Sermon for October 16th 2016 - Dancing on the Margins ...

       

  I started my thoughts on this week’s sermon using the Gatherings resource from the United Church and had themes of envisioning and experiencing faith, living out our faith and learning to pray … good themes … solid themes … themes that challenge us to find hope in the face of discomfort and uncertainty …

          But it got me thinking and reading and reflecting on that experience ALL of us have had at some point when someone has done something in a church context that has caused a hurt that may linger for a moment, a month or a millennium … We’ve ALL had that experience … Mrs so and so, or mr so and so said or did something – it may even be something completely well intentioned and with no malice involved, but it hurt …

          My brother left church after an incident in Sunday School when the collection plate was passed around and our Sunday school superintendent accused him or putting Canadian tire money on the plate as a joke … My brother took offense on several levels, not least of which was that as a budding car mechanic, he saw value in Canadian tire money, and he would NEVER have done something as foolish as wasting it on the church collection plate … he could buy tools, and parts and car stuff with that – why give it to the church?? But the deeper level was – why was HE of all the kids in that room – and at the time, there were lots in our Sunday school – why was he accused of it? (Looking back, I can’t help but wonder why it mattered anyway – Canadian Tire money could be used for stuff – I’ve accepted it at the shop and used it for supplies – so why couldn’t the church do the same? …)

          But the damage it did was immense, and it sent a very sensitive and very spiritual young man out the door and FOREVER soured his view of the church … he never went back … he missed it, and he encouraged me in my ministry because he valued faith and spirituality and what it offered, but for himself he could never go back because of the damage Mrs X did … and he wasn’t the only one … over the years Mrs X did little things to many many many young people in our church, and as the church withered and died and some of us as alumni talked about why the church died a theme developed … over and over people left BECAUSE of little things that happened, and likely without any malicious or hurtful intent … but the damage was deep and it was done …

          It may not be politically correct to admit to it, but I never let Mrs X bother me because I ended up punching her son in the middle of a Christmas concert when I finally had had enough …

          Eventually, Mrs X and her family moved on to another church – but the lasting impact remained … our church never regained what it lost and in time it like many others - closed …

          Later in my journey in ministry, during the debate about marriage equality and churches conducting same sex weddings, I had a conversation with a church member who excitedly showed me an article in a national gardening magazine about her son and his husband and the absolutely breath-taking gardens they had in their west coast home – as she showed me the article she said “you are the only person I can share this with …” I questioned her and she spoke of the horrible hurtful things said back in the dark days of “The Issue” by members of the congregation around the ordination of self-professed gay and lesbian candidates in the United Church … this mom was immensely proud of her son, but was terrified that she would be rejected by her church because of him, so she opted for silence …

          And there was the time when as a student minister I was asked to find out why one of the faithful elders of the congregation had stopped coming … I went to have tea and as we talked she shared with me the horrendous few months she and her family had been through – she had stopped coming for church initially because she was SO exhausted that Sunday morning was the only day of the week when she could sleep in and rest … then finally she decided she needed to go back, she wanted the comfort of community, the hymns, the prayers, the context – and so she came and as she walked through the front door of the church, her friend and neighbour – with the purest of intentions said “Oh would you like to sign the guest book …”

          Intended as a joke, and offered with nothing but love and respect – it rubbed the first woman the wrong way and she walked out after service and decided to never come back … when she told me the story, I wove it into a sermon the following Sunday and when the second person said over coffee after service ‘how horrible that is …” I seized the moment and suggested that she should call her neighbour and say “sorry …”

          She was mortified … but she did and the next week both women were back at church and a friendship was restored …

          There are countless examples of those hurtful things we may be oblivious to … as minister I’ve done them … I’ve witnessed them … I’ve tried to bring resolution to them … they are common and they are part of the narrative of any faith community, and in truth, they are a HUGE reason why so many of our churches are withering and dying. We have too many stories of Mrs H and the lasting damage and the inexplicable habit churches have of IGNORING it completely.

          United Church minister Gordon Turner wrote a book entitled “outside looking in” in which he explored the world of church drop outs and those who for whatever reason have left Church behind, and he offered some powerful observations and some poignant suggestions on how to address this uncomfortable reality in our churches, our communities and dare I say – within our own families.

          So, if we let our readings today settle within us, and we pause on the difficult message they seem to be carrying – and how do we envision and experience AND SHARE our faith in the face of the kinds of hurts I’ve mentioned today.

