A Thought For The Week Of January 22, 2018

"I pray that you, being rooted and established in love,  may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ ..." (Ephesians 3:17b-18) It was the experience of becoming a parent that really taught me about God's love. I had been a Christian for a lot of years by that point. I understood the love of God; I had felt the love of God; I was convinced of the love of God. But still ... there was a theoretical feel to it; something I couldn't quite relate to. I understood that "God so loved the world." I understood that nothing could separate me from God's love. And that filled me with a sense of both humility and gratitude - but I'm not sure I ever really understood it until that day; the first time I held my daughter in my arms. And I looked at her. And I was swept away. This life was dependent on me. And in that moment I could imagine that it would be possible for me to be disappointed in her, angry with her, frustrated with her - many things. But equally in that moment I realized that I could never - no matter what - not love her, not care for her, not protect her, not give myself for her. And in that moment - I understood the love of God more fully and more powerfully and more completely than I had ever understood it before. The love of a parent for a child. Not an emotional, "carried away with the moment" kind of love - but a sense of commitment and dedication. A long haul, "nothing - no matter what - can ever change this" kind of love. On a Christian radio station a few days ago I heard a discussion on the question "is God's love unconditional?" The question seemed so pointless to me. God is perfect; I am not. God is far more loving and far more merciful and far more compassionate and far more dedicated than I can ever be. And if I can feel such total love for my child - a love that I know will never, ever change, no matter the circumstances - then how much more is God's love for his children? Indeed, "I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ ..."

January 21 2018 sermon: Fishing Tips!

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea - for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” And immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.

(Mark 1:14-20)

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     It seems that Jesus had a special place in his heart for fishermen. After all, Peter and Andrew and James and John – his first four disciples – basically came right off the fishing boats that sailed the Sea of Galilee. I wonder what it was about fishermen? There were other options. Jesus could have gone to the religious leaders in Jerusalem and tried to convince them to join him in his mission. He could have gone to the intellectuals, the authorities or the political leaders of his day with his invitation. But he started with fishermen. And after that he kept finding disciples in the most unexpected places: Matthew the tax collector (who would have been seen as a collaborator with the Romans and traitor to his people) and Simon the Zealot (who today we would probably recognize as a terrorist) and even Judas Iscariot (who, as we know, was not the most reliable person around.) So Jesus seemed in some ways to look for the most unexpected of people to call to his side, but the first four were fishermen. Fishing is at the centre of the gospel.

     A few years ago there was a bumper sticker that had become somewhat popular, especially among people who enjoyed going out on a fishing trip every now and then. It was a very simple message: “LIFE’S SHORT – FISH HARD!” The point is pretty simple. There’s not really that much time to do all the things you want to do, so you better get out and do them. For those who were putting this bumper sticker on their cars and trucks they were expressing their own opinion about what was important in life: fishing! Everything else could (or at least should) wait. Do as much fishing as you can possibly do in the time that you have available to you. That bumper sticker is supposed to be humourous, of course. You’re supposed to look at it and have a bit of a chuckle and then get on with your life. But, especially in the light of Jesus’ words, that bumper sticker seems to have an important message for Christians – not a funny one at all, but a very serious one. We have only a limited time to do the things that God calls us to do, so we better get out there and actually do them. We can talk about them until we’re blue in the face, but unless we actually get out there into the world and do what God wants us to do then our talk is meaningless. And as Jesus’ disciples – well – we’re called to fish! We’re to “fish for people” as Mark put it; to proclaim good news; to tell the world about the wonderful and immeasurable love that God has for the world. And, since life is short, we do need to fish hard. For the next few minutes, I want to share three very important “fishing tips” that I think will make our fishing trips for Jesus a lot more successful.

