Sermon delivered by Rev. Elisabeth R. Jones

This is the third in the series of sermons exploring the way the prophets have portrayed God.

In the first week we discovered in Hosea a window into the heart of God, and found there the fierce Mother-love of God who refuses to abandon or give up on her wayward children, no matter what.

Last week, Isaiah came along and smashed that window, portraying instead a God anguished beyond belief because God’s special people, whom she had blessed to be a blessing in the world

 – whom he had nurtured like a vinedresser caring for his vines, hoping for a fruitful harvest – produced nothing but sour grapes.

Isaiah’s image was hard to look at because he refused to portray the Anguished God
as a ‘there- there’ Soft-Touch, Fixit God.

This week it’s Jeremiah’s turn to open a window into the ways of God in the world.

Isn’t Jeremiah the so-called “Prophet of Doom”? Isn’t it Jeremiah’s long, vitriolic diatribes against the ills of the world which have given us the word “jeremiad”?

True, Jeremiah was not known for outbursts of jollity. I won’t deny that Jeremiah’s long book is a hard read, but given the circumstances of his career this isn’t so surprising;

after all Jeremiah was around to watch the dying of his nation, the destruction of its centre of religious life, and the forced exile of its people into Babylon.

But it is also a compelling read; a mirror into the turmoil of life and faith like no other.

There are moments later in the book where he outright accuses God of deceiving him,
of overpowering him like a schoolyard bully, of forcing fierce words into his mouth,
and of burning up his guts when he tried to keep these brutal words of judgment to himself rather than kick the people in the teeth.

There are other moments when it’s not easy to tell where God’s anguish and anger ends and Jeremiah’s despair and rage begins.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, I want to focus on these opening words of the book. The moments, when Jeremiah was ‘only a boy’ when he first heard the call of God. You’ll note from the opening verse that Jeremiah was a preacher’s kid. Born into a professional priestly family, this kid was weaned on the stories of Abraham and Sarah, and Isaac and Rebekah, of Moses and Joshua,
of Eli and Samuel, and of David and Nathan.

So we shouldn’t be surprised that, growing up above the shop, Jeremiah would expect to follow Dad’s footsteps into the priest business. Except that prophet-ing and priest-ing in those days weren’t the same thing. Priests hung around the temple, kept the lamps lit, sacrifice the right animals at the right time, were custodians of the liturgical calendar.

Prophets on the other hand were “God-intoxicated voices of radical social criticism and advocates of God’s alternative vision.”[1] Definitely not the cultural icons of the religious and ruling classes.

When God came along in the 13^th year of Josiah’s reign and called on young Jerry, God was calling him away from the relative safety of the family profession into a hornet’s nest. Now to be sure, this call from God starts off well enough, beautifully in fact. What could be more beautiful than God lovingly, gently recalling Jeremiah’s conception, not only in his mother’s womb but in the heart of God?

To know that we are loved into being, created for a purpose in God’s world,
is one of the greatest testimonies Scripture can give us of the loving purposes of God.

It can also be one of the most daunting. Scripture, is full of stories like this one, of God who calls people.

-Abraham called out of Haran to father a nation as numberless as the stars. -Moses, called to bring out the slaves from Egypt. -Gideon was called from his wheat fields to lead Israel in battle.

-Isaiah (if you recall) was scared out of his wits by six winged seraphs and God calling, with the help of burning coals. -Samuel, also only a young boy, called from his lamplighting to become prophet to Saul and David. -Or Jesus himself, born to a call of living God’s love in the flesh,- and his own disciples, Andrew, Peter, James, Paul, Silas, Timothy.

What’s striking about every blessed one of these call stories is, not just that God calls – striking enough when you think about it, but that everyone whom God calls seems somewhat –to very – reluctant to take on the dubious honour of being God’s called. Why is that do you think? We love to be loved by God. We enjoy praising a Generous God, We need God to protect, we need God to heal, even, especially when cure is impossible, we need God to forgive what we find impossible to forgive. But are we so happy when this loving, generous, protecting, healing, and forgiving God calls? It seems not, and for good reason.

