year to come is a powerful claim that love-in-the-flesh is stronger than hate. It is a claim that, despite what the world says, life has the last word. That loving and trusting strangers, rather than shutting them out, is what makes the world a better place. Joy holds the line against the cynicism and bitterness that become suspicion and hatred. Joy actually melts those things away.

Because darkness does not have the last word. It does not even have the first word. The first and last word is light. Light from God, light in the darkness. Dare we even say laughter in the darkness?

Irrepressible laughter and mirth are manifestations of joy; the wiggles and giggles of a child who knows they are loved are a defiant rejection of the powers of darkness. Joy also manifests as shouts of triumph, the joy of justice served, of wrongs made right, like when the Berlin Wall fell, like when a dictator is overthrown, it is the feeling that fills our hearts when we hear trumpets playing Joy to the World. 

Joy can also be peaceful, serene, the feeling when we light the candles and sing Silent Night. This is the joy of the stars shining brightly in the middle of the night, the joy of holding a sleeping child, the calm in the midst of the storm.

Laughter, shouts, peace––all of these are a protest and a resistance to the darkness of the world. They are more than appropriate responses to what has happened this year and what we suspect is yet to come. They are a gift of God, to be received and shared, so that the darkness will not win.

And so, this evening, I invite you to enter into a few moments of joy, of shared joy with everyone here, to feel joy this day, to resist and to protest the darkness that would take over the world.

First, I invite you to close your eyes. If a phone rings, smile and let it ring. If you have to cough or sneeze, go ahead. We’ll all say bless you. And if you have little kids with you, don’t worry about shushing them, let them wiggle and giggle and talk, if they like. This joy is for everyone. And now, take a breath. A deep breath in, and exhale out all the darkness from this past year. Whether it is the darkness of the world, or something from your own personal situation, take another deep breath and breathe all that darkness out. It’s okay to let it go, there is no need to carry it in this moment. And one more breath to let go.

And now, if you haven’t hyperventilated yet, I invite you to breathe in the good news of this night. Christ is born for you. Breathe in the joy that the light continues to shine in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome it. Breathe in the joy of wiggling and giggling children, irrepressible life in the face of death. Breathe in the joy that there is more to this world, because love has become flesh.

And finally, I invite you to one last deep breath, to commit this moment to memory, so that you can retrieve it tomorrow when things are at their most chaotic, or their loneliest. So that you can recall when you need it most in the year to come. 

God is in the world, the Saviour has come, the light shines in the darkness. May the Joy of Christ come into the world be yours, today and always. Thanks be to God.

December 20, 2019 - Blue Christmas Sermon

Isaiah 9:2-7; Psalm 27: Luke 2:22-32; John 1:1-5, 14

May the peace of the Lord be with you always.

When was the last time you cried in the dark? Maybe even being asked that question brings tears to your eyes. There is something about the dark, the literal dark, that brings our vulnerabilities to the fore, that causes the walls we usually keep up around our hearts to come down, that even loosens our tongues. We cry out, quietly or loudly, hoping no one hears us, and yet, hoping Someone does.

There’s actually a long tradition in the Bible of people crying out in the darkness. It’s called Lament, and it’s a persistent although often overlooked theme. We hear it in the prophets like Isaiah, in several psalms, and even in the story of Jesus on the cross––when he cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 

In our story from the Gospel of Luke, I suspect such a cry is lingering in the back story of Simeon. Simeon, as we know, had lived a very long time, and God had promised him that he would not die until he saw the Messiah. As he got older, and then older still, as the years began to take their toll on his body, as he buried friends and family, how many times did Simeon return to the Temple, waiting for the arrival of the One anointed to rescue Israel from the cruelty of the Roman Empire? As the years, and decades passed, how often did Simeon lament, “How long, O God?” 

It is a cry that many of us here are familiar with. Maybe it’s even the reason you are here tonight. All the jolly cheer building up this time of year can intensify feelings of lament, leaving us wondering how long before we can feel the light in the darkness that is proclaimed so often right now. Wondering if anyone “out there” even hears us.

You know, names in the Bible are not just names, they have particular meanings. Simeon’s name, which he shares with one of the sons of Leah and Jacob, in the Book of Genesis, means “God hears.” God hears. Intertwined with thread of Lament throughout the Bible, we also have the thread that God hears. God heard the cries of Leah when Jacob didn’t love her. God heard the cries of those who walked in the land of darkness, during Isaiah’s time, when the Assyrian army was preparing to invade northern Israel. God heard the lament of Simeon as he waited out his days for the Messiah. God heard the cries of that Messiah on the cross. 

God hears your cries. Even in your darkness, when it seems as if everything is being swallowed up by the dark, God hears. God, who is everywhere, listens carefully to find those who are lonely, those who are bereaved, those who are sick. God pays attention to those who are on the outside looking in, to those whom the world ignores. God pays particular attention to those who feel like outsiders, to those who are weighed down by circumstances beyond their control. God hears them. God hears you.

God hears, and God responds. I say this because our Scripture is also clear on this point––that God does not just listen. God also responds. I know that sometimes all we need is a sympathetic ear, someone who can hear and share what we’re going through. But sometimes, we need more. Sometimes it’s not enough just to have someone sitting in the darkness with us, sometimes we actually need someone to bring us some light. We need someone to respond to our cries. Which God does. 

But a word of caution, or perhaps this is a word of comfort: God does not always respond the way we expect. What I mean is that God does not always respond in ways that are clear and evident to everyone. While yes, in the book of Isaiah the Assyrian Empire was overthrown and the people of Israel returned to the land, God does not always, even in the Bible, respond to lament in such obvious ways. 

Take, for example, Jesus’ birth. A baby born in the middle of the night, in a nowhere village, to an unremarkable couple, who were not noble Romans but lowly Judeans. This baby was born to a people ruled by a foreign Emperor, who handpicked not only their governor, but their high priests in Jerusalem, as well. Jesus was born much like any baby born in a village in China, or India, or El Salvador––to parents who no doubt loved him very much, but were not even so much as a blip on the radar of the earthly powers-that-be. If Jesus was the light shining in the darkness, it was the smallest light in the vastest darkness, nothing to compare to the light of Caesar Augustus, who styled himself as the Sun blazing in the sky. If Jesus was God’s response to the cries of people like Simeon, then it was a response that began in a very un-obvious way.

That Simeon recognized this tiny baby as the Messiah then, is a miracle in and of itself, possible only because, as the Gospel tells us, God’s Spirit led him to see it. Through the power of God Simeon came to know that this tiny baby, unassuming, unexceptional, was, actually, truly exceptional and truly the light of the entire world. Through the power of God, Simeon came to recognize that this baby was love sent into a loveless world, that this baby was the light sent into the darkness that the darkness would not overcome. Through the power of God Simeon saw that this baby would grow to become the one whose death––another darkness––would pave the way for new life for the world, a light that shines forever. It took the power of God to see these things because, on the day that Simeon encountered Jesus, he was not a blazing sun, or the light of a thousand candles. Not yet. He was still one small baby in a very big world.

