Pastor's Message

A Celebration of Mutual Ministry: My Prayer for You!

2011-06-12T10:30:00.002-04:00

Philippians 1:3-11 - read this passage online here »

Opening Prayer: Gracious God, this morning I ask you to hold my words and all of our thoughts in your heart with loving compassion and care, knowing who we are and where we are on our life’s journey. I pray in the name of Jesus Christ, the Lord and Saviour of all. Amen.

I am very grateful and thankful to God this morning for God’s grace and mercy that has allowed me to come to this time in my ministry and service. I am also very grateful and thankful to God today for our mutual ministry together in this time and place. Many years ago, I asked God for a group of people I might be part of and love in the name of Jesus Christ. I believe God answered that prayer five years ago when we began this journey of mutual ministry here at OYM. For those who are visiting friends today, OYM is our affectionate name for Oriole York Mills United Church. So I am here this morning with a heart filled with joy and gladness because of our ministry together. And a heart filled with love for you because of our friendships over these years.

I also believe that any growth we have experienced of our faith in God and in caring for one another and for our neighbours is the result of God doing his good work in us as individuals and among us as Christ’s church in this place for the love of neighbours both nearby and farther away. When we become disciples or students of Jesus and cooperate with God in sharing the word of the gospel of Christ and in doing the work of the kingdom of God in showing love, mercy, hope and justice for all humanity, I believe God will continue that good work in us and through us.

Today is a celebration. We celebrate one another in many ways. Today we celebrated the children and youth in “Sunday’s Cool.” So I commend to you the work of Sunday’s Cool (our Sunday school) under the direction of Carol MacLean and her dedicated team. We will also celebrate Holy Communion -- where Jesus invites every one of us to remember his love for us and for all humanity, to remember his death on the cross in order to accomplish the final defeat of all that separates us from God’s presence. So I commend to you the ministry and service and sacrificial love of Jesus for all humanity.

Actually, every Sunday is really another time and another opportunity to celebrate the presence of God among us, to renew our response to God’s loving embrace and to recommit ourselves to our mutual ministry and service to one another, to our community and to the world. So, my friends, as your pastor for these past five years, I want to celebrate our mutual ministry as our time together comes to a natural close. I have patterned my message after Paul’s prayer for the Philippians. He says he loved those people with the love of Jesus Christ. And I hope you experienced a similar love in our times together as pastor and people of God.

I pray that your love for God and for your neighbour will flourish. May your love be overflowing – a love that does not retreat in the face of adversity but advances and becomes even stronger in endurance, character, joy, hope and with even more love.

If I had my ministry to do over, what would I do differently to allow God’s love to grow and flourish more and more within me? I would trust God more! I would trust God more! I would open my life to God’s challenging yet compassionate presence more and more so that fear of risk and failure or even success in my life and ministry -- which really is a lack of trust --would fade into the background more and more.

When we were children, we were often afraid of things that go bump in the night. By the time we were teenagers we were not usually afraid of what might live under our beds. But we may well have been afraid of what our friends would say about the way we combed our hair or how we dressed.

What do I fear now? To put it simply, I do not want to live a life that does not matter. I do not want to leave the world exactly as I found it, no different for my having been here. There are some things that can have an impact now and also eternal value and consequences in God’s eyes. Acts of justice, mercy, forgiveness, compassion and grace are merely a few mentioned over and over again in both the Old and New Testaments. If I want my life to count, to be significant, then I will try to live my life God’s way as much as possible with these attitudes and actions.

I pray that your love for God and for your neighbour will flourish – and be real! As many of you know, one of my favourite paraphrases of the Bible is The Message, which puts part of the passage from Philippians 1 this way:

“You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush.”

The Good News Bible has:

“I pray that your love will keep on growing more and more, together with true knowledge and perfect judgement, so that you will be able to choose what is best.”

So my prayer for you, then, is that your love for God and for your neighbour will grow and flourish with true knowledge and with discerning judgment.

How does the love of God grow or flourish with knowledge in a disciple or student of Jesus? There is a beginning to every person’s spiritual journey. Some can tell you the date and time while others are not as clear about the beginning of their intentional spiritual journey to follow Jesus -- but they know they are clearly on that journey now with God in Jesus Christ. And everyone on the journey knows something else: they may have started on their journey but there is still a long way to go and grow. There is still more to understand and know. And with the Holy Spirit’s help, there is still more for us to do in being God’s loving people in the world. That is why we take the Christian Scriptures seriously. We need to know God’s ways and to discern God’s living word – Jesus – and his kingdom mission for the world in the written word of the Bible.

Let me illustrate the beginning and the life-long growth in knowledge of God with this true story:

A little girl in England, Josie Caven, was born profoundly deaf. Growing up, she often felt isolated because of her inability to hear. But that changed after receiving a cochlear implant [in her ear]. At the age of 12, she heard clearly for the first time. The first sound she heard was the song “Jingle Bells” coming from the radio.

Was Josie's hearing restored? Yes -- completely. Was she hearing well immediately? Not exactly. Her mother said: “She is having to learn what each new sound is and what it means. She will ask, ‘Was that a door closing?’ She has realized for the first time that the light in her room hums when it is switched on. She even knows what her name sounds like now, because [at first] she could not hear the soft 'S' sound in the middle of [Josie]. Seeing her face light up as she hears everything around her is all I could have wished for,” her mother said.” [“Christmas Carols Music to the Ears of Deaf Girl,” Yorkshireposttoday.com, December 21, 2005]

Josie's hearing was restored. But that restoration introduced her to a daily adventure of learning to distinguish each new sound in the hearing world. She could hear, but there was still much to learn. In a kind of similar way, as students of Jesus, we have only begun to love. As students of Jesus, we have only begun to know and to discern. As students of Jesus, we know there is so much more love for us to learn and to give.

So how do we discern God’s way or the way of love or “choose what is best,” as the Good News Bible puts it, for every situation in our lives? There is, of course, no definite rule in the Bible for every circumstance in life. But as a commentator in The Yale Anchor Bible observes, “A loving heart instinctively senses what to do.” [Reumann, J. (2008). Philippians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (126). New Haven; London: Yale University Press.]

I have been friends with Bob for more than 40 years. He is struggling now with inoperable cancer. Bob wrote the following in his blog and titled the post “What’s Fair?”

“A couple of times the thought has come that what I'm experiencing is ‘not fair.’ But when I analyze the thought (or take it captive to use a biblical image), what I'm really feeling is that I deserve better than this and, moreover, God owes me something better than I've been given. [This thinking] robs me of peace and joy and makes me quite dissatisfied. It amazes me [however] how quickly my thoughts will change if I return to a core belief that I have; namely, that God is good and completely trustworthy in how he treats me in life. This quickly leads me to consider a posture of thankfulness and, soon, I'm no longer thinking things aren't fair.

[He also wrote,] “On another level, though, it isn't fair. This isn't what God had planned for us and, deep within, we know or sense this somehow. Our whole world -- despite all its beauty -- is broken, sick and 'fallen.' And I, along with many who suffer, protest against the effects of sin on God's design. I look forward to the day when all will be set right and all will be ‘fair,’ if we want to use that language.”

Bob is a disciple of Jesus who knows God and loves God deeply. He knows that God is good and completely trustworthy for every situation in his life.

I also pray this morning that your lives will flourish with the character qualities produced in your life by the Holy Spirit because of your loving connection with Jesus Christ. Those qualities are significant. Because the way we live our lives before God with each other and in our society matters greatly to God. The way we forgive one another and seek to restore relationships. The ways we care for each other when we are in need or brokenhearted or troubled. The ways we act justly in our society for those who are poor, treated unfairly, in trouble or regarded as outcasts. For the way we live is grounded in our love for God and for our neighbour. As disciples – as students – as followers of Jesus, we should be known for being generous, compassionate, dedicated to justice, hopeful and committed to truth.

And I also pray that your lives will flourish to the glory and praise of God.
A wise person once said:

“Preparation for old age should begin not later than one's teens. A life that is empty of purpose until 65 will not suddenly become filled on retirement.”

So my prayer includes a longing that everyone here will experience a God-filled life of purpose -- an ever-maturing knowledge and experience of God, an ever-deepening life of love for God, and an ever-growing character that becomes more and more like Jesus Christ.

And, my friends, what I pray for you, I also pray for myself.

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

Rev. Chris Miller
“Retirement” Message
June 12, 2011

oympastor@rogers.com

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto

Visit with us online!

Come and Drink! Go and Pour!

2011-05-22T10:30:00.001-04:00

John 7:37-44 - read this passage online here »

The text for this morning’s message is from John’s Gospel, Chapter 7, verses 37, 38 and 39:

On the last and most important day of the festival, Jesus stood up and said in a loud voice: “Whoever is thirsty should come to me, and whoever believes in me should drink. As the scripture says, ‘Streams of life-giving water will pour out from [within].’” Jesus said this about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were going to receive. At that time, the Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus had not been raised to glory.

Some images are quite appealing. This is one of those. Most people, I imagine, would like their hearts to be like a deep mountain spring overflowing with rivers of life-giving, thirst-quenching water. Even before we have a clear idea of what this image is referring to, we yearn for it. We yearn for it because it implies fullness and completeness to the point of overflowing. Because it implies sweet coolness and refreshment. Because it implies moisture, not dryness; growth, not decay; and life, not death.

But we will miss the point if we merely respond to Jesus as a poet who knows how to make us feel good with beautiful words and positive images. Because these very moving words refer to something real and true. These words are not meant to make us feel good because of their beauty and natural associations; they are meant to put us in touch with something hopeful – actually, Someone powerful and real. Jesus is offering to connect us with his life-giving Spirit.

Last week my wife, Marg, titled her message “Why I DO believe in God.” Here is my extension of her meditation: Jesus stands up in the middle of our feasts – our religious festivals, our church services – and cries out to us through his Spirit too, as he did 2,000 years ago, that he has come to satisfy our deepest thirsts and longings for a life of fullness, wholeness and love. Jesus has come to satisfy our deepest thirst and longing for the very presence of the life-giving, loving, living God. His invitation includes a promise: if we come to him, he satisfies our thirsty hearts. That’s the “Come and Drink” part in the message title.

Two years ago, I spoke about Jesus as one who is worth following in our time. Not only does he satisfy our own thirst but he also pours into us a deep desire and compassionate need to care for one another – to care for a hurting and broken humanity. That’s the “Go and Pour” part in the message title. As believers in the Risen Christ, we not only drink the living water of life but we also become channels of that same living water in order to bless a thirsty world.

In the midst of all the distractions and other noises around us, we, too, are invited by Jesus – “in a loud voice,” the Scripture says -- to come and drink. The invitation is universal. There are no ethnic, cultural, intellectual, gender or social qualifications for drinking at Jesus' fountain. The invitation goes out to everyone, everywhere. No one is excluded. Anyone, anywhere, has a personal invitation from Jesus himself to come to him and drink. There is, however, one condition: we have to be thirsty. An obvious condition, you would think! We are not likely to want to drink unless we are thirsty. But, we might ask, thirsty for what? What do we really desire?

I believe all people thirst. But – and this is the decisive point of the issue -- not all realize and understand that the thirst deep down within them for all that is good is ultimately a thirst for the living God. We are the only species of God's creation afflicted and blessed with chronic longing. Dolphins seem content to frolic in the sea. Cats seem content to lie in the sun. Frogs seem happily content to bump on their bellies from lily pad to lily pad. But human beings are not content. We are afflicted with chronic restlessness. Some even fight without success against an epidemic of personal boredom. Fad after fad, fashion after fashion, and challenge after challenge – all leave us still thirsty in the end. Why? I wonder if our chronic thirst is really a hidden blessing. I wonder if our thirst is one of the ways God nudges us to seek him.

But I don’t find this matter of conveying thirst easy. How do I encourage people to be aware of their thirst – and not to ignore it or seek to quench their thirst with what does not truly refresh or satisfy their thirst?

A man once talked to a minister, asking for some bullet points on Christianity to help him make sense of the dinner conversations he was having with his wife, a new believer in the faith. The man made it clear he was very busy, very successful, and he didn't really have time to study her beliefs. So, just the Christian faith in point form, please!

The minister observed it would have been easy to hand him a book or pamphlet. (That can be helpful sometimes.) But instead, he said, “I can see you are a very busy, very successful person, so I don't think this is a good idea.”

“Why not?” the man asked, frustrated at the response.

I like what the minister said next: “Because, if I were to give you the bullet points, and you were to really understand them, they have a way of working into a person's life so significantly that your life could really get messed up. You would have to rethink the meaning of success, of time, of family … of everything, really. I don't think you really want to do that, do you?”

Here was the minister’s effort to raise the man’s thirst by not giving him quick and easy answers.

Are you thirsty for the things of God? This is a simple question from your pastor who cares for your soul. Only you carry the answer in your heart.

If we are thirsty, then what does it mean to come and drink? Jesus is not with us in a visible or tangible way today. So we know he cannot be approached in the same way his followers did when he was with them in the early first century. But even in that time, our text indicates that coming to Jesus was more than simply hearing his teachings and even acting on them. (Although you and I know that coming to him includes learning what he taught and obeying him.) Coming to Jesus Christ also involves an act of the heart – that place inside us where we live with our conscience and soul. That place inside us where dreams and hopes and plans grow that affect our character and our actions and the rest of our life. Our heart is the centre not only of spiritual activity but also the centre of all the operations of our human existence.

What might this movement of the heart – this coming and drinking with our soul -- look like?

I remember the first time I travelled at night in northern Saskatchewan and saw the Aurora Borealis -- the Northern Lights. I stepped out of the car and “drank in” that awesome glow of colourful lights in the clear night sky. What do we mean when we talk about standing before a scene of beauty and drinking it in? We mean, don’t we, that we have put ourselves in a position not only to behold the beauty but also to intentionally enjoy it. In effect, we have said “Yes” to all that it is. We do not disregard or dispute or debate the beauty or call it unreal. We affirm its worth enthusiastically and with awe and we let ourselves enjoy it all – even to be affected by it because we trust its beauty for our good. In that sense, we “drink” in the scene.

I wonder: is it not something like that with Jesus? We first put ourselves in a position to behold him as clearly as we can. One way we do this is through the words of Scripture -- when we read the Bible ourselves. When we hear God’s Word proclaimed in a sermon. When we sing God’s Word in a hymn. When we see God’s Word in action in someone’s life. Earlier in John, Chapter 6, verse 63, Jesus said,

“What gives life is God’s Spirit; human power is of no use at all. The words I have spoken to you bring God’s life-giving Spirit.”

We meet the life-giving Jesus in his words. And when he calls us to come and drink the living water from him, we respond – or not -- to his words. When we read his words with thoughtfulness and love in response, we say “Yes” to all that it is. We affirm the worth of the One – Jesus – who spoke. We give ourselves to Jesus Christ unreservedly and open ourselves to be affected by him because we trust him and his words for our good. We rest in the confidence that here is truth that will not leave us empty!

In one edition of the devotional booklet Our Daily Bread, the writer put it this way:

“Lord, I crawled across the bareness to you with my empty cup, uncertain in asking for any small drop of refreshment. If only I had known you better, I'd have come running with a bucket.”

What Jesus means by drinking is the same thing he means by believing or trusting. After he says, “Come to me and drink,” in verse 37, he immediately says, “Whoever believes in me.” So the essence of drinking in the words of Jesus is trusting him -- banking on him and on what he says with our very life. And the reverse is true too. The essence of believing in Jesus is finding in him the satisfaction of our deepest soul-thirst. Drinking is believing; believing is also drinking.

But the passage in John says more.

“If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his [or her] heart shall flow rivers of living water.’”

What does Jesus mean? The promise is not only that we will be satisfied but that we will be satisfying to other people. Jesus promises not only that our cup will be full but also that it will be overflowing for the good of others. In drinking from Jesus, we become not merely a receptacle that receives but, at the urging of his Spirit who fills us within, we will become a spring or a fountain that gives out. Jesus promises that if we drink him into our hearts, he will flow out from us through the Holy Spirit with rivers of living water for others who are thirsty too. I find that remarkably humbling and challenging!

I have discovered that I am blessed when I drink the refreshing and thirst-quenching words of Jesus. I am also most blessed – and most satisfied – when my experience aligns with the Scripture from the Book of Acts, chapter 20, verse 35, which says: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” There is a wonderful sense of blessing that happens because of giving to others. I have also discovered that the overflow of my heart for the good of others is an essential part of my contentment. My deepest soul-thirst is not simply to be a receptacle but also to be a river – to be a channel of blessing for others.

When we drink of the water Jesus gives, we are also drinking the water of the Holy Spirit – the water of eternal life in God. The Holy Spirit is the unseen yet all-pervasive presence of the living God in the lives of those who believe in him, love him and obey him [John 14]. When Jesus shouts out his invitation to anyone who wants to have the water of life bubbling inside them and flowing out to the world around, Jesus is talking about the Holy Spirit as that water of life. Jesus is promising, for anyone who believes in him, that the Holy Spirit, God’s refreshing personal presence, will come to live within. Do you sense God’s Holy Spirit within your heart and soul?

A minister friend calls the Holy Spirit “the gracious and quiet Helper.” He writes about how the Holy Spirit is with us and quietly helps us in the following ways:

in the sincere concern of a friend for our health,
in those who take a stand against injustice,
in the grace of folk who go the second mile,
in the inner resources we discover in times of crisis,
in those who dare to go against the tide of popular opinion.

The Holy Spirit is with us and quietly helps us

in the grace that enables us to admit when we are wrong,
in the resilience of people who fight for the rights of others,
in those who surrender some of their rights for the larger good,
in times when we share the Gospel despite our inadequacy,
in taking on responsibilities that we once thought beyond us.

The Holy Spirit is with us and quietly helps us

in refusing to let the greed of society take over our soul,
in giving thanks always, even through the hard times of life,
in rising above past failures and putting past hurts behind us,
in finding a central core of peace in the midst of turmoil,
in daring to laugh in situations where some would curse.

The Holy Spirit is with us and quietly helps us

in knowing ourselves to be children of God,
in knowing ourselves loved [by God], even when we have been very unlovable.

This Holy Spirit is real, life-giving and personal. The Holy Spirit is the unseen presence of God, of the resurrected and ascended Jesus, with us and within us. And John wants us to understand that the coming of the Holy Spirit to the Church happened after Jesus was “glorified.” A strange word to us, perhaps. But it refers, first, to Jesus’ crucifixion -- his moment of true glory. For only through Jesus’ death on the cross for the sins of the world can we be forgiven and our human hearts be made clean and fit for the Holy Spirit to live in as Jesus promised. And only then can the Holy Spirit fill us to overflowing in the way God longs to do for our own blessing and for us to be a blessing for others whom God also loves so dearly. Jesus being glorified also carries the meaning of his ascension to be with his Father. It was only when Jesus went to be with his Father that the Holy Spirit came to live within those who believe and love God.

A few years ago, a teacher asked her fourth-grade students to name the person they considered the greatest person alive in the world today. Their responses were varied and interesting.

One boy said, “I think it’s Joe Montana because he led the 49ers to all those Super Bowl wins.” A girl said, “The President.” And another girl named Oprah. On and on it went with the students mentioning a wide variety of celebrities.

But then it was Donnie's turn. Without hesitation Donnie said, “I think it's Jesus Christ because He loves everybody and is always ready to help them.”

The teacher smiled and said: “Well, I certainly like your answer, Donnie, because I'm a Christian too and I also admire Jesus very much. But there's one slight problem. I said the greatest living person and, of course, Jesus lived and died almost two thousand years ago. Do you have another name in mind?”

I love Donnie’s simple, innocent, confident, wide-eyed response. He said, “Oh, no, Mrs. Thompson, that's not right at all. Jesus Christ is alive! He lives in me right now!”

That's the good news of our faith! That’s the truth of our message! Jesus is alive! The living God is with us right now in the person of the Holy Spirit, working from the inside out and giving us the true water of life that truly satisfies us and flows through us like rivers of living water. Through the life-giving presence of the Holy Spirit, the Risen Christ does quench the thirsty hearts of those who come to him, believe in him and drink. And through the life-producing presence of the Holy Spirit, the Risen Christ makes his people a channel of blessing as we go and pour out our lives in love for the world God so loves.

May this blessing of the life-giving, thirst-quenching water of the Holy Spirit’s presence be so for you and for me. Amen.

Rev. Chris Miller
May 22, 2011

oympastor@rogers.com

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto

Visit with us online!

Why I DO Believe in God!

2011-05-15T10:30:00.075-04:00

Life Is a Long-Distance Run: “Run Your Race With Endurance”

Psalm 19 - read this passage online here »
Philippians 2:5-11 - read this passage online here »

An increasing number of books, articles, interviews and statements from people eager to say they do not believe in God prompted me to set down (briefly) four reasons why I do believe in God!

First, I believe in God when I look at creation.
Every morning I turn up a page on my computer from NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I look at the Astronomy Picture of the Day and try to understand the astronomer’s explanation! The vastness of the still-expanding universe boggles my mind! So too the magnificent grandeur and microscopic complexity of the Earth. Geological formations, lavish vegetation of beauty and flavour, animal life and human beings. The observable order and delicate balance that make life possible. The human body – and DNA, all three billion “letters” of the human genetic code. It seems obvious and logical that the universe cannot have evolved by random chance without a Designer and Maker. However God did this, there has to be an intelligent Designer. There has to be a powerful Maker of the heavens and the Earth who initiated the Big Bang science points to, who created dependable natural laws allowing for scientific investigation and conclusions, who planned things to work with intricate precision. As minister and author Robert Morgan wrote, “We’re not accidental blobs of dying chemicals mysteriously evolving from primordial sludge without purpose or meaning.” Even Antony Flew, a world-renowned philosopher and atheist whom people of my generation studied and discussed, came to that conclusion. For years he relished publicly debunking the existence of God. But eventually he “followed the evidence” honestly and came to believe there has to be a God who designed and created the universe. In 2007 he wrote the book There Is a God with the publisher’s subtitle How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind.

Looking at the world of nature helped author Philip Yancey change his perception of God. The strikingly beautiful desert wildflowers, the vibrantly colourful tropical fish and some of the comical creatures God created corrected his misconception of God as a “frowning Supercop.” “I began to see God as a whimsical artist,” he writes. I, too, smile with delight and awe at God’s creation. The animals show God’s love of diversity and fun. There are animals that are beautiful and odd, great and small, agile and lum-ber-ing, serene and frenetic! Some have fantastically long necks or long noses or long beaks or long tongues or long legs (or lots of legs)! But these beautiful and odd amazing creatures are all suited to contribute to and enjoy the Earth by God’s creative power and genius! They give evidence, Yancey says, that “The heart of the universe is a smile not a frown!”

So I believe in God for the same reason King David said in Psalm 19: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” And so does the extraordinary beauty and complexity of the Earth. All give clear, convincing evidence of a great and good Creator. And everyone on Earth can know this. Romans 1:19-20 states: “What may be known about God is plain to [people], because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.”

Second, I believe in God from studying the Bible.
After reading the Bible for many years and reflecting on what it says, I find it filled with realism and the ring of truth. Theologian John Stott writes: “Scripture is equally the Word of God and the words of human beings. Better, it is the Word of God through the words of human beings.” And that is how Jesus regarded Scripture.

Ancient historian Paul Maier at Western Michigan University says the Bible is unique among the books of all other religions because of its “solid historical base.” Its 66 books were written by more than 40 authors over 1,600 years, yet it has amazing unity. And when the Bible is examined like any other ancient historical document, the majority of scholars regard it as reliable and reporting the truth. Besides, the Bible is a historical record of God interacting with real people at specified times and places. So its documented events can be investigated. And over the past 100 years or so, much has been verified by archaeology. This gives me confidence in what the Bible states about God, about humanity and about Jesus. So I believe in the God who reveals himself in the Old and New Testaments as awesomely great and powerful, totally holy and good, amazingly gracious and compassionate, wonderfully loving and forgiving because there is convincing historical evidence that what the Bible states is true.

I have also found, again like King David in Psalm 19, that reading the Scripture every day “refreshes the soul,” “makes wise [or “wiser” at least!] the simple,” “gives joy to the heart,” “gives light to the eyes”! And God’s word, David said, is “sure,” “true,” “righteous,” “more precious than gold,” “sweeter than honey.”

So I believe in God from studying the Bible. And I find the Bible relevant to all situations of my life – the good, the bad and the ugly. Like Asaph, author of Psalm 73. There was a time in his life when he seemed to face a new problem every morning – “punishment” from God, he mistakenly thought at first. He says he almost lost his faith. But although he was confused, full of doubt and even bitter, he kept talking to God and listening for God. The psalm does not say God solved all his problems, but Asaph came to revel in his discovery that the God who created the universe and spoke through the Scripture was “near” him. He said: “As for me, it is good to be near God. I have made the Lord God my refuge.” I have too – and have sensed God near me and holding me in some difficult times.

Third, I believe in God after considering who Jesus is.
In 2010 we had a wall calendar called Bible Tails (t-a-i-l-s). It’s about things in the Bible from the animals’ perspectives! The cartoons made me smile or laugh out loud! But one made me sad. June showed a mother fish out for a swim with her seven little ones. Suddenly, one youngster looks up and shouts: “MOM! That man is walking on water!” Mom’s response? “That’s nice, dear.”

