Looking Ahead to February 4, 2024 --5th Sunday After Epiphany Year B

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

The Scripture Readings for this week are:

• Isaiah 40:28-31
• Mark 1: 21-45

The Sermon title is The Healer, the Renewer

Early Thoughts: Where do you need to be healed? What part of your life cries out for renewal?

The Gospel accounts are clear. The ministry of Jesus included a ministry of healing. Jesus healed people. Jesus cast out demons.

This is sometimes a challenge for those of us whose rationality tends to discount the supernatural. And demon possession/exorcisms?

However the Gospels are clear. Even if the (sometimes overly) rational 21st century Christian finds the concept unbelievable Jesus healed, Jesus cast out demons.

Moreover, I would suggest that the ongoing work of the Risen Christ in the world continues to include healing. The presence of God in our lives brings healing and renewal. God's activity in the world continues to silence demons and take away their power.

I also suggest that there may be times that there is a difference between having our selves healed/renewed and having a physical condition cured.

So back to the questions I started with. Where in your life do you need healing and renewal? I might even ponder what demons (because in one way or another many of us have demons) need to be silenced and robbed of their power. Are we able to name those things? Are we able to ask for healing? Are we able to receive it?

And more to the point...HOW?

The how has to do with our willingness to ask and seek, but also our ability to see and recognize. Sometimes healing and renewal might look different than we want them to. Or sometimes we are so focused on how we understand the world to work that we can't see what is staring us in the face.

When I read those few verses from Isaiah I see another clue to the how. "They who wait for the Lord...". We might have to wait and allow God to work. We might have to wait an allow God to reveal what God is doing so that we can participate in the healing and renewal that is already happening around us.

That might be true both for us as individuals and for us as communities (including congregations). This weekend I started to read a book that a colleague had recommended: When Church Stops Working.
One of the things that has been suggested in the opening chapters is that the path forward is not about new or more programs but starts with waiting. Renewing the church begins with waiting. I look forward to seeing where they go with that line of thought.

Assuming that we, as individuals and communities, are in need of healing and renewal and assuming that God's activity in the world includes bringing healing and renewal, are we ready to look and see where that healing is occurring? Are we ready to pause and wait, to stop doing something, so that the healing can happen?

What might happen if we opened ourselves to the possibility of healing, of renewal, of demons being silenced? How might our lives be different?
--Gord

Looking Ahead to January 28, 2024 -- 4th Sunday After Epiphany, Year B

The Scripture Readings this week are: 

• 1 Corinthians 6:12-20
• 1 Corinthians 8:1-13

The Sermon title is To Do or Not To Do

Early Thoughts: If all things are permitted why not do them? And what criteria do we use to decide what to do and what not to do.

I see three possible answers in these passages from 1 Corinthians:

1. Self-control. We may be permitted to do something but we should not be dominated by it. We need to set limits
2. Does doing the thing bring glory to God? We should choose to do things that are in line with our identity as beloved children of God. Our choices should show that God is active in our lives.
3. Care for our neighbour. Do the choices we make lead others into confusion? We are called to build a community, not to indulge our own desires.

 It appears that among the many issues being faced by the Corinthian church was a failure to understand those three points.

I wonder if we are that much different today? Culturally we have moved through a few cycles in recent generations. In the 2020's we may not be quite as deep in the "if it feels good do it" mindset of previous decades but we are still living in a culture that is coloured to some degree by that ideal. I think it goes along with a "me first" mindset (something else that has marked the last 50 or 60 years).

At the same time we are not as puritanical as some earlier generations, and I believe we never will be. The pendulum might swing between permissiveness and restriction but each time it swings the center of the movement pushes over slightly to the permissive side. Whether that is a good thing or not is a matter for debate.

So how, in the 21st century, do we decide "to do or not to do"? How do we decide what limits to place on ourselves -- particularly when we are talking about placing stronger limits than the wider culture?

I encourage us to return to the three points I named above. It turns out Paul might have know what he was talking about (even if his discussion of eating meat in chapter 8 seems to say both yes and no).

What things are you allowed to do but choose not to? When do you say "well I could but it would be better if I didn't"? Are there times you choose care for your neighbour to override your desire to do something?
--Gord

Looking Ahead to January 21, 2024 -- 3rd Sunday After Epiphany, Year B

This week during the Time for the Young at Heart we will talk a bit about Christian Unity

The Scripture Readings this week are:

• 1 Samuel 3:1-10 
• Jonah 3:1-5 
• Mark 1:14-20

The Sermon title is Open Ears

Early Thoughts: There is a song, #272 in Voices United, which says: 

Open your ears, O faithful people, open your ears and hear God's word.
Open your hearts, O royal priesthood, God now speaks to you.
God has spoken to the people, Hallelujah!
And those words are words of wisdom, Hallelujah!

They who have ears to hear this message, they who have ears, then let them hear.
They who would learn the way of wisdom, let them hear Gods word.
God has spoken to the people, Hallelujah!
And those words are words of wisdom, Hallelujah!

