Sermon for World Food Day - October 14th 2012

One of the commentaries for this week’s readings notes the following:

Job’s three friends believe the wicked receive just retribution. Job must be wicked in God’s eyes to have such calamities befall him. The doubts they raise about Job are within the orthodox Wisdom tradition of their faith. In the section immediately prior to today’s reading Eliphaz questions whether Job could possibly be innocent. He claims that Job “stripped the naked of their clothing” and “withheld bread from the hungry” (22:6,7). Even though Job didn’t commit these injustices, it is nevertheless an insidious criticism. To be powerful in a community where people are hungry or favoured in a land where people are stripped of their dignity is a way of ben­efiting from the injustice of the world.

Job maintains his innocence and, in today’s reading, calls upon God, who is silent and seemingly absent, to reason with him. Given a choice, Job would rather argue his integrity before an awe­some God than claim a wickedness for himself that would satisfy the religious conventions of his friends.

          Job would rather stand before an awesome God and argue for his integrity – ultimately, his innocence from the suffering he is enduring – than claim for himself a wickedness that would satisfy the religious conventions of his so-called friends.

          The lesson for us in this exchange, is the steadfastness by which Job lives his life, maintains his faith, and endures his struggles and suffering. He is being counselled to curse God and die by his wife, to accept his fate by his friends, and to simply go with the notion that he has done something to deserve all of the bad stuff happening to him. But Job won’t do that.

Job can’t do that. Jon is ultimately, to faithful to do that …

When we couple this ancient Old Testament reading with our Gospel reading, we are left to reflect on our choices in life and in faith, and how they play out in our day to day existence … the heart of the question “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” echoes through Job’s life experience and struggles, and the conversation Jesus finds himself involved with and it continues to resonate outwards into our modern lives and world … what must we do to inherit eternal life?

How must we live today, to ensure that we benefit and partake in the promises of life eternal.

For some, the answer is a simple straightford check list that must be adhered to … for some it’s about doing the right thing and saying the right words at the right time … for others it is an immensely complicated and at times confusing process … while for others it is about Grace.

Grace – the gift of transformation and forgiveness offered with unlimited and boundless love at the hands of God without condition, restriction or anything else.

Grace – the very heart of what we are as a Church. The gift of God that affirms our place in God’s love, and affirms our worth and value as people AND that assures and ensures we are a forgiven and transformed people.

Trusting in God, and trusting in this gift of Grace is about more than just following the religious dictates and conventions. Llike Job, we need to value the gift of Grace – real grace not some vague imitation of grace.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer offers the most succinct and straightforward definition of real grace in the opening paragraphs of his classic volume “The Cost of Discipleship” when he observes:

Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of our Church. Our struggle today is for costly grace.

Cheap grace means grace as bargain-basement goods, cut-rate forgiveness, cut-rate comfort, cut-rate sacraments, grace as the church’s inexhaustible pantry, from which is doled out by careless hands without hesitation or limit. It is grace without a price, without costs. Is is said that the essence of Grace is that the bill for it is paid in advance for all time. Everything can be had for free, courtesy of that paid bill. The price paid is infinitely great, and therefore, the possibilities of taking advantage and wasting grace are also infitinetly great. What would grace be, if it were not cheap grace?

Cheap grace means grace as doctrine, as principle, as system. It means forgiveness of sins as a general truth; it means God’s love as merely a Christian idea of God. … Cheap grace is thus, the denial of God’s living word, denial of incarnation of the word of God. … Cheap grace is preaching forgiveness without repentance; it is baptism without the discipline of community; it is the Lord’s supper witout confession of sin; it is absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without the living incarnate Christ.

Costly Grace is the hidden treasure in the field, for the sake of which people go and sell with joy everything they have … it is the call of Jesus which causes a disciple to leave his nets and follow him.

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought agains and again … costly grace is the incarnation of God. … it is grace as living word, word of God, which God speaks as God pleases. It comes to us as a gracious call to follow Jesus; it comes as a forgiving word to the fearful spirit and the broken heart. Grace is costly because it forces people under the yoke of following Jesus, it is GRACE when Jesus says “my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”               (cost of discipleship – D. Bonhoeffer)

Costly grace is about living our faith, even in those moments like that faced by Job that feel like God is absent. Costly grace is about living our faith knowing that faith and grace and the incarnation of God is about more than just doctrine and theology and empty rhetoric – it is about trusting in God and our faith. It is about making decisions that reflect our role and place as disciples, and reveal rather than deny our values of faith.  

