Darrow Woods: Writer of Things

We are not alone,
we live in God’s world.
We believe in God:
who has created and is creating,
who has come in Jesus,
the Word made flesh
to reconcile and make new,
who works in us and others
by the Spirit.
We trust in God.

(from the New Creed of the United Church of Canada)

“Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.  For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.” (1 Corinthians 1:22-25)

In the first centuries following the earthly life of Jesus, gatherings were held to discern which documents Christians would cherish as scripture, to define the nature of the Trinity, and to affirm the divinity of Christ. Creeds were formulated. Doctrine was debated and heresies refuted. It is interesting to note that no conference was held by the early church to make an official pronouncement on the meaning of the Crucifixion.

Over the last two thousand years there has been a range of answers to the question, “How are we saved by Jesus’ death on the cross?”

As a person of faith, and as a preacher, I struggle with hymns, and anthems, and prayers and faith statements, that tend to reflect one particular approach to answering the question. It has been my observation that some interpretations of Jesus’ death on the cross are actually a stumbling block.

During the Good Friday service this year, we looked at some quick snapshots of some perhaps lesser known theologies of the cross.

The Ransom Theory

Before the American Civil War, a physician in the South, in his effort to explain the behaviour of African American slaves claimed many his subjects suffered from mental illness. He said two disorders were prevalent. An uncontrollable urge to escape, and willful destruction of property, disobedience, and refusal to work. His way of seeing the world, and people, was shaped and clouded by his culture.

To borrow an image from a Good Friday hymn, we survey the cross from a distance, something like a surveyor takes a sighting. In order to get an accurate measure, the surveyor needs to know where they stand.

Depending where we stand, we may have different perspective on the crucifixion, and its significance. The various ways of thinking about the crucifixion reflect the culture and spirit of the age in which they emerged, and build on assumptions that may seem strange to us.

The earliest idea was the “Ransom Theory”. It said Jesus offered himself as a ransom, to secure our freedom. The human condition was viewed as one of enslavement to Satan because of the “Fall” of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

It was not always clear to whom this ransom was paid. Many early church fathers said the ransom was paid to Satan. This understanding assumes that Satan is not a mythological figure, but an actual being that cannot be overcome by God, and has to be bought off.

The Commercial Theory, and the Penal Substitution Theory

In the ancient Middle East social and business relationships were based largely on reputation. Honour had a value like a commodity that could be traded. A development beyond the ransom theory was the idea that God rewarded Jesus for his sacrifice, and the reward was passed on to humanity. The reward gained by Jesus can be applied against humanity’s debt, for our sinful condition.

Over a thousand years after the earthly life of Jesus, an eleventh century theologian from England named Anselm of Canterbury picked up on this approach. Anselm lived in the midst of a medieval, feudal society. If a servant stole from the lord of the manor, the crime was not only larceny, but an offense against the honour of the lord, and the feudal system as a whole, that demanded to be set right. A debt must be paid, to preserve the honour and integrity of the feudal lord.

Anselm saw the relationship of human beings to God in feudal terms. The offense of human sinfulness, as expressed in the concept of original sin, was so great, humans really ought to pay a great price. Jesus death on the cross, the shedding of his blood, was understood as a substitute sacrifice, to satisfy the honour of God.

The Moral Example Theory

Another way to look at the death of Jesus on the cross is that it saves by offering a powerful showing of God’s love, by which we are inwardly stirred to respond with gratitude and service. Jesus’ death demonstrated the depth of God’s love, by the extent God is willing to enter into our reality.

In this view, Jesus’ death is seen as an heroic, inspiring act, rather than a required part of a business transaction. Modern proponents of this theory see Jesus as the example for us of self-giving love, and what the world might see as foolish vulnerability, is described as holy living. Jesus set aside concern for his own well-being to live and die in service to his people, and calls us to do the same.

Closely related to this theory is martyrdom, the idea that some things are worth dying for. Often references to contemporary figures such as Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., are made.

The Governmental Theory

This theory suggests Jesus death was required as retribution, to show that sin is displeasing to God. In order to sustain the moral government of the world, God found it necessary to demonstrate holy wrath against sin. Jesus’ death is accepted by God as sufficient, only because God is merciful, and does not require exact justice.

This view, as well as the substitution theory mentioned earlier, depend on the idea of “Original Sin”. This is a shorthand way of saying that because Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden chose to disobey God, every human is tainted or marked by their sin of disobedience.

Setting aside the question of whether the Genesis story Adam and Eve in the Garden should be read as factual, or as a truth-bearing parable, there are many contemporary theologians who work from a completely different premise, they call “Original Blessing’. Everything that God makes, including each person, comes into life with a blessing rather than a curse.

A Note on the word “Atonement”

The Penal Substitution Theory mentioned earlier is usually called the Theory of Penal Substitutionary Atonement, and it is central to the teaching of many of the churches we think of as evangelical or fundamentalist. The thrust of this teaching is that God required Jesus’ death on the cross, to atone for the sins of all of us, the idea we heard earlier, called “Original Sin”. What may be overlooked in discussions of this theory is the word “atonement” was not originally found in the Bible.

Like many words that found their way into common language, by way of translations or paraphrases of scripture into English, the word “atonement” was invented, or “coined” by the translator William Tyndale. He originally meant for it to be two words at, and onement. He was trying to find a way to convey a number of concepts, including reconciliation, forgiveness, and one from the Hebrew scriptural account of the Jewish Fast of Yom Kippur. The Hebrew word is “Kaper” which means to cover, or remove, or cleanse. In the Yom Kippur ceremony, blood was sprinkled on the lid of the Ark of the Covenant, which was also called the Mercy Seat.

Christus Victor, or the Dramatic Theory

In 1931, Swedish theologian Gustaf Aulen published “Christus Victor”, in which he laid out the history of major theories of atonement. He revisited the most ancient, the Ransom Theory, which he retooled and gave a new name. Instead of Jesus’ death being a price paid as a ransom, Aulen said the Crucifixion was part of the larger conflict between God and the powers which hold humanity in bondage: sin, death and the devil.

