Saturday, December 25, 2010

Experience Hope This Christmas... In a Baby Born


Whenever I see one of those huge hummer-like vehicles parked outside a bank, I know it is delivering some serious coin. Occasionally I have watched as some big guys in uniforms with guns at their sides haul a heavy sack through the front doors. It doesn’t take much thought to know the bag is filled with a lot of money.

However, what would you think if you saw an old pickup instead of an armoured van in front of the bank and a young fellow in a T-shirt and blue jeans leaning against it? If you are like me, you might glance at it but then just walk on without any more thought. Here is how the fellow in the T-shirt and blue jeans described his experience in this true story [Roger Thompson, “Treasure in a Brown Bag,” Preaching Today, Tape 42]:
One day we got a call from Bank of America in downtown San Bernardino, and they were in a panic: “We've got to have some coin in the hour.” Well, all the armoured trucks were gone, and so Larry, my manager, backed his '49 Ford pickup into the bay. Now if Brinks ever finds out about this they're going to shoot this guy. We loaded $25,000 worth of coin in a '49 Ford pickup. That thing was dragging. That's over a ton.
Larry said: “Hop in. We're going up to B of A.”
We hopped. I'm in my T-shirt and blue jeans. We drove up to the front of the Bank of America, parked the truck, and Larry said, “Hang on, I'll go in and get the dolly, and we'll haul this stuff in.” I'm whistling, standing against this truck for twenty minutes. I don't have a gun. I thought, if anybody notices what is in this common-looking pickup truck, I'm a dead duck! Of course, you can't carry eighty pounds very far.
The treasure that people were walking by! But they didn't see it because of the commonness of the delivery people and delivery vehicle!
Every year we still carry on the custom of celebrating the anniversary of an ordinary birth in unusual circumstances – the birth of Jesus. He was delivered in the same way every other baby comes into this world. While we may wonder about how he was conceived – and that is one of the great mysteries surrounding Jesus – we don’t usually wonder about his actual birth. He came out of Mary as any other baby is born. Anyone walking by the stable that night and knowing a baby was being born might have wondered about the place of birth but not about the birth itself. It took some angels telling a bunch of shepherds and an unusual star in the sky to tell some Magi that there was treasure to be found in the simple birth of a baby called Jesus -- born in a little Middle Eastern town in a place where animals were housed. Otherwise they would have missed him.

We are now aware this baby grew to become a man whose life and teachings have influenced the world like no other. We could be somewhere else tonight but we are here in this place, perhaps because we sense that this particular baby called Jesus has treasure in him yet to be recognized by others who walk by – treasure yet to be discovered by us.

What is the treasure to be found in Jesus? Here is part of the treasure I have found.

In the Christmas story, we read of God’s love for the world. That’s Treasure Number One.

It intrigues me that Mary and Joseph did not pick the name of Jesus for their son. Most parents want to pick a name that is meaningful to them in some way. Instead, God picked a name for him that was significant to God! One of God’s angels told both Joseph and Mary separately to call the baby Jesus “for he will save his people from the condition and the consequences of their sins.” The name Jesus means “the Lord who saves.”

You see, Jesus is an expression of God’s character. Here is a good way to think about the way God works -- from creation to Incarnation to redemption, God’s work is an unfolding of God’s character. So we ask, What is the character of God shown in the Christmas story?

Like the creation of the Earth and the universe, the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus are also expressions of a most extravagant divine love. This is love that seeks beyond every river and mountain until the lost sheep is found. This is love that travels down any road of suffering and pain, of messy living and difficulties to find, to heal and to reconcile. This is love that will suffer and sacrifice everything on behalf of the beloved and that lays down his life for his friend. This is the same love that brought us into being in the first place. And in the tiny out-the-way village of Bethlehem, this same love enters into a new and more intimate relationship with human beings in the person of Jesus. “God so loved the world” that he sent Jesus so that every person who puts his or her faith in him will be reconciled to God and be brought to live with God forever. God’s extravagant love seen in Jesus: that’s the first treasure.

Treasure Number Two: We celebrate in Christmas that God became a person in order to enter into a personal relationship with human beings -- with us!

I am not embarrassed to tell you that I have a personal relationship with my wife. Our relationship is personal, intimate and loving. She loves me and wants me. I love her and I want her. Well, God also loves us and wants us for his own.

If I told you I had a “personal relationship with Jesus,” does that sound too personal and too intimate a way to express my response and devotion to him? Or to God? But the treasure of Christmas is that God became a person. In other words, our most intimate relationship with God is only possible because of the astonishing and seemingly impossible event we celebrate at Christmas: God entered into our human condition. God became one of us, capable of relating to us not merely as Creator but also as Friend in Jesus Christ. The truck driver who thinks of Jesus in the passenger seat as he rolls across the plains of Saskatchewan. The school teacher who asks Jesus for patience as she nears the end of the school day. The worker in the oil fields of Alberta who talks and jokes and argues with Jesus as he goes about his work. The disabled child who asks Jesus for the strength and courage to carry on. All of these people, whatever their background, give expression to a profound theological truth: God is not only the magnificent Creator who fashions the suns and measures the span of the heavens but also the compassionate Friend who dwells among the lowly, the humble, the contrite and the suffering.

With the coming of Jesus, we discover the treasure that our relationship with God is meant to be interpersonal. Not only is it characterized by worship and reverence but also by tender mercy and forgiveness, love and mutual understanding. With Jesus, we can know God and be known by God. With Jesus, we have footsteps in which to walk. With Jesus, we have the transformative presence and power of God with us even in our most human and most painful moments. And for that I am most grateful. God’s personal relationship with us: that’s the second treasure of Christmas that we can experience in Jesus.

Treasure Number Three: In Christmas we celebrate that God delights in using the small, the weak and the foolish things of the world to humble the great, the mighty and the wise. 

In his newest book What Good Is God? In Search of a Faith That Matters [Faith Words, 2010, pp. 184-186], author Philip Yancey tells a contemporary story that shows how the great and the mighty were humbled by the small and the weak. He wrote about the 2004 election in Ukraine in which the reformer Victor Yushchenko challenged the entrenched party and nearly died for it. On election day, the exit polls showed Yushchenko with a comfortable lead. But through outright fraud, the government reversed those results. Yancey wrote:
That evening the state-run television reported, “Ladies and gentlemen, we announce that the challenger Victor Yushchenko has been decisively defeated.” However, government authorities had not taken into account one feature of Ukrainian television: the translation it provides for the hearing-impaired. On the small screen insert in the lower right-hand corner of the television screen, a brave woman raised by deaf-mute parents gave a different message in sign language. “I am addressing all the deaf citizens of Ukraine. Don't believe what they say. They are lying, and I am ashamed to translate these lies. Yushchenko is our President!” No one in the studio understood her radical sign-language message.
[Inspired by that courageous translator, deaf people led what became known as the Orange Revolution.] They text-messaged their friends on mobile phones about the fraudulent elections, and soon other journalists took courage … and likewise refused to broadcast the party line. Over the next few weeks as many as a million people wearing orange flooded the capital city of Kiev to demand new elections. The government finally buckled under the pressure, consenting to new elections, and this time Yushchenko emerged as the undisputed winner.
Yancey further commented:
Our society is hardly unique.… [L]ike the sign language translator in the lower right-hand corner of the screen, along comes a person named Jesus who says in effect, “Don't believe the big screen -- they're lying. It's the poor who are blessed, not the rich. Mourners are blessed too, as well as those who hunger and thirst, and the persecuted. Those who go through life thinking they're on top will end up on the bottom. And those who go through life feeling they're at the very bottom will end up on top. After all, what does it profit a person to gain the whole world and lose his soul?”
In the birth of Jesus, whose young mother laid him in a manger, we see a God who delights in using the small, the weak and the foolish things of the world to humble the great, the mighty and the wise: that’s the third treasure of Christmas that should give most of us great hope!

Treasure Number Four: God showed us in Christmas what it means to give and to love. 

We human beings love to give gifts – to those who may be in need of some of the essentials of life, to those who are friends and especially to those who are family. Sometimes we even give for no apparent reason -- we give “just because.”

In the Christmas story, the Magi brought gifts to the infant Jesus. So it could well be said we give gifts at Christmas following the example of the Magi and their gift-giving. Yet the ultimate Gift-Giver in the Christmas story is God. In the first Christmas, God showed us what it meant to give. God did not give sparingly and selectively. God gave of himself in Jesus to the whole of humanity. God did not give from a distance as one song would want us to believe. God entered into the trenches with us, into the deepest pits of our fears and struggles and sufferings in order to be with us, to comfort us, to strengthen us, to heal us, to redeem us.

