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.

Dominion From Sea to Sea: Sermon, June 29, 2014

Give the king your justice, O God,
and your righteousness to the royal son!
May he judge your people with righteousness,
and your poor with justice!
Let the mountains bear prosperity for the people,
and the hills, in righteousness!
May he defend the cause of the poor of the people,
give deliverance to the children of the needy,
and crush the oppressor!
May they fear you while the sun endures,
and as long as the moon, throughout all generations!
May he be like rain that falls on the mown grass,
like showers that water the earth!
In his days may the righteous flourish,
and peace abound, till the moon be no more!
May he have dominion from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth!
May desert tribes bow down before him,
and his enemies lick the dust!
May the kings of Tarshish and of the coastlands
render him tribute;
may the kings of Sheba and Seba
bring gifts!
May all kings fall down before him,
all nations serve him!
For he delivers the needy when he calls,
the poor and him who has no helper.
He has pity on the weak and the needy,
and saves the lives of the needy.
From oppression and violence he redeems their life,
and precious is their blood in his sight.
Long may he live;
may gold of Sheba be given to him!
May prayer be made for him continually,
and blessings invoked for him all the day!
May there be abundance of grain in the land;
on the tops of the mountains may it wave;
may its fruit be like Lebanon;
and may people blossom in the cities
like the grass of the field!
May his name endure forever,
his fame continue as long as the sun!
May people be blessed in him,
all nations call him blessed!
Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel,
who alone does wondrous things.
Blessed be his glorious name forever;
may the whole earth be filled with his glory!
Amen and Amen!
The prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended.

Psalm 72, English Standard Version

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

Hebrews 11:8-16, English Standard Version

I want to single out one verse from Psalm 72 – verse 8, “may he have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth.” It is the motto of Canada, “from sea to sea” in the Latin Bible as a mari usque ad mare, and it appears on the Canadian coat of arms we see on our passports and we used to see on all of our paper money.

Now this is an interesting story. That verse of the psalm, "may he have dominion from sea to sea," is one of the inspirations for calling the new Canadian confederation a dominion. This was apparently the idea of Sir Samuel Leonard Tilley, representing New Brunswick at the Charlottetown conference on confederation. The verse began to be used in reference to Canada by Rev. George Monro Grant, who was quite a character.

He was born in Stellarton in Pictou County, Nova Scotia, and became a Presbyterian minister, serving at St. Matthew’s in downtown Halifax, which is now a United Church congregation. He was very involved in the coming together of four Presbyterian denominations to become the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Most of those congregations later entered our United Church of Canada. And he was elected Moderator of that new Canadian Presbyterian church. He was in favour of Nova Scotia joining Canada, and played a major role in overcoming opposition to confederation in that province. For 25 years he was principal of Queen’s University, which was a Presbyterian college at the time. I graduated from Queen’s in Grant Hall, which is named after him. He was secretary to his friend Sir Sandford Fleming, who came up with the idea of the time zones that are now used around the world. So we have Sandford Fleming to thank for those announcements on CBC that your show will be on at 7 PM Eastern, 8:30 in Newfoundland.

In 1872 George Grant traveled with Sandford Fleming across Canada, from Atlantic to Pacific, to survey the route of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Grant began using the verse from Psalm 72, from sea to sea, in his sermons and in a book he published, called Ocean to Ocean, as he made the case for a Canadian nation that would indeed span the continent from sea to sea. Years later the verse in Latin was engraved onto the mace of the new Saskatchewan legislature. When Canada’s coat of arms was redesigned in 1921, a mari usque ad mare was chosen as the national motto.

So that’s quite a story – a Canadian story. From sea to sea. In the psalm these words are meant to show that the king of Israel governs the entire Middle East, and for us they mean that Canada extends, as the song says, from Bonavista to Vancouver Island, from the Arctic Circle to the Great Lakes waters.

