Healing Happens in an Ecosystem

Sermon, by Pastor Joel

Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost

September 8, 2024

Isaiah 35:4-7a

Psalm 146

James 2:1-10, 14-17

Mark 7:24-37

The context of this sermon is

100% written by a human

This summer, the week before returning home, I witnessed faith at work. A small boat club hosted a sailing regatta. Nearly two dozen sailors came from across the country and raced for four days around the islands of Mahone Bay. A winner was declared. The band played. But this was a special regatta called the Mobility Cup. To get ready, the members of the boat club had to pull off extensive renovations - replace the deck, the doors, the washrooms, the ramp to the wharf – all to make the club accessible for this very special regatta. They had to be ready to hoist and lift and serve as valets for the visiting athletes. The sailors, of course, arrived with their own stories. Many of them were in wheelchairs. A few would sail with “sip and puff technology” to control the trim of their sails. Among them was Tracy Schmitt, who goes by the nickname Unstoppable Tracy. She was born without fully-developed arms and legs. I met her in the parking lot when she wheeled up to shake my hand. Watch for me on the water, she said. Her sailboat was called “Silver Linings.”

Now the ocean is an unpredictable place to go on a small boat when you can easily jump off. I consider it a high octane sail on the rare occasion the toe rail gets a little close to the water on our creaky 50-year-old sailboat. But these people – many of whom learned to sail after they suffered injuries or became ill – were truly fearless. You could go out on the sea like this only if you had faith: faith in your support circle and the strangers volunteering to help you, faith in yourself, faith in the sea and the world around you. So yes, what else could this be but the gospel at work?

I thought of these people when I pondered our reading this week. We hear of the healings of Jesus. A man who cannot hear receives hearing. A child suffering from an unspecified illness is made well. These are the promised acts of a loving God. One who, our first lesson says, sets the captive free, opens the eyes of the blind and loves the righteous. For it is, as the gospel tells us: Jesus has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”

Perhaps we hear those words for ourselves and think of our wounds and sufferings. But it is equally important – as our second lesson so pointedly reminds us – to consider what happened around those healing moments. Who had been deaf and was given hearing? Who was mute and yet emboldened to speak?

The family of the man who had been deaf could not contain themselves: they would be heard, proclaiming what had been done. And in the case of the daughter, we know the speaker to be her mother, who bravely confronted Jesus, when he might otherwise have turned away. “Am I not also fit for a place at your table?” she asks him, with humility. “Do not discount me so quickly,” she says to him. And he is altered by this exchange and heals her daughter. And so we see how the healing did not just restore health only to those who received it directly. It changed irrevocably the people who witnessed it. They now heard and saw the world in a new way – as a place connected by purpose and meaning and beauty.

If I think about the scene of that regatta, I see this all at play, the many pieces that need to come together for healing to happen. Had the volunteers said “Come and use my wharf” but not stepped up to help, what good would a wharf have done? Had the sailors not been resilient in the face of adversity who would there have been to savour that beautiful ocean? It was not enough to extend an invitation; work had to follow it, or else that invitation would have withered. Healing happened in an ecosystem—a pulling together of many parts, and many configurations. We are healed by caring. And we are cared for into healing. My youngest son, Samson, who managed the front-of- house staff at the restaurant, later told me that this regatta – more than any others at the club – was the most joyful one he’d worked. It was full of people being healed as they both offered and provided care - sailors and volunteers both.

Of course, we cannot forget the main player on this wonderfully human scene, so easily admired, and then so often neglected -- the ocean. When we consider what it means to be alive with faith through works, surely the environment is the perfect example. We can write odes to the sea, but it’s nothing if we don’t look after it. We can give thanks for the forest, but it will be lost if we don’t care for it. This kind of empty faith is not just dead, but it also causes death. “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith, but do not have works?” Faith that works beyond prayers, that includes an offering of ourselves, our time and resources, that are not only alive: it is the definition of hope.

And hope is what I saw on that shining, sunny sea last week in Nova Scotia. It did not mean that every wrong was made right, and every injustice fixed. It was the hope of people coming together to enjoy one another and the bounty of the ocean. The hope that comes from innovation, resilience, and courage. The hope when people find their voices and open their eyes. The world is not made perfect, but it becomes a step or two better. Surely that is the healing power of the gospel at work -- alive and doing everything well. Amen.

In Reflection, We Find Change

Sermon, by Pastor Ronald Nelson

Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost

September 1, 2024

Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9 

Psalm 15

James 1:17-27 

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Twenty-Second Sunday in ordinary time.

