SERMON: Seek Some Security

(Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17; Mk 12:38-44) J G White

10:30 am, Sunday, Nov 8, 2024, FBC Amherst

Naomi, Ruth’s mother-in-law, said to her, “My Daughter, I need to seek some security for you, so that it may be well with you.”(R 3:1) Your life and mine, today, are quite different from these two women, thousands of years ago. But we also might need some security, some sense of safety and hope. I do.

This past week, within a twenty-four hour period, I saw someone die, right in front of my eyes; I finished reading a serious book about the end of life as we know it, called Life After Doom; and a new president-elect was chosen in the United States of America. As an old friend would say, ‘it was a heavy week!’ I need to seek some security. Perhaps we all do.

Alongside the scripture readings for this day, and it being the eve of Remembrance Day, my own mind and soul have been overcome with these other three matters.

Wednesday morning, I arose early, as usual, and delayed checking on the world, to see what happened south of the border, until about 7:30 am. Later in the day, social media told me how various friends and acquaintances, not to mention educators and podcasters, were responding to the Trump win. Here are a few quotations:

When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn't become a king. The palace becomes a circus.

He’s not the messiah, he’s a very naughty boy.

Start building a wall, Canada.

Grief

Not all my friends are in the same camp.

Congratulations to all Americans!  You chose the best person to serve your country.  Next year it’s up to Canadians to do the same.

It does seem to be a time of uncertainty, including for us here, resting on the top of the USA. Concerns about so many things arose within me, as I listened just a little bit, to the alarms others were raising, in this return of President Trump.

In a season of speaking our own sense of including people at First Baptist, we get strong hints of some different attitudes among many millions in our world.

History repeats itself. It can also get more severe. I happened to listen to a bit of classic rock from my youth, Land of Confusion by Genesis, released in 1986. Funny how the song seems even more appropriate, in some ways, now.

Now did you read the news today

They say the danger's gone away

But I can see the fire's still alight

There burning into the night

There's too many men, too many people

Making too many problems

And not much love to go around

Can't you see this is a land of confusion?

Well, this is the world we live in (oh-oh-oh)

And these are the hands we're given (oh-oh-oh)

Use them and let's start trying (oh-oh-oh)

To make it a place worth living in

Back to the Bible now... At the time of Naomi and Ruth, it was also a ‘land of confusion. We can read: In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes. (Judges 21:15)

In the face of that terrible age (Just read the Book of Judges for details!) the amazing story of Naomi, Ruth & Boaz is given. And, as widow Naomi said to her widowed daughter-in-law, “I need to seek some security for you, so that it may be well with you.” The story takes us way back in time, amid some different, ancient, Middle-Eastern cultural practices. In harvest time, they find a way to connect with some locals, a relative, there in Bethlehem, and become secure in the community.

It is in togetherness that we get through our challenges, such as world events that are far bigger than us and our little corner of the world. Don’t you see this in the Ruth and Naomi story? Like them, we are here to seek some security for one another, to seek the well being of our neighbours – especially those on the edge, those in need or trouble. Is this not what our nation, at its best, has fought for around the world, and worked for as peacemakers?

Heavy moment two. This week, as I said, I finished Brian McLaren’s book, LIFE AFTER DOOM: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart. It is a book about the climate crisis, emergency. So, I was reading stuff like this:

...we can’t shake this sense that we’re all in trouble—all of us, really serious, tangled up trouble. It’s the feeling that our civilization’s Jenga tower is about to crumble...

If we felt doom about the global climate crisis alone, that would be bad enough. But we have also come to see that global overheating is the toxic cherry on top of a hot, festering mess of other global problems that go untreated because they remain unacknowledged.

I have known this, to some degree, for, oh, thirty-five years. Since I started my biology and chemistry degree at college. What have I done about it? How have I lived differently? When have I teamed up with others to make a difference? It is a bit like my occasional idea to stop eating so much sugar in my diet EVERY DAY. Great idea. I believe in it. Sounds simple – I am the one in charge of every things that goes into my mouth. But my habits stay the same. So too with my use of gasoline, electricity, water, paper, plastic. I stay the same.

This weighs on me a bit more, in past weeks, as I read and pondered how I see the world. As I pondered how Christ would lead me, and us, in better paths. And as this book got me wondering about how things will collapse in the world. How people will behave when things get worse and worse, and really bad. And what is our calling, as those who are clinging to Christ in this day and age? Surely Christianity will not be about survival, or only readiness for an afterlife. The Creator calls us to build a Kingdom, a Kin-dom, here. And to help in crisis time.

I have a nice, easy life, compared with millions. And maybe it will still be so for me when I celebrate my 80th birthday in 2050. What about the refugees on earth, or the local unhoused? The traumatized and the dying? The poor and those cruelly treated? As the Bible put it, the widows and the orphans? Remember Naomi and Ruth, refugees in famine. Or, centuries later in the Bible, the widow Jesus and the disciples observed giving her last coins to the Temple. Generous, sure, but was she being taken advantage of, oppressed by her own Faith? Jesus brought to the fore God’s ‘preferential option for the poor.’ That priority for the needy of the world that Creator has in the Bible, highlighted by the theologian Gustavo Gutierrez, who just died two weeks ago today.

If we are saved, Christ has saved us for good work. Good action is here for us to do, as the New Testament tells us. In crisis time, we belong to the God who walks thru the crisis.

Ready for heavy moment three? Death. We are certainly facing it as we honour our military of the past and present in these days. It is everywhere, of course. As Billy Graham said, in the States, the death rate in America is still very high. 100%!

In Digby, my sixty-first and final funeral service was for a woman I knew who died in her nursing home room, surrounded by family, with the help of MAID. I was nearby that day, though not in the room with everyone at that poignant moment. This past week, I was present for the death of a man I knew, from Annapolis Royal, at the Valley Hospice in Kentville. I went back down for the memorial service on Friday, which was a beautiful musical event, planned by my thoughtful friend.

It is an important, though sometimes unwelcome, privilege to be present when someone dies. It has happened for me just a few times in my life, so far. So blessed when it is peaceful; but many deaths in this world are unpleasant. To witness it is often horrible and traumatizing. Not my experience, yet.

Once more, I take us back to Naomi in the First Testament story. Remember, she had lost her husband, and her two married children. She renamed herself Mara, meaning Bitter.

Jump ahead again to the days of Ruth’s descendent, Jesus the Messiah! He saw a poor widow give her last money to the Temple. Again, she was a widow, which was a place of weakness and vulnerability in that society, not to mention the simple, life-long grief of that loss she carried.

The Spirit has held and kept these sacred stories for us, and the world, in order to bless those who have suffered a loss. In order to bless everyone. This life is short. It is fragile. It is precious. It matters. What good you do, on your own, is important. Seek some security for others. And what we accomplish together can be very good.

Ten days ago I heard retired Pastor, Dr. Barry Morrison, offer this excellent blessing (as good a word to end on as I can find). Dear ones, life is short and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those with whom we walk this way. So let us be swift to love, make haste to be kind, and may the Holy One bless you, and make you a blessing. Amen.

SERMON: My God, Your God

(Ruth 1:1-18; Mk 12:28-34) J G White

10:30 am, Sunday, Nov 3, 2024, FBC Amherst

 It so happens that I keep seeing, in the Sunday scripture readings, elements of our new Inclusion Statement. October 20th, Job met Creator in a whirlwind and in all the elements of creation; I pondered indigenous Ethnicity and spirituality. Last Sunday, the Apostle Paul spoke of some disability that was his ‘thorn in the flesh.’ Ability (or disability). Next Sunday, Jesus points out a poor widow giving all she had at the Temple, two coins. Economic Status. 

Today, a foreigner follows her Jewish mother-in-law to her home in Judah. So I wonder some more about Colour, Ethnicity, and Creed. The story of Ruth, in just a few pages, stands out in the midst of many other texts in the First Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures. Her name, Ruth, means ‘friend,’ and she certainly acts as a friend to her mother-in-law, Naomi. Ruth had lived all her life in her native Moab, on the east side of the Dead Sea, a nation of people similar to the Hebrews but usually an enemy of them. She and her sister, Orpah, had married brothers, the two sons of a Jewish family who had come to Moab in time of famine. 

What does God think of those who are not of the Hebrew faith? Such as the Moabites? Or the Jebusites? The Ammorites? The Egyptians? We might know of many occasions in the Bible when they were to be eradicated, or at least kept at a distance. Somehow, Naomi and Elimelech and family live there, among the people of Moab. Tragically, after a decade, the men in the family have all died, leaving Naomi and her two daughters-in-law. Mother decides to go back to Judah, and her hometown, called Bethlehem. 

We can read over and over in the Bible of the challenges of various peoples getting along, or not. Sometimes one ethnic and religious group is very protective of its culture and religion, and treats everyone else as enemies. Have you done any reading in the book of Joshua lately? Or Judges? Many of the stories and the teachings are harsh. And very exclusive. The story of Ruth is set in the days of the Judges when, well, things were pretty wild.

Have you done any reading in the book of Baptists lately? Or Anglicans? Or Catholics, Nazarenes, Brethren? We too can be very exclusive, at times. Insisting on being in the right, and anyone who differs with us is in the wrong. Or, anyone who does not look like us, and do things the way we do, is not quite right. ‘Needs to learn from us!’

The Ruth story is the opposite of the ruthlessness of so much religion, now, and then. In contrast with the behaviours, and the beliefs, seen in the stories in the book of Judges, is the gentle, endearing way that this woman from Moab, Ruth, clings to her Mother-in-law and chooses to join her back in Bethlehem. 

Even Naomi can’t be certain how she will be received, back in her hometown, after a decade away, and with a foreign young woman accompanying her. You may know that the story does end well - more on this next Sunday. 

Suffice it for today to remember the poetic decision of Ruth.   Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge;

your people shall be my people and your God my God.

Have you ever been a minority? Ever spent time among those who were not of your ethnicity, or your religion? Did it feel like home? Did it become home? Did you feel loved at all, by your neighbours? Have you ever felt yourself among people whose understanding of God was different? Your way of praying, or explaining, or singing, or behaving did not fit with the majority? 

Here, we now declare, in our Inclusion Statement, that we do welcome everyone regardless of colour, ethnicity and creed. And regardless of those other named categories, which are meant to catch just about everyone. I believe it has been a journey of First Baptist for many years to get to this point. For years and years we have been singing, “All are welcome, all are welcome, all are welcome in this place.” We have been including people in this fellowship of Jesus who are diverse, different, and delightful to God. 

If Jewish Naomi and family could live in Moab for a decade and then go back; if Ruth can join her and enter Hebrew life in Bethlehem; if she can become (spoiler alert!) a great-grandmother of King David - then we can find our way to welcome all sorts of people into the family of God today. 

We have come to believe that the descendent of Ruth, named Jesus of Nazareth, meant all sorts of people, when He spoke of loving our neighbours as ourselves. Our differently-abled neighbour, our gay neighbour, our homeless neighbour, our differently- opinioned neighbour, our non-English-speaking neighbour. Who is my neighbour? Didn’t Jesus get asked that? And didn’t He answer?

Even our different conceptions of God and the Holy come together under one roof, in one fellowship. You have had great freedom in this for a long time, First Baptist, and this has been a gift. How you relate to God has an impact on my relationship with Christ, and vice versa. No wonder we do not feel compelled to re-baptize believers coming from other Christian churches. Diversity in the fellowship is a gift, and can even be a goal.

This past week I was hearing from Rev. John Perkin about life at First Baptist Ottawa, where he serves. In that busy, capital city, First Baptist has seen many new people join the life of the congregation, mainly non-white people. Their new, part-time associate minister is herself from Haiti, and a trilingual person. John mentions that Christians from Nigeria or Haiti or elsewhere have different opinions and theology they bring to the table. One Nigerian newcomer was not so sure about First Ottawa’s sense of including and affirming people of the LGBTQ community; but another African man who had been with them longer explained how he had learned this inclusion, this part of loving these neighbours as himself. The fellowship is learning from one another. May it also and always be so for us here.

We are going to sing a hymn later, words written by a mentor of mine, and First Baptist’s assistant minister of fifty years ago here. Before he died, in 2022, he had composed this:

Christ calls us to a journey Of faith and hope and love;

So we must still be learning Our wisdom from above:

The Spirit leads us onward Through faith that’s in the Word;

We walk the way that’s forward, By trusting all we’ve learned.

(R. H. Prentice)

SERMON: Thorn in the Flesh

(Job 42:1-6, 10-17; 2 Cor 12:6-10; Mk 10:46-52) J G White

10:30 am, Sunday, Oct 27, 2024, FBC Amherst

Is the Bible realistic, or unrealistic? Is Christianity down-to- earth, or idealistic?

One problem is a bit of a thorn in my side: all the happy endings in Bible stories. Because they don’t jive with all the tragedies of real life. Did all that really happen then? Well, why not now?

When we were finalizing our Identity Statement a month or so ago, one of our wise Deacons suggested we add to our list of diverse peoples who are all welcome in this fellowship of Jesus. That we add ability to colour, ethnicity, creed, economic background and so forth. People of any ability are welcome into the Church and all our work. This in itself may recognize the fact that we don’t expect every hurt, limited, injured or ill person to be healed by some miracle or other. 

But, some days, it seems like all the Bible stories are about miracles of healing and freedom from evil forces and even resurrection from being dead. Do our sacred stories have far too many happy endings?

Such as the finale of the book of Job? Today is Sunday four of four, skimming through this long, ancient book. We saw the profound response of this suffering man, Job, after God comes near. Job repents - makes a turn around - with dust and ashes: a very old, traditional way of expressing grief and humility. 

Then, then the ‘happy ending.’ His long-winded friends are told they were all wrong (and they must make sacrificial offerings to help Job pray for them). And then: Job ends up healed in body, gains a whole new family, and great riches in domestic animals. More than he’d had at first, in chapter one. 

Many people - from Bible scholars to folks like you and me - have wondered about this ending. And even wondered if it was not original: was it added on later? There is such power if it ends with Job humble and still faithful, in a heap before God. Why make it all sunshine and lollipops in the last eight verses?

I like the comments of Bible teacher Matt Skinner, a Presbyterian at Luther Seminary in Minnesota. Skinner made the point that he sees in the last paragraph of Job the message that people who suffer devastation can find happiness again. People who lost spouses or children can find happiness again with others, even new families. Not to discount the grief and trauma that is real and remains, and so on. So Skinner says that Job’s ending does not have to be either/or - an idealistic happy, happy ending, or a poor addition to the story of the book that dulls its impact. It is an ambiguous ending; it does give hope for new beginnings.

For me, there are two details in the finale that catch my attention. First, where we read that ‘the LORD restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends; and the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before.’ (J42:10) When all the sermons were over, and Job got to meet Almighty God, Job was blessed as he prayed for his friends who were no help to him at all. This is like what Jesus would teach, many centuries later: pray for those who persecute you.

The second detail is in the next verse. (J42:11) ‘Then there came to him all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before, and they ate bread with him in his house; they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him; and each of them gave him a piece of money and a gold ring.’ Job’s truest friends appeared, and this was the start of the blessings. Perhaps it is true that many a miracle begins with some friends doing some good things for the person in trouble. That sounds real to me.

The Gospel lesson today is, once more, from Mark 10. Blind Bartimaeus is healed by Jesus. This is but one case among the many in these Jesus stories that sees a hurting person healed or freed from their trouble. Just skim through Mark and you can read of a man with an unclean spirit (1), Simon’s mother-in-in law with a fever (1), a leper in Galilee (1), a paralysed man (2), a man with a withered hand (3), and many others who were all healed. And this is just in the first three chapters of Mark! 

