Have you ever been surprised by the urge to do something out of the ordinary? Some might call it a whisper from God, or as in the story from Acts, like an angel is speaking to you. If you have had such a moment, did you follow the urge, and do the strange thing?

I have a story about one of those angel whispers. Almost thirty years ago, I was a student minister, in rural Manitoba. It was 9 pm, on a cold January night. I was home alone in the manse, the minister’s house beside the church. I had been out for a supper visit. As a young, single minister in farm country, I rarely ate at home.

I got this odd urge to go out again into the cold night, without knowing where. I warmed up my little silver-grey Chevy Chevette, and headed out. The village I lived in was very small, more like a place where two country roads crossed near a grain elevator. There were maybe 60 houses, one church, and a post office. It was only a short drive up the main street before it met the provincial highway. By the time I reached the stop sign, I knew I should turn left. That took me south on highway 59, but I did not stay on the highway long. I turned right on the road towards the ski hill, which led up into  rolling hills along the Manitoba-Saskatchewan border. You could stand at the top of the highest of those hills and be in two provinces at once.

The car seemed to know where I was supposed to go. I slowed and turned right, and up the long driveway to Eric’s house. He was a man in his forties who was very involved in the church. His lights were on, so I was hopeful it wasn’t too late to drop in. At harvest time a late night visit would have made more sense, because the odds would be good that Eric would have just been getting in from driving combine. But in the middle of the winter this was all very unusual.

Eric saw me coming up his drive, and light spilled out as he opened his mudroom door. The mudroom is the way you enter if you are not company. Company would use the front porch door. The mudroom is where you knock the mud or snow off your boots, remove your outer wear, and come in the back of the house to the kitchen.

Eric welcomed me, and had me sit at the kitchen table while he put on the kettle for tea. Seriously, two guys sitting down in a farmhouse kitchen to chat over tea! He ran water into the kettle, but before he could plug it in, the phone on the kitchen wall rang. Eric said hello, and then just held the receiver against his head, and stood, mouth open.

When I saw his face, I knew why I was there, why I had left my house so late at night, in the January cold, to show up unannounced at Eric’s door. There had been a tragic, unexpected death in his family, just around the time I climbed into my car. His brother-in-law was making the calls to let all the family know.

I sat with Eric for a few minutes, and went with him to the next farm over, where his mom and dad had already had their phone call. Eric’s older sister had died. The family, from different parts of the province, would all be coming home.

It happens. If we are open to being led by God’s spirit, then God’s spirit will lead us. I chose that dramatic example, because I will never forget that night. But little nudges, and good ideas, intuitions, and inspirations happen all the time. We notice a person who seems like they need a little attention. We get the urge to pick up a phone and check in with someone we have not talked with for a while. We do it and discover it was exactly the right time to call.

The whisper of God may ask us to go outside our comfort zone.  In the story from the Book of Acts, Philip responds to such a whisper, and sets out down a wilderness road. There was an Ethiopian eunuch on that road, a court official of Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians. He was in charge of her entire treasury, and was travelling from Jerusalem back to Ethiopia, in his own chariot.

Philip heard the Spirit whisper to him again, to go to the chariot. He ran over, and heard the court official reading from the prophet Isaiah, from a scroll of the Hebrew scriptures.

This is pretty interesting. Philip followed the Spirit’s urging to approach a total stranger, who turns out to be a foreigner. He is a non-Jew who had been to Jerusalem to worship, and who was apparently well enough educated, and wealthy enough, to have his own scripture scroll.

The Acts of the Apostles is essentially volume two of the Gospel of Luke. It tells stories of the development of the early church. In the days following the first Easter the small group of Jesus followers, mostly Jewish converts living in or near Jerusalem began to rapidly expand. Their movement spread into nearby communities. It also began to cross ethnic, and economic, and cultural lines, and cultural taboos.

In the encounter between Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, we can see the early Jesus movement was radically inclusive, and incredibly welcoming. Philip heard the person in the chariot reading the Hebrew scriptures, and asked him if he understood what he was reading. The man in the chariot replied, “how can I unless someone guides me?”

Philip, who would have been taught from childhood to keep his distance from anyone outside of his class, and culture, and religion, stepped across all those boundaries to share his faith.

A eunuch was a man who’d been castrated as a boy. In some ancient cultures this was done to slaves before they reached puberty, with the belief it would make them docile, and trustworthy.  Eunuchs often served female royalty because they were not seen as a sexual threat to the women.

This man had climbed the ladder of respectability and trust, and was in charge of the treasury of the Queen of Ethiopia. He would have a lot of power and influence back home. But to most people in Jerusalem he be seen as ritually unclean.

Some foreigners were allowed to come to Jerusalem to worship, and even to enter the courtyard around the Jewish temple. Because This man would not have been welcome, because he had been castrated. According to the Book of Deuteronomy, no man who had been mutilated in this way could worship in the assembly of God’s people. He was a permanent outcast, made irredeemable by the abuse that had been done to him, without his consent, when he was a child.

When Philip joined the eunuch in his chariot, he had been reading the part of Isaiah that said,

“Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.”

I can imagine those words would have touched him deeply. He might identify with someone who had been unjustly treated, and humiliated.

The eunuch asked Philip, “About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?”

He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him.

Philip followed a whisper of God, and stepped out of his comfort zone. The result was a man who was once a stranger felt so touched by God’s love he decided to be baptized, and become a follower of Jesus. His life was forever changed. I think it would also have changed Philip, left him more open to what can happen, if you listen to the Spirit’s whispers.

This is a great story. It challenges us to be like Philip, and to listen for God’s promptings, to step outside of our own comfort zones, and to share God’s love.

You may be wondering, does this story have anything to do with me? Is it possible that God is whispering to me? Am I supposed to step outside of my comfort zone? Can I share God’s love?

Are you wondering about any of those things? Is this story from the Book of Acts just ancient history, about spiritual superheroes, saints from the past? Or could these kind of things happen to us, in our time?

I want to offer you a challenge for the coming week- actually for the next two weeks, since I won’t be here next Sunday. I would like you to begin each day with a prayer. It’s very simple.

I will teach it to you now. I need you to repeat it after me:

“Dear God;

Please show me what I can do today, for you.

I will do my best to do it, with your help.

Amen. “

Mark’s Gospel said this about me:   “A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind.”

I was in the garden that night, trying to get close to Jesus.  I’d heard he and his friends were in town.  They were amongst thousands who flocked to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover.

I knew about Jesus and his teachings. Jesus spoke of a God who is actually interested in us, who cares what happens to us. When I went to temple with my parents, the priests and teachers of the law mostly wanted to make sure I was following all their rules, so I could be ritually clean. They were always on my parents, who didn’t have very much, to keep buying animals to be killed, and burned as sacrifices, so God would look more kindly on us.

