A Thought For The Week Of May 19

"Gracious words are a honeycomb,  sweet to the soul and healing to the bones." (Proverbs 16:24) There's an old saying that everyone has heard: "sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me." The problem is that it isn't true. Names hurt. Broken bones and bruises aren't pleasant - but they do heal. But when people are subjected to name calling and verbal attack, it leaves a lasting scar.  Language has the ability to build others up or to tear others down. But it strikes me that we're not very careful with our language anymore. It saddens me sometimes to listen to the language that gets used on an everyday basis - sometimes even by young children. There are times that I almost cringe as I walk past a schoolyard and hear how some children talk - but of course we hear it from adults as well. Sometimes the way we speak is innocent fun (at least it's meant to be) but there are times as well when what we say is hurtful. It shouldn't take a great deal of effort to speak with "gracious words," but it just doesn't happen all that much today. Perhaps we don't live in a very gracious society. What I hear too often is name calling, obscenity and anger. That puts a lot of responsibility on followers of Christ. I'd like to think that Christ calls us to a higher standard. Not that we're to be prudes in language or anything else - but it does seem to me that a follower of Christ should be making an extra effort to speak in gracious and wholesome and life giving ways that offer healing and wholeness and dignity to those who hear them. I'm going to make a very conscious effort to watch my language this week, and also to look for opportunities to build others up with a few well-chosen and gracious words. I hope you will, too. Have a great week!

A Thought For The Week Of May 12

Martin Luther wrote that "you may as well quit reading and hearing God's Word, and give it to the Devil, if you do not desire to live according to it." For all his faults, and they were many, Martin Luther understood the basic importance of the Word of God. To read it or hear it but not want to live by it seems contradictory at best and hypocritical at worst. Why bother with the Word of God if one isn't going to at least have the desire to live by it, to put it into practice. I think there's a basic truth being illustrated by Luther's words here. Even something as good and as powerful as the Word of God can become an idol. Even the Bible can draw us away from God rather than to God if we start to think that knowing the Bible can be a substitute for truly knowing God. If a person reads the Bible (or hears it) and thinks that just by reading or hearing it they've accomplished something, then the Bible has become an idol - because if we don't allow it to transform us, then we've emptied it of any real power and turned it into a god unto itself. But the Bible - the Word of God - can never replace God. It's sole purpose is to reveal God, to point us to God. As we are both comforted and challenged by the Bible this week, let's seek to also put what comforts and challenges us into practice. Have a great week!

May 11 sermon: The Answer We Often Don't Have To The Question That Rarely Gets Asked

Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. For, “Whoever would love life and see good days must keep their tongue from evil and their lips from deceitful speech. They must turn from evil and do good; they must seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.” Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed.“Do not fear their threats; do not be frightened.” But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behaviour in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. (1 Peter 3:8-16)

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     “ Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” There's a story told about something that happened on a plane in the midst of a long trip. The captain's voice suddenly came over the intercom system: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. I have to advise you that one of our engines has stopped working, but I want to assure you that there's no reason for alarm. The plane can fly perfectly well on three engines, but we will be arriving at our destination 15 minutes late.” A little while later, the captain's voice was heard again. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. I have to advise you that another of our engines has stopped working, but I want to assure you that there's still no reason for alarm. The plane can fly perfectly well on two engines, but we will now be arriving at our destination 30 minutes late.” After another while, the captain's voice was heard yet again: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking again. I have to advise you that a third engine has now stopped working, but I want to assure you again that there's no reason to be alarmed. This plane can fly perfectly well on just one engine, but we're now going to be arriving at our destination about an hour later than scheduled.” This was finally too much for one man on board. He looked at a flight attendant and in an impatient voice said “this plane better not lose its last engine because if it does we'll be up here forever!” I wonder what that man would have said if one of his fellow passengers had asked him to give the reason for the hope that he had? To me, at least, whatever answer he offered wouldn't have been very convincing.

