Looking Ahead to February 5, 2023 -- 5th Sunday After Epiphany

 This being the first Sunday of February we will be celebrating the sacrament of Communion.

This week we continue our exploration of the first few chapters of Paul's letter to the church in Corinth as we read all of 1 Corinthians 2.

The Sermon title is Hidden Wisdom

Early Thoughts: At the end of Chapter 1 Paul talked about the foolishness of the Christian message. In Chapter 2 he starts to talk about wisdom (indeed in the NRSVue most of the chapter is under a heading "The True Wisdom of God").

I have come to believe that the deepest, truest wisdom in life is usually a little bit hidden. It has to be sought out, explored. It doesn't just fall into our laps.

I have come to believe that the deepest, truest wisdom in life often challenges "what we all know". It comes with a different look at things. It makes us question the way things are, the way things "have always been".

So it is with the wisdom of God, the wisdom of Christ. It comes through different paths than "common sense". [And as mentioned last week it often is not common sense when it does arrive.] It comes from opening ourselves to the movement of the Holy Spirit. It comes when we are open to other possibilities than worldly/fleshy/human wisdom.

I truly believe that this true, deep wisdom is life-transforming -- maybe even world transforming -- in ways that worldly/fleshy/human wisdom is not.  That is why we seek it out, because we want to be transformed. It is, as Narnia's Aslan might say, Deep Magic from the depths of time. It may get applied in different ways in different eras and contexts but the wisdom runs deeper than any particular example (all good wisdom does, I think).

Will we search for the true, deep, transformative wisdom of God?
--Gord

Looking Ahead to January 29, 2023 -- 4th Sunday after Epiphany

The Scripture Readings this week are: 

• Matthew 5:1-12
• 1 Corinthians 1:18-31

The Sermon title is Holy Foolishness

Early Thoughts: Do you like to be told you are foolish? Or silly? How about out of step?

[As a father of four I get told all of the above on a regular basis.]

Maybe your were being foolish or silly. Or maybe you were simply marching to the beat of a different drummer (or  maybe dancing to the music in your head?).

Following the way of Christ is often to follow a different wisdom (to be charitable). Following the way of Christ means doing and believing things that are foolish according to most common standards.

I mean look at the Matthew reading this week.  Blessed are the meek or blessed are you when you are persecuted, or those who mourn? Even those beatitudes that Matthew has made much more philosophical like blessed are the poor in spirit or those who hunger and thirst for righteousness don't seem like qualities that are often rewarded in our society these days. Not even being peacemakers or being merciful seem to match common wisdom some days.

We are supposed to take this stuff seriously?

Yes. Yes we are. Following Christ, living a life aligned with the Reign of God, means we have to embrace a different form of wisdom. It means we have different priorities. It means we do and say and promote and believe things that 'common sense' would define as foolishness.

Paul calls the people of Corinth to this foolishness. Paul reminds the people of Corinth that God works in mysterious ways, ways that don't match expectations, ways that are different than the ways of Jews or Greeks.

Are we ready to embrace holy foolishness? Are we ready to view life by a different set of standards?
--Gord

Looking Ahead to January 22, 2023 -- 2nd Sunday after Epiphany, Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

 The Scripture reading for this week is 1 Corinthians 1:10-18

The Sermon title is Get Together!

From Naked Pastor

Early Thoughts: This passage seems very appropriate for a Sunday that falls in the middle of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. 

One of the issues Paul seeks to address in his letter to the Corinthian Church is that they are divided. They are terribly divided on a variety of fault lines. Paul wants them to not be so divided. Or at the very least Paul wants them to be able to be unified in their diversity. 

One of the fault lines appears to be which leader/teacher people choose to follow. People are choosing sides and claiming that Paul or Apollos or Cephas (Peter) provides the best, truest, most complete understanding of what it means to follow Christ.

Of course we would never have that happen in the modern world....right?

[Side Note: I think this passage makes Paul the patron saint of all who have trouble keeping their records in order.  Does he even know who he baptized?]

Paul wants the people to understand that there is one Christ, and that whichever teacher you follow you still follow Christ. Looking at the cartoon above, note that they are all drawing water from the same aquifer. We all draw from the one source. Why can we not get our act together and celebrate our diversity while acknowledging that we all draw from the same source?