We can’t afford a God like that, and we can’t afford to be clean, if that is what it takes. But Jesus said we are blessed if we are poor, or suffering, or in trouble.  I wanted to know more about the God he talked about, who blessed people like me.

I wanted to be close enough to Jesus and his friends to hear what was going on. I was working up nerve to step a little closer, to come out from behind the olive trees, and approach Jesus. I never made it, because suddenly there was a huge commotion in the garden.

I saw the one they called Judas, a friend of Jesus, walking towards him. Behind Judas strode a gang of rough looking people, all armed.  I recognized a few security guards from the temple.  Some carried clubs, others brandished swords.  They were loud, and looked ready for a fight.

Jesus opened his arms to embrace Judas.  Judas kissed Jesus on the cheek.  Behind Judas a man with a raised sword shouted, “He must be the one!  Grab him!” The disciples nearest Jesus looked frightened.  Then their fear turned into anger.  I was surprised to see one of them raise a sword.  He swung it wildly, like one not used to battle.  His blade slashed the side of the head of one of the men with Judas.

There was a lot of blood and screaming.  It was a terrible, confusing scene.  I can’t be sure but I think the sword took his ear off. Only then did Jesus raise a hand, but not in anger or defence. He tried to calm the scene.  He asked, “Am I leading a rebellion that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me?”

Things got really crazy.  The guy who I think lost his ear, had blood gushing out the side of his head, and was calling out for help, but the people he came with ignored him.  They were too busy grabbing hold of Jesus.  Jesus friends were no better.  They didn’t try to help the injured man either.  They did not stand with Jesus.  They ran!  They fled off in every direction, some pushing frantically through the shrubs and trees.

I don’t know what happened in the garden after that. I decided I better get out of there too.  I tried to run.  Before I could escape someone grabbed at my tunic, and it was pulled off me. I did not look back, I just ran into the night.  I was vulnerable, I was afraid, I was alone. Looking back on that night, I realize I was not the only one.

Have you heard the old saying that when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail? The people who saw Jesus as a threat sent out thugs with swords and clubs, under the cover of night, to grab Jesus and bring him before the chief priest. They flexed their muscle, and were eager to do violence, because that was how the game they understood was played. If you wanted to win, you used might and intimidation to put down those you saw as opponents.

It is easy to get sucked into that way of seeing the world. It happened pretty quickly that night to at least one of Jesus’ friends. The raiding party armed with swords and clubs appeared, and one of them pulled out his own sword, and struck out. But Jesus was having none of it. In one version of this story, found in John’s Gospel, Jesus healed the man with the severed ear.

Jesus asked the security force if they thought he was leading a rebellion. If he had been a terrorist, or a revolutionary, it might have made sense to send an armed party after him. But even in the midst of the raid, Jesus maintained calm, and responded peacefully.

People still got hurt. One lost their ear, another was stripped of clothes and ran off naked into the cold night. When people are ready to use violence, innocent bystanders will inevitably suffer. In war movies and news reports they call this collateral damage. Regular people have other words for it, and it is not limited to war zones.

Collateral damage can happen any time winning is all that matters, when other people are seen only as enemies to vanquish, and casualties the cost of doing business. Each of us can likely think of situations in which non-combatants, or innocent by-standers get hurt.

Some parents in custody battles treat their children as prizes to be won, or as pawns in a cruel  chess game.

Refugees leave everything behind them to flee violence and terror inflicted on them by warring factions motivated by politics, or economics, but wearing the mask of religion.

There are bullies with such low self-esteem they see no way to connect with people except to hurt them and make them afraid.

People have their careers and lives torn apart when a big corporation buys a competitor, then guts the workforce in the name of a slightly better bottom line. When winning becomes the only thing, people are treated as things, or worse.

We are called to resist these sword wielding ways, and be more like Jesus. To see all people as children of God, and worthy of love, and respect and care. We might feel that hopes of living with compassion for all are as flimsy as the linen tunic torn off the young man. How can we live in this world, and not get caught up in the deadly game of winners and losers?

Early Christians lived in fear of the kind of violence and brutality Jesus and the disciples faced in the garden. Saint Paul, who helped found the first church in Ephesus, wrote some words to them to encourage them to have courage, and not resort to the methods of those who would do them harm.  He reminded them the real struggle is usually not with the people involved, who in reality are usually not very different from us, but with the forces and influences that can overtake them. Paul reminded them that God offers all of us tools that can be of great help, as we resist evil in the world, without resorting to evil methods. He said,

“Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.  For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.  Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.” Amen

Do you remember the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes? I found a delightful version of it on YouTube, featuring finger puppets. Let’s watch!

https://youtu.be/HV9lJ4YMgck

The people around the King were did not tell him the truth. Some worked for him, and were protecting their jobs. Perhaps others were just too polite to tell him he had exposed himself to ridicule. Some may have feared the King would blame them for his embarrassment. Even the King’s closest confidantes and advisors lied, and pretended they could see the fancy suit of clothes.

The people who lined the parade route for the King’s procession all went along with the big lie. Everyone except the little girl, who just blurted out the words, “Mommy, the Emperor is not wearing any clothes!” Only then does the shell of lies crack, and the truth peck its way out, like a freshly born chick. The crowd began to excitedly peep the truth, that the Emperor was naked. If the story had been set in our time, the crowd would have whipped out their phones, to take photos. They’d be tweeting and snap-chatting and facebooking about catching the King with barely any dignity left.

The voice of truth in this story is a small child. I love that. It makes me think of the time people brought children to Jesus to be blessed, and some disciples tried to keep them away. Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”

The story of the Emperor’s New Clothes is about the innocence of a child. She has not yet learned there can be consequences to saying out loud what she sees to be true. The story is also about the dangers of vanity, and pride. The King seems trapped in a false image of who he is, and who he can show himself to be. He does not have the courage to admit he could not see the new suit of clothes.

We could also see the story as a warning against unchecked consumerism. What emptiness inside the King was he trying to fill with fancy clothes, and the fawning compliments of his paid friends in court? Most of all, I think the story is about the foolishness, the danger, of going along with the accepted truths of society, even if you know they are big fat lies. Only the child dared to tell the unpopular truth. When she did, the crowd was quick to acknowledge what she said was true. The sad, vain king really was standing naked in the street.

Have you ever been in a situation in which you faced the power of a big lie? What did you do? Unless you are blessed with the innocence of a child, it takes courage to stand by the uncomfortable, inconvenient truth. What are the big lies of our time?

