Sermon for July 24th 2011

One of the books I’ve been reading lately is the recollections of Elizabeth Sifton, of her father Theologian, preacher and activist Reinhold Niebuhr. Many of us may not be familiar with Niebuhr, but most of us have at some point encountered his most famous prayer known to many as:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference.

What is fascinating about this famous prayer is that no one can say for certain when it first came into being. His daughter notes that it was first used and published publically in late 1943, early 1942 … what is obvious though is that the prayer floated around in Niebuhr’s life throughout the early years of World War Two as he struggled to find a faithful response to the horrors unfolding throughout Europe … in the deepest darkest hours of the war, when it seemed that all was lost and a Nazi controlled continent was inevitable – AND as Churches were wrestling within themselves to find a faithful response to the war, Niebuhr cleared his throat and offered the words:

O God and Heavenly Father, Grant to us the serenity of mind to accept that which cannot be changed; courage to change that which can be changed, and wisdom to know the one from the other, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

In that moment Niebuhr set the model that countless others would follow … in those deep dark moments when ALL seems lost, turning to God in prayer is a gift … As Jewish philosopher Martin Buber aptly notes: “when we pray, we don’t (or we shouldn’t) ask God for anything. Instead we ask God for God. We invite God into our lives, so that the actions we take will be guided by a sense of God’s presence.” (Kushner pg. 17)

Prayer for the sake of opening ourselves up to the presence of God is a radical thought … radical in the fullest sense of what that word means. It is not something new, but rather it is an idea that has fallen by the way side, and has been overlooked and even forgotten in the passage of time …

Paul writing to the Church in Rome, offering the words we share this morning is standing firmly in the place of understanding that sees prayer, not as a series of petitions, or a divine wish list, but rather as simply an openness to the presence of God in our lives, and our world.

The heart of Paul’s theology – and perhaps one of his most precise proclamations of faith is found in verse 28 of this morning’s reading from Romans: “we know that all things work together for good for those who love God and who are called according to his purpose …”

WE KNOW ALL THINGS WORK TOGETHER FOR GOOD FOR THOSE WHO LOVE GOD … what an earth-shattering concept! What a powerful proclamation to make to a Church under duress.

Everything that is happening now, in this moment, no matter how bad WILL bring us – me – you – ALL of us – to a good conclusion …

It’s about trust.

Not blind passive trust. But trust that actively engages the moment and KNOWS in every fibre of our being that we are NOT alone, that God is with us, even in this deep dark moment. It is Trust that KNOWS, God WILL bring wholeness to our lives … our world … no matter how deep and dark the moment might be, God will move us through it …

Many years ago, when as a teenager struggling to find my way in the world, and to make sense of what has happened around me, I went to our minister Ross Cumming, and said – “If God loved me, why did my father die before I ever had the chance to know him? …” I then wrestled through the impact Dad’s death had and the ripples that continued to pass through my family because of his accident and death … WHY? I wanted to know, would a loving God let this happen …

The trigger for this exchange had come some days earlier at our early morning youth Sunday School class. The older kids gathered each Sunday morning before worship in the kitchen of the Church with Ross, our minister to discuss the readings for the day, and concerns and issues we may have in our lives and our faith … it was a special time when we had Ross’ full attention, and we were able to ask him just about anything … BUT, one morning Ross had someone fill in for him … and it didn’t go so well.

What I remember some three decades later was the class beginning with the statement – “ALL that happens in the world happens because God loves us and God shows that love through the things that happen in our lives … NOTHING bad ever happens to us …”

The gauntlet was thrown … “really?” … I challenged the point asking finally after several ineffective attempts to question his stance – “if God loves me SO MUCH, why did my father die before I knew him?” … he had no answer … the cool detached theology ran hard against a very personal and very painful query that ran counter to the notion of love …

It took weeks for me to come back to the Church and to find a place a faith that was comfortable for me … but it happened because of Ross, and his willingness to wrestle with the issue with me … I remember the day he suggested I read this particular passage of Scripture – the 8^th Chapter of Romans.

The words of verse 28 exploded in me … Instead of seeing ONLY the negatives of Dad’s death and his loss and absence, I was challenged to see the ways in which my life had and continues to be enriched as a result of his tragic death.

I have never been able to stand in a place where I can say dad’s death happened because God wanted it to … but rather, dad’s death lead to a myriad of other things that HAPPENED BECAUSE of his death … family, friends, neighbours and others stepped up and responded to the situation differently because they wanted to offer care, support, and help in response to his death …

Viktor Frankl, the survivor of the Jewish Death Camps run by the Nazis puts it well when he notes: “you cannot control what other people do to you, but you can always control how you respond to what they do …”

Accidents happen.