But there are actually two mottoes on Canada’s coat of arms. If you look closely, you will see a mari usque ad mare on a scroll below the shield, but there is also a ribbon behind the shield, with the words desiderantes meliorem patriam, which is the motto of the Order of Canada. Desiderantes meliorem patriam. Folks who had to take Latin in high school are trying to parse this now. I didn’t take Latin; I only know Latin words in anatomy and the names of plants. But this is a verse in the reading we heard from the Letter to the Hebrews. Who knew that there are two Bible quotes on the arms of Canada? This one is Hebrews 11:16, Desiderantes meliorem patriam, they desire a better country.

We desire a better country, from sea to sea. We desire a country that has the peace, order, and good government our constitution speaks of, a country that, as the constitution also says, recognizes the supremacy of God and the rule of law, a country where everyone has freedom of belief and religion, a country where the common good is foremost. We desire a country where we act to share the wealth with which God has blessed us, a country where we take the gifts God has given us out into the world, a country where we are servants to God’s world and God’s people.

In the Letter to the Hebrews the author sums up the Abraham and Sarah story in the book of Genesis that we talked about last week. The letter says that these great characters of the Bible were “strangers and exiles on the earth” – and they were, they were nomads, they came from a far country, just as our ancestors came to Canada from elsewhere. Sarah and Abraham were strangers in a strange land. But they never went back, just as our ancestors stayed here and never moved back to the United States or Britain or Holland or Germany.

But these words apply to more than our ancestors. They apply to us. We speak today of our attachment to Canada, and it’s a real one, one we can feel, one which inspires pride in us, but as followers of Jesus we remember what it says in the letter to the Philippians: “Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” We are not detached from our lives here; we do not fail in our duties as citizens of Canada and the world; but our ultimate citizenship is in heaven, not on earth. We desire a better country of Canada, but our desire doesn’t stop there – as Hebrews says, we desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one, our final homeland, prepared by God for us, and from there our saviour Jesus will come.

The Closer

The Closer: My Story
By Mariano Rivera with Wayne Coffery
Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2014
280 pages

I was pleased to receive a review copy of this autobiography of baseball pitcher Mariano Rivera. who played 19 seasons (1995-2013) for the New York Yankees - 17 of them as a relief pitcher so dominant he was nicknamed "The Sandman." He was a thirteen-time All-Star and five-time World Series champion, and is Major League Baseball's career leader in saves and games finished. I can't imagine that he won't be in the Baseball Hall of Fame when he is eligible.

As a sports memoir should, The Closer tells the story of Rivera's years with the Yankees organization and the World Series wins. But for me the most interesting aspects of the book were his story before baseball, in the poor fishing village of Puerto Caimito, on Panama's Pacific Coast; how the Yankees recruited him out of Panama, where he had never heard of Babe Ruth or Hank Aaron; the anecdotes about playing in the Yankees minor-league affiliates, where he met future team mates like Derek Jeter ("the kid is a year out of high school and all limbs, and you are never sure what he will do") and played against Carlos Delgado, one of my favourite Toronto Blue Jays (and peace activists); and his faith.

Rivera tells how he spoke about faith with his cousin while they were working on a fishing boat off Panama, and how he eventually responded to the altar call in a small cement church. The book does not understate the impact of his faith on his life:

I unpack my most precious possession - the red-leather Bible that was a gift from Clara. It has notes in the margins, and verses underlined and passages highlighted. It has been well-thumbed, I can tell you that. The Bible can't tell you the story of my walk with the Lord, but it can tell you everything about how I try to live, and why the love of the Lord is the foundation of my whole life...It is the best kind of wisdom: Simple wisdom. This sort of wisdom, from the twenty-third chapter of Matthew, verse twelve:
Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

And, in contrast to how prayer is treated in some sports settings and in popular culture:

Prayer is not like a vending machine, where you put in your quarters (or words) and then wait for the product to be delivered. It's not as if I can say to the Lord, "I pray for this World Series victory," or "I pray for a clean bill of health on my next checkup," and then just sit back and wait for Him to deliver it. When my agent is negotiating a contract for me, I never get down on my hands and knees and ask the Lord to make me wealthy. I don't pray for a new car or a good MRI result, or a strikeout in a big spot. For me, the most meaningful prayers are when I ask for God's wisdom.