In setting aside his glory in coming into our world as a baby, God showed us what self-sacrifice means because of his great love for sinful humanity. When we give ourselves or sacrifice ourselves for others, when we enter into the trenches with one another, when we restore broken relationships and deepen the bonds of friendship and family, when we give even to those who have wronged us or failed us or disappointed us – when we do this, we are honouring the fourth treasure of love and giving that God showed us in Christmas.

Hear this piece of treasure from the heart of seven-year-old Bobby: “Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.”

My Christmas prayer for each of us is to listen well, to be open to God’s love, and to receive the hope, the joy and the peace God has for us in the birth of Jesus.

May this be so for you and for me -- and for the entire world. Amen.



Rev. Chris Miller
Christmas Eve, 2010
oympastor@rogers.com

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto
Visit with us online!
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Experience Hope This Christmas ... In the Mysteries of God

I appreciate a good mystery. A story is called a mystery when the plot involves a crime or some other event that remains puzzlingly unsettled until the very end. Among the best writers of such mysteries, in my opinion, are authors such as Charles Dickens, Edgar Alan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, G. K. Chesterton, Ellery Queen, Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, Isaac Asimov, Earle Stanley Gardner, P. D. James, Ian Fleming, John le Carre and Ray Bradbury. You no doubt have your own list. Do you remember some of these mystery programs from the past: Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Columbo, Dragnet, Hawaii Five-O, Perry Mason, X-Files, The Avengers, Quincy M E, Rockford Files? Among my favourites today are Murdoch Mysteries, Doctor Who and NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigation Service). For me, there is a common approach I need to take for virtually all mysteries. I have to be open and not closed to all the possibilities inherent in the mystery. I have to be aware there is more to understand, more to experience and more to resolve in the story than what I may think at first. A mystery means I had better be careful not to make up my mind too soon, thinking I know all the answers already! 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer challenged our respect for the mystery in life itself when he wrote:
“The lack of mystery in our modern life is our downfall and our poverty. A human life is worth as much as the respect it holds for the mystery. We retain the child in us to the extent that we honour the mystery. Therefore, children have open, wide-awake eyes because they know that they are surrounded by the mystery. They are not yet finished with this world; they still don’t know how to struggle along and avoid the mystery, as we do. We destroy the mystery because ... we want to be lord over everything and have it at our disposal, and that’s just what we cannot do with the mystery.”
This morning we heard two passages from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke that are filled with mystery. This mystery challenges us to respect it and to honour it. That means we dare not dismiss it as if there were no mystery. My constant prayer is to allow the child in me to respond with awe to this mystery that holds and surrounds us with love and hope. 

Where is the mystery in these two passages? It is in at least three places. The mystery is in the conception of Jesus. The mystery is in the name of Jesus as “Saviour.” The mystery is also in the name of Jesus as “Immanuel,” which means “God with us.”

It was not a mystery to Joseph and Mary 2,000 years ago how a baby is conceived! (Nor is it to us!) Under normal circumstances, a baby requires a man and a woman to engage in a sexual relationship. But today there is also artificial insemination when a doctor intervenes! That’s what was so intriguing about how Jesus was born. Both Joseph and Mary knew that neither one of them had begun such a relationship with each other even though they were engaged to be married. Mary also knew she had not been with any other man at all. That was part of the struggle Joseph had at first when he learned Mary was pregnant. At first her pregnancy meant to him (and to anyone else who would find out she was pregnant before they were lawfully married) that Mary had committed adultery and, therefore, could be stoned to death as permitted by law. And even though Joseph properly married Mary, there still seemed to be some rumours whispered around the community that Jesus might have been born illegitimately. I am of the belief, however, that Mary was telling the truth even if it left her vulnerable to innuendo and gossip about her supposed misconduct. 

But both Matthew, Jesus’ disciple, and Luke, the physician and historian, would have believed both Joseph and Mary as well; otherwise, they would not have made themselves or Mary or even Jesus vulnerable to ridicule by writing matter-of-factly about these details of Jesus’ birth. Why draw more attention to Mary, Joseph and Jesus by adding these circumstances in writing? It only made the possibility of people believing the worst about Mary’s behaviour more widely known. Why would Matthew and Luke include this information in their Gospels unless there was something important here? Otherwise, it would only create an unnecessary embarrassment in the Christian community. 

Part of the mystery of Jesus’ birth is that the virginity of Mary was assumed by both Matthew and Luke -- and the Early Church. But the virginity of Mary was not their primary focus. They also did not suggest that this conception of Jesus was the most important thing about Jesus. It was simply a matter of fact to them – Luke telling of Mary’s experience and Matthew of Joseph’s experience with both accounts converging on this point. But, in fact, no other New Testament writer talked about the conception and birth of Jesus as being unusual. Most, like the Apostle Paul, focused on the death and the resurrection of Jesus as more significant for their readers. I appreciate theologian N. T. Wright’s observations about this mystery:
“But to those who have come to some kind of faith in the crucified and risen Jesus, whose minds are thus opened to God being uniquely present in [Jesus], there is a sense of appropriateness, hard to define, easy to recognize, about the story Luke and Matthew tell. It isn’t what we would have expected, but it somehow rings true.” [Tom Wright, Luke for Everyone, SPCK, Great Britain, 2002, p. 11.]   
Both Matthew and Luke clearly focused their attention on God’s Holy Spirit. It was the intervention of the Holy Spirit of God who caused Mary to be pregnant. Twice Matthew said she was going to have Jesus by the Holy Spirit. Luke recorded that the angel said to Mary: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you” and “God’s power will rest upon you.” So the birth of Jesus involved connecting humanity with the power of God’s Holy Spirit. With all that we experience about Jesus in the Gospels, does not this connection of the human with the divine “ring true” in our hearts and minds? 

The mystery is also in the name Jesus. The name “Jesus” is a Greek equivalent of the well-known Hebrew name Joshua. It comes from two Hebrew words that mean “Lord” and “save.” So when the choir sings the introit “Jesus Stand Among Us” at the beginning of many of our worship services, as a community of faith, we are calling on the “Lord who saves” to stand among us here, in this place, in his risen power!  

Christmas is about the salvation that God planned for humanity through Jesus. What does the Church mean when we say “Jesus saves”? Well, to be saved still normally means to be rescued from something, from some condition or from someone. And the Scripture teaches -- and the worldwide Church has taught for two millenniums -- that Jesus saves his people from the condition and consequences of their sins.

Throughout the Gospels, “save” is also very much connected to healing and justice. There is a wonderful sense that God’s saving work encompasses the whole of life. For instance, when the disciples’ boat was about to capsize, they wanted “salvation” [Matthew 8:25]. When Jesus was on the cross, he was taunted about saving himself [Matthew 27:40]. When Mary sang her song of praise (The Magnificat) in Luke’s Gospel, she declared God as her “Saviour” who would bring down the high and mighty, lift up the lowly, fill the hungry and send the rich away empty. The mystery of God again comes to the forefront in this complete reversal of fortunes. We merely have to ponder how God used the mystery inherent in a young peasant girl of no particular fame or fortune, from a small and insignificant village in the Middle East, to bear the Saviour of the world as a hint of what is to come. And, yes, there is the social justice message and ministry of Jesus on behalf of those who are oppressed and powerless and poor. And there is ultimate hope for those who experience more than their share of suffering in this life. As the Church, you and I are the heart, the hands and the feet of Jesus in the ways we care for those who are poor and on the margins of society.

But there is more than that when we talk about Jesus being the “Saviour” of the world. This kind of “saving” is something only Jesus could do. 

At the heart of the word “save” in the Gospels is the sense of personal salvation. Listen to Jesus when he says: “For whoever wants to save their own life will lose it; but whoever loses their life for my sake will find it” [Matthew 16:25]. That’s the hope of the remarkable mystery in realizing we cannot save or rescue ourselves, in accepting Jesus’ death on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins and in giving our whole lives to Jesus Christ in response.

As a researcher and physician, Francis Collins' credentials and accomplishments are well-respected in the scientific community. He headed up the Human Genome Project before serving as the director of the National Institutes of Health in the United States. In 2007 he wrote a New York Times best-selling book called The Language of God. It weaves together the story of his work as a world-renowned scientist and his journey from atheism to faith in Jesus Christ.

Although Collins is thoroughly committed to rational inquiry and the scientific method, God used a few people and the majesty of nature to cause Collins to consider the meaning and the mystery of Jesus Christ in his life. As a gifted medical student, Collins thought it was “convenient to not have to deal with God.” But, then, after one of his patients told Collins about her faith, she asked him: “What about you? What do you believe?” In Collin's own words, he said: “I stuttered and stammered and felt the colour rising in my face, and I said, ‘Well, I don't think I believe in anything.’ But that suddenly seemed like a very thin answer. And that was unsettling.” 