And yet Jesus became God’s definitive and very visible response to the lament of God’s people. It would come to pass that millions, over the centuries, would come to see that this small baby was indeed the light of the world. But not quite yet.

Tonight, we are in that time of the not quite yet. We are in the time of Simeon, when God has heard our lament, and God is responding, but we are in need of God’s Spirit to point it out to us. But to be clear––God is always responding. God is always sending light into the darkness, even if it is in quiet, unassuming ways. Sometimes the light God sends is a soft light, a single flame rather than the blaze of the sun. In truth, this is the way God more often responds to our cries. We often refer to Jesus at this time of year as the son/sun of righteousness, but I wonder if we might also think of him as a single candle, flickering but undaunted, small but present, God’s response of steady and tender love.

Lament and response, two thousands years ago and today. God hears our laments, and this evening, God responds and sends you God’s Spirit through two means. The first is through the lighting of the candles when we sing Silent Night. As each small candle is lit, the Spirit of God reminds us of the birth in the darkness of that small unassuming baby who became light for the world. And as the small lights grow in number, we are shown how these small individual lights, how these small blessings of God, become brighter when brought together. God’s Spirit helps us to see how God’s light, given to each of you, as small as it might be, becomes light for those around you when you turn to share the flame with them. We see how the ‘not quite yet’ becomes ‘now.’

The second way in which God will respond to your lament tonight is through touch. I have no doubt that as Simeon held the baby in his arms, he felt healing. Holding babies will do that to you. We are created with bodies that are meant to be touched, whether through a handshake or a warm embrace. And so, a little bit later in the service, you will be invited to receive a laying on of hands, as a blessing to you in your darkness. And then––and this is different from the last few years––you will be invited to be a blessing to others, to be yourself an instrument of God’s Spirit––an incarnation of God’s response to someone else’s lament by laying your hands on the person next to you, and blessing them with the blessing you yourself will receive, as they, in turn, will do for the person beside them.

As we sit in darkness, as we cry out, know that God hears and God responds. God has done so in the past, and God does so even today. Not necessarily with a blazing light, but God does. In fact, as you share God’s light with others this evening, and as you share God’s love as you lay your hands on your neighbour and bless them, know that God is using you to be the small but very real light to someone else in their darkness, to be God’s response to their cries, as they are God’s response to yours. This is the glory of the Incarnation, this is the gift of Jesus, this is the light and love of God come into the world, in the past and also today. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Blessing: God bless you and keep you in the light of Christ. + Amen.

Advent 2 - Hope vs Reality

By Edward Hicks - National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C., online collection, Public Domain, Link

Isaiah 11:1-10; Romans 15:4-13; Matthew 3:1-12

“The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together.” “They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full to the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”

The book of Isaiah is just poetry when it comes to visions of hope, isn’t it? This particular passage inspired the work of Edward Hicks, a Quaker minister, who painted at least sixty pieces like the one up there, all called Peaceable Kingdom. He was captivated by this idea of the promised peace; in fact, if you look at the background on the left side of the painting, you can see that he painted William Penn (the founder of the state of Pennsylvania and another Quaker) and Lenape chiefs establishing a peaceful treaty. In Hicks’ and Isaiah’s visions, God’s peace is two warring sides coming together, not in a violent conflict, but to live in harmony with one another.

Paul, in the letter to the Romans, has the same vision. “May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another,” he says. For Paul, the two sides that he wished would come together were the Jewish people to whom he still belonged, and the non-Jews––the Gentiles––in Rome. These were two groups that generally didn’t spend time together, didn’t each together, didn’t socialize together, except around the table of the Lord to worship God through Jesus Christ. And even then, there was lingering tension. Paul longed for a universal peace and harmony, which is why he quotes Isaiah. He yearned for a day when all the people––the Gentiles and the Jews––would all be one together, worshipping the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

What might Hicks paint today? Or what might Paul envision? Democrats and Republicans coming together to establish gun control? UCP and NDP working to pass bills together? Albertans and Ontarians having compassion and sympathy for one another? Or maybe Iran and the United States reestablishing a nuclear treaty, or Brexit and EU folks coming to an agreement?

Or maybe they might envision the harmony of humans and our environment. Maybe the Peaceable Kingdom would have people working with, rather than exploiting, the land. Maybe, and I know this is a hard one to swallow in Alberta, vegans and meat-industry people side-by-side. I’ll settle for Tesla drivers and Ford Escalade drivers letting each other in at merges.

It’s a beautiful vision, isn’t it? This image of worldwide peace and harmony, between peoples, and between people and the environment. It’s the light in the darkness that we desperately need right now. It’s our hope.

My question, though, is: do you believe in it? Do you have hope? 

I’m asking because these are difficult times. I mean, every era has its impending catastrophe that makes it hard to hope––Isaiah wrote when the Northern Kingdom of Israel was about to invaded by Assyria. Invasion means mass slaughter, starvation, sexual violence against women and children, disease. It means mass deportation––entire families scooped up and relocated far away from their ancestral homes. The end of the world for those experiencing it.

At different times throughout history, people have legitimately believed that their world, their way of life as they knew it, was about to be taken from them. The apostle Paul believed the end would come in his lifetime. So did Martin Luther. And so, when I say that these are difficult times, in a way, these times are no different than the rest.

And yet they are, because they affect us. They are personal. Whether the darkness looming on the horizon affects thousands, or just one, makes no difference. Elie Wiesel, the famous Holocaust survivor, once said that suffering expands to fill a person’s entire universe––whether that suffering is caused by a migraine or by a concentration camp, the grip of that suffering is still the same. The darkness before you might be individual––it may be the loss of someone beloved or waiting to hear whether or not you have a terminal disease. The darkness before you might affect your family or friends––there are people who are part of this church community who will be losing their jobs next year due to cuts. Or maybe the suffering you are experiencing is more global––maybe you are sensitive to the heart-rending increase in polarization and hate in this very country, or the global rise of fascism. Maybe you, like I, have read all of the ICPP scientists’ reports on the coming climate catastrophe, and despair that we seem completely unable or unwilling to respond. Big or small, when your way of life, the world as you know it, is about to end, the suffering is all equally real.

And so, I ask again, do you have hope? Because on the one hand we have these visions of hope, faithfully proclaimed throughout the centuries. And yet on the other hand, we have the actual experiences we are going through, some of which will literally change the entire world. We have hope and we have reality. 

Which puts us in a tough bind. It sometimes seems as though one can only be either hopeful or realistic. Either one can hope, and deny that things are as bad as they are, or one can accept the cold, hard facts and give up hope. The first response means living in denial, while the second response means living in despair. 

