That They May All Be One: Sermon, January 20, 2013

This sermon was preached for the Week of Prayer For Christian Unity. The 2013 worship service was written to reflect the work of the Student Christian Movement of India, and included testimony from a Dalit (or "untouchable") Christian woman in Orissa state who is a victim of persecution for her faith and status.

With what should I approach the LORD and bow down before God on high? Should I come before him with entirely burned offerings, with year-old calves? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with many torrents of oil? Should I give my oldest child for my crime; the fruit of my body for the sin of my spirit? He has told you, human one, what is good and what the LORD requires from you: to do justice, embrace faithful love, and walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6:6-8, Common English Bible

On that same day, two disciples were traveling to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking to each other about everything that had happened. While they were discussing these things, Jesus himself arrived and joined them on their journey. They were prevented from recognizing him.

He said to them, "What are you talking about as you walk along?" They stopped, their faces downcast.

The one named Cleopas replied, "Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who is unaware of the things that have taken place there over the last few days?"

He said to them, "What things?"

They said to him, "The things about Jesus of Nazareth. Because of his powerful deeds and words, he was recognized by God and all the people as a prophet. But our chief priests and our leaders handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him. We had hoped he was the one who would redeem Israel. All these things happened three days ago. But there's more: Some women from our group have left us stunned. They went to the tomb early this morning and didn't find his body. They came to us saying that they had even seen a vision of angels who told them he is alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found things just as the women said. They didn't see him."

Then Jesus said to them, "You foolish people! Your dull minds keep you from believing all that the prophets talked about. Wasn't it necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and then enter into his glory?" Then he interpreted for them the things written about himself in all the scriptures, starting with Moses and going through all the Prophets.

When they came to Emmaus, he acted as if he was going on ahead. But they urged him, saying, "Stay with us. It's nearly evening, and the day is almost over." So he went in to stay with them. After he took his seat at the table with them, he took the bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he disappeared from their sight. They said to each other, "Weren't our hearts on fire when he spoke to us along the road and when he explained the scriptures for us?"

They got up right then and returned to Jerusalem. They found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying to each other, "The Lord really has risen! He appeared to Simon!" Then the two disciples described what had happened along the road and how Jesus was made known to them as he broke the bread.
Luke 24:13-35, Common English Bible

Giving all glory and honour to God.

A day or week dedicated to unity among Christians has been a dream of church leaders for about two centuries or so. The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity has been marked continuously for the last 119 years, and is now held around the world between January 18 and 25 so that it covers the days between the feasts of St. Peter and St. Paul.

Today I want to tell you a little about what is happening with Christian unity here in our area. You know that we cooperate with the Newington Wesleyan Church on the Stormont County Fair service and Good Friday worship. Clergy in South Stormont meet a few times a year, we share information about our churches’ ministries and events, we organize worship services at Woodland Villa in Long Sault, and we have collaborated on the Alpha course, the introduction to Christianity. I meet with clergy and representatives of other churches in overseeing pastoral care at the Winchester and Cornwall hospitals. There is a Cornwall and Area Christian Council, with clergy from the city of Cornwall and surrounding counties meeting once a month. I’m the president. We support each other in our ministries and coordinate worship at seniors’ homes and prayers at Cornwall city council. Our January meeting was on the theme of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, with worship led by my friend Monsignor Rejean Lebrun from Holy Cross Church in Cornwall.

Monsignor Lebrun talked about when this week was a big thing, 1965 when the first city-wide Week of Prayer for Christian Unity service was held, and there was an opening service at St. Paul’s United Church and a closing service at St. Columban’s Roman Catholic Church, and both were packed full of people. There seemed to be a real momentum then, as the Roman Catholic Church became much more open to dialogue with Protestants. This momentum picked up steam with what was called the liturgical movement as churches went back to ancient traditions of worship and their worship practices became much more similar. That’s when our United Church began using the liturgical calendar with seasons of the church year like Advent and Epiphany that we hadn’t observed in the past, and many United Church congregations began reading Scripture in worship from the common lectionary, a cycle of readings shared with other denominations. If you look back at United Church worship resources from the 1960s and 70s, there were a lot of materials for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. And if you look in the front of the red hymn book, the one that came out in 1971, you see that this was the joint hymn book of the United Church of Canada and the Anglican Church of Canada.

It looked then as if the two churches might merge. Real Christian unity, churches coming together to form a greater union, seemed to be imminent. American denominations were merging. The Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregationalist churches had joined in the United Church in 1925, and the Evangelical United Brethren came in 1968. Talks with the Anglican Church had produced the red hymnal for use by both churches, and a framework to merge the two denominations.

But then the United and Anglican churches couldn’t come to a final agreement. And today the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is probably only being observed in a few churches in this area. I think since those days our idea of unity has changed. The 1960s and 70s were all about big programs, big projects, big institutions, in government and business and the church. Now we know that bigger isn’t necessarily better. These days we don’t have unlimited money and time and effort, so in the church we have, I think, turned away from merging denominations together into bigger denominations, and chosen to cooperate in a limited number of areas where we can make a real impact and build God’s realm of peace and justice, while preserving our diversity of belief and practice. We would rather have God’s people working together to be salt and light for the world than try to get everyone worshipping the same way and organizing their churches in the same manner.