Then after a long period of searching, which included serious questioning of a pastor, reading C. S. Lewis and observing the beauty of creation, Collins finally responded to Jesus Christ. This is Collin's description of that life-changing encounter:
“I had to make a choice. A full year had passed since I decided to believe in some sort of God, and now I was being called to account. On a beautiful fall day, as I was hiking in the Cascade Mountains during my first trip west of the Mississippi, the majesty and beauty of God's creation overwhelmed my resistance. As I rounded a corner and saw a beautiful and unexpected frozen waterfall, hundreds of feet high, I knew the search was over. The next morning, I knelt in the dewy grass as the sun rose and surrendered to Jesus Christ.”  [Francis Collins, The Language of God (Free Press, 2007), p. 225]
My friends, this is experiencing the Christmas hope! This is coming to believe in the name of Jesus who was born to save us from the consequences of our sins so we can experience God’s amazing grace and forgiveness.  

The mystery of God is also in the name of Jesus as “Immanuel” -- “God with us.” Matthew wants us to connect the Virgin Mary with the young woman Isaiah the prophet speaks of in Isaiah 7:14: “The Lord himself will give you a sign: a young woman who is pregnant will have a son and will name him Immanuel.” Matthew says the son who is born to Mary “will make come true what the Lord had said through the prophet” [Matthew 1:22] and her son will be called “Immanuel,” meaning “God is with us”! 

Christmas is all about “God with us.” It is about the Incarnation. But “God with us” is more than simply a theological statement. Incarnation is God doing the really astounding and unthinkable! Incarnation is God taking humanity on himself by becoming human in Jesus of Nazareth. And “God with us” is more than that.

Immanuel – “God with us” -- is a promise. A promise given from the beginning of creation. A promise given to Abraham and his descendants. A promise of redemption expected throughout all the years of history. A promise now fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

Immanuel – “God with us” -- is redemption. God with us is good news – the gospel! The gospel story is that God has identified completely with humanity in order to redeem us. “Immanuel” (God with us) explains “Jesus” (The Lord who saves).

Immanuel – “God with us” -- is mission. If God is with us by sending Jesus the Son, the Son is with us we carry on the mission of healing, caring, loving our neighbours and calling people to ponder Jesus Christ for their lives.

You may not be familiar with Clarence Jordan’s The Cotton Patch Gospel. Jordan recast the stories of Jesus by bringing them to the life and language and culture of the mid-20th-century southern United States. Listen to how Jordan put Jesus’ words in the final verses of Matthew, Chapter 28: “As you travel, then, make students [disciples] of all races and initiate them into the family of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit [that’s baptism]. Teach them to live by all that I outlined for you. And you know, I am right in there with you -- all the time -- right to the [end].” 

Immanuel – “God with us” in a promise is the way Matthew begins his Gospel. He ends his Gospel with “Jesus with us in mission.” How full of hope is that for all of us!

The mystery of God calls us to ponder the mystery of Jesus. Romans 8:31 and 32 declares for the entire world to consider: “If God is for us, who can be against us? Certainly not God, who did not even keep back his own Son, but offered him for us all!”

We do not say our New Creed every week. But I have a sense it may be appropriate to say it together now – as a witness to one another that God is with us in the promise of redemption and Jesus is with us in salvation and through the Holy Spirit in loving mission for the world. Turn to page 918 in Voices United and please stand as you are able.

A New Creed

We are not alone,
we live in God's world.

We believe in God:
who has created and is creating,
who has come in Jesus,
the Word made flesh,
to reconcile and make new,
who works in us and others
by the Spirit.

We trust in God.

We are called to be the Church:
to celebrate God's presence,
to live with respect in Creation,
to love and serve others,
to seek justice and resist evil,
to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen,
our judge and our hope. 

In life, in death, in life beyond death,
God is with us.
We are not alone.
Thanks be to God.

May this be so for you and for me.


Rev. Chris Miller
December 12, 2010

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto
Visit with us online!
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , ,

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Experience Hope This Christmas... In Christ’s Love for You

John 1:1-18 - read this text online here »

Almost every day as a hospital chaplain, I would sit by the bedside of someone who was going through a significant illness. Some were in rehab for a broken hip or leg. Some had ALS (known as Lou Gehrig’s disease). Some had Multiple Sclerosis. Some had kidney failure and were undergoing constant dialysis of their toxic blood. Some were stricken with cancer. And some were in palliative care. Some people were clearly in mental and emotional and spiritual distress. Others were in various places of depression. Some welcomed me to be with them and others waved me off when they discovered I was a chaplain. Some had difficulty accepting the presence of any kind of help let alone a person of faith like myself. A hospital patient once told me that I couldn’t possibly understand what he was going through. “How could you?” he said. “You have your health and I don’t. You go home to your family and here I am, imprisoned in my pain and suffering.” At the end of some days, my head almost touched the pavement as I dragged myself to my car. At some level in my spirit, I sensed the hospital patient was speaking truth. I was reasonably healthy and could go home to my family while he could not.

Then one day, I was struck with the pain of cellulitis in my lower left leg. Cellulitis is an infection and inflammation of the tissues beneath the skin. It is normally not dangerous unless it penetrates the deeper skin structures. But if it is not treated promptly and properly, it could enter the bloodstream and cause blood poisoning as well as infecting the bone. Then, not only severe suffering may occur but even death is possible. What started out for me as a local skin irritation, high fever, some pain, redness and swelling developed into severe pain and spreading infection, enough to put me into the hospital for six days and for me to experience acute pain for several weeks. I was even in a wheelchair and on crutches because of the difficulty and pain of walking. Thankfully, I regained my health. But I relearned something in those couple months of illness. What I knew in my head through my chaplaincy training, my heart learned again through personal suffering. I experienced once more the reality that, essentially, I live in the same room as my suffering hospital friends.

And, in Jesus, God has also lived in the same suffering world that we live in.

We heard this morning in John’s Gospel that “The Word became a human being and ... lived among us.” The older translation in the King James Version of the Bible puts it: “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” I also appreciate the image in The Message Bible: “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.”

God loves our flesh. And God expressed himself, God even revealed himself, in our flesh -- in our skin-covered skeletal frame of bone and cartilage and muscle, with a pumping heart muscle and veins coursing with life-producing blood cells. God loves our humanness: our minds, our wills, our emotions and our spirits. Because God made us!

John 1:1-18 is John the Apostle’s defining statement about the astounding good news and hope of Christmas! John has embodied Christmas in one word: Incarnation. That is, the Word – the very Life and Light of God – became flesh, became a human being. The One who was known as the Word -- who existed in the beginning before the world was created – became flesh and came to live among us who are also flesh and blood human beings. John wanted his readers to understand that, at whatever point creation began, the One known as the Word already existed. And it was this Word -- who is the Life and the Light of God -- who became a human being just like us. And he was born in Bethlehem just over 2,000 years ago.

Why would the Word become human and live among us?

John says, because the Word, Jesus, is so full of grace, he keeps giving humanity the blessings of God -- the gifts of God -- gift after gift after gift, blessing after blessing after blessing. Not only then but now in our day as well. In John’s Gospel, grace focuses on Jesus’ character and personality. In Jesus we see grace expressing love and kindness – a loving kindness that actively cares for and seeks to help all those who need help and come to him. And all throughout his Gospel, John wants us to understand that this grace depends upon the character of Jesus, not on any merit in the people themselves.

Can you see “grace” in the following story? In his book Tattoos on the Heart [Free Press, 2010, pp. 26-27], Father Greg Boyle, pastor of an inner-city church in Los Angeles, California, for 20-plus years, tells the story of Rigo, a 15-year-old member of a local gang. Rigo was in jail getting ready for a special worship service when Boyle casually asked if his father would be coming. The following is a summary of their conversation:
“No,” he said, “He's a heroin addict and never been in my life. Used to always beat me.”
Then something snapped inside Rigo as he recalled an image from his childhood.
“I think I was in fourth grade,” he began. “I came home. Sent home in the middle of the day…. My dad says, ‘Why did they send you home?’ And cuz my dad always beat me, I said, ‘If I tell you, promise you won't hit me?’ He just said, ‘I'm your father. Course I'm not gonna hit you.’ So I told him.”
Rigo began to cry and wail and rock back and forth. Boyle put his arm around him until he slowly calmed down. When Rigo could finally speak again, he spoke quietly, still in a state of shock: “He beat me with a pipe … with … a pipe.”
After Rigo composed himself, Boyle asked about his mom. Rigo pointed to a small woman and said: “That's her over there…. There's no one like her.” Then Rigo paused and said: “I've been locked up for a year and half. She comes to see me every Sunday. You know how many buses she takes every Sunday?”
Rigo started sobbing…. After catching his breath, he gasped through the sobs: “Seven buses. She takes … seven … buses. Imagine.”
Boyle concluded his story with an analogy. God, as revealed in the person of Jesus, loves us something like Rigo's mother loves her son -- with commitment, steadfastness and sacrifice. We have a God “who takes seven buses, just to get to us.” All throughout Jesus' ministry -- his birth on that first Christmas Day, his meals with sinners, his healing of those who were sick, his death on the cross for our sins – Jesus showed us the heart of God, the God who will take a long journey of love to find us. And we really cannot fully comprehend the length of that journey God made for us. Another word for that kind of journey is grace!

