A Thought For The Week Of June 26, 2017

"Give us today our daily bread." (Matthew 6:11) These are six very simple words that could actually be summed up in just one word: trust. "Give us today our daily bread." The words are familiar.As Christians, we repeat them a lot. They come from the Lord's Prayer. And in the midst of that prayer, Jesus teaches that we should find time to as God to bless not all of our tomorrows, and not even just tomorrow, but just to make provision for today. The verse refers specifically to "our daily bread," which makes us think immediately of food, but I find myself thinking that Jesus meant more than just "give us enough food so that we can eat today." Bread, after all, is a pretty common image in the Bible. It can refer to the word of God - both the Bible itself and to the Word made Flesh, which is, of course, Jesus. We should remember that Jesus actually called himself "the bread of life." It seems to be more than just food that Jesus is speaking of in this verse. He's referring to all that nourishes us in any way - both physically and spiritually. It could be "put food on my table today," but it could also mean "keep me faithful in reading or studying my Bible today," or "help me to remember that Jesus is with me today." After all, we could find ourselves having any of these needs on any given day. There are a lot of distractions in this world that can pull us away from both the Bible and Jesus. But however you define "bread," there's no doubt at all that Jesus is calling us to trust God with the future in this verse. We don't need to worry about the future. We can take life one day at a time and trust God to lead us to where we need to go. It's not that we shouldn't prepare for the future, but we certainly shouldn't become obsessed with planning for it, because worrying about the future accomplishes nothing. I've always been a little suspicious of multi-year "plans" for a congregation, for example. Planning too far ahead can create an idol. We have a plan we've committed to seeing through and we're going to stick to it no matter what - even if it becomes painfully obvious that the plan isn't serving either God or the church very well. One day at a time seems to be what Jesus teaches.

The Halfway Christmas Sermon - June 25, 2017 sermon

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.

(Galatians 4:4-7)

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     About a week ago I was in Orillia, and as I entered town I noticed a sign saying that Orillia is celebrating "Christimas in June" - and I thought "Wow! So am I!" I do have to confess, though, that Orillia beat me to it. Their "Christmas in June" was yesterday, and my "Christmas in June" is today. It did cause to me start doing some reflecting on the whole idea of "Christmas in June." I know why I wanted to do "Christmas in June." I decided to have a "Christmas in June" service when I realized that June 25 was a Sunday this year and that today is exactly since months after Christmas and six months before Christmas - as far away from Christmas as you can possibly be - and that would perhaps give us the opportunity to reflect on the incarnation of God in Jesus without all the various distractions of the secular Christmas season - not even Dollarama has its Christmas trinkets out yet! And I wondered why Orillia wanted to have "Christmas in June"? And I wondered what the difference was between such an event organized by a city, and one held as a time of worship in a Christian church? So, what does Christmas in June in Orillia look like? Why does Orillia celebrate "Christmas in June"? Well, obviously having "Christmas in June" in Orillia isn't to avoid the secular distractions - it's to celebrate them! Obviously having "Christmas in June" is Orillia is basically to have fun! Let's face it - Christmas is fun! It's a lot of fun! I didn't go to Orillia yesterday - but I'm sure they had a lot of fun! But although I think we can have some fun today - it's fun to sing Christmas carols! - my goal today isn't to have fun. It's to reflect on the meaning of God coming to earth in human form in Jesus. It's to reflect on the incarnation without the distractions of the season.

     I'm not the first person who's ever realized that the secular Christmas has a lot of distractions that can make us forget what Christmas is really about. Over 50 years ago - in 1965 - Charles Schulz made the first (and I'd say the best) of the Peanuts TV specials - "A Charlie Brown Christmas." You surely remember the story. Charlie Brown is asked to be the director of his school's Christmas play, and he accepts happily - only to discover that the "Christmas play" has nothing whatsoever to do with Christmas, and he's devastated when he finds that even his beloved dog Snoopy has succumbed to commercialism by decorating his dog house in the hopes of winning a contest. After he angrily puts an end to the play's rehearsal he finally cries out in despair “can’t anyone tell me the true meaning of Christmas!” And Linus walks to centre stage, and a spotlight shines on him, and he shares in the majestic language of the King James Bible this story:

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

(Luke 2:8-14)