There is a quote from Church History that comes to my mind  at this point: In essentials, unity; In non-essentials, liberty; In all things, charity. I had always believed that to come from a German Reformer and compatriot of Luther, Philip Melancthon, however some searching this morning shows me that it has been credited to a variety of people ranging in time from St. Augustine to John Wesley. Whoever said it first, the point remains the same.

In those things that are essential we should find unity and agreement. In things that are not essential we should be ready to recognize that there can be more than one right answer/method. In all things we are to love each other, in agreement and disagreement we are to love each other, in unity and in diversity we are to love each other.

The church in Corinth seems to have been having trouble with that third point. The worldwide church in 2023, how are we doing living out the dictum?

Yes part of the challenge is in agreeing on what counts as essential and what counts as non-essential. That is an area of discussion that has cause much ink (and not a little blood) to be spilled over the centuries. But I think we can all agree that the key essential, the key thing that keeps us unified as Christians is Christ. We can agree that the source from which we draw our life, our hope, our understanding of the world is Jesus of Nazareth, the Risen Christ and the God whom he reveals/to whom he points. God made known in Jesus is the aquifer from which all Christians draw their water. [I suspect that aquifer is then linked to other aquifers from which other faiths draw their water making one larger aquifer with separate points of access.]

I wonder if as we read thee words from Paul chiding the Corinthians for their divisiveness, we might feel ourselves a little chided as well. We tend to say our way is the best, not just for us but for all. We tend to be a little divisive ourselves at times. And so I close this with these words sung by the Youngbloods a few decades ago:

If you hear the song I sing
You will understand (listen!)
You hold the key to love and fear
All in your trembling hand
Just one key unlocks them both
It's there at your command

Come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another
Right now

--Gord

Looking Ahead to January 15, 2023

The Scripture Readings for this week are:

• John 1:29-42
• 1 Corinthians 1:1-9

The Sermon title is Sharing, Welcoming

Early Thoughts: Over the next few weeks we will be reading through the opening chapters of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians.

This week we have the opening salutation and words of thanksgiving for the community who is receiving the letter. These are common features of letters in the ancient world, but what might we find in here that goes beyond etiquette and form?

Pairing these opening words with the story in John of the gathering of the first disciples got me thinking about what it means to be called to be part of the community. Along with that is the idea of testimony, of sharing. It is testimony that leads to the gathering of the first disciples. Paul names that testimony of Christ is part of the strengthening of the Corinthian community. It is well established that testimony, the sharing of one's experience of what God is doing is the way the community grows. That testimony may be in words or in actions or, more appropriately, both. We share our experience as a way of inviting others in.

In later verses Paul will start giving the Corinthian church some pretty hard words. The community is hardly a perfect community of faith. But he starts with these words. He starts with lifting them up. He starts with reminding them who they are called to be and in whose name they are called together.

What does it mean to be a welcoming, testifying (sharing) community? In John, testimony leads to exploration and being welcomed. In Corinth testimony is building up the community as they experience the gifts of the Spirit. Does that help them welcome each other (spoiler alert, it is not at all sure they do a great job of welcoming each other)?

As a gathered community of faith, a community of those called together to witness to what God is doing in our midst, what might it mean to hear these opening words addressed to us? That is what I will be pondering for the rest of this week.

--Gord

HOw Diverse Are We/ (Newsletter Piece)

In my first piece for this newsletter I found myself asking : “While we are at it, how diverse do you think we are right now? What sorts of diversity might there already be in our midst?”. Those seem to be important questions. And in fact I am not sure they are as simple as they seem at first.

On the face of it it would be easy to say that we are really not a very diverse community of faith. After all, on Sunday morning when I look out from the pulpit (or if I pick up the last photo directory and thumb through it) I see what looks like a pretty homogeneous group. In terms of skin colour, socio-economic bracket, and other easily visible criteria we are all pretty similar. But I wonder because I think we are also pretty different in some ways.

My wondering is based on some stories, 3 to be precise. These stories push me to ponder what diversity might be among us that we are missing.

Story #1: First year seminary. One of my classmates, who returned to university as a mature student, is sharing a story form one of her English classes. The Professor had asked who spoke with an accent. She raised her hand, which confused many of the students since by all appearances she did not have a different accent than any of the others. Her point was that we all speak with an accent, shaped by the place where we were raised and the environment in which we learned about the world. These accents are not only in how we speak but also in how we understand the world, in how we view the world. What various accents are present in our community of faith? What accents have been silenced or people taught to learn to speak/be more proper?