Why would the Word become human and live among us?

John says because the Word is also full of truth – not only the truth that Jesus revealed about God but, more so, that Jesus himself was the true revelation of God. When John, in his Gospel, connects truth with Jesus, he wants us to understand that “what Jesus was shows completely what God is” [Newman, B. M., & Nida, E. A. (1993). A Handbook on the Gospel of John: Helps for Translators, UBS Handbook series (22). New York: United Bible Societies]. John said clearly in verse 18 of Chapter 1: “No one has ever seen God. The only Son, who is the same as God and is at the Father’s side, he has made [God] known.” Again like grace, truth may be better illustrated than directly stated.
A father was anxiously anticipating the premature delivery of triplets. For at least one of the babies, there was a definite possibility of being born dead. He said he will never forget the moment the doctor announced, “They are all alive!” Until they heard those words, he and his wife lived in total uncertainty. All of the wishful thinking -- even from certified medical professionals -- could not alleviate that uncertainty and turn possibility into actuality. The father said:
“I could believe all I wanted in a successful delivery, but I had no promise to rely on, either from God or the doctors, and the intensity of my believing had nothing to do with the state of affairs. My confidence developed entirely on the words that the doctor uttered”: [“They are all alive!]” [Michael Horton, The Gospel-Driven Life: Being Good News People in a Bad News World, Baker Books, 2009, pp. 123-124.]
You see, the gospel is good news – hopeful news -- because it speaks about events that actually happened, whether we are talking about the Incarnation (the birth of Jesus), the Crucifixion of Jesus or the Resurrection of Jesus. Our faith does not make the event true; rather, our faith embraces the truth. We see and embrace God when we place our trust in and embrace the Word made flesh – Jesus Christ.

Why would the Word become human and live among us?

Because God wanted us to know that he thoroughly understands human pain and suffering. God wanted us to know he is not distant or aloof from the human condition. That’s part of the good news and amazing hope of the Incarnation – of Christmas – that the Word became flesh and blood and spent about 33 years of human life on this Earth with us. And especially in his last three or so years of earthly existence, Jesus experienced in his own body what human pain, suffering and struggle against all kinds of adversity and difficulty feels like and means to us as human beings. One biblical writer, the author of the Letter of Hebrews, spoke about this identification of the human Jesus with us when he wrote: “We don’t have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. [No.] He’s been through weakness and testing, experienced it all -- all but the sin” [Hebrews 4:15, The Message].

The late Jesuit priest and writer Henri Nouwen possessed keen spiritual insight into the human condition. Because of his time in the L’Arche community [http://www.larche.ca/en/larche], he was also known as a compassionate caregiver for people with developmental disabilities. In his book Out of the Solitude, Nouwen made the following observation:
“What we see, and like to see, is cure and change. But what we do not see and do not want to see is care: the participation in the pain, the solidarity in the suffering, the sharing in the experience of brokenness. And still, cure without care is as dehumanizing as a gift given with a cold heart.” [Henri J. M. Nouwen, Out of Solitude (Ave Maria Press, 2008), pp. 35-36.]
But the reality of God becoming human in Jesus Christ – what the worldwide Church calls the Incarnation -- means God’s care is there for us and we can have hope even in our pain, suffering and brokenness. The reality of God becoming human in Jesus Christ means God shares in our experiences of suffering and brokenness. The reality of God becoming human in Jesus Christ means God will do whatever it takes to bring about, in time, justice and hope in a world we cannot control. The reality of God becoming human in Jesus Christ becomes even more real and moving for us when we also realize Jesus died for our sins and he defeated death for us by rising from the grave, giving us the evidence there is life after death for us too! And how hopeful is that!

A couple of years ago, our Wednesday morning small group studied Anglican theologian N. T Wright’s book Simply Christian. In it, he begins his chapter entitled “Putting the World to Rights” with the following personal story [HarperSanFrancisco, 2006, pages 3-13]:
“I had a dream the other night, a powerful and interesting dream. And the really frustrating thing is that I can't remember what it was about. I had a flash of it as I woke up, enough to make me think how extraordinary and meaningful it was; and then it was gone…. Our passion for justice often seems like that. We dream the dream of justice. We glimpse, for a moment, a world at one, a world put to rights, a world where things work out, where societies function fairly and efficiently … and then we wake up and come back to reality.”
According to Wright, our longing for justice “comes with the kit of being human.” But, unfortunately, although we all strive for justice, we often fail to achieve it. Wright goes on to say:
“You fall off your bicycle and break your leg. You go to the hospital and they fix it. You stagger around on crutches for a while. Then, rather gingerly, you start to walk normally again….
“There is such a thing as putting something to rights, as in fixing it, as getting it back on track. You can fix a broken leg, a broken toy, a broken television. So why can't we fix injustice. It isn't for lack of trying.
“And yet, in spite of failures to fix injustice, we keep dreaming that one day all broken things will be set right.
Wright then asserts:
“Christians believe this is so because all humans have heard, deep within themselves, the echo of a voice which calls us to live [with a dream for justice]. And [followers of Christ] believe that in Jesus that voice became human and did what had to be done to bring it about.”
Why would the Word become human and live among us?

Because, as John pointed out in Chapter 3 of his Gospel:
“God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him [the Son] may not perish but have eternal life.”
May this hope and experience be so for you and for me.

Rev. Chris Miller
December 5, 2010

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto
Visit with us online!
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , ,

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Experience Hope This Christmas... In Christ’s Brokenness for You

“Hope is an amazing, God-given gift. It fuels your dreams, lightens your spirits, and lifts your despair. When life becomes a battlefield, hope digs in and fights the good fight.” We find this remarkable description of hope on the inside jacket cover of respected counsellor Lewis Smedes’s book Standing on the Promises. Who among us does not desire to experience hope – again and again -- especially when “life becomes a battlefield” and we feel as though we are losing the fight?

In Psalm 139, the psalmist highlighted three images where life could feel like a battlefield for him. But even more than that – these images reflect where life could leave us feeling helpless and hopeless and broken too. They feel like places where God is not present – where even God would not want to be. Godforsaken places we call them! But here’s the paradox: The psalmist expected God to be there with him and for him in those very places of brokenness, helplessness and hopelessness!

One image the psalmist used was the edge of the sea. In verses 9 and 10, the psalmist joyfully says this of God: “If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.” For the psalmist, the farthest limits of the sea or the edge of the sea was as far away as he could get -- the edge of the Earth in poetic language. What happens when we reach the edge in our lives? At times, we may feel we could very well fall off the face of the Earth. And we may feel we have also fallen beyond the reach of God.

What does being at the edge feel like? Is there not the sense of losing control, of feeling the foundations of our life shake so hard the bottom could fall out of our world at any moment? It seems as if there is no one to hold onto us or steady the ground under our feet. Even God feels nowhere to be found to stop our free fall over the edge.

But according to the psalmist, who has been there himself, God is there and so hope is there! It is as if the psalmist reaches into our soul and says: If you should find yourself at the edge like me and even beginning to free fall, look up and you will discover God is with you after all. And God will hold you as he held me. God will hold you fast and will not let you go.

Another image the psalmist used was darkness. Verses 11 and 12: “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me and the light around me become night,’ even the darkness is not dark to you [God]; the night is as bright as the day for darkness is as light to you.”

To be in the dark alone is to be vulnerable and defenceless. It’s like being lost in a forest in the dead of night and wondering what might be lurking in the shadows. It’s like not knowing which direction to go in or whether or not our next step may cause us to trip and break our neck. We can’t see anything to help us find our way and it feels as though no one can see us either. So there is no help or no hope to be had.

But according to the psalmist, who has been there himself, God is there and so hope is there! It is as if the psalmist reaches into our soul and says: God will be with you when you are groping about in the dark. You see, God can see you in the midst of your darkness. You are not out God’s sight and you are not alone.