This week we have three very different stories about people who make a choice to hear. One is a story of someone who takes a while to recognize what is happening. One may well be the most effective call to repentance one finds in Scripture. The third is the familiar story of fishermen leaving their nets behind to follow this Jesus fellow.

There is an interesting line at the beginning of the Samuel story: "The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread". I always wonder if God had gone silent for a time or if the people just were not listening carefully enough. Maybe it is a variation on the old conundrum "if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around does it make a sound?". If God is speaking but nobody has open ears to listen/is tuned in to the right frequency (to use a radio image) is God really speaking? Of course the tree in the forest DOES make a sound, even if nobody is there to hear it, but how useful is an unheard sound?

That story of young Samuel resonates with me. Do we recognize when God might be calling out to us, whispering in our ears? Are we ready to say "Speak, for your servant is listening"? Who will be our Eli, eventually helping us to recognize what is happening?

Or there is the story from Jonah. Having finally arrived in Nineveh, where he never wanted to go in the first place, Jonah shares the message that God has given him. He warns the people to change their ways or the city will be destroyed. To his surprise (and possibly to his dismay) the people of Nineveh listen. They hear the message clearly and respond. [It appears Jonah was all excited that he might get to watch them be destroyed and is very disappointed that this does not come to pass. Sometimes we get listened to when we don't really want to.] For some reason the people of Nineveh had ears that were open and ready to hear.

Then there is our third story this week, one many of us have heard before. Jesus shows up along the shore of the sea of Galilee and calls four fishermen to join him. Immediately they get up, leave their nets behind, and follow him. What made them so open to hear the call? Or what was it about the call-er (Jesus) that made the message so compelling that they responded so immediately? What might make us respond that quickly to an invitation?

Several years ago the United Church of Christ in the US reminded us that God is still speaking. Judging from the ads I saw that used that phrase, in large part this was a call to "not put a period where God has put a comma", to remember that the world and our understanding of who God calls us to be is not fixed and unchanging. God is calling us to new understandings. But I also think it is a reminder that we need to stop, unplug our ears, tune in to a different frequency, and listen for God. 

Doing that might change life completely...
--Gord

A First Taste of Fruit... (Newsletter Submission)

He would call it love, even call it falling into Love, with the woundedness of all creation.
The word love, however, is bandied about with such incautious disregard for its power, so prodigally scattered on the sidewalk. People love ginger molasses cookies, their cat, and their mothers – hardly the same things. The word love, to Billy’s mind, is so diminished by excessive use, that it is not worth bending down to pick it up from where it has been dropped.
(from The Undertaking ofBilly Buffone by David Giuliano)

At the end of the 5^th chapter of Paul’s letter to the Galatians we find a verse that talks about the so-called fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Sounds like a bunch of different things right? However the verse talks about the “fruit” of the Spirit. It is singular. One fruit that is all those things, where all those virtues are to be found. I think of the list as the various flavours that one finds in the singular fruit. Maybe one bite has a strong burst of love while the next has the overwhelming taste of joy, and the there is a hint of gentleness (and so on).

Maybe that is a good description of life in the Spirit. On different days we manifest (hopefully) different virtues to a greater extent than others.

This newsletter we start at the beginning of the listed virtues (after all the song reminds us that the beginning is a very good place to start). And the beginning taste is love. I wonder if Paul thought that love should be the predominant taste, with all the others being afternotes?

AS it happens, the day after Sharon told me what the theme for this issue was I read the above quote in the novel I bought to read over Christmas (but did not actually start until January). It struck me as containing a great deal of wisdom. After all ‘Billy’ is right. Love gets used in such a wide variety of ways and not all of them are the same. Does overuse lead it to lose its power and meaning?

Maybe?

There is certainly a difference between loving a particular cookie and they way we love another person – or at least I hope there is. And if we use the word and pretend that it means the same thing i all those uses then we do lose some of its power and meaning. However I think that even if we don’t always say it outright we know that we are using the same word in a different way. Several decades ago C.S. Lewis wrote The Four Loves, which I hope to read some day, to remind us that there are different things meant by the word Love.

When Paul talks about love as the first flavour of the fruit of the Spirit he is not talking about loving cookies. He is not talking about philio, brotherly/sisterly (siblingry?) love. He is not talking about romantic love He is not talking about erotic love. Paul knows that when we are filled with the Spirit we are moved to agape love, to love each other as God loves us, to love deep to the core. In specific instances that may include aspects of philio or eros or romance but it goes deeper.

The love that flavours life when we are filled with the Spirit is that love that, as Paul says elsewhere, “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:7). This is love that pushes as to see each other as being made in God’s image. It moves us to work to create a world where all are allowed to flourish. It leads us to consider not just our own needs but the needs of our neighbours. It is the core of what it means to live in The Way of Jesus Christ, to live as a citizen of God’s Reign.

I think that is why it leads the list of virtues we call the fruit of the Spirit. I think that is why it is the predominant flavour we get when we take a bite of God’s promise. Certainly it is why Paul says to the Corinthians “The greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13)

So take a big bite of the fruit of the Spirit. Let the multiple flavours fill your up. Savour the love which provides the foundation for life.