Aulen moved away from the idea that Jesus’ death satisfied a debt in a legal, contractual sense. He argued the crucifixion was part of a drama in which Jesus subversively condemned the powers of evil, and revealed their unjust ways, by submitting to death. The victory of Christ came not in the Crucifixion, but in the Resurrection, in which God vindicated Jesus, ultimately clearing him of any wrong-doing.

The Last Scapegoat Theory

Contemporary theologians are greatly influenced by a man who died recently, a French scholar named Rene Girard. Girard observed that human societies advance as members learn to copy each other’s successes. The capacity to copy also causes us to want the same things as others, which leads to tension between individuals and groups.

For a society to thrive, and not be torn apart by rivalry, it occasionally needs to release the tension. Killing one person, or one small group, is a small price to pay compared to anarchy, or a bloody revolution. The society chooses a scapegoat, a minority or a villain to blame for its problems. The sacrifice of the scapegoat relieves the built up tension, and calm is restored, which seems to prove the occasional blood sacrifice is a necessary, perhaps even a divinely inspired thing.

Girard theorized that by his death on the cross Jesus did two things. He exposed the lie of scape-goating , because he was innocent of any wrong-doing that might have made his execution legitimate. He also became the ultimate scapegoat, and eliminated the need to ever turn again to this violent practice.

The Solidarity Theory

A German theologian named Jurgen Moltmann, whose thinking and faith was profoundly influenced by his experience of the second world war, wrote a ground-breaking book called The Crucified God. His view was that in Jesus of Nazareth, God entered fully into what it means to be human- including all the pain, confusion, mortality, and times of feeling totally cut off from hope, and even cut off from God. Moltmann said that in Jesus, God entered into even the feeling of “Godforsakenness”, as an act of ultimate solidarity.

This allowed Moltmann to proclaim that God is with us, even in our feelings of being distant from God. That is a hint of hope, that points towards the greater hope- if God is with us in the human condition as represented in the crucifixion, we are with God as Jesus, human as we are, is raised to new life in the resurrection.

We are called to be the Church:
to celebrate God’s presence,
to live with respect in Creation,
to love and serve others,
to seek justice and resist evil,
to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen,
our judge and our hope.
In life, in death, in life beyond death,
God is with us.
We are not alone.

Thanks be to God.

(from the New Creed of the United Church of Canada)

The above is a rough survey of some “crucis theologia”- theologies of the cross. It is not exhaustive, and the theories are not mutually exclusive. Many Christians are draqwn to aspects of more than one approach. Nuances have been omitted, for the sake of brevity, and by the limits of this writer’s intellectual grasp of each theory.

Resources consulted included Wikipedia.com; The Heart of Christianity, by Marcus Borg; Saved from Sacrifice: A Theology of the Cross, by Mark S. Heim; and A Better Atonement, by Tony Jones. (Errors or misrepresentations of the theories are not a reflection on the usefuleness of these resources!)

Today is Reign of Christ Sunday, what we used to call Christ the King Sunday. It is the last Sunday on the church calendar. Next week is the first Sunday in the season of Advent, which anticipates the celebration of the birth of Jesus. So the church year is structured to begin with waiting for Jesus, and to end with Jesus as the one we follow. A way from earlier days to express this was to say that Jesus is our King, our Lord. We may not relate to that language, but it is still true we would do well to follow the ways of Jesus, in how we live.

But how do we do that? If Jesus were an earthly king, and we were his loyal subjects, and these were medieval times, following might be easier. We could just do what we are told, by decree, or by royal command. I wonder if we actually would follow orders, if that was the way it worked.

But Jesus is not that kind of king, and following the ways of Jesus, being a faithful person, is not that simple. We have free will, and we exercise that freedom every day with many smaller and bigger decisions, that add up to the general direction of our lives.

Wouldn’t it be great to know we were on track, that we were making good decisions?

I have taken extra training, beyond the basics needed to be a pastor, in order to serve as a spiritual director. Part of what I do with people who meet with me for spiritual direction is try to help them pay attention to how God is already at work in their lives. A wonderful side effect of this work is that it reminds me to do the same about my own life. When I do this, it always leaves me feeling more at peace, more trusting that the universe is a good place to live, more sure that there are reasons to have hope.

Sometimes people meet with me when they are sorting through a major decision in their lives. They often have a pretty good idea of what they should do, are seeking clarity, or confirmation. They are trying to discern that they are on the right path.

I have been doing further study on the spiritual practice of discernment, so I can get better at it in my own life, and so that I can help the people who meet with me for spiritual direction. It seems to me that in our life together as a congregation, it is important that we learn more about how to listen for God, as we discern the way forward.

I have been reading 2 books by a woman named Elizabeth Liebert, who is quite helpful on this subject. She wrote that:

“The Latin root of the verb “to discern” means to discriminate…. in the Christian spiritual tradition, discernment refers to the process of sifting out what is of God, discriminating between that which expresses God’s call and anything that runs counter to it.

 Whenever we seek to answer such questions as “How is God present here?” or “How can I know what God is calling me to do?” or “Is this just me, or is this really God?” or “Is God calling us to go forward with our plan?” we are engaging in discernment.

 Discernment… is the process of intentionally becoming aware of how God is present, active, and calling us as individuals and communities so that we can respond with increasingly greater faithfulness.”

Last Sunday we acted out the story of God calling to the little boy Samuel, who lived in the temple with Eli. The voice kept waking up Samuel, and Samuel kept waking up Eli, who finally said to him, if it is God calling you, say, “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.”

I believe that God is calling to us all the time, in soft and quiet voices we do not always even notice, in the busy rush of our lives. Many times a day we are offered the choice between a good path to follow, and a path that may not be right for us, and others.

Jesus, in the Gospel lesson we heard today, promised God would be present with us as a comforter, as a guide, to help us find our way.

One of my favourite shows, that used to be on CBC radio, was called the Dead Dog Comedy hour. It was set in a coffee shop on First Nations land in Alberta. The show had a slogan, a motto that the characters said at the end of every episode. Do you remember this?

“Keep Calm, Be Brave, Wait for the Signs.”

That’s pretty good advice, even if came from a comedy show.