Disasters happen,

People die, move away, get angry and pull away … our lives are changed and altered and we are left to struggle and pick up the pieces … we can’t do ANYTHING about the initial event … but we can help bring healing, wholeness and transformation into being as we struggle to pick up the pieces and move forward …

And along the way, we will find that there are a myriad of other people who will help us along the way …

It is truly the Resurrection in action.

There is no high-falooting theology at play here – just life being lived, faith being shared, and healing and wholeness being offered, shared, and embodied …

It is frighteningly simple … and it begins with prayer …

Not a passive, “O woe is me” type of prayer, nor an aggressive “O God, give me this …” kind of prayer, but a prayer seeking God’s presence and strength … a prayer that is open not to some celestial gift, but to the very presence of God in our midst as we seek to move forward, heal and return to some level of wholeness.

As a teenager, I looked at the many people in my life who had truly stepped up and gone the extra mile to help me and my brother and our mom after dad’s death … there were countless examples of people offering small gestures of help and care when they were needed most … there were numerous moments which took away some of the darkness and offered a faint glimmer of light … as I sat in Ross’ office and we discussed the passage from Romans, and looked honestly at what had happened in my life I could see how things were truly transformed to the positive in the wake of Dad’s death …

Since then, I’ve marvelled at how many of the modern self-help gurus struggle to share the same message through their writings … ‘let go of the past’ they urge us … ‘focus on the present’ they counsel … ‘live life with a positive attitude,’ they say … and ultimately they are simply echoing the teachings that for millennia we have, as members of the Judeao-Christian tradition, passed on from generation to generation …

Nothing will ever separate us from the love of God … and at the end of the day … no matter what happens, God will be with us as we continue to keep moving forward … along the way, we must trust in God enough to let our lives continue to unfold knowing that things WILL work out …

Rabbi and author Harold Kushner puts it succinctly when he writes:

In my theology, God’s promise of salvation for people whose lives don’t turn out as they hoped they would is not the promise of a better life in some world to come. It is the promise of forgiveness and a fresh start in this world. “save me” need not only mean “get me out of this situation.” It may mean “Help me cope with this situation so that I am not destroyed by it.”

Kushner’s theology embodies the spirit of Niebuhr’s prayer, and together they remind us that we stand in this moment of time, and we are not alone … in faith we move forward … and in faith we are given the strength, the courage, and the patience to continue living our lives to the fullest.

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

Sermon for July 10th 2011

Readings:

Genesis 25:19-34

Psalm 119 vs 105 – 112

Romans 8:1-11

Matthew 13: 1-9, 18-23

Hymns:
We Plough The Fields and Scatter
Jesus, You Have Come to the Lakeshore
Breathe On Me Breath of God
In the Bulb There is a Flower
We Have this Ministry
Sent Forth By God's Blessing

SERMON:

I hadn’t thought about it until I read a commentary on this week’s passage from Matthew, and the writer noted that we often refer to the story offered by Jesus as “the parable of the sower.” The author then went on to suggest quite boldly, that we would be better off, and more accurate if we referred to this reading as “the parable of the soils.”

Afterall, he noted – the seed is the same and the action of the sower is simply to go out and broadcast seed on the various types of ground, leaving the rest up to the seed, the soil and God …

SO, the parable of the soils … leaves us to consider which soil are we? But more than that, it leaves us to consider the role and importance soil plays in our world and in our lives.

As I started thinking about these readings, my mind drifted a number of books I read some years ago that looked at the historical interactions and relationships we as a society, have with nature around us. The first entitled “The ecology of Eden” examined the two dominant myths that operate in Western society. The author of The Ecology of Eden suggests that we have one of two relationships when it comes to our connection to the world around us. We are either oriented to the mountain or to the tower. Traditionally our culture and society were very much oriented to the mountain – to nature, to the world around us – the ebb and flow of seasons, the natural processes that are simply part of life.

To his thinking, the traditional farm oriented communities that guide and determine their actions by the weather and the many factors that determine the things you can and can not do, are cultures of the mountain – connected to nature, dependent on nature, and co-exisiting with nature.

These contrast with the cultures oriented to the tower – the man made edifice that looms in our psyche like mountains once did. The tower culture creates its reality, controls the nature and the environment, and believes that it has complete control over all things around it … it doesn’t take long however, for us to see the fallacy of that idea. Turn on the news and see the many natural disasters from fires to floods to earthquakes to realize the fragility of the tower culture and its inability to control many aspects of life …

In the case of a flood, the mountain culture would move to higher ground and return when the waters subsides, whereas the tower culture will build walls and barriers, dykes and dams to hold back the water and control its flow one culture choses to live within the confines of nature, the other choses to vain try to control nature …

Eisenberg contends that we need to consider returning to a more mountain oriented culture that seeks to live within the means of nature, and to live in partnership as a steward with nature … not an unreasonable goal.

