Three Keys To Prayer - July 30, 2016 sermon

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified. What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

(Romans 8:26-39)

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     I have always been interested in what you might call the dynamic of prayer. To put it a different way, I've always wondered what exactly it is that's happening when we pray. We know that prayer is a way of communicating with God; it's a type of conversation we have with God. But communication and conversation has a point. What's the point of this conversation? On the one hand, prayer seems like such a simple thing, so that you can take the words of Pope Francis and pretty much sum up what prayer is - “To be friends with God means to pray with simplicity, like children talking to their parents.” I certainy agree with Francis on that - and I'm sure the Pope is relieved to have me onside! But if prayer is at its essence a simple thing, it's also at its essence a mysterious thing. Last week, I was talking about "thin places" - those places where heaven and earth seem to meet - and I suggested that the thinnest place of all was actually our own hearts and souls, and prayer seems to be a way of living that out. Real prayers - sincerely expressed and heartfelt - come out of us as a part of that dynamic  interaction with the God who dwells within us.

     Today's passage from Romans is an interesting one. Almost every interpreter holds these verses together as a single passage where Paul is speaking about the same subject. And yet, the passage moves from the mystery of prayer to a statement of absolute faith. Paul starts with an acknowledgement that sometimes prayer (and, I suppose, life) is so mysterious that we don't even know what it is we're supposed to be praying for. "... for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words." It's not entirely clear what Paul means here. Some people see this as a reference to what's called "praying in tongues" - the "babble" sort of language that some people begin to use when they pray. I'm not sure about that though. I suspect that Paul was simply trying to make the point that if we're always connected with God then what we say comes from God just as much as it goes to God. And it's the discipline of prayer that ultimately deepens and strengthens our faith to the point at which we have the assurance within that we'll never be separated from God. The last few verses of this passage are often used at funerals as a way of saying that death doesn't separate us from God. But in context, the point is that nothing separates us from God - and that assurance comes at least partly from the connection we establish with God through prayer. So Paul sees prayer as an absolutely integral component of any life of faith. Which means that we should try to understand prayer a little better. This passage got me thinking more deeply about prayer, and what's involved in prayer and how to make prayer more meaningful, and I managed to condense those thoughts down to three key components of prayer that I want to share with you today.

     The first thing I would want to suggest as a key to prayer is the question of why we pray. I think there are a number of reasons, actually. We pray because we believe in God. That might seem simple, but you always have to start at the beginning. We believe in God. Prayer in and of itself is a statement of personal faith. We wouldn’t pray to a God we didn’t believe in. And a part of that faith is not only belief in God – it’s a belief that God is interested; that God cares; that God actually listens. There’s not much point in talking to someone if you don’t believe that they’re going to less to or care what you have to say. Prayer demonstrates that we believe in God, what we believe about God and, perhaps most important, that we want to have this ongoing conversation with God. You can’t be in a relationship with someone – not even God – if you never talk to them. Relationships just don’t work that way. Somehow there has to be some two-way communication going on for the relationship to be real; for it to grow and flourish; for it to eventually lead us to that place Paul got to after he started to discuss the mystery of prayer: a place of deep and abiding assurance that nothing will ever be able to break the intimacy of this relationship we have with God. So the first key to prayer is why we pray – and it’s because we want to develop a relationship of intimacy with God.

     The second key to prayer is how we pray. There are all sorts of teachings on this question. Jesus taught his disciples how to pray – and the end result of that teaching was what we call now “The Lord’s Prayer” - almost certainly the best known prayer in the world. The Pope taught people how to pray when he said that we should “… pray with simplicity, like children talking to their parents.” Then there’s the advice that Paul gives in this passage we read today. Paul’s basic perspective seems to be that real prayer has to come from within us, because it all happens within us, in that thin place inside us where heaven and earth meet and where God’s Spirit interacts with our spirit – and something happens!  I don’t think that means so much that the words have to come from within us. We can use prayers we’ve memorized (like the Lord’s Prayer) or written prayers (like we have in our order of service) but what does have to come from inside is the spirit in which the prayers are offered. Are the words we’re speaking real and passionate and from the heart or are we just reading words and without them touching us or moving us or changing us in any way?