Turtle Island

Well, this is it.  Labour day is tomorrow, and everything will be back to normal?  Eh! Programs in the community, in school, and in the church will be back to the usual routines.  And above all, Pastor Joel will be back.

A cartoon recently depicted a woman saying, “my desire to remain well-informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane.”  I would think the above is shared by many of us as we deal with politics, AI, wars, creation, and climate, among many others. Our first reading from Deuteronomy basically says, “Israel, if you follow the laws of God, all of life will fall into place.”  We Lutherans prided ourselves in the fact that we lived by grace and not by law. But now we have to get serious about James’s teachings. So let us see if our lessons today give us a few clues on how even staid Lutherans can progress.

I have to admit I wish I could do this a few more weeks because James is now the second lesson for five weeks. The letter of James got Luther’s “knickers in a bind.”  Martin said James was “an epistle of straw.”  In Luther’s day, the need was to lift up the broad and sweeping themes of “justification by faith alone.”  But now, James’s very ability to hold a magnifying glass to the ethics of everyday life. His capacity to urge us toward such deeds; as making peace in close and sometimes strained personal relationships, caring “for widows and orphans in their distress”, all as a life well worth living, seeking in family and vocation to live in such gentle ways that we reap a “harvest of righteousness” – comes as a deep and cooling refreshment.

James is looking at the big picture. What does a faithful person look like, act like, be like? James is sharing the importance of public faith, of being an example for others. For James, faith is life, and so a faithful life is one lived out, not hidden.  Do not forget who you are.  Whether you are stranded on a desert island or in downtown Toronto, faith is about what God sees and what the world sees.  Hear the word, do the word, follow the word, alone or on a crowded bus. The journey is ours, but others may notice.  Today, and for four more weeks, the writer of James will be one of the mentors we will hear from. The letter probably was not written by the person Paul met in Jerusalem, or the brother of Jesus. In fact, the author probably used the name James to counter Paul’s exaggerated ideas about “faith versus works.”  It is interesting that the letter of James uses a variety of expressions for the gospel, “perfect law,” “law of liberty,” and even “royal law.”  Scholars tell us it was written in perfect Greek, thus not the language used by followers of Jesus. It also has no personal references and no allusions whatever to the Jewish and Gentile conflicts in which either of the above James would have been involved.  Therefore, this book was probably written by a Greek Jewish Christian in the late first or early second century. In fact, James was only accepted into the Christian canon in the fourth century, C.E., A.D.  Practical advice, giving in tone and substance, James reads more like a treatise or sermon rather than a letter.  It was aimed at averting an abstract and therefore an inauthentic expression of the Christian faith.  As the author states in today’s second reading, those who have been privileged to hear God’s word are to let its power take root and then live and act by virtue of that power.

V. 22. “but be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.”

V. 23-24 “for if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror, and immediately forget what they were like.”   Is that not what we should all be about?

To only listen to God’s word and not act upon it, is to deceive oneself. Like Moses, James is encouraging us to allow God’s word to continually bring us to be alive to life.  While we listen to the word of God, we are challenged to see who we are and who we ought to be. God plants a seed in us and we need to cultivate it. To see what is wrong and do nothing to become better is to hear the word and yet not let it be a transforming power in our life.  So, the word should have a dual emphasis on hearing and doing.  For the month of September, we will be hearing much about doing and living in creation. For me, James is an ever-practical letter that reminds us that what we hear in worship must then be lived in our every-day life.   Now as soon as I say all of the above, I have to put in a dis-claimer.  Because I find many Lutherans today becoming followers of James and ignoring Paul.  Can we be both followers and practisers of faith and works?  Jewish readers of this text would have identified the word of God as the Torah, live the law and we have faith. Christian readers can take it to mean we have accepted the saving power of God. Which can mean we are back to where we started.  Seeing ourselves in a mirror should help us recognize who we are and to do what is necessary to become all that God intends us to be. James calls us back to integrity and asks us as the community of believers to demonstrate what James called the true religion.

V. 27 “religion is to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”

The author of James tells his community to just zero in on the above. Now that sounds kind of innocent, but “keeping oneself unstained” can become complicated.  Now that I have basically repeated myself, let us turn to Mark.