Looking at all these call narratives, we can see that God calls not to some holy set-apart, spiritual spa, but calls us into life in all its messy, nasty, chaotic, sometimes frightening fullness. It’s precisely in those places that God’s love, generosity, healing and forgiving is most needed, so it’s precisely there that God calls us.

When God calls, it’s usually a summons to get off the sofa, off the fence, and choose. And almost always, choosing the ‘better way’ is not the same as choosing the ‘easy way.’ For Jeremiah, the call was both a gift of grace, and a burden almost too much to bear.[2] His call was to speak painful truths to a world unwilling to listen. Not just in this opening call narrative, but time and again throughout the book, the words “pluck up” “overthrow” “destroy” and “pull down” issue forth from Jeremiah’s sometimes reluctant lips.

God’s response to Jeremiah’s initial and recurrent reluctance is worth noting. God doesn’t take “No” or “maybe” for an answer. The reason God doesn’t take no is not because God is an almighty bully, nor is God petulantly judgmental, nor off the divine deep end. God doesn’t take no, because God has a greater “Yes” at stake.

We have to go back to the Genesis story to remember how God created this world; God took the matter of chaos and created with it a world of amazing beauty, of interconnectedness, of harmony and balance, a world capable of majesty and awe, and of intimacy and delight. God’s world was created “Good, very good.”And, Genesis tells us, our place in this world is as partners with God in tending, planting, cherishing, caring for its delicate balance, protecting its weakest, glorying in its strengths, and above all, loving it and all it contains.

When God calls, it is a call to live out our place in this world as God intended.

When God rails at the injustice, at the hypocrisy,at the poor stewardship that blights the earth and hurts its creatures, this is precisely the moment when God’s call is issued, to the Jeremiahs of the world. Young, or old, timid or bold, God’s call is a summons for world-building according to God’s dream.

This sort of call is not just ‘biblical.’ I think of a young woman choosing not the “easy” seat on the back of an Alabama bus, but choosing the right seat of racial equality. I think of an Al Gore, risking all to speak an ‘Inconvenient Truth.’ I think of nameless people choosing justice over comfort, even when it costs. I think of seemingly simple acts, like choosing to buy fair trade goods.

I think of Leo’s ‘blessing cups’ as a way to reorient ourselves to gratitude and abundance. I think of Youth Groups like the one at CPUC, choosing to spend time raising funds to build schools, water wells, and hope for children they’ll never meet.

World-building according to God’s dream is a profoundly prophetic act that is not reserved for the few, but as the writer of Acts tells us, is the call of God to old men and young women, to slaves, and children, to everyone.[3]

Oh yes, there’s one other, very important reason why God doesn’t take “No” for an answer; it’s because God when God calls, God also equips. “Don’t worry” he says to Jeremiah, “I’ll tell you where to go, what to do, what to say. I’ll be with you, no matter what.”

Just before his own death, Jesus echoes God’s promise to Jeremiah; Jesus said to his disciples, and to us,

“When they persecute you for following me, I will give you words and wisdom strong enough to endure.”[4]

Whatever barriers we believe are holding us back from answering our call to prophetic partnership in world-building according to God’s dream, remember this is a God who loves this world, who loves us, who heals, who forgives, who equips, as well as a God who calls.

Amen. 

[2] Henry Langknecht . Workingpreacher.org. Aug 22.

[3] Luke 2:17-18, citing Joel 2:28-32.

[4] Luke 21:15; Mk 13:9-13

Isaiah 5:1-7 (Ps 80)

Sermon delivered by Rev. Elisabeth Jones

“Chilling” 

“Cynical and negative”

“Devoid of Gospel”

These are quotations from lectionary resources for this week’s reading.

Not particularly inspiring is it?

Still, given that I’d committed myself to preach the OT Prophet texts this month, I guess we’ll have to try and make something of this text.

One creative preacher (perhaps seeking to tone down the cynicism and the chill) has even offered his own (Midwestern Country-Western tearjerker) take on the Song of the Vineyard 

- a versification of it which fits to the tune of Home on the Range ! (No kidding!).

It is a song, at least it begins as a Song.