This willingness to face life with ALL of its ups AND downs, while daring to live our faith and celebrate the gift of costly grace reminds us that:

Jesus did not walk by the Sea of Galilee and shout to the fishermen, “Have faith!” Instead, he asked them to do something more: “Follow me.” When they followed, he gave them ore things to do.At fist, he demonstrated what he wanted them to do. Then he did it with them. Finally, he sent them out to do it themselves, telling them to proclaim God’s reign and cure the sick. When they returned from this first mission, they could not believe what had happened. They discovered that proclaiming the kingdom was not a matter of teaching doctrine, rather, the kingdom was a matter of imitating Jesus’ action. Jesus did not tell them to have faith. He pushed them into the world to PRACTICE faith. The disciples did not hope the world would change. They changed it. And in doing so, they themselves changed.

(Diana Butler-Bass pg 207-8 – Christianity after Religion)

The commentary I began with, ends its reflections for today with the observation:

… Jesus was asking him to give up his ability to keep the Law! Jesus has asked him to give up the one way to achieve salvation that he knows in favour of something entirely new. In order to achieve eternal life, Jesus is saying, he must relinquish his focus on achieving it. He must become a very different person.

When the man walked away griev­ing Jesus had no harsh words for him. Rather he understood that to give up what one knows for that which one has not yet experienced is a great risk.

On this World Food Sunday we are faced with choices far tougher than which product to pick off a shelf. Like Job, many of us are the privileged in a hungry world. Like the rich man, we are challenged by a call to discipleship more radical than we can imagine. What choices can each of us risk to further God’s reign?

Costly Grace means going into the world and making the active CHOICE to practice our faith – changing the world – and changing ourselves in the process.

And it ALL begins with the two simple words that echo across the millennia: Follow Me, and our choices will determine where it leads …

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

Sermon for Thanksgiving Sunday - October 7th 2012

We live in a curious time.

We have around us an amazing and truly unbelievable selection of food items, with quantities our forebearers would find unimaginable.

Our stores are stocked with a dizzying array of selections, our fridges, freezers and cupboards are seldome empty. Our society drips in wealth and power and stuff …

Yet, how often have we stood in front of our fridge and pondered its contents and uttered the words: “There’s nothing to eat …” (Hannah says it frequently … not because I’m neglectful and starving my children but because our selection in appropriate and nutritional snacks differs …)

That is the society we live in though … we are surrounded with an incredible quantity and selection of stuff – from food to gadgets and gizmos, and we still feel it is never quite enough …

Sadly, in our country today one of the fast growing sectors of business are the soup kitchen/food bank sector. The not-for-profit agencies that serve the most marginalized and most vulnerable among us.

We need only look at the continued and unrelenting growth in demand our own local food bank has been experiencing to see the frightening proof of that statistic.

In my twenty years of ministry I have been involved in the work and ministry of food banks and outreach ministries from Ontario to BC and back again. I’ve watched as smaller and smaller towns have had to set up their own food banks to meet the demands.

I was part of the decision to take a simple voluntary food cupboard in the office of the Minnedosa Church, and turn it into a Food Bank with a client list, and an organization that put together monthly hampers designed to meet the nutritional needs of a household for a week … it was a decision and process opposed by many within the Church and the community because they couldn’t believe it was needed …

It was needed … it was used … and it is growing …

To speak of my personal experience for a moment, I think I have had a unique opportunity in my life journey to have experienced the work and ministry of Food Banks from a variety of vantage points.

In 2000 when I arrived in Minnedosa my first experience of the regional food bank was dropping off the Thanksgiving donations of produce, canned goods and cash at Samaritan House in Brandon. I still vividly remember walking into their tiny cramped little space and bringing in boxes of stuff for them … I was shocked … but I was hooked.

Over the next ten years, the folks at Samaritan House became and remain friends, and my involvement with them expanded and diversified. Together they helped as we expanded the food programme in Minnedosa, they invited me to help when the CP Holiday Train made its annual trips across Canada and stopped in Brandon and Minnedosa, we organized a Tom Jackson lunch concert in the Elemetary School in Minnedosa and collected thousands of pounds of food for the Food Banks, and over and over we worked together to raise awareness and collect much needed food for an insatiable and ever growing demand.

Then when my employment as a United Church minister was terminated and I spent 13 months working under contract for the Feds as the Homelessness Coordinator for the City of Brandon, I got to see the other side of the table as we worked to secure funding for needed equipment and programming to serve the vulnerable in Brandon. I also took time in that position to visit the dozen or so shelterless individuals who lived in the alleys and under bridges around Brandon’s downtown – listening to their stories, hearing about their experiences and trying to understand why they were truly homeless …

Then when that contract ended, I experienced the Samaritan House Food Bank in a wholly different way … I became a client.

I stopped by when I was able and volunteered my time and my strength, and deeply appreciated the boxes and bags of food that I was able to take home to supplement our food stocks.