There are occasional exceptions - moments when Jesus does not heal an ill person or help someone with some other trouble. Such as the story of the rich young fellow, looking for the path to eternal life, who went away sad. We just read this a couple weeks ago here. The end of that man’s story is unknown. We have to go to another Gospel writer, John, for the story we see in our scarecrow at the front doors here: the death of John the Baptist. Here is a terrible horror that Jesus did not prevent, and later, Christ did not resurrect John, as He did with a few other people, such as His friend Lazarus.

The power, and the purpose, of all the healing stories must be pondered. The main point might not always be about miraculous healing. In the case of Bartimaeus, in Mark 10, we might see that those who said ‘be quiet!’ to the disabled man were wrong. Jesus called Bartimaeus to Him. When it is all said and done, we discover that Jesus calls others who suffer and are disabled to Him, and to follow, be they healed or not.

Such as the Apostle Paul. I picked out this reading from 2 Cor 12  today, in which Paul famously writes about his thorn in the flesh.  At last! Here is an un-healed, un-erased problem.

Much ink has been spilled by great thinkers about just what was Paul’s problem? Many illnesses have been suggested, not to mention other problems (some enemy who dogged him?) that could have been his thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment him. Sounds quite serious! Paul saw some purpose in his mysterious problem: it kept him humble, amid some profound spiritual experiences he enjoyed. He mentions praying three times for it to be removed, but no. The grace of God had to be enough for Paul.

I dare say most people on earth will endure some pains and limitations that come their way. And which won’t go away. And, amazing things, gracious things, can germinate and grow from a rugged seed planted in the dark, damp earth (and crap) of life. God’s grace is sufficient, in the face of difficulties and even evil forces.

Henri Nouwen was a priest and a brilliant teacher at places like Harvard and Yale. Feeling led by God, he spent the last decade of his life living in a community of people with severe emotional, mental, and physical disabilities. Henri tells a story about Trevor, a man with severe mental and emotional challenges who was sent by Henri's community to a psychiatric facility for evaluation. Henri wanted to see him, so he called the hospital to arrange a visit. When those in authority found out that Henri Nouwen was coming, they asked if they could have a lunch with him in the Golden Room—a special meeting room at the facility. They would also invite doctors and clergy people to the special luncheon. Henri agreed.

When Henri arrived, they took him to the Golden Room, but Trevor was nowhere to be seen. Troubled, Henri asked about Trevor's whereabouts. "Trevor cannot come to lunch," he was told. "Patients and staff are not allowed to have lunch together. Plus, no patient has ever had lunch in the Golden Room."

Henri was not a confrontational person. But, knowing that community is about inclusion, Henri thought, Trevor ought to be here. So Henri turned to the person in authority and said, "But the whole purpose of my coming was to have lunch with Trevor. If Trevor is not allowed to attend the lunch, I will not attend either."

The thought of missing an opportunity for lunch with Henri Nouwen was too much. They soon found a way for Trevor to attend. 

When they all gathered together, something interesting happened. At one point during the lunch, Henri was talking to the person on his right and didn't notice that Trevor had stood up and lifted his glass of Coca-Cola. "A toast. I will now offer a toast," Trevor said to the group.

Everybody in the room got nervous. What was he going to do?

Then Trevor, this deeply challenged man in a room full of PhDs, started to sing, "If you're happy and you know it, raise your glass. If you're happy and you know it, raise your glass…"

Nobody was sure what to do. It was awkward. Here was this man with a level of challenge and brokenness they could not begin to understand, yet he was beaming. He was thrilled to be there. So they started to sing. Softly at first, and then louder and louder until doctors and clergymen and Henri Nouwen were all practically shouting, "If you're happy and you know it, raise your glass."

Henri went on to give a talk at the luncheon, but the moment everybody remembered—the moment God spoke most clearly—was through the person they all would have said was the least likely person to speak for God.

A person ‘with limitations’ is still a person.  A person can thrive with a thorn in their side. Trevor did. Henri Nouwen did. The Apostle Paul did.  This is also some of what shines from our sacred scriptures, and what shines from our own lives today. 

We used a nice, new prayer book earlier today, and the title says it all, I think: ‘The Lives We Actually Have.’ Our conversations with God, and with one another, must be real, actual, down-to-earth. It is here we will survive many things, and thrive through many challenges. Thanks be to God, in Jesus Christ, our Lord.

SERMON: Meeting Creator

(Job 38:1-7, 34-41; Ps 104: ; Mk 10:35-45) J G White

10:30 am, Sunday, Oct 20, 2024, FBC Amherst

This week I have been enjoying the full moon. Friday at 8 pm I walked on a beach and a road, and turned out my flashlight so my only light was from the very bright, almost still full moon. I have not yet seen the comet that is up there, and I missed out on the recent northern lights. I’m being followed by a moon shadow, moon shadow, moon shadow. 

We started our ceremony here with some of Psalm 81. Blow the trumpet at the new moon, at the full moon, on our festal day. We don’t count our months by the moons, but the Hebrews did. And so do the many indigenous peoples of Turtle Island. I am no expert at all in indigenous spirituality, and I barely know any first nations people personally. But let me take us on a short journey in respect of those who have been in this land far longer than us.

An attitude we share in common is our sense that we are part of creation. In Genesis 1:24, the sixth day in that story of creation, people get made on the same day as cattle and various creeping things. We do not need to see ourselves as supreme, or separate, or even ‘best of’ what’s in the world. We don’t need to make those value judgments. 

What we also share, I suppose, is how we can know the Creator in creation. 

Can ‘God’ be understood? We sometimes wonder - and for good reason. At the centre of the Christian story is how we meet God as part of creation. As the Messiah. 

We read a bit more of the Jesus story in Mark today. This has been a year for Mark’s Gospel. Here we see how it is tempting to want to be close to Power, closer to God. Like James and John. 

But this competitiveness is not Jesus’ Way. The Gospel scene today, follows right after Jesus said, “But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” Soon after – the next day perhaps - James and John express their ambition, so they seem to require a repeat of the message. “whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.”

The climb to be greater, better, at the top, is not quite the Way of Jesus. Our recent Inclusion Statement borrowed a good phrase. It’s put this way: we believe that Jesus taught and practiced an inclusive discipleship of equals... Not only is our human fellowship aimed at being gracious and generous and sharing, our fellowship with all the creatures and elements of the world can be humble.

In contrast with that story are the scenes from Job today. 

What would you want, from a meeting with the Creator, if all your business dealings (including your pension plan) got destroyed? Or if a bunch of your family died – and not the older ones, the younger ones, your children? Or if your own health failed, you got some very gross disease, severe pain, and you got shunned by some because of it? This is the ancient story of Job. He wants to know why? Why all this disaster? His visitors all think they know why – they blame Job. He must deserve it, must have done despicable things. But no, he had not.

Finally, chapter 38, in a whirlwind, God is there! And the speeches, they only speak of the marvels of creation – sun, moon and stars, weather upon earth, animals and their life cycles, ending with a couple great aquatic creatures.

Do you know these? Do you understand them? Did you plan the stars, or the times when the wild donkey raises its baby? Or can you tame the Nile crocodile? That’s what God says to suffering Job.

Or maybe, shows to Job. All these marvels of creation are before Job’s eyes, and are bigger than his one life and its problems, apparently. Job does not get answers. He gets questions, visions, mysteries. No reasons are given for his suffering, or explanations of why the speeches of Job’s visitors were wrong. Job gets to meet the Maker. And meet Creator in the creatures of creation.

I ponder the people I know and have known who have big suffering, and wonder why? Is it someone’s fault? How is it going to end? 

I think of a friend Sharon and I had for years, in the Valley, Jennifer. She was about our age, in ministry, slowly working her way thru divinity school part time. I discovered what a beautiful writer she was when she got diagnosed with cancer, and posted occasional reports on social media. After she died, I went back and saved all she wrote - I have this idea to have a special service someday where we read Jennifer’s cancer journey. Here are just three excerpts, in her own words. Listen to her attitude, her spirit!

May 23 This is the day that the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it!

The consensus is that the cancer is so aggressive that it is causing me to bleed internally and be infected, all of the issues are the same problem. It is growing so ridiculously fast. I can feel it.

There is always hope. I am filled with peace. God is good. All the time. And I am humbled that God’s people are praying for me. Thank you! Please pray for my husband and our families too. 

Much love…

June 1 8:09 pm

Odd things and observations from life in the VG. We know we are exactly where we are supposed to be and God is allowing me to convalesce and recover here daily. The staff is wonderful. Everyday is interesting! It is an adventure!

1. The water is contaminated. I can not shower. I cannot wash my hair. I need to wear a mask and close my eyes to wash my hands and flush. If cancer doesn’t kill me.... the water could. Jon cleans me up with bottled water from the kitchen for sponge baths and to try and wash my hair in the sink. Refreshing!

2. It costs $14.50 a day during the week to park our car here.

3. Anytime my friends come to visit me in the daytime on a weekday there is no parking in the lot. Or on any nearby streets. Parking is a real problem here.

4. The internet is slower than our internet on the mountain that comes over satellite. I think Jon said the wifi is .3 to .78 Mbps. 

It also kicks him off every two hours. He can get his work done on it and we are glad for it. Apparently until recently only one floor had it. Thank you to whoever fought for it and paid for it for patients on this floor!

5. There is a nice little cafeteria in the building but it does not feed patients. Patient meals are prepared at the infirmary site and shipped out to the other hospitals and they are later heated somewhere here. you have to order them a few days ahead or they pick what you get. My first meal was burnt spaghetti on a disposable plastic plate. Not sure how that happens... I have had good bad and ugly delivered but I have also had to throw so much food away it sickens me.

6. One day I threw up into a plastic bin. They just tossed it into the garbage and passed me a new one. The garbage can in my room is a big Rubbermaid roughtote kind. It is filled and emptied at least once a day. … The amount of single use plastic garbage here has been overwhelming me. I asked what they do with it. As every cancer hospital should... they burn it.

6. The nurses are amazing. I haven’t had one yet that I haven’t liked or that hasn’t taken wonderful care of me. The lab technicians each morning are great too. The doctors are fantastic!

7. Last night one of my neighbours was rather irate about the mice running around and no one seemingly doing anything about it. Pretty sure I saw one in my room last week. I didn’t announce it. I feel like I’m camping here. There are always rodents when you camp. I do feel bad for Jon because his bed is closer to the floor than mine. We gave our nurse a peace offering for her to give the man and apparently it may have helped sooth him.

8. Last night one of my neighbours died.

9. We have been told here that one in two Nova Scotians will be diagnosed with cancer.

10. My Patient Navigator in the valley told me she gets 30 new cancer patients assigned to her every month for King’s and Annapolis Counties. A new cancer patient a day.... and how many counties does Nova Scotia have???

And this is her last post, from June 13th that year. Not the whole poem - parts of it…

‘‘Twas the night before chemo and all through the house, 

not a creature was stirring, save the hospital’s mouse.

The iv bags were hung on standby with care, 

in the hopes that more healing soon would be there.

The patients were nestled all snug in their beds, 

pushing nurses buttons to make them stand on their heads.

And I in my kerchief, (or should I be wearing a cap?) 

had just settled down for a brief little nap.

Perhaps tomorrow’s cycle of chemical blast 

will be just what we need to send this disease to the past.

A growing pile of blessings make me believe all miracles can be true. 

I’ll leave God in charge, what else can I do?

I don’t believe that he gave this trouble to me, 

but even if he did, I will trust He.

There are bags of support drugs to keep you strong through the initial attack.

Once you have started, there’s no going back.

For 24 hours, or 48, who is sure? That chemical spins to all of your parts, 

you become rather toxic, even your farts.

And then when you’re feeling you’re actually green, 

you start to get rid of it and maybe come clean.

Chemo speaks not a word so pray it goes straight to work, 

And kills all the cancer, and isn’t a jerk.

But let us exclaim as we log off this site

HAPPY CHEMO-EVE TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD-NIGHT!

Jennifer, wonderful delightful Jennifer, died on June 20. Did she get answers? I think she was an answer. A shining light. One who walked with Creator, with Jesus.

Job did not get answers, but got to hear from the Divine Answerer. Job got a similar answer, I think, that poet Mary Oliver did. Here is her poem, ‘I Go Down to the Shore.’

I go down to the shore in the morning

and depending on the hour the waves

are rolling in or moving out,

and I say, oh, I am miserable,

what shall –

what should I do? And the sea says

in its lovely voice:

excuse me, I have work to do.

Isn’t this the experience in Job 38-41. The focus of the trees and the seas, the birds and the stars is not you or me. What’s going on out there is much bigger than any one of us. 

We like to give meaning to nature’s things; people do this all the time. A bright red bird, a cardinal, visits your yard: it is a deceased loved one. It rains on a loved one’s wedding: good luck. What about our big issues? Do we meet our God out in the world like Job did? When we see the sunset or the tides, the frost or the white-tailed deer? 

I think I have mentioned my friend, Brian, before. He was born in the 1940s. He is a paraglider, for decades climbing up hills around Parrsboro, waiting for the wind to be right so he can take off with his wing and soar like the hawks. His partner, Ruth, would joke that he is up on a hill somewhere, ‘working out his problems.’

Brian is such a relaxed man, we don’t think of him having many problems to work out. But that’s the experience of some - getting out, getting away from it all, to ponder and process life’s challenges. 

Indigenous spiritually is deeply rooted in all the creatures of the earth. Even a lake or a mountain is thought of in personal ways, not to mention the raven or the squirrel. An upcoming Crash Course video about religion will ask, “can a river be a person?” Can the Maccan River be my brother? When we think of each part of the environment as personal, we may respect each element and living thing more. My brother is worthwhile, my sister is valuable.

God may answer us in our problems not with answers, but with being there, the divine presence. And some holy perspective. This world is not all about me. It has even been said, ‘your life is not about you.’ Even, like Job of old, we may live to prove that evil is wrong. Your life is not about you; your life is your message. ‘Actions speak louder than words,’ don’t we say. Amen to that. 

God knows all the things of creation. Including you. God is here. Meeting Creator in creation is a piece of every single day. And can be profound and powerful in some serious moments of life.

SERMON: Who Can Be Saved?

(Job 23:1-11; Heb 4:12-16; Mk 10:17-31) J G White

10:30 am, Sun, Oct  13, 2024, FBC Amherst

This month’s First Testament readings are from the ancient book of Job. Job being a man who is painfully ill, and the rest of his life was destroyed also: the possessions & the people near & dear to him. 

What can save Job? Today we heard from the middle of the book, the middle of all the speeches between Job and those who visit him. Here, Job cries out, not finding God. If only he could find the Creator, who would defend him as if in a court of law, and prove Job innocent. Because his ‘friends’ all think him guilty. 

In my own experience, this month, I have all these people under my care who are seriously ill. The ones who are undergoing amazing cancer treatments, which are very hard at times, but miraculous in their own way too. The people who have been through many treatments, and perhaps are healed, healed for a long time into the future. The folks who are just starting to find out what the problem in their body is, and what can be done about it. And the people who have been through it all, there is no more healing work to be done, and the number of future days here is unknown.

I wonder about my prayers for them (& guiding your attention to them) & how we find Jesus the Great Physician. Is our Holy Healer as hard to get to as a doctor at the ER of a Nova Scotia hospital? Can our friends be saved from pain and problems? Be saved from dying? 

What words of Job did we read from today?

O that I knew where I might find him,

that I might come even to his dwelling. (23:3)

If I go forward, he is not there; 

or backward, I cannot perceive him; (23:8)

If God’s saving help is sometimes for all the challenges of this life, making that connection is so important. And hard when others around us think we have what we deserve. But deep in the soul is that longing, that knowing of the One who made us, who is Love.

Here is another example I think of when I read Job - I wonder about people who are oppressed, mistreated by ‘friends.’ Who can be saved? Saved from injustice?

