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: Victimize! Us in Spite of Them?

10:30 am, Sun, June 23, 2024

(1 Sam 17:1-11, 16-23, 32-47; 2 Cor 6:1-13) J G White / FBCA

We have good reasons to be victims, sometimes. When we know a lot of frightening details about and experience of danger. Look back to the David and Goliath story, and all those details about the Philistine warrior. His size, his armour and weapons, not to mention his speeches to the Israelite army. Goliath was a real threat, and he knew how to terrorize. At the front of the Philistine army, he represented them all.

The facts and the rumours about the dangers you and I face have an impact upon us. We can be intimidated, expect the worst, and give up before we ever begin. We react. It’s normal to react, but when we over-react, we can be our own worst enemy. For instance, I don’t know if COVID-19 or cancer or some other disease has ever terrorized you, but we can get caught up in being a victim of such threats.

And we become fearful. This is certainly illustrated in this military scene in 1 Samuel 17. In the face of champion Goliath – and his speeches – it says right here the Israelites were greatly afraid.

What is that famous quote about fear from Dune – the novel and the film?  I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

Maybe that science-fiction is right. We know our Bible keeps saying two things about fear. ‘Fear God.’ I want to see this as deep respect for the Almighty One. The other scripture phrase is ‘Fear not,’ or, ‘Do not fear.’ That is so often said when someone meets God, or meets some holy being, a divine representative. Fear. Do not be afraid.

Perhaps it is when a threat keeps on keeping on that we get trained to be a victim. In that ancient Israelite scene, we are told Goliath comes out every day for forty days, morning and evening, challenging and threatening. ‘I dare you!’ And the Israelite warriors don’t dare.

It is a normal thing to come back at an ongoing threat with dread and play the victim. In The Seventh Story book, we are told: The victimization story alienates us and invites us to self-harm by defining “our” suffering as greater than “theirs,” perpetuating violence by demanding vengeance. Life is very hard for some people. Well, for many people in this world. How do some of them rise up from being victims, and live better? It happens. We see it.

I look back to the words of those early Christian preachers, in 2 Corinthians. Paul and his teammates kept suffering all sorts of troubles, as they traveled with the message of Jesus. They had afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labours, sleepless nights, hunger! They were dishonoured, treated as imposters, unknown, and so forth. You may know this is not the only list of the troubles the apostle Paul suffered. Through it all, he found strength and courage and confidence. We know from history those early believers kept on, even as they started getting killed off.

You and I may have had moments of looking for ways to keep on being positive, and make some difference when everything seems lost. Maybe this is one of our greatest challenges: doing some little, good thing when we can’t fix the big problems all around us.

In the Goliath and David story, we read of this moment when the Father of a bunch of young men sees to it that some provisions are sent to the front, for his boys. One of Jesse’s youngest, David, has the job of taking the bread and cheese to the boys and leaders in the army. It is simply a little bit of help, something Jesse could do, in the midst of the enemy that faced his people. This anecdote reminds me that the little actions we can take are still important. Still worth it.

Gareth Higgins grew up in Northern Ireland, in the 80s and 90s, when the Protestant/Catholic conflict and violence was so terrible. He has a lot of stories to tell; here’s one. On the day after Pope John Paul II died in 2005, some anti-Catholic graffiti went up on a very conspicuous location in Belfast. It was an opportunity for easy condemnation – of the nastiness of the slogan and the people who wrote it; it also would have been easy to shirk responsibility, and wait for local authorities to clean it up (which would take time during which the damage and the message would be repeated). Instead, a small group of friends went out at four o’clock in the morning, and painted over the graffiti, in large letters, one word that could open the door to a reconciliation path: SORRY. (Higgins & McLaren, Ibid, p. 144)

Other times, someone takes a big step, and inspires hope for victims. The story of David and Goliath famously has the young shepherd step up and say, ‘I’ll take him on. Don’t worry!’ King Saul and the armies of Israel were acting like losers already, unwilling to meet the challenge, forty days running. David sees a possibility. He will go for it.

I just spent four days at a seminar on the theme of imagination – imagining the possibilities of Faith. What we heard was rooted in the imagination and history of centuries of Celtic Christianity and of Indigenous spirituality. I can see that with great imagination comes great hope. We are in need of some inspiration these days. We need to dream dreams and see visions of the future. New possibilities.

Rabbi Michael Lerner says, Martin Luther King, Jr. is not known for a speech entitled, “I have a complaint.” Of course he spoke against the injustices of his time, but he also outlined a vision to overcome them. (Higgins & McLaren, The Seventh Story, 2019, p. 129) ‘I have a dream!’

Not everyone is gong to be ready for the dreams. At first.

Of course, as soon as young David says he’ll face Goliath, King Saul says ‘no way.’ He can’t believe it; he criticizes. But David turns out to have confidence, experience, skill, faith.

As we peek ahead to the start of the Christian era, and that time of peaceful action and non-violence, Paul the apostle lists the skills and qualities he and his fellow leaders were showing, by the grace of God. They had great endurance… purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, power of God… weapons of righteousness. All those powerful, peaceful weapons made possible some amazing victories over terror and trouble.

The next bit of this David story is another bit we learned in Sunday School. The armour and weapons. Someone else’s great big gear just won’t work for tough, little David. He ends up using the tools he already has and knows so well. He carries a staff – a big stick – some  stones from the riverbed, and his sling. Hey, that’s what he used against the wild animals that threatened the sheep he cared for.

There really is something to be said for using your own tools and your own best skills. Sometimes, the smallest, simplest things we have at hand are enough to deal with big problems. A terrible sadness, a terrible illness, a terrible betrayal – these could be combatted by the basic methods you know. Your prayers and meditative moments. Your friendships. Your activities that keep you balanced and healthy. We have practiced these things for such moments as these. Moments when troubles come – or come back – in a big way.

In the end, reliance upon God is demonstrated by young David. The whole army that is feeling like they are about to be victims of their enemies, are no longer victims.

Out of this ancient story – and a war story at that – comes some inspiration, some imagination for us. There can be freedom from being the victim of circumstance, of enemies, of life itself. The giants that face us, need not control our lives, our attitudes, our relationships.

