Get the point?

It’s been a long time since we’ve all been together, but I feel pretty safe in saying that we have fun at our church. We can also be very serious. Sometimes we laugh, sometimes we cry. There's enthusiasm that's sometimes a little noisy and there's times when it's quiet, almost too quiet. We use art and video and different media, we sing new songs and old hymns, we're very dramatic - theatrical, even! - and we talk a lot, we listen to talking and we talk together. We sit, we stand, we dance (yes, we do, really), we move about, we sit still. Occasionally, I bet someone falls asleep. You know who you are.

The point is, we engage the story of God and Jesus and us in a way that’s meaningful, in whatever way helps us to bring it into our lives because the message of Jesus is about life, and living is how we should tell it. In church and in the world. Inside and out.

That's the thing, really. This is just what we do and others do what they do. That's what can make the church both so alive and so dead. To be doing what is, not what was. That's why "church" is changing so much. It's because we are.

Right now, we're making our way through a part of the Gospel of Luke that we know as The Sermon on the Plain. It’s likely Luke’s version of what Matthew calls the Sermon on the Mount. Whether it's an actual "sermon" or they each just collected some of Jesus' best sayings into this format, it hits on many of the key themes and ideas in Jesus' ministry. Side note: might also be worth considering if there’s a metaphor here. Is there a different perspective to having someone talk to you from above (mountain) or on the same level (plain) ? Hmm.

Let’s suppose it was a "sermon." Here's how I picture this happening. Jesus starts telling the crowd about how they are already blessed and they will only know that blessing in being vulnerable and open enough to experience it. There are some woes, too, and again, it’s really about what’s happening now. Hang on, he says, and take a minute to really think about it. He's not reading from notes here, so the more impassioned he becomes, he starts moving about. They follow because they have questions about this blessing thing. There's some dialogue, maybe Jesus needs to grab a shoulder or get close to make that point about how sometimes it’s not going to be easy to follow him.

Listen, he says, looking them right in the eye, love your enemies. He might touch someone’s face or pull at their cloak when he talks about offering the other cheek when someone hits you or give more to those who take. People look confused. I’m not talking about the other person, he says, it’s about you. You, he’ll say as he touches each person around him, and you and you and you. And he’ll move quickly through the crowd, looking for eye contact with each person. He won’t always get it. So he’ll say it more emphatically, it’s about you and how you are. Show others that. Offer love, do good, give without expectations or conditions. Don’t judge others and decide their worthiness, just love. Just. Love.

"Wow, that's deep," says Peter. “So simple,” says Andrew. “You just blew my mind," says James. Luke and Matthew chime in with “I’m gonna write that down before I forget.”

"No," says Jesus, "don't just write it down. Go and live it."

And he proceeds to do just that: he shows them how to take these ideas into their hearts and live them.

That would be an awesome sermon. Not just the style and panache of Jesus. But that they heard his words, took them to heart and lived them. Inside and out.

When will we trust again?

It’s a lot. The world is struggling with so much. It’s challenging, overwhelming, frustrating. There’s divisiveness, conflict, hurt, brokenness, anger. It’s a lot.

Communication seems to have been an early casualty and, for awhile now, relationships. While we ramped up social media, live streaming and platforms like Zoom and Skype, we also seemed to find dialogue becoming more acrimonious, defensive and divisive. Random acts of anger and bitterness seem to be overtaking kindness. And individuality seems to be trumping community. It’s a lot.

Jeremiah lived in a world with a lot going on. In his time, Judah was threatened by the Assyrians and Egyptians, conquered by the Babylonians, Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed and many of its people sent to Babylon in exile. It was an era of difficult and violent transitions, religious and political upheaval and personal conflict. Jeremiah offered condemnation and lament about the Hebrew people’s relationship with God, but also words of hope.

Jeremiah encouraged the people to trust in God. He said that trusting in the things of this world, having power through armies and force and valuing stuff more than heart is like being a bush in an arid desert, a shrub in an arid an uninhabitable land. Trusting in God - the divine, the love, grace and spirit of life - is like being a tree planted by a river with deep roots that reach into the earth for water and nourishment. It grows and flourishes and doesn’t fear when the seasons change, because it is strong and connected to the life giving earth.

I think that’s a great way to describe what trust feels like. Connectedness that brings life and warmth and nourishment. It’s not just sustaining, but growing. Call it God, or Spirit or the life force or energy in all things, but trusting that is what brings life to our own spirit, our own hearts and minds.