Today we heard the description in Mark’s Gospel of an encounter between Jesus, and the chief priest of the Jerusalem temple. Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, and brought before a gathering of the powerful leaders of the temple. They had been looking for a way to get rid of him. The Message says, “The high priests conspiring with the Jewish Council looked high and low for evidence against Jesus by which they could sentence him to death. They found nothing. Plenty of people were willing to bring in false charges, but nothing added up, and they ended up canceling each other out.”

The Chief Priest faced a choice. He could go along with the conspiracy to deal with Jesus, or he could admit out loud there were no real grounds to condemn him. There might be a case to be made that Jesus had disrupted things in the Temple when he chased out the money-changers. But could that really be called blasphemy, an offence punishable by death?

I admire what Jesus did in the Temple, on the day he knocked over the tables. Do you remember that story? Jesus objected to the money-changing in the temple. Devout Jews who came to buy animals for sacrifice in the temple, had to exchange their Roman coins, which bore graven images of Caesar, and were considered to be unclean. The money changers took those coins, and gave the equivalent in Jewish shekels, minus their commission on the deal. Then the faithful Jew could buy a heifer, or a goat, or a lamb, or doves, to be slaughtered by the priests, and burned as an offering, or sacrifice to God. Except that only the parts of the animal not fit to eat would be burned. These sacrifices were promoted by the priests as a way to win God’s favour, and to become once again, ritually clean. But the priests actually sold the parts of the animals that were not burned, and made great profits for the temple. Jesus called attention to these shady practices, by which the temple priests preyed on the faithful.

I think Jesus was doing what Quakers call “Speaking Truth to Power”. In 1955 a group of American Quakers first used that phrase in a pamphlet. They were proposing a new approach to the Cold War, the escalating stock-piling of weapons of mass destruction that ate up so much of the energy and money of the American and Soviet economies in the years after World War 2. They offered a powerful truth to the elected leaders of the United States, and to the American people. Their pamphlet said: “Our truth is an ancient one: that love endures and overcomes; that hatred destroys; that what is obtained by love is retained, but what is obtained by hatred proves a burden.”

The Quakers challenged the idea that peace could be achieved by the threat of more violence. Jesus challenged the idea that God’s love must be bought, and that it was acceptable to make a profit from people’s fear of a judging God. It takes courage to reject the big lies, especially when vested powers need those lies to be upheld, to protect their interests.

The Chief Priest, who had the power to release Jesus, instead went along with at least two big lies. The first was that Jesus was sinning against God, in how he lived, and in what he taught. The second was that any good would come of handing him over to the Romans to be killed. If the Chief Priest had the conscience of any normal human being, like you or I, it must have caused him deep inner conflict to ignore the little voice inside, that spoke the truth. Maybe it was a childlike voice, innocent of evil plans, like the little girl who said, “Mommy, the Emperor is not wearing any clothes.”

Near the end of the conversation with Jesus, the Chief Priest asked if he was the Messiah. Jesus said,  “Yes, I am, and you’ll see it yourself: The Son of Man seated At the right hand of the Mighty One, Arriving on the clouds of heaven.”

The Chief Priest’s response was complicated, and I think it shows that he was conflicted- that deep inside he was arguing with himself. Should he do what was politically expedient, or listen to the little voice of truth? The story says he lost his temper. Not a good thing to do when acting in an official role, to pass judgement on another human being. He ripped his clothes, which is a traditional way of expressing grief, rather than anger. It sounds like his anger, his frustration is tinged with sadness. As if he is not so sure. In the end, he does not actually make a decision. He backs away from responsibility, and goads those around him, the lesser priests and temple officials, to get them to make the call.

He yelled, “Did you hear that? After that do we need witnesses? You heard the blasphemy. Are you going to stand for it?” They condemned him, one and all. The sentence: death.    Some of them started spitting at him. They blindfolded his eyes, then hit him, saying, “Who hit you? Prophesy!” The guards, punching and slapping, took Jesus away.”

I imagine that as Jesus is hauled off to the Roman officials, the Chief Priest just stands there, not knowing what to do. There is no way he can take back what he has said, and no way to prevent what is about to happen. He stands there, weakly, in his torn clothes.

I wonder how naked he felt. Amen

Teaching Time: “Someone at the table…”

I loved comic books when I was a kid. Batman was my favourite. Superman was less interesting to me. He was too perfect, and too powerful. For characters to be interesting, they need a basic humanity. They need to have weaknesses, character flaws, ambiguities.

My kids and I watch Marvel’s Agents of Shield together. Who here is a fan? For the uninitiated, Shield is the Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement Logistics Division, a kind of secret super-spy police force,that has unimaginable high-tech, and deals with really big threats, like aliens, and monster robots, and mutants that use their power for evil.

The agents of Shield look and act like regular people. They don’t wear capes, or even name tags that identify them as heroes. Early in the series it was established Shield had been infiltrated and taken over by evil-doers, except for a few small, scattered groups. Of course, the episodes of the series give a lot of attention to our good guys. But they don’t always behave like good guys, and there is a changing cast of characters, and enough double and triple crossing going on that it can be very difficult at times, to tell who is on what side. It’s not like watching a hockey game, where both teams act pretty much the same, but you can tell the teams apart by the colour of their jerseys.

Most of the time, whether it is Shield, or real-life, the players in the human drama are not wearing team jerseys. It is not always easy to tell who is on what side.

It’s that way for me when I read about the people around Jesus. When I look closely at the stories, I see characters with good qualities who make big mistakes, and I also see characters who we might expect to be bad guys, but who have more to them just schemy fingers and an evil laugh.

There is comfort in that for me, to be reminded people are more complicated than comic book heroes and villains. Life is not always black and white; right and wrong; good guys and bad guys.  Sometimes we are people who choose life and sometimes we are people who make poor choices.

This morning we are looking at Judas. In the gospel reading we heard Jesus say, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me—one who is eating with me.”

Many of us have heard the story more than once over the years, and know Judas is the one who takes a bribe from some temple officials. We may assume Jesus is talking about him, and that Judas switched sides, and traded in his Team Jesus jersey for one from the temple priest’s team.  Judas accepted thirty pieces of silver for his role in the plot of the temple priests. But did Judas know the implications of what he was doing?

The story in Mark’s Gospel moves on from the Last Supper, to the moment in the Garden of Gethsemane when Judas pointed to Jesus, so the guards could arrest him. It moves to Jesus’ conversation with the high priest Caiaphas, and his temple cronies, and leads to the moment when Jesus is handed over to Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor. Pontius Pilate allows the crowd to decide Jesus’ fate, and it is the crowd who call for Jesus to be crucified.