 The author I have been reading, Elizabeth Liebert lays out a process for doing spiritual discernment. I am distilling her work down into something less than the 350 or so pages of her two books. I know that in doing this I lose much of the depth and nuance of what she teaches.

This process works best when a person is trying to decide between two options or choices. Each may have pluses or minuses to them, but each are possible, and each have good in them.

Seek spiritual freedom, the inner disposition upon which discernment rests and which creates the climate for discernment. “Indifference” which means knowing that whatever the outcome, we are still held in God’s love.

This spiritual freedom becomes not only a place of calm to begin from, but also a factor in any choice we finally discern, because it changes who we are- we are people who trust in God, and see the work of God in the world as one of the factors we include in our discerning.

If we can’t imagine any other world than we presently inhabit, we will not desire more. To move toward deeper desires, then, we must school our imagination, learn to imagine that which is not yet.

1. Discover and name the issue or choice you face. What is really at stake is not always self-evident. Carefully framing the issue not only helps to clarify the matter for discernment, but it also actually begins the process of sifting and discriminating that is at the heart of discernment. Framing the question into something you can actually work with is very freeing. A lot or parents of grade 12 high school students are having conversations lately about what their child is “going to do with the rest of their lives”. Putting it that way is crazy making. It may be helpful to narrow the question to something like, “further study, or a break from school”, or “college or university”.
2. Gather and evaluate appropriate data about the issue. Discernment is not magic. We have to do our homework.-gather information, talk to people who know things we don’t. Because we are trying to discern what might be possible in a world that includes the reality that God is at work, our sources of information are wider. We can learn from our memories of other times we have needed God’s help. We can pay attention to what our intuition may be telling us- when we make surprising connections, have interesting dreams, get a hunch or a feeling. We don’t need to leap on these, but can add them to the information we collect. We can pay attention to what our body says. If talking about a particular option makes us energized, or really tired, what does that mean. If talking about something leaves us feeling ill, what does that mean? If talking about something fills us with joy and excitement, what is our unconscious, and our body telling us?We can also gather input from our imagination, from our logic and reason, from our religious traditions and stories.
3. Reflect and pray. Actually we have been praying from the outset. We pray for spiritual freedom. We select and frame the issue for discernment in prayer. We prayerfully select and consider the relevant data. But as we begin the process of discrimination in a more focused way, it is important to renew our attention to prayer.
4. Formulate a tentative decision. Many different methods can help us come to a decision, and therefore aid our discernment.
5. Seek confirmation. In this step, we bring the work we have done, including the decision that is emerging, back to prayer, asking God to confirm it. That is, we await the inner sense that we are on the right track. We look for the presence of indicators, the touchstones or norms that the tradition suggests are signs of the Holy Spirit’s work. We bring our tentative decision to the community of faith, checking our sense with others who know us well. In confirmation, we “discern the discernment.” We “test the leadings.”
6. Assess the process. Revise as needed. Still discernment does not end. We look back over and examine the entire process. Was there anywhere that we acted without spiritual freedom? Any place where peace deserted us? Any part filled with anxiety? We let some time pass and look to see what kind of fruit has appeared in our lives and the lives of others as a result.

But if something went awry, we can become alert to how that happened and therefore more attentive to preventing it in the future. Nothing need be lost.

It is also okay to discern further, and revise our conclusion, to adapt. God is with us in all of it. Amen

Day by Day

See thee more clearly,

Love thee more dearly,

Follow thee more nearly,

Day by day.

Check out this clip of a “flash mob” version of a medley from Godspell, that includes “Day by Day”

Godspell Flash Mob

At the heart of Christianity is the invitation to be in a relationship with God, who passionately loves each of us, cares what we do with each moment, each day of our lives, and who has hopes and dreams for us, and this world, that we can take part in.

How do we listen to God? How do we know we are making decisions that fit well with God’s hopes and dreams?

This is a good question for each of us as individuals. It is also a question for us collectively, as a congregation. I have been talking lately at meetings of the church council about spiritual discernment. The council, the people who work on a daily basis all year round to manage the church, its employees and its property, accept the responsibility to do that with an openness to serving God.

Our church is more than just a group of people that meets once a week to pray and sing together. We are here to serve God’s people. We are here to live out a mission.

It takes spiritual discernment to know what is required of us, and what decisions to make. There are major decisions coming up in the life of this congregation. In my own prayer life, and in my pondering about how best to serve God, in this place, with you, it has become clearer to me that I should teach more about how we can be like little Samuel, who learns to say, “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.”

We are cautious around the idea that God is speaking to us. While it does happen that people hear God speaking in actual words, most of us are careful, skeptical, curious about this possibility.

It does happen. People do hear words that are important for them to hear. God does speak.

Most often, for most people, this communication between God and us is a more subtle, nuanced experience.

We can all use practice in paying attention, so that when we say in our hearts, “Speak Lord, your servant is listening,” that we will actually be ready to listen.

This listening to God depends on a few things:

1. Conviction that God is real, and intimately interested and involved with us.
2. Openness to the possibility that we may hear something that changes us.
3. Spiritual freedom- a willingness to go with it, rooted in the sense that God is with us, and that this is all we really need.

For most people, paying closer attention to God at work in their lives leads to deeper trust, and gratitude. Seeing a little of God at work today, helps us believe God will be active in our lives tomorrow. Last month I shared this story about “Sleeping with Bread”.

During the bombing raids of World War II, thousands of children were orphaned and left to starve. The fortunate ones were rescued and placed in refugee camps where they received food and good care. But, many of these children who had lost so much could not sleep at night. They feared waking up to find themselves once again homeless and without food. Nothing seemed to reassure them. Finally, someone hit upon the idea of giving each child a piece of bread to hold at bedtime. Holding their bread, these children could finally sleep in peace. All through the night the bread reminded them, “Today I ate and I will eat again tomorrow.”

As the trust develops that God has been active in our life today, and will be tomorrow, we may begin to experience the sense of spiritual freedom, that we can follow God.

The kind of listening to God we can grow into may be about hearing words, but is not limited to that. We can learn to use all of our faculties to pay attention, to notice, and to see, hear, taste, feel, remember that God is present. We can grow in our awareness of how we are actually experiencing God all the time.

