November 13th 2011 - Anniversary Sunday for St John's United Church

I would like to begin this morning with a story about a dear, dear friend, and the lesson she taught me, and herself about change.

Edith was one of the elders of the Church in Port Hardy BC, where I was sent as one of my 16 week student internship charges as part of my theological training. Port Hardy is three hours north of Campbell River at the northern end of Vancouver Island – it remains one of BC’s more remote and isolated communities.

When I arrived it was a fairly prosperous community with a booming logging, fishing and mining industry … Edith was born and raised on the coast. Her father had been the second son of royalty in England, and had come to the West Coast in the latter part of the 19^th Century to find his fortune and build a life. He settled in the Kingcome area, where he raised his family and created a tiny corner of England on the coast.

In time Edith moved from the family home, married and raised her children in Port Hardy, a proud member of one of Port Hardy’s founding families. She was a force to be reckoned with, but was also someone who took her faith very seriously, and lived life with a HUGE heart that had a place for almost everyone. Edith, even in her later years took in the lost and lonely ones she encountered along the way. Often people feared for her safety because she wouldn’t give a second thought to bringing home a hitchhiker she met along the highway, and giving him a place to stay in her spare room.

Edith was an interesting character … she was very set in her ways, strong in her opionions, and more than a bit eccentric in her point of view on everything from the Bible through to Politics.

But Edith was firm in a few things – one was that the ONLY Bible to read was the King James version, two folks like Bishop John Spong were leading the Church astray, and three she firmly believed that Jesus was married, and that the male hierarchy of the Church had hidden away his wife and denied her existence in an attempt to marginalize and oppress the strong women in leadership within the early Church.

One afternoon, years after I had been ordained, I had tea with Edith at her kitchen table along with the minister at the Church. Merv and I started teasing Edith and her views – in a good natured way – and the conversation turned to Jesus and his family background. Merv and I had planned a bit of an ambush on Edith. Earlier in the week I had been at a Bible Study where Bishop Spong had come up, and Edith had had a proper fit denouncing him and his writings, while also admitting in passing she had never actually read much of his stuff.

Merv and I turned the conversation to the issue of Jesus’ perhaps being married, citing the Rabbinic traditions that said by 30, ALL Jewish males were expected to be married, and to be called Rabbi and regarded as a teacher worth listening to one had to have a wife and children.

I then handed Edith a photocopy of a chapter from a book that cited this. Edith was kind of excited – this was the kind of thing she had been pushing for years … she read the chapter and pointed out various bits and pieces as proof of her ideas.

She finished the chapter and asked – “who wrote this?”

Merv, in his find British fashion smiled, took a puff on his pipe and said – “shall I tell or do you want to?” Together we told Edith that she had just read AND AGREED with a chapter from the reviled Bishop John Shelby Spong.

That afternoon Edith began reading everything that Bishop Spong had read – his books, his articles, and anything else she could find … her opinion of Spong changed in a heartbeat because she had read what he actually had to say about a topic near and dear to her heart …

Edith in her mid-80’s was open to change. She was open to learning something new, and altering the way she saw and experienced the world. And she also passionately shared that openness with others.

That afternoon, Edith taught me the truth behind the value and the inevitability of change.

Around the same time, I was privileged to attend the AGM of BC Conference where Anglican writer and theologian Herbert O’Driscoll delivered the key note addresses. In one of his addresses, O’Driscoll talked about how radically and subtly the Church has changed since its founding some 19 centuries ago. He noted that if we were to move forward or backwards a mere 50 years in the Church we would find ourselves hopelessly lost.

We may recognize some of the music, and get a sense of what is happening liturgically – but our overall impression would be confusion and bewilderment, because change in the Church happens constantly and unceasingly, and so subtly that we might be totally oblivious to it.

Even here, in this place, we’ve experienced an unrelenting wash of change over the last 134 years since Egerton Ryerson stood in this sanctuary and dedicated the new building on November 11^th 1877.

