How does your life speak?

There’s an old Quaker proverb that goes “let your life speak.”

It’s been running through my head a bit the last little while.  To be honest, I see it frequently because it’s the title of a book by Parker Palmer that sits on the bookshelf right behind my desk.  (Find that book and read it.  Please.)  But I also read the news.  I also look at the world.  You do to, I bet.

Fear, anger and hate seem to be everywhere and there’s been lots written and lots said about it, much written by people more knowledgable and eloquent than me.  Much of it also quotes great figures like Mandela, Martin Luther King, Gandhi and Jesus.

But let me come at this from a little bit different way, the way of people maybe a little less eloquent and a little less famous.  Might even be people you know.

I’ve either attended or been honoured to lead a number of celebrations of life in our community the last little while.

Many of the services have included the passage from scripture that begins “for everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven …”  It’s from Ecclesiastes - thought you might also know it from Pete Seeger’s folk hit “Turn, turn, turn.”  It includes a lengthy list of things that there is time for, from “a time to be born, and a time to die” to “a time for war, and a time for peace.”  Even “a time to love, and a time to hate.”  I’m pretty sure that just because it’s on the list doesn’t mean you should find a time for it, only that you’ll likely encounter it.  And I’m sure that we could all add to that list.

Unfortunately, “the list” is sometimes all we remember.  It’s all Seeger put in his song and sometimes we think the stuff is the most important part.  It’s not.  A life full of stuff isn’t nearly as important as what you do with it. 

More importantly, the writer of Ecclesiastes doesn’t say how long we have, nor do they bemoan the fact that we don’t know.  Instead, the writer reminds us that living into life is what is intended, not living towards death.  “I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil” (Ecclesiastes 3:13).  God intends for us to live well.  And, as Jesus reminds us, to love well, just as he loved us (John 15:12).

To live life as a gift from God, to live well, and to love well as God intended and Jesus taught, gives voice to our life.  We hear it and see it in the lives of those we have seen, met and engaged in our life.  And even when our physical life is ended, our presence continues on in those who have experienced life with us.  Those who have heard our life speak to them.

Comfort in the loss of someone we love is very individual, I think, and can take many forms.  And we often have lots of life questions for which we seek answers, what are often referred to as “life’s unanswerable questions.”  Sometimes I wish we had more answers.  But than I remind myself that having all the answers would make us less created in the image of God, and more, well, God.

The thing is, we are most inclined to wonder these things - and to hear these words from Ecclesiastes - when someone is gone.  And we wonder at these words as we reflect on them, not ourselves.  Again, maybe we should also remember to live into life, not towards death. 

I know that God wants us to live well, to love and care for, and with, others, living as Jesus exampled for us.  As I have been able to share in celebrating lives that have been well lived and shared with so many others, I know that our lives speak.  And they must not speak of fear or anger or hate.

What is your life saying?

Let's talk about sin, shall we?

I’d like to talk about sin for a minute.

And I’d like to do it in a completely non-judgemental manner.

Now, I know what you may be thinking: minister writes about sin and isn’t judging?  Is that even possible?  I hope so.

Still, in the church’s defence, we kind of invented it.  Not all the sinning – we’ve all had a creative hand in that through the years – but in the concept.

We use the word “sin” in a pretty generic way these days.  It tends to mean anything anyone considers wrong, especially morally or ethically wrong.  And we usually use it when describing something WE have judged to be so.

But that’s not what sin really means.  The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church says that sin is “the purposeful disobedience of a creature to the known will of God.”  So sin is a theological concept – it is fundamentally about our relationship with God.  Sin distances us from God and the life God intends for us.

That pretty much covers anything, doesn’t it?  Yes it does, but here’s where it’s different to a moral or ethical right or wrong: sin is God-centred, not human-centred.  Hmm, that sounds funny doesn’t it?  “Sin is God-centred.”  Let me come back to that in a minute.