We are going to do a spiritual exercise together, called the Examen. It was developed by Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, also called the Jesuits. He is probably the 2^nd most famous Jesuit in the world today. The most famous being Pope Francis.

You don’t have to be a Pope, or a Jesuit, or even a Catholic, to benefit by this exercise.

Practiced on a regular basis, it can help us grow in ways that are important to the work of discernment, of knowing what God would have us do, day by day.

Settle comfortably in your seats.

Breathe.

Follow the directions we will see on the screen, or in the booklet I have for each of you to take home.

Watch and pray along with the video.

the examen

One of my children came home from school not long ago, and told me their teacher said there was really no point to any of our recycling, or efforts to reduce our consumption of energy, to shrink our carbon footprint. His argument was the difference we can make as individuals is miniscule, especially when measured against the immensity of the problem. So we needn’t bother trying.

The teacher is of course entitled to their opinion. I also think it is sad and irresponsible of him to waste the opportunity he is given, as a teacher, to influence thinking, and behaviour. I also believe he is wrong.

Our gospel story today is a great one. The story of the widow’s mite. The woman of limited means, who gives as much, or more than she can really spare, is held up in contrast with the wealthy, who may give more in terms of the amount, but much less, if there donation is considered as a percentage of their net worth.

The woman gave all that she could. The others in the story gave much more in amount, but much less than they could afford.

The phrase, “my 2 cents worth” has its origins in this story. Often when a person would use that phrase, it is in the manner of false, or feigned humility, to disarm a person’s fears before you speak, as if to say, ”don’t worry about what I say, it won’t have much bearing or significance, it’s just my little 2 cents worth.”

But the story itself is not really about that. It does not put the woman down for giving so little. It honours that she gave of herself, and that she gave sacrificially, and took a risk in doing it. Her gift was valued over the others, because what she gave was precious to her.

It is a good gospel story to hear on this Sunday before November 11, a day when we are encouraged to remember the sacrifices, the risks, the willingness to give something precious, of many people who have served in times of conflict.

The story offers a reminder of the dignity and meaning of giving all that you can. The story also points to what intentions need to be behind the giving.

The kind of giving that we are honouring this week was likely done out of very human, complicated motives. We rarely, I notice, do things for just one clear and pure reason. The story offers a warning to examine our motives. The sacrifice does not have quite the same spiritual meaning or power if it is made out of pride, or the desire to self-promote, or to make another person look bad.

Why we do things, the real intent behind our actions deserves examination and reflection, first and second, and third thought, especially when a country is considering the decision to send people into harm’s way, to be involved in armed conflict.

If we enter a war out of pride, or greed, or in pursuit of revenge, these are less than noble reasons. We need to have really clear, and appropriate reasons to put lives at risk.

The widow only had a few coins, so each was precious. She had to think carefully about what to do with the rare and precious things.

The people who wield decision making power, and who exercise the authority to send people to war, are dealing with the precious commodity of human lives.

What fights are really worth entering? What is really worth risking lives over?

What is worth not just risking lives, but potentially taking the lives of people who find themselves on the other side of a conflict?

Religious thinkers have, for millennia, struggled in their thinking about how, and when it is a legitimate choice to engage in war.

In the Western World, much of the discussion of whether or not there can be a just war, is rooted in the thinking of Thomas Aquinas, a Roman Catholic philosopher and theologian who lived in Italy in the thirteenth century. He laid out three basic principles, which have been expanded upon, and added to over the centuries since. They are Proper Authority, Just Cause, and Right Intention.

Proper Authority Just war must be waged by a properly instituted authority such as the state.

This contains the implication that if a government decides to enter a war, but the people disagree, then the government is no longer legitimate, as it does not reflect the will of its people. As someone born in 1961, who grew into a thinking person during the American involvement in Viet Nam, a lot of my thinking about the legitimacy of war has been influenced by seeing a country tear itself apart on generational, class, and racial lines, over the justness of that war.

Just Cause War must occur for a good and just purpose rather than for self-gain or as an exercise of power, or to punish, or for revenge.

The proponents of going to war have to be clear about the “why”. The invasion of Iraq was based on the premise, later argued to be false, that the government of Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. That rationalization may have prevented actual dialogue and debate on other motivating factors.

Right Intention Peace must be a central motive even in the midst of violence.

Asking the Just War questions is an exercise of the freedom that has been defended by our military. It also is a necessary and important part of how we honour their sacrifices, to make sure that we do not ask that those sacrifices be made for anything less than just and honourable reasons.

The widow’s mite story reminds us that it is good and faithful to give sacrificially, when it is done for the right reasons.

As people of faith, we are called to be like the widow in the story, and give as we are able, not out of pride, but because we know it is the right thing to do. The widow in the story is held up as an example of the way we should live.

The widow in the story is the reason why I think the teacher who told their class that they should not bother doing the right things to respect the environment, has it all wrong. He sees each little effort as not enough, when compared to the greater problem.

But he misses the bigger picture, that we can see from our perspective as people of faith. We do what is right, because it is right to do. Not because we expect a result, or a pat on the back, but because living the right way matters for itself.

We make a difference in the world by offering our two cents worth. God is able to take your two cents, and yours, and yours, and yours, and mine, and something more comes of it. We become living examples to each other, of the kind of living, that is worth living. Amen

 

“What truly feeds us?”

A few years ago, I read a beautiful and very simple book called, Sleeping with Bread. It was written by Dennis and Sheila Linn and Dennis’ brother, Fr. Matthew Linn S.J. The title of the book came a following story they recount early in the book:

During the bombing raids of World War II, thousands of children were orphaned and left to starve. The fortunate ones were rescued and placed in refugee camps where they received food and good care. But, many of these children who had lost so much could not sleep at night. They feared waking up to find themselves once again homeless and without food. Nothing seemed to reassure them. Finally, someone hit upon the idea of giving each child a piece of bread to hold at bedtime. Holding their bread, these children could finally sleep in peace. All through the night the bread reminded them, “Today I ate and I will eat again tomorrow.”

