Sermon for June 19th 2016 entitled: ENOUGH !!!!!

 Sermon for June 19th 2016 - ENOUGH !!!!!

This past week as I wrestled with the horrific events in Orlando and struggled to make sense of them by pausing to pray, reflect and meditate in a place of silence before the presence of The Holy, akin to that described in our reading from the Hebrew Scriptures describing Elijah encountering God’s presence in the sheer silence … I found myself recalling a poem by Ann Weems I have and will continue to use frequently … As I struggled, not so much to make sense out of the events of Orlando, but to find a faithful and faith-filled response to the tragic deaths of young men and women who were targeted simply because of their sexuality, I was drawn to these words:

FEED MY SHEEP – Ann Weems

Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.”

There were no conditions:
Least of all, Feed my sheep if they deserve it.
Feed my sheep if you feel like it.
Feed my sheep if you have any leftovers.
Feed my sheep if the mood strikes you.

if the economy’s OK . . .
if you’re not too busy . . .

No conditions . . just, “Feed my sheep.”

Could it be that God’s Kingdom will come when each lamb is fed?

We who have agreed to keep covenant are called to feed the sheep

even when it means the grazing will be done on our own front lawns.

Three simple words – “feed my sheep”

Three words that call us to action – that challenge us to live our faith.

But as we’ve witnessed over the last week since the shootings in Orlando, it is not unfortunately how the world tends to see us … it is not how the Church is viewed, nor how we may even see the Church ourselves. All too often the church expresses its faith in less than faithful ways … Last night, I was deeply disturbed to find a video clip of a pastor from a church in Orlando calling on his flock to NOT pray for the families of the victims of the shooting, but he expressed thanks that the shooting happened and with his congregational support said that it was too bad more weren’t shot, AND that it was the will of God that they were shot and that God wants ALL gay and lesbian people dead … too often – THAT hate-mongering is the voice of the Church …

Add to that that this past week, our televised comedians offered reflections that we by far more faithful than many offered by voices within the Church.

Thankfully though, some churches spoke up and spoke out in voices trembling with deep heartfelt grief, including The Rt Rev Jordan Cantwell offered the words: “If there is a word of hope to be uttered in the face of such tragedy, this is it: When we stand together in defiance of hatred, we are stronger and we are safer. No act of violence can strip us of our humanity – particularly when we respond to homophobia, transphobia and Islamophobia with love.”

I’ve watched as colleagues across this United Church of ours have wrestled with the pain and grief the shooting has stirred … from lighting candles, to draping the communion table in rainbows – they have spoken words of love and compassion and inclusion in the face of unspeakable hate … and they are not alone in speaking out …  

One comedian – Trae Croder, the Liberal RedNeck offered a challenge to the Church writ large that we should take seriously as we wrestle with the phobias that run rampant in our society AND OUR COMMUNITY. In a video posted online Croder , with some pretty raw language observes that the heinous hate crime that happened in Orlando is what happens when zealous hate mascarading as faith is allowed to go unchecked. He challenges ALL OF US to take this seriously – to take the things we believe that stigmatize and marginalize Gays, Lesbians, Transgendered and bi-sexual people – “the archaic lunacy” as he describes it – that involves owning slaves, subjecating women and other things that have no place in civilized society and chuck it on the ideological scrap heap once and for all …

It’s a vivid and accurate reminder that we MUST decide whether we take our faith seriously, and how that gets expressed … today, perhaps like never before we are being challenged to chose love or hate as we live out our faith … we’re really good collectively at saying “jesus said …” and offering things he never actually said, when we should be taking seriously the things he ACTUALLY said.

For example – let’s play for a moment … Jesus said we are to love our neighbours and he ALSO said “let he without sin cast the first stone …”

Let the one without sin cast the first stone … hmmm … shall we do a review of what constitutes sin in the Jewish faith that he was speaking within?

