Our Words of Faith Study:

We beginning a study of the Remit 6 resource put out by General Council entitled "Our Words of Faith", which will examine, discuss, reflect and celebrate what it is that we believe as a Church.

Over the next six weeks, we will be meeting in three sessions to examine the various statements of faith that have forged the beliefs and practises of The United Church of Canada. Copies of a shortened and revised study guide are available at both Church buildings, or by calling the office.

Each session will be held twice (once at Eugenia and once at St John's) to allow folks to attend when it is more convenient for them. We will also, be welcoming submissions and reflections via email !!!

If you are unable to attend either of the sessions when they are scheduled, feel free to email your reflections to the Church (fleshertonunited@cablerocket.com) or post them here via the reader's comment form.

Input is welcome from all members and adherents of the Congregations that form the Flesherton Pastoral Charge to allow the Joint Council inlieu of a Session, to respond to the Remit request prior to the end of February.

So, please consider attending one of the following sesssions, or at the very least reading through the study document and letting us know what you think:

We look forward to hearing from you and sharing your reflections and thoughts !!

Peace !!

Session One: Thursday January 26th - 7pm at Eugenia United Church
Sunday January 29th - 12:30 pm (bring a lunch) at St John's

Session Two: Thursday February 9th - 7pm at Eugenia United Church
Sunday February 12th - 12:30 pm (bring a lunch) at St John's

Session One: Thursday February 23rd - 7pm at Eugenia United Church
Sunday February 26th - 12:30 pm (bring a lunch) at St John's


The study document can be found by clicking here: Our Words of Faith

Sermon for January 22nd 2012

John Lennon once quipped – “Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans …”

The implication being that we may make our plans and set out goals, but life somehow manages to spin things around and take us where we may not intend nor expect to be. We have our ideas of what we want in life, but life, fate, God – whatever term you
choose – may have slightly different plan … or in some cases, our plans may be regarded as a direct challenge that needs to be addressed.

I can still remember sitting at our table in the apartment in Kingston when I began filling out the forms for settlement while still a student at Theology College in Kingston. One of the last questions on the forms was “would you be willing to serve in a Native Ministry? Yes or No.”

I answered the question “No.”

Now, to contextualize this a bit – when I was a humble University Student, I spent one summer painting with my life long friend Darin. We were painting an old farm house out in the wilds of Perth County and talking about what we wanted to do with our lives. Darin knew then he wanted to go into law and become a lawyer. I was struggling because I have known since I was 14 that my calling lay in ministry. But after the study trip I took to the Middle East in second year, I really wanted to do graduate studies and teach Religious Studies … so we were weighing the pros and cons as we painted.

I remember saying “I think it is Graduate Studies that has more interest for me …”
Little did I know … that fall I dully filled out the various forms for BOTH graduate studies at a number of universities, and for Theological Studies at a number of Theological Colleges … I never did hear back from ANY of the graduate studies programmes, but I heard back quickly from the various Theological Colleges … and here I am.

I SHOULD have learned in that moment, that when God has called you to something, don’t try to deny it nor run away from it. … You’re gonna get caught!!

When I applied for my student internship that first summer of Theological training, I asked for Newfoundland – I had Newfoundland first in my order of preferences … I was sent to BC – to the northern tip of Vancouver Island … my supervisor from Presbytery said – “well, it’s an island …” The OTHER side of the country – but an island !! … for the record I had recorded BC about 7th on my form.

So, as I checked off the form on my settlement sheets answering ‘No’ to the First Nations’ Ministries, I should have known better …I should have remembered my previous experiences and not tried to direct where I was going …

A few short weeks later I was offered a choice between Wawa Ontario or Bella Coola BC … a remote northern ministry, or a remote northern First Nations Ministry … like Lennon said – “Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans …”

I’m glad I went to Bella Coola and I had a good foundation for ministry formed in those years there – I learned a lot, and I left there four years later a better person for what I had experienced. Such is the vagaries of putting our trust in God and life and fate …

And that’s the lesson the writer of the Jonah story is trying to convey through the use of absurdly unlikely tale of the whale … I shared yesterday my experience once of telling the Jonah story to a group of kids during a childrens’ time at worship and having one delightful young person sit and listen to the WHOLE story before saying – “you expect us to believe that story? There’s NO WAY that guy could live in the belly of the whale for three days then be puked up on some beach and just walk into town …”

She was right.