          Step one … honesty … a willingness to name and own the past hurts and address them … my brother never went back to the Church … the parishioner with the gay son gave me permission to share her story anonymously and the day I used it in a sermon one of those who spoke words of venomous hurt came up after church wanting to know who it was that was SOOOOOOO hurt and scared that they could tell others about their gay son. The mom was standing there and when I looked at her, she nodded and I said “I would like you to meet the mom …”

          The two women had been friends for years … even after the dark days of the late 80’s and all the hurtful things that had been said, the mom had remained silent … that morning in the narthex of our church tears flowed as the truth was revealed and a relationship restored and renewed …

          Step two … openness to the possibilities of what might be … in naming hurts caused within the church, we are opening ourselves to a spectrum of possibilities and to the discomfort of moving beyond the comfort and familiarity of what is and being open to what might be …

          This perhaps the point where we as congregations stand without even fully appreciating it … we are struggling with finances, dwindling memberships, escalating costs and a history of families and individuals who USED TO ATTEND but don’t for some reason … we are in the very heart of what shelves of books have struggled with.

          In my office, I have study after study that looks at why people leave churches, and what that exodus means … Canadian scholar Reginald Bibby has written more than a half dozen books on the condition of Churches in Canada and the peril they are in … his studies build on dozens by writers around the world.

          And it is Gordon Turner who perhaps gets to the heart of the issue when he writes: The Gospel will pinch some lives if spoken truthfully. It will release the yoke and burden of others. And people will also leave the Church if they don’t hear the prophetic word of the Gospel. We have to chose which side of the cutting edge of faithfulness we shall be on. A prophetic ministry can indeed be exercised if based on pastoral caring for persons …

          A prophetic ministry can indeed be exercised if based on pastoral caring for persons … addressing past hurts is pastoral care … avoiding current or future hurts is pastoral caring … recognizing the circumstances our neighbours find themselves in is pastoral caring … a prayer chain is pastoral caring … honestly facing our fears is pastoral caring … throwing open the doors and welcoming in people is pastoral caring …

          AND NONE OF IT NEEDS TO HAPPEN SOLELY ON A SUNDAY MORNING here in this time and space … pastoral caring is about going out into the world and engaging our friends, our neighbours and our communities both local and global and exercising and sharing our faith.

          It is about moving in to the world and living out our faith with integrity and with an awareness that what we say and do WILL have an impact on others – faith necessitates that we do everything we can to ensure that impact is positive. Pastoral caring is that positive impact.

          So, as we survey the road ahead, and we as congregations take a deep breath before plunging forward into whatever lies ahead have an opportunity to start envisioning our community differently …

          What if … what if, we opt for mid week worship instead of weekends?

          What if, we opt for small group devotions in slow seasons, and gather in homes or elsewhere instead of in church?

          What if we hold lunch time hymnsing services instead of Sunday morning?

          What if … what if, we dream and see where the Spirit is leading us by daring to play at being church … not silly amusement type of play, but joyous experimentation and testing new things way beyond the walls of what is traditional and comfortable … play as adventurous expressions of faith beyond what we might be used to?

          What if we dare to be a community that takes the Gospel seriously – the gospel that pinches and discomforts – the gospel that calls us from our complacency into action – the gospel that challenges us to step beyond our boxes and to follow the spirit into a place of healing, wholeness and transformation that not only welcomes back the lost sheep, but that courageously and rightly listens to their voices and addresses their bruises and hurts …

          Our readings challenge us to live out a simple covenant of God being our God, and we being God’s children … it challenges us to live lives with hope and faith under this new Covenant, trusting in God to be with us always …

          The spirit beckons us to envision a new reality and to embrace new possibilities … the rest is up to us …

          What if?

                        Let us pray …

The 2106 Decoration Day Service at The Old Durham Rd Cemetery

Rev Shawn's Preaching notes from the Decoration Day Service at The Old Durham Rd Cemetery:

I grew up in Stratford Ontario, in the mid 80’s my home congregation centennial United Church called The Reverend Robert Gibson to be their minister. Not an unusual nor uncommon event, but Bob was black and calling him to a pulpit in Stratford became a bit of a new story

People all over town said things like – there’s never been a black preacher in Stratford … that’s the first Black minister in town … and so on … but what we learned was that there was a deep, almost wholly forgotten strata of story in the Festival City that Bob’s arrival rediscovered and reanimated …

