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
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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
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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
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