Out of the Mouths of Babes

This edition might have been a review of the movie Babe, which Lorna and I watched recently.  However, I have been thinking about what children – especially young ones - can give to the world.  This came to mind when I recalled what I have determined was a wise thing I said a long time ago when I was five or six years ago.  I was with my mother in the family car, and we stopped at a store where, I guess she had to pick up a few things – I’m not sure what.  As she left, she said to me, “I will only be a minute.”  I replied without thinking, “is that one of your minutes or one of my minutes?”  I don’t remember what she replied but it did sum up my perspective on what time meant for each of us.  I don’t remember but I think it was closer to one of my minutes than hers – at least that time.

Children – especially little one – see the world in ways that adults have forgotten.  They see aspects of their world with fresh eyes.  One way is that they have a strong sense of fairness.  They know instinctively when things are not fair – or at least don’t seem to be fair from their perspective.  They may not see the larger perspective, but they still have an innate sense that the world should be fair. 

Jesus knew that children can have a way of seeing the world which has been lost by people when they ‘grow up’.  First, they represent how we should reflect the values of the Kingdom of God, "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 18:3). 

He realized that children were among those who were often excluded.  People did not realize that we are mistaken when that happens, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." (Matthew 19:14, Mark 10:14, and Luke 18:16).  Rather than excluding them, they should be welcomed and received as we would receive Jesus,” "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me." (Matthew 18:5). 

Finally, Jesus warns against the mistreatment of children.  It is our duty as individuals and society to protect them, "If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea ( Matthew 18:6, Mark 9:42, Luke 17:2). 

As is often the case, Jesus reminds us that all are welcome in the Kingdom.  Those excluded by society – those on the margins, as well as children, can reflect more of the Kingdom than those of us who have received their reward in this world.  Remember that Jesus chose to be in this world first as a child – a helpless baby in fact.  That says it all.

Perhaps we should all attempt to reawake our inner child from time to time.  It could get us closer to God’s intention for us.

Love Your Enemies – Yes Really.

Sunday, Christians celebrated The Reign of Christ in the Christian Calendar.  Does this mean that the Kingdom of God has been established?   Well, yes and no.

Jesus gives us the great commandment which will be the rule when the Kingdom is fully established.  The Great Commandment from Matthew 22: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’

That certainly is a challenge but Jesus does not stop there.  He ups the ante, “You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.

This is the essence of the Kingdom of God; love – love your neighbours and even your enemies.  Can you imagine if you were to tell this to someone who is not Christian or even many Christians?  I haven’t seen a lot of evidence of people loving their enemies on the news.    If we are honest, how many of us can say that we love those who persecute us or even neighbours who are difficult or even nasty?  If asked I will admit that I may be able to love the difficult people in my life with a lot of effort.  However, the nasty people are very difficult, if not impossible. 

How then, are we to love our neighbours of every variety and type- pleasant and nasty, good or bad or even your enemy – how are we to live out the Great Commandment that our Lord and Saviour gives to us as Christians?  I don’t know if you are familiar with Richard Rohr.   He is a Roman Catholic priest who I find very helpful in my journey following Jesus Christ.  He recently provided something which I believe can be helpful in this challenge to love our enemies.  I would like to invite you to participate in this short exercise.

Father Richard offers a practice of deepening love and healing:

How do we come to know love so that we can live from its depths? Love cannot be understood by the mind. And if God is love, God will never be subject to the mind as we know it. God and love can only be experienced. This simple practice is an invitation to encounter love in its very physical, connective reality.

Place the palm of one of your hands on your heart. Feel your heart beating, letting its rhythm bring you into the present moment and into the awareness of God’s blessing on your life, beat after beat after beat.

Bring to your conscious mind a loved one, an ancestor, a favorite place or animal, or anything that makes you smile with undeniable, spontaneous, unconditional love and joy.

Bring that particular beloved being or thing down from your mind and place it right under your palm, in your heart space. Relax your mind and let your heart relax at the same time, feeling the sensation of blood vessels, muscles, and chest cavity opening in warmth and love for that particular loved thing. Smile.