     “ Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” That's an interesting verse of Scripture, because it tells us to be prepared for something that hardly ever happens. Let me just ask flat out: how many of us have ever actually been asked by anyone at any time what the reason is for the hope that we have? To be perfectly honest with you, I've never been confronted with that question! I suspect that most of you haven't either. And I wonder why? It's not that I don't have hope, and I'm sure that you have hope. So why don't people ask the question? Maybe it's better to put it another way: why would they? People ask about things that make them curious. People ask about things that startle them or amaze them. People ask about things that look or seem or act different. I wonder if the basic problem isn't that for the most part many Christians just blend in to the crowd these days, when it seems to me that the point of the gospel and the example of the life of Jesus was that we're supposed to stand out in the crowd, and be noticed – not to gain credit for ourselves, but so that people would want to know what it is that we have that makes us hopeful. That would give us an opportunity to talk about faith, to talk about God, to talk about Jesus, to talk about the impact that all this has on our lives. But too often there's a disconnect between what we believe and how we show it. Rebecca Manley Pippert, in a book called Out Of The Saltshaker, wrote that “I remember once encountering a zealous Christian. His brow was furrowed, he seemed anxious and impatient, and he sounded angry.” Too often we either buy into society's notion that faith is a private thing not to be spoken of in public, or we simply don't display our faith well enough to make people want to ask us about it. And if we often can't show that any of this makes a difference to us – then no one asks.

    Now, that may not be a bad thing, because I suspect that a lot of people might have difficulty asking the question if it did get asked. That's not a criticism. It's a symptom of a larger problem. It's a sign of how comfortable we've become with our faith – a faith that, really, is supposed to challenge us at least as much as it comforts us. In 1965, Pierre Berton wrote a book called “The Comfortable Pew.” He had been an active Anglican, but left the church because of his disillusionment with what he called “churchianity” at the expense of “Christianity.” Basically, he felt that the church had become comfortable with itself and comfortable with society. It had stopped being a counter-cultural movement that could offer hope to the downcast and disillusioned and had instead become simply a part of the culture, with nothing new or exciting or dramatic to offer, upholding the status quo, making people comfortable with what is rather than challenging them to hope for what might be. And – becoming fixated on the church itself (on ourselves) rather than focusing on preaching good news to the poor, on proclaiming freedom to the prisoners, offering sight to the blind, releasing the oppressed and proclaiming the Lord's favour. This was the ministry Jesus called His ministry according to Luke 4. This should be the church's ministry. But when we settle for what is rather than hoping for what might be, we too easily lose sight of what we're supposed to be about, and that makes it hard for us to even imagine what we might say to someone who asked us the reason for our hope. It's why we often don't have an answer to a question that we rarely get asked.

     This all, of course, leads up to a single point – if we know what the question is (what's the reason for your hope?) then we need to figure out what the answer is and we need to determine how to live in a way that literally begs the question to be asked. And it's really not that complicated, but I think too many Christians have it wrong – even if they are reluctant to share it.

     For most people, the idea of the Christian hope is oriented toward eternity. I certainly don't want to deny how important it is for us to believe in eternity. In one way or another it's the thing that's on everyone's mind, if only because everyone's going to die, and living with that knowledge gives us the desire to have hope that somehow we're going to continue on beyond death – if only because we love life. Paul doesn't refer to “death” as our “last enemy” for no reason. It is an enemy. It's perhaps our greatest enemy. And Christian faith does give us hope that we'll continue on; that there's more to life than just this life. That's what the resurrection of Jesus is all about – it reminds us that God is a God of life, and that in the end life always triumphs over death But the Christian hope is more than that. If we satisfy ourselves with the hope of eternity then we run the risk – to use an old saying – of becoming too heavenly minded to be of an earthly use.

     To be of earthly use, the Christian hope we share has to be more than a hope for eternity. It has to be a hope for today – or at least a glimmer of hope for tomorrow. And the Christian hope for today and tomorrow is that ministry of Jesus – the ministry the church is called to continue; the ministry that threatens to turn the world and our society upside down; the ministry that promises to liberate the oppressed and feed the hungry and provide for the poor and welcome the outcast and love the stranger and heal the sick. And this is the ministry that calls us not just to talk about such things – not just to make them an answer to a question – but to actually try to bring such things about in whatever way we can, or at least to create within our own church community a glimpse of that ministry (which is the Kingdom of God) being lived out.