The story is SO incredible it is intended to cause the listener to scoff and engage the teller in a conversation. The intent of the Jonah story is NOT the literal truth of Jonah being swallowed by a whale and being upchucked on a beach – the intent is to remind the listener that no matter what you try to do to run away from God’s calling for you, God WILL bring you back.

In Jonah’s case, he was swallowed in the Mediterranean heading WEST … the whale swallowed him, then barfed him up on a beach outside of Ninevah – far to the east … and, if you will permit – let’s do a quickly refresher in geography of that region …
Israel is just above Africa, nestled between Asia and Europe facing to the Mediterranean. Jonah hops on a boat and sets sail toward the west – modern Spain, Italy and so on … the whale swallows him at sea in the Mediterranean.

Until the building of the Suez Canal in the 1800’s that linked the Mediterranean with the Red Sea – the ONLY way to get from the Mediterranean AROUND to Ninevah – in modern Iraq, was by circumnavigating the entire continent of Africa – not something that ANY whale could do in three days.

So, the premise of the story begins with an impossibility:

The whale swallows Jonah, swims around the entire continent of Africa in less than 36 hours and spits him up on a beach in Iraq … the literary device at work is grounded in the absurdity of the story.

By using such an incredible exaggeration, the story teller wants to grab the listener’s attention and underscore, highlight, italicize and have flashing in bright neon colours the futility of trying to avoid what God wants of us.

The morale of the story is – “you can run the other way, but look at Jonah, he tried that only to be brought back to where God wanted him to be … so don’t even try. Just open yourself up to what God wants and do it …

The story of Jonah is using absurdity and humour to convey a lesson to the listener.

It is akin to the role of the jester or fool to offer lessons in the Royal Court.

The jester tells a story that causes the King and the court to listen, but then suddenly the King realizes that the subject of the joke – the very object of the derision is himself.

The king has an epiphany moment where he realizes that everyone is actually laughing at him … “Wait a minute,” he thinks, “that’s me the jester was talking about …”

And the lesson is learned.

The Holy Fool has taught the King the error of his ways.

In our modern world, many comedic voices continue that tradition by poking fun at happenings in our society, and opening our eyes and our understandings to the lessons we NEED to learn through the gift of laughter. Folks like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have quite effectively managed to combined newscasting and humour to convey important and otherwise overlooked truths that other media chose to ignore.

Using humour is known to be one of the most effect ways to offer a morale or a lessons. People listen better when they are laughing and have an ability to take harsh criticism more easily if it is offered in such a way.

The ancient Jewish story tellers knew that, and they used that device ALL the time.

A humourous story works ALL the time …

By the time the listener gets it – they’ve been laughing and can see the absurdity in a positive light …

So the lesson for us today in our modern world where we KNOW that the story of Jonah is nothing more than a big fish story – perhaps there is a secondary lesson here about JUST how big that story of ‘the one that got away’ can get if allowed to be told and retold over a few millennia …

The lesson we are to pull from the delightful and humourous story of Jonah is an awareness of those moments in life when we realize and recognize that we are being called by God to act on our faith. Our response CAN NOT be like that of Jonah’s – running as hard and fast in the opposite direction as our legs will carry us. But rather our response should be like that of the disciples called to follow Jesus.

They left it behind and went the way God was calling them …
They saw the moment of call and answered.
They seized the moment – the opportunity and answered with an affirmative response.

ALL of us are called … individually, collectively and corporately – we are called to live our faith. The next step after seeing, experiencing and recognizing the call is to respond.

We are to be open to the call.
We are to be aware of the call.
AND we are to respond to the call by living and sharing our faith.

It took a whale of a tale to bring Jonah back to where he was supposed to be. For you and I, what is required to put us back on track should be a little less grandiose, and a little more straightforward.

We are called … now we need to listen and stop fighting what God wants of us individually, collectively, and corportately.

To borrow from the sci-fi show, Star Trek the Next Generation – if the story of Jonah teaches us NOTHING else, it teaches us that God’s call is similar to the arrival of the Borg in the STNG universe – ‘resistance is futile”. If God calls – we need to listen …

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

Semon for January 15th 2012

"To be called ... having the courage to respond ..."

One of the things that is central to our theology as a Church is the concept and idea of call. Call undergirds everything we do, everything we say, everything we think and yet, I doubt we EVER think about it more than with a passing notion …

When our congregations are looking for a new minister we talk about call. We will call a new minister rather than hire.