     That brings me to what I would argue is the third key to prayer – which is after we pray. If prayer only impacts us for however long it is that we pray then it’s been pointless. It doesn’t really matter whether our prayers last for thirty seconds or two hours – although there are some who will look at that as either meaningless prayer that demonstrates a lack of real faith or pretentiousness prayer that’s trying to show off. What matters, though, is after we finish praying. Are we moved to follow Jesus? Are we inspired to take our faith outside our proverbial prayer closets and into the world? It seems to me that while I’m calling this the third key, it might be the most important of them, because if our faith and how we live it simply ends when our words of prayer end then it’s fluff – it’s of no importance, it offers no service to others and no glory to God. There’s an old saying that tells us to “practice what you preach.” But you could also say that practice comes from prayer; that prayer is what ultimately moves us to practice what we preach and to practice what we believe.

     Why we pray, how we pray and what happens after we pray. These are three keys to prayer. Use them to unlock the riches of a life of prayer; use them to deepen your relationship with God and with the world around you.

A Thought For The Week Of July 24, 2017

"Jesus said to [Peter], 'Truly I tell you, this very night, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.'" (Matthew 26:34) I've noticed that after a frenzied flurry for a few days, the angst over Eugene Peterson's remarks about same gender marriage seems to have died down. But for a while he had pretty much everyone in the Christian community upset with him. Peterson is an author, an academic, and best known for his own version of the Bible, called "The Message." That's not a text I'd use for preaching purposes or Bible study, but it does provide a fresh and unique perspective on the biblical story and I consult it regularly. I don't honestly remember ever picking up "The Message" and wondering "What in the world are Peterson's views on same gender marriage?" The subject never occurred to me in connection with Eugene Peterson. But then in an interview he stated that he (a Presbyterian minister) would conduct a same gender for friends if asked. That unleashed a predictable storm from the evangelical community who apparently thought he was one of theirs. He was attacked mercilessly; there were threats to boycott his books and "The Message." And something got him, because a couple of days after that interview was released, Peterson recanted. No, he said, he was against same gender marriage. He just wasn't prepared for the question and didn't answer well. So then more liberal and progressive Christians lined up to take their shots at him. Me? I feel kind of sorry for him. Be disappointed in him, by all means. But angry? To me, Peterson is a man who in just a couple of days found himself the object of a torrent of criticism and abuse and threats. Although he's a Presbyterian, he had become very, very popular in the evangelical community; to some extent, they had become his community. They read his books, a lot of them love "The Message." And they turned on him. Ruthlessly. Peterson probably spoke quickly - probably accurately giving us his thoughts, but without thinking through the consequences. And I think it was the shock of suddenly seeing people who had been his friends and admirers turning on him that made him recant. Too many on the "liberal" side of the spectrum are expecting him to be Jesus - expecting him to sacrifice himself; go to the cross. But before anyone gets all high and mighty - let's remember that none of us are Jesus. Peterson isn't much different than Peter - one minute saying "no one will ever do this to you because I won't let them," and the next saying, "Give me a break. I don't even know who this guy is." I suspect that so many people from all sides of the spectrum were so angry with Peterson because he made them wonder how much pressure it would take for them to back down on something important. All of us are more like Peter than Jesus, after all. Which is why we should always try to remember to show grace rather than anger toward those who disappoint us.

Jacob's Thin Place - July 23 2017 sermon

Jacob left Beer-sheba and went toward Haran. He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place. And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And the Lord stood beside him and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring. Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!” And he was afraid, and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” So Jacob rose early in the morning, and he took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. He called that place Bethel ... .