Rivera and his wife Clara have now started an evangelical church, Refugio de Esperanza, in a former Presbyterian church building in New Rochelle CT, with Clara as senior pastor.

Baseball fans (of all teams) will enjoy this memoir from one of the finest players of the last two decades; Christian readers will learn from this story of faith, as Rivera seeks to honour God in his calling as an athlete.

Word For Word Bible Comic

I remember the Bible comics we had in Sunday school, and the six-volume set of The Picture Bible I still have ("Genesis to Revelation in Picture Strip Form. Dramatic, Authentic"). But Bible comics have always been written primarily for children - except for the manga Bibles, of which there are a couple - and leave out parts of the Bible.

I was interested to learn that there is a project underway by a British artist, Samuel Amadeus Pillario, who says that "There’s a big gap between Bible-based comics and storybooks for kids, and the real harsh texts of the book we read as adults. I felt called to fill that gap and create a graphic novel of the books of the Bible that would be not be for little kids but would be a good way to reach teens (aged 15+) and adults, with the full story of the Bible." And it is the full story - a "word for word," unabridged Bible, based on the World English Bible translation and with great efforts made to have the illustrations include historically accurate detail.

There's more about the Word For Word Bible Comic here, and a Kickstarter campaign underway until May 25 to fund completion of the Book of Judges.

A Disabled God: Sermon, April 27, 2014

This reflection on the story of "doubting" Thomas was inspired by the treatment of Jesus' wounds in the post-resurrection stories in Nancy Eiesland's The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000).

As I am a hunchback, it's apt that this sermon was preached on the Second Sunday of Easter, which has been called Quasimodo Sunday after the Introit at the Latin Mass — "Quasi modo geniti infantes, rationabile, sine dolo lac concupiscite."

It was still the first day of the week. That evening, while the disciples were behind closed doors because they were afraid of the Jewish authorities, Jesus came and stood among them. He said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. When the disciples saw the Lord, they were filled with joy. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father sent me, so I am sending you.” Then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven; if you don’t forgive them, they aren’t forgiven.”

Thomas, the one called Didymus, one of the Twelve, wasn’t with the disciples when Jesus came. The other disciples told him, “We’ve seen the Lord!”

But he replied, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands, put my finger in the wounds left by the nails, and put my hand into his side, I won’t believe.”

After eight days his disciples were again in a house and Thomas was with them. Even though the doors were locked, Jesus entered and stood among them. He said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here. Look at my hands. Put your hand into my side. No more disbelief. Believe!”

Thomas responded to Jesus, “My Lord and my God!”

Jesus replied, “Do you believe because you see me? Happy are those who don’t see and yet believe.”

Then Jesus did many other miraculous signs in his disciples’ presence, signs that aren’t recorded in this scroll. But these things are written so that you will believe that Jesus is the Christ, God’s Son, and that believing, you will have life in his name.

John 20:19-31, Common English Bible

Thomas is known forever as Doubting Thomas. This seems a little unfair – after all, the women had told the male disciples that Jesus is risen, and they don’t believe it either until Jesus shows up in their midst. They’re not called the doubting disciples. If you remember back before Palm Sunday, when their friend Lazarus died, Thomas was the only one who was brave enough to say, “Let’s go so that we may die with Jesus.”

We could talk about doubt, or about what Jesus says about those who haven’t seen him yet believe, or about camping. But I want to pick up on something in the Thomas story and continue a bit of what we discussed a month ago, when we told a story about Jesus healing a blind man, and I spoke about my disability and how people with disabilities are viewed in the church.

Jesus displays his hands and his side. He says to Thomas, “Put your finger here. Look at my hands. Put your hand into my side.”