In modern language, call refers to a myriad of things from calling someone on the phone to seeing them on the ski hill and calling to them. Yet, in the Church call is a very clearly defined set of ideas and concepts.

When we call a minister we are asking someone to come and minister with us who is bringing the gifts and talents and enthusiasm we have discerned spiritually to be what we need and want and can use.

In broader church concepts when we begin a discernment process with someone who is feeling CALLED to minister we are seeking to ascertain if they have been called to ministry, and what ministry they have been called too. It’s not a popular thought in Church circles, but I’ve heard elders say to us repeatedly that we must do a better job of assisting in the discerning of call. One Church elder I once knew boldly said at a Conference AGM that not everyone who is ‘called’ is being called to Ordained or Commissioned leadership – some, he said ‘may be simply called to deepen their commitment to their congregation rather than standing in the pulpit and leading a community of faith …”

He was not popular, but he was in many respects right. He lived and worked in a Presbytery that has been a hotbed of settlement for decades. Every year somewhere in the presbytery at least one, and often more newly ordained and commissioned folks land from their training at Theology College and begin ministry. Many are gifted and committed people who are starting out on what could be long and rewarding ministries in the Church, others likely should have been committed, while still others were never called to the ministry of leadership in the first place, but should have simply deepened their involvement in the Church …

The process of discernment is difficult and fraught with challenges, but it is central to everything we do and everything we are about as a Church. Without Call, we have nothing to motivate us – nothing to encourage and nourish new leadership – nothing to move us from where we are to where God wants us to be … Call is the heart of our faith.

We are ALL called. The challenge and the task of the Church is to help each of us to discern what our call is …

In the United Church we have, on paper, done a good job of celebrating and lifting up the many ways in which we are called, and we strive to honour the diversity of the gifts, talents and enthusiasm that are NEEDED to keep a healthy active community of faith functioning in its ministry. The concept we live is very much based from the Biblical text to the Church at Corinth where Paul celebrates the many gifts of the body, and notes that not every one can be an arm or a leg, or an ear or an eye, but together we form the body, and no gift is really better than another, simply different.

A healthy functioning church needs a myriad of callings … from the leadership in the pulpit to the Sunday School teachers, to the volunteers who put together dinners and worship services, to the folks who bring cookies and casseroles, to the people who take fifteen minutes to pray … ALL of these gifts are valuable and important, and we could not function long without them.

Yet, the vast majority of gifts and talents shared in the Church are seldom thought about in the context of call … we don’t think of our Sunday School teachers being ‘called’ … we don’t think of dear Mrs McGillicutty brining her tuna casserole and chocolate chip cookies as “called” … yet, they are. The gifts we bring and offer are part of that call that draws us together and celebrates the commonality of faith in this place.

We are called as certainly as Samuel was called that day in Bethany.

We are called as clearly as Nathaniel and Philip were called.

We are called to come and share our faith – our talents, our gifts, our treasures, our time, our enthusiasms and our interests. Whatever it is, we are a community built on the things that each of us brings and shares in response to the call from God asking us to be part of THIS …

And, that is the moment when we can stop and look around and instead of lamenting what we may fell is lacking, we can instead celebrate what we HAVE and what we SHARE.

Whether we see it or not, we are a community of faith based around the proverbial kitchen table. Food and beverage and the fellowship they represent are CENTRAL to what we do and who we are. Our mens’ fellowship is ALL about food and coffee and conversation around the table. Almost everytime we have a gathering or a meeting somebody puts a pot of coffee on. We even sell the coffee as a means of awareness and conscience raising.

Our calling begins with fellowship. Meals, coffee time, gathering in the kitchen to chat – we DO IT ALL THE TIME – it’s who this community is, it’s what we do … it’s OUR CALLING, and that casual form of fellowship colours the rest of what we’re about as a community of faith.

The knitting circle, the prayer circle, the Sunday School, our worship, our various outreach activities, the use of our building – ALL OF THE THINGS WE DO emanate from this casual fellowship based on the kitchen table. The heart of our communion as a Church is not the formal tables that sit in our sanctuary, but rather the worn tattered tables where we have coffee, cookies and the occasional sandwich or bowl of soup.

We may break bread formally up here – but the real bread that we break happens other times downstairs!

It’s ALL about celebrating our Call to ministry. A call that brings us to the table, then sends us out into the world to welcome in others who are hungering for something more …

When I first began talking about Fair Trade Coffee, I cited the tag line – we will change the world one cup of coffee at a time. The implication of this is that through Fair Trade we can better the lives of producers in the third world regions where our coffee, tea, chocolate and other products come from.