The strength of this goal is underscored by the second book that I thought about as I considered the parable of the soils … The second book “Out of the Earth” is a study of our relationship with the soils around us. Hillel, the author cites the examples of modern day Lebanon and Iraq as cultures that abused the soils around themselves and managed to take fertile hills and valleys and turn them into desolate barren. He cites the Biblical references to the ‘cedars of Lebanon’ – trees renown for their majesty, height AND abundance – trees that are no largely a shadow of their former glory.

Hillel cites the deforestation and overgrazing that humanity engaged in as they moved into a more urban culture that required more than just living off the land … in time this deforestation and overgrazing rendered many places on the planet less desirable for settlement … some even became deserts because of human intervention …

As I reflected on these two books I wondered about the changes we’ve wrought as a culture on places like Southern Ontario and whether we’ve really learned anything along the way about good stewardship of our soils … Yesterday on the way over to Chesley for a family reunion I pondered on what the landscape visible from the high points on Hwy 4 must have been like when my first ancestors arrived from Europe and began the hard work of building farms and homesteads and settling villages.

On my mom’s side of the family AS Elliot arrived and settled the village that is now called Chesley … like dozens of others he hacked away at the thick bush that once covered southern Ontario like a blanket and created a homestead and a townsite … our fields and pastures today are a direct result of the back breaking work of generations who created farms where once thick forests stood.

A few months ago I read a biography of a preacher who served across this region and marvelled at the descriptions he offered of traveling from community to community – he talked about impassible swamps, thick dark forests and literally stumbling upon a clearing in the endless woods where a tiny log cabin sat on the side of freshly cleared fields … and all of it was within the last 120 years … a very different world from ours, yet the very world from which ours has arisen.

The question though, as we reflect on our parable today, and think about the not so distant past and the opening up of this area for settlement, is whether we’ve learned anything or not along the way … a few weeks ago I was having lunch with a colleague in ministry and our conversation turned to the megaquarry being planned south of here … we talked about the size and scale of the quarry and the effect it will have on almost every aspect of life in this part of the province. But what summarized it well was the comment made by that colleague who observed – “they are talking about 10 000 acres of prime potato growing land – good farm land … they aren’t making that any more …”

They aren’t making that any more …

Instead of seeing dirt and soil and open spaces as places to go and tame and exploit, perhaps it’s time to rethink our approach. Soil is the gift from our Creator … the ability to go and scatter seeds and produce a harvest is not a right but a privilege, and as such it our responsibility to treat the land that feeds us with respect … we are called to be stewards of the land, and that means using it appropriately and preserving it for future generations to use and benefit from as well …

And as we rethink our stewardship, we need to think about which soil we are as well … are we the hard packed path that yields little nutrients or space for the Gospel to prosper and grow? Are we the weed infest plot that expends energy on less than helpful things, allowing the Gospel to take root but then letting it be overwhelmed and overshadowed by other pursuits ? Or are we the good soil that hears the Gospel, embraces it, and allows it to grown and prosper and return a yield that is ten, fifty, a hundred times what was planted?

We are called to be the good soil … we are challenged to be the good soil … we are called to protect the good soil.

Ultimately, we are the good soil ... think about funeral liturgies. We stand by the grave of our departed loved ones and say boldy in faith that we are simply dust, and dirt, and we return from where we came ... "ashes to ashes, dust to dust ..." there is no formality in that moment, only the knowledge that we return from whence we came ...

Our problem culturally, is that we’ve compartmentalized our lives to such an extent that we no longer see the connections between what we do here as people of faith, and what we do OUT THERE as we live out our faith … it`s easy to shrug and say ‘what can I do?’ It’s more challenging to rethink our approach to something as ubiquitous as soil and dirt, and our approach individually AND societally … as a Faith Community, we stand in an interesting place in our modern world. Simply shrugging our shoulders is no longer an option, instead we need to consider how we will live our faith and what we are prepared to do in regards to issues like food production, urbanization, logging, mining and anything else that moves us from simple reliance on creation to outright exploitation … and along the way, we MUST engage in conversation that welcomes and fosters open and frank conversation.

For two millennia, we’ve been the good soil where the Gospel message has grown and prospered, today we remain the good soil, but like many corners of creation, we are under threat and being pressured … our calling today is to hold tight to our core values, and to continue to nurture our faith … and in the process we nurture OUR roots – the things that keep us grounded, the values and attitudes that make us who we are – values and attitudes that are part of our history and our present – values and attitudes that are handed down from generation to generation …

A man went out into the field to sow … and instead of just tossing the seed willy nilly, he paused and looked at the breadth of land that stretched out before him … he took a breath and felt the rush of fresh air and the caress of the wind … and he smiled in the warmth of the sun … and he savoured the moment … he savoured the gifts of creation … and he whispered the words “thank you God …”

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