While Mark frames his story as an incident in conflict between Jesus and the pharisees and the scribes, what is really at stake is the question at the heart of religion, to be specific, what we call Christianity.  In contrast to traditions that may or may not bring people closer to God.  In every society, from worship to families, once-beneficial practices easily became rigid customs, such as washing our hands.  For instance, the sprinkling of some water on the servers’ hands before they distribute communion, has no sanitary value. Yet using some kind of disinfectant on the servers’ hands needs to be mandatory in the world we now live in. The bottom line is that the pharisees and scribes made doctrines of their preferences while ignoring the intent of God’s commandments.  When Jesus talked about what was truly impure, He mentioned not one single infringement of ritual laws.  Instead, he gave his listeners a list of actions that harm others, behaviours that defile the perpetrator even as they denigrate others.  Our politicians could learn from that one.  Jesus knew that it is a lot easier to wash one’s hands or follow the rubrics than it is to live in reverence for all of God’s creation.  Jesus also demonstrated which one of these two options brings joy.  Jesus minced no words.  He challenged/challenges all of us to stop deluding ourselves by accepting compliance with regulations as a substitute for the kind of relationship with God that frees us to act out of love and nothing else. So, we look at the author of Deuteronomy one more time.  Deuteronomy and Jesus provides us with the best reason for keeping God’s laws, for honouring creation, namely life itself.  We are created with an interior longing for love and the source of love.  When we are deeply aware, we know that love is our deepest desire.  Remember in Deuteronomy’s time they knew nothing about an afterlife.  But the writer was certain that keepers of Yahweh’s rules and decrees will have a better quality of life right here and now than those who disregard those regulations.  The writer of James was saying the same thing. So rather than grumble about keeping some law, we should be grateful for the life we experience by obeying the rules - driving drunk and too fast instead of following the rules can kill you and others. It is that simple.

I have only touched the surface of these readings today, as is true every Sunday.  But these readings especially, are calling us to an ever deeper, and broader integrity.  Do we admit our own need for conversion and help, in order to grow in grace?  The critiques of others that we heard and read about today, put our own values and integrity on show, and reveal whether our priorities come from God touching our lives or, just because we have a desire to look pious?  When we discuss what “should” be done, our remembrance of Moses and Jesus and others in scripture demands that we question whether our interpretation of God’s will is life-giving or self-serving?  Jesus did not convert many of his adversaries.  What he did do was invite everyone to explore the depths and meaning of humanity.  Most of them did not take him up on it.  Even more interesting those who did listen and did something, were by and large outsiders.  Religion is caring for others and freedom from false values of society. 

So again today, we are challenged to balance God’s laws with our love of others.  Remember Hebrews 4:12 reminds us that “the word of God, is like a two-edged sword.” Sometimes, like the pharisees, we place rules and conditions on how we share our love and who is worthy of receiving the gifts and the love we have to offer.  Looking at Jesus we find an example of a hearer- and a doer – of God’s word.  Today we are called to be – and do - the same.  Finding and following our deepest desires will free us to follow Jesus who was accused of many things, but he was never accused of failing to love.  God through Jesus understands we struggle in our human weakness.  We live in a secular world that measures our worth by what we accomplish and possess.  But God wants to draw us closer into a loving relationship with him.  The good news of these texts today is that we are called to examine ourselves, revealing our hidden shortcomings, and that will draw us into a closer relationship with God and humankind.  Yes, we are called today to reflect and introspect and in so doing we will find repentance that is [metanoia] change and forgiveness.  When we do that, then we discover the joy of our truest selves, by transforming our hearts to love, seek peace, and walk in companionship with the poor and the marginalized.

Finally, I believe, as a new school year begins, we share with Moses a hope that our children will have the blessings of life.  We pray they will enter into a place where we no longer have to carry them but that they will enter and claim the inheritance, that God has for them.  May our worship and life show our children the wisdom and justice of God’s teaching, so they may trust in God’s promises and receive abundant life.

Let us never forget;

This is my father’s world, and to my listening ears

All nature sings and round me rings

The music of the spheres.

This is my father’s world; i rest me in the thought

Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas.

His hand the wonders wrought.

[ELW 824 v. 1]

And so;

We lift our voices, we lift our hands,

We lift our lives up to you:

We are an offering.

Lord, use our voices, lord, use our hands,

Lord use our lives, they are yours:

We are an offering.

All we have, all we are,

All that we hope to be,

We give to you; we give to you.

We lift our voices, we lift our hands,

We lift our lives up to you:

We are an offering.

 we are an offering.

