Wars and Rumours of Wars: Sermon, November 15, 2015

Then, as Jesus went out of the Temple, one of His disciples said to Him, “Teacher, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here!”

And Jesus answered and said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone shall be left upon another, that shall not be thrown down.”

Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives opposite the Temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew asked Him privately, “Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign when all these things will be fulfilled?”

And Jesus, answering them, began to say: “Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am He,’ and will deceive many. And when you hear of wars and rumours of wars, do not be troubled; for such things must happen, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be earthquakes in various places, and there will be famines and troubles. These are the beginnings of sorrows.”
Mark 13:1-8, New King James Version

I want to tell you a story. There was a man, who served in the military of his country, and then left the army and tried his hand at farming. But there was unrest in that country, because of the oppressive actions of the government. Soldiers fired on a crowd and killed protesters, and the man heard about angry anti-government meetings, and sabotage, and reports of guerillas stockpiling weapons. Then it came, soldiers on their way to seize weapons were ambushed by insurgents, and fighting broke out in several places in the country.

The man kept to himself, but soon the strife reached his area. Rebel militias began to pressure pro-government people, and then things escalated, and rebel fighters seized property and burned homes and even executed those loyal to the government. And he heard that the same thing was happening to rebel sympathizers in pro-government areas. The man was already under suspicion as a former officer in the government’s army, so he had to flee before the rebels came for him, and after he left they did take his farm.

The man made his way to an area controlled by the government, and joined the regime’s forces. In a city held by the government he met a woman, and despite all the chaos around them they decided to get married. But her family supported the insurgency and they had to elope.

The man and the woman had children, a boy and a girl. But a foreign power intervened in the conflict on the rebel side, and the war eventually reached their city, and it was surrendered to the rebels. Government officials and soldiers and anyone else who sympathized with the regime had to get out, and the man and woman and their son and daughter were among the desperate families who crowded onto ships and sailed away from their country, knowing that they might never return. The ship they boarded was jam-packed, there was not enough food and water, the sea was rough, and the vessel was probably unsafe, but after a stormy voyage they reached a new land, as refugees.

This sounds like a story of Syria today. And it could be. Wars and rumours of wars. But this story is 230 years old. This is the story of my ancestors: John Hatfield who had to abandon his property in New Jersey, and he and his wife Mary Lockerman and their children had to leave New York City by ship in 1783 and come to Nova Scotia. They were loyalists, like so many of the families here in the Seaway Valley, refugees from the American Revolution.

I hear people say that refugees from Syria are dirty, that they carry disease, that they are terrorists in disguise and threats to security, that they are only trying to get free healthcare, that they will cost us too much money, that they are too different and will change our culture. And, you know, the same things were said about my ancestors in 1783. The United Empire Loyalists were dirty. The ones here walked from the Mohawk Valley in New York, after all. They often contracted disease in crowded camps and on ships. They could have been secret rebels. They could have just been after a Crown land grant. They cost the British government lots of money in transportation, and land, and compensation. A loyalist from South Carolina or Massachusetts probably didn’t have a lot in common with the habitants of Quebec or aboriginal people. And similar things have been said in more recent times, about the 35,000 Hungarian refugees who came after the defeat of the revolution in their country in 1956, and the 60,000 Vietnamese boat people who came to Canada 35 years ago.

Imagine the horror of Paris on Friday happening every day. That is the daily reality of life in Syria. The refugees from that country are not coming to bring this kind of violence to Europe and North America - they are trying to get away from the terrorists who bomb and shoot civilians. Most of the victims of the Islamic State have been Muslims themselves.

As the descendant of refugees, I can relate to the stories of people who have fled violence and oppression in Syria, and so many other places, because they are my family’s story, and the story of so many families here. And, sisters and brothers, all of us as Christians can relate, for the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament tells us that this is the story of Jesus and his family, who were forced to flee from violence in Bethlehem and make a hard and dangerous journey to Egypt and safety.

The churches of Seaway Valley Presbytery – which includes us - are sponsoring a refugee family from Syria, a Christian family of four whose home and church have been destroyed and are now in a camp waiting to come to Canada. We have now raised much of the $30,000 it costs to sponsor them, and are waiting for our family to arrive, as it takes a long time to go through the security and background and medical checks the United Nations and Canadian government conduct on refugees.

I want to read to you a part of a message from the Moderator of the United Church.

Sisters and brothers in Christ,

I bring you greetings in the name of Jesus, Comfort and Guide—and also once a refugee.

We are called at this particular moment in time to witness in a concrete way to our Christian faith in response to the needs of millions of desperate people seeking refuge and compassion. The plight of Syrian refugee children washing up on Mediterranean shores has struck at the core of Canadian self-perception as generous and welcoming people. As we have done in the past, we are responding once again with an outpouring of concern and compassion.

For decades, churches have been sounding the alarm about a deepening global crisis for forcibly uprooted people. We know that these are not the first tragic deaths among refugees fleeing danger, nor will they be the last. We must act immediately to turn the tide on this horrific reality. Right now, thousands of people from all over the world are risking their lives every day in search of safety. Some have been offered sanctuary; millions more have died en route at the hands of human traffickers or are held in detention camps, where they are treated primarily as dangerous security threats, or are ignored as if they do not exist.

Since the crisis in Syria began, the United Church has been actively contributing to humanitarian relief and sponsoring refugees. We are once again amplifying our appeal because the church wants to do all that it possibly can to help those in need of assistance and seeking refuge.

With a renewed sense of purpose, The United Church of Canada joins others in stating that we must respond urgently, compassionately, and comprehensively. United Church congregations have a long history of supporting refugees. Many of our communities of faith are already in the process of sponsoring refugee families to come to Canada. However, the need is great and it demands an even greater response from all of us.

Together, we have the capacity to make a profound difference in the lives of thousands of refugees. The time to act is now. Please consider how you and your faith community can best support the ongoing efforts to address this desperate refugee crisis, and please continue to hold the people of Syria and the surrounding region in your prayers.

In faith and hope,
The Right Rev. Jordan Cantwell
Moderator, The United Church of Canada

The Great Election in Missinaba County

It's federal election time in Canada - there's a debate among the main party leaders tonight, and we vote on October 19th. All United Church Conferences and Presbyteries have been sent a reminder during this election period that as registered charities we are prohibited by the Canada Revenue Agency from devoting any resources to partisan political activities, including making any statements that could support or oppose a candidate or party. So I don’t want to blog anything that could be interpreted as applying to a particular Canadian party or leader.

But elections always remind me of The Great Election in Missinaba County, chapter 10 in Stephen Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, published in 1912. This is one of the funniest stories in the book, describing what is probably the 1911 Canadian federal election in the fictional town of Mariposa and the surrounding Missinaba County. I will likely be quoting from Leacock when I preach about anything election-related (without endorsing a candidate or party, of course).

Everybody in Mariposa is either a Liberal or a Conservative or else is both. Some of the people are or have been Liberals or Conservatives all their lives and are called dyed-in-the-wool Grits or old-time Tories and things of that sort... But the one thing that nobody is allowed to do in Mariposa is to have no politics. Of course, there are always some people whose circumstances compel them to say that they have no politics... So with the clergy in Mariposa. They have no politics - absolutely none. Yet Dean Drone round election time always announces as his text such a verse as: "Lo! Is there not one righteous man in Israel?" or "What ho! Is it not time for a change?" And that is a signal for all the Liberal business men to get up and leave their pews.

Similarly over at the Presbyterian Church, the minister says that his sacred calling will not allow him to take part in politics and that his sacred calling prevents him from breathing even a word of harshness against his fellow man, but that when it comes to the elevation of the ungodly into high places in the commonwealth (this means, of course, the nomination of the Conservative candidate) then he's not going to allow his sacred calling to prevent him from saying just what he thinks of it. And by that time, having pretty well cleared the church of Conservatives, he proceeds to show from the scriptures that the ancient Hebrews were Liberals to a man, except those who were drowned in the flood or who perished, more or less deservedly, in the desert.

Big church win!