The problem, of course, is discerning what is God’s will.  The bible is a good place to start, because it gives is two helpful perspectives.  First, the word we translate as “sin” in the bible literally means “to miss the mark.”  In other words, if our goal is to be close to God, to have a relationship with God, sin is the stuff that knocks us off course or sends us in another direction.  Second, the other word we use with sin is “transgression.”  That’s when we “cross the line” – violate a law or a commandment.  The are many laws in the books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus (some of them are, um … interesting, too) and there are the Ten Commandments, fundamental guidelines for living.  And there is the “Great Commandment” in Christian scripture: to love God with all my heart and soul and my neighbour as myself.

Our interpretation of those laws and commandments changes over time.  I know that stoning your neighbour for working on the Sabbath certainly has, for example.  (Although, you may feel like you want to if they’re running a chain saw at 6 am when you’re sleeping in.)  But that doesn’t mean that the concept of respect for justice and for what is right should change.  Nor does the concept that right relationship with God and each other and the world – to “love” as Jesus taught – should be our goal in living.  In her book Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, Kathleen Norris writes that “I can find all too many ways in which I transgress regularly against the great commandment, to love God with all my heart and soul, and my neighbour as myself.  On a daily basis, I fail to keep the balance that this commandment requires of me: that I love and care for myself, but not so well that I become incapable of loving and serving others; and that I remember to praise God as the author of life itself, but not so blindly that I lose sight of the down-to-earth dimensions of my everyday relationships and commitments.”  But we always need to continue to try.

Which brings me back to that phrase above that sounded funny, “sin is God-centred.”  I think it seems odd to me because sin is the antithesis of a God-centred life, the thing that drives us away from God.  So what draws us to God.  Salvation?  Redemption?  Fancy terms, but I think they’re only the process of returning to God after sin.  The opposite of sin?  I think it’s love, love as God loves us and as Jesus showed us.

Appropriate and Balanced

I was going to write about how we tell our stories today.  We recently had our annual summer kids program and the theme this year was Superheroes of the Bible.  We had a story each day of a character in the Bible who exemplified a “super power,” things like caring, bravery, friendliness and wisdom (and there were lots more, we discovered).  On the last day we talked about Jesus and how Jesus shows us that we all have those “super powers” in us and we can all be like Jesus and share those powers loving each other.  We’re all superheroes.

It was great and we had fun.  Connecting the kids with these “super powers” and how we treat each other  - love each other, as Jesus would say - was meaningful, I hope, and I hope that we sent some more confident superheroes out into the world.

The thing I wanted to say was that, when it came to telling the stories of Miriam, David, Abigail, Solomon and Jesus, I told them with a bit of, well, let’s say “creative license.”  When David fought Goliath, for example, there was no sling and stones and he didn’t chop Goliath’s head off (1 Samuel 17).  He made Goliath slip on a banana peel and, when he fell, David hit him over the head with a turnip.  David was vegetarian, by the way.  The whole story tells much better, really, but the point is that I kept the essential truth about David being brave and adjusted the narrative to make that point in a way more appealing (no pun intended) to kids.  Really, it did work.  It was fun, engaging and meaningful.  And then we had crafts and games and awesome snacks that were pretty much like having a meal.

So, yes, I was going to write about how we tell our stories - I guess I have a bit - but then I realized the more significant thing: we made being in church fun, engaging and meaningful.

I think that’s a sentence we don’t hear often enough.  Unfortunately.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not thinking that “church” should be all about having fun and being entertained.  Appropriate respect and reverence for things sacred is important and there can be serious issues addressed when we gather as a faith community - anytime we gather as a community.  But that needs to be balanced with lighter moments, moments when the learning and the worshipping comes from engaging God with some humour and a little friendliness.  And maybe a snack.

Right there are two key aspects of “church” we need to be constantly considering, appropriateness and balance, and they are reflected in two key aspects of Jesus’ teaching ministry, and we worked them both: stories and food.

Jesus was rarely about doing what society thought was “appropriate.”  In fact, an important lesson in all the stories Jesus told - parables and otherwise - was that they challenged the most common thinking in society, they challenged the status quo.  Jesus’ behaviour was often inappropriate according to the society of his day: he associated with all the wrong people, he taught and healed on the day of rest, he challenged authority.  He challenged what was conventional and appropriate.

