Mark 4:3-9
1 Corinthians 3:4-7

The two scriptures I’ve chosen today are ones from my covenanting service 8 years ago.  Some of you will remember  Ian Smith preaching on them and giving us seeds to plant and to tend together in ministry. Well its time to reflect on the harvest!   

But first,  Paul’s  letter to the Corinthians.  He reminds the folk in that ragged Christian community that church leaders come and go,  But that the God who gives growth does not.  The ministry belongs to God and to the community here. At Cedar Park, you have been blessed with excellent ministry leadership’;Victor Rose,  Lorne Brown, Jack Nield, Paul Evans, Brenda Bell and for the last 8 years me. Some of you have lived through all of those leaders and know that not all had the same gifts, not all growth was the same,  But God used each one to grow this ministry that we celebrate today. And God will continue to use new leaders;  Ron Couglin, and whomever you choose as your new minister in the future.  

 I think there’s also a slightly hidden message in this passage. That is don’t say to your next minister….”But Sharon always did it this way”.  I hope you will give your new ministers the same generous support and accompaniment that you have given me. And I hope you will wear name tags to help them (and one another as well).

Now to the harvest.

Jesus told a story of a generous God who squanders grace recklessly.   A sower  went out to sow.  Some seed fell on the path and birds took the seed to other places.   I  think of all those whose ministry journeys touched our work these last 8 years. Jen DeCombe, Phil Reade, Elaine Beattie, Genevieve Trudel, Margie Ann MacDonald, even our own Elisabeth Jones.   Seeds of Cedar Park’s vision of church have been carried on the wings of the spirit to many places.   Many lay people  have moved to new congregations and brought with them seeds from this congregation. Others have brought the seed of other places here.  Our healing Pathway ministry has sown seeds in many other congregations where they have grown and taken root.

Seeds of discipleship have grown plentifully here and been carried elsewhere.

Truly God has blessed us with abundance.

The story goes on to speak about seed that fell in rocky ground where it sprang up because it had no depth, but wilted in the sun because it had no strong roots.  This is part of the nature of a generous seeding God. God offers the seed of transformed living everywhere, generously, even to those who are not ready or able to let it  grow deeply in them at this stage of their journey.  We know from our own experience of life,  that just because this is not the time for the  spirit to root deeply, does not mean that there will not be other times, and other opportunities to receive and to grow.  

Then the story speaks of  seed falling among thorns which choke out  new growth.  You might want to reflect on what strangles growth and fullness of life in you.  Might be addiction to work or fear, or control, or perfectionism.  Or maybe to powerlessness,  negativity, busyness or poverty thinking.  Might be other things.     Jesus was very realistic that there are things which crowd out healthy growth, and they are usually like weeds which grow wildly and selfishly demanding all the attention and energy for themselves.

But the real focus of the story is the shocking abundance of the seed that falls on good ground that multiplies exponentially-30,60,100 fold.  Truly a miraculous harvest!!

There have been so many seeds of God that have flourished abundantly in this community in these past 8 years!  I spoke of seeds of discipleship carried elsewhere.  But such seeds of discipleship have remained right here!  This congregation has some of the strongest lay leaders I have ever known…at the board level, Kidzone, in our various ministries. CD, Worship, Social Justice, Pastoral Care,  Healing Pathways, Welcoming, Stewardship and Finance, Fundraising, Property and Décor. Ministry and Personnel, Trustees.  We have had strong leadership for our programmes bible study, faith discussion, journalling, care for the caregivers, We have had strong leadership for our projects like Free the Children,  Grandmothers to Grandmothers, and Coffee House, and Raising the Roof, Gourmet food fairs and so much more.

Our staff team of Elizabeth Chown, church administrator and Douglas Knight, Music Director is the strongest and most committed I have ever worked with.  Together, we share a vision of reaching out beyond our walls, discovering people’s gifts and integrating new people into the heart of community. Both of these staff partners  have done that in very powerful ways. I have been truly blessed.   You have been truly blessed!   Shocking abundance  

Seeds of leadership and discipleship have grown here

Truly God has blessed us with abundance.

 And  our numbers have grown. Shocking abundance! This  happens for a reason.  It  happens because this congregation speaks a message.  and creates a vision of community that matters to people’s lives, and makes faith relevant to daily living.  We are an open faith community seeking to keep Jesus’ message relevant and real in our complex world – a message of abundant life for all.  We have committed to a powerful statement of our Values as a congregation and also to a clear covenant for harmony in how we will treat one another in community and how we will make decisions.   We have also made a strong decision to become an Affirming Congregation welcoming  the GLBT community and their families, committing to work in advocacy and justice for Gays and Lesbians Bisexuals and Transgendered.  Here All are welcome, really does mean all. In Sept. you welcome an openly gay minister in a committed relationship.  These statements, seeds of purpose and meaning,  will continue to orient your life together, and will continue to challenge you to grow into them .

The seeds of strength of purpose and meaning have grown here.

Truly God has blessed us with abundance.

Our influence in the larger community has also  multiplied many hundred fold.  As we have risked going beyond our doors to encounter and partner the community, we have been blessed with abundance. The Dix Mille Villages fair trade ministry continues to work for justice and to change lives of the very poor around the world.  Youth in Action, Free the Children has raised over 90 thousand dollars for projects in Africa and China and will now turn its attention to rebuilding Haiti.  Not only lives across the world, but the life of every one of the young people in this community who have been involved has been changed. They know their lives make a difference!   Shocking abundance!  

This ministry to the larger world has happened through partnerships:  Grandmothers to Grandmothers and our partnerships with Family Life Centre, Monteal City Mission, St. Columba House, and our own Mission and Service fund of the United Church.

Seeds of community partnership and justice  have grown fruitfully here.

Truly God has blessed us with abundance.

Please do not become a congregation who becomes so focused on what goes on inside, that you lose sight of how much Cedar Park plays a key  role in the soul life of the larger community.

Seeds of Creativity have also grown here.  We have one of the best choirs in Montreal!  At a time when many congregations don’t have a choir, we have to create  space for our growing choir.  We have our own choir, but we also have the Voices for Hope community choir that Douglas began touch the lives of many lives in our community but also the lives of those for whom their fundraising brings hope.   Well Done Douglas!  

But our music creativity is even deeper rooted in our coffee house that showcases creative talent, in groups like the Purich family, Perfect Blend, Lisa Walsh, Brian Clarke. And of course the DANCING QUEENS!!!

And then there’s Bob and the banner making!  And Rosemary Cass Beggs and our dancers, and our budding acting troupe!

 And weren’t those seeds of creativity powerfully demonstrated at the living wake you gave me a week ago Saturday?  Wow . Creativity is abundant in our midst in so many other parts of the life of this place too numerous to mention

Seeds of creativity have flourished here

Truly God has blessed us with abundance.

Seeds of caring, of healing, of  love have multiplied many fold  in this place; Lives have been profoundly changed by being here; experiencing the ministry and community that is here!  Much of it happens behind the scenes, unseen, unknown;   Like the woman who visits every week for several years with one of our elders.   Or the work of the pastoral care team who have helped people die with dignity,  surrounded by love, But they have also helped people LIVE as they have listened and walked beside those going through stressful times. Healing Pathways is one of the most powerful, life-changing ministries of our congregation, and we have seeded that ministry in many other churches.  We have visited in hospitals, offered treatments in homes, or in our Monday clinic.  Every day we see God’s grace and healing become incarnate.   Then there’s morning connections and elves creating gatherings for seniors and friends. and  those who lovingly care for our space and our resources, and worry whether we will be able make ends meet.  Quiet faithful loving, concrete ways of making the love of Jesus Christ real.  There is much caring, supporting, listening that goes on in this congegation beyond official channels;   people being who they are; passing on the love they have received to others.

Seeds of caring love have grown wildly here.

Truly God has blessed us with abundance.

But there is an even greater abundance that I celebrate from this time of shared ministry.  Countless people in this community have come to experience the presence of God in their own lives.  People who thought God wouldn’t care about them, have discovered the God of grace at the core of their beings, their own holy ground, the spirit of God that lives and moves in each one and breathes life and wholeness into each one.  Through meditation, retreat, prayer, study groups, healing services, healing pathways, and Sunday worship, God has found  many ways to bubble up in the life of this people with life-changing energy and power.  

And as we encounter God, we are challenged to grow in wholeness, and to  unlock and use spiritual gifts.   My prayer would be that you will continue to  call out and nurture the seeds of spirituality and call out the spiritual gifts of one another so that you can use them for the building up of the whole.  

The seeds of spirituality and spiritual giftedness have flourished here

Truly God has blessed us with abundance.

Thanks be to the God of abundance. May God continue to bless you as God has already blessed you.  When you start to feel discouraged because everything is not happening yesterday, or irritable with one another or fearful of what lies ahead, I hope you will call one another to remember the Abundance of God  present in your midst.

Truly God has blessed us with Abundance

He says ” It just turns your whole world upside down when you can turn the faucet on and stick a cigarette lighter under it and you get this explosion of flame.  People were showering with their light bulbs off because of fear of a spark setting off a huge fire.  He says”The first thing that I heard about was a woman [whose] water well exploded on New Years Day of 2009. And it sent a concrete casing soaring up into the air and scattered debris all over her yard. And then other people started to notice that their water was bubbling and fizzing, that their water had been discolored. By the time I got there a month later, there were children who were getting sick [and] animals who were getting sick and the whole place was pretty much laid to waste. There were gas well pads everywhere. There was incredibly heavy truck traffic. It seemed like normal life had just been turned completely upside down.”
But surely people can make a choice of whether they have this on their land you might think. Like Nabboth, they can say, “No this is my ancestral land. I will not sell it out.”