So our money and time and effort are going at the national level into coalitions of churches: like the Canadian Foodgrains Bank that we are familiar with in the Seaway Valley as there are local farmers that participate in supplying crops and knowledge; like Kairos Canada which supports justice work; like Project Ploughshares that does research on issues of military spending and arms exports; like Action for Churches Together that provides assistance when disasters strike. Rather than maintain our own, costly, in-house distribution of books and materials, we now use the same centre as the Lutheran and Anglican churches.

I can tell you, because I am one of the people involved, that the United Church of Canada is beginning negotiations with other denominations on mutual recognition of clergy, which means that we will cut out a lot of the red tape involved in admitting a minister from another denomination into our church and the other way around. We’re trying to make it easier for clergy from, for example, the American Methodist or Presbyterian churches, or the Korean Presbyterian church or the United Church of Christ in the Philippines, to serve Canadian churches, and for our ministers to serve outside our denomination.

We also have a mutual agreement among Canadian denominations to recognize each other’s baptisms, so that if you were baptized here and want to marry in a Roman Catholic church, for instance, you won’t have to be baptized again. Unfortunately, we don’t have an agreement on Communion. Our reading today was about recognizing Jesus in the breaking of bread, but Protestant and Catholic and Orthodox Christians aren’t able to do that together in the Lord’s Supper. If we go to a Catholic or Orthodox church we can’t take Communion, because of different understandings of the sacrament.

So that’s nationally. In our Presbytery I began, when I was chair, to foster a partnership with the United Church of Christ across the border in New York State. They were formed during the big wave of denominational mergers, like we were, and were originally Congregationalist, and that’s one of our traditions too. Originally it was just to have a joint observance of 200 years since the War of 1812, with the two churches witnessing to the peace that we profess as followers of Jesus. Now it’s expanded to attending each other’s meetings and sharing ideas on how we can do Christian education and stewardship and justice work.

And I’ve talked about what we do on the local level. One of the things we have focused on in the Cornwall and Area Christian Council is reminding each other, and the people in our churches, about fellow Christians around the world who suffer persecution for their faith in Jesus, and trying to stand with them. There was an ecumenical worship service last year in Cornwall for the persecuted church, and we try to set a date each year for prayers for Christians suffering for their faith. This year’s Week of Prayer for Christian Unity service has reminded us, in the testimony of Sarah that we just heard, about this persecution, and how it is taking place even in India, the world’s largest democracy.

Many of us probably think of India as a predominantly Hindu country, and it is. It also has nearly 32 million Christians, although they are a tiny minority in a country as big as India – just three percent of the population. There have been Christians in India since the days of the early church, with the message of Jesus supposed to have been brought by the Apostle Thomas.

The main Indian churches, other than the Roman Catholic Church, are unions just like our United Church, bringing together Anglicans and other Protestants in the Church of North India and the Church of South India. And many Indian Christians are Dalits, untouchables. The word “Dalit” means “crushed” or “suppressed,” and that’s what the untouchables have been in the Indian social system, regarded as so low that even their shadow can pollute a person of a higher social class or caste. Many Dalits have been attracted to the Good News of Jesus, who reached out to marginalized people. But even in the church Dalits may face segregated congregations, cemeteries, and worship services, although discrimination against Dalits is officially illegal in India.

And, as we heard in the story of Sarah, there have been cases of persecution of Indian Christians, and especially Dalits. The story we heard was from Orissa state, where there has been a wave of persecution; I was just reading a report from another state, Maharashtra, where a mob surrounded and beat Christians at worship two weeks ago.

Sisters and brothers, in this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and at all times we are praying for and working for the day when all may be one. That is what Jesus prays for his followers, that they may all be one, and that is in fact the motto of The United Church of Canada and the Church of South India. The stories of our fellow believers suffering for their faith remind us of how fortunate we are in the freedom of worship we enjoy, and that we are striving that all may be one in faith and purpose, not just in Canadian churches, but united with our brothers and sisters in Christ around the world. When Jesus prayed that we may all be one, he wasn’t asking that we have the same beliefs and practices, but that we be one family. Every member of a family may not think and act the same way, but they are on the same journey.

The prophet Micah asks, what does God require of us? To seek justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God. We have a long way to go, but we are on that walk of Christian unity together.

Interview With Shannon Kearns, a Transgender Man Being Ordained as a Priest

Shannon Kearns is a transgender man and will be ordained on January 19th as an Old Catholic priest. I'm thrilled to be able to interview him, and grateful that he took the time to answer some questions when he is so busy getting ready for the ordination service. He says that "there still aren’t enough stories (though thankfully more each year) of transgender clergy. If my story can reach someone who feels called but thought there was no space for them, than that’s amazing."

