Looking Ahead to May 25, 2025 -- Marking a Century of the United Church

 The Scripture Readings this week are:

• Joshua 4:1-8
•  Psalm 127
• 1 Peter 2:4-7

The Sermon title is 100 Years of Faith, A National Dream

Early Thoughts: Something started early in the 20th century. A dream that had been nibbling at some hearts and minds since the last part of the 19th century started to grow legs. Serious talks began to happen about church union. Eventually (delayed by a number of things, including World War I) those talks coalesced into a new denomination, The United Church of Canada.

The Inaugural Service

After over 2 decades of labour the new church was born in a hockey arena -- the Mutual Street Arena in Toronto, precursor to Maple Leaf Gardens to be precise. Over the years many have commented that a hockey arena seems like an oddly appropriate place for a uniquely Canadian denomination to be born. Hopes were high for what this new creation might become as representatives of the Methodist church, the Presbyterians (well 2/3 of them, more on that in a bit), the Congregationalist church, and the Local Union churches came together in a worship service to solemnize the marriage [okay I may be mixing my metaphors here] and sign the documents to mark the Union.

One of the dreams of our founders was that this new national United Church (formed in part by an Act of Parliament) would become the "church with the soul of a nation". It was never imagined that it would be an official established church in the same way that church in Europe have been (and some still are). But it was envisioned that we would be a force helping to shape the course of national events, that it would hold a key role in Canadian society. For a while perhaps we were. That may or may not have been a good thing.

Over the last century the United Church has had many highpoints -- and many disruptive discussions. We have never been a denomination that has gotten along all the time. In fact the disruption began even before 1925. 1/3 of the congregations of the Presbyterian Church (mainly in Eastern Canada) chose to remain Presbyterian and opt out of this new thing that was being formed. All reports I have seen are that the discussions within Presbyterian circles were very heated. Even after that day in Toronto the new church and the continuing Presbyterians argued in court (largely over property matters) for many years before an agreement was reached. {Side note, we see some of that legacy here in Grande Prairie where  McQueen's Presbyterian voted to join the new Church (Alexander Forbes disagreed) but within a year or two a new Presbyterian congregation had formed. In discussion with George Malcolm I got the sense that the corporate memory of those years varies between the two congregations.}

• As a denomination we decided, after a long debate to ordain women. Though it took several decades after that to agree that women could serve in ordained ministry and be married.
• WE changed our understanding of divorce and remarriage --which actually led a number of divorced people in the 50's and 60's to get married in a United Church because their home denominations would not do that as we saw the world around us changing.
• We advocated for the Social Welfare state and have talked about social issues
• At a national level we launched a Sunday School Curriculum based on modern Biblical scholarship, one that challenged and/or denied things that many had taken as gospel truth about the Bible for their entire lifetimes.
• Starting in the 1970's we engaged in a LOOONG discussion/debate/argument about human sexuality. This eventually led to the 1988 General Council and the decision that sexual orientation, in and of itself, was not relevant to a call to ministry.
• We have created Hymn Books, and that means choosing what pieces get included and what gets excluded.

Every one of those things (and probably more than a few others) caused debate and angry words and (sometimes) fractured relationships. In Maybe One?, the play he wrote for the 75th Anniversary Scott Douglas has a character named Ms. Ernestine Curmudgeon who shows up repeatedly to rant and rave about the horrible decisions being made.

It has not always been a smooth century.

SO where are we now?

I don't think we still see ourselves as the 'church with the soul of a nation'. I think we know that we no longer have as central a role in Canadian society as we once dreamed we would. We know that we are smaller. We know that we are different. I am 3rd generation United Church. My Paternal grandparents became part of this new thing when the Presbyterian church in Simpson joined the Union. My parents were raised in this denomination. My sister and I grew up in Sunday School and Junior Choir. The church I grew up in was already different from the church my parents grew up in. The church in which I was ordained was different again. The church today is different again. We have changed in many ways (positive and negative many be a matter of perspective) and will continue to change and evolve and grow as the future marches on. But I believe that one of the threads of continuity that links all of the changes is that as a denomination we have consistently sought to be faithful to who we understand God is calling us to be.

Sometimes we got it right. Sometimes we got it terribly wrong. We have also had the courage to admit (in hindsight, and not always) when we got it wrong and offer words of apology as part of our growth and evolution.