Physically, the interior and exterior of the building has been altered. The Bibles, hymn books and other resources we use have changed. Even the use of technology has, in the last ten or so years changed dramatically – when I started my path in ministry in 1993, email was a new novelty that took forever to download through dial up modems – today I can check it in seconds on my cell phone.

The church of 2011 is not the church of 1991, or 1951, or 1911 … but it is intimately and spiritually connected … we are part of a continuum of faith that has continued to share its message and ministry to the community around us … and oh how we’ve changed.

In 1901, the Church Council voted to install a telephone line so that one of the elders in the community could listen to the services in comfort at home. Today, we have web pages to share our events and happenings, and when I get time – our sermons and services.

In the first Century of our life as a Church you were expected to rent a pew for the year, and it was yours to sit in during services.

Rent a pew? Even though we don’t do it, it is still an active part of the memory of this place with some recalling the little slips of paper that were tucked in the holder on each pew announcing who’s pew it was … today we sing the hymn “nobody here has a claim on a pew …” but it wasn’t that long ago when they had a claim backed with official receipts.

Even the mundane matter of our Services has changed over time. In 1877 when Egerton Ryerson came up to Flesherton to open and dedicate this building, he took part in no less than FOUR separate services over Saturday and Sunday, along with a hymn sing service and a fowl supper on the Friday night to begin the weekend. Not only where there A LOT of services, from Ryerson’s own notes he was proud of his ability to still conduct a FULL service. In a volume of his collected letters he noted in the fall of 1877 that he was able to REGULARLY preside at services that began at 10:30 am and broke up reluctantly at 3 or 4 in the afternoon.

We live in a time when services that extend past noon are frowned upon – how many of us, myself included would want much less welcome a service that stretched on for four or more hours??

These are just a few of the changes that have marked the history and heritage of this place over the last 134 years … I doubt many of those who sat in this building the weekend it opened, could have or would have imagined the Church as it is today … and if they were to step through our doors, they would be lost and bewildered … but they are part of who we are. They are not only part of the great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us as a people of faith, they are part of what and who made us who we are today. Their faith and their ability to grow and change has helped and inspired us as we’ve continued on the journey they began.

I began with a roundabout mention of Bishop Spong, and he is a good place to come back to as we continue our reflection on our anniversary and the inevitability of change. In one of his books Spong mentions that he was born a Southerner in a pre-civil rights era. In his world and church blacks were marginalized and not regarded as people, women were never in places of leadership except to oversee Church suppers and teas, and there was no place for gays and lesbians anywhere in the Church.

Looking back on his life Spong muses that four strong daughters taught him the fallacy of that dated view of women, prominent leadership showed him that Blacks and other minorities had a place in the Kingdom we call the Church, and in more recent years the faith of gay and lesbian Church members and leaders challenged and changed his long held views on the place of gays and lesbians in the Church.

Overarching ALL of this Spong notes not only the inevitability of Spirit driven change in the Church, he marvels and celebrates the amazing gift that change truly is. We are not who we once were, but we are informed, inspired, challenged and strengthened by the lessons of our forebearers, and the struggles that they experienced and endured as they sought to share their faith with the community around them and the world in which they lived.

In 1877, when the people of St John’s Methodist Church gathered on a cold November weekend to hear the illustrious Egerton Ryerson dedicate their new Church building, they were standing on the edge of something great … they were part of the Methodist Church that had in Ryerson’s life time grown from 30 saddle bag preachers to over 1000 preachers standing in churches of every size and shape across this new land called Canada, even the country itself was new.

That weekend in remote Grey County, they gathered as part of the Church to proclaim and celebrate their certainty and their belief that they were part of something that was about to transform the world.

To build on an observation made by Richard Bentham, who this weekend celebrated the sesquicentennial of his family farm here in Flesherton – the people came to this area full of hope and promise knowing that they were embracing and embodying change as they built a new life for themselves and their descendents.

The men and women who gathered the supplies to build this building and who joined with Rev. Ryerson to dedicate it, lived that hope and have entrusted it to us to continue our faith journey as we seek to realize that new life of faith that we are part of.