...or something like that. Our county is hosting the 2015 International Plowing Match (I usually spell it Ploughing, but I seem to be in the minority). It's not well known, it seems, but the International Plowing Match and Rural Expo will be one of the biggest events in Ontario this year, and certainly the largest undertaking in this county for decades. Local farms, businesses, schools, churches, and homes have been decorating as part of the Match's Beautification Contest: the display has to include scarecrows, sunflowers, and the Plowing Match sign.

Winners were publicized tonight, and first prize in the Schools/Churches/Senior's Residences category went to St. Andrew's-St. Mark's United Church in Long Sault! I think that the John Deere tractor, which belongs to one of the members (who is also principal of North Stormont Public School, which took the third prize), probably clinched the award.

International Ploughing Match and Rural Expo near Finch in South Stormont Township, Ontario, September 22 to 26, 2015!

Kokopelli

I've been reading about Kokopelli, a deity venerated by First Nations peoples in the southwestern United States. He is a god of fertility, music and agriculture, but what is fascinating to me is that Kokopelli is depicted as being hunchbacked (his name means "wooden backed" in Hopi). This may be because he is based on Aztec traders who carried their loads on their backs, or because his origin lies in a legend of a village hunchback who was a trickster - but the Missippian culture further east depicted a hunchbacked woman in art.

All very interesting because of my own disability. Hunchbacks are represented in European art and literature as objects of fear or pity, so Kokopelli is someone I will have to become more familiar with.

#90Bells

This morning we rang the bell at St. Andrew's-St. Mark's United Church in Long Sault 90 times to mark the 90th anniversary of The United Church of Canada. The bell rang at 10:30 AM, the time that the inaugural worship service of the United Church began on June 10, 1925, as Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalist, and members of local Union churches streamed into the old Mutual Street Arena in Toronto singing "The Church's One Foundation." Many United Church communities of faith across the country are celebrating the anniversary with bell ringing, and as bells aren't as common now as they once were, some are using hand bells, noisemakers or electronic ring tones. Check #90Bells on Twitter to track the commemorations!

This is the prayer used at that inaugural service 90 years ago:

O God, who to an expectant and united church didst grant at Pentecost the gift of the Holy Spirit, and hast wonderfully brought into one fold those who now worship thee here: Grant us the hope of the same Spirit in all our life and worship that we may expect great things from thee, and attempt great things for thee, and being one in thee may show the world that thou didst send Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with thee and the Holy Spirit, be all honour and glory, world without end. Amen.

Truth and Reconciliation

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada is finishing its six years of work, having heard from over 7,000 witnesses to the terrible experience of Indian residential schools run by churches (including The United Church of Canada, and the Methodist and Presbyterian churches which preceded the formation of our denomination) on behalf of the federal government. The Commission calls this school system "cultural genocide" against Aboriginal peoples.

The Commission's report tells the story of those who survived residential schools, and the thousands who did not, and makes 94 recommendations. Several of these are particular to churches, so here they are in full:

Church Apologies and Reconciliation

58. We call upon the Pope to issue an apology to Survivors, their families, and communities for the Roman Catholic Church’s role in the spiritual, cultural, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of First Nations, Inuit, and Metis children in Catholic-run residential schools. We call for that apology to be similar to the 2010 apology issued to Irish victims of abuse and to occur within one year of the issuing of this Report and to be delivered by the Pope in Canada.

59. We call upon church parties to the Settlement Agreement to develop ongoing education strategies to ensure that their respective congregations learn about their church’s role in colonization, the history and legacy of residential schools, and why apologies to former residential school students, their families, and communities were necessary.

60. We call upon leaders of the church parties to the Settlement Agreement and all other faiths, in collaboration with Indigenous spiritual leaders, Survivors, schools of theology, seminaries, and other religious training centres, to develop and teach curriculum for all student clergy, and clergy and staff who work in Aboriginal communities, on the need to respect Indigenous spirituality in its own rights, the history and legacy of residential schools and the role of the church parties in that system, the history and legacy of religious conflict in Aboriginal families and communities, and the responsibility that churches have to mitigate such conflicts and prevent spiritual violence.

61. We call upon church parties to the Settlement Agreement, in collaboration with Survivors and representatives of Aboriginal organizations, to establish permanent funding to Aboriginal people for:
i. Community-controlled healing and reconciliation projects.
ii. Community-controlled culture-and language revitalization projects.
iii. Community -controlled education and relationship building projects.
iv. Regional dialogues for Indigenous spiritual leaders and youth to discuss Indigenous spirituality, self-determination, and reconciliation.

Churches responding to the report's findings have said:

We acknowledge and welcome the specific calls to action that offer direction to the churches in our continuing commitment to reconciliation. In particular, we are committed to respect Indigenous spiritual traditions in their own right. As individual churches and in shared interfaith and ecumenical initiatives – for example through Kairos, through interfaith groups, and through the Canadian Council of Churches – we will continue to foster learning about and awareness of the reality and legacy of the residential schools, the negative impact of such past teachings as the Doctrine of Discovery, and the new ways forward found in places, such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. We will continue our commitment to financial support for community-controlled initiatives in healing, language and cultural revitalization, education and relationship-building, and self-determination.

May it be so.

Doctrine of "Discovery"

My friend Aric Clark, who is a PC(USA) minister and one of the Friars of the must-read (or is that must-view) site Two Friars and a Fool, invited me to write something about the Doctrine of Discovery. I don't know if he's aware that I'm a descendant of the Mayflower Pilgrims, who established the Plymouth colony in Massachusetts under the Doctrine of Discovery's assumption that land in the New World was unoccupied and available for grants by English companies. It's a good thing for the Pilgrims that the land was not empty, as the First Nations people living there helped the colony survive that winter of 1620-21, even though no one asked them about colonizing their land.

Aric has been blogging at Ecclesio.com about it, and has a very helpful post about churches repudiating the doctrine.

Briefly, the Doctrine of Discovery has been the legal basis of colonial governments' claim to sovereignty over territory that was inhabited by indigenous peoples (for example, Australia, British North America and the United States). The discovery doctrine is not a historical artifact; it was the basis of a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States decision limiting a First Nation's sovereignty as recently as 2005.

My own denomination, the United Church of Canada, has been exploring reconciliation with aboriginal people within the context of the legacy of church involvement in the horrific Indian Residential Schools, the church's 1986 and 1998 apologies, reflections on empire, and the Doctrine of Discovery. It is becoming more common at church gatherings to acknowledge that we are on the traditional territory of indigenous peoples (for example, our Conference annual meeting is opened by a Mohawk elder as a way of showing that we are meeting on what had been Mohawk land on the West Island of Montreal). Doing so is one way we can work toward right relations, "by repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery that assumed the land was empty when European explorers, traders, and settlers first came."

The United Church of Canada's General Council Executive moved in March 2012 to repudiate the doctrine, and in October 2012 to join the World Council of Churches in denouncing it and its impact on indigenous peoples. It's worth quoting at length from the background to the motion that the General Council Executive sent to the denomination's 41st General Council, held in Ottawa that year, denouncing "the Doctrine of Discovery as fundamentally opposed to the gospel of Jesus Christ and as a violation of the inherent human rights that all individuals and peoples have received from God."

In February 2012, the World Council of Churches Executive Committee denounced the “Doctrine of Discovery,” which has been used to subjugate and colonize Indigenous Peoples around the world. This doctrine has permitted the enslavement of Indigenous Peoples in the name of Christianity. The World Council of Churches’ statement declared that this doctrine is “completely opposed to the gospel of Jesus”.

The origin of the doctrine lies in the papal bulls issued by Pope Nicholas V in 1452, allowing the invasion and killing of the Indigenous Peoples. In the 14th century, some of the historical church documents such as Dum Diversas and Romanus Pontifex called for non-Christian people to be captured, vanquished and to have their possessions and property seized by the Christian monarchs.

The Royal Proclamation of 1763 is a legal precedent in Canada that upholds the rights of Indigenous Peoples in Canada. It was issued by King George III, after Great Britain acquired French Territory in North America at the end of the French and Indian War/Seven Years’ War to organize the new North American empire and to stabilize the relationship with the First Nations people by regulating trade, settlement and land purchases in the new frontier. In other words, The Royal Proclamation was a step in the Crown recognizing that the land occupied by First Nations located beyond the existing North American colonies were in some sense Indian Land. Title and access to these lands could only be granted by the Crown.