We who have grown up with the story may connect the dots and make a straight line from Judas pocketing the bribe to Pilate handing Jesus over to be crucified. But we can look at the beginning middle and end of story all at once. For Judas, at the beginning of the story, there was no way to know how things would play out. He can only see what is happening right around him, in the moment it happens.

Perhaps Judas thought it would be a good for Jesus and Caiaphas to have a conversation. Maybe he hoped they could clear the air, resolve some differences, and find a way to work together. Maybe Jesus could have ended up with Caiaphas as a disciple. Judas had seen Jesus attract, and befriend Roman soldiers and Jewish tax collectors, and demon-possessed raving lunatics. People from many backgrounds had been surprised, and changed by the love that shone through Jesus.

If Jesus had been able to reach Caiaphas’s heart, who knows what changes could have happened at the Jerusalem temple. The Jesus movement could have received official recognition. Maybe the high priest would have put them on the temple payroll, or issued them team jerseys!

Thinking in those terms, what harm would it do for Judas to accept a small fee for arranging the meeting? Judas is often portrayed as the disciple’s treasurer, and managing their money could not have been an easy job. Maybe he took the money, and meant to give it to the common purse.

We don’t know what Judas was thinking, or feeling, or what his hopes, and dreams, his illusions and self-deceptions might have been. Only he knew what story he told himself about his own life, to guide his decisions, and help him live with his choices.

Perhaps Judas was trying to do something good and it went terribly wrong.  Maybe he was afraid for his own life and thought if he pointed his finger at Jesus he would be protected.  Maybe Judas was impatient thinking that Jesus needed to be doing more… at a faster rate.

We don’t really know enough about Judas to judge him. Can he really be held responsible for what happened to Jesus? Did the high priest really need Judas to point out which one was Jesus? Lots of people would have known Jesus. It was his growing fame and influence that was the problem, and the reason he had the attention of the temple authorities.

Judas would not be the first or last person in human history to get into something, and think they knew what they were doing, and then discover they were in trouble. A danger with scape-goating Judas, and labelling him as the evil one who caused all the problems, is that it lets everybody else off the hook. Scape-goating allows us to be judgemental, and feel superior to another human being. No real good comes of it.

The temple priests might have looked at Jesus the same way, thinking life would be better for them if they could just get rid of him. Life is far more complicated. Every person is a complex mix of motives and ideas and emotions. There is no such thing as a person who is totally evil, or totally good.

Jesus knew that. On the night described in today’s gospel, when Jesus said one of those gathered at the table would betray him, he did not send anybody away. Jesus welcomed them all, and shared the cup of blessing and the bread of life with each of them.

That’s really good news. Jesus welcomes all complicated and mixed up people to his feast, to share in God’s love. You, and me, and Judas, and everyone else. Amen

During the season of Lent, our teaching times are focussed on characters from the stories in Mark’s Gospel, chapters 14-16. This morning we hear from the woman who gave Jesus an extravagant gift. Why did she do that?

I was an outcast and alone, and was welcomed to the banquet. Simon, the one they so unkindly called the Leper understood life on the fringe of things. He had filled his house with close friends and any neighbours willing to enter the home of a man like him.

In our world people walked a wide circle around people with skin diseases. They called them lepers, a catch-all phrase for a variety of ailments, some serious, some just unsightly. People worried about the disease spreading to them. More than that, they saw the scars, or rash, or leaking wounds as outward signs of some moral sickness or spiritual rot, inside the person. You might catch what they had, and the temple priests would look at you funny, or worse, avert their gaze as they passed you by. There was a cost to being seen with the wrong sort of people.

That’s me. I was the wrong sort. My outcast status was harder to cure than a skin rash. I lived in a culture in which there was room for me only if I was a good daughter or a wife- with some man to care for me. I had no public voice and no rights. Women and children were considered property of the eldest male of their household.

A woman on her own, without a man to shield her from lustful eyes, and to rein her in, was a threat. If she had her own money, dark rumours clouded around her. How did she get her money? I did not have a man. I had my own money. Never mind how I earned it. They never ask a man that question!

Some people talked about me, and wrote stories about me, as a woman painted with shame. The kind overlooked by parents seeking a suitable wife for their sons. It is hard to wash off the stink of rumours and gossip.

I was made welcome in the house of Simon the leper, but that didn’t last. I’d brought a gift for Jesus, the guest of honour. I knew about Jesus. I’d heard him speak. I had seen something in his gaze. He did not look at me, or anyone, with an eye to judge our worth. He told us we were each of infinite value. He told me we are all children of the One who made the earth, the sky, all the creatures that live. Jesus said the life within us surged from the source of all life.

I loved hearing Jesus talk about God as being closer than close. He mocked priestly efforts to enforce rules about who was worthy to approach the holy of holies. How dare they keep us away from the temple, when the kingdom of God is within us?

Jesus chuckled at their feeble logic. I loved when he laughed. That laugh, and those loving eyes gave me hope. Jesus gave me courage to love God without fear, and to love this beautiful world, in spite of all the darkness and cruelty that people inflict on it, and on each other. He showed me God loves each of us with endless generosity. There is no worry God will run out of love.

I wanted to give Jesus something wonderful. Something extravagant and ridiculous, with no purpose except to be beautiful. His laughter had pointed me toward this truth that changed my life.  God made beauty. God makes each of us, and sees us as beautiful. I wanted to give Jesus a gift, in gratitude for all he gave me.

I had to act soon, because when Jesus looked at the world with loving eyes, and laughed out loud, not everyone was laughing with him. There were some who wanted Jesus out of the picture even more than they wanted to keep out the likes of Simon and me.

I hoped there wouldn’t be any of those cold eyed scowlers at the party. And such a party it was! The table richly laden with roasted lamb and quail, and vegetables and grains. The luxuriant smell of the olives, and the bread, and the wine. I ate and drank my fill, and perhaps a little more.

I looked around the crowded room as I made my way to the head table. Jesus was at the centre of things. I knew most of the other people by sight. There was joy in the air, and I loved feeling welcome at the feast. But as I said, the welcome turned out to be temporary.

The only strangers were in a group of men sitting close to Jesus. One of them glared at me as I came close to the teacher. I remember he held a drink to his lips with one hand, and his other hand tightly gripped a money pouch. Here was a man who could not enjoy the party for fear of what it cost.

Jesus greeted me warmly, and nodded approval of my gift. He saw what I meant to do. I cracked open the perfume bottle, and poured the loose, oily liquid into his hair. I wiped at it with my hand as it dripped on to his brow.