     The first, I admit, is pretty obvious. If you want to have a successful fishing trip you have to go to where the fish are. That sounds pretty obvious. If you want to go fishing you’re not going to head off into the middle of a desert – you’re going to look for a body of water! So perhaps the real point is: if it’s so obvious that we need to go where the fish are to be able to catch them, why don’t we do it? I suspect that for many or even most Christians, living a Christian life revolves around a handful of things: going to church, reading the Bible, praying, maybe watching the odd religious program on television. And for many Christians, what’s missing from their list is going where the fish are! Too often we seem to have a “Field of Dreams” concept of sharing the gospel. Most of you probably know the movie: a man is visited by an angel and told that if he builds a baseball field great players from the past would come to play on it. “If you build it, they will come,” was the angel’s message. And a lot of Christians tend to apply that principle to sharing the gospel. The gospel’s already here, the church is already here, so we can sit back and wait for the masses to show up. But the masses aren’t showing up! “If you build it they will come” might have worked in a movie, but it’s not working in the church. We can’t wait for the fish to come to us, we have to go to the fish – even if at times we may not like where the fish are going to be found. – and even Jesus from time to time found himself in a few unsavoury places! Karen talked with the children about Jonah, and I think that we have a lot to learn in this regard from Jonah. Jonah was called to go and preach to the people of Nineveh – but he didn’t want to go. He desperately tried to avoid going to Nineveh. He didn’t like Nineveh – the city or its people. But he had no choice. God gave him no choice. This was where he was called to go. So, fishing tip #1 is actually quite simple: go out and find the fish! You can’t really fish until you do that.

     Which brings me to fishing tip #2: once you’ve found the fish, how do you catch them? It becomes a matter of using the right bait. When I was young I went fishing on a handful of occasions. On those trips we always used worms, and for the kinds of fish we were after those worms worked pretty well. But there are different kinds of bait, and the kind of bait you use depends on what kind of fish you want to catch. So as we go about fulfilling the call of Jesus to “fish for people,” what kind of bait are we going to use? What do we have that can attract people? Jonah had to go to Nineveh – which had a reputation as a wicked city, and God’s call to Jonah was in the hope that the Ninevites would hear the word of God and respond. What kind of bait did Jonah have to “fish” for the people of Nineveh. What did he have to offer them to turn them to God? It was actually very simple, and it’s something that we still have in abundance today: Jonah would offer to the people of Nineveh the word of God – no more, no less. And the response was dramatic: Nineveh repented! There’s great power in the word of God. Sometimes I think we forget that – but there is great power in the word of God. And what is it that people will find when we offer them the word of God? We actually have what many people are searching desperately for: acceptance, love, hope, peace. These things Jesus offers. These things are our “bait” - they’re the things that “lure” people. Many don’t reach out with the gospel because they think they don’t know it well enough or they won’t be able to answer questions. But reaching out with the gospel means being willing to live as Christ lived and to show to others the same love and compassion that Christ showed. The example of Jesus is the “bait,” so to speak. To “fish for people” we offer the life and love of Jesus.

     And I have one last tip for those who might want to “fish for people.” Fishing takes patience. The fish don’t just jump into the boat. You have to be patient, and you have to wait for the fish to respond. You have to keep dangling the bait until the fish decide to take it. You can’t cast your line into the water and then quit five minutes later because you haven’t had a bite. Sometimes miracles will happen. Sometimes people thrown in their line and catch something right away. Nineveh responded pretty quickly to Jonah. Sometimes it happens, bit in general terms that just isn’t how fishing works. You have to have patience. You have to stick with it once you start. Too often we try something and it doesn’t work the first time and we declare it a failure and we move on. But I was given a wonderful piece of advice a few years ago that I’ve always found to be true: if something is worth trying once, then it’s worth trying again, no matter how the first time went. And then often you try it again and again before you have any success with it. That’s commitment. That’s a measure of our own faith in God – and if we don’t show that kind of faith, then we can’t really expect others to respond to us. “Stick-to-it-ive-ness” is essential if we’re going to go about the business of fishing “for people.”

     I hope you’ll take these “fishing tips” to heart: go where the fish are, use the word of God as your bait and be patient. One of the greatest things about this work Jesus has given is is that fishing for people is the opposite of fishing for fish. When we catch fish we’re often taking their lives, but when we fish for people we’re offering life – new life; vibrant life; the life Jesus wants us all to have. And the great thing about fishing for people is that it’s never out of season and you don’t need a license. So get out there and fish – and remember: “LIFE’S SHORT – FISH HARD!”

