Up From the Garbage Dump: Sermon, November 18, 2012

Then Hannah prayed:
My heart rejoices in the LORD.
My strength rises up in the LORD!
My mouth mocks my enemies
because I rejoice in your deliverance.
No one is holy like the LORD —
no, no one except you!
There is no rock like our God!

Don’t go on and on, talking so proudly,
spouting arrogance from your mouth,
because the LORD is the God who knows,
and he weighs every act.

The bows of mighty warriors are shattered,
but those who were stumbling
now dress themselves in power!
Those who were filled full
now sell themselves for bread,
but the ones who were starving
are now fat from food!
The woman who was barren
has birthed seven children,
but the mother with many sons
has lost them all!
The LORD!
He brings death, gives life,
takes down to the grave,
and raises up!
The LORD!
He makes poor, gives wealth,
brings low, but also lifts up high!
God raises the poor from the dust,
lifts up the needy
from the garbage pile.
God sits them with officials,
gives them the seat of honour!
The pillars of the earth
belong to the LORD;
he set the world on top of them!
God guards the feet of his faithful ones,
but the wicked die in darkness
because no one succeeds
by strength alone.

The LORD!
His enemies are terrified!
God thunders against them from heaven!
The LORD!
He judges the far corners of the earth!
May God give strength to his king
and raise high the strength of his anointed one.
- 1 Samuel 2:1-10, Common English Bible

This morning we have the story of Hannah, who was one of the two women married to Elkanah. This was back in the day when men could have more than one wife. I can barely handle one. And Elkanah has a hard time handling the problems between his two wives, for Hannah can’t have children but Peninnah can, so she mocks and provokes Hannah constantly. This kind of thing would seem to me to be a major drawback to having more than one spouse. Hannah finally just pours out her soul to God in prayer, and God grants her prayer, and she gives birth to Samuel, who will grow up to be a great prophet and leader.

So Hannah prays, in what is called the Song of Hannah, about what God can and will do, shattering weapons, filling those who were starving with food, bringing life, raising up from the grave, lifting up the poor from the dust and the needy from the garbage dump, sitting them in places of honour and power.

Lift up the needy from the garbage dump. When I was in Nicaragua in Central America, we drove through the capital city, Managua, to the garbage dump. A thousand people live in the dump itself – people whose land was stolen by the dictatorship that ruled the country until 33 years ago. They had nowhere else to go, and have remained since because land reform never came. Thousands more live in the barrios at the edge of the dump.

It was an apocalyptic landscape – mound after mound of stinking garbage, smoke and flame from fires burning everywhere in the trash, vultures eating the rotting corpse of some dead thing, cattle grazing in the rubbish and so thin their ribs were showing, stray dogs roaming around, shacks built out of waste and surrounded by pools of reeking, toxic water, and the people who lived there – men, women, and children – picking through the garbage to find bits of paper and metal to sell.

My emotions were confused. People forced to live in a dump is completely outside my experience, our experience. We don’t have people living in the South Stormont Township landfill. And my thoughts went back to a novel I had read before going to Nicaragua, A Flag for Sunrise by Robert Stone.

In the novel, the North American characters are driving through the poor neighbourhoods of a Central American city, a city just like Managua. And one of the characters says:

What I wonder, is whether the people down here have to live this way so that we can live the way we do. We have to believe it’s no, don’t we? We couldn’t face up to it otherwise. Because if most of the world lives in this kind of poverty so that we can have our goodies and our extra protein ration – what does that make us?

That’s hard for us to think about. We’re shocked that we have to think about it. We even resent it. But, you know, the teachings of Jesus are hard. One time his friends said to Jesus, “Your teaching is difficult. Who can accept it?”

But it’s also hard to see people living in a garbage dump – and it’s even harder to be the dump dweller.

These words are wrenching for us because they’re true. Things may not be great economically for many Canadians, but most of us still benefit from the widest gap between rich and poor since the Middle Ages. Most of us in Canada are the minority surrounded by the majority in the world: the kids overseas who can’t afford to go to school, yet make the school clothes for our kids; the farmers who get paid less than it costs them to grow the beans that get made into our coffee; the poor longing for the scraps that fall from our overloaded tables.

And the question for us is the same one we ask whenever we come up against the hard challenges of the Bible: how, then, shall we live? Hearing the truth that people have to live in crushing poverty so we can live the way we do, well, we feel guilty. I struggle with that guilt. Yet our guilt can lead us to conclude that we made a choice to be so wealthy, that we created the problem so we can create the solution. As North Americans, we think that we can do something about everything. If something is wrong, it’s our fault. We can fix it.

And it’s certainly true that as followers of Jesus, we must fix what must be corrected. If we have wealth, we are to use it for good. We are to seek justice and resist evil. We are to support our Mission and Service Fund and give with vision. We are to look closely at our lifestyles – because for the entire world to have our Canadian standard of living would require the resources of five planets.

But in doing so, we need to recognize that we may have more power to act than people in that dump, but we too are trapped. The same systems of injustice, the institutions and ways of doing things that benefit us also curtail our freedom. The people who live in that trash dump can’t escape the economic and political empires that keep them poor – but neither can we. We can’t get away from supporting empire.

When we open our eyes to this, then we can really start to identify with the people suffering in poverty, we can know just a little of their struggle, we can ask hard questions about the systems and empires that trap us all, we can really join with the marginalized people of the world in working for real liberation, not just of Latin America of Africa and Asia, not just of ourselves, but of all of God’s creation.

When we are working for change, when we are wrestling with the magnitude of poverty and hunger and disease, it's easy to lose hope. But hope is there for us. We have good news to inspire us and keep us going – because of Jesus. He was seen as a dangerous revolutionary by the authorities. He was arrested and put to death, executed on the city dump of Jerusalem, just as the dictator’s death squads once brought political prisoners to that dump in Managua and killed them.

But injustice and evil and death did not have the last word. Jesus was raised from death by the power of God, and triumphed over empire, over injustice, over oppression. The message of the resurrection of Jesus is that the systems that keep people in poverty will never win: the God of the poor, the God of surprises, the God who turns human expectations upside down, will have the victory.

Talking to Christians in Nicaragua, I heard the message of hope in the resurrection of Jesus. Vibrant, exciting hope in the midst of poverty. And we can share that joy, that hope for real peace, real justice. Our message is not one of guilt, for God sent Jesus into the world, not to condemn the world, but to save it. Our good news is a message of hope, and we are called by God to live out that message, standing with our suffering brothers and sisters in love.

And that hope will be fulfilled, for God promises us that the day Hannah sings about will come. The day will come when the old ways will pass away and everything will be made new. The day will come when God’s realm of love and justice will be complete over all the earth. The day will come when the poor will be raised up from the garbage dump to sit in the places of power. Thanks be to God. And let all God’s people say, Amen.

Photos illustrating this blog post were taken in the city dump of Managua, Nicaragua, in February 2007.

Heresy and Orthodoxy

I was reading the November issue of our denomination's magazine, The United Church Observer, and turned to the Question Box column in which reader questions about the church are answered. The answer to question about Celtic spirituality included a discussion of Pelagius:

One of the great proponents of Celtic spirituality was Pelagius, a fourth-century monk and teacher. Pelagius taught that there are two scriptures - creation and the written word - and we need to pay attention to both to live a balanced life. Pelagius believed that God is good, creation is good, and therefore we are good and responsible for our actions. His contemporary, Augustine of Hippo, hated his ideas, teaching that people are filled with sin that can only be taken away by the church. Payment for the removal of such sins was a lucrative business for the institutional church, so Pelagius was excommunicated. Augustinian theology carried on into the Reformation and is still popular today, denying the essential goodness at the heart of every person and of all creation.

My mind reeled, as this answer oversimplifies both Pelagian and Augustinian thought and is mistaken in stating that the fourth century church had payments for penance. It also fails to note that the Augustinian understanding of Original Sin is doctrine in The United Church of Canada. See Article V of the Articles of Faith in the 1925 Basis of Union:

We believe that our first parents, being tempted, chose evil, and so fell away from God and came under the power of sin, the penalty of which is eternal death; and that, by reason of this disobedience, all men are born with a sinful nature, that we have brokem God's law, and that no man can be saved but by His grace.

I had a few discussions with other ministers and church folk online that night. We talked about Celtic Christianity, which was more diverse than is often depicted but did have pockets of Pelagian thought; about John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, and whether his Arminian position on free will and grace is semi-Pelagian (I say no, as Wesley believed in original sin and the total depravity of humanity); and about how the Question Box column represents Pelagius and Augustine. One colleague, while agreeing that both theologians are misrepresented in the Observer column, said on Twitter that "heterodoxy is preferable to orthodoxy imo (in my opinion)."