 - a love song, sung by a prophet about God – whom he knows, and loves deeply.

“I’ll sing of my Beloved One and the vineyard that he built.”

Sounds okay so far.

This transports me immediately to one of my favourite parts of the world,
the Rhine valley, with its hillsides covered with neat rows of lush vines,
and sweet juicy wine cheaper than bottled water.

Sing on, Prophet!

He sings of that obsessive care of someone who is passionate
about his work, settling for nothing less than the best –
the finest soil, the choicest, strongest vines,
fences to protect them from scavengers animal and human.

A watchtower, no less,
And a stone wine-press, carved deep into the hillside,
Built to last centuries.

The prophet takes a tiny breath, getting ready for the next verse.

The tune, the form, is hinting that like every good ballad,
there’s going to be some trouble, some crisis,
some heartbreak,
which after a few verses and a few repeats of the chorus,
will resolve with the Lover of the Vineyard gathering a vintage harvest….

Before the prophet can begin again,
a strident, anguished voice interrupts,
takes the tune to a whole new level of minor key and dissonance!

“Nobody knows the trouble I see!”

We listen, stunned as this new voice
wails, laments with no filters:
“I did everything I could! I spared NOTHING,
to make this vineyard beautiful, and fruitful.

But did I get the harvest I hoped for?

Were there choice syrah grapes bursting beneath their vines?

Oh no…. all I get is a few shriveled, rotting sour grapes!”

The next verse is worse.

This Vineyard owner is so distraught, overwrought,
that he knocks down the fences and walls,
lets the foxes and the ravens in,
the stakes rot and tumble the vines to the ground.

The weeds grow up and brambles choke the vines.
And then, mid-song,

He stops singing, and walks away!

The prophet is left with the band still playing,
waiting for the next verse.

Do we get the ‘happy ever after’ verse?

Oh no.

Instead we get.
”Erm, just to be clear.

That was God.
He’s really ticked off.
He really has gone.
Left.
That’s it.”

“Chilling” is an understatement.

Two weeks ago, we are peering gratefully through Hosea’s window into the heart of a God whose love is so Mother-fierce and strong that she will not give up on her wayward child, no matter what.

And now, Isaiah comes along with this so-called Song and smashes that window,
showing instead what looks for all the world like a capricious, moody, obsessive then dismissive Give-up-and-Go-home God

There is a strong temptation, lamentably rampant in the life of the Churches of the 21^st century,  to avoid the ‘chilling’ texts of Scripture, those filled with violence, genocide, judgment, or those texts which portray God in a less than “Holy, Loving” light – like this one.

We have tended instead to stick only to those passages which speak of humans  as God’s beloved, chosen, blessed and saved, and to those passages which portray God as loving, trustworthy, capable of saving us in the worst of circumstances, and willing to overlook the worst of human misbehaviour.

But to do that would be to render Scripture useless.

This Bible has always been, and still can be a powerful resource
for those who seek to make sense of life in all its cruel fullness,
to make sense of God’s action – or absence  – in the face of failure, of chaos, of unfairness.

It can do this because, within the covers of this Book, are many different voices
all prepared in their own way to tackle head on these life-death, faith or despair questions.

They speak of life in the cracks, some take on the cruel reality of endings, some wrestle with the cruel twists of creation’s impact on human life, or human impact upon creation,
some sing of a fidelity of Presence in the most desperate of circumstances,
while yet others rage, lament and cry out for an absent God to show up, and save or at least to abide in the chaos.

If we let it, this Book is a mirror of the messiness of our own experience of living,
If we let it, we will not only follow this Book along paths of joy in God’s love,
we will also allow it to take us places where the questions are really hard,
where the truths are really inconvenient, because in these places to can be found food for our journey, and the seeds of our own salvation.

This Chilling Song is one such place.

Singing to a community of relative security, to the ‘haves’ of Judah,
Isaiah’s song was dismissed as fear-mongering, unnecessarily negative.

Inconveniently judgmental, to be ignored.

We stopped at  chapter 5:7, but the Song, and its sister songs continued for 39 more chapters, until Judah’s once safe vineyards were indeed laid waste by Assyria,
and its people -those tiny soured grapes- were carted off in chains to Babylon.