We learned Bob was FAR from the first black preacher in Stratford. In fact, he was just the latest of MANY black preachers in pulpits in Stratford … the stories emerged of vibrant black churches that formed as former slaves made their way up the underground railway and opted to stop in the sleepy little village of Stratford … stories emerged of vibrant black churches and service clubs that grew out of the resident population of porters who served the various train lines that ran through Stratford over the years … stories of an active, vital and fairly large black community in Stratford rose to the fore with Bob’s arrival, and people began talking about the history and heritage of Stratford that had lain forgotten and neglected for decades …

This little cemetery is a similar place … here, you can physically connect and even touch a significant chapter of local history that had lain domant (physically and literally) for years …

I grew up hearing stories of the escaped and freed slaves who made their way up the underground railway, following the drinking gourd as they made their way to that elusive place of freedom far to the north … I’ve delighted in watching documentaries about houses and buildings scattered across the US that have secret tunnels, hidden rooms and other almost forgotten legacies that served the cause of freedom throughout the years as men, women and children struggled for freedom … I’ve marvelled at the history the resident black families forged in places like Owen Sound, Collingwood, Stratford and countless other communities where they settled and built a life only to have that history neglected and almost forgotten by the dominant narrative …

My own family in the Owen Sound area is interconnected to that history, and it has largely gone unspoken …

But thanks to places like this – thanks to groups like the committee who passionately and tirelessly work to preserve these wonderful little corners of history, the stories are not forgotten, but can be reclaimed and reanimated … names, stories, experiences and history can be told and retold …

Our society tends to remember the Henry Ford’s and forgets about the hundreds of workers who toiled on the lines to make Ford’s name great … it was the guys on the assembly line putting the nuts and bolts together into the Model-T that made Henry great, yet we know next to nothing about them … These quiet forgotten corners scattered across this land of ours are what made this country great … the men and women and children who lie memorialized in cemeteries like this are the people who came and with back-breaking labour cleared the forests, building the communities and created the landscape we take for granted today … they came in pursuit of freedom and through hard work helped build our nation, our communities and all that we hold dear. And now, our obligation is to REMEMBER.

To remember them

To remember their stories

To remember their names

To remember … my friend and mentor Bob Gibson, is a great preacher, an amazing minister and a cherished friend – he happens to be black, and in my view of the world it is the content of one’s character that matters not the colour, creed or anything else … but Bob’s arrival in Stratford in the early 80’s opened an important door … the door to the stories of a community that otherwise had been forgotten. We stand at a similar door here – the stories of the people who came and settled in this area and built a community and a life for themselves and their families had ebbed away over time, but thanks to this place, and the persistence of a dedicated few who continued to remember and who worked to amplify those stories – we have a place that not only honours those who lie under our feet, but that honours ALL of those who made their way up the Underground Railway and by claiming freedom helped build this country.

We still have a LONG way to go in the enjoyment of a freedom free of bigotry, racism, and ignorance – but today, we pause to give thanks for this place and all that it represents, and we give thanks for all the work that has been done to make this a place to be proud of …

Our history can teach us much, and places like the Durham rd Cemetery offer the ability to touch that history and to reanimate it to make our journey forward much better …

Thanks be to God … let us pray !!

Sermon for the 121st Anniversary of Eugenia United Church

Rev Shawn's Sermon for Eugenia's 121 Anniversary:

Too often, we focus on the negatives and what we lack rather than what we have … our readings this morning have request for prayer for those in places of authority and power, the parable of the unjust manager from Jesus and lament from Jeremiah seeking a Balm in Gilead … balm, a substance that brings healing and comfort to a wound … and a lament – that powerful tradition of prayer that names the harsh reality, while standing firmly grounded in the Holy Presence of God, knowing full well that God is with us even in the face of the negatives and the challenges …

One of our commentaries for today notes: “the problem is, we often feel overwhelmed and do not know where to start. This is especially true when it comes to the brokenness … we wonder if there is anything we can possibly do” … BUT … it goes to note: “to long for healing means to live in hope. It is a beginning …”

To long for healing is to live in HOPE … Hope, is as American Theologian Jim Wallis likes to point out - believing inspite of the evidence and watching the evidence change … Hope is knowing God is with us …

So, today, 121 years on as a Church and a congregation, awash in challenges and struggles – where do we find our hope?

How do we stand on our anniversary Sunday and not only feel hopeful, but live in a hopefilled way?

Where do we draw our hope from ?

How about all around us?