I have been blessed by reading his thoughts on church liturgy as resistance against the secular culture and his experience as a trans individual in the church. I will be praying for him on January 19th as he is ordained, and for his ministry starting a new church in Minneapolis, House of the Transfiguration.

Shannon is a graduate of Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York and is a deacon, about to be ordained as a priest, in the North American Old Catholic Church. He writes as the Anarchist Reverend. He tells me that he loves to read, watch cheesy TV, and play LEGO video games.

Can you tell me about the Old Catholic tradition? It may not be a familiar one to many readers.

The North American Old Catholic Church is an independent Catholic group not in communion with Rome. As a group they ordain women, queer folks, partnered and married people, and folks who have been divorced. They are focused on social justice issues and new church starts. There are parishes all over the United States, but the main concentration is on the East Coast.

Were you raised in the Old Catholic tradition, or came to it later?

I was not raised in the Old Catholic tradition, or really any Catholic tradition. I grew up in a fundamentalist evangelical church. While there was a lot about the church that I loved, I never really felt like I fit in. When I hit Junior High I felt a very strong call to serve the church in some way. I wanted to be a part of making the church more welcoming to people. As someone who lived the first part of my life being perceived as female, I was told from a very young age that I could never be in ministry except to, maybe, teach Sunday school. I definitely could not be a pastor. As I came to understand more and more of my own identity (first coming out as a lesbian in college and then later coming out as a transgender man), I also came to understand more about faith and my relationship with God shifted. I left the evangelical church and worked in mainline churches for several years (United Methodist, American Baptist, United Church of Christ) which was a better fit theologically, but I still felt something was missing for me.

What attracted you to the Old Catholic Church?

I began to explore Catholic liturgy, introduced to it through the life and witness of the monastics, the activism and wit of Dorothy Day, and the poetry and fierceness of Philip and Daniel Berrigan. In the Catholic tradition I found the mix of radical politics and deep, contemplative faith that I had been really longing for.

However, even though I was strongly drawn toward Catholicism, I still felt that I had no place in it: As a transgender man there was no way I could be ordained as a Roman Catholic and I had no idea that the Old Catholics even existed. I was pursuing ordination in a mainline congregation; even though it didn't feel like the exact right fit, it seemed like one of the only options I had to fulfill my calling to ministry. I found the Old Catholics on Twitter of all places! The presiding Archbishop Michael Seneco reached out to me to see if I could help get the word out about the North American Old Catholic Church and the fact that they ordain transgender people. The more we talked about the NAOCC, the more I felt like it would be a good fit for my own calling and ministry. I was ordained to the diaconate in June of 2012 at the Philadelphia Transgender Health Conference.

How do you feel called to be "set apart" through ordination?

I feel like my calling to ordained ministry is not about being "set apart" from people so much as it about specificity of role. Meaning that I am called to walk with people, to help them create rituals that mark time and bring meaning to their lives, to help facilitate worship where they can experience God, and to preach and teach the Gospel.

Can you describe what the ordination service will be like?

The ordination will take place as part of a traditional Catholic Mass. There will be prayers and singing, the Bishop will lay on hands to ordain me, I'll be vested (dressed) in my new vestments (clergy clothing; a priest's stole and chasuble), and then I will help to celebrate the Eucharist.

Do you think that being a transgender person gives you a certain perspective of God as Creator, Christ and Spirit, or affects how you will serve the church?

Being trans has definitely shifted how I understand Jesus especially. My own physical transition has brought me to a much better understanding of what it means to be embodied, what the incarnation meant, and has challenged my thoughts about crucifixion and resurrection. The idea that Jesus lived a bodily life really resonates for me in new ways.

I think really having experienced being not welcome in the church will affect how I serve the church. I know what it feels like to be told that I am not the "right kind" of Christian or Catholic, I know what it feels like to desperately want to be in a religious community but to feel like I don't fit in or that I am not wanted, I know what it feels like to want sacred space but to not know where to go to find it. I want to be able to minister to other people who have been on the margins or who have felt unwelcome in churches.

I'm fascinated by your statement that being trans has challenged your thoughts about crucifixion and resurrection. Can you say more?

Here is a short response, but it might also be helpful to read the passion narrative I wrote based on my trans* experience.

The first time I really started to think about the similarities between my own trans* experience and the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus was in a class in seminary. We were looking at the story of "Doubting Thomas". I had been transitioning for a little while and quite frankly I was exhausted: I was tired of fighting with people to use the right pronouns, tired of answering questions about the state of my body, about what surgeries I had (or had not) gotten, tired to advocating for myself. In class that day we read the story of how Thomas wouldn't believe that Jesus had been resurrected until he saw Jesus' scars. It reminded me of all of the invasive questions I got from people. It reminded me of the comments people would make about my appearance. Why couldn't they just believe that I am who I say that I am? I was also struck by the gentleness of Jesus' response to Thomas. He both chides Thomas for his lack of faith, but also offers to show him his scars anyway. It was a stunning moment.