A third image the psalmist used was Sheol. Psalm 139, verse 8: “If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.” To the psalmist, Sheol was the world of the dead. Death -- where a person was finally cut off from God.

But according to the psalmist, who knew he would die like everyone else, God is even there so hope is even there! It is as if the psalmist reaches into our soul and says: God will be there with you even when you are in the most hopeless place of all – when you die. Hope is there even when we die because God is there!

Jesus has been in these places of brokenness, helplessness and hopelessness too. He stood at the edge of life looking into the abyss of being totally forsaken when he took the sin of the world on himself: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” [Matthew 27:46]. He experienced the darkness of being utterly vulnerable. Matthew recorded that, while Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Grief and anguish came over him, and he said to [the disciples – Peter, James and John who were with him], ‘The sorrow in my heart is so great that it almost crushes me. Stay here and keep watch with me.’ He went a little farther on, threw himself face downwards on the ground, and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, take this cup of suffering from me! Yet not what I want, but what you want.’”

Jesus went through the process of an unjust and illegal trial. Hear some more of what Jesus went through according to Matthew: “They made a crown out of thorny branches and placed it on his head, and put a stick in his right hand; then they knelt before him and mocked him.… They spat on him, and took the stick and hit him over the head” [Matthew 27:29–30]. Jesus was lashed so badly he was too weak to carry his own cross. And finally he was nailed through his hands and feet to rough wooden planks. As we will hear in our Communion service, Jesus’ body was broken – broken for us. He faced death for us.

What does being broken or helpless or hopeless mean in our lives today? Are we experiencing this in our finances? In our relationships? In our employment or unemployment? In our bodies – physically and emotionally? In the changes of life we experience all around us? Yet, like the psalmist, do we see hope in such places? Do we expect God to be there for us too?

Jesus understood how broken and hopeless people could be in life – how they struggled and carried too much in their lives. So he invited them to an astonishing place of hope and grace. Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are tired from carrying heavy loads and I will give you rest.” How startling is that! That is what we heard in the reading this morning from the Gospel of Matthew. It more than intrigues me that Jesus did not invite those who were having a hard time of it and felt overwhelmed to come to God to receive the hope and strength and refreshing rest they needed. No, he clearly invited these harassed and beleaguered strugglers to come to him as if he was the authorized connection to God! Constantly throughout the New Testament, and certainly in Matthew’s Gospel, the truth about coming to God always pointed to Jesus. I like the way New Testament theologian and commentator Dale Bruner expressed it:
“In Jesus, God gets a face. Jesus invites us to himself, and we feel quite naturally that we are invited to God.”
[Matthew A Commentary Volume 1: The Christbook. Revised and Expanded Edition, p. 537. Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing, Grand Rapids, Mich.
That’s why, in the Communion service, you will read and hear these words of hope:
“Loving and tender God, in Jesus of Nazareth we recognize the fullness of your grace: light, life and love, revealed in words that confront and comfort us, in teachings that challenge and change us, in compassion that heals and frees us.”
In her memoir Take This Bread [Ballantine Books, 2008, xi], author Sara Miles shares how the first time she ever took Communion changed her life forever. She writes:
One early, cloudy morning, when I was forty-six, I walked into a church, ate a piece of bread, took a sip of wine. A routine Sunday activity for tens of millions of [people] -- except that up until that moment I'd led a thoroughly secular life, at best indifferent to religion, more often appalled by its fundamentalist crusades. This was my first communion. It changed everything.
Eating [the bread as Jesus’ body], as I did that day to my great astonishment, led me against all my expectations to a faith I’d scorned and work I’d never imagined. The mysterious sacrament turned out to be not [merely a] symbolic wafer but actual food -- indeed, the bread of life....
I took communion, I passed the bread to others, and then I kept going, compelled to find new ways to share what I had experienced.
It is important to realize that God does not always take the forsakenness out of the so-called godforsaken places. If God did not do that for Jesus on the cross, it is not likely it will happen to us. But when God comes to us in those places – and God does come to us even in those many situations that feel hopeless -- we can still have hope!

Brennan Manning wrote with insight and with hope: “To be alive is to be broken; to be broken is to stand in need of grace.”

That’s what you and I are doing here this morning. In our deep desire to experience a life of hope, we freely confess our brokenness – our helplessness and our hopelessness -- before our loving and compassionate God. And as we each pour out precisely our circumstances and situation to God from the depths of our hearts, we will also find ourselves knee deep in the place of grace – God’s grace. This is a remarkable place to be: to experience -- perhaps for the first time or many times over -- hope in our lives for those places where we feel broken.

In this 2010 Christmas season, even if you are experiencing brokenness, may you also experience hope. Like the psalmist, may you also be joyfully amazed that there is no place you can be that is beyond the reach of God’s compassionate grace and God’s loving care.

May this be so for you and for me.

Rev. Chris Miller
November 28, 2010

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto
Visit with us online!
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , ,

Sunday, November 21, 2010

What Is This Child Going to Be?

Infant Baptism Sunday
  • Luke 1:57-66 (67-79) - read this text online here »
For most parents, the birth of their child, born out of their mutual love for each other, is an occasion for great joy. In fact, a survey conducted this past year [a 2010 Pew Research survey, http://people-press.org] asked 770 parents why they decided to have children. Seventy-six per cent of those surveyed said it was because of the joy of children.

There is a story about a mother who was talking to her sons about new babies. Her seven-year-old son asked, “Mom, were you there when I was born?”

Many a mother may well “forget” the pain of labour and childbirth not only when she holds her little one in her arms but also when she is asked a question like that one!

The birth of a child is also the opportunity to express love. I know parents feel love when their children are born. But they will also have many occasions to express their love when their children begin to grow and get a little carried away or, well, even naughty at times. I can see possibilities here when you, Jackie and Jordan, and your children (I am assuming here, aren’t I!) are sitting around the kitchen table one day in the future when they are almost adults and start talking about some of their childhood scrapes.
One of your children looks at you – maybe Kasia -- and says: “Mom, remember when I broke that family heirloom vase when we were playing hide and seek in the house? It was an accident. I felt so bad.”

And you say, “I know, dear.”

“Dad, once we started hockey you almost never got to sleep in on Saturday mornings. I didn’t appreciate that then as much as I do now.”

And you say, “I can understand that.”

“Mom, Dad, remember when you took us places in the car and we used to bug each other in the back seat and end up fighting? We can’t believe how you put up with us kids? How did you do it?”

How might you respond? Well, I can almost hear you thinking: “It was easy because we love you! And you are ours! And we could remember being children and getting into scrapes too!”
The birth of a child is also cause for reverent awe or admiration. More than one parent has held his or her daughter to their chest, as I did with my son and daughter, and counted the fingers on his hands and the toes on her feet, smoothed down the mop of hair -- or not! -- on the baby’s head and, with a finger, delicately traced a circle around the “innie or outie” belly button. What’s not to admire! But I am also aware of the deep love and joy felt in families with children who are born with less than the requisite 10 toes and 10 fingers or who have cognitive, developmental and other difficulties. Love and awe for our children is not limited to those who may appear perfect.

The birth of a child also gives rise to great hopes. A tourist once asked a local villager, “Were any great men or women born in this town?” The villager replied, “Nope, only babies.” But we do wonder, don’t we, what kind of a person this little baby we hold in our arms will become? Will she be noteworthy in some way? Will she make a positive mark for good in this world? That’s the kind of question John the Baptist’s family – his elderly father and elderly mother – and their neighbours asked in the Bible reading from the Gospel of Luke 1:66 this morning: “What is this child going to be?” That’s an appropriate question for any parent to wonder about and ask.

It is that kind of question that helps create a healthy climate within which a child may grow and develop into the kind of person she or he is meant to be. And that’s because our children develop opinions and feelings about themselves from the people they live with – in their families, in their churches, in their communities and in their schools. A rabbi, whose name was Zusya, was very insightful when he observed: “In the world to come, I will not be asked, ‘Why were you not Moses?’ I will be asked, ‘Why were you not Zusya?’” That’s the rub, isn’t it? How to be the person we were meant to be.

How do we encourage our children and our grandchildren to become the people they are meant to be? The birth of John the Baptist (that’s the “John” in our Scripture) will help us answer this question.