Not so simple. Though he and his family have decided not to lease the land, some of his neighbours have.  In many states there is forced pooling.  If 60% of a community have signed, you are forced to lease whether you sign or not. People said that the first time the gas people came they were friendly showing how much money a farmer could get.  Next time they put on stronger, nastier pressure. The third time they say, well, we’re taking your gas anyway, so you might as well make some money out of it. He says we are talking about 65% of Pennsylvania and 50% of New York.

But surely there are regulations to protect the environment and the people you say….”The gas industry were exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act by the 2005 Energy bill. The Safe Drinking Water Act monitors underground injection of toxin. They were also exempted in previous years from the Clean Air Act, the Superfund Law. … It’s an unregulated industry.”
Josh Fox, this very ordinary farmer from Pennsylvania is becoming a modern Elijah, pointing out injustice; naming the dirty business of manipulative abuse of power. And as he points out in his film, this is also happening in Alberta.

We still live in Naboth’s world. Some questions this passage forces me to reflect on- Where have we experienced ourselves in conflict between values of justice and concern for the powerless?  Where are we seduced by the notion that progress and getting ahead, requires its victims? How do you feel when little people make life inconvenient for you, stand in the way of something you want to accomplish and feel you have the right to do?   Where do we experience ourselves being seduced by the divine right of privilege?  Have you ever, like Jezebel, felt that you had to do someone else’s dirty work in order to stay on the right side of the power game? in order to keep your job?  Have you ever found yourself justifying the means by the end result?  Have you ever been in Naboth’s position where you have had to withhold something that another with more power wanted, even at personal risk?   Have you ever thought about land or possessions in terms of their relationship to God  as a trust for future generations?  Have you ever been in the Elijah position, where you have had to stand up and cry out injustice, where you have had to name the oppression, make judgement, refuse to pretend that  no one is being hurt, that everything is fine and proceding as it should?  Have you ever had to break the silence about abuse, violation, injustice?
 
There will be a need for a great many more Elijahs in these times as a leaner, meaner, more selfish spirit invades our world. He refused to be silent in the face of injustice.  He recognized  that God cares about the way power in used, the way land is used, the way people are treated, the way people are governed, the way a society treats those who are less powerful.  God cares profoundly, and invites us to care as well, and to risk breaking out of the complicity of denial, and to speak our truth, even into the places of power.
 
There are too many Naboths in the world.  God cares.

Proverbs 8:1-4,22-31
Psalm 8

Today we get to play, with Lady Wisdom. Several biblical texts describe her as creating the world, redeeming a people, crying out for justice, pouring forth compassion, playing with the seasons, comforting and consoling, teaching right paths, uttering her challenging word, renewing all things, making people friends with God, and with the prophets, lighting up evil and overcoming it. Not too shabby eh? You’d think she’d be hard to ignore. Yet for centuries, her presence has gone unnoticed by much of the tradition. Now I wonder why that might be?????

One reason seems to be that in scripture, Wisdom/Sophia operates outside the hierarchical structure of priest, temple and law. Her teaching is not so much about mighty divine acts in history, as it is rooted in the experiential, in the ordinary. Her teaching is about relationship, interpersonal and social, about seasonal changes and daily life. And then of course, there’s the real kicker….Wisdom is personified as feminine…Sophia in Greek, Hockmah a feminine noun in Hebrew. In a patriarchal society her teachings were no doubt seen as subversive to authority.

Wisdom teaches us that life is consequential. Living in harmony with Holy Wisdom leads to life. Ignoring her leads to destruction. Wisdom reminds us that history swings on an ethical hinge, and that God will not be mocked. If we mess with that ethical hinge, if we overstep God’s limits then we are surely in for a great shock for it simply will not work. There is a price. The tragic oil spill in the Gulf? Climate change and resulting extreme weather conditions? Life is consequential.

Wisdom, Sophia, is described elsewhere as “the one who enters into holy souls and makes them God’s friends and prophets” Wisdom makes people speak up for justice in politics and society. She is described as the one who “spans the world in power from end to end, and orders all things well.” As the proverbs passage puts it she is the active presence of God upon earth, the source of all life and blessing. She was there at creation when God set the heavens into place and fixed the horizon line. There when God made the heavens above to be firm and the fountains of the deep gush forth. There when God assigned the sea its limits, when God fixed the foundations of the earth. And this Wisdom rejoiced before God at all times, rejoicing in creation, delighting in the human race. She is portrayed as dancing, playing, intelligent, planning sheer delight in creation. She is the female principle of the Creator. And yet for many centuries she has been banished from our churches, from our worship, even from our imagining of God.

In Proverbs, she speaks with authority like a prophet at the busiest cross roads, addressing the law courts that met at the city gates. Wisdom comes right into the midst of life and work, where commerce is conducted and where justice is supposed to be given. Wisdom does not wait for people to find her. She goes out searching and calling.

So where is she calling in our times?

Is she calling us back from the brink of destructiveness? One hopes so, for our lack of wisdom is being projected today onto the earth itself. The ecological crises we face and the crises of our world, are crises of the human soul. We are told that the knowledge she offers will lead to life. We are so desparately in need of that voice in our times.

In seeking to possess things, in making ourselves the centre of the world, we have failed to see our interconnectedness with the rest of creation, We have failed to comprehend the wonder, the brilliant complexity of Creation. In treating the earth as an unliving, inanimate source of riches to be owned to benefit the powerful few, we are forgetting the wisdom of the elders in Aboriginal culture that remind us to make decisions with the 6th generation into the future in mind. Would that BP and regulators of underwater oil drilling had had some of this wisdom?

Chief Seattle, 1854 said…..
“All things are connected. Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the sons
and daughters of the Earth. Humans do not weave the web of life, they are merely strands in it. Whatever they do to the web they do to themselves.”
That is wisdom…Life is consequential.

So where do we hear wisdom calling?
Where do we meet wisdom at the cross roads of our lives?
Here’s a story that literally meets us at the cross roads. Can you hear wisdom calling?

In Portland, Oregon a small group of people reclaimed their own street intersection – painting a design in the street, a beautiful Mandela in vibrant colours, building a child’s playhouse, installing a bench and a kiosk for sharing neighborhood information. Soon they had an interactive social space.
A volunteer-run nonprofit City Repair was born, organizing neighborhood groups throughout the city. Their goal… to create gathering places in street intersections. One new project is Depave Portland, which removes unnecessary asphalt to make space for urban gardens.
City Repair Project co-founder Mark Lakeman, an urban planner, says that people have lost the connections they used to have when they lived and worked in the same place. People had regular opportunities to interact with their neighbors as they went about their daily lives, which gave people in a community “cultural cohesion.” “We weren’t isolated the way that we are now,” Lakeman said, adding that today “many of our phobias and issues come from separating the pieces of our lives.”
As he traveled, Lakeman saw that people’s gathering places were where their pathways came together and intersected. He began to see that the idea of crossroads is ancient – it pervades indigenous societies. Today we try to keep people moving, instead of encouraging them to gather as they would in a village. “Lakeman says, “Our great archetype is the main street, which is not really a center. It’s just a flow. It’s a movement corridor…There isn’t a social commons that you can attain and occupy.”
In Portland more and more neighborhoods are “repairing their intersections,” creating social commons, places where people can and do meet and gather. “The power of what we do,” Lakeman says, “is we start with the idea and the belief that we can make it happen. If it has a social basis, if your primary goal is to build networks and relationships, then you attract all the other forms of capital that begin with the social. That’s the magic. That’s the key.”

Wisdom at the crossroads!! Cedar Park is already a crossroads where people meet in study, play, music, worship…But I wonder what we could do on our front lawn to create a more interactive space??? A labyrinth? A small park with garden for meditation and reflection? A community garden to grow food? Hmmmm. Where is wisdom calling?

Another story of wisdom at the crossroads. Friday evening Francine LeMay spoke at Montreal and Ottawa Conference focusing on a theme of Living in Right Relationship. Raised in Acton Vale Quebec, she said her early life was spent pursuing things like being a model, worrying about her appearance, her glasses, her weight, her clothes…All things which she now describes as superficial. Her awakening came when she learned that her brother Corporal Marcel LeMay had been killed in Oka at a confrontation with natives at the Pines burial ground. Francine says that she went through deep pain and grief and a lot of anger at these people who had murdered her beloved brother. She hated them for what they had done.

This pain, in large part, drove her back to her faith roots. Her life began to deepen. Her priorities changed. She grew in her relationship with Christ.

One day, when Harvey and Susan Gabriel from Kahnesetake were at her church reporting on Harvey’s translation of scriptures into Mohawk. She went up to them and said. “Your people murdered my brother”!

She says that it was by God’s grace that she began from that moment, a journey of reconciliation with a people she did not know. Relationships began. She began to meet people, to hear the painful history of the native people of Kahnesetake and came to learn why that burial ground in the Pines was so important to them, and to learn that what we have come to call the Oka crisis, did not come out of the blue, but out of years of a history of oppression. She came to meet Mohawks who were not carrying a gun pointed at her and to learn about a people she had never known. She learned, and that made a huge change for her.