I began to look more closely at the passion narratives of Jesus and I saw more parallels; his "coming out" at the transfiguration, his struggles with his family, the way his friends started out as his biggest supporters but abandoned him in his time of need. And I was struck by the way he had to endure pain and crucifixion in order to get to the beauty of the resurrection, but that even when he was resurrected he still lived with the scars of what he had experienced. In medieval paintings of Jesus, the wound in his side looks eerily like the chest surgery scars of many trans* men; this, too, was another point of contact.

I think my experience of transitioning has helped me to engage with these stories again; to cling more steadfastly the idea of resurrection being bodily, to understand that bodies are important and that even though I live with scars there can be something holy about them.

Thank you! This has been great. Blessings!

Thanks!! Really appreciate you doing all of this.

More on Alpha: Questions of Life

Questions of Life
By Nicky Gumbel
Alpha North America, Deerfield IL, 2007
207 pages

Nicky Gumbel first wrote this book in 1993 to accompany the handful of Alpha courses then up and running, based on the original offering at Holy Trinity Brompton. Called "the Alpha course in book form," Questions of Life has now sold over 15 million copies worldwide and introduced millions of people to Jesus Christ and the Christian faith.

The introduction states that in the book Nicky Gumbel provides answers to "the hunger and growing hope in every human heart that somewhere, somehow, there may be found a contemporary answer to the timeless question, 'What is truth and how and where can we discover it?'" Questions of Life is structured like the Alpha course itself, in fifteen chapters that present answers to faith questions:
Is there more to life than this?
Who is Jesus?
Why did Jesus die?
How can we have faith?
Why and how do I pray?
Why and how should I read the Bible?
How does God guide us?
Who is the Holy Spirit?
What does the Holy Spirit do?
How can I be filled with the Holy Spirit?
How can I resist evil?
Why and how should I tell others?
Does God heal today?
What about the church?
How can I make the most of the rest of my life?

In the book, and the Alpha course, Gumbel adheres to Christian orthodoxy, and does not attempt to describe any of the historic or current theological debates or breadth of belief regarding, for example, the Atonement - the saving work of Christ on the cross. Gumbel speaks throughout the "why did Jesus die" chapter in terms of the penal substitution theory of the Atonement ("only the blood of Christ, our substitute, can take away our sin"). There is no acknowledgement that the moral influence and Christus victor models of the Atonement have been equally legitimate views of Christ's death.

However, Questions of Life remains a resource for new believers (and, perhaps, some longstanding "cultural Christians") that introduces the core beliefs of the Christian faith in an accessible, relevant way.

The Alpha Journey

The Alpha course began in the Church of England and has spread worldwide. It is the most popular small group activity introducing Christianity and seeking to make disciples for Jesus, at least in the English-speaking West.

I have been involved in three iterations of Alpha, in cooperation with congregations of other denominations (Anglican and Presbyterian) in our area. I know that Alpha is not looked upon with favour by some United Church of Canada folk, because of the way doctrines like the atonement are presented in the course, but I can't find another adult education activity that is as successful in forging ecumenical partnerships, motivating a congregation for evangelistic mission, and making disciples.

This article on Alpha is used with permission and credit attributed to Gerard Long 2012 Alpha USA.

The Alpha Journey
By Gerald Long

In the U.S., the Alpha course has already reached 3 million people in all 50 states and in every major denomination. On this extraordinary adventure called Alpha, together with our leadership team, I’ve asked God to provide clear vision in our strategic thinking and mission goals. Prayerfully, we’re seeking “to transform our society—one life, one church, and one community at a time.” Also, we’re enthusiastic about all that God’s doing to make this happen! In Genesis, God asks us to “go forth and multiply,” and in Matthew, He asks us to fulfill the Great Commission: to “go and make disciples” of Jesus Christ. With these instructions in mind, we’ve set strategic goals to greatly expand our reach in the U.S. We’re seeking to multiply the number of churches that run the Alpha course as well as the number of guests enrolled; to enrich families and individuals through many of the marriage, parenting and outreach materials we provide; and, most importantly, to see more and more lives transformed for Christ. We’ve set a goal to reach 18 million people with the Gospel via an Alpha course in the U.S. by 2020, which is part of Alpha’s global vision to reach 100 million people with the wonderful news of Christ by that same year. And, God willing, we’ll continue with great passion on this exciting journey of changing lives for Him.

Prayer is everything, really; it’s at the core of everything we do, every decision we make. Communicating with God, our gracious Heavenly Father is such a privilege and a necessity at the same time. At the core of Alpha are relationships, first with God and then with our guests. And prayer is key to our relationship with God. Also, as James 5:16 says, the earnest prayer of a believer — a person right with God—avails much. And through His Holy Spirit, we receive the love, joy and peace — and all the fruit—that only He provides. For each guest of the Alpha course, each seeker, it’s the power of prayer and the work of the Holy Spirit that brings the conviction, revelation and transformation of the heart that he or she so desperately needs.