(Genesis 28:10-19a)

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     I just want to explain - in case you misunderstood the meaning of the sermon title - that today's sermon is not about some strange biblical diet plan. Actually, the idea of the "thin place" has been around in Christian circles for a very long time. It first appears (as far as we know) in writings from St. Angus MacNeese. The name might allow you to guess that Angus was a Scotsman. Actually he was a Scottish monk who lived in the 9th century. There are a lot of legends about his life (which is usually the case with those who have been declared to be saints by the Roman Catholic Church - stories of miracles being performed by them; people praying to them or through them and having their petitions granted.) The truth, though, is that we really don't know very much about Angus's life. But we do have some of his writings. We know that there was a place in Scotland (and we don't actually know exactly where it was) that captivated him. It was apparently a valley that was often shrouded with mist and if you looked at the valley from above in the early morning on a clear day you could see the sunlight shimmering off the mist, contrasting with the lush green of the hillsides that surrounded it. It sounds quite beautiful. And Angus became convinced that here - in the midst of all this beauty - was a place where heaven almost came into contact with earth; where the barrier between the two was almost gone. It was a heavenly place on earth for Angus. And it's for that valley that he coined the phrase; that mysterious and beautiful valley was Angus's "thin place" - where heaven seemed to almost touch earth.

     I suspect that we all have such places. Everyone probably has such places. In my last congregation we actually did a Sunday in which we asked members of the congregation to submit pictures for us to display of their own "thin places" - the places where they felt God's presence most powerfully. And every single one of those pictures was of something beautiful or heart-warming. I could understand why these places were so meaningful to those who had taken the pictures and who loved these places and thought of them as places where heaven and earth met. But it also troubled me just a little bit. I started to wonder if perhaps we don't equate God too easily and too readily with only the beautiful things. It strikes me as a little bit like our celebrity-fixated culture. We pay attention to beautiful people because they're beautiful people. We listen to beautiful people because they're beautiful people. In some respects, beauty speaks to us more than words, and an image can be more powerful than all the logic we bring to bear on a subject. Politicians have learned those lessons well. And so, since we obviously believe that God is good, and since we equate goodness with beauty, we also start to believe that God must be beautiful, and that God must be revealed only by the beautiful things of the world. Which is why you listen to me, of course!

     I find myself thinking of a popular and beloved hymn: "All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small." The problem is that we don't really believe that. The hymn talks about little flowers and little birds, and purple headed mountains and running rivers. Bright and beautiful things, indeed. And that kind of thinking gives us all sorts of freedom. Little birds we like - house centipedes on the other hand we're quite willing to quickly and ruthlessly do away with, even though aside from their yucky appearance they're actually quite inoffensive little creatures who won't hurt you and who help to keep the real pests under control. But they're not beautiful. Monty Python put out a spoof of that hymn:

All things dull and ugly,

All creatures short and squat,

All things rude and nasty,

The Lord God made the lot.

Each little snake that poisons,

Each little wasp that stings,

He made their brutish venom.

He made their horrid wings.

And he's got a point. Which, in an admittedly roundabout sort of way, brings me back to Jacob's experience in today's Scripture reading.

     Jacob encountered God. His dream was a wonderful one, of a ladder stretching from heaven to earth, and angels going up and down the ladder and God standing at the top of the ladder. It's a great image of a God who wants to be involved with the creation. But I found myself interested not so much in the vision as in where Jacob was when he dreamed the dream. It seems from the description that he was for all intents and purposes in the middle of nowhere. The NRSV that we read from today says that Jacob came to a "certain place," but other translations just say basically that he arrived "someplace." It's nothing special is the point. There was no reason anyone would arrive at this place and have an experience like St. Angus had. No one would have looked at this place and said, "Ah! God must be here! This is where heaven meets earh." No one. Not even Jacob. He was just tired apparently and he wanted a place to sleep and so he put his head on a rock to close his eyes - because a rock was the best thing he could find for a pillow in this dreary place! There was nothing spectacular here. Jacob just fell asleep - and he dreamed. And, as anyone with even a passing acquaintance with the Bible knows, our dreams are often where God speaks to us. And after this wonderful vision, Jacob awoke, and he said, "Surely the Lord is in this place - and I did not know it!"