For a very long 18 months I worked a variety of part-time positions. I delivered a weekly newspaper – at 40 years of age I became a newspaper boy once again, I was paid to write a monthly column on poverty and homelessness, I worked part-time pulpit supply in a Presbyterian Church, I worked as a research assistant for the Office of the President at Brandon University, I worked as a research assistant for the Department of Rural Development helping prepare an academic magazine for publication, I worked as part-time relief cashier at a local bookstore, and as needed I drove the pick-up & deliver truck for Samaritan House gathering the food donated by stores and businesses and bringing it back to the food bank.

All of that work barely covered the cost of living for me and the kids, but it helped me appreciate the absolute necessity having bread programmes, hamper programmes and other food programmes truly are.

Without Samaritan House there would have been times when even having a loaf of bread would have been a challenge …  fortunately, Samaritan House was there to supply day old loaves and extras like bagels that would have otherwise been out of reach …

I learned by experience how quickly life can turn and how we can move from being a benefactor to a recipient …

I was fortunate, because I knew my set back was temporary, and that in time something would pull me out of it and I would find my way back to full time employment. But others – tens of thousands across our country today are not so lucky. With the loss of industries, factories and jobs, the number of people needing food banks and the assistance they offer is growing every week …

And yet, we are blessed and fortunate to live in a country that has so much wealth …

We need to re-orient our thinking … not to something new and startling, but back to something we’ve always known.

When I was a Beaver leader we taught our colony the simple idea of “Sharing, sharing, sharing” – we stressed the importance of working together and looking out for one another. We valued cooperation and compassion …

As a nation, it wasn’t that long ago that we collectively embodied the SAME values … we teach our children those ideas, we look back with nostalgic fondness on those ideas … we need to just take them down off the shelf, dust them off and reclaim them for ourselves.

And it starts by living our lives with an honest appreciation of how blessed and fortunate we truly are. Instead of opening the fridge and looking around and saying “there’s nothing to eat …” we need to open our fridge and look at it and say “wow, thanks …”

Then, the next step – one as people of faith, we can rightly claim – is to go out into the world and share that understanding of appreciation and gratitude with others.

When people complain about how high our taxes are, instead of agreeing and grumbling along, we should dare to smile and say – “Yeah, our taxes may seem high, but look at the amazing array of things we benefit from because of them … Hospitals, school, roads, communication, old age security, safe food, safe travel, the post office, cbc, the police, fire and paramedic services, ORNGE helicopters and planes … the list goes on and on …” We may think we have it bad, but really – we have it pretty good.

I remember having a beer once with a Cabinet Minister in Manitoba just prior to an election, and saying to him “Why don’t you run a campaign outlining ALL the things we get for our tax dollar, and instead of offering hollow promises of tax cuts, invite us to appreciate ALL of the benefits we enjoy BECAUSE of our taxes?”

He laughed and said – “you know, you have a point. But we’d never get re-elected because people don’t want to know where their tax dollars really go, they want to know the gov’t is willing to cut taxes if asked …”

I will not apologize for saying then, AND now, that such an approach is unfaithful. Cutting taxes means cutting programmes that hurt the most vulnerable and marginalized – the very people we are called to care for and care about. Being a people appreciative of life and all it offers us, means being willing to share the blessings and bounty with others …

That is the Thanksgiving Message we should be shouting from the roof tops as we strive to be a faithful, faith-filled and grateful people.

To love lives of faithful gratitude, appreciating what we have and remembering to share ... 

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

Sermon for September 30th 2012 - No Farewells!!

Over the last few days, a song by the group The Common Cup Company has been rolling through my mind.

The song, entitled “No Farewells” written by Ian Macdonald and Gordon Light (who also penned She Flies on, and some of the other hymns by this group in Voice United) begins:

No farewells – pain will end forever

Death will die, sorrows pass away.

And we shall rise to find a table

Where love and mercy feast,

With a voice around us sounding No Farewells.

No farewells – love last forever shining

Meaning like God’s heart beat never fades

For we shall rise to find a river

Where peace and justice flow,

Where a voice says, Come and drink to no farewells.

This song became imbued with meaning for me at their recent Concert at Christ Church in Meaford when in the middle of the concert my cell phone rang and I answered a call I knew couldn’t go to voice mail … I stepped outside and had my last real and substantive conversation with Jason T---.

Jason had been admitted to the hospital and was facing some serious health issues – issues that ultimately claimed his life this past week.

Jason and I talked and we ended the conversation without saying “Good Bye”. Instead, I offered hopefully the words – “I won’t say good bye, because whatever happens isn’t good bye …”

When I returned to the concert The Common Cup were singing the song – No Farewells:

We will slip into a sea of stars, in a galaxy of years,

Years that were and years to come

-      All hours gathered into one,

Nothing’s lost when all is done

-      No end to what’s begun.