Sadly, neither is actually helpful, and both lead us away from following Christ. Despair, of course, means not trusting God’s promise of goodness to us. It’s easy to see how despair is neither an effective nor a faithful course of action. But neither is denial. You see, when we live only in hope, believing that God will somehow swoop in and make everything better, that our actions are besides the point, when we assert that God has a grand plan for all of us and we just keep doing what we’re doing and God will nevertheless work everything out, this is, yes, to put our hope in God as we are commanded to. When we live only in hope, we are loving the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind.

But, and this is really important, when we live only in hope, we are not loving our neighbour as ourselves. You see, Christ came into the world to call us to do both, to love the Lord our God, and to love our neighbour as ourself. And Christ, in fact, spent more time on the latter than the former. Christ fed those who were hungry, he healed those who were sick, he told us to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, visit those in prison. He did not––actually––say, Put all your hope in the Lord, believe everything is wonderful, and just pray. Instead, what he actually said was, the poor will always be with you, feed them. Hope and face reality. When you turn your face to the light of God, don’t turn your back on the very real presence of suffering and loss. 

To be realistic that there is darkness and hopeful that there is light that will not be overcome––this is the paradox of Advent. Jesus Christ said, the kingdom of heaven is coming and the poor will always be with you. And so how do we live in this paradox? How do we live in Advent? How do we live in these times?

I believe we do it by putting our hope in the Incarnation, which is to say, by putting our hope in the here and now, in the presence of God amongst and actually in people. The central message of Advent is first that God became incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth, that God came to bring hope to the people by becoming one of the people. God sought to change the world, to bring about the Peaceable Kingdom, by living and acting in this world. And the second half of that message is that God is not done. God’s desire to change the world by acting through and in it did not end when Jesus ascended into heaven. It wasn’t like God took a two-thousand year pause. God is still acting in the world, but through us.

And this is our hope as we face our reality. Our hope is that God works through us, that God gives us “the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord,” as Isaiah proclaims. Our hope comes from knowing that God works through us when we turn to one another, when we turn to those in need, when we spend our energy––our time, our resources, our money, our efforts––not in the belief that God will rescue us from on high, but in the belief that God has given us God’s own power to help one another. Our hope is that God works through us when we reach out to others and work to end their suffering.

We have actually seen it happen, even in our own lifetime. We have seen people, filled with hope and simultaneously facing reality, experience moments and flashes of the Peaceable Kingdom. The end of apartheid in South Africa. It happened because faithful people both accepted the reality of deep racism and trusted in the hope that God would bring peace. The fall of the Berlin Wall. Again, it happened because faithful people both accepted the reality that the people of East Germany were imprisoned in their city and were suffering and acted in the hope that God would bring harmony. I have seen it in faithful Christians who have accepted diagnoses of terminal cancer and gathered all their family and friends around them in those last weeks or days because they lived in the hope that God would unite them all in love. It was the acceptance of reality and the hope of God’s world to come that enabled all of these things to happen.

John the Baptist issued a call to repentance, to turn away from certain things. Perhaps today it is a call to repent from both denial and despair, to turn away from denying the realities of our world and from giving up hope entirely. Perhaps we are called to turn towards the Christian claim at this time of year that the light shines in the darkness because we acknowledge that there is a darkness. To know that we do not yet live in the Peaceable Kingdom and yet to continue to imagine it. We are called to be realistic and we are called to hope. We are called to act in and for the world, to know that God is in the world with us, and to see that as God calls us to turn towards one another, God works through us to turn hope into reality, so that the vision of God’s peace and harmony is made real. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Sun, Nov 10 - What Will Resurrection Be Like?

Job 19:19, 23-27a; Luke 20:27-38

So this passage from Luke takes a bit of unpacking to understand. The writer of the Gospel manages to put a lot of information into every sentence, and so it takes some careful reading. Overall, what we have is a debate about whether or not there is such a thing as resurrection.Is death it? The ancient Israelites did not actually believe in resurrection––that belief only became popular about 300 years before Jesus was born, and it was likely picked up from one of the other religions in the countries around Israel. So, resurrection was a relatively new idea in Jesus’ time, and there wasn’t agreement on it. The Sadducees believed that there was no resurrection. Their question about the woman with seven brothers-in-law is intentionally extreme, in order to make resurrection sound as ridiculous as possible. They cite Scripture to give weight to their argument, but really, the Sadducees are trying to trap Jesus into publicly saying that the idea of resurrection is absurd. Their target isn’t actually Jesus, but Jesus’ audience.

Because among that audience were Pharisees and scribes who, along with Jesus, did believe in resurrection. They believed what we hear in the book of Job, that even though our skin will be destroyed, we will be restored and see God with our own eyes, in our own bodies. They did not agree with the Sadducees, and, in the end, the belief of the Pharisees became the prevailing belief, both in Judaism and in Christianity. Both religions believe in the resurrection to life everlasting.

But what does that mean? We say it all the time, whenever we say the Apostles’ or the Nicene Creed. “I believe... in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.” What does that mean? Are we all going to be walking around like zombies? What kind of body will we have in the resurrection? The one we had right before we died? That’s maybe not great if we die at 100, with cataracts and hearing loss. The body we had when we were in our 20s? If someone is born deaf, will they be resurrected that way? If someone has Downs’ Syndrome, will they be resurrected that way?

And what about those we love? The Sadducees are exaggerating to make a point, but they do have a point. What will our relationships be like in the resurrection? If you have lost a child, or a baby, maybe you wonder––what will they be like in the resurrection? If you have married after losing your spouse, you may wonder––how will this work out in the resurrection? Some people don’t get married again, for that very reason.

Now if you like clarity, and precise, cut-and-dried answers to these very meaningful questions, I’m sorry to tell you that the Bible doesn’t give us that. The Book of Job clearly talks about physical resurrection––in our flesh, and with our eyeballs, we will see God. If you remember Elijah in the valley of the bones, there is another clear picture that resurrection will be physical––bone to bone, sinews and muscles laid on those bones, and skin on top of that. In the Gospels, the disciples encounter a bodily resurrected Christ. He eats, he drinks, he can be touched. In The Apostles’ Creed we say, “the resurrection of the body.”

In contrast, in the Nicene Creed we say, “the resurrection of the dead,” without talking about bodies. And the apostle Paul writes, in 1 Corinthians, that we should not expect to be resurrected with the same bodies we had in this life. (1 Corinthians 15:35-56) He describes the resurrection body as being like a plant, while our earthly body is the seed. You can’t tell from the seed what the plant will look like, and you can’t tell from the plant what kind of seed it grew from. And yet there is a clear connection between the two. We would say today that they have the same DNA, that their essence is the same, even though their form is different. For the apostle Paul, who was a Pharisee, the resurrection is certain. And we will be resurrected, and we will still be ourselves, it’s just that our outsides will be different. Still us, but different.

