June 22 ~ Be Fearlessly Good to Those Who are Justly Afraid

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Second Sunday after Pentecost

Isaiah 65:1-9

Psalm 22:19-28

Galatians 3:23-29

Luke 8:26-39

(The context of this sermon was 100% written in Canada by a human)

A couple of years ago, a team of researchers set up automated speakers in 21 animal-watering holes in the Greater Kruger National Park, in South Africa. When animals arrived for a drink, the speakers played one of a list of sounds: the growls of a lion, the barking of dogs, the sound of birds, gun shots, and human beings having a calm conversation. The researchers caught on camera how long it took for the animals to flee. As it turned out the results were very clear – and maybe you won’t be surprised. The animals were twice as likely to make a run for it at the sound of human voices than they were when hearing lions or gun shots, and they abandoned their drinks roughly 40 per cent faster. And not just one animal: rhinos, giraffes, warthogs. A leopard even ditched his prey at the sound of a woman’s voice. You can watch it on Tik Tok even now, as The Atlantic helpfully explained in its story on the experiment. That story, incidentally, was called “Animal Are Avoiding Us.” Also, as the story noted, this might not be a bad policy for the animals. We can indeed be a nasty species to those with less power than us.

Fear – the emotion figuring prominently in our gospel this morning – is one of those universal experiences among animals, although scientists are still trying to figure it out: is fear just an instinctive response, or does it require higher-level thinking? Fear can keep animals - and us – alive in bad spots, steering us away from danger. It can also do harm – for example, fearful sparrow parents are less likely to feed their babies.

Fear can be rational – do you really need go to bungee jumping? – and it can be irrational, making us overestimate risks, such as flying, and underestimate other risks, such as driving. Fear can be guided by reasonable cultural information – like when a woman becomes more watchful when approached by a man on an empty street in the dark. And it can also be driven by ignorance , harmful stereotypes and discrimination, such as when that same woman gets more nervous because the man approaching her is black.

Indeed, our fear – of change and difference – is a useful tool for those who would seek to divide society. It can be raised and misdirected in equal measure. When the current US president talks about immigrants being rapists and murderers, he is using misinformation to stoke fear to his best advantage.

So what are we to make of these fearful people in the gospel who come upon Jesus, who had just healed one of their neighbors, and rather than embrace the act, they demand he leave? Certainly, it was as dramatic a healing as Jesus could perform. As the gospel tells us, he pulled the demons out of the man, sent them into a herd of pigs, who then ran into a river and drowned. That is pretty spooky. If the farmer next door came running back from his field telling that story, you might feel the hair rise on the back of your neck.

And yet, when the crowd arrived, what evidence did they see with their own eyes: their neighbor now healed, sitting amiably with Jesus. Are they curious? Do they pause to ask questions? No, they send Jesus packing. And when the man, understandably, wants to go with him, Jesus, tells him to stay, and spread the story of what has happened. That is, in the hopes that fear will subside, replaced by the marvel of the miracle.

Perhaps a more accurate human example of this is the burning of women at the stake for being witches, by leaders fearful of their healing power and influence in society. And while we don’t hear those kinds of specifics in the crowd of people casting Jesus out, surely we can all imagine that one voice rising above, the voice of so-called authority stoking such fear among the others that this man, Jesus, would not stay and remain a threat. If fear is an instinctual, an evolved response meant to protect us from harm, then fear, the more conscious emotion, is also easily manipulated. Combined, these two forms of fear can lead us quite astray.

Just think, for a moment, what these villagers lost. A chance to learn from Jesus. A chance to be healed by Jesus. Their fear cost them these great gifts, and they never even knew it. And isn’t that true with us as well? Fear prevents us from acting or doing; it stops us from opening ourselves up to new people and experiences. But we just go on afterwards, the same as always. Because we cannot know the richness of life, the teaching moments, the valuable friendships that we have missed out on.