Her journey has become not just about personal reconciliation, but about seeking justice for the very people who killed her brother. She said. If we had done things right in the first place, if we had listened in the first place, this shooting of my brother never had to happen. It was a tragedy of not knowing “the other”.

Someone, she says, has to be willing to take the first step……We are called to a ministry of reconciliation she says…Learning to live in right relationship…
Wisdom at the crossroads…Do you hear her calling?

And another wisdom voice from one of my favourite modern prophets…
Frances Moore Lappé./Opening Note from Getting a Grip Clarity, creativity and courage in a world gone mad.

“I’ve finally figured it out. I am not overwhelmed, depressed, confused, ,or bewildered by our world gone mad. I’m ready, I’m past ready. I just want to go for it.
Why can’t we have a nation –why can’t we have a world we’re proud of? Why can’t we stop wringing our hands over poverty, hunger, species decimation, genocide, and death from incurable disease that we know is all needless? The truth is there is no reason we can’t.
…I realize that humanity has no excuses anymore. In the span of my own lifetime, both historical evidence and breakthrough in knowledge have wiped out all our excuses. We know that we know how to end this needless suffering and we have all the resources to do it. From sociology and anthropology to economic, from education and ecology to systems analysis…the evidence is in. We know what works.

No physical obstacle is stopping us. Nothing. The barrier is in our heads. We are creating this world gone mad, not because we’re compelled to by some deep flaws in our nature and not because Nature itself is stingy and unforgiving, but because of ideas we hold. Ideas.”

Wisdom at the cross roads…Wisdom calling out. Return to the Source.. make choices that are wise. Remember the unconventional upside-down wisdom of our brother Jesus. Return to God’s ways which lead to abundant life.

Pentecost 2010. Sermon delivered by Rev. Elisabeth R. Jones

I’ve always had trouble with the Holy Spirit.
When I was a child, growing up in a Roman Catholic family in England,
I learned to make the sign of the cross (in Latin) about the same time I learned to walk.
But I do remember learning from my big sister (always a risky undertaking to trust the teachings of an older, mischievous sibling) how to do it in English:
”InthenameoftheFatherandoftheSonandoftheHolyGoat
AMEN!”
(Thank goodness the framers of English liturgy decided to reduce childish confusion by declaring that the third person of the Trinity to be “Holy Spirit” not Ghost.)

Goat, Ghost, or Spirit,
this ‘Spirit/Power’ of God at work in the Church and the world
is elusive, enigmatic,
always just beyond our grasp,
never to be contained or constrained by our limited imaginations,
but rarely beyond our experience.

The writer of Genesis describes her hovering like morning mist or life-giving breath over unformed chaos at creation;
The prophets describe her as fire in the belly which provokes one to speak out against deadening injustice,
Ezekiel felt her presence as the handprint of God shaping the soul’s imagination,
John calls her the “Comforter”
- please don’t imagine a Holy Duvet, the word means provoker of strength, giver of courage.
Luke describes her coming down as tongues of flame.

We invoked her presence this morning as Fire, Power, Peace Maker, Truth-Teller, World -Builder, a Spirit of Mischief, Causer of uproar, Subversive Dove.
We danced her into our presence this morning with shakers, noisemakers, flame banners, the choir were specifically instructed not to ‘process’ but to ‘invade’ the sanctuary in a display or glorious holy mayhem.

Perhaps it’s no wonder I’ve had trouble with the Holy Spirit.
I think we’re supposed to.
We are holy fools to call upon this power of God to come into our lives,
into our church, into our world. We are asking for trouble. Literally.

12 years ago to the day, I was ordained.
It was in one of Canada’s most holy spaces – a hockey arena in rural Alberta.
The theme for the Conference that year was Many Gifts, One Spirit
Norman has a photo of me, this alb, this stole, and behind me on a banner,
there she is, Holy Dove. Subversive Bird.
Unleashed Trouble maker in full flight,
Spirit of mischief let loose in my life and in the life of the Church.

After ordination, she led me into a teaching ministry,
first at Vancouver School of Theology.
Spirit-led, I taught Church History, for me a window into the active, loving presence
of God in the lives of God’s people.
I retraced the Spirit’s steps from the present back to the dawn of human history,
discovering along the way bright feathers from Spirit’s plumage,
those holy intrusions she has made into the life of the Church,
unsettling the settled, breathing new life, vitality, change,
power, creativity, resurrection:
the Revivals of the 19th Century,
the Great Awakening of the 18th,
the Pilgrim voyages to the New World in the 17th,
the Reformation of the 16th,
and so on, backwards,
to Jesus’ world subverting footprints on Judean sand.

But you can be sure that just when things start to settle and feel “comfortable”
up She starts again, this Unsettling Spirit-Comforter,
prodding us onward, outward, forward.
For me there was a letter, an email, a phone call..
“We need you here in Montreal” – I barely knew of UTC.
Feeling rather like Philip “suddenly transported by the Spirit” to a wilderness road (Acts 8),
we found ourselves travelling from one end of the country to the other, leaving bits of family along the way, dusting off languages not spoken in decades,
all because this Spirit wanted us here.

Sometimes she moves too fast, this Spirit.
Too fast for the Church to keep up with, sometimes
(more often than we care to admit).
The fine print of church legislation said, “You can’t go unless we “settle” you.”
I said fine, “settle me”.
Only the ink ran out, and the Manual didn’t get printed in time
for the new form to exist that would say “settled to teach”
(those mind-numbing details are NOT the stuff of proclamation, so let’s just move on with the story)

So, in 2004, I came, “unsettled” and “discontinued” – my ordination was suspended, caged, set aside.
“For an interim period” they said.
“Just while we sort out the paperwork” they said.

Six years is a long time to sort out the paperwork.
A neat version of the story would say that for those six years
the Spirit was caged, I was caged,
caged by the bureaucracies, the devotion to formulae and to ‘good order,’
but we all know that’s not true.
When Spirit has set a fire in your soul,
she leaves you with little choice
than to do what she has gifted you with courage to do,
even if, for a time, you have to do it from within the confines of a cage.
This Holy Spirit of God,
has breathed, inspired, held up and held on
kindling a burning tongue of fire
within this upper room confinement.
She has drawn out from me the deepest of my calling and my gift.

All the while, as She has done countless times before,
and will do again, and again,
She has blown away the cobwebs of tired systems,
cauterized the bureaucratic growths,
and laid open a way to restore me to the Church, and it to me.
And today, on this Spirit’s Day, we celebrate.

In my experience,
and in everything I’ve learned in the pages of Scripture,
and the pages of the history I teach,
the Spirit of God just isn’t that interested in cages.
Church throughout its centuries, simply because
it’s so human, has created various gilded cages, set them up on pedestals,
cast them in bronze and set them with fine jewels,
and invited God’s Spirit to “settle” in them,
to become the Church’s resident Bird of Paradise,
ornamental, but of little power or consequence.

But this Spirit of God unleashed upon the Church at Pentecost,
is one “lone wild bird in lofty flight.”
She doesn’t live in cages,
she rarely rests on a perch,
she has little time for ‘settled-ness.’
Her verbs are “riot, create, build, encourage, spin,
burst forth, infuse, inspire, break open”
She is Wing, she is Flame, she is Power, she is Energy.

She breaks open cages, she doesn’t brood in them.
She doesn’t let us brood disconsolately in them either.
Whenever God’s people have found ourselves caged,
by -isms that oppress,
or by systems that settle and sag,
whenever God’s folk are caged by
circumstance, indecision,
or want of courage or vision,
Spirit enters our cages and says
“Create anyway!”
“Imagine away!”
“Live free!”

She sighs into our souls
and whispers words of promise, potential, possibility;
With her wings she fans the flickering tongue of fire until it is burning flame,
She blows us, at times she cajoles us, unsettles us into living as God intends us to be.
She gifts the Church with power, until with her,
God’s people are unleashed into Church, into world,
in the name of the Risen One, Jesus.
Amen.

Isaiah 43: 1-3
John 5:1-9
 

Used to be that preachers were kind of embarrassed by those odd healing stories of Jesus and felt we had to explain them away as unscientific superstitions. We grew up, all of us, with a world view rooted in Newtonian science and knew that there was no connection between the spiritual and physical, the mind and body, or emotion and rational thinking.

And then there were those fundamentalist kooks out there who wanted you to touch the TV set and be healed…and of course to send LOTS OF MONEY, to support this work. We were embarrassed to be in the same religious tent. Still am….For a few hundred years, the church has been somewhat skeptical about healing.

Yet for the early church, healing was very much part of the ministry to which they felt called by Christ. Healing of bodies, healing of minds, healing of relationships, healing of community. Scriptures speak of all of these aspects of healing. We may not take them literally, we do need to take them seriously.

And then, as the circle turns, we encounter radically new scientific thinking at the end of the 20^th C. Quantum physics whose proponents sound almost like the mystics of the ages. Everything is connected and relational and transformational.The way we think is changing/ changing radically.

I grew up with the image of a God out there; up there; in a 3 tier universe; kind of like an external clockmaker, outside of creation, who intervened to tinker with creation; at whim it seemed. To talk of God healing you in this paradigm, would be to talk about an external miracle. Maybe you could be healed if you could pray loudly and well enough to get God’s attention! But it was pretty arbitrary.