I thought about that. I had said online that Pelagianism is a heresy, meaning that historically it has been treated as heretical by the Western church since Pelagius was excommunicated in AD 417. But I didn't mean that any discussion of his position is off limits. There was considerable disagreement when Pelagius was alive over whether his theology was orthodox. It took much lobbying by Augustine to get the Pope to declare it heretical - and it was never condemned by the Eastern church. More broadly, today's church should see any theological debate as healthy. Everything needs to be on the table. Theology is meant to be living, not static. Faith statements can only ever be summaries, and cannot express the entire truth about God. They are never the last word.

The United Church is a merger of Presbyterian, Methodist, Congregationalist and Evangelical United Brethren traditions that were the products of debate within the church. I am descended from Dissenters from the church (although, admittedly, they shut down belief in any doctrines but their own when they left England and founded their New World settlement in Massachusetts).

Friends talking online had also reminded me that the boundaries of what is heretical and what is orthodox are set by those with power in the church. Pelagius had allies among the bishops and their synods, and was in fact declared orthodox by one Pope, but Augustine finally managed to win over enough of the church hierarchy to get Pelagius executed. Such power struggles, and the church's relationship with the secular power, lie behind declarations of which positions are orthodox.

However, in an age when many people who are affiliated with the church are not that familiar with the church's traditions - and, of course, people who are not affiliated have no familiarity at all - any debate must begin with what the denomination's doctrine states. In the United Church we have just gone through a nationwide vote on doctrine, so we should know that explaining what the church believes is important, even if in our denomination our doctrine is not binding on individual members (although candidates for ministry must be in "essential agreement" to be ordained or commissioned, although each of us defines that for ourselves). Our tradition, like other mainstream Protestant denominations, is Augustinian. We can then talk about whether Pelagius had insights on issues of sin and grace that can speak to us today and help us as we seek to follow Jesus Christ.

As an aside, much of what we know about Pelagius comes from the words of his opponents, and many of his writings have been lost in the intervening 16 centuries, so reconstructing his thought can be problematic.

I ended up writing this letter to the editor of the Observer:

I was surprised to read in the November Question Box response on Celtic Christianity that Pelagius was excommunicated for teaching against original sin "because payment for the removal of such sins was a lucrative business for the institutional church." Pelagius was excommunicated in 417; the practice of paying money to commute penance for sin was only beginning 100 years later, and the profitable system of selling indulgences would not reach fruition until the Middle Ages, at least six centuries in the future.

Question Box disparages the theology of Pelagius' contemporary and opponent Augustine of Hippo, while noting that it "is still popular today." It is in fact the doctrine of The United Church of Canada, as Article V of the 1925 Articles of Faith takes the position of Augustine, not Pelagius, on sin.

"That Lays Upon the Altar the Dearest and the Best:" Sermon, Remembrance Day, November 11, 2012

Christ didn’t enter the holy place (which is a copy of the true holy place) made by human hands, but into heaven itself, so that he now appears in God’s presence for us. He didn’t enter to offer himself over and over again, like the high priest enters the earthly holy place every year with blood that isn’t his. If that were so, then Jesus would have to suffer many times since the foundation of the world. Instead, he has now appeared once at the end of the ages to get rid of sin by sacrificing himself. People are destined to die once and then face judgment. In the same way, Christ was also offered once to take on himself the sins of many people. He will appear a second time, not to take away sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.
- Hebrews 9:24-28, Common English Bible

As Jesus was teaching, he said, “Watch out for the legal experts. They like to walk around in long robes. They want to be greeted with honor in the markets. They long for places of honour in the synagogues and at banquets. They are the ones who cheat widows out of their homes, and to show off they say long prayers. They will be judged most harshly.”

Jesus sat across from the collection box for the temple treasury and observed how the crowd gave their money. Many rich people were throwing in lots of money. One poor widow came forward and put in two small copper coins worth a penny. Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “I assure you that this poor widow has put in more than everyone who’s been putting money in the treasury. All of them are giving out of their spare change. But she from her hopeless poverty has given everything she had, even what she needed to live on.”
- Mark 12:38-44, Common English Bible

Giving all glory and honour to God.

Much of today’s service was written by United Church of Canada chaplains serving in the Canadian Forces. At the church’s General Council this summer we had worship led by Canadian Forces chaplains. There are chaplains wherever Canadians are serving, including Afghanistan and the Middle East. I want to take a few minutes on Remembrance Day to talk about chaplains and tell the story of one chaplain in particular, my Great Uncle, Claude Hayward.

Claude was born on a farm in Carleton County, New Brunswick, in 1904, and in the 1920s he felt the call to ministry in the Presbyterian church. When the United Church was formed, he stayed Presbyterian, but we won’t hold that against him. He served congregations in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick until the Second World War started.

I should mention that on the day war was declared Claude’s brother Bill, my grandfather, also went to join up. Grampy had been a private in the militia, but the year before the war started he was working in the lumber camps, as most farmers did in the winter, and he was run over by a logging truck and was so seriously injured he couldn’t farm anymore. So it was no surprise that the Army turned Grampy down and gave him a certificate of general discharge. Grampy said that was pretty good, he went into the Army a private and came out a general.

Great Uncle Claude, however, passed the physical and joined the Navy in Halifax. He became the chaplain on HMCS Prince Robert, which was a coastal ferry converted into a cruiser. For much of the war it was the largest and most heavily armed ship in the Royal Canadian Navy. The Prince Robert escorted convoys in the Atlantic, Pacific and Mediterranean, took Canadian troops to Hong Kong, and participated in the American and Canadian campaign in Alaska. At the end of the war the ship returned to Hong Kong to represent Canada at the Japanese surrender.

On board the Prince Robert my great uncle was the spiritual advisor to 500 officers and men. He held worship services on board every Sunday, in all weather. His duties also included acting as the ship’s censor, because in wartime all letters had to be examined in case they contained sensitive information, so he had to read an average of 700 letters a day when the ship was in port.

After the war Claude left the ministry, moved to BC and worked for the provincial forestry department. Now, he died 38 years ago, so I never got to ask him about his wartime experiences in chaplaincy and how they affected him.

The Hayward family had more children than Claude and my grandfather Bill. There were four girls and three other boys. During the First World War the oldest boys, Sandy and Walter, joined the Army and went to France. And, two months before the war ended, Claude was 14 when a letter came to the farm.

The letter was from an Army chaplain, and it read:

Dear Mrs. Hayward,
It is with deep regret that I have to convey to you the sad news that your son, W.C. Hayward 709857, has died of wounds in 57 Casualty Clearing Station. Also his wound had rendered him unconscious and we did not speak to him. He only lived a short time after he came in.

We laid him reverently to rest in the cemetery close to 57 CC Station. The number of his grave is 58 Plot 4 Row E. If you write to the War Office, Winchester House, St. James Square, London SW1, they will have you a photo of it. The cemetery is well kept and each grave is marked with a cross bearing name and date of death.

May I express my sincere sympathy with you in your great loss. It’s so little a stranger can say, but I pray God may comfort and sustain you in your heavy trial. You join with him in laying on the altar of sacrifice the greatest offering a man can make, and Jesus has said there is no greater love than that.

Yours in sorrow,
Rev. W.M. Kinletsale

Letters make me think of another story about chaplaincy in the Second World War. This was written by Rev. R.M. Hickey, a Canadian Army chaplain, in his book The Scarlet Dawn:

“Padre,” the soldier said, “you told us if we couldn’t write you’d write for us.”

“Sure,” I said, “anytime.”

“Any kind of letter? A love letter?”

I assured him I was a master of love letters and I’d write just what he said.

“Dear Mary.” I wrote that. “I love you.” Again: “I love you.” He kept repeating, “I love you.”

“Yes,” I said. “I have that. Now, how much?”

“I love you… Well, I love you as much as I love the Lord.”

Heresy? Not at all. That was his way of telling Mary he loved he a whole lot. Six months later they were married.

Four years later, one evening during the Battle of Carpiquet, in Normandy, I knelt and looked at the lifeless face of the boy who’d had me write that letter. I lowered him into his rough and narrow grave and, as I whispered the prayer, a voice from the past said over and over: “Dear Mary… Dear Mary…” And when I wrote to tell his wife I had prepared him for death and buried him, that same voice awoke again: “I love you, I love you as much as…”

I wonder how many letters like that Great Uncle Claude had to write in the Navy, and if any with his signature as chaplain, informing a family about a death, are still preserved in boxes and drawers in homes across Canada. I wonder if writing these letters and seeing starving Canadian prisoners of war in Hong Kong and watching the crews of torpedoed ships die in the water had anything to do with his quitting ministry.

In our Scripture reading today Jesus sees a poor widow put two copper coins, all that she has to live on, in the offering box. This story is often the subject of sermons on stewardship, but it’s not really about money. It’s about sacrifice. The widow gives everything she has. And in two world wars, Korea, peacekeeping missions and Afghanistan, Canadian men and women in uniform have given everything they have. A lot of widows and grieving families have given their loved ones.

