May 18 ~Love Means Taking Responsibility for Making Each Other Better.

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Fifth Sunday of Easter

Acts 11:1-18

Psalm 148

Revelation 21:1-6

John 13:31-35

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

Jesus makes it pretty easy this week, or at least he appears to do so. He spells it out for all of us – the secret to being a good person, an honest citizen, a faithful Christian. It comes down to three words, and if we all left this place this morning living out these words, the world would be a better place because of it. It is the secret to happiness, the bringer of joy, and the vehicle for peace. Three simple words: Love one another.

Jesus, and those who recorded our sacred text, understood how important this message was, because it is pretty much the last one we get from him. Jesus is going, he tells the disciples, where they cannot follow – not yet. So, he leaves them with a new commandment: “Love one another,” he says, “just as I have loved you. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

With these three words, Jesus does a very powerful thing: he moves the followers firmly away from law, and toward grace. The Old Testament gives us a set of very different commandments, ones which we have used even in these modern times to build and structure society, to maintain order. It is perhaps the story we know best of the Old Testament – how Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the stone tablets, dictated to him by God, and presented a new set of rules for God’s people. I am sure that many of you can rattle them off. I wonder in fact how many of us would remember the 11th commandment?

The commandments that Moses brought down from the mountain fell into several categories. There were the ones designed to maintain healthy community - We shall not kill, we shall not steal or covet another’s possession or tell lies about another person. There are the commandments designed to preserve family – thou shall not commit adultery and always honour your mother and father. The commandment meant to keep our lives balanced: to keep one day for rest. And the commandments meant to keep us close to God: to not take God’s name lightly, or create false idols, and to honour God above all other things that might tempt our worship. Those are all good rules—upon them we have built a great civilization, if a flawed one. But in the end, what Jesus was saying to us, is that life must go beyond following rules.

In fact, as is so often the case, Jesus was well ahead of his time. We talk about Jesus as a teacher, a preacher, a healer and a shepherd. But we should also see Jesus as psychologist, sociologist, and scientist. Thousands of years after Jesus said, “Love one another” and put it at the very top, above all other commandments, happiness researchers have reported the same finding, over and over and over again. The most essential ingredient for happiness is not money, not mindfulness, not gratitude journals, not therapy. The most essential ingredient for happiness is healthy community. This comes at the very top of all the other happiness interventions. Happiness is created when we feel supported by others, when we trust our neighbors, when we have friends we can call on in times of need.

But this makes sense -- right? What is the best way to use our money but to share it, to create experiences, to put it to good works in our community? How can we be mindful and at peace if we are anxious and alone? What do we have to be truly grateful about if we don’t trust those around us, and also act in a trustworthy way towards them? And as for therapy – well I think that is a valuable exercise – but even here the research shows that the quality of the relationship you have with a therapist is more important than any particular approach they may use. Again, what matters is a sense of community, care, and trust.

And so this commandment to “love one another” is an important guide for us. It should mark our decisions when we consider public policy, when we think about building inclusive communities, when we decide our priorities. Do they come from a place of love?

And yet these three simple words are also the most complicated commandment.

Because love, while often reduced to unicorns and rainbows, is also a complex emotion. So I want to say something about this commandment, that I think will be important for a many of you. The commandment does not come with exceptions or caveats, but the gospel calls us to consider what it truly means to “love one another.” What does it look like in the world?

Jesus would want that love to involve risks – to love those who are alone, who are poor in spirit or means, who are in danger - requires action and sacrifice and often risk, because often we cannot guarantee success.

But serving those who are in pain or vulnerable does not mean putting ourselves at risk, mentally or physically. Loving one another also means loving ourselves – otherwise how can we ever truly and faithfully love anyone? Sometimes, loving one another requires boundaries and distance. These can also be acts of love done to repair relationships, or to give time for perspective, or to allow us to focus our loving action on those who need it more.