But this understanding of God has undergone radical change for many of us. We speak more about the immanent God, the One in whom we live and move and have our being. We speak of God as Spirit flowing through all that is; Spirit that we encounter in our own depths as well is in the depth of all life around us. We experience God as near as the breath we breathe. In this new paradigm, healing, is opening oneself to this sacred presence….creating the space to attune oneself to this Source of life; allowing oneself to rest in this Spirit of creating, healing love. How you understand healing depends very much on how you understand God and how God connects with creation, and with us.

In Hebrew the word nephesh was used for body/spirit. There was no separation. Body and Spirit were intertwined. Jesus did not see God as someone far away, out there, inaccessible. Jesus saw God everywhere in seeds, in water, in children, in lepers, in a man sitting at the healing pool of Bethesda, who had been sick for thirty-eight long disappointing years. Like the other lame and sick and blind, the man sat waiting, waiting for the waters to move, waiting to be plunged into the pool. He felt his healing depended on someone outside himself. By the time Jesus met him, he was pretty convinced he would never make it in, blaming others. “Others get in first” he said, “there’s no room for me”. No one pays attention. What is it about this man that Jesus notices? Jesus sees beyond the sick helpless, hopeless man …. to the one who could stand and be healed. “Stand up, take up mat and walk!” Jesus says… And he does!!! What changed?

Did Jesus unleash a miracle healing power and zapped him? Did the man suddenly realize that he could begin to see himself as other than sick and helpless, precisely because he had experienced been seen whole by Jesus? Could he believe in himself, because Jesus had believed in him? However it happened, healing occurred. Life was transformed! I wonder what his next day was like, and how he began to rebuild his life. For someone who has defined themselves by their illness for 38 years, healing can be as threatening as it is desired. We can be sitting at the pool, looking as if we want healing, sometimes for a lot of years, but are heavily invested unconsciously in keeping things exactly as they are.

One of the first experiences of healing I ever had, was before I was ordained. I’ve shared this life-changing story before. A friend had a baby born with Hylie membrane disease, a coating of the lungs that, at that time at least, almost always meant death within days. I went into deep prayer for this child, quite unconscious of what I was doing. I woke in the night holding the image of this newborn babe in God’s presence. Once in the night I woke to a sense of a bright light connecting with the child and an inner knowing that it would be all right. I did not know what all right meant-perhaps the child had died in peace.

The next morning the mother called; the baby had taken an unexpected turn in the night. There was no sign of the disease. At precisely the time the light had wakened me. I filed it away, unable to make any sense of it.

Early in my ministry, I visited a man with complications following surgery. Doctors had said that nothing more could be done. Even though this man was also a minister I felt insecure offering him healing meditation and laying on of hands. Would he think I was a fundie kook? Would he dismiss me? We silence a lot of spiritual gifts this way; particularly gifts of healing, with this fear of what people will think of us.

To my surprise, both he, and his wife, welcomed the experience. It was as if we had broken the silence, got to the heart of the need and were talking about what really mattered. I led them in the Healing Light meditation that is in my book and laid on hands in prayer. We also asked everyone we thought would be open to this kind of healing, to pray for Jim, imagining him surrounded by the healing light of Christ, imagining his body systems being restored, made whole. I didn’t expect much, but in 1 1/2 days his body simply started to function again in the way it was meant to. His doctors were shocked. He lives out in BC now. Though I did not know it at the time, there was a lot of research into exactly what I was doing showing it worked.

Then it happened to me. My system paralyzed after surgery. Despite everything the medical profession could do, nothing was working. All they could recommend was more surgery with no guarantee of success. I called an elder from my congregation, who was a Reiki master. By opening the energy field, his work awakened my physical body which doctors had tried in vain for 16 days to restore. I believe Dan saved my life.

We are coming to know there is a profound connection between the mind and body; and that spiritual and emotional illness can manifest in physical illness. Our unconscious minds can both create and heal. Each of us knows we have places in our body where we store tension and stress, where we lock up anger, fear, or pain. It can be healing to listen for the wisdom of the body through metaphor e.g. What is giving you a pain in the neck? What is tying your guts in knots? What is hard to swallow, making your throat tense? What can’t you stomach? What are you gritting your teeth and locking your jaw to keep from letting out?

We ignore our bodies when they are not in pain. We dislike them for not fitting the image created for them. When we become ill or tired, we treat our bodies as if they are letting us down, rather than having compassion for them. We dislike them for the natural processes of ageing. We punish them for the messages of pain that would invite our attentiveness, or for the messages of fatigue that would slow our driven path. As we age, we are brainwashed into seeing the changes in our body as a scandal, an enemy that must be contended with, controlled, fought against.

These images and messages planted in our unconscious mind deeply affect our physical systems. Whether we realize it or not, these messages permeate every cell of our body, as well as our emotional, and spiritual life. Low self-esteem, de-energizing depression and even physical illness can result.

Our bodies are like photographic films on which are imprinted the memories of unhealed hurts of our bodily and emotional experience. We are not disembodied minds or spirits. Our bodies ARE ourselves. They are a source of wisdom and knowing. They offer truth that we can not know in other ways.

Our bodies respond physically to images and to intention. This is why have been so drawn to the use of imagery meditation for healing. Meditation, including my own books are now used in a number of hospitals, particularly in the areas of cancer and AIDS treatment for pain control, and in some psychiatric treatment. Healing meditation and healing touch are powerful tools to promote healing and to help the whole person work with the Source of healing through the body and soul’s own healing processes.

Healing is not a magic act. While some may find it more easy to be attuned to healing energy, I believe that, in each of us there is an inner healer that can be accessed through prayer, meditation, and practising the Presence of God. Healing is one of the fundamental patterns God breathed into creation. We can enable it, open to it, channel it, but no individual creates it. It is God’s power not our own.

Healing happens on many levels in this congregation. It happens when we listen one another into being…when we help one another speak from the heart, and tell the deep stories that heal. We do this as individual caring people, but our Pastoral Care team have taken special training for this ministry of listening. Healing happens also when we include those who feel marginalized; when we allow space for all ages and abilities. Healing happens when we work for justice and right relationships. Healing happens in our groups as we learn and share and build community.

Healing also happens through our healing Pathways ministry, which is a ministry of this congregation reporting to the board through the Pastoral Care Team. Over 400 treatments have been given in the past year, which have resulted in much healing and wholeness, both for those receiving and those offering. Healing Pathways is a United Church healing and wholeness ministry housed at Naramata BC. It has been hugely well received here in Montreal. More than 150 people have taken training and we have practices in 4 congregations, including this one. Healing stories abound, some dramatic, some more simple. Many of you have your own stories to tell as a result of experiencing this ministry.

During one of the trainings Howard had fallen while moving furniture at Summerlea. He arrived at the training barely able to stand or to walk. He could not go up or down stairs and was in agonizing pain. Luckily the trainers were staying at our house, so we worked on him that night. When he walked in standing straight, moving freely the next day, the group could not believe their eyes anymore than he could.

One elderly woman hobbled here in a walker. After a few treatments she moved to a cane, then to walk on her own and finally was able to come for treatments downstairs. Her face lit up as she told others of what had happened for her over these weeks. Healing is often a process, not a one-shot effort. Others have spoken about pain decreasing or of a sense of balance and inner peace and well-being.

There are many ways in which healing may take place. Healing and curing are not the same thing. One person may be healed of her fear of death so that she can die with grace and dignity and in peace when it is her time. Another person may experience healing of life-style. Another may be able to let go of the control certain memories have had on their lives. For another self-acceptance may be the healing. For another, healing may be allowing themselves to experience being known by name by God, knowing they belong to God intimately and eternally even when they pass through deep waters and fiery tests. For some, as lives come more into balance, physical healing occurs. We offer pathway treatments without expectation of outcome. It is up to God and the person what happens with it.

But I think all of us who practice would agree that. reconnecting with Sacred Source is in and of itself of infinite worth. By practising the presence of God in meditation or other healing practises we ground ourselves in God’s grace, we come home to the self, home in an abundant, grace-filled universe where we know that we are called by name and known by God whether we are in deep water, or fiery testing times.

Acts 16: 9-15

Rivers are pretty special places in the Bible…and they are for many of us as well. We love to sit beside the St Laurent…so wide it forms Lac St. Louis at this spot… Sitting beside a river, it just seems natural to pray; to reflect on the flow of life; where life has been; where it is heading; where the Spirit is flowing freely; where it is dammed up/blocked.

John of Patmos, writing to sustain a church under terrible persecution invites the early church, and us to dare to imagine outrageously; even in the face of very hard times. He invite the early Christian communities to imagine a different way…a Holy Way…a new heaven, a new earth. He visions that there will be no temple in the holy city – not because people will no longer be religious, but rather because God will be present everywhere. The river of life-giving waters will flow in the middle of the city. People will know and experience God right in their midst, not through the intermediary of the temple. All the peoples of the world, will walk in the light of the presence of God, and the gates of the city will not be shut. What an incredibly welcoming, inclusive vision.Not just some of the people of the world…not just those who follow MY religion or think like me. All peoples…will know themselves to be filled with the light of the Holy. It’s a vision we still need. What we can imagine, we can work to create.