If Isaiah resisted the temptation to change the tune and sing what they wanted to hear, he resisted.

He resisted because the God he knew and loved so deeply, wept. 

He needed to let the people know God weeps.

If Isaiah resisted the temptation to ignore God’s anguish,
so should we, at least for a morning.

In the final verse of the prophet’s Song
he sang:
God hoped for grapes dripping with justice, and instead found them to be dripping with blood.

God hoped for a harvest of righteousness and instead heard a cry of outrage.

In the original song, the words for Justice and bloodshed are identical but for one tiny letter.

The same is true for the words ‘righteousness’ and ‘cry of outrage’.

If you read them too quickly in the Hebrew, you can miss the distinction.

A Song of lament is a strange time to employ word puns, but I think there is a profound point here. 

“Justice” and “Righteousness” are words we hear and use often. We believe we know what they mean. We have built up systems which foster forms of justice, and systems which manage and monitor they way we live together as a human society.  But what we mean and what God means by these terms are so close and yet so far apart.

One letter changes and there’s a whole world of difference between them.

“Justice” to God means the protection of the poor, homeless and weak, a joyful sharing of the rich abundance of God’s providence for all, with all.

God’s anguish arises because God sees in the way we run our societies, a “system of justice” which punishes poverty, protects the strong, and shelters the wealth of the few at the expense – the bloodshed – of the many.

Tzedekah – Rightousness to God means “living in right relationship with the Creator, creation and one another.”  Somehow, in this globalized world where we have thankfully created “United Nations” and nuclear arms limitation treaties,  we have also by our transnational structures, contributed to melting and calving ice-caps, deforestation, oil production pollution in land, air and sea, and persistent outbreaks of war, terrorism, ethnic cleansing and vast migrations of displaced people, child malnutrition of epidemic and fatal proportions. If we look at this through God’s eyes, we too would weep.

The prophet’s task is among other things, to show us ourselves and our world as God sees them.

Even when what God sees causes God anguish.

This Isaiah has done in this very ‘chilling’ Song.

This song didn’t win a Grammy.

It was, and still is, too hard to hear.

In too many places today it won’t even be read.

But if we don’t, listen, if we don’t hear, if we don’t see as God sees,
what then?

 I think we need to pray.
 
Looking into the face of anguish is too hard for us,
O God.
We want to turn away, find better
more hopeful things to ponder.
We want you to show us a happy ending.
 
Show us instead how to be a fruitful vine,
cut away our distorted self-protective justice,
our misspelled self-righteousness,
teach us how in our own lives we can
live justly, seek the well-being of our fellow creatures,
allow us weep with you when others are hurt,
so that we can also rejoice with you when there is healing.
 

Amen.

“The Winner Takes it All”

Sermon delivered by Rev. Rich Sheffer

It’s a pleasure to be here among friends.

Today we are joined by our kinfolk from St. Johns United with whom I had the pleasure of sharing worship several weeks ago.

Both Cedar Park and St. Johns are embarking on new roads for Ministry which is an exciting and, hopefully, a growth opportunity to further “push your edges” of your spiritual journeys.  I note that Elizabeth Jones is exploring the question of “who is this God” of the Old Testament scriptures both in worship services with you this month and in a Bible Study/Exploration series in September which should help fuel your personal journeys of spiritual exploration.  I look forward to participating as I have always found that Elizabeth’s teaching encourages deeper reflection.         

Today, my topic goes in a different direction.  I recently purchased a CD of the Swedish group ABBA’s hit songs which include, among many others, the song “Dancing Queen” to which Sharon danced at the wonderful celebration send-off that you organized for her in June that Fran and I were happy to be a part of. I thought of that as I listened to that song. In some ways that song is

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symbolic as Sharon and Howard danced into the next chapter of their lives and both Cedar Park and St. Johns have begun their new dance into the future. 

On that CD were a couple of other hit songs that caused me to stop and reflect.

Here is a sample of the first (play exerpt from “The Winner Takes it All”). Try to listen to the words and let them sink in.