The commandment to love one another does not rob us of free will. Love can help us see the other side of a person and have empathy for them. Love is boundless, we never run out of it, and we should and must, according to the gospel, feel it even for our enemies and those who wrong us. But while our ability to love may be infinite, our time is not. We are allowed to prioritize the needs of others, and to choose where most to invest our time.

This is indeed how the commandments that Jesus places under “Love one another” serve us best. Not because they give us law from which we can never bend. But because they allow us to focus our good works. If love leads everything, then we do not universally condemn the murderer or the thief or the one who covets; we consider the context and nuance of the situation; we do not reject summarily the one who fails to honour their family or God. We seek to understand.

We can love without excusing terrible actions in principle, but love offers us a deeper understanding so that we may reach out as a caring, supportive community. There is no one version of love, and no one version of healing. Surely the diverse stories in the gospel teach us not to limit ourselves to a single definition. To do so is not love but judgement. To do so is not grace, but law.

This is the example that Jesus sets for us. The love Jesus felt for the disciples did not falter, whatever they did. But he loved them at different times in different ways – appealing to their search for meaning when he beckoned them out of the sea to fish for people, scolding Peter when he wanted Jesus to choose self-preservation over his ministry, gently counseling Mary and Martha when they squabbled over whose job was more important. Even his act of listening to the woman at the well was one of love: he saw her as a person of value, where others did not, one of the most important gifts of the loving heart.

And so we must choose love. But not the squishy kind on birthday cards. The kind of love that is unconditional but wise. A love that works hard but also sets priorities. A love that doesn’t judge but seeks to understand. Love that assumes the best of others, and a love that also sees the worst, but responds with compassion.

This commandment, then, may be the hardest all of the others. For it requires the most contemplation, the most wisdom, the most compassionate understanding on our part.

Jesus didn’t walk around those dusty roads holding the hands of his followers, talking in fluffy platitudes. He pushed them and prodded them. He forced them to see where they were going wrong, and he challenged them to make it better. Love doesn’t mean letting everyone off the hook – it means that we take responsibility for making one another better. And while “Love one another” sounds as though it’s all about serving others, it’s really also about saving ourselves.

That is all we need to do, Jesus is saying, to be known as one of the disciples. We don’t need to drag people into church, or to convince them we are right. We don’t need to force them to live by our ways. We don’t need law – we need grace. Following this commandment – the most important of commandments - is the most crucial part about Christian. I hope we all can try to remember this the next time we get a little too caught up in the rules, and our own idea of what is right, to let these three words guide our days: Love one another. Amen

May 11 ~ Happy Mother's Day!

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Fourth Sunday of Easter

Acts 9:36-43

Psalm 23

Revelation 7:9-17

John 10:22-30

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

What do we think of when we hear the words Mother Nature? Perhaps you imagine the green pastures and still waters – those soothing images in the Lord Is My Shepherd. Maybe, you see in the brightness of the sun on a clear day, in the roar of a waterfall, in the steadfastness of a tree, in the bounty of a field, in the energy of the wind - the blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honour and power and might of God. Like me, you may find God speaks to you most clearly in the places where humanity’s touch is slightest – in the places where the ocean goes on forever, or the horizon never ends, and on the quiet forest trail.

Mother Nature – the idea of her – has inspired poets, and theologians and environmentalists. It’s a name that speaks of warmth and comfort, and giving life. A name that feels forever present. In art, Mother Nature is often depicted as a tranquil elderly woman or a younger, beautiful one. Her arms are often encircled around the earth or a representation of the natural world, holding it safe.

Of course, the connection to our own mothers and mothering influences in our lives is obvious: we see supportive and loving women as warm and wise and comforting, holding us safe. And we expect them to be ever present, no matter how we treat them.