 “Today I ate and I will eat again tomorrow.”

Please indulge me a moment, and say these words with me.

“Today I ate and I will eat again tomorrow.”

“Thanks be to God.”

I do give thanks, each day, that I can say these words. In the life I lead with my family, the only reason we might not have food in the house, is that we have neglected to stock the pantry, and I need to go shopping. This happens sometimes! But even in those times, it is never the case that there is no food in our house, perhaps just food we do not care to eat today.

In the house I grew up in, actually, in the series of houses I grew up in, it did, actually happen, on thankfully very few occasions, that there was nothing in the house to eat. My parents worked hard, and I do not remember a time when either of them were unemployed for any long period. But there were definitely times when they were under-employed, or when what they earned simply did not stretch far enough.

I don’t know how aware of this my younger siblings were, as we grew up. As the eldest, I have clear memories of looking through the cupboards while both my parents were out at work, searching for something to prepare, to feed my brother and sister for lunch.

This was not a daily occurrence, but it happened enough that I remember it. Enough to carve something in my soul, a wound that still opens sometimes when I am at the grocery store. I do a lot of the food shopping for my family, partly because it’s something I am good at, and partly because it brings me great joy to be able to provide for my loved ones.

I have noticed something the last few times I have taken one of our children with me to buy groceries, and the old wound has opened. The old feeling of pain, the old fear of not having food enough, these have largely been transformed into gratitude, because we do have enough. Sometimes I celebrate, and share the joy by telling which ever child is with me that they can choose anything they want in the store, anything to eat or drink, and I will buy it, with no questions asked, and no parental nutritional advice attached.

Sometimes I tell my kids how amazed and overwhelmed I am at being able to walk into a grocery store with the means to buy basically anything I might want. I do not, and cannot take this for granted. Not in a world in which 800 million people will go to bed hungry tonight.

“Today I ate and I will eat again tomorrow.”

The story about placing bread in the hands of traumatized children, so they could sleep through the night without fear stays with me.

That story gave the title to this book called “Sleeping with Bread”, which actually has very little to say about food. The book is about spiritual practices, that feed the soul, by helping a person pay attention to all that God has provided in their life.

God offers us so much. There is love, and beauty, and freedom, in our lives. There are opportunities to learn, and to heal, and to grow, and to be of service to others. There are opportunities to overcome fear, and to grieve well, and to mature. There are opportunities to pause, and breathe, and to look at the gift of our lives, and to do the wonderful spiritual work of giving from what we have, for the sake of the health and well-being of others. There are so many blessings.

It makes sense the book would begin with a story about bread, because when a person is physically hungry, and because of their life experience, are also truly despairing that any food is likely to come their way, it must be so hard to recognize the other blessings in life.

That little story can remind us that hunger is a spiritual issue. How would it change our openness to God, and to God’s blessings, if we lived like one of those hungry children, but there was no kind person to offer us the comfort of bread to hold?

When someone visits our home, if we truly want them to feel welcome, what do we do? We offer food or drink or both?

When we are beginning a new friendship, or starting a romance, what do we do? We invite the person to eat with us- we take them out for a bite to eat.

When Jesus wanted to encourage his friends to remember him, and to live with confidence in God’s continuing presence with them, what did he do? He broke bread and poured the cup of communion.

Food is such an essential part of being human, and being human with each other. We can use the gift of food to make the world a better place.

I want to show you a video about a place in Hamilton, called the 541 Eatery and Exchange. It has been developed and is being run by people connected to a church. They understand the spiritual power of food, and the importance of passing on blessings.

541 Eatery and Exchange

Here is a link to the actual restaurant:

the restaurant

 

 

 

 

Wouldn’t it be great, if at the end of our lives all we had left to say was “Thank You”?

That is not to suggest we would have lived lives free from challenge or difficulty or sadness, or pain.

Everyone faces hardships,

Everyone lives with disappointments,

Everyone goes through experiences that break our hearts,

Everyone has times that leave us soaked in tears.

There is a way to live, that wise people know about,

and which all major spiritual traditions, including ours, teach.

The way to live,

that has been proven to result in reaching the end of life with a thank you on our lips,

is the way of gratitude.

A wise teacher named Timothy Miller, in his book “How to Want What You Have” wrote:

“ Gratitude is the intention to count-your-blessings every day, every minute,

while avoiding, whenever possible,

the belief that you need or deserve different circumstances.”

It is easy to get out of the habit of gratitude, if I get caught up in the soul-killing habits of entitlement, greed, and envy. Another wise teacher, Edward Hays wrote:

“It is important not only to be grateful to others but also to be grateful for others. We need to cultivate a gratitude for others’ giftedness in the same way that we appreciate a beautiful sunset or a smile from a loved one. Others always seem to have been given gifts in life that we desire, and so it’s easy to be envious. Riding sidesaddle with envy is a dangerous practice: I would be happy if I had what he or she possesses. By contrast, giving thanks constantly and in all circumstances liberates us from envy.”
We are, each of us here, alive.

We have memories of times, and places, and people, for whom we are grateful.

We may also have feelings of grief and sadness, for the absence or the end,

or the loss of some of those times, places, and people.

We can feel grief, but that need not overpower or wash away our basic gratitude for all we have cherished.

Even when we are feeling sad, or lost, or afraid, or alone,

at least we are alive to feel these things.

At the heart of the present moment we are in, is the gift of being alive.

A gift that is made up of many more gifts.

The gift of memories. The gift of being here and now. The gift of sharing in the human experience of being alive.

Thomas Merton, another of my favourite spiritual teachers wrote: “To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything He has given us — and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him. Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder and to praise of the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.”

Earlier in the service I suggested 3 g’s we might use with our family and friends, to open up conversation during this Thanksgiving holiday weekend. I think they are worth coming back to:

Gratitude: name something in your life you deeply appreciate, and would not want to live without.

Make a quiet prayer of thanks for that gift.

Grief: name something, someone in your life that you remember with fondness,that is no longer physically with you.

Make a quiet prayer of thanks, for that gift, and for the experience of cherishing a person, or place, or something, so deeply.