     God bless Linus! It was better than the Christmas play. But as I think about it six months removed either way from Christmas I wonder if it's really that text that sums up Christmas best? Even in the Bible, it isn't described as the meaning of Christmas. It describes an event that spurs the shepherds on to find answers, as Linus would have noted had he continued on to the very next verse: "Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us." Because, you see, peace on earth and good will to all are laudable goals, but perhaps they're just a bit too tied up with the hype and sentimentality of the secular season. If I were going to choose a Scripture passage that "explained" Christmas I'd probably choose Matthew’s Gospel – which explains to us that Jesus came as Emmanuel (God With Us), or I might choose the passage from John's Gospel that tells us that the word - Jesus - became flesh and dwelt among us. Because as much as the secular Christmas is about lights and decorations and Frosty and reindeer and trees and all sorts of other things (and even peace and goodwill and generosity) Christmas is really about one thing: the birth of Jesus; the incarnation of God in human flesh.

     Even in the church I think it's possible to forget that. To some extent, the church has lost sight of the importance of the incarnation because we restrict its proclamation and the singing of the carols (which are teaching tools) to about six weeks a year at maximum at a time when our attention is already distracted by the glitter of the secular celebrations. And even some Christians just don't think that the birth of Jesus is all that important. They'll point out that Mark - the earliest Gospel - doesn't mention it. And people say that Paul - who probably wrote most of his letters even before Mark's Gospel was written - didn’t care about Jesus’ birth. But if that's true then he didn't care only in the sense that he took for granted that Jesus had been born! His concern was more the practical application of Jesus’ teaching than it was on Jesus’ birth – but at the very least he knew (as he wrote in Galatians) that Jesus had been “born of a woman,” and that in another letter he acknowledged that Jesus was a descendant of David. Here's what Paul, in today's reading, describes as the meaning of Christmas: it was "... to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children." He even described the effect of Christmas: "And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!' So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God." For those who say he doesn’t have one - this is Paul’s Christmas story, right here in Galatians 4: Jesus was born, and this is why!

     It's impossible to improve upon what Paul wrote. It's the coming of God to earth in human flesh that made it possible for each of us to become a child of God. What could be more wonderful than that? But if I could add just a few thoughts, it might be these.

     If God chose to live a human life through Jesus, then Jesus’ life is the perfect human life. If any of us think of Jesus as an example of how to live, then we think that only because this was human life as God wanted it to be lived. What we see in the life of Jesus was what God intended human life to be and how God expected human life to be lived from the very beginning of creation. There would be no point to God in heaven saying to us "look at me and be like me." That would be beyond our reach and even beyond our understanding. As Hebrews 2:17 says, Jesus "... had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect ..." Had that not happened, Jesus couldn't be an example. Instead, Hebrews tells us that he was tempted like us in every way, but that he did not sin. We perhaps can't be that perfect - but because Jesus was like us, it's certainly a goal to shoot for.

     And if God chose to live a human life through Jesus, then incarnation is also a sign of God’s love for the creation – God became a part of what God had created, rather than remaining forever separate from it. Surely God didn't have to do that. (Surely God doesn't have to do anything.) God could have created the world and the entire universe and set it up as a sort of lab experiment, watching with interest perhaps but with no real care or concern for the outcome. Some believe that to be what God did. It's a school of thought called "deism." But God didn't do that. God is neither uncaring nor disinterested about that which God has created. In fact, God cares so much about what was created that God chose to become a part of creation. The Creator doesn't have to do that. But the Creator chose to do that. That is a sign of the depth of God's love for all that exists.

     Finally, if God chose to live a human life through Jesus, then incarnation tells us that God understands our lives – that God has experienced the range of human experiences and human emotions through Jesus. We speak often of God being present with us in times of suffering - but of what use would God's presence be if God had no understanding of our suffering. But through Jesus - God understands pain; God understands grief; God understands sickness; God understands hunger and thirst; God understands abandonment and betrayal; and - yes - God even understands death. All these are things that God didn't have to experience - but God chose to. And so we can turn to God in our times of despair, and know that God really does care, because God has been through it.

     I'm willing to bet that Christmas in June was fun in Orillia yesterday. My point here today wasn't to have fun with Christmas - it was explore a little more deeply the whole idea of divine incarnation - why it happened, what it accomplished, and how it impacts us - without the seasonal distractions that will be back soon enough. My prayer is that we've been able to do that - at least a little bit.