This is what Jesus implies, too, in our reading from Luke. “The dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection.” The life we will have in the resurrection will not be like the life we have now. It will be more like the life of angels, whatever that is, and we will be resurrected as children of God, rather than children of this age. In the resurrection, we will still be us, but, again, different.

Two very different ideas about resurrection. One physical, one spiritual. It’s no wonder we have questions.

But Jesus goes on to say something that is very clear, “God is not God of the dead, but of the living.” God is the God of life. Jesus, as the Son of God, as the Word made flesh, says in the Gospel of John, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10) While Scripture presents different pictures of what resurrection is like, it is very consistent in saying that God, as we see in Christ, is the God of life, and so resurrection is a resurrection to life, with God.

Life with God. What gives you life? What gives you abundant life? I’m asking because how you answer that question shapes how you will experience resurrection. What I’m suggesting is, actually, that both the bodily resurrection view and the spiritual resurrection view are right. (God is, after all, capable of encompassing different things together, surely. God can handle both bodily and spiritual resurrection in ways that we can’t even imagine. God does not have the logical limitations that we do.) So what gives you abundant life in this life? What makes your life meaningful? What gives you joy? What makes you grateful to be alive? This is, I believe, what resurrection will be like for you.

For some of you, you might experience abundant life in your embodiment, your physical existence: being able to run, to dance, to embrace. These things bring you life. You might delight in your senses, in the taste of good food, in music, in art. If these things give you life—abundant, meaningful life—then you can trust that these will be part of your resurrection life. As Job says, God is on your side, and if these things give you true life, the God of life will give you a resurrection body that can continue to delight in these things.

For others of you, the embodiment part might not be so important. We all experience life differently. For others, what gives true, abundant, meaningful life, what makes you grateful to be alive, might be your relationships; your bonds with other people. With your spouse, with your children, with your friends. And you might find Jesus’ words today kind of troubling. It sounds like he is dismissing those relationships. Now, to be fair to Jesus, marriage in his time was not about love. It was about procreation and economics. For women, especially, marriage was not particularly life-affirming. Marriage was an institution, not a relationship like it is today. Today, marriage can give life, abundant, meaningful life.

Which is to say that, because our God is the God of life, in the resurrection, those relationships that give you life will be restored, marriage or otherwise. In physical bodies or spiritual bodies, the relationships that, in this life, have given you a taste of God’s love for us, that affirmed you as children of God, that made life worth living, will be there for you in the resurrection, made even more perfect. As we see through Jesus Christ, our God is the God of life, whether that life comes through our bodies, through our relationships, through both, or through something else entirely.

But here’s the thing. We don’t need to wait until the resurrection to experience abundant life. Our God is the God of the living. Jesus is the Word made flesh, come to be among us in this world. Jesus brought abundant life, through his healings and his miracles, to the here and now. As a foretaste of the feast to come. As a this-world experience of the coming Kingdom of God. As an example in this life of what resurrection life will be like.

And that means that part of the way of following Jesus, of walking the way of Christ, involves becoming aware of and then nurturing those activities and relationships that give you life, in this life. And I don’t mean live a life of hedonism, do-what-you-want, buy all the shoes that catch your eye, or eat fast food at every meal. I don’t mean exploit every relationship you’re in so that it’s all about you feeling good. Those things do not actually give us meaningful and abundant life. They don’t leave us feeling satisfied with life. There are experiences that leave us craving more of those experiences, and when they’re over we’re miserable. That’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about those activities and relationships that lead you to give thanks to God, to be grateful for life, that lead you to hope that they’re included in the resurrection. Give more attention to those things, to those relationships, and less to the rest of it. Seek ye out the kingdom of God. We are called to resurrection life now, to life that gives us, and by extension those around us, even deeper life. Whatever that is for you, give attention to it now, be grateful for it now, because that is how you will experience resurrection.

And, if you have cultivated these experiences and relationships, and yet they are now lost to you, because the things of this world are not forever, take heart that in the resurrection God will restore them. If there are abilities or activities that once gave you life thatyou can’t do anymore, because your body is not what it was, in the resurrection God will restore them to you. If there are relationships and people who have given you life but they aren’t here anymore, God will restore them to you. Above all, our God is the God of life.

This is what Jesus was sent to show us, through his life and through his resurrection. God is the God of life, now and in the resurrection. My prayer for you this week is that you experience, whether through your body or through your relationships, even if only for a moment, what resurrection life is like, and so be reassured that our God is the God of life, today and in the time to come. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Nov 3, 2019 - All Saints' Day

Jesus’ demands of how to live as a Christian are not easy, are they? “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” If you even manage to accomplish only one of these things in your entire lifetime, then I would say that you are far and away better than most. Especially today––when we live in a society that is becoming increasingly polarized, where we “cancel” people who hurt us, where it is all too easy to mock our enemies, where we relish in schadenfreude, rubbing our hands in righteous glee when something bad happens to someone bad––especially today, Jesus’ words call Christians to a counter-cultural way of living. “Love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return.” Bracketing the whole discussion that Jesus is not saying that we must remain in abusive relationships, because Jesus would most definitely tell people not to do that, we are still left with an incredible challenge. The Most High is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked, and so we are to be merciful, just as the Most High is merciful.

And unfortunately, it is not something we can wiggle out of. And that is because, in baptism, we committed (or were committed, if we were baptized as babies) to following Christ and living as he lived. In baptism, we entered into an irrevocable covenant with God, made possible by Jesus Christ: God committed to being our God, and we committed to being God’s children, brothers and sisters of Jesus. As we will hear in a few minutes, we committed to renouncing the devil and all the forces that defy God, to renouncing the powers of this world that rebel against God, and to renouncing the ways of sin that draw us from God. In other words, we committed to refusing to hate our enemies, refusing to do evil to those who hate us, refusing to curse those who curse us, and refusing to think ill of those who abuse us. We committed to living lives that really seem impossible.

Honestly, it does lead me to wonder why anyone would choose to be baptized, or to have their children baptized. To be brought into the Christian community, to be brought into the covenant with God through Christ, is to be set up to live very difficult lives, if we take our baptism seriously. Baptism is not a light thing. It’s no wonder, actually, that in the first couple of hundred years of the church, Emperors and kings and military leaders would wait until they were on their deathbed to be baptized. They felt that they needed to hold onto their vengeance and power for the good of the empire or kingdom, and if they were baptized, they wouldn’t be able to do that anymore.