     “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” We may not get asked the question very often, and unfortunately we might struggle with the answer sometimes. But we shouldn't – because we should be living the answer out each and every day. We should be making a difference in lives right now. I don't know what the man on the plane in the story I opened with would say was the reason for his hope. But the reason for my hope (and, dare I say, the reason for OUR hope) should be that we know about Jesus' life, and Jesus' death and Jesus' resurrection, and all these things push us forward to create a better world now even while we wait for eternity.

A Thought For The Week Of May 5

Not that I am referring to being in need; for I have learned to be content with whatever I have. (Philippians 4:11) There's an interesting life lesson here. Too often, we decide that we have to measure our ability to be happy on the basis of how much we have, or we decide that we're not happy because we don't have something that we really want. Let's be honest. We all do that from time to time in various aspects of our lives. But sometimes there's great contentment in learning simply to be satisfied with whatever we have. Over my years as a pastor, I've had the opportunity to talk to many people who grew up during the Great Depression. One common theme that runs through the stories I've been told is that as children, these folks were quite content, even though they were growing up in hard times and didn't have very much of anything. They didn't know anything else, and they were grateful for what they had. Many continue in that spirit of gratitude all their lives, but for those who grow up in an environment where there's always plenty – and where there's always plenty more to have – contentment can be a hard thing to achieve. In Philippians, Paul wrote that he had “ learned to be content with whatever [he had.] Whether he had a lot of whether he had very little. Paul had learned how to be content. I believe his contentment came from his rock-solid relationship with God. He grasped for nothing, gratefully accepted what he received, and so was content with everything he had. We don't need great abundance in anything. We don't need the newest this or the latest that. We need the contentment that comes from knowing that God is with us and will always be there for us. Have a great week!

May 4 sermon - Wanted: Living Not Dead!

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith - of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire - may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen Him, you love Him; and even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls. (1 Peter 1:3-9)

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     It's something we've probably all seen at one time or another – usually in a movie or on a TV show about the Old West in the United States. It's the infamous “Wanted” poster. It's usually hung in either the Post Office or the Sheriff's Office. It's what we would call today the “mug shot” of some heinous criminal – a murderer or a bank robber or a cattle rustler – and the poster usually makes it point briefly: “Wanted: Dead Or Alive!” It seems that from the perspective of the authorities, “dead or alive” doesn't really matter. Either way will do. And, given the rough and tumble nature of frontier justice, I suspect that most of the citzenry would rather see the poster captioned with the words: “Wanted: Dead NOT  Alive!” It was the way of the West, after all. Frontier justice; vigilante action. Death? Life? Living? Dead? It didn't really matter. Let's just take care of the problem. That tended to be the attitude.

     I started thinking about the old Wanted posters when I read this passage from 1 Peter, and came across the verse that says “In His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead ...” “A living hope.” The words intrigued me. At the very least they raised a few questions for me. Can there be any other kind of hope, I wondered? Doesn't “hope” in a sense have to be living, since hope impacts our lives? Something that's dead can't really impact our lives, so how could we have anything other than “a living hope?” And yet, the fact that the phrase even gets used seems to suggest that Peter at least must have thought there was an alternative. So, hope doesn't have to be “living.” It must be possible to have a dead hope – sort of like a dead faith, which the letter of James tells us is possible. And maybe the more basic question that occurred to me was – what, exactly, is “hope”? What do we mean when we use that word? Let's talk first about the difference between a living hope and a dead hope.