A week or two ago I got a book I’d been curious about since it came out in 2016. ‘Secret Path’ by Gord Dwonie and Jeff Lemire: the story of a boy who fled residential school, in October, 1966, and tried to walk home, find home; and did not. The harsh and poignant tale of Chanie Wenjack is told in this graphic novel and poetry. I think there is really nothing for me to say about it: it simply needs to be seen, viewed, read. Perhaps Next Sunday I will pay particular attention in our worship to indigenous peoples and our Gospel. October is Mi’Kmaw history month in Nova Scotia.

Who can be saved? What do we think is meant by the question?

Saved. Saved from what? Saved for what?

Saving people from afterlife problems, and evil now.

Saving people and communities from hurricanes.

Saving people and communities from war and violence. 

Saving them from illness, pain, injury.

Saving more than us - all of creation, which might be crashing. 

Another book I bought this year is Brian McLaren’s “Life After Doom: wisdom and courage for a world falling apart.” I just started reading it. It speaks of how we, as earth destroyers, are needing mercy and grace and hope, in the face of the impossible, perhaps. (I also rewatched, recently, that film, Don’t Look Up, which is funny and thought-provoking.) ‘It’s the end of the world, as we know it’ - and do we feel fine?

We have been so rich in things - probably become too rich, on the backs of the whole creation, and other people - and we have even stolen from the future generations, really. Taken and used up too much of what is here. 

Can we be saved? Or will the only salvation be in the afterlife - this world will end? What’s left of things here will become, more and more, a place of suffering? 

Going to heaven is not the goal of religion, wrote Richard Rohr. Salvation isn’t an evacuation plan or a reward for the next world. Whenever we live in conscious, loving union with God, which is eventually to love everything, we are saved. This can and should happen now in this world. Social justice advocate Dorothy Day (1897-1980) credited Catherine of Siena’s inspiration for her often-shared words: “All the way to Heaven is heaven, because He said, ‘I am the Way.’” (Richard Rohr, Dec 19, 2017)

All the way to heaven is heaven. Jesus is the Way. Day by day, we might get back to God. You may know the story of a newborn baby’s homecoming, which illustrates the implanted memory of union with God or heaven. A newborn’s precocious four-year old sibling tells her parents, “I want to talk to my new little brother alone.” The parents put their ears to the nursery door and hear the little girl saying to her baby brother, “Quick, tell me! Who made you. Tell me where you came from. I’m starting to forget!”

When we have forgotten, we need a path back. 

Friday here, we had a wedding rehearsal, and yesterday afternoon the wedding. What a joyful time it is for me to spend some time with a bunch of twenty-somethings, and several couples have a baby or toddler. Their lives together are beginning, and new people are being born. There is such joy in these young, innocent lives. 

I wonder what hopes and dreams the next generations have. Also what dreads and fears. Who can be saved? I believe the door of hope is open, but not easy. There is good news from God for these generations too. We get to be deployed here to share the path of Jesus, and in the values we spelled out in our Statement of Inclusion, for instance. 

Who can be saved? Back in the days of Jesus, a person who got to be wealthy was thought of as blessed. But it is easier to thread a needle with a camel than get a rich person into God’s Kingdom! If the blessed could barely get into the Kingdom, what hope is there? Jesus told His disciples, ‘For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

When we are most needy, blessing is most possible. When we are most in need of healing, of hope, of justice, of belonging, of answers, or of purpose, it is then that we are ready for the impossible to happen.

We look for all things possible, in all the ways we think of ‘salvation.’ So we follow Christ, and we find out!

SERMON: Complain, Complain, Complain Why? - Rev. Marlene Quinn

As we prepare to receive this morning’s message, let us come before the Lord in Prayer. Let’s pray: O Lord let the words of my mouth and the mediations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

In Cumberland County we are known to talk about the weather a great deal. A saying we often use; if you do not like the weather wait 5 minutes it will change. So what do we say about the weather? Well, it’s too hot, it’s too cold? We have too much rain? Not enough sunshine. Too windy. We call this talking about the weather but if we wanted too we could call it complaining. Why? Because there is absolutely nothing we can do about the weather it is all controlled by God, our creator, our sustainer. But this is what the Israelites are currently doing in our scripture reading today.  (Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16-24-29).

 The Israelites were God’s chosen People. Back in the Book of Exodus they were enslaved by the Egyptians, they cried out to God to rescue them from their enslavement. God called Moses to lead his people out of Egypt, out of bondage, into a land flowing with milk and honey in other words freedom. 

The Israelites ended up spending 40 years in the wilderness before they reached the Promise Land, meaning two generations. The Bible considers one generation to be 20 years. Some of the older Israelites who started out on this journey would have passed on but their family members would have heard stories about the enslavement, how they were treated, how they were fed, how they were sheltered. By the time this section of Numbers would have been experienced the Israelites had spend a great deal of time in the wilderness. They would be feeling frustrated, discouraged, depressed, after all when would this journey end? When would they be in the promise land? When they run out of food they complain to Moses about their hunger, their lack of food and why is God not providing for them on this journey. Moses takes his concerns to God. Why? Moses was called by God in the burning bush event to lead the Israelites from Egypt to Canaan. God spoke directly to Moses and Moses communicated God’s words directly to the Israelites.

 God provides manna food from heaven bread for their consumption. Manna. What is it? It was a white powdery substance which fell at night on the ground, it had to be gathered early in the morning before it got too hot or it would melt.

The Israelites gathered just enough for their meals each day, except for the Sabbath. The day before the Sabbath they would collect enough for two days as God did not send the manna on the Sabbath. Recall the 10 commandments, God gave Moses: Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. On all the other days if they gathered more than what was needed for one day whatever was left over would spoil. The Israelites would take this substance and make bread out of it to eat.

I want to back track just a bit. Numbers 10 the Israelites are currently camped at Mount Sinai where God gave Moses the ten commandments. They set out from here to continue their journey to the promise land. It has been a long, long time since they had left Egypt. For most of us a coffee and a cinnamon roll smothered with cream cheese icing is a treat. But image if you were to drink and eat this everyday for breakfast, lunch and supper for years. YA I hear you.

Well this is exactly what the Israelites were doing they were grumbling about their steady diet of manna. They were reminiscing about how good they had it in Egypt (We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic; but now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all to look at and eat but this manna.

It is important to remember the Exodus account; it was not only the people of Israel who came from Egypt but Egyptians as well as people from other nations also came with the people of Israel. It is this group called the rabble that start crying for meat and then the Israelites join in with them. Yet they had forgotten about their enslavement and how they had cried out to God to rescue them.

The Israelites in their reminiscing felt it cost them nothing to eat fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, garlic. Did it cost them nothing? That food cost them their very lives as they were slaves in Egypt. But all they can think about is the variety of food. Even though this manna was made into breads, cakes, and pastries the Israelites could no longer stomach eating it.

The problem here is what people are communicating. They are essentially saying life was better before they knew God. Life was better when they were not on the way to the promise land. Life was better when they were enslaved.  So....they are actually complaining about what they do not have. They are complaining about what God is not giving them.

In the first three verses they were complaining about what God was giving them in life (hardships).

Now they are complaining about what God is not giving them (a better menu of food). The Israelites had wept again and said” If only we had meat to eat! They remember the provisions of Egypt and complain against God’s provisions.

God says he will give the people meat to eat but they will not just eat it for one or two days but for a month until it comes out their noses and they hate it “because you have rejected the Lord who is among you and have wept before him, saying, ‘Why did we come out of Egypt?’” (11:20). God says he is going to give the people so much meat that they will hate it.

We need to remember back in the Book of Exodus the Israelites were enslaved by the Egyptians and cried to God to rescue them from their bondage. Yet when they got tired of the manna God was sending to them so they could eat, the Israelites forgot about their enslavement and how they cried out to God to rescue them. We know this when we read the question why did we come out of Egypt? (Numbers 11:20).

Now we see how sensitive Moses has become from dealing with these people day after day.

Moses can’t understand how it will be possible to feed over 600,000 people meat. We can’t even kill all our flocks for us to have meat to eat (11:22). God, what you said is not possible. Now before we go on I want us to catch something. You have heard this story before. You have seen this happen before in the New Testament. When Jesus is going to feed the 5000, Jesus tells the disciples to not send the people away but to give them food to eat (Matthew 14:16). Remember the response of the disciples is the same. I wanted you to see Jesus modeling the events of the exodus and the wilderness so the people will see Jesus as the greater Moses. So back to Numbers 11 we see God’s answer to be simple.

Is the Lord’s hand shortened? Is there something God cannot do? The hand of the Lord speaks to his power. Is it possible for God’s hand to not accomplish what he says? Now you will see whether my word will come true for you or not. God can and will always do what he says. Moses understands something the people do not understand: it is not about Moses. The people think it is about them. Our life is hard. We do not have the food we want to eat. We want what we want when we want it. We deserve certain things from God. We think God should do things for us. But Moses understands it is not about himself but about God. The people think it is about themselves; so that is why they complain.

This leads us to what God is going to do to teach the people.

There are so many problems with the sin of complaining. First, our complaints are received by God as acts of faithlessness. We are not happy with what God is doing for us. We are telling God we know better than he. We are telling God this life he has ordered is not good enough. When we complain we are undervaluing the provisions of God. Is this not what the people say throughout this chapter? They are complaining about their hardships. They are complaining about the food they are eating. God is doing a terrible job. Ultimately, complaining is the rejecting of the Lord who is with us on this journey. We are in the wilderness on the way to the promise land.

 How many times have we complained against the Lord about our circumstances, about our provisions, and about our possessions? How about the words of these Israelites? Our strength is dried up and we can no longer go with the Lord because of what is happening in our lives and what God is doing for us.

What Moses says is the answer to complaining and the answer to walking by faith: it is not about me. I am not important in God’s story. My life is a part of God’s story. God is not a part of my life story. I am part of God’s story. May God use me as an instrument in his service. This is what Moses understands. This must be our outlook on life if we will walk by faith and avoid complaining.

This leaves us with the final piece of the account. What did these people need? They needed an intercessor to go before God. The wrath of God is deserved against us for all our complaining. How often we have been faithless toward God because we have complained about his provisions or about the hardships of life. But God has given us an intercessor who goes before God on our behalf so that we do not have to experience the wrath of God. Jesus is our faithful intercessor whose sacrifice makes atonement possible, covering over our sins.

Put away the heart of complaining and grab hold of Jesus as our faithful advocate and intercessor who saves us from the wrath of God which we most certainly deserve. It is not about me. It is about God. It is about his story, not mine. Our lives are in his hands and he will use us for his purposes. Amen

SERMON: Whence Wisdom?

(Prv 1:20-33, Ps 19, Jm 3:1-12) J G White

10:30 am, Sun, Sept 15, 2024, FBC Amherst

Whence wisdom? Whence cometh wisdom? Where, how, when do we find answers, truth, the best ways to live this life?

I almost named this sermon ‘Wise / Dumb,’ a play on ‘wisdom,’ but at the end of the week, I did not want to home in on the contrast between wisdom and being dumb or foolish. Even though we hear that contrast in the opening scene of the book of Proverbs in the Bible. Wisdom cries out in the street; in the squares she raises her voice… “How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?”

Do we ever hear true wisdom offered up on street corners? In our community?  Three Sundays ago, at the corner of Ratchford and Havelock, a street preacher, with amplification, was calling out the local church and minister, giving an incessant warning. I don’t think that was wisdom - at least, not much. No great fount of it. 

Think about where you find wisdom today. Where you go for life coaching, for personal guidance, for help in understanding your world. What teachings attract you? What spiritual guides do you end up paying attention to, these days? There are many, many sources claiming to be an ‘answer.’

In God’s world, much of the wisdom does come to us through people. Some wise Jew of the ancient world was inspired to put these proverbs down on papyrus. We have people we know in our own lives who are wise ones, elders - some of them - whom we go to, to whom we listen, when they speak. 

Last week one person I spent some time with is elderly: in her nineties. She is experienced in life. Though she has suffered vision loss, and is hard of hearing, her mind and heart are still keen. We got talking - she and her daughter and I - about time, and age, previous generations and the younger ones around us now. This woman’s memory is keen. And I think she is still learning things. Learning things about her family. Learning things about how to live life when you can’t see much anymore, and everyone has a new phone number, and you must simply memorise them all, for instance. She keeps up a skill so many of us have lost. 

She might not claim to be a wise elder.  She might even have days when she wonders why she is still here, still alive. We who know her are grateful for her. She remains a touchstone of wisdom, a gift from God among us, as every person is, to tell some truth. I think the biblical Woman, Wisdom, calls out to those who will listen: when I meet up with this elder, here in our town. And many others.

We did not quite read Psalm 19 today: we read a poem inspired by it. Don’t you just love Psalm 19? The heavens are telling the glory of God. The days and the nights speak, but there are no words. It is a communicating Cosmos we live in. The first half of the Psalm is all about the sky, which I enjoy immensely. And does it speak? Is there wisdom? Yes, yes there is. Holiness grows as we are silent before it. 

Having lived so much of my life near the Bay of Fundy and the Minas Basin, I am a tide watcher. The Biblical people did not have tides to view, so none of their stories and poetry are tidal. The closest they come is when the Hebrews crossed the ‘Reed Sea,’ and forty years later, the Jordan River. The stormy sea is so often a threat, a danger in their imagination. 

For me, the steady, somewhat predictable, tidal cycle is so powerful, so sure, so beautiful, so dangerous, so amazing. I can wander for hours at Five Islands, Economy Point, Kingsport or Cape Split and watch the water flow in, relentlessly. This summer I was hiking one morning with friends along the beach from Fox River to Diligent River. It was sunny, and perfectly calm. Barely a ripple on the water. The water was moving, the tide flowing in the channel to fill the Minas Basin. At one point, looking across to Cape Split, about 6 kms away, I could hear a sound: a gentle roar in the distance. No plane, no car to be heard, not a boat in sight. It was the water. It was the water ripping and rushing and foaming over at Cape Split. We could hear it roaring, kilometres away. 

It gets called the Voice of the Moon, that roaring water of the Split. Because the Moon (with the Sun’s help) is sloshing all this water around the earth, and speaking with that roaring salt water. As Regina Coupar’s Psalm 19 says,   we look to the sea

and feel

your strength in the waves

Or as an old hymn says:

All nature sings and round me rings the music of the spheres.

You, you may seek and find wisdom - and the voice of God - in other elements of nature. The birds in your yard. The flowers and fruit growing. The animals of your life. Hand in hand with the words of scripture are the words of the whole world.

And, we look for wisdom in those who teach and train and write and guide.  But we have warnings, in the New Testament, in James. A retired teacher read aloud, Not many of you should become teachers, my siblings, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For all of us make mistakes. And a preacher repeats the words. 

There are so many teachers and preachers among us: in books, in lecture halls, in pulpits; in blogs and podcasts, TV and internet; the influencers and activists and authors. They are inside Christianity, and on the fringe, and outside it completely. Could not our loving, powerful Master make use of most of them? So it was in Bible days.

I thought I should listen to some local voices of leadership and life coaching and motivational speaking. More than one resident of Amherst is a guide, with podcasts and books and seminars on offer. Perhaps you know some. Perhaps you have found some wise counsel and encouragement and correction and guidance. I found it quite interesting - and encouraging- this week, to listen to Stephanie Allen on podcasts, and Patrick Manifold. 

Bless God for the gifts of good advice and wonderful thinking. Bless God for the gifts of powerful storytelling and wise counsel. Bless God for the gifts of beautiful artistry and inspiring creativity. These all speak - sometimes beyond words - to the soul and body and society. Bless us when we do long for and hunger for wisdom…

Let me close with wise words from a wise person. Christian author, Frederick Buechner, said this about ‘Wishful Thinking,’ which was also the title of one of his delightful books. 

