I was tempted to call this – “the sermon I didn’t plan on writing”, given the announcement that yesterday was the going to be the end of the world … I think someone got it wrong … we’re still here, and from what I can gather, either the crowd caught up in the Rapture was pretty small, or it simply didn’t happen …
However, far from being a negative thing, I had the thought earlier today that this non-event offers believers within the Christian Church a great opportunity to get back to some sense of reality and refocus our life and ministry on what’s really important.
In the last couple of decades, likely in response to the ever present whirl-wind of happenings and event throughout our world, there has been a noticeable and troubling rise in apocalyptic theology, visions, and messages throughout the church. Book series about the ‘end times’ have proven to be popular in Christian Bookstores across North America, and by my count this is atleast the fifth time since 1980, that someone has put an actual date on the day things will end. In the 80’s you had ‘The Late Great Planet Earth”, then along came Herbert W. Armstrong and his tv show and magazine The Plain Truth that offered a date in 2001, and there was the Japanese group who set a date in the mid-nineties, and when I was at Theology College there was a big newspaper distributed by a religious group that warned of the pending apocalypse, only to be proven wrong …
What I find fascinating, and bit scary though, is the response when they’ve gotten it wrong. Instead of recognizing that they are dabbling in things they should be dabbling in, and predicting something that is completely and utterly unpredictable – they instead say – “oh we mis-calculated …” and try again and again and again … and most disturbing of all, is the number of people who continue to go along with this line of thought …
The world WILL end someday … we just don’t know when …
So, our job as people of faith is to build a good foundation on which to nurture and share our faith, and with which we should be encouraging and welcoming people into our circle of faith and community … and encouraging and welcoming happen best when we abandon a theology of fear and exclusion, and instead place our trust on The Gospel and focus on a theology of care, compassion and inclusion.
The foundation on which we build our faith, and ultimately our Church needs to be strong and loving so that what rises upon it is strong, loving, caring and most of all welcoming …
And of course, we all know what a good sturdy foundation is built of … rocks and stones … if Grey county has taught generations of people nothing else, it has taught them the value – both positive and negative – of stones, and what you can do with them …
When I think about the uses of stones and rocks, I am mindful of a scene in the movie “the Last Temptation of Christ” when Jesus confronts the crowd about to stone the woman caught in adultery. He challenges them to consider that only ‘the one with no sin can cast that first stone’. One by one people in the crowd drop their stones and stand uncertain and hesitant.
Then one man steps up and says – “I have nothing to hide …” and gets ready to lob his stone at the woman.
Jesus smiles and says – “are you sure? …” and begins to challenge this man and his assumption that he is without sin … the man then drops the stone, and the crowd disburses and the woman is free … stones have HUGE potential for both good and destruction – ultimately, the choice is in our hands …
I remember as a kid coming up to my great-grandmother’s farm in Desboro and being struck by the stone fence lines and the rocky pastures we passed on the way … there’s a lot of rocks in them thar hills !!!
But along with the irritation of annual rock picking excursions, the early settlers found the material handy for the foundations of the magnificent Bank Barns they built to anchor their farms and protect their animals and crops. And the rocks and stones formed the foundations of their houses and outbuildings and in some cases the walls and the homes they built to shelter themselves.
The ubiquitous rock became a central part of life all across the Grey-Bruce area … our own Church building stands on rocks likely gathered within a stone’s throw of where we stand today … and so the lesson was taught from the earliest days of settlement here that rocks, while being irritating and annoying in one context, are remarkably useful and helpful in another … the challenge is to be open to possibilities. To be open to the Spirit and what she is calling us to do and to be.
I’ve always likened the use of rocks to that of dandelions … many people find the profusion of little yellow flowers in their lawns annoying. They prefer a clean crisp green lawn to one speckled with bright yellow blossoms. Unfortunately, over the last few decades the means of attaining that immaculate green space on our door steps has involved the application of harmful chemicals and pesticides that have lingered in our environment and done untold harm to other plants and animals. So the response in many places has been to ban the spraying and application of chemicals and to allow the profusion of yellow to continue unchecked.
I personally like dandelions. I worry about what the application of these chemicals and sprays has done to our environment, but more than that, I have always felt lawns are for playing on, and the time, energy and money spent creating perfect green lawns can be better utilized doing other things … afterall, a weed like the dandelion is simply a plant in the supposedly ‘wrong place’.
A dandelion is a remarkably useful plant. If you search uses of the dandelion you will find hundreds of thousands of pages that tell you what a dandelion is good for … the leaves make a tasty and nutritious salad, you can stir fry the blooms, the roots and the leaves, the sap can be used as a disinfectant, the roots can be tried and ground to make a coffee, the leaves and flowers can be used to make tea or a poultice, the flowers can be friend with a bit of butter to make a tasty sidedish for dinner, and of course you can’t talk about dandelions without mentioning dandelion wine … over and over, the uses of this plant that many regard as an obnoxious weed have been listed and celebrated, yet to most people a dandelion is an irritant … but like a wise woman said to me earlier this week when we were discussing dandelions and I mentioned that may favour illustration of a dandelion’s usefulness is the example of a young child offering a fistful of the yellow blossoms that “you would have to be pretty hard hearted not to see the beauty in THAT” – dandelions call for a rethink and a reconsideration …
And that’s the challenge we have before us in this post-rapture era we stand within … we need to rethink and reconsider and most importantly, refocus our faith, not on the sweet by and by that might be coming next week or next month, or next year. We need to focus on being part of creating the Kingdom of God in our midst – ALL around ourselves – by sharing our faith through action rather than through fear.
We need to see the rocks and stones around us as a means of building the kingdom by setting foundations, forming supportive walls, and creating smooth path ways rather than using them in offensive and harmful ways …
We need to see the versatility and usefulness of the weeds around us by being open to their possibilities rather than seeking to stomp them out in a blind quest for sameness and uniformity …
We need to bring into being the Kingdom of God by living the values of our faith and sharing with one another (even the stranger and those who make us uncomfortable and who irritate us) the values of our faith and the welcome that has been extended to all, not just an elite or select few.
The stoning of Stephen reminds us of two things – the power of hate and fear, and the power of faith and belief … Stephen lived and died by his faith – he trusted in God every moment including his last … and the crowd that stoned him feared the message that he and the others brought, and so they sought to snuff it out …
With a stone in our hands we can chose to use it constructively, or destructively … the choice is ours …
We are a people of faith. We are a people of the resurrection.
We are a people who stood before the tomb when the stone was rolled away and proclaimed LIFE …
There really is only one choice for us and it is the faithful choice of LIFE.
May it be so – thanks be to God … Let us pray …
No comments:
Post a Comment