For many people today, Jesus is a nice man to be admired but no one to be really excited about. But the Jesus I read about in the Bible and believe in is someone to be very excited about. And I have to consider seriously how I respond to him. Like everyone else, I must answer the question Jesus asked his disciples: “Who do you say I am?”

C. S. Lewis suggested three alternatives. He said Jesus is either the Lord, or he was a liar or he was a lunatic. Jesus, a liar? when his teaching and life give evidence of such genuine integrity? Jesus, a lunatic? Yet listen to some of the astonishing claims Jesus made about himself:

Jesus said he existed before Abraham and before the world was created.
He said no one has seen God except him.
Jesus said he is the only way to God.
He said “the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms” all speak of him.
Jesus said, “I am the light of the world!”
Jesus said he has “all authority” in Heaven and on Earth.
He said whoever has seen him has seen God for he and God are one. (And people then understood his meaning. They replied, “You, though only a human being, are making yourself God!”)
Jesus told people to honour him as they honour God, and he let people worship him.
He said whoever believes in him believes in God and whoever rejects him rejects God.
Jesus rose from the dead with flesh and bones, demonstrating this by eating broiled fish and inviting people to touch him.
He included himself in the Triune revelation of God, telling his followers to baptize people of all nations “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
Jesus said he will raise people from the dead to new life forever with God.
And Jesus said he will come again in all his greatness and he will judge the whole world, deciding everyone’s eternal destiny – he said his judgment will be right and fair.

That is some of what Jesus said about himself! Bono, of the rock music group U2, understood the implications. He said either Jesus is who he said he is or Jesus was “a complete nutcase.” So, was Jesus seriously delusional? Or was Jesus a fraud? Or is Jesus the Lord God revealing himself in human form? This is what the worldwide Church and most biblical scholars still teach about Jesus: Jesus did say these things about himself and Jesus is God seen in human form! As Philippians 2 states, Jesus is “in very nature God” before whom “every knee [will] bow” one day.

So I believe in God because Jesus did. And I stand in awe of who Jesus is because I believe the ancient eyewitness documents of Jesus’ life that are regarded as truthful and accurate by most scholars. And I believe in Jesus’ bodily resurrection from the dead because the evidence is so convincing – even for some authors who originally set out to disprove his physical resurrection!

The universal hope for life after death could be regarded as only a sentimental hope were it not for Jesus’ resurrection. The reality is, Jesus’ resurrection gives humanity our only substantiated hope for life after death in real, recognizable, transformed bodies. To religious sceptics 2,000 years ago, Jesus clearly stated there is real resurrection life for us [Matthew 22:23-33, Mark 12:18-27, Luke 20:27-38]! And when Lazarus died, Jesus said to Martha [John 11:1-44]: “I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live even though they die … Do you believe this?” I join Martha saying, “Yes, Lord, I believe!”

Fourth, I believe in God because I am experiencing God!
Having a relationship with God was not something I expected. For years, I believed my standing before God had changed when I accepted Jesus’ death on the cross for my sin: I was forgiven! But I did not seek a more personal relationship with God because I did not think more was possible. Then about 13 years ago, I became starving hungry and thirsty to know God better. And about 10 years ago, I was surprised to begin enjoying God in very personal ways! I have experienced Jesus’ promises [John 14:15-27, Revelation 3:20]: to reveal himself to us personally, to be with us as our helper through the Holy Spirit and even to be our friend when we invite him, believe in him, love him and obey what he says (in the Scripture). William Barclay wrote: “God’s voice comes to those who listen for it.” And Our Daily Bread: “God speaks to those who take time to listen.” Most often I hear God’s voice in the Bible – in helpful timely Scripture passages and in amazing converging passages. But God’s voice comes to me in other ways too. And I record it all in my journal. So I believe in God because God keeps convincing me he exists!

Do I ever have doubts? Sure! Author and minister Frederick Buechner says: “Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep [faith] awake and moving.” How? When a doubt catches me off guard, I don’t want to wallow in doubt; instead, I rethink the evidence, and my faith is refreshed. I DO believe in God (1) because the heavens and the Earth need a Designer and Maker, (2) because the Bible has proved reliable historically and personally, (3) because what Jesus said about himself and about God and what the eyewitnesses wrote about him all ring true and (4) because I am experiencing a relationship with God. So what does this mean for my life?

I have a few books by Alister McGrath, former professor at Oxford University, now chair of theology, religion and culture at King’s College, London. McGrath also has a background in molecular biology and has debated well-known atheists about the existence of God. One of his books is entitled What Was God Doing on the Cross? What was God doing on the Cross? It leaves me absolutely stunned that God the Creator loves humanity so much God himself in Jesus died on the cross to forgive our sins! And in Isaiah 43:25, God says he forgives us “for [his] own sake”! Astounding!

So I do believe in God and I also love God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength. Not merely because this is “the first and greatest commandment,” as Jesus said [Matthew 22: 34-40, Mark 12:28-34], but because the better I get to know God the more I want to love God with my whole being!

With all the loud talk these days from people who are eager to say they do not believe in God, do we give much intentional thought to God and to why we do believe in God? If God does exist, we need to seek the truth about God because the truth about God matters. If God does exist, God is too important to virtually ignore in our daily lives, or treat casually or take for granted. If God does exist, we need to respect God seriously, listen to God carefully and respond to God wholeheartedly, with reverent and joyful faith and worship. And If God does exist and did reveal himself in Jesus, what more could Almighty God have done to show how much he loves us?

And us? How much do we love God?

Margaret Miller,
May 15, 2011

oympastor@rogers.com

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto

Visit with us online!

Life Is a Long-Distance Run: “Run Your Race With Endurance”

2011-05-01T10:30:00.003-04:00

Life Is a Long-Distance Run: “Run Your Race With Endurance”

Hebrews 11:1-6, 12:1-3 - read this passage online here »

What does it mean to run the race of our lives with endurance, with determination, with perseverance? Here is one way:

Two frogs fell into a can of cream,
Or so I’ve heard it told.
The sides of the can were shiny and steep,
The cream was deep and cold.
“Oh, what’s the use?” croaked number one.
“’Tis fate, no help’s around.
Goodbye, my friend! Goodbye, sad world!”
And weeping still, he drowned.
But number two, of sterner stuff,
Dog-paddled in surprise.
The while he wiped his creamy face,
And dried his creamy eyes.
“I’ll swim awhile at least,” he said,
Or so I’ve heard he said;
“It really wouldn’t help the world,
If one more frog were dead.”
An hour or two he kicked and swam,
Not once he stopped to mutter,
But kicked and kicked and swam and kicked,
Then -- hopped out -- via butter!

And we also have to know, it was only by perseverance that the snails reached Noah’s ark!

It is baseball season again. Blue Jays outfielder Jose Bautista seems on track for another remarkable year of hitting home runs – nine in the month of April. And when he comes to the plate, his determination is obvious. In a previous generation, Babe Ruth was called the Sultan of Swat. He too knew about perseverance and determination in playing baseball. To achieve his lifetime total of 714 home runs he also struck out 1,330 times! But he just kept on swinging!

Thomas Edison gave some wise thoughts regarding failure and perseverance. It is said the famous inventor made thousands of trials before he got his celebrated electric light to operate. One day, a workman to whom he had given a task said, “Mr. Edison, it cannot be done.” To which Edison responded, “How often have you tried?” The man replied, “About two thousand times.” Edison said, “Go back and try two thousand times more. You have only found there are two thousand ways in which it cannot be done.”

The author of the book of Hebrews wrote about “the race that lies before us.” We each have a course stretched out ahead of us in life. And for each of us the course is unique. For some, life is a relatively straight run but, for others, life is all twists and turns and hurdles. For still others, their course in life seems all uphill. For some, the course may be long; for others it may be shorter. But we all must run our own courses -- I cannot run your course and you cannot run mine.

So how will each of us run the race of our life? Does it go without saying that we will take God seriously in our life’s race? Well, we live in a society where we know the answer is no. Some do but many don’t take God seriously at all. Did you catch the statement in the Scripture reading this morning: “Whoever comes to God must have faith that God exists and rewards those who seek him”? Or as The Cotton Patch version of Hebrews 11 puts it:

“Anyone who is serious about the God-life must stake everything on the fact that God is, and that [God] amply rewards those who make him their quest.”

The Message Bible has it:

“Anyone who wants to approach God must believe both that [God] exists and that [God] cares enough to respond to those who seek him.”

It is one thing to believe God exists; it may be quite another to stake our lives on the fact God cares enough for us personally that he rewards us or responds in some way to those who take him seriously enough to come to him in worship.

What happens when we encounter deep ruts or fallen trees across our path? What happens when our life gets ripped apart by an unexpected tornado – literally or in a manner of speaking? What happens when we are tempted to call it quits? How will we run the race of our life then?

We could trust ourselves to self-help approaches. “I think I can! I think I can!” said The Little Engine That Could as it pulled its heavy load up the long steep hill in the well-known children’s story. We could continue to kick and kick and swim and swim and maybe succeed. We could even keep on swinging and swinging our bats. Or we could trust ourselves to God – who exists and who rewards or responds in some way to those who come to him.

We can run our race in life, with its twists and turns and hurdles, with determination and endurance when we run the race of our life with trust in Jesus Christ. Let’s hear again the Scripture from Hebrews Chapter 12, verses 1 to 3:

“… let us run with determination [with perseverance] the race that lies before us. Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, on whom our faith depends from beginning to end. He did not give up because of the cross! On the contrary, because of the joy that was waiting for him, he thought nothing of the disgrace of dying on the cross, and he is now seated at the right side of God’s throne. Think of what he went through; how he put up with so much hatred from sinners! So do not let yourselves become discouraged and give up.”

In 1940, Clarence Jordan founded Koinonia Farm in Americus, Georgia, as a haven for racial unity and co-operation. Jordan was the translator of The Cotton Patch version of the Letter to the Hebrews that I quoted earlier. He was also a primary influence for the founding of Habitat for Humanity. In 1954, the Ku Klux Klan burned every building on Koinonia Farm’s property except Jordan's home.

In the midst of the raid, Jordan recognized the voice of a local newspaper reporter. The next day, the reporter showed up for a story about the arson while the rubble was still smoldering. He found Jordan in a field planting seeds. He said to Jordan, “I heard the awful news of your tragedy last night, and I came out to do a story on the closing of your farm.”

Jordan kept planting and hoeing. The reporter continued prodding him with questions but with no response from Jordan. Finally, the reporter said: “You've got two PhDs, you've put 14 years into this farm and now there's nothing left. Just how successful do you think you've been?”

With that statement, Jordan stopped hoeing. He said to the reporter: “You just don't get it, do you? You don't understand us Christians. What we are about is not success, but faithfulness.”

To be faithful to God in our lives means running with perseverance -- with endurance – because we are always wanting to connect with Jesus. That is what we consistently say in our weekly bulletin and on our website. To be faithful means enduring even the worst life throws at us. To persevere includes staying the course and starting all over again as Clarence Jordan did -- if that is what it takes.

Let me tell you another story – about Bill Broadhurst. In 1981 Broadhurst entered the Pepsi Challenge 10,000-metre race in Omaha, Nebraska. In 1971 he had had surgery for an aneurysm in his brain that left him paralyzed on his left side. But, 10 years later, Broadhurst stood with 1,200 agile men and women waiting for the race to begin.

The starting gun sounded! The runners surged forward. Broadhurst threw his stiff left leg forward, pivoting on it as his foot hit the ground. His slow plop – plop -- plop rhythm seemed to mock him as the rest of the runners raced ahead into the distance. Sweat rolled down his face, pain pierced his ankle, but he kept going. Some of the runners completed the race in about 30 minutes but it took Broadhurst almost three hours before he reached the finish line. From the small group of remaining bystanders, a man stepped out and approached the exhausted runner. Bill Broadhurst recognized the man as marathon record holder Bill Rodgers, who had won medals in both the Boston and New York City marathons. Rodgers then did something remarkable. He took his newly won medal and draped it around Bill Broadhurst’s neck. Why? Because Broadhurst finished the race, and his finish, though he finished last, was as glorious as that of the world’s greatest! Why? Because he ran with perseverance. His determination was deliberate and steady and he refused to be distracted from his intended goal. No obstacle could deter this determination nor could any discouragement take his hope away. Nothing was going to make him quit!

It is quite within the reach of every one of us to live with persevering patience – even if it feels as if we are struggling to put one heavy foot in front of the other until we reach the finish line. The race in life is not for sprinters who flame out after 100 metres or 200 or 400 metres. It is for faithful plodders like you and me. Fast or slow, strong or weak -- all of us can persevere and finish well.

Only one focus can make consistent endurance possible. You won’t be surprised when I tell you the focus is Jesus -- our Good Shepherd. The Message Bible puts the first few verses of Hebrews Chapter 12 this way:

“Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed -- that exhilarating finish in and with God -- he could put up with anything along the way: [the] Cross, shame, whatever. And now he’s there, in the place of honour, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility [Jesus] plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!”

To say the Church exists to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, we certainly must take seriously this Scripture in Hebrews: “Keep your eyes on Jesus,” we are told. In fact, this is the central theme of the book of Hebrews. Throughout Hebrews, we hear the theme stated in various ways: “But we see Jesus …” (Chapter 2, verse 9). “Fix your thoughts on Jesus ...” (Chapter 3, verse 1). “Since we have a great high priest [Jesus] … let us then approach [God’s] throne of grace with confidence” (Chapter 4, verses 14 and 16). It is always heartening to remember the witness of others who have gone ahead of us for they can inspire us, encourage us and bring us hope by their example. But, above them all and above all else, we are being challenged to fix our attention on Jesus Christ, for he can do for us what no one else can.

Jesus Christ can inspire faith in us. He can bring us to a faithful finish in this life and bring us into God’s presence both now and at the end of our lives. In fact, that was Jesus’ greatest joy! To be with his Father -- and to make it possible for us to be there too! That’s why he endured the Cross and its shame – whatever it took to finish well and do God’s will. And since his resurrection from the dead, Jesus is now waiting for us to be in his resurrected presence when we reach the finish line of our life’s race. But in the meantime, through the Holy Spirit, Jesus is also with his people daily – every hour, every minute, every second as we open ourselves to him. He is with us to strengthen our faith in the midst of life – “to shoot adrenaline into our souls,” as The Message Bible puts it. So when we find ourselves flagging in our faith, we must go over Jesus’ story again and again – line by line, event by event – even the long hard times of hostility he went through. Yes, we do look at other men and women of faith for inspiration and encouragement but then, or perhaps even first, we look higher -- to Jesus Christ.

That’s why the Church around the world has always taken the Bible seriously, as we try to do here at OYM. That’s why we encourage each other to read the Bible. It is through placing ourselves in God’s presence as we read and listen to the Scripture that we can experience the love of God, the grace of Jesus and the companionship of the Holy Spirit. And we can also experience God’s gracious love by coming together -- worshipping God and sharing our lives together, praying for and caring for one another.

The Olympic Games have always captured the imagination of people around the globe. Athletes train hard and long and with passionate determination to achieve their hopes and dreams. If they were not passionate, they would have great difficulty persevering as they do. There is a lesson the Olympics can teach us in our long-distance run in life. Mark Boswell, a Canadian 2008 Olympic high jumper, expressed his passion and perseverance this way:

“Be serious.”
“Be focused.”
“Go hard.”

Remember the Marathon of Hope Terry Fox ran in 1980? His goal was to run a marathon – 26 miles – every day as he crossed Canada. He certainly was serious. He clearly was focused on his goal to raise money for cancer research. And he ran hard every day. He showed determination, perseverance and endurance as he ran across the country. And although he wasn’t the fastest or the smoothest runner, and although he didn’t make it to the West Coast, who would not say that Terry finished his race well and reached his goal, accomplishing even more than he had planned or ever knew in the end.

Leslie Scrivener, at that time a journalist with the Toronto Star, covered the Terry Fox Marathon of Hope. At the time of his death she wrote:

Terry was uncommonly blessed with hope. He refused to be humbled by the disease burgeoning inside him. Even if cancer did claim him, Terry believed he was still a winner. There was no other way he could look at his life. In 22 years, he had contributed more – materially and spiritually – than many who live to a gentle old age. Terry wouldn’t want us to weep for him; he’d want us to hear his message and be uplifted.

Then she quoted Terry Fox:

“I don’t care what percentages the doctor tells me I have. If God is true, I know I’ve got 100 per cent, if that’s what He has in His plans for me. And if I really believe and if God is really there, then I’m not going to lose even if I die, because it’s supposed to be the Pearly Gates I’m going through, and if heaven is there, I can’t lose out!”

So how can you and I run the race of our life and finish well?

We can “be serious” about our relationship with God.
We can “be focused” on Jesus Christ.
And we can “go hard” and, with determination, persevere faithfully no matter the hardships we face in this life.

For we know that, with God, we cannot lose out in the end!

God wants us to finish this race of life and finish it well. So let us run faithfully and with perseverance the race that is stretching out before us -- however long and however successful or however arduous it may be. Let us keep our eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in. And let us, as well, think of the joy that is waiting for us too! When we do, that will shoot adrenaline into our souls!

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

Rev. Chris Miller,
May 1, 2011

oympastor@rogers.com

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto

Visit with us online!

Being Christian: Jesus Calls, We Follow

2011-04-25T22:52:00.001-04:00

“Jesus Has Been Raised, So We Follow”

Matthew 28:1-20 - read this passage online here »

“Gracious Lord Jesus, open our hearts and minds by the power of your Holy Spirit so that we can hear what you want to say to us today.”

What if the four Gospel writers had made it very clear that, when Jesus died on Good Friday, he had stayed dead! What if Matthew, Mark, Luke and John had written that, when Jesus’ body was taken down off the cross and put in the tomb, his body had stayed in the tomb -- or that his body went the way of most of the bodies of those who were crucified. You see, their bodies were usually dumped into a pit and left to rot – or to be eaten by dogs. What if the male disciples did not finally wonder about what the female followers of Jesus kept insisting – that they had found the tomb empty when they went to honour Jesus’ body with proper burial spices. (Although I don’t know how they expected to do that when Jesus’ body was sealed securely in a tomb behind a very heavy stone.) What if the disciples did not go to see for themselves what the women told them they saw -- or didn’t see! It would have made things a lot easier for us who follow Jesus in today’s sceptical climate. It would be easier for us to say with some degree of certainty that what Jesus taught -- his teachings -- were all that really mattered. It would be easier for us to say that his philosophy of life was what was of supreme importance because, like all noteworthy ideas, they have stood the test of time. Most people do agree they are good teachings – perhaps even extraordinary. Most agree they are good moral teachings – perhaps even exceptional. Most agree they are ethical teachings – perhaps even outstanding – that are meant to help us become the best people we can be.

But we are in a predicament this morning. We are in a predicament because we cannot be certain that what the women reported they saw and experienced on the third day after Jesus died did not in fact happen as they said! And we cannot be certain that what the men saw and experienced after they finally listened to the women did not in fact happen as they said! A predicament is a difficult and perplexing situation to be in. One dictionary even calls such a situation “embarrassing.” You see, those women followers of Jesus and those 11 disciples came to believe Jesus did not stay dead! They came to believe, in fact, he was raised from the dead just as he had told them several times. Because he appeared to them very much alive and recognizable as the Jesus they had followed merely days earlier. He appeared to them and they worshipped him. Though some had their doubts about whether this really was Jesus or not. And who wouldn’t? At least at first!

It certainly would be easier for Christians in today’s pluralistic society if we could be absolutely clear that Jesus’ body stayed dead. But we can’t be that confident. It certainly would be easier for us because then we could focus all that we mean about the Christian life and the Church on what Jesus taught. We could focus on what Jesus taught rather than on Jesus’ resurrection. We could focus on what Jesus taught rather than on the Risen Jesus Christ being with us and in us and in his Church and in the entire world today through his Holy Spirit.

It is a fact that no one talks about the Buddha’s risen presence -- only his teachings. No one talks about Muhammad’s risen life -- only the writing of the Qur’an. No one talks about Moses’ risen life -- only the teachings of the Torah. No one talks about the Apostle Paul’s risen life – only what he taught in his letters in the New Testament. No one talks about Confucius’ or Aristotle’s or Plato’s or Descartes’ or Augustine’s or Rousseau’s or Socrates’ risen lives -- only their prominent teachings. But we, as the Church and followers of Jesus today, do talk about the resurrected life of Jesus Christ -- not merely his teachings. Of course, the Christian faith does include the rich and remarkable teachings of Jesus. We readily admit that. In fact, they are foundational for the understanding of our faith. But the Christian faith is much more than Jesus’ teachings. The Christian faith is centred on the living God who has come to all humanity in Jesus of Nazareth -- as our United Church’s creed so openly states. The Christian faith is not a mere superb philosophy to live by. The Christian faith is a living relationship with a living God who lives in his believing people – in his believing Church -- through his Holy Spirit.

When Matthew 28 was read, did you catch that intriguing phrase toward the end of the passage? I was taken by Matthew’s honesty to include such a statement because it adds to our predicament this morning. When I read it, I was also impressed that Jesus did not correct or attack the attitude. He seemed to let it be part of the record as if it could be a normal experience for his followers. Did you hear the statement in verse 17: “When they saw him, they worshipped him, even though some of them doubted.” Some had their doubts! After all, people rising from the dead is not the usual experience – either then or now.

We who worship today also have our doubts at times. And even Jesus’ very first worshippers had some doubts about him. I appreciate the way theologian Dale Bruner commented on this passage that he called “Doubting worshippers” [Frederick Dale Bruner, Matthew: A Commentary. Volume 2: The Churchbook Matthew 13-28, Revised and Expanded Edition. Eerdmans, 2004, p. 810]:

“By reporting doubt and worship in the same sentence, Matthew tells his church that the structure of the Christian faith and life is bipolar: disciples live their lives between worship and doubt ... or mixed with worship and doubt. Just as Jesus in the wilderness lived between the ... Holy Spirit and the Unholy Spirit (4:1), so Christians live their discipleship in a war between the spirit of worship and the spirit of doubt. Christians are both believers and doubters, adoring and wondering, trusting and questioning ...

“All disciples experience this bipolarity; and it is not healthy to deny it.”

How did Jesus handle his disciples who doubted? He did two things. First, he drew near to them all. We might think he would shake his finger and say “Don’t doubt me – here I am!” But he didn’t. He came close to them to reassure them. He came alongside them because he knew they would need his loving presence and his power with them. So Jesus also promised to draw near to us as well through the Holy Spirit as he did with the believers in the Early Church. Second, Jesus spoke to his disciples directly and gave them a definite command that the Church has called its Great Commission. It remains the Church’s commission to this day. We heard it earlier in the Bible reading; now, here it is again:

“Jesus drew near [to them] and said, ‘I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. [That is significant for us to know.] Go, then, to all peoples everywhere and make them my disciples: baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you. And I will be with you always, to the end of the age.’[This is also important for us to know as well.]”

Jesus was teaching his disciples to meet their doubt head-on by obeying his mission command – to go and develop learners for him, to baptize them and teach them to obey everything he commanded them. Jesus was saying that the way to know God is to obey the will of God. The famous missionary doctor Albert Schweitzer who founded his Lambarene hospital at Gabon, Africa, in the early part of the past century knew the meaning of obedience when he declared: “Follow him and you will know him.”

So what are the significant take-away messages for us about the resurrection of Jesus Christ today?

Our attendance at this service of worship -- and at any worship service -- only makes real sense because Jesus rose from the dead and is here with us and in us as he promised through the Holy Spirit. Why else would we be here?
Reciting the New Creed of the United Church only makes real sense because the crucified and risen Jesus we proclaim in the creed is here with us and in us – to be our hope in life, in death and in life beyond death. Why else would we say it?
Taking part in Holy Communion only makes real sense because, once again, we are remembering and giving thanks that Jesus Christ gave his life for us. His body was actually broken and his blood actually flowed from his broken body for our suffering and for the forgiveness of our sins. So we take the bread and the wine not because we are worthy in any sense but because we accept Jesus’ invitation in faith to know him and be nourished and sustained in our journey of faith with him.
Even though we may have times of doubt and hesitation, listening to the message of the Resurrected Jesus Christ and responding in obedience to his message, as Albert Schweitzer indicated, is the way to handle our doubt.

And is that not also the way to handle our predicament this morning? If we follow the Risen Jesus we have been told is alive and here, we will come to know him. Our theme this Lenten and Easter season is simple really: Being a Christian means when Jesus calls, we follow. It is the same today as it was 2,000 years ago. The first followers of Jesus -- the eyewitnesses -- saw an empty tomb. But that wasn’t all they saw. They also saw a living, breathing Jesus Christ who was supposed to have stayed dead -- but he didn’t! He was raised from the dead, as he himself said would happen. The first followers of Jesus – the eyewitnesses -- saw Jesus in a body they recognized. And he ate with them and talked with them. He was not a disembodied ghost or spirit.

But we live in 2011 and not in AD 33 or so when Jesus’ resurrection occurred. I can only tell you that faith comes by hearing this message about the Risen Jesus and following him as a result. But following him is not automatic. It is a gift God offers us -- a gift called grace. And it is an intentional choice we make. So no one, no minister -- not me for sure -- can really convince anyone to follow. All I -- or you -- can do is witness to God’s grace and hope and love and healing and forgiveness in our own lives. That’s what those first followers did. They witnessed to God’s presence with them and God’s call in their lives. And they were eager to go and tell their world to follow Jesus too because it is through Jesus that people find the abundant life they are looking for in this life and also resurrection life in the life to come – for that is also what Jesus said people will find in him.