     Why would he have known it? We don't expect to encounter God in the dreary or the mundane or the every day (and even less in the various uglies mentioned by Monty Python.) But maybe that's the lesson we should take from Jacob's dream. We don't need to scour the world for "thin places" where haven and earth seem almost to touch. Everywhere can be such a "thin place." No matter where we are and no matter what we encounter, heaven is so close - right there - we're almost able to touch it. Maybe every place we go is sacred ground. Think about that. There's a popular Christian chorus that starts with the words, "We are standing on holy ground; and we know that there are angels all around." Think about that. Every place we go is sacred and holy ground. Wherever we find ourselves - "surely the Lord is in this place," even if, like Jacob, we didn't know it at first. Maybe we should be keeping our eyes and ears open for an experience of God - because such experiences can happen everywhere and anywhere and anytime. That's what Jacob discovered. And perhaps the fact that he not only discovered it in this place - just "someplace" that he ended up lying down to rest - but that he discovered it in a dream is the most important thing of all.

     Dreams come from within us. And what did Jesus say about the Kingdom of God? He said that it was within us. Yes, we all have our thin places where heaven seems to almost touch earth and which in their very beauty or majesty bring thoughts of God to our head. But maybe you don't have to travel to get to them or search to find them. Maybe you just have to explore your heart and your soul. maybe you just have to look deep within. Maybe the thinnest place of all is within us - where God's Spirit touches us always. Maybe our own very heart and soul is holy and sacred ground - a "thin place," where heaven and earth are almost touching.

A Thought For The Week Of July 17, 2017

"If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love -  just as I have kept the commandments of My Father and am abiding in His love." (John 15:10) At first glance, this verse actually seems rather difficult. It speaks about keeping commandments. It seems out of place in the Gospels; legalistic, and therefore extremely difficult. But there is, of course, reference to different kinds of commandments here, and the distinction between them is surely important. Jesus said that he had kept his Father's commandments and therefore remains in his Father's love. That would be a reference to the Jewish law; the law of Moses. Scripture tells us that in fact Jesus did not sin. We read his own words, that "I have come not to abolish the law but to fulfil it." And fulfil it he did. Over and over again the Pharisees tried to find the smallest points of the law of Moses that Jesus had violated, and over and over again they failed. It's true that Jesus may not have always fulfilled the law as the Pharisees thought it should be fulfilled - but when push came to shove they could never trap Jesus by demonstrating that he had actually violated the law. So, Jesus fulfilled the law. But there's no doubt that Jesus also re-interpreted or re-defined the law and how it was to be understood. The commandments of his Father may have been the law of Moses with all of its details, but the commandments of Jesus were the essence or the spirit of that law - the law of Moses boiled down to only that which really mattered. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself." Jesus said the law could be summed up with those words. To keep the commandments of Jesus means to live in love for God and for the world; to always look out for the best for others; to place the needs of others above our own. To keep the law of Moses with all its minute details is impossible apart from Jesus. To understand that, you should read A.J. Jacobs wonderful book "The Year Of Living Biblically." But to keep the commandments of Jesus means basically to deliberately care for those around you, which is a much less daunting task.

Even Withered Grass Comes Back - July 16, 2017 sermon

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!”

...

“Hear then the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”

(Matthew 13:1-9 & 18-23)