Jesus reveals his injured hands and side to his friends. This may just seem like Jesus proving to them that it really is him, and that’s part of it, but let’s look at it from the perspective of a person with a disability.

This resurrection body Jesus has is like the physical body he had before his death but is somehow transformed, so that he can pass through locked doors but he can eat and he can be touched. And his body retains the wounds of his crucifixion. Presumably his resurrected body didn’t have to include these wounds, but it does, and Jesus displays them to his friends. Even though his body is raised and changed into a spiritual heavenly body, it is impaired and imperfect. It has the marks of disability.

This aspect of the Easter story isn’t often recognized. The resurrected Jesus isn’t usually seen as bearing the marks of physical disability. But people with disabilities, people like me, can see in the Thomas story that even Jesus can experience disability. By embodying disability in his resurrected body, Jesus is showing us that disability does not indicate a flawed humanity, but a full humanity.

Jesus tells us that he and God the Creator are one, and that’s what we believe. So then, in the resurrected Jesus of Easter with his broken body, God is a disabled God. What a powerful idea this is, described by Nancy Eiseland in her book, The Disabled God. If God can be disabled, God is present with people with disabilities. If God in sinless, suffering Jesus can be disabled, then our ideas about how disability is somehow a punishment, the result of something a person has done wrong, are nonsense. The link between disability and sin is broken. If God can be disabled, then anything society and individuals do that denies the full personhood of people with disabilities is an offence against God. If God can be disabled, the bodies and minds of people with disabilities are made in God’s image, Nancy Eiseland points out, not in spite of disability but through disability. If God can be disabled, the church which is to live God’s mission in the world must allow for the full participation of people with disabilities.

If God can be disabled, the hope of Easter is made real for people with disabilities and those who care for them. There is hope for justice, that the barriers that exclude and humiliate people with disabilities will be removed. There is hope for lives of dignity and integrity. There is hope, as Nancy Eiesland says, that our bodies are worth the living.

Don't Be Afraid: Sermon, Easter Sunday, April 20, 2014

After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to look at the tomb. Look, there was a great earthquake, for an angel from the Lord came down from heaven. Coming to the stone, he rolled it away and sat on it. Now his face was like lightning and his clothes as white as snow. The guards were so terrified of him that they shook with fear and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, “Don’t be afraid. I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He isn’t here, because he’s been raised from the dead, just as he said. Come, see the place where they laid him. Now hurry, go and tell his disciples, ‘He’s been raised from the dead. He’s going on ahead of you to Galilee. You will see him there.’ I’ve given the message to you.”

With great fear and excitement, they hurried away from the tomb and ran to tell his disciples. But Jesus met them and greeted them. They came and grabbed his feet and worshipped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Go and tell my brothers that I am going into Galilee. They will see me there.”

Matthew 28:1-10, Common English Bible

We have been with the characters in the story of Holy Week and Easter on a roller coaster of emotions. We had the joy and excitement of Palm Sunday, the sadness and questioning of the final dinner Jesus had with his friends on Thursday, the shock of his arrest, the anger and violence and despair of Good Friday, the silence of Saturday. And now Easter morning. The women, both named Mary, Mary Magdalene and Mary, who is the mother of James and Joseph, come to the tomb. They had gone through the heartbreak of watching the body of Jesus being laid there on Friday. And in this early morning there is surprise, an upsetting, frightening surprise – in the story we read from Matthew’s Gospel, it says that there is an earthquake, and an angel rolls away the stone that seals the tomb, and sits on it. The guards are so scared that they shake with fear, and are paralyzed, as if they are dead.

Who are these guards? At our Good Friday service we stopped reading the story at the end of Friday’s events, but Matthew continues that on Saturday the religious authorities went to the Roman governor and said, “We just remembered, this Jesus said he would rise after three days. You had better seal his grave, or his friends may come and steal his corpse so they can tell people, he’s been raised from the dead.” And the governor gave them guards to post at the tomb.