Can you begin to imagine what would it be like to live in a world where the light of God’s presence shone with absolutely no barrier, in our families, our relationships, our communities, our governments, our economics, our justice, and health and education systems? What would it be like to live in a nation where one did not need to shut the gates against outsiders? Imagine a city where the river of the water of life flows freely right through the middle of the city… healing, life-giving energy, peace and power available to all, right in the centre of our context, right where we live, where we do business, where we make political decisions. God’s healing, transforming power permeating all life, not locked off in a holy temple- Everywhere. And the trees of life which flourish on each side of this river of life, producing fruit in extravagant abundance and leaves for the healing of all people. Nothing evil, no oppressor, no violator, no exploiter would be allowed to enter.

Even catching a glimpse in our imagination is healing.

Imagine hearing this vision if we lived in fear for our lives as did the congregations to which it was written.

What would it be like in your own life, if you were aware of this river of sacred life flowing freely- through every act, every decision, every relationship? flowing through your anxiety and fear, flowing through the places where you felt inadequate, flowing through the painful memories that have wounded you, flowing through your hopes, through your desires, through your giftedness, through your awareness of God calling you, and nurturing the tiny seeds of growth and hope and possibility in you? Imagine resting in God who has this desire for fullness of life for you- for the whole of creation? The river of life flows freely in our midst.

In Acts, we come to another river of life…a river of prayer; a river of community; a river of welcome and encounter. Paul had been heading in the opposite direction, but because of the dream, of all things, he heads west to Macedonia. Have you ever changed direction in your life? Have you ever left a path you were taking to go a different way? Have you ever experienced yourself, as was Paul, called in a particular direction in a dream?

Paul journeys to the Roman colony of Philippi. Outside the city he comes to the Gaggitas River, a meeting place, where women gathered to fetch water, to do washing… This ordinary place is also the place where a group of religious women gather to encounter God in prayer; to share spiritual needs on the Sabbath. Their activities are well enough known in the city for Paul and Timothy and Luke to go looking for this established place of prayer.

One of the women was Lydia, a merchant of purple dyes. A pound of wool dyed with her special costly dye would cost 100$. The snail that produced this rich purple dye was found only in the area from which she came. Royal purple, the highest quality of her cloth, was called that because only someone of royalty could afford this cloth, created by the women of the area, with secret formulae passed from generation to generation. Lydia was undoubtedly, a woman of independent means, quite wealthy, and, as head of her household, was responsible for the immediate family, slaves, former slaves now clients, hired laborers, and sometimes business associates or tenants.

She was a foreigner in Philippi. She had left her home in Thyatira, across the Aegean Sea, so she was already a woman who knew how to make changes in her life. We know that she was a worshipper of God, probably born Gentile but attracted to Judaism. Lydia was a seeker. Because of the high cost of the goods Lydia dealt in, she had to be a person who had an eye for value and quality, and able to drive a hard bargain in the market place to support her household. She welcomed Paul and Timothy, though they were strangers, and in listening to them, she found something of great value. Scripture says God opened her heart to what she was hearing; she heard with her heart. Soon Lydia and the whole household were baptized. My guess is that this happened over time rather than in one afternoon, but that is how the story is told. Lydia became the first convert in Europe.

Paul was willing to take seriously a group of women gathered to pray- and to meet Lydia where she was; something those who quote some of Paul’s statements about women seem to miss. The heads of many of the house churches Paul founded were women.  

I wonder what Paul spoke about. Did he speak about meeting the risen Christ, on the road to Damascus? Did he talk about his own transformation, what he had learned from the disciples who had known the living Jesus? What did he share that drew Lydia to his message?

Whatever he said, it connected with her spiritual seeking. It resonated with what she already knew of God through her prayer life. Something that she heard was good news and transformed her life. Christianity was a brand new untested idea at that point. Lydia was willing to try something new.

When have you heard something that transformed how you lived or thought about your future? Have you ever heard another tell a story that opened your eyes to see yourself in a new way? Lydia prayed beside a river with other women. Where do you go to listen for God? Where do you find spiritual companionship? Lydia was willing to listen to a person from a different faith-Paul. How do we meet people who have taken different spiritual paths from our own?

After her baptism, she welcomes Paul and Timothy to her home. Her household becomes the centre of the first group of Christians in Europe.

Lydia sets the tone of generosity and hospitality and welcome for the entire Philippian church. She supported Paul and Timothy so well that while they lived with her, Paul did not have to engage in his craft of tentmaking as was his usual custom, and it was to her home later that Paul returned after being in prison.

Lydia had intellectual, spiritual curiosity. She was a woman open, eager to discuss and learn. She was a woman who trusted her own judgement and acted on it. If we had a gospel according to Lydia, it would be interesting to read about that day. What called her to become a Christian? It would be interesting to hear about the hours of conversation between her and Paul and Timothy and Luke, while they stayed in her home. It would have been interesting to hear how it was, that she attracted and welcomed people to her new house church, how she developed community, how she shared her faith in her work situation and with her contacts.

We do not have a gospel according to Lydia. We do not know what became of Lydia. We do have a later letter to the Philippians, and know of a journey 5 years later that Paul made to visit this church, which was apparently thriving, and steadily growing, and giving liberally to support the poor of Palestine.

We know that Lydia was the first Christian in Europe, founder of the first Christian community there, and that she used all of the skills she had built up in her business life to set up and continue a house organization which welcomed others into faith. Lydia acted on her experience of God and shared the good news she had found.

How do we do that? Do we know what our good news is? How would anyone know that we were people of faith? What do we say, or how do we act that would invite and welcome friends or neighbours or work colleagues into a journey of faith? What would you want others to know about God, about Christ from the wisdom and the experience you have had?

Lydia founded a community. The river of the Spirit of Life flowed through her. All because she welcomed strangers and paid attention to an encounter when she was praying beside a river.

Come gather by the river and pray, the women invite and welcome Paul

Come gather by the river and hear an amazing story, Paul continues the invitation.

Come enter the river and be baptised

Come gather by the river and teach

Come gather by the river and become church community

Come gather by the river, then go to serve.

I invite you to come forward to this living water, reminder of the river of life, reminder of the river of baptism, reminder of the river of prayer and of the flow of God’s Spirit in your own life. Come remember your baptism/ remember God’s life that flows through you.

Acts 11:1-18
Revelation 21:1-6
 

Have you ever had a dream that changed the whole direction of your life? Do you think of your dreams as a place for holy encounter? or just something annoying to disturb your sleep! People in biblical times believed that God spoke to them through dreams; that the Spirit led them through visions. They listened for God in dreams and could distinguish important dreams; sign dreams; holy dreams from unimportant ones.

Some cultures still take dreams very seriously. In Aboriginal tradition, the Creator communicates in dreams, and at turning points in their lives, people are led by the Spirit through visions and vision quests. Jungian analysis is based on attending to dreams as a way of understanding and integrating the unconscious. Those who pay attention to dreams find that the more they value the messages of the dream, the more the unconscious mind gifts the dreamer with a flow of images and connections, for healing. I believe that dreams do connect us with our deep inner wisdom and are one way for God, the genius of the indirect, to nudge us on our journey.

Today we read two scriptures in which people dream and vision outrageously! Usually when times are hard, we feel we don’t have time for dreams; Got to get practical! factual! get on with it! …..(Or is that just me?) But here two leaders of the early Christian community; one trying to build a new movement in an alien culture, and another living through times of devastasting persecution… are having visions and dreams that change how they and their communities view the world! These dreams were so important in the early community that they were shared and written down so that we have them 2000 years later. And they weren’t even high on LSD or peyote!!!!

Peter in Acts, is on the hotseat with the disciples who had stayed in Jerusalem. They were a rules-bound lot and Peter who has been out in the territories, preaching and teaching and healing in the Spirit, is called on the carpet for playing too fast and loose with the gospel. Why has he broken the purity code by welcoming Gentile outsiders into the Jesus’ people? (Gentile is the term for anyone who was not a Jew) In his defence, Peter tells of a life-changeing dream. It happened while he was in Joppa, the same seaside town where Tabitha was raised. And it happened while he was in prayer, he says.

As a religious Jew, he had always known what God considered clean and unclean. He knew it was against God’s will to visit in a Gentile’s home, and particularly to eat with them, which showed tacit acceptance. Eating non kosher was repulsive to Peter. Peter knew also that before Gentile outsiders could be baptized into Christian community they had to be circumcised as Jews. OUCH! You can imagine there might be a bit of resistance to this idea. especially from adult males!….

Imagine Peter’s shock to have a vision of a large sheet coming from the sky, full of unclean animals. Three times, a voice urged him to eat. That biblical 3 again! Now Peter is a righteous man so he refused After all these animals were unclean! Then come powerful words which make a huge spiritual shift not only for Peter, but for early Christianity. “Do not consider anything unclean that God has declared clean” A radical idea for the people of the First Century. Still a radical idea for most of our own age. We so much prefer to tell God whom God should consider unclean….which strangely just happens to resemble very closely our own biases n’est-ce pas?

Peter took his dream seriously. He understood its meaning as a message from God. He acted upon it the very next day. He had been invited to the house of Cornelius, a gentile. Because of the dream, he went; and then he preached and lo and behold, these Gentiles were filled with the Holy Spirit! Go figger! Who could have guessed that gentiles could be spirit filled believers! So he baptized them, because as he said, Who was I to try to stop God? Who was I to try to stop God? Case closed!

It seems God was doing a whole new thing that Peter had to catch up with!