     What would a dead hope actually look like? At first, I have to admit that I had some trouble getting my head around the concept of a dead hope. It sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it. I mean – hope is a good thing! Hope keeps us going when the temptation might be there to give up. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there is indeed a type of dead hope; a hope that doesn't give life, but that rather deadens us and dulls us. George Orwell understood this kind of dead hope rather well. I'm thinking here of his famous novel “1984.” Written in 1948 (Orwell just reversed the last two numbers of the year to give the novel its then futuristic sound), “1984” was a description of a nightmare society – one in which lies had become the truth; where language was used to manipulate and control rather than to explain and clarify; where war was a permanent way of life; where people now existed merely to serve the system. Life in such a society was, indeed, a nightmare, and the sad thing, quite frankly, is that some of Orwell's vision sounds rather familiar to us today, doesn't it. Shall we continue on with the familiarity? Orwell understood that the people living machine-like existences in such a society would have to be given the illusion of hope, just to keep them under control, and so – voila! - the lottery! The lottery promised a huge windfall to some lucky person in that society. People's hopes and dreams for the future revolved around the lottery, the hope that they could win big, and that their winnings could lift them out of their miserable existence. We have lotteries galore in the modern world! Late last year in the United States, the Mega-Millions lottery offered a prize of $586 million! The number of possible winning combinations were 259 million. The odds of anyone winning were astronomical. But people bought tickets – in huge numbers. Stephen Goldbart and Joan DiFuria reflected on what some call “lottery-itis” in an article in Psychology Today that

 in times of economic stress, playing the lottery is a way of coping with  financial anxieties and uncertainty. We may seek a magic pill to make us feel better. Ah yes, buy a lottery ticket. Feel again like you did when you were a child, having hope that a better day will come, that some big thing will happen that will make everything right, set the course on track.

     A recent survey by the Bank of Montreal suggested that 34% of Canadians hope they win the lottery, and 14% of Canadians believe that winning the lottery is the only way they can finance their retirements. Folks, that's sad – and it represents a dead hope. It's not a living hope; it doesn't give life. It's a sign of being afraid of life, of having no hope. Planning to win the lottery isn't hope – it's at best wishful thinking and at worst delusional. It's hoping in something that gives no real hope. It's pointless. But 14% of Canadians think winning the lottery might be their only hope once they turn 65. George Orwell would be proud of his soothsaying abilities!

     But if there's a dead hope, then there must also be a living hope. What would that be? What is the “living hope” that Peter writes about? A living hope, it seems to me would be that which frees us from fear and releases us from the need to engage merely in wishful or delusional thinking and that fills us with confidence as we face the future. For a child of God, “living hope” is a sign of the relationship we have with God. The Psalms taken together portray an almost symbiotic relationship. Psalm 42:5 tells us to “put [our] hope in God,” and Psalm 62:5 tells us that “our hope comes from [God.]” God gives us hope that we then direct back at God. Hope becomes the sign of our faith and our trust in God. It's a “living faith” because it enables us to face our circumstances (whatever they might be) with the assurance that something better is coming. Paul says in Romans that “hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have?” We as children of God believe that God has a plan that's somehow coming to fruition even as we gather here today. We don't know all the details, but we believe. Our relationship with God and all that we've come to know about God through Jesus have convinced us. We don't know the details, and we don't have to, because we have faith, and the Book of Hebrews tells us that “faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” It isn't wishful thinking. It's not a forlorn hope that just maybe we'll survive in retirement by winning the lottery in spite of the odds against it. “Living hope” is “confidence.” It is believing in what we hope for. It's what Jesus called for. “Trust in God; trust also in Me,” He said in John 14:1. He's inviting His disciples into hope with those words. Trust, confidence, assurance, belief. These things are what make hope “living” rather than dead.

     So, what is hope? I'll be thinking about that question more next week. But if you remember back to Easter Sunday, you might recall that I suggested that the biggest challenge facing the church today is a loss of hope – or at least the loss of a “living hope.” Too often, the church settles for surviving as best it can for as long as it can – and when we do that, we do it at the expense of truly living the gospel with passion and with joy. The passion and the joy that we as the church and as disciples of Jesus should possess should fill us with hope – real hope, living hope, hope that gives life to ourselves and to others who encounter us. It's the hope of Easter. It's the hope of resurrection. It's the hope that no matter how tough things might seem to be, hope is always there, pushing us outward into the world with a message that can raise even the deadest of spirits who are trapped in mere wishful and wistful hope for something that will never happen; it's a message for those who – even worse - who've given up on hope altogether. We offer the world not what we wish for, but what we believe; what we know to be true. We offer the world Jesus – risen from the dead, and with us still today and forever.