Christianity is mainly wishful thinking. Even the part about Judgment and Hell reflects the wish that somewhere the score is being kept. 

Dreams are wishful thinking. Children playing at being grown-up is wishful thinking. Interplanetary travel is wishful thinking. 

Sometimes wishing is the wings the truth comes true on. 

Sometimes the truth is what sets us wishing for it.

[1973, p. 96]

SERMON: Judge Ability

(Prov 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23; Ps 125; Jm 2:1-10, 14-17; Mk 7:24-37) J G White

10:30 am, Sunday, September 8, 2024, FBC Amherst

Three weeks ago today I took the picture you see on the cover of today’s bulletin. I happened to be travelling home along the Eastern Shore of NS, and discovered that the annual sand sculpture contest was that very Sunday, on Clam Harbour Beach. With about eight thousand other people, I viewed the diverse sandcastles and sculptures. Each one in the competition was marked with a number. 

But of course, along part of the beach was this sign. The organizers and judges of the competition did not want artists expecting to enter all along the whole beach. So, from this spot, there were to be no more sculptures to be judged in the contest. NO Judging Past This Point. 

I knew I had to take a picture of that little sign. And I thought about how many uses we could come up with for that sign. ‘No judging past this point.’ A lot of us - if you are like me - need to see that sign every day of our lives. Because we have a tendency to judge lots of things and many people, moment by moment, each day. 

Many things are said in the scriptures of our Faith about judgement and judging. Oft quoted is the phrase, judge not, that ye be not judged. (Jesus, in His sermon on the mount ~ Matt 7:1 KJV). There are many moments when we need to judge something as good or bad or whatever. We need to choose, and choose well. But there are limits to what and how and who we judge. 

These phrases come up in various sacred texts we heard today. The little book of James, filled with wise dos and don’ts, tells of the favouritism that’s shown to the fine people we’d love to associate with. Folks become ‘judges with evil thoughts,’ it says here. 

Looking way back, Proverbs 22 and Psalm 125 both hint at - or illustrate -  judgements we make about the rich and the poor, so called, as well as the upright of heart and those of crooked ways. 

With the great brains and hearts and lives we have been given, we have the ability to judge, to judge for ourselves many things. 

I am just finishing a little novel of historical fiction, called Two Crows Sorrow, by Laura Churchill Duke. It is about a real drama in rural Kings County, and a murder case that is in the historical record. I was interested to discover that the judge of the supreme court who was called upon then, 1904, in Kentville, was Judge Charles Townshend, of Amherst. The novel takes one’s imagination into the life and work of a judge like Townshend, 120 years ago. And the courtroom scenes in the novel are filled with crowds of curious people, all making value judgements about the ones on trial, gossiping, and sometimes calling out for their version of justice!

I am guessing that none of us here has been judge in court of law, but we judge many matters in our lives. To know the limits of our judging job: there’s true wisdom. And loving kindness. So we each learn how and when to put up that sign for ourselves, ‘No Judging Past This Point.” As people of Christian faith, we are disciples of the Master. We learn, step by step and stage by stage, how to make decisions; when to make choices, big and little, that affect others; and when to leave matters in the hands of others, including God. 

Speaking of the Master… we have such striking stories about Jesus, today. The first one, in particular, with the local woman calling upon this spiritual traveler to heal her daughter, free her from a spirit. How the Rabbi responds to her can seem quite strange. Jesus rejects her. He rejects her? ‘Let the children be fed first (meaning the Israelites), not the dogs.’ Bible scholars have pondered this for aeons, and come up with many ‘solutions.’ Such as:

• ‘Dog’ was not actually such a nasty term. (Well, it was!)

• Jesus was urgent about His primary mission to Jews.

• It was actually inappropriate for the woman to make the request.

• This is not an authentic saying of Jesus; not truly historical. 

• The wealthy Gentiles of Tyre, like this woman, were always adversaries of the poorer Jews of that region.

• Jesus simply does change, learn, bend in a new direction. 

When it is all said & done, the woman is persistent in her faith that her daughter will be helped, & Jesus respects her. 

Is Jesus, here, learning to judge differently? Change his decision, broaden His path and widen the people He will see and serve? The story keeps us wondering - and praying with Him about it all. 

We might think about how Jesus, born in Bethlehem, raised in Egypt and Nazareth, had to learn everything as a human child and youth. He learned to eat, learned to talk, learned to walk, learned every skill of a child. How about judging? Was he still learning this at age thirty? How to make decisions; how to respond to others? Perhaps we think it is scandalous that our Christ was not perfect, somehow. But development and discernment need not be finished at the start of His journey, I’d say. We even have God Almighty sometimes ‘repenting’ or changing God’s mind in the First Testament Stories. It is possible for us to have conversations with God that matter, that make a difference: that make things turn out differently. 

So, once again, from our Jesus, we can learn to judge, & also not to judge / be judgmental; when to submit to others, humans & God. We do this by trial and error, with our Teacher close at hand. As we walk through life and can become closer disciples of the Master, we can be trusted by God with more: more responsibility, more decisions, more wisdom to choose.

In the end, it comes down to our actions, our lives. As the book of James famously says, So it is with faith: if it is alone and includes no actions, then it is dead. (J 2:17, TEV)

May we be blessed to know when it is time to stop judging (past this point) a do something good.

SERMON: Blame! Us Vs Some of Us?

10:30 am, Sun, July 28, 2024 - J G White / FBC Amherst

(2 Sam 11:1-15; Ps 14; Eph 3:14-21)

The whole story of our scripture begins, famously, with creation, and the two people, Adam and Eve. By page three of the Bible, they get in trouble. As my Old Testament professor used to say, ‘the blaming begins.’ (Timm Ashley)

Adam: the woman made me eat it.

Eve: the serpent tricked me into eating it.

The blaming begins. This is another story that repeats itself in human life, through all of our history. Which is, in part, why we have the story of Genesis 3. That chapter is a story about all of us, through all of time. 

‘Whose fault is it anyway?’ we ask, over and over. Often, we find people in our midst to blame. Sometimes, we make scapegoats of someone, and put all the blame and punishment and bad feelings upon them. Sometimes, we try to purify ourselves by banishing or destroying those we blame. Gareth Higgins and Brian McLaren say that “The purification story names, blames, shames, excludes, and sometimes eradicates minorities.” (Gareth Higgins & Brian McLaren, The Seventh Story: Us, Them, & the End of Violence, 2019, p. 123)

Many of us might claim we are not so barbaric and prejudiced as others in history. But, as Higgins and McLaren suggest, we have our own rituals that express blaming and scapegoating. Then there are the dramas we read, and the movies we watch: as viewers, we are bystanders and witnesses to violence that is often nothing short of horrific, and we leave feeling purged… The same could be said of an election cycle… And so on. 

Today’s Hebrew scripture text is the infamous story of king David and his neighbour, Bathsheba. Looking back, we have our own thoughts about the blame upon those involved - mainly David - and what that blame means. He certainly abused his power, and the powerful usually do not take blame. Some disasters do befall him (and others) but David remained at the top, special, privileged, powerful. 

Looking for where to put the blame is but one small bit of the big picture of problems here, in the David story. 

This is my sixth and final week on the stories, the themes, of our lives. The seventh story is the story of Love, the story of reconciliation. In the Seventh Story, humans are participants in something far bigger than being reduced to dominating others for one group’s gain, or the pursuit of happiness through revolutions that replace one dominance with another, or isolation, or purity, or being a victim, or gaining possessions. 

Instead, Love: Some of Us For All of Us.

Today we read a prayer in Ephesians 3. We see three main requests or statements in this prayer, offered to the recipients, the Jesus believers in the ancient town of Ephesus. First, that they be strengthened, on the inside. This is about people of God being ‘rooted and grounded in love.’ To quit playing the ‘blame game’ we must be deeply connected in God’s love. This is something worth praying for! Something that God is involved in, for us. 

This month we have been singing Carolyn McDade’s words, Roots hold me close; wings set me free;

Spirit of life, come to me, come to me. 

This is part of the Ephesians 3 prayer. 

Second, that they be given the power to love. It takes energy to do the work of loving enemies, of not laying blame, of choosing not to purify your world by kicking someone out. There is power available to understand this, in our bones, and be filled with God. Then, then we love. Instead of blame, or compete, or run away, or attack. 

It is when we are most hurt by someone that it is hardest to keep them in our lives and not blame them and shame them and keep them out. I know a man who was quite harsh in raising his three children, and they suffered various abuses by him. He is my father-in-law. Sharon fled home as a teenager to get away. Years later, she struggled through an amazing healing journey for herself, and could finally relate, in a limited and safe way, to her father. The other two children seem to have made no such journey and will have almost nothing to do with their father. 

The prayer needs to be answered, so we can see how Christ, how God, still loves and cares for and includes the ‘problem person.’ 

Third, God is able to do more than imaginable!  This little phrase gets quoted by Christians regularly, for good reason. But as you can see, it is not about hoping for any and everything from God that you want. It is here, in the midst of learning to be loving. Being blessed to be a lover of all others in this world. More good kindness is possible - even among us violent humans! - that we realize. Seems to me that’s what this prays asks, and tells us. The Master’s glory will be shown in the lives and work of the people, the gathered ones, what we call ‘the Church.’

Perhaps we could take our next steps in doing as Higgins and McLaren have suggested, in their Seventh Story Manifesto. Five things:

1. Humans initially desire things not because we actually want them, but because our rivals want them.  Notice your desires, and when possible, name them, and remember your power to say “yes,” “no,” or “not right now” to the demands they make of you. 

2. Jesus’ life and death were not an invitation to more scapegoating, but the end of it. Devote yourself to the example and teachings of our greatest moral leaders and visionaries who summon us to a way of life that promotes the good of people and the earth. [Start with those of your own culture or religion, but don’t stop there. Pay special attention to the wisdom of indigenous traditions.] 

3. Becoming fully human involves defecting from rivalry [wanting what others want], and from the notion that anyone else should ever be my scapegoat. Avoid blaming, scapegoating, insulting, or shaming anyone, remembering that even the people who bother you most are your neighbours. 

4. One way to prevent war is to give preemptive gifts to our enemies. Show kindness rather than vengeance and generosity rather than judgement to your enemies or opponents. 

5. These can be profoundly difficult and complex ideas, but there is simplicity on the other side of complexity, summed up in universal wisdom:

Devote yourself to Love. 

Love your neighbour.

Love yourself.

Love the earth. 

Love the Spirit of Love that fills the universe. 

The first and last step: do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and don’t do unto others what you would not want done to you. (pp. 177-179)

SERMON: Accumulate! Us Hoarding Over Them?

(2 Sam 7:1-14; Eph 2:11-22) J G White

10:30 am, Sunday, July 21, 2024, FBC Amherst

 Allow be to begin with a hundred-year-old story by Rev. William Barton, one of his tales about Safed the Sage, a very wise, old fashioned preacher. PHILOSOPHY AND MONEY.

There came to me a Rich Man, who spake unto me, saying, What is a Philosopher?

& I said, As is his name, so is he; one that loveth Wisdom.

And he said, Art thou a Philosopher?

And I said, Humblest am I among the most humble of her servants; yet am I a lover of Wisdom.

And he said, I am no Philosopher, but I am a Rich Man. What dost thou consider a Rich Man to be?

And I answered. As one whom God hath blessed so richly with abundance of Soup whereon he filleth himself so that he hath no room nor appetite for the Ice Cream, so is many a Rich Man; but also there are Others. Of which sort art thou?

And he said, If thou art a Philosopher, thou shouldest know. But art not thou thyself a lover of Money? Yea, doth not every Philosopher love Money more than any Rich Man loveth Philosophy?

And I said. That question hath been asked of old. And there was a Rich Man in Olden Time who thus asked a Philosopher wiser than I. And that Philosopher answered. The reason that Philosophers care more for Money than Rich Men care for Wisdom is that Philosophers know what they Lack, and Rich Men know not.

  & he said, The Philosopher who said that was a Wise Old Boy.

And I said, O thou Rich Man, thou art not altogether hopeless. Even like unto the Big Monsters of the Deep that yet are Mammals and not Fish, so hast thou something besides Gills; yea thou hast Lungs that are fitted for More Oxygen than thou canst extract from the Salt Water of Business; and now and then must thou Come Up to Breathe.

And he said, Thou art indeed a Wise Old Boy.

For a long time I have realized that money can have a hold over us, whether we have it or not. It gets people’s attention all the time. When we don’t have it, don’t have enough, we are wanting it, seeking it, looking for ways to get the things we need. Dreaming of the luxuries we don’t ever have. Looking with envy or dislike upon others who have more than we do.

If we do have some wealth, we pay a lot of attention to keeping it, protecting it, growing it, and using it in big ways to please ourselves. No wonder Jesus spoke so often of money.

Or the apostle Paul, who was known for saying of himself: I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. (Phlp 4:12) What a secret to learn!

The grand story of accumulating possessions and lands and wealth and all is a powerful story in human culture. It is one of these six stories that can be so destructive and controlling. The story of God’s love, sometimes called lovingkindness, is greater. There are other loves, of course. Such as the love of money and of things. Scripture tell us these words of Paul: the love of money is the root of much evil. (1 Timothy 6:10) And a wise, old friend of mine used to warn about loving things and using people, instead of using things and loving people. (MRC)

Our New Testament scripture today, from our summer, semi-continuous reading of Ephesians, speaks of how the non-Jews and the Jews were being brought together by Christ. People who felt far off from the promises of God were brought near. A new humanity was created by Jesus – all are welcome. No more us and them. And that metaphor of a building gets used. With Jesus as the cornerstone or capstone, the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.

We, First Baptist, and you, Trinity-St. Stephen’s, we each have spectacular, stone buildings. We’ve got what, well, what King David of 3000 years ago wanted: an impressive temple for God and for our worship and our congregations.

There are advantages and disadvantages to having a grand building. We think this is the Church; when we are, you and I the place in which God dwells.

I noticed this month that a gentlemen I knew, of Hants Border, died at age ninety: Reg Harrison. He was a real gentleman, a Christian, an educator and sometime preacher. He was a Springhiller. He once told the story from his youth of a time the congregation of Springhill Baptist gathered all around, shocked and weeping. Their church, their building, was burning. The church was destroyed, wrecked, gone, the people cried! But no. Someone spoke up, he remembers. No, the Church is not gone. It is us – we the people. We are the Springhill Baptist Church, and we will live on! So they have.

When we possess some wonderful things, expensive things, we do get rather attached to them. How does God guide us? Just a few years ago I heard tell of a fairly new Christian organization called ‘Wisdom and Money.’ Their website says:

W&M is a web of people of wealth who seek to align the flow of their financial resources with the Holy Spirit in service of Divine Love and Justice. Our work is rooted in ancient Christian traditions, contemplative and prophetic, and modern social movements for justice.

Perhaps none of us are rich enough to join this, but what an interesting concept. Here’s another quotation about it: What would you do with your wealth if you made financial decisions from the mystical heart? That’s the question asked by Wisdom and Money, a non-profit whose mission helps transform an ego-driven relationship with money into a sacred contract.

The group asks questions like this: How does a person of faith, possessing disproportionate material privilege, live with integrity? This begs the question: So, living right in the world as a wealthy person, with Jesus, is possible? How about a wealthy organization? Even a wealthy congregation, a Church?

It is good for us to ask, once in a while: what riches do we have in this castle of a building, here, First Baptist Church? What spiritual glory could we have, represented here, that is so amazing that is requires such a beautiful structure?

What God established in the days of King David was the promise of his great offspring, who would be the great Messiah, Christ, Jesus. Not that David knew all that. And what the Holy Spirit established in Trinity Church, and St. Stephen’s Church, and First Baptist Church was the sort of fellowship of people who are home to God, and have a great peace for human souls. We are not, first and foremost, about locally quarried sandstone and beautifully crafted woodwork. We are not founded upon investments and endowments in the millions. We are not about accumulating. We are about giving and sharing and blessing.