Story #2: A continuing education gathering where hymn singing was the topic (it was the year that More Voices had first been published). Bruce Harding, the keynote speaker, was talking about getting congregations to sing in a language other than their first language. It is a challenge to get folk to sing in French, or Shona, or Cree, or Chinese or Latin (I like to sing the first verse of O Come All Ye Faithful in Latin once each Christmas season), even when there is a transliteration available and hints about how to pronounce the words. Most congregations will choose to sing the comfortable English words because they are the words they know and understand. [Side note: I find this happens also with hymns I have known since a child where the words have been altered to be more gender inclusive, I sometimes automatically sing the ‘old’ words.] A colleague who is a few years younger than I stands up and says “but I have been singing in a foreign language all my life”. As an example she used Holy, Holy Holy with ”thy” and “thee” and “which wert and art”. Do we make assumptions about what is normal and what is new to people when we think we are all the same? Do we speak different languages and assume we will all understand the same way?

Story #3: A colleague from another denomination is talking about filling out annual reports. One of the questions asks how diverse the congregation is. Being in a slightly ornery mood, he asks if this means “how many visible minorites are present?”, is it based on skin colour? Or does it take into account the family with roots in the Ukraine as well as the WASPs and the recent immigrant from France and... When we think “diverse” or “intercultural” what makes the cut? What gets thrown into one bin and said “all the same”? What makes one ‘different enough’ to be a sign of a diverse community?

So I ask again, how diverse a community are we really? Or maybe the better questions are: a) how are we already diverse? and b) in what ways could we be more diverse?.

As we continue to explore being an Affirming Ministry we have to take seriously the call to be a diverse community. Being Affirming may be a discussion that began around questions of gender identity and sexuality, but the questions of full inclusion cover all the many aspects of diversity. What different accents or world views are present, and how do we make them feel included? How might we need to change our language and way of being to open the door for those with other understandings? Can we open our eyes to see past the ways we thing we are the same and celebrate the wonderful diversity already present among us?

It means taking a risk. It mean opening ourselves to be changed as a community. Are we willing?
--Gord

A Diverse Community (Newsletter piece)

As a part of the words of welcome to the Christmas Eve service I said:

Here at St. Paul’s we strive to create a faith community where ALL God’s people are welcome to come and explore God’s presence in the world. Wherever you were born, whatever the colour of your skin, whatever your gender identity or expression, whatever your sexuality, whatever your age. Maybe you are just testing if this is the right place for you, maybe you have been coming here for decades. Whoever you are, you are a beloved child of God and you are welcome here.

I included these words for two reasons. One is that this is a hope I have heard expressed from within the congregation of St. Paul’s. There is a desire that this would be who we are as a community of faith. The other reason is that if we do decide to name ourselves as an Affirming Ministry there is an expectation that a statement like this is shared at the beginning of our worship services on a regular basis. The statement helps remind us of the commitment we make as an Affirming Ministry to build an inclusive, diverse, and safe community.

How do you react to those words? Do you think they are a good description of who we are right now? Are they a description of who we want to be? Are they totally inaccurate? Do they make you uncomfortable?

There is a long-standing hope within the United Church of Canada that we would be a diverse community of diverse communities. One way this hope has been expressed is in a commitment in 2006 that the United Church would work towards living as an Inter-Cultural Church. As the “About” statement in the United Church Intercultural Ministries Facebook Group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/UCCanIntercultural/) says:

The United Church is committed to living out an intercultural vision. The commitment to becoming an intercultural church was made in 2006, reaffirmed in 2009, and the vision developed in 2012. It challenges us to change the ways our communities worship, live, and work together.

This decision moved us past talking about a church with Ethnic Ministries and toward being a church where different cultures would (hopefully, ideally) mix and mingle. It was an attempt to move past tokenism and recognition to full participation. How successful that attempt has been across the church is up for debate.

To be honest I think that at this point in time both the words of welcome I shared on Christmas Eve and the national commitment to be an intercultural church (more recently we have added anti-racist to that commitment) are still more aspirational than descriptive. That is not necessarily a bad thing. It is good to have aspirational statements. They remind us of who we believe God is calling us to be, they push us to move toward a goal. The danger is when we start to think we have already arrived and so that e can move on to the next goal.