That chaplain's letter in the First World War talked about an offering laid on the altar of sacrifice. At the end of the service we will sing a verse of the hymn I Vow to Thee, My Country. The first verse of that hymn talks about “the love that stands the test, that lays upon the altar the dearest and the best.” My great uncle Claude laid his career in ministry on that altar. His brother Sandy, wounded in World War I, laid his health on that altar. His brother Walter laid his life on that altar. They gave everything they had.

We remember them and so many others, chaplains, soldiers, sailors, aircrew. And as we remember them and their sacrifices - so many lifeless faces, so many bodies lowered into rough and narrow graves - we need to reflect on this Gospel story of the poor widow giving all that she had. We must do more than praise her sacrifice. We must ask why she was forced into that position of giving everything in the first place. And then we must turn back to the wars of the last century and this one, and question the attitudes and fears and behaviours and systems that led to the sacrifices of so many lives.

That hymn I Vow to Thee, My Country, goes on: "There’s another country, and her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace." That is the kingdom of God, and we truly remember sacrifice when we work for the coming of that kingdom where there is no more sorrow or pain or death, that realm where there is true peace with justice and the sacrifice of lives in war is unnecessary, for Christ himself has been offered for us. Blessed are the peacemakers, of the past and today, for they will be called children of God.

All to Jesus

All to Jesus: A Year of Devotions
By Robert J. Morgan
B&H Publishing Group, Nashville TN, 2012
380 pages

All to Jesus is a book of one-page devotions for each day of the year. They are not dated, so they can be used over and over. Each day has a Bible reading, a verse excerpted from that Scripture, and a short devotional. For instance, Day 19's reading is Isaiah 38:15-20 and excerpts verse 17 ("You have thrown all my sins behind your back"), with a reflection on forgiving ourselves for past moments we can't change.

What distinguishes this devotional is that each of the Scriptures uses the word "all." Author Robert Morgan, who has previously written Then Sings My Soul, 100 Bible Verses Everyone Should Know By Heart, The Children's Daily Devotional Bible and other books, is a long-time pastor in Nashville, and believes that the frequency with which "all" appears in the Bible must indicate its importance. He explains this in a Question and Answer (reprinted with permission from Robert J. Morgan, All to Jesus).

Can you tell us how your new devotional, All to Jesus, came into being?

One night when I was troubled, I found 1 Peter 5:7, a verse of Scripture I had known for years: Casting all your care on Him for He cares for you. The word "all" struck me. I'd never seen it before. The verse would have been wonderful without it, but its inclusion lifted the promise to infinity. No burden or problem was beyond the reach of 1 Peter 5:7. I could cast "ALL" my burdens on Him without limitation. That made me wonder if there were other verses in the Bible that were similarly modified with that little adjective and I found over 5000 of them. We selected 366 "alls" for this book.

What is “the largest little word in all the world” and why do you think so?

Someone said: "All means all and that's all all means." We often use the word "omni" to describe God — He is omnipresent, omnipotent and so forth. The little word "all" is the earthly application of God's omni-qualities. It takes His infinite nature and shows us what it means to us here and now. The Lord doesn’t waste words in His Book. In the verses above, the alls could easily have been left out; yet there they are. Seems it’s one of God’s favorite words. He used it thousands of times, often in passages that would have read nicely without it; yet the all maximizes the meaning to the absolute. It’s the largest little word in the world, taking already-strong statements and broadening their applications to virtual infinity, which, after all, is what one would expect from an omnipotent Father.

How many times is “all” mentioned in the Bible? Why do you believe God uses the word so frequently?

The word “all” appears in the Bible 5,675 times. God loves to speak in all-encompassing superlatives because He is eternal and infinite. According to 2 Corinthians 9:8, He is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.

What are a few of your favorite “all” verses and why?

All things work together for the good of those who love God—Romans 8:28
You have thrown all my sins behind Your back—Isaiah 38:17
Even the hairs of your head have all been counted—Matthew 10:30
Love the Lord your God with all your heart—Matthew 22:37
Trust in the Lord with all your heart—Proverbs 3:5-6
Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened—Matthew 11:28
Goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life—Psalm 23:6 (NIV)
Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you—Matthew 6:33

What do you hope readers will take away from their daily readings of All to Jesus?

Each of these devotions is excerpted from my pulpit ministry and represents what I believe to be solid exposition of Scripture, sprinkled liberally with stories, quotes and interesting tidbits of truth. Each reading calls us to total faith and total obedience, based on the totality of God’s grace. Because He is our All in All, we can say, “All to Jesus.”

Amazing Grace: Sermon, October 28, 2012

Now, we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth will be silenced, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For “no human being will be justified in his sight” by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.

But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.

Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded. By what law? By that of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works proscribed by the law.
- Romans 3:19-28, New Revised Standard Version

Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?”

Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”
- John 8:31-36, New Revised Standard Version

Giving all glory and honour to God.

John Newton was born 287 years ago, in a part of London not that far from where I was born. His mother wanted him to be a minister, but she died when he was only six. John’s father was a shipping merchant, often away at sea, so the boy was raised without much love by his stepmother and in a boarding school. John went to sea when he was only eleven years old, although that wasn’t unusual in the 18th century. And his seagoing career was marked by constant disobedience, not just to his superiors on board ship, but also to God, because John would experience some life-threatening event at sea, profess his faith in God, and then relapse back into bad habits when the threat had passed.

If you watched the American presidential debate, there was an exchange about the Navy, comparing today’s Navy to that of 100 years ago. Well, back in John Newton’s day, the Royal Navy consisted of wooden sailing ships that needed hundreds of men to let out and take in sails and man the cannons, and if the Navy was short of men they could send parties on shore to round up civilian sailors and press them into service. That’s what happened to John Newton. But he was just as rebellious in the Navy. His naval service ended when he deserted to visit a woman, Polly, and he ended up in the slave trade.

Conditions on the ships that carried slaves from West Africa to the Caribbean and America were terrible - beyond terrible - as thousands of slaves were packed into holds and many died on the voyage. You may have seen the slave ships depicted in the movie Amistad or read Lawrence Hill's novel The Book of Negroes. In this environment John Newton was just as disobedient as ever, getting the reputation as one of the most foul-mouthed men in a job that seemed to involve constant swearing, and disagreeing with his shipmates so often that he was put in chains and sent ashore to work on an African plantation.

In 1748 Newton was on the ship Greyhound when it sailed into a violent storm in the Atlantic Ocean. A wave swept away a crew member standing where Newton had been moments before. Newton proposed that he and another sailor be tied to the pump so they could empty water from the ship before it capsized, telling the captain, “If this will not do, then the Lord have mercy on us!” He and the other seaman pumped for several hours, then Newton took the wheel and steered for eleven hours straight. That whole time, he pondered about what he had said – would God have mercy on him, when his job was transporting other human beings to slavery, when he had mocked other people for their faith in God, when he had denounced the Christian story as false, when he had the worst language and attitude of anyone in a profession known for bad language and attitude?

Two weeks later the battered ship and starving crew arrived in Ireland. Newton was still thinking. Whenever he had encountered something like that storm in the past, he had found faith in God, but sank back into his old ways later. But this time was different. He came to believe that in that storm experience God had sent him a message and begun to work through him. Now, his behaviour didn’t change much, and he stayed on the slave ships, although he cut way back on the swearing. He managed to persuade the parents of Polly, the woman he had visited when he deserted from the Navy, to allow him to write to her, despite his bad reputation. He and Polly eventually got married, and he left the sea and the slave trade. On shore, the Newtons became so immersed in their church community and John so passionate about learning Biblical languages and theology that their friends said that he should become a minister in the Church of England. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, was among those encouraging him. John Newton was initially turned down, because he was too friendly with the Methodists who were seen as too evangelical, but was finally ordained.

At that time, many ministers preached as if from a distance, and would never admit that they had personally known temptation or sin. Not John Newton, who preached from his own experiences. And in 1772 he wrote a poem called Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound, from his own perspective: “I once was lost, but now am found.” And the poem Amazing Grace was published, and set to music, and picked up and sung at great revival meetings in the United States, and included in hymnbooks during the American Civil War. Amazing Grace became probably the most popular hymn in the English-speaking world.

When John Newton started on slave ships, it was seen as a respectable way to make a living. But he went on to write about the horrible things he had seen, and to join forces with a man named William Wilberforce to change public opinion and end the slave trade in the British Empire. There was a recent movie about that, called Amazing Grace.

The Apostle Paul writes to the Roman church, all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. John Newton would agree wholeheartedly. He seemed to have hit rock bottom – whipped in the Navy, humiliated as a deserter, so badly behaved on a slave ship that he was starved, imprisoned, and forced to labour essentially as a slave himself, so caught up in swearing and scorning faith that he could have lost the woman he loved. Looking back, he saw himself as a wretch.