Now, to end, ‘Listen, children, to a story, that was written long ago.’ It is in this song...  

SERMON: Isolate! Us Away From Them?

(2 Sam 6:1-; Eph 1:3-14) J G White

10:30 am, Sunday, July 14, 2024, FBC Amherst

 A pastor friend asked me once if I knew where in the Bible is the first time Baptists are mentioned. I knew it had to be a joke; I did not know the answer. “No, where is the first place in the Bible that Baptists are mentioned?”

“Genesis 13: when Abraham says to his nephew, Lot, ‘You go your way and I’ll go mine.” :)

All stereotypical joking aside, there are a lot of people not getting along in this life, and going their separate ways. “This town isn’t big enough for the two of us.” The story of separating, of isolating from others, of Us Against Them by getting away from Them, is a story we keep repeating. To use traditional language, we can say this is a result of our sin, our fallen nature. When there are lots of us, and we are different, we don’t all get along. 

This week we went back to the stories of David, King David in Israel, three thousand years ago. We entered the scenes wherein he is establishing Jerusalem as his new capital city, and having the Ark of the Covenant brought into town. David famously dances as the parade enters.

One of his wives, Michal, is very displeased. There might be a few reasons for this. One could be that David, the king, is fraternizing with the lowest in society. With sarcasm, Michal said, “How the king of Israel honored himself today, uncovering himself today before the eyes of his servants’ maids, as any vulgar fellow might shamelessly uncover himself!”

It is, in part, the old ‘us vs them’ mentality. Keep away from them, the riff raff!

Indeed, we know how we talk to one another and about one another is a key part of our divisions, and at the heart of how we are healed. We know the old proverb is a lie: ‘sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.’

About a decade ago now, Sharon and I got introduced to Nonviolent Communication, developed by Marshall Rosenberg. Even the name of it makes a point: how we talk can be violent, or nonviolent. We tend to think of violence as actions that are physical. But how we talk can be just as violent. Jesus wants peace and reconciliation among us.

We were introduced to Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication through a series of workshops we had in the Windsor Church, led by a deacon from the Falmouth Church. The very basics of it are these points, these four steps:

1.     Observe what is actually happening in a situation. The trick is to be able to say what we see without adding any judgement or evaluation - simply to say what people are doing that we either like or don’t like.

2.     Secondly, we tell how we feel when we see what’s going on: are we hurt, scared, joyful, amused, irritated? 

3.     Thirdly, we say what our needs are that are connected to our feelings. 

4.     The fourth component is a specific request. This is saying what we are wanting from the other person that would enrich our lives or make life better for us.

Let me give you an example of all this from Marshall Rosenberg’s experience of mediating and of teaching communication skills. Twenty years or more ago, he was presenting to about 170 Palestinian Muslim men in a mosque at a refugee camp in Bethelehm. Attitudes towards Americans at the time were not favourable. As Marshall was speaking, he suddenly noticed a wave of muffled commotion fluttering through the audience. “They’re whispering that you are an American!” his translator told him, just as one gentleman leapt up and hollered at Marshall, “Murderer!” Immediately others joined in: “Assassin!” “Child-killer!” “Murderer!”

Marshall felt fortunate he was able to focus his attention on what the man was feeling and needing. He’d had some clues, such as empty tear gas canisters near the camp, clearly marked ‘Made in the U.S.A.’

Marshall asked the man who had first spoken, “Are you angry because you would like my government to use its resources differently?” He didn’t know whether his guess was correct--what was critical was his sincere effort to connect with the man’s feeling and need.

“Damn right I’m angry! You think we need tear gas? We need sewers, not your tear gas! We need housing! We need to have our own country!”

“So you’re furious and would appreciate some support in improving your living conditions and gaining political independence?” Marshall said.

“Do you know what it’s like to live here for twenty- seven years the way I have with my family--children and all? Have you got the faintest idea what that’s like for us?” the man responded.

“Sounds like you’re feeling very desperate and you’re wondering whether I or anybody else can really understand what it’s like to be living under these conditions. Am I hearing you right?” asked Marshall.

“You want to understand? Tell me, do you have children? Do they go to school? Do they have playgrounds? My son is sick! He plays in open sewage! His classroom has no books! Have you seen a school that has no books?”

“I hear how painful it is for you to raise your children here,” Marshal responded, “you’d like me to know that what you want is what all parents want for their children-- a good education, opportunity to play and grow in a healthy environment…”

“That’s right,” the man said, “the basics! Human rights --isn’t that what you Americans call it? Why don’t more of you come here and see what kind of human rights you’re bringing here!”

“You’d like more Americans to be aware of the enormity of the suffering here and to look more deeply at the consequences of our political actions?” The dialogue continued, with the man expressing his pain for nearly twenty minutes, and Marshall listening for the feeling and the need behind each statement. He didn’t agree or disagree, he simply received his words, not as attacks, but as gifts from a fellow human willing to share his soul and deep vulnerabilities with him.

Once the gentleman felt understood, he was able to hear Marshall explain his purpose for being at the camp. An hour later, that same man who had called him a murderer was inviting him to his home for a Ramadan dinner. (M. B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication, 2003, pp. 13-14)

There is a lot to learn about the process of Nonviolent Communication, yet it is clear, and simple in a way. The hard part is the personal part - and it is all personal! It is about getting in touch with our own thoughts and feelings, and our real needs. It is about being honest about these things. It is about listening well to others, to discover their thoughts and feelings and needs. Then, be ready to hear what people are asking for, and to make your own requests.

God has blessed each of us with some skills in this during our lifetimes. It comes with living. It comes from the school of hard knocks, and from the school of love and compassion that Jesus teaches us.

We heard this morning from the New Testament letter called Ephesians, named after the recipients of long ago. The words of this first chapter wax eloquent – but long-winded – about the gifts of God to us people. We are destined for adoption by God; all things are being gathered together in Christ; we obtain and inheritance, grace given to us by Christ, spiritual freedom, forgiveness of wrongdoing, and we are shown the mystery of God's plan for us all. And promised the presence of God, the Holy Spirit.

Notice, this is all about togetherness, actually. These spiritual ideas are not just for you, and you, and you, and me - they are for us, together. They are gifts that bring us into a life of getting along, getting into loving one another, getting to include so many people. Our faith journey will seldom take us into isolation, hating others, hiding from those who are different. The Way of Jesus is a path of reconciling, getting to know and understand one another. With all the great promises of God to us, we can find it safe to be honest, and safe to get to know those different from us.

This is hard work, often. Miraculous work! Marvelous, loving work. We are in such a time, in our part of the world, for wanting to stay away from others. Those who we disagree with strongly. Those we think cause us trouble. Those who sap our energy and our time and all. Those who are not benefiting us. So we believe all the voices who tell us to isolate, 'drop those people in my life,' take care of number one - that's me/you!

But I believe in the miracle of caring for those who just might need me a bit. And those who are not going to be like me in my thinking and my living. And those who I don't understand much at all. We are all still part of this one human family. And this one created order (sometimes disorder!) Let us look to our Holy Source to build some new order out of the mess we sometimes feel we are living in today.

Know thyself. And know others. Let us rely upon the promised Holy Spirit when we communicate. So it will not be a matter of us away from them, it will be Us With Them.

SERMON: REVENGE! Us Overcoming Them?

(Ezekiel 2:1-5; Mark 6:1-13) J G White

10:30 am, Sunday, July 7, 2024, FBC Amherst

When I was about twenty years old, and just getting deep into classical church music, one of my cassette tapes was of the Choir of All Saints Cathedral, Halifax. They sang, in typical, traditional, Anglican chant, Psalm 149:

O sing unto the LORD a new song:

let the congregation of saints praise him.

Let Israel rejoice in him that made him:

and let the children of Sion be joyful in their King...

Let the saints be joyful with glory:

let them rejoice in their beds.

Let the praises of God be in their mouths,

and a two-edged sword in their hands;

To be avenged of the nations,

and to rebuke the peoples;

To bind their kings in chains, 

and their nobles with links of iron;

To execute judgment upon them as it is written.

Such honour have all his saints. 

To sing harsh words beautifully… what does this do? Sometimes it masks what is truly being said. Perhaps the organ growls a bit and sounds harsher when the choir sings ‘bind their kings in chains, and their nobles with links of iron.’ 

Vengeance - such a common religious reaction. Such a human reaction! Some of you know I am spending six weeks on six stories that we tell in our lives, our culture, our religion. The story of dominating others, of being the victim of others, of taking revenge on others; and so on. Yet a seventh, the story of love, is far better. 

So far, in two sermons, in June, I have not told many stories. So here is one, that touches on revenge: us overcoming others. The Man Who Ran Over a Rattlesnake - a story of Safed the Sage, by Rev. William Eleazer Barton, c 1920.

There was a man who owned an Automobile, and he drove unto places afar. And there was a day when he stepped on the Gas, and went out into the country. And he beheld in the road ahead of him a Rattlesnake. And the Rattle-snake was crossing the road, and asking of him no favors save that he observe the speed limit, and give unto Transverse Traffick a fair share of the Publick Highway. And when the man saw the Rattlesnake, he ran the wheels of his Car over it, so that the back of the Serpent was broken. And the Serpent writhed in pain and died and the man drove on. And he patted himself upon the back and said, I have wrought a good deed, and there is one less enemy of the human race. And that may have been true; neither am I reproving him for what he did; for I am no friend of Rattlesnakes. 

Now it came to pass as he drove on, that one of his Tires went flat, and he stopped and removed it. And he found in the Inner Tube a small Puncture. For something had penetrated the Outer Tire, and cut it through. And he felt of the inside of his Outer Tire with his finger tips to find if peradventure a Tack had gone through his Tire, that he might remove it before he put in a new Inner Tube. And he found something that pricked his finger, and it felt like a Tack. But on the next day that man died. 

Now I once knew the President of a Railway who was unjust to a Brakeman; and the Brake-man rose to be a Conductor, and then a Division Superintendent, and then a General Manager, and then he caused the President to be fired, and he sat in the President's seat and he said, It all was written down in the Book of Fate from the day the Old Man Cursed me from his Private Car. 

And I have known of very humble men who have Resented being run over by Mighty Men, and who have kept it in mind for years until they found their opportunity. Yea, I have known the blind, unreasoning bite of a man whose back was broken to leave a poisoned fang for the finger of him who had run over him. 

Wherefore beware lest thou think too meanly of him whom thou despisest; neither be thou too ready to run over even the humblest of the creatures of God. For in this manner are the haughty brought often to humility. 

The urge to rebel and take vengeance is strong. Be it like the man driving the car who had it out for any rattlesnake. Or like the snake that seemed to leave a poison fang in the tire of the car. Or the Brakeman who worked on the railway, and worked his way up the corporate ladder, only to fire the company President who’d mistreated him. 

The first story we read today, was at the start of the text we call Ezekiel, that Hebrew priest and prophet is getting his calling to preach renewed. Among his own conquered people, now exiled in Babylon, Ezekiel is to speak out to them,  a rebellious people, whether they will listen and receive the message from God, or not. The leaders had been, many times, rebels against their own God. Things had gone badly for them; they were partly at fault themselves.

We have this tendency, when things go wrong, to blame and to want things made right - of course. But we want vengeance; we want revenge. We want to rebel against the ones who hurt us. We want to punish them and we want to win. But there is such a thing as seeking justice without vengeance. (Gareth Higgins) 

Revenge can feel like a good deed. Like the man who ran over the snake. “I have wrought a good deed, and there is one less enemy of the human race.” Yet, as Safed the Sage put it, ‘the Rattlesnake was crossing the road, and asking of him no favors save that he observe the speed limit, and give unto Transverse Traffick a fair share of the Publick Highway.’ 

To do justice without doing harm - that would be… special, peaceful, miraculous? As Jesus preached, it is no longer ‘an eye for an eye and tooth for tooth,’ quoting the Hebrew Scriptures. Rather, turn the other cheek, be generous, be peaceable. 

The one lesson I pick out from our Ezekiel scene today is the lesson - once again - of doing the small, good thing that is there for you to do. Prophet Ezekiel was to do some heavy preaching “whether they hear or refuse to hear.” At least they will know there has been a prophet in their midst. In other words, they’ll know they have been warned, they have heard from their God. The leaders of the Hebrew nation might never change their ways, or admit the failures of the past, but at least Ezekiel spoke the truth to them.

There is a place for rebellion, for protest, for refusing to go along with the powers that be. But we can do things kind and good, in the face of wrong and evil. Back when I was in college, the war in Bosnia broke out. The story was told of a cellist, in the midst of Sarajevo being bombed, who got out his cello and played. 

‘Why are you playing the cello,’ someone asked, ‘while they are dropping bombs?’

‘Hold on a minute,’ the musician said. ‘The question should be “why are they dropping bombs on me while I’m playing the cello?”’

There is a defiance that can be gracious and moving, without being harsh or violent. Without being vengeful.

I look to Jesus, in that hometown scene from Mark 6, today. The locals don’t respect Him. He speaks; He blesses a few people. He moves on. When Jesus instructs the disciples being sent out, they are prepared for both a warm welcome and for the cold shoulder. “If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” We don’t take violence against them, we don’t make a stink. We simply move on, in peace. 

We come in worship, in a few moments, to the time of remembering Jesus’ death by execution. In that scene, He is known for saying, “Forgive them, for they do not know what they’re doing.” As we are ‘at the Table,’ let us remember those words of His. And as we acknowledge that we do not always know what we are doing, we may yet be inspired to speak a different story than taking revenge and violently rebelling. We can live into the story of peaceful love, in the face of all the world of nastiness that hurts. 

What did Safed the Sage say? Wherefore beware lest thou think too meanly of him whom thou despisest; neither be thou too ready to run over even the humblest of the creatures of God. And let me end with words ‘of Safed’ from his Introduction to these stories. 

No apology is here offered for the optimism which underlies the philosophy of these little lessons. The author has lived long enough to know something of the sorrows and perplexities of life, but he still believes that this is a good world, and he is glad he is alive… 

SERMON: Dominate! Us Over Them?

10:30 am, Sun, June 16, 2024

(1 Sam 8:4-10; 11:14-15; Mk 3:20-27) J G White / FBCA

“Oh I just can’t wait to be king!” So sings young Simba in the animated movie ‘The Lion King.’ Thanks to our grandchildren, I’ve gotten reintroduced to such classic, cartoon, family films. Simba sings:

I'm gonna be the main event like no king was before

I'm brushing up on looking down, I'm working on my roar

Oh I just can't wait to be king

No one saying ‘do this’

No one saying ‘be there’

No one saying ‘stop that’

No one saying ‘see here’

Ah, to be in charge, to be the boss, to dominate. Every child has moments of wanting this. Every adult too! It has a certain appeal. It has a certain power. It is in so many of the stories that we tell, and in the story of our own lives.

On the group level, there is also just as much: as much of US OVER THEM, dominating. So much of our entertainment tells this story. And the stories we keep telling ourselves, and our children, influence us. We get trained to want to dominate and be the group in charge. Be the best people, above others. Be in charge of the way things are run. The way our governments and organizations are organized perpetuates the Us Over Them attitude.

Yet it is a violent attitude. And the roots run deep.

The Bible history we read is filled with kings and kingdoms. In the ancient days of the Hebrews, they got to a point of wanting a king, a king like the other nations had around them. To lead them into battle! They asked their leader, Samuel, who conferred with God: he prayed. ‘Sure, go ahead,’ YHWH seemed to say. Then Samuel gives a speech of divine warnings; he outlines all the problems that will go along with having royalty in charge. Yet the people still say: “No! We are determined to have a king over us.” So they get what they ask.