The World Council of Churches statement points out that the “current situation of Indigenous Peoples around the world is the result of a direct line of 'legal' precedents, originating with the Doctrine of Discovery and now codified and embedded in many of the contemporary national laws and policies of the nation states that have emerged from the European colonial process.” The doctrine has been cited by courts in the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

The World Council of Churches statement rejects the idea that “Christians enjoy a moral and legal right to invade and seize lands and to dominate Indigenous Peoples.” It also supports the “rights of Indigenous Peoples to live in and retain their traditional lands and territories. And to maintain and enrich their cultures.”

Through this statement, The World Council of Churches reaffirms its commitment to the rights of the Indigenous Peoples, and asks each member church to “reflect upon its own national and church history,” and to seek a better understanding of the issues faced by Indigenous Peoples.

The repudiation of the doctrine is now being cited in our statements on aboriginal issues - for instance, in a 2013 letter sent to the federal Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, which sets out the church's history with the doctrine. Again, it's worth quoting at length:

For the first 60 years of its existence, from 1925-86, The United Church of Canada conflated Christianity and European civilization. Based on the worldview of the Doctrine of Discovery, we operated in tandem with the Canadian government and other elements of colonialism to assimilate the Indigenous peoples into our political, cultural and economic systems, thus aiming to free their lands for settlers.

Gradually, however, our direct relationship with the Indigenous Peoples with whom we worked and worshipped converted us towards a truer understanding of the gospel. A major turning point came in 1986, when our church’s General Council apologized to the First Nations Peoples for imposing our culture and spirituality, “We tried to make you be like us,” we said in that apology, “and in so doing we helped to destroy the vision that made you what you were. As a result, you, and we, are poorer and the image of the Creator in us is twisted, blurred, and we are not what we are meant by God to be.”

Thus we began a journey towards a new way of living together, based on healing, justice and right relations. That journey has included a second apology in 1998, specifically to the former students of United Church-run residential schools, and their families and communities for “the pain and suffering that our church’s involvement in the Indian Residential School system has caused.”

Churches in Canada, and Australia, New Zealand and the United States, are now engaging with the Doctrine of Discovery as part of a long history of conquest and assimilation. It will be a long journey to right relations with indigenous peoples. Repudiating the doctrine is a necessary step on this journey, but only one step.

Rags to Riches: Sermon, Easter Sunday, April 5, 2015

On the first day of the week, at early dawn, the women came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.”
Luke 24:1-5, New Revised Standard Version

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”

Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”

When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.
John 20:1-18, New Revised Standard Version

We know this story. Well, many of us do. We know the Easter story from hearing it on many Easter Sundays, from movies and novels and children’s books and pictures.

From all those sources, we can imagine what that first Easter looked like, and felt like. Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, John writes to start the story. We can imagine the setting, always a lush garden in the pictures, palm trees, flowers, but still dark in the time before the sunrise, as a favourite song says, while the dew was still on the roses. The women who had followed Jesus during his ministry come from the city to the tomb. In Luke’s story that we read at the start of the service, there are several women; John mentions only Mary Magdalene but she says “we” so she may not have been alone. They move through the pre-dawn darkness, coming to do their duty and finish anointing the body of Jesus. They are still in grief, in shock, they had gone through a living nightmare as they watched Jesus die on the cross on Friday, a cruel, agonizing death for an enemy of the state, destroying their hopes and breaking their hearts. But they have come, even though the male followers of Jesus have gone into hiding and, it seems, abandoned Jesus, and them. We know a bit about how they feel, all of us who have gone through the death of a loved one or a relationship or a job, who have experienced pain and isolation, who have felt overwhelmed by the injustice and violence of the world.

They talk in whispers, as they walk gingerly in the dark, about how to open the tomb to reach the body of Jesus. And they come to the rock wall where tombs have been dug, and the sun is still below the horizon, but they can see enough now to realize that the tomb is open, the heavy stone that sealed it has been rolled back. They don’t know what to think. Who could have done this? Who would have opened the tomb that they had seen shut on Friday? They’re confused, and scared, and run, hearts beating fast, lungs labouring with the effort, running back into the city to find where the male disciples are hiding. Mary Magdalene races through the empty streets to the house where some of the men are sleeping, and wakes up Simon Peter and another disciple – John doesn’t name him, but says that this is the one whom Jesus loved – to blurt out to them that the tomb is open, the body must be gone, and who knows where it is? So they get up, and run, faster than Mary can so she falls behind, they run through the city, the other disciple in the lead so he arrives first at the tomb, adrenaline pumping, out of breath, sees the stone rolled away, panting as he bends down to look in and glimpses the linen cloths the body of Jesus had been wrapped in, lying on the shelf where the corpse had been laid. And Peter arrives, pushing past the other disciple into the tomb, as impulsive and brash as Peter always is, to look at the burial cloths lying there. He has no words, he has no explanation, his thoughts are a jumble. The other disciple enters after Peter, and, John writes, he sees and believes. Then the two men leave the tomb, and just go home. It’s left to Mary, in the light of the new day, to encounter angels, then the risen Jesus himself, who says her name, says it the way only a dear friend can, and she gasps as she recognizes him in a moment of surprise that turns to pure joy. Tears of grief become tears of happiness.

What a story. From darkness to light. From death to life. From sadness to joy. You know, a few weeks ago as we were sitting with my mother in law in the days before she died, I brought the 1913 Kresge’s catalogue for her to look at. On one page are books, 10 cents each for hardcovers so you can tell that it’s a very old catalogue, including what are described as “books for red-blooded boys, all written by Horatio Alger Jr., the well-known writer of boys’ books. Besides being full of snap and life they all teach a beautiful lesson.” These books have titles like Strive and Succeed and Making His Way. The hero in these books of 100 years ago always starts at the bottom but prospers through hard work. We would call these “rags to riches” stories. And this Easter account is a rags to riches story, from the cloths of burial to the riches of resurrection.

Now, these riches aren’t immediately apparent to the characters in the Easter story. The other disciple sees the cloths and believes, believes that what Jesus promised has come true, that he would be killed but rise after three days. Peter takes his time to digest what has happened but later Jesus appears to him too, and Peter can preach that God raised Jesus on the third day. Mary Magdalene knows that she has spoken with her teacher and friend, somehow come back from death.

It took time for that little group of believers to think this through, to appreciate this rags to riches story and its meaning for the followers of Jesus and for all of humanity. In a few decades the Apostle Paul could write that because Jesus died and rose again, through Jesus God will raise all who have died. And it took a while, centuries even, but the church developed several ways of thinking about the riches that are ours when Jesus is raised and leaves his rags behind. The Easter story of resurrection is about the riches that are ours from God, who raised Jesus from death to confirm God’s love for Jesus and for us, for whom Jesus died. Paul says nothing, not even death, can separate us from that love. The Easter story is about the riches that are ours from Jesus. The grave can’t hold Jesus. The glory of his resurrection undermines our ideas of what is possible. The Easter story is about the riches that are ours from the Holy Spirit. We participate in the new life of the risen Jesus by the power of the Spirit. The Easter story is about the riches that are ours as the resurrection proclaims God’s triumph over all earthly empires and their injustice and violence. The Easter story is about the riches that are ours as the resurrection is the beginning of God’s new world, the world where death is defeated for all of us, the world that the United Church’s Song of Faith describes as “a future good beyond imagining, a new heaven and a new earth, the end of sorrow, pain and tears, the making new of all things.”

But all of this did not occur to Peter, Mary Magdalene and the other disciple when they encountered the empty tomb. And, you know, we may be like them as we come to this Easter story. We may believe like the other disciple, believe right away that Jesus has been raised from death. We may be like Peter, just knowing that something momentous, even world-changing has happened to Jesus. We may be like Mary, fully knowing the truth of Easter when we have some kind of experience in our lives of the presence of the risen Jesus. The way John tells the story, these are different ways of processing the transformational experience of Easter; one way of believing is not superior to another.