We are part of that community of faith called for 149 years to transform the world …

May it be so – thanks be to God … Let us pray …

Sermon for November 6th 2011 - Remembrance Sunday

This month’s United Church Observer reminds us that we live in an interesting time … one of the articles raises the question of acknowledging and commemorating Remembrance Day in a Church that has decided that Peace is the preferable option. The question is raised – what do we do? We have two very distinctive camps in our congregation – one that wants a traditional Remembrance Day observation, and the other that wants perceived glorification of war and violence …

Reading the question saddened me because it means as a society we’ve failed in living out our Remembrance of War and the impact it had and continues to have. The challenge today is to hold back the rabid nationalism that has touted ALL things military, and in many ways has overshadowed the solemn reminder Remembrance Day offers of the price that has been paid to grant us the peace we so easily enjoy.

I will go out on a limb of sorts today and say that I have never met a veteran of any war or armed conflict who has demanded the kind of respect we’re being told should be accorded to our soldiers today. Instead, these men and women who have gone into battle wearing the uniform of our nation, have returned home and have appreciated the respect they’ve been offered, without ever having asked for it.

In truth, most of the veterans of the two world wars and the Korean conflict that I have had the opportunity to sit down and get to know have repeatedly mused on the futility of war as a means of solving ANYTHING, and have yearned for us – you and I – the non-combatants, to learn something from their sacrifice and at the very least STOP glorifying war.

They want us to respect and support the soldiers, who like them have returned home forever changed by their experience, but none of them see value in glorifying war and the devastation it wreaks across nations and lives.

One of the greatest honours I think I have been blessed with in my ministry has been the ability to hear the stories and experiences directly from veterans of every war. The time I spent sitting with men with names like Herb, Franklin, George, Kenny, Jim, Ernie, and Scott as they related their memories of serving on distant battle fields and returning home forever changed by those experiences, has left an indelible impression on me … some, like Scott were horrendously wounded and spent months recuperating in hospital beds from Afghanistan through Germany until he was finally able to come home to Canada … while others like Herb spent the better part of 80 years carrying the memories of what happened on a battle field called Vimy one spring morning when thousands of troops poured over the top and faced an unimaginable horror of shells, bullets and death … and ALL of them have the same experiences my Grandfather admitted to when he shared his war stories with me.

Grandpa, had served in the Royal Canadian Navy for 6 years during world war two, having signed up when the war started and left his home and family in Chesley to go off on what he thought would be a grand adventure. Years later he spared me many of the stories of actual battles and the suffering he had witnessed, choosing instead to talk about the storms his tiny Corvette faced in the North Atlantic, and regaling me with tales of Polly the parrot he bought for $5 dollars during his trek south through the Panama Canal. Polly returned to conservative Chesley with the remarkable ability to swear like a sailor … and few who met ‘The Elliot’s parrot’ forgot him – much to the embarrassment of my Grandmother who threatened to wring his neck on a regular basis … Polly for his part was just repeating what he had learned living on the ship with Grandpa.

Grandpa did at times talk about the less glorious side of war. He talked about watching ships sink after being torpedoed in the convoys he was part of – he was one of a handful of Canadian Sailors who did the Murminsk run to Russia three times and lived to tell the tale … he talked about shelling a sub that surfaced in the midst of a convoy, only to discover as the last man came out of the hatch with a Union Jack draped over one shoulder and a picture of the King in hand, that the sub was a friendly and not a u-boat. But what haunted Grandpa’s mind at night when he was trying to sleep was the incessant cries of sailors that had to be left behind in the cold Atlantic waters after their ships has been torpedoed and sunk.

There was no time to stop and retrieve them. The convoy had to continue on, so hooks were used to pick up what survivors they could grab, and the others were left in the water calling for help and crying for their mothers, as the convoy speed away … Grandpa said quietly once that he still hears their voices at night … especially the young men calling for their mothers …

To my Grandfather, and to the other veterans I’ve met who have stood on distant battle fields and faced death all around them, there is no glory in war … only destruction, devastation and suffering … they have never come home demanding that we remember them or their sacrifice. They have never stood up and insisted that we honour them. Instead they came home, carrying a heavy burden, and knowing the cost of peace.