In Christ, we find the way out of living our lives as victims: us in spite of them! Instead, we live a loving life, ‘some of us for all of us.’

So may it be.

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: Do Not Understand

10:30 am, Trinity Sun, May 26, 2024 ~ JGWhite, FBCA

(Isaiah 6:1-10; John 3:1-17)

In the past few months of few of us staff have been watching episodes of the ‘TV series,’ The Chosen, that dramatizes the stories of Jesus and the disciples. From the first episode, one of the main characters is… Nicodemus. Nicodemus, a Pharisee of the Jewish religion of the first century. In our visual lifetimes, with all the TV and film and computer videos that have filled our minds, we grasp onto the telling of such a story, and now we visualize Nicodemus as we saw him onscreen, when we read of him in these Bible pages.

In the series, he does have this secret meeting with Jesus of Nazareth, in which we hear Christ say, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?”

If you could sit down at a table, with Jesus, what things do you think you might not quite understand? What would you ask Jesus? What might He ask you?

There are a number of things that might not be understood today, from the scriptures we are reading. John 3:16, this most famous verse of the Bible, what does it mean? The Jewish scholar, Nicodemus, who talks with Jesus here, has a few questions; a few things do not make sense to him in what Jesus says.

What Jesus was offering Nicodemus was not a tune-up, or a few minor tweaks to an already near-perfect life; it was a brand new life. A new birth. A fresh, down to the foundations beginning. What newborn enters the world without birth pangs, shock, disorientation, or pain?  Downright bewilderment isn’t the exception in a birth story; it’s the rule. If we don’t find Christianity at least a little bit confusing, then perhaps it’s not Christianity we’re practicing.

— Debie Thomas, “Where the Wind Blows”

Today, in much of the Christian Church, is celebrated as Trinity Sunday. How do we understand this Trinity idea of God? God is One, only One; but God is known as Three Persons, the Father, the Christ, the Holy Spirit. Don’t understand completely? I say that’s OK; you can know the Sacred One without having to explain.

And when we look back, hundreds of years before Jesus’ lifetime, the Hebrew prophet Isaiah has a vision of God, and immediately does not understand how he can survive it. “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and live among a people of unclean lips.” Yet Isaiah does survive; and is called upon for a mission, which he chooses to accept. “Here am I; send me.”

I used to think I understood Isaiah chapter six. Back when was a university student, this chapter became very important to me. Worship together, which I already liked, became a whole new realm, for me. I never shall forget the first time I came into the pews for Sunday night service in the Manning Memorial Chapel, Acadia. The hymns were different. The prayers were different. There were candles burning. There were robes to be worn. The order of things was new to me. There seemed to be a lot of bowing and scraping going on. It was all quite unfamiliar… and yet I felt I was at home. Sensed I had found a pattern I had not even known I was looking for. I did not understand in my mind; but I knew my experience of Holiness that night, among strangers with whom I shared those pews.

In a way, the service was patterned upon the experience of Isaiah the prophet, in chapter six. In time, I found some new spiritual mentors for my life, while I was still a teen, and I even felt the influence of those who had been their mentors before.

So, Isaiah 6 was a model for divine worship. An influence upon Prentice and Boyd and Cherry was I. Judson Levy, who wrote a book about Christian worship, patterned upon Isaiah 6.

But, the esoteric theories about how worship works need to come down to earth and get real. What do we people actually want and need to understand? Simply how to hope in God, and contact God, and live our meaningful lives with God.

Isaiah claimed: In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the LORD sitting on a throne, high and lifted up… (I 6:1) That king had reigned for 52 years in Israel. It was a moment of change.

Forty-five years ago, Acadia Chaplain, Jud Levy, wrote,

It is always “the year of King Uzziah’s death”, not literally, of course, but in what is symbolized by this. It is the year, and the day, in which men and women, boys and girls, face the realities of their living – the time when personal problems face them, and when they are baffled or confused by the turmoil in society around them. It may very well be the year of some one’s death, some one nearer and dearer than any “King Uzziah”. There is likely to be a broken heart, and a wounded life, in every congregation. (I. Judson Levy, Come, Let Us Worship, 1979, p. 23)

One of the many students who was mentored by Jud Levy was a person I consider one of my mentors. One of your former Senior Ministers here at First Baptist. He died suddenly, this past week: John Boyd.

In the week that Rev. John Boyd died, did I see God, with any power and care?

Our understanding of deaths is rather like what we know of births, when we experience them. Be they physical births, or spiritual rebirth. Decades ago, in Port Lorne, NS, someone asked their pastor, Mr. Olmstead, about death and life after death. ‘Death is like birth,’ the wise minister said. He continued, saying something like this: ‘Before you were born, you were safe, and warm, and fed, and as close as you could ever be to someone who loved you. Then, one day, you got forced out of that safety, that security, that closeness, into a strange, bright, cold, painful world. Did you know what you were headed for? No. But it turned out to be so amazing, so beautiful, so filled with opportunities.’

‘So it is with death. We may have little desire to leave this life, die, and get forced into whatever the next is like. But it is as much larger and greater than this life as this life is bigger than being in the womb.’

In her most recent book, Diana Butler Bass talks at one point about the new birth in Jesus, relating it to her experience of birthing her first child, and in those first hours receiving her daughter to hold and to nurse.

Women understand this transformation, this new birth, in all its tenderness, the freshness of God’s presence come into the world. This was true for me, and mysteriously, painfully true for one of my best friends, Teresa, whose son was stillborn. Even with the sadness of simultaneous birth and death, she felt it too: “God’s presence was in the midst of the worst of our lives; they will call him Immanuel, God with us.” Years later, we shared our memories of those days. “Birth,” she said knowingly, “is so transformative.” (Diana Butler Bass, Freeing Jesus, “Presence,” 2021, p. 225)

Never having fathered a child, never having a partner who became a mother and cared for a one-day-old, a one-week-old, a one-month-old, I can only guess at the real joy, and tiredness, and confusion of first parenthood. I have seen it in others, many who carry the new role so graciously. Many things are not understood. But understanding grows with the experience, and in family, and in community. Our understanding is never complete. It is always growing.