I set out with a challenge – to list 121 things about us as a Church community that we do and are and give thanks for, but 121 things that give us Hope and show the world we are alive and well and still sharing our lives and faith … (I didn’t quite make it … not because there aren’t 121 things to be thankful for – things that make us hopeful, but because as I compiled my list I started realizing how oriented backwards that list really is …)

So, I started by noting:             

1.  We have a beautiful building

2.  We are a small buy dedicated congregation

3.  Our music

4.  The prayer circle

5.  Men’s coffee

6.  The women’s group

7.  The annual pancake breakfast

8.  The yard sale

9.  Coffee and goodies after church once a month

10.      The Xmas pot luck

11.      Our space for community groups

12.      Our commitment to the food bank

13.      Our involvement in the community

14.      Our easter morning sunrise service

15.      Our easter breakfast

16.      Our Christmas services

17.      Our observance of November 11^th at the cenotaph

18.      Our Pork dinner

19.      Our Sunday school – past AND present

20.      Our volunteers

21.       Our musicians

22.      Our stuff – the books, tables, chairs and the things we use regularly in our outreach

23.      Each other …

And it was at this point I started thinking about the things not only whisper HOPE today, but that are the very embodiment of HOPE.

I quickly got to 23 … there are more.

If each of us started listing the things we can think of, the list would grow and grow and grow … and that my friends is the very essence of HOPE … being able to frame the world with things – people, items, places and most importantly – relationships and interconnections – that that say boldly and with faith – we can and we do make a difference

The world is a better place for our presence

The challenge in the Church today, is that we’ve stopped believing that. We’ve stopped seeing that we do make a difference, and we’ve convinced ourselves that the world doesn’t care if we live or die as a community … but as we transition into whatever we are becoming – and as a church, we are most definitely in a time of transition and change – the old ways of being and doing church are waning, and something new is looming … we are being called to be part of birthing or delivering this new entity … as we make this transition, it gives us the opportunity to seriously consider the core values of who we are and what we are about and we will build with our lists in the future.

Likely the most important piece of who we are and what we are about as a Church – past, present and future – are the connections and relationships that we forge through our interactions and our faith … our dinners and services and outreach activities will ebb and flow, and we will lose interest and try new things, but the constant is and will be US – you and I – the people …

In modern theology it is drilled in our head that the church is NOT the building nor the stuff – the Church is the gathering of people - and even that is a broad definition … if you ask most church people, their definition of Church includes things like worship, a building, and many of the things that may or may not be important in the future …

What if … what if, as we move forward into our next 121 years, instead of focusing on Sunday morning worship, our building and the stuff that we’ve taken to be part of our working definition of Church, we instead allow the things that we do well – the things that are stirrings perhaps of where we are meant to be … we allow those things to dominate our life and ministry.

What if … we let go of our buildings and dare to dream of being Church in new ways.

What if … we let go of our services and instead focus on the small groups – the mens’ coffee, the womens’ group, the knitting group, the prayer circle, and other gatherings as our main ministry – using those times as places to worship and fellowship and reach out into the world by being present to our community?

What if … we dare to let go and with prayer, reflection AND faith boldly step out that door this morning open to the call of the Spirit and having the guts to follow wherever it may lead ?

It starts with prayer … prayer for each other, prayer for our community, prayer for the work we have to do … prayer that calls on God to be present in our midst as we seek to discern where we are to go, and what we are to be about … prayer for courageous openness that builds relationships in our community and enhances and encourages the interconnectedness that has kept us alive and well for 12 decades …

I’d like to think that when the call went out over a Century ago to bring sparkly stones for the foundation of this building, the men, women and children who dug around in their fields and yards and in the bush around Eugenia, had a dream of a Church that generations later would be the hub for their community – not a building that is used once a week for an hour or so, but of a gathering of people IN A BUILDING that was present to the community around them. A place of fellowship, a place of belonging, a place that welcomes one and all, and was a presence in life’s ups and downs …

We ARE that, if we dare to dream and dare to believe.

Our financial crunch will not suddenly disappear, and our problems and challenges will not just go away – but if we take seriously that dream of presence – that HOPE embodied and shared across the decades, we can start to be something different … something new … something that not only speaks eloquently (and often) about the Resurrection, but instead embodies it and more importantly - LIVES it …

We can focus on what has been and continue to wring our hands in worry as things seem to fail … or we can embrace our hope and boldy dare to embrace the future in the same way a dedicated group of people did 122 plus years ago when they saw HUGE and hopefilled potential here in Eugenia, and gathered their sparkly rocks and build themselves and US a beautiful little church to call home … let us this gift to build and grow the Church for our community and our world … let us begin with dreams and prayer and the knowledge that God is with us now and always … thanks be to God - Let us pray …