But this soothing presence is an incomplete image of Mother Nature. She is also fierce – bringing us hurricanes and tornadoes. She is also resilient – resurrecting life from the ground we clear cut and contaminate with chemicals. She is hard-working, always changing with the seasons, never pausing. And she is innovative and clever – always finding new ways to evolve, alternate paths for the plants and animals of the earth, even as we, the smartest animals upon it, carelessly destroy their homes and habitats.

Surely these words also describe the women we lovingly remember and honour today, who raised us, and advised us, and spoke up for us, when we could not do it for ourselves. The mother I had, the mothering influences I have today, the mother of my own children were and are all fierce, resilient, hard-working, and innovative – each in their own unique way. I am blessed to have their presence in my life.

And Mother Nature and the women who are our mothering influences share other commonalities: a history of judgement, abuse and neglect. We have assumed that we can mistreat Mother Nature – ravage her forests, wipe out her animals, poison her ocean – and she will always remain, as she is. So society has with mothers, for most of history, expecting these women to give us life and care for us, from making them virtual slaves, voiceless to change the society they are raising, denying them, for so long, the right to own land, to vote, to even escape dangerous situations.

We have also neglected Mother Nature – perhaps not actively destroying her bounty, but also not repairing the harm we have caused, and not supporting her in a way that we should, to help her thrive.

So we have acted as though climate change is not a problem, or will somehow solve itself, and we have not done enough to mitigate the effect of climate change, to save the species that are disappearing. In the same way – although in Canada we have certainly made important strides - we have not often given women who are mothering influences the support they need - child-care, care-giving respite, equal pay, health care that recognizes their complete journey as women, the kind of investment that recognizes their true value.

Instead, societies have restricted a mother’s freedom and her free will, even when it comes to her own body, and in many parts of the world, this terrible injustice continues, and or is creeping back. We have cast blame upon them for every social ill: at different stages of the last century, mothers have been blamed for crime, for autism, for poor test results, for entire generations that are too dependent, for entire generations that are too entitled.

As with Mother nature, we have failed, as a society, to see the larger picture, to recognize all the forces that weigh heavy, and our own part in the consequences. Mother Nature and mothers exist to give us life; only the most foolish of animals would treat them in this way.

What is the lesson we take from this? First, I would remind us of our confirmation classes that taught us clearly that God created humanity to have dominion with the created world—not to destroy it. And that the fourth commandment clearly states that we are to honour our father and mother. Second, I believe it is as the Gospel of Jesus Christ reminds us, that we are all interconnected, not only to each other but also with nature. How we treat each other relates to how we treat Mother Nature. If we, as a society, value people over products, equality and moderation over status and greed, we would automatically improve conditions for Mother Nature. And if we treasured our forests and our air and our water above wealth, cracked down on those who profit by destroying them, and cooperated across borders to remedy our harm – those choices, I believe, would lead to a world that is kinder and more other-centred, a better place for mothers, and for all of us.

This weekend we have seen our own community take a stand to create this kind of world, with Pilgrimage for the Planet organized by the Eastern Synod of the ELCIC. Some of the pilgrims who cycled from Montreal to Ottawa are here with us this morning. And tomorrow on Parliament Hill we will all have an opportunity put our faith into action with a peaceful demonstration.

The gospel is, unfortunately, a story dominated by men. Women such as Dorcas, who is lifted up in our first lesson as a good and efficient philanthropist, appear far less often than they should. And yet, at the same time, the gospel itself espouses the very qualities that lead us to hold mothering women in such high esteem: compassion, hope, and love.

Perhaps, you are sitting here saying, yes it’s Mother Day, but what about the good men and the good dads? In fact, I say, what about them, what about me? Our role, in this just push for progress, is important: to be faithful allies to the women in our lives. Not only for their sake, but for our own. A society that treats mothers better will also improve the world for daughters and sons and fathers. A society that treats Mother Nature better improves the world for the life upon it, including us. Indeed, a society that protects and preserves the life-giving and loving presence in the world, will surely save itself. Amen

May 4 ~ What Does Resurrection Really Mean?