In the quest for truth, I offer six sermons now, on six stories of our culture, outlined by Gareth Higgins and Brian McLaren. We tell these stories of dominating others, of taking revenge on others, of isolating from others, of blaming others, of accumulating more than others, of being victims of others. But Jesus, I am sure, takes us to love of others. In Christ us and them can be one. The Seventh Story is the story of LOVE, and to live this we tell the story of Jesus.

We’ve a story to tell to the nations

That shall turn their hearts to the right,

A story of truth and mercy,

A story of peace and light.

That gospel hymn has a rather militaristic flavour, and an old-fashioned sense of being victorious and triumphant. Yet look at the details of what we just sang.

We sang of truth telling and of showing mercy, of waging peace and shedding light on things. Folks in the Baptist Peace Fellowship always say ‘peace, like war, is waged.’

We sang of conquering evil, and destroying swords and shields. Actual, real wrecking of metal weapons is a thing to do, in Jesus’ Way of love. Based in Philadelphia, Shane Claiborne and others have a shop in which they repurpose firearms; they make tools, jewellery and art out the metal and wood of guns!

We sang of a God who reigns above (like a king) yet who is shown to us – by Jesus – to be Love, with a capital L.

All these things are needed in our world because things are in a mess. Gun violence is huge – that’s what Shane Claiborne is opposing. The Baptist Peace Fellowship is telling new stories of what God is truly up to, among us, making peace where people are at odds. We sing of a Saviour who ‘the path of sorrow has trod.’ All our paths of sorrow today, Jesus walks with us.

We read a Bible story today of Jesus getting no respect by those who wanted to dominate the religions scene. ‘He must be of the devil,’ they accused. Jesus then speaks of kingdoms, noting that a kingdom fighting against itself will not last. Jesus’ realm, kingdom, Way, does not fight like others.

Not that we are all peace and flowers and sunshine and lollipops. If so, are we are missing out on dealing with the terrors of life, and making a real difference. The ways people get dominated over, get oppressed, are real and terrible. We must have good news for them.

At the local level, the personal level, are the harsh relationships where one person lords it over others, dominates, abuses. It has been such a part of our culture, it is enshrined in songs. I think of a classic rock song, a great song. Or is it? To me it has such a great, iconic sound. But the words, the message – it is horrible!  The Rolling Stones:

Under my thumb  The girl who once had me down

Under my thumb The girl who once pushed me around

It's down to me     The difference in the clothes she wears

Down to me, the change has come  She's under my thumb

At best, a classic song like that is a reminder of at attitude, an awareness of how evil dominating happens in relationships. We know the challenge of supporting and helping people who are under someone’s thumb. It takes intense care, & miracles.

Thus, we, of the Church, we, of Christ, has ministry to those in trouble, those dominated by others. Our gathering is not just to escape into happiness or serenity. It changes lives.

A resource I am impressed by, not yet having put it to use, is an eight-week program called Groups of Hope, from CBM. First designed to help women who were hurting, in the wake of abuse, broken relationships, and other disasters, it is a short-term, small group program designed to bless people who have suffered and need to find emotional healing and spiritual hope. We have tools we use to face deep troubles head-on.

A respected minister and orator from Chicago, Otis Moss III, preached some lectures in Wolfville this past week. Using a musical metaphor, he spoke of a blue note gospel. You’ve got to sing the blues to have real good news that means anything. Dr. Moss quoted from Ezra 3:13, in his own paraphrase: No one could distinguish between the gospel shout and the blues moan. The faithful community in the days of Ezra was filled with young people rejoicing, and the older people weeping. The happy and the sad were all mixed and mingled together.

When the ‘worship wars’ we going on in churches in the 1980s and 90s, between new Christian music with guitars and drums, against hymns with choir and pipe organ, a great professor spoke at a big conference. In the Q&A, someone asked the professor if he thought a church should have a ‘praise team?’ After a moment, the wise teacher said, “Yes, I suppose so, as long as the church also has a ‘lament team.’

So our message is not all ‘Victory In Jesus!’ Anything good in our tradition is responding to the terrible and painful. Christianity is not about dominating the world or our town. It is about facing pain head on. Walking with the weary. Suffering for the sake of others who suffer. Struggling for freedom with those who are oppressed.

To dominate, to have our dominion over others, can be so dangerous. Our story of Jesus says so much, in the midst of the rest of Biblical history, and of our Christian story. We preach Christ, crucified. A great Servant Leader.

Early on in the story ‘The Lion King’, young lion Simba gets excited about one day becoming the king. “I just can’t wait to be king!”  His father, Mufasa, tells Simba, “There’s more to being king than getting your own way.”

So there is. There is more to being the people of God than getting our own way. More to being ‘the faithful remnant’ than thinking we are right in a world of wrong. There is more to being saved than getting our way into eternal glory. We are to be the people of blessing: blessing others, sharing powerful grace with the whole world.

This is our message. This is our gospel. This is the Jesus we serve: wanting to share the dominion with one and all. It is not a matter of us over them, it is Us For Them.

SERMON: A Well-Needed Rest

10:30 am, Sun, June 2, 2024

(1 Sam 3:1-10; Mk 2:23 – 3:6) J G White / FBCA 

The Fourth Commandment: Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. (Deut 5:12)

To prepare for this message about ‘keeping the sabbath,’ I read most of Ruth Haley Barton’s 2022 book, Embracing the Rhythms of Work and Rest. A wife, a preacher and teacher, a spiritual leader and author, she tells of being at the height of her powers and work, when she was about forty.

Then she had a bike accident. After surviving, she went right back to work. A friend laughed and said, “Ruth, when are you going to learn that when you are on a bike, you can’t take on a van?” Another friend, curious about the fact she was taking no time off to recover, said, “You know, you did just get run over by a car. You could take a day off!

The world just can’t go on without us. Some of us have days we think that way! Perhaps so many people feel trapped on that running wheel of work and family responsibility and financial demands and emotional duty. Do we see in one another what the media keeps telling us? This is a time when people have so much stress, anxiety and fear, loneliness, and struggle of every sort?

In the midst of all this, our dear Jesus would call us to a ‘Sabbath rest by Galilee.’ The ‘day of rest and gladness’ is a wonderful gift from God, but for so many an unopened gift. We think we sometimes enjoy the pretty wrapping, but never truly see what the day is or get to use it.

Even traditional Church Sundays were such a burden. They still can be! Especially for the twenty percent of any congregation who do eighty percent of the Church work. There could be refreshments to prepare, music and readings to get ready for, maybe a committee meeting after Sunday service, people to find and talk to about that decision that needs to be made, or make sure they get those papers they need for whatever ministry is about to happen.

The seventh day – or first day of the week as we Christians have it – is a gift from the Creator, who ceased from work on the seventh day in the first creation story. Even before the Ten Commandments were given, Moses and the Israelites were provided for so their seventh day could be a break.

What a break it was to be! Those ancient Hebrews were no longer slaves, slaves in Egypt. They would get a day off? Every seventh day? No work? Even your donkey got the day off? The travelers and visitors too? And food preparation was even simplified. Wow. That was good news.

 That was thousands of years ago, far, far away. But in the first years of Christianity (only two thousand years ago) there was the promise of weekly rest. Hebrews chapter four declares these things: a Sabbath rest still remains for the people of God, for those who enter God’s rest also rest from their labors as God did from his. (9, 10) All such teaching is preceded by the leading of Jesus in His lifetime. More than once, Christ did things like this: He said to [the disciples], “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. (Mk 6:31)

But does it surprise us when we read that story of Jesus and his close followers getting in trouble on their Sabbath, picking grain as they wander? And then Jesus seems quite clearly to be making a point when he heals a man’s hand right there at a synagogue on Saturday. Again, we see this piece of time in our lives is a gift. The Sabbath was made for people, for us, not the other way around.

When we slow down, time can slow down. The rush ends, we share rest with others, it can be a kairos moment, a special quality of time. It can be real freedom. Think again back to those freed slaves, becoming a new people in a whole new way, journeying thru the wilderness. So too in our day and age. There are still many people who are enslaved, literally and figuratively. Resting, we remember those who get no rest.

Creator of Black Liturgies, Cole Arthur Riley, said,

When we rest, we do so in memory of rest denied. We receive what has been withheld from ourselves and our ancestors. And our present respite draws us into remembrance of those who were not permitted it… When I rest my eyes, I meet those ancestors and they meet me, as time blurs within us. They tell me to sit back. They tell me to breathe. They tell me to walk away like they couldn’t. Rest is an act of defiance…. It’s the audacity to face the demands of this world and proclaim, we will not be owned. (The Sabbath, 1951, p. 15)

Moses and those Hebrews, finding the rhythm of rest each week, with their manna in the desert, were finding their new identity, their true identity. We, today, find our identity in our quieter times with Jesus. We get in touch with ourselves, and with our Source, the Spirit of Christ in us, and among us in fellowship.

When we slow down, and cease a lot of usual actions, lots of things can surface. Thoughts, feelings, memories, problems, questions. So sabbath keeping has its harder moments. Christ uses Sunday to help us feel all the feels, as people say today. 14th century Persian poet, Hafez, wrote     

Absolutely Clear

Don't surrender your loneliness

So quickly.

Let it cut more deep.

Let it ferment and season you

As few human

Or even divine ingredients can.

Something missing in my heart tonight

Has made my eyes so soft,

My voice

So tender,

My need of God

Absolutely

Clear.

As we build – or rebuild – sabbath days into our weeks, or sabbath moments into every day, we touch the deeper parts of ourselves, and are touched by others. Even by God. I know how some of you do this. 😊

We believers have, for the most part, taken the tradition of the seventh day, and moved it to the first day of the week, the day of the resurrection of Christ. Sunday becomes our tithe of time – the first and best of the week is given to God; we get to enjoy it fully with our God.

In theory. As I pointed out, Christian Sabbath has gotten lost in all the dos and don’ts, and the busyness and business of congregational activities. As well as our feelings that we are competing with the other activities of our community.

It is time to recreate and reclaim for ourselves what our day of rest can be. We have fully entered this age of shopping on all seven days, and work of all sorts too, and sports and so on that can be demanding and controlling of our time. I don’t think we fight against these trends; I think we get creative and live better, in spite of. Some people need to take their spiritual Sabbath on a day other than Sunday, for example.

The gift of this sacred day of rest is a shared thing. And it needs leaders to lead us into it. Starting with Jesus, yes, but we need people among us, such as pastors, to lead the way. Teaching, and example. I have read a quotation somewhere that claims, ‘A minister should be a kind of human Sunday.’

I find it striking that Eugene Peterson has a chapter in his book, The Contemplative Pastor, that is all about ‘The Unbusy Pastor.’

How can I persuade a person to live by faith and not by works if I have to juggle my schedule constantly to make everything fit into place? (p. 25) Peterson goes on to suggest an unbusy ministry leader is able to do three things. I can be a pastor who prays. I can be a pastor who preaches. I can be a pastor who listens.

Presbyterian minster and author/editor, John Buchanan, says he learned sabbath keeping this way:

My instructor in Sabbath-keeping was not a professor or spiritual director, but a foreman at the East Chicago Inland Steel plant named Make Paddock. His wife was the treasurer of the tiny congregation I served as a student pastor, and she wrote my salary check twice a month. Mike would deliver it along with two dozen eggs and a shopping bag full of tomatoes, cucumbers and honey dew melons. Mike’s seminar on Sabbath-keeping occurred on a summer Saturday morning when he saw my car at the church.

“What the hell are you doing here on a Saturday morning?” he asked me.

“Well,” I stammered, “I’m here being available to the congregation. I’m pretty much gone all week, at school, so Saturday I’m here in case anybody needs me.”

“Let me tell you something,” Mike said. “Nobody needs you today. If they do, they’ll call you. Nobody wants to see you today. They’re busy. They’ll see plenty of you tomorrow. So go home. Cut your grass, wash your car, sit in your yard, play with you kids. Get outa’ here.”

I did what he said and have tried to abide by it ever since.

Our First Testament story today – centred around the boy Samuel – is one about the failure of spiritual leaders: Eli and his wicked sons. Young Samuel hears the call of God to rise up and renew the path.

We all need renewal. I do, with your help. And you do, with my help, and the help of one another. Help to find Sabbath, a spiritual practice that is a gift to us, to our world, to all of creation, actually. Help to share it, to let others know this gift that is waiting for them!

Sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the Sabbath. Jesus, the Son of Humankind, is Master even of the Sabbath.   It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath, to save life.

Jesus found out that keeping the Sabbath would get him into trouble. But it was so needed. It even saves life.

SERMON: First Responder Spirit

10:30 am, Sun, May 19, 2024 ~  FBCA

(Acts 2:1-21; John 14:16-17, 25-26; 15:26-27; 16:7-15)

Last month, while visiting her older daughter, Sharon happened to step on a nail and get a little puncture in her foot. As she came down the ladder from the attic, she called out to seven-year-old Amelia, “I hurt my foot, I need a band aid.” 

“I’m on it!” declared Amelia seriously, and went into action to get Nana bandaged up. 

The grandchildren have been trained to have the spirit of a First Responder, thanks to Sharon White, with her years of training and experience. As I studied John’s words of Jesus over the past couple weeks, a Bible scholar, Caroline Lewis, talked about the Holy Spirit as the First Responder to the human condition. This grabbed me. In these days of deep personal needs among most people on earth, we need spiritual first responders more than ever. God responds to the creatures of earth when they cry out. And, we are here to join the first responding team of the Spirit.

So I turn to words of Christ about the Spirit of God. First, remembering God abides with us, in us. Jesus said, I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever… You know him because he abides with you, and he will be in you. A way for God to be with us forever, to abide with people, to be in humanity. 

The title for the Holy Spirit here is interesting, the Greek word is Parakletos, transliterated Paraclete. In our usual English translation, Advocate. In other Bible translations it can be Helper, or Comforter. It means one who comes alongside, goes with you. Years ago, a girl had been to Sunday school and came home saying they were getting a quilt. “Getting a quilt?” Her father wondered what this was about. She replied, “The teacher said, the Comforter will come.’ 

The Comforter, the Helper, the Advocate, the Paraclete is the promised presence of God with people. Multiple people at once. God with us in an unlimited way. We celebrate Jesus as God With Us. So is the Spirit, and God with the world. Our awareness is broadened.

And so God can indeed be known as our first responder. One who is nearby, ever present, always available, in any time of trouble or need, big or small. 

Years ago,  minister Robert Matthews told me the story of a man who had some troubles, was working at being a Christian, but who had anxieties and concerns about getting help from this God he was trying to believe in. Rev. Matthews said he comforted the fellow by teaching him the doctrine of the Holy Spirit - the available presence of God. God is real and is there, at any second of your lifetime, where you are. He said that man was quite encouraged by this.

There are four so-called Paraclete sayings of Jesus in these chapters of John’s Gospel. The second one is also in chapter 14, with Jesus saying, the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you. The Spirit teaches and reminds us. Reminds us of everything Jesus showed us. 

The old hymn, ‘ Come, Thou Everlasting Spirit,’ at one point names the Spirit the ‘Remembrancer Divine.’ I think the poet must have made up that word, remembrancer, as poets often do. But it is a cool word. Someone whose job it is to remind you everything you could stand to remember. Sounds a bit like ‘dancer’ too, so I like to imagine how the Holy Spirit dances beautifully with the fumbling steps of my human spirit. I don’t like the song, ‘Jesus, Take the Wheel,’ and these feet do not know how to dance, but I like the image of the Spirit taking the lead in a dance with my soul. 

A few months ago, Kevin, Shauna, Angela and I took the basic First Aid course. I wonder what I remember now? We got no book to work through and keep. We had only our minds and bodies, that one day, to learn what to do in emergencies. I think I need reminders.