In the life of John the Baptist, the question had particular interest because of the unusual circumstances surrounding his birth. John’s birth was totally unexpected. His parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth, were old enough to have given up any hope of having a baby. So you can well imagine they welcomed John’s astonishing birth with joy and love and overwhelming thanksgiving. And as we ponder some more about John -- as a baby crawling around on the floor, as a child stumbling over his first steps and as a youth growing up -- the message he must have heard from everyone in his family and his community and also must have felt non-verbally was that people delighted in him. His parents were clearly enthralled with him. The neighbours were in awe of him from the moment of his birth, saying, “What is this child going to be?” John would have sensed deep in his spirit how special a man he was meant to be. Sigmund Freud, who is considered to be the father of psychoanalysis, noted that the details of our birth and early life are powerful determining factors in the person we eventually become.

As a pastor, I have met many families over the years who were expecting a new baby. Freud’s observations remind me of two reactions I experienced in one of my first congregations. One family responded to the news of a baby with: “Oh, isn’t this awful! Pregnant again!” The other couple couldn’t wait to tell me the good news: “We are expecting again! We can’t believe how blessed we are!” Think about those two attitudes into which the children were born. One little life was influenced by a positive and loving atmosphere while the other was influenced by an uncertain if not resentful family climate. Children are emotionally and spiritually affected by whether they feel wanted or unwanted. My hope is that all children will come to learn about God early in their lives and allow God’s compassion and love to tell them that they each belong to God and that each one is God’s wanted child. I am confident John the Baptist realized early on how much he was wanted and loved by his parents. And, consequently, he no doubt heard about and felt God’s love and God’s call on his life earlier and with more clarity than he might have otherwise.

When I baptized Kasia this morning, I asked her parents to tell me their daughter’s name. Our names are significant because they carry a sense of identity for the child. Kasia comes from Katherine and means “Pure” and “Beloved of God.” In many cultures, the naming of the child is very important. Such was the case in the naming of John. Earlier in Luke Chapter 1, the angel Gabriel gave God’s message to Zechariah to name his son to be born John. God was giving John a particular identity. Both Zechariah and Elizabeth understood the significance of names. Their names, like so many others of the Jewish people, were meaningful affirmations of faith in God. Zechariah means “The Lord Remembers.” Elizabeth means “My God Is an Absolutely Faithful One.” They understood the power of new names with positive and spiritual associations. The name John means “Gift of God” and conveyed blessing and power.

For Zechariah and Elizabeth to give the name John to their new son was also a test of their own obedience to God’s call on their lives. It was highly unusual for them to name him John because there was no other John in the family. Normally, he would have been called after his father or someone else in Zechariah’s family tree. But he was given a name that was uniquely his. In the Scripture, Zechariah initially didn’t believe the angel that he and Elizabeth would become parents. So Zechariah’s voice was taken away and he had to communicate using sign language. But when he and Elizabeth named their son John as they were instructed, Zechariah was able to speak again. And his very first response was to praise God! But his neighbours were filled with fear and awe at all of this. The Message Bible – a modern English version of the Bible – put verses 65 and 66 this way:
“A deep, reverential fear settled over the neighborhood and, in all that Judean hill country, people talked about nothing else. Everyone who heard about it took it to heart, wondering, ‘What will become of this child?’ Clearly, God has his hand in this.”
You may already sense this but our names influence how others look at us. An intriguing test was once conducted during a beauty pageant. A number of the girls were given fictitious names. Some of the names were unpopular for that generation while the other names were considered more popular. All the girls were considered equally attractive. But, as you can guess, the girls with the unpopular names invariably lost out to those with the names considered more popular. 

My surname has always been Miller. But my heritage is Bulgarian. When my grandfather came to Canada in the 1920s, his family name was originally Minoff. At some point, he became a naturalized British subject and his surname was changed to Miller. His given name also changed, probably from Christoff to Chris. I was named after him. In 2010 here in Toronto, I don’t think this kind of change of name has the significance it did in the early 20th century. My grandfather told me his change of name made a difference in the way people approached him. He was no longer considered an outsider or “an ethnic” as he was called then. With the name Miller, he became more acceptable in mainstream Canadian culture.

When John received his name, the people wondered: “‘What is this child going to be?’ For it was plain that the Lord’s power was upon him.” From the very beginning of John’s existence, even before his birth, God had something remarkable for him to do. If I had asked Les to read to the end of Luke Chapter 1, we would have heard Zechariah’s prophesy from God about John. Here it is in the Good News Bible:
    “You, my child, will be called
a prophet of the Most High God.
You will go ahead of the Lord
to prepare his road for him,
    to tell his people that they will be saved
by having their sins forgiven.
Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, had great hopes for his son because he himself was a person of hope and trust in God.

The good news is God also has great hopes for you and for me! I believe God’s heart is for his people to experience renewed hope in Jesus this Christmas. In fact, that is our theme for this 2010 Christmas season – to experience the hope Jesus was born to give us! Christian thinker Lewis Smedes wrote:
“Hope is an amazing, God-given gift. It fuels your dreams, lightens your spirits, and lifts your despair. When life becomes a battlefield, hope digs in and fights the good fight.”
What is your identity or name? Let me ask another question: What is the new spiritual identity God might want to give you now at this time in your life? As with Zechariah and Elizabeth, it is never too late for God to give to you! What do you need? Might your new identity be hopeful? or forgiven? or loved? or wanted? or joy? or peace? or accepted? or pure? Whatever gift or identity God wants to give to each of us in this season when we celebrate Jesus’ birth into the world, we are all identified as beloved of God as is the beloved child, Kasia, who was baptized this morning. God has a gift of spiritual identity that is reserved for you and for me. Let’s accept God’s gracious invitation of hope and love and receive God’s gift for us.

May this be so for you and for me.

Rev. Chris Miller
November 21, 2010

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto
Visit with us online!
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Be-Attitude Living: A Series on the Beatitudes (5) Working for Peace

  • Matthew 5:9 - read this text online here »
  • Amos 5:14-15, 21-24 - read this text online here »
Peacemakers are people who work for peace. We find them all over the world and in all kinds of circumstances.

In family time earlier in the service, we heard about young elementary school children who worked peacefully for a change in the lunch menu in their school.

Another story involves country music singer Travis Tritt who spent many years playing in out-of-the-way places before he became a star in the music industry. He said many of the bars were not very nice – actually dangerous at times -- with drunk fans starting fights over the smallest matters. But the singer found a unique way to make peace in such situations. He said:
“[Playing] ‘Silent Night’ proved to be my all-time lifesaver. Just when [bar fights] started getting out of hand, when bikers were reaching for their pool cues and rednecks were heading for the gun rack, I'd start playing ‘Silent Night.’ It could be the middle of July. I didn't care. Sometimes they'd even start crying, standing there watching me sweat and play Christmas carols.” [Twang! The Ultimate Book of Country Music Quotations, compiled by Raymond Obstfeld and Sheila Burgener, Henry Holt and Company.]
One of the most difficult places to be a peacemaker today is in the Middle East. While working for peace in that area is extremely hard, there are many individual stories of hope. One such story is about a Palestinian baby found abandoned at birth in a roadside heap of trash. She was rescued by Palestinian doctors, nurtured by a group of Roman Catholic nuns and her heart was repaired by an Israeli surgeon. The story called "'Peace Baby' Touches Mideast Enemies" was reported by the Associated Press on February 25, 2002.
The survival of tiny Salaam, whose name means “peace” in Arabic, is a rare example of the region's usually fractured and clashing peoples working together to save a life. The world is all too painfully aware of the suffering and death of both Palestinians and Israelis -- including children and infants. Salaam was found by Palestinians along a road north of the West Bank town of Ramallah and taken to a shelter run by Palestinian social services. A group of nuns in Bethlehem then gave her a permanent home.

But the baby's health was not good. She was born with a large hole between the chambers of her heart so her lungs did not receive enough blood. Salaam was eventually taken to a Jerusalem hospital.

“She was skin and bone and that's it,” said Israeli doctor Eli Milgalter, who operated on Salaam's heart. The nuns raised nearly $11,000 to pay for the hospital costs. But Milgalter performed the surgery without accepting payment. The doctors said that Salaam made a full recovery.
So blessings on young school children who work for change peacefully, singers who bring peace to unruly bars by singing Christmas carols, and Palestinian and Israeli doctors and Roman Catholic nuns who work together for peace.

Are you a peacemaker where you are? Are you someone who works for peace?

Many of us do not like to engage in verbal conflict. And some such people will settle for “peace at all costs” rather than taking part in any dispute. It doesn’t seem to matter whether this is something on a large scale – such as war – or something on a small scale such as a family or neighbourhood conflict. These folk definitely lean toward keeping the peace by giving in or avoiding conflict at any cost.