 Well … let’s consider these things that were sins … you have a rock in your hand, and you can throw it IF YOU ARE WITHOUT SIN … you have sinned if you have done any of the following:

Left the town boundary on a Sunday

Taken God’s name in vain

Disrespected or cursed your parents

Really really wished you had something your neighbour has

Withheld food, clothing or sex from your spouse

(Remember: these are from the 613 prohibitions in the Jewish Torah)

Let money to someone poorer than you rather than just giving it

Charged any kind of interest on a loan to ANYONE

Cursed, ridiculed or called down the Prime Minister or Premier or ANY world leader

Failed to rest on the Sabbath

Have you ever eaten a cheeseburger? Pizza with meat AND cheese?

Bacon? Pork? Ham? Shrimp? Lobster? Oysters? Crab? Mussels? Octopus or Squid?

Sorry, ALL of those are sinful and forbidden food …

Have you ever gossiped?

Borne a grudge?

Shaved your beard?

Gotten a tattoo?

Done anything that has ridiculed or embarrassed another?

Do you tithe? Apparently to NOT tithe everything is a sin … funny how we skip that one quite A LOT … and quickly …

Ever visit a medium or play with a ouji board? It’s a sin to attempt to contact or communicate with the dead …

Do you wear mixed cloth? Polyester blends (which may be a sin for other reasons …) or cotton blends? Or wool blends? We are to wear ONLY natural fibres without blending linen or cotton or wool … so no nylon, polyester, or any other synthetic fibres …

Oh and I discovered reviewing the 613 torah prohibitions that carp is edible, and okay, but most seafoods like scallops and sushi are ‘not so much …”

The list goes on and on and on … it covers all manner of sexual behaviour like sleeping with a woman’s son’s daughter … a widow’s daughter and so on … it has a single almost passing mention of men lying with men … and quite a lot to say about behaviours and actions in and around worship and service before God … one reference to men lying down with men, and DOZENS about how we are treat the poor and marginalized, how we are to conduct ourselves at worship, and what we should do about property and wealth …

Yet, we cherry pick about three or four prohibitions and completely and utterly ignore the other 610 …

We also over look that the Bible is okay with some other stuff that we’re not – things like slavery, capital punishment, corporeal punishment, treating women as property, denying women, children, minorities, refugees and homeless people of their rights and a number of other things we no longer see as civilized or humane …

AND THAT’S THE POINT

Perspectives change and faith is a dynamic thing based on certain unalienable truths, the most essential and central being the three words Jesus spoke: love thy neighbour – that’s it. No conditions, no terms and limiting definitions, just love thy neighbour …

It’s kind of like the poem I began with – feed my sheep – love thy neighbour … just do it – no conditions!!

Instead of focusing on the nuance of the 613 sins and trying to find a way to avoid or even get around them, we are to focus forward on how we live the IMPORTANT teachings instead.

Instead of focusing on the sins, we are to focus on Grace and how that love is poured forth in abundance.

This past week, I was reading a book on the theology of the Social Gospel and realized that the heart of the theology undergirding the Social Gospel is a call to simplify our faith into action …

If we meet someone who is cold, we comfort them and bring them care, compassion and warmth.

If we meet someone who is hungry, we feed them.

If we meet someone who is wounded, we don’t wonder how it happened, and what we can do to prevent it happen to others, we tend their wounds and comfort them …

If we meet someone who is a victim of unspeakable violence, we don’t start pointing figures and clouding the issue by politicizing and distracting everyone from the real issue. Instead we tend to their wounds and care for them and stand up against the violence they have endured …

The social gospel calls us to act …

The book itself points out that Theologians and preachers have a tendency to make complex issues of faith, Instead of focusing on the practical, they pontificate grandly … while the solution is actually quite simple.

As I read the book on the social gospel, I thought of a passage in the Barbara Kingsolver book The Poisonwood Bible, where the missionary in Africa is approached by the tribal chieftain of the village where he is sharing his ministry.

The chief tells the missionary he needs to stop doing baptisms of the people.