For the past two decades, the mission of Alpha — making disciples of Jesus from all walks of life — has greatly impacted the world for Christ. All the content of Alpha is based on the truth of God’s Word—on His infallible Holy Scripture. So we know the content is trustworthy and true, this Biblically-based content, is then systematically laid out to unfold the basic teachings of the Christian faith. We have updated some of the more practical aspects of the course several times to make it as relevant as possible and to achieve maximum results. Very importantly, we also ask that Alpha leaders teach the material as it is written, to not change its key teachings. Our training materials reinforce this point, and we entrust our leaders with this responsibility.

One of the key ingredients to Alpha’s success has been in making its guests feel relaxed, accepted and open to the Gospel message. We want to treat others with humility and respect, to value each guest, to show them a servant’s heart and to honor them with confidentiality. And, of course, the atmosphere should be friendly, non-judgmental and inviting — a fun place to be! One of the best ways we can show people we love them is to listen carefully and respectfully to what they are saying. The most successful groups tend to learn about Jesus and have fun at the same time. That also brings up one of my favorite parts — the Alpha jokes. Our leaders weave humorous stories into the opening and teaching time, and during the discussions we encourage leaders to interject humor when appropriate. Finally, testimonies throughout the course by people who have “been there” — who can relate how God has opened their hearts and transformed them from the inside out—provide a powerful ingredient.

The Alpha course offers guests a 10-week small group experience, plus a weekend or all-day getaway. After talking with hundreds of people who have experienced the getaway, I can say with confidence, “It’s a crucial component, so please don’t omit it!” As you might guess, it not only helps everyone bond together more closely, but it also gives the guests the space, time and environment to thoroughly process all they’ve been learning, and it gives the Holy Spirit opportunities to soften hearts in amazing ways. Those who fill out evaluation forms often cite that “it’s the best part of the course.” In particular, it provides an opportunity for balanced teaching on the work of the Holy Spirit to empower Christ followers to be His witnesses. It’s often a time when guests experience for the first time that God really does love them. Their understanding of Christ and His teaching spreads from their head to their heart.

The Alpha course has proven successful in leading participants to make a personal commitment to Christ. When churches begin engaging the community through Alpha, they’re looking outward, seeing the broken and hurting people who need answers to life’s biggest questions. In reaching out to people from all backgrounds — co-workers, neighbors, classmates, those embracing other religions and world-views and even those in our prison systems—churches are discovering new blessings and new passion in sharing God’s truth. Churches that were perhaps declining find themselves growing. Often, churches develop an entire evangelism strategy, a vibrant prayer ministry and a new heart for those who need Christ’s redemption. I encourage every church to “Go Forth” — to multiply the souls saved for Christ and to fulfill His Great Commission. In summary, churches that implement the Alpha DNA see growth in new disciples, in leaders, in service and in financial giving.

The Alpha course offers a 10-week small group experience for those within and outside the church. The adventure doesn’t end after 10 weeks – it continues! Alpha offers a line of discipleship studies that help guests keep seeking, exploring and growing in faith. Many groups plan a follow-up reunion or party to stay connected, begin going to church together, start a small-group discipleship group, get baptized or serve together inside or outside the church. Also, many will invite their friends and family on the next Alpha course and will often be a helper and then a leader on the course. God faithfully paves the way.

_________________________

Gerard Long is the president of Alpha USA. Today in the U.S., three million people in all 50 states and 127 denominations have already experienced the Alpha course, with hundreds of thousands making a commitment or recommitment to Christ. (Globally, the Alpha course has reached 19 million people in 169 countries and 113 languages.)

Gerard’s first book, The Breakthrough was developed in cooperation with best-selling author Ken Blanchard, The Breakthrough uses a modern-day parable to communicate basic truths about God, suffering and the after-life. Gerard blogs regularly, where he writes on the topics of evangelism and church growth.

No Time For a Child to Be Born: Sermon, December 24, 2012

The story of Christmas. We have heard it tonight and we have sung it in our carols. We know the story. And it’s always a challenge to preach on the much-loved Christmas story, because what can we add to it? Well, we do add characters, like the Little Drummer Boy, and animals, which aren’t mentioned at all in the Bible’s story of Christmas. But we sing "the cattle are lowing," and "the ox and ass kept time." And there can be even more unusual animals. Some churches have llamas in their living nativity scenes. And if you saw the movie Love Actually, you may remember the character Karen being told by her excited daughter Daisy, “We’ve been given our parts in the nativity play. And I’m the lobster.” Karen says, “The lobster?” “Yeah, first lobster,” Daisy beams. Karen asks, “There was more than one lobster present at the birth of Jesus?” Daisy responds, “Duh.”

The story of Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, the angels, and the Bethlehem baby in the manger tells us the “how” and the “what” of Christmas. But it only tells us a little about the “why.” Now, Luke wrote the Christmas story in his book, his gospel, and he has the whole rest of the book to tell us more about the why. But we only have one evening worship service.