I said that we can know something of the grief at the beginning of the Easter story. And, whether we are most like Mary, or Peter, or the other disciple, we can know something of the joy at the end, the joy we find whenever signs of resurrection appear in our lives, in our world, whenever a tomb that we assumed was shut forever opens up and rags become the riches of God’s kingdom and hope triumphs over despair, good wins out over evil, love prevails over hatred, life comes out of death. And then, this Easter morning, this Easter day, and every day, we can tell others as Mary did, that in some way we too have encountered this mystery, this good news, of resurrection, and joy has scattered the shadows and sorrow has turned into song.

Twenty Centuries Past

As I prepare for Palm Sunday and Holy Week, I'm reading through Let Justice Roll Down: A Worship Resource for Lent, Holy Week and Easter. One of the Palm Sunday prayers in this anthology is by John Young of Scotland (page 125). In 2015 the poem may have to say that it's nearly twenty-one centuries past now, but the words are just as relevant.

Twenty Centuries Past

Twenty centuries past, what city has not heard of your coming?
From Beijing to Berlin, from Jerusalem to Johannesburg, from New York to New Delhi
surely the word has spread that you've come in peace, not violence
to enrich, renew, transform our lives and bring us to shalom?

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.

Twenty centuries past, what city has not heard of your church?
From Catholic, Orthodox, or Reformed, Anglican, Evangelical or Pentecostal
surely the message of acceptance, healing, confidence
in your royal advent, has been passed on through faithful living?

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.

Twenty centuries past, what city has not rejected you?
From penthouse to tenement, from factory to leisure centre, from theme park to concert hall,
surely the news is that this life is for taking, not giving
and what stands in the way of this lifestyle must now be removed?

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.

Twenty centuries past, what city does Christ seek to enter?
From leafy suburb to shanty town, from housing estate to West End flat, from salon to slum,
surely the sign of the church free from pride, united in deed,
must be the welcome Christ longs for as he enters your city?

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.

Talking About Suicide in Church: Sermon, February 1, 2015

Jesus and his followers went into Capernaum. Immediately on the Sabbath Jesus entered the synagogue and started teaching. The people were amazed by his teaching, for he was teaching them with authority, not like the legal experts. Suddenly, there in the synagogue, a person with an evil spirit screamed, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are. You are the holy one from God.”

“Silence!” Jesus said, speaking harshly to the demon. “Come out of him!” The unclean spirit shook him and screamed, then it came out.

Everyone was shaken and questioned among themselves, “What’s this? A new teaching with authority! He even commands unclean spirits and they obey him!” Right away the news about him spread throughout the entire region of Galilee. Mark 1:21-28, Common English Bible

I was watching the British TV series Grantchester, which is on Masterpiece Mystery on PBS on Sunday nights. It’s about a minister in England in the 1950s. I love it when TV shows clergy writing and preaching sermons, and putting on their robes – and solving crimes. In the first show there is a funeral for a man who is believed to have committed suicide. This added to the issue of suicide in our society having been on my mind for the last while. There have been several high-profile suicides in the news, like the actor Robin Williams and a senior Ottawa police officer, young people who have been bullied, and among military veterans. Lately I have heard stories of suicide among ministers. This week was the annual Let’s Talk Day about mental health. And we have this story from Mark’s Gospel this morning, about a man with an unclean spirit, which today we would probably call a mental illness.

And yet, despite all these stories and publicity, we rarely, if ever, talk about suicide in the church. There are seven different Biblical accounts in which characters kill themselves, but if you challenged most Christians to name one many people could think only of Judas, who betrayed Jesus, hanging himself. I don’t think we have ever discussed that story, or any of the others, here. In fact, we hardly ever talk about suicide outside church either. Suicide seems to be taboo in conversation. But keeping silent about it just perpetuates myths and stigmas that aren’t helpful.

Suicide is a major public health issue in our society. It is one of the leading causes of death among Canadians aged 15 to 24, and for men in their 40s and 50s. 16 percent of Canadian young people have seriously contemplated suicide. The suicide rate for First Nations youth is five to seven times higher than non-aboriginal youth in Canada, and the suicide rate for Inuit youth is 11 times higher, so suicide in aboriginal communities merits being called a health crisis. And mental health and suicide are issues for the church. We talked not so long ago in worship about assisted suicide, people with terminal illnesses ending their suffering, but this broader issue of suicide among people of all ages concerns us too, because following Jesus as his disciples means walking with each other in relationship and love, through mental as much as physical illnesses.

In September I went to a workshop for faith leaders on suicide. It was held at Knox-St. Paul’s in Cornwall, and I sat at a table with a Muslim imam and listened to a speaker from the Canadian Mental Health Association. I just want to tell you two stories from that workshop, about suicide and communities of faith.

Susan had struggled with depression for much of her life, although she managed to stay active and involved in her church. However, after the birth of her first child, Susan went into a depression so severe that she couldn’t leave the house. Her husband David called their minister and said that he was worried that Susan’s depression was getting worse. Based on what David shared, the minister told him she was concerned that Susan might be suicidal, and urged him to take her to the emergency room. Then the minister asked to speak to Susan. After talking with the minister for a while, Susan finally agreed to go to the hospital, where the minister met her and her husband. Following an evaluation, Susan entered into a program of intensive psychiatric care that was appropriate for the mother of a newborn. The doctors and nurses worked to regulate her medication and help her talk about her feelings and fears. Following the program, she was able to resume her life with the help of her outpatient providers. What happened with the church during this period was also very important. The minister obtained Susan’s permission to share with the congregation that she was in treatment and encouraged church members to help as they would have if she had been in treatment for a physical illness. They helped Susan care for the baby, brought meals for the family, wrote her notes, and welcomed her back into the community when she returned.

That’s one story. Here’s the second one, told by a woman to the Mental Health Association:

The prayer and support of our family of faith helped us survive after losing our son to suicide seven years ago. Our grief was their grief because Todd was a vital member of this faith community. They felt his absence in ways that validated our sorrow. This loving community helped us navigate a journey we had never planned to take. They stood by us as our question shifted from ‘Why?’ to ‘For what purpose? Why now?’ Our faith community was instrumental in helping my husband and I see God at work within our tragedy, redeeming some of our pain. They gave us courage to keep trusting God.

Two difficult stories, with different outcomes, yet the church responded in love in both cases. Churches also have a key role in promoting awareness and healing, by talking openly about suicide and providing education about mental illness being a treatable illness, instead of a sin. And churches are significant in preventing suicide, because what is it that we do as the church? Well, for one thing, we help each other find meaning in our lives, and a sense of hope, and we support each other as we experience life's challenges and crises. Fostering a sense of connection and belonging, especially among people who are experiencing mental health or substance abuse problems, has been found to be important in decreasing the risk of suicide.

As well, in Susan’s story there were signs that she was suicidal. In eight out of 10 suicide attempts, the person hints about it to family or friends beforehand. We need to be aware of the problems that increase the risk of suicide and the behaviours that may mean there is an immediate risk.

Finally, I want to talk about what to do when a suicide takes place. The suicide of someone in a congregation is devastating for the entire faith community. It can create feelings of stigma, shame and guilt for those close to the deceased person, and may increase the risk of suicide for people who are already vulnerable. When there is a suicide, it is important for all of us to reach out, support, and promote healing among those who are grieving. But when we do so, we should try to avoid the common phrase that the person is “at peace,” and steer clear of words that imply that suicide was a reasonable response to stress.

In our reading today, Jesus reaches out to a man whose mental illness isolates him from society. As the followers of Jesus, we are called to reach out, to let go of attitudes that abandon people with mental illness and survivors of suicide, to bring this difficult subject into the open, to provide a safe space for listening and relief. The two stories we just heard tell us that as the church we can help each other navigate this journey towards hope and healing.

Canadian Mental Health Association: Preventing Suicide

Fishing on the Other Side: Sermon for the Third Sunday After the Epiphany, January 25, 2015

After John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee announcing God’s good news, saying, “Now is the time! Here comes God’s kingdom! Change your hearts and lives, and trust this good news!”