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Third Sunday of Easter

Acts 9:1-6 [7-20]

Psalm 30

Revelation 5:11-14

John 21:1-19

Sermon by Pastor Nelson

Jesus said “How much do you love me?”

I mentioned the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. last Sunday. Sixty-two years ago, two years before I came to Canada, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote the “Letter from Birmingham jail.”  Responding to criticism by local clergy, he explained that he had led a peaceful demonstration in Birmingham, Alabama, because theirs was the most segregated city in the nation.  He told them that,

“we will have to repent…not merely for the hateful words and actions… but for the appalling silence of the good people.” Yes we will need much metanoia.  King added, ”human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability, it comes through the tireless efforts of people willing to be co-workers with God.”  Could those words ever be more meaningful than they are now after our election?  Well King was not a fortune teller for our election but he could have been echoing Peter and others who told the powers to be,

“we must obey God rather than human beings.”  In the New York times edition of April 20, 2025, there was quite an article about people trying but failing to replace religion with something else.  In spite of how bad we humans want to replace God we have found that we cannot.

In the tragedy in Vancouver this last week, we hear so many people saying, “my thoughts and prayers are with you.”  In spite of such a common saying, what else can we say? Way back in 1963, King explained that he intended to “create a crisis,” dramatizing the evils of segregation so that they could no longer be ignored. By risking their lives for others, the disciples of Jesus and others, through the years, have dramatized their lives so that people could/can see concrete evidence of the freedom and new life available in that freedom.  We might use Christ as our example but others only know that they have to do it for humankind.  Bonhoeffer, Bishop Romero, and King are just a few of many examples we have in history; who laid down their lives for a cause, and who found that religion gave them a cause. 

We hear today of many who say they will lay down their lives for this place we call Canada.  Will we?  Our Easter Gospels explain what happens when we encounter love and a mission in our lives.  We have the message again in our lessons today. John’s Gospel describes each detail of the story to reflect events of Jesus’ life and/or the current situation of his Christian community.  Please remember the Gospel of John was written in about 90-100 ad, 60-70 years after the Jesus’ story.  In other words, this story today tries to sum up Jesus’ life once again. This story begins with Peter and six others deciding that the hour had come to return to their fishing trade.  Their religious venture with Jesus was over.  Their miraculous catch suggests that the fishing was good, but they were missing something.  Jesus had offered them much more.  The story of Peter jumping into the water gives us a reminder of baptism.  The fire on the shore evokes the memory of the fire in the garden at night when Peter denied knowing Jesus.  The fish that Jesus was preparing reminds us of the miraculous sharing of the bread and fish a couple of times during Jesus’ life.  And then Jesus asks Peter, “do you love me?”  This becomes both a question and a command.  The writer of John has Jesus asking and saying, “I want you to really love me for who I am, not just your idea of me or what I can do for you.”

So many today, who practice the “White House” kind of Christianity, are saying pious words so that the fringe group of our own MAGA conservatives will bow down to us and swoon over our pious pretentions.  But they forget what Jesus said, “if you really love me, you will live in me and I in you and you will care for my people with the same love and courage that I have cared for you.”  Tell me how that squares with what Trump and his gang of thugs are doing to immigrants, gays, poor and the like?  You see the miracle of Easter is not the empty grave.  It is that God comes back from death and does not condemn the unrighteous ones but loves them, loves us.  Resurrection is about justice owed to the suffering.  If you are suffering, resurrection is good news. Every time Peter repeated his denials by proclaiming his love, Jesus would again explain that loving him implied doing what he, Jesus had done; “feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep.”

Jesus knew the disciples had denied him, but the good news was/is not just that the tomb was/is empty but that Hell was/is empty also.  You see the kind of love Jesus was talking about was not friendship, not admiration, but such a profound union in love that even a Peter would share his passion for doing God’s will by giving of himself for others.