A Thought For The Week Of January 15, 2018

“… the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:7) Sometimes, we all need peace. There are so many things that happen in the world and even in our own lives that are beyond our control; indeed, things that seem to spiral out of control. Often, it’s no fault of our own. We get weighed down by the pressures of life and by the unexpected pitfalls that come to us and we don’t know how to handle it. Sometimes we just make bad and even tragic decisions as life’s troubles play out. We hurt ourselves and we hurt others. Perhaps what I find most tragic is that there is a way out of the spiral. I could talk about all kinds of secular resources that are available to see us through those difficult times in our lives (and we should certainly be aware of them and make use of them) but I’m much more interested today in encouraging people to find “the peace of God.” Paul speaks of this as the peace “which transcends all understanding.” This peace is not comfort or quiet. It’s a peace we feel when things are closing in all around us and we can’t see a way out. For most people that’s a time to become desperate; a time to panic. But for those of faith there is another way, and a resource available to us. It’s “the peace of God.” It’s the peace that strengthened Jesus as he went to the cross – a time when he could have been lashing out at those around him, condemning those who had betrayed or abandoned him, falling into despair as his destiny approached; a time when he could have become out of control and uncontrollable. And yet, Jesus had “the peace of God.” It was a peace that allowed him to face what was coming with courage, to trust that his Father would see him through his fate, and to forgive those who had either abandoned or condemned him. None of us are Jesus, of course. None of us will ever face the sorts of trials that he faced; none of us have the intimacy with the Father that Jesus enjoyed. But, still, we are not helpless. God still reaches out to us, and there is peace available to those who can see beyond their immediate circumstances. “All who seek will find,” Jesus said. My prayer is that those who need peace will seek it from God. It is there. It will be given to you.

A Thought For The Week Of January 8, 2018

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." (John 1:1) In my last devotional, I reflected on the opening words of the Bible, which begin with "in the beginning," and which remind us that everything comes from God and that everything is, in origin at least, good. John's Gospel also starts with the words "in the beginning," suggesting that John wants to link what he's writing with that foundational story of the Bible. In Genesis 1, the word was important. God created by speaking; in the story God literally spoke into existence everything that exists. John understands the significance of that, and as he reflects on the life of Jesus that he had witnessed, he sees the creative and transforming power of God in God's word - and, more than that, he sees it in Jesus. He looks at the ministry of Jesus he has just witnessed, and he understands - that creative force that brought everything into existence is inseparable from the Jesus who had walked with him and talked with him. And so, John could say a few verses later, that the "Word" (the power that brought everything into existence) "became flesh and dwelt among us." He's clearly talking about Jesus. He has seen Jesus "create." He has seen Jesus bring new thoughts, new ideas, new ways of relating to God. He has seen Jesus bring new life even to those who were dead. He has seen. And he has understood. In Jesus was contained the creative force and the life giving spirit of God. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Having encountered Jesus face to face, John could no longer see a distinction between Jesus and God. indeed, "the Word was God." It's one of the statements of faith that has marked the church almost from the very beginning.

January 14 2018 sermon: Finding The Good

The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.” And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

(John 1:43-51)