Grace: name something in your life you have appreciated, and you are now willing to pass along for the good of others.

Make a prayer for thanks for being in a place in life in which you have gifts to offer to others.

Take another moment to think about how you might give this thing away.

There may be times when we don’t feel like feeling grateful. We may need to practice gratitude, even if we are not feeling it, to wake ourselves up again to the fullness of life, which includes the experience of gratitude.

These three simple g- questions may help us.

Returning to the practice of gratitude can re-awaken joy and help it stay alive in our hearts.

Joy is not the same as temporary happiness.

Joy is the capacity, I think, to see the goodness in life, to rest in the awareness that God is the source of that goodness, and to look for ways to pass the goodness along.

Wouldn’t it be great, if at the end of our lives all we had left to say was “Thank You”?

I was asked by the Five Oaks retreat centre to gather together some friends who like to create liturgy, and music, and prayers. The idea was to offer worship services for use in the United Church across Canada, for the season of Creation, that would also celebrate the beautiful place where Five Oaks sits. I spend a lot of time at the retreat centre, and know that it is a real gift. In May, I went there for an overnight retreat, we called it a sleepover, with 3 friends. We spent the afternoon walking around the grounds of the centre. We chatted, and prayed, and began to gather ideas about what we could write. Then we ate supper together, and attended a funky concert by a woman who plays the Japanese flute called a shakuhachi.

The next day was spent on writing, and laughing, and singing together. For me, the whole experience was a good reminder of the beauty of the created world we live in, that I don’t always see when I spend my time in cars and offices and churches, and houses, and stores. It was good to slow down, to be outside, to go for a walk, to sit under a big tree and pray.

It is harder, living as most of us do in this large urban area, to retain the sense that we live in God’s garden, and are charged with its care. There was a time when most of the best farm land in Canada was all around us. More and more of it is being plowed under and paved over for new housing and roads.

There is something truly wonderful about planting seeds, or seedlings, and watching them grow, tending them, and anticipating the results. There is a special awareness of our dependence on things out of our control, when we grow things, or try to grow things.

I remember living on the prairies, serving churches in farm communities. Those folks knew they were connected, not just to the land, but to the weather. They watched the sky, and waited, and prayed for rain in the spring, and for clear days during harvest time.

I love eating the tomatoes and lettuce we have grown for ourselves in our little backyard plot. This week I have also been enjoying kale grown by a good friend. The vegetables taste that much better for never having been packaged in plastic, trucked hundreds or thousands of miles, and then had the flavour chilled out of them in a huge grocery store.

We were made to tend the earth, the bible story tells us. We were also made to eat well, of good things that we can watch grow. These are practical, basic things, and they are deeply spiritual.

This is something that churches are beginning to re-discover. A church may not have a lot of money, or big crowds of people, or flashy programs to attract attention. But a lot of churches, like ours, have land. Land that can be put to use, to grow things, to bring people together, to help them re-connect with the sacredness of creation.

There is a “growing movement” of churches that set aside some of their land to make space for community gardens.

We could do something like that. I spent time walking the grounds around the church this week. What I noticed is that even after we sub-divide the property, and sell off part of it to be developed as housing lots, we will still have space enough left to do other things.

There is a great section between the back end of the fellowship hall and the parking lot where we could easily put in some nice raised beds.

We could grow vegetables. We could offer the space to other people in the area, some of whom might want to garden, but live in an apartment or senior’s building, and don’t have their own land to work with. We could grow vegetables to give to the food bank, or to use in community meals here at Trinity.

It might be a very small thing at first, that could grow, inch by inch, row by row, into something beautiful. Amen

One evening, an elderly Cherokee brave told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said “My son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’ inside us all. One is is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is good. It is joy, peace love, hope serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.” The grandson though about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “which wolf wins?…” Grandfather answered, “the one that you feed”

 

I used that story last weekend at a wedding. It seemed to me that it could be useful thing for the couple to ponder, as they continue sorting out how to make their life together.

The story points to two basic human urges- the one that is all about our survival, and putting our own needs first, and the one that is about love, the mystical one-ness, and connection to all things.

Has anyone here heard of Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor? She is a neuro-anatomist, a brain scientist, who worked at Harvard. She got interested in the structure of the human brain, and in looking at what the different parts actually do, how they function, how they relate to each other, and how they help us relate to the world. She has a brother who was diagnosed with the brain disorder schizophrenia, and she wanted to understand what that meant and look for ways to be of help to him.

In 1996 she had a stroke, a massive brain hemmhorage that interrupted the supply of blood to the left side of her brain. She wrote a book called “My Stroke of Insight”, which describes her memories of the actual stroke event, and then what she experienced as she lost the function of the left half of her brain, and relied on the right hemisphere.

Dr. Taylor has also done a TED Talk, in which she describes her understanding of how each half of the brain works.

It seems like we are made, the our brains are actually hard wired to do the things the Cherokee grandfather was telling the little boy about. Part of us needs to take of ourselves, and make sense of the world, and make rules, and think of ourselves as separate from everyone, and everything else. Part of us contains the mystical view of things, and knows that we are all connected, and that your existence and my existence are inter-dependent, that we need each other.

I think the mystical loving side of my brain is the part that is activated when I see the photos of the Syrian refugees desperately seeking a safe place to live. It is the part of me that collapses in sorrow when I see the photos of children who have died, or who are suffering because of the violence, the warfare, the human cruelty.

The logical, protective, orderly part of my brain is the one that responds to the messages of fear, and protectiveness. How can we help those people? We barely have enough for ourselves! What if some of them are terrorists? Won’t they just come to our country and ruin things here for us? Won’t they take my place in line for health care, or cause my taxes to go up?

If God has made us with these two brain halves, then we obviously need them both. But in the world we live in, which half gets listened to most often?