As Jesus passed along the Galilee Sea, he saw two brothers, Simon and Andrew. They were fishermen, so they were throwing fishing nets into the sea. “Come, follow me,” he said, “and I’ll show you how to fish for people.” Right away, they left their nets and followed him. After going a little further, he saw James and John, Zebedee’s sons, in their boat repairing the fishing nets. At that very moment, he called them. They followed him, leaving their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired workers.
- Mark 1:14-20, Common English Bible

Mark’s is the shortest of the four gospels in the Bible, and we think it’s the first one written. It has the least detail. Some of us hearing this little story about Jesus calling the fishermen may remember how the other gospels tell the same story. Matthew tells it pretty much the same way as Mark. But Luke’s version is a bit different. In his account Jesus tells Simon to row the boat out farther, into the deep water, and drop the nets. Simon replies, “We’ve worked hard all night and caught nothing. But if you say so, I’ll drop the nets.” So they do, and the catch of fish is so large that the nets are splitting, and another boat has to come help them, and then both boats are so full that they start to sink. In yet another version of this story, in John, Jesus says to them, “cast your net on the other side of the boat, and you will find fish.”

I’m mentioning this because this is a good opportunity for me to talk about something facing the church right now. In the United Church of Canada we have General Councils every three years, with commissioners elected from Conferences across the country. I went to the General Council in Ottawa in 2012, and we voted for a comprehensive review of all of the church’s structures and programs. And the group formed to conduct that review came back with a report last year that in some form will go to the next General Council, this summer in Corner Brook, Newfoundland and Labrador. That report begins with this story of Jesus and the fishermen. It’s called Fishing on the Other Side.

This report is the result of consultations with congregations about who we are as the United Church, how we do things, and how we can live faithfully in changing times. Since then there have been more consultations with presbyteries and conferences. Now, I don’t have to tell anyone here that times are changing in the church. Fewer people attend worship. Fewer young adults, youth and children are participating in congregations. We don’t have the money or the volunteers to do everything we used to do. These pressures are resulting in congregations amalgamating, clustering, or closing, and we have gone through all of that here and around here.

So when the task group consulted with over 600 congregations across the country, they heard about these changing times, and they heard a clear understanding that we are being called to change and to live out God’s mission in new ways. They heard a strong sense of identity as an open, welcoming, and justice-seeking church. They heard that the way we govern ourselves may have worked well at the time of church union 90 years ago but is now too expensive and cumbersome, and needs to be simpler and more effective.

This wisdom from the church is reflected in the principles guiding the comprehensive review. As a church we want strong and vibrant communities of faith at our core, to support people in their spiritual journeys and inspire and equip them to participate in God’s mission. We want our structures to support and enable congregations, and focus on relationships and connections rather than setting and enforcing rules. We want congregations to group together in networks for mutual support and faithful action, rather than governance. We want a strong denominational voice. We want adaptable, nimble and sustainable structures and policies. We want to support and nurture ministers, and to ensure their effective and efficient oversight and discipline.

Fishing on the Other Side, and the reports that the comprehensive review has produced since, set out a model of what a church based on these principles would look like. At the centre of the new model are communities of faith - congregations and a variety of other ministries. You know that right now our decisions in lots of areas, including what we do with property and how I am employed here, are subject to approval by presbytery. In the new model, we would be solely responsible for community life, including worship and learning, and property, leadership, and local administration. We would be able to access support, resources and services from the denomination to help us do that, but we wouldn’t have to answer to anyone.

Right now we are part of a Presbytery, which is part of a Conference. The original Fishing on the Other Side report set out a model with no presbyteries or conferences at all. There would be no levels of church government in between communities of faith and the national body. Communities of faith would be able to group together voluntarily with other like-minded communities around a particular interest or issue. So, just off the top of my head, there might be a rural ministry network, or a network focused on sponsoring refugee families in a particular area, or a French-speaking network. These might continue some of the mission of presbyteries and conferences. But these networks would, as I said, be voluntary and have no decision-making authority.

Now, just recently the comprehensive review responded to feedback by proposing that there would be a middle level – not like presbyteries or conferences, but several regional councils to support, rather than oversee, communities of faith.

And at the national level there would be a much smaller denominational body, tasked with taking public positions, looking after our relations with other churches and faith groups, ordaining and commissioning ministers, and providing shared services like payroll and pensions.

Finally, Fishing on the Other Side puts forward a major change in how we support and oversee ministers. Many of us are familiar with colleges for nurses, teachers, and other professionals. The report proposes a national college of ministers to implement the standards for ministry set by the United Church. A congregation would only be able to call a member of the college as their minister. The college would investigate complaints and discipline ministers. And, if there is to be a college, ministers would be encouraged to form a corresponding association to support and represent them.

Summing up this new model: no oversight of congregations in matters like property and personnel; no presbyteries or conferences, only regional councils and voluntary networks; a college of ministers. That’s what the model looks like now; the final version that will go to General Council will be presented in March.

This may seem very "inside baseball," but it represents a major shift in how we act and what we do right here. And this is all pretty radical, given that we have done things pretty much the same way for 90 years. I was elected as a commissioner to the next General Council, so I will be voting on the comprehensive review recommendations in Corner Brook in August. The theme and logo for this General Council are inspired by the history and culture of Newfoundland, and by our fishing story from the Bible, with the logo depicting a fish, which is a very old Christian symbol, and water, with words taken from the book of Revelation: "Behold, I make all things new/Voici je fais toutes choses nouvelles." And, after General Council decides, their decisions will go to all pastoral charges and presbyteries to vote on in a series of remits, so we here will also get to decide on the future shape of the church.

When the Moderator of the United Church, Gary Paterson, was with us in November he said that the way things are can’t continue. The status quo is not an option. The words he chose as the General Council theme, Behold I make all things new, remind us that the church can’t remain static – it is always reforming. Change is coming – the question is what kind of change.

We know the challenges we face. And we know that Jesus continues to call us to follow him. And, maybe, setting aside our ties to the ways things have been and the ways we are used to doing things will open us to amazing new possibilities. Is Jesus calling us to let down our nets on the other side? We need to decide. I welcome your questions and comments and prayers as I make my own decision.

What I Would Tell You... About Disability and the Church

I'm chairing the United Church of Canada's brand spanking new Working Group on Theologies of Disability. We had our first face to face meeting in Toronto on Wednesday, and it was such an exciting and inspiring day that it made up for the harrowing drive through a snowstorm to get home from the train station!

We discussed how our report on theologies of disability should be more than words on paper - it should illustrate the theology with the stories of people with disabilities, told through text and images of artwork, and possibly video and music. I can easily write a page, or several pages, on, for example, images of God in theologies of disability, but it would be far more powerful for people with disabilities to tell in their own words and images how they conceive of God.

Accordingly, we have sent out an invitation, which I'm reproducing here. It's also on the main United Church website.

"What I Would Tell You…"

Are you a person living with disabilities (visible or invisible), a caregiver, or an ally? What would you tell the church, over coffee, about your life with a disability?

The Theologies of Disability Working Group of the United Church invites you to tell your stories about your faith life with disability.

• How has this experience made you vulnerable?
• How has it shaped your understanding of God and the church?

You are welcome to respond with a spoken or written story, or by submitting an original video, photograph, piece of art, music, or other form of expression. Responses will be received until January 31, 2015.

Disability involves restricted movements, senses, or actions that limit participation in activities considered routine and "normal" by society. A disability may be visible or invisible. A disability might be physical, cognitive, mental, sensory, emotional, developmental, medical, health-based, or some combination of these.

It is an honour and a privilege of the Theologies of Disability Working Group to gather these stories, and we will take seriously and care for any of your contributions. These stories will inform work leading up to the 42nd General Council in 2015. Features that might personally identify individuals will be changed. The working group will seek your permission before sharing your stories in a widely distributed format. Responses can be sent by e-mail, mail, or fax. Please contact:

Adele Halliday
The United Church of Canada
3250 Bloor St. West, Suite 300
Toronto, ON M8X 2Y4
E-mail: Church in Mission
Fax: 416-231-3103 (attn. Adele Halliday)

Blame the Messenger: Ferguson and Social Media

I got a surprise today when a friend of mine, a United Methodist minister in Texas, told me that my name had appeared in the Washington Post. It turned out to be in an article on the criticism of social media by the St. Louis County prosecutor, Robert McCulloch, during his announcement of the grand jury decision not to indict the Ferguson, Missouri, police officer who killed an unarmed black teenager. I had reacted by tweeting, "So a white police officer shoots an unarmed black teenager six times, and it's Twitter's fault?” My remark was retweeted over 2,800 times and favourited over 800 times, so many people agreed with it.