Right now, I am missing the final events in Kentville of the NS Celebration of Nature conference. Yesterday, a couple times, Nature NS president, Bob Bancroft, mentioned that he is quite uneasy with people who say they know everything about something or other. That’s never true, is it?

It is important to know that you don’t know. And realize when you don’t understand something.

Then, you rest, and seek enlightenment.

Then, you converse with God about things.

Then, you wait long enough truly to ‘get it,’ instead of rushing to your own conclusions.

Then, you follow the guidance available to you.

It is Good News that there are inspired people around us, who meet God, have the Divine encounter, receive some holy wisdom. Like Isaiah of old. Like John Boyd of our lives. They help us, they serve us, they minister to us. Even from the grave those who went bravely before us lead us and lift our spirits by what we remember of them, by what they wrote, what they left behind, and the stories that are told.

[ We do not understand everything. So, it is still going to be OK to rely upon others, to be led on our way. I am serious when I say I am a good follower. I don’t actually mean I am good at following where others lead me. What I mean is, my following is better than my leadership!

That’s not really it either. I should say, any leading I do is actually never something new. It is simply following someone else. I am always catching up. Not sticking my neck out; just going along after others blazed a trail or were new and creative. But I have chosen the path I think is greatest, among the options already there.

Maybe you are like this; a natural-born follower. That can be fine. To follow a good path, that others have pointed out, IS to be decisive, it is to act, it is to take your own steps forward. Steps that someone else might even follow later. ]

It is within ‘the will of God’ that we do not understand all things.

It is also within the plan and way of this life that we are brought into those moments of closeness with Holiness, that show us the next big step for us. ‘In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the LORD, high and lifted up…’

In the year that… things end and change around us… someone will have a vision. We answer the call. Thanks be to God!

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

SERMON: Up From the Grave We Arose

10:30 am, Resurrection Sunday, March 31, 2024 ~  FBCA

(Isaiah 25:6-9; Mark 16:1-8)

 Ah, it is Easter Sunday. Early in spring this year; so, few flowers are blooming. No bees buzzing yet. ‘You know why bees buzz? You’d buzz too if someone stole your honey and nectar! And the bees went on strike, eh? You know what their demands are? They want shorter flowers and more honey.’

I regularly quote Rev. Dr. John Bartol, my Minister Emeritus back in Windsor Church. These are his jokes; he had one for every occasion. He’d say, ‘All the good men are dying off; and I don’t feel so well myself.’ And, ‘There’s people dying that never died before!’ 

Dealing with death and everything deadly is part of this life. It is essential to the human experience. Byron read what was spoken thousands of years ago, in the time of one of the Isaiahs. God will swallow up death forever …will wipe away the tears from all faces. This great hope gets repeated, from time to time, through the centuries of the Bible. We understand today’s story of Jesus to be at the heart of this, the pinnacle. It is like a victory; death is conquered.

In this ‘Mark year’ we read the resurrection story from Mark chapter sixteen. This earliest of the four Gospels is brief, and the ending of the book is even uncertain, with a couple options after the finale we read today, with Mary, Mary and Salome fleeing and not saying anything to anyone at first, in shock and fear. 

The book of Mark does not tell the story of Mary Magdalene meeting Christ in that garden where the tomb was, nor of the disciples who walked to the town of Emmaus that night and recognized Jesus once they stopped to eat, of Christ appearing to the disciples suddenly in a room with locked doors, of Thomas wanting to touch the nail wounds in Jesus’ hands a week later, of the Master meeting them all and giving them their ‘great commission.’ 

Not to mention the actual resurrection moment. No one sees it or reports him stepping out of the tomb, in the book of Mark. 

But wait… search through the end of Matthew, and Luke, and John, and we will be reminded that no one tells the scene of Jesus coming out of the tomb. None of them describe it. 

Scholar, Dom Crossan, calls this the great omission. We have the birth of Jesus in Matthew and Luke. His baptism is described in more than one place. His transfiguration into a shining, glowing being is in print. But not the actual moment of Jesus’ resurrection.

Did the soldiers, guarding His tomb, see anything? We are not told. Mark makes no mention of them anyway. Just the angelic man who speaks to the women, after the resident corpse is already gone, and alive.

None of us got to see that moment either, of course. So we are all in the same boat with those first disciples, men and women. We have only our experience of meeting Christ alive, after, to prove to our hearts and souls that we ‘serve a living Saviour, He’s in the world today.’

I put the image of a Christian icon on the front of today’s bulletin. It is, I think, a fairly modern one, from the Eastern Church. I have been interested in how believers have made pictures of the resurrection for 2000 years, with no Bible description. We have one stained glass window here of Jesus’ resurrection. Do you know it? Back there, above the entry doors. What does it show? An open tomb with a winged angel, with halo, sitting on the edge. Easter lilies bloom nearby, while three empty crosses can be seen in the distance. 

This is typical of resurrection pictures in the Western Church: the Roman Catholics and Protestants. Jesus is often seen rising up above the tomb entrance, or sometimes just stepping out of it. 

In the Eastern tradition, Eastern Orthodoxy, different images arose. Like the one I put on the bulletin. More than one dead person comes out of the earth in these resurrection scenes. See who they are? See who Jesus is grabbing by the wrist and pulling up from the grave? Adam and Eve. 

Of course, this is not meant to be a picture of what literally happened that early morning. It is art, is it a spiritual picture, it is a metaphor; it is about meaning, not history. Jesus comes to life, and brings all of humanity with him. Eve and Adam represent all humanity in Genesis, and in the New Testament, and they do again in the artwork of the Eastern Church. So, to rework a Baptist Easter hymn, ‘Up from the grave we arose!’ 

All our spiritual stories, here, are for the sake of our real lives. All our songs, all our artwork, is not escapism, but realism. All this Christianity stuff is not just comforting thoughts, or true facts. It is about our lives. Our lives get to be resurrected, even here and now, before our physical death. 