That power is in all things. It’s easy enough to say that, even see that, when we talk about the creation around us, the seasons and the cycles of life in the world. But that same power is in me and you and in all the people we get along with and in all those we don’t, the people we call friends and the ones we might call enemies, the ones we “love” and the ones we “hate.”

Jesus, I believe, makes that point. Just like Jesus, we’re divine and human, created in the image of God (however you know God) and of the earth. Jesus tries to bring us back to God by revealing that divinity in each of us.

So, what if we understood trusting in God as trusting in God wherever God is - including each other? What if we could work through that connectedness of spirit, of the energy of life and love, that’s in each of us? What if we could employ the love that Paul wrote the Corinthians about, the love that’s patient and kind, envies no one and is not boastful or rude? Or dominating or selfish. What if we could just pause for a moment, take a breath, and seek out the connection of the spirit, rather than the self-oriented, self-important demands that divide us? Wouldn’t it be a place to start, a place of green, shady trees by a quiet stream, rather than a barren, desert wasteland.

A Fish Story

I wonder what it feels like to be a fish. One day you’re swimming around, minding your own business, maybe hanging out with some other fish, just getting comfortable in a nice little eddy, snacking on stuff floating by, when - BAM! - you’re hooked. Next thing you know you’re eye up in a frying pan.

Oh sure, you can fight it. You might even break the line or dislodge the hook and get away, but you’ll always feel it. And the other fish will always be looking at you sideways and wondering if it might happen to them. Soon you’re off on a shoal by yourself wondering what happened to those lazy days in school.

I think that’s sometimes how people see the church. After all, didn’t Jesus call his first disciples - who were fishermen - to come and fish for people? For those who find themselves to be spiritual, but not religious, I wonder if this isn’t a key part of that - that they’re not interested in being hooked. And for those that used to attend church, have they found it to be as boring as being, well, dead in the frying pan, or have they been left scarred by the experience? For some, evangelism seems to mean that aggressive “catching” of people who then become one of “us,” saved from the sea of the real world. Maybe they don’t see that kind of fishing as being saved.

But look at the story again and we might be able to describe the image a little differently. The fishermen Jesus called as his first disciples didn’t use hooks, they used a net. So what if we did that. Our net is the love of Jesus that we are called to live out. If we live that kind of life, we bring love to the world. Not just the warm, fuzzy romantic stuff on Valentine’s Day, but the deep, difficult love that calls us to care for the poor and the sick, to be kind and compassionate even to our enemies and to love the seemingly unlovable. That’s a net that holds people but doesn’t hold them back, that embraces them but doesn’t imprison them, that includes all and excludes none. That’s what evangelizing means, by the way: to proclaim the gospel, to tell the story and to live it, too. In sharing that experience with the world, we build a net that connects people with each other and with God.

And we do it on porpoise ...

Been There

I wasn’t there, so I don’t know for sure, but when Paul visited the city of Corinth in the first century, I think he would have found a pretty cosmopolitan city for its day. The ancient city had largely been destroyed by the conquering Romans in the previous century, but it had been rebuilt as an administrative and trading centre, their provincial capital in Greece. The port brought goods and people from all over the Mediterranean. There would have been Greeks and Romans, some Jews, and likely others from different cultures. There would have been all ages of men, women and children from a variety of social and economic circumstances, government officials, business owners, soldiers, labourers, scholars and artists.

I wonder how Paul would have described them. I imagine, if someone had asked him, that he would have just said, well, they’re people. They have different ideas, different opinions. Some do well, some struggle, but they do the best they can.

I wonder, too, how many people there heard Paul talk about Jesus and teach what Jesus taught. And how many of them were inspired to create a community of followers of this Jesus and become People of the Way, as they were known then. I can’t imagine it was easy in a city like that, in an occupied state where anything that was perceived to challenge the status quo was brutally put down.

And I wonder, when Paul left Corinth, did he feel confident and hopeful for the people that had come together to share their lives in this new community.

However he felt when he left, sometime later he heard things weren’t going well at all. They weren’t embracing their diversity, they were struggling with economic and social issues that were dividing them, issues of authority and practices, issues of power and influence versus justice and equity. Common ground was hard to find, it seemed. Sharing the words and teachings of Jesus was a lot easier than putting them into practice.