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     As many of you know for the first three years of my ministry (almost 25 years ago now!) I served a three point pastoral charge in Central Newfoundland. The three churches were located in three very unique communities: Beaumont, Roberts Arm and South Brook. Roberts Arm was where we lived. It was a small town, but a busy one. It had a grocery store, a small department store, a couple of convenience stores, a public library, a gas station, a restaurant and a motel. You could get pretty much anything you wanted to get in Roberts Arm, so if you were so inclined you never had to leave. It had a government wharf right across the street from the manse we lived in and there were a lot of fishermen who lived there – and before I’m accused of being sexist any women I knew who were involved in the fishing industry in Newfoundland (at least when I was there) would have laughed out loud if you had called them “fishers.” They were fishermen – and never, ever call a Newfoundlander what they don’t want to be called. The second point was Beaumont. It was actually off the coast of Newfoundland, so I had to take a short five minute ride on a small ferry to get there. It was very isolated and aside from one convenience store that I remember there wasn’t much else there. It was a fishing community as well, and the church (which was the largest of the three congregations on the charge) overlooked one of the bays and if you got to the right part of the island you could stare out at the open North Atlantic. There were views that were literally breath-taking. The third point was South Brook. That church was the smallest on the charge. On a good Sunday (a REALLY good Sunday) we might get 15 people. On an average Sunday you could probably count on anywhere from 8-12. On a bad Sunday? Well, let’s just say there were bad Sundays from time to time. Aside from a gas station, there really wasn’t a whole lot in South Brook (although I checked out South Brook on Google this past week and now it has two convenience stores, two gas stations and apparently a hockey rink!) But when I was there, you pretty much had to leave town to get much of anything. South Brook wasn’t a fishing community because it was located inland. At one time it was a logging community, but there wasn’t much logging going on 25 years ago. People there used to poke sad fun at themselves, and there was one woman in my congregation who used to paraphrase this morning’s Gospel reading when she spoke about the town. “Can anything good,” she used to say (with a smile on her face, but I think also with a bit of sadness) “come out of South Brook?”

     That’s what they said about the place where Jesus was raised. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nazareth had an identity problem. Apparently two thousand years ago Nazareth was neither very prominent nor very prosperous, and in fact it’s so unimportant that although there’s archaeological evidence that suggests Nazareth was destroyed during the Babylonian invasion that happened 700 years before Jesus was born, there are no mentions of Nazareth during Roman times (except in the New Testament) until almost 200 years after Jesus died. And, if indeed it was said “can anything good come out of Nazareth,” then it seems Nazareth was perhaps a town with a reputation, so to speak. Not the sort of place you’d want to bring up your kids if you could avoid it. And yet, it seems to have been the town that Joseph and Marry settled in after they returned from Egypt with Jesus. What an odd choice of hometown for the Son of God. And perhaps there was a reason for that choice.

     It seems to me that this points out a problem that’s endemic in human society. It’s hard for us to see the good. Sometimes it seems that the question isn’t so much “can anything good come out of Nazareth” (or South Brook) – instead the question can seem to be “is there anything good?” Goodness sometimes seems to be in short supply wherever you look. We get inundated on a daily basis (or more often if we choose) with so much bad news. We got one of those Amazon home assistants named Alexa for Christmas from my brother in law. All I have to do at any time of the day or night now is say “Alexa, give me my briefing” and Alexa will proceed to give me all the daily headlines – which are usually about bad things. It can be depressing. When I was a kid growing up in Scarborough (back in the days before there were 500 TV channels at our fingertips) one of the TV stations we used to watch from Buffalo was WUTV – Channel 29. Channel 29 was cool because it had a Japanese science fiction show called “Ultra Man” that I used to watch all the time. But one of the things it also used to have was something called “The Good News Report.” It was about a 5 minute capsule of good, positive, uplifting stories. And some news programs today do something like that – but, again, it’s usually a 5 minute or so capsule that gets lost in the “real” (which means “bad” news of the day.) Finding the good can be difficult at times when we’re so surrounded by the bad.