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     John Muir was a 19th century naturalist and conservationist - in modern terms I guess you'd call him an environmentalist - whose most lasting accomplishment was to be the founder of the Sierra Club. He was also active in the movement that started the US National Park system. He was born in Dunbar, Scotland and his family emigrated to the United States when he was 11 years old. They started a farm in Wisconsin, and when he was 22 years old Muir began  attending the University of Wisconsin. He studied botany and geology, although he never actually graduated because apparently his attendance at classes was "irregular." Muir and his brother Daniel both lived for a while in what's now southern Ontario. They came here in 1863 - many believe to avoid being drafted into the Union Army during the Civil War. They explored the Niagara Escarpment and the shores of Georgian Bay. John returned to the United States when the war ended and in 1867 he made a 1000 mile walk from Kentucky to Florida. He also spent time in Cuba and New York City. But he's most famous for his next adventure - a trek to the Sierra Mountains of California in 1868. He ended up spending six years in the Sierras, sometimes high in the mountains and sometimes in the Yosemite Valley. During that time he kept a daily diary in which he kept notes about the plants and animals that he saw, the weather he encountered, and simply described what he saw as the rugged beauty of the area. Finally, in 1911 - three years before he died - he published the diary he kept during his first few months there, calling it "My First Summer In The Sierras." I tried to get a copy of it but there are no copies in any of our local libraries. There are, however, excerpts of the book available on the internet on Google Books - and it's a captivating read. His decriptions are often breathtaking, and while not a great deal is known about Muir's religious views, you can see from his diary that at the very least he did believe in God and that he felt nature was a testimony to who and what God was. I thought that one of the most meaningful quotes I came across in the research I did on him was "No Sierra landscape that I have seen holds anything truly dead or dull." To me, there seems to be great wisdom in those words.

     Our Scripture passage for today (and, really, the entire story of Jesus' life) convinces me that Jesus himself was fascinated by nature and saw nature as a way for people to enter into the mystery that is God. Think about his words. He spoke about birds and flowers and foxes and olive trees and mountains  and sheep and goats. So much of what he taught had a nature theme to it. So many of his parables seemed to revolve around nature or farming. Today, for example we read the parable of the sower and the different kinds of soil that seeds can be sown in. And Jesus helpfully went on to explain the parable, just in case anyone had missed the point: the seed was the word of God, and the various kinds of soil are the various types of human hearts into which the seed is planted. Sometimes the seed bears fruit and the fruit matures and sometimes it doesn't - but as I read the parable I find myself wondering if there's any fault to be assigned for those times when the seed doesn't seem to produce a crop. The seed isn't to blame; God's word is always sufficient. But what about the human heart, represented by the various types of soil into which the seed is planted. Is there blame assigned there?

     We all know that people hear the word of God and are permanently changed by it, or have an initial enthusiasm for it that burns out quickly, or embrace it until tough times come and then let it go, or just get pulled off track so to speak by the company they keep. This particular parable is probably one of the most easily understood parables Jesus offered and it gives us perhaps the clearest and most obvious lesson we gain from a parable: the word of God won't fail - but circumstances can affect how we respond to that word. But if I continue to apply the parable, I'm struck by the fact that (in this one parable at least) there's no blame attached. It isn't, of course, the fault of the plant that grows that it sprouted in an undesirable place. That's just called life. For years now whenever I've read this parable I've thought of it as a sort of negative parable - a warning of sorts. "You better be the right kind of soil, and if the seed doesn't sprout it's your fault." But somehow, reading it over the last couple of weeks preparing my thoughts for today, I came to the conclusion that I've been wrong. The more I think about the image Jesus gives us the more I find this passage to be an incredibly hopeful parable - hopeful even for those plants who end up not doing so well, because nature - and Jesus is using an image from nature as he often did - has a strange way of dealing with these things.

     I like James Muir's comment: "No Sierra landscape that I have seen holds anything truly dead or dull." I'd extend it just a bit: does any landscape anywhere hold anything truly dead or dull? Life sprouts in the most unexpected places. We know that now. There's life at the bottom of the oceans at the entrance to scalding vents that would kill humans in an instant; there's life inside active volcanoes; life is found in bubbling lakes of hot tar; life is found in the frigid valleys of Antarctica and in the sun scorched sands of the desert. We don't know about life anywhere else - but on earth life is everywhere; even where logic tells us it shouldn't be. Jesus didn't know about all of the extreme places life could be found on earth - but his parable seems to be a way of saying that life can take hold in pretty much any environment, and nature seems to tell us that once life takes hold it's pretty stubborn. Life can seem to disappear - but it comes back. Jesus died and was resurrected. And I find it interesting that in the course of the parable Jesus never speaks of anything dying. It withers, it fails to bear fruit, it falls away - but he never actually says that anything dies. Perhaps the point is that life actually doesn't lose. Even when things die they get recycled and emerge again in some way. I think that in this parable Jesus wasn't warning us that we better be good soil or else!; I think Jesus was assuring us that once God's word is inside us it won't let us go.