A woman once approached a pastor and asked, “So what happened with Jesus after the Resurrection?”

“Well, he ascended into heaven and he's still alive,” the pastor said.

“I know he was resurrected, but he's alive?” she asked.

“Yes, he's alive.”

“Alive? ALIVE?! Why didn't you tell me?!”

Rev. Mark Aitchison is a friend who is the senior minister at Islington United Church in the west end of our city. Mark posted on his Facebook page the following statement:

“The greatest man in history, named Jesus, had no servants, yet they called him Master. He had no degree, yet they called him Teacher. He had no medicines, yet they called him Healer. He had no army, yet kings feared him. He won no military battles, yet he conquered the world. He committed no crime, yet they crucified him.... He was buried in a tomb, yet he lives today!”

My friends, Jesus Christ is risen indeed! When you hear his call, do not be afraid to follow.

Jesus Christ is alive and here for you and for me. Amen.

Rev. Chris Miller,
Easter, April 24, 2011

oympastor@rogers.com

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto

Visit with us online!

Being Christian: Jesus Calls, We Follow “Some Follow, Some Don’t”

2011-04-03T10:30:00.000-04:00

John 9:1-41 - read this passage online here »

On Saturday evening, I often watch a television program called Behind the Story. The host will usually have three guests who talk with him about what they think is behind the news stories of the week. There is usually an underlying story behind each story. How true that is for the story of the man born blind in John Chapter 9! If we had read Chapter 8, we would have heard Jesus clearly state [verse 12]:

“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

While John – in Chapter 9 -- wanted us to sample Jesus’ ability to restore sight to a man who was congenitally blind, John also hoped we would see the dawning of spiritual light in the blind man who was healed and also the dawning of Jesus’ light in all those who would read or hear his Gospel and be open to believe. That we would see what the man eventually saw – that Jesus is the life-giving light for the world.

Now that particular insight of faith took time to develop in the man born blind. At first, he considered Jesus merely a man who used mud to heal his eyes (verse 11). Then after he had some time to think about what his healing meant, he called Jesus a prophet (verse 17). Then, as the authorities continued to question and push him about the identity of Jesus, he told them he believed that “unless this man came from God, he would not be able to do a thing [to heal my eyes]” (verse 33). Finally, he confessed his belief that Jesus was the Son of Man. In a short time, he had come to believe Jesus was more than a mere man – Jesus spoke and acted in miraculous ways with God’s authority. He now believed Jesus was Lord. And he worshipped him!

In writing his Gospel, not only did John hope everyone would see Jesus as the life-giving light for the world, John also revealed to his readers toward the end of his book -- in Chapter 20:30, 31 [GNT] -- the real story behind all the stories he told in his Gospel (including the man born blind):

“In his disciples’ presence Jesus performed many other miracles which are not written down in this book. But these [miracles] have been written in order that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through your faith in him you may have life [eternal life with God].”

One thing that intrigued me about this story of the man born blind was the confusion among those who knew him as a neighbour and those who had seen him begging when he was blind.

“Is this the same man? Sure looks like him, doesn’t it? But it can’t be him, can it? How could it be – he was born blind?”

There was also the conflict between the healed man and the religious leaders who had to accept the reality that the man could see – that he had been healed. But they did not want to accept Jesus as the one whom the man said had healed him.

“Say it was God who healed you. Don’t say it was this man Jesus. He’s not from God!”

As well, there was the intimidation the man’s parents felt at the hands of the religious leaders. They were afraid to admit what they really knew or how they really felt about “the man called Jesus” who healed their son because they might be expelled from their place of worship. That would be difficult to accept because all their friends went there. What would they do? Where would they go?

Some elements in the story sound very like articles and stories we might find in our national church magazine, The United Church Observer, asking Who is Jesus? Was he merely a human mentor, a teacher with fine teachings? Or is he truly the Messiah, the Son of God who did perform signs and miracles as the New Testament Gospels and letters record? The story of the man born blind and his healing by Jesus revealed questions and conflict and eventually the call for personal decision in the face of opposition or rejection.

Our basic theme this Lent is “Being a Christian means that, when Jesus calls us, we follow.” But the reality is that, when Jesus calls, some follow and some do not. In his Gospel, John reminds us that what we know happens among people in the 21st century is not all that different than what happened with people during the first century when Jesus physically lived among human beings. Some followed. And some did not.

Why do some people not follow Jesus?

For instance, do some people deliberately disbelieve what they hear or see? Some of the blind man’s neighbours and those who had seen him begging on the street for money were so surprised they didn’t know what to believe at first. They wondered if this man who could see was really the same man who was formerly blind. He said he was! And if they wanted further confirmation, they could have asked his parents and they would have clearly identified him as their son. But most of the real questioning and disbelief came from the religious leaders who were already having clashes with Jesus before this incident. We know this because the man’s parents were very careful not to talk about any possibility of Jesus being the one involved in their blind son being able to see because they already knew they would be thrown out of the synagogue. Then the conversation between the man and the religious authorities also revealed how differently they viewed Jesus. They saw Jesus as a sinner because he did not observe their Sabbath law – therefore, he could not have healed the man despite the evidence standing before them. Interestingly, the man born blind had not yet seen Jesus but he had a different viewpoint and answered honestly:

“I do not know if he is a sinner or not. One thing I do know: I was blind, and now I see.”

At the end of this incident, some of these religious leaders overheard Jesus saying:

“I came into the world to bring everything into the clear light of day, making all the distinctions clear, so that those who have never seen will see, and those who have made a great pretense of seeing will be exposed as blind.”

These leaders then asked: “Does that mean you are calling us blind?” [The Message Bible]

In The Magician's Nephew [Collier Books, pp.125-26], a novel from the Chronicles of Narnia series, author C. S. Lewis gives us careful insight into the meaning of spiritual blindness. The land of Narnia was created when Aslan -- the Lion who represented Jesus – sang it into being. That creation song revealed Aslan's majesty and glory. We could call it a grand “call to worship!” But there was one person – Uncle Andrew in the novel -- who refused to hear the song. And the consequences were staggering. Lewis writes:

When the great moment came and the Beast [Aslan] spoke, he [Uncle Andrew] missed the whole point for a rather interesting reason. When the Lion had first begun singing, long ago when it was still quite dark, he had realized that the noise was a song. And he had disliked the song very much. It made him think and feel things he did not want to think and feel.

Then, when the sun rose and he saw that the singer was a lion (“only a lion,” as he said to himself), he tried his hardest to make himself believe that it wasn't singing and never had been singing -- only roaring as any lion might in a zoo in our own world. “Of course it can't really have been singing,” he thought. “I must have imagined it. I've been letting my nerves get out of order. Who ever heard of a lion singing?” And the longer and more beautifully the Lion sang, the harder Uncle Andrew tried to make himself believe that he could hear nothing but roaring.

Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed. Uncle Andrew did. He soon did hear nothing but roaring in Aslan's song. Soon he couldn't have heard anything else even if he had wanted to. And when at last the Lion spoke and said, “Narnia awake,” he didn't hear any words: he heard only a snarl. And when the Beasts spoke in answer, he heard only barkings, growlings, bayings and howlings.

Like Uncle Andrew in the novel and some of the religious leaders in John 9, there are also some today who dislike what they see and hear in Jesus – in his life and in his teachings. So they refuse to acknowledge what Jesus clearly said. They turn away from the light in Jesus. They claim they see what is good but then deliberately reject the author of all goodness. I don’t really understand that. But in Matthew 6:23, Jesus said: “If the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”

Why do some people follow Jesus?

The story of the man born blind and then healed tells us one significant reason. The man is one among many people – countless men and women over the centuries – whose personal lives have been touched or healed or made well or who have experienced deep forgiveness or reconciliation or hope or joy or peace because of what Jesus Christ has done for them and in them through the Holy Spirit. Sometimes Jesus does heal people physically. Why that doesn’t happen more often, I don’t know. But I do know Jesus heals people in many different ways.

In the April 2011 issue of the magazine Christianity Today is an article [p. 42] titled “God of the Schizophrenic.” David Weiss, an ordinary individual like you and me, writes about how he rediscovered his faith amid the ravages of mental illness and the expensive electroconvulsive therapy (electric shocks) and the drug treatments he endured. This is how he concludes the article:

“Though my illness persists, I have finally met the God I had heard about but never truly experienced [before]. A God who heals. A God who loves. A God I cannot logically explain to my psychiatrist. A God who manifests his genius by salvaging good from the evil in our lives. Someone unlike me. Someone unlike the well-meaning inquisitors who judged me and sought spiritually to cure me. Someone I never would have discovered without my affliction.

“A God who calls himself Emmanuel – God with us.”

Some follow Jesus because they do see that God has truly come to us in Jesus. In fact, that is what the United Church New Creed confesses: “We believe in God … who has come in Jesus.”

In the latest issue of our church magazine, there are a number of letters to the editor written in response to an article in February’s issue titled “Sacred, yes, but is it church?” That article outlined several United Church clergy and congregations whose spiritual journey is more about what they call “sacredness” than about any sense of believing in God who has come in Jesus. It is illuminating and encouraging that many readers had great difficulty with the article. Here is a sampling of what they wrote:

“These post-theistic congregations have turned their places of worship into little more than coffee-houses for self-centered conversations. They have not only thrown out the baby with the bathwater; they are now worshipping the tub.”

“I am uncomfortable with the concept of a church that has God ‘taking a back seat’ to spiritual questing and community development. God is the subject of my spiritual quest, and my community is a community of Christian worship. At my yoga studio, I experience a sense of the spiritual and of community, but it is not a church.”

“In my 84 years, I have never doubted that fact that God is. Many times I have had the assurance of God’s love and care during my life’s journey. I know that my redeemer lives!”

“So let’s say I order a ham and cheese sandwich but say, ‘Leave out the ham.’ Is it still a ham and cheese sandwich? Let’s say I call myself a Christian but say, ‘Leave out the Christ.’ Am I still a Christian?”

And a final letter:

“Neither spirituality nor sacredness defines the church. So what is it? The answer can be found in Connie denBock’s column in the same issue: “Without Jesus, there’s not much to justify church.”

My friends, in this season of Lent, we have the opportunity to look truthfully within ourselves, to approach God with repentance and gratitude and to draw closer to and follow Jesus Christ. As I conclude this message, let us renew our hope in God as we anticipate the joy of Easter by confessing together that “We are not alone, we live in God’s world.”

Please turn to page 918 in Voices United and stand as you are able.

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 confession be so for you and for me.

Rev. Chris Miller,
Lent 2, March 27, 2011

oympastor@rogers.com

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto

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Being Christian: Jesus Calls, We Follow “Too Close for Comfort – or Not?”

2011-03-27T10:30:00.002-04:00

John 4:1-42 - read this passage online here »
Exodus 17:1-7 - read this passage online here »

If you are like most people, I suspect you are careful who you let into your personal space and how close they may get to you. Whether we recognize it or not, we each have our own personal space that surrounds us like an invisible bubble. It grows larger or smaller depending upon who we are with and the circumstances at the moment. If the other person is someone who is not a friend or someone we don’t know very well, their presence could become too close for our comfort. So we don’t let them get too close to us – even physically. Those who measure such things suggest we do not let them closer than four feet or so. But if he or she is someone we really like or even love, then the personal space between us may be small or even non-existent. The same is true of our psychological and spiritual spaces as well. Consciously or unconsciously, we are careful whom we allow to come closer to us at different stages in our lives. It depends on who they are – are they strangers? or adversaries? or friends? Do we like them or do we love them? Do we trust them? And do the circumstances of our lives welcome them to come close to us? Will they be helpful to us? What will happen if we let them come closer into our personal space?

We heard again this morning, in the Gospel of John, Chapter 4, the story of Jesus and his conversation with the Samaritan woman. I know she was not given a name but I’d like to give her one because she was a person with character and personality. Let’s call her “Samantha” from Samaria – or “Sam” for short. The relationship between Jesus and Sam focused on each of them opening the entrance to their personal spaces to include the other. As they did so, both moved closer to each other. As I ponder their conversation with each other, I see three movements within their personal spaces.

The first movement occurred in their public or social space. Sam did not know at that time who Jesus was but she did recognize immediately that he was a Jew. She was really taken aback that he would talk with her – first, because she was a woman and, second, because she was a Samaritan. As The Message Bible puts it: “Jews in those days would not be caught dead talking to Samaritans.” There was strong racial prejudice on both sides. But Jesus took the first step in moving a little closer into her personal space. He was tired and thirsty and so was vulnerable with her. “Please, give me a drink of water,” he said. He simply wanted a drink. Jesus was not impolite or demanding or demeaning. So while Sam may have been suspicious of Jesus, she was not afraid to talk with him. She did not run away or back away from him, and she did not cower before him.

The first movement between Jesus and Sam from Samaria was all about water. It was a strange conversation. After they went back and forth for a bit with Jesus asking for water and Sam being surprised that he would talk with her, Jesus said:

“If you knew the generosity of God and who I am, you would be asking me for a drink, and I would give you fresh, living [life-giving] water.”

How do you respond to that! At first, Sam thought Jesus was somehow referring to water from the well and asked how he would give her this water without a bucket. Then Jesus answered:

“Everyone who drinks this water [in the well] will get thirsty again and again. Anyone who drinks the water I give will never thirst -- not ever. The water I give will be like a spring from within, gushing fountains of [eternal] life.”

Sam’s interest was piqued and she asked Jesus for this water. If he could really give her such thirst-quenching water, she would never be thirsty and never have to make the trek back and forth to this well again and again. With this request, she opened up to Jesus a bit more and allowed Jesus a little closer into her personal space. She realized his water was not ordinary but did not yet understand in what way Jesus’ water was out of the ordinary.

Think back to our Call to Worship:

Like a peaceful stream running through the desert ...
God's Spirit brings life.
Like a powerful waterfall dropping into a deep pool ...
Christ's Spirit pulls us along.
Like a cool, clear cup of water ...
The Spirit refreshes our lives.
Come, Holy Spirit, come!
Here and now, renew our spirits.
Come, Holy Spirit, Come!
Make us vessels
for your presence,
for Christ's presence,
for God's presence
in the world.
Come, Holy Spirit! Come!

What Sam would eventually come to realize is that the living water Jesus offers is the all-important, life-giving presence of the Holy Spirit. We know this because of what Jesus later said in John 7:37-40 [NLT] on the last great day of the Feast of Tabernacles:

Jesus was quite emphatic when he stood up in the crowd and said in a loud voice: “Anyone who is thirsty may come to me! Anyone who believes in me may come and drink! For the Scriptures declare, ‘Rivers of living water will flow from [the believer’s] heart.’”

And the Apostle John identified this “living water” with the Holy Spirit who, after the resurrected Jesus returned to heaven, would be given to everyone who believes in Jesus. So the believer is the one who is promised and who receives this “living water” – the Holy Spirit – to experience the life-giving presence of Jesus. The believer is also the one who is the vessel – the channel – for this life-giving presence of God, this life-giving presence of Christ through the life-giving presence of the Holy Spirit to be a blessing for his and her world.

The second movement of the interaction between Jesus and Sam of Samaria was Jesus’ personal advance into her private space – Sam’s private, personal life. As soon as she asked for the thirst-quenching living water, the conversation turned to her personal life. And Jesus let her know he knew all about her – “everything I had ever done,” she told the people of her town later on in the passage. When Jesus moved into her private, personal life, something significant happened between them. He let her move further into his personal life. Now Jesus didn’t do that with everyone he met -- even with those who, on other occasions, said they believed in him. That’s because he knew what was really going in their hearts [see John 2:25]. They considered Jesus “a nine-day wonder,” as William Barclay put it. They only responded to him because he did some miracles. Jesus possessed a keen sense of human nature and knew these people would leave him once the miracles stopped. But he also knew there were others, like Sam, to whom he could entrust himself. In other words, he let people like Sam, who truly believed, into his personal space. He knew their hearts.

Although Jesus knew everything about Sam’s life, it intrigues me he did not say anything about sin or sinfulness with respect to her life. There was no word of condemnation from Jesus against her at all. He simply asked her to call her husband. When she said she had no husband, he said to her she was being truthful because, he told her, she had been married to five men and the man she was living with currently was not her husband.

Sam’s life was quite tragic but not necessarily scandalous. She very easily could have been widowed or, more likely, divorced and abandoned -- in those days pretty much the same thing -- by five men for any old reason they wanted to give. And wouldn’t five such experiences be heartbreaking and demeaning and a reason for local gossip?

According to Sam, what was life-changing for her was that Jesus knew all about her life. Jesus saw her plight and her isolation – there were no other women who came to the well in the hot mid-day sun to draw water. What Jesus saw did not cause him to condemn her. Instead, he moved into her personal private space with respect. She knew he knew all about her and yet, for perhaps the first time in her life, she found someone who believed she had worth and value and significance. So when Jesus spoke of her past both knowingly and compassionately, she realized she was in the presence of someone exceptional -- a prophet, maybe. And because she realized Jesus knew her, she was open to know him.

So we observe the third movement of the relationship between Jesus and Sam from Samaria. She now trusted Jesus enough, even though he was a Jew, to let him move even further into her personal space. She risked talking to Jesus about one of the central questions that had divided Samaritans and Jews for centuries. Samaritans said one thing about worshipping God while Jews said another. She asked a serious and intelligent question, and Jesus gave a serious answer. As one commentator said: “This is no awkward dodge or academic diversion; this is a heartfelt question that gets to the core of what separates her from Jesus.”

What did Jesus tell her? In essence, he said to worship God as God wanted had everything to do with the Holy Spirit. To worship God as God desired had everything to do with truth. And Sam, like us, would discover that this truth was embodied in Jesus himself. He told his followers on another occasion, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Worship then has everything to do with a relationship with God, with Jesus, through the Holy Spirit.

When Jesus told Sam about the meaning of true worship, that led her to speak about the Messiah who was to come. One thing she knew was that, when the Messiah came, he would tell them (Samaritans and Jews alike) everything they needed to know about worshipping God. Jesus then did something he did not do with anyone else in John’s Gospel: he let Sam deep into his personal space by revealing to her that he – Jesus – was the Messiah she expected. “I am he, I who am talking with you,” Jesus said to her. That was startling for Sam. And with the arrival of the disciples at that moment, she went back to the town and told the people there: “Come and see the man who told me everything I have ever done. Could he be the Messiah?”

When Sam let Jesus into her personal space, Jesus also let her into his personal space. She began to see and believe who Jesus is, even if she framed it as a question for the people to consider. Her witness was startling or convincing enough for the townspeople that they wanted to discover for themselves if Jesus really could be the Messiah – the one they had been expecting for so long. Sam may not have known it then, but God’s Holy Spirit was using her as a channel to share God’s life-giving message of love for the people of her town.

The primary theme for our journey through Lent is that being a Christian means that, when Jesus calls us, we follow him. For the woman of Samaria, that meant letting Jesus into her personal space and allowing him to move closer to her. It also meant that Jesus invited her to move ever closer to him. When this movement – actually, this relationship -- was developing with Jesus, it was more than helpful for the woman from Samaria. Her new relationship with Jesus transformed her life! She was filled with new dignity and hope and value.

Who do you let into your most private and personal spaces? Certainly someone you trust. Certainly someone you love or who loves you. Certainly someone who is there to build you up, not tear you down. Today, we live in an intriguing religious and spiritual climate. It is not always clear, even in the church, that Jesus today is someone whom we can invite into our most personal and private spaces.

The Christian faith is not a philosophy or ideology. The Christian faith is not “our” type of morality or “our” social ethic. The Christian faith is the amazing “good news” that truth and beauty and goodness are found in the person of Jesus. Like Sam, we too can find our true humanity as we connect with Jesus Christ. And like Sam, we too can experience our true dignity and worth as we continually open up our personal and private spaces to Jesus. For he has already opened his personal space of love and grace to us -- on the cross.

May this be so for you and for me.

Rev. Chris Miller,
Lent 2, March 27, 2011

oympastor@rogers.com

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto

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Being Christian: Jesus Calls, We Follow - “Love Is Certain”

2011-03-20T13:30:00.000-04:00

John 3:1-17 - read this passage online here »

When I pick the individual titles for a message series, I usually do so several weeks in advance. The overall theme for our journey through Lent and into Easter this year is “Being Christian: Jesus Calls, We Follow.” But when I looked again at this week’s title of “Love Is Certain,” I wondered if I should change it. The vicious way some leaders in some nations have recently treated their citizens, their people might wonder about the certainty of love – and so might we. The way Planet Earth has treated various areas of the world recently, such as Japan and that country’s inhabitants, they might also wonder about the certainty of love or even if they are loved – and so might we. But I decided to keep the title because I believe it is a true statement. Despite the worst evil that human beings may experience at the hands of other human beings, despite the most calamitous conditions we may experience in nature and despite the most difficult personal circumstances we may experience here and now, I still believe that love is certain.

If you have been following the disastrous situation in Japan, there are more than a few glimpses of love to be seen. There is the story of the “Fukushima 50” who are risking their lives to prevent a severe meltdown of the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. While there are more than 50 personnel involved, they all know the possible deadly dangers to which their lives are exposed with the massively high radiation levels in the plant. And there are stories such as the following that I received this week in an email from a Japanese friend. The story’s author is a non-Japanese teacher of English as a second language in Sendai, which was hit the hardest by the earthquake and the resulting tsunami. Here is part of what she wrote:

“Things here in Sendai have been rather surreal. But I am very blessed to have wonderful friends who are helping me a lot. Since my shack is even more worthy of that name, I am now staying at a friend's home. We share supplies like water, food and a kerosene heater. We sleep lined up in one room, eat by candlelight, share stories. It is warm, friendly, and beautiful.

“During the day we help each other clean up the mess in our homes.... If someone has water running in their home, they put out a sign so people can come to fill up their jugs and buckets.

“It's utterly amazingly that where I am there has been no looting, no pushing in lines. People leave their front door open, as it is safer when an earthquake strikes....

[There are] other unexpected touches of beauty [such as] the silence at night. No cars. No one out on the streets. And the heavens at night are scattered with stars. I usually can see about two, but now the whole sky is filled. The mountains around Sendai are solid and with the crisp air we can see them silhouetted against the sky magnificently.

And the Japanese themselves are so wonderful. I come back to my shack to check on it each day, now to send this e-mail since the electricity is on, and I find food and water left in my entranceway. I have no idea from whom, but it is there. Old men in green hats go from door to door checking to see if everyone is OK. People talk to complete strangers asking if they need help.

When I read this email, I asked myself, Are these not glimpses of love – of people acting with compassion toward others? Are these not hints that we really do consider one another valuable enough and worth enough to give our lives for or, at least, act with the utmost compassion and care toward each other?

How much does love cost? Or another way to put the question might be: What is the value of a human life? A writer for the New York Times wrote an article in the February 16, 2011, issue and talked about the fact that the United States government has been grappling with this particular question: what is the value of a human life? Or to be more precise, there are government agencies trying to find what is called “the statistical value of life.” The answer will influence how much American society (especially businesses) should spend to prevent a single death. In 2004, the United States government's Office of Management and Budget told agencies they should pick a number between $1 million and $10 million, although it also warned that any figure under $5 million would be too low. So, as of last month, the following agencies have offered their price tags on the worth of one human life:

The Environmental Protection Agency set the value of a life at $9.1 million.
The Food and Drug Administration declared that a life is worth $7.9 million (up from $5 million in 2008).
The Transportation Department has determined that one life is worth $6 million.
[Binyamin Appelbaum, “As U.S. Agencies Put More Value on Human Life, Businesses Fret,” The New York Times, 2-16-11]

I have not discovered whether there are any Canadian agencies attempting a similar determination.

I wonder what God thinks about these human calculations? Does God put a dollar value on our heads? Or how does God express that value? Rather than dollars and numbers, might our value to God be expressed in God’s love for us – and for all in this world? For those of us who grew up in the church, I hunch that one verse we all probably memorized was John 3:16. If this verse is new to you, it is one of the most significant passages of the Bible. Millions of followers of Jesus have loved John 3:16 for 2,000 years because it sets out the limitless dimensions of how God values – of how God loves -- the entire human world:

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. [John 3:16, New King James]

Look at the cross behind me and let us ponder the breadth and the length of the love of God, and the depth and the height of the love of God.

“For God so loved the world … ” Hear the intensity and see the breadth of God’s love in these words.

God’s invitation of love is broad – as wide and expansive as God’s very nature. When we follow Jesus from place to place in the Gospels and listen to him, we will hear him say he came not to save a few good people but he came to seek those who are lost – the whole world of humanity, the very ones God loves. Even at our best, we all are marred by sin. One definition of sin is the human bent to fall short of God’s glory – or God’s standard of goodness. This coming up short needs to happen only once in our lives for us to be marred or broken. And if we are honest, we know there have been many times when we have come up short of God’s standard of goodness. But God loves us – marred and broken though we are because God’s very nature is love.

God is love. And by looking at the character of God in Jesus, we discover the nature of God’s love for the world. Jesus Christ and the salvation he offers have their origin in the will and action of God’s love. God loved and God specifically acted at a point in time -- God gave his only Son to the world for the world.

The intensity of the love of God, the agony of God’s love, is expressed in that little word “so” – “God so loved the world.” “So” means “how much.” The Message Bible says, “This is how much God loved the world: he gave his son, his one and only son.”