     I found it interesting that this passage from John’s Gospel came up for this week in the lectionary when we’ve once again been inundated with people being dismissed or attacked because of where they come from. I won’t, obviously, offer a verbatim quote, but the words of the President of the United States in these past few days about African countries being – to put it delicately – undesirable (similar to comments he’s made about Mexicans and Muslims and Haitians) is just another manifestation of Nathanael’s “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Closer to home, an 11 year old Muslim girl in Toronto having her hijab cut off from behind by a complete stranger just a couple of days ago is another manifestation of someone thinking “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” And, while I don’t want to get too political from the pulpit, maybe it’s because we have the so-called “leader of the free world” routinely spouting these offensive and odious ideas that some people feel empowered to think that “those people” - whoever “they” are – can’t be any good and therefore aren’t worthy of any respect or dignity. All I can say is that Canada is a part of the “free world” - and he ain’t my leader! But in this passage from John’s Gospel, the story of Nathanael reminds us that these unthinking, knee jerk reactions we can so easily have toward people we don’t know or don’t understand have no basis in reality and that we need to overcome this “can anything good come from …”  mentality that can so easily seep into our thinking, and it tells us that they can be overcome. Nathanael, of course, would learn. He would encounter Jesus. He would get to know Jesus. He would become a disciple of Jesus. The way to overcome our prejudices about people who are different from us is to learn about them and to meet them and to discover that they’re not really that much different than we are and that we don’t have to be afraid of them and that we don’t have to hate them. Maybe we can just love them – because, you know, God does.

     “Can anything good come out of South Brook?” Well, I knew some very faithful people in South Brook who would literally give you the shirt off their back if you needed it and who deeply influenced my life and ministry and faith in the three years I ministered to them, some of whom I’m still in touch with all these years later. That was pretty good. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Well, the Son of God came out of Nazareth and taught the world the way of love and compassion and grace, and accepted all who approached him without judgment. That was pretty good. The reality is that the good is all around us. Sometimes we’re blinded to it because we’re so focused on the problems and the challenges – but it’s all around us. I think that as Christians we need to make a concerted effort to see the good. So many Christians like to focus on what we call the doctrine of original sin, but I rather think that we need to start adopting a doctrine of original goodness. The creation story of Genesis, after all, tells us that when God had finished the work of creating God looked at what had been created and said it was “good.” “Good” is the default position. And I believe that goodness is still there. It’s marred and distorted perhaps by human actions and – frankly – by human sin, but it’s there, and the more we come to understand God the more able we are to love our neighbours no matter how different they might seem on the surface.

     Nelson Mandela once wrote that “No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” Nathanael learned. Good things do come out of Nazareth. Good things come from everywhere. Good people come from all over.

A Thought For The Week Of January 1, 2018

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 1:1) As we start a new year, where better to look than the very start of the Bible, which begins with the words "In the beginning." This is really such a simple verse and such a simple message (and, really, so is the entire story of creation) but we make it so complicated by trying to force it to answer questions it was never intended to answer. So, you have some Christians who insist on treating the creation story as if it was a science textbook, and some non-Christians who then choose to poke holes in the details of the story. Both groups seem to miss the point. The former abuses Scripture and the latter abuses science. The most important point in the creation story is not how God created. Scripture is not intended and was not intended to get into the nitty gritty of the process of creation. The Bible itself seems happy to leave those questions to science. The most important things about the creation story are, first, simply that God created, and then what that act reveals to us about God. The creation story tells us that God is real and that God is creative and that God cares about what has been created. I'm not saying that there isn't more that we need to learn about God - but from one story (and even one verse) of the Bible, that seems like a lot. And I wonder what difference it might make in the world if we started with the proposition that the God revealed so simply in this story exists. Instead we start either with the proposition that God is much more complicated than the Bible actually reveals, or we begin with the idea that God is a concept to be disproven. But if we started with just this verse - just the idea that everything that was created (all the raw materials, so to speak) came from God then we essentially recognize the goodness of creation - which is another vital part of the story. God saw everything that he had created, and called it "good." But what we do with those divinely created raw materials isn't necessarily good. I don't blame God for nuclear weapons, for example. We've chosen to use the raw materials for purposes that defy goodness and dishonour God, and we choose to do that because we make the Bible (from the creation story on) far more complicated than it should be. Scripture, God, etc. may be mysterious - but it's not that complicated. Everything came from God; God loves what was created - including us; we use what God created for good or for bad or for evil purposes; God calls believers to be active in seeing the goodness of creation and in trying to restore it as best we can. Tough to do, perhaps (that last part) - but not really that hard to understand. So I begin a new year with a commitment to try to see God in everything, and to following what is really a very simple gospel without letting it get too complicated.