 “The winner takes it all. The loser standing small. Beside the victory. That’s her destiny.”  What message is this giving  us and our kids?

Although this song was written in the aftermath of a marriage break-up the words resonate in the larger sphere of what we have created as core values in our society. Win/lose. Compete or fail. Go for the Gold. If you don’t win it all you’re a loser.  There’s no such thing as second place let alone being all that you can be and doing your best. Unless you win your best is not good enough.

As a guy trained as an MBA and with, I must confess, more than a trace of that competitive instinct whether it be the marketplace, the football field or even, OK Fran I agree with you, a Scrabble game, that competitive sense is still alive though I hope is now channeled more to being the best I can be rather than to be “the winner who takes it all”.

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As I listened to this song I could not help but think of how different this win/lose paradigm is from Jesus’ teachings and those of the major world faith pathways. As well, there is a big difference between aiming to be all we can be and aiming to be the winner who takes it all with the loser (note the use of the word “loser”) standing small.

Where is the balance with this?   Where is there room for fair competition where both sides can gain from the encounter or transaction? Are we teaching and modeling “win/lose” or “win/win” to our kids?

I think of Jesus’ words in Matthew (Matthew 22: 34-40) as the two most important commandments to  “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and with all your mind… and Love your neighbour as yourself…”

I don’t equate viewing another as a “loser” or thinking in terms of win/lose with this teaching.  It is interesting, is it not, that we seem able to put internal compartments around our value systems and operate one way in one context, perhaps in our work life as an example, and, yet, subscribe to another form of behaviour more in keeping with this teaching in others.

What is our role as parents, citizens, and church-members?

 Finding and living what I may call “the God experience” is both an inner and an outer exercise.

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Loving our neighbour as ourselves as Jesus prescribes needs to start on the inside in learning to love ourselves, not always easy to do with the “shoulds” many of us were brought up with with the social and cultural do’s and don’ts of our time, including within the church.

Above all else, I would suggest that Jesus was a wisdom teacher. I see his ministry as aiming to transform peoples’ consciousness including ours in our world of today.  His is a ministry of transformation.  I suggest that this is really about getting in touch with and getting to know and listen to that deep place of inner wisdom, that God-part of ourselves.  Jesus modeled this to us with his practice of meditation, asking, and deep listening to develop a close relationship with that divine essence we call God. In Jesus’ case he had attained enlightenment, a oneness with God.

Jesus’ teachings about entering the Kingdom of God are not about dying and going to Heaven, they are about raising human consciousness in the here and now.  Jesus spoke about being in this world but not of this world.  God’s reality is not the reality of our material world; “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is God’s”.  The Kingdom of God is the world of spirit.  The Kingdom of God is the God-centre in each of us.  Our challenge is to discover it, nurture it, and live from it. This is what the second reading from Matthew is about (Matthew 7:1-11, 13,14). Ask, search, and knock and the door to this consciousness within will be opened It is

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there, waiting. This is what Jesus called the “narrow gate and hard road that leads to life”.  The strivings of “the winner takes it all” is not of God’s world.

In our “outer world”, loving our neighbour in Jesus’ terms is much more than being a good guy or gal.  It is more than a friendly smile and handshake with those we know and doing good deeds in our communities though these are important too. To fully love our neighbour in the manner Jesus modeled to us is radical justice. Jesus welcomed those he called “the least of these” into the heart of community, “… that which you do to the least of these you do to me.”  He overturned our typical idea of   “hospitality” as a reciprocal social relationship of parties and gatherings with family, friends and acquaintances to one in which instead you invite the poor, the disabled, the dispossessed to dinner because they can’t repay you.”

Truly “loving your neighbour” in the manner Jesus modeled doesn’t necessarily mean the end of poverty and discrimination but it can change judgment into respect and fair treatment.  Just think of how you feel when you are treated with respect and without judgement.  It certainly is not “the winner takes it all” leaving the “loser standing small”.  “Do unto others as you would have them do to you.”