So he wrote them a letter.

He had some ideas for how they might address some of the problems they were having, practical wisdom and suggestions for things they could do. And he reminded them that diversity is a great thing. From that one source of life that we know as God or the spirit, comes many gifts. Everyone has gifts, different gifts for different people, but we need them all to be a whole community. It’s like the body, he wrote. Creation is one body, the community is one body, but that common-unity is made by all of us together. We are the parts, the members, the vital organs that make up the body and every part is necessary and important to the whole. Wise words.

But then, it’s like he suddenly realized that wise words are still just words. And even following the words can be just superficial behaviour. Unless … so he wrote “I can speak with all the beauty and eloquence of an angel, but if it doesn’t come from love, it’s just noise. Whatever I do, however I do it, if there isn’t love behind it, it’s nothing.” Love is action of our very being: being patient, being kind, being generous, being humble, being true. It’s our being from the beginning and always, even beyond this life. In fact, says Paul, as important as faith and hope are, love is the most important.

In a world struggling with division, hate, hurt and oppression, begin with love. It’s your very being. Imagine how different you could make things, imagine how you could change the world. Paul could. He wrote us a letter.

Hearing Test

According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus’ public ministry begins like this.

He goes to the Jordan River to be baptized by John, just like everyone else. When he comes out of the river, the Holy Spirit appears as a dove and, Luke says, “descended upon him in bodily form.” Then, Luke says, “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness” to be tested. After the forty days in the wilderness, Jesus, “filled with the power of the Spirit,” returns to Galilee and begins teaching and preaching with, according to Luke, a lot of success.

One day, he reads scripture in his hometown synagogue. He’s handed the scroll of Isaiah, the great prophet and he reads from near the end of it. “The spirit of God is on me. God has chosen me to bring good news to the poor. God’s sent me to free captives, give sight to the blind, liberate the oppressed and declare a time of restoration, rejuvenation and renewal for all creation.” He then tells everyone that what he just read has been fulfilled in their hearing.

Let’s just pause there for a minute before we come to the people’s reaction.

I believe that Jesus’ ministry is meant to show us more than just what God is capable of in Jesus: it’s meant to show us what God is capable of in us. And, of course, when I say that, I don’t mean a particular religious convention that we call “God,” I mean the life that is in all things, the love, the energy, the universal source that connects us all in that living. I mean the inherent good, creative force that inspires and move us. I mean what I think Luke means when he says “the Holy Spirit.”

I wonder if that isn’t also what Isaiah means. And why Luke tells the story in this way, constantly repeating the presence of the Spirit as Jesus begins his ministry: in his baptism, in his time of discovery in the wilderness, as he begins his ministry and as he proclaims his ministry. Jesus shows us the divinity that is in each of us, all of us. Jesus is just like us, human and divine, hoping to bring us back to God by reconnecting us with the divinity that’s in us, too. “Love one another as I have loved you” doesn’t mean that we imitate Jesus in practice, but that we connect with the spirit that is in us as well as the humanity and be Jesus in our world.

I wonder if all of this might point to Jesus proclaiming Isaiah’s words fulfilled “in your hearing” - he doesn’t say “in me” or “in what I’m about to do.” I wonder if Jesus means to tell the people that the words are fulfilled every time they’re proclaimed and, more importantly, when the spirit moves us to enact them. I wonder if this is Jesus telling us that the spirit is on all of us, we are all chosen and sent, we are all meant to live what we proclaim. It’s as if Jesus were saying the spirit of God is in all of us, let me now show you - in my ministry and in my life - how the time has come for you to live it.

That’s not easy. Or welcome, sometimes. Let’s go back to Luke’s story for a minute. Initially, the crowd is amazed at Jesus. But then they realize he’s just the son of Joseph the carpenter, he’s a local boy, and they’re indignant and offended and threaten him. Not everyone hears the message the same way. That didn’t stop Jesus from proclaiming it or living it. It shouldn’t stop us, either.

All the Parts

Unity and uniformity are not the same thing. 

And thank goodness! Imagine what the world would be like if we were all the same. Imagine what the world would be like if all the trees and flowers, animals and birds were all the same.

Well, you can't, really, can you?  Such perfect uniformity is beyond our ability to comprehend. Thank goodness again.

We're all unique, not only in appearance but in age, gender, sexual orientation, personality, skills, philosophy, culture, religion - the list goes on. In fact, all of creation is unique and different. But we are all still part of the one world in which we live.