And the angel says to the women, “Don’t be afraid.” Matthew wrote in Greek, and his words have the sense of “Stop being afraid.” The King James Bible translates them as “Fear not.” We wouldn’t say it that way these days. You don’t hear anyone saying, “Fear not.” When our niece was little – probably about two years old - if we told her that she should do something or stop doing something, she would say, “I not.” Fear not sounds like something she would have said.

Stop being afraid, the angel says. You’re looking for Jesus, who was put to death. He isn’t here – he has been raised from the dead, just as he said. Come, see the place where his body was. Now hurry and tell his followers that he’s been raised and is going on ahead of you to Galilee, where you came from.

What a message. You can imagine that the roller coaster of emotions takes another turn for the two women with this news. The story says that they run from the tomb with great fear and excitement. They’re still scared. It’s frightening enough to find the grave where you saw your friend buried empty. If I went to St. Lawrence Valley Cemetery and found a hole in the ground where I know someone had been buried, I would feel panicked about what had happened. The women have not just seen an empty tomb, but have been through a startling encounter with some kind of supernatural messenger. The angel’s clothes are described as being white as snow, which would frighten anyone in eastern Ontario today. We’ve had enough of snow!

Mary and Mary are terrified, and they’re amazed – they have been given news that no one else knows. What if it’s true? It must be, look what just happened. They lose no time racing away. Just think how their hearts must be racing, their minds trying to process what they have seen and heard and felt, their lungs barely able to breathe, as they run.

And in the story they meet Jesus. Jesus, their friend. Jesus, whom they had seen dying a horrible death on a cross. Jesus, whom they had watched being placed, dead, in the grave. Jesus, now alive, on the path, saying hello.

What do they do? What would we do? If you have seen the TV show Resurrection, a boy who died 30 years ago comes back, and his parents react, we could say, with fear and wonder – they are obviously freaked out at first, they don’t believe it, they step back, their eyes open wide, their mouths hang open, and then the mother rushes forward and hugs him, to make contact with him again. That’s what Mary and Mary do. They fall down and grab his feet. Matthew doesn’t tell us what they say – maybe they can’t get any words out, maybe they can only speak incoherently, maybe they just say the same thing over and over. What would we say? We’re only told what Jesus says, the same thing the angel says, the same thing the choir sang for us a few minutes ago: “Don’t be afraid.” And then, “Go and tell my followers that I’m going to Galilee. They will see me there.”

What an experience for the two Marys. What a roller coaster, from horror to grief to happiness. They live out the words in Psalm 30, “you turned my wailing into dancing, you stripped off my funeral clothes and dressed me with joy.”

But did we forget the guards, who also saw the angel, and the grave opened? They may have been so scared that it’s as if they were dead, but they snap out of it. We stopped reading at verse 10 – here’s how the story goes on at verse 11:

Now, as the women were on their way, some of the guards came into the city and told the chief priests everything that had happened. They met with the elders and decided to give a large sum of money to the soldiers. They told them, ‘Say that Jesus’ disciples came at night and stole his body while you were sleeping. And if the governor hears about this, we will take care of it with him so you will have nothing to worry about.’ So the soldiers took the money and did as they were told. And this report has spread throughout all Judea to this very day.
Matthew 28:11-15, Common English Bible

So the authorities try to cover it up and buy people off – I’m glad this kind of thing doesn’t happen anymore. You never hear about cover-ups and buying people’s silence in today’s news.

Now, the guards and the women both saw everything that happened that morning. They have all gone through this experience that is far outside anything they have ever lived through, far beyond anything they can understand.

The women and the guards are both faced with what do about this frightening, incomprehensible, amazing event. The women make their choice. They’re afraid at the power they have seen, but they’re overjoyed at being told that Jesus is risen, and they run to tell the news. The guards are afraid, too, at what’s happened, and what will happen to them for letting the body disappear on their watch. They go to tell – but they only tell the authorities, who hush it up, as empires always want to do with the truth when it threatens the status quo.