I’ve mentioned before that I wrote my thesis in theological college on a guy named Gregory of Nyssa, a theologian who lived over 1600 years ago. I know, stop the excitement. No one here is going to open a gift they find under the Christmas tree tomorrow morning and be shouting, “A book by Gregory of Nyssa! Sweet!” Well, I would be thrilled.

Gregory writes about the “why” of Christmas. He says that the story at the beginning of the Bible, of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, shows that humans have been led astray by evil, and as a result humanity is mired in misery and death. It’s as if humans are held captive by evil and can’t escape on their own. With the evil events in the news of the last week, mass murder in Connecticut, war in Syria, bombings in Pakistan, I don’t think we can disagree.

Gregory says that only God, who created us, can restore us to grace. So, out of God’s immense love, God becomes human, to restore humanity to life and freedom.

But, Gregory asks, if God is all-powerful, why didn’t God just save humanity with one word, or one click of the divine fingers? Why be born as a powerless, vulnerable human baby, which would seem humiliating for a transcendent, incomprehensible divine being, and a pretty roundabout way to accomplish the salvation of all people?

Gregory responds to his own question, we shouldn’t argue about how God saves us. But he continues that God is good, wise, and just, and so God must demonstrate these qualities in the way that God acts to deliver humanity. Justice demands that as humans of their own free will had allowed themselves to be imprisoned by evil, God must not use force to free them. God’s justice demands that humanity be redeemed by non-violent, just means, not by one arbitrary divine act.

So God takes the most good, wise, and just course of action: God who is eternal, uncreated, beyond all space and time, comes into finite space and time. The Bible puts it as, the Word becomes flesh. The divine becomes human, not appearing as a fully-grown human adult, but revealed as a baby, born just as we were born, with all the mess and pain and joy of our births.

Born as an infant, the Son of God knows the full range of human experience, from birth through childhood to adult life. And he is born, not as the child of a royal or aristocratic or rich business family, not in a palace or a luxurious home, not in a city like Rome or Jerusalem that is the centre of political and military and economic and religious power – but in an obscure out-of-the-way town, on the fringe of the empire, where there is no room for his pregnant mother in an inn and she and her husband have no money to buy shelter, so the newborn baby is laid in a feeding trough for animals.

His human parents are in this little town for a census. We know from the Bible that for ancient Jews it was a grave sin to conduct a census, because it was seen as a foreign practice connected with taxation and forced labour. In the Bible there is vigorous opposition to even that great Biblical hero King David taking a census, debates even more passionate than those in Canada over the long form census.

But in the story the Roman emperor, Augustus Caesar, orders a census, and these objections don’t matter. The empire needs a census in order to levy taxes to pay for its wars. The Christmas story emphasizes that Joseph and Mary and even the baby, the baby who is the divine made human, are helpless in the face of the empire and its bureaucracy and the violence it has at its disposal to enforce its will. They are poor people, trapped in the empire’s schemes. Bethlehem may be a long way from the imperial capital, but it is still under foreign occupation, and any danger to the empire will be crushed ruthlessly. And later in the story it is: the king the empire has put in place sends his soldiers to hunt down the child. The little family is forced to flee as refugees while the king’s men slaughter all the boys in Bethlehem, a part of the story that chills us as we think immediately of children’s lives cut short in Connecticut and Syria today.

And, the story tells us, the emperor has ordered a census not just of this far-off province in the Middle East, but of the entire Roman world. God is coming among us in a way that makes clear that the Christ child is born to take on not just the condition of Palestine oppressed by Rome, but the condition of the whole world, the human condition.

The Christmas story for us is very sentimental, but it it isn’t really: it’s a story of travel in harsh, dangerous conditions, of forced cooperation with the order of a foreign government, the ever-present threat of violence, social stigma, dire poverty, a birth in unsanitary surroundings, cold and dirt and stench and hunger, a panicked escape at night from the rage of a dictator who kills anyone who might threaten his grip on power. That was no time for a child to be born. And, yet, when you think about it, no time is a good time for a child to be born. All times in human history, including today, are marred by violence and injustice and suffering. Some of us here were born during wars and depressions. I was born just before the Cuban Missile Crisis and the very real possibility of nuclear destruction. Times always seem dark, even when we’re not being told that the Mayan calendar predicts the world’s end. It is never the best time to bring a child into this broken world. And yet we do. That was no time for a child to be born, yet in that little town of Bethlehem long ago, in the dark streets shone the everlasting light. Maybe the best way to express this mystery is in poetry: In the words of our Christmas carols, or this poem by Madeline L’Engle:

This is no time for a child to be born, with the
earth betrayed by war and hate
And a comet slashing the sky to warn that time
runs out and the sun burns late.
That was no time for a child to be born, in a land
in the crushing grip of Rome,
Honour and truth were trampled by scorn, yet
there did the Saviour make his home.
When is the time for love to be born? The inn is
full on the planet earth,
And by a comet the sky is torn – yet Love still takes
the risk of birth.