We are in Week 2 of Lent when we, as followers of Jesus, journey with him toward the inevitability of his suffering and death on the cross of Good Friday. And it was the intense love of God in Jesus that compelled Jesus to give his life for us so that we could experience God’s gracious forgiveness and accept his loving invitation to give our lives to him.

The breadth of God’s love embraces the whole world. On the night Jesus was arrested, just before he left the house for the Garden of Gethsemane, he prayed that the world would know God loved them. And the world – that includes the entire human race -- is no small place.

“For God so loved the world ... that he gave his son, his one and only son.”

This speaks of the dimension of length (or the extent) of God’s love – the length God was willing to go to forgive us because of his incredible love for the human race.

There are also other Scriptures in the New Testament that speak strongly about the dimensions of God’s love. Listen to the writer of Ephesians:

“I pray that you may have your roots and foundation in love, so that you, together with all God’s people, may have the power to understand how broad and long, how high and deep, is Christ’s love. Yes, may you come to know his love -- although it can never be fully known -- and so be completely filled with the very nature of God.” [Ephesians 3:17-19, Good News Translation]

In many languages, to speak about Christ’s love being broad and long and high and deep is awkward since love cannot be conceived as having spatial dimensions. So this figure of speech could well be translated: “So that you will be fully able to understand how very, very great is Christ’s love for you” or “You cannot even imagine how great Christ’s love is!” or so you will grasp “how much Christ truly loves you.” [Newman, B. M., & Nida, E. A. (1993). A Handbook on the Gospel of John. Helps for translators; UBS handbook series (89). New York: United Bible Societies.] My friends, the extent of God’s love seen in Jesus Christ for you and for me is beyond our comprehension and imagination. But I say, God’s love is certain!

God’s love also runs deep. God’s love has depth. John 3:16 says, “that whosever believes in him [in Jesus] should not perish but have everlasting or eternal life.” That statement is bold, is it not? When Jesus talked with Martha about the very real physical death of her dearly beloved brother, Lazarus, whom Jesus also deeply loved, he said to her with similar boldness:

“I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” [John 11:25–26, TNIV]

That is Jesus’ question to us too: Do you believe this? You see, Jesus loved Martha and Mary and Lazarus. They were like family to him. He would sometimes take time away from his disciples and the crowds and spend weekends with them. They were his friends. Even so, he still asked Martha, “Do you believe I am the resurrection and the life?” God’s love possesses enormous depth because that love includes anyone and everyone who believes in Jesus as the resurrection and the life. And Jesus said these people will never spiritually die but will live with him forever.

God’s love has the cosmic dimensions of breadth and length and depth. The love of God also possesses height -- “everlasting or eternal life.” Everlasting life, as the Scripture teaches, has a beginning but no ending. Eternal life includes all the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love for all his followers now but also real life that continues with God after our short lives on this Earth are over. And this is the great hope of the human heart!

Oswald Chambers, in his book The Highest Good, wrote:

“To realize the dimensions of the love of God, its breadth, and length, and depth, and height, will serve to drive home to us the reality of God’s love, and the result of our belief in that love will be that no question will ever profoundly vex our minds, no sorrow overwhelm our spirits, because our heart is at rest in God, just as the heart of our Lord was at rest in His Father. This does not mean that our faith will not be tested; if it is faith, it must be tested.” [Chambers, O. The Highest Good. London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1996.]

Paul the Apostle said something similar and expressed the extravagance of God’s love in his letter to the Romans 8:31-39. Here is what he said from The Message Bible:

“So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? [Doesn’t this include Jesus’ journey of suffering toward the cross for us? Doesn’t it also mean he rose from the dead to defeat the stranglehold of sin and death in human lives? Paul continues:] And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us -- who was raised to life for us! -- is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. [We could say “praying for us!”] Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture … None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. [Now, that is some statement of faith!] I’m absolutely convinced that nothing -- nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable -- absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master [or Lord] has embraced us.”

I believe with Paul: God’s love is certain!

So, my friends, I dare to conclude with a prayer for you – the same prayer the Apostle Paul prayed for those he worked with and loved. From The Message Bible:

“I ask [God] to strengthen you by his Spirit -- not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength -- that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask [God] that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.”

My friends, may this be so for you and for me.
Rev. Chris Miller,

Lent 2, March 20, 2011

oympastor@rogers.com

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto

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Being Christian: Jesus Calls, We Follow - “Clarifying Questions”

2011-03-13T13:30:00.000-04:00

Matthew 4:1-11 - read this passage online here »
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7 - read this passage online here »

While I haven’t read Jewish journalist and author A. J. Jacobs’ funny yet serious book The Year of Living Biblically, I am reading Christian pastor Ed Dobson’s book The Year of Living Like Jesus [Zondervan, 2009]. Jacobs wrote the Foreword to Dobson’s book and observed: “Ed was inspired by my book ... (a fact that makes me commit the sin of pride).”

Jacobs is a secular Jew. But he wanted to see what it was like to live like a biblical Israelite. Dobson is a Christian who took up Jacobs’ challenge but applied it to the life and teachings of Jesus. In his book, Dobson told a story of visiting some bars in Florida. Because Dobson knew Jesus was accused of being a glutton and drunkard (or wine-imbiber) by the religious leaders of his day, this Baptist minister decided to visit places where people usually drink -- hence, the bars. In one particular bar, he had a conversation with a short Jamaican bartender with a slightly greying small moustache, a contagious laugh and who wore a Hawaiian shirt [The Year of Living Like Jesus, p. 164].

Normally clean-shaven, Dobson was trying to live like Jesus as fully as he could for a year so he let his beard grow as Jesus probably did. The bartender liked the beard and asked him why he was growing it. Dobson responded: “I made a commitment on January first to spend the whole year trying to live like Jesus. So the beard is part of the gig.”

After some conversation, the Jamaican bartender said: “Dude, that’s unbelievable. So what are you learning?” Here is Dobson’s dialogue with the bartender:

Ed: “I’m learning that trying to follow Jesus is a full-time job. I’m learning how difficult it is to actually follow his teachings.”

Bartender: “So what’s so hard about it?”

Ed: “That’s a great question. How about loving your enemies? How about caring for the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame? How about clothing the naked, visiting those in prison, visiting the sick, feeding the hungry, and giving water to the thirsty?”

Bartender: “Right on.”

I have heard more than one person make a similar confession: that trying to follow Jesus is difficult. Living as Jesus did and following his teachings is far from easy. Pastor Ed Dobson didn’t think it was easy either. But that is our calling – our mission -- is it not? Our congregation decided to express our mission this way: “To bring to life the teachings of Jesus Christ.” How do we do that – bring to life Jesus’ teachings? Bring to whose life – your life? my life? the life of our community? our city? our country? our world? Does not the meaning of our mission embrace all of these?

Our underlying theme for Lent and Easter this year is stated simply: “Being a Christian means Jesus calls and we follow.” This may sound simple but it comes with personal struggle. Following Jesus calls for faith and trust in him even in the greatest of difficult circumstances. For instance, Ed Dobson has been living with the debilitating disease of ALS – Lou Gehrig’s disease – since January 2001 when he was diagnosed. While writing his book about The Year of Living Like Jesus, which was published in 2009, his body continued to deteriorate. So whatever our personal concerns or whatever our circumstances as a church, the meaning of being a Christian does not change. It will always mean Jesus calls and we follow. That is the foundation upon which I am building these messages through Lent and Easter.

At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, two significant events occurred in his life. First, he was baptized in the Jordan River. That was vital for the rest of Jesus’ ministry because he knew – at that moment – the acceptance, the approval and the confirmation of God the Father on his life and ministry. The Message Bible puts Matthew 3:16-17 this way:

“The moment Jesus came up out of the baptismal waters, the skies opened up and he saw God’s Spirit -- it looked like a dove -- descending and landing on him. And along with the Spirit, a voice: ‘This is my Son, chosen and marked by my love, delight of my life.’”

For Jesus, he heard God’s call and so he followed.

The second event happened immediately after his baptism: “Then the Spirit led Jesus into the desert to be tempted by the Devil.”

There are at least two significant questions underlying Jesus’ time in the wilderness with the tempter. Both questions require a response from Jesus. Since we claim to be followers of Jesus, they are our questions too. And they require a response from us as well.

The first question: What is Jesus’ sense of God? Theologian Dale Bruner [The Christbook Commentary on Matthew, Eerdmans, 2004, p. 133] calls Jesus’ sense of God being “the ruling passion perceptible in all three of Jesus’ answers to the Tempter.”

Jesus’ first answer: “The scripture says, ‘Human beings cannot live on bread alone, but [they] need every word that God speaks.’”
Jesus’ second answer: “But the scripture also says, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
And Jesus’ third answer: “The scripture says, ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve only him!’”

In all three answers, God is uppermost in Jesus’ mind. In two of the answers, Jesus also included a word translated as “only” and “alone”: “Human beings cannot live on bread alone” and “The Scripture says … serve only [God].” What does Jesus want us to understand here? That in all the circumstances and concerns of our lives and despite how the circumstances and concerns of our lives appear to us, God is not to be excluded from our thinking and living, or from our service and worship.

Consider Jesus’ first temptation. He has just completed a long fast without food. He is hungry and tired. He hears the appealing words of the tempter: “Since you are God’s Son, order these stones to turn into bread.” Of course, he is God’s Son. He knows it. Jesus could have changed the stones into bread. He had the power to do this or else it would not have been a real temptation to him. But what was Jesus’ temptation? I believe Jesus remembered the voice he heard not long before from God his Father who called him “chosen” and “beloved” and a “delight.” He remembered his baptism. But that was then and this is now. Surely, as God’s chosen One, he could serve himself, especially since he was so hungry. He had the memory of his baptism. But sometimes memory can play tricks on us. Sometimes faith can fade into the background when we are weary or hungry or under stress. And, after all, Jesus was deeply human. But God was Jesus’ passion. To turn the stones into bread would have revealed a lack of trust that God would provide for him. Remember, Matthew records that, after the tempter finally left Jesus, angels came and helped him.

What does this temptation mean for us? In Genesis 3, Eve got into a discussion with the tempter and lost. Let me suggest that you and I will lose every time if we try to question and discuss and rationalize temptations that come into our minds. Has God said this? God surely would not have said that – whatever “that” is.” In Adam and Eve’s case, God commanded them not to eat the fruit from one particular tree because, if they ignored what God said and did eat from that tree, they would experience evil for the first time and begin to die spiritually. But the tempter lied to them and convinced them God was trying to keep something from them. The tempter convinced them God didn’t really mean what he said and had other reasons for not wanting them to eat. Unfortunately, they gave in to these lies. And isn’t that a similar kind of conversation that goes on in our minds when we are tempted to think or do something that is not quite right – that is, in fact, wrong?

Jesus attempted no such discussion. Instead, he answered the tempter with the words of Scripture. Jesus knew his Bible. He quoted Deuteronomy 8:3 in this instance as well as Deuteronomy 6:16 and 13. Jesus understood what God was doing in the events and stories of the Old Testament Scripture. In Deuteronomy 8, the nation of Israel was being tested. And through this testing, God was demonstrating to Israel that the people could depend on and trust God. Listen to what Jesus knew about being tested and trusting God from Deuteronomy 8:2-3:

“Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments. He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.” (NRSV)

Jesus’ sense of trusting God meant trusting what God says -- that human beings are meant to live by every word that comes from God!

The second question underlying Jesus’ time with the tempter in the wilderness: Whose word will Jesus honour? As followers of Jesus, that is our question too: Whose word will we honour? Jesus not only honoured God, he also honoured God’s word. In all three temptations, Jesus gained the upper hand over the tempter by knowing and using the Scripture. And Jesus used the same common resource – the same Scripture -- that is accessible to all of us! To receive direction and help and strength from God, he did not use a private line that is unavailable to you and me. Jesus believed the Hebrew Scripture gives us God’s Word. The apostles believed that as well. And, of course, as followers of Jesus, we also have the record of Jesus and his early disciples in the New Testament Scripture. This adds even more to our knowledge of God’s amazing love for all humanity and gives us even more reason to continue to listen to and trust God.

But I am troubled, quite frankly, by certain trends today. What troubles me is the diminished value many in the church place on the Scripture. For many, it is as if God no longer uses the Scripture that Jesus himself used. So let me finish this morning with a story about how the record of Jesus in the Scripture changed the life of one man whose name is Nard Pugyao. Nard writes:

In March of 1956 (when I was about 6), a tall, pale, white man stumbled into my home village ... in the northern jungles of the Philippine island of Luzon. The man didn't speak our language, so our elders asked him the best they knew how, “Why are you here?”

“I've come to learn your language,” he [helped them understand]. “I'd like to write it down and then give you God's Word in your language.”

“Who is your God?” the elders asked.

“He's the God of Heaven and earth,” the man answered. “He's the Creator of the universe. He created you, too.”

“Is he powerful?” the elders probed. “More powerful than the spirits that have controlled our lives from the beginning of time? Is he more powerful than our ancestors, the head-hunters?”

“Yes, he's more powerful.”

Hopeful, we started teaching this man [whose name is Dick Roe] our language. Maybe his God could free us from the spirits.

When I was about 13, Dick had to return to the United States to raise support for his ministry. But before he went back, he translated the Gospel of Mark and gave me a copy. While he was gone, I started reading the Bible for the first time, beginning with the Easter story and continuing through Chapter 16. Sitting on top of a rock, I read the Gospel of Mark in my heart language. It felt like I was actually there, seeing the characters.

But the further I read, the more distressed I felt. A mob of people came to get Jesus out of the Garden of Gethsemane. What did he do wrong? I read as fast as I could. They accused him of all kinds of false things. They mocked him, spat on him, beat him, and took him before Pilate. Then the scourge and the crown of thorns. It was excruciating to read that they forced him to carry a wooden cross and then nailed him to it.

Deep in my heart, a hatred of God swelled. I shook my fist and shouted: “I hate you, God, for being so powerless! Why should I believe in a powerless God like you?” With all my strength I threw the Gospel of Mark down to the rocks and started walking home. I couldn't understand why God wouldn't protect his own Son. Our head-hunters defended us to the death. Because of them, no one could touch us. I wanted a god like that -- someone who would protect me from the spirits that demanded we sacrifice our cows, chickens, pigs, and dogs. This God didn't even save his own Son.

Suddenly, God reached down into my heart. “Nard, don't you understand?” I heard him say. “That's how much I love you. I gave my Son on your behalf.” For the first time, I understood grace. I understood how much God loved me.

“God, if you love me that much,” I prayed, “I want to give you my life, my heart. It's all yours.” I went back and picked up my Gospel, brushed it off, and sat back on that rock to see what happened next. It was an incredible moment as I read that Jesus rose from the grave on the third day. Nobody in [my town], nobody from among [my] people, had ever risen from the grave. The resurrection story changed my life. [Nard Pugyao, "Penetrating Power," Decision (July-August 2006), p. 18; ©2006 Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, used by permission, all rights reserved. Preaching Today Illustrations]

May the words of Scripture change your life too. May the Risen Jesus bring you hope and strength and deep joy too. My friends, may this be so for you and for me.

Rev. Chris Miller,

Lent 1, March 13, 2011

oympastor@rogers.com

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto

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The Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive Us Our Failures as We, too, Forgive Those Who Failed Us”

2011-02-27T13:30:00.000-05:00

Matthew 6:12, 14-15 - read this passage online here »
Matthew 18:21-35 - read this passage online here »

Forgiveness is one of those uncomfortable topics. It ranges from the routine and mundane to the very, very difficult. On one end of the spectrum: “I forgot your birthday. I’m sorry. Please forgive me.” If a husband says that to his wife, I hope she forgives him! Although her extending forgiveness to her husband may become more difficult if he is forgetful year after year. Was that seven times or seventy-times-seven? It depends on your age I guess.

At the other end of the spectrum are the seemingly unforgivable acts. How do you forgive someone who has abused you terribly -- physically or sexually or emotionally? What if you were called upon to forgive someone who murdered your child? What if the person who killed your child was also someone you loved? Each of us can no doubt name particular acts that are seemingly unforgivable for us.

While forgiveness may be uncomfortable, it is at the heart of the Christian life. Forgiveness is not incidental or optional – certainly not to God, nor should it be to us as followers of God in Jesus Christ. Immediately after inviting us to pray for our daily bread – our necessary physical sustenance -- Jesus also invited us to pray: “Our Father ... forgive us our failures as we too forgave those who failed us.”

Obviously, Jesus believes that his followers asking the Father to forgive their – our -- failures is vital. Jesus also connected God’s forgiveness of us to our responsibility to forgive those who fail us because being able to forgive is so vital for our spiritual health and for the health of our relationships with others, especially with those who are followers of Jesus. But I know many Christians have deep hurts and numerous questions about forgiving hurts and wrongs that look so unforgivable. I have several books that offer honest help to those who have great difficulty with forgiveness -- like Forgiving the Unforgivable and Forgive & Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don’t Deserve. These writers do not gloss over real evil. You might find them helpful and are welcome to borrow them from me.

What I want to do this morning is open up some of the background to this significant petition in The Lord’s Prayer. Jesus also told many stories or parables as part of his teaching process about many subjects – including forgiveness. So we will consider Jesus’ parable of the forgiving king and the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18 as well. That story has much to say about God forgiving us and our subsequent responsibility -- as those who have been forgiven – toward others.

But, first, Jesus invited his followers to pray “Our Father ... forgive us our failures as we, too, forgave those who failed us.” It intrigues me that we in the United Church tend to use the word “trespasses” when we pray The Lord’s Prayer. Elda Scott tells me the Presbyterians ask God to forgive their “debts.” It must be their Scottish heritage! Other churches ask God to forgive their “sins.” All three words – debts, trespasses and sins – have their place in the Scripture. In Luke’s version (11:4) of The Lord’s Prayer, we ask God to forgive our sins. In Matthew’s version (6:12), we ask God to forgive our debts. Theologian Dale Bruner helps us see how sins and debts are connected. He writes:

“In rabbinic thought every sin created a deposit of debt before God, the accumulation of which formed a separating wall between the person and God. On the other hand, every righteous deed contributed to the believer’s accumulation of assets before God and so created a kind of bridge to God. Sins were demerits that separated, righteous deeds merits that connected. The corporate name for these separating demerits was ‘debts.’ Jesus takes this well-known word and the set of ideas connected with it and tells us that we can ask the Father to wipe out our [accumulated] debts!” [Matthew: A Commentary, Vol. 1: The Christbook, Matthew 1-12, Revised and Expanded, Eerdmans, 2004, p. 308]

When we ask God to forgive our debts, we are asking God to wipe out what is separating us from God. A debt is a failure to pay. When Jesus used this word, he would have spoken in Aramaic – his language. And the Aramaic word for “debt” would have included a stronger sense of moral failure than the written word for “debt” in Greek. So I like the word “failure” here because it encompasses both debts and our sins. We are asking God to forgive our failures. And as Martin Luther wrote, “We are in the land of debts; we are up to our ears in sin.”

In Matthew 6:14-15, Jesus adds a postscript to The Lord’s Prayer:

“For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” [ESV]

What intrigues me here is that Jesus adds an immediate comment to the petition about forgiveness. He doesn’t add any such comments at this point regarding asking for daily bread or asking to be kept from hard testing or kept safe from the Evil One. And in these verses immediately after the prayer, Jesus uses the word “trespasses,” which is more like “mistakes” as opposed to failures or sins or debts. But notice, Jesus is emphasizing his followers’ responsibility – that is, our responsibility -- to forgive those who have trespassed against us.

When you pray The Lord’s Prayer and ask God to forgive your failures – or “wrongs,” as the Good News Bible puts it --do you believe you have failed God or wronged God? Jesus assumes all of us have. When you ask God to forgive your failures – your sins, your debts -- do you think your debt to God is a large or a small debt? When you find yourself failing again and again in some area, do you hope God forgives you seven times or seventy-times-seven? Peter asked Jesus a similar question in Matthew 18, except Peter posed the question to Jesus a little differently:

“Lord, if my brother keeps on sinning against me, how many times do I have to forgive him? Seven times?”

Jesus answered: “No, not seven times, but seventy-times-seven! Here’s why. The kingdom of heaven – or God’s rule – is like the following story.

When Jesus said “seventy-times-seven,” he was really saying that our forgiveness of another person is meant to be unlimited. But is that really possible for us humans? Are there no limits? Dale Bruner asks:

“Doesn’t even God’s forgiveness have limits? Isn’t that one meaning of the Last Judgment? … Yes, but wherever there is human repentance there will always be – constantly and forever – divine forgiveness. This is the heart of Jesus’ gospel. So forgiveness must be the heart of the disciples’ ethic.” [Matthew: A Commentary, Vol. 2: The Churchbook, Matthew 13-28, Revised and Expanded, Eerdmans, 2004, p. 235]

I wonder if unlimited forgiveness is one of the things Jesus meant when he said in Matthew 5:48 for us to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect. I like the way The Message Bible amplifies that statement of Jesus:

“In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You are kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.”

I think it is worth our while to hear the parable again from the Good News Bible:

“Once there was a king who decided to check on his servants’ accounts. 24He had just begun to do so when one of them was brought in who owed him millions of dollars.”

The actual words are “ten thousand talents.” A couple of observations about this number. Jesus deliberately used a fantastic amount that was meant to stagger the imagination. At that time, 2,000 years ago, people did not count higher than ten thousand. And the talent was the largest currency in existence. One talent was worth more than 15 years’ wages for an ordinary labourer of the day. So what would ten thousand talents amount to in our currency? How high do we want to count? Somewhere in the economic stratosphere – billions upon billions? Zillions of dollars sounds reasonable. In his story, Jesus used the highest sum imaginable for the servant’s debt to the king, to be contrasted with the paltry amount of debt in verse 28 of a few dollars. Jesus was making a point!

25”The servant did not have enough to pay his debt, so the king ordered him to be sold as a slave, with his wife and his children and all that he had, in order to pay the debt. 26The servant fell on his knees before the king. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay you everything!’”

An impossible request to believe! How could he even begin to pay the interest on his debt of zillions of dollars even within his whole lifetime?

27”The king felt sorry for him, so he forgave him the debt and let him go.”

Now I call that being forgiven! The king wiped out his servant’s whole debt! That is grace! The servant did not have to pay anything to the king. Jesus was making two points here. We are in deep debt to God because of our sin. And we do not have the means to pay the debt.

28 “Then the man went out and met one of his fellow-servants who owed him a few dollars. He grabbed him and started choking him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he said. 29His fellow-servant fell down and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back!’ 30But he refused; instead, he had him thrown into jail until he should pay the debt.”

It is fair for us to ask what forgiveness meant to that servant. Is it possible for one human to treat another this way? Is it even possible for Christians who have experienced God’s amazing grace and generous forgiveness to be unforgiving to others? Unfortunately, Jesus’ parable is making exactly that point. And we all know that is true. It is much easier for any one of us to ask God for forgiveness and expect God to forgive us but then to turn around and take offense and nurse grudges and hold on to our hurts from others and fail to forgive them.

31”When the other servants saw what had happened, they were very upset and went to the king and told him everything. 32So he called the servant in. ‘You worthless slave!’ he said. ‘I forgave you the whole amount you owed me, just because you asked me to. 33You should have had mercy on your fellow-servant, just as I had mercy on you.’ 34The king was very angry, and he sent the servant to jail to be punished until he should pay back the whole amount.” 35And Jesus concluded, ‘That is how my Father in heaven will treat every one of you unless you forgive your brother [or sister] from your heart.’”

There is an underlying theme in this parable. It is this: to those who have received God’s full forgiveness, the same generous forgiveness must be given to others. There are two sides to this theme. On the one side is God’s free forgiveness of sins provided by God in Jesus Christ for us on the cross. As the Scripture records in 1 Peter 2:24:

“Christ himself carried our sins in his body to the cross, so that we might die to sin and live for righteousness. It is by his wounds that you have been healed.”

On the other side is the gratitude of those who have received God’s forgiveness who then turn around and offer forgiveness to those who have failed or wronged them.

Let me conclude with a story from the life of Miroslav Volf. Volf is a theology professor at Yale Divinity School. He is also the director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. In his book Free of Charge: Grace and Forgiveness in a Culture Stripped of Grace [Zondervan, 2005], he shares a personal story about the power of forgiveness and grace.

I was one[year old] then, and my five-year-old brother, Daniel, had slipped through the large gate in the courtyard where we had an apartment [in Croatia]. He went to the nearby small military base --just two blocks away -- to play with “his” soldiers. On earlier walks through the neighbourhood, he had found some friends there -- soldiers in training, bored and in need of diversion, even if it came from an energetic five-year-old.

On that fateful day in 1957, one of them put him on a horse-drawn bread wagon. As they were passing through the gate on a bumpy cobblestone road, Daniel leaned sideways and his head got stuck between the post and the wagon. The horses kept going. He died on the way to hospital -- a son lost to parents who adored him and an older brother that I would never know.

Aunt Milica should have watched him. But she didn't. She let him slip out, she didn't look for him, and he was killed. But my parents never told me that she was partly responsible. They forgave her….

The pain of that terrible loss still lingers on, but bitterness and resentment against those responsible are gone. It was healed at the foot of the cross as my mother gazed on the Son who was killed and reflected about the God who forgave. Aunt Milica was forgiven, and there was no more talk of her guilt, not even talk of her having been guilty. As far as I was concerned, she was innocent.