A Thought For The Week Of June 19, 2017

"Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God." (Romans 15:7) This is a fascinating verse of Scripture, because there are a variety of ways in which the first three words (and then the action of Christ) have been translated. The NRSV (above) says "welcome one another." The NIV says "accept one another." Another translation I've come across says "receive one another." All slightly different. "Welcome" seems friendlier, "accept" seems more formal, and "receive" - to me - seems almost official and ritualistic. Which made me start to think which of those options I personally preferred. And if I had to choose, I think I'd go with "welcome."  To either accept or receive someone seems rather passive. Neither demand or even expect any transformation - and yet Christ is about transforming us from what we are into what we will be - or, more precisely, into what God would have us be. In that sense, to "welcome" seems much more active. It is to welcome us into an experience of transformation. I've heard people in the church dismiss the idea of "welcoming" people. Their argument seems to rest upon the idea that everyone belongs in the church, and to "welcome" people who belong seems to imply that they're outsiders who don't really belong. But to be frank I believe that one thing the church is called to proclaim that we often don't proclaim very well is that none of us - not even the proclaimers - truly "belong." None of us are perfect, with no need for change. All of us need to be transformed by God's grace. The welcome we are to give is not a welcome to people to stay as they are but is rather a welcome to join us on a journey to help discover what God wants us to be and what changes we need to make to be that. Admittedly, we have to be careful in defining what it is that needs to be transformed in a person, because it's too easy for us to simply put our own biases into play and to decide that someone needs to change what we don't like or what we're uncomfortable with. But the transformation we're talking about is into the image of Christ, not into the image of ourselves. We aren't really called to "accept" or "receive." Those both carry an implication that there's no need to change, but there are areas in all of our lives that need to be brought into conformity with God's desire for us. So, "welcome one another," I would say. That is in fact a good way of reflecting the image of God. Welcome one another and others and model to the best of your ability a way of life that reflects Christ's life, and allow the Holy Spirit to work the change in yourself and others that the Holy Spirit chooses to work.

A Thought For The Week Of June 12, 2017

"Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you." (Colossians 3:13) This verse appears right in the middle of an extended passage in Colossians (3:9-17) about forgiveness. It's very sound advice, it's very Christian - and it's very healthy. In my opinion, nothing good ever came from hanging on to unforgiveness. Unforgiveness eats away at us and usually ends up hurting us far more than it hurts the person we're unable to forgive - if only because they probably really don't care if we forgive them or not. But, of course, as beneficial as it might be for us to forgive - it is hard. It may be the hardest part of Christian life. The very fact that we have to forgive someone is a reminder to us that they must have in some way hurt us. The Bible says that vengeance is God's, but usually we prefer to leave the forgiving to God and take the vengeance ourselves. That's understandable, because it's very human - but it doesn't make it Christian. We want those who have hurt us to be in our debt - which is essentially what unforgiveness is. So we have to find a way to let go of what we feel others owe us. A couple of verses later, we find perhaps the key: "let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts." I take note of the fact that Paul speaks here of the peace OF Christ and not peace FROM Christ. That's a very small difference - but it strikes me as important. This isn't just any peace that comes to us. It's the same peace that Christ himself had in his heart that we are to allow to rule in our hearts. It's the same peace that allowed Jesus to look down from the cross at those who had crucified him and were tormenting him and still ask for them to be forgiven by his Father. That's a tough forgiveness to give, because those being forgiven weren't even asking to be forgiven. They didn't think they were doing anything wrong! In fact, they were busy celebrating what had happened. But still Christ forgave them. That's the peace OF Christ that's to rule in our hearts. If only we could reach the point of offering unconditional forgiveness to all who have hurt us and no longer hold them in our debt. That's tough, and it's the tough parts of living a Christian life that are the easiest to turn away from and make excuses afterward. But if we could do it - we would, indeed, have a better world.