Jesus came to teach us to not be bound by fear, and to open ourselves to love. To remember that there is more to us, than what we can grasp and hold tightly. That we are mystical, spiritual beings as well as flesh and blood. That the wellbeing of every person is connected to the wellbeing of every other creature, every living thing, every part of God’s amazing creation. That we are all one. Amen

In July when I was at a writing conference for clergy I went to a master class taught by a poet named Marie Howe. Marie is a tall, very thin, very dramatic looking woman with wild curly blonde hair that flies in all directions, as if the wind is constantly blowing through it. She looks the way I imagine the female figure of wisdom to look in the eighth chapter of the book of Proverbs, where it says;

“The Lord created me at the beginning of his work,     the first of his acts of long ago. ²³ Ages ago I was set up,     at the first, before the beginning of the earth. ²⁴ When there were no depths I was brought forth,     when there were no springs abounding with water. ²⁵ Before the mountains had been shaped,     before the hills, I was brought forth— ²⁶ when he had not yet made earth and fields,     or the world’s first bits of soil.”

This is intriguing to think about, that the Creator made wisdom, before making everything else. Wisdom is described as standing by with the Creator, as a witness to the work of making, well making everything.

The first thing that Wisdom does is watch, observe God at work. The Book of Proverbs is a collection of wise sayings, advice for living. Sometimes it is suggested that King Solomon, remembered as one of the wisest kings of Israel was either the author, or the collector of the wise sayings.

It is a fairly clever literary device, to include a figure that personifies wisdom, in a book of collected wise sayings. Then it becomes the job of the character, not the author, to say, hey, listen, pay attention to these wise words. In this case, the character is saying, “I am wisdom, and I have been around since the Creator began the work of Creation.”

But back to my teacher, the poet Marie Howe. She came to Kenyon College, as part of the planning team, and as a faculty member, to teach writing to ministers, priests, rabbis, spiritual directors and chaplains from many different backgrounds, and from at least 3 different countries.

She began her master class by telling a room full of preachers that a poem is not a poem, if you are already know what you are going to say, before you say it. I was confused and attracted at the same time by this statement. She was saying the work of creation is actually the work of discovery. You create not just to make something that has not been made before, but to grow, to learn, to see in a new way.

I remember going to the Canadian Lakehead Exhibition, that’s the CLE, which is different from that other big end of summer event that happens in Toronto. In the same building as the quilt competition and the flower arranging show, there was a landscape artist. I wish I could remember his name. My parent actually have one of his paintings above the couch in their living room. He was famous in a Thunder Bay kind of way, a commercial artist who would take a commission to make a painting for your house. You could tell him how big, and what the colour scheme of the room was, and he’d make you a landscape to fit. But that was not what made him amazing.

I stood and watched in the arts and crafts building one summer day as he quickly sketched out a scene that showed a bend in a river, and rocks, and trees, and some mountains and clouds and sky in the background. It was a very typical Northern Ontario, Pre-Cambrian Shield kind of scene. What evoked wonder in me was that after the artist established the scene, he began taking it through the seasons of the year. He was working in oils, and he added layer over layer to the scene.

He began with the barrenness of winter, moved to the bright new growth and freshness of spring, showed the glories of summer, and then, with colour, and light, and shadow, brought the scene to fall. If I’d had a video camera back then, focussed on that canvas, I could have captured the progression of a whole year in that scene. It was genius.

I remember the spring that we had an art class here at Trinity, with David Walker. He was showing us how to work with pencils, and watercolors. It was wonderful to watch him work with water colors. It looked to me like he had something of a plan, before he ever touched the brush to the page, but that once there was colour in the brush, and the brush made contact with the page, anything could happen. Because it was water colour and not oil, there were no layers. David had to respect the medium he was working with, and to some degree, follow where the colors took him, as they spread into the sheen of water on the surface of the page.

I am not a painter. I relate far more easily to working with words. Hearing a poet say that she doesn’t know what a poem is going to say, until she is writing, that feels real to me. She is discovering something as she works.

Another one of my teachers this July was another poet, named Rodger Kamenetz. Rodger is actually much better known than Marie. Rodger is a retired professor of Jewish studies and English literature. He used to teach at the University of Louisiana. In 1990 he was part of a group of Jewish leaders and teachers who were invited to India, to meet with the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama was interested to hear from Jewish people about how a religious culture survives in exile. Rodger wrote a book about the journey of these Jewish rabbis from the Western world, to the Tibetan compound in Dharamsala, India. It is also a book about his own re-discovery of his Jewish identity.

In one of my favourite passages in the book, Rodger described a conversation with one of his rabbi friends, about the story of Noah and the Flood. Rodger wrote,

“I wanted to know how God could have made such a botch of things that he had to wipe out his creation with a flood. Zalman (one of the rabbis) answered with a midrash (Imaginative Torah commentary) on the phrase of Abraham’s, “God of my youth.” It so happens the Hebrew can also be read, “God in his youth.”

The midrash says that the flood happened because God used to be younger. When God was younger, he made mistakes.

With that twist, Zalman turned a point of doubt for me into a point of faith. ‘When God was younger’ was a very liberating idea. It meant that God evolves in the Torah—and in our lives. A God who evolves, a God still evolving, a God whose evolution I had a stake in—this was a refreshment.” (p.189, The Jew in the Lotus)

Rodger discovered this was a God that he could believe in, a God who was actively, passionately involved in the making of the world, and is still evolving, still learning.

There is a whole wave of Christian thinking about God called Process Theology, that works with this notion. It kind of rose up as a response to another idea about God that suggested that God the creator is like a clock-maker, who put all the pieces of an enormous mechanism together, wound it up and set it in motion, but really has little to do with it on an ongoing basis. This is an image of a very distant, and almost disinterested creator.

Process Theology suggests God is more like the painter I watched, who is right in there, at every stage, involved in what is happening, in the ongoing process of creation. Creation in this thinking is not just a noun, but a verb. And so is God.

One of the implications of this is that if we are made in God’s image, and God is an active creator, then that is who we are as well, we are being made, to take part in the active work of creating, Our lives, and what we make of each day, are part of the ongoing work of creating the universe. Amen

 

It seems like every time I go on study leave, something breaks. The worst was a rainy spring 8 years ago. I was at a spiritual direction retreat at Huron College in London, when the family room in our basement flooded. Through the magic of Skype, my wife could show me the indoor pond. It kind of put a damper on my time away.