My friends, let us learn from Jesus, who forgave those who plotted his death and crucified him. We dare not insist on withholding the gift of forgiveness from one another. As N. T. Wright put it, we dare not refuse to give someone else “the kiss of life they may desperately need” [Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part 2, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2002, p.39]. We will find our spiritual and emotional healing and the ability to forgive at the foot of the Cross as we ponder the amazing grace and love of God who forgives our sins. So let us forgive one another from the bottom of our hearts.

May this be so for you and for me.

Rev. Chris Miller,
February 27, 2011

oympastor@rogers.com

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto

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The Lord’s Prayer: “Give Us This Day Our Bread”

2011-02-13T13:30:00.000-05:00

Matthew 6:11 - read this passage online here »
Luke 12:22-31 - read this passage online here »
Exodus 16:12-30 - read this passage online here »

Over recent weeks, we have been looking at The Lord’s Prayer. People, in all times and in all places, have always wanted to pray. Jesus’ followers are no exception. In Matthew 6, Jesus tells his followers to remember that, when they pray to God, they are praying to their heavenly Father who loves them and knows already what they need. So with a God like this loving them, Jesus told them to pray very simply. Like this:

“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. [English Standard Version]

We usually end the prayer with “For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.” Some have asked me why we add these final words when they are not in either Matthew’s Gospel or Luke’s Gospel. Though these words are not in the earliest or best manuscripts and so do not appear in more recent translations, there are times when tradition serves the church well. These words were added later by the church as a doxology of praise to God. But theologian Dale Bruner has this interesting observation [Matthew: A Commentary, Vol. 1: The Christbook, Matthew 1-12, Eerdmans, 2004, p. 305]:

“The fact that the Lord’s Prayer ends so raggedly – with the devil! – is probably an invitation to close the prayer with one’s own free petitions.... The rough ending is an open ending.”

I like that! I think that’s also why our Roman Catholic friends wait for the priest to add his words at the end rather than everyone saying “For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.”

The prayer Jesus gives us is short and simple. In its marvellous simplicity is contained all that is necessary for us as his followers to pray. When we read the prayer in Luke 11, we hear Jesus telling his disciples, “When you pray, say this.” So our praying regularly and together The Lord’s Prayer basically word for word is a good thing. It fills our minds and hearts with words from the heart of Jesus when he taught his followers – including us! – to pray to his Father and our Father. On the other hand, when we read the prayer in Matthew 6, we hear Jesus telling his disciples “Pray like this.” In other words, here is the essence of how to pray to God.

Each time we pray like this, we should remember God is our Father, whose name is to be honoured above all others and whose kingdom and will is for the whole of this Earth as well as for heaven. There is no other kingdom or will or name to be sought. God’s righteousness and God’s kingdom are to come first in our lives, in the lives of all Jesus’ followers and, ultimately, in the lives of all humanity. For two weeks in a row, we have sung the Scripture from Matthew 6:33 -- “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness” -- for that reason. As we fill our minds and souls with the essence of Jesus’ mind and soul and continue to grow in our understanding of what he taught, we can alter the words we use. The phrases of The Lord’s Prayer then become a kind of handrail, Dale Bruner suggests, along which we form our own words and responses to God. One of the places on the handrail is “Give us this day our daily bread.”

Almost every week, Marg and I walk up one aisle and down another in our local grocery store filling the cart with food items for the week to come. I imagine that’s a weekly or bi-weekly ritual for many of you as well. Then we line up with others at the checkout and pay for our food. Some people no longer regularly leave their home to buy their daily food; they go to the dining room in their residence for their meals. But they still pay for this service, of course! On the other hand, because of the circumstances of their lives, others have difficulty getting enough food for themselves and their families. So they receive government assistance. They may also go to a local food bank for groceries or to a local church such as ours and hope for a food voucher to help them get through the day and, perhaps, the next day. Or they might sit down to a meal once a day that is provided by an Out of the Cold group.

Physical sustenance is a necessary part of our living. Jesus understands we need daily bread in order to live – we need enough food every day! So Jesus tells us to pray to his Father, who is also our Father, about our daily necessities, which reminds us who the ultimate Provider is of all the good gifts we have. The sense here of daily provisions is what housekeepers in Jesus’ time would understand as they made their daily lists of what the household needed to sustain itself and then purchased the food at the daily market. [Robertson, A. (1997). Word Pictures in the New Testament (Matthew 6:11). Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems.] When Jesus taught this prayer, he emphasized that God is vitally interested in our daily lives, beginning with the food necessary for our physical bodies each and every day. So to pray about physical, social and personal needs is not a selfish attitude. Jesus actually commands his followers to pray this way.

However, for those of us who have healthy bank accounts, I suggest it is difficult, more often than not, to think God has very much to do with our daily food. We are the ones with the cash or credit and we use them easily. Maybe that’s why the writer of Proverbs prayed this way [30:7-9 GNT]:

“I ask you, God, to let me have two things before I die: keep me from lying, and let me be neither rich nor poor. So give me only as much food as I need. If I have more, I might say that I do not need you. But if I am poor, I might steal and bring disgrace on my God.”

Perhaps that is why Jesus said it is hard for rich people to enter heaven. It would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, he said [Matthew 19:23-24]! It is too easy to forget about God when things are going too well or too easily for us.

Perhaps that’s also why Jesus instructed his followers to pray first to God: “Our Father in heaven, honoured be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, right here on Earth as in heaven.” Then when Jesus continued to pray “Give us our daily bread,” the clear connection is that the ultimate source for our daily bread is God – not someone or something else. In whatever form or from whomever the gifts of daily sustenance may come, all ultimately comes from God’s creation, God’s love and God’s gracious concern for all his creatures – human and otherwise. In other words, we need to leave room for God to help us in our lives when we think about even the basic of necessities of life.

When we leave room for God in our lives, we are opening up the possibility for a relationship of trust with God. When we are not afraid to ask someone for something, we are implying there is a relationship of trust between us. For instance, I was more than happy when my children asked me for something they really needed. As their father, I wanted nothing more than to help. So when Jesus tells us to ask God to provide the bread we need for today, we are saying to God: We trust you, God our Father, to provide for us today.

When we trust God in this way, we learn more and more about being grateful to God. There have been only a few times in my life when I have been close to being hungry -- especially when I was at college and living away from home. But I am one of those in this blessed western society who has never really gone hungry. So when I say The Lord’s Prayer each week and think deeply about this particular petition – “Give us this day our bread” -- I find myself being grateful for the food and sustenance I have this day and thank God again for it.

Our problem, sometimes, is that we worry about a tomorrow that has yet to come. And may not come in the way we worry about! To worry about tomorrow is a draining experience. It distracts our focus from God and drains us of trust in the God whose very nature is love. In Luke 12:22-31, Jesus tells us not to worry about what we will eat or what we will wear and not to be afraid because our Father knows we need these things. Instead, we need to be concerned, first, with God’s kingdom and, if we are, Jesus says God will provide what we need somehow. Jesus is not saying it is wrong to think about tomorrow or to plan for tomorrow or to make provision for tomorrow; he is saying not to worry about tomorrow. To worry is to lack trust – and, often, gratitude too. But when we leave room for God in our lives, we will discover we can both trust God for our daily sustenance and remember to be grateful for all the good gifts in our kitchen cupboards.

When we do trust God, we will find ourselves saying thanks to God again and again for our blessings. But as we say thanks, we may well feel more than a little guilty for being able to enjoy food in abundance while so many in the world “walk in hunger,” as we prayed in the Opening Prayer. (Did you notice how close that prayer is to a familiar grace people often use before a meal?) So at the moment we pray “Give us this day our daily bread,” should not our next sentence be “We are sorry we so often think only about our own need for bread” and then “Show us how to share our bread with the world”? William Barclay wrote: “No Christian can be content to have too much while others have too little.”

When we trust God in our own lives, we will not allow God’s other intended recipients of daily bread stay hungry. As one writer suggests, should we not shout, “Woe, woe to the persons or institutions or economic systems that keep people hungry” [Arthur Paul Boers, Lord, Teach Us to Pray]? Is not this prayer for God to give us our daily bread also a prayer for justice for others too -- a lively concern that there be enough bread for all people all over the world?

It is good our denomination receives and sets aside money from its mission and service fund for the relief of world hunger. It is good to encourage our governments to take seriously worldwide concerns for those who are hungry and give even more in matching grants to relief and development projects through CIDA. But what does the answer to “Show us how to share our bread” look like on a personal level? Maybe we can learn about that in unexpected places.

While working as a journalist for the Chicago Tribune, Lee Strobel reported on the struggles of an impoverished, inner-city family during the weeks leading up to Christmas [The Case for Christmas, Zondervan, 2005]. A devout atheist at the time, Strobel was mildly surprised by the family's attitude despite their circumstances. Here is part of his report:

The Delgados -- 60-year-old Perfecta and her granddaughters, Lydia and Jenny -- had been burned out of their roach-infested tenement and were now living in a tiny, two-room apartment on the West Side. As I walked in, I couldn't believe how empty it was. There was no furniture, no rugs, nothing on the walls—only a small kitchen table and one handful of rice. That's it. They were virtually devoid of possessions.

In fact, 11-year-old Lydia and 13-year-old Jenny owned only one short-sleeved dress each, plus one thin, gray sweater between them. When they walked the half-mile to school through the biting cold, Lydia would wear the sweater for part of the distance and then hand it to her shivering sister, who would wear it the rest of the way.

But despite their poverty and the painful arthritis that kept Perfecta from working, she still talked confidently about her faith in Jesus. She was convinced he had not abandoned them. I never sensed despair or self-pity in her home; instead, there was a gentle feeling of hope and peace.

Strobel completed his article. But he could not get the Delgados and their unflinching belief in God's providence out of his thoughts. So on Christmas Eve, he decided to pay the family a visit. He discovered that readers of his article had responded to the family's need in overwhelming fashion, filling the small apartment with donations of new furniture, appliances, rugs, a large Christmas tree, many wrapped presents, bags of food, warm winter clothing and even a generous amount of money. (We have heard of similar responses by the citizens here in Toronto from time to time to families in need.) But it wasn't the generous gifts that shocked Strobel. It was the family's response to those gifts. In his words:

As surprised as I was by this outpouring, I was even more astonished by what my visit was interrupting: Perfecta and her granddaughters were getting ready to give away much of their newfound wealth. When I asked Perfecta why, she replied in halting English: “Our neighbours are still in need. We cannot have plenty while they have nothing. This is what Jesus would want us to do.”

That blew me away! If I had been in their position at that time in my life, I would have been hoarding everything. I asked Perfecta what she thought about the generosity of the people who had sent all of these goodies, and again her response amazed me. “This is wonderful; this is very good,” she said, gesturing toward the largess. “We did nothing to deserve this -- it's a gift from God. But,” she added, “It is not his greatest gift. No, we celebrate that tomorrow. That is Jesus’ birth.”

To her, this child in the manger was the undeserved gift that meant everything -- more than material possessions, more than comfort, more than security. And at that moment, something inside of me wanted desperately to know this Jesus -- because, in a sense, I saw him in Perfecta and her granddaughters.

When we leave room for God in our lives like the Delgados did, despite having only a handful of rice at the time, we discover Jesus, the Bread of Life – Jesus who leads us into God’s kingdom. When Jesus was in the wilderness and tempted by the Evil One, his response to the first temptation was:

“The scripture says, ‘Human beings cannot live on bread alone, but need every word that God speaks.’” [Matthew 4:4, GNT]

When people later asked Jesus to show them a miracle similar to the one their ancestors experienced in the desert when God gave them bread – manna -- from heaven to eat [John 6:30-35 and Exodus 16:12ff], Jesus answered this way:

“‘The bread that God gives is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.’

‘Sir,’ they asked him, ‘give us this bread always.’

‘I am the bread of life,’ Jesus told them. ‘Those who come to me will never be hungry; those who believe in me will never be thirsty.’”

I believe a second meaning behind this prayer for daily bread in The Lord’s Prayer is for a spiritually starving world to be given the Bread of Life – that is, the Word of God. Besides needing bread to eat, people also need bread for their souls. They need the gospel, the good news about Jesus – who is the Bread of Life – through whom human beings really live, both now and forever!

Let us trust God for our daily necessary physical needs when we pray “Give us this day our bread.” And let us be thankful too. Let us also pray for open and generous hearts to share that bread with a hungry world. And let us ask for Jesus, the Bread of Life, when we pray. Jesus came to this world for everyone. He is the Bread of Life people all over this world are hungering for -- whether they know it or not.

My friends, may this be so for you and for me.

Rev. Chris Miller

February 13, 2011

oympastor@rogers.com

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto

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The Lord’s Prayer: “God’s Kingdom Come”

2011-02-06T13:30:00.000-05:00

Matthew 6:10 - read this passage online here »
John 18:28-38 - read this passage online here »

In recent weeks, Bob Dylan’s classic song “The Times, They Are a-Changing” can be illustrated from what is currently being heard and seen in the news.

Come senators, congressmen,
[add presidents and rulers and kings]
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway, don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside and it is raging
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times, they are a-changing

The line, it is drawn, the curse, it is cast
The slow one will later be fast
As the present now will later be past
The order is rapidly fading
And the first one now will later be last
For the times, they are a-changing

First in Tunisia and now most prominently in Egypt. And it appears these changes may only be the beginning. These are truly “kingdom shaking” times. Will the shake-ups be minor or major? What new rule or kingdom will emerge in their places?

Jesus knew what it meant to shake up kingdoms. Did you hear the Call to Worship?

Jesus said: “Time’s up! God’s kingdom is here.”
Earth-leaders say: “We have our own kingdoms.”
Jesus said: “Change your life and believe the Good News.”
Many say: “Let’s get free of God.”
Jesus said: “Listen to me carefully.”

The Call to Worship is adapted from Mark 1 and Psalm 2 – a psalm of leaders and people plotting rebellion against God. But in the end the rebellion is doomed. The psalmist warns the kings and rulers that they are in grave danger. So he urges them to embrace God in adoration and to celebrate God in trembling awe.

Almost every week, along with millions of other Jesus followers in this world and in various ways, you and I pray together The Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed [or honoured] be your name; your kingdom come, your will be done, on Earth as it is heaven.” Let me tell you, this prayer Jesus taught is a kingdom-shaking prayer of massive proportions. Have you ever felt its tremors?

When Jesus tells his followers to pray “God’s kingdom come,” he is saying various things to them. One, our lives will be shaken to the core. The way Jesus calls us to live in love in our community with others, the way we are called to relate with deep care to the Earth and the way Jesus calls us to relate intimately with God – our lives will never be the same. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ call to forgive others who have seriously wronged us (even to love our enemies), his call to be peacemakers, his call to consider ourselves blessed when people lie about us because we are his followers and his call to us to live with God as our most significant relationship – this kind of living can only happen for us when this prayer becomes deeply embedded in our souls: “God’s kingdom come.” I believe Matthew placed The Lord’s Prayer in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount to show how Jesus’ prayer provides the support necessary to live out what Jesus taught. In a previous message, I said: “If there is no prayer to a loving and compassionate Father at the centre of our lives, Jesus’ teachings are like a dry code of lifeless ethics.”

When we sincerely pray that we want “God’s kingdom to come,” we are identifying with a kingdom that “does not belong to this world.” That’s what Jesus told Pilate, the governor of Judea. Jesus said: “My kingdom does not consist of what you see around you. If it did, my followers would fight so that I wouldn’t be handed over.... But I’m not that kind of king, not the world’s kind of king” [John 18:36, The Message Bible]. What does Jesus mean that his kingdom is not of this world? Two of Jesus’ stories illustrate one aspect of his kingdom, Jesus said:

“God’s kingdom is like a mustard seed that a farmer plants. It is quite small as seeds go, but in the course of years it grows into a large tree, and birds build nests in it.”

Jesus also said: “God’s kingdom is like yeast that a woman works into the dough for dozens of loaves of barley bread -- and waits while the dough rises.” [Matthew 13:31-33]

Here’s a contemporary story with a similar meaning. I think Jesus would have liked the program Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman. This was a popular 1990s television series about an early frontier doctor and her devotion to medicine, her patients, her family and her friends. In one episode [Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman (CBS Television, 1994), episode written by Toni Graphia], Dr. Quinn's best friend, Dorothy, has breast cancer. She doesn't know how bad it is and is worried she may not have long to live. As Dorothy walks sombrely among the townspeople who are enjoying a picnic in a large clearing, Dr. Quinn’s 10-year-old son, Brian, runs up to her.

“Hey, Miss Dorothy, look what I found! Acorns! Sully says if I plant one, it'll grow to be as big as that oak.”

“None of us will live to see it get that big, Brian,” says Miss Dorothy. “That oak is a hundred years old.”

“Oh,” Brian replies. Dejected, he puts the acorns in his pocket and walks back to his family. He tells his mother, Dr. Quinn: “Miss Dorothy says there's no use in planting it. She says none of us will get to see it grow that big.”

Dr. Quinn takes an acorn from him and says: “Brian, you must plant it because, by next year, it will have grown up to your knees. The year after that, it will be taller than you. When it's time to go courting, you can take your young lady for a picnic under it. Then, when you have children, they can build a tree house in it. And some day you can tell your grandchildren about how you planted it. When that tree gets to be a hundred, it doesn't matter that you're not here to see it.” Dr. Quinn places the acorn back in Brian’s hand and says: “All that matters is today. Today, you hold a hundred years in your hand.”

Brian looks at the acorn thoughtfully, then asks Sully to help him find a place to plant it.

Brian could look forward to a lot of birds that would nest in his tree!

Jesus’ kingdom can work within and change other kingdoms on the Earth, like a small acorn seed planted in the ground breaks up the hard soil around it into workable earth, so good things such as kindness, compassion, peace, hope and love can sprout and grow. Where Jesus’ kingdom is worked into the kingdoms of this world through his people like salt, as Jesus said in another story, they can preserve what is good in society and provide zesty flavour to life. Jesus’ true kingdom is anything but bland! Jesus’ kingdom is also like rays of light coming together to penetrate the darkness and cause both the good and the bad to be seen for what they truly are.

When Jesus tells us to pray for God’s kingdom to come, what else does he mean? Certainly he means that God – not someone else or something else -- is clearly the centre and the Creator of this new reality. And as the Creator, God also is the One who cares for his kingdom. When Jesus began his public ministry, his first words were: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand” [Mark 1:15]. Those listening to Jesus then would have thought of three things when they heard the word “kingdom.” First, they were looking for a king whom they knew would also be the Messiah – that’s significant. Second, they would also be thinking of the kingdom as land (a sacred place or sacred space). And, third, they would be thinking of themselves as participants together with the king in this kingdom. Then along came Jesus who declared that the kingdom they were looking for throughout their long history had finally arrived and was now here – in him! What is significant for us to understand is that the arrival of Jesus into our human community brought the kingdom of God into fresh focus. Jesus upgraded the meaning of the kingdom of God not only for his original hearers but also for us. Here is Eugene Peterson’s expression of what Jesus meant:

“This kingdom you have been hearing about now for these many centuries is here. Listen to me carefully. Watch me attentively. Join me believingly. I am here to do kingdom work, and I want you to join me in the work. I want you to work alongside me.” [Eugene H. Peterson, Tell It Slant: a conversation on the language of Jesus in his stories and prayers, Eerdmans, 2008, p. 174]

If we were to look up all the references to the “kingdom” in the New Testament -- about 150 or so depending on the version -- we would discover the following three major themes. First, God’s kingdom refers to a redemptive community or society of people. It does not signify merely any kind of social community. God’s kingdom is wherever God’s people offer themselves as participants in the world where God rules in love and brings salvation. And God’s people, Jesus says, are those who “seek first – above all else – God’s kingdom and God’s right way to live” [Matthew 6:33]. Second, those who desire to participate in God’s redemptive kingdom community must enter by repentance, faith and obedience to Jesus. This is the essence of Jesus’ words in Mark 1:15: “The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel -- the good news.” The entrance to God’s kingdom is primarily by way of personal commitment to Jesus Christ whose death on the cross brought salvation to us. Third, the connection between God’s kingdom and Jesus is so close that the clear implication is “there is no such thing as kingdom apart from relationship with Jesus” [Scot McKnight, www.patheos.com/community/jesuscreed/ 2010/11/15/secularizing-kingdom/#more-10545]. This is another way of seeing that Jesus’ work among us is God’s kingdom work. And that he wants us to join him in what he is doing in this world.

There is one more major theme about God’s kingdom that I should mention because Jesus often spoke about it -- about the end of this age or the end of history as we know it and the coming of the new earth and the new heavens. Theologian and Gospel of Matthew scholar Dale Bruner said it this way [The Christbook Commentary on Matthew, Eerdmans, 2004, p. 300]:

“The most sophisticated biblical scholarship on the one hand and the most simple … faith on the other combine in believing that when Jesus teaches his church to pray ‘Your kingdom come,’ he is teaching her to pray for the coming of the new heavens and the new earth, for the end of this history and for the beginning of the new, and thus (as far as we know now) for Jesus’ own Second Coming. Here we are praying not merely for changes in history but for a complete end to this history and for the beginning of the new history of the world of God.”

When Jesus was on the cross, two thieves were also crucified, one on either side of him. One of them recognized that Jesus was innocent and should not have been there. The thief knew he deserved his punishment, but he also seemed to know enough about Jesus to ask: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” [Luke 23:42].

In Fuller Seminary’s Theology, News, and Notes [Dale Bruner, “Is Jesus Inclusive or Exclusive?” October 1999, p. 3], Rev. David Peterson told about a time when he was preparing his sermon.

His little daughter came into the room and asked, “Daddy, can we play?”

He answered: “I'm awfully sorry, Sweetheart, but I'm right in the middle of preparing this sermon. In about an hour I can play.”

She said, “OK. When you're finished, Daddy, I am going to give you a great big hug.”

“Thank you very much,” he said.

David Peterson said his daughter went to the door. “Then she did a U-turn and came back and gave me a chiropractic, bone-breaking hug.” He said to her, “Darling, you said you were going to give me a hug after I finished.”

She answered, “Daddy, I just wanted you to know what you have to look forward to!”

My friends, part of the fullness of our faith and the love of God is the great hope of Jesus’ Second Coming when he will truly reign. When there will be no more sickness, no more sorrow, no more pain, no more tears, no more mourning and no more death. That’s part of the promise of the new resurrected life with God. You can read this for yourself in the second-last chapter of the last book of the Bible – Revelation 21:4.

Through all we experience with Jesus because of his First Coming, we have so much more to look forward to in his great cosmic Second Coming.

May this be so for you and for me.

Rev. Chris Miller
February 6, 2011

oympastor@rogers.com

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto

Visit with us online!

The Lord’s Prayer: “Thy Will Be Done”

2011-01-23T13:30:00.000-05:00

Matthew 6:7-15 - read this passage online here »
Psalm 119:1-8 - read this passage online here »

There are a variety of reasons why people do not want to be followers of Jesus. There are also various reasons why people leave the Christian faith. Here is one reason. Drew Dyck is a Canadian born author whose most recent book is titled Generation Ex-Christian. It is about younger Christians leaving the faith. He tells about one interview with a young man who left to join the Wicca religion. Dyck wrote:

“Morninghawk Apollo (who renamed himself as is common in Wiccan practice) discussed his rejection of Christianity with candour. ‘Ultimately why I left is that the Christian God demands that you submit to his will. In Wicca, it's just the other way around. Your will is paramount. We believe in gods and goddesses, but the deities we choose to serve are based on our wills.’” [Drew Dyck, “The Leavers,” Christianity Today (November, 2010), p. 43; excerpted from Generation Ex-Christian, Moody, 2010]

C. S. Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia, wrote:

“There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.'”

When Jesus’ disciples asked him to teach them how to pray (Luke 11:1), Jesus told them to pray: “Our Father in heaven, may your holy name be honoured; may your Kingdom come; may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). Or, with the words we have known for so many years and often use, “Thy will be done.”

Mary, the mother of Jesus, understood the personal significance of praying “Thy will be done” at the beginning of Jesus’ life. And Jesus knew the personal significance of these words when he prayed them at the end of his life on Earth.

Before Jesus was born, young Mary had a conversation with the angel Gabriel who told her she would “become pregnant and give birth to a son,” whom she would name Jesus. Mary was understandably perplexed because she was not involved sexually with anyone, not even with Joseph to whom she was engaged. Gabriel told her not to be afraid and added: “[Jesus] will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:33, NRSV).

I like how Eugene Peterson describes the interaction between Gabriel and Mary in his book Tell It Slant [Eerdmans, 2008; p. 178]:

“Angel or no angel, Gabriel obviously doesn’t know the facts of life. Mary fills him in, telling him that she is a virgin. But Mary doesn’t know the facts of the kingdom. Gabriel fills her in: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you….” As sure as she is of the ‘facts of life,’ Mary doesn’t insist. She opens herself to Gabriel’s King and kingdom announcement and prays, in effect, Thy will be done: ‘Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord ... let it be to me according to your word’ (Luke 1:38, RSV).

Mary had the choice –as we all have the choice – to go along with God’s will or not. Mary could have refused to allow the Holy Spirit to be involved in her life in this way because of the potential for ridicule and real trouble. Then God would have found someone else. But she did not refuse. “Let it be to me, according to your word,” she said. And the will of God was done in Mary’s life.