I, of course, didn't mean that McCullouch had said that Twitter and its users were responsible for Michael Brown's death. I was reacting as the only blame he could find in the aftermath of the killing, the protests and the heavy-handed response of the police, was not with the police officer who fired 12 times; not with a militarized police force that treats citizens like subjects of an occupying power and acts as a fundraising arm of the municipal government by extorting money from black citizens through fines; not with the system that has seen police kill 461 people in the US in the last year for which statistics are available (compared to eight in Germany, and none in the UK and Japan) - but with social media.

McCulloch blamed the messenger as he tore into Twitter, saying that "within minutes various accounts of the incident began appearing on social media" and "non-stop rumours" followed, "filled with speculation, and little, if any solid, accurate information." Certainly speculation and rumours were part of the social media focus on Ferguson - as they were part of broadcast media coverage (listen to talk radio discussions of Ferguson, and TV panels, to hear more speculation, rumours, and inaccurate information that can be crammed into 140 characters on Twitter). I learned more about what was going on in Ferguson last night from Twitter than from the confusing CNN broadcast. Social media was most important in creating an alternative narrative that shone a light on injustice, and allowing black voices to be heard which would have been silent or muted in broadcast media.

Don't blame the messenger when a police force armed to the teeth with surplus military equipment uses state violence on peaceful protesters. Don't blame the messenger when the authorities keep tensions high and then release the grand jury decision at night, a move anyone could see would be provocative. Blame institutionalized racism. Blame the militarization of North American culture. Blame sin, because that is what this is.

In Rural North America, the Future Looks a Lot Like... Now

I have read everything Vancouver-based author William Gibson has written, and remember excitedly watching his cameo in the 1993 mini-series Wild Palms (where he is introduced as the man who coined the term "cyberspace"). I even got to meet him at a book signing in Ottawa and have a signed copy of his classic Neuromancer - the book which introduced cyberspace.

So I'm excited about his new science fiction novel The Peripheral. His last few novels have been set in the present, or a facsimile of it, but the plot of the new book takes place in the near future and in a farther future, more than 100 years out.

A feature on Flavorwire interviews Gibson and describes The Peripheral. I was intrigued by the writer's description of the part of the novel set in the near future:

The Peripheral’s first future, which occurs a few decades from now in the rural American South, features mega-versions of Walmart, 3D-printed meth, and new, pernicious forms of post-traumatic illness that stem from ever more technologically advanced military combat.

Living in rural Ontario where villages and towns have lost many of their manufacturing jobs and there are few family farms left, near New York's North Country which is even less prosperous, I can attest that this near future sounds a lot like today: Walmart, meth, and PTSD. The New York Times said that “to read Gibson is to read the present as if it were the future,” so I'm sure that, like all good science fiction, The Peripheral will tell me a lot about today as well as tomorrow.

Unco 14 West

For the past few years I've been attending Unco (for "Unconference") East in Stony Point, New York, each May. This year, however, I was in Saskatchewan at a symposium on the theology of occupied land when Unco 14 East was held, so last week I flew to San Francisco for the Western version.

Unco West is held at San Francisco Theological Seminary - a very gracious host, by the way - in San Anselmo in Marin County, across the Golden Gate Bridge from the city of San Francisco. As I have never visited California before, memories include driving across the iconic bridge; the view of the city, Alcatraz, and Oakland at dawn as the sun rose and the fog lifted; seeing great architecture downtown like San Francisco City Hall and the opera house; tall redwood trees - the ones at the seminary are, I'm told, young, so they're only hundreds of years old; and being in the Bay area as the San Francisco Giants competed in baseball's World Series (unfortunately, they were playing in Kansas City).

Unco really is an un-conference, a reaction against expensive church conferences with highly paid keynote speakers. There are no keynotes - and no agenda, as the entire conference is crowd-sourced from the participants, many of whom have only met on social media. Some people wanted to talk about fundraising for new ministries - fine, who will lead, and which room and which time slot do you want? Some were interested in a new model for church committee structures, based on the liturgical seasons, and I participated in that one. I led a session on people with disabilities in the church, although the real discussion leadership came from my friend J.C. Mitchell, who has a ministry in Seattle for families with children with disabilities.

While I was there, the news broke that there was some kind of attack going on in Ottawa - in the parliamentary precinct and downtown, areas that I know well as I used to work there and I still know many people. My wife wasn't answering her phone and I couldn't be certain that she hadn't gone to Ottawa (it turned out that she was in Dundela, Ontario, home of the McIntosh apple, getting, yes, apples). But I was immediately surrounded by prayers and concern from American friends. The photo is of art drawn at one of the tables during that difficult day.

And I can't improve on this reflection on Unco 14 West and the San Francisco experience from Whitney Wilkinson, complete with her great photography.

God Gives You 'Every Dog-Boned Morsel': Sermon for Thanksgiving Sunday, October 12, 2014

The LORD your God is bringing you to a wonderful land, a land with streams of water, springs, and wells that gush up in the valleys and on the hills; a land of wheat and barley, vines, fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of olive oil and honey; a land where you will eat food without any shortage—you won’t lack a thing there—a land where stone is hard as iron and where you will mine copper from the hills. You will eat, you will be satisfied, and you will bless the LORD your God in the wonderful land that he’s given you.

But watch yourself! Don’t forget the LORD your God by not keeping his commands or his case laws or his regulations that I am commanding you right now. When you eat, get full, build nice houses, and settle down, and when your herds and your flocks are growing large, your silver and gold are multiplying, and everything you have is thriving, don’t become arrogant, forgetting the LORD your God:
the one who rescued you from Egypt, from the house of slavery;
the one who led you through this vast and terrifying desert of poisonous snakes and scorpions, of cracked ground with no water;
the one who made water flow for you out of a hard rock;
the one who fed you manna in the wilderness, which your ancestors had never experienced, in order to humble and test you, but in order to do good to you in the end.
Don’t think to yourself, My own strength and abilities have produced all this prosperity for me.18 Remember the LORD your God! He’s the one who gives you the strength to be prosperous in order to establish the covenant he made with your ancestors—and that’s how things stand right now.
Deuteronomy 8:7-18, Common English Bible

What I mean is this: the one who sows a small number of seeds will also reap a small crop, and the one who sows a generous amount of seeds will also reap a generous crop.

Everyone should give whatever they have decided in their heart. They shouldn’t give with hesitation or because of pressure. God loves a cheerful giver. God has the power to provide you with more than enough of every kind of grace. That way, you will have everything you need always and in everything to provide more than enough for every kind of good work. As it is written, "He scattered everywhere; he gave to the needy; his righteousness remains forever."

The one who supplies seed for planting and bread for eating will supply and multiply your seed and will increase your crop, which is righteousness. You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous in every way. Such generosity produces thanksgiving to God through us. Your ministry of this service to God’s people isn’t only fully meeting their needs but it is also multiplying in many expressions of thanksgiving to God. They will give honour to God for your obedience to your confession of Christ’s gospel. They will do this because this service provides evidence of your obedience, and because of your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone. They will also pray for you, and they will care deeply for you because of the outstanding grace that God has given to you. Thank God for his gift that words can’t describe!
2 Corinthians 9:6-15, Common English Bible

Last week I took the train to Montreal for a meeting. And we got talking to a couple waiting for the train at Cornwall, and it turned out that the man is from Carleton County in New Brunswick, from a town near the one where my father’s family is from, and in fact his mother had changed my cousin’s diapers. So we talked all about who we knew and who is related to whom, who is still farming potatoes and who got out of farming. And that reminded me of the harvest season down home.