We can extend this analogy into our relationships with all of creation.  Too often we, as personkind, have interpreted the words in Genesis to have dominion over the

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earth as exploitation of finite resources and other living beings who share our planet, a win/lose paradigm, rather than as sustainable stewardship, a win/win paradigm. We are now beginning to realize the price though we are still slow in changing course.

Yet, I for one hold up much hope and optimism. It’s fair to say that I’m a glass half-full rather than half-empty kind of guy. I think, for example, of the great strides that are being taken in curing disease and in growing world-wide movements to address environmental concerns. I see the refugee family getting a new start in life through help from our Montreal City Mission and the children getting a “hands-up” boost at the After School Program at our Saint Columba House.  I see the Talibe children being given a new lease on life through the Maison de la Gare project and the efforts of the LeRoy family, and much, much more.

We through our own efforts can and do make a difference.

As Cedar Park and St. Johns follow your calls to future ministry you may be interested in what Diana Butler Bass has to say in her recent book “A People’s History of Christianity”.  She speaks of the church during the Medieval period as “mediating the mysterious territory of earthly existence embracing the mundane and the transcendent, making little differentiation between the spheres, acting as a thin place – a kind of permeable spiritual membrane – between the worlds.” 

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As we go deeper in understanding Jesus’ teachings for a more direct, more intimate connection with the Divine should the church not be, then, a window into the divine and, perhaps, even a doorway into that thin place that embraces the sacred?  Thinking this way, church becomes a helping hand for each of us and the wider community towards that transcendent experience in discovering and experiencing the presence of God in ourselves and in our lives and in living out of this experience.

From what I have seen in our congregations we can, I feel, do a better job in preparing people to develop their own spiritual practices, such as deep prayer, meditation, and deep listening, and in providing guidance and support on practices to establish our personal relationships with God, that quiet wisdom voice within each of us.  The spiritual path can be a lonely path. Sharing this path with others in community encourages and supports us in following this path.

This, however, is not only a Sunday morning exercise.

This direction has implications for how we train our Ministers and worship leaders as this goes beyond, in many cases well beyond, a standard worship service.

In our churches we can, as well I suggest, more intentionally encourage exploration into our spiritual selves and some of our belief systems. We know that there is a great deal of searching going on, polls have

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consistently indicated that some eighty percent (80%) of people are searching for greater spiritual connection but few are turning to our congregations as part of that searching.  People are looking to experience their own personal connection with God not to hear of someone else’s experience   Our church community reaching out to those in the wider community interested in spiritual exploration could, with appropriate leadership, be a vehicle to do this. 

I know that the Cedar Park congregation has taken some important steps in these directions including, for example, mid-week meditation and discussion/exploration series including the one being led by Elizabeth Jones in September. Taking the further leap to do this in an interfaith context would expand the circle and help us realize that the wisdom teachings from the different major faith pathways have much similarity. 

There is another song on the ABBA CD which, in part, captures our aspirations for a better world,  “I Have a Dream” (play exerpts).  “If you see the wonder of the fairy tale, you can take the future even if you fail.  I believe in angels, something good in everything I see…  And my destination makes it worth the while, rushing through the darkness still another mile…I’ll  cross the stream, I have a dream…”

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We all have dreams.  Dreams for our children, our families, our communities, our church, our world.   Some dreams are bigger than others but all dreams count.

Jesus had a dream, a dream that personkind would find the Kingdom of God, our higher state of consciousness of  our God–centre within.  Jesus’ teachings still encourage us to, as the hymn “My Love Colours Outside the Lines” says to “… colour outside the lines and walk beyond the boundaries where we’ve never been before and discover “worlds outside the lines”, our God-self within.

As I listened to the “I Have a Dream” song  the vision I was seeing was the picture of a solitary Black man standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC on the 29^th of August, 1963.

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood…

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character…”

I wonder what Martin Luther King Jr. would say to President Obama of the United States today as he shook his hand.

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As we choose to live a paradigm different from the “winner takes it all” to one where one is not judged by the colour of their skin, or their language, or their ethnicity, or their religion, or their ability to run faster or jump farther but rather by the content of their character, we begin to truly “love our neighbour”.