I had us start this service reciting a bit from the letter we call Colossians. I got you to say ‘Hallelujah’ after I read:

So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. (3:1)

If you have been raised with Christ!? Yes, you and me. 

Sometimes, it is at our worst moments that we need a new lease on life. Then, we can receive the resurrection. Jesus takes us by the wrist, and brings us up. 

It was years ago that a friend and mentor of mine was interviewed on the radio. One story he told was of a very tragic time, thirty years before. It was supposed to be so happy. He was to be married. And, move to a new province for a new job. Preparations for the wedding were all set. The new job was lined up. Then, his fiance was killed in a car accident. The happy plans for their life were destroyed in an instant. 

Many of you know this story - better than I - because this was Roger, your Minister of CE, and Lianne. 

Why did Roger tell this in a radio interview? Because the point of his personal story was resurrection. Roger spoke of his friends who rallied around him during the tragedy. A few of you were surely among those dear friends. Rog talked of how he was taken on road trips and kept busy that summer, by those who loved him and mourned with him. He said this was resurrection. The grace of being able to live after life seemed destroyed. 

That was 1975. Now, fifty years later, Roger is also dead. And that beautiful mystery of resurrection speaks in a different way. 

Likey, many of you can tell your own stories of resurrection. And, you have your own personal hopes about the life-after-death part of what Jesus brings us. It is all gift. All grace. All awesome and beautiful. It is all an answer to death and pain: going through it, we are raised with Jesus. As the Saviour sings in the musical, Jesus Christ Superstar, ‘To conquer death you only have to die, you only have to die.’

To paraphrase Dr. Bartol: All us good folks are dying, but we don’t feel unwell in Christ! And: there are people being resurrected who never lived before! 

Alleluia! Praise Christ!

SERMON: Love & Good Deeds

(Heb 10:16-25; Mk 15) J G White

10:00 am, Good Friday, March 29, 2024 ~  FBCA

Words of an American folk hymn:

What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul!

What wondrous love is this, O my soul!

What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss

To bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul,

To bear the dreadful curse for my soul?

Today’s story is remarkable, in part, because it is telling of a wondrous love, & a good deed, offered to the world by Jesus.

Our Epistle reading this morning, the alternate reading, from Hebrews, urges: let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds. That is a nice use of the word ‘provoke,’ I think. We are gathered, together, to spur one another on, when it comes to this Christ upon a cross. Jesus’ love and good deed is at the heart of us being provoked to be loving and do good.

I notice three things about what Jesus famously does today. First, He is very quiet. Mark’s telling is briefest of the four Gospels. And Jesus speaks very little; just one response to Pilate. Once Christ is being tormented and executed, all sorts of people make fun and offer verbal abuse. He remains quiet. Here, He is non-violent in His communication.

An American spiritual says: They crucified my Lord,

and he never said a mumbalin’ word.

Jesus dies to put an end to the kind of violence He was suffering. Let our speaking be in His spirit of peace.

Second, He is not physically violent at all. His resistance to the powers that be was in the style of non-violent resistance. Jesus did not invent this; He did use it. The Roman forces in power thought they knew what He was up to. Mark points out a number of times Jesus was called ‘King of the Jews.’ This was a title used by the rulers in the region, such as Herod. And the big title, “Son of God” was used by the Roman Emperors. Remarkable that a Roman Centurion, on duty, declared of Jesus at His death, “Truly this man was God’s Son!”

This was just five days after He paraded into Jerusalem. He peacefully submitted to the crucifixion path. Let our actions be in His spirit of mercy.

Thirdly, the Saviour is honestly expressive of His emotion, His experience. He uses a Bible quotation to cry out from the cross, in the Aramaic language: “My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?” Some bystanders do not understand what He is saying. Others surely recognized Psalm 22, which is a desperate plea for help and justice, yet ends with hope and faith:

From you comes my praise in the great congregation...

All the ends of the earth shall remember & turn to the LORD.

Today, we are together in these scenes from Jesus’ life, and should I say, death. Again, we gather to provoke one another for our own love and good deeds. Let our hearts be open with His spirit of honesty.

What else can I say? On Good Friday, as a preacher, I often feel like the priest in that old, medieval story. The priest in the dark, stone church, stands before his big congregation on Good Friday. It is time for his homily. He speaks not a word. He takes a candle in his hand. He approaches a statue, a large crucifix, as we still see in Catholic Churches today.

The priest slowly, purposefully, holds the candle up to Jesus feet, pierced by a great nail. Moves the candle, in the dim church, to the wounded hands upon the cross. Then to the bloody mark of the spear in Jesus’ side. And then to His bowing head, with that crown of thorns.

The priest blows out the candle. His sermon is complete.

Sermon: Holy Week Chapel Service

12:10 pm, Wednesday, March 27, 2023 - J G White / at Christ Church Anglican

(Psalm 70; Hebrews 12:1-3)

Compared to many of you, I am ‘new in town,’ but surely that will wear off soon, as I’ve been here twenty-one months now. I am even newer to being a real ‘runner,’ you know… one of those Striders in town, jogging up the streets no matter the weather!

I have never met a more encouraging group of people. When I was starting out, I happily discovered that they would always ‘loop’ back to where I was, as a slower runner. And a few of them would always say how well I was running, how well I did, how improved I was. They still cheer me on. Not to mention other folks we pass who encourage us. Often it will be kids who see us and shout out, or else other runners who happen to be in their yards or in cars going by.

So I understand, in a fresh way, those famous lines from the start of Hebrews chapter twelve. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses… let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us. It is like we are being cheered on by those ancient, biblical people who went before us in lives of faith. At least, their stories encourage us.

Of course, heading the lineup of the faithful is the timeless One, Jesus the Christ. Not only our Leader, we realize He is our number one fan and cheerleader. The author of Hebrews takes us back to the great suffering and execution of Jesus upon the cross. The prize that Jesus had his eyes set upon then was us, humanity. And all creation, for that matter. Jesus’s great joy was to end death and suffering for us, by suffering and dying.