We have grown in our understanding of how humanity is created in God's image. WE have (hopefully) grown in our ability to talk with people who are different than us.  We have gotten a bit more humble. Still we do our best to live in to the words of the New Creed: "We are called to be the church".

A century of faith. A century of experiment. A century of leaping ahead and falling back. A century of faith. WE remember and we are thankful (most of the time).
--Gord

More SUmmer Newsletter -- Centennial Thoughts

 A church with the soul of a nation. That was the dream of the founders, or at least one of the dreams of the founders of this thing we call the United Church of Canada.

100 years ago the hard work of negotiating, cajoling, debating and voting of many years came to fruition. A project that had been started before the Great War was finally seeing a product. Not a final product, that still is yet to be, but a product – a new denomination, a truly Canadian experiment, a church that would help guide the nation as it grew and developed. There was, in the hearts of its supporters and advocates, great joy and hope as they gathered at the Mutual Street Arena for the inaugural service.

There are many books and articles about our history as a denomination. There are many other stories that have been shared but not yet made it into a book. There are stories of times when we did seem to help shape the soul of the nation. There are stories about times when we became too much a part of the standard operating policies of the nation (Indian Residential Schools for example) when in hindsight we maybe should have stood stronger to shape that soul in a different way. There are stories of times we heard the Holy Spirit lead us into more inclusion and widening the circle and there are stories of times when we were afraid of the circle widening and fought against it – often on the same issues.

We have not been a perfect church. But I believe that we have grown and changed over the years.

The United Church that turns 100 this year is a wholly different church than the one that was birthed (after many years of gestation and hard labour) in the arena in Toronto in 1925. Then the hope was that we would be the mainstay of Protestantism in the nation, that we would be a national church helping to shape the nation. We would be at or near the center. Now we are much more out at the margins. We see our role of shaping the soul of the nation in different ways than assuming the Prime Minister would take a phone call from the Moderator and listen to his advice. But we are still here. We are still a voice (even if sometimes it feels like a voice in the wilderness) calling our neighbours to share the vision revealed in Scripture, the vision of a new heaven and a new earth.

Many months ago I sent out an e-mail asking if we wanted to host something big to mark the centennial. One response I got back was that people might find it depressing to remember the church that was once so vibrant shrinking so much. I have heard similar things expressed many times over the course of my ministry. We have had our ups and downs (though as a percentage of the Canadian population we have in fact been shrinking since the 1930’s) but we are still here. A prayer I wrote for the 85^th anniversary named that there were people wondering might be left for the 100^th. We are still here. Different, smaller, less powerful but still here. How will we continue to help shape our society going forward?

This morning (well this morning on the day I am writing this – not on the day the newsletter comes out) I was starting to create an image of how we would mark the centennial in worship. On May 25^th I am inviting us to look back at who we have been thus far, the good and the bad, the triumphs and the disasters, the celebrations and the divides. On June 8^th, Pentecost Sunday, as we gather at the amphitheater at Lake Saskatoon I am inviting us to listen for where the Holy Spirit might be leading us next.

How would you tell the story of the United Church in your life? What will we pass to the generations who follow us?

--Gord

Summer Newsletter Submission

 Faithfulness. What does that mean? How does one measure it?

I think faithfulness is one of those words where we just “know what it means” without giving it a lot of pause. We know it when we see it. We know when it has been violated.

For me faithfulness is closely linked with trust and trustworthiness. To be faithful is to show trust and also to keep trust. In fact I am sure that with out trust faithfulness becomes almost impossible. Without trust we are always hedging our bets, always making back-up plans, expecting to be disappointed, Nothing about that is faithfulness – unless the faith you have is that the other will disappoint/fail you.

In his book The Heart of Christianity the late Marcus Borg talks about faith as the way of the heart. He suggests that in the life of church people we sometimes think faith (as in making a faith statement) means giving intellectual assent to a statement or doctrine or dogma. This makes faith, and faithfulness, about how we think. Borg suggests, and I tend to agree, that this takes us in the wrong direction. At its heart, Christianity is an invitation to follow a way of living, not an invitation to subscribe to a particular set of philosophical statements. It is a matter of the heart more than a matter of the head.

When we trust in God we can be faithful. When we trust that God is with us faithfulness follows. It allows us to relax into the arms of God, not because we think God will make everything right but simply because we know those arms will always be there. We trust in God who is trustworthy so we can have faith.

