June 14 ~ "Affliction produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope." ~ romans 5:3-4

Video will be uploaded next week.

Exodus 19:2-8a

Psalm 100

Romans 5:1-8

Matthew 9:35--10:23

Sermon by Pastor Joel

This morning, we hear two different messages about God’s call to serve others: one that speaks of happiness, the other of hardship. But they are not incompatible. Happiness can be found in the midst of hardship. Indeed, when the hardship that comes from following the gospel is meaningful, generous, and shared with our neighbor, it can be the truest path to happiness. 

The gospel this morning represents a hinge point, as our current Prime Minister likes to say, in the ministry of Jesus. Having demonstrated to the disciples what it means to follow the gospel – to teach and to heal and to embrace the stranger -- Jesus is now bestowing that same calling on the disciples themselves. And through them, on each one of us. 

Yet we find ourselves today on both sides – on both the crowd – harassed and helpless – and on the disciple, empowered as sheep to go bravely among the wolves. The people who heard the teachings of Jesus were facing financial strains, political domination, and corrupt leadership, more ready to fill their own pockets with public funds than to distribute them to those in need. 

The gospel describes the people as “sheep without a shepherd” – adrift in a difficult world, searching for leaders they can respect and who will do what is right, fight for justice, and make the world better, more equal, and kinder. 

We hear this stark warning from Jesus about the persecution that the disciples will face in this world, about families being set at odds against one another – and Jesus could be speaking to our own time. 

People today who speak out against tyranny are being persecuted – in person and on social media. Ideological divides in families are causing estrangement. Polarization is ending friendships. Civil dialogue across divides is declining – making people more and more hesitant to attempt that civil dialogue in the first place. 

And yet, Jesus reminds us that we must. We must go out into the world and greet those who disagree with us, break bread with them, discuss the world with them. 

And this mission we are on must not be pursued for our own personal gain. Indeed, this edict from Jesus to “Take no gold, no bag, no second tunic” suggests that the disciples are to rely on the hospitality of others. 

They cannot be seen collecting their own wealth – for that would make them no better than the corrupt leaders. That would make them wolves among the people. And secondly, when the strangers they meet offer that hospitality, they are no longer strangers. 

The disciples are given very clear directions. We are given very clear directions. We are to have conviction tempered with mercy. We are to endure hostility without becoming hostile. To speak our truth with humility and gentleness. To be courageous with our openness and our compassion. 

A tall challenge indeed. And yet, in our Psalm, we are reminded how to accomplish this, and most importantly, how to sustain it. 

“Make a joyful noise to the Lord, |all you lands!” the psalmist writes.  “See the Lord with gladness; come into God’s presence with a song.” 

This might seem impossible – given the path that Jesus laid out for the disciples - one of suffering and persecution. And yet, what else did he describe? A life of value, an opportunity to build community, a chance to make a difference. 

For what most erodes our happiness is feeling lonely and helpless. These feelings fuel our anxiety. Paralyze our ability to act. Keep us home when we should be knocking on our neighbor’s door. 

Modern society and social media tell us over and over again that joy is found in what we own, in the titles we hold, in how far up we rise. But this message requires us, by definition, to step over our neighbors rather than to walk beside them. 

And yet, science has caught up with the gospel. What we do as individuals to foster the practice of happiness and insight – writing in a gratitude journal or praying to God reminds us of what we already have. Meditating or sitting under a beautiful tree feeds our souls. 

But the fuel for happiness is people and the meaningful actions we take on their behalf. What builds happiness is connection – to people, to the natural world. What sustains happiness is working to make a difference, even if it is one small moment at a time. 

We should not sit with the message from Jesus in the gospel, without hearing the encouragement of the psalmist. Let us not go forth dour and disheartened, ready to flinch and turn away. Rather, let us be joyful in our actions and choices. Let us choose optimism. 

For what lies within joy but hope. The hope that what we do matters. The hope that our family will one day come back together. The hope that friends will forgive. The hope that together, we will reach a hinge point, and the world will be changed. 

There is another message, hidden in our readings this morning.

In our gospel, Jesus advises the disciples to steer away from the “gentiles” and to avoid the “Samaritan towns”.  In modern times, this particular section of the gospel has been employed to demonize those who disagree, to suggest that only some merit the gospel. But is this what Jesus could  possibly have meant? The very same Jesus who honored the Good Samaritan so highly that the phrase Good Samaritan now stands for the gospel itself? 

Of course not. But Jesus was pragmatic, just as we must be. He was advising the disciples to begin where they will be most welcomed, where even people who doubt their message might be willing peacefully to listen. 

Begin in more comfortable spaces, he was saying, and build your strength and expertise. Gather a community around you for support. He was reminding the disciples that they do not have to spread kindness and hope and healing on their own. That we do not have to do this on our own.