Jesus also balanced his teaching with humour and wit.  Maybe we have a little different perspective now than first century Jews, but many of Jesus’ stories are humorous and – here’s the food part – much of Jesus’ teaching happened informally with the sharing of food. Some of the stories are about food, too, as is the occasional miracle story (changing the water to wine and feeding the 5000 with a few loaves and fish).  Again, maybe it’s less so today, but in Jesus’ day a meal was an important time of gathering and sharing.

All of this is brought out in the Bible stories we hear in church this summer in the gospel of Matthew: the parables, Jesus sharing a meal, feeding the multitude.  And it reminds me that we need to be constantly thinking about what we teach and how we are teaching it, how we are engaging each other and how we are engaging God in our liturgies.

I think we had fun with the children and I hope they did too.  I hope that they also had a good feeling about being in a church, about hearing stories from the Bible and engaging each other with what’s in those stories.  I hope they remember that Jesus wants them to be the superhero they really are and God is always with them to help.  And I hope they remember that sharing food is a good way to engage people.  We all need nourishment for body and soul.

Planting a seed of wonder

Jesus once taught about what the kingdom of God was like by saying that it was like a mustard seed: the tiniest of seeds grows into a bush so big that birds can nest in it.  It’s a great metaphor for a common biblical theme, that greatness often comes from the smallest, or the least, of things.  Plant the seed and it will grow into something much greater.

But it’s also one that would have left any first century farmer – or any century farmer, for that matter – wondering about a few things.  The mustard is small, that’s for sure, but it’s not the smallest seed.  It doesn’t grow all that big, either.  Certainly not big enough for birds to nest in.  And, worst of all, it’s a weed.  Sure it was used for flavouring and colouring things, and it was a medicinal herb, but really it was more of an annoyance to farmers than anything else.

I wonder if Jesus means something more radical, something more complex than simply plant the seed of faith and it will grow into a great flourishing kingdom.

What if the mustard seed isn’t just about size, but “ordinariness?”  Nothing unique or exotic, but something you might see anywhere, at anytime.  What if the point of growing into a great bush isn’t about what we know can happen, but about envisioning something far beyond what we expect, imagining something greater than our own limited experience would allow?  What if the point of using a weed is to suggest that we need to look again at what really is valuable to us?  We call something a weed because we don’t see its value compared to a more useful plant, but that doesn’t mean it has no value – we just don’t see it.  Perhaps others do.

Our lives are full of little, ordinary, everyday things.  Even acknowledging that is problematic, isn’t it?  What’s little, ordinary or everyday may be different for each of us.  But every step moves us somewhere and it’s worth pausing sometimes to wonder about the simplest things we do and where they are taking us.  And not just ourselves, of course.  The truth is that Jesus didn’t do anything super complicated.  Jesus made time for people, especially those that others didn’t.  Jesus listened to people, especially those that others didn’t.  Jesus cared for people as best he could, especially those that others didn’t.  Jesus loved people, especially those that others didn’t.  Even the miracle stories can be understood to be less a divine action in the physical realm and more a divine action of love.  When the possessed were exorcized of their demons, it was a miracle that Jesus simply gave them time, understanding and respect that restored their dignity and sense of personhood.  When the blind received sight, it was a miracle that Jesus simply made them visible to the world and restored their place in it.  When the multitude was hungry, it was a miracle that Jesus inspired such generosity and sharing with a simple gesture of offering all that there was, that all could be fed.  Simple, ordinary acts change things.

Our daily lives can also be limited by our expectations.  We think we know how it’s going to go and we limit our thinking to that end.  But what if we let go of expectations and used imagination sometimes.  And I don’t mean pressure to achieve or complete or meet a certain standard, I mean letting go of that and imagining the possibilities if we weren’t limited by our own - or anyone else’s - expectations.  A couple of weeks ago in our church in Ponoka and again this week in Bashaw, I’ve watched children imagine bracelets from cardboard and tinfoil, shields from foam waterboards, capes from towels and make up their own superhero logo, not to imagine that they’re Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman or Spiderman, but to be the superhero that they already are.  These are the super powers we all have: caring, bravery, kindness, wisdom and love.  Comic book superheroes are great entertainment, but these are real and if you don’t think they’re super, read my thoughts on Jesus and the miracle stories in the preceding paragraph again.