Now humbly place a challenging person, issue, or problem directly under your palm, within your wide-open heart space. This could be someone or something currently challenging you or an old hurt from a person gone from the living world. Silently continue to smile and hold this challenging thing in the warmth of your heart.

With closed eyes, look at the thing that causes you pain, visualizing the detail that bothers you the most, all the while smiling. Consider that there may be reasons why this thing brings hurt. Smile at the fragility, suffering, or misunderstanding that makes it this way.

Finally, give the person or problem to your heart and ask that your heart’s wisdom and love take over. Rest in the Love that loves both you and the other and wants to transform all into its loving image.  Open your eyes and return to what is around you. 

Let us love one another as Jesus loves us.  With God’s help it is possible.  May you be blessed on your journey to experience the love of Jesus and share that love with your neighbours - even those who are your enemies.

I acknowledge that we are on Turtle Island, the original homelands of the many Indigenous Nations who have lived since time immemorial in Canada or as many First and other Indigenous Nations
All of the lands in Canada are the subject of up to one hundred Treaties signed by the Crown in the right of Canada with these Nations.  I will only mention a few of the Nations: the Cree, Ojibway, Blackfoot, Blood, Dakota, Mig M'ag, Huron, Inuit and these lands are also home to the Metis people.

 

Sermon June 25, 2017 2nd Sunday after Trinity

I am sure we have all heard this parable of Jesus many times in our lives.  Indeed the Medical Mission Sisters made it quite well known with their popular hit in the 1970’s.  Regular, life-long churchgoers have heard it many times proclaimed and many sermons preached on it.  What then can we gain from hearing it one more time?  Is there anything that we haven’t considered before in this lesson by Jesus, the great teacher?

The thing that struck me when I read it this time was not the missed opportunity by those who were invited to the banquet.  Here they have a chance to attend a wonderful banquet.  Of course we think of this as the heavenly banquet which is offered to each of us by Jesus Christ.  I’m not positive but that is probably often the focus of sermons preached on this parable. 

I want to propose another way of considering the parable.  Let us look at the ones who received the invitation when the friends and neighbours excused themselves from the opportunity to attend.

The host was not dismayed or swayed from his purpose when everyone excused themselves.  No, he decided he would invite those not normally included in a great banquet by a wealthy person in Jesus time; the poor, he maimed, the halt, and the blind.  Indeed it is no different in our day—I cannot see Donald Trump or one of Irving’s or McCain’s or anyone of their ilk inviting people like that to one of their banquets.  Of course it is easy to point the finger at them but when was the last time any of us did that?  I can say that I have never done it—not that I have banquets, but I don’t invite them to dinner. 

Lorna and I have helped out at community dinners at our former parish in London but never have we held a banquet or party for the local people on the edges of society. We may give generously to charity but doing things arm’s length is not the same as engaging the poor face to face.

This certainly is one of the messages that Jesus has given us.  He tells us that blessed are the poor for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  If we look at the set up for this parable we see that Jesus is telling his host that these are exactly who should be invited to a banquet.

He said also to the one who had invited him, ‘When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbours, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. ¹³But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. ¹⁴And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.’

There is a clear message of what we are to do; of how we are to live.  We are to do all those things that don’t come naturally or easily to us.  This is the counter-cultural Jesus speaking.  We are to turn the other cheek; we are to go the second mile; we are to love our neighbours; we are to love our enemies.  This is the Jesus who is asking us to live in a way that seem impossible and do the things that seem impossible. 

Jesus does not ask us to do the impossible.  So how are we to love our enemies or even hold a banquet for the poor and the halt and the lame?   I don’t believe that Jesus expects us to do something which is impossible.  We need to learn to crawl before we can walk much less run.  So how do we take the baby steps that will get us to that seemingly impossible place of loving our enemies?

The principle that you can only change yourself is that one that guides us.  Let’s look at those in the parable who are invited after the others refuse; those less than acceptable in society.  What if we consider those people to be us?  What does it mean if we are the ones who are the blind and the halt and the poor and the lame? 