Community lies at the heart of both our gospel and our Psalm this morning. Every door that was opened to the disciples on their dusty road – on our own dusty roads – makes our community larger, our social connection greater. 

And what better way to bring people together than with song, as the Psalmist writes. 

A soloist is beautiful and brave, singing alone. But a choir of people singing in harmony, raising their united voices to the sky? Now that is something that really shakes the rafters.

Amen

June 7 ~ "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" ~ Matthew 9:11

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/3ef8bd_0e2bafaf74134435830be60a1c62aa1a/720p/mp4/file.mp4

Hosea 5:15—6:6

Psalm 50:7-15

Romans 4:13-25

Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

Sermon by Pastor Joel

God beckons us in the most unusual and exciting ways. Slow to anger and always creative, God challenges us to pay attention to the small things and follow Christ. Whenever God calls us to serve, we are transformed by an experience that strengthens our faith and conviction in the love of Christ. It is in these times that we clearly see what Christ calls us to do: love unconditionally. For what does Jesus tell us in our gospel this very morning: “I desire mercy and not sacrifice.”

Compared to sacrifice, you’d think that mercy would be an easier action for humanity. For what is mercy but acceptance, forgiveness, kindness, understanding – all the things that each of us desires in our own lives. We know a merciful society is the best society and so we create constitutions and charters and treaties designed to be merciful - and then we go about eroding and breaking them. Even knowing better, we are afflicted with what I might consider the worst of human flaws: judgement. How many groups have suffered under that oppressive judgement of society? How many were sacrificed by the unmerciful? 

The list is so long. You will all name your own – groups, individuals, perhaps people you sought out to protect yourselves. In the case of Canada, I will point to two. You may not be surprised to know that some of the most open and accepted racism in this country is directed at our Indigenous brothers and sisters. How quickly we forget that the last residential school closed only in 1996 – a mere three decades ago. Canada sought to erase a culture, caused irreparable harm to generations and yet, even today, when Indigenous Canadians insist on being heard, they are shut down. They sacrificed so much, and yet in so many ways, we have failed to show mercy. 

June is Pride month, another time to recognize our failure to show mercy. Instead, in our own lifetimes, the LGBTQ community has been imprisoned, committed to mental hospitals, castrated, shunned, denied basic rights such as justice and health care, denied the right to stand before this very altar and vow before God to love the person dearest to them. Was that the mercy that Jesus, who welcomed everyone, desired of us? 

In our gospel, Jesus beckoned Matthew to follow him and become a student of life and love. By society's standards, Matthew was not the best example of a faithful servant. His background as a tax collector, zealot, and a man prepared to engage in violence with anyone who disagreed with him made him a risky choice. But Mathew was passionate about life. He was open and willing to see the world – and the people in it – with generosity and openness. 

Hosea was available to God late in life and had a choice of whether to serve God or not. To an unbelieving, undoubtedly judgemental crowd, he preached about grace and love, about becoming faithful instruments of peace, about replacing old ways with better ones.  Hearing that message, our responsibility is to turn around to God and say, "Here I am. Send me!" 

God's promises can be fulfilled only through faith. In Romans 4:13, God's promise to Abraham is fulfilled because of Abraham's faithfulness. Through faithfulness Abraham received and accepted God's grace. God's grace is not earned. Our faith provides a vision for a church without boundaries, an altar and font where people of every class, ethnicity, sexual orientation and any other category we invent for humanity, gather to worship God in love and peace. Through our faith, we receive God's grace to build communities and societies that embrace the best of our traditions and adapt them to a progressive, merciful world. Through our faith, which is dynamic, we receive God’s grace to build a world that does not exclude. 

In today's climate of fear and frustration, it is not easy to be available to the love of God. It is our choice to be available to build a community as a place of refuge for all people. James 2:14 (RSV) teaches us that "faith without works is nothing"; Hebrews 11:1 (RSV) teaches that "faith is the assurance of things hoped for, and the conviction of things not seen." With faith we can build a new church that meets the needs of all. With faith we can knit and bind together a nation in love and trust, seeking Christ in each person we meet. And treating that person as though they were Christ. 

Like Mathew, we can choose to follow Christ. Like Hosea, we can choose to deliver the message. Like Abraham, we can live into the promise of God in faith. But it is by God's Grace that we are forgiven, strengthened, rejuvenated, and transformed in the love of Christ. Each day we make decisions about our lives.  Some are consciousness- or process-oriented, while others are spontaneous, requiring very little thought. Yet, we always have a choice to follow Christ, live a life of love, and embrace those who are perceived as unlovable. We decide whether to show the mercy that Jesus desires. 