And yet, all around the world, people do choose baptism, either for themselves or for their children. We don’t experience it as much in this country, but in other countries, people are choosing baptism by the millions. The worldwide Christian church is growing by tens of millions every year. For example, the Lutheran Church in Ethiopia, where I was the week before last, has grown to 10 million Lutherans over the last 60 years. The Lutheran churches in Indonesia number 7 million people. Every week, hundreds of thousands of people choose to be baptized and choose to take on the commitment of following Christ’s challenge.

Why? To what end? What is so worth it, that people choose baptism and that those of us who are baptized daily choose to live our baptized lives with integrity and commitment?

So far, I have talked about what we commit to in baptism. But we are not the only ones at work. Actually, we are not even the ones doing most of the work. It sounds like we are, but there is one who is making a bigger commitment than us, working harder than us, if we can say it that way, who is doing all of the heavy lifting when it comes not only to our baptism but to our entire lives. And that is God.

Through the Holy Spirit, in baptism God makes a commitment to you that never wavers, or weakens, or comes to an end. When you were baptized, the pastor or priest or minister who baptized you asked God that the Holy Spirit of God would fill you. When J---n is baptized in a few minutes, we will pray that God “sustain[s] J---n with the gift of the Holy Spirit.” And I will proclaim that J---n has “been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.” Forever. God’s gift and commitment to you is forever. We may waver in our level of commitment throughout our lives, but God never does.

And I think that we don’t take seriously enough what it means that the very Spirit of God comes into us at baptism and is present with us forever. This is the same Spirit that was present at Creation - that formed life where there was no life, whether you think of that through a literal seven days or through the Big Bang and evolution. The Spirit of Life, life in the face of death, life after death, life before death, came to dwell in you the moment you were baptized. The Holy Spirit of God that filled the prophets, that gave Elijah the power to heal the sick and actually raise the dead (once, but he did), the Spirit of God that filled Jesus, and gave him the power to love everyone without limits, that gave him the strength to actually die for others, that gave him new life after death, this same Spirit was given to you in baptism and continues to be in you now. This Spirit of God makes it possible to actually love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for your enemies. Just as Jesus did.

And this is why we choose baptism, for ourselves and for our children. This is why we continue to live as baptized Christians––as saints. Because yes, living as Jesus calls us to is hard, but it is not impossible. It can’t be impossible because we are filled with the Spirit of God. J---n is about to be filled with the Spirit of God, which is going to empower him and enable him to live as Jesus asks us to: to live with love and mercy and kindness as the guiding principles of our lives.

Jesus calls Christians to high standards of living. And I know that, as committed as we are, we frequently doubt our ability to live up to that. And, if it were up to us alone, we wouldn’t. We couldn’t. But Jesus calls us knowing that it is God’s Holy Spirit dwelling within us who gives us the ability and the strength to follow where Jesus calls. This is the blessing and promise and joy of baptism, and of baptismal living. Thanks be to God, Amen.

Oct 20, 2019 - Struggling with your Faith

Genesis 32:22-31, Luke 18:1-8

Anybody here struggling with their faith? Or ever struggled in the past? (It’s okay, I don’t actually expect anyone to put their hands up. And good for you for putting your hands up, if you did.) It’s an unfortunate reality that we don’t talk enough in church about when we’re struggling with God. We seem to think of it as something shameful, as an indication that we’re losing our faith, or we look at it as a kind of disobedience. How dare we question what God is doing? Isn’t that impertinent, or rebellious? We hide when we’re wrestling with our faith, we worry that others will find out and judge us, or worse, that God will.

And then along come our readings for today––Jacob struggling in the middle of the night by the river in Genesis, and the widow persisting in her struggle for justice from the judge in Luke. We tend not to lift these two up as role models of our faith, since they don’t seem to trust God enough to just let things unfold as they should. Their interactions with God fly against what we’ve been taught is the proper response to God, which is reverence, humility, and acceptance. The widow, for one, doesn’t quite seem to accept her place. You’d think that one refusal from the judge would enough. The judge is, after all, educated in the law, appointed by the leaders, and the ultimate decision-maker. The widow is, well, a widow. She’s not nearly as educated as the judge, she clearly has no powerful people in her family, she’s on the bottom rung of the social ladder. The judge, who sets himself up as God, could cast her out or have her ostracized, or even sentence her to stoning for disrespecting him. She should trust and accept his judgement, but instead she returns, not once, not twice, but over and over again, to plead her case, wasting her time, and his, risking his wrath.

And then there’s Jacob. It’s pretty much a given that Jacob was not struggling with an actual “man.” It’s the middle of the night, he’s all alone, camped by a river whose very name is synonymous with the word “struggle,” and this “man” appears out of nowhere and starts wrestling with Jacob? It can only be God or God’s representative. And what does Jacob do? Does he give in and say, “okay, you win!”? Nope, he keeps wrestling. He does not demonstrate any degree of reverence, humility, or acceptance in the face of God. God could strike him dead, right there and then, and yet Jacob grabs hold of this divine being and refuses to let go!

And what is God’s response? How does God react to this persistent struggling and refusal to accept what would appear to be the will of God?

God steps forward into the struggle with Jacob, and God blesses Jacob. And in that encounter, Jacob’s life is changed. Jacob’s name is changed from one which means supplanting, as Jacob did to his brother Esau, to Israel, which actually means “struggles with God,” and was given as the name for all of the descendants of Jacob, the people of Israel. God not only lets Jacob live, God blesses Jacob and his descendants because he has struggled with God.

How weird is that? When we wrestle and struggle with our faith, when we argue with God and get mad at God and question God, far from punishing us, or calling us disobedient or rebellious or impertinent, God responds to us with a blessing. This is what Jesus says in his parable about the widow - while the unjust judge finally gives the widow what she is persistently struggling for, the supreme judge, our very just God, is so much more willing, when we persistently struggle in our relationship with the divine, to bless us.

Which means that we should not be ashamed when we struggle with our faith. We shouldn’t hide when we’re wrestling with some deep, personal, theological questions, like why does God let people die from cancer, or why does God allow suffering or abuse or violence, or why does God allow systems of injustice to carry on instead of sweeping in and getting rid of all evil? Because these are important questions, and they belong to a tradition that is thousands of years old of faithful people trying to make sense of God and the world. Instead of hiding these questions, we can engage in our struggles openly, in broad daylight, in public, trusting that at the end of our struggles, God has a blessing waiting for us.

Now, I’ll admit, this is a different way of thinking about our faith journey. But it is biblical, and it can deepen our relationship with God. For one thing, to question God, to wrestle for answers, to demand answers even, is to exhibit a tremendous amount of faith in God. After all, we’re not just shouting questions into thin air. Wrestling with God can only be done if you believe that there is someone to wrestle with, someone who is going to stick around for the struggle. Because that’s what God does. After Jacob wrestles with the “man,” and after he is blessed by God, he renames the place he is in as Penuel, or Peniel, which means face-of-God. In Jacob’s wrestling, he came face-to-face with God. Overwhelming, yes, but isn’t that why we struggle in our faith? Because we want to know the truth, because we want a meaningful encounter with God, because we want to make sense of this relationship between the divine and us? We struggle in our faith because we have faith, because we have not yet quite given up hope, and in that wrestling, God comes to us, engages with us, and shows God’s own face to us.