Most spoke of the futility of war … One, a gentleman named Franklin shared with me his experiences of coming home and feeling out of place. He put many of his reflections to paper creating a small book of poems that he shared in the years prior to his death. One, written about sitting on a hillside over a military cemetery containing the fallen from both sides of the conflict is a powerful reminder that in war the uniform only matters until death comes …

(From the land beyond the grave)

The shades of night are falling

On a cross-enstudded field,

‘tis the resting place of hundreds

Of the Nazi marksmen’s yield;

While not far over yonder,

Less than half a league away

From the graveyard of the Khaki,

Are the gravestones of the Gray.

There’s one common soil to hold them,

Warmed by the selfsame sun,

And the wind that blows o’er Khaki,

Wails its path across the Hun.

To, the bees, by nature’s bidding,

Recking not from where they grow,

Nix the nectar from the blossoms

Off a friend with that of foe.

Hear the Bells on hillside chapel

Sounding out the Vespers call,

Tolling out in common volume

On the sleeping, one and all.

See the peasants wending mass-ward,

Up the path at eventide,

Sign the cross with equal fervor

To the dead on either side.

Comes the stealthiest of hushes,

On this hero-strewn lea,

And the spectres of the corpses

Live in forms they used to be;

But, one thing alone is lacking,

‘tis the longing to affray,

And in one forgiving mingle

Are the Khaki and the Gray.

Gone is all their warring spirit,

Followed by their marital mien,

Love has gathered in their heart-reins

Where but hatred once had been.

Lo! They speak in bated whispers

Of the grief that is to be,

With the last and western problems,

And the wars near hallowed sea.

They decide, in ghostly murmurs,

To tender on this plea –

‘Let war hatches all be sunken

In some unrelenting sea.”

So they spake, ‘til dawning flares

Heralding in the rising sun,

Hastens on their prompt adjourning,

Sends them back from whence they’d come.

But they journey back together

To that haven they must go,

For he has but one lone barracks

For the warrior, friend and foe.

Now to all the worldly salons,

Who we, from war, would save,

Pray be guided by this venture

From the land-beyond-the-grave.

(Franklin E. Mooney, poet, soldier and friend.)

Franklin E. Mooney, my grandfather Frank, and all the other veterans I’ve been privileged to share time with, have taught me over and over that our responsibility on November 11^th, is to stand and glorify war, but to remember the fallen – both military and civilian, and to honour that sacrifice by striving to maintain, share and spread the peace …

After a century of war and armed conflict, our responsibility is to Remember and to care enough to create a world of peace …

May it be so – thanks be to God … Let us pray …

Sermon for October 30th 2011 - All Saints'

(McCowan Falls, Durham Ontario)

Have you ever wondered about the role rivers play in our world and our lives – I mean really thought about it …

When I was an undergrad at McMaster, one of our profs once wrote the word WATER on the black board then had us begin to think about other words and concepts that we associate with water. Given that it was a Religious Studies course, we pretty much kept it in the realm of religion … from water we started with things like Baptism, life, cleanse, … pretty soon the blackboard in the lecture hall was full … panel after panel filled with jottings from our thoughts.

Using the word - river would have a similar outcome.

Religiously we have many examples of rivers as metaphors and experiences of faith. From the ancient Greeks and the role of the river Styx separating the world of the living from the world of the dead through to Jesus standing at the River Jordan to be baptised along with today’s story of Joshua and the Israelites preparing to cross the River Jordan – rivers play an important role in our religious traditions. Even our theology of the afterlife is centred on the concept of The River of Life that flows out from the throne of the resurrected Christ into all of the new creation that will come into being.

On one level, this makes sense given that the Israelites were a people of the desert, who spent countless days wandering around looking for water for their flocks. Water is found in rivers, so rivers would be an important source of water, which in turn is a source of life. The river would loom large in their day to day world, and would in turn loom even larger in their spiritual world.

Yet this importance is not limited only to desert dwelling people. Rivers continue to play a central role in the thoughts and reflections of religious traditions the world over.