Thirty-three years later, as Jesus wrestled with God in the Garden of Gethsemane in the certain knowledge he was about to suffer a horrible death, Jesus prayed: “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42, NRSV). And the will of God was done in Jesus’ life. Jesus gave up his life on the cross and, three days later, he became the resurrected Lord of the Kingdom. Jesus’ life – from beginning to end on this Earth and beyond this life – is framed with the intent “Thy will be done!”

When Jesus teaches us to pray, he wants us to start with “thy” and not with “us.” Did you notice, we are not even mentioned in the first petitions to the Father? Except, Jesus does want us to know his Father is also our heavenly Father. That is radical and remarkable because you and I -- through Jesus -- are connected to God when we pray. We are in this Christian life together with Jesus as we pray to “Our Father.”

Jesus starts the prayer with the pronoun thy or your: May your name be honoured, may your kingdom come, may your will be done. When we pray this way, we are deeply involving ourselves in wanting God’s ways of working done on this Earth – by honouring God’s holy name, by intentionally calling for God’s kingdom to come and by desiring God’s will for the entire Earth to be done as it is in heaven.

But, then, halfway through his prayer, Jesus changes the pronoun to us. When we pray “Our Father in heaven, may your name be honoured, may your kingdom come and may your will be done,” our prayer involves us deeply with God’s purposes: “Your will be done.” But then we continue to pray: “Give us today the food we need. Forgive us the wrongs we have done, as we forgive the wrongs that others have done to us. Do not bring us to hard testing but keep us safe from the Evil One.” Our prayer now involves God deeply with us -- in life-changing ways in all the details of our lives. (But these details are for later messages.)

The movement in the Lord’s Prayer from your will – being all about God’s will -- to being all about our needs is another way of expressing our intimate and personal connection with Jesus’ Father who is also our Father. As I noted last week, Jesus is teaching us to be real and honest and open with God. Let me remind you how The Message Bible in Matthew 6:7-9 introduces Jesus’ teaching on how to pray:

“The world is full of so-called prayer warriors who are prayer-ignorant. They’re full of formulas and programs and advice, peddling techniques for getting what you want from God. Don’t fall for that nonsense. This is your Father you are dealing with, and he knows better than you what you need. With a God like this loving you, you can pray very simply. Like this: Our Father in heaven … ”

What Jesus wants us to realize is that our connection with God is not a prayer formula or a prayer technique. Our connection with God is meant to be a relationship with God the Father who knows better than we do what we need and who loves us. Therefore, we pray with a sense of person-to-person intimacy, love and joy.

So what is the will of God? If we take the context of where Jesus is telling his disciples how to pray, it is in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, which encompasses Matthew chapters 5, 6 and 7. So when we listen to Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount, we can hear the will – the intention -- of God.

Here are only a few things Jesus talks about in the Sermon on the Mount that reveal God’s intention for us:

There are the Beatitudes. Jesus says those who are poor in spirit and those who are merciful to others will be blessed. Those who mourn will be comforted. Those who work for peace will be called God’s children. And those who are persecuted for doing what God requires will find the Kingdom of heaven belongs to them.
Jesus says God’s intention is that his people be like life-enhancing salt giving extra flavour to society and preserving what is good in society and in the culture. God intends the witness of his people to be like goodness-enhancing light so that others will see the good things God’s people do and give praise to God.
Jesus says God’s intention is that we have deep respect for all people and even love for our enemies.
Jesus tells us to stock-pile treasures that last in heaven rather than the fleeting treasures here on Earth for “our heart will always be where our riches are.”
Jesus calls us to be concerned, above everything else, with the Kingdom of God and with what God requires of us and not to be obsessed about where our food and clothes will come from.
Jesus constantly reminds us to trust God. He also says that those who listen to what he says and put what he says into practice are wise because this is like building a house on solid rock that can withstand the storms of life. Not to trust him and put what he says into practice is like building our lives on sand. When the storms of life come, we are guaranteed to fall apart.

When I was a young Christian – both young in years and in my faith – a significant question for me was: What is the will of God for me personally? What does God want me to do with my life? Is there a particular vocation God wanted me to pursue? What would help me discern the answer to that question as well as to other questions as I grew in my relationship with God? Presbyterian minister and writer Frederick Buechner has helped me frame a profoundly personal sense of the will – the intent -- of God for us. Buechner wrote:

“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.”

“The place God calls you to”: Is that not the will of God? Think of what this statement might mean for Jesus and for us. When Jesus teaches us how to pray, do we not sense in our spirits that Jesus’ “deep gladness” is to hallow or honour the holy name of his Father? To pray for the coming of God’s Kingdom? To do the will of his Father? When Jesus teaches us how to pray, do we not also sense “the world’s deep hunger” is that their daily needs be met – needs of body, mind, emotions and spirit? Is not the world’s deep hunger also to know their sins are forgiven -- and to be able to forgive those who have wronged them? Is the world’s deep hunger not also to know that God “will not allow [them] to be tested beyond [their] power to remain firm…. [And] at the time [they] are put to the test, [God] will give [them] the strength to endure it, and so provide [them] with a way out.” (You will find that last statement in 1 Corinthians 10:13.)

When Jesus teaches us – his followers -- to pray, do we not recognize Jesus is the primary connection between our deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger? When we pray “Thy will be done,” Jesus is the One – through the Holy Spirit -- who causes us to acknowledge that the Father’s purposes will be done in whatever way God chooses to accomplish them. And so we pray that God, in his wisdom and love, will let us work with him to do his will. Someone has said: “I used to ask God to help me. Then I asked if I might help him. I ended up asking him to do his work through me.”

God’s will is down-to-earth yet planned in heaven. Jesus prayed that God’s will be done “on Earth as it is heaven.” When we pray thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven, we are saying God is not only in heaven but also at work here on Earth where we are – where we live and work and play and laugh and cry and love and hurt. When we pray “Thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven,” we are acknowledging, as Eugene Peterson expresses it [Tell It Slant, Eerdmans, 2008; p. 180]:

“God is at work in creation, in salvation, in blessing – on Earth. He is at work in our homes and workplaces, in our governments and schools, in our prisons and churches, in ships at sea and automobiles on highways, among the hungry and poor, among the newborn and the dying. Make your own list. Insert your own names. And then pray them.”

Søren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher and theologian who lived in the first half of the 18th century. I thought his brief prayer was appropriate for our Prayer of Approach:

“Father in heaven, now draw our hearts to you that our hearts may be where our treasures ought to be, that our minds and thoughts may look to your kingdom, whose citizens we are.”

Kierkegaard also wrote about human nature and how complex we human beings really are. But Kierkegaard was a disciple of Jesus and knew the difference between being merely an admirer and being a follower or disciple of Jesus. He wrote:

“If you have any knowledge at all of human nature, you know that those who only admire the truth will, when danger appears, become traitors. The admirer is infatuated with the false security of greatness; but if there is any inconvenience or trouble, he pulls back. Admiring the truth, instead of following it, is just as dubious a fire as the fire of erotic love, which at the turn of the hand can be changed into exactly the opposite -- to hate, jealousy, and revenge. Christ, however, never asked for admirers, worshipers, or adherents. He consistently spoke of ‘followers and ‘disciples.’”

May each of us consider not merely admiring Jesus but following him intentionally. May each of us also consider not my will but thy will be done. May this be so for you and for me.

Rev. Chris Miller
January 23, 2011

oympastor@rogers.com

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto

Visit with us online!

The Lord’s Prayer: Who’s Your Daddy?

2011-01-16T13:30:00.000-05:00

Matthew 6:7-15 - read this passage online here »

One day, a young boy asked his grandmother if he was a child of God. “Why, of course you are,” she replied. He looked puzzled and then responded, “Well I had better tell Mom and Dad -- they think I'm theirs!”

Who’s your daddy?

In the 1998 Disney movie Parent Trap, identical twins who were separated at birth by their parents' divorce accidentally meet 11 years later at summer camp. Together the twins plan to switch identities so each can meet the respective parent she's never known and try to bring their parents together again.

As Annie, who is pretending to be Hallie, disembarks from her plane, her father is waiting for her. Annie is tentative but exuberant as she sees him.

“Get into these arms, you little punk!” her dad says.

She runs to embrace him with a big smile, saying, “Dad! Finally!” The father tells her he has missed her and a lot has been happening. Annie responds: “A lot's been happening to me too, Dad. I mean, I feel I'm practically a new woman!”

As they're walking to the car, the father notices that Annie – who he thinks is Hallie -- can't stop looking at him and asks: “What? Did I cut myself shaving?”

Annie answers: “No. It's just seeing you for the first time. I mean, you know, in so long.”

As they drive toward his home, Annie discusses the camp, ending almost all her sentences with the word “Dad.” He asks her, “Why do you keep saying 'Dad' at the end of every sentence?”

Annie answers: “I'm sorry. I didn't realize I was doing it, Dad. Sorry, Dad.” They both laugh. “Do you want to know why I keep saying 'Dad'? The truth?”

The father says, “Because you missed your old man so much, right?”

“Exactly. It's because in my whole life -- I mean, you know, for the past eight weeks -- I was never able to say the word 'Dad.' Never. Not once. And if you ask me, a dad is an irreplaceable person in a girl's life. Think about it. There's a whole day devoted to celebrating fathers. Just imagine someone's life without a father. Never buying a Father's Day card. Never sitting on their father's lap. Or being able to say 'Hi Dad' or 'What's up, Dad?' or 'Catch you later, Dad.' I mean, a baby's first words are always 'Dada,' aren't they?”

The father asks: “Let me see if I get this. You missed being able to call me 'Dad'?”

Annie answers, “Yeah, I really have, Dad.”

Who’s your daddy?

Jesus understood the deep yearnings of his disciples to pray – even to pray properly. What do we say? Is there a right way to say our prayers? Jesus says that, when we pray, we are to closet ourselves away –or find a quiet spot by ourselves -- so we can connect with God the Father alone and not make a theatrical production of our personal devotion before the world. Jesus also says that, when we pray, we don’t need to say special magical words or special spiritual words. And we don’t need to be repetitive and long-winded with God. We just need to be real and honest and open with God. I appreciate how The Message Bible in Matthew 6:7-9 introduces Jesus’ teaching on how to pray:

“The world is full of so-called prayer warriors who are prayer-ignorant. They’re full of formulas and programs and advice, peddling techniques for getting what you want from God. Don’t fall for that nonsense. This is your Father you are dealing with, and he knows better than you what you need. With a God like this loving you, you can pray very simply. Like this: Our Father in heaven …” [Italics are mine.]

Our world abounds with many names for God. For instance, Hinduism has more than 330 million gods that they call aspects of the Supreme Being. Islam speaks of the 99 beautiful names of Allah. However, Jesus’ name for God is strikingly simple and uncomplicated: “Father.” In teaching us how to pray, Jesus invites us to pray very simply: “Our Father.”

“Our Father” – two simple words that need some unpacking.

First, “Father.” Jesus uses the Aramaic word – abba -- for “Father.” Children, young and old, used that intimate term for their fathers. It comes close to the way children in many languages refer to their fathers even today. Note the sounds ab-ba. Don’t they sound like papa, dada, daddy, for instance? Abba is a word filled with love and affection that theologian Dale Bruner says “is the most warm of [all] the Aramaic words for father.” What also intrigues me is that abba was never too childish to say. When children grew up, they still affectionately called their fathers abba. So when Jesus says abba, his disciples recognized the word. But they probably would have been startled by Jesus using such a familiar and affectionate name in praying to God. Yet this is an important issue in the way Jesus teaches his disciples (and us) how to pray. He teaches us prayer is personal. For Jesus, prayer is not depersonalized techniques and formulas to get God’s attention. Prayer to God is personal because God is personal -- even like a good father!

In the how-not-to-pray verses leading up to his prayer, Jesus calls God “Father” three times. In the Sermon on the Mount as a whole (Matthew 5, 6 and 7), Jesus uses the word “Father” 15 times! In 10 of those instances, Jesus expanded “Father” to include “Father in heaven” or “heavenly Father.” As Eugene Peterson, author of The Message Bible wrote: “Get used to this: Father.... ‘Father’ is Jesus’ metaphor of choice for God.” [Eugene Peterson, Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers, Eerdmans, 2008, p. 169]

Who’s your daddy?

For various reasons, some people have difficulty addressing God as “Father.” It may be because they have issues with their own fathers. Their fathers may have been emotionally or physically abusive or emotionally cold or verbally harsh. Or these so-called fathers may have been absent for much of their children’s lives --walking away from the family and leaving only the mother to bring up the children. And also, do we not live in a North American entertainment culture that more often parodies fathers than encourages their presence? Now I am not convinced the best remedy for a bad father is no father at all. When I say this, I am not saying an abusive father ought to be endured and remain in a family. But does it not make sense to intentionally encourage the gifts of a good father and teach and model the character of a responsible provider, a caring guardian, a compassionate and loving husband? Jesus gives us such a gift when he teaches us to pray “Our Father ... ”

The Lord’s Prayer is located almost exactly in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, which encompasses chapters 5, 6 and 7 of the Gospel of Matthew. It is as if this prayer is the support beam upon which the rest of Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon finds balance. Without this prayer, Jesus’ teachings and way of living with his disciples would not have happened in the manner Jesus and his Father dearly desired. If there is no prayer to a loving and compassionate Father at the centre, Jesus’ teachings are like a dry code of lifeless ethics.

Second, in teaching us how to pray, Jesus says to pray “Our Father.” The pronoun “our” is significant.

This is the only place in the Gospels where Jesus says “Our Father.” In other places, Jesus always talks intimately of “my Father” or in an absolute manner of “the Father.” When he talks to the disciples, he usually speaks of “your Father.” For instance, even after his resurrection, Jesus tells Mary Magdalene, “Go, tell the disciples, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” The meaning of his distinction between “my” and “your” becomes clear when we think in the following manner (which, by the way, is a way to think theologically). The church has confessed down through its history that Jesus, our Lord, is God’s only Son. You might remember hearing John 3:16 as a child in the traditional King James Version: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.” Jesus’ relation to God the Father is absolutely unique. He -- and he alone -- is God’s Son by nature. That is the intent of Jesus being the only begotten Son of the Father. Christians are God’s children by grace – the grace of adoption (John 1:12). And all people are God’s children by virtue of creation (Acts 17:28-29). Jesus, and Jesus alone, is God’s Son by right.

So when Jesus connects with us and calls the Father “Our Father,” he gives us a remarkable and wonderful gift. He is passing on to us something of his personal and priceless relationship with his Father. Jesus is saying God is our Father too! It is the kind of relationship that we can have with God as well -- to which I say, Thanks be to God!

When we pray to the Father, Jesus is also connecting himself with us. We are praying together with him. We are living our life together with him. Jesus is not disconnected from our praise and our honour of God or from our desire to do what God our Father wills. Jesus is not disconnected from our experience of what we need, whether regarding physical sustenance or spiritual nourishment. Jesus also knows what it means to forgive others. Jesus understands our desire not to be tested too hard. In teaching us to say “Our Father,” Jesus connects with us in our experience of the daily grind of our lives. All of these things are focused in the rest of the Lord’s Prayer. But that’s for the next several messages.

We are connected with Jesus and we are connected with one another when we pray “Our Father.” When we say “our,” we place ourselves with Jesus and with all who pray. We are never alone when we pray. We are with Jesus and with all others who love and follow him. That’s why I believe our church’s small group called the OYM Prayer Supporters is a significant ministry among us. The group symbolizes our prayerful concerns and connections with one another. When they pray for us, when we pray for one another, we are not alone. Thanks be to God “Our Father!”

Who’s your daddy?

John W. Fountain is a professor of journalism at the University of Illinois. He was formerly a national correspondent for the New York Times. The National Public Radio runs a series called “This I Believe.” As part of the series, Fountain gave the following testimony [Excerpted from “The God Who Embraced Me,” All Things Considered, www.npr.org (posted 11-28-2005)]:

“I believe in God. Not that cosmic, intangible spirit-in-the-sky that Mama told me as a little boy ‘always was and always will be.’ But the God who embraced me when Daddy disappeared from our lives -- from my life at age four -- the night police led him down the stairs, away from our front door, in handcuffs. The God who warmed me when we could see our breath inside our freezing apartment, when the gas was disconnected in the dead of another wind-whipped Chicago winter, and there was no food, little hope and no hot water.

“The God who held my hand when I witnessed boys in my 'hood swallowed by the elements, by death and by hopelessness; [the God] who claimed me when I felt like ‘no-man's son,’ amid the absence of any man to wrap his arms around me and tell me, ‘Everything's going to be okay,’ to speak proudly of me, to call me son.

“I believe in God, God the Father, embodied in his Son Jesus Christ. The God who allowed me to feel his presence -- whether by the warmth that filled my belly like hot chocolate on a cold afternoon, or that voice, whenever I found myself in the tempest of life's storms, telling me (even when I was told I was ‘nothing’) that I was something, that I was his, and that even amid the desertion of the man who gave me his name and DNA and little else, I might find [in God] sustenance.

“I believe in God, the God who I have come to know as Father, as Abba -- Daddy.

[Fountain also said:] “It wasn't until many years later, standing over my father's grave for a conversation long overdue, that my tears flowed. I told him about the man I had become. I told him about how much I wished he had been in my life. And I realized fully that, in his absence, I had found Another. Or that he -- God the Father, God my Father -- had found me.”

My friends, may the personal knowledge of God as our loving heavenly Father also be so for you and for me. Amen.

Rev. Chris Miller
January 16, 2011

oympastor@rogers.com

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto

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How Not to Pray (Series on The Lord’s Prayer)

2011-01-12T09:50:00.001-05:00

Matthew 6:1-8 - read this passage online here »

Have you heard the story about a minister who dies and is waiting in line at the Pearly Gates? Ahead of him is a fellow dressed in sunglasses, a loud shirt, leather jacket and jeans.

Saint Peter says to this man: “Who are you, so I may know whether to admit you to the Kingdom of Heaven?”

He replies, “I'm Joe Cohen, taxi driver, of New York City.”

Saint Peter consults his list, smiles and says to the taxi driver, “Take this silken robe and golden staff and enter through the Gates.” The taxi driver goes into Heaven with his robe and staff.

The minister is next in line. He says, “I am Joseph Snow, pastor of Saint Mary's for the past 43 years.”

Saint Peter consults his list. He says to the minister, “Take this cotton robe and wooden staff and enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

“Just a minute!” says the minister. “The man before me was a taxi driver. He gets a silken robe and a golden staff. How can this be?”

Saint Peter answered: “Up here, we work by results. While you preached, people slept. While he drove, people prayed.”

We may smile and even laugh. But the kernel of truth in the story is that we human beings want God to notice us. This is especially true when we pray. And as Jesus said to his early followers, let me say to you as well: God does notice us. In verse 6, Jesus said, “Your Father, who sees what you do in private, will reward you.” God can’t reward someone he doesn’t notice! But God does notice us -- and rewards us, Jesus says -- when our good actions and deeds are done for the right reasons and not for the wrong reasons.

Most of us, I would think, want to know how to pray. That was true of Jesus’ first followers. In Luke’s Gospel 11:1, when Jesus had finished praying his private prayers, his disciples asked him to teach them how to pray. In the beginning of 2011, this is my prayer as well: “Lord Jesus, teach me how to pray. And, Lord Jesus, teach these wonderful people at Oriole-York Mills how to pray as well.”

In Chapter 6 of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus divides his teaching on prayer into two sections: “How Not to Pray” in verses 5-8 and then “How to Pray” in verses 9-15.” The how-to-pray section is what we call The Lord’s Prayer or the Jesus Prayer. When Jesus tells us how not to pray, he wants to free us from some widely held mistaken notions about prayer. Once we understand this, we will more fully grasp how Jesus wants us to pray by teaching his marvellous prayer to God the Father. So today, we will take time to consider Jesus’ teaching about how we are not to pray.

Jesus said: “When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites! They love to stand up and pray in the houses of worship and on the street corners, so that everyone will see them. I assure you, they have already been paid in full.” Let me start with the negative. When we come before God, Jesus is clearly warning us not to make a spiritual production of praying. We are not to be theatrical show-offs, as someone said, before one another or before God.

The literal meaning of “hypocrite” is of a performer who is doing good actions in a dramatic way so as to be noticed. Jesus rejects this kind of performing in the lives of his followers. He sets us up for his teaching on prayer by teaching first about helping people in need. This is a significant theme in Jesus’ life and teachings. Listen to what he says in verses 2 to 4 of Matthew 6:

“So when you give something to a needy person, do not make a big show of it, as the hypocrites do in the houses of worship and on the streets. They do it so that people will praise them. I assure you, they have already been paid in full. But when you help a needy person, do it in such a way that even your closest friend will not know about it. Then it will be a private matter. And your Father, who sees what you do in private, will reward you.”

If we go back to verse 1 in Chapter 6, Jesus tells his followers not to do the right thing for the wrong reason. “Make certain you do not perform your religious duties in public so that people will see what you do,” he said. It is not that we are not to act in good ways, in right or righteous ways. Of course, we are to give our money to help those in need. Of course we are to pray, even in public. That’s what we do every Sunday morning in our worship. We have several times of prayer in our service, including what we call the Prayers of the People. But to those who are his followers, Jesus warns them about their motives. If the religious duties they do are done with an eye on the audience, they are not acceptable before God. Jesus said it this way: “If you do these things publicly, you will not have any reward from your Father in heaven.” Our reward will come from being noticed by our human audience instead of by God. And God’s reward isn’t merely any reward. As theologian Dale Bruner, in his The Christbook Commentary on Matthew [p. 288] reminds us: “Disciples make their life goal the hearing of their Father’s approval at the Last Judgment.”

But Jesus also told his followers how to do the right thing for the right reason. Here are his words in The Message Bible:

“When you help a needy person, do it in such a way that even your closest friend will not know about it. Then it will be a private matter. And your Father, who sees what you do in private, will reward you.” [6:3, 4]

The right reason has to do with how we relate to God. Jesus wants us to do whatever we do because we are eager to please God. This is meant to be so private we won’t even tell our closest friend. So Jesus instructs his followers on how they can do whatever they do – whether helping others or praying -- with integrity and focused solely on God.

When it comes to our own prayers, here’s how The Message Bible stated what Jesus said:

“Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense [God’s] grace.”

We don’t pray for show because God wants to meet us mainly in private, by ourselves, where we can be real and honest before him.

Many people today talk as if their life -- the way they live -- is really a prayer. So they do not recognize the need to stop, find a private place and pray some words to God. In other words, they don’t think they need to take time to actually talk with God. But prayer for Jesus is far more than a general sense of God’s presence with us in life. Prayer is the attempt to say words to God in privacy – in an intimate and personal conversation. Theologian Dale Bruner [The Christbook Commentary on Matthew, p. 288] observed that, for Jesus and thus for his followers, “Prayer is to a living person – to the living God – and it is not ... a psychological mind game....”

There is a place for praying – for saying actual words to God – when we are on the go in the midst of our tasks and activities of the day. But it is difficult to have a good conversation with someone if we are multitasking – a 21st-century term we are familiar with. Just ask my wife. When she phones me at the office, she has this unerring sense of determining if I am on the computer or reading at the same time I am talking with her. She knows when she does not have my undivided attention. God knows it too. He knows when he does not have our undivided attention. That’s why Jesus wants us to pause and to “closet” ourselves at some time in our day away from things that distract us from giving God our undivided attention even for a few minutes. In that place by ourselves with God, we can strive to be as honest as we can be with God. If we do, we will discover that God will become the focus of our very existence. And we will become less self-centred and more God-centred.

Jesus said not to pray as a performance or a show before others because God wants us to talk with him, not to the people who might be listening. And God loves a one-on-one conversation.

Jesus also said: “When you pray, do not use a lot of meaningless words, as the [Gentiles] do, who think that their gods will hear them because their prayers are long. Do not be like them. Your Father already knows what you need before you ask him.” When we pray, we do not have to go on and on and on, repeating our prayer over and over again, because God already knows what we need. Jesus says there doesn’t have to be a lot of words before God will hear us.

Jesus is contrasting the sort of praying that went on in much of the non-Jewish world of his day. For instance, there was the conviction that the gods were reluctant to hear prayers unless the prayers were long – long, repetitive and sometimes filled with complicated magic words meant to persuade the deities to be favourable toward those who prayed. The lengthy prayers were also meant to prove the sincerity of the petitioners. But Jesus taught that, because of the loving character of God the Father, we do not have to pray that way. That’s why Jesus told his followers how to pray (and not merely how not to pray) and he began his prayer by saying “Our Father.” But that’s next week’s message.

It has been a while since I saw the film Bruce Almighty [Universal, 2003, directed and produced by Tom Shadyac, written by Steve Kornen and Mark O'Keef]. But when I came across the write-up of the following scene, I was drawn to it because of how prayer was treated.

Bruce Nolan (played by Jim Carrey) is a mediocre news reporter in mid-life crisis. He complains to his girlfriend that God does a poor job of running the world. He could do far better. To his surprise, God (played by Morgan Freeman) gives him the opportunity.

You guessed it: Bruce does not do a good job of playing God. After wrecking his relationship with his girlfriend, Grace, he begins to ask God for help. The turning point comes when God helps Bruce cut through the pomp and pretence and teaches him to pray about the real issues in his life.

“What do you want me to do?” Bruce asks.