This week we celebrated World Refugee Day. Our work as a community to change lives has continued. We recently received Sened here in Ottawa after three years of work and prayer to get her from Africa; while fleeing one war, she landed in another country. Can we even imagine the fear of that experience? And Robel and his family have just been given notice that they will be coming to Canada in 5-7 weeks after 10 years of waiting to get here. Again, imagine the fear they have experienced from all they have seen in conflict ridden Ethiopia, and the fear they feel now, coming to an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar people?

The gospel this morning is a reminder to listen carefully to our fears. They always tell us something. Our hairs rise on the back of our neck, and we step more carefully in a dark room at night. Fear prevents us from taking dumb risks. Fear makes us aware of legitimate risks.

But the fear that listens to the wrong voices also rejects people who are different, or worse, does harm to them. This fear stymies the diversity that leads to innovation. That fear feeds on racism and homophobia and xenophobia. That fear does not save us; this fear will be what dooms us.

Be careful what voices your fears listen to. What voice at life’s watering hole sends you fleeing? Someday, it might be the politician seeking to distract you from his hand in your pocket by making you afraid of your fellow citizen. Someday, it might be the friend at the party with his all-too-convincing fake facts. One day, it might even be the modern version of the swineherd running back to the village who has mistaken a miracle for something wicked.

Be not afraid, the gospel tells us. Listen to God’s voice – the gospel’s spirit, the teaching of Jesus. And be fearlessly good to those who are justly afraid. Amen

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/10/animal-human-interaction-predatory-fear/675649/

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/10/animal-human-interaction-predatory-fear/675649/

June 15 ~ Wisdom is Gained Through Prayer, and Listening to the Whispers from Above

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The Holy Trinity

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31

Psalm 8

Romans 5:1-5

John 16:12-15

(The context of this sermon was 100% written in Canada by a human)

Today, most of us are celebrating or remembering our fathers and the fatherly influences in our lives, so let’s begin with this question: If you had to describe your father’s character to someone, what is the first story that pops into your mind?

For me, I remember how my father taught young men who were down and out how to build wooden canoes in the basement of the Welland church where he served. And how he would take his four sons to play soccer with the rest of the youth in the neighbourhood, to give our mom a break on Saturdays, and buy a single chocolate bar with the change he had saved up as a mission pastor, and give each person a tiny square, which was enjoyed more than the full chocolate bars other fathers could afford.

Maybe, like my wife, Erin, you have a childhood memory of your father’s selling the family’s old Toyota Tercel to the single mom and then taking it quietly to the mechanic for a tune-up before she came to pick it up. And if you are like most of us, not every story is so charming or caring. Our fathers are human; the stories we tell about them are the memories we choose to keep of them. In a 1950s essay in The Atlantic magazine, Virgina Woolf remembered her father’s magic-like ability to take scissors to paper and produce perfectly formed elephants and monkeys. Last year, in The Atlantic, writer Ross Andersen reminisced about the colourful jokes he made in public that mortified his son, and his own ferocity while playing driveway basketball.

Fathers also have their own stories to tell – throughout history they have often been the ones to detail the adventures, the family history, the hard-luck stories, stories out of a past before we knew them as our fathers. Which ones do you remember still?

And then it pays to think about why? Why these stories? Why these memories? What are we seeking to learn from our fathers – good and bad? How do these stories help us understand them, and thus ourselves?

And how can Holy Trinity Sunday – when we pray, in traditional language, to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – how can this day help us better understand these fatherly influences in our lives, and all the people we love and are yet to meet and will never know?

For starters, while we are remembering our own fathers, let us consider that one father is almost entirely absent from the gospel: Joseph. Jesus goes out in the world to preach and teach and risk his life, and we learn that his mother walks with him for much of the way, but Joseph is not there. According to our Christmas story, Joseph makes one of the boldest choices as a man of his time, and remains faithful to Mary, even with her complicated destiny; he gets her to Bethlehem; he keeps his family safe while they flee, and while Mary is still recovering from childbirth. Back in his hometown, he helps raise this unique son, and teaches him his own trade of carpentry, presumably realizing even then that Jesus would not be taking over the family business – not his earthly family business anyway. And then Joseph disappears from our story completely. It is assumed that he died before Jesus left home and began preaching, which is why Mary came alone. Perhaps the loss of his father wounded Jesus so deeply, it precipitated his heading out on the road. We never hear.