But we have to persist. This kind of struggling can take months, or even years. It’s not always over in one night, like it was with Jacob. It’s more like the widow, going again and again and again to the judge, striving, wrestling, struggling to have a genuine encounter. (Part of my own struggle is why that struggle has to take so long.) But when we persist, once again, we are blessed. God shows God’s self to us. We come face-to-face with the one who made us and sustains us.

We might limp afterwards, to be sure. There is no way to come face-to-face with God and be unchanged. Maybe that’s why sometimes we shy away from the struggle. When we wrestle with God, when we struggle with our faith, things get out of joint. Often it’s our preconceived ideas of who God is, or who we are. But what is a limp compared to being blessed by God?

If you have never struggled with your faith, you will one day. And if you have already experienced that struggle, you probably will again. But when you do, remember that it’s okay (and that you can talk about it). God will meet you in that struggle, not to punish you, but to bless you. The struggle will probably take longer than you want, but keep at it, like the widow. Don’t let go until you have demanded a blessing, like Jacob. Because God will hear you, God will come to be with you and struggle with you, and God will bless you. Thanks be to God. Amen. 

Oct 9, 2019 - Would the Neighbourhood Miss Your Church If It Was Gone?

There is a question making the rounds in churches these days, particularly in churches that are focusing on church growth and outreach. The question is: would the neighbourhood miss your church if it was gone? It’s a good question - a church should never exist just for its own sake. It should never engage in endless navel-gazing. Our faith calls us to serve the world, not ourselves, and so this question is meant to get us thinking about whether or not a congregation is connected to the world around it, and existing with a mission to serve. Is the church making an impact in the world?

The tricky thing about the question, though, is how do we know? What are the metrics that tell us whether or not the church is making a difference? Whether or not its people have a strong faith? Is it the number of people who come to church? Or the number of people who come to church from the surrounding neighbourhood? If the numbers are high, presumably that means that the church is doing something right. Or maybe we measure church impact by the number of outreach events, or if not by the number of events, by the numbers of people those events reach. Certainly we look at congregations that have weekly dinners for the homeless or do clothing drives or march in Pride Parades and think, wow, those congregations are really making an impact in their communities. They are living out their faith in ways we can measure - numbers of people involved, numbers of people served. We envy their reports of increasing numbers, and if they shrink, we pity them and worry about what’s going wrong. 

Or, maybe we can know if the church is having an impact by the number of children in Sunday School, or in Confirmation, or the number of youth involved in the church. Surely these things point to the impact a church is having on the community around it. And so, in an attempt to answer the question, we study the numbers, we track them, record them, put them on a graph. We try to measure the effectiveness of our collective faith.

Except, of course, that we know that faith is not about what can be measured. The spiritual well-being of a congregation is not measured by the numbers of people in the pews, or the grandeur of the outreach program, or the number of children in Sunday School. We know this because in our Gospel reading, the disciples ask Jesus for more faith. They want bigger numbers to show their impact. And Jesus responds by saying that first of all, faith isn’t measurable - they ask for more, and Jesus says faith the size of a tiny seed is enough. Faith doesn’t need to be more or bigger to be effective. In fact, the strongest faith is easily missed. And then Jesus warns them not to be live out their faith for the reward of it, for being recognized or rewarded or even thanked. He cautions them that living a life of faith is a thankless task, with no recognition, and that it’s better to simply accept that from the outset than to think that we will know our faith is good because we will be recognized for it.

Which is actually one of the pillars of Lutheran theology, of our Lutheran faith. That we do not live striving for glory, as if success and numbers and programs is proof that God is with us. Because God does not seek to be revealed in the glorious, successful things of the world. Rather, God seeks to be revealed in the humble things of the world, things that we might call failures. God reveals God’s self in babies, in the poor, in God’s own death on a cross. Paradoxically, God’s own power is revealed to the world in God’s most powerless moment. God is seen in the mustard seed, not in the mulberry bush tree uprooted and planted in the sea.

And so this is why I am troubled when I hear the question, would the neighbourhood miss the church if it was gone. Because even though the question rightly points us to consider whether we are serving ourselves or the community, it can too easily lead us to worry that the answer is no. It can lead us to become concerned with whether or not we are doing enough, to a kind of church-works righteousness. And, in our fear that the answer is no, it can too easily lead us to pursue programs and events that bring us achievement, and recognition, that show off how much faith we have, sometimes at the cost of the humbler things we are doing elsewhere. To pursue glory, and forget that God has already accomplished all on the cross.

More than that, though, it is a misleading question because it implies that the church needs to be doing big things that make it noticeable in the neighbourhood. But that is not what the church is about, or at least, it’s not the only thing a church is about. A congregation is also about empowering individuals, empowering you to go out into the world and live your faith, not in grandiose ways, but in ordinary, everyday ways. The faith, or impact, of a congregation is not, in fact, primarily seen in the programs or events or numbers of people involved. The impact of a congregation is primarily seen in the small, daily, even mundane tasks that its members carry out in the course of their regular lives. 

We’re going to get a little bit of listener participation in here now. Could you please, if you will, take a piece of paper, those scribble pads in front of you will work fine, and write down the name of an organization or group that is not this church, that you have given to in this past year? A group you’ve given money to, even if it’s just a few quarters at the cash register for Tim Horton’s camps or a poppy in November, or that you’ve given your time to through volunteering, or that you’ve given food or second-hand clothes or old furniture to. As many as you can think of, and then any time you’ve helped an individual, write that down, too. If you gave a neighbour a ride somewhere, or shovelled their sidewalk, or called up a friend to check in on them. If you’ve given to someone who’s homeless, or given blood, make a note of that. I’ll give you a minute. And then if you can hand that piece of paper towards the centre aisle, and ushers if you can collect them and bring them forward, please.

So here’s some of what we have. [Some selections include: the Diabetes Association, the Mustard Seed, the Red Cross, Goodwill, PFLAG, the Conservative Party, the Green Party, Canadian Wildlife Society, MS Society, Girl Guides, the Humane Society, Heart and Stroke, the Food Bank, helping shovel snow for neighbours, phoning a widow, visiting families and friends, volunteering at the Hospice, baking for friends, visiting residents at seniors’ homes, donating things for refugees, Meals on Wheels, Boy Scouts, Veterans Food Bank, helping family with financial support, praying for people.] This is the impact of the faith of Advent on the world. Every time you give to an group or a person outside the walls of this church, that’s outreach. That’s living your faith. These small little acts, humble in and of themselves, are how God works in the world to achieve something tremendous. But these aren’t things that a neighbourhood can really see. They can’t be measured. We will miss seeing them if we’re looking for the big stuff, but God works through them all.