And, yet, Paul continues in the letter to the Romans, that while all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, they are all treated as righteous because of God’s grace because of a ransom that was paid by Jesus Christ. The words Paul uses come from the law courts - all are guilty, yet all are treated by God as innocent. All are justified. And Paul, and Jesus, use the language of slavery. Jesus says that anyone who sins is a slave to sin. But Jesus has redeemed us. All are delivered from slavery. All are free. Because of grace. Amazing grace.

In that storm at sea, when death was near, John Newton came to realize that God’s amazing grace was there for him too, no matter what he had done before. Romans says that, in grace, God passes over our previous sins. We do not need to live in terror of God because of what we have done wrong, and John Newton had done a lot wrong. But God is love, unfailing love. God is amazing grace. We know this because Jesus came to tell us, and Jesus died and rose again to show us. Jesus came not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.

Now, John Newton’s conversion wasn’t immediate. It took place over time, but he changed his life, and left us with his legacy of work against the slave trade, and this great hymn Amazing Grace. He wrote, “I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see.”

Amazing grace. Grace that, as John Newton says, relieves our fears, brings us safe through dangers, toils, and snares, grace that will lead us home. God’s grace for us, through Jesus Christ, grace for us no matter how undeserving we seem to be. So then, Paul asks the Roman believers, what happens to our bragging? Paul says, it’s thrown out. By what law? By that of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we consider that a person is treated as righteous, justified, by faith, apart from works.

This is the great theme of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformers. Those 95 theses Luther nailed to a church door were, among other things, protesting the idea that grace and salvation could be bought through our actions. The church at that time believed that salvation was obtained through charity and good works. Giving money for a building in Rome would, basically, buy your way into heaven.

Luther said, no, return to what Paul tells the Romans: we have all sinned, we have all fallen short of God’s glory, and yet we are all put into right relationship with God by faith, not by what we do. Grace is God’s free gift to us. Luther refers to these words from Romans as he sums up his ideas in his Smalcald Articles:

First, Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, died for our sins and was raised again to justify us. He alone is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, and God has laid on him the sins of us all.

And here Luther refers to the letter to the Romans: that all have sinned, but are justified freely, without their own works and merits, by God’s grace, through the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, in his blood.

This is necessary to believe. This cannot be acquired or grasped in any other way, by any work, law, or merit. So it is clear and certain that faith alone puts us right with God.

Sisters and brothers, the Apostle Paul and Martin Luther and John Newton are telling us, nothing we can do could ever win for us God’s grace and forgiveness. Only what God has done for us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ can bring us that grace. The way to a right relationship with God is not in our attempts to win God’s approval, for in God’s grace and love we already have that. Being put right with God comes in our humble acceptance of the amazing grace which God offers us in Jesus. How precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed. Thanks be to God.

Review: My First Handy Bible

Review:

My First Handy Bible: Timeless Bible Stories For Toddlers
Text by Cecilie Olsen, illustrations by Gustavo Mazali
Scandinavia Publishing House, Copenhagen, 2003

Scandinavia Publishing House, based in Denmark, began with a monthly paper in 1973 and is now producing illustrated children’s books, children’s Bibles, illustrated Bibles and inspirational and gift books. Its titles have been translated into 80 languages. The complete product line is now being made available in North America for the first time.

The promotional material for My First Handy Bible states that "young children delight in carrying around the compact and colorful Bible — taking it to church, 'playing' church or cuddling up in a lap to have it read to them." My First Handy Bible is touted as meeting the need babies and toddlers have for their very own Bible.

There are 61 thick board pages in a cushioned plastic cover, complete with a bright yellow plastic clasp and a suitcase-style handle so a child can carry their Bible. We were very impressed by the quality of this book when we opened the package containing our review copy.

The full colour illustrations by Gustavo Mazali are bright and contemporary in style - none of the 1920s-vintage pastel pictures or pen-and-ink drawings on text-heavy pages of the children's Bibles of my youth. The stories, told in short, simple sentences, begin with Creation and proceed through the great narratives of the Old Testament - Noah, Joseph, Moses and the Exodus, Samson, Ruth, David, Esther, Jonah - to the story of Jesus, his birth, ministry, the events of Holy Week ("King Jesus," "the last meal," "Jesus is killed," "Jesus lives") and "happiness in heaven," author Cecilie Olsen's summary of Revelation.

My First Handy Bible is a beautifully done Bible for young children, ages one to three. It will appeal to parents, grandparents, nursery teachers and ministry leaders, and especially to the toddlers who will carry it by its handle and learn the stories of God's love as they are read.

Rock Solid Faith Study Bible For Teens

Review:
Rock Solid Faith Study Bible For Teens: Build and Defend Your Faith Based on God's Promises
New International Version
Zondervan, Grand Rapids MI, 2012

This is a NIV Bible in a handsome hardcover printed with a rock wall design, which is repeated on the presentation page. This edition is billed as helping teenage readers, ages 13-16, to "face their questions head on and build a steadfast foundation for their faith. With the Rock Solid Bible, teens discover constant and concrete truths rooted in the unchanging love, guidance, and promises of God."

The Rock Solid Faith edition contains the complete NIV text of the Old and New Testaments, as well as additional features:
Truths that examine Christian beliefs and explorations of other religions;
Principles that apply the Bible to relationships, sex, money, and more;
Promises that call out what is (and is not) promised in the Scriptures;
Plans that explore God’s plan for daily life;
People that provide scriptural examples of overcoming challenges; and
Unshaken God that points out God’s amazing and unyielding attributes.

There are also reading plans, eight pages of full-color maps, Bible book introductions, and other features to help teens grapple with big questions about the world, their futures, and their faith.

Zondervan is publishing the Rock Solid Faith Study Bible in hardcover and Italian leather covers, as well as an eBook version.

This study Bible provides ample footnotes on translations of Hebrew and Greek words, although I may disagree about some of the choices made by the translators. I found the additional features in this edition quite helpful for teens and for providing food for thought, and answers, to their questions.

But this Bible will not be helpful for teens who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered. Coming from my mainstream Canadian denomination, I ran head-on into the "Rock Solid Truth" that comments on Leviticus 18:1-30 and states that "Homosexuality is a sin - and so are lots of other things." This Truth goes on to say that "the conviction that homosexuality is wrong isn't just based on Old Testament passages - like Leviticus 18:22. The Bible consistently speaks against homosexual behavior, including in New Testament passages like Romans 1:26-32 and 1 Corinthians 6:9-11." This edition does not acknowledge the debate over whether the words translated as "men who have sex with men" (1 Corinthians 6:9) apply to the modern understanding of sexual orientation.

This "Truth" commentary does note that the Bible never depicts homosexuality as the worst possible sin, but lists it alongside such sins as envy, gossip, lying, and disobeying parents - and asks teens "Think: Why do you think homosexuality is a sin - or not?" (although it has already answered that question pretty definitively).

In our mainstream context, the Rock Solid Faith Study Bible will be a good resource for teens who realize that not all followers of Jesus interpret its "Truths" the same way.

A Dry Season: Sermon, September 9, 2012

Elijah from Tishbe, who was one of the settlers in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As surely as the LORD lives, Israel’s God, the one I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain these years unless I say so.”

Then the LORD ’s word came to Elijah: Go from here and turn east. Hide by the Cherith Brook that faces the Jordan River. You can drink from the brook. I have also ordered the ravens to provide for you there. Elijah went and did just what the LORD said. He stayed by the Cherith Brook that faced the Jordan River. The ravens brought bread and meat in the mornings and evenings. He drank from the Cherith Brook. After a while the brook dried up because there was no rain in the land.

The LORD ’s word came to Elijah: Get up and go to Zarephath near Sidon and stay there. I have ordered a widow there to take care of you. Elijah left and went to Zarephath. As he came to the town gate, he saw a widow collecting sticks. He called out to her, “Please get a little water for me in this cup so I can drink.” She went to get some water. He then said to her, “Please get me a piece of bread.”

“As surely as the LORD your God lives,” she replied, “I don’t have any food; only a handful of flour in a jar and a bit of oil in a bottle. Look at me. I’m collecting two sticks so that I can make some food for myself and my son. We’ll eat the last of the food and then die.”

Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid! Go and do what you said. Only make a little loaf of bread for me first. Then bring it to me. You can make something for yourself and your son after that. This is what Israel’s God, the LORD, says: The jar of flour won’t decrease and the bottle of oil won’t run out until the day the LORD sends rain on the earth.” The widow went and did what Elijah said. So the widow, Elijah, and the widow’s household ate for many days. The jar of flour didn’t decrease nor did the bottle of oil run out, just as the LORD spoke through Elijah.