As my fingers combed through his hair, I remembered the words of the psalm we sang at the synagogue when I was a girl, “how wonderful it is when people get along, it is like oils running down the beard of Aaron.”  That would be the real joy, the real glory of God, if we could just love each other, and see each other as God does.

I heard a gasp in the room when I touched Jesus, but I tried to ignore it. I’d heard that sound before.  The sound of callous judgement. The snide whispers were not long in following.

“Why didn’t she sell the oil and give the money to the poor?”

They were so quick to condemn. They had no way of knowing what I shared with the poor.

Tears welled in my eyes.  Why were they so critical? Did my generosity shame them? Was it easier to judge me than to face their own poverty of spirit? Some people hold on so tight to what is in their grasp, like that man at the head table with the money bag. They can’t bring themselves to give anything away unless they have enough for themselves. How much is enough?

Should I stay or go? Jesus looked into my eyes, and gave me his warm smile. He then turned his gaze towards the grumblers, and used the moment to teach. His words washed over me like oil running down the Aaron’s beard.

He said, “Let her alone. Why are you giving her a hard time? She has just done something wonderfully significant for me. You will have the poor with you every day for the rest of your lives. Whenever you feel like it, you can do something for them. Not so with me. She did what she could when she could—she pre-anointed my body for burial. And you can be sure that wherever in the whole world the Message is preached, what she just did is going to be talked about admiringly.”

In spite of Jesus words, I did not stay much longer at the party. I felt poured out, and just wanted to go home. As I was leaving, I saw the man with the money bag out in the courtyard, deep in conversation with some officials from the temple. They did not know me, but I recognized them. They’d not been at the feast. They would not have been caught dead in Simon’s house.

I heard the rattle of coins changing hands. A lot of coins. Even that did not bring a smile to the bag-man’s face. What would be enough for him?

After a full day of visiting with people, and teaching, Jesus and his friends were to spend the night in the home of Simon’s mother-in-law. It turned out she was sick with a fever. Jesus healed her. The story suggests she was not able to feed them supper until she felt better.

I wonder if part of the healing was to help her in the kitchen, and listen to her blow off steam about being the only cook in a houseful of able-bodied people. That was probably not it, but I do think an important part of Jesus’ healing work was listening deeply, to communicate to people by the simple and profound act of attention, that they were loved.

On Friday evening, and all day Saturday we had a training session here at the church, for people interested in helping with the Week of Guided Prayer. We each practiced listening to another person, as they spoke of their experience of reading and praying with a scripture passage. Our teacher reminded us that the word listen is made up of the same letters as the word silent. There are times when the best gift we can give another person is to be silent, and listen to them.

Words have their place. There is nothing wrong with words, but there are times when words fail. What do you say to someone who is in pain, or feeling anxious, or grieving, or struggling with a serious illness?

Sometimes the best we can do is just be with a person, meet their eyes softly with our gaze, and listen. Sometimes silence is the best, and most healing way for us to be with them. That kind of patient presence shows a person they have your attention. You are not even worrying about thinking of something to say, you are just there, fully with them.

However the healing happened, Simon’s mother-in-law was healed. This was wonderful, and a mixed blessing, because word quickly spread. Soon there was a line of people at her door, all seeking comfort, hope, love and healing from Simon’s friend Jesus. What may have been planned as a restful evening in with a small circle of friends became an after-hours clinic. Jesus gave himself to the loving work of listening to each person, and helping them find healing.

This story, even though it is just a few lines in Mark’s Gospel, is like a pencil sketch by a true artist. I love sketches that are mostly open space on the page, shaped and defined by simple lines that suggest the contours of the subject. A few lines give you enough to let your imagination, and memory fill in details. There is magic and mystery in this kind of art. You are touched as much by what is unseen, as by the marks on the page.

The sketch of Jesus in this story suggests his humanness. He had compassion for those in need. Jesus also became tired, and I imagine, drained by his giving of self. It was hard work to be available so fully, for so many. How much hurt and loneliness, misery and despair could he witness, before he felt the immense weight of it all?

This sketch also points towards the possibility, without defining it, that there is more to Jesus. There is something around, with, within him that is more. Is it more than human? Theologians have tried to describe it, to point to the truth and beauty inside the mystery, using words like holy, divine, spirit, God in the flesh, God incarnate. They are good words, but they are just words.

At times I am amazed at how seriously we take our words. Honestly, we often have enough trouble finding words to answer a question like “how are you?” Or “what colour is that flower?” Or “how do you feel when you hear that song?” Words are limited. Words don’t mean the same thing to the person speaking as to the person hearing. We do the best we can, but it is a humbling task, trying to say what we mean, even about things we think we understand.

What is the best word to describe Jesus as he taught, and loved, and healed people? Were the people around him seeing God? Were they seeing more God, or seeing God more clearly than we do, when we look into the eyes of a loved one? Even these questions are like lines in a simple sketch that define the space, and still leave room for mystery, for visual silence.

It may be sufficient to say Jesus is human enough, to help people, and be wearied by the work. Jesus is God enough, that love and healing flowed through him to those in need. The story also shows Jesus as human enough to feel the need to go off by himself, in the early morning after the after-hours clinic night, to pray.

Depending on the translation, the story says he went off alone, into the desert, or it says he went to a deserted place to pray alone, or my favourite, he went to a lonely place to pray. The lonely part of me is helped to hear that Jesus could be in a lonely place- it hints he could be lonely, or see loneliness in a landscape.

Jesus prayed. This adds more lines to the pencil sketch that points to who he is, without explaining everything. If Jesus is totally God, then why would he go off to a place of solitude to pray to God? That would just be talking to himself! He could do that anywhere, and why would he?

There is more mystery here than clear answers. Jesus prayed. He was not just talking to himself. Later on in the Gospels, Jesus teaches his followers to pray. “Our father”, he says. Say “Our Father”, and talk to God, like I do.”

The story does not tell us what Jesus prayed, or how he prayed in the lonely place. I am drawn to the idea that Jesus prayed in silence.

There are many ways to pray. We pray and ask for help, for ourselves, or for others. We make prayers of gratitude. We have prayers about coming to terms with our mistakes, sometimes called confessions. We have prayers of praise, in which we acknowledge the amazing awesomeness of God. All these prayers fall into the category of spoken, or sung, or at least thought prayers. They involve words and images, and are directed to a particular idea of God. When we say “loving God”, or “Our Father”, or “God who made the earth and all its creatures”, we are aiming our words, thoughts and feelings towards a God we imagine a certain way.

Another kind of prayer recognizes the limits of our words and images for God. It can be called silent, or contemplative prayer. We do not always know what words to say when we talk with each other, and we don’t always have words to pray. We may not even know how to think about, or talk about, or imagine the God to whom we would pray.