Would the neighbourhood notice if this church disappeared? Perhaps the question shouldn’t trouble us, because in God’s eyes, the answer is always yes, of course! If this church disappeared, all of these organizations would notice. The people in your lives that you’ve helped, friends and strangers, the people represented by these pieces of paper, these people would notice. The church is so much more than the events it hosts, or the programs it runs, or the numbers of children or youth. The church is you, living your life from day-to-day, and all the things you do in a day that help those around you. In these small things, the greatness of your faith is lived out, and the glory of God shines into the world. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Sunday, September 29 - A Sermon for Election Season

Amos 6:1a, 4-7; Psalm 146; 1 Tim 6:6-19; Luke 16:19-31

Amos, the writer of our psalm, the writer of the first letter to Timothy, Jesus––they all have harsh words for us this morning. To a person, they are condemning God’s people for doing nothing when confronted with people in need. We don’t like to hear this part of God’s message to us, but here it is: God has given us the resources and the opportunity to help those in need, and when we don’t, God gets upset. Amos takes his listeners to task for not being “grieved over the ruin of Joseph,” by which he means the exploitation and abuse of those in the community. The writer of the psalm warns people not to put worship human leaders as if they are gods, since they are no more powerful than any of the rest of us, and likely to have gotten their riches off the labour of the poor. The writer of 1 Timothy says that all kinds of evil grow from loving money more than anything else, and Jesus makes it very clear to his listeners that God has already warned us, through Torah and the prophets, to take care of the poor, and that if we ignore those words, no one is going to save us from the consequences.

We call these four bearers of God’s Word prophets. A prophet is a person sent by God to point to the truth that nobody else wants to see, that often nobody wants to admit is coming, and then the prophet clearly lays out the consequences if nothing changes. Anybody, actually, can be a prophet––Martin Luther was one, Desmond Tutu was one, we even have them today.

The trouble is, prophets are seldom popular in their own time. We like prophets in retrospect, but not if they’re actually speaking to us. Mostly because they always seem angry, and they seem intent on shaming or berating us. Their accusations put us off, their anger allows us to dismiss them as irrational, we might even label them as “crazy” and stop listening. And yet they continue. It’s only later, years later or even thousands of year later, that we look back and realize that what they were saying was and is still true. Prophets like Amos, or Jesus, or Luther only get credit and respect in hindsight.

I suspect, though, that the real reason we don’t take to heart what prophets say to us is because what they’re saying is incredibly overwhelming. In their righteous anger, they come across so strongly that we feel defenseless. “I hate, I despise your festivals,” are the words Amos uses to describe God’s feelings towards those who walk past the needy on their way to worshipping God. Jesus says that if we act like the rich man and don’t care for the poor at our doorstep, we will be flung into a place of fire and torment, with no chance of escape. Prophets demand, with divine authority, that we change in significant, life-altering ways. They tell us that we need to dismantle entire systems. And so we stop listening, because even though they are speaking the words of God, they’re asking us to do the impossible.

But it’s only a twisted God who would tell us to do the impossible and then condemn us when we can’t. And that is not our God. Instead, we have a God who has and does give us what we need to change. God has given us the resources to care for the needy in our midst. God has always blessed us with more than we need, and has always provided opportunities for us to use those blessings to help others. For example, in Amos’ time, as well as in Jesus’ time, and in the time of the early church, societies were structured so that those with more were obligated and expected to take care of those with less. “Moses and the prophets” say that if you have land producing food, you are not supposed to harvest it, you’re supposed to leave the edges of the field, or grapes on the vine, or fruit on the trees so that those who are poor can come along later and take the leftovers. Roman and Greek societies were built on patronage systems, and the Middle Ages on feudal systems, where those with riches and power understood that God or the fates had caused them to be born into their stations in life in order to provide for those who were born lower. It was expected––it was the divine order––that we would take care of those around us. It’s just that, in our love of money and power, we twisted what God had given us to serve ourselves rather than others.

So what does that mean for us today? Well, we’re in a bit of a new situation here, because today we’re living in a society that Amos and Jesus and the early church and even Luther couldn’t possibly imagine. Today we live in a world where we believe that people aren’t born into power, like the rulers of old, but that we elect them to power. Today we live in a democracy––something that the people of the Bible could not even imagine. And living in a democracy means that we live in a society where we regular people actually have way more power than those in previous times ever did. We have the power to affect government policy, which is a power far greater than simply feeding the poor out of our own kitchens. We have been born into a time and a place where our individual vote has the power to affect the lives of millions of Canadians, and even billions around the world.

Now, before anyone starts worrying, I’m not about to cross that important distinction between church and state and tell you which party Christians should vote for. We do misunderstand what that concept means, which Luther himself actually invented, but that’s for another day.

But what I am going to say is that our readings for today tell us that God expects us to use the riches and the power we have to improve the lives of those in greatest need, to love our neighbours as ourselves, and today, those riches and power comes in the form of our vote. You see, each of us here is doing okay. It is highly unlikely that any of us will end up literally starving and begging at the gates of rich Calgarians if one or another of the political parties win. We might gain some, we might lose some, but our basic necessities will still be cared for. But there are people in Canada, and around the world, whose lives will be fundamentally altered depending on which party comes into power, and which promises they choose to keep. And so God is calling us to hear the words of the prophets of our time, to look at the difficult reality before us, and to vote for the party that has the best platform for the Lazaruses around us, for the disadvantaged in need in our communities, whether we think of those communities as our ridings, as the whole country, or even the whole world. And so I don’t think it’s going too far to say that God is calling us to “give away” our vote to those most in need, to turn it away from serving ourselves to serving the least among us, to serving the Lazaruses of our world. To listen to Torah and the prophets, to listen to Jesus, and to love our neighbours as ourselves by casting our ballot as if their needs are our own.

The prophets’ words tell us to take care of those in need amongst us, and we can listen because we need not be overwhelmed. God gives us the means and power to shape the systems, and God gives us the opportunity to actually do it. We are not, in fact, like the rich man who has already died and is left on the wrong side of the chasm. God is not twisted, setting us up for a failing task. The task––to treat our votes as riches to be shared with the larger community––is challenging, but it is not impossible. God has given it to us to do, and so we can. And for this opportunity and for the resources to serve, we say, Thanks be to God, Amen.

Sunday, September 22 - The Dishonest Manager

Luke 16:1-13

Well, that wasn’t confusing at all, was it? Okay, so, to get to the heart of what Jesus is trying to tell us in this parable, and to understand how this is a message of God’s Good News for us, we’re going to have to do a little bit of Bible study here. 