In his wonderful book, “In the Name of Jesus, Reflections on Christian Leadership”, Henri Nouwen reflects that “the most important quality of Christian leadership in the future is not a leadership of power and control, but a leadership of powerlessness and humility in which the suffering servant of God, Jesus Christ, is made manifest… a leadership in which power is constantly abandoned in favor of love.  It is a true spiritual leadership.” 

If you, as I do, see God as being an integral part of each of us at the heart of our spiritual selves then loving God, loving ourselves – that spiritual part of us, and loving others – that God part of them, is a circle of love.

As we learn to relate to and love the God-part of ourselves and relate to the God-part of others our world-view changes from one of “us” and “them” to “us” as we’re all “us”, all “one”.  There are no “losers standing small”. 

Think of the changed dynamics in our families, our communities, our workplace, our church, our world if we began to live and act this way.    It starts with each of us.

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As one of our hymns says “It only takes a spark to get a fire going”. 

So, what are your dreams?   Our next hymn encourages us to “seek ye first the Kingdom of God” the God within, “to knock and the door will be opened”, “…and all these things will be added unto you.”

So, let’s cross the stream and live our dreams from that deep God-centre within each of us.

Hosea 11: 1-11 

Delivered by Rev. Elisabeth Jones

As ‘advertised’ in your worship bulletin, for the four weeks I am here, I shall be preaching a series of sermons on the Lectionary readings from the Old Testament Prophets.

This might be a little alarming to some of you;you may well think that a ‘sermon series on prophets’ is a little heavy for Summertime worship.
After all, aren’t prophets supposed to be rather gloomy, or sometimes manic, bearded hell-fire and brimstone -breathing mouthpieces of the Almighty,threatening all and sundry with divine destruction?
Renowned Jewish scholar of the Hebrew Bible, Abraham Heschel has called them
“the most disturbing people who have ever lived.”

Certainly that’s the case with prophets like Elijah, or Ezekiel or Amos, or Jeremiah.
These four crash all over the place, breaking pots, burning all sorts and tearing things down
- in which case, the dramatic possibilities are endless – and now we have chancel space to play with…..!!

On the other hand, for many of us, the word “Prophet” conjures up images of the sooth-sayer,
The Yoda-like ancient one, peering through the mists of the centuries to predict
everything from the birth of Jesus,to nuclear holocaust, global warming or the free parking spot at Fairview.

‘Predictor’ of Jesus is in fact the most dominant ‘Christian’ image of the prophet, helped in large part by the writers of the New Testament Gospels, who quoted huge chunks of Isaiah, Micah, Hosea, Joel and other prophets to make sense of the birth, the suffering, the death,
and the resurrection of Jesus.

Indeed the Christian Church in its public worship has followed the Gospel writers’ lead,
so that those who come to Church during Advent, Christmas or Easter will certainly hear readings from Isaiah which foretell the coming of God’s Anointed – “the Messiah” And George Frederick Handel even provides us with the sound track for the ages.

These Old Testament Prophets, it seems, can be many things to many people,but there is feature which all have in commonthat doesn’t get much play in popular culture and imagination,
but is the one that deserves our attention, particularly those of us who come to Church for any number of reasonson a summer Sunday.

The feature I have in mind is their common experience of God and their capacity to put their experience of Godinto words, images, metaphors which have stood the test of time and distance.
Their experience of God was both intensely personal, and deeply rooted in the life of the community.

One reader of the prophets puts it this way, “Prophets are seers, that is, they are see-ers.
They have a peculiar capacity to see God at work in the life of the world,and a remarkable capacity to describe what they see.” They have found a way with words to open windows into the mind and into the heart of God.

This passage from Hosea is a glorious place to start this sermon series.Perhaps more than any of the other prophets we will look at,Hosea opens a window into the heart of God.

This passage brings tears to my eyes. Hosea’s pen gives God speech: Let’s listen again…

When my little boy was still tiny, oh I loved him!
The smell of his downy sleepy head against my cheek….
I nursed him, fed him, I taught him how to walk… my son…

Who does that sound like? Sounds like a new Mom to me ….This is the language of a doting parent, that bowl-you over, watch them while they’re sleeping love-language for this baby-bundle of possibility and hope.