[ELW 692]

Amen

Liturgy is Only Authentic, if it Leads to Changed Lives

Sermon, by Pastor Ronald Nelson

Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost

August 25th, 2024

Joshua 24:1-18

Psalm 34:1-22

Ephesians 6:10-20

John 6:53-69

Twenty-First Sunday in ordinary time.

Turtle Island

Well, here we are. This is the last Sunday we will be using the Gospel of John for awhile.  But you have not gotten rid of me yet! Or maybe you have? Next Sunday we get back to my favourite Gospel, Mark.  Or a special worship on creation?

In the 1970’s, Robert Zimmerman wrote, “Gotta Serve Somebody.”  His message was,

“you may be an ambassador to England or France,

You may like to gamble; you might like to dance…

But you are gonna have to serve somebody…

It may be the Devil or it may be the lord,

But you are gonna have to serve somebody.”

Like all genuine gospel music, the song is not just singable, it challenges some basic common assumptions – This one goes to the heart of our culture’s addiction to individualism and independence.

The fact is that as we head towards our election next year and the USA in 3 months, we must understand that we are obsessed about preserving our individual rights, which is a clear and ironic illustration of the truth of the above chorus.  The minute we discover what orients our decisions, what we would protect at any cost, we know what we serve – consciously or not. Bob Dylan could have been paraphrasing what we hear Joshua saying in today’s first lesson. In today’s first reading, Joshua gathered his people and called them to make a solemn commitment.  They were to proclaim publicly whether or not they wanted to serve the lord who had freed them, fed them, and brought them - a unique people - to the Holy Land. They swore enthusiastically that they would always serve the lord their God. Their common identity came from God’s work and their response.  We know they kept that commitment as “perfectly,” as we keep ours!

All of this leads into our final reflection on John 6, the moment when we hear the reaction of Jesus’ various disciples. The readers of Joshua and John detect an atmosphere of crisis. Would they remain faithful to God or not? Their decision was entirely free. God does not coerce, God simply invites. Or as we heard last week, “wisdom invites, cajoles, and persuades, it never commands.”  When Jesus finished explaining that he, Jesus, was the bread given for the life of the world, the majority of his disciples came to the conclusion that it was too much for them to accept.  Are we any different today?  Some of them apparently cherished the concept of a more mysterious God who stayed on the heavenly side of creation, a God they could worship from a safe, cultic distance.  Others realized that the God Jesus represented in his own total self-giving, could only be served in an imitation of that same love, and they found that too costly.  The writer of John explained their reactions by simply saying, “because of this many of his disciples turned back, and no longer went about with him.”  This basic decision is always a turning point. And for many, probably most, they returned to their former way of life.  John does not tell us how Jesus felt. The writer of John only tells us that Jesus knew that some of the disciples lacked faith and that even one of them would betray him.

Of course, Jesus told his disciples that they could come to him without the help of God’s grace, but even with that, did he expect so many to walk off, to leave him?  John implies that when Jesus looked to see who remained, the group had shrunk to a mere twelve. A lot less romantic way of explaining how there came to be 12, instead of the twelve tribes of Israel idea that is often used to explain the 12 disciples.  Which is the way we have often explained happenings in the bible.  Sad to say, making up some grand idea instead of just admitting the facts.  We can only imagine the look on Jesus’ face and the tone of his voice when he asked, to the last of his followers, “do you also wish to go away?”  The pharisees had begun to talk about eternal-life, the Sadducees refused to go there.  The Sadducees felt that believing in heaven created too many complications.  I have to confess; I lean towards the Sadducees.  Remember, as I quoted last week, the church wants you to “think for yourself.”  John 6 paints a picture of Jesus offering us, eternal life.

The writers of Joshua and John presume there are times when we are forced to choose between at least two ways of looking at our faith.  In all of the gospel of John, this is probably Jesus’ most vulnerable moment. When you offer yourself to someone else and they turn you down, (I am sure some of us have been there) it sure leaves you vulnerable.  On the other hand, it was also the natural result of offering himself for others.  Therefore, it was all Jesus could do, he offered himself.  The results depended on their openness to his gift of life. Yes, the teachings of Jesus usually led/leads to division. “How can this person give us his flesh to eat?” Taking the literal sense of these words, they missed Jesus’ point.  Jesus’ teachings may have been challenging but he did not shy away from them.  Peter spoke for his fellow disciples, by responding to Jesus’ question by asking a question (something Peter had learned from Jesus to do).  “Lord, to whom can we go?”  Then Peter added, showing he had listened, “you have the words of eternal life.” “We have come to believe and know that you are the holy one of God.”  Now of course Peter did not fully understand the implications of what he said. Nevertheless, what he said committed him and his companions to continue as Jesus’ disciples with all of the unpredictable repercussions that would entail.  I wonder if the founders of this congregation, really understood what they were doing when they took the name St. Peter?  Peter had his strengths and his weaknesses. He was not perfect, but his misunderstandings of the faith help us to think about our faith. Peter’s portrait of the process through which they came to believe in Jesus is certainly worth looking at. 