So, the most important thing that’s helpful to know is that the very last sentence of our Gospel reading is supposed to shape our interpretation of the very first sentence. “You cannot serve God and wealth.” “There was a rich man...” Right from the get-go, we are supposed to understand that the rich man in Jesus’ story is not a sympathetic figure. He is not someone who’s supposed to be a role model for our journey as a Christian, and so we need to be suspicious of everything he does after this point. When he tells his manager that he’s going to dismiss him because the manager has been accused (without proof) of financial misconduct, we should be suspicious. When he then commends the dishonest manager, we should be suspicious. We so often think that if someone appears in the Bible that that means they are perfect examples of the godly life, but that isn’t always the case. This rich man is serving wealth, and therefore not serving God. Whatever he does, we should be doing the opposite.

Now, the second thing that it’s important to pay attention to is the way Jesus talks about the “children of this age” versus the “children of the light.” The “children of this age” are people who live in this world, in the present, in this concrete, material world. The Gospel calls them “shrewd,” which really means practical. They want to make the best of what’s in the here-and-now, because it’s not practical to get too attached to a future that may or may not happen. Jesus contrasts them with the “children of light,” who are not so practical. We might call them the people with their heads in the clouds, idealists, not quite in touch with the realities of the world. The children of light often get taken advantage of; the word “shrewd” just isn’t in their vocabulary. That being said, the children of light are the ones who serve God, not wealth.

And finally, the last thing we’re supposed to have in mind is that leading up to this point, the Gospel of Luke has said a lot of things about who is in the kingdom of God, about who is already being brought into the eternal homes: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, all the prophets, the “last” (as in the last shall be first), and the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame. These are the ones whom God is already bringing into the kingdom.

Okay, so, rich man and children of this age, the ones who serve wealth––bad. Children of the light and those already in the kingdom, the ones who serve God––good.

And now, let’s look at the most puzzling thing Jesus says, which makes this whole parable so confusing the first time we hear it. After telling us how the manager falsifies the bills so that the debtors will take care of the manager after he’s fired, Jesus says, “and the master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd (or practical) in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.”

So, for one thing, when the rich man commends the dishonest manager, remember: we’re supposed to reject everything that the dishonest manager did. There are lots of preachers who have tried to twist his actions and struggle to find something good in what the manager has done, but there’s nothing good. Whatever the rich man commends is something we should reject, in this case, shrewd, practical (if dishonest) behaviour. 

But it’s that last sentence that’s really supposed to tip us off to what Jesus means: “make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.” 

Wait a minute, it’s not the shrewd, practical, servants of money who welcome us into the eternal homes. Jesus is being sarcastic. I know, we never think he is, but here he is. Jesus knows that the ones who are going to welcome us into the eternal homes are the ones who are already there. You can’t welcome someone in unless you’re already in. And the ones who are in are the “last,” the poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame. The ones who are in are the children of light, the completely impractical ones, the ones who said, “No, I’m not okay with falsifying my bill, it’s not okay to cheat the rich man out of what I owe him, even if he is rich and I’m poor.” The ones who welcome us into the eternal homes, into the kingdom of God, are not the practical, or the shrewd, or the ones whose friendship or protection or loyalty can be bought, but the ones who serve God, who hold to their integrity, who hold to their idealism, even in the face of a world that demands practicality.

And so now we can get to the heart of what Jesus is saying. Jesus is speaking to the disciples, and so to us, and warning us that there are two worlds, two masters fighting for our allegiance. There’s the practical one, where money or the economy is the top priority, and God’s, where the “last” are supposed to be put first. And he’s saying that we can’t live in both worlds. We can’t be both practical and idealistic at the same time. We’re going to have to choose. We can’t live our lives from Monday to Saturday making decisions based on what “makes the most sense,” or trying to make friends with dishonest people, or being practical with our money or our possessions or our lives or our votes. Sure, this way of living probably does makes our lives easier in the here-and-now. I mean, yes, sure, we can prioritize those things, and enjoy this life, but Jesus is saying that if we do, we need to be fully aware that we who call ourselves Christians and followers of Jesus are not, in fact, loving or serving God.

Which is not super-encouraging to hear. I like being practical. I can definitely see the appeal of making friends who have money and power and influence. I used to be idealistic, when I was young, and the stakes seemed lower, but as I get older, I find myself becoming more practical. My kids depend on me. The stakes seem higher. Wealthy people welcoming me into their homes seems like a good back-up plan in uncertain economic times. Voting for the federal party that’s going to protect, or even improve, my financial well-being makes sense. And Jesus is showing me that I need to give that up. To give up being practical. I don’t like this parable. I can see why preachers try to find ways around it.

But it’s important to note that Jesus is speaking to the disciples. He’s speaking to people who have already started following him, who have already very impractically left behind their careers and their security on the shores by the Sea of Galilee. He’s speaking to people who have already given up practical thinking and put themselves in last place. He’s speaking to those who have made the very impractical decision to spend their Sunday morning in church, instead of running errands or cleaning the house or being efficient with their time. He’s speaking to you. Who already know you can’t have it both ways. And he’s telling you that he recognizes that you are sacrificing things to follow him. He acknowledges the cost you are paying to be idealistic rather than practical. He’s telling the disciples and you that when you are faithful in the little things of this life, as you are, that he trusts that you will be faithful with the big things. He’s saying that as you are faithful with what God has given you––your life, in particular; as you are living the life God has given with integrity and honesty, that you will be compensated with God’s own life. That you will be welcomed––by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, by the prophets, by the poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame––into the eternal homes, into the kingdom of God.

And this is encouraging to hear. Because Christ is not like the dishonest master, who dismisses his manager. Christ is the good master, the one who takes care of his servants no matter what. When you were baptized, Christ became your master, and that means you already have a home to be welcomed into. By virtue of our baptism, we are already guaranteed a place in the kingdom of God, which means we don’t need to act like the manager, creating back-up plans through dishonesty, or putting money and the economy above everything else. We can be last in this life, because in God’s presence we are already first. You are freed from having to live up to the standards of this world because you are already claimed by God. There are different standards for you, which have already been met in baptism.

It’s true, in this world, living with Christ as your master means that things will not always be comfortable. The children of this age will always be ready to dismiss you, especially if you say you’re going to vote as a Christian first. The children of this age will accuse you of being impractical, of being idealistic, of not dealing with the realities of this world. But there is more than just this world and this practical, wealth-focused existence, and so you can hold to your ideals in the face of scorn, you can be impractical in the face of criticism, you can follow Christ as your master. Because even if the children of this age scorn you, even if your family or your friends dismiss or outright reject you, in this world you are in good company with the disciples of Jesus and the children of light. And in the world to come, you are already being welcomed into the company of God and all of God’s children. Thanks be to God. Amen.