St. Francis of Assisi wrote a prayer about being an instrument for God. St. Francis asked us to consciously consider being God's instrument of peace, to understand rather than seek to be understood, and to love rather than be loved. God does not ask us to be perfect, just available in spirit and truth, and to proclaim the message of love. In a world that is so often judgmental and harsh, let us be the people who speak with love and challenge those who use words of hate, Let us choose, as Jesus asks, to be kind and accepting, not only in private, but by proudly and publicly walking with those burdened by the world’s judgement. Let us, above all else, be people of mercy. As Jesus understood, a single act of mercy can be the beginning of great change. And it is within our power – each one of us – to grant it.  

Amen

May 31 ~ Holy Trinity

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/3ef8bd_263bbac5d97d49168e6f3622a90ac427/720p/mp4/file.mp4

Genesis 1:1—2:4a

Psalm 8

2 Corinthians 13:11-13

Matthew 28:16-20

Sermon by Pastor Joel

When was the last time you truly felt God? Was it during prayer, alone with your thoughts, hoping for clarity with a problem? Was it when, in a moment of choice between right and wrong, you heard the words of Jesus in your mind, reminding you to be kind and forgiving? Was it the perfect sunset, the shade of a tree, the wind rustling in the leaves? Perhaps, if we are lucky, it has been in all those places.

This Sunday is Trinity Sunday. Our National Bishop Larry Kochendorfer wrote a sermon for our 40th anniversary as a national church and those churches who might not have a minister today, and in that sermon, he joked about the many pastors who wished for a guest preacher so they could get out of trying to explain Trinity Sunday. 

The church has spent a lot of words and time arguing about the meaning of the Trinity. Is it three separate identifies of God, that you could sit in seats beside one another? Is it meant as a metaphor for one, diverse creator? Is it a way for us to understand the vastness of God?

St Augustine once said: “The Trinity is a mystery. Whoever tries to understand it fully will lose [their] mind.”

Martin Luther, who put great stock in the Trinity as a concept of God, nonetheless rejected simplistic versions—that God could be explained as three slices of one pie, or three separate beings. To try to pin down the Trinity, Luther said, was folly. 

"Why, then, do we poor wretched people rack our brains over the nature of God?” Martin Luther asked. “To take upon ourselves to understand it is a very dangerous thing, through which we may stumble and break our neck.”

Much later, theologians tried to ignore the Trinity altogether, focusing on ethics. Some viewed it a symbol of God’s all-encompassing love. Others objected to the limiting gendered language that locked out other, more diverse understandings of God.

Some suggest that the Trinity reflects God’s actions, and you can find support for that position in our gospel this morning. Jesus leaves the disciples with three callings: to baptize the next followers of the gospel in the name of God, Jesus, and the Spirit. To teach the lessons that Jesus first taught them. And to trust that Jesus is always with them, even when he is not physically present. With these instructions, has Jesus not, in essence, thus defined the trinity? The God who deems us worthy, Jesus who teaches us the way, the Spirit who weaves the presence of the divine throughout the world.

To be honest, I have always found these debates about the meaning of the Trinity too dogmatic, a bit like arguing about what God looks like. Can there truly be only one way to understand this concept of God? Is God contained in one definition? Or does God, as Luther suggests, defy our understanding?

What’s more, we live in modern times, where much of the world is not explained, and much of it remains a mystery. We have the education and awareness to live with complexity. For as much as we know already, we are still discovering new animals, new ideas, and new solutions in the world each day. The world will continue to reveal itself to us, all our lives – surely we know this now. Why shouldn’t our understanding of God do the same?

For myself, I find the Trinity a comforting idea. I am okay that it is fuzzy around that edges, for in that mystery lies more of the divine yet to be revealed to me. The Trinity as a guiding concept reminds me to look for God, in large and small ways, in the gift of baptism, in the words and life of Jesus, and when I am not looking for God at all, but sense the presence of something beyond myself and the world I know.

In the end, what we decide about the definition of the Trinity matters not one iota if we do not do anything with it – if we don’t go out into the world, and show generosity and wisdom, follow the gospel, or bring the presence of divine beauty to the lives of others. 

Bishop Kochendorfer reached the same conclusion with a closing prayer in his sermon, calling us to breathe peace into fearful lives, welcome the stranger, forgive sins, and serve on bended knee, to all in need of care. 

In other words, to be like our God who loves, Jesus who teaches, and the Spirit who brings comfort.

So, let me ask you again, when was the last time you have felt God? If you can’t remember, I hope that when you leave here today, you keep an eye open for those moments, that sense of a higher calling, that feeling of the divine in your life. That is the Trinity, and to try figure it all out, as Luther said, will leave us wracking our brains. And yet that is the gift: we do not need to know the answer to everything. We only need to be open to what we cannot understand, and watch for the moments when the divine touches our lives and inspires our actions. 

Amen