It is hard to be a truly diverse, intercultural, inclusive community. To live into those descriptors requires us to re-think some of our understandings. We have to be ready to let people be in the community as their true selves and not expect them to become like us, We have to be ready to adapt, change, transform how do some things to allow different ways of being to happen as well. Truly intercultural spaces not only welcome people of different cultures, they allow those different cultures to be celebrated and practised – even (or maybe especially) when those practices differ from what the majority or dominant culture sees as normal or comfortable, or “this is how things should be done”.

So are we ready to take the leap of faith and open ourselves to be a truly Diverse, Intercultural, and Inclusive Community? Are we willing to let our culture as a congregation change as we invite new perspectives and different practises shape how we live out our faith? And here is the big question, are we ready to be patient as people discern if we are truly ready and truly open to diversity and inter-culturality? It takes time for people to know that we are indeed a safe place, and we have to find the ways to show, on an ongoing basis, that we are learning how to be that safe place. Only then will we be able to become as diverse and intercultural and inclusive as we might hope to be.

While we are at it, how diverse do you think we are right now? What sorts of diversity might there already be in our midst? I will address that question in another piece within this newsletter.

Looking Forward to January 8, 2023 -- Baptism of Christ Sunday

This Sunday we will be celebrating the sacrament of Communion.

The Scripture Readings for the week are:

• Isaiah 42:1-9
• Matthew 3:13-17

The Sermon title is Beloved Servant

Picture Source

Early Thoughts: It is traditional that the first Sunday after Epiphany (which falls on January 6th, right after the 12 Days of Christmas) we commemorate the Baptism of Jesus. This moves us from the birth of Jesus to the beginning of his public ministry.

There are a couple of things that I always notice in Matthew's account of the baptism. The first is the reaction of John. John is all about baptism but he is reluctant to baptize Jesus, recognizing that Jesus is the one whose coming John had been foretelling, the one who John describes as "I am not worthy to carry his sandals". So Jesus has to reassure John that the baptism is the right way to go. The other is that Divine blessing. Who all hears those words of blessing? Jesus? Jesus and John? The witnesses present? And does it matter who all hears the voice?

I think that the pronoun references imply that only Jesus sees the dove and hears the voice. And I do think that matters. The blessing part of this story is not a time when people are being told who Jesus is. The blessing is Jesus being told who Jesus is. Jesus is being told that he is God's beloved son and that God is pleased with him. I can not help but think that those words of blessing at the beginning of his ministry might have carried Jesus forward when things got difficult.

Other people have to figure out who Jesus is as the story continues.

Our reading from Isaiah talks about God's servant. This is an image used many times in the book of Isaiah (often referred to as the Suffering Servant or the Servant Songs). Just who Isaiah understands the servant to be is a matter of some controversy. Is it the people as a whole? Is it an specific individual, such as a king or leader? Is it the Messiah? A standard Christian understanding is that the servant passages refer to Christ. I think that interpretation works, but at the same time I firmly believe this is a re-interpretation by followers of Christ that may not match the original understandings. Sometimes new experiences, new understandings of how God acts in our world give us a different point of view. Often there is more than one 'correct' interpretation or understanding of ancient texts.

If we look at the servant in Isaiah with eyes that see Jesus described in there what does that tell us about who Jesus is. Jesus is a servant (and in the ancient world there was little or no difference between servant and slave) of God. Jesus is chosen and upheld by God and God's delights in him. Then the passage describes what the servant, Jesus, is to accomplish, the passage is a commissioning of sorts for this servant. Finally we close with the affirmation that God is at work doing a new thing, which firmly suggests that the servant is a part of this new thing God is doing.

As followers of Jesus we are called to emulate Christ. To be a Christian is to allow ourselves to be transformed and become more Christ-like. How do we take these passage in that light?

As baptized people does God call us beloved children? As a baptizing community do we help others see themselves as beloved children of God?j

Looking at those words of commissioning in Isaiah, how well do we follow the job description of God's servant/slave?

Jesus was God's Beloved Servant/Slave, God's Beloved Son. Jesus preached, proclaimed and advanced the new thing God was doing. As those who profess faith in the Risen Christ, who follow the Way of Jesus, are we ready to proclaim the new thing that God is still doing? Will we carefully tend the bruised reed or the dimly burning wick? Will we faithfully bring forth justice?

Will we live as though we are God's beloved servants/slaves?
--Gord