Each year, we who follow the Church’s pattern of storytelling and worship, get to rehearse these things over again. We have yet another opportunity to understand and appreciate Christ, and the eternal fellowship we’ve been welcomed into.

I think also that how Jesus, Son of God, reaches us personally is often through other persons. Other folks who are our inspiration, and somehow, mystically, timelessly, are rooting us on, in our lives, no matter how tough times get, how challenging, or how painful, or dull. ‘Press on! You can do it.’

Yesterday, here, I was sitting over there, and looked closely at a window, which celebrates two Bible people, Dorcas and .

The window also is in memory of someone who was much more recent, someone in this congregation, named    .

Are these people who support you today? Yes. They can be. And then there are the living. We are together in a beautiful way, this week, noticing that we are all on the same team, running the same race, all destined to win – with Christ at the head. Our Captain wants everyone to know this, and join the team.

So, in this Holy Week, we consider again the One who endured so much, so that we will not grow weary or lose heart.

SERMON: Following All the Way

(Is 50:4-9; Ps 22:1-5; Mk 15:25-47)

Lent 6 ~ 10:30 am, Palm/Passion Sun, March 24, 2024 ~  FBCA

 I have learned that I, Jeff White, am a natural-born follower. So, when I joined the local running group, I discovered I could learn to run ten kms, or fifteen, or even twenty-one, if I just follow along with the others. And, wow!, I can run in the rain, run in the slush, run in -10 with a wind chill. I just follow the example of others. 

To follow Jesus all the way, no matter what happens to Him, and to us, this is the calling of the disciple, the Christian.  As we hear Mark’s brief telling of Jesus’ execution, we note who was close by to see it all happen. A group of women; three of them are named. At the end of the narrative, Mark lets us know they were there, had been following for some time, and were supporters of Jesus and the group up north in Galilee.

What did it take, I’ve wondered, to follow Jesus all the way, as Mary, Mary, Salome, and others did? Part of me thinks it must have been a terrible, gruesome thing to watch executions by crucifixion. But that is exactly what they were for - for watching, for warning people entering the city of Jerusalem. This is what happens to those who oppose the Roman government. Barbaric! we might say. We forget our own history, and the executions that happened in our own town, a century or more ago, quite near here.

To follow Jesus all the way, almost two thousand years ago, was to see a beloved guide and teacher get arrested, beaten up, and put to death publicly. All these centuries later, we don’t face those same experiences. But we do face the story. We are the keepers of the story, the tellers of the story. And we are those who live differently because of the claim this story has upon us. So we sometimes follow Christ when others do not, and some strongly reject this path. The Gospel stories of Jesus tell the tale of His rejection, and attacks. The following of this Man and God today regularly comes under attack, or at least rejection. 

An Australian musician and comedian wrote a Christmas Song. And it haunts me. It keeps me grounded in the world of opposition to my religion. Tim Mincin’s song is called ‘White Wine in the Sun.’

I really like Christmas

It's sentimental, I know, but I just really like it

I am hardly religious

I'd rather break bread with Dawkins than Desmond Tutu, 

to be honest

And yes, I have all of the usual objections to consumerism

The commercialisation of an ancient religion

And the westernisation of a dead Palestinian

Press-ganged into selling Playstations and beer

But I still really like it

I don't go for ancient wisdom

I don't believe just 'cos ideas are tenacious

it means they are worthy

I get freaked out by churches

Some of the hymns that they sing have nice chords 

but the lyrics are dodgy

And yes I have all of the usual objections to the miseducation

Of children who in tax-exempt institutions are taught 

to externalise blame

And to feel ashamed and to judge things as plain

right and wrong

But I quite like the songs

To me, Tim Mincin is a voice in our conversation with those who strongly oppose the ‘following of Jesus.’ It is so important to hear and understand. And to remember to see the differences there are between our religion and the actual, real God in Jesus Christ. 

Another thing that happens to the Jesus for whom we make a Holy Week is disinterest. I think many people are simply not impressed. Apathetic. And some, quite uninformed. How can they judge if they don’t know the basics of the Holy Story we tell? 

One hundred years ago - remember the Roaring Twenties? - there may have been some apathy. Apathy with spiritual practices. Disinterest in Jesus Christ. Responding to this was World War I chaplain and Anglican priest, Rev. Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy (1883-1929), who was a poet. I was introduced to his work by my homiletics professor. Here is one of his poems, named ‘Indifference.’

     (Matthew 25:31-46)

When Jesus came to Golgotha

They hanged Him on a tree,

They drave great nails through hands and feet,

And made a Calvary.

They crowned Him with a crown of thorns;

Red were His wounds and deep,

For those were crude and cruel days,

And human flesh was cheap.

When Jesus came to Birmingham,

They simply passed Him by;

They never hurt a hair of Him,

They only let Him die.

For men had grown more tender,

And they would not give Him pain;

They only just passed down the street,

And left Him in the rain.

Still Jesus cried, “Forgive them,

For they know not what they do.”

And still it rained the winter rain

That drenched Him through and through.

The crowds went home and left the streets

Without a soul to see;

And Jesus crouched against a wall

And cried for Calvary.

We, as followers of the Way of Jesus today, live in a world sometimes interested in Jesus, but not keen to follow. You and I are keen enough today to be gathered here. (Hopefully not just for a meeting, but also for divine worship!) More and more we discover that people my age and younger know little of who God is when you know Jesus, or what Christianity actually is, in practice. I will always remember a moment in a biology lab at Acadia University, in 1991. One of my lab-mates said the only things she knew about Jesus Christ were from the musical movie, Jesus Christ Superstar. More than thirty years later, our witness to the Jesus story is all the more important.

The brilliant, Christian author of a century ago, G. K. Chesterton, famously wrote, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” (What’s Wrong With the World, 1910) 

We have so much to learn, in this decade, about our Faith, for how we live it well is new, in this new age. There is always more to try out, with God. It is no easy pathway. This week, this Holy Week, we remind ourselves again how challenging the path of Jesus was. And how intense it can be today, to follow all the way this Person who shows us God directly, even when He dies. 