By paying a fair price for our product here in Canada, the producers in places like Ethiopia, Columbia and India get more money in their pocket, which means a better standard of living, more opportunity for their kids and their community, and an overall improvement in the lives of those who are growing coffee, tea and cocoa for far away lands.

But that notion of changing the world flows the OTHER way too. Our community is changing one cup of coffee at a time when we live our faith openly and by sharing our calling.

In the case of coffee, we have not only provided folks in our community a good quality product, THEY KNOW WE’RE HERE. I’ve said it many times that I’ve lost count of the number of people who have picked up a bag of coffee at the farmers’ market and looked at the tags we staple to them and said “Wow, there’s a Church in Eugenia/Flesherton! I didn’t know that …”

People know we’re here. People know we’re not ashamed to be the Church – we no longer have to whisper that we’re part of this community of faith. We are out and about telling people we exist and THEY are welcome to come and share in the activities and outreach we embrace by living out our calling.

One cup of coffee at a time, we make people feel welcome in our buildings and in our circle of community, and we share our call.

That is the heart of our faith – our call. Samuel grasped that idea when he went back to his bed that night and waited to once again hear the voice calling to him in the darkness and he dared to say “Speak Lord, your servant is listening …”

Philip and Nathaniel grasped that when they responded to Jesus’ invitation to come and join in the ministry he was sharing throughout Galilea.
We can not only graps this idea, but share it when we respond to the call in our life to live our faith in this wonderful community we call Church.

We ALL have gifts, talents, abilities, enthusiasms and interests to share – and we are gathered together in this place with the opportunity to do just that – to share in faith who we are with one another and with our community and our world …

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

Sermon for January 8th 2012

"With water and light ... sharing our faith."


Our readings this morning are a wondrous blend of lectionary texts from the celebration of Epiphany that we marked on Friday, and the Baptism of Jesus, that we mark today.

We have the visit of the Magi to the Holy Family in the days following Christ’s birth, we have the celebration on God’s gift of Creation, and we have Jesus grown into an adult and being baptised at the River Jordan by John.

In some ways, these texts seem divergent and unrelated. But if we step back and consider the season we’ve been journeying through, and the underlying message of Faith, we can not only see the connections, we can celebrate those connections as a means of strengthening ourselves and our community to continue to journey forward into our lives and our world, and face whatever comes our way.

Ultimately we are a hopeful people. I would go so far as to say that hope is almost hard-wired into our beings so that we can keep moving forward no matter what the odds might seems to be. Hope gives us the motivation to face the uncertainties and challenges of life, and KNOW that we will not only survive and endure, but we will succeed.

Think about how pervasive hopeful images are in our culture … they are literally everywhere if we dare to look.

I had a few pop to mind over this last week – the scene in the Lord of the Rings movies when Gandalf is taken prisoner and held in the tower as the forces of evil and darkness are preparing to conquer middle earth. After the fight between wizards, Gandalf is lying on the cold stone floor when a moth arrives, fluttering through the tumult and devastation unfolding all around to deliver a message to Gandalf – a message of hope … the soft fluttering flight of the moth is HOPE made real … as you follow this story though, you realize that Tolkien built on this theme of hope throughout the journey of the Frodo, Sam and their companions. What began as a quest to return a ring to its place of creation became a journey that was no longer about the destination at all. Instead the journey itself became the source of hope – over and over, just when things seemed their bleakest and it appeared that the forces of darkness and evil were about to win, something broke through to keep the various characters moving forward … The stories of The Lord of the Rings were crafted by the pen of JRR Tolkien in the deep dark hours of World War Two and shared with his son Christopher who was serving in the RAF.

Through the fantastic world of Frodo and the others, Tolkien whispered a message of hope for both the inhabitants of middle earth as well as his fellow residents of this earth …

This flicker of hope is found too in places like John McCrae’s poem “In Flanders Fields” that begins by acknowledging the beauty of the bright red poppies blowing between crosses where fallen soldiers lie … this juxtaposition is powerful because it takes note of the presence of hope in the midst of destruction.

Life will endure despite our best efforts to the contrary … Hope is Universal and unconditional.