     We're in the middle of July, at the height of summer. We've had a lot of rain this year, but in years past wherever I've lived by this time of the year there's usually been some pretty scorching days and a good period of time without rain and there have been times that I've looked out at my front lawn and seen a forest of withered, brown blades and thought it was never coming back. But the most awesome thing is that all it takes is a little bit of rain overnight and you look out the window in the morning and those withered, brown blades of grass are starting to come back and green starts to show almost right away.  That's what John Muir noticed in his travels. "No Sierra landscape that I have seen holds anything truly dead or dull." And maybe that's the point Jesus was making. No matter what kind of "soil" the word of God falls in and no matter what perils or hardships or circumstances arise after it falls - the word of God always gives life, and that life can never be taken away.

A Thought For The Week Of July 10, 2017

"But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord." (Joshua 24:15) Usually this verse is spoken of only in the context of the stark choice it presents: choose whether you're going to serve God, or whether you're going to choose any of the pantheon of false gods that our society and world dangle before us. And that's a very valid choice to challenge people to make because - and I'm not even thinking of our various religions - there is indeed a pantheon of what you might call secular gods that we can choose to serve if we want to. But what I found interesting, and what - in my experience - is less talked about with this passage - is the rationale for not choosing God. For people of faith it probably seems inconceivable that a person would not choose to follow God. The choice seems so obvious. And yet it clearly isn't obvious. Many people choose a different god. And Joshua introduced his challenge by stating outright that some might find it "undesirable" to serve God. And so I wondered - what would be undesirable about it? As I reflect on that question it strikes me that if I choose a false god, then in a way I get to create that god in my image, or at least to design that god according to my likes and dislikes. But make no mistake about it, a false god (even one we design) can be a very demanding god and can suck us in. One way hey suck us in is by offering us an illusion of being in control. And we like that. We like the idea that we can be in control of our own lives. We don't want to surrender ourselves to an outside authority - even if that outside authority is God. So we get enticed by the illusion of control and we get sucked into the life and spirit draining service of a false god. It's a little bit like sailors being enticed by the illusion of a mermaid, or desert travellers being given false hope by a mirage of an oasis. It sure looks good, but in the end it destroys. Serving God, on the other hand, seems much more demanding. God overtly expects things from us. There are clear responsibilities involved with serving God. And that can make it "undesirable" to serve God - especially when given the choice of a false god that we get to design and which seems to make no demands upon us while promising us everything we think we want. Make no mistake though: false gods suck the life out of us. Only God truly gives us life that can never be taken away.