Oh and it is still okay to love cookies. It just might be something a bit different.
--Gord

 

Looking Ahead to January 14, 2024 -- 2nd Sunday After Epiphany, Year B

 The Scripture Reading this week is John 1:19-51

The Sermon title is Curiosity – a Virtue

Early Thoughts: What makes you curious? is It a good thing to be curious? Is it a dangerous thing? Is it a healthy thing? Is it maybe good, dangerous and healthy all at the same time?

Then again they say that curiosity killed the cat....

I suggest that without curiosity this week's story from John's Gospel would never have moved forward. This is John's account of the calling of the first disciples  but if a number of people, starting with the Baptizer, had not piqued the curiosity of others in the story they may not have been there to be called.

In his ministry John the Baptizer has laid the foundation. He has talked about the one who is yet to come, the one who is greater than the Baptizer, the Chosen One. Then he sees Jesus walking along and says "there he is". This gets two people curious and they go investigate further. Then Andrew shares the news with his brother and gets Simon curious so he too goes to check it out.

In our final scene this week we find Phillip and Nathanael. Nathanael's curiosity has a tinge of skepticism in it. "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?". But he too is won over. The story moves forward because of a combination of curiosity and (possibly more important) people who invite others to come [or go] and explore.

In this story, and in the ongoing story of inviting people to follow The Way of Christ, curiosity is certainly a virtue. It leads us to new places. It opens us to new possibilities , new understandings, and and new experiences. It takes us to a healthier place. 

But there is possible danger in all that goodness. There is something unsettling in being led to new places, understandings, and experiences. There is a risk in following a path that diverges from the tried and true. There is peril in not following the crowd at times.

So what makes you curious? How do we make others curious about this path we call The Way? And then what do we do with that curiosity?  

I suspect that there is sometimes a desire to push our curiosity aside, to stick with the way we know. Familiar often brings comfort. But we need to indulge ourselves. We need to let ourselves explore those places that curiosity leads us even if, or maybe especially if, it sometimes makes us uncomfortable.

We also need to invite others to join us along the path. We need to be ready to spark a desire to go further. We need to be open to hearing and exploring, maybe even answering, questions about who this Jesus is and where does he want to take us.

God is always at work in the world. God is always up to something. When we allow ourselves to be curious, to check out the new thing that is happening transformation can occur. It might be unsettling. It might seem dangerous. It might even have killed the cat. But in the life of faith curiosity is indeed a virtue.
--Gord

Looking Ahead to January 7, 2024 -- Baptism of Christ Sunday

 Welcome to a new year, and of course a new month. As this is the first Sunday of January we will be gathering to break bread together as we celebrate Communion.

The Scripture Readings this week are:

• Acts 19:1-7 
• Mark 1:4-11

The Sermon title is Washed With Spirit

Early Thoughts:  Every year we begin January with a remembrance that Jesus was baptized. In part this serves to remind us that we are a baptized and baptizing community. Remembering the act of baptism also serves to reminds us that we are God's Beloved children. As people who have been baptized into Christian faith we have all been washed by water and the Spirit.

Our story from Acts this week intrigues me. For a long time I assumed (always a dangerous thing to do) that baptism was always the same within the Christian community. Certainly it has been the rite of initiation into the community from a very early time. But this week's reading from Acts shows that even then there were differing understandings of how Christian baptism might be done. It seems that in the early days there were still people (in the Christian community) out there baptizing in the same way that John the Baptist baptized. So Paul shares a different teaching, one that has become a norm for Christian baptism and brings the Spirit into the act of baptism.

Do we baptize into John's baptism or into Jesus' baptism? 

Jesus, as far as we can tell from reading the Gospel accounts, never performed baptisms himself. However he was baptized [even though Matthew's Gospel seem to suggest there was some scandal about this in the early church -- why would Jesus need  to get a baptism of repentance? why would John baptize the one who is greater than John?] and so we are baptized because Jesus was himself baptized.

But our understanding of baptism is different from John's. Especially when baptizing infants/young children we don't really emphasize the "repentance to wash away your sins" aspect. At least I don't. We talk more about initiation, membership in the family of God. We might highlight the idea of that the Holy Spirit is a part of this action, that we invite the Holy Spirit into the life of this person (and by extension re-invite the Holy Spirit into the life of all those members of the baptized and baptizing community). We might not talk about washing clean of sin. We might not talk about dying and rising to new life -- though in practice I think we talk about the new life without the somewhat disturbing talk of dying first. So what do we mean when we talk about being wash with/in/by the Spirit?

I think it is in fact about new/renewed/transformed life. I think it is about being reminded that we are part of the circle of God's Beloved children. I think it is a symbolic action that marks us as a different person, set apart, called to a new way of being. I think it is what empowers us to keep on following The Way of Christ in a world where often we are encouraged to follow a very different path.

THere is a story that Martin Luther, a man who had deep concerns about his sinfulness and worthiness before God, when he felt especially unworthy would simply remind himself that he was baptized. My reading of this story is that he remembered the promises of baptism. He remembered the transformational work of the Holy Spirit. And that made a great difference.

What does it mean to you to remember that you are baptized, born of water and the Spirit?
--Gord