These are our choices too. Suppress the news of Easter. Or proclaim that Jesus is risen.

At that time women were not even able to be witnesses in court, they were considered to be so unreliable. And yet God chose the women to be the first witnesses to the resurrection. And God chooses us, not to keep silent, but to be witnesses of the power of the resurrection in our lives and in our world, to be Easter people, to live every day as if it is Easter day, and it is, for every day is lived in the light of Easter.

Fear not. Don’t be afraid. Stop being afraid. Stop being afraid about what happened on Easter morning; stop being afraid of the powers that be that want to keep Jesus and his message of love and justice in the grave; and stop being afraid about what is going to happen to us when we die. Because Jesus has been raised, the Scriptures tell us, we will all be raised. The Apostle Paul writes to the Corinthian church, Christ has been raised from the dead as the first crop of the harvest of those who have died, and so all who belong to him will be raised. “Since we believe that Jesus died and rose,” Paul tells the Thessalonians, “so we also believe that God will bring with him those who have died in Jesus.”

Fear not. Don’t be afraid. Stop being afraid. The angel says, “he isn’t here; he has been raised from the dead, just as he said.” For Jesus has been raised: he is not in the tomb, he is not in a world 20 centuries in the past, he is not preserved in stained glass and paintings - the risen Christ is here right now, present in this community, present in us through his Spirit, choosing us, calling us to be people of the resurrection, people who live our lives in joy and service and blessing. Where does the angel say that the risen Jesus will go? To Galilee. Galilee is the symbol of the poor, the marginalized, the despised. As Easter people we will find the risen Jesus in the Galilees of this world, wherever empires keep people silent, poor, homeless, ill, hungry, imprisoned, oppressed.

Fear not. Don’t be afraid. Stop being afraid. Stop being afraid of empires that can never keep the resurrection hushed up, stop being afraid of violence that can never kill love, stop being afraid of death that can never have the last word – stop being afraid of God, for God’s power rolls away the stone from the tomb, not to let out an angry Jesus bent on vengeance, but a Jesus who meets us and gently tells us, “Don’t be afraid,” a Jesus who lives so we can live too.

Don’t be afraid! Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you!

Access Over Exclusion: People With Disabilities as Children of God: Sermon, March 30, 2014

This sermon, preached on the Fourth Sunday in Lent, draws on Deborah Beth Creamer's Disability and Christian Theology: Embodied Limits and Constructive Possibilities, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009, and Jennie Weiss Block, Copious Hosting: A Theology of Access For People With Disabilities, New York: Continuum, 2002. Their work has shaped and inspired me as I reflect on my own disability and theology.

As Jesus walked along, he saw a man who was blind from birth. Jesus’ disciples asked, “Rabbi, who sinned so that he was born blind, this man or his parents?”

Jesus answered, “Neither he nor his parents. This happened so that God’s mighty works might be displayed in him. While it’s daytime, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” After he said this, he spit on the ground, made mud with the saliva, and smeared the mud on the man’s eyes. Jesus said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (this word means sent). So the man went away and washed. When he returned, he could see.

The man’s neighbors and those who used to see him when he was a beggar said, “Isn’t this the man who used to sit and beg?”

Some said, “It is,” and others said, “No, it’s someone who looks like him.”

But the man said, “Yes, it’s me!”

So they asked him, “How are you now able to see?”

He answered, “The man they call Jesus made mud, smeared it on my eyes, and said, ‘Go to the Pool of Siloam and wash.’ So I went and washed, and then I could see.”

They asked, “Where is this man?”

He replied, “I don’t know.”

Then they led the man who had been born blind to the Pharisees. Now Jesus made the mud and smeared it on the man’s eyes on a Sabbath day. So Pharisees also asked him how he was able to see.

The man told them, “He put mud on my eyes, I washed, and now I see.”