This story was pivotal to the early Church which struggled with the baptism of Gentiles the way the United Church struggled with the Ordination of Gays and Lesbians a few years ago, and then later gay marriage. “Do not consider anything unclean that God has declared clean” Some of the Christian community continue to think that they know who is acceptable and who is unclean. And they are more than willing to enlist God on their side to bash those whom they despise.

Next Friday I am going to Ottawa for an anniverary of a service that I was part of developing in my former congregation. It was to honour birth mothers who gave their children for adoption. We held it Saturday night before Mother’s Day. It honoured a group of mothers, birth mothers, who were invisible, at best, or despised at worst. It was a way for adopted children and adoptive families to honour their bringing life into the world. Over many years we heard painful stories of the shame and guilt and silence these women had lived because they were labeled by their families, their churches, their society as unclean, bad women. These services were for many, the very first time they had stood up in public and broken that silence. It reminded me of Peter’s vision of inclusiveness. Who are we to declare unclean what God has made clean? Who are we to try to stop God?

Dreams matter. They can lead to paradigm shifts, They can give us new ways to see our world and our place in it. There are so many places where we need dreams and visions to help us see in new ways.

Our generation recognizes the need of dreams and visions of new ways of being in relationship with First Nations, for we have operated out of a colonialist, racist mind set for far too many generations. We are all broken by this reality and God’s intention is surely distorted. For the future of our planet we need to learn from Aboriginal people a new way of being in creation. Montreal and Ottawa conference meeting this year will meet with the theme Living in Right Relationship. And in the fall at Manoir d’Youville there will be an encounter between aboriginal and non-aboriginal people from the church on Seeking Right Relationship. If this is of interest to you, let me know.

What difference would it make to our world if we were to experience the sacred in creation as native people do? What would a world look like that honoured creation and allowed creation to honour the sacred? a world where human beings were seen as part of this creation connected to it in harmony, not it’s owners, and exploiters? What if our paradigm for all economic and political decisions shifted and was rooted in a sense of reverence for the earth and for one another? What if we, like Aboriginals, thought in terms of the earth being our inheritance from our ancestors and our decisions as affecting the next future 7 generations? It would matter wouldn’t it? Visions make a difference. They affect every aspect of how we live our lives, of where we find meaning and identity, of what we value and therefore protect and give energy to, of how we make decisions. They can change our world view.

Visions also sustain when there is crisis, when the world is falling apart, and we are discouraged and feel hopeless. Revelation was written when the early church was facing persecution from Rome. It was a dangerous time to be known as a follower of Jesus. Many were tortured, imprisoned, or killed for their allegiance. It was surely a time when one could be excused for nervousness that human events had somehow gotten out of God’s control. How audacious to dare to dream in such a time! Yet John of Patmos (not the disciple John) sets himself the task of strengthening his community and inviting his people to open their eyes to God’s promise, so that they do not lose hope.

John vision in today’s reading, paints a spectacular verbal portrait of life as God intends for us to live. It is a vision that invites us into awareness that God is always making a new creation. As God’s Spirit breath moved over the out chaos in the first creation bringing order and life out of chaos…so God was recreating even in the midst of their chaos. and I would suggest ours. John casts his vision…

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.….All of the evil, all of the violence that they were currently experiencing was destroyed- The sea in ancient Hebrew cosmology symbolized Chaos, containing the monsters of the deep. Saying the seas was no more means choas is no more. In God’s dream, which we glimpse of in this passage, chaos is no more.

The new heaven and new earth which God is creating is not a return to the garden of Eden, but a city as it was meant to be, the holy city, the New Jerusalem, given from heaven. And God dwells in the midst of this city, in the midst of community. God dwells not just in some past place, in the garden, but with people in community…. life understood as communal, inspirited by the Presence of God.

And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, Death will be no more; mourning and weeping and pain will be no more for the first things have passed away. The vision of healing, and wholeness, and of an end to the oppression is God’s dream, God’s intention for creation – This is what God is creating….This promise of a better world has sustained many in the struggle for justice around the world.

Then God speaks- See, I am making all things new I am Alpha and Omega the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. Imagine nourishing yourself from the spring of the water of life; from the Source itself.

Imagine living out of a vision of a God who is not some ancient Being struggling to keep up with our fascinating and frightening modern world. Rather a God whose Spirit is continuing to create, to make all things new , who is both the originator and the consummator of history. who longs to give water from the eternal spring of the water of life.

This image has captured the greatest and most resilient of humanity’s hopes and dreams. It has energized and inspired many into action to seek a better human society. It energized the struggle against child labour and inhuman working conditions in the Industrial revolution, it was a powerful vision for those who worked to end the slave trade. It has inspired reform movements in many parts of the world. It has been a source of identity and strength for my own journey.

It has been said that without a vision the people perish.

Visions energize, visions give meaning, They create how we see reality. Visions connect us to one another and to what God is doing in our world. Who are we to try to stop God? Who are we to assume God is not doing a new thing in our midst?

Visions matter.. We discount them at our peril.

Psalm 23
Acts 9:36-43

 Psalm 23 which our choir sang is surely one of the best known and most powerful psalms in our bible.  Many of your know it by heart.

 Early in my ministry when I worked as a chaplain in Ottawa, I had to sit in intensive care with a couple as they watched their 23 year old daughter who had been healthy and well 2 hours before, literally turn into a huge bruise from head to toe, as every blood vessel in her body broke from a sudden, unknown disease.   Nurses, doctors, parents, chaplain sat helplessly by, unable to do anything to save this beautiful vital life.

 All I could think to do into this overwhelming  silence, was to put my arms around the parents’ shoulders and repeat the words of psalm 23 aloud- The Lord is My shepherd I shall not want—–All of us joined in-parents, nurses, the Jewish doctor- It was an awesome sacred moment of the presence of God in the valley of the shadow. 

 In another setting I was leading worship in a nursing home.   Many participants had altzheimers; others were in wheelchairs. I began to read, Psalm 23 and suddenly one voice, then another-started to repeat it.  Voices that could not have put a full sentence together under  other circumstances-began to repeat the whole thing! I slowed down, and looked into the faces of the people in the room as they recited this ancient psalm- The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, God makes me lie down in green pastures, God leads me beside still waters, God restores my soul——-Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for thou art with me,  Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.  Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever”.   Their faltering  words were more eloquent than any sermon  I could speak.  The word of God came alive in that room. 

 And when I visited Dr. Charles Johnstone in the last week of his life, I asked him what his favourite scripture was and we recited the whole of psalm 23, though Charles could barely get out a half sentence by that time

 The bible is very clear that walking in the valley of the shadow of death is part of living.  And when we walk there, when we truly allow ourselves to be present to the experience of walking in that shadow, we are never the same, whether we walk near a loved one, or whether we have a life-threatening experience ourselves. Grief work is Holy work. It creates the holes through which the Holy can enter.

  The early Christian community in Joppa in our reading from Acts experienced deep grief at the death of the only woman in the Christian scripture who is ever identified by the specific title disciple, surely a sign of her importance in the early Christian community. And whereas many women in scripture are never named at all, she is named both in Aramaic and in Greek.  Tabitha, and Dorcas in Greek, both meaning Gazelle.

 Tabitha, is renowned for  her work with the widows and fatherless of the community of Joppa,  Joppa would never exhaust the needs of the people, for in this seaport lived many families who depended upon the sea for their living.  In wooden boats the men would set sail on the Mediterranean, then called “The Great Sea.”  Often their boats would be torn to bits as the winter storms and wind drove the boats into the treacherous rocks. There were many widows in Joppa.

 Acts does not tell us whether Tabitha was a widow herself.

The emphasis is on her holy work, her ordinary acts of kindness and generosity.  With her sewing needle as her tool and her home as her workshop, in the way she lived her ordinary life, Tabitha,  established a ministry of caring for the poor. We can infer that Tabitha, was a woman of affluence and wealth.  She could have given of her coins only, but she chose to give of her heart and soul and compassion  too. 

  In many places, the Bible declares God’s desire for widows to be treated with kindness and justice. The frequency of these urgings suggests that such mandates were not always heeded. Widows remained vulnerable. So, Tabitha ministers with women routinely overlooked. In so doing, she weaves a community who grieves her death, celebrates her gifts, and witnesses her restoration to life.

 In response to her holy work,  the people loved her.  Her death sent  shock waves through the community.   Widows and church folk  whom  she had befriended made their way to her house,  We hear intimate details about the women washing her body  for burial,  laying  her  out in the upper room, surrounded by bolts of cloth, sewing needles, and thread. 

 The mourners stood about her, weeping, struck with grief. They told stories and reminisced about the one who had died. They recalled all of the was she had cared for them and touched their lives.  

 This is what we do when we walk in the valley of the shadow of death is it not?  ….We remember… We gather the stories and try to make sense …We come to terms with what they meant to us in our own lives. Grief work is holy work.   There was no burying of grief here-no attempt to suppress the pain of loss.

     About ten miles from Joppa in the fertile Plain of Sharon was Lydda, where Peter had gone to preach.  The disciples sent two men to Peter to ask if he would come to them without delay.  When Peter arrives, the gathered widows show him the tunics and clothing the Tabitha,  had lovingly made for them. Peter comes to the upper room, where Tabitha’s body has been laid.  Instead of doing the funeral sermon he may have expected to do,  he prays with her, He calls her to life and Tabitha, awakens restored to life.  OK must have been a coma right? or maybe she was unconscious, The story says clearly, the people around her were sure she was dead. From this valley of the shadow of death, she returns to life-is given a second chance at life!  And the story has been remembered and told in loving detail perhaps as a sign of the ongoing power of the resurrection;

 .. The narrator blends words and memories from Jesus’ ministry into this story. The raising of Tabitha strongly resembles Jesus’ raising of a little girl in Mark. Again it happened in an upper room.  The parallel is striking Peter says (“Tabitha, get up”) and Jesus (“talitha cum,” Aramaic for “little girl, get up”).  It seems calling people to life is part of the ongoing work of resurrection.   What would it mean for us to call people to life in our own community?