We will find evidence of Hope if we dare to look … over and over, in our literature, in our art, in our scriptures we are confronted with this universal truth that no matter how dark it may be – no matter how alone we may feel – no matter how bleak things may seem to be – Hope WILL break through and we will be able to celebrate that God is with us …

So in the darkened streets of a forgotten village in a backwater corner of a long ago empire, a simple oil lamp shines in the darkness and welcomes in the various visitors who had come to celebrate the arrival of the new born King … In the coldest and darkest season of the year, we are invited to remember and recall these happenings as a way of reminding ourselves collectively that this HOPE is real …

Hope as light shining forth in the darkness.

Hope as the promise of a new born child – not just the Christ child, but every child …

Then we hear the ancient words of Genesis that celebrate the crafting of Creation at the hands of God … over and over we conjure the image of God bringing into being the various bits and pieces of this world in which we live, and at the end of each ‘day’ God leans back and with a joyous smile announces – “it is Good” … light and dark – it is good … water and land – it is good … trees and bushes and vast grassy plains – it is good … animal and fish and birds – it is good … and lastly, but certainly not least, man and woman and the human family – regardless of what we have managed to do in recent decades, and putting aside the silly tendency we have toward things like greed and selfishness and destruction – we began with the pronouncement “it is good.”
Creation unfolds as a place and a gift overflowing with blessings … we stand in the midst of a planet teeming with life and with goodness – we need only open our eyes and our beings to it …

The story of creation is about taking this hope and making it real. Relearning how to live in a place of awe and wonder that gives rise to a gratitude that is not grovelling but rather APPRECIATIVE of what is around us.

Have we ever really thought about what we have as a people and a culture? How incredibly fortunate we truly are?

We live in house where at the flick of a switch we have light and power. We can turn a tap and have hot and cold running water in an instant. We have cupboards and fridges full of food. We have so much stuff collectively that one of the biggest growth industries even as the economy has faltered has been the self-storage places. ALMOST every town in North America has a self-storage place today – something that was unheard of a generation ago.

We have so much stuff, we have to rent extra space to store it … yet, despite ALL of this – do we appreciate it? Or have we grown complacent in our views? Do we have too much stuff and too little appreciation of what we have?

Perhaps that’s the whole point of the Genesis story – to appreciate the blessings that we have, and to realize that these gifts are truly good … our job is to appreciate them more, and to appreciate the source.

And so, with hope and gratitude, we approach our final reading – the Baptism of Jesus … we have light and God and now we bring in the cleansing life giving power of water …

Every minister, if he or she was being honest and candid will likely admit to having a conversation at some point in their ministry that goes something like this:

Hi, I’d like to have our kid done.

Done?

Yeah, done – you know with the water when you splash some on them and say a few words …

You mean Baptism?

Yeah, that’s what mom (or grandma) called it. Baptism. We’d like to get our kid done …


Many of my colleagues resent these phone calls, and there have been books written on informing and educating these callers about the importance and significance of Baptism, and how to bring them back in line with the theological and traditional underpinnings of the Act of Baptism as a celebration within the Church … meanwhile, eyes glaze over and people say “fer crying out loud, we just wanted to get the kids done …”

Personally, I don’t mind these phone calls. Part of me knows we may never see that family again, but another part of me realizes that in that moment they are asking for something and they are reaching out to a Church to find confirmation that this ‘kid’ is as important to God and to someone else as it is to them. They may be calling because Grandma has put pressure on them, but when we hold open the door and affirm that this child has value and is a precious child of God we are not only living our theology, we are saying that this family has a place here with us.

Baptism is about the abundant and limitless gift of Grace. In Baptism we are affirming that EVERYONE is a child of God and EVERYONE has a place.

As Jesus rose from the waters of Baptism, the words “this is my son, my beloved” echoes across the universe.

In our Baptism we rise from the water with the same words echoing across the universe.

Baptism is an affirmation of God’s love for ALL people.

So that family calling to ask about getting their kid ‘done’ is opening the door for us to welcome them in and affirm what we may so easily forget: that God’s love rolls down in abundance for ALL people, and like water flooding over creation that love brings life to all of us.

Hope … Gratitude and appreciation … and the abundance of God’s grace … that is what we are to be about in our faith journey, and that is what undergirds everything we do and everything we are as a Church and a people of faith. Epiphany is the season when we REMEMBER that and go back into the world recharged and enthusiastic because of what we’ve recounted and experienced in the streets of Bethlehem.

Now is the season when we, like the Magi go home by a different route to share with the world all that we have seen and heard and experienced … now is the season that we celebrate the abundance of God’s love throughout our world not just for us – but for everyone !!

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