A Thought For The Week Of June 5, 2017

"But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing ..." (Matthew 6:3) What we do as Christians - how we live and the works we perform - should always be for the sake of the other. That seems like a pretty basic Christian principle, easy to defend from both the example of Jesus and from the Bible. We seek neither credit nor gain for the works that we do. It's always interesting to run across a Christian who makes their works very obvious, as if there's a show being put on and their real goal is to get attention more than it is to help whoever is being helped by their work. It runs counter to the idea that we should be humble. That's pretty obvious. But it isn't just that we need to not put our works on display for others. We also need to look within ourselves at our own motivation. I know that many people feel a sense of pride or accomplishment when they do good works that help others. That's human; it's only natural . But if it becomes our primary motivation for the works we do, there's a problem. In fact, Matthew 6:3-4 would seem to suggest that Jesus himself sees it as problematic if our goal is mainly to make us feel good about ourselves. If that's our reason for what we do - even if what we do does provide help to someone (and even if we don't draw attention to ourselves) - then, indeed, our priorities are out of line. Our focus is on ourselves and how we feel, but the only orientation of a follower of Jesus should be toward the other. The privilege of helping and serving others should be our only motivation; it should be the only motivation we need. Putting our faith into action isn't meant to seek attention or to feel good about ourselves. It's to make ourselves servants of those who have need. The Christian life should be not "me" centred but "you" centred faith (or, not "we" centred to "they" centred.) That's how Jesus lived and served. That should be our example. That's a mark of an authentic faith.

Empowered - June 4, 2017 sermon

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

(Ephesians 3:14-21)

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     We've got the power! It's true - WE'VE GOT THE POWER!!! In fact I want to hear all of you say it - WE'VE GOT THE POWER!!!!! LOUDER - WE'VE GOT THE POWER!!!!!!!!!! OK. The point is made. We've got the power. It's Pentecost. And like our opening hymn said, "Come, O Spirit, dwell among us, come with pentecostal power ..." So, assuming that the Holy Spirit has come and does dwell among us with "pentecostal power" we can say that we are an empowered people - which then begs the question: to what end? What, exactly is it that we're empowered for? To put it another way, I really like the words of Steve Mariboli: “Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you do have power over instead of craving control over what you don't.” But to do that we have to figure out what it is that we have power over - otherwise, we're fighting a losing battle; spinning our wheels at best and possibly even slipping backward bit by bit - getting nowhere very fast.

     If Pentecost is a celebration of the coming of the Holy Spirit to the disciples of Jesus, then Paul's words in our passage from Ephesians are instructive. Paul believes that the Holy Spirit is present with believers - and, more precisely, within believers. Paul sees the Holy Spirit as the engine that pushes us ever forward into the world. He says that we are "strengthened in [our] inner being with power through [God's] Spirit." Do you ever hear people talk about their inner resource of strength, or people who go through some horrible crisis and say that they didn't realize they had the strength to make it. I believe that's the Holy Spirit. I believe that's God's Spirit within us making itself known; manifesting itself through a power to do or accomplish or persevere through something that we would have thought impossible - that we could not have done simply by our own strength. Our ability to achieve things that we would have thought impossible for us to achieve are signs of the power of God's Spirit working inside us, coursing through our veins. Paul went on to say that God's Spirit within us gives us the power to "comprehend the breadth and length and height and depth of Christ's love." And love is power. Love, in fact, is the greatest power. Love is what moves us to the good works we do as a witness to the faith we have. "Love never ends," Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, and of faith, hope and love (all that will remain when everything else disappears) - "the greatest of these is love." And through that power of love filling us from within and overflowing from us to the world, Paul says that "God can accomplish more than we can ask or imagine." We limit ourselves. We become pessimists. We fall into despair. We think that things are bad and that they're going to get worse. We are overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the problems around us. But God is not overwhelmed. God sees possibilities even when we're tempted to throw in the towel. And God works within us to bring us out of despair and pessimism and to make us agents of change and transformation in the world around us - even if it's one person at a time, even if we'll never see the end result. How will the Kingdom of God come? Perhaps with a mighty roar and the sound of a trumpet and in the twinkling of an eye - but perhaps also bit by bit, person by person until we look around and all of a sudden realize that the Kingdom of God has arrived, and that love and peace reign. It seems impossible when we look at the world around us - but God does the impossible through us. By the Holy Spirit within us, "God can accomplish more than we can ask or imagine." Or, as Paul said in Philippians, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

     Pentecost is a celebration of that power. We know the story of Pentecost. I didn't have it read today, but we know it. Gathered together, the disciples experienced miraculous things as the Holy Spirit came upon them. Sights and sounds and visions that revealed the power and presence of God. But I want to go back to Steve Mariboli for a second. You have to decide to "to take control of what you do have power over instead of craving control over what you don't." Ever since that first Day of Pentecost, Christians have been trying to control the Holy Spirit; to tame the Holy Spirit; to bottle the Holy Spirit. Ever since that first Day of Pentecost Christians have been trying to recreate what happened as if that's what's supposed to happen forever and always, and I'm not convinced that we haven't missed the point. In fact, the whole business of "speaking in tongues" as it's evolved from that first Day of Pentecost has become not a source of strength for the church but the source of one of the major divisions in the church between those who speak in tongues and those who don't - with the group who do often thinking that only they have the Holy Spirit within them and other Christians don't. That's neither strength nor power. Its pride and ego and disunity sapping the church's strength and marginalizing the church's witness. And there it is - the church's witness.