The missionary puffs himself up in righteous indignation and says “that’s impossible! This is about the salvation of the people … they were born in sin and need to be redeemed by the blood of Christ and brought into the family by the act of Baptism …” he goes on and on and offers a theological rationale for continuing the baptism …

The chief says “no no, it has nothing to do with any of that … there are crocodiles in the river and they eat people … stop doing baptisms there”

The horrors of the events at Disney World not withstanding this past week, That’s the point within the church … too often we overlook the practical and focus on the superfluous … Today the world is saying to people of faith who exclude, fear and even hate LGBT people that they need to stop focusing on the superfluous and instead focus on the practical … Jesus said Love thy neighbour … no conditions … no frivolous terms  

In the face of the unspeakable violence that unfolded at Orlando and that is perpetuated EVERYTIME someone speaks words of hate couched in religious faith, we are called to say ENOUGH …

Enough of the exclusion and bigotry

Enough of the hypocritical judgement

Enough of the misreading of scripture to put asterixes on the call to love thy neighbour

Enough of allowing ignorance, fear and hatred towards gays, lesbians, transgendered, minorities, refugees, first people, disabled, or any one who doesn’t fit the norm …

ENOUGH of hiding our faith and letting the bullies and ignorant hicks speak out painting us with a horrendous and hatefilled brush …

It’s time to step up and LIVE WHAT JESUS really said. It’s times to choose actively to express our FAITH in love … Love NOT hate hidden in religious niceties …

What did Jesus say … as a Jesus scholar what we can with certainty say he likely really said is a very short paragraph … we did say “love your neighbour” … he did say “let he with no sin cast the first stone” … he did say “your sins are forgiven” … he did say “your faith has made you whole” … and he likely did say “Feed my sheep.”

I don’t know about you … but that is enough for me to get busy living out my faith in the world … in the quiet reflection that comes when we grapple with suffering and grief, we have an opportunity like Elijah, to listen to the whisper of the still small voice and respond differently …

Love thy Neighbour …

Let’s go and show the world what love really means.

Thanks be to God … Let us pray …

It begins with a single breath ... - Sermon for October 18th 2015

Jean Vanier writes:

          I once visited a psychiatric hospital that was a kind of warehouse of human misery. Hundreds of children with severe disabilities were lying, neglected, on their cots. There was deadly silence. Not one of them was crying. When they realize that nobody cares, that nobody will answer them, children no longer cry. It takes too much energy. We cry only when there is hope someone will hear us.

          Such loneliness is born of the most complete and utter depression from the bottom of the deepest pit the human soul can find itself. The loneliness that engenders depression manifests itself as chaos. There is confusion, and coming out of the confusion is a desire for self-destruction, for death. So, loneliness can become agony, a scream pain. There is no light, no consolation, no touch of peace, and of the joy life brings. Such loneliness reveals the true meaning of chaos.

          Life no longer flows in recognizable patterns. For the person engulfed in this form of loneliness there is only emptiness, anguish, and inner agitation; there is no yearnings, no desires to be fulfilled, no desire to live. Such a person feels completely cut off from everyone and everything. It is a life turned in upon itself. All order is gone and those in this chaos are unable to relate or listen to others. Their lives seem to have no meaning. They live in complete confusion, closed upon themselves.

          Loneliness becomes such uncontrolled anguish that one can slip easily into the chaos of madness …  (Vanier – Becoming Human – pg 9)

          In the face of suffering, what are we to do?

          What are we to do? What can I do?

Ultimately it is about carrying our faith into the world and living what we believe IN THE VERY FACE of that age old struggle.

          That struggle is the heart of the Book of Job.

          The book of Job is not so much the story of one person but rather the cry of confused outrage from the heart of a people in exile. Job represents that faithful remnant of the people of Israel who had tried to serve God faithfully and yet found themselves defeated and overrun by their enemies. It is an attempt to understand how a truly great person could become so forlorn and destitute.