In July, as I was preparing to go to a writing conference, our dishwasher quit. Fortunately, there was no flood. The dishwasher just stopped. The kind and helpful repair man said he could replace the computer circuit board, and bring the machine back to life, but the fix would cost more than a new dishwasher. There was no guarantee something else wouldn’t break or burst tomorrow.

Do you know what a decision tree looks like? Each question leads to new branches. If no, then what? If yes, then how? Each branch opens up new questions, and each answer leafs out to more choices.

I so hate relegating big hunks of plastic and steel to the landfill. It’s an awful legacy to leave the future. Once we got past that, we had to consider whether we replace the appliance, or do without. Two weeks of washing pots and cups and dishes settled that one. So then we climbed the next decision tree, and started swinging from branch to branch.

What brand? What price range? What features? Which vendor? Do we buy an extended warranty? How do we know we aren’t buying another big box we will end up tossing in a few years? Can we find one actually built in this country, or even on this continent? I resent that everything we buy comes from across at least one ocean. We burn fossil fuel to transport goods around the globe, and live in a place where no one seems to actually make anything anymore. Trying to find a way through this forest of decision trees was kind of paralyzing. It’s the real reason we did nothing about the problem for those two weeks when we were washing and drying everything by hand.

I know how fortunate I am to have these middle class, first world problems. The dishwasher dilemma is just an example of decisions we face all the time. Decisions that matter, and have faith implications- because what I throw away, what I keep, and how I spend money all have ripple effects. Decisions that require careful discernment, and prayer, and a genuine asking of the question, “What should I do?”

Talking about dishwashers is less likely to get me in hot water than talking about the federal election! In either case, we can’t just flip open our Bible, and look up, “What should I buy?” or “How should I vote?”

The Bible mostly doesn’t work that way. Even the parts with rules require interpretation, and many decisions we face are not explicitly covered. On the cover of the manual for our new dishwasher, there is a note about the manufacturer’s website, where you can read answers to frequently asked questions. This can be helpful, to learn from what others have experienced. If that doesn’t help, there is also a 1 800 number that allows you to talk to an actual person.

This morning’s line from The Lord’s Prayer is “Thy will be done”. How do we sort out what God would have us do? In my work as a minister and spiritual director, I am a little different from the person who answers the toll free line. I usually don’t have their answer, but try to help them discern the answer that God is offering.

A person on the verge of retirement may have questions about what will now give their life meaning. What will they do with their time? Are there new opportunities for them to do things to help others? Is it time to down-size, to move?

Someone between jobs may need help remembering there is more to them than paid work. Their question may be “God, who am I?”

A person who has suffered the loss of a loved one, or the end of a marriage, or who has survived serious illness may question God’s role in it all. They may wonder if there is something they must do, in response to recent events.

I often quote the Catholic monk and mystic, Thomas Merton. He believed we can discern things about what God would have us do. He trusted God’s love. He believed that God is with us, even when we feel unsure.

Merton wrote a prayer that offers a good starting place: “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.” Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

God loves us, is interested in us, and wants the best for us. Even though God wants only good for us, God does not actually make us do anything. We always have choice. God is giving us hints and clues all the time, about how to be fair, how to be honest, how to take others into consideration, how to care for the earth, how to be generous.

Jewish rabbis say the whole world is Torah, which is another way to say God’s love letters are written everywhere, if we can only take time to read them. God can speak to us through things we see, hear, feel. Through the words in conversations, and through the words we read, in the Bible and other places. Through our day dreams, and night dreams, and in apparently random and idle thoughts. Through almost anything we can experience. Most of the time, the hints and clues we get from God will be subtle, and not literal. We will need to ponder them, to be contemplative

We need to slow ourselves down, breathe, and quiet ourselves down. I was talking with someone this week about how with modern technology, it is so easy to never have quiet. We can have music, or talking, or someone else’s story in a television show coming at us all time. We never have to be alone with our thoughts. This can happen so much we forget we have thoughts, and that our own company is a good thing.

Some people deliberately keep themselves occupied with external distractions, because their own thoughts and feelings make them uncomfortable. But it is actually worth listening to ourselves, and sorting through all the different messages and voices inside. It may be that some of the inner voices we have been trying to ignore or drown out just needed to be heard, and then can quiet down. Once we have heard them, we can be in a better space to listen for God.

When I help with week-long spiritual retreats, we build in at least one 24 hour period of silence. Most people are a little wary of that extended silence, at least the first time. After the first time, many look forward to doing it again. We have a moment of silence as we begin worship, to make room inside, to hear God.

It is good to practice quieting down, even when we don’t have a particular question for God. To take time each day, to just be. To sit quietly, and open ourselves to God’s presence. To let the distractions of the world, and inside of ourselves fall away. To just be, and remember again how good it is, to be alive, and to be loved by God. To know that whatever else may be going on, God is with us.

If we take time each day for even a few minutes of quiet remembering that we are loved by God, and that God is with us, then some of the urgency of getting an answer, of knowing exactly what we should do, may melt away. We can remember that we are not alone in anything God has for us to do. God is in it with us.

We can remember that we will do the best we can, that God will help us, and that the best we can do, is all that is asked. That’s the spirit we need to be in, to get a sense of God’s hopes and dreams for us.

In that spirit, we can use the gifts and tools God has given us. We can use our intellect, to collect information. We can sort out what we actually know, from what we think we know, and from what we fear, or worry about.

We can listen to our own hearts, to hear what love is telling us. What would be the most loving thing to do?

From a calm and loving place, trusting that God is with us, we might ask ourselves:

-does anything I have learned from the Bible or from church help me here?

-what does my own logic and reason tell me? What seems sensible?

-what does my conscience say? Will I regret the choice, one way or another?

-How do I feel if I imagine having made the decision, one way, or another? Do I feel peace, joy, or love? If I feel anxious or angry or joyless, when I imagine a certain decision, what does that tell me?

As people of faith community, we can take comfort in knowing that we are not alone in our efforts to know, and to do God’s will. We can help and encourage each other. We can talk with each other, and if we have an idea about God’s hopes and dreams that we are not sure about, we can seek counsel from each other. We can remind each other that we are not alone, and that God is with us. Amen