SERMON: Garden of Prayer

(Is 53:1-6; Ps 22:6-11; Mk 14:32-42)

Lent 5 ~ 10:30 am, Sun, March 17, 2024 ~  FBCA

Today we’ve looked at Thursday of Holy Week, in Mark’s Gospel. After the Passover supper, with the disciples, Jesus leads them just out of the city to an olive garden. Gethsemane, it is named, which means ‘garden of oil.’ For Jesus, it is an intense time of prayer. It inspired me to consider how Praying is like gardening. So, turn to my list of 24 ways that prayer is like garden work. P. . You get to choose some of these.

1. It definitely takes work.

2. It is not all up to you.

3. It keeps us ‘grounded.’

4. It goes along with the seasons.

5. Not every crop can be grown where you live.

6. Various harvests come at various times.

7. A longer harvest season is possible.

8. What grows in it varies from person to person.

9. Plants build themselves mostly from what? Air!

10. It can make use of… manure.

11. It will have weeds and pests.

12. It will have failures and successes.

13. Sometimes, what grows is a surprise... or a mystery.

14. It can cause trouble, injury, illness!

15. It is sometimes a struggle.

16. Some people just have a natural green thumb.

17. Doing some of our own gardening is important.

18. Some crops are beautiful, blooming, and fragrant.

19. Some crops are hidden, dirty, buried, or prickly.

20. Working on it together is so good.

21. It is learned from others: hands on, books, etc.

22. Many tools are available; but you can do a lot with few.

23. It is one of the most natural human things to do.

24. The products are often worth sharing; they should be.

I will begin by choosing number one.

Praying is like gardening:

1.     It definitely takes work.

Jesus is keenly aware of the fate He is about to face – the arrest, interrogation, torture, and execution about to happen, not to mention that His own followers will turn Him in, flee, and deny they even know Jesus. His prayer at this moment is hard work. It is emotional. It is intense. It is prayer in a crisis.

The disciples who are with him all fall asleep, more than once. Praying to God can take energy and attention on our part. When we take it seriously, we put effort into it. Just like growing a garden: when it is a priority, we devote ourselves. Surely you have had terrible moments in life, when your prayer was powerful, or desperate! Prayer demands work.

2.     It is not all up to you.

Jesus even said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.” (Mk 4:26-27) A farmer, a gardener, does their part to plant and water and feed and cultivate plants. But so much depends upon the plant, and upon to weather. And so on.

Prayer is not all up to you. For the most part, how other people pray – how you pray – is a mystery to me. Because we don’t talk about this much to one another. I do know that the ways I pray naturally and pray well are few and far between the kinds of praying that seem like my failures. But we are not alone. We are in conversation, and the Holy One wants the conversation. The Spirit speaks, and listens, and gazes lovingly upon us. Within us. For us and not against us. Prayer is guided.

Did you notice, in today’s story of Jesus praying three times, there is no mention of Abba God answering with words? 

I have always appreciated this phrase from Romans chapter 8, “the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with groanings too deep for words.” (Rom 8:26)

3.     It keeps us ‘grounded.’

I was visiting a dear friend and soul-mate in Parrsboro the other day. We are also gardening buddies, and thus we are now talking about spring. Ruth was saying she did almost nothing in her flower beds last year: it was so cold and wet! But she is determined to break her hibernation and get out there this year.

It can be cold, and very dirty, getting into the earth in the spring. As the seasons go on, we know there is something so important about getting our hands into the earth, seeing and touching the stems and roots that fill the spaces and are full of life. To walk or stand barefoot upon the earth is also grounding.

We say we are grounded when we are calmed down, and in touch with what holds us up, the foundational things of life. The practice of prayer, in its many forms, grounds us. It can settle us down into who we are, where the Spirit is, and what we are doing next. Why on earth did Jesus need to pray to God the Father after the Passover, before He got betrayed? He always took these quiet moments before great events in His life. He teaches us again, now, to ground ourselves, in the face of great pain or great purpose.

4.     It goes along with the seasons.

It goes without saying that in our climate – maybe any climate – what you grow in your garden, and how you tend those plants, must be according to the seasons. What you do with your green beans, or dahlias, or raspberries depends upon the month of the year.

So too, our prayer practices take shape due to the moment. When Jesus goes to prayer in Gethsemane, the end is near! That night, right there, He will be arrested, at last, by Roman soldiers and taken to trial and all that goes with it. He will get executed. His praying in Gethsemane is so vivid and memorable because of His moment. So it is with our life of prayer. Desperation can bring depth; sadness can bring silence; happiness can bring out our inner hallelujahs!

5.     Not every crop can be grown where you live.

The little environmentalist inside me loves the idea of shopping local, shaking the hand that feeds you (nearby farmers), eating produce in season, and growing my own (veggies and fruit). But I like bananas a lot. And avocados. And citrus fruit. And tapioca pudding.

Not every crop can grow here in the Maritimes. Not every prayer can be prayed by you, by you, by me. Not everything we seek will be answered with ‘yes.’ Teach me the secret of unanswered prayer says one classic hymn from our book. (173, ‘Spirit of God! Descend Upon My Heart) I think that author was right; the secrets of prayer can be learned. Look at that Gethsemane conversation of Christ: three times Jesus spoke of not taking the path to His death. Then, we went directly into His suffering and died.

6.     Various harvests come at various times.

I want us to have a nice but simple breakfast here on Easter Sunday, after the 7 am, outdoor, sunrise service. Along with baked French toast, we will have fruit. I said I’d shop for the fruit. Someone suggested orange slices or strawberries. Lovely. And they will be in season at a few local grocery stores.

There is not much produce ripe in Nova Scotia on the last day of March. If I hiked and hunted for them, I could come up with a few cranberries in a local bog, or dig up an ostrich fern and cut out some tiny fiddleheads.

So with prayer. There are seasons in our lives when all is very quiet, dry, and empty.