“I want you to pray, son. Go ahead.”

Bruce squints his eyes and attempts a prayer: “Um … Lord, feed the hungry and bring peace to … um … all of mankind. How's that?”

“Great … if you want to be Miss America,” God responds. “Now come on. What do you really care about?”

“Grace,” Bruce says, thinking of his girlfriend.

“Grace. You want her back?”

Bruce seems surprised by his own response. “No. I want her to be happy, no matter what that means.” Bruce closes his eyes. “I want her to find someone who will treat her with all the love she deserved from me. I want her to meet someone who will see her always as I do now -- through your eyes.”

“Now that's a prayer,” God says. “I'm going to get right on it.”

Jesus wants us to be real with God -- not play games. We can’t expect any response from God by trying to impress him with fine-sounding spiritual talk because God wants to meet with us privately for a real and personal conversation. And remember, God loves us. God is not a reluctant listener.

Jesus knows intimately that God is a lover of people. That’s why, later in his ministry [Matthew 11:28], Jesus would graciously call to people and say: “Come to me, all of you who are tired from carrying heavy loads and I will give you rest.” Jesus wants his followers to understand that God knows all about them – their sorrows and joys, their burdens and comforts -- and what they need in their lives. And he wants his followers to bring their various needs to God as a child would, with trust in his father.

As a church, we have many questions about where we are going in 2011. I do believe Jesus would love to hear us say: “Lord Jesus, teach us how to pray – for our sakes, for your sake and for the sake of the world.”

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

Rev. Chris Miller

January 9, 2011

oympastor@rogers.com

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto

Visit with us online!

God Believes In You

2011-01-02T13:30:00.000-05:00

Psalm 8 - read this passage online here »
James 1:2-8, 16-18 - read this passage online here »

We could begin this new year by asking one another what we believe about God. That’s one of those questions people talk about whether they are in church -- or not. And it is an important conversation to engage in whether in our own minds or with others. What do we believe about God? But at the beginning of 2011, I want to turn the issue around and ask: “What does God believe about us?’

That question intrigues me because what God believes about us as human beings influences how God acts toward us. Belief and action are two sides of the same process and not separate entities. We too act as we do because of what we believe.

For instance, I believe my children are worthwhile. Therefore, they are worth my investment in their lives – investments of time, love, care, interest and discipline – and much more. One way I did that was to help them financially through university. Another way is to be available to them when they are in difficulty. When they were in school, I used to remind them that, if they found themselves in an awkward circumstance they knew they shouldn’t be in or did not want to be in, they could always blame their dad to help them get out of it. They could say I was really strict and they needed to get home right away -- or else! Sometimes they took advantage of my offer and sometimes they did not. [smile]

How God acts toward us depends upon what God believes about us. So what does God believe about us as human beings?

Psalm 8 is a significant place to begin. Verse 3 in The Message Bible set us up to consider where we humans fit into the immensity of creation in God’s eyes:

“I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous, your hand-made sky-jewelry, Moon and stars mounted in their settings.”

Creation is immense and God, the grand Artist, made it all. And yet, even though God’s handiwork is cosmic and majestic, God both notices and pays attention to us humans. That is what so captivated the psalmist. Here’s verse 4 in The Message Bible:

“Then I look at my micro-self and wonder, why do you bother with us [,God]? Why take a second look our way?”

While the immensity contrasts with seeming insignificance, the clear implication is that God does take the time and effort to look our way – and even be involved in our lives. Humans seem so inconsequential beside this incomparable and vast creation. Who among us has not stood under the stars in awe and wondered about our place in this incredible universe? We might continue to wonder if it were not for what the psalmist tells us in this psalm about the place and the task of human beings. And here are some reasons why God believes we are worth his love/the bother and the concern.

In the first instance, the place of humans among everything God has made is “just shy of God’s own Being” -- as one commentator puts it [John Goldingay]. Yes, that is exactly what the psalmist says in verse 5. It fascinates me that the psalmist did not say humans are “a little higher than animals.” That’s what many today might say. Instead, he says humans are actually “a little lower than God.” In a sermon, Rev. Jay Kessler described it this way:

Virtually every one of us in this room is the result of an educational system that has, drip by drip, like dropping water on stone, made an impression on our lives as to who we are. Very few of us, naturally speaking, think of ourselves as a little lower than [God] {the angels}.

We almost all think of ourselves as a little higher than the animals. That is, we have in our mind a mental picture of something we've seen in any natural history museum: an ascendancy of primates, little jumping creatures, eventually humped over with knuckles dragging, and finally standing erect. When we see the final "naked ape" embarrassingly like us, we say, "This is my heritage. This is where I came from." We think of ourselves as a little higher than the animals.

I wouldn't debate the fact [said Kessler] that as human beings we are mammals. We carry on the mammalian kind of processes: ingestion, digestion, absorption, assimilation, respiration, excretion, secretion, motion, sensitivity, and reproduction. We do these things without consciously thinking about them, just like all the other animals.

[However,] the central statement of Scripture about [humankind] is that we have been ... infused by God with a nature that is not a little higher than the animals, but one that is ... a little lower than [God]{the angels}.

My friends, we are not an accidental by-product of an accidental evolutionary process. And we are not something. We are someone. We humans are a deliberate creation by God – however God did that.

Because we are someone in God’s eyes, verse 5 also says that God crowned humans with "glory" and "honour." Imagine that. God gives us glory and honour! The imagery here is significant. Crown refers here to humanity’s authority over other created life. Another way to express this is to say: “God, you gave humans power to rule over all created life and you gave humans splendour and honour.” Surely the psalmist is thinking back to the beginnings of life in Genesis 1 and 2 where we human beings were made so as to reflect God’s image and God’s loving purposes for God’s creation. This is a place of wonderful responsibility.

Because we are someone in God’s eyes, verses 6 through 9 of Psalm 8 tell us that human beings have been assigned the task of ruling over everything in God’s creation: sheep and cattle, all creatures of the world, the birds and the creatures in the seas. God believes in us enough to give us this remarkable assignment with serious responsibilities for caring wisely for other living creatures on this planet.

No matter how human beings have failed in their assignment up to this point, the task still remains today. As followers of Jesus, we are not alone – we have never been alone – in the task God has called us to accomplish. The author of the Letter to Hebrews in Chapter 2:6-9, shows us, by quoting these same verses from Psalm 8, how we are connected to our task through Jesus, our Lord:

“What are human beings, O God, that you should think of them; mere human beings, that you should care for them? You made them for a little while lower than the angels; you crowned them with glory and honour, and made them rulers over all things.’

[The Scripture] says that God made them “rulers over all things”; this clearly includes everything. We do not, however, see human beings ruling over all things now. But we do see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, so that through God’s grace he should die for everyone. We see him now crowned with glory and honour because of the death he suffered.”

This is the task God gave to humans on Earth: to rule the Earth on behalf of God as those given glory and honour by God to do so. But God has not appointed humans to rule by exploiting this Earth and other human beings. In fact, throughout Scripture, God is clear we are not to destroy the Earth or oppress or take advantage of one another. God’s intention is that our rule should involve compassion and care for this Earth and all its creatures, including all humanity. Unfortunately, humans seem to possess an inner inclination toward exploitation and destruction. That’s why we need to be connected to Jesus who came to help us through the Holy Spirit to overcome that inner tendency to abuse others and to damage ourselves – in other words, to sin. But think of it: God believes human beings are capable of governing God's good world on his behalf, especially through Jesus Christ!

What more does God believe about us as human beings? James 1:2-4 gives us another insight. God believes we are capable of handling the tests and challenges of life that inevitably come our way. And who does not believe there will not be adversity and struggle for us in 2011? Here is the passage again from The Good News Translation:

My brothers and sisters, consider yourselves fortunate when all kinds of trials come your way, for you know that when your faith succeeds in facing such trials, the result is the ability to endure. Make sure that your endurance carries you all the way without failing, so that you may be perfect and complete, [that is mature and well-developed in your faith and response to life].

We are capable because the faith in God and in Jesus that is within us shows its self in the way we handle the troubles and difficulties of our human condition. Our ability to succeed despite the troubles and difficulties we face does not come from thinking we can handle these circumstances on our own or in our own strength. Rather our willingness to exercise our faith and hope in God results in our being able to endure the challenges we are going through. Our willingness to trust that God is with us through anything and everything (whether we feel God’s presence or not), means we will come out the other end of the tunnel as people who have become more mature and developed in our faith. And if we are not sure what to do when we find ourselves in challenging circumstances, God expects us to pray to him and ask for help and for the wisdom we need. God loves to help, says James. Here’s how The Message Bible puts it:

If you don’t know what you’re doing, pray to the Father. He loves to help. You’ll get his help, and won’t be condescended to when you ask for it. Ask boldly, believingly, without a second thought. People who “worry their prayers” are like wind-whipped waves. Don’t think you’re going to get anything from the Master that way, adrift at sea, keeping all your options open.

God believes we are capable of trusting him -- that he loves to help us, that we can be bold in our asking for assistance and that we can believe -- without reservations -- God is there for us even when the trouble is not removed from our lives.

God also believes we are capable of doing what is good. Micah was one of those Old Testament prophets who, in the words of Eugene Peterson, was “charged with keeping people alive to God and alert to listening to the voice of God” [Introduction to Micah in the Message Bible]. Hear what Micah said in Chapter 6, verse 8:

The LORD has told us what is good. What he requires of us is this: to do what is just, to show constant love, and to live in humble fellowship with our God.

A 2009 article in the Chicago Tribune newspaper [Barbara Mahany, "Cooking Up Compassion," Chicago Tribune (9-20-09), section 6] told the story of Bettye Tucker, a Christian cook who works the night shift at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago. She has been doing her job for 43 years -- 28 of them on the night shift. She sees a steady stream of parents in her job, many of them frightened and weary. On one particular night in September 2009, Miss Bettye (as she is referred to by all who know her) served food to a mother whose three-year-old had fallen out of a second-storey window that morning, another mother whose 17-year-old was battling a rare form of leukemia and a third mother whose 18-year-old had endured seven hours of brain surgery. Their stories broke the heart of Miss Bettye and, as one co-worker said: “That's why she feeds every last one of them as if they had walked right into the 'too-small' kitchen of [the] South Side brick bungalow [where she lives]." A member of the hospital's housekeeping crew added this about Miss Bettye: "You need someone to bring you life, and she brings it in the middle of the night."

A picture of Miss Bettye that accompanied the article shows a woman with a beautiful smile. It's hard to imagine how much that smile would mean to a suffering parent or child. She says, "When I ask, 'How you doin' today?' and they say it's not a good day, I say, 'Don't lose hope.' When the nurses tell me it's a bad night, I say: 'I understand it's a bad night. But guess what? I am here for you. I'm going to get you through the night.'"

Another picture shows Bettye sitting down, head bowed, over a meal. "I'm a praying lady," she says in the article. "I pray every night, for every room and every person in the hospital. I start with the basement, and I go up, floor by floor, room by room. I pray for the children, I pray for the families, I pray for the nurses and the doctors. … I say, every night while I'm driving in on the expressway, 'Oh, Lord, I don't know what I'll face tonight, but I pray you'll guide me through.'"

The reporter who wrote the article offered these words about Miss Bettye: "[It] just might be, that divine helping on the side is the most essential item on Miss Bettye's menu. The one she stirs in every broth, and every whisper. The ingredient that makes her the perpetual light shining in the all-night kitchen."

God believes we are capable of doing what is good – of showing the constant love and compassion of someone like Miss Bettye.

God believes in us. God acts in amazing mercy, in understanding compassion, in generous forgiveness and in constant love toward us. And James 1:18, as stated in The Message Bible, reminds us:

“[God] brought us to life using the true Word [that is, Jesus the Lord], showing us off as the crown of all his creatures.”

That is who we are! That is who you and I are – in God’s eyes! May this be so – may we believe this to be so -- in your eyes and mine.

Rev. Chris Miller

January 2, 2011

oympastor@rogers.com

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto

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Experience Hope This Christmas... In a Baby Born

2010-12-25T01:30:00.000-05:00

Isaiah 9:2-7 - read this passage online here »
Luke 2:1-20 - read this passage online here »

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

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

2010-12-12T13:30:00.000-05:00

Matthew 1:18-25 - read this passage online here »
Luke 1:26-38 - read this passage online here »

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

oympastor@rogers.com

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto

Visit with us online!

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

2010-12-05T13:30:00.000-05:00

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

oympastor@rogers.com

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto

Visit with us online!

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

2010-11-28T13:30:00.000-05:00

Psalm 139:1-12 - read this text online here »
Matthew 11:28-30 - read this text online here »

“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

oympastor@rogers.com

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto

Visit with us online!

What Is This Child Going to Be?

2010-11-21T13:30:00.000-05:00

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

oympastor@rogers.com

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto

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

2010-11-07T13:30:00.000-05:00

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

oympastor@rogers.com

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto

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

2010-10-31T13:30:00.000-04:00

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

oympastor@rogers.com

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto

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Be-Attitude Living: A Series on the Beatitudes (3) An Appetite for God

2010-10-24T13:30:00.000-04:00

"You're blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for God. He's food and drink in the best meal you'll ever eat. Matthew 5:6

Possessing an appetite means you have a desire for something. You have developed a taste for something. On the one hand, your appetite could be weak so that even a small taste would be enough to satisfy you. In the long run, whether you actually get that taste or not may not really matter to you. On the other hand, your appetite could be strong. You have really worked up an appetite for something. Your appetite may be voracious. You crave something. You long for it. You absolutely need it. You may even believe you cannot live without it.

That is the sense underlying Jesus’ fourth Beatitude when he talked about those who “hunger and thirst for righteousness.” For these people, their entire body and soul ache to be satisfied or filled with what God says is the right way and the good way to live. In Jesus’ sermon, this Beatitude follows immediately after three other Beatitudes similar in tone and character. Each of these four blessings expresses being poor or being poverty-stricken. I appreciate how theologian and commentator Dale Bruner [Matthew A Commentary Volume 1: The Christbook. Revised and Expanded Edition, p.155. Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing, Grand Rapids, Mich.] gives structure to the 10 Beatitudes in Matthew’s Gospel. He divides them into three groups. Each Beatitude in each of the groups connects with the other Beatitudes in its group. Bruner calls the first group poor Beatitudes. That’s because each Beatitude is about people who are incomplete, deficient and lacking in some way. They are people who are in a condition of deep need. They are people to whom God extends his grace simply because they need his help.

Beatitude One: “Blessed are those who are poor in spirit” -- or spiritually poverty-stricken. Beatitude Two: “Blessed are those who mourn” -- or are broken-hearted.” These are people who are poor because they are without joy of heart. Beatitude Three: “Blessed are those who are humble.” These are people who are poor because they are without power in the eyes of the world and have no power to commend themselves to anyone around them. They are similar to those who are poverty-stricken in their spirit. And Beatitude Four: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness” -- or those who have a deep and voracious appetite for what God desires in their lives and in the lives of others, for what is good and right. That appetite still needs to be satisfied in all our lives whether we recognize it or not.

In the weeks that follow, we will look at the fifth and seventh Beatitudes: “Blessed are those who are merciful” and “Blessed are those who are peacemakers.” They are in the second group of Beatitudes that Bruner calls the help Beatitudes because they focus on service and love. And then there is the third group that Bruner calls the hurt Beatitudes because they consist of two Beatitudes centred on persecution – on “those who are persecuted for righteousness” and on “those who are persecuted because they are devoted to Jesus.”

Human beings possess appetites for many things. Some things are good and some things are bad. Some appetites lead to harmful actions and addictions while others may be more annoying than anything else to others.

A father told the story about his eight-year-old daughter who left six green beans on her plate. She normally ate her vegetables so, usually, the father was not bothered by this kind of thing. However, on this particular night, he was irked for some reason and said to her, “Eat your green beans.”

She replied, “Dad, I'm full to the top.”

“You won't pop,” he responded.

“Yes, I will pop!” she said.

“Risk it!” he said. “It will be OK.”

“Dad, I could not eat another bite.”

Her father knew that night they were having her favourite dessert -- pumpkin pie squares. So he asked, “How would you like a double helping of pumpkin pie squares with two dollops of whipped cream on top?”

“That sounds great!” she responded as she pushed her plate back, ready for dessert.

“How can you have room for a double helping of pumpkin pie squares with two dollops of whipped cream and not have room for six measly green beans?” he asked.

She stood up tall in front of her chair and, pointing to her belly, said: “This is my vegetable stomach. This is my meat stomach. They are both full. Here is my dessert stomach. It is empty. I am ready for dessert!” [www.preachingtoday.com/illustrations]

So what do we hunger for? In this Beatitude, Jesus is not necessarily comparing different hungers and thirsts. At least he doesn’t give any examples. But he says clearly that the blessed are those who keep hungering and keep thirsting for God, for righteousness – that is, for what God desires, for what is right according to God’s standard for their lives and for the lives of others. Jesus knew -- and so did his disciples and the other listeners -- that the picture of hungering and thirsting for God meant a deep longing for God. At some point, I can imagine Jesus unpacking the meaning of this blessing by quoting from the prophet Isaiah in Chapter 55:

“The LORD says,

‘Come, everyone who is thirsty -- here is water!
Come, you who have no money -- buy corn and eat!
Come! Buy wine and milk -- it will cost you nothing!
Why spend money on what does not satisfy?
Why spend your wages and still be hungry?
Listen to me and do what I say,
and you will enjoy the best food of all.
Listen now, my people, and
come to me; come to me, and you will have life!’”
It would cost the thirsty and hungry nothing only because God, in his amazing grace and love, paid the cost!

Listen to how King David expressed his deep longing for God in Psalm 63, verse 1:

“You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you;
I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you,
in a dry and parched land where there is no water.”

The meaning of this hungering and thirsting for God is to continually seek God with all our heart, to desire God above all else.

Everyone who listens to Jesus and this blessing is challenged with such questions as: How hungry and thirsty am I for God? How hungry and thirsty am I to think, speak and do what is good and right in God’s sight? How hungry and thirsty am I for what God wants for me and for others, especially those living in unrighteousness ways and in unjust conditions? How much do I truly want the justice and will of God not only for myself but also for others? These are questions I frequently ask myself. And it is not so much a question of feeling (How do I feel?) as it is of behaviour (What do I intend to do?). I believe Jesus is challenging us to hunger and thirst to be a doer of God’s will. And we will discover more and more of what God’s will is through the teachings and commands of Jesus, focused here in his Sermon on the Mount. The content of his sermon in Matthew, chapters 5 through 7, is a summary of what God wants for us in our relationship with God, within ourselves and certainly in our relationships with others.

There is an intriguing yet encouraging irony in this Beatitude. Those who hunger and thirst for right conduct (another meaning for “righteousness”) are blessed, not because they are righteous but because they are continually craving the personal, moral and social righteousness that God wants for them and for others. That captivates me. Again, Dale Bruner says it so well [Matthew A Commentary Volume 1: The Christbook. p.168. Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing, Grand Rapids, Mich.]:

“God’s promise is given to people for whom righteousness ... and right conduct seem painfully missing, in themselves and in others ... ”

Bruner then says:

“The meaning of ‘hungering and thirsting’ is this: these persons do not believe they can live until they find or see righteousness. They long for what is right, they crave justice, they cannot live without God’s justice prevailing; for them right relations in the world are not just a luxury or a mere hope but an absolute necessity if they are to live at all.”

Thomas Merton was a writer and Trappist monk known for his depth of spirituality, his contemplative life and his passionate desire for peace and justice. In his little book Thoughts in Solitude [Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999), p. 79], Merton wrote 15 lines that have become known as "The Merton Prayer.” As I pray this prayer, I hope you will sense his poverty of spirit and his bottomless appetite – his deep hunger and thirst -- to do God’s will and not his own:

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

For me, Merton’s thirst is most evident in the line: “I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire” – the desire to please God. Are you starved for more of God? Are you hungry and thirsty for more goodness and righteousness in your own life and in the lives of others? Jesus says: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for what God wants, God will satisfy them fully.”

When will God satisfy those who are hungry and thirsty to do what is just and right in God’s sight? When will God finally satisfy their longing for personal obedience and social justice? I say finally because the hard reality is that, while we can enjoy a taste of satisfaction now, full satisfaction will not happen in this life. We may seek to do our best to live God’s way and to help others but we often fail personally. As well, the evil forces in this world can thwart the justice we hope for and work for. But one day, God’s judgment will come and this will be good news for those who, in this life, have received little if any justice. For God has deep compassion for those whose lives are hard, who are spiritually broken, whose hopes are constantly dashed and whose lives are powerless. And many of these very people in our world today, who are oppressed or persecuted and long for justice, look beyond this life to God’s justice and the life to come. For then they will be finally and fully vindicated when they enter fully into God’s kingdom where they will “neither hunger nor thirst anymore,” as the Scripture says in John’s Revelation, the last book of the Bible. (I have read that verse in more than one funeral service, especially for those whose lives were difficult and poverty-stricken indeed.)

God’s judgment will also come with mercy and forgiveness and freedom and joy for those who hunger and thirst for God’s righteousness in themselves. They desire, like Thomas Merton, to please God in all they do but know they fall far short of God’s standard. But they are forgiven and, in the life to come, they will experience the righteousness they long for because of Jesus’ death on the cross for them.

I know some of you follow the game of baseball and are watching the World Series games these days. In his book The Sacred Way [Zondervan, 2005, p.31], author Tony Jones suggests that the Christian can learn something from the life of a baseball player. He writes:

“Becoming more adept at following Christ … is like being a baseball shortstop. A young player can watch videos, read books by the greatest shortstops of all time, and listen to coaches lecture on what makes a good shortstop; but what will make him a truly good shortstop is getting out on the field and practicing. The only way he'll really get a feel for the game is to field ground ball after ground ball, to figure out when to play the ball on a short hop, when a pull-hitter is at bat, and how far to cheat toward second base when the double play is on. The more practice he has, the better he'll be.

“Getting a ‘feel for the game’ in following Jesus is much the same. You can listen to innumerable sermons and read countless books, but the true transformation happens only when you practice the disciplines that lie at the heart of the faith.”

I believe what Jesus is doing in all the Beatitudes is helping us get a feel for the life God promises to bless. When we listen to what Jesus says, we sense God’s loving heart, strong compassion and amazing grace for all people who are in deep need. And as followers of Jesus, we pray that our hearts will resonate with God’s compassion for others. We also get a good feel for what following Jesus means in the fourth Beatitude. Do we have an appetite to do God’s will? Do we hunger and thirst to obey Jesus’ commands? If so, let us pray our appetite is to love God with all our heart and mind and soul and strength and to love our neighbour as we care for ourselves.

May this be so for you and for me.

Rev. Chris Miller
October 24, 2010

oympastor@rogers.com

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto

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Be-Attitude Living - A Series on the Beatitudes (2): Loss is Gain

2010-10-17T13:30:00.000-04:00

You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you. Matthew 5:4

If I remember correctly, there were about 200 or so students when I attended my first lecture at university. The attendance thinned out after a while for a variety of reasons. One reason I stayed was quite realistic, I thought: since I paid good money to be there, I wanted to get my money’s worth. But I also discovered some students paid very little to be there because they audited the class. They had no strong financial commitment to the class but they were interested enough in the subject and perhaps in the particular teacher to sit and listen, at least for a while.

This is something like what was going on with Jesus the teacher and those who attended Jesus’ class on the mountain. We are in week two of a five-week message series on the Beatitudes of Jesus [5:3-12] from the Gospel of Matthew. Beginning with the nine Beatitudes was Jesus’ way of introducing his class to his teaching in the entire Sermon on the Mount. Jesus’ class comprised two groups. His 12 disciples were those who really wanted to hear and live by Jesus’ teaching [those who wanted “to get their money’s worth”] because they had already made a strong commitment to follow him. Then there were those who were on the edge auditing his class – perhaps some were casually listening and others listening only to critique what Jesus said. They had enough interest to spend time listening to Jesus because he was an unusual teacher. Some were impressed he spoke with such authority, the Scripture says – apparently, quite different from the other religious teachers they usually heard. Matthew framed the Beatitudes and the entire Sermon on the Mount in the following manner. Hear how The Message Bible begins Matthew 5 and then concludes Jesus’ sermon in Chapter 7, verses 28 and 29:

“When Jesus saw his ministry drawing huge crowds, he climbed a hillside. Those who were apprenticed to him, the committed, climbed with him. Arriving at a quiet place, he sat down and taught his climbing companions….

“When Jesus concluded his address, the crowd burst into applause. [Not only his disciples heard Jesus teaching but so did the crowd with them.] They had never heard teaching like this. It was apparent that he was living everything he was saying -- quite a contrast to their religion teachers! This was the best teaching they had ever heard.”

What is significant to consider here is that the disciples and the crowd are drawn to listen to the teacher Jesus and not merely to another religious teacher. He was the extraordinary one who was worth listening to and, for some, worth their personal commitment. We only have to read the first four chapters of Matthew’s Gospel to see how extraordinary the person of Jesus is: his genealogy, his birth, his baptism, his temptations and his life of light and hope and healing for the entire world. No wonder people wanted to know more about Jesus and what he taught. So they sat down with him to listen and to ponder how to respond to such a teacher and to such teachings.