Hosea’s window into the heart of God shows us passionate parent-love, and I need to emphasize that this is a radical image.

For those who think the Old Testament God is just the LORD, mighty and strong in battle,
the Smite-them-all Conqueror God we find marching around with Joshua or David and Solomon.
Or the carve-the- commandments- in- stone Law-Giver God of Moses, this Mother Loving God comes as quite the surprise.

For those of us raised with the more modern-era image of a featureless Prime-Mover Creative Force, whose divine finger stirred the proto-nucleic mess at the dawn of creation
only to sit back and watch the universe unfold on its own, Hosea’s window into a God with a heart attentive, indeed passionate about we creatures is equally radical.

And let’s be even clearer, Hosea’s experience of God expressed in this passage
is of a Mother-God, plain as day.

Centuries of male-dominated Scriptural interpretation have so submerged and neutered Hosea’s graphic maternal images of God the mother, nursing her newborn, holding his hand while he learns to walk,watching him build his world out of mud-pies and sand-castles, that we have to freeze the frame long enough to understand what we’re seeing, to grasp its implications.

Now at this point I think I ought to issue a listener’s discretion warning: all mothers, fathers, or grandparents of newborns may find the next scenes in Hosea disturbing.

Hosea leads us forward in the story of God’s maternal love; forward to a time when the darling infant has grown into a wayward child. Not just a rambunctious 8 year old,
but a wayward teenager, 15 yrds old, with hooded eyes, pot-pallid skin, sullen mouth, slope-shouldered, hanging around the Depanneur with packets in his pockets, selling to support a habit you don’t even know he has. Or the 17 yr old woman-child, dazzled into destitution
– or worse, into dismembered disappearance, seduced by false promises of sex-for-sale love and belonging.

And still, the window into the heart of God reveals Mother-love that 10 years later won’t give up the nightly drive along Hastings or Ste Catherine just in case her scared-dove- child is there to be rescued and brought home.

How can I give up on you, Ephraim?
How can I turn you loose and forget you?

This isn’t hallmark Mother’s Day card love.
It’s real parent love.
Love anyway, love regardless love.

How on earth, or in God’s name did Hosea open this particular window into the heart of God?
What could have possessed him to see such a radically different image of YHWH?
By the time he writes this God-picture, Hosea is an aging man, he has raised his children in the hell of a country run to rack and ruin – government graft, police corruption, food-shortages, flood and famine, refugee camps filled with the hopeless, hiding from the scourge of ethnic cleansing. It was in these places, in his life, in the life of a country on the brink of annihilation, that he saw the face, and the heart of God. Which is what makes this already radical picture remarkable.

His picture has such a ring of truth to it: watching this wayward child hell-bent for self-destruction, this mother-hearted God expresses the frustration and pain,
and even anger we too have experienced as parents, or friends,
or as onlookers to individuals, communities, or nations similarly hell-bent
to follow their own way, rather than the God-given way of life.

How can she do this?
How can they be so…..?
I’m so angry I want to…..

What?
Want to what?

We dread the ending to that sentence.
We know how we’ve answered it, too often in our own personal and global experience.

But look at what Hosea sees in his window into the heart of God.

Tears. worried tears, angry tears, fierce tears born of love for the wayward and lost:

I’m so angry I want to destroy…
But how can I ?
I will not….
I will not….
For I am God, and no Mortal.

They are those fierce tears of a lioness protecting her cubs, picking them by the scruff of their necks when their recklessness leads them into danger;they are those cries of a mother hen covering her chicks with her wings from the fox that prowls around the coop;
they are the hope beyond hopeless tears in the eye of a father on the hill’s crest watching for the return of his prodigal son. I will not give up on you!
For I am God, and no mortal.

Eight centuries later, another prophet of God, known to us as Jesus of Nazareth,
who had looked through Hosea’s window into the heart of God, and recognised his Abba-Father,
said “If you who are mortal, human and prone to the failures that you are,
know how to give good things to your children, how much more then can you depend upon
God to give good things to the beloved children of God’s heart?” (Matt 7)
This is Gospel for us today.

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.

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.