No farewells – no letting go forever,

We rise to God, and so to one another,

For we shall rise to find a welcome

Where all that’s past is healed,

In God’s good hands, love offers no farewells.

In faith, there are no farewells – no good byes … we place our trust in something more … this concept is fundamental to who we are and what we are about in our faith journey, yet too often when confronted with pain, uncertainty, suffering and those incomprehensible moments when we feel like we’ve been punched in the gut, we’re left wringing our hands and wondering what to say or do …

That night in Meaford, I felt lead, held and inspired by the Spirit … the message of the words from The Common Cup Company – friend and colleagues in ministry – were a reminder that no moment of our lives is outside of the care and attention of our God … there are no farewells, for we shall rise to find a welcome in the hands of God …

This idea has been percolating in my brain the past week, and as the harsh and very non-sacred reality of our trouble financial picture as a Pastoral Charge and as Congregations, hit home, I couldn’t help but wonder what the Spirit is calling us to be and to do and to offer to the community around us … how do we take this idea of being Children of God, firmly in the hands of God, loved by God and live it?

Especially in a world that really doesn’t care …

Then I found a quotation from Walter Brueggemann that hit home what our ministry – our life and work together is about. Brueggemann writes: “None of our theological reasoning has a reliable resolution to the questions of theodicy and the force of unmerited pain. Such pain is dealt with only by embrace as body touches body in compassion.”

Our world is at times a dark and troubled place. There is so much pain and alienation and fear around us … by faith, we are called to confront and address those shadows by offering compassion – our care – our love – our ministry. Brueggemann summarizes the experience of our world nicely when he observes:

Our society has been for much too long, a community:

With ears that do not hear,

With eyes that do not see,

With hearts that do not comprehend

(see Isa 6:9-10; Mark 8:17-18)

And now,

Perhaps healing,

Perhaps to arrive at the mountain (with Moses).

Perhaps to chance the triad of God’s joy.

Perhaps to move through hope to reconstruction.

This is ALL an enormous “perhaps”. But we live in Hope.

We are called to be a hopeful and hopefilled people.

We are called to address and break the cycle of loss and grief by proclaiming that hope, and offering the reconstruction and transformation that a faith filled JOY can not only proclaim, but provide.

Body to body compassion means real help – real care – real presence in the darkness, and not just simple cheque book charity, or uninvolved third person care and prayer … body to body compassion means rolling up our sleeves and doing what needs to be done.

And I offer this, not as a critique of what we haven’t done. But as a pause to reflect on what we HAVE done, and continue to do as faith communities.

In a myriad of quiet humble gestures and actions, this community has lived its faith and offered that body to body compassion that embraces the cycle of loss and grief, and LIVES the message of HOPE and brings into being the transformative JOY we speak of … in the face of fear, we strive to offer care, presence, and community.

For Brueggemann, this is the heart of our calling to live faithful lives as disciples. He notes that God offers what Brueggemann dubs the “Triade of God’s Joy”  to confront and address harsh reality of our world, and the alienation and loneliness many experience.

This triade arises from the Biblical call to live hesed, mispat, and sedaqah as we journey through life.

Hesed – steadfast love that sees us standing in solidarity with those on the margins, those beaten down by life, those forgotten and alone.

Mispat, the concept of justice that offers real and tangible concern for the widows and the orphans in our world – concern for those who are pushed to the sides and forgotten, and who yearn for acts of care and compassion.

And then there is sedaqah – the gift of righteousness that sees us taking our love, our justice and with faith actively involving ourselves in the solutions to problems; actively intervening in society on behalf of those who may have no other voice; helping in real and tangible ways.

If we pause to look around and honestly examine what we are about and what we do in faith, we can see this triade of hesed, mizpat, and sedaqah active among us … there is ALWAYS room for improvement – but for the moment, we can pause and KNOW we’re on the right track.

Our involvement in the food bank, our commitment to the Mission and Service Fund, our prayer chain, the annual mitten tree, the prayer shawls from the knitting group, the men’s coffee, the outreach through the farmers’ market, our cards – phone calls and messages to friends and neighbours in distress, and the myriad of other gestures we do together and individually, are signs that we strive to embrace the pain of our world in a real and tangible way by SHARING our faith, whether we’re even aware of it or not by living out God’s call to hesed, mizpah and sedaqah … love, justice and righteousness!!

God has heard the cries of those bruised and battered and hurting in our world … and God’s answer rests in our hands … it begins with prayer and continues as we rise from our knees and go into the world carrying with us the mantle of love, justice and righteousness which we share with everyone we meet …

We are a people who embody and live Hope and Joy and who dare to offer “no farewells”

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