Faithfulness as a matter of the heart also links, in my mind, with words like commitment, loyalty, and allegiance. Where we are faithful, where we put our faith and trust, shows where our true center is, it shows what pole we use to ground ourselves, what we orbit around. To be faithful to the God we meet in Jesus is to center ourselves on the teachings of Jesus, to ground ourselves in the promise of Resurrection life (and that in abundance). We are most faithful to those things and people that are most important to us. To be faithful is to be loyal and committed. When God, known as Parent, Son and Spirit, holds our primary allegiance then we can not help but remain faithful to The Way Jesus lays out, the path that he invites us to follow. When something or someone else claims our primary allegiance we fall prey to idolatry, we wander from the path. We have trouble being faithful.

So why is faithfulness one of the overtones of the fruit of the spirit whose main flavour is love? I can think of a couple of reasons. One is that it sustains us, the trusting in God sustains, comforts, and emboldens us. Maybe when we sink into faithfulness we sink into a more healthy place, a place where we can feel the abundant life promised by Jesus. The other reason is that it keeps us grounded. Being faithful reminds us what we orbit around, what the center of our circle is, what is most important. Both of these flow out of the knowledge (or trust or even faith) that we are Beloved children of God. And then they help us to be loving children of God to everyone we meet.

WE are people of Faith, Hope, and Love. We are challenged to be faithful in all things. May God help us live into that reality.

--Gord

Looking Ahead to May 11, 2025 -- 4th Sunday of Easter

With this Sunday being Mother's Day we will take some time early in the service to talk and think about families. Many of us have family by blood and family by choice. Many of us are part of more than one family. I invite you to ponder this quote from Lilo & Stitch:

Ohana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten

Who is part of your family(ies)? 

This week we conclude our series of post-Easter appearance stories with John 21:1-17

Source

The Sermon title is Shore Lunch with Jesus

Early Thoughts: John 21 is a strange chapter. The last verse of chapter 20 is a very clear ending to the Gospel. It might as well have "The End" in it. But then all of a sudden we have another chapter, another story, another appearance. Many believe that Chapter 21 is the work of a different author within the Johannine community that gets edited in to the Gospel.

The last time we met the disciples we were in Jerusalem, locked in an upper room for fear of what might happen next. They had 2 visitations (a week apart) from the Risen Christ who spoke of peace, breathed the Holy Spirit onto them, and sent them out. Well they have gone out...sort of.

A small group of the disciples are in this story. They have gone home, gone back to what they knew, maybe they are trying to get 'back to normal'. We are back on the Sea of Galilee (also known as the Sea of Tiberias after that city was founded on its shore in the early first century CE). But they have not gone home to preach and teach. They were once fishermen and now Peter says "I'm going fishing", he is going back to what he knows best, to what he understands. I can understand that. When what we thought we knew has been tossed around in the storms of life we often want to find something familiar, something that makes sense.

But life doesn't always let us leave it there. Or at least God doesn't.

Jesus shows up. After a night of empty nets Jesus shows up and a massive catch of fish follows. [Note that there is a very similar story in Luke chapter 5, at the beginning of Jesus' ministry. Some have suggested that it is one story used differently by the two writers.] Peter runs to shore to greet the Risen Lord and they find breakfast waiting for them. Another appearance, the third one to the disciples (4th overall in John when we remember that the first appearance was to Mary alone).

But really it seems that this story is about Peter. The others see Jesus, eat with him but the meat of the story comes next. Peter and Jesus have this exchange about love and commissioning. Generally it is understood that the threefold questioning is to counteract Peter's three fold denial of Jesus in the Passion narrative. I wonder if it is also to lock in the understanding that a large part of  discipleship is to care for others.

What does this appearance tell us about what it means to be followers of the Risen Christ. Again we are reminded that Easter happens in many different places (last week on the road and in a house in Emmaus, this week along the shore of the lake many miles from Jerusalem). Again we are reminded that when we meet Jesus there is feeding involved. Again we are reminded that Jesus brings abundant life. What else?

We are reminded that to follow Jesus is to be given a task. We don't just go about our regular business, our lives will be changed by our encounter with Christ. In the verses that immediately follow this reading Jesus reminds Simon Peter that his life is no longer his own, that his choices are now shaped by forces outside his own mind.

That was quite a shore lunch after a fishing trip!
--Gord