7.     A longer harvest season is possible.

A decade ago I got Niki Jabbour’s great book, Year Round Vegetable Gardening. Though I have not yet followed her guidance and plans, we can grow greens for our salads for about ten months of the year, outside, keep beets and carrots and so forth in the ground to dig up all winter, and so on. Our Maritime growing season can be extended – a lot.

The reach of our prayers can be extended – a lot. The ways we learn to pray can grow and develop. The impact of our praying can increase: the harvest can be spread out so so far.

8. What grows in it varies from person to person.

Last year at 20 Clinton Street, we grew some tomatoes, strawberries, chives, parsley, and Cape Gooseberries (do you know what they are?). Right beside us, at 18 Clinton, corn grew, big squash and pumpkins, peppers, tomatoes and strawberries. Out other neighbour, # 24, grew, well, not much food. There were blossoms in the yard.

Not every prayer method is for you, or for me. Silent, Christian meditation is probably a good practice for most people, but not for every single one of us. Prayer and fasting from food might be impossible for some folk. Prayer for your enemies is taught in scripture, but you might not be able, today, to pray for the blessing of that one particular troublemaker in your life.

OK. That can be OK. Someone else will have to do that praying for you. And your crop of prayers will help them.

9. Plants build themselves mostly from what? Air!

If you look at a tomato plant in pot on your patio, or a tall oak tree in your yard... what did the plant make all the fruit out of, all that wood? What materials did it use? Dirt, the soil? Or water? Sunlight – well, that’s energy, not matter.

It used air. Mostly air. Carbon dioxide in the air it turned into solid carbon – used to make wood and fruit – and oxygen gas that it mostly let go of back into the air. Plants build themselves out of air, using the energy of sunlight.

Prayer gets built out of the intangible. Out of spirit: the human spirit and the Holy Spirit. Sometimes, it seems the answers to prayer for help and guidance, the answers come out of thin air. Something appears out of nothing. A healing where there was deep injury. A pathway where there was no path.

10. It can make use of… manure.

A couple weeks ago I was preaching about giving God our failures, our faults, our injuries, our hurts, our sins. We have these things in our lives to present to Creator, and transformation happens. The grace of God is merciful and powerful and beautiful.

Last year I got a big bag of compost from Little Forks landfill. Perhaps some of that rich fertilizer came from what we put in our own composter, which included cat litter. Waste becomes wonderful in the ground. Dung becomes delightful to the plant roots. Manure becomes more nutrients for the garden.

In prayer, the crap of our lives gets recycled and created.

11. It will have weeds and pests.

When it comes to flower gardening, I am a great collector, but a poor curator. In other words, I plant lots of cool stuff, but don’t keep ahead of the weeds. Things get out of control. And Every spot seems to have its one bad weed. Or bug.

When it comes to prayer, it does not always go well. We will get distracted. Or keep asking for things without thanking, or confessing. Or we go through the motions without getting closer to God, or to the heart of ourselves, when we pray. We can fall for many temptations when we are near the garden of prayer. An old hymn I found in an Anglican hymn book says

Have we no words? Ah think again;

Words flow apace when we complain,

And fill our fellow-creature’s ear

With the sad tale of all our care. (Wm. Cowper, 1779)

12. It will have failures and successes.

Maybe a few of your are master gardeners, and seldom have a crop failure, but most of us do fail, regularly. I remember years ago, on a whim, buying a couple of eggplant plants, and put them in the ground. One was at the cottage I had, across a dirt road from the acres of a lovely organic farm. That year, potatoes were planted across from the cottage. Midsummer, I noticed the potato plants being eaten up – eaten up completely! By, of course, potato beetles. But my eggplant also got chewed down to a bare stem! My neighbour, the organic farmer, told me the one thing potato beetles like more than potato plants is... eggplant!

When we offer our ordinary prayers, or make desperate pleas to Almighty God, we sometimes feel failure. Feel like our prayers just go up and hit the ceiling and go no farther.

On other occasions, the simplest moments seeking God, become suddenly amazing! Serene. Powerful. Sublime.

13. Sometimes, what grows is a surprise... or a mystery.

Once, a friend pointed out in his farmyard a lovely tall tree, with many nuts falling from it to the ground. “It’s a hazelnut,” He said. Well, I don’t think he ever tried to eat them, because if he did he would soon discover it was not a hazel. It was a hickory tree, a ‘bitternunt hickory.’ It would taste nasty!

What comes of our prayerfulness surprises us too; I hope you have had this experience. In the requests we give, the things we ask for, we sometimes say the answer from God could be ‘yes,’ or ‘no’ or ‘not now, later.’ And the answer can sometimes be something else altogether. And in those devoted times of simply being present with God, not asking for anything, the crop that grows will pleasantly surprise us.

14. It can cause trouble, injury, illness!

“Every rose has its thorn,” sang the band Poison. Yes, yes they almost always do. Pulling weeds, you can get into the stinging nettles, or the hornet’s nest, or poison ivy.

Some approaches to the Holy have their risks. It is a regular, normal thing for people to lash out at God, or reject the Master, when really bad things happen, or a prayer for a miracle is not ‘answered.’

We see Jesus approach this in Gethsemane, pleading about the suffering that is about to happen to Him – and to His friends. Upon the cross, being executed, He speaks out the start of Psalm 22, ‘My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?!’ The road of suffering can be paved with prayers, and there will still be suffering.

15. It is sometimes a struggle.

I think if I lived in Truro, gardening would be a struggle. The deer! The deer would eat and eat and eat so much, until a big fence is put up. And there are lots of other times that gardening is a struggle. Last summer: hot dry spring, then a wet, wet summer! So strange.

Prayer, when we really want God, when we deeply need to find serenity amid the storms of life, prayer can be a problem. Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane was a harsh night; even the brief account in the Gospels gives us a scene of struggle. Somehow, it is comforting to know that Jesus, Son of God and Son of Humanity, had such prayer on the brink of personal trauma.

16. Some people just have a natural green thumb.

That’s just the way it is. My maternal grandfather had a green thumb. He tended certain things with care; always the same things in his yard, every year, it seemed: the impatiens in the flowerbed, the raspberry canes in the back corner of their city lot, the privet hedge along the sidewalk. Even the two white birch trees he’d planted in the back yard. All did well.