“Now I know that you really are a man of God,” the woman said to Elijah, “and that the LORD ’s word is truly in your mouth.”
1 Kings 17:1-16, 24, Common English Bible

The LORD ’s word to Jeremiah concerning the droughts:
Judah mourns;
her gates wither away.
The people fall to the ground in sorrow,
as sobs of Jerusalem ascend.
The rich send their servants for water,
but the wells run dry.
They return with empty jars,
ashamed, bewildered, and in despair.
Because the ground is cracked due to lack of rain,
the farmers too are ashamed;
they cover their heads.
Even the doe in the field
abandons her newborn,
for there’s no grass.
The wild donkeys stand on the well-traveled paths,
panting like thirsty dogs;
they go blind
since there’s nothing to eat.
Jeremiah 14:1-6, Common English Bible

Today it seems that summer is over. I know that the season of summer doesn’t officially end until later in September, but for many of us the Stormont County Fair, and Labour Day weekend, and our cooking contest here at Trinity United mark the end of summer and the beginning of fall. And this summer was, as everyone knows, a dry one. It was a summer of drought. I think it rained all of an hour or hour and a half during the entire month of July. It’s obvious to anyone driving through the county looking at the state of the corn crop that this was a drought year.

Someone once commented that they had never heard a farmer say, “We got the perfect amount of rain this year.” Farming is a tough occupation, and the weather never cooperates fully. There have been droughts before. But 2012 looks to be an historic drought year, and, as bad as it was here in Eastern Ontario, we didn’t get the worst of it.

July was the all-time warmest month on record in the United States, and precipitation that month in the American corn-growing states was 60 percent less than normal. There’s a debate about whether or not this is due to climate change, but what is certain is that American corn yields are the lowest in 17 years. They’re down as much as a quarter. Farmers in the affected parts of the US and Canada growing corn and other crops have seen their profits wiped out, and are trying to get by on crop insurance payments or savings. Farmers in livestock and dairy are having to sell off part of their herds as feed prices increase. So while farmers’ incomes plunge, the prices of crops, particularly corn, are going up, and these price increases will get passed on to industries that rely on corn, everything from breakfast cereal to ethanol to meat of all kinds, and then on to us who buy food and gasoline. So this drought is going to affect all of us, no matter where we live or what we do. And some researchers predict that this may be the start of a long period of below normal rainfall and high temperatures that could last twenty or thirty years, not even including any impact from global warming.

The Bible does mention drought, because the Bible was written in a dry land for a people who farmed, in an age with no crop insurance or marketing boards or importing food over long distances. In Bible times a drought meant hunger, as it did for the widow and her son Elijah met in our story this morning, and as it still does in much of the world. I just finished reading a book called The Last Hunger Season, about small farmers in Kenya. They experience hunger every year as the corn stored from the previous crop runs out and they wait to harvest the new crop. A crop failure means not just hunger, but starvation. Organizations like those partnering with our Mission and Service Fund and the Canadian Foodgrains Bank are working to end these hunger seasons with access to better seeds and farming techniques and crop storage.

So in our drought this year we can relate to the words we heard from the prophet Jeremiah, about dry wells, and the ground cracked due to lack of rain, and the people bewildered and in despair. And maybe there’s more than one kind of drought. As we lament what the withered crops have done and will do to incomes and prices in our part of the world, we have also been lamenting the state of our church, lamenting declining membership, and reduced givings, and the cost of maintaining buildings, and the decline in church influence in our country. We have been lamenting the state of our society, the behaviours and attitudes that are so foreign to the way Jesus taught us to live, the embrace of greed and vanity, violence that invades movie theatres and political rallies. The people around us, perhaps we ourselves, are lamenting how they feel dried up inside, how they are searching for something to believe, something to give them hope, something to satisfy the thirst they have for answers. Sisters and brothers, we’re not just in a summer of physical drought. We’re living in a time of spiritual drought. One blogger, Tamara Hill Murphy, calls us drought Christians.

And how do we live as drought Christians, in a time of spiritual drought? We can be present to each other whenever we feel parched and thirsty; present to our neighbours who are ashamed and bewildered and in despair and craving hope like the people Jeremiah describes in the drought; present to our society needing healing. We can be like the people Jeremiah talks about a few chapters later in his book, when he says,

Happy are those who trust in the Lord, who rely in the Lord. They will be like trees planted by the streams, whose roots reach down to the water. They won’t fear drought when it comes; their leaves will remain green. They won’t be stressed in the time of drought or fail to bear fruit.
Jeremiah 17:7-8

We can be those trees who remain green, even as spiritual drought turns everyone and everything around us brown.

I said that the Bible deals with physical drought. And with spiritual drought too. There is a story in John's Gospel, of how Jesus meets a foreign woman at a well, and talks with her as he asks her for a drink of water. And he tells her, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks from the water that I will give will never be thirsty again. The water that I give will become in those who drink it a spring that bubbles up into eternal life.”

In this time of drought we are called to follow Jesus, who gives us his living water. We are called to be his presence, being with all who suffer, reassuring and comforting all who are worried – including ourselves in this time of drought for the church – praying, working for justice for the hungry and thirsty, pointing to the living water that Jesus gives to provide relief and peace for all who are afraid, all who feel dried up, all who thirst both physically and spiritually.

This fall we need to return to Jesus, as if for the first time, and rediscover him, how to be with him, how to be like him, and how to be drought Christians. This fall I hope will be all about Jesus: who came as one of us to be with us in times of drought and plenty; who died for us and rose again for us; who gives us the living water that bubbles up into eternal life; and who will come again to bring a new heaven and a new earth free of drought, and famine, and all brokenness. Come, Lord Jesus. Amen.

Open Space

I haven't blogged about my experiences as a Commissioner to the 41st General Council of The United Church of Canada, held at Carleton University in Ottawa on August 11 to 18. The week was dominated by receiving reports and debating and voting on proposals, as has happened at all 40 previous General Councils and at the Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregationalist assemblies that preceded them.

However, Thursday was novel - the day was given over to Open Space, facilitated by leaders who had previously been the facilitators for a similar exercise at our denomination's Maritime Conference. Open Space comes from the same roots as the Unconference which I've attended at Stony Point NY. Unco has become sufficiently well-attended to spawn a Western offshoot in San Francisco. Perhaps this is the new way of collaborating on new ideas for the church.

Basically, Open Space or Unco are crowd-sourced conferences, with attendees setting the agenda and providing discussion leadership. At the 41st General Council - known as GC41 - Thursday August 16 began with the facilitators explaining how Open Source would work in a one-day setting with 300 elected Commissioners, plus Youth Forum delegates. This was a larger group than Unco has been. Then all ideas were welcome - any Commissioner or Youth Forum delegate with a discussion group idea came up, wrote their idea on a sheet of paper, spoke into a microphone stating their idea, then proceeded to a wall where the pages were posted in time blocks. There were three blocks of an hour and a half each, one morning and two afternoon. Each sheet was then given a number, which matched that on a pole topped with a colourful windmill so people wishing to attend would be able to find each group in the large meeting space.

I jumped up and proposed a discussion on The Challenges of Sustainable and Vibrant Rural Ministry, wrote it on a page and posted it in the first afternoon time slot, where it received the number 13. When the time came I found where pole number 13 was placed on the floor and arranged some chairs in a circle. These were promptly filled by Commissioners anxious to talk about the issues of rural ministry, and I threw out some opening questions and let the discussion take off from there. I asked one of the attendees to take attendance and notes on ideas that came out of the discussion, and at the end of the time slot went to a bank of laptops and typed in the report for Group 13. These reports were later collated and read by church leaders.

It seems that Open Space/Unconference formats are ideal for letting ideas come forth that may otherwise be held back by our proposal format with three courts of the church - congregation, Presbytery, and Conference - passing on formal motions to General Council. The topics covered included several that were only mentioned in passing or not covered at all in other General Council business, such as rural ministry, clergy pay, outreach ministries, suburban church growth, and LGBTQ experiences in ministry. Perhaps our processes will evolve so that a future General Council receives most of its input from crowd-sourced discussions and formal reports and motions occupy the minority of Commissioners' time.

More on Mormonizing

Further to yesterday's post reviewing The Mormonizing of America, here are two articles of interest.

"Mormonism Obsessed With Christ," by Stephen H. Webb was published in First Things in February. Webb emphasizes the Christocentric nature of Mormon devotion while acknowledging that such faith is often at odds with orthodox Christian interpretations, such that "the Mormon metaphysic calls for the revision of nearly every Christian belief."