     What are we empowered to do by having the Holy Spirit within us? I want to go back one step farther. Before Pentecost there was the Ascension - Jesus being taken into heaven as his disciples watched. That's an interesting story. Ascension Sunday was last Sunday and had I been here last week instead of at the meeting of Bay of Quinte Conference, I'd have been preaching on the Ascension. But what intrigues me about the Ascension isn't Jesus being taken into heaven - it's what Jesus said to his disciples before he was taken into heaven. "you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." It wasn't the power to speak in tongues or to perform miracles or to bring forth signs and wonders. That's not the power Jesus spoke of. It was the power to be witnesses. Witnesses of what? Witnesses of Jesus and his way. Witnesses who reveal the presence of God in the world; witnesses who show the love of God to the world. Witnesses who are willing to stand up to the rich and powerful and famous on behalf of the poor and lowly and outcast. Witnesses who are willing to take their place on the margins with the marginalized rather than stand in judgment over the marginalized. These are hard things to do. These are tough things to do. These are sometimes even risky things to do. They might be so hard and so tough and so risky that we often don't want to do them and we don't think we can do them - except that, as Paul wrote in Ephesians, "by the power at work within us God can accomplish more than we can ask or imagine." If the call of Christ seems hard or tough or risky, that doesn't mean we shouldn't accept it; it means we should find the power of God's Spirit within us - and get to it!

     Steve Mariboli wrote that “incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you do have power over instead of craving control over what you don't.” We can't control the Holy Spirit. When we try it leads to disaster. But we can cede control of our lives to the Holy Spirit, and we can accept the power of the Holy Spirit and we can be witnesses to Jesus and to the way of Jesus: the way of faith, the way of peace, the way of hope, the way of love. And if we do that, then we won't only see incredible changes in our own lives - maybe we'll see incredible changes in others whose lives we touch, and eventually even incredible changes in the world.

     We've got the power. Say it with me - "WE'VE GOT THE POWER." We do. We just have to use it!

A Thought For The Week Of May 29, 2017

"When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” (Luke 9:54) We live in a world, unfortunately, in which religious enmity and hatred has become pretty commonplace. We see examples of that all the time. It's only a minority of believers, of course, but it's not unknown for people to kill others in the name of their "god" primarily because they believe in a different "god." It's very tragic. Perhaps one of the saddest verses in the Bible is this verse from Luke's Gospel, where we see that mindset in two of the disciples of Jesus. Before this verse we read that the people in a Samaritan village had refused to welcome Jesus. Why? Because, the account says, he was going to Jerusalem. That would have been an issue for them because Jerusalem at the time was the centre of the Jewish religion, and Jews and Samaritans didn't get along very well. To the Samaritans it must have seemed that if Jesus were going to Jerusalem he had thrown in his lot with those who despised them. Why should they welcome him? So they cast him aside. But what was even worse in this passage was the response of James and John. Simply because the Samaritan village had refused to welcome Jesus, James and John wanted to destroy it. In the name of God! That's what you call extremism - not unlike the acts of religious extremism that you see being committed by supposed followers of various religions all over the world. To some (thankfully - hopefully! - only a few) serving God means saying "agree with me or I'll kill you." And that sort of attitude has led to a lot of tragedy over the centuries. Fortunately, though, we have the example of Jesus. He seems to have accepted the rejection of the Samaritan village in good spirits, and his only action in this passage is to rebuke his own disciples for having had the horrible thought of destroying the Samaritan  village because the Samaritan village didn't act as they felt it should have. That's a good lesson from Jesus, and should be the characteristic of a Christian: always stand against violence and hatred; always rebuke those who want to engage in violence and hatred. That's a lesson that the church needs to proclaim and that the world so desperately needs to take to heart.