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

Click above to watch a recording of Sunday's Sermon

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

Click above to watch a recording of Sunday's Sermon

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

June 1 ~Why Does Our Humanity Thrive on Screen, But Falter in Real Life.

Click above to watch a recording of Sunday's Sermon

Sixth Sunday of Easter

Acts 16:16-34

Psalm 97

Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21

John 17:20-26

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

Perhaps some of you have already gone to see Mission Impossible this weekend and revelled in Tom Cruise’s famous stunts. Reading the first lesson, it certainly feels like an action- movie plot, and we can imagine a Hollywood movie exec pitching it.

How would it go? The movie opens with a young woman enslaved by the villains of our story. She is dirty and dressed in rags, but, naturally, under all the grime, very beautiful. (“We’re thinking, Ana de Armas, the executive might say.”) Her slavers are using her skill at fortune-telling to line their own pockets: buying stocks before they rise, and winning lottery tickets. Think” White Lotus” wealthy, the people swanning around in fancy clothes in their oversized mansions, ordering people around, conspiring over future plans that take advantage of people – really unlikeable. Our poor protagonist is strong and fierce, but exhausted by their demands.

Enter our dusty, weary heroes: Paul and Silas. (“Perhaps,” the executive might say, “we can get Ryan Gosling and Timothy Chalamet if they are free.”) Paul is the leader, testy, but in a charming ‘Harrison Ford’ kind of way. Like spies in another land, they are trying to get the regular people to rise up against their tyrants and make the world better.

They have a “meet-cute” with the slave girl – “We’ll sort that out later”, the executive says – and she tells their fortunes (cue special effects) that identify who they are. But Paul doesn’t like that, so he uses his own secret healing skill to stop her fortunes. Our bad guys find out – and after a chase, they capture Paul and Silas and throw them in jail. The slave girl, now useless to them is put – inexplicably – in the cell next to them.

But the jailer – maybe a grizzly, bent-over Anthony Hopkins – takes pity on them, and feeds them. He doesn’t have the keys – only the bad guys do – but Paul, ‘MacGyvers’ the door open mysteriously (or was it a higher power?) – and also frees the slave girl.

The final scene: The jailer, meanwhile, has seen the light, and quietly begins teaching his family and friends the lessons he learned from Paul and Silas to create a more equal and just community. We last see our heroes, walking the dusty road, on to their next mission.

Not a bad movie, don’t you think? But then, so much of our sacred text contains the kind of characters and certainly the values that we see in our favourite movies. The misunderstood protagonist who finds her power. The crusty heroic team who saves her. The villains who get their comeuppance. And what do our heroes – the ones we remember by name and cherish in our culture – fight for? Not money and not power. They fight for love and family, for hope and peace.

There are a lot of narratives being told in the world right now. The real ones we read about in the newspaper are often the very opposite of the gospel. We see immigrants in the U.S. being snatched off the street and deported without a legal defence. We see children starving in Gaza and children stolen out of Ukraine. We see dictators solidify power, and democratic voices silenced. Why does what we know is right – what inspires us in stories and movies – seem so lacking in the real world? Why does our humanity thrive on screen, and yet falter in real life? Who are we in the gospel: the ones enslaved by villains, or the heroes rising against them?

All that to say, that while our story in the first lesson may seem dramatic, the gospel message that Paul and Silas were spreading has never been more relevant. That movie executive also took some liberties with the story: the slave girl, unlike Lydia, is featured in a much longer story, yet is never named. Paul is annoyed with her, we are told and calls out her demon. The bad guys, as far as we know, never do get justice. But God is present in both stories: in the resilience of the young girl; in the determination of Paul and Silas; in the willingness of the jailer to open his eyes.

These stories can seem like a good distance from our own lives, out of touch with the world we live in. And yet, the values and teachings they present are universal. What more do we need now – in these times – than resilience, kindness, mercy and openness?

Unlike the jailer who witnessed the power of God, we must look for it more deliberately in our own lives. God is here, among us. Indeed, our movies with their themes of generosity and self-sacrifice speak to the universal importance of the gospel. Even when humanity has lost its way, human beings know who they want their heroes to be, what those heroes should stand for, and how those heroes should act. As our psalm writer says: “Light dawns for the righteous, and joy for the honest of heart.”

One last thing: That jailer, we are told, came to believe, and that belief was solid. This is another lesson for us, as we manage misinformation and mixed messages: to be careful what we think is true, and to safeguard our beliefs, which can be hard to change. When you feel confused by fake news and false facts, you need not look far: when everything else is stripped away, the gospel clears our heads and reminds us what to believe. Amen