Christian tradition has collectively agreed there are some things we can say with some confidence about God, and Jesus. Alongside this set of ideas, there has always been a stream of thought that whispers that our words and ideas about God, and Jesus were made up by people a lot like us. They are human words, human ideas, and likely to be incomplete, inadequate, and not always helpful. There is more to life, the universe, God, and us, than we know how to express. There is a lot we simply do not know. There is mystery.

A healthy, growing faith life, and prayer life, has room for humility, and openness to mystery. Openness to a larger reality only hinted at, pointed to vaguely by our words and images.

There is a book that dates from 14^th century England called “The Cloud of Unknowing, in which a soul is oned with God”. It is a collection of short essays intended to help the reader develop in a way of contemplative prayer that does not depend on our human ideas and limited images of God. In fact, in one essay the author suggests we abandon what we think we know about God, and for the purposes of prayer, let go of trying to know, and simply set ourselves on being with, and loving God. The author suggests that our preconceived ideas about God actually get in the way. They are like a cloud of unknowing, that lies between us and God.

I imagine Jesus in that quiet, solitary place, opening his heart to love God in the same way he loved the people who came to him for help. I imagine God in return loving Jesus completely, and looking upon him with a soft-eyed gaze, if we can say God has eyes!

This open-hearted way of praying is available to each of us. It is what we encourage each Sunday, when I ring the prayer bowl to signal the beginning and end of a time of silent prayer. In the space between, in the mystery of silence, there is room, as we sang at the beginning of the service this morning to:

“Come and find the quiet centre

                        in the crowded life we lead,

            find the room for hope to enter,

                        find the frame where we are freed:

            clear the chaos and the clutter,

                        clear our eyes, that we can see

            all the things that really matter,

                        be at peace, and simply be.”  Amen

We just heard a reading in which Paul, the missionary who founded the church in Corinth tackled the question of whether it was okay to eat food offered to idols. The whole thing may sound strange to our 21^st Century ears, without some context.

Corinth was a seaport in ancient Greece. Trading goods and people from many cultures and natins flowed through the port. The city itself was under Roman rule in Paul’s time. There were public temples built to honour the Roman gods, as well as those of other religions. It was normal for people to keep their own religion, and also honour the gods of the official Roman religion.

A lot of the tension that arose between the first Christians and the Roman rulers had to do with the Christian idea that there is only one God. Christians, like Jewish people are monotheistic, but as far as Roman law was concerned, they were atheists, because they refused to honour the state gods. Some Jesus followers refused to go to the Roman temples, or take part in festivals for the Roman religious holidays. They saw the Roman gods as false idols.

There were other Christians who saw no harm in attending a banquet at a Roman temple- because as far as they were concerned, the Roman religion was all make-believe, and honoured gods that didn’t actually exist. Why not enjoy a good meal?

Paul, as the spiritual leader of this fledgling Christian community, was asked for an opinion. He agreed with those who felt free to eat whatever food was available, but also said, “take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. “

Paul recognized some people might be confused if they saw Christians eating food offered to idols. It might appear they were worshipping Roman gods. Paul said, “if food is a cause of their falling, I will never eat meat, so that I may not cause one of them to fall.”

Paul did not want anything to be a barrier to a new believer finding their way into the love and acceptance of Christian community. It was more important to him that people gain a knowledge of God’s love, than to enjoy the fine cuts of meat available at a Roman temple.

This is a story about our response to God’s radical hospitality. It puts out a healthy challenge to all of us who gather to follow Jesus. Are there things we do, consciously or unconsciously, that make it harder for people to find their way to God’s love?

I spent most of last weekend in a curling club in Peterborough. Thanks to the Little Rocks program at the Oakville Curling Club, our kids have had the opportunity to learn to curl, and also to curl competitively in bonspiels. I liked the Peterborough club. They had free wi-fi, which helps when I am working on my sermon, and they don’t have a dress code, like some of the fancier private clubs.

It was a culture shock the first time we went to a bonspiel at a club with a dress code. To be frank, I still don’t get it. The parents sit in what is basically a bar, and all around us people are quaffing beers and talking too loud, and sometimes rudely, while ostensibly watching their kids, who are down on the ice. But you are not allowed to wear jeans, or shirts that don’t have a collar.

Part of me resents being told what to do, or what I am not allowed to do, and rails against the dress code. But I have to get all the sarcasm out of my system before I get to the club. The host clubs are being generous in offering their venue for a youth bonspiel. I try to be a good guest. I resist the urge to mock the notion I am somehow more acceptable if I wear dress slacks.

When I lived in rural Manitoba, the curling rink was in the same building as the town hockey rink, and was a place for everybody. The foursome I curled with included two farmers, the local insurance agent, and me, the United Church minister. I curled all winter for around $100, and had a great time. Some people had fancy curling gear, but most of us were less formal. Heavy wool sweaters and jeans, and the old corn brooms.

It may not be that big a deal that a private club enforces rules designed to keep out people who look a certain way. After all, the club is not claiming to be for everyone.  It is a very different thing when a church acts like a private club, and has written, or unwritten rules, or attitudes that leave people out. For many years my mother did not go to church, even though she made sure us kids were up and dressed and ready to go. We walked ourselves to church, and mom stayed home. Ironically, my dad was often at the curling club on winter Sunday mornings.

My mom’s feelings were hurt when two church ladies visited our home one evening, and said she really should be wearing a hat and gloves to church. They had also come to talk to my parents about making an annual pledge. At that time, my family was scraping by, living in a small apartment on the top floor of someone’s house. My dad drove shifts for Lacey’s Taxi Company, when he wasn’t at the community college finishing his high school equivalency. My mom worked part time as a department store seamstress, and most of what she earned paid the babysitters.

A church should be a place where no one is looked down on, or rejected. There should be no rules to keep people out, or to limit God’s love to the people we find acceptable. That’s why we have an open communion table. That’s why I will marry or bury, or baptize anyone.

I am glad to be part of the United Church. Over the course of my lifetime, our denomination has struggled to remove barriers that were part of our tradition. In 1962 we declared it was possible for people who had been divorced to be re-married in the church. In 1969 we decided a minister could be divorced, and still serve the church.  In 1988 we said sexual orientation was not an issue when it came to membership in the church, or a barrier to serving as a minister. In 2003, the United Church took a leading role in advocating for legal recognition of same-gender marriage in Canada.

None of those changes happened easily, and many congregations, including this one, were scarred by conflict. Each time one of these issues have come up, there have been some who said of course we need to change. Each time there have also been those who came out with a different opinion. Usually a majority of people hesitate to take a side at all, often out of fear. They don’t want their church to suffer losses of people, or revenue, or status. They want everyone to get along.