When it comes to living the lives that God intends for us that is truly who we are.  We are blind to many aspects of ourselves that God created us to be.  We want to avoid aspects of ourselves that are inconvenient or downright unacceptable.   We are halt and lame when it comes to living the life that God want us to live.  We may try to take those halting steps and find that we are lame because we have not used the muscles of charity and compassion that God has given us.

So what are we to do?  How are we to follow Jesus and live the life he calls us to live?   The way to do it is to take baby steps.  You would not expect a new born infant to walk or talk much less read or write.  We need to take small steps as we begin to live the lives that Jesus calls us to.  We must above all not expect to do those big things right away or even in the near future.  And most important we must be able to truly forgive ourselves when we do not always succeed.  Jesus is the God who forgives us our sins; he forgives us our failures. 

The message from the angels, the messengers of God is, fear not.  Do not be afraid to try and to fail.  All that Jesus expects of us is to try and when we fail try again. 

Fear not, the Kingdom of God is open to us when we try. 

Amen 

Sermon August 14, 2016 12th Sunday after Trinity

Let us put today’s Gospel into the context of Jesus’ ministry.  Jesus has just come from the territory of Tyre.  Tyre was a prosperous Roman port city and was Gentile i.e. non-Jewish. While he was there he healed the daughter of the Syrophoenician woman—a Gentile.  This miracle is well known because Jesus initially rejects the woman’s request to heal her daughter.  He tells her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”  This rejection by Jesus is surprizing as it is not typically how we understand Jesus’ response to people who come to him for healing.  It is particularly harsh comparing the Gentiles to dogs.

However, when the woman persists and asks again despite this rather harsh rejection, she answered him, ‘Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.’ 29Then he said to her, ‘For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.’ 30So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.  Jesus relents and heals the daughter.

One way of understanding this difficult passage is that Jesus had a growing awareness that he had come to bring the Good News not just to the Jews but also to the Gentiles— that is to the whole world.  This is the fulfillment of the visit of the Magi – those non-Jewish wise men who came to Bethlehem to worship the new born King of the Jews. 

With this growing awareness of his divine purpose he returns to familiar territory through the Sea of Galilee to Decapolis.  Here he has another encounter with someone who is in need of healing.  It is both similar and different to the encounter with the Syrophoenician woman.  In both cases he receives a request to heal someone.  However, here he does not initially reject the request.  Rather he does not hesitate and performs the miracle in a very personal way.  He speaks to him in Aramaic, his native language, “Ephphatha”, which means “be open”.   Jesus touches the man directly putting his fingers in his ears and using his spittle to free his tongue and free his speech.

The woman’s daughter was not even present—it was a long distance healing.  Here Jesus deals directly and intimately with the man and heals him of his deafness and speech impediment. It is as if this man is close to his heart.  He has come home to his people with a renewed sense of mission—one that must begin at home but is meant for the whole world—both Jewish and Gentile.  He opens the ears of this man who is one of his people.  He wants them to be open to hear his message and understand the Good News that he is bringing to them and to the world.  Jesus frees his tongue to enable him to speak of that Good News. 

Again he does something which is a surprize.  He tells the people there not to say anything about what he has done. It is as if he is not sure he is ready to have the Good News preached aloud to the world.  Of course the good news of this miracle and what it means cannot be contained.  He had done all things well; he is the one who makes the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak.

This Good News was foretold by the prophet Isaiah:

⁵ Then will the eyes of the blind be opened
    and the ears of the deaf unstopped.
⁶ Then will the lame leap like a deer,
    and the mute tongue shout for joy.
Water will gush forth in the wilderness
    and streams in the desert.

This is what the Kingdom of God will be like.  We are now blind but we will have eyes to see that Glory.  We are now deaf but we will have ears to hear.  We now are like those who limp through life but we will leap like the deer at the water brook. 

Our lives are now as one thirsting in the dessert but like the Samaritan woman at the well we will receive the water of eternal life and will never thirst again.  That is the Good News for us today as it was for those people in the Jewish world two thousand years ago.  Jesus is giving us the Good News of the coming of God’s Kingdom.  If we have ears that have been opened we will hear his message for us.  But just hearing it is not enough we must loosen our tongues and speak that Good News to our neighbours and to the world.  Amen