People who are trained are capable and can be very helpful. That is what First Aid training is for, all the way up to Medical First Responding, not to mention other skill sets like Mental Health First Aid, which Sharon and I took about twelve years ago.

Sharon is a well-trained, very experienced, Medical First Responder. It is really a personal story for her to tell, of a childhood experience in Scotland, when she witnessed an accident on the street involving a motorcycle. None of the bystanders seemed to know how to respond, or do anything! People just stood around, at first. 

Sharon decided to become someone who knows how to respond.

In the fellowship of Jesus, we have this calling to be those who know how to respond, when people have a spiritual crisis, emotional upset, a traumatic moment. So for all such things, great and small, we can learn from Jesus, from Jesus’ Spirit, our Rabbi.

As with anything, training can be in three categories: One, is the teaching. Two, training exercises. Three, practice - actually doing it, using your skills in real life. It is worth evaluating the activities of our Church here, in terms of how we are being trained to care for others, to be spiritual first responders. The first steps might be One, notice and celebrate how we already do respond as spiritual first aiders. Two, get motivated by what more is possible for us to do, cooperating with the First Responder Holy Spirit. Three, discover what our next training could be. Sharon has worked on a curriculum for trauma-informed pastoral care. That could be so helpful to us.

The third Paraclete saying tells us the Spirit ‘testifies’ in us. In essence, it is our experience of the Sacred that tells us God is real. A Gospel hymn says of the risen Saviour, ‘You ask me how I know He lives? He lives within my heart.’ So the first responder to our doubts and discouragements is the actual God we sometimes wonder about.

I’m not going to spend much time on this third Spirit saying. I suppose I should requote some of it: When the Advocate comes… he will testify on my behalf. You are also to testify… The whole ‘communicating cosmos’ tells us of our God. Our belief, faith, trust, confidence, what all we call it, grows from moments that speak to us, even speak within us. We are deeply moved, moved within. And we share this, which helps move others in good directions.

Fourthly and finally, the Spirit is the presence of Jesus, giving us life. Along with the story of the Holy Spirit filling the people, told in Acts 2, we have many other Bible moments, before and after, pointing to the Breath of Life, the Wind of God. A contemporary worship song begins, ‘This is the air I breathe; this is air I breathe. Your holy presence, living in me.’ 

With the story of the Christian Pentecost event, we see again God the Spirit is air, wind, breath. God, like the P in CPR: P for Pulmonary, about your lungs and breathing. 

A person was asked on their hundredth birthday - of course - what is the secret of such a long life? ‘Just keep breathing!’ 

To live is to breathe, among other things. In Psalm 104, the creatures of the earth are given life and breath… and when they lose breath they die. As one of my deacons in Digby used to say, “That breath, that last breath you just took: it was a gift from God; you were not promised it.”

We sometimes think about our whole life as a gift. Alongside the physical action of breathing, clearing CO2 out of our bloodstream, and taking O2 into it, is the breath of the Spirit, filling our own human spirits. The God we declare that we know in Jesus becomes present to us ‘in Spirit.’ The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus. As Rev. Dr. John Bartol, of Winsdor, used to say, the Holy Spirit is like another Jesus. One who is available to all of us now, at all moments, everywhere upon earth, all at once. 

And we rejoice that God, the Spirit, Jesus, wants life for us, abundant life. Jesus spoke so often about giving life, using many metaphors. He is the source of fresh water, the light of our inner lives, the bread to feed our souls, the shepherd to guide us always, the grapevine of our fruitful branches. Jesus, my Life, my Breath.

As terrible moments come and go in our lives, as great challenges come along, one after another, or as dull dreariness sometimes goes on and on, may the Breath of Life fill us. The Spirit, the First Responder. God, with us. God, to teach and train us. God, to prove to us what’s real. God, to make Jesus clear and present to us, with us. God is Good. God is Spirit. God is love. God is with us. Alleluia!

SERMON: I Chose You

10:30 am, Sun, May 5, 2024 ~  FBCA

(1 John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17)

Our choice has been made - the work was done by the Search Committee - the applicant for this one year term has been accepted, and Marlene has just begun her ministry with us in her new role. Her assistance to our work of Christian Education, to Me, and to all of us will be such a good thing. 

I heard this funny old love song on the radio the other day.

I'll be wonderful, do just what I'm told

I'll do anything for you, I'm your puppet, I'm your puppet

Just pull them little strings and

I'll sing you a song, I'm your puppet

This is not going to be our theme song with Marlene Quinn. No! Pastors sometimes can feel like a puppet on a string - or with one hundred strings, pulling in all directions - but this is going too far. 

Now, both our scriptures today are speaking of love and obedience, yes. John’s Gospel says if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love. And the First Letter of John says the love of God is this, that we obey His commands. We know this is not saying, ‘be a puppet on My string.’ But it is getting at the real love that wants to do what the other desires and plans. Giving up one’s life for one’s friends is the greatest love. 

Like any of us, Marlene has sought wisdom beyond herself to figure out what to do with her life this year. And she has sensed some answers have come from God - often heard in the voices of people around her: some of you. The six of us on the Search Committee have met many times, and we made this commitment to the team: “I agree to pray daily for each committee member and for the work of the church.”

This is all about how to love one another. It is easy, and sometimes profound, to agree that, of course, we are to love God and love one another. The real work, the real decisions, are how to love one another. What action, what choice, what words are loving at this moment? And the next? And tomorrow? It is a beautiful thing for a congregation of Christians to find in their number a person to take on a special ministry job. Now the real work begins, to plan and work together with Marlene, get to know and care for one another, and appreciate what we each can do for the Body, the Church. 

For many years I have loved to read the 1967 novella, I Heard the Owl Call My Name, by Margeret Craven. It tells the story of a young Anglican priest who is sent by his Bishop to a ministry in an isolated First Nations village in British Columbia. 

It is no ‘spoiler alert’ to tell you this; these are the first sentences of the novel: The doctor said to the Bishop, ‘So you see, my Lord, your young ordinand can live no more than three years and doesn’t know it. Will you tell him, and what will you do with him?’

The Bishop does not tell the young priest, Mark, but sends him on his way to the isolated village. On arrival, he finds there has been a tragic death, and with the police he deals with it and prepares for his first burial in his new community.

In one of the best houses in the village Mrs Hudson, the matriarch, was pleased that a vicar was again in residence. The Bishop would surely come more frequently, perhaps even with a boatload of landlubber clergy to be fed and housed, and the young wives would gather her in her house to defer to her judgment, speaking softly in Kwákwala. 

‘What meat shall we have?’

‘Roast beef.’ Or salmon. Or wild goose. Or duck. 

‘And what vegetable shall we have?’ Mrs Hudson’s answer was always the same, & her small revenge on the white man, the intruder.

‘Mashed turnips.’ No white man likes mashed turnips. 

The story carries on, telling of all the times of the community facing other deaths and tragedies, times of fishing and celebration, times of storytelling, times out on the land and the water, times of white and indigenous being different, and the same. 

Mark works closely with some in the community. He travels to other little communities by boat to patrol - have services there, give pastoral care. He holds the hands of people as they die; then he offers the final commendations and prayers. Mark patches up the decaying little vicarage where he lives. He helps them plan and prepare a new burial ground for the ancestors of the community. He struggles with the native names of the villages and people. 

Mark goes along on a bear hunt, and after tracking it for hours, it appears behind them, and is shot. ‘I thought we were following the bear,’ Mark said to Jim. 

‘We were until he circled. He’s been following us for an hour.’

‘But there’s no bullet hole. ‘

‘It is hidden by the fur and the folds of fat,’ and Mark saw the laughter rise and hold in all the dark eyes. 

‘This bear did not die of a bullet,’ one of the Indians told him gravely. ‘He died of shock. It’s the first time he’s ever seen a vicar so far up on the mountain.’

Mark also gets to see the swimmer, the salmon, and the end of the swimmer, where they spawn, and die, and new life begins. 

Of course, the novella ends with the death of the young rector, Mark. And all the preparations for funeral and mourning and burial, for visitors who will come to the community. 

In the house of Mrs Hudson the young matrons said to her in Kwákwala, ‘There will be many guests. What meat shall we prepare for them?’

‘Roast beef.’

‘And how much?’

‘One hundred and fifty pounds.’

And what vegetable?’

‘Carrots,’ and tears trickled down the cheeks of the matriarch. ‘He never liked mashed turnips and I made him eat them. I am a stubborn old woman who wants her own way.’ And the young matrons moved closer to her like chicks to an old hen. ‘Oh, no - no - no.’

This novel always moves me to tears when I read it. For it is true, true to life. Our lives, together, in Christ. With all our roles in Church and community and families, we learn love. We learn to submit to others. We learn to obey when it is good to obey. We learn to lead when we must lead and follow when it is time to follow.

We learn that we have all been chosen. Chosen for such a time as this. Chosen for love in action and in attitude. Chosen to belong - for we have been chosen by God. We are the beloved ones of God. And we must show all the others they are also beloved by God.

Jesus said to those first apostles, whom He called ‘friends,’ “You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.”

SERMON: Gospel Unlimited

10:30 am, Sun, April 28, 2024 ~  FBCA

(Acts 8:26-40; 1 John 7:7-21)

A week or two ago I was minding my own business, listening to the radio in my car. I was listening to CBC, so I should have been ready. I heard a song, a duet, by Orville Peck and Willie Nelson. “Cowboys are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other.” The song is actually more than forty years old, and Willie, for one, covered it in the past, back in 2006. I’d never heard of this ‘gay cowboy song.’

Today’s story from the Acts of the Apostles gives us reason to ponder people whose sex and gender do not fit into simple, easy categories. Man and woman, in other words, male and female. We know there are quite a few other categories or variations. God knows there is variety. What is the good news of our faith for everyone?

An apostle of Jesus named Philip is sent by the very Spirit of God to meet up with a traveller who, as the hymn just said, had dark skin and a foreign language. He also happens to have a very big job, back in Ethiopia: treasurer for the Queen. So, he has some status and position; but he is a eunuch, so people would have seen him as somewhat odd. What was a eunuch? What is a eunuch? A castrated male. This has been a practice in many lands and cultures of the world for thousands of years. Men have been castrated for various cultural and religious purposes  - from preventing them from fathering children among the people they work for, to keeping their youthful, soprano voice into adulthood. Eunuchs were well known, but certainly considered different by many people. 

This man, in Acts 8, also appears to be a God-fearer, which is what the Jews called people of other cultures who started following Jewish ways of worship and lifestyle. He is educated - he can read - and has the luxury of possessing a copy of some Jewish scripture, the Isaiah scroll, at least. 

This unnamed person becomes one of the first converts recorded by Luke in his book called Acts. It is even the story of a baptism. The baptism of a Christian. Events all guided by the Holy Spirit.

But the African man does not quite check all the right boxes, eh? As the teacher of preachers, Thomas Long, clearly put it, “He belonged to the wrong nation, held the wrong job, and possessed the wrong sexuality.” 

Some serious Hebrews - and early Christians - could have quoted Deuteronomy 23:1 which prohibits men whose, uh… privates have been damaged… from assembling with the rest of the faithful for worship. And other ‘laws’ of old. Plus all the attitudes and values tied in with being married, and the blessing of having children, and all that one supposedly is supposed to do. As a good person of God. 

Sometimes, in religion, it seems there have been such rules and keeping out of many wrongdoing people and many problems for all of history. Yes, there have been. But other faithful prophets have been the voice of including and welcoming someone ‘different.’ 

In this case, we could look to Isaiah 56, which appears to speak into the moment in the sixth century BCE, when the Hebrews got to return from up north in Babylonia, back down to the Promised Land. A prophetic voice declared, about foreigners and eunuchs who wanted to follow the Jewish Deity:

3 Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say,

    “The Lord will surely separate me from his people,”

and do not let the eunuch say,

    “I am just a dry tree.”

4 For thus says the Lord:

To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths,

    who choose the things that please me

    and hold fast my covenant,

5 I will give, in my house and within my walls,

    a monument and a name

    better than sons and daughters;

I will give them an everlasting name

    that shall not be cut off.

This is unlike the teachings of the prophets Ezekiel and Ezra, which was, basically: get rid of the foreigners and pay attention to which people are impure - keep. them. out. 

I hope you know by now that our scriptures have these contrasts, these conversations, these differing voices that all speak and give different, holy perspectives. All together, this gives us reality. We are influenced by the Bible… by our God, behind all the authors. And. as in today’s New Testament story, helpers, interpreters are needed.

The story of Acts 8 picks up on Jesus’ own way of breaking all the barriers the religions kept between people. And on the simple and profound reality that God is love. 1 John 4 riffs on this theme, and twice has this tiny synopsis. God is love. 

God loves the man who is exploring faith, even though he is a eunuch with odd sexuality, unusual social status, and a privileged position working for a foreign ruler. 

Including people who were excluded is not a new thing, in our Faith. We can see it was happening six hundred years before Jesus, and six months after Jesus. Not to mention with Jesus Himself. In the midst of talking with people about marriage and divorce and their Jewish traditions, we hear Him say, in Matthew 19:12 For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus’ words on such things are still challenging to us. It takes time to ponder what He had said about men and women, divorce and marriage, right here. It takes study on our part. Working together.

I side with the voices who repeat, God is love. (1 John 4:) 20 Those who say, “I love God,” and hate a brother or sister are liars, for those who do not love a brother or sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21 The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.

There is something very unlimited in this Good News we are to proclaim with our lives. This Gospel is, in one sense, the basic story of Jesus. In another sense, it is the experience of meeting and knowing the Spirit of Christ. In another sense, it is intentionally following the ways He taught us, how to live here and now in the Kindom of God. 

This story, this experience, this following, is unlimited. All the stories we have of how Jesus met people can make this clear. How we live the Way of Jesus ourselves is so important today in our communities and our world. The struggle is real to sort out how to love one another. But it is beautiful how God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.

SERMON: Creation's shepherd

10:30 am, Sun, April 21, 2024 ~  FBCA

(Psalm 23; 1 John 3:16-24; John 10:1-18)

Today is Good Shepherd Sunday, among other things. Psalm 23 is here, along with words of Jesus about being a Shepherd. 

In our faith experience, we have met up with the great, good Shepherd, Jesus the Christ. The Shepherd who knows and is known by the sheep. The Shepherd who lays down His life for the flock. 

The images are so earthy. Today is the eve of Earth Day. Yesterday, today and tomorrow, there are local opportunities to get out and do a bit of clean up where there is trash. Even the local running and walking club cleaned up a part of town, yesterday. There is so much more that is done and learned on Earth Day, or during Earth Week, and some call it. Faith communities like First Baptist get involved. For years I have thought that churches could set a new goal for Earth Day every year, and celebrate how we changed over the previous twelve months - whether our goal was using less paper, less water, less healing fuel, or less food from far, far away.

It usually seems to me that our religious faith, our Churches, our scriptures, are all about God and people. Well, the Bible was written down by and for humans, after all. Our religious patterns were developed by us. But might our Good Shepherd also be the Shepherd of all Creation? The story of our Saviour and Shepherd is of a loving Deity who joined the created world, as one of the creatures, 1 of us. 

The Spirit of Jesus today is speaking for climate justice, for the good of the whole world. I think, when it was written down that Jesus said to a man named Nicodemus, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son,” I think it was about people. God so loved all humans. But the Greek word here for ‘world’ is cosmos, which we use, in English, for the whole universe out there. Does God also so love the cosmos that God came into creation as the human, Jesus?

Two weeks ago we sang ‘This Is My Father’s World.’ The author was an American pastor, Maltbie Babcock. A great athlete, he swam, hiked, went fishing; he also played instruments and wrote music. When he was at a church in Lockport, New York state, he would hike and run in the hills outside town. At that time he wrote a sixteen stanza poem, each line beginning with ‘This is My Father’s world.’