When my father was a boy in the 1930s in New Brunswick, in the days when you ate what you grew, they had wheat, buckwheat, barley, oats, turnips, and beans on the farm. And I assume there were potatoes, because potatoes are grown on pretty much every farm in Carleton County. In the fall they would have threshers come for the harvest. After that Grampy would load several bags filled with wheat, and several filled with buckwheat, onto the wagon. About four o’clock in the morning he would use the light of a kerosene lantern to hook up the horses to the wagon for the annual trip to the grist mill. My Dad and uncle never saw the mill, because they were never allowed to go. But my uncle George Hayward wrote this story down in his collection Growing Up in Simonds, and told how they remembered the lantern light and shivering in the cold fall air and wondering why Grampy didn’t want to take four and six year-old boys along.

It was a 20 mile round trip with a team of horses on gravel roads from the farm to the mill. It was a mill with a water wheel, like the one at Upper Canada Village. Grampy had the wheat ground into whole wheat flour, wheat hearts, and bran. The buckwheat was ground separately into meal. This was before you could buy pancake mix in a box, and before anyone knew that whole grains are better for you.

Grampy returned from the mill long after dark, and would water, unharness and feed the horses. The next morning he would bring the flour into the house and place it on tables in the parlour. That room wasn’t used in the cold months as it was unheated. Each table leg stood in a two foot-long section of metal stove pipe, to stop mice climbing up to get at the flour. Mice were a constant threat to the harvest on the farm. That whole wheat flour was used by Grammy Hayward to bake bread, the wheat hearts went into cream of wheat porridge, buckwheat flour became pancakes, and wheat bran was used muffins but most of it was fed to the cattle. Both the family and cattle ate turnips, too. The Haywards in the 1930s had little or no money, and food wasn’t fancy, but it was wholesome.

That’s a good harvest story. I could also tell you, from Uncle George's descriptions, about pulling the turnips by hand and chopping off their tap root and stalks and leaves. Or about pulling up the bean plants, letting them dry before beating the pods with a flail, and then pouring the beans into a wooden mill to clean the chaff off them. Those beans were white with a reddish-brown marking. In the Maritimes and New England these are called soldier beans, which is the name my family uses for them. Saturday night suppers on the farm were usually baked soldier beans and potato salad.

Now, these stories make it obvious that the harvest involves lots of hard work. Many of us here have lots of personal experience with that. There’s an old movie called Shenandoah, about a farm family in Virginia that tries not to get involved in the American Civil War. It seems I’ve had a lot of Civil War stories in sermons lately. The head of the family was played by Jimmy Stewart. And he says grace at supper, and says:

Lord, we cleared this land.
We ploughed it, sowed it, and harvested it.
We cooked the harvest.
It wouldn’t be here, we wouldn’t be eatin’ it, if we hadn’t done it all ourselves.
We worked dog-boned hard for every crumb and morsel, but we thank you just the same anyway, Lord, for this food we’re about to eat.
Amen.

This attitude, that we have done all this by ourselves, is what this morning’s reading from the book of Deuteronomy is about. Moses is giving the people of Israel a warning. They have been in the desert for four decades after being brought out of slavery in Egypt. They haven’t even entered the promised land yet. But Moses knows these people. He knows that, even though God brought plagues on Egypt so their oppressors would let the Israelites go, even though God parted the sea so they could escape, even though God made bread appear on the ground to feed them and made water flow from a rock in the desert, the Israelites complained. In the TV comedy show Family Guy, there’s a scene where Moses adds another commandment: “There’s nothing I can do about the sun.” That isn’t in the Bible, but it sounds like something Moses might say, trying to get the complaining Israelites through the desert. They are completely dependent on God for survival, but Moses is still trying to get this across to them after 40 years.

Moses knows that when they get to the new land, they will have wheat and barley, grapevines, fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil, and honey, that in this land there will always be food on the table and a roof over their heads, their flocks and herds will grow, and everything they have will thrive – and then, Moses knows, they will be tempted to forget the lesson they were supposed to learn during their time in the wilderness, that they rely on God. Don’t become arrogant, he tells them. Don’t think to yourself, My own strength and abilities have produced all this prosperity for me. The Message version of the Bible translates this as, “I did all this. And all by myself. I’m rich. It’s all mine.” If Moses had heard Jimmy Stewart’s character in the movie, he would have said, "Don’t say to yourselves, We wouldn’t be eatin’ this food if we hadn’t done it all ourselves. We worked dog-boned hard for every morsel."

Jesus tells a story about this attitude, about a rich man whose land produces a bountiful harvest. The man says to himself, “What can I do? My barn isn’t big enough for my crop. I know. Here’s what I’ll do: I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones for all my grain. Then I’ll say to myself, ‘You’ve done well. You’ve got it made and can now retire. Take it easy and have the time of your life.’”

Moses is warning Israel against pride. He is trying to tell them that, despite what people think and what Jimmy Stewart’s character and the rich man have to say, they didn’t do it all themselves. It may be their labour that plants and tends and harvests the wheat and barley, grapevines, fig trees, pomegranates, and olives, but they didn’t invent these things or the natural processes that cause them to grow. As our reading from the Second Letter to the Corinthian believers says, it is God who supplies seed for planting and bread for eating. Jesus tells another little story, about scattering seed on the ground, and the seed sprouts and grows, but the farmer doesn’t know how. The earth produces crops all by itself, Jesus says, first the stalk, then the head, then the full head of grain to be cut at the harvest.

A lot of us are now pretty removed from the harvest, These days we may bring in vegetables from our own gardens, or we do what I did on Friday, go to the grocery store and buy a turkey and vegetables and potatoes and bread that someone else raised and grew, dressed and processed and baked. But we can still fall into the trap Moses and Jesus are speaking about, of believing that we can take all the credit, of thinking that any wealth we may have is the result of our own striving, or because we are better than others.

Remember the Lord your God, Moses says. God gives you any ability you have to produce food or anything else. And when we remember God and that everything comes from God, when we recognize that we are dependent on God for all that we have, when we realize that we have not achieved anything on our own, then we have to accept that what comes from the earth is not ours to hoard for ourselves. God has given it to share. The Corinthian church is told, you will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous in every way. Such generosity produces thanksgiving to God.

So at this harvest time, remember the Lord your God who gives seed that becomes food for us, who gives us gifts we can give away, which grow into well-formed lives, grounded in God, rich in generosity, giving God the glory, producing abundant and bountiful gratitude to God. Let us show our thanksgiving through our generous offerings to our needy brothers and sisters. That’s how we can bless God in the wonderful land God has given us.

Taking a Good Look at Our Communion Liturgy

This is the sermon at the South Stormont United Churches on World Communion Sunday, October 5, 2014.

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.
1 Corinthians 11:23-29, English Standard Version

At the Last Supper Jesus tells his apostles to remember him whenever they break bread and share the cup. Soon the church began doing this as part of worship, as a sacrament, a symbol and sign of God’s grace. It was called Communion, or Eucharist, or the Lord’s Supper. And it’s good to talk about what we do in Communion, so that it is truly meaningful for us and not just a ritual we do without really understanding its significance.

We have a whole theology around Communion. If you look back at the statements of faith of the United Church of Canada, the 1940 Statement of Faith has this to say:

We believe that the Lord’s Supper perpetuates the fellowship between Christ and his disciples sealed in the upper room, that at the table he is always present, and his people are nourished, confirmed, and renewed. The giving and receiving of bread and wine accompanied by his own words signifies the gracious self-giving of Christ as suffering and living Lord in such wise that his faithful people live in him and he in them.

A Song of Faith, our latest faith statement, also speaks of Communion:

Carrying a vision of creation healed and restored, we welcome all in the name of Christ.
Invited to the table where none shall go hungry, we gather as Christ’s guests and friends.
In holy communion we are commissioned to feed as we have been fed, forgive has we have been forgiven, love as we have been loved.
The open table speaks of the shining promise of barriers broken and creation healed.
In the communion meal, wine poured out and bread broken, we remember Jesus.
We remember not only the promise but also the price that he paid for what he was, for what he did and said, and for the world’s brokenness.
We taste the mystery of God’s great love for us, and are renewed in faith and hope.