          Job’s friends assure him that the calamities which have befallen him must be the consequence of some terrible personal sin or fault. Job knows this is not true and when he refuses to accept the guilt they try to lay upon him, they accuse him of the sin of pride.  In today’s passage, for the first time in the book, we hear God speak. After listening endlessly to Job and his “friends” argue, God’s voice speaks out of a whirlwind. Here we encounter a God that cares for and serves the needs of all creatures – not only humans.

          Job’s problem is placed into the context of the whole created cosmos. The questions that caused him to feel unjustly treated fade in the light of this cosmic vision. We begin to perceive that the answer to Job’s demand for understanding requires a major shift in his perspective. Part of Job’s problem, it seems, may lie in his human-centered world view which causes him to ask all the wrong questions and to seek wholeness where it cannot be found.

          He is drawn out of his self-centeredness into an awareness of the wholeness and relatedness of all God’s creation and somehow, the longing of his soul is satisfied. Healing and relief come to him – not from any rational understanding of his suffering – but from a profound sense of awe before the mystery of God. We are led to wonder how many of our own complaints about life might disappear if our own lives were more filled with awe and wonder.

          What if … what if has become a favourite question of mine lately – what if we lived lives more filled with awe and wonder?

          What if – we were able to have moments like Job, where we are totally overwhelmed by awe and wonder and find ourselves standing in a place of incredible holiness – overwhelmed and completely immersed in the very presence of God especially in the face of sorrow and suffering such as named by Vanier in the opening text?

          In the Hindu tradition, the holy text of the Bagava Gita bears striking similarities to the book of Job. The king Arjuna is leading his troops into a great battle when suddenly in the midst of the raging maelstrom, Arjuna realizes his chariot driver is the god Krishna … like Job suddenly Arjuna finds himself in the presence of the Holy and is facing a barrage that says essentially – how dare you question me … were you there when I created the world? Were you there when I did all of these things … who are YOU to question me …

          Yet in the dialogue there is a powerful conversation about the very nature of creation and the role that suffering, struggle and the things we frame as negative play in the overall play of the universe. It about finding our balance in the cosmos and within ourselves and being able to see the big picture …

          The big picture at play today in our society is one that clearly shows the importance and vitality of balance.

          On one hand, we have a culture that is awash in greed, insecurity, selfishness, fear and anger – commentators describe this as alienation – alienation from self, from others, from the culture itself. Our solution is to build bigger walls, install bigger locks, and seek security and safety by hiding ourselves away and becoming more and more insular and isolated.

          But on the other hand are values of creativity, vitality, compassion, care, and love. Commentators – often with a deep sense of human spirituality, speak of the freedom that comes from those values – freedom that seeks the good of others, while opening ourselves up to the possibilities and potentials that are all around us – freedom that allows us to rise above the petty problems and be more …

          In recent weeks, we’ve seen this imbalance play itself out in the election here in Canada and in the build up to the election in the US.

          The fear-mongering and the focus on the economy and non-issues like immigrant, refugees, the niqab and old stock Canadians are about fear are not reflective of freedom, but are reflective of alienation … we fear the Muslim … we fear our neighbour … we are to be more concerned about our personal taxes rather than the simple FACT that secure good paying jobs are draining away at a frightening rate … our political leaders want to focus on ourselves rather than on the common good …

          Worry about your pocket book NOT your neighbour is the theme we are told to embrace, or sometimes, as in the case of one candidate we may be familiar with – it is openly a case of bigotry by calling on the immigrants bringing a rich and deep tradition with them, to go home where they came from – forgetting that ALL of us came from somewhere else and brought their culture with them … I’m the first generation of my family – a family who have been here since the summer of 1847, who does not speak German … I guess we, despite a history of service and sacrifice to our country are not Old Stock Canadians …

          That’s the insidiousness of fear and alienation … that is what we are to be fighting against as people of faith … we are to be about freedom … addressing the sorrow and alienation people experience DIFFERENTLY.