In one of his letters to the people in Corinth, the apostle Paul reminds them of that. He was responding to squabbles and divisions in their community. So he reminds them that everyone has their own gifts - abilities, skills, talents - but there is only one source of life from which those gifts come. Paul calls it the Spirit or the power of God, that gives these gifts, but we might also know it as the power of creation or the energy of life, or we might know it simply as love. However you know it, it’s both the source of our life and the thing that connects us all.

If only Paul could think of a metaphor for how unique and diverse we are, that also shows how we’re connected. Something that reminds us that we all need each other. Something that includes everything and everyone, even the things we’d rather not have to deal with, and reminds us that they’re all important. All of them. We could really use that now, Paul.

Together, Paul writes, we are one body and each is a different and individual part of that one body. "For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ" (1 Corinthians 12:12). Furthermore, everyone is a different part of that body, just as everyone has different gifts and abilities, and every member is important to the body. Everyone is needed. Everyone is equal.

Yes, equal. Though, in fairness, Paul says that the least are in fact greater: "God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honour to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another" (1 Corinthians 12:24-25). That’s how we have health and wholeness.

But that isn't what we do, is it? It wasn’t the practice in Paul’s day, either. Back then, the metaphor of the body was already in use as a way to describe a city or town. And it was used as a means to assign not only gifts and abilities but status as well. Those that did the work that made them feet and hands did not have the same status as those who did the thinking, for example. While everyone was necessary to the whole, your status was determined by the value of your ability to the whole. For many, it still is.

But Paul's body isn’t about commodities, it’s about people. The body that Paul describes reflects love for everyone, no matter who they are, what they do, what they think or know or feel or even what they believe. In this body, every member is a part of the whole simply by "being" in the first place. In fact, in this body, the strong care for the weak, the wise care for the foolish, the big care for the small, everyone respects everyone and we’ve learned that everyone is a gift worthy of love and sharing.

If we want our communities to be healthy and whole, maybe this is a good place to start.

The World in a Stable

Just before I put away our nativity scene (our creche or manger scene, if you like) this year, I paused for a moment to take it all in, one last time. We might put the figures away and box up the stable, but I like to think the characters continue on with us.

What adventures are ahead? I don’t really know, but I feel better knowing that we can go together. If not in person, then in story and in heart, in imagination and awareness. I think that’s comforting. And inspiring.

We have further stories of Jesus to guide us, but what about the shepherds and the magi? The shepherds may well have returned to the comfort of their flocks and fields, but the magi, fearful of Herod, it says, “returned home by another road.” Wherever they went, I’m sure they took with them the experience of meeting Jesus and all it meant. For the shepherds, hoping for a messiah, it meant a promise kept and hope realized. For the magi, following a sign in the sky, it meant a prophecy fulfilled. For all of us, it means that same love they found can be found in every journey.

That’s ahead. Before we put it away again until next year, it might also be useful to consider how everyone in the nativity scene got here, arriving at the tableau it represents. 

I like to think of the angel as the stage manager in this production directed by God. The angel instigates and moves the action on, but the characters live it.

Mary and Joseph arrived here both by the grace of God and the command of the oppressive occupiers of their country. That night was the intersection of the divine and the earthly powers.

I think of any animals that might have been on hand as innocent bystanders, unintentional witnesses of a new life in the world. But then, animals are much more in tune with creation around them, so who’s to say that they didn’t instinctively know that the creator was coming there?

The shepherds were on hand because they were told to be. As much as they might have been waiting in hope for the coming of the messiah, the good news was proclaimed to them and they followed directions to find Jesus. That’s part of their story, they then went and told everyone “what had been told them about this child” and they were “glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.” Everything they had seen and heard brought them to Jesus.

But the magi are a different story entirely. They were seekers. They were from a different culture, different religion, different world entirely, but they followed a sign, the star, which they interpreted to mean a prophecy was fulfilled. They didn’t know where they were going and I don’t think they really knew what they would find until they found it. And somehow they knew it was just the right thing.

However they came, from wherever they came, they all met Jesus and found just what they were looking for: love, unconditional, innocent and new, just like a child. We all know God our own way, we come to God our own way and we are all loved by God, just as we are, whoever we are, however we are, wherever we come from. And we can love, just as we are. A child will show us how.