Those of us old enough to remember and we who have read about the circumstances leading up to the Second World War may recall the intense feelings about Great Britain’s Neville Chamberlain and his concessions to Nazi Germany in the 1930s. He tried to avoid war through a policy of what he regarded as rational negotiation that came to be called “appeasement.” Whatever we may think of Chamberlain’s motives and means, the word “appeasement” has become a synonym for weakness and even cowardice in international relations rather than confronting evil or injustice in the world. Of course, sadly, we realize that confronting evil and injustice, more often than we care to think, can lead to armed action.

In this Be-Attitude for Living, when Jesus said “Blessed be the peacemakers,” he did not mean peace at all costs or merely keeping the peace or appeasement or merely soothing someone’s feelings. For Jesus, making peace involved action, not passive compliance. While peacemakers may live inwardly peaceful lives, they outwardly and actively work for peace wherever there is dissension and strife. They strive to be reconcilers rather than dividers -- as much as is humanly possible. While peacemakers actively pursue the end of hostility and conflict whatever the circumstances, they often must confront and deal with difficult issues.

Peacemakers are people who respect others despite their differences and work at their relationships with others. They also recognize that the work of pursuing peace comes from an inner attitude of the heart and mind. Author Leonard Sweet tells a story about such a peacemaker:
Tom Wiles served a stint as university chaplain at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, Arizona. A few years ago, he picked me up at the Phoenix airport in his new Ford pickup and whisked me away to keynote a leadership conference at the university. Since I was still mourning the trade-in of my Dodge truck, we immediately bonded, sharing truck stories and laughing at the bumper-sticker truism: “Nothing is more beautiful than a man and his truck.”

As I climbed into his Ford Ranger for the ride back to the airport a day later, I noticed two big scrapes by the passenger door. “What happened here?” I asked.

“My neighbour’s basketball post fell and left those dents and white scars,” Tom replied with a downcast voice.

“You're kidding! How awful,” I commiserated. “This truck is so new I can smell it.”

“What's even worse is my neighbour doesn't feel responsible for the damage.”
Rising to my newfound friend's defence, I said: “Did you contact your insurance company? How are you going to get him to pay for it?”
Tom replied: “This has been a real spiritual journey for me. After a lot of soul-searching and discussions with my wife about hiring an attorney, it came down to this: I can either be in the right or I can be in a relationship with my neighbour. Since my neighbour will probably be with me longer than this truck, I decided that I'd rather be in a relationship than be right. Besides, trucks are meant to be banged up, so I got mine initiated into the real world a bit earlier than I expected.” [Leonard Sweet, Out of the Question ... Into the Mystery, Waterbrook Press, 2004), p. 91-92.]
A peacemaker is someone who is willing to be honest about the conflict. In Len Sweet’s story, Tom was honest about what happened to his truck. He didn’t try to pretend it didn’t matter. In fact, after speaking to his neighbour who took no responsibility, Tom agonized over what he felt was the right action to take. In his case, he discovered that being a peacemaker was in conflict with his rightful self-interest. He felt that working for peace was a spiritual issue that began in his spirit. Peacemaking and self-interest, especially when insisted on in the face of the self-interest of other people, cannot exist together. So peacemakers are people who face conflicting realities and even confront them but who ultimately focus on developing good relationships with others and maintaining a good relationship with God – even at a cost to themselves.

The Hebrew word for peace is shalom. Shalom means wholeness and harmony rather than strife and discord. Peace or shalom is meant to cover all aspects of life. And Jesus said those who work for shalom, who reconcile others to each other and to God “will be called children of God.” And that is what Jesus came to do for us -- to bring us peace with God and peace within. So peacemakers will be called children of God because they reflect God’s character – their Heavenly Father’s character. Peacemaking is what God loves to do for those who respond to his offer of love and forgiveness.

We are on the edge of the Christmas season. We will soon hear again from the prophet Isaiah (9:6-7) that Jesus invested his life in the life of humanity as “the Prince of Peace.” Jesus Christ was born on Earth in Bethlehem and gave his life to bring humanity shalom or peace with God – the wholeness, redemption and salvation of God. And God calls those who follow Jesus to be something like their Prince of Peace – peacemakers – in our world today. Jesus blessed all those who work for peace, calling them God’s children, because they are “doing something just like God; [and] God is always making peace” among people one with another, within people’s spirits and ultimately with God himself [Green, M. (2000). The Message of Matthew: The Kingdom of Heaven (91). Leicester, England; Downers Grove, Ill., U.S.A.: Inter-Varsity Press].

We will also soon hear the song of the angels to the shepherds on the Judean hillside in Luke 2 singing praises to God: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on Earth to those with whom God is pleased!” The Apostle Paul picked up on God’s peace when he wrote in his letter to the Colossians: “Through the Son, then, God decided to bring the whole universe back to himself. God made peace through his Son’s sacrificial death on the cross and so brought back to himself all things, both on earth and in heaven.” In other words, Jesus gave the sacrifice of his own life through his death on the cross to bring peace between God and all humanity and peace to the universe (Ephesians 2:14-18; Colossians 1:20).

Being a peacemaker may call for our ultimate sacrifice too. Today is a day of memories. We remember the sacrifices of people in the past as the Call to Worship called us to do. One of my spiritual mentors, author and speaker Brennan Manning, has a remarkable story of self-sacrifice and about how he took the name “Brennan.”
He was born Richard Francis Xavier Manning. His best friend while growing up was Ray. The two of them did everything together. They bought a car together as teenagers, they double-dated together, they went to school together. They even enlisted in the Army together and went to boot camp together and fought on the frontlines together. One night, while sitting in a foxhole, Richard was reminiscing about the old days while Ray listened and ate a chocolate bar. Suddenly, a live grenade fell into the foxhole. Ray looked at his friend, smiled, dropped his chocolate bar and threw himself on the live grenade. It exploded. Ray was killed. But Richard’s life was spared.

When Manning became a Franciscan priest, he was instructed to take on the name of a saint. He thought of his friend Ray Brennan and took the name “Brennan.” Some years later he visited Ray's mother. They sat up late one night having tea. Brennan asked her, “Do you think Ray loved me?” Ray’s mother got up off the couch, shook her finger in front of Brennan's face and shouted, “What more could he have done for you?” At that moment, Brennan said he experienced an epiphany. He imagined himself standing before the cross of Jesus wondering, Does God really love me? And he also saw Jesus’ mother, Mary, pointing to her son, asking, “What more could he have done for you?”
Jesus clearly understands the sacrifices his followers then and now would have to make in their desire and calling to be peacemakers. So on this Remembrance Day 2010, blessings on all those who have sacrificed their lives to bring us peace. But blessings, too, on those who live their ordinary lives each day seeking to be peacemakers in their home or workplace or community or nation or world or even in their church – wherever peace needs to win out over conflict. “Blessed are the peacemakers,” Jesus said, “for they shall be called children of God.”

May this be so for you and for me. Amen.

Rev. Chris Miller
November 7, 2010
Remembrance Day

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto
Download a copy of this message at our drop.io account
Visit with us online!
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , ,

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Be-Attitude Living: A Series on the Beatitudes (4) Act with Mercy

  • Matthew 5:1-12 (7) - read this text online here »
  • Matthew 18:21-36 - read this text online here »
“Blessed are those who show mercy to others, God will show mercy to them.”

In his sermon “Blessed Are the Merciful” [www.preachingtoday.com], Rev. John Koessler told a story about a mother who came to Napoleon on behalf of her son who was about to be executed. The mother asked the ruler to issue a pardon. But Napoleon pointed out it was her son’s second offence and justice demanded death.
“I don't ask for justice,” the woman replied. “I plead for mercy.”
The emperor objected, “But your son doesn't deserve mercy.”
“Sir,” the mother replied, “it would not be mercy if he deserved it, and mercy is all I ask.”
Her son was granted the pardon.
“Blessed are those who show mercy to others, God will show mercy to them.” This is Jesus’ fifth Beatitude that theologian Dale Bruner calls one of the three help Beatitudes [Matthew A Commentary Volume 1: The Christbook. Revised and Expanded Edition, p.155. Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing, Grand Rapids, Mich.]. It is called a help Beatitude because it focuses on service and love to others and requires an intentional action on the part of those who show mercy. The disciples and others who climbed the side of the mountain to spend time with Jesus would have needed to hear more than one brief statement from Jesus about mercy -- or about any of the other nine blessings for that matter. That’s one reason Matthew structured Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount the way he did. He knew Jesus’ listeners would need to hear how Jesus’ stories in the rest of the Sermon unpacked the meanings underlying the Beatitudes. They would have much to ponder and to do.