So, here we are, we have been contemplating Jesus as the bread of life for five weeks.  That is almost as long as Lent and longer than Advent. We have had time to ponder how God has shown, and shows us, love and care.  As we now reach to the end of this immersion into the Gospel of John, the scriptures are inviting us to stand with Joshua’s Israelites and Jesus’ disciples as they are asked about their commitment; after remembering so much about God’s goodness, after hearing the promise of life-giving bread and being reminded that God draws us to this idea of a Christ who loves all and draws us into our deepest longings.  Yes, now it is time to review our own fundamental allegiance.  Please remember we do not need a Billy Graham altar call. You will have one in two weeks when your pastor is back, and the Eucharist will be offered.  For now, we need to renew our deeply personal and public dedication to God.  Please think of your next time at the Altar for Communion as a re-enactment of the pledge Joshua was calling forth in our first lesson today.  Just think of what we are saying when we say “amen,” at the end of our service today.  As Augustine said, “are we willing to receive what we are and to be what we receive?”  Jesus’ offer to those who would receive him is nothing less than an invitation to an adventure of unlimited love that leads to unlimited life. Those disciples who had remained with Jesus understood the implications of all this. Remember they said, “this is too hard.”  Those who were concerned primarily with their own well-being were not able to stay with him without the grace of God.  So that part was “easy,” but now this is where it gets hard.  Because if we allow ourselves to be drawn by grace, we will become counterintuitive, and countercultural. We will become a faith of empathy for people of diverse humanity. We will not practice the theology of cruelty, exclusion, and malice that so many seem to proclaim as Christianity today.

The hymn “Onward Christians Soldiers” is just beyond the pale.  Early Christianity was largely pacifist. I have never been quite there, although my six years in the Marine Corp was about as safe as it could be, it was not long after I was in Canada that people said to me, “you can never go back to the USA with your views on Vietnam.” So it was too much, is too much, for many would-be disciples.  We hear it again, “do you also want to leave?” and we should not be surprised that most of our friends and family have walked away.  You see this is what liturgy is all about, my preaching, Sonya’s playing, our singing, and praying, and listening is only authentic if it leads to changed lives. Faith is a gift, but it is also a choice. Paul was in jail when he asked his readers to pray that he would proclaim his faith boldly. It is hard work to preach and believe in daunting times. I, as a preacher, fear, on one hand, to sow division or misunderstanding but on the other hand, I fear failing people by an overcautious silence. I believe in placing these readings before us today, the church is affirming the crisis which is at the heart of Christian commitment.

So, for us addicts of freedom, as we have meditated on Jesus as the bread of life, I ask the following questions to myself and to you, knowing full well that none of us live up to the answers of these questions, even with God’s help. But we still need to ask ourselves these questions.  Do we make God the centre of our lives?  Do we live in such a way that our daily decisions and choices bear witness to our relationship with God?  Do we live in mutual faithfulness and service to spouses and family?  Do we accept the wisdom of God as our guide on this earth?  In other words, does faith permeate all that we do?  Remember in both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures we find a God who has given us free will.  Interestingly, the more we use that free will, the more we actually become like the God we are trying to imitate.

Today is a turning point, yet another opportunity offered by God. How do we decide? How will our decisions affect the rest of today? How shall they reshape tomorrow?  We “gotta serve somebody.” And so, today, like every worship service we partake of, we ask, “are we all in?” and we hear God ask,

“Will you come and follow me

If I but call your name?

Will you go where you do not know

And never be the same?

Will you let my love be shown,

Will you let my name be known,

Will you let my life be grown

In you and you in me?”

“Will you love the you you hide

If I but call your name?

Will you quell the fear inside

And never be the same?

Will you use the faith you have found

To reshape the world around,

Through my sight and touch and sound

In you and you in me?”

[ELW 798 v. 1 & 4]

Amen.