I guess maybe that’s also the perception part.  Weed or valued plant?  Part of how we understand “the kingdom of God” is to recognize the diversity of views that contribute to - and challenge - how we perceive it.  God is one, but we are many and come from many places.  Respect, understanding and love (and probably a whole lot of patience) is how we come to share in the life we all have together.

And that’s another thing about this parable of the mustard seed: it doesn’t just spontaneously burst into a giant bush right from the seed.  It takes time, it takes care and nurture, and there are often lots of twists and turns on the way.  Sometimes it takes more than one person to care for it.  And God.  That’s pretty obvious with a seed, but what about your life?  If we don’t take the time to plant, feed and water our own lives, we won’t have much to bring to the bigger field, the life we share with others.  One little seed is the start of things.

What are you planting?

Making time for prayer

Do you pray?

Just to be clear, I'm not asking about those times in church when the pastor says "Let us pray" and we all bow our heads or kneel and share in a prayer made on our behalf.  Nor am I talking about those times we share in the Lord's Prayer, the prayer Jesus taught us, whether we understand it as an example of how to pray or "the" prayer to be shared.

I mean, do you pray?  You.  By yourself.  With God.  Or by whatever name you call God.

In the gospel of Luke, the author gives us one of the two stories of Jesus answering the disciples request to teach them to pray (Luke 11).  His response includes a short version of what we refer to as the Lord's Prayer.  But Jesus goes on, first with a parable that reminds us to be persistent in prayer and second, a reminder that God answers with what God knows is appropriate.  It seems a little like saying - and I'm paraphrasing Luke with some additions, here - "ask, and it shall be given to you, though maybe not exactly what you were expecting; search, and you will find, though maybe not exactly what you thought you were looking for; knock, and the door will be opened to you, though it may be a little like playing The Price Is Right, 'cause you might find something you weren't expecting."  God knows what is best for you and will answer with what is best for you.  Trust God.

That's a good way of explaining that, I suppose.  At least, we want it to be.  Sometimes it's hard to make that enough.  Like when we pray that God will help someone with cancer get well and they don't.  Or we pray that God will protect us from abuse, but the abuse doesn't stop.  Or we pray that a loved one travels safely and they're hurt in an accident.  Or we pray that God will help us find a job so we can care for our family, and there's no work to be found.  Or we pray for good healthy crops and there's a drought.  Is it enough then?

I want to say it is.  But if you've been in one of those situations when you appeal to God for help and it appears that the help isn't coming, it's seems harder to believe, doesn't it?  And not just in God, but in ourselves.  After all, what if our prayers weren't answered because we prayed wrong?

Maybe the key to understanding that better is in the examples Jesus gives, comparing prayer to persistently asking a friend for help, or comparing how God might answer to a parent's response to a child.  It seems, in Luke's gospel, like Jesus is saying "you must understand the relationship as if God were a friend or parent who knows us, who really knows us, not like some distant, all powerful entity."  God is not the Great Oz, but our dearest friend, a parent, a lover that knows us intimately, genuinely, uniquely.  After all, if we come from God and return to God, how can God not know us so deeply?

I don't have an answer for how God responds to each individual and unique prayer.  I can't imagine that anyone does.  But I know this: prayer is the voice of our relationship with God.  God hears all that is said from our hearts and you can't - you can't! - pray wrong.  God loves us for who we are and God loves us regardless of how we live.  God answers all prayers with love, whatever that love may look like to us.

Talk regularly with God.  Pray for needs, but pray with thanks also.  Pray because God is listening like a best friend or a parent or a loved one.  Pray however your heart needs to speak.  But do pray.

Can the seed grow anywhere? How do you know?

Jesus told a lot of parables.  The Parable of the Sower is a familiar one that appears in each of Mark, Matthew and Luke’s gospels.  It’s one that Jesus, himself, explains.  I think that’s a feature that’s part of his explanation to the disciples of why he uses parables, but that’s for another time.  Let’s look at the parable itself for a minute.

A sower goes out to sow some seed, Jesus says.  As he tosses the seed - by hand in those days, of course - some lands on the stone path and is eaten by birds; some lands on rocky ground and grows, but withers quickly without soil; some lands on ground and grows, but weeds grow with it and choke it out; and some lands on good soil and grows, thriving and producing a great harvest.