If we were to begin to brainstorm the word river in the same way my prof did at Mac twenty some years ago, I think we could and would quite quickly fill a few blackboards with our concepts, experiences and ideas.

We could begin with the River Jordan … the Baptism of Jesus … rivers as means of transportation … rivers as source of irrigation water … rivers as place of peace and serenity … rivers in full flood as a reminder of nature’s power and fury … and on and on it goes.

I thoughts about the place rivers have occupied in my own faith journey and came up with quite a list … my son Sam was baptised on warm summer morning by the river in Bella Coola with the community of friends and family gathered around us. As the words of the Baptism Covenant were shared an eagle looped overhead and a seal bobbed in the greeny grey glacial waters … it was a service that was simultaneously both breathtaking and simple.

I thought about a visit to Niagara Falls with two Palestinian friends from the city of Bethlehem. They stood on the edge of the falls watching – completely speechless at the thunderous experience of the falls … they commented later that in the ten minutes they stood there more water had poured over the falls then they would like see in their entire lifetime in the deserts around Bethlehem.

I thought about having grown up a stone’s throw from the mighty Avon River in Stratford … and yes, I’m being facetious about the mighty part. Most of the year the Avon is a trickle of water that winds its way through the broad valley Stratford sits on. It is hindered by a dam that creates the swan infested lake not far from the Festival theatre. But the part of the Avon I was most familiar with was east of that, running through the golf course of the Stratford Country Club.

We spent many an hour wading the river looking for snapping turtles and golf balls in the summer. Paddling up and down in my friend’s family canoe. Or just trying to avoid falling in while we looked for frogs, snakes, turtles, golf balls, or other treasures that lurked along its banks … but like any river in Southern Ontario, there were also times of the year when you avoided it.

The spring floods when the trickle turned to a torrent meant you stayed well back and watched as massive willow trees were under mined and swept away by the river’s power. And in the winter, the constant flow of water meant the ice was never safe enough to skate or play on …

The tiny trickle of the Avon was both revered and feared. Revered for the life it offered, and feared for the power it possessed that could take back that gift … it might only be knee deep for most of the year, but there were times it ran far deeper and more deadly, and those of us who grew up in our neighbourhood still remember the day when it swept away one of our neighbours who foolishly ventured out on the spring flood in an inflatable rubber dinghy bought at Kmart or Canadian Tire … he was found and later revived after his immersion in the icy waters, but we never looked at the river quite the same again. The threats of it drowning you were a little more real after that …

But such is the power of the river … even a trickle of a creek can inspire fear and awe in the bystander.

So, Joshua and the Israelites standing on the side of the poised to enter the long awaited promised land isn’t too far out of the realm of possibility … even though the River Jordan isn’t much bigger than the little creeks that wend their way through our country side around here. Creeks you can easily jump with a good running start. It represents a division – a physical separation that stands between here and there.

To cross the river is to commit to living on the other side.

To cross the river is to embrace the new life offered by the Promised land.

So, Joshua wants the people to be ready … ready to commit to this new life and new venture. He wants the people to be ready to face what lies on the other side, even if it isn’t much different than what they’ve been living and experiencing on THIS side.

These river moments, moments when we find ourselves standing here, but really wanting or needing to be THERE, happen all the time. Some are big and momentous, while others are smaller and more subdued. But if we honestly think back in our lives, we can identify many moments in time where we stood like Joshua; facing a choice and having to come up with a means of crossing whatever the river before us was …

The heart of the story of Joshua is a reminder that in that moment we are not facing the choice alone. We stand as children of God, immersed fully in the love and strength and grace of God.

AND, with the celebration of All Saints looming on the horizon, we are reminded that we stand as part of God’s family, with the saints of every time and place around us … as we face the challenges of making a choice, and crossing the river into the unknown that lies before us, we are, as a people of faith able to make that transition knowing that we are loved by God, and that we have the examples and experiences of others to guide, inspire and help us …

It doesn’t make the transition any easier to face, but it helps us to move forward knowing we are not alone, and knowing that no matter what happens God will be there to help us …

It’s all about being open to the presence of the Holy around us …

May it be so – thanks be to God … Let us pray …