          Vanier writes:

A sense of loneliness can be covered up by the things we do as we seek recognition and success. This is surely what I did as a young adult. It is what we all do. We all have this drive to do things that will be seen by others as valuable, things that make us feel good about ourselves and give us a sense of being alive. We only become aware of loneliness at times when we cannot perform or when imagination seems fail us. Loneliness can appear as a faint dis-ease, an inner dissatisfaction, a restlessness of the heart. (Becoming Human - PAGE 7)

          This dis-ease of alienation and loneliness is rampant. It is all around us, and some of us may even suffer from it ourselves …

          This past week I finally admitted to myself that I have been struggling with that issue of alienation and loneliness in my journey … I’ve said for years “I’m fine …” but this week I realized I was far from fine … I was in truth NOT fine!

          My life has been out of balance and disconnected. I felt anger and resentment far more than I felt joy and lightness.

          I stopped being hopeful about things, but had grown angry and frustrated – I was not fine … and I have not been fine for several years despite my best effort to fake it …

          That hunger within lead me to the core writers of Thich Nhat Hanh, Jean Vanier, Eckert Tolle and others who helped me reopen a door within that I had long ago forgotten and overlooked … it was ultimately a door of awareness and mindfulness.

          A door that is about the awe and wonder we began with.

          Earlier this week I stumbled across a reading in the writings of Eckert Tolle that gave me an “Oh sh-t …” moment – Tolle writes:

... people with strong pain-bodies often reach a point where they feel their life is becoming unbearable, where they can't take any more pain, any more drama. One person expressed this by saying plainly and simply that she was "fed up with being unhappy." ... they know that neither their unhappy story nor the emotion they feel is who they are ..."

          As I read that I gasped in recognition that it described me …

         

          For Tolle, the pain body is the remnants of negative emotions we’ve experienced  - it is a gathering of energy and emotion that we carry as part of our experiences. It is the gathering of all of our past experiences and it colours and affects our present – Tolle describes the pain body as something that sits dormant like a black cloud within us waiting to unleash its stormy contents …

          Each of us carry it whether we acknowledge it or not, and when we are out of balance the suffering, loneliness anger and resentment all rush to the surface and overwhelm us and drag us into a dark place where everything is seen in a negative light …

          BUT WHAT IF ?

What if we countered the pain body and the negative and the dark cloud cloud with child-like awe and wonder?

          What if we were to be more child-like in our lives and embrace awe and wonder while letting go of our alienation?

          How many complaints in life might simply disappear if we stopped feeding our fears and our angers and our negatives, and instead fully lives with the awe and wonder of a child?

          Years ago, I read that the holiest moment in ALL of creation is the wow of a child discovering something new for the very first time – what if we lived our lives in that holy wow – encountering God and the holy in EVERY MOMENT?

          Tolle observes that we are constantly trying to find our way home, but we never feel like we are home when we are awash in the feelings of alientation – what if the remedy to alienation was and is as simple as finding the home that lies within us – and has been there all along …

          Our Psalm reading this morning beholds the marvels of creation and praises God for all that God has done – What if – pausing to consider creation is one of the ways home?

          What if living aware and mindful of what is around us, and our place within it is a means of finding our way home?

          This past week I put and app on my phone that rings a Buddhist mindfulness/meditation bell at random intervals – the intent is to pause and breath mindfully using the exercise from Thich Naht Hanh I shared last week. When the bell rings I pause and breath and say:

          Breathing in, I calm my body

                Breathing out, I smile

Dwelling in the present moment,

          I know this is a wonderful moment!

          In the midst of a busy hectic day the bell chimes and I pause – close my eyes breath and become very conscious and aware of the moment … aware of my breathing and the stress ebbs …

          It can be that simple … pausing to be mindful and aware of the moment. Aware of our breath – aware of our inner turmoil or peace … and as we become aware of what’s inside we are better able to face what’s outside … and with peace and mindfulness we become aware of the holy that surrounds us … and life fills with awe and wonder …

          Imagine a world awash not in fear and alienation, but awash in love and awareness … it starts within by embracing the holiness that is around us … and it can start with one breath …

          May it be so …