A Thought For The Week Of July 3, 2017

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and ..." (Matthew 6:24) Every Sunday when I step into the pulpit I'm aware that just a few feet away from me on the chancel is a Canadian flag. I've been reflecting on that this week as we've just finished a few days in North America in which both Canada and the United States have celebrated "birthdays" - their national holidays; Canada Day in Canada and Independence Day in the U.S. I'm very happy to live in Canada. To have the opportunity to live in this country and this part of the world does make me feel blessed, indeed. And on July 1 I took part in some of the local festivities around our national holiday. I think that's appropriate. Paul does teach in Romans that we should honour the state, and in the Book of Acts we discover that Paul was aware of and willing to claim his rights as a Roman citizen. I see no reason that Christians today should be reluctant to do the same. But patriotism does cause me some concerns. When I think about it, many forms of patriotism seem to turn our nation into a sort of quasi-God. Consider that. We sing hymns to or about our nation (except we call them national anthems.) We look to our nation to care for us (through welfare and social assistance networks.) We petition our nation just as we petition our God. There's even a tendency for us to think of our nation as the ultimate force for good (whether American exceptionalism, or the Canadian "good guys of the world" image.) For some, the nation becomes almost an object of worship. Which reminds me of the words of Jesus. Jesus said that "you cannot serve both God and money." But I suspect that the principle is far wider than that. Jesus likely would have said that you cannot serve both God and anything else. You certainly cannot serve both God and country. That doesn't mean not accepting our responsibilities as citizens; nor does it mean not being thankful for the rights and freedoms that we have and for exercising them. But it does mean that we always have to remember that as Christians we are a "holy nation" - and that our citizenship first and foremost is "in heaven" and not in an earthly nation. Sometimes (tragically - because it rarely happens without tragic results) we allow God and country to become almost interchangeable; we co-opt the name of God to justify the actions of our country. But God and country are not interchangeable. God is God - and God always claims our first allegiance, over and above any earthly allegiance we may have to any country. Our faith should become the lens by which we evaluate and critique the actions of our nations and their governments and through which we call for change in the form of justice and righteousness; instead it almost seems at times at least as if faith itself has been co-opted to the service of the state. We're not unique in that in North America of course. We see it happening with virtually all faiths all over the world and throughout history. For Christians it began when the church and Rome began to work together to extend the Empire. A valid question to ask is whether Christianity converted the Roman Empire or whether the Roman Empire tamed the church. And while Rome fell, the church didn't. Other nation-states arose in Rome's place, and we've been left with this awkward fit between church and state ever since - no matter how many of our countries talk about the so-called "separation of church and state." Is there a solution to the problem? There's no easy one. The call to loyalty to the nation is always going to be in competition with the call to commitment to God. Sometimes we'll be called upon to make a choice. When those times come, I just hope we remember the words of Jesus: you cannot serve both God and ... anything - money or country; partisanship or ideology. Our faith in God must always come first.

The Responsibilities Of Freedom - July 2, 2017 sermon

Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification. When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

(Romans 6:12-25)

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     Pretty much everyone, I suspect, is familiar with Sigmund Freud. He was an Austrian neurologist and is considered the creator of what we now call psycho-analysis. A lot of his ideas have been discarded over the years, and psycho-analysis is increasingly in decline in medical and psychological circles, and a lot of Freud’s work is increasingly the subject of debate. Having said that, there are most certainly some things that Freud got right. One thing he seemed to understand well I included in today’s bulletin: “Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.” And that’s really what I want to explore with you a little bit today - the relationship between freedom and responsibility. It seemed an appropriate time to do that. It is, of course, Canada Day weekend. We’ve celebrated the 150th “birthday” of the country we call home, and today is the first day of Canada’s 151st year. Canadians are quietly proud of our country - and, while we’re certainly not perfect and have our share of problems and issues to deal with - I think that we should be. We’re particularly proud of the freedom that we claim as our own; freedoms guaranteed by our laws and our constitution. In the same way, Christians delight in the freedom we find in the gospel; freedoms held out to us in the Scriptures and by God’s grace. But in both cases I sometimes wonder if we don’t take that freedom for granted - and even abuse it - by being unwilling to accept the responsibilities that inevitably must accompany freedom. We see that in simple ways. We celebrate our political freedom, but as time goes on fewer and fewer Canadians tend to vote; we celebrate our spiritual freedom, but as time goes on fewer and fewer Christians tend to go to church. In both ways we see increasing numbers of people isolating themselves from the wider communities of which they are a part, and whose freedoms they passionately claim for themselves. That’s a problem. Because freedom without responsibility simply doesn’t work. And, ultimately, Freud was right: if we fear accepting our responsibilities (either as Canadians or as Christians) then we risk surrendering our freedom. I’m going to be reflecting primarily on Christian freedom, of course, but it might be worth keeping our Canadian freedoms in mind as well.