It intrigues me Jesus began his Sermon on the Mount with blessings rather than commands. But these “blessings” may have sounded a little startling at first. The disciples and the crowd would hear about his commands and his ethics soon enough but, first, Jesus wanted them to experience God’s grace and love. With the Beatitudes, Jesus laid a foundation of God’s grace upon which his 12 disciples and the others who followed him could respond to his often difficult commands. For instance, those who are “the poor in spirit” are those (then and now) who realize their spiritual poverty – that they do not have adequate goodness of their own to stand before a holy God. They know they need God’s own goodness! They realize they are blessed in God’s presence -- or in God’s kingdom -- solely because of God’s grace and love for them shown in the death of Jesus on the cross for them. As they grow in their understanding of God’s grace, they will become increasingly careful of the way they relate both to God and to other people. They know God’s grace extends not only to them but to everyone they encounter, both friend and foe. And if at times they fail to live God’s way or miss the mark or sin, grace means God also forgives them and forgives them and forgives them. And they will learn that Jesus calls them to forgive others as they have been forgiven.] So they get up and keep on loving others, themselves and they keep on being open to God’s love.

This morning we heard Jesus’ second blessing: “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.” This is a paradoxical or counter-intuitive blessing. It sounds as if Jesus is saying, “Happy are those who are sad.” Or, as The Message Bible puts it, “You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you.” Or “loss is gain” as I titled this message. G. K. Chesterton once defined a paradox as “truth standing on its head calling for attention.” That is certainly true here. Jesus states one of the essential truths of the life God blesses in such a way that it cries out for all to come and take a good long look at what he means -- a look that can bring life to them.

I think there are two things going on in this Be-Attitude for living. First, Jesus says that the attitude of being brokenhearted, grief-stricken and in mourning is the attitude God blesses. Jesus was not at all explicit about what the circumstances might be that cause someone to mourn. But just as Jesus spoke before of spiritual poverty he is now speaking of mourning spiritually. Jesus wanted his hearers to feel in themselves that God comforts those who are brokenhearted and filled with deep sadness. As theologian Dale Bruner translated this verse: “Blessings on the brokenhearted, because they will be comforted.” [Matthew A Commentary Volume 1: The Christbook. Revised and Expanded Edition, p.154. Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing, Grand Rapids, Mich.].

Bruner also said something important when he wrote:

“Jesus [blesses] mourning, not moping [or pouting] (cf. esp. 6:16-18). He does not counsel the long face. He does, however, bless real sadness, a state that can as easily coexist with an outwardly happy life as do all the other normal contradictions of living. (The deepest joy may reside in persons with the deepest sadness.) Sadness and joy are not mutually exclusive; they are often cause and effect. (Much folk music lives from this strange but strong combination.) Jesus lends his authority to the perception that it is those for whom sadness is deep that God is real (cf. Ecclesiastes 7:2-4).

But we also want to know more about the kind of circumstances that break peoples’ hearts – what causes such deep personal sadness. Those listening to Jesus might recall what the prophet Isaiah said (Isaiah 61:1-2): “He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted … to comfort all who mourn.” Or someone else who knew the Scripture well may have remembered Ezekiel 9:4: “Go through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of those who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it.” Another person might have remembered the words of the prophet Amos 6:6: “Woe to those who drink wine from bowls, and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of [their country]!” In these Old Testament Scriptures, Jesus’ listeners – who were really paying attention -- could sense how injustice, societal evil and sin would cause deep wounds in people’s spirits. These wounds would break the hearts of people sensing God’s heart because those who could help to heal the wounds of hurting people in a selfish and unjust society did not care enough to do so. These wounds would grieve peoples’ spirits sensitive to God’s Spirit because such evil and injustice and sin seemed to go on all around them.

However, when we ponder our human experiences, and are also aware of what is happening in our society and in the world, do we not realize that what breaks our hearts is not only what’s wrong with society or the world, but also what’s wrong with us? If we connect Jesus’ first beatitude – “Blessed are those who know they spiritually poor” -- with the second one – “Blessed are those who mourn” – then we may see one more circumstance that may cause us to be brokenhearted: our own tendency to fail and to miss the mark of God’s good intentions for our lives. We call it sin.

One speaker said it like this:

“We twist the truth to get out of a jam. We say hurtful things to people we love. We commit adultery in our hearts. We spend on ourselves what we could give to others. We lose our tempers and look down our noses. We spread gossip, and we wallow in envy. We do these things knowing they’re wrong, that they’re hurtful to others and to us, and that they fall far short of the good things God created us to do and be.” [Bryan Wilkerson in his sermon “The Heartbreak Gospel,” PreachingToday.com]

Rev. Andy Stanley points out that we need to take care we do not call our sins “mistakes.” There is a big difference between the two. A mistake is an error, a blunder, a slip-up, an oversight or a miscalculation. We both regret and apologize for a mistake. We try to make amends for our mistakes. But we don’t mourn a mistake. What we mourn is the fundamental flaw in our character that compels us to think or say or do the wrong thing. What we mourn is a twist in our spirit that consistently takes us in the wrong direction. We were made to be generous, but we tend toward greed. We were designed to treasure our sexuality, instead we trash it. We were wired to worship God. Instead we worship other things – even something good like nature or ourselves. As Stanley puts it, we are not merely “mistakers,” we are also “sinners.”

Jesus said “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.” And the blessing and the comfort are from nowhere else but God!

Those listening to Jesus in his day would have understood that and so must we in our day. To mourn over the evil and the injustices in our world is a good thing. I hope our mourning will cause us to act, if at all possible, to be generous givers and sensitive but strong peacemakers – to be part of the solution and not part of the ongoing problem. God wants us to be healers with Jesus of the wrong in our world.

If we listen to Jesus in our day and mourn over what is wrong in ourselves, Jesus promised us the blessing of God’s comforting presence with us. In John’s Gospel – especially chapters 14 to 16 -- Jesus makes us more than aware that the One who guides us into truth, who helps us and who comforts our spirits in this life is God’s Holy Spirit.

But we are pondering the blessing for those who mourn. Let me be clear that Jesus’ blessing and God’s comfort embraces all mourning, whatever loss we face in our lives. The Message Bible has it right when it states: “You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One [that is God] most dear to you.” But I also believe that the mourning Jesus blesses and for which God will provide comfort extends even to people who grieve about their seeming difficulty to believe. One commentator put it this way:

“Sometimes one seems unable to believe, [but] there is faith in this very longing [to believe] …. Such mourners have already pressed into the second [Beatitude]…. I think it was Teresa of Avila who said: ‘I do not love you, Lord; I do not even want to love you; but I want to want to love you.’” [Matthew A Commentary Volume 1: The Christbook. Revised and Expanded Edition, p.165. Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing, Grand Rapids, Mich.]

My friends, if you are mourning today, then be prepared to be embraced by the grace and love of God in Jesus and to be comforted by the gracious presence of the Holy Spirit. If someone you know is struggling to believe that Jesus Christ has come to bring them new life, then trust that God’s grace and love is there for them to receive in Jesus. Pray that, in their struggle, they will come to experience the blessing and comfort of God’s presence in their lives as Jesus promised. Pray that they will want to want to love God.

May this be so for you and for me.

Rev. Chris Miller
October 17, 2010

oympastor@rogers.com

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto

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Be-Attitude Living: A Series On The Beatitudes 1.Less Is More

2010-10-10T13:30:00.000-04:00

Matthew 5:1-12 (5:3) - read this online here »
Micah 6:6-8 - read this online here »

There is little question the Sermon on the Mount is the most well-known of Jesus’ teachings. Rev. Dr John Stott called it “the nearest thing to a manifesto that [Jesus] ever uttered, for it is his own description of what he wanted his followers to be and to do” [Stott, J. R. W., & Stott, J. R. W. (1985), The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7): Christian Counter-Culture. The Bible Speaks Today (14–15). Leicester: Leicestershire; Downers Grove, Ill.,: Inter-Varsity Press]. A manifesto is a public declaration of a person’s principles, policies and goals. What we have in this teaching in chapters 5 through 7 of The Gospel of Matthew is the essence – the ultimate standard -- of right or righteous living that Jesus wanted for every one of his followers, without exception.

The Sermon is so famous and powerful we can hardly underestimate its influence. The great poet and preacher John Donne of the early 17th century wrote:

“Our blessed Saviour, in these three chapters of this Gospel, hath given us a sermon of texts, of which, all our sermons may be composed. All the articles of our religion, all the canons of our Church, all the injunctions of our princes, all the homilies of our fathers, all the body of divinity, is in these three chapters, in this one sermon in the Mount.”

Lutheran minister, scholar and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, hanged by the Nazis in 1945, based his classic book The Cost of Discipleship upon its teaching. And the influence of the Sermon on the Mount is not limited only to Christians. Anyone who is familiar with Mahatma Gandhi’s approach to political life understands Gandhi’s acknowledgement of Jesus’ teachings, especially in the Sermon on the Mount.

For those who want to be serious followers of Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount focuses on the kind of life Jesus wants for us. It highlights attitudes and behaviours found in those who confess their belief in Jesus as the One to whose extraordinary life and teachings they have committed their lives. While we won’t be dealing with the whole of the Sermon in chapters 5 though 7, we will spend the next five Sundays on the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount -- the Beatitudes of Jesus.

I have called this series “Be-Attitude Living.” Someone else has called Jesus’ Beatitudes “beautiful attitudes.” In these Beatitudes, we see the character and nature of the life Jesus sets out before us. We will see who we are – and who we ought to be – as people who confess we follow Jesus Christ. We are going to centre our attention on five of Jesus’ Beatitudes. Today, we will think about “Less Is More” as seen in verse 3: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” In the following weeks, we will consider “Loss Is Gain” in verse 4. We will see we need “A Good Appetite for God” in verse 6. We will be challenged to be people who “Act With Mercy” in verse 7. And then we will reflect on what it means to be people “Working for Peace” in verse 9 – an appropriate message, I hope, for the Sunday we celebrate Remembrance Day. These are the attitudes that are to characterize all followers of Jesus Christ.

For those who don’t have enough food to eat today or a bed to sleep in tonight, to hear that less means more would be seen as cruel, even ridiculous. So it’s important to realize that Jesus is not saying material poverty in and of itself is a good thing. The Bible Jesus read – which is the Old Testament -- says in the Book of Deuteronomy:

“If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor.… Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.” [Deut. 15:7, 11 NRSV]

Jesus knew God’s compassion for those who were poor is so great that ignoring the plight of the poor is grounds for divine judgment. In the New Testament, we read in Galatians 2:10 that those who follow Christ are to “remember those who are poor.” In Acts 20:35, the Apostle Paul quoted Jesus who said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Today, many people give to a broad range of charities – some faith-based and some not – whose mandate includes helping those who are poor to receive the assistance they need and to get out of poverty if at all possible. So Jesus is not saying that living in a state of constant material poverty is what he wants or what God blesses either.

But Jesus is describing the kind of person God blesses. He wants us to know the character of the people who are on the receiving end of God’s blessing. The Good News Translation uses the word “happy” instead of “blessed.” It says “happy” are those who are poor in spirit or who mourn or who are humble or who are merciful. But when we think of being happy, we usually mean we feel happy. We feel good in ourselves. But in Jesus’ Beatitudes, he is not declaring how people feel. Rather, he is stating what God thinks of them. So Jesus says those who know they are poor in their spirit are those who find approval with God. They are the kind of people whom God blesses.

One of the most difficult hurdles some of us encounter in our relationship with God is to recognize we are spiritually bankrupt before God. For those of us who have everything or almost everything we need to live a good life, it is sometimes hard to believe we might be spiritually poor or spiritually poverty-stricken. That’s why some translations make this beatitude – “Blessed are the poor in spirit” – as clear as possible in its intent. For instance, the Good News Translation says: “Happy are those who know they are spiritually poor.” The New Living Translation says: “God blesses those who are poor and [who] realize their need for him.” And the New Century Version says: “They are blessed who realize their spiritual poverty.” So in the kingdom of heaven -- God’s kingdom – saying less is more means we acknowledge our personal spiritual poverty for that is the kind of person God blesses.

It may feel strange to connect God’s approval or blessing with being spiritually poor. However, Jesus wants us to see there is a connection. Let me come at it this way. In the Oxford Dictionary, the first definition of the word “poor” is “lacking adequate … means.” In the New Testament the word “poor” bears something of the idea of a poverty so deep that the person who is poor is fully dependent on the giving of others. People who are poor do not have enough of what it takes to survive. In this case, people who are poor recognize they do not have enough goodness of their own to stand before God. So if we connected this meaning of “poor” with the words “in the spirit,” we have the idea of “Blessed are those who know they cannot stand before God on their own merit.” Or “Blessed are those who are so desperately poor in their spiritual resources that they realize they must have help from outside sources.”

Of course, being “poor in spirit” does not mean that we have no value as persons. It does not mean we should have no self-worth. It does not mean we are merely shy or we lack spiritual interest or energy. Being “poor in spirit” means we simply acknowledge our deep need of God’s goodness rather than relying on our own. Being “poor in spirit” means we come to God with open hands and heart to receive God’s loving grace rather than thinking we have enough goodness in ourselves to present to God. When we come to God this way, we recognize we cannot survive without “help from the outside” – without expressing our dependence upon God. That was a major issue between Jesus and religious leaders in his day. They prided themselves in their own goodness and were unwilling to acknowledge their dependence -- not on their own efforts but -- simply on God and God’s grace.

Do you remember the story of the Pharisee, a respected religious leader, and the publican or tax collector, regarded then as a notorious sinner? Both went into the temple to pray. In Luke’s Gospel 18:10-14, The Message Bible puts the story this way:

Jesus told this story to some who were complacently pleased with themselves over their moral performance and looked down their noses at the common people: “Two men went up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax man. The Pharisee posed and prayed like this: ‘Oh, God, I thank you that I am not like other people -- robbers, crooks, adulterers, or, heaven forbid, like this tax man. I fast twice a week and tithe on all my income.’

“Meanwhile the tax man, slumped in the shadows, his face in his hands, not daring to look up, said, ‘God, give mercy. Forgive me, a sinner.’

Jesus commented, ‘This tax man, not the other, went home made right with God.’ ”

Actually, being “poor in spirit” is no respecter of persons. We can be respectable or not. We can have money in the bank or not. We can have a nice home or not. We can be a churchgoer or not. What matters is having an openness of spirit and a willingness to come to God realizing we have no spiritual resources of our own or within ourselves to commend ourselves to God. That’s the kind of person Jesus says God blesses.

Dr. Perry Buffington, a licensed psychologist, author and columnist, in an article titled “Playing Charades” [Universal Press Syndicate (9-26-99)], wrote about various situations in which we often fool ourselves. He concludes with this comment: “And, finally, as we take our seat in church or synagogue, we try to fake out the Almighty that we’ve really been good all week.”

You may recall hearing this next true story in a previous message but I believe you will sense in it an acknowledgement of being spiritually poor.

Dr. Helen Roseveare was the only doctor in a large African hospital. Because of the constant interruptions and shortages of medical supplies, she became increasingly impatient and irritable with everyone around her. Eventually, one of the African pastors asked Helen to come with him. He drove her to his humble house and told her that she was taking a personal retreat -- two days of silence and solitude. She was to pray until her attitude adjusted. All night and the next day she did pray and she struggled. She said her prayers seemed to bounce off the ceiling. Late in the evening on the second day, as she sat with the pastor around a little campfire, with humility and desperation of spirit, she confessed she was stuck. With his bare toe, the pastor drew a vertical line on the dusty ground. “That is the problem, Helen: there is too much ‘I’ in your service.” He gave her a suggestion: “I have noticed that quite often you take a coffee break and hold the hot coffee in your hands waiting for it to cool.” Then he drew a horizontal line across the first one making a cross. “Helen, from now on, as the coffee cools, ask God, ‘Lord, cross out the “I” and make me more like you.’” And that became a daily routine in Helen’s life.

Helen Roseveare is a follower of Jesus whose spirit reflects the be-attitude of less is more. This is the kind of person The Message Bible depicts this way: “You’re blessed when you are at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.”

“Be-Attitude Living,” according to Jesus, is an attitude of life that God desires to see in all those who call themselves Christians. Being “poor in spirit” means acknowledging our total dependence on God to help us live our lives God’s way. We need the help of the Holy Spirit to live the way Jesus taught – we cannot live his way on our own. That open attitude to God’s involvement in our lives is the kind of character Jesus loves to see in his people. And that is the kind of attitude that takes God seriously. Less really is more when we cross the “I” of our lives with the cross of Jesus. Then God is able to bless us – fill us -- with more love, more hope, more joy, more patience, more kindness, more goodness, more faithfulness, more humility and more mercy than we could ever imagine. When we rely on God like that, Jesus says, the kingdom of heaven will truly belong to us!

May this be so for you and for me.

Rev. Chris Miller
October 10, 2010

oympastor@rogers.com

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto

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Why Church? Reason: Spiritual Mentors

2010-10-03T13:30:00.000-04:00

2 Timothy 1:1-14

Twenty-five years ago, product developers at Matsushita Electric Company were trying to develop a home bread-making machine.

”But they were having trouble getting the machine to knead dough correctly. Despite their efforts, the crust of the bread came out overcooked while the inside was hardly done at all. Employees exhaustively analyzed the problem. They even compared X-rays of dough kneaded by the machine and dough kneaded by professional bakers. But they were unable to obtain any meaningful data.

“Finally, software developer Ikuko Tanaka proposed a creative solution. The Osaka International Hotel had a reputation for making the best bread in Osaka. Why not use it as a model? Tanaka trained with the hotel’s head baker to study his kneading technique. She observed that the baker had a distinctive way of stretching the dough. To imitate that, the engineers added special ribs inside the machine and developed a unique ‘twist dough’ method. In its first year on the market, their bread-making machine set a record for sales of a new kitchen appliance.”

But it is true, isn’t it, some things can’t be learned in a lab or with an X-ray machine. There are some things we can only learn by spending time with another human being. [Story told in Ikujiro Nonaka, “The Knowledge-Creating Company,” in Harvard Business Review on Knowledge Management (Harvard Business Review Press, 1998), pp. 26-27.]

A mentor is one human being spending time with another human being. A mentor is a person, usually older and more experienced, who helps and guides another person’s development. This “trusted counsellor or coach” does what she or he does not for personal gain but for the benefit of someone else.

A little interesting history: Did you know the original “Mentor” is a character in the legendary Greek poet Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey? When Odysseus, King of Ithaca went to fight in the Trojan War, he entrusted the care of his kingdom to Mentor. Mentor also served as the teacher and overseer of Odysseus’s son, Telemachus.

Many of you here this morning have been mentors to someone else (and no doubt you have been mentored yourselves) at various times in your lives. And it does not matter what your vocation or background or life experience has been, being a mentor or being mentored applies in virtually every area of life -- in business, in schools, in the church, in community concerns. Mentoring occurs with adults of all ages, with children and youth, and with adults-at-risk and children- and youth-at-risk. I remember very clearly my grandfather mentoring me as my driving instructor. He did not want me to become a 16-year-old youth-at-risk while driving a car -- especially his 1956 sky-blue Chrysler New Yorker. If I were to ask you who mentored you or whom have you mentored, I suspect I would hear some interesting and motivational stories.

I have another word this morning for mentors. We could also call them “connectors” because mentors are those people who help other individuals learn and develop in their lives by connecting them with new knowledge, with spiritual inspiration and with other gifted people.

This morning I want to talk with you particularly about “spiritual mentors.” Spiritual mentors are spiritual connectors. They are individuals who help others make at least three significant connections in their lives. One, spiritual mentors help someone else connect with God – with life-changing faith in God. Two, spiritual mentors connect people with life-changing faith in God through personal inspiration and not with merely information. Three, spiritual mentors connect people with the truth and blessing, the richness and relevancy of Jesus Christ for our lives and for the world.

Spiritual mentors help people connect with God -- with life-changing faith in God. This is life-altering faith in God with a track record. In Timothy’s case, his first spiritual mentors were in his family. His grandmother Lois passed down a vibrant faith to her daughter Eunice -- Timothy’s mother -- who in turn passed that rich faith down to him. In our Scripture from 2 Timothy 1, we heard how the Apostle Paul reminded his young protégé, Timothy, of how his dynamic faith was intimately connected with his family’s faith in God.

The Apostle Paul’s own personal faith was also built on that same life-altering faith in God with a track record. He said in verse 3 of 2 Timothy 1, “I give thanks [for you] to God, whom I serve with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did.” Or as The Message Bible puts it: “I thank God for you, the God I worship with my whole life in the tradition of my ancestors.” Paul did not disregard the rich faith of his Jewish ancestors. He had not left the God of Abraham to worship and serve another God. Instead, he recognized that Jesus was the long-promised Messiah of the Scripture [cf., Acts 23:1, 24:14, 26:6], which meant Paul affirmed a continuity with the faith of his Jewish ancestors.

For us, the Christian faith has 2,000-plus years of significant history, as well as the 2,000 or so years of our Jewish roots back to Abraham, that help us connect our faith with the life-giving God who exists, who is real and who cares enough to respond to all who seek him -- as Hebrews 11:6 states so plainly. As young Timothy’s spiritual mentor, Paul thanked God for Timothy night and day. He asked God to give his grace, mercy and peace to Timothy as he had experienced God’s grace himself. Through Paul’s mentoring and laying on of hands, God gave Timothy the gift of ministry with the power, love and self-control of the Holy Spirit. Paul also coached Timothy to accept any suffering he might encounter as he witnessed to the truth of the Good News. And Paul said God would give him strength to endure that suffering. As Timothy’s mentor, Paul was constantly encouraging Timothy to stay connected to the rich and vibrant faith in God that he had received from his mother, grandmother and Paul – and which he had come to believe.

Spiritual mentors also connect people with life-changing faith in God through inspiration and not merely information. I remember some of the spiritual mentors in my life who inspired me to grow in the faith. I remember Paul -- the university student leader in our church youth group. He inspired me by the way he lived his life as a believer in Jesus: his love for God, his hunger and respect for the Bible and his disciplined life in training to be a medical doctor. I remember “Mary,” the 80-year-old retired missionary, who inspired me with the way she prayed -- simply yet passionately, especially that one time when it was just the two of us praying together for the worship service soon to begin. I remember Pastor Art who inspired me with his messages and his pastoral prayers Sunday after Sunday. I remember a business man, Martin, my Sunday school teacher, who inspired me with his knowledge of the Bible -- yet more so for his acceptance of us questioning and sometime mischievous young boys who were trying to figure out what the Christian life really meant. All of these mentors were constantly connecting me with faith in God that was real and that worked. As I think back, I know now they were hoping to ignite my soul to love God and to love the people of this world.

My spirit resonates with what Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once wrote:

“Let them remember that there is a meaning beyond absurdity. Let them be sure that every little deed counts, that every word has power and that we can do – every one [of us] -- our share to redeem the world in spite of all absurdities and all frustrations and all disappointments. And above all, remember that the meaning of life is to live life as it if were a work of art.”

I like that. We are living, breathing works of art God is restoring for his glory. We need to inspire each other to see God painting or weaving or sculpting or moulding or orchestrating our lives for his glory. As spiritual mentors, we can help one another connect with the amazing love of God, the master artist of all that is good and beautiful and wholesome. Being that kind of connector is my heart’s constant cry.

Finally, spiritual mentors connect others with the truth and blessing, the richness and relevancy of Jesus Christ for our lives and for the world. Jesus Christ is the ultimate goal and the source of life-giving faith in God. Union with Jesus Christ, beginning now and extending into eternity is “the promised life” from God that Jesus sent Paul as his Apostle to proclaim. That’s in the first verse Les read this morning in 2 Timothy 1. That’s the kind of faith we mean when the church states it is the church of Jesus Christ. As spiritual mentors, we can help each other connect with God’s salvation through the death of Jesus on the cross for the world. As spiritual mentors we answer God’s call to be the people of God and to tell the Good News that God has ended the power of death for all humanity and has revealed the reality of eternal life through Jesus. This is the kind of faith Paul wanted Timothy (and us) to see when he wrote:

“[God] saved us and called us to be his own people, not because of what we have done, but because of his own purpose and grace. [God] gave us this grace by means of Christ Jesus … He has ended the power of death and through the gospel has revealed immortal life.”

The celebration of Holy Communion -- or simply Communion -- is an opportunity for each of us to connect again with life-changing faith in Jesus Christ. Communion is the opportunity for each of us to connect with life-changing faith in God as we allow ourselves to be loved by God in Jesus Christ. And as we thank God for the love he showed by sending Jesus -- who gave his life for us, who rose again from death and who lives to pray for us forever -- we will experience the deeper connection with God we long for. Communion connects us once again with Jesus Christ who has taken away all that separates us from God and who has made us friends with God and with one another.

The celebration of Communion is the recognition that Jesus Christ invites all who believe in him, all who long to be nourished and strengthened on their journey of faith with him and who seek to live justly and in peace with their neighbours, to sit with him and share in this joyful table that is his.

My friends, God has called us to be spiritual connectors with others. Some of you experienced being connectors recently with our youth during their journey of Confirmation. You shared with them your connection with the relevancy of Jesus Christ in your own lives. That’s one way we are spiritual mentors or connectors with one another. So, this morning, we thank God he has brought us together to this table to be strengthened and encouraged and connected to his love through the life, death and resurrection of his life-giving Son -- Jesus Christ.

May this life-giving connection be so for you and for me.

Rev. Chris Miller
October 3, 2010

oympastor@rogers.com

OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto

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