 Elisabeth Jones in the bible study blog beyond wood and stone  says   “The ones who stayed around long enough to witness the miracle of life beyond death’s dark vale were the ”saints and widows.”   Walter Brueggemann,* a stunningly perceptive scholar of the Bible, points out that “saints are those who do not flee from the smell of death” because they know the God of life. “Widows are those who  live every day in their vulnerability, at the edge of death.”  Living at this edge, facing death and living anyway, they become images of a Living God, witnesses and testifiers to God’s answer: Live!

Nothing is recorded of Tabitha after her healing.  I wonder how it affected her life to have walked in the valley of the shadow of death, and to have been given a second chance at life.

 How would this affect any of us? We lived something like this in February with mom in Thunder Bay.  We were preparing for death, beginning to plan for a funeral. The doctors had declared mom palliative.  Two days later in the upper room of the hospital she sat up…Now she is back in her home where she lives by herself. Life in the face of death! a second chance.   Who could have imagined it?

 How would your life change if you were to discover that you only had few weeks left to live?   You prepare to meet the end.   You gather friends and family for support, and prayer. Then after surgery  it turns out that the tumour was benign! Life still opens before you. How would this affect what you would do with your life?  How you would spend your time and your energy? Would it change what you thought was important and what was not worth wasting energy for?  Dr. Bernie Siegel a cancer specialist would ask “Can we configure our lives into healed patterns without needing the disease and the crisis?”

 Whenever we walk in the valley of the shadow, we ARE changed.  Some like Tabitha are lucky.  They experience a second chance.  But not all have this experience of the valley   Some fight it, try to go around the valley, or think they can avoid it.  But this valley is one we all must walk through. No one, however strong or nimble, can leap from mountain top to mountain top…there will always be the valley of grief, of loss, whether about death or one of the many other losses of life.

 Some think they can run through the valley – get over it quickly. They do not allow themselves time to grieve, to feel the loss.  We are in a hurry about most everything these days. Even in a hurry to heal. People try to push  healing-tell you to get over it – to get on with it. “  But if we are to find life and healing in the face of deep loss, we must be patient with ourselves and one another.  And the deeper the wound, the longer it takes to heal…Grief is a very deep wound…

 The Psalmist is wise when he says we must WALK through this valley.   Not to try to avoid it or rush through it, but walk;  accept it, embrace our pain and loss, give ourselves permission and time to grieve. For this is the first step toward healing so that we can claim the life that is ours because we have dared to face into death, and chosen life.

 We do not walk alone in this valley. Many others have walked through it too, and walk through it with us. Look around you – a whole community of fellow  pilgrims walking with you through this valley. From their presence, we can draw great comfort and strength.   And in the valley we are accompanied by the  God whom the psalmist called the Shepherd, who leads us to green life-giving places where we can have our needs met, who leads us beside still waters where we can be refreshed, renewed, and have our souls restored.

And always, if we grieve in healthy ways, we find life, indomitable, persistent life rising up, at first unexpectedly, but gradually more and more.

 In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us, we are not alone, thanks be to God

Acts 9 1-20
John 21:1-19
 
Easter season continues to unfold. Today we meet three people who have transforming encounters with the Risen Christ.

As you listen to these stories, and look for the marks of resurrection living we find in them, I invite you to think about your own experiences of transformation- times when you were able to pick up and begin again after a major loss or crisis in your life; times when you were brought to a new way of being; times when you came alive in places you thought were dead; times when the unexpected turned your life upside-down; times when you were nurtured into a healed place so that you could see your future in a new way; times when you felt called upon to do what seemed impossible, and discovered the strength and power to do it. Notice if you find yourself in any of these stories. Resurrection living takes on many forms, but it is always about experiencing new life.

In Acts we meet Saul who had been breathing threats of murder against Christ followers. A piller of the political and religious system of his day-educated, with strong religious convictions, he was driven by a national security mentality to wipe out this dangerous sect called “The Way”. There was no room for doubt in Saul. He knew he was on God’s side, defending the orthodox faith of his ancestors against dangerous new teachings.

We have people like Saul still in every religious tradition today – and they are dangerous. They continue to harass, exclude, violate, or in the extreme, murder people who think differently from them, all in the name of true faith. Frankly I’d prefer a doubting Thomas anyday to one of these ideologues.

Saul is heading to Damascus from Jerusalem, where he had just witnessed the stoning of Stephen. According to the writer of Acts, it was on that journey that he experienced a blinding light; then a voice confronts the persecutor Saul, “why are you doing this?” Then a voice with a question that cuts through to the core of Saul…. “why are you doing this?” How the world longs for this kind of confrontation of oppressors (Liberian Women) Saul fell to the ground, dumfounded and blind.

This strong leader accustomed to power has to now depend on an ordinary person in the Christian community of Damascus called Ananias for his healing. He needs to ask for help from those he has been hurting. Used to giving the orders, he had to follow in blind trust. This must have been very new to the man who became Paul.

Saul was the kind of person who needed this kind of breaking down before he could be open to transformation. Sometimes resurrection power begins in breaking down to create possibility for new life. Ever had that happen to you or seen it in another?

Paul went on to found key Christian communities all over Asia minor.

But the story of Ananias is no less transforming. The risen Christ tells him to lay hands on Saul of Tarsus to heal him. Now Ananias is no fool. He has heard about Saul. He knows that Saul hunts out and kills Christians and not only that, he has the local and national authorities behind him. The very sound of Saul’s name chills his blood, with good reason.

But despite the resistance and the fear, he acts. With assurance from Christ, he risks his life to go to meet the dreaded official Saul. His courage to take on his power to heal in the face of potential danger is as much a sign of the transforming power of resurrection as was Saul’s fall from authority and his consequent transformation into an apostle. Although we hear no more of Ananias in scripture, his life must have been changed as much as Paul’s.

Is there any of Ananias’ experience in your story…Learning to take on your power, finding courage to face into danger.

In the John reading, we meet another key leader of the early church, a despondent Simon Peter in grief and in failure. In the troubles in Jerusalem, when Jesus had been crucified , he had denied even knowing Jesus three times afaid of arrest. After the chaos in Jerusalem, some disciples had returned to Galilee trying to go back to what used to make sense. It’s what we do in trauma..Look for something familiar to ground us.

They thought Jesus would meet them –there, and they waited and waited — but nothing happened. It’s hard to go back to where you’ve come from after you have begun the journey of transformation. These disciples couldn’t clearly see the path ahead and felt too overwhelmed to try anything new; So they go fishing, same old boats, same old nets, same old Galilean lake. But it wasn’t working. They were coming up empty despite the hard work of heaving and hauling nets all through the night. We’ve all been in those places where we expend lots of energy, and effort, but seem to have no results..But we just keep on going, because we don’t know what else to do.

Then comes the transforming moment. The experience that so often comes from that numinous between place, from the edge . At the very edge of the day, as dawn breaks, at the very edge of the lake where water meets land, at the very edge of life and death as they later discover, comes the stranger , who tells them to put their nets out on the other side of the boat and they will find fish. Now who’d expect them to pay attention to thistranger? I’m sure they crabbed and complained to one another. Who does this person think he is? We were raised on this lake? But someone must have decided there was nothing to lose. So they do as the stanger asks.

And when they do their nets are filled to overflowing. They can barely bring them to shore. They dare of do something a different way. Fishing on the other side. Shocking abundance! Imagine fishing where the fish actually are, rather than where you think they should be!

It’s interesting, and maybe even comforting to note, in this paradigm story of the Breakfast Party, that it is only when they were out engaged in life, even if it is unproductively, that the transformative voice of Jesus comes to them. He did not come to them until they had set out into the night sea journey, until they were engaging the journey themselves, and had risked at least some beginning.

God seems to meet us when we are out there slogging, not when we are sitting around in the kind of study that just results in inertia and never gets us off the shore. If we need to cover off absolutely all of the possible things that could go wrong before we set out, we would never get off the shore. At some point we have to just risk setting out.

My friend Jami Scott tells a story he heard from Rene Fumeleau about a Native elder up in Dene country in the north. The elder had been at a meeting on a cold winter night with Rene who was his priest. They had been talking about being church in the north. It was late already and they had a long journey to make through mountainous roads before they got back home.

They got into the truck, and the elder just sat silent for a while. Then he said, The church is kind of like this isn’t it Rene. “What” Rene wanted to know. Well, he said. We could just sit here afraid to start out because where we want to go is way over there somewhere. We can’t see it. We’ve got an idea of where we are going but that’s all.

But we have to get in the truck and turn the key and we’ve got to trust that that when we turn the key that will get the engine turning over. And that that engine will take us all the way home. And then while its still dark, and we can’t see where we are going then we have to turn on our lights and trust that they will give us a little bit of light. We still don’t have all the light to see all the way to where we are going, but we have to set out in the light that we have, and trust that the light will keep going ahead of us to show us where we go next, till we get to the end of the journey. The church is kind of like that” said the elder.