The other story we heard this morning was from the first chapter of the Gospel of Mark. It describes Jesus’ debut as a preacher and teacher, in a synagogue in Capernaum. Things went well until “he was interrupted by a man who was deeply disturbed and yelling out.”

The story says he was afflicted, or possessed of an evil spirit. What I find most interesting is he was not a stranger to the congregation, he was one of them. When he yelled at Jesus, he said, “What business do you have here with us, Jesus? Nazarene! I know what you’re up to! You’re the Holy One of God, and you’ve come to destroy us!”

In other words, “Hey Jesus, don’t come in here with your radical ideas and try to change us!” I can imagine the same things being said to the first Christians who dared to oppose slavery, or advocated for the legal rights of women and children, or worked so women could vote, or pushed to make it possible for women to become ministers.

It brings us down to earth to realize this critic of Jesus was a member of the congregation. He was not some stranger. Jesus confronted the spirit within the man. Jesus said, “Quiet! Get out of him!” The afflicting spirit threw the man into spasms, protesting loudly—and got out.

The story says that Jesus confronted the evil spirit within the man, and told it to get out, but the man himself was not rejected. He remained a part of the community. I read a quote this week from The Gulag Archipelago, a book by the Nobel Prize winning Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:

 “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn’t change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.”

Every human being is capable of doing terrible things, and leading other people astray.  When we are bound by the power of our own fear of change, or fear of the unknown, or fear of people who are not quite like us, it is harder to be a force for good. It is hard to be really hospitable, in the way that God would have us be, if we are possessed by selfishness, or close-mindedness.

Jesus confronted the narrowness, and fearfulness that can live within us, and can limit us. Jesus came to help us know about ourselves, that we are each capable of doing courageous and loving things, extending the God’s radical hospitality to all people who hunger for acceptance and love. Amen

Every stage of life

 

A few years ago at a meeting of Halton Presbytery I heard a man named Mark McDonald speak. Mark is an Anglican priest, who studied at Wycliffe College in Toronto, and served for a time in Mississauga. His career has taken him all over North America. He served for ten years as the bishop for the Episcopal Diocese of Alaska. In 2007 he became the first National Indigenous Bishop for the Anglican Church in Canada.

Bishop Mark talked at our meeting about his understanding of the role of the church within the wider society.

He described for us the little mission churches that still exist in small native communities in Alaska. There might be one priest serving 7 or 8 little churches, visiting each congregation on a rotating basis. But even on the Sundays when the priest was not there, a core of faithful people, often mostly women, will gather in each little church, for prayers, and to sing hymns. When the priest is able to come, the core is there, and then a few more. Mark said in most places, a big congregation gathered for communion might be 12 people, mostly elders.

Mark also told us that in each of these communities, if something major happened, like the a death, or a wedding, or a weekend of gospel music, then the little group of 12 worshippers would grow and grow, and all the people of the village would be there, joining in for the occasion.

The bishop had an interesting, and inspiring way of looking at this, drawing upon his aboriginal heritage. He said that in each of these small communities, the little core of people who meet every week for prayers and hymns are like the elder women from the ancient days, who did the important work of tending to the fire, literally keeping the home fires burning. In the centuries before matches, and barbeque lighters, this was no small job. In the midst of a winter storm, the fire kept people warm and alive. The fire gave them the capacity to cook and to clean, and to prepare medicine.

Hunters could go off in search of game, with the knowledge that when they returned home they would have a warm place to rest and recover, and that the meat they brought back could be cooked and preserved to sustain their families.

Rather than look down on the people who may only come out to something at the mission church once or twice a year, Bishop Mark celebrated the faithful ministries of those who are there every Sunday, and during the week.

During the first world war there was a popular song with the title “keep the home fires burning” which was meant to encourage the mothers and wives, sisters and girlfriends of those who answered the call to go to war. The phrase points to the importance of those who often have the most thankless jobs while others are in the limelight

Those affected by the ice storm last year, who lost lights and heat when the power wires came down, know what it means to be at home in the dark and in the cold. They know in a very tangible way what it means to keep the home fires going, and what it is like when we can’t.

We had a great crowd here on Christmas Eve. Some people we may not know very well, and some who we only see once or twice a year, along with folks who come back to visit when they are home to be with family. The presence of all those people in the sanctuary literally heats the place up.

It is possible to become cynical, and a bit resentful of those we don’t see here that often. We may wonder what our little mission church would be like if we needed extra seating every week. But it also important to remember that we don’t necessarily know what is happening in the lives of those people. We don’t have a way to calculate the importance in their lives, of having this place to come to, when they seek the warmth and light.

This morning in our Gospel reading we heard about about Anna, who seems to have spent most of her life faithfully tending the home fire. In her 84^th year of widowhood, she saw the effect it had on Simeon when Mary and Joseph brought their infant son Jesus into the Temple for his dedication service. Anna broke out into song, and began to tell everyone she met about the special child. It is as if the little spark she had been helping to tend could now burst out bright and hot into a full fledged fire.

Last year I became reacquainted with a man I went to school with, a Quaker pastor and author named Philip Gulley. Phil has written a series of novels and short stories that reflect his life in small town Indiana, usually centered around the goings-on at a Quaker meetinghouse, which is what they call a church. In his book of short stories called “Hometown Tales” there is a story that he turned into fiction, but rings true for me. It is about a woman named Margaret, who believes that got has been tending to her, gradually getting her ready to serve.

Every Monday morning, my friend Jim and I eat breakfast at Bob Evans and swap war stories. Jim pastors an inner-city church, and his stories have more meat and gristle than mine. One morning he told me about Margaret. Margaret is an eighty-year-old widow in his church. She lives in a retirement center and ventures out once a week to buy groceries at Safeway. Margaret, Jim reports, is a sweet lady, though that hasn’t always been the case. She told Jim that when she was younger she was not a good person, but God has slowly changed her.

Occasionally, God builds the house overnight, but most times God nails up one board each day. Margaret was a board each day. Several years ago, Margaret felt God wanted her to do something for her inner-city church. So she prayed about it, and after a while the Lord told her to save all her pennies for the children of the church. Margaret was hoping for something a little grander, but she didn’t complain. A person has to start somewhere, she told Jim. So every year at Christmas, she wrapped up her pennies, about ten dollars’ worth, and gave them to her church. She told them it was for the kids and not to spend it on pew cushions.

 

One afternoon a lady down the hall from Margaret came to visit. She noticed Margaret’s mayonnaise jar full of pennies. She asked her why she was saving pennies. Margaret told her it was for the kids at church.