This is my Father’s world;

He shines in all that’s fair;

In the rustling grass I hear Him pass,

He speaks to me everywhere. 

Amid all the beauty, we know the problems. People these days get plenty of data, information, science, about the climate crisis and environmental research and the many issues to be faced. Where do people get their values? Their meaning? Their hope? Their spirit to bring them together and make a difference? In many settings, God talk is not allowed much, anymore. We, in church, allow ‘God talk,’ of course. Among us, from us, comes the opportunity for people of every age to explore the spirituality of this crisis time. To find the meaning of our lives in this age of troubles.

We declare this Christ, this Jesus, this God, can shepherd us. And many of us can be shepherds to others, undershepherds, as is sometimes said. This breaks the shepherding metaphor, I guess, because I don’t think many sheep become little shepherds of the others in the flock. But we, who follow Jesus who lived and breathed upon this earth, we can be shepherds to others in our world. Shepherds under Christ, as we seek how to live in this day and age. 

You may or may not feel it, but we hear there is great climate anxiety among many younger people these days. The situation can seem hopeless, as the world gets polluted, the human population grows hugely, the climate gets altered, and other species on earth and in the seas disappear.

The Good Shepherd is at the root of our ability to be carers for creation. The Psalm celebrates that God is my Shepherd, so:

I shall not need. If I don’t feel in need, I am freed up to use less, waste less, and bless more. 

I shall be led. When we are lost or confused about environmental issues, we have a Saviour who is no dummy. There is guidance available to us, about every aspect of life. 

I shall not fear. This is recited so many times in our scriptures. And we can live it when the earth and seas are crashing into chaos. What a difference it makes when we sense we are provided for. 

I shall be prepared for. If the face of the enemies of our earth, God goes with us.

I shall be followed by goodness. Just when nothing but disaster seems to be what is headed our way, we have this sense that some other things are chasing us, and catching up with us: goodness and mercy. 

I shall dwell or abide. While we have this life, on earth, together, our Shepherd wants us to know we belong, and are with our Good Shepherd, even here and now. Even in the darkest of valleys. 

When we are so secure, we can be free and confident to be good stewards of all creation. Remember we are creatures, we are part of creation. And, as undershepherds of the Master, our lives are inspiring others, teaching others, training others, and bringing others into better lives upon this good, green earth. We are doing it together.

First John warns those who have the world’s goods but are not helping people in need. Our proper living in the environment is part of our helping those in need. Right? 

And, those in need and in crisis are not nearly as free to be ‘environmentally friendly,’ so called. Or so it seems. Some good ways of doing things for earth are like luxuries. Such as ‘eating local.’ Great idea. But is it more expensive? Lettuce at a local market stand, or lettuce from Sobeys or Superstore?

First John speaks about love as true action. Love is not just words and ideas. Love in deed and in truth, it says here. Actions speak louder than words. Actions get things done. Touching the earth lightly and using the earth gently is better for the billions of people who also share it with us. One way to love people is to love the rest of the earth. We are inseparable. 

One day this past week two birds caught my attention. One was a Summer Tanager that I heard about, just over in West Amherst. I only saw pictures of this small, vibrant red bird with dull black wings. The second: our grandson and his friend were playing outside, with their nerf guns, and took a little chickadee as their target. It was hit. It was stunned. It died. The boys apologised - to us. I guess they apologized to the bird by burying it in the backyard. 

It is said that to make a change in our lives, things have to get uncomfortable enough that we simply must move, must change how we do things. But can’t there also be attraction? Something new, a new way, a new attitude, is so attractive we move into it. Like the boys and the chickadee, we learn from our actions and our powers. Like the birders seeking to see the summer tanager, we get inspired and attracted to all the beauty of God’s green earth.

Jesus stands before us, laying down His life for the whole world, and taking it up again, as it says here in John’s Gospel. A great Shepherd of creation. Even the Revelation vision of a new heavens and earth shines for us as a call to make this kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven. For the beauty of the earth, let us keep knowing the Shepherd's voice, and following our Leader.

SERMON: We Will Be Like Him

10:30 am, Sun, April 14, 2024

(1 Jn 3:1-7; Lk 24:36b-48) JGWhite / FBCA

My parents almost came up to visit today. They have not been up here to Amherst for a while. But my schedule is not that free today, so they will travel another time. You have not seen them that often, so you don’t know yet if you think I resemble either or both of them. There are some similarities. Now, with my sister and brother, I don’t see a lot of resemblance. Others, others do. Others see how I am like them.

We could take today’s reading from 1 John today personally, and say we shall be like the Son of God: be children of God, be loved.

There are frequent exceptions, but generally we think of parents looking fondly upon their child or children, often thinking the best of them. Seeing the good in them; knowing the good in them, because they know them best.

1 John 3 starts with a verse that I learned to sing when I was a kid; sing in the KJV, for what it’s worth.

Behold what manner of love the Father has given unto us

Behold what manner of love the Father has given unto us

That we should be called the [children] of God

That we should be called the [children] of God

“And that is what we are.” (1 J 3:1) We have this concept we are taught, that Jesus is the Son of God. We hear it from scripture all thru the NT. And we get brought into the divine family – where we belong.

Our status is a gift, grace, of God. Like human families, there need not be a physical resemblance. But ways of talking, ways of moving and acting, shared values and attitudes show up. And like an old couple who have been together for many years, there seems to be a real resemblance. We truly belong to Christ, and Him to us.

We shall be like Christ: and what this is is not yet revealed. Today, here in Churchland, it is still the season of Easter. Again, we celebrate Jesus revealing Himself, risen from

the dead, to His disciples. Dramatic, when you think about it.

One of you was remembering, the other day, a scene in one of the delightful dessert theatres here, several years ago. The Johnson boys had a part in it, when they were younger. I guess one of them played a character who died, in the play. And, to very dramatic effect, somehow his brother appeared, as if the dead man was coming back to life! Well, most everyone knew the two brothers – and they aren’t even twins, or the same age – but that moment was very effective, apparently.

Today’s Bible scene from Luke chapter 24 is another truly dramatic moment for some of those who knew Jesus best. A couple of followers who had left town, returned unexpectedly, after dark, saying they had just met Jesus, alive! Somehow, they were prevented from recognizing Him at first, but when they sat down to eat, voila, it was the Master. They immediately get up and go back to the others.

Now, just after they explain all this to the group of disciples, Jesus appears to them all. (What Tammy read a few minutes ago.) “Peace be with you,” He says. They are totally spooked, think they are seeing a ghost or somesuch. Then, as He had done earlier, Jesus eats with the disciples, and opens their minds to understand their Jewish scriptures in terms of what has just happened with Himself: He’s been a suffering, dying Messiah who then arises from death.

That was close to two thousand years ago. Now, we remain in this waiting time, with this promise that the living Christ will return in a profound way. The fixing of the world will get completed.

This was expected all those years ago in this text we call First John. Written just decades after the risen Jesus walked the earth for a few weeks. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.

We shall be like Christ. This is the promise of salvation. Even though there are some mysteries here, some unexplained stuff, we know we shall be like the Eternal One, with whom we are already connected. Our status is ongoing, yet to be completed, unfinished.

You know there is more than one idea among Christians about what people are like in the afterlife. What will we be like at completion? I’d don’t need to go over all the images. Some of our ideas are quite biblical and orthodox, some are a bit far-fetches and have a lot of guesswork, some are science fiction and fantasy. The author of this little book simply says what we will be has not yet been revealed. We shall be like Jesus, in His completeness.

This likely sounds like perfection, which is just what it should sound like. A third thing I draw out today about Christ is: We shall be like Jesus: purifying ourselves. Some of the stuff 1st John says here, is said over and over in these few pages: No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him. We read talk like this back in the first chapter. These things repeat in this New Testament Book.

John keeps circling back to his themes in this letter, which is more like a poetic sermon than the other NT letters. His words go to extremes, John exaggerates. He repeats himself, rewords things over and over. He deals in stark contrasts: dark and light, being sinful and being right, love and hate. These are all parts of his method, John’s writing style.

So we are reading a message about our growth towards perfection, our ongoing purification. We keep heading in the direction of doing right and loving well and being guided by God from within. We know it is a process, a journey, growth.

Just a few days ago the town honoured Deanne Fitzpatrick for being inducted into the Order of Canada, back in the fall. When she talked at the reception next door, she talked about good advice she’d received from so many people in her life. She mentioned ‘being good,’ which is what people like our mothers would tell us. ‘Be good!’ We do learn from one another to be good. I think Deanne is on to something. Something author Dallas Willard often mentioned: life is about figuring out how to live a good life. How truly to be good?

It comes from our walk with God. Our life in Christ. The blessings of salvation. And we aid one another on this journey of being disciples of Jesus. That’s perhaps a big part of loving one another. We decide to be for people, not against them. And that effects what we do with and to others, what we say to and about them, what we want for them and from them. We want more and more of the best for them.

A few times in my life I have met a person whose persona, whose personality, impressed me, the moment I met them. Once, it was the President of the Baptist Convention, Margaret Munro. She was a retired professor and dean of nursing, and leader at First Baptist Charlottetown. So, in the year she was our Atlantic Baptist President, I met her at a conference. She was one of those people you knew was paying attention to you; every second she was listening to you. She had that presence. You were the centre of her attention; she was listening, truly listening. I still remember that chance meeting with her. She has  become one of those people who inspire me to stive at meeting people well. I think this stands out to me because Christ still has far to go in training me. I, who don’t look people in the eye much when I speak.

That was one way that woman was like Jesus. We shall be like Jesus. We are growing up, as children of God and siblings of Christ. We find people in our lives that the Spirit uses to train us, develop us, purify us. That becomes our role in our neighbourhood, for others.

When we know we belong and are loved, we are like Christ, and in Christ, as the NT puts it. When we are becoming a Christian – a little Christ – what we shall be is yet to be seen. When we follow the way of Jesus, we are a student in the school of life always, being perfected.

SERMON: Total Eclipse of the Heart

10:30 am, Sun, April 7, 2024 ~  FBCA

(1 John 1:1-2:2; John 20:19-31; Mark 16:1-8)

Turn around    Every now and then I get a little bit lonely

And you never coming 'round

Turn around    Every now and then I get a little bit tired

Of listening to the sound of my tears

Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time (all of the time)

I don't know what to do, I'm always in the dark

We’re living in a powder keg and giving off sparks…

 I could not resist the metaphor of the moon’s shadow that will cross the earth tomorrow. And I could not resist using that classic rock ballad sung by Bonnie Tyler, today. Mid-afternoon, tomorrow, that shadow, that eclipse, will pass over us, and more dramatically up across New Brunswick. The sun will shrink and darken, the air will cool, some birds will behave like it is dusk. And then, like a sunrise, the light will slowly return to normal, by the time supper is cooking. 

The images of light and darkness fill the scriptural little book we call First John, the 1st Letter of John. These pages share a style and sayings with John’s Gospel, though the letter is anonymous, and which person named John is the author can be debated. 

God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. We might remember Jesus saying, ‘I am the light of the world.’

In the ups and downs of our lives, we have times that are bright, wonderful, and holy. We also have those seasons that are dim, or even dark, so to speak. Sometimes it is as if our hearts are eclipsed, the light and love and energy has been covered up. We ‘don’t know what to do,’ we’re ‘always in the dark.’

Often, we know what is behind this. We can name the things that have happened, the things we did, the things others did that affected us. At other times, a hard time comes out of the blue, and it takes some attention, and help, to get to the bottom of things and find our path up and out. 

I think the only time I was truly depressed was thirty-one years ago. In the late winter of ‘93 I was finishing my first year of Divinity School studies, but got depressed. As far as I knew, there was no reason for it. But I lost energy and interest and wondered about life. I had to drop a course or two at university. I remember the day I drove down the Valley to Annapolis, for a summer job interview at the Baptist Church. I was still wondering ‘Why?’ 

I worked there that summer, and somewhere along the way the darkness dwindled and I felt and acted well again. All these years later it is still a bit mysterious to me. And I know that is what it is like for many others. Unlike a solar or lunar eclipse - that can be accurately predicted, from start to finish - a depression or other illness can arrive, and leave, with little to no apparent reason. 

There are many other circumstances that challenge people. Some are relationship disasters, or spiritual crises, and of course serious health problems, or injuries. There is violence - of every sort - which leaves its long term mark on the psyche, and the body. Not to mention financial and work troubles: these days are filled with such challenges. Housing is not easy. Raising children is not simple. Growing old is no walk in the park. 

Today is ‘Green Shirt Day,’ an event that promotes organ donation as a plan for each of us. It arose out of the deadly auto accident of the Humboldt Broncos bus in Saskatchewan, in April 2018, which resulted in 16 people killed and 13 injured. Today is In honour of the Logan Boulet Effect. When the news of Logan’s organs being donated became widely known, tens of thousands of Canadians registered to be organ donors in the weeks that followed. It was a miraculous response. 

Is this an example of a terrible darkness, even an eclipse of the heart, we could call it, and then of the bright light and hope that came after. From our solar eclipse playlist I should quote Cat Stevens, for the bright side of loss, the positive attitude, the hope after death: 

Yes, I'm being followed by a moonshadow

Moonshadow, moonshadow

And if I ever lose my hands

Lose my plough, lose my land

Oh, if I ever lose my hands

Oh, wey ay...  I won't have to work no more

Back to the Bible, before we end this and approach the Communion Table. If the story of Thomas, missing out on seeing Jesus alive again, in person, is an example of a little darkness followed by joyous light, then the text from 1st John closes with words about the problems we cause ourselves, and a solution. 

Sin. That’s the classic word from this. The actions and attitudes that break our connection with the Divine, and with others. The ways we fail, and keep failing, can keep us from the best light of God’s presence. As well as the sins of others against us. We have Christ, who sets us free from all the powers of wrongdoing and failure. We have Christ, who is ready to speak up on our behalf, when we condemn ourselves. 

The Church has gone too far with this, at times, this sin problem. Sometimes this has been the harsh teaching - how sinful we all are and how few are truly finding salvation. Jesus’ salvation gets made into just ‘sin management,’ when it is actually far more. One of the books I inherited from a professor is one on pastoral counselling. It takes the tack that everyone who comes to counselling with a problem, the root of the problem is always a sin in their lives they need to confess and get forgiven. That’s that. 

Uh, no. I don’t see things that way. Spirituality and psychology are not all about sin and forgiveness. Yet sin and forgiveness are still so very important to us, so very basic. Like a dark moon that covers the life-giving sun, wrong things block our life with the Holy One. 

An old, obscure hymn I have never heard sung, got quoted to me by a wise, old minister. It tells of how unworthy we feel, how burned to a crisp we would actually be, metaphorically, in the vibrant, direct light of God.

Eternal Light! Eternal Light!  How pure the soul must be

When, placed within Thy searching sight,

It shrinks not, but with calm delight

Can live, and look on Thee!

O how shall I, whose native sphere Is dark, whose mind is dim

Before the Ineffable appear, And on my naked spirit bear 

That uncreated beam?

There is a way for [us] to rise  To that sublime abode;--

An offering and a sacrifice, A Holy Spirit’s energies, 

An Advocate with God:                  (Thomas Binney, 1798-1874)

In a few minutes we celebrate the symbolic feast called Communion, or The Lord’s Supper. We remember the offering and the sacrifice of Christ. We seek the energy of the Holy Spirit. We rely upon our Advocate with God, Jesus, who is for us, not against us.

Let me take again the words of Jim Steinman, and reinterpret them for our spirituality. Dare this become a prayer?

And I need You day and night

And I need You more than ever

And if You only hold me tight

We'll be holding on forever