Instead, the father of Jesus in the gospel is God, which cuts down on a certain level of confusion. But if we can understand God as God, and Jesus and the Holy Spirit, then we should also remember that Jesus, who was human, carried the stories and lessons of both father and mother. As a human, Jesus walked the world with confidence, and an understanding of human behaviour, in the manner of someone who grew up knowing he was loved and taught to love, well before his adult relationship with God developed.

I know that some of you struggle with this idea of God as father. I encourage you to use whatever word speaks to you: mother, creator. The whole idea of Trinity Sunday is that God can and should be explained through many stories, and from many views. God is God, who defies a full understanding. God is Jesus, who stands with us, protects us and cares for us. And God is the Holy Spirit who exists everywhere, and who, we hope, speaks to us when we need the voice of wisdom – as described in our first lesson – or acceptance as explained in our second, or compassion, as Jesus describes.

As humans we struggle with complexity; we want a simple answer – a God who looks like Santa, sitting up in the clouds. Instead, we are given a greater gift, a sophisticated idea of God. Living in that complexity is good for us; it leads to wisdom, which is ultimately the humble acceptance of what we do not know and never will.

I suspect for many of us, it is the same with our fathers and fatherly influences. Our dads are both knowable and unknowable, present and also untouchable. If your dad is still around, I encourage you to ask some of these questions: what gave your life meaning? what are your regrets? what are the moments you felt happiest? when did you feel closest to God? If your father is no longer with you, reflect on those stories that you remember; in them lies meaning. And in that meaning – our clearer, more compassionate understanding of one another – we learn to savour what we know and accept what we don’t. This is what Trinity Sunday teaches: God is a complicated ideal, and we do not have to know everything for certain; we need only to seize the wisdom however it comes to us -- in our prayers from above, in the whisper of a story from the Holy Spirit, and in the loving, imperfect humans, who, like Jesus, walked life with us, and did their best. Amen

June 8 ~ Love is Our Common Vocabulary

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Day of Pentecost

Acts 2:1-21

Psalm 104:24-34, 35b

Romans 8:14-17

John 14:8-17, 25-27

(The context of this sermon was 100% written in Canada by a human)

That is a marvelous story we heard this morning. And a true example set by the plurality of languages being read from the same text. And good on all of us who found pleasure in it, even if we did not understand the language being spoken. Perhaps you felt a little confused or worked hard to keep up with the snippets you heard. You have just performed the most essential action of Pentecost: you accepted what you did not know, with humility.

If anything, our Pentecost reading came off too perfectly - thanks to the talents of our readers. For that is not how people of different cultures and languages come together. They misunderstand one another. They have to be mutually patient to build a friendship on deeper subjects than the weather. They have to be quick to forgive misunderstandings, and humble in the face of their own limitations.

For what else do tolerance and openness require but times when we are awkward and stumbling, in moments of misunderstanding and confusion, and with an optimism that we will build a relationship - indeed a nation - together?

Yet a willing humility to be confused and to feel awkward seems like a trait much in absence these days. I imagine my Norwegian grandfather coming to this shore - and how his English was at best filled with errors. What effort it must have taken even to order food, or be understood at a shop, let alone try to get through some government through. And yet, I assume that for him to have thrived in Lunenburg - and what’s more to have wooed my very feisty grandmother - he must have had people who were patient with him, who coached him, who gave him the benefit of the doubt when he stumbled.