 

“I don’t have a church,” the lady said. “Can I save up my pennies and give them to the kids in your church?”

 

“Suit yourself,” Margaret said.

 

Before long, thirty folks in the retirement center were saving their pennies for the kids.

 

Every Wednesday, they climb on the retirement center’s bus and drive to the Safeway. They steer their carts up and down the aisles, then stand in line at the checkout counter. They put their groceries on the moving belt and watch as each price pops up on the display. When the checker calls the total, the old folks count out the money a bill at a time. Then they ask for the change in pennies. They count that out, too, one penny at a time. The other customers stand behind them and roll their eyes. They don’t know a work of God is underway.

 

The next year at Christmastime, the women loaded up their jars and took their pennies, twenty thousand of them, to the church Christmas party. The kids staggered from the Christmas party, their pockets bursting with pennies.

 

When the kids found out who was behind the pennies, they wanted to visit the retirement center and sing Christmas carols. Pastor Jim took them in Big Blue, the church bus. They assembled in the dining room. Jim watched from the back row. In front of him sat one of the retirement center ladies. Jim didn’t know her, had never seen her. She was explaining to a visitor what was going on.

 “These children, you see, they’re from our church, and they’ve come to visit us. We’re awfully close.”

 

The next week, one of the men in the retirement center passed away. Jim came and conducted the memorial service right there at the retirement center, which is fast becoming the new church annex.

 

All of this, mind you, began with Margaret in her apartment praying to the Lord to let her do a mighty work. She admits now that she was a little disappointed when God told her to save her pennies. She was hoping for a more flamboyant ministry. She didn’t want to start with pennies. Then she thought back on her own life and how sometimes God builds houses one board each day. Amen

“Waiting Actively”

Have you had the experience in which you keep looking at a word, and the more you look at it, the less familiar it seems? You look at it, or hear it said out loud, and part of your brain says, “Is that even a word?”

Psychologists call this “semantic satiation”. The theory is the neurons in your brain that have the job of responding to a certain word, after responding over and over again, become desensitized to it, and are temporarily unable to do the job of helping you connect the word to its meaning. So you can look at the word, or hear it, and draw a blank. You just can’t connect meaning to the word.

I have been looking at Christmas cards this week. Cards I have received, and ones I was getting ready to send. A lot of them use the same words over and over again.  I had the experience of semantic satiation, looking at these cards, and realizing the meaning of the words was slipping away.

Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays. Best of the Season. Wishing you Joy. Joy. Joy. Joy. Joy. How do we get back to the meaning of a word like Joy, which is our advent word for this week?

Last week I talked about how Advent is a time of waiting, preparing for the coming of Jesus. There is an important difference between passive waiting, and active waiting.

We are getting ready to celebrate the birth of Jesus. A key figure in the nativity story is Mary, waiting to give birth. The image of a pregnant woman is powerful. Anyone who has been where she was, waiting for her child to be born, and anyone who has made the journey with a pregnant woman, knows this is not passive waiting.

A pregnant woman may be encouraged to rest, to take it easy, but that does not mean she is not doing anything. She is actually very busy, doing a lot. Within her body huge work is happening. The woman’s body is preparing itself for giving birth. Her body also continues to nourish and nurture, and guide the development, the growing going on in her womb.

The expectant mother is a perfect image of someone who is actively waiting. Patiently, or impatiently, they are busy, waiting for the day. But this kind of waiting absolutely does not mean sitting around doing nothing, until something happens to you. In this kind of waiting she is an active participant, doing her part in what needs to be done.

When that semantic satiation thing happens inside our head, and we temporarily lose the connection to the meaning of a word, it may help to get out of our heads, and look at things from a different perspective. Not everything is about us.

Our gospel reading this morning from Luke is the beautiful passage often called Mary’s Song, or the Magnificat. The word Magnificat is the Latin version of the word “magnify”, which means “praise”. Luke tells the story of Mary responding to the news she is pregnant, and the child growing in her womb will have a special mission.

Mary sang that her spirit rejoiced in God, her Saviour. To rejoice means to see joy, or to feel joy, to be joyful. Mary knows what the word means. She finds Joy in having a role in God’s work, for doing her part in something so much bigger than her. Mary went on to sing about God is doing.

“God’s mercy is for those who fear God from generation to generation. God has shown strength with God’s arm;

God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. God has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

and lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things,

and sent the rich away empty.”
It does not get any easier to hear those words about God scattering the proud, bringing down the powerful, and sending the rich away empty. That sounds pretty bad for those of us who like our pride, who crave power, and have believed the world’s hypnotic message that it is good to be rich.

Even though it is hard to hear these words, we know they are true. The joy Mary sang about is not to be found in being proud, in wielding power, or being rich. The joy she sang about is not just about us, and our personal accomplishments.

The song-writer Michael Franti said, “ joy is the intersection between the human and the divine, and that’s why at some points, when you experience joy you throw your hands in the air, you laugh, you dance, but at other times you experience joy you cry, and you like release in this other way, and it’s the same thing, and its coming from this place of letting go…”

Mary let go of a lot, to embrace her role in the bigger story. And she knew great joy. A few weeks ago, while talking about the mission of churches, and the future of congregations like ours, I quoted a writer named Frederick Buechner. Perhaps the most famous thing he ever wrote comes from a book called “Wishful Thinking”. He said,

“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

 

Buechner was talking about the same thing Mary sang about. True joy, true gladness, true meaning in life is found not so much in our own ambitions, plans, desires, but in the larger story of God’s hopes and dreams. What is really needed? How can we be part of giving birth to a world that is more like God imagines for us? How can we more often see God at work in the world?

Another of my favourite writers, the Roman Catholic monk Thomas Merton said,

“Life is this simple. We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through all the time. This is not just a fable or a nice story. It is true. If we abandon ourselves to God and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes, and we see it maybe frequently. God shows Himself everywhere, in everything- in people and in things and in nature and in events. It becomes very obvious that God is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without him. It’s impossible.”

Today we gathered and blessed the White Gifts. This week Linda and Kathy, and their helpers will distribute them to families they know, that need help to make Christmas a little more special for their children. This is just a part of the year round work that Linda and Kathy do, on our behalf.

When we act generously, when we reach out beyond ourselves, we can get a glimpse of the world as God would have it be. I find great meaning, and yes, Joy, when I go out and shop for a child I have never met, and try to imagine what might make them smile.

True joy is found at the intersection of the human and the divine. We find Joy where we see God at work. God is everywhere, always, but we do not seem to be able to see that all the time. We are more able to see God when we go beyond passive waiting for something to happen to us, and we are more like Mary, quietly, actively waiting to help goodness and mercy shine through into our world. Amen