We say in the season of Advent: Christ has come, Christ is coming, Christ will come again. That was no time for a child to be born, yet God came to us as a baby. It is no time for love to be born, yet God comes among us in the Spirit, in people and places that are as unexpected and surprising to us today as an unimportant town and a teenage mother and a manger were back then. It is no time for love to be born, yet love is. This is the mystery of Christmas, this is the miracle of Christmas, this is the good news of Christmas: out of love God enters into the life of humanity so completely that the divine, who created atoms and galaxies, comes among us as weak and dependent as we were, to lift us out of our powerlessness in the face of death and the violence and hatred and oppression of the world and help us to realize that we are people created in God’s image, and we can be much more than we are if we let Christ be born in us today.

God comes in love to be wrapped up in humanity. The great hymn writer Charles Wesley expressed this mystery, the “why” of Christmas, in his words: “Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see, hail the incarnate deity, pleased with us in flesh to dwell, Jesus, our Emmanuel.” And so we sing with the angels.

1. The summary of Gregory of Nyssa's thought regarding the Incarnation is largely drawn from his Catechetical Oration.
2. I was inspired by Jack Miles' discussion of the census in Luke 2:1-3 in his Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God, and in particular his statement that "all the world should be registered" means that Christ is taking on not just the condition of Judea under Roman rule, but "all oppressed people at the mercy of officious power" (page 87).
3. The Madeline L'Engle poem is “The Risk of Birth, Christmas 1973,” The Weather of the Heart, p.73.

What Christmas is All About

When I was a boy we knew what Christmas is all about - the minister preached about it, we sang along with the choir about it, and Linus told us about it in A Charlie Brown Christmas (with that great jazz soundtrack by Vince Guaraldi).

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid . And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
Luke 2:8-14, Authorized (King James) Version

A Good Word in Response to the Newtown Murders

I have a short piece in A Good Word, a free ebook of sermons, prayers and liturgies in response to the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown CT. Please read part of the introduction and download the book from Landon Whitsitt's page.

For December 16th

I have very little to add to the flood of grief, and consoling words - and, too often, arguments about guns - that has washed across social media since news came on Friday of the terrible crime as 27 people, 20 of them six and seven year-old children, were murdered in Newtown, Connecticut. A prayer for these children has been posted by The United Church of Canada. I will be including part of it in our prayers tomorrow, as we let our grief flow that in homes in Newtown, trees are decorated and wreaths are hung, yet the children are gone. We have no answers as to how to bear such imaginable grief.

In tomorrow's message I am looking at how we can possibly mark the Sunday of Joy on this December 16th. Here's a bit of what I'll say:

Our reading about joy from Philippians (4:4-7) was actually written from prison as the followers of Jesus were being persecuted. Our reading about joy from the prophet Zephaniah (3:14-20) is at the end of a book about a terrible event, what the prophet describes as a day of distress and anguish, of ruin and devastation - a day maybe like Friday was for many of us when we heard of the murders of so many children at a school.

The Bible speaks to us with such relevance today because it was written by and for people who experienced acute pain and distress and yet found joy. These long-ago believers were told that they could be glad despite awful circumstances. And we, so in touch with the suffering of our world, are trying to get through the darkness and find joy too. Though we are surrounded by fear and hurt and tragedy, we somehow light that pink candle, for in the Advent season we learn again that we are not alone. God is with us.

In the letter to the Philippians, Paul, who wrote this letter from prison, tells the members of the Philippian church that the Lord is near, and then goes on to offer advice that rings just as true today: Let your gentleness show in your treatment of all people. Don’t be anxious about anything; rather, bring up all of your requests to God in your prayers, along with giving thanks. Don’t be anxious, Paul says. Be patient. Trust God. Wait and watch for the signs that God is with us, sharing our pain. Be with each other. Slow life down and pay attention to the moment. Slow life down and remember who we are and whose we are. Slow life down and savour how precious each moment we have together is.

And, as Paul tells the Philippian believers, the peace of God that exceeds all understanding will keep your hearts and minds safe in Christ Jesus. Amen.

A Tale of Hunger at Home and Abroad For American Thanksgiving

In July I reviewed Roger Thurow's book The Last Hunger Season: A Year in an African Farming Community on the Brink of Change, and I've been recommending the book since. Here is an article by Roger for the American Thanksgiving holiday. I'm pleased to reprint it with permission, with credit to Roger Thurow, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs 2012.

A THANKSGIVING TALE: THE HUNGERCLOTH
By Roger Thurow

I often write and speak about the awful oxymoron, “Hungry Farmers.” How can the smallholder farmers of Africa suffer through an annual hunger season when every morning they rise with one task: grow food for their families?

That these farmers should battle chronic hunger and malnutrition is absurd, obscene and shameful.

But there’s another awful oxymoron that deserves our attention, particularly as we near Thanksgiving and our season of feasts. Hungry Americans.