We have to start out when it is still dark, Setting out in the light that we have.

Some things to think about as we move into this transition time…

Fishing on the other side of the boat is done at the command of the one whom they eventually recognized as Jesus. Fishing on the other side of the boat is being faithful to the Christ.

It wasn’t that the fish weren’t there. What the disciples longed for was right under their noses … but they needed to approach it from a different point of view … to come at things from the other side …

And these disciples had to listen to this stranger before they knew he was worth listening to. They had to listen to a voice from the edge.

But there is another part …The tender story of Jesus preparing a breakfast barbeque for the worn out disciples. You can almost smell the coals; Jesus cooking for them, feeding them.

Jesus takes Simon aside and three times asks “Do you love me” He gives Simon Peter 3 times to state his love and allegiance . After the time denial by the fire in Jerusalem, Peter welcomes the chance to respond “yes, you know that I love you.” Each time Jesus says “feed my lambs”. Peter is confused and even hurt by the repetition of the question. Surely Jesus knows he loves him.

-He was giving Peter the time to realize that it is time to put aside the self-condemnation and blame he was feeling after he had denied Jesus, that it is time to claim his recovery and to become a resource to the others to take on the leadership he has been called to. Peter is being offered and challenged to a new beginning.- and to a life of ministry.

In all of these instances, as different as the stories may be, there is a call to life and transforming encounter. A Saul who sees too clearly but with the wrong eyes is confronted with the evil he is doing and through a period of blindness finds the path to new life. He transforms his gifts and passion into building up what he had been destroying. Ananias, who felt inadequate and afraid is given the courage to reach out with healing to an enemy. He offers hope and welcome to one he feared. Peter, restored from the self-blame and powerlessness that was paralyzing him, is challenged to take on leadership and nurture of a community. Different movements of resurrection living.

 
Resurrection is real in us when we allow that power for new life, for transformed living to flow through us. -when we dare to believe in, and to watch for the signs of the new life that God is giving us. Where is the resurrecting God at work in you and in life around you? Where do you see the resurrecting God at work in our congregation in these times of transition?

John 20:19-29
Acts 4:32-35

Wasn’t that some Hallelujiah chorus last Sunday? And the trumpet and with the hymns…Didn’t you enjoy singing Christ the Lord is Risen today? It was joyous and it all seemed so easy. Christ is crucified and in 3 days risen! Easter’s over. Everyone can go home happy. But the gospels are much more realistic than that about the transition time between the ending and the beginning, and about what this period of time that has come to be called Easter is all about. It was not a one day wonder! chocolate bunnies and easter bonnets.

The first group of Christians had to learn how to live in a world where the Jesus they had known and loved was no longer with them. They were in profound grief. They had to integrate the loss and shock and reality of what had happened. And that did not happen all at once. Easter, it seems, was not so much a one shot deal, the way it seems for those who only come on Easter Sunday. But rather a process of transition; of coming to terms with the ending of one way of being, and the gradual dawning awareness that the presence of Jesus was still alive with them; and called them to carry on with the ministry he began. They came to realize that all that he had taught them, all that he had shown them about God was still with them.

Resurrection transformed those who experienced Christ’s presence as we will hear over the next few weeks. We’ll hear stories of the people of God in a transition time. Stories that we will hear no doubt in a different way because of the transition we are currently in ourselves.

Today we meet the disciples in the locked room in Jerusalem in crisis. Jesus has been killed. They were in deep grief. They had responded to the crisis of Jesus death by closing themselves in. They were afraid for what the future might hold for them, and for the movment that Jesus had started.

We are no strangers to fear. Fear and insecurity are a huge part of our daily lives. We fear about our work future, we fear for our kids and the choices they make, we fear for our health or the health of those we love, we fear for our earth and global warming. We fear whether we will be able to find a new minister that we will like. We fear for the future. Fear can paralyze us; it can numb us; it can shrivel up our lives and our hope.

We react in different ways to loss as did the disciples… shock…denial…maybe it will go away if I just ignore it..depression; anxiety….feelings of helplessness; of being overwhelmed…What can one person do? Some of us get angry and lash out at the unfairness of it all, -angry at a world in which such things can happen, angry at God for allowing it. We look for someone to blame.

Where do we find a breath of hope in such times?

Our experiences of fear and anger make it a lot easier to identify with those disciples in our gospel this morning. The faith community was devastated; holed up behind locked doors holding one another after Jesus’ execution. They had such hope and trust in Jesus who sowed seeds of new ways of seeing themselves and of God’s kingdom , which is really about what the world would look like if God were in charge, and not the rulers of this world.

The vision was defeated; the dream crushed. Jesus had been arrested and executed by state torture. Soldiers were looking for his followers. They’d been lucky to escape. As soon as things cooled down they would have to return home, admitting to skeptical families and friends that they’d been taken in by this itinerate charismatic Jesus, who when all was said and done was powerless, just like them.

To make matters worse, the body had disappeared. At first they thought that the women who had gone to the tomb to prepare the body were hallucinating. But then some men went and saw the body was gone. It was definitely time to get out of Jerusalem! If the Romans were even going to go after a dead body, what would they do if they caught some of his live followers?

Besides they were getting sick of being holed up in that one little room they had rented for the passover. Though they needed the support of one another, they were getting on each other’s nerves and fueling one another’s fears and anger and disappointment. No one knew where to turn or what to do next. Who would have believed that it all would have ended like this?

And then it happened. It happened right in that very place of total despair, cynicism, and resignation. It happened in the place where they were locked up. There came an experience that left them all knowing that Jesus had been with them. They knew they were not alone.

When Jesus entered the fear-locked doors, his first words were: “Peace be with you.” “Peace be with you” said not once, but three times in this passage. “Peace be with you.” Peace was the last thing they were experiencing!

Yet there was a knowing; in that way that many of us also have experienced after the death of a loved one/ The presence of the one who has died has come to us. It has happened on more than one occasion to me. I have been in a locked room (well at least the door was shut) and have had the powerful mystical experience of presence. In one case it was to offer the most powerful blessing I have ever experienced. In another it was to ask me to look after his wife. He had died at 50 years old of a sudden heart attack. The disciples that day in the locked room knew that the the Spirit of Jesus was still alive and was with them. They were not abandoned or alone in their pain. Life arises to meet them at the very moment where they feel all is lost.

Jesus speaks of a different kind of peace from what the world calls peace. It was a peace that spoke to the heart and soul of those who so desparately needed to connect with purpose, with meaning, with healing. The kind of peace which lets you know that life holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. One gifted with this peace could perhaps function productively in a tumultuous time.

Jesus said a second time, “Peace be with you”. Then he adds “As Abba has sent me, so I send you.” This peace leads to calling; to mission. Jesus reminds them of the ministry to which they had dedicated themselves. They’d forgotten that in the chaos of the loss. But now Jesus reminds them that he is with them, he gives them his spirit and asks that they continue faithfully in the ministry he began. As God has sent me, so I send you. Jesus points beyond himself and points them back into life….out into the world to continue to live lives of faithfulness. They are called to live the ministry Jesus gave them, not simply to be attached to his person.

Jesus then breathes the Holy Spirit into them, evocative of the Creator’s gift of the breath of life that breathed order out of chaos; evocative of the breath of God over the valley of the dry bones in Ezekiel’s day, restoring hope and new life to a people grieving in exile.

Jesus breathes peace in the locked rooms of their souls. Jesus breathes peace into the places where they have lost centre. Jesus breathes peace into their fear about the future. Jesus breathes peace……deep peace…..and call to be willing to be sent by God.

This blessing, this peace, this breath of hope, of resurrection power gradually takes root in them. It both challenges and comforts them, it empowers and embraces them, and it transforms them over a period of time from disciples, (students), to apostles, (those sent out). It leads them to a mission of healing and reconciling, and passing on the peace and power of Christ.

But it did not happen all at once. A week later, they were still locked up in that same room. Thomas had not been with them the first time Christ appeared. Thomas is one who has deeply believed and has had his trust and faith shattered by devastating loss. This happens when we have been wounded—when we’ve felt betrayed and abandoned. We won’t let ourselves trust easily again, not daring to risk further hurt and disappointment. Faith in the goodness of life is one of the deepest casualties of devastating violating experiences. It is not enough to be told by others that there is resurrection. We won’t believe until we have been able to experience it ourselves—feel the wounded Christ , know the presence of the God who feels totally absent until the Spirit finds a way through the locked door and the protective shell we build around ourselves.

Thomas recognizes Jesus by his wounds. Jesus had a deep scar in his hand that reminded Thomas of the crucifixion; scar tissue still there, even in the new life of reconciliation.

The Spirit of the risen Christ is able to move beyond the wounds, beyond the devastation of violence and death, beyond the walls of fear. The Spirit is able to break through the walls to the core of the hurt, and to remind them that life has not forgotten them, that it holds them in its hand and will not let them fall.”

May we experience this in our own lives, especially in this season of loss and transition. May we touch it with our own hands, so that we can pass it on to others in the spirit and power of this risen Christ. May we, like the disciples move from fear to confidence, from paralysis to action, from merely existing to newness of life. May we take up our ministry to continue the peace-making work of Christ in the times that are ours. May the breath of hope breathe peace and power into us and into our hurting church and our hurting world.