"Why I Fell in Love With Joseph Smith But Couldn't Commit to Mormonism" was written by Jane Barnes and published on The Huffington Post on September 5. She comes to a similar conclusion to Stephen Mansfield in the book I reviewed in yesterday's post: "Today's Mormon Church is not the church of Joseph Smith. Joseph's church was a wild and woolly institution, constantly adapting to new situations and to the prophet's revelatory twists and turns. That's far from the case now." The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints managed to thrive and grow despite hardships and persecution, but inevitably it became conservative and grew away from its founder.

The Mormonizing of America?

Review:
The Mormonizing of America: How the Mormon Religion Became a Dominant Force in Politics, Entertainment, and Pop Culture
By Stephen Mansfield
Worthy Publishing, Brentwood TN, 2012
265 pages

I read this book while watching the Republican National Convention broadcast from Tampa, including the speech by Governor Mitt Romney accepting the GOP nomination for President. There had been much talk online about Romney's Mormon faith and whether or not he would downplay his religion in his speech.

Romney is one of the prominent Mormons mentioned in this book, along with business author the late Stephen Covey, entertainers Donny and Marie Osmond, former ambassador John Huntsman (who had contended with Romney for the Republican nomination), right-wing activist Glenn Beck, and others. Stephen Mansfield, who has written two books on the faith of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, sets out to look at the "Mormon Moment" as seven million Latter-Day Saints, two percent of the US population, seem to have a disproportionate influence in politics, business and entertainment.

Mansfield does this partially through a series of vignettes with Mormon characters - a student athlete, a boy preparing for priesthood and his grandfather, a couple wanting to add to their already large family - often interacting with "gentiles." I found these to a bit stilted, with dialogue that did not ring true, but they did make their points about Latter-Day Saints (LDS) beliefs and actions.

He argues that the success of Mormons in the US and the present "Mormon Moment" are the result of the Mormon religion creating "what can benevolently be called a Mormon Machine - a system of individual empowerment, family investment, local church (ward and stake level) leadership, priesthood government, prophetic enduement, Temple sacraments, and sacrificial financial endowment of the Mormon cause." In fact, Manfield claims, "plant Mormonism in any country on earth, and pretty much the same results will occur." Canadian Mormons do not yet have their "moment," but they make up only half a percent of our country's population, much less than in the US.

Mansfield makes the case that Mormon values and behaviours are also the hallmarks of successful people, and further that these values and behaviours grow naturally from Mormon doctrine. He then sets out an overview of the genesis and growth of the faith of the Latter-Day Saints. The history of the Mormons is laid out from the visions of the Prophet Joseph Smith, his translation of the Book of Mormon, persecution by mobs and governments, and the eventual trek west to Utah. Mansfield does not hesitate to depict Smith, and other early Mormon leaders, harshly when he feels it is warranted. At the end of the book he articulates a view, which he does not say if he believes personally, that Smith "completely imagined the religion he said he received by revelation" and that Smith can be understood as "a manipulative deceiver." Despite this, these "invented religious doctrines...have nevertheless fashioned a capable, ambitious people over time."

The historical and doctrine sections of the book are the most useful for me. The core Mormon beliefs are set out, and contrasted with those held by orthodox Christianity: that God the Heavenly Father has a physical body, and is married to the Heavenly Mother; that families exist prior to the earthly existence; that after his resurrection Christ appeared to Hebrews who had settled in North America; that the churches which were formed after Christ's life were corrupt; that the priesthood authority given to Mormon men is the power of the Holy Spirit to bless, heal, and have revelations; that the Book of Mormon is considered Scriptural on a level with Smith's own reworking of the Bible. Mansfield states that, given the depth of the doctrinal divide between Latter-Day Saints and orthodox Christian churches as well as Mormons' fervent devotion to Jesus, it may be time to move beyond debates over whether or not Mormons are Christians and classify the LDS Church as the fourth Abrahamic religion alongside Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Interestingly, the first version of this book was subtitled "How a Fringe Cult Emerged as a Dominant Force in American Politics, Entertainment, and Pop Culture." Presumably, there was an adverse reaction to "fringe cult" and the publisher changed it to "How the Mormon Religion Emerged." But Mansfield, who is not a Mormon, is sympathetic to the hard-working, faithful ordinary Mormons, despite the shadows of their religion's past of manipulation, polygamy, and racism. Mormons have both the advantage and disadvantage of belonging to a young faith tradition; the first Christian churches are 2,000 years in the past, while the Book of Mormon was published in 1830.

The political and cultural references in this book may become dated soon - if Governor Romney does not win the Presidency in November, his prominence as a Mormon may soon be forgotten. But Mansfield's analysis of the ascension of Mormons in US society, while not deep, will stand as an introduction to the LDS Church and its members in America. It will certainly be of interest to anyone who wonders about the beliefs and practices of their Mormon neighbours, or what is in the mind of Governor Romney as he seeks to be President of the country in which the Latter-Day Saints originated.

Comment vivre dans un pays étrange de l'exil

Le mercredi août 15, le jour nationale des Acadiens, j'ai préparé une réflexion pour le culte d'ouverture de ce jour au 41e Conseil général de l'Église Unie du Canada. Les plans ont changés. Voici donc la réflexion que je n'ai pas donné.

Vous, les chefs et le peuple, vous ne valez pas mieux que les chefs corrompus et la population de Sodom et Gomorrhe. Écoutez donc la parole du Seigneur, ouvrez vos oreilles à l'enseignement de notre Dieu!

Le Seigneur dit: À quoi me servent vos nombreux sacrifices? Vous brûlez entièrement des moutons pour moi, vous m'offrez la graisse des veaux. J'en ai assez de tout cela. Le sang des taureaux, des agneaux et des boucs, je n'en veux plus. Quand vous venez vous présenter devant moi, vous occupez inutilement des cours de mon temple. Est-ce que je vous ai demandé cela? Arrêtez de m'apporter des offrandes qui ne servent à rien! La fumée, je l'ai en horreur. Vous fêtez la nouvelle lune et le sabbat, vous organisez de grands rassemblements, et en même temps, vous commettez le mal. Je ne peux pas supporter cela.

Je déteste vos fêtes de nouvelle lune et vos cérémonies. Elles sont un poids pour moi, et je suis fatigué de les supporter. Quand vous étendez les mains pour prier, je détourne mon regard. Même si vous faites beaucoup de prières, je n'écoute pas. Vos mains sont couvertes de sang.

Lavez-vous, rendez-vous purs. Éloignez de mes yeux vos actions mauvaises, arrêtez de faire le mal. Apprenez à faire le bien. Cherchez à respecter le droit. Ramenez dans le bon chemin celui qui écrase les autres par l'injustice. Défendez les droits des orphelins, prenez en main la cause des veuves.

Le Seigneur dit: Venez, nous allons discuter. Même si vos péchés ont la couleur du sang, ils prendront la couleur du lait. S'ils ont rouges comme le feu, ils deviendront aussi blancs que la neige. Si vous acceptez d'obéir, vous pourrez manger les bonnes choses du pays.

Mais si vous refusez, si vous continuez à vous révolter contre moi, l'épée vous dévorera.

Voilà ce que le Seigneur affirme.
Ésaïe 1:10-20 (Bible Parole de Vie)

L’exil. Les Acadiens connaissaient l'exil de tout ce qu'ils aimaient - leurs fermes, leurs arbres, leurs eaux. Le peuple d'Israël savait l'exil. Et nous, peuple de Dieu, nous le connaissons aussi. Nous connaissons l'exil, à partir des anciennes façons de faire les choses, depuis les jours anciens où l'église était puissant et les églises étaient pleines et il n'y avait pas de pénurie d'argent.

Et maintenant nous sommes en exil à partir de ces jours. Nous nous asseyons par nos fleuves de Babylone. Nous sommes dans notre Louisiane. Et nous sommes nostalgiques. Nous voulons revenir aux vieux jours. Et si nous avions seulement la musique et le pasteur et le culte d'aujourd'hui, puis les vieux jours pourraient revenir.

Mais il y a plus d'un type d'exil. C’est vrai, nous sommes en exil de vieilles manières d'être de l'église. Mais, le prophète Isaïe nous dit, et Jésus nous dit, nous pouvons aussi être en exil de bonnes façons d'être l'église. Si vous êtes contraire à l'éthique, si vous êtes injuste, vos offrandes et votre culte sont en vain. Le prophète a dit, et Jésus l'a cite, la parole de Dieu: Ce peuple m'honore des lèvres, mais son coeur est bien éloigné de moi. C’est en vain qu’ils me rendent un culte, enseignant des précepts qui ne sont que des commandements des humains. Vous savez que nous pouvons être en amour avec amour de Dieu, plutôt que d'aimer Dieu. Nous pouvons faire notre culte et nos structures en idoles.

Nous luttons avec l'exil et la perte. Mais, dans notre exil, nos exils, Dieu fait quelque chose de nouveau. Et Dieu nous dit quoi faire - la façon d'être le peuple de Dieu dans un pays étranger - un appel renouvelé à la mission.