The seed, says Jesus, is the “word of the kingdom.”  When it’s heard and not understood, that’s the seed that falls on the path; when it falls on rocky ground, that’s those who hear, but the word doesn’t take root and when things are difficult, they readily give up; when the word is heard, but those who hear it choose wealth and the pleasures of the world, then that’s the weeds overwhelming it; the good soil is when the word is heard and understood and lived, that’s what produces a harvest.

Well, that all seems clear: Jesus wants us to be the good soil, to hear the word, understand it and live it.  Yes.  And we should, hard as that may be at times.  Because, aren’t there times when we’re being all of those things in the landscape of our lives?  Sometimes we’re like the stone path, sometimes the rocky ground, sometimes challenged by weeds - especially if we’re already challenged to be able to recognize what is a weed.  And yes, we can be good soil.

Thank goodness the sower is who the sower is.

You might be tempted to think that you don’t have to be a farmer, in this century or in the first century like Jesus’ first audience, to know that this is one really incompetent sower.  Seed is precious.  No one would toss it so casually that it went pretty much everywhere.  That would be foolish and wasteful.  You would want to be careful and cast the seed only where there is a certainty of it having a chance to grow.

Unless ... the seed was, literally, life and the sower could see the potential to grow in every landscape.  Why else would the sower cast the seed everywhere?  Wherever we find ourselves, the word is there.  God generously, graciously and lovingly offers life to all.  Hear, says Jesus, and listen.

Where's the love?

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there always seems to be a lot of talk about love in church.  Yes, I confess that I tire of it, sometimes, too - when we just talk.  It does seem like it’s one of the two most talked about things in church and it always seems like we’re saying the same thing: God loves you, Jesus loves you, love your neighbour.  Good stuff.  Okay.

That other thing we talk about the most, by the way, is money.  At least, everyone thinks we talk about it a lot.  I’m not so sure we do.  I think it’s just that we talk about it so badly, that everyone thinks we talk about it a lot.  The church needs money to keep its doors open, keep on doing good things and keep on paying their very gifted clergy.  But when are the doors open and for whom?  And what “good things” exactly?  We seem to just assume that everyone knows what the church does and why more is always needed, so we talk very broadly and in generic terms.  And who is this “everyone,” anyway?  Shouldn’t we know people a little better?

Sometimes I think we handle love like that, too.  We speak very genuinely and authoritatively and we talk about how God loves you, Jesus loves you, and you should love your neighbour (often by making a financial contribution to this church-based program or that one).  But there’s more to love than that.

The Bible includes at least three kinds of love and, because the earliest translations of the Bible were in Greek, we often call them by their Greek names.  There’s “filio” which means, literally, brotherly – and sisterly – love.  Philadelphia, for example, is referred to as “the city of brotherly love” because that’s literally what it means.  There’s “eros,” which is physical, sensual love (this is where we get the word “erotic”).  And last, there is the one we don’t hear quite so much about, “agapé.”  This is the kind of love Jesus speaks of, the all encompassing unconditional love of God.

More often than not, it seems like the church – the institution – speaks about love in only two dimensions, with moral pronouncements on filio and eros (especially eros…) on the one hand and encouragement to just go love everybody, on the other, because that’s what Jesus says we should do.

Except it isn’t, exactly.  Jesus is a lot more specific.  What Jesus says is that we should do more than love at a distance, as if it were some warm fuzzy sweater we can put on.  Jesus says we should love one another as he loved us, and while that’s most clearly stated in John’s gospel, it’s as readily enacted in the others.

Jesus engaged people, got to know them, shared with them.  Jesus asked people to come and do as he did, to learn about what it means to love by getting to know people, especially the people we least wanted to know, and find out what love means to them.  Jesus calls us to let go of those things that get in the way of relationship, like hate and anger, and to try to see things as others might and to do that with compassion and understanding.  Filio and eros are spiritually empty without relationship.  And yet, as much as the love of agapé is unconditional in itself, living it out is not: it’s work, it takes time and investment and how much or how little can only be found out in relationship.  What does love mean to you?