Some Pharisees said, “This man isn’t from God, because he breaks the Sabbath law.” Others said, “How can a sinner do miraculous signs like these?” So they were divided. Some of the Pharisees questioned the man who had been born blind again: “What do you have to say about him, since he healed your eyes?”

He replied, “He’s a prophet.”

The Jewish leaders didn’t believe the man had been blind and received his sight until they called for his parents. The Jewish leaders asked them, “Is this your son? Are you saying he was born blind? How can he now see?”

His parents answered, “We know he is our son. We know he was born blind. But we don’t know how he now sees, and we don’t know who healed his eyes. Ask him. He’s old enough to speak for himself.” His parents said this because they feared the Jewish authorities. This is because the Jewish authorities had already decided that whoever confessed Jesus to be the Christ would be expelled from the synagogue. That’s why his parents said, “He’s old enough. Ask him.”

Therefore, they called a second time for the man who had been born blind and said to him, “Give glory to God. We know this man is a sinner.”

The man answered, “I don’t know whether he’s a sinner. Here’s what I do know: I was blind and now I see.” They questioned him: “What did he do to you? How did he heal your eyes?”

He replied, “I already told you, and you didn’t listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?”

They insulted him: “You are his disciple, but we are Moses’ disciples. We know that God spoke to Moses, but we don’t know where this man is from.”

The man answered, “This is incredible! You don’t know where he is from, yet he healed my eyes! We know that God doesn’t listen to sinners. God listens to anyone who is devout and does God’s will. No one has ever heard of a healing of the eyes of someone born blind. If this man wasn’t from God, he couldn’t do this.”

They responded, “You were born completely in sin! How is it that you dare to teach us?” Then they expelled him.

Jesus heard they had expelled the man born blind. Finding him, Jesus said, “Do you believe in the Human One?”

He answered, “Who is he, sir? I want to believe in him.”

Jesus said, “You have seen him. In fact, he is the one speaking with you.”

The man said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshipped Jesus.

Jesus said, “I have come into the world to exercise judgment so that those who don’t see can see and those who see will become blind.”

Some Pharisees who were with him heard what he said and asked, “Surely we aren’t blind, are we?”

Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you wouldn’t have any sin, but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains."

John 9:1-41, Common English Bible

Jesus sees a man who was born blind. And the followers of Jesus ask him, “Who sinned so that this man was born blind, him or his parents?” At that time people believed that disability was the result of sin; if you were blind or deaf or had a physical deformity, it was a punishment for something you or your parents had done wrong. In the story the religious authorities keep repeating that the man must be blind because of sin. They and the followers of Jesus are trying to figure out why disability happens to people, and their answer is that the people must be bad.

Jesus breaks this link between sin and disability; he says that neither this man nor his parents sinned to cause his blindness, and heals him.

We’re still trying to understand how to fit disability into our worldview. And this is important. The chances are very good that each of us knows someone with a disability, or have experienced, or will experienced, some degree of disability ourselves. A disability is defined as a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of a person’s life activities. I don’t know what the numbers are in Canada, but in the United States 18 percent of the population experience physical or mental disability.

I do. Since my late 20s I have had an arthritic disease called ankylosing spondylitis. It’s an arthritic disease which affects between 150,000 and 300,000 Canadians. It develops in men three times more often than women, and usually strikes people between the ages of 15 and 40.

This particular form of arthritis affects the spine, causing pain and stiffness in the back. The course of the disease differs from person to person; some only have short episodes of back pain, while others, like me, have chronic pain as the spinal joints – the vertebrae – swell. Small bony outgrowths can extend outwards from the edges of the vertebrae and can eventually bridge across from one joint to the next. My vertebrae are fused together at the top of spine, so while a normal back is S-shaped, mine is fused like a question mark.

I’m a hunchback, like Quasimodo, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, or Dr. Frankenstein’s assistant Igor, or Shakespeare’s character King Richard III, who described himself as:

I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deform’d, unfinish’d, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me, as I halt by them.