How can anyone in this richest country on the planet, home of the mightiest farmers, breadbasket of the world, be hungry?

That millions of households here are deemed “food insecure” – unable, at some point in the year, to afford the next meal – is equally absurd, obscene and shameful.

Hunger at home and abroad are of the same cloth. Yes, the depth of the hunger and malnutrition that I have seen in parts of Africa and elsewhere in the developing world is profoundly deeper than I have seen here. Thanks to a sturdy social safety net, no one starves to death here, as far too many people do every day in the poorer precincts of the world.

But whether in Africa or America, I see the same pain, desperation, guilt and humiliation in the eyes of mothers and fathers. How will I feed my family? Where will the next meal come from? And the same longing and despair in the eyes of the children.

I think back to one of my first conversations with Leonida Wanyama, who is among the smallholder farmers in western Kenya profiled in my new book, The Last Hunger Season. With head bowed and voice low, Leonida told me of the bleak Christmas holiday that had just passed; all she was able to offer her family was a pot of boiled bananas.

Now, in the U.S., I’m reminded of the many food pantries preparing to distribute turkeys and all the fixings to families who otherwise wouldn’t share in our great Thanksgiving tradition, and I think of the many soup kitchens readying meals for those who have no place to eat such a feast.

In both Africa and America, I have seen hunger narrow the choices of daily living.

For the smallholder farmers with their meager crop yields: feed my family or sell some of my harvest to pay school fees for my children; feed my family or buy malaria medication; feed my family or repair the hole in my thatched roof.

For those who rely on American food banks and soup kitchens: buy food or pay the rent; buy food or keep my health insurance; buy food or pay the electricity and gas bills.

Hunger, no matter where it is, is an abomination. It tears at families, communities, societies. It cheats economic development. It haunts the conscience. Or at least it should.

Scenes from my reporting on hunger, be it at home or abroad, are seared in my mind: In Africa, severely malnourished children clinging to life in emergency feeding tents. Families struggling to make it through the day on a mere cup of tea.

In America, astonished teachers watching students stuffing their pockets with food at Friday lunch, even when that food was spaghetti, because they didn’t know if there would be much to eat at home over the weekend. Children so eager to get to school they hopped off the buses on Monday morning and raced through the hallways; they were heading to the cafeteria, for school breakfast, because they hadn’t eaten much since school lunch on Friday.

A common source of hunger, of course, is poverty. For Africa’s smallholder farmers, it is an absence of essential resources: better quality seeds, micro-doses of fertilizer, financing and agriculture extension advice – the vital ingredients to grow enough food to feed a family for a year. For families in America, it is an absence of a living wage, a lack of decent paying jobs to afford food security throughout the year.

The solutions are also similar. They must be long-term, beyond the immediate aid, and include more community input, individual empowerment and innovative education. The goal is for the farmers of Africa to grow as much nutritionally rich food as they possibly can and for the food insecure in America to be as productive as possible and earn enough to buy their own food.

One more common thread: Efforts to end hunger are under siege by the global financial mess. In the U.S., both short-term safety nets and long-term solutions are threatened by budget cuts, be they food stamps or women and infant care programs or the White House’s Feed the Future initiative which focuses on improving harvests of smallholder farmers in the developing world. The mandatory spending cuts that loom at the fiscal cliff will have a disproportionate heavy impact on poverty and hunger programs, which have already been hit in previous budget slashing moves. Hungry farmers? Hungry Americans? The awful oxymoron would be extended, not ended, by such cuts.

At Thanksgiving, we know we can do better. It is the time to commit to the last hunger season.

_____________

Roger Thurow was a reporter at the Wall Street Journal for 30 years, 20 of those as a foreign correspondent based in Europe and Africa. In 2003 while covering the famine in Ethiopia he experienced an epiphany that would completely change his life.

While in Ethiopian headquarters before going into the hunger fields, Thurow received a warning from one of the aides who said, “Looking into the eyes of the hungry becomes a disease of the soul.” The next day, while looking into the eyes of those who were starving, Thurow immediately understood what the aide had meant. No one should ever have to die from hunger.

Before the year was out, Thurow and colleague Scott Kilman, the Journal’s chief agricultural correspondent, collaborated on a series of articles on the African famine. The series was later chosen as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize on International Reporting. The two journalists teamed up again to write Enough: Why the World’s Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty. It released in 2009. In 2010, he resigned from the Wall Street Journal and accepted a post as Senior Fellow for Global Agriculture and Food Policy with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs where he remains today, writing and speaking about global hunger and food security issues for a number of outlets and platforms.

Thurow graduated from the University of Iowa in 1979. He and his wife Anne live in the Chicago area and are the parents of two children, Brian and Aishling, both now in college. When not working, Thurow is a baseball fan and particularly enjoys watching the Chicago Cubs to, as he jokes, “put things in perspective.”

To learn more about The Last Hunger Season and the documentary film it inspired, please visit: WeHaveDecided.org, Thurow's blog, or The last Hunger Season.

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.