     If God in Christ has set us free, then the obvious question for us to ask is: free for what? Freedom to what end? There must be a point to our freedom because freedom without responsibility is meaningless at best and at worst it’s an invitation to anarchy. Is freedom simply the right to do whatever happens to strike our fancy at any particular time? To simply do whatever I want to do whenever I want to do it? Is that all that it means? Did Canadian soldiers die in time of war so that I could do whatever I want? Did Christ die on the cross so that I could do whatever I want? That’s ridiculous of course - except that some people do seem to take that attitude. Freedom becomes license. And if we start to believe in license rather than freedom then we must believe that God doesn’t care how we live or what we do. Rather than “love the Lord your God” and “love your neighbour as yourself,” Christian faith might as well be summed up not by the words of Jesus but by the words of Bobby McFerrin - “Don’t worry. Be happy.” But there’s more to it than that. There has to be. And there is.

     In today’s passage, Paul asks “Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace?” And he answers his own question: “By no means!” In Paul’s mind anyone who thought that freedom meant license had completely misunderstood the very nature of divine grace. Paul saw freedom not as our right to do whatever we wanted to do, but as our opportunity to do what God calls us to do. “Having once been slaves of sin,” he wrote, we “have become slaves of righteousness.” Slaves belong to and do the bidding of those who have possession of them. We - God’s people - belong to God and we do the bidding of the God to whom we belong.

     In this passage from Romans, Paul used the word “slavery” several times. In Paul’s world, of course, the concept of slavery  would have been well understood, since slavery was one of the cornerstones of the social structure of the Roman Empire. In slavery, you belong to another. Your time is never your own, it’s always your master’s. You never do your own will, but rather you always do the will of your master. Paul’s readers would have understood all that. Perhaps in Canada in 2017 some of us have difficulty understanding it. We just know that slavery is bad, and we take pride that it doesn’t exist here anymore. The British Empire abolished slavery in 1803. Slavery hasn’t existed anywhere in the western world since Brazil abolished it in 1871. Or has it? There have always been vestiges of slavery left over - vestiges that continue to have consequences in society today: there was segregation in the US South, there was apartheid in South Africa; there’s been the destruction of native culture in Canada; there’s exploitation of workers by large corporation; there’s the trafficking of women and children. All are or were forms of what you might call quasi-slavery; all still impact our world. And yet, for all that, Paul can still take the image of slavery and turn it into a positive. Paul would look at those things I’ve just mentioned and say that they’re examples of people being in slavery to “the sinful nature.” But there’s also that thing called slavery “to righteousness.” That slavery, ironically, gives us freedom. In fact, you could say that we can’t have real freedom until we’re slaves to righteousness, because being a slave to righteousness is what gives us freedom with responsibility; it’s what frees us from the fear of responsibility that Freud spoke of.

     So freedom - properly defined in Christian terms then (and I’d argue that this has a wider application to our national life together) - means serving righteousness rather than sin. Let go of this idea of “sin” as being just all those bad things we do. I’m not saying that we don’t do bad things sometimes (we all do) but really, when you boil it down, “sin” means making the conscious and deliberate choice to live for myself rather than for God; to live for myself rather than for others. That’s how Jesus understood the law, after all: “love the Lord your God … and love your neighbour as yourself.”

     The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “the truth will set you free, as Jesus said. But first it will make you very angry.” Ultimately anger - in the righteous sense rather than the out of control emotional sense - is what moves us to accept the responsibilities that are attached to the freedom Christ won for us. That sort of anger comes from seeing the plight of others - whether systemic injustice or racism or endemic poverty or corruption - and it causes us to respond in righteousness - with a righteous anger that leads to righteous action. That's what it means to be in slavery to righteousness. It doesn't mean to give up freedom but to be free to serve God and to serve God by serving others. In that way we live as both faithful Christians and as good citizens.

     We're celebrating Canada and the freedom that Canada gives us this weekend. But every day we celebrate Christ and the freedom he's won for us. Both types of freedom carry with them responsibilities. May we accept them, and may we honour both our country and - more importantly - our God.