Think about this, if it was not for Good Friday, on Easter we would just make some coloured eggs and hide.  That then brings us into the Last Supper discussion when Jesus told his disciples that loving him implied living his command of universal love and his prayer that they would be one in him as he was with God.  We see this is already being argued by those cardinals who think Pope Francis went too far in loving others.  How can you be a Christian and go too far in loving others?  So today we get to contemplate our own gospel vocation.  How do we express our faith in action?  How do we express what our baptism and partaking of communion mean to us?   The bottom line is, the reign of God versus the reign of the empire will depend on our efforts to accept that we are coworkers with God.  Looking at life this way we will always be drawn into the mystery of the resurrection.  The writer of revelation cannot help himself, he sees us with myriads of myriads and thousands and thousands loving God and that God through us will be recognized by all.  Incidentally, I think a myriad was 10000 in Greek?  I did not get into the Book of Revelation this week as I thought I would but I want to say this.  Revelation unveils for us a foundational contradiction of our faith.

Once we get to the centre of God’s world, to the centre of the idea of a throne, we realize that there is no Emperor or King on the throne, there is a lamb.  We may see some trappings of royalty and adoration, but the adoration is not directed at a strong man.  Perfection and prosperity are not God’s fundamental qualities. We find vulnerability in the place of power, creativity in the place of conformity, and love in the place of loyalty.

Here in 2025, Pope Francis called us to recover the essential gospel of mercy as our message to this troubled world.  Doctrinal consolidation, warrior Popes, great cathedrals and liturgies, fortress mentality and legalism, are not what is needed by this global community on the brink of enormous challenges to its survival and future direction.  What we need more than anything else is hope and reconciliation.  Will our newly elected leaders give us that?  What we need more than anything is, metanoia.  What martin Luther King Jr was saying sixty-two years ago was we need repentance, a spiritual conversion.  Not Poilievre’s change, change, change but a change of heart.

We know that some will listen and in listening we will be transformed, and some will not.  I will quote Diana Butler Bass from a book entitled “a beautiful year,” which will be published later this year.  The older I, Ron, get, the less I am sure what the resurrection means.  But I think Diana says it as clear as anyone.  Resurrection is not resuscitation.  Resurrection is not regeneration.  And it is different from reincarnation.  It is not just renewal. Resurrection is what happens after death.  Indeed, death is necessary for resurrection to occur.  Some Christians are absolutely convinced that it is about literal bodies rising from the dead.  Others claim resurrection will entail some sort of new spiritual body or is primarily an alternative spiritual state of personhood. Still others insist that resurrection is political or social liberation.  Christians argue about whether the event was scientific fact, evidenced by history, a kind of communal visionary or mystical experience, or something else entirely.  The New Testament employs a variety of metaphors to explain it. Even Paul and the writer of Luke seemed not to agree.  But all agree on two things at the centre of the Christian story.  First, death is not the last word.  And second, whatever the resurrection was, is, or will be, it serves as the gateway to a new existence – a life of mercy, service, and love.  Like Christmas, Easter is more than a single day.  It is a season of fifty days.

As spring lengthens, as the earth awakens, this year invites us to explore the many meanings of resurrection.  It raises questions, even as it inspires hope.”  Yes, resurrection is the power of love and hope in the face of destruction and violence.  Jesus called Peter back and then sent him out again, in spite of Peter’s denial and betrayal.  For each of us life in the faith will not be without struggle, but we are called and sent to follow God in our own dying and living.  There are no conditions on our life but there is a commission.    There are sheep to feed and care for.  There is work to do now, not to earn forgiveness and acceptance that has been given, but as a way of expressing gratitude for the gift of grace, and as a way of living the new, resurrected life that we have received. 

Yes, we will hear again and again;

“Will you come and follow me

If I but call your name?

Will you go where you do not know

And never be the same?

Will you let my love be shown,

Will you let my name be known,

Will you let my life be grown

In you and you in me?”

[ELW 798 v. 1]

 Amen.