Dieu dit, votre culte n'est pas seulement à l'église. Dieu dit, cessez de m’apporter des offrandes; elles sont inutiles si elles ne sont pas accompagnés par l'action éthique. Cessez vos celebrations; elles sont inutiles si elles ne sont pas accompagnés par l'action éthique. Cessez de mal faire.

Apprenez à bien faire, préoccupez-vous du droit des gens, tirez d’affaire l’opprimé, rendez justice à l’orphelin, défendez la cause de la veuve. Pratiquez l'hospitalité à l'étranger. L'étranger aujourd'hui est peut être le réfugié, l'immigrant, ou la personne qui n'a jamais été à l'église, la personne qui ne connaît pas Dieu ou Jésus.

La lettre de Jacques dit la même chose: Mettez en pratique la parole, et ne vous bornez pas à l’écouter.

Oui, vous êtes sauvés par la foi seule. Mais à son tour votre foi se manifestera dans tout ce que vous faites, dans le domaine social et politique que dans celui des relations personnelles.

Et, je vous dis ce que Dieu vous dit: ne vous découragez pas! N'ayez pas peur! Vous êtes des enfants de Dieu, par Jésus Christ et remplis de l'Esprit Saint. Dieu est avec vous toujours. Vous pouvez avoir confiance dans les promesses de Dieu: Si vos péchés ont la teinte du sang, ils deviendront blancs comme la neige.

Voici la parole de Dieu. Voici comment vivre dans ce pays étrange de l'exil.

The Last Hunger Season

Review:
The Last Hunger Season: A Year in an African Farm Community on the Brink of Change
By Roger Thurow
PUBLICAFFAIRS, New York, 2012
304 pages

In western Kenya, the Luhya people often name their children for the time of year in which they were born: Boys, for instance, may have as one of their names Wafula (rain), Wanyonyi (weeding), Wekesa (harvest), or the most common, Wanjala (hunger). The hunger season lasts from the time the food from the previous harvest runs out to the time when the new harvest begins. As the harvest in this part of Kenya is in August and September, May and June are the high point of the Wanjala, the hunger season.

Here in our part of rural eastern Canada, this summer's dry conditions are putting our corn and soybean crops in jeopardy, but while farm families will suffer financially they are unlikely to starve. However, a crop failure in Kenya, and in many other places, will cause widespread starvation, and in fact that was occurring elsewhere in Kenya during the time frame covered by this book.

I was fortunate to receive a review copy of The Last Hunger Season by Roger Thurow, senior fellow for Global Agriculture and Food Policy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a former reporter for the Wall Street Journal. He tells the story of four smallholder farmers in western Kenya - Leonida, Francis, Zipporah and Rosoa - and their experiences with the One Acre Fund, founded by American social entrepreneur Andrew Youn after he saw the effects of the hunger season in Kenya.

In Africa the yields of corn, wheat, rice and beans lag as much as 90 percent behind those of farmers elsewhere. The smallholder farmers of western Kenya work in what is essentially a time warp, farming without machinery in the same way as 50 years ago, prior to Kenyan independence, or 80 years ago - just with cell phones as one of their tools. One Acre is one attempt to increase yields for Africa's smallholder farmers by providing groups of such farmers with hybrid seeds and fertilizer on time for planting, and following up with advice on planting, tending, and harvesting, on a credit of about 4,500 Kenyan shillings (US $50) per half-acre of corn. I know that the Canadian Foodgrains Bank - in which our United Church of Canada, and local congregations and farmers here in eastern Ontario, are participants - has been involved with a partner organization in Zimbabwe in a program that sounds similar.

Thurow's book reads like a thriller as he follows these four farmers through the year, receiving their seeds and fertilizer from One Acre, struggling to keep families fed and pay school and medical bills and the One Acre debt, and dealing with weevils and mould ruining the stored corn and catastrophes like drought and then heavy rain washing away a food storage hut. Will the rains come in time to save the corn crop? Can the money be found to keep a child in school so that he can take the all-important exams for further study? How to juggle sales of stored corn, cattle, and milk to pay the bills? Will One Acre manage to get a hybrid bean seed approved by the layers of bureaucracy so the farmers can plant it this year? Will families survive the hunger season, getting by on just a cup of tea a day while tending their crops and keeping hungry children in school? Will enough corn be grown on the One Acre plots to keep families fed throughout the year and make this the last hunger season? Meanwhile, decisions are being made far away that will affect the livelihoods of these farmers, as the US Congress debates cutting the Obama Administration's Feed the Future initiative that funds global programs focused on smallholder farmers and in turn assists One Acre and other organizations.

The reader gets a feel for life on these small farms and the impact initiatives like One Acre can have on global food security and the lives of farm families. It is also apparent how important a role faith plays for these farmers: the One Acre groups meet in the churches that are found throughout rural Kenya (Baptist and Assemblies of God congregations are mentioned), farm houses are decorated with Biblical sayings, and as they work the farmers and their children quote the Bible. For example, Leonida's son Gideon repeats Philippians 4:4 as he works on the house: "Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice."

The world needs to double food production by 2050 to keep up with a growing and more prosperous global population. Improved food storage, higher crop yields, and more efficient markets for smallholder farmers in Africa are crucial if this goal is to be met. The Last Hunger Season provides a great insight into the farmers and organizations that are vital to the future of agriculture in Africa and the world.

Liturgical Colours, Liturgical Dancing: Sermon, July 15, 2012

Once again David assembled the select warriors of Israel, thirty thousand strong. David and all the troops who were with him set out for Baalah, which is Kiriath-jearim of Judah, to bring God’s chest up from there—the chest that is called by the namen of the LORD of heavenly forces, who sits enthroned on the winged creatures. They loaded God’s chest on a new cart and carried it from Abinadab’s house, which was on the hill. Uzzah and Ahio, Abinadab’s sons, were driving the new cart. Uzzah was beside God’s chest while Ahio was walking in front of it. Meanwhile, David and the entire house of Israel celebrated in the LORD ’s presence with all their strength, with songs, zithers, harps, tambourines, rattles, and cymbals.

So David went and brought God’s chest up from Obed-edom’s house to David’s City with celebration. Whenever those bearing the chest advanced six steps, David sacrificed an ox and a fatling calf. David, dressed in a linen priestly vest, danced with all his strength before the LORD. This is how David and the entire house of Israel brought up the LORD ’s chest with shouts and trumpet blasts.

As the LORD ’s chest entered David’s City, Saul’s daughter Michal was watching from a window. She saw King David jumping and dancing before the LORD, and she lost all respect for him.

The LORD ’s chest was brought in and put in its place inside the tent that David had pitched for it. Then David offered entirely burned offerings in the LORD ’s presence in addition to well-being sacrifices. When David finished offering the entirely burned offerings and the well-being sacrifices, he blessed the people in the name of the LORD of heavenly forces. He distributed food among all the people of Israel — to the whole crowd, male and female—each receiving a loaf of bread, a date cake, and a raisin cake. Then all the people went back to their homes.
2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19, from the Common English Bible

Bless the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! He has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing that comes from heaven. God chose us in Christ to be holy and blameless in God’s presence before the creation of the world. God destined us to be his adopted children through Jesus Christ because of his love. This was according to his goodwill and plan and to honor his glorious grace that he has given to us freely through the Son whom he loves. We have been ransomed through his Son’s blood, and we have forgiveness for our failures based on his overflowing grace, which he poured over us with wisdom and understanding. God revealed his hidden design to us, which is according to his goodwill and the plan that he intended to accomplish through his Son. This is what God planned for the climax of all times:c to bring all things together in Christ, the things in heaven along with the things on earth. We have also received an inheritance in Christ. We were destined by the plan of God, who accomplishes everything according to his design. We are called to be an honor to God’s glory because we were the first to hope in Christ. You too heard the word of truth in Christ, which is the good news of your salvation. You were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit because you believed in Christ. The Holy Spirit is the down payment on our inheritance, which is applied toward our redemption as God’s own people, resulting in the honor of God’s glory.
Ephesians 1:3-14, from the Common English Bible

In the story we have been following for the last several weeks, the shepherd boy David who defeated Goliath is now king of Israel, and he brings the ark - not Noah’s ark but the ark in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the chest containing the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments - to his city of Jerusalem. And there is worship, with a procession and animal sacrifices and a blessing and music. The Bible says that David and all of Israel celebrated in God’s presence with songs, zithers, harps, tambourines, rattles, and cymbals. We may be able to find a tambourine and a rattle, and maybe a cymbal, downstairs but I don’t think we have any zithers or harps around. Since David’s time we have invented the piano and the organ.