So our faith statements tell us that in Communion we have fellowship with Jesus, remembrance of Jesus and his life and death, promise, renewal, commissioning, mystery. But our Statements of Faith aren’t printed for us in the hymn book – well, the New Creed is, but not the others – and they aren’t in a booklet in the pews. They are printed in the United Church Manual, but we don’t have copies for each person. However, all of these meanings of the sacrament, and more, are present in the words and actions of Communion itself. The Lord’s Supper has been a very old way for the church to tell the story of salvation, to share together, and to send us out as disciples of Jesus. In fact, Communion prayers are pretty similar across denominations and have been much the same back to the ancient church. Some churches use the same prayer each time they celebrate Communion; we vary the language but keep the structure roughly the same.

Let’s have a look together at how we share in the Lord’s Supper and what this tells us about the sacrament and our faith.

We start off with a Prayer of Confession. The Second Corinthians passage we read has some of the most ancient words about Communion we have. In it the Apostle Paul talks about examining yourself before eating the bread and drinking the cup, and that’s what we do in our confession (This prayer was written by Catherine Tovell, Dundas Street United Church, London, Ontario, and is used with permission from Gathering, Summer/Autumn 2012, page 51).

O God, in our daily life we gather many times around tables. We sit at tables to eat, to talk, to do business, to weep, to comfort. Yet too often our tables are places of exclusion and pain, rather than reconciliation and support. We use tables to divide, to set rules of who’s in and who’s out.

You call us to one table, an open table, where all are welcome, all are equal, and all are valued. Forgive us when we try to close your table, to claim it as our own possession, to misuse it. Amen.

Then we have the Invitation to the Table, just as A Song of Faith says: We welcome all in the name of Christ, invited to the table where none shall go hungry.

All are welcome at this table. It is a table where everyone is a guest. You may never have been here before, or you may have been coming to a table like this all your life. It doesn’t matter. You are welcome here today. This is not the table of this congregation or the United Church of Canada; it is the table of Jesus, who invites us to come and eat, to fill our hunger and quench our thirst, to find new life in him. So come, because you are welcome here.

Now we come to the Great Prayer. It starts off with these responsive words:

The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
Lift up your hearts.
We lift them to the Lord.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right to give God thanks and praise.

In Latin these are called the Sursum Corda, and go back at least to the third century, so we are saying them with generation upon generation of Christians before us.

Then the prayer has words of thanksgiving:

Thanks and blessings to you, Holy One, who summons galaxies into being.
We bless you for our world.
The diversity of our planet amazes us, from the prairies and forests of the Americas to the deserts of Africa and Asia, from the majestic mountains of Europe to the vast outback of Australia.
We give you thanks for the multiplicity of humanity, with our complexity of colour and culture, yet called into oneness of being through Christ.

Jewish prayers would tell what God has done, and the church perpetuates that in this prayer:

We give you thanks that through the waters of the sea you delivered your people from slavery;
On your sacred mountain you called us to truth and holiness;
In the words of your prophets you called us to justice and compassion.
Yet we turned away from you.
Finally, you sent Jesus, the newness of your promise to us.

One of the most important things we do as a church is to tell the Biblical story – so here is the story of creation, then the story of God’s action saving the people of Israel, how Israel turned away from God, and God’s response in sending Jesus. This brings on the Sanctus and its words from Isaiah and Revelation:

So, with those who trembled at the foot of your holy mountain, with all who have gone before us, with the angels of the heavens, and with all who will follow us in the community of faith, as we join our voices in praise to you:
Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might,
heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest.

So this prayer is packed full of meaning. And it continues in the Post-Sanctus, which carries on the story of salvation in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, so we will remember this story.

Holy are you, God of all creation, and blessed is Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord.
Yearning for us to know you, he came to be your face of love and compassion for all.
Hungering for reconciliation between you and your children, he became the broken Bread of Life.
Witnessing to your holy teachings and fulfilling your holy law, he suffered on the cross. Yet he was raised from the grave to lift us all up from death and sin into freedom.
He is known to us in the breaking of bread and the sharing of the cup.

The Institution Narrative which follows is based closely on the description of the last supper in the Gospels and Second Corinthians, as Jesus breaks the bread and shares the cup at that last supper and commands us to remember him in this way.

On the last night he spent with his friends, Jesus took an age-old tradition of his people and transformed it into something new.
He took bread, staple food of his land, blessed and broke it, and gave it to those around him, saying ‘Take, eat; this is my body, broken for you. Whenever you do this, remember me.’
After supper he took a cup of wine, common drink of his people, and gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink this, all of you. This is the new promise of God in my blood. Each time you do this, remember me.’

And these are not just words. The church learned long ago not to rely only on the spoken word, but to engage all of the senses. We hear the words of Jesus, we taste the bread and the juice when the supper is served, and we see the last supper acted out. Some churches have incense, so there is smell too. So we reenact, not just retell. As celebrant I repeat the actions of Jesus, taking, blessing, breaking and giving, and in recreating the original event we somehow experience again the reality of Jesus himself being present with us.

We than have a Memorial Acclamation together, proclaiming the mystery spoken of in A Song of Faith, God’s love in Jesus who died, rose and will come again:

By remembering Jesus in this way now, we claim our common heritage as we proclaim the mystery of faith:
Christ has died.
Christ is risen.
Christ will come again.

And now we move on, to the Epiclesis. This is a prayer for transformation, calling on the Holy Spirit to transform the gifts of bread and juice, and transform us, to do what the 1940 statement says Communion does, make this a sacred meal which nourishes, confirms and renews us:

Send, O God, your Holy Spirit upon us and what we do here, that we and these gifts, empowered by your Spirit, may become signs of peace and justice to each other and to all peoples of this earth.
As this bread, once scattered, was brought together and made one, it is our hope that your people will be brought together from the ends of the earth into your reign of justice and love.

And we conclude with the Doxology, praising God in the Trinity of Creator, Christ and Spirit:

Through Christ, with Christ, and in Christ,
In the unity of the Holy Spirit,
All glory is yours everywhere, now and forever.
Amen.

So there’s a lot in these words and actions: Self examination. Welcome in the name of Christ. Thanksgiving. The story of Israel. Praise. Retelling, reenacting and remembering the story of Jesus. Mystery. Renewal. It’s as if our Communion liturgy is a mini-course in our faith. It’s one of the ways we tell each other and the world what we believe and whose we are. So let’s listen and watch as we celebrate this holy meal that means so much to us.

Working Group on Theologies of Disability

I've been working on a small United Church of Canada group on theologies of disability, responding to a request to the church's Theology and Interchurch Interfaith Committee (of which I'm a member) stemming from a national consultation with people with disabilities last year. We have only met once, largely to set parameters for our work, and are now awaiting nominations of additional members. But here is the language from the nominations document, telling the church what we will be doing:

How does disability matter for our theologies? How do our experiences with disability shape our understandings of God?

The mandate of the working group is to engage the United Church in an exploration of theologies of disability, which could include engaging concepts such as healing, cure, sin, and normalcy, and to make this work widely available in the church.

The working group will explore questions and concepts that relate to the attitudes toward people with disabilities, and intersections between disabilities and other identities—including gender identity and racial identity. The group’s work will relate to the church’s work on intercultural engagement; it will also seek to explore concepts related to difference, diversity, power, and privilege. The working group may also explore how disability theologians have worked on medical, social, and cultural models of disability; in addition, it may consider theological topics such as what it means to be made in the image of God (imago Dei), providence, and the disabled God.

A Story of Iraq

Reading this piece on books about Iraq in the New York Review of Books, I was struck by this excerpt from Hassan Blasim's The Corpse Exhibition and Other Stories of Iraq, to which I can add nothing:

The man with the beard was a teacher who went to the police one day to report on a neighbor who was trading in antiquities stolen from the National Museum. The police thanked him for his cooperation. The teacher, his conscience relieved, went back to his school. The police submitted a report to the Ministry of Defense that the teacher’s house was an al Qaeda hideout. The police were in partnership with the antiquities smuggler. The Ministry of Defense sent the report to the US Army, who bombed the teacher’s house by helicopter. His wife, his four children, and his elderly mother were killed. The teacher escaped with his life, but he suffered brain damage and lost his arms.