Instead, today what do we hear? Fake news about the strangers in our midst. Anti-immigration rhetoric, even though we live in a country built on the strength and perseverance of immigrants. Complaints about diverse languages in the street, even though we may make little effort to cross the sidewalk and exchange greetings with a newcomer. We can have, of course, a real discussion about immigration and whether it is right to bring people to Canada who cannot find a home - but we can also accept in principle that diversity is what makes our communities alive and thriving. We can have serious and complicated questions about holding fast to the democratic principles of our country while allowing freedom of speech and religion. Too often we forget that kind and reasonable people can disagree reasonably and with kindness - on approaches, for instance, if not goals.

So how far are we from that first Pentecost? From a united vision of a loving God? Very far indeed, it would seem.

None of this is simple or easily solved. Not the wars between faiths that are ongoing; not the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza, not the antisemitism experienced by Jewish citizens in democratic countries, not the distortion of God’s progressive and loving message.

The story of Pentecost seems to come off so easily: God, with a snap of the fingers, causes everyone to speak the same words in different languages. How much easier it would have been for us just to speak in one language. But Pentecost is a reflection of the reality of the world, that human beings are diverse and unique, depending on where they live and the language they speak. The world is complicated, and both the disciples and us are reminded of this today.

So, what can we do, as progressive people of faith, horrified by religiously-motivated violence, seeking peace, trying to compromise? We could, of course, just abandon our faith – reject religion entirely as the source of unrest in the world, a tool of discrimination in a species already prone to discrimination. We could, alternatively, hide our faith, ashamed to be tainted by association.

But this, as history has shown, would be tragic. For in a space with no middle ground, the extremes take over. If in North America, those who argue for tolerance and social justice go quiet, then judgment and tyranny will take over - indeed, we already see that clearly happening. If in Israel, those Jewish and Muslim citizens who seek peace stay silent or flee, violence will grow. If people stand by while teenagers and students are rounded up in the street, who will they come for next?

It is our responsibility, here in Canada, to continue to voice the principles of the gospel, of which Jesus has left us in charge.

Pentecost is a dream, an ideal goal – a time when people of faith will be able to speak the same language. In the time in which our first lesson happened, the idea was that everyone would become a follower of Jesus – and indeed, the story of Jesus did spread, so that Christians began to appear in many places in the world. But as time went on, those Christians lost the ability to speak peacefully even with one another, let alone with other faiths. The risk of our hearing the Pentecost story is that it suggests that if we just stand around, God will take care of it for us. But in fact, the gospel is not about God’s taking care of things for us – it is about God giving us the tools to take care of ourselves and the world around us.

Pentecost is a challenge to us: to seek to understand, to find a way across barriers such as nationality and language, to hold to the universal tenets of the gospel while the world is noisy and uncertain and confusing.

What, then, are we to do? What example has been set by Jesus, in our own faith? We are to listen, and to be wise, and not to be quick to fall prey to rumour and spin. To resist our own tendencies to wear judgment like a cloak of righteousness, for, I guarantee, we will quickly find that it is itchy, and heavy, and suffocating. We are to try to hear, underneath the anger, a desire to be understood, to be treated as an equal. There is only one side worth taking – the side that seeks out a loving compromise, that keeps presenting love where hate appears to be winning.

We can do that as Lutheran Christians. Christ has taught us how. Indeed we have all been freed by Christ and empowered by Christ, in small ways - in the conversations, for instance, that we have with one another. Listen to your own words – are we assuming we are right too often? Or are we putting ourselves in the place of the other person and really trying to understand that perspective? Are we educating ourselves to understand the complexities of the problem? To truly practice this fine art of listening, of perspective-taking, of knowledge-seeking, is the only way to solve the problems that divide us.

Go out into the world and speak the language of the gospel, as Jesus would have us hear it. Above all else, love one another as you would be loved.

For in the end, every human speaks the same language – that desire to be loved, to be welcomed, to be free. That is our common vocabulary. That is the true sought-after goal of Pentecost – that in speaking the language of the gospel, we may all be heard. Amen