And David dances with all his strength before God. His wife Michal watches him, and she doesn’t approve of him worshipping through this jumping and dancing. Things haven’t changed a lot over the 3000 years since then. If we had dance as part of worship today, as some churches do, some of us would probably think it added a lot to the service, and some of us would be like Michal and think that it didn’t belong.

That’s been the case with anything new in worship. And worship has evolved a lot since David’s time, and since Christians began meeting together. Christians started out worshipping in houses and eventually moved to church buildings, and that was probably controversial. Service times have changed. Our morning worship time in North America was originally to accommodate milking. Evening services have largely disappeared. Eastern Orthodox Christian services are two to three hours long, but ours are about an hour, a length that was entrenched when radio programs lasted an hour. Sermons used to be much longer – Puritan ministers in the 17th century preached about 50 minutes, which is still the case in the West Indies and Africa but not here. And folks here are probably thankful. Protestant ministers tended to wear black robes called Geneva gowns, or in some denominations no specific clerical dress at all, until the 1960s. That’s changed. And music – the zithers, harps, tambourines, rattles and cymbals of the Bible were replaced by just the human voice for most Protestants, who sang just the Psalms alone and unaccompanied. When the pipe organ was introduced into churches many people saw it as the Devil’s instrument, and disapproved as thoroughly as Michal disapproved of David’s dancing.

One thing that hasn’t changed so much in our tradition is that our worship is liturgical. Liturgy comes from a Greek word meaning an act of public service; in the time of Jesus and the early church, your liturgical act might be working on building one of the Roman roads. The early Christians applied the word to worship, as an act of service to God rather than the empire, and eventually liturgy came to mean the rituals of worship. A ritual is a structured human activity with patterns and repetitions that enact the stories of the community. And that’s what liturgy is – in worship our liturgy provides structure through repeated actions that convey the story of God’s relationship with humanity in Jesus Christ.

Within our Christian faith we can live our faith in several ways, in private devotion, in acts of service to our neighbours in our community, in working for justice here and around the world, and through participation in the rituals of our church community. Through the rituals of Sunday worship and weddings and funerals and special services, we learn the Christian story and the meanings attached by the church to events. Liturgy is a way for us to enter the presence of the holy. Liturgy gives a recognizable order to worship so that we can enter into this experience.

So as the ark is brought to Jerusalem, there is liturgy in music, which the Israelites must know in order to sing and play along, and blessing. The Psalms in the Bible were originally written for the liturgy of the Jewish Temple, and they are still used in our liturgy today, as we just said Psalm 24 together. We know that the early church had liturgy, as we have these prayers and hymns in the Bible from the first Christians, and we said one of them together as our call to worship, written probably about 20 years after Jesus.

So in our United Church, and in other mainline Protestant denominations and the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches, we come from a liturgical tradition. There are churches which are non-liturgical, although even their worship services are not complete free for alls lacking any structure.

There are lots of folks who see liturgy in the same way as Michal saw David’s dancing. They wonder what any of this structure has to do with modern life, and particularly how liturgy with its formality and references to ancient stories and repetition of very old prayers can possibly appeal to young people today. But surveys show that whether or not a church’s worship is liturgical or non liturgical isn’t actually a big concern to younger folks. And it may not be true that younger generations lack appreciation for formal signs and symbols and rituals. If you think about it, two of the primary experiences for young people are education and sports. There is ritual in education, particularly in graduation ceremonies. Sports are full of ritual and traditions. The Olympic games will begin later this month, and we will see an opening ceremony, and an Olympic flag raising and Olympic anthem and Olympic oath, and rituals and ceremonies during the games. All of this means that our liturgy need not be excessively formal and wordy, but it need not be overly casual either.

We have a liturgical tradition, but it hasn’t remained stationary. All the changes I mentioned in service time and length and sermon length and music met with as much disapproval from some worshippers as David worshipping God by dancing in front of the ark. One big change was during the Protestant Reformation when worship in Latin was replaced by worship in the language of the people. The version of the Bible read in worship and the hymn books we use have changed, during our lifetimes. Since the United Church was formed we have had the 1930 Hymnal, the Songs of the Gospel supplement, the 1971 red hymn book, the green Songs For a Gospel People supplement, Voices United, and the More Voices supplement. And all of these have been criticized as much as Michal dissed David.

One way that our liturgical tradition has been changing came in the 1970s. There was a liturgical movement after the Roman Catholic Church had made its shift away from worshipping in Latin, and the main Protestant denominations and the Catholic Church began looking at bringing our different liturgical ways back to their roots in the early church. This was all part of a push for ecumenism, unity among the various strands of Christianity. It produced the red hymn book, a joint production of the Anglican and United churches that were looking to merge at that time. It gave us our lectionary, the common cycle of readings that major Protestant and Catholic churches share each Sunday. If you look at the 1969 Service Book of the United Church of Canada, there’s a lectionary in there, but it’s unique to the United Church and used by no one else. And if you read through that lectionary, you see that seasons we now mark in the church, like Advent, Epiphany, and Lent, aren’t mentioned at all. Many of us can probably remember that.

I want to talk about this a little today. Part of liturgy as the rituals of worship is teaching the symbols of our faith and the meanings the church attaches to what is happening. At one time we learned this through Sunday school and liturgy just provided a refresher course throughout our adult lives. But it’s no longer true that people are exposed to church rituals from childhood onwards. When I lead wedding or funeral services there are often – no, there are always – people who have no idea what to do or what the rituals involve or what they mean. So starting in September we are going to look more closely at one part of the liturgy during each worship service and refresh ourselves or learn together about it, so it is our shared ritual.

And today I want to look briefly at how, as part of this liturgical movement, Protestant and Catholic churches began sharing a common liturgical calendar with the major seasons. The church calendar that these major churches now share begins in Advent, at the end of November or beginning of December, with the stories of the future return of Christ and of the events leading up to his first coming in his birth at Christmas. And Christmas is the next season, lasting just 12 days. Epiphany means to make known, and this season is about how Christ is made known, beginning with the visit of the wise men. Lent is the season of repentance and searching ourselves to get ready for Holy Week. In that week, starting on Palm Sunday, we relive the story of the last week of Christ’s life and his death on Good Friday. Easter is the joyous celebration of Christ’s resurrection, and lasts long after Easter Sunday, for another 50 days until Ascension and the birthday of the church in the story of the Holy Spirit coming upon the followers of Jesus at Pentecost. And the season after Pentecost is the longest, going until Advent comes up again.

Again, if you look in the 1969 service book there is a season of Creation, and there’s an effort to bring this back into the church calendar in September as a season looking at God’s act of creating the world. The season after Pentecost ends on Reign of Christ Sunday, which is November 25 this year.

This cycle of the seasons reminds us that the church’s time, God’s time, is not the world’s time, and it enables us to retell the story of God as Creator, Jesus Christ, and Holy Spirit each year. And each season has a colour. As I said, at one time all United Church ministers wore black gowns and tabs like lawyers. The clerical shirts I wear with the collars were originally designed to be more casual versions of that dress. In the 1960s ministers began wearing different vestments, and some no vestments at all, and with the liturgical movement liturgical colours came in for the vestments ministers wear and the furnishings in the sanctuary.

Roman Catholics and the major Protestant churches share a similar colour scheme. These colours are symbols, helping to remind us of the tone being set in a particular season. Advent and Lent are blue or purple, colours of preparation and repentance. Christmas, Epiphany Sunday, and Trinity Sunday are white, representing joy and happiness. Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Reformation Sunday, and All Saints are red, the colour of blood and martyrdom. Pentecost Sunday and church anniversaries are red too, for the fire of the Holy Spirit. What is called ordinary time, the season of Epiphany after Epiphany Sunday and the season after Pentecost, is green, standing for nature and representing the whole world.

None of this is carved in stone or made into law, so there are churches that use gold on Christmas Day and no one gets arrested. A symbol has to be meaningful to the people interpreting it, so white is used for funerals in churches that have Asian worshippers as the colour associated with grief in Asia is white, not black.

In worship we are gathered in together to encounter God, to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ, to learn about our faith, and to be sent out changed. Liturgy is how we in our tradition do this in worship. So let’s look forward to learning more about what we do and why we do it. And thanks be to God for the ways we have been given to worship, as God’s children adopted through Jesus Christ.

Wondering...

There's a very sad story in Ottawa as police charge a well-known (and much-loved) Roman Catholic priest with stealing $240,000 in cheques and $160,000 in cash from his parish to feed a gambling addiction. The local CTV station ran a poll on its website asking if people would still give donations to their church in light of these charges - 66% responded no, although I have no idea what this means as there are no numbers on how many respondents gave to "their" church before the charges were laid, nor is there a breakdown of how many are Roman Catholic.

Yet in another story, the co-founder of Ottawa's Escapade electronic dance music festival has gone missing with $600,000 in funds from the event. I'm wondering why CTV is not asking if people will still attend festivals in light of this development.