We tend to see disability in medical, or functional, terms. We emphasize what people with disabilities can’t do – what body parts or mental processes don’t work. We think of “normal” and “disabled” as opposites. And we use labels: “cripple,” “handicapped,” “retarded,” even though these terms, which originally referred to a loss of function, now convey the idea of lack of worth.

Now I need to switch so that when I say we, I mean people with disabilities. We, people with disabilities ourselves, have come up with alternatives to this viewpoint. We may argue that disability is not so much about what you can or can’t do, but about how individuals with disabilities are treated by society. To have a disability is to experience prejudice and exclusion - ableism, the stereotypes about people with disabilities. I know about these assumptions. People will ask me, “What’s wrong with you?” Yes, they are usually that blunt. I respond that I have an arthritic disease, called ankylosing spondylitis. And often people will say, “Oh, I think my cousin’s brother in law has that! You must know him!” Now, ableism here is well-meaning. I could go on about the much nastier prejudice directed at people with disabilities, and particularly people with mental disabilities – and how we have to constantly be aware of how we’re perceived, every moment of every day.

In the story, the religious authorities and the followers of Jesus base their assumptions about disability in their theology: This blind man sinned, or his parents sinned. And religious interpretations of disability continue today, coming out of our theology. The idea that disability is a punishment for sins still persists. And people with disabilities may hear things like this: “Don’t worry about pain now, in heaven you will be made whole.” “Thank God it isn’t worse.” “You’re special in God’s eyes. That’s why you were given this disability.” A theologian named Deborah Beth Creamer demonstrates that is sung and said in church frequently depicts people with disabilities as objects: We are symbols of sin – to be avoided – of saintliness – to be admired – of God’s power – to be pondered – or of suffering – to be pitied. We are almost never considered first as people.

Most congregations now realize that church buildings need to accommodate ramps, elevators, chairlifts, hearing assistance, and so on, all of which are necessary and welcome. But churches have been removing these barriers of architecture much faster than barriers of attitude. A friend of mine, Carol Howard Merritt, wrote the other day about a friend of hers, who announced that she had stopped going to church. “I just can’t take the dirty looks any longer,” she said. She has two children with autism, and the congregation just didn’t appreciate having them in worship. Since then, my friend says she has become increasingly aware of the times when the parents of a child with Downs syndrome or autism drops out of a community of faith, because the congregation does not accommodate people of all abilities worshipping together. These obstacles to welcome and acceptance are even greater barriers than stairs or other physical impediments to full participation of people with disabilities. I should add that there are many examples of congregations that do practice full inclusion of people with disabilities - Carol's article has a great story about one - but there aren’t enough.

In the story, even though the blind man has his disability removed, he isn’t able to tell his story. People talk about him. The religious authorities don’t believe him, so they call for his parents to tell his story for him. Churches today still don’t engage with people with disabilities – we are spoken to, or spoken about, but not included as partners in conversations. I am in a small group working on a theology of disability for the United Church, and I've been wondering whether we are supposed to concentrate mainly on physical issues of accessibility, or delve into what reflection on disability can tell all of us about what it means to be a child of God.

And that is really the point here – not to make anyone feel bad about how people with disabilities are treated, for all of us are caught up acting out the script that our culture writes in us. The point is that all communities, including churches, have members with visible or hidden disabilities, who are not objects of charity or pity or fear, but children of God. And when we think this through, and what this story of Jesus and the man born blind shows us what God is like and we are to be like, we see that our God of justice and love is committed to the full inclusion of all of God’s children. And so all of us need to ask: How can we be more inclusive? What actions do we need to take? How must we change to make the message of Jesus, that all are welcome and all have a place, a reality in our congregation?

Brothers and sisters, the Good News of Jesus Christ is good news of access for all, including people of disabilities. All of us are called to be on the side of justice, of access over exclusion.