Prayer is for everyone, of course. So we believe. But there is also what we might call ‘the gift of prayer.’ Some people are spiritually gifted, blessed by God as people of prayer. There is a contemplative tradition within Christianity, and some folks are naturally (or supernaturally?) adept and praying, mediating, contemplating. They become our teachers and our inspiration. We elevate Jesus as our Master Teacher in the school of prayer.

17. Doing some of our own gardening is important.

Perhaps more than half of you here do not grow any of your own food. I grow very little for me and Sharon. But in terms of prayer, it is vital we all have some going on. We can’t rely upon others to do it all for us. Do our praying, our Bible time, our spiritual practices for us. Yes, there is plenty we can do together, such as on a Sunday morning. But on our own, it is good to go to our own ‘garden of prayer.’

After the Passover supper with the disciples Christ took his friends with Him to pray. We remember other times before when Jesus went off all alone to be in prayer. He taught both.

18. Some crops are beautiful, blooming, and fragrant.

We each have our own foods that we especially love. (I love chocolate – that comes from a bean, doesn’t it?) I really enjoy squash, and corn, and lobster. You have your favourites. And maybe some things you liked to grow – you like to eat them, or you found you could grow them with success.

At our best moments, we learn some ways to pray that work for us. A certain time of day, or familiar words we like to use again and again. Some music that speaks from our soul. I have this hope that our good and easy habits of prayer train us for the harder times. Jesus had lots of times in His life to rejoice in prayer. Today, after the Last Supper, in a time of trouble, He was ready to pray a very serious prayer.

May the beautiful garden of prayer prepare us for the harsh, dark valleys of prayer, and for the dark nights of the soul.

19. Some crops are hidden, dirty, buried, or prickly.

I have a couple pairs of gloves I wear when I got out to work in the yard. Sometimes. I have never liked wearing gloves, or hats, for that matter. Sometimes I am foolish, trimming a rose bush or bramble, thinking I can carefully grab the branches with my bear fingers. Wrong! I end up going for my gloves.

Our lives can be rough. Rough times. Harsh troubles. Pain and anxiety are faced often. Our prayers then are strong, maybe desperate, and we wonder if we will actually get protection, strength, healing, answers, or whatever we cry out for.

A word of blessing is powerful, like those words of St. Patrick’s Lorica, or Breastplate. A prayer, a charm, as a bit of spiritual armour. Reciting or singing the words, we are brought in touch with the inner and outer strengths and powers of Christ.

I bind unto myself today the virtues of the starlit heaven,

the glorious sun’s life-giving ray,

the whiteness of the moon at even,

the flashing of the lighting free...

Pray to put on the armour of God.

20. Working on it together is so good.

On Olivet, another name for the place where Jesus prayed, under the olive trees, we do not see a very good example of the disciples praying. They kept falling asleep. Maybe Jesus expected this. Yet He took them with Him, that night.

Prayer together is important. Someone speaks, and our prayer thoughts follow them. We say words together from a page that unite our voices in the exact same prayer. We learn from someone else how prayer can happen, what our conversation with God can be like. And we ask someone else to pray about what we want prayed for – we get their help that way. We’re stronger together, closer together, faithful together.

21. It is learned from others: hands on, books, etc.

I learned about taking care of plants from my Mother, mainly. There were always houseplants indoors; always flowerbeds outside; and a little veggie garden. Not to mention hot summer days along the railway tracks, picking wild blueberries, or blackberries.

As a child I got houseplants of my own. Then started digging up flowers and baby trees in the woods to bring home. One thing led to another. I got hooked on it. I got books about plants; I still have them all. Houseplants, wildflowers, trees.

And now I have plenty of Bibles, books explaining prayer, and books of prayers. More and more of them. I just got a great new book of prayers. I find these all helpful. It is a way that I am learning from others how to pray. And in it all, Christ is still my teacher. ‘Teach us to pray,’ the disciples asked Him. And so do we.

22. Many tools are available; but you can do a lot with few.

I’m not a hoarder, but I do have a habit of collecting stuff. I gather gardening tools, bit by bit. But, to be honest, I don’t use that many of them. A shovel, a trowel, a watering can and some pruners – that’s about all I end up using, 90% of the time.

I could name you a lot of prayer tools. Many methods and patterns and routines and words. Do I use lots of them? No. I only use three of four types of prayer, 95% of the time. Are you the same? And if you don’t feel you know much about praying, or think your ways are basic and simple, that could be very good. Remember, Jesus warned about long, fancy prayers and showing off and all that. Use a few tools that work for you. And when you do need to find a new way of prayer, may be there.

23. It is one of the most natural human things to do.

However we understand the origins of humanity, gardening came early on, and became vital to survival. The Genesis stories begin in a garden, with humanity involved, gardening with God, we could say. Tending and growing things is a natural thing for us. And even hunters and gatherers learned where to harvest and how to travel to the right places at the right times for food from Mother Nature.

Prayer is one of the most natural human things to do. Beauty, joy, pleasure bring out thankfulness in us. We get food we did not create, and we look for a Creator. We enjoy a moment in life, and we sense it is from beyond us. To pray is to make personal our relationship with the earth and everything. We see Someone behind it all, in it all, Someone with a capital S. Later on, it becomes natural to call that Creator our Saviour.

24. The products are often worth sharing; they should be.

Most summer seasons, some kind souls share with me and Sharon some food they grew. There was a big tomato crop, so they get shared. The spaghetti squash were prolific, so they were given away. Even if the blueberry field is sparse, “come on in and pick some for yourself.” I did. I am still eating them on my morning granola.

The depths of our prayers, when life is tough, can bring some real grace and blessings. These naturally flow and touch others. The fruit of our prayers is shared. This is certainly the case when we have been praying for a blessing in someone else’s life. They are the ones truly blessed by good that happens.

Almost two thousand years later, we are still reading of Jesus’ prayers in the Garden. That praying is still blessing millions, as we peek in again, in this holy season. Go to dark Gethsamane... learn of Jesus Christ to pray.