At first glance, the people listening to Jesus would understand that those who were merciful to others had some feeling of sadness and compassion for a person’s bad situation – maybe even of his or her own making -- and were trying to do something about it. Those who were merciful were being kind or forgiving or generous to such a person in serious need. Unless they were strict Pharisees, that is. In Jesus’ day, traditional pharisaic theology would have affirmed another kind of beatitude: “Happy are those who are righteous – who have cleaned up their act, who are good and have it all together -- then God will be merciful to them.” They would have had a difficult time with Jesus’ attitude and teachings that conflicted with theirs.

Mercy is mercy because it does not figure out what a person might deserve. The Oxford Canadian Dictionary says mercy is “compassion or forbearance shown to a powerless person … with no claim to kindness.” Mercy would not be mercy if it acted on what a person deserved. On the contrary, mercy allows people to make a fresh start and often involves forgiveness and the release from their indebtedness to others – perhaps even to the one showing mercy. So being merciful as Jesus teaches can be personally costly.

Let me put it this way: Mercy is good if I am the one receiving mercy! However, if I am the one required to show mercy, then there is considerably more to struggle over. That’s because, in this context, the only kind of person to whom I can show mercy is someone who clearly does not deserve it. In fact, the person may never be able to pay me back for whatever I do to show mercy. That’s why I asked John to read Jesus’ story about forgiveness and the servant who would not forgive in Matthew 18. The story is about a king whose servant owed him an impossibly large sum of money – millions or billions or even zillions of dollars, as one commentator suggested. When the king called in the debt, the servant begged for patience. He asked the king to give him a chance to pay it all back. This desperate request was as impossible as the debt itself because it would have taken several lifetimes to repay the amount he owed! Of course, the king knew the servant's situation was hopeless. So what did the king do? Instead of giving the servant more time to repay or making him pay for the debt with his life – which he could have done with all justice -- the king showed great mercy and cancelled the entire debt. 

But that’s not the end of the story. We wish it were. No sooner did the servant leave the king he found a fellow servant who owed him a relatively small debt compared to what he had owed the king. The servant grabbed him by the throat. “Pay up! Now!” he demanded.

His poor fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, “Give me a chance and I’ll pay it all back.” Did you notice these were the very words the first servant had used with the king when he pleaded for more time to pay back his impossibly large debt? But the irony was lost on him. So he had his colleague thrown into jail.

Jesus then said: “When the other servants saw this going on, they were outraged and brought a detailed report to the king. The king summoned the man and said, ‘You evil servant! I forgave your entire debt when you begged me for mercy. Shouldn’t you be compelled to be merciful to your fellow servant who asked for mercy?’”

You would think so, wouldn’t you? But you and I also know differently, don’t we? Acting with mercy toward someone who has slighted or offended us is not easy, is it? Forgiving someone who has hurt us or said something behind our backs is not easy, is it? Being generous toward someone who has taken advantage of us or been mean to us in some way is not easy, is it? But when we listen to Jesus, we are faced with the fact of acting intentionally with mercy toward such people. Otherwise, we are in difficulty with God. James, the half-brother of Jesus, told us clearly in James 2:12, 13 [GNT]: “Speak and act as people who will be judged by the law [of mercy] that sets us free.” (We are to love our neighbour as ourselves -- even the undeserving neighbour.) “For God will not show mercy when he judges the person who has not been merciful; but mercy triumphs over judgement.”

What would persuade us to be merciful – to act with mercy to someone who does not deserve mercy? Is not what persuades us found in our inner being, in our hearts, because we have responded to God’s remarkable grace and costly forgiveness of us -- we who are entirely undeserving of God’s love of us? William Shakespeare had a well-developed sense of biblical themes and their application to our lives. Showing mercy was one of them. You might recall the familiar quotation from The Merchant of Venice when Portia asked Shylock to show mercy.
He said,
“On what compulsion, must I?”
She responded:
“The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute of God himself;
And earthly power doth then show like God's
When mercy seasons justice.”
What compels us to show mercy – to act intentionally with kindness, compassion, forgiveness and generosity -- toward someone who deserves to be dealt with differently? It is, first of all, having a heart out of which mercy flows. Twice in Matthew’s Gospel [9:13, 12:17], Jesus quoted from Hosea 6:6 where God said, “I want mercy and not sacrifice.” Religious sacrifices and rituals can be done casually, by habit, with little thought or meaning or personal consequences in our behaviour. But mercy calls for our intentional compassionate identification with others. My theologian friend Dale Bruner observes that God’s call for mercy in Hosea is the Old Testament equivalent of the New Testament’s golden rule: “Do for others what you want them to do for you: this is the meaning of the Law of Moses and of the teachings of the prophets.” And it was Jesus who said these words in Matthew 7:12. So for Jesus, a fundamental priority in Be-Attitude Living is showing mercy graciously to those who do not deserve mercy [Matthew A Commentary Volume 1: The Christbook. Revised and Expanded Edition, p. 421. Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing, Grand Rapids, Mich.].

Saint Augustine, who is accepted by most scholars as the most important figure in the ancient Western Church, said that those who act with mercy are also those who “come to the aid of the needy.” Ambrose, another theologian and church leader in the fourth century wrote: “There is your brother, naked and crying! And you stand confused over the choice of an attractive floor covering.” (As true in the fourth century as in the 21st century!)

In his book The Best Kept Secret of Christian Mission [Zondervan, 2010, pp. 97-98], author John Dickson writes about Tim Winton, Australia's most celebrated novelist and also well-known for his Christian faith. Winton was interviewed on a television show and asked about the time a stranger visited his family. That visit profoundly affected young Tim as well as the rest of his family. Dickson sums up Winton's response:
Tim Winton [told] how his father, a policeman, had been in a terrible accident in the mid-1960s, knocked off his motorcycle by a drunk driver. After weeks in a coma, he was allowed home. [Winton said], “[My father] was like an earlier version of my father, a sort of augmented version of my father. He was sort of recognizable, but not totally my dad.… Everything was busted up and they put him in the chair.… I was terrified.”

Winton's father was a big man and Mrs. Winton had a great deal [of trouble] bathing him each day. There was nothing that Tim, five-years-old at the time, could do to help. News of the family's situation got out into the local community and shortly afterward, Winton recalls, there was a knock at the door. “Oh, g'day. My name's Len,” said the stranger to Mrs. Winton. … “I heard your hubby's [not well]. Anything I can do?” Len Thomas was from the local church, Winton explained. This man had heard about the family's difficulties and wanted to help.

”He just showed up,” [Winton said], “and he used to carry my dad from the bed and put him in the bath and he used to bathe him -- which in the 1960s, in Perth, in the suburbs, was not the sort of thing you saw every day.” 
According to Winton, this simple act of kindness from a single Christian had a powerful effect. “It really touched me in that, regardless of theology or anything else, watching a grown man bother, for nothing, to show up and wash a sick man -- you know, it really affected me.”
Jesus says those who show mercy to others will be blessed by God. So we rightly ask the question: When will God show mercy? There are at least three answers we can give because of what we know from the Scripture. First, God has already shown his mercy to the world in Jesus’ death on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins. We hear this often, I know. But underlying the seventy times seven forgiveness theme that Jesus prefaced his story about the king and the unforgiving servant with is the costly and generous and amazing mercy of God in Jesus. And Jesus did that for all humanity.

Second, those who act with mercy toward others will themselves be treated with mercy in the future on God’s final Day of Judgment. Mercy and forgiveness are not meant to be withheld but to be passed on to others. So God promises he will be merciful and forgiving to those who intentionally act with mercy to others who do not deserve mercy -- any more than we do. But where forgiveness and mercy and kindness are not passed on to others, there is judgment.

There is also a third sense of when God shows mercy. It is included in today’s Call to Worship. God said to our spiritual ancestor, Moses: “I am God, the God of mercy and grace, endlessly patient with so much love and forgiveness for you.” And as the Words of Assurance of God’s Forgiving Love reminded us this morning, adapted from Psalm 103: “God is sheer mercy and grace and not easily angered. God is rich in astonishing love. God doesn’t treat us as our sins deserve. As far as sunrise is from sunset, God has separated us from our sins.” I like the way Canon Michael Green expressed when God shows his mercy to us in his commentary on Matthew’s Gospel [Green, M. (2000). The Message of Matthew: The Kingdom of Heaven (90). Leicester, England; Downers Grove, Ill., U.S.A., Inter-Varsity Press]:

“[Those who are merciful to others] have tasted the sheer mercy of God who received them into the kingdom. They have come to share that quality of divine love. And they will be shown mercy throughout their lives and at the Day of Judgment.”

May this be so for you and for me.

Rev. Chris Miller
October 31, 2010

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto
Download a copy of this message at our drop.io account
Visit with us online!
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)