Yes, There Is Such A Thing As A Liberal Christian

A few days ago a Facebook "friend" (the quotation marks are not meant to be disrespectful or to call their friendship into question, but just to note the unique nature of Facebook friendship) included the following words in a response to a post I had made: "Is there any such thing as a liberal Christian?" And I have to admit that my gut clenched.

It's exactly that type of response that makes me shake my head at so much of Christianity. It's the attitude that seems to suggest that "I know the truth - and if you don't agree with me you're not a real Christian." Let me begin by answering my Facebook "friend" (same disclaimer about the quotation marks as above) directly - yes, indeed, there is such a thing as a liberal Christian. Just as surely as there are conservative Christians, there are liberal Christians. And let me make a couple of personal points. First, I try as much as possible to avoid the use of "liberal" or "conservative" to define and separate Christians into separate groups. Christians are Christians, and all Christians are children of God and beloved of God, and my brothers and sisters in faith. Second, many people don't know quite where to place me on this theological spectrum (which actually makes me kind of proud.) Most "liberals" would see me as "conservative" - essentially because I have a high christology. I believe Jesus was God in the flesh; I believe Jesus was raised bodily. But a lot of conservatives would take note of the fact that I'm a firm believer in the work of social justice as the heart of a Christian life, and I believe strongly that we should try to emulate Jesus' example of including and welcoming those who are often excluded or marginalized. So, I'm kind of in an in between theological world here. Back to the point, though.

If we take "Christian" to be a noun (yes, it could also be an adjective, but we'll say it's a noun in this context) then words such as "liberal" or "conservative" become adjectives. (In other contexts, of course, they could be nouns - confusing, isn't it!) In any event, I find it sad that the adjective for some people becomes more important than the noun. What is a Christian? A Christian is a follower of Christ. This means different things to different people, admittedly, but I know many "liberal" Christians who outwardly at least seem to do a far better job of following and representing Christ than many "conservative" Christians I know. My sense of the difference between "liberal" and "conservative" is that "liberal" Christians tend to focus on the outward living of a Christian life, while "conservative" Christians tend to focus on the inward adherence to traditional Christian doctrine. Each believes their way to be right; each is suspicious or dismissive of the other. Sad, but true.  I'm not sure that either really captures the spirit of what it is to be a disciple of Jesus, though.

Yes, there's a doctrinal aspect to Christian faith. What we believe motivates us and moves us and shapes our relationship to God. But there's also what I might call an ethical aspect to Christian faith. How we live and what we do and how we treat others is how we incarnate Jesus - which is what we're supposed to do as a part of the church which is His body! Neither "liberal" nor "conservative" sums up the totality of what it means to be a Christian, and so neither liberal nor conservative Christians should be so easily dismissive of the other as I often see. Maybe we each need each other to be the totality of Christ's body.  Otherwise, perhaps we'd be, in an allusion to Paul's wonderful illustration, like an ear with no eyes.

"Walk humbly with your God," said the prophet Micah. Surely a part of that humble walk should be to acknowledge that we don't know everything, and we certainly shouldn't be dismissive of those who proclaim their faith in Jesus but who live that faith out in a way that's different from ours. After all, it was Jesus who said, "do not judge" - partly because, in humility, we're not capable of judging what's in another person's heart, or what another person's eternal destiny is. Jesus also reminds us that there may be surprises waiting for us. After all, "not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father Who is in heaven." It seems to me those words are a warning that not everyone who loudly proclaims themself to be a follower of Jesus is actually following Jesus! And, of course, Paul summed up the faith this way: "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord AND believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved." Since I can`t know what's in a person's heart, I'm surely not qualified to dismiss how sincere a person's Christian faith is.

Jesus seemed to sum things up pretty well: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself." This, Jesus said, was fulfilling the law. Not the details, but the big picture; not the letter, but the spirit; not the trees, but how they work together to make an entire forest. I don't care if you're liberal or conservative or anything else. Long and short of it? There are liberal Christians and conservative Christians and Christians of a variety of denominational labels. As long as they're striving to love God and to love their neighbours, I'm not going to call the sincerity of their Christian confession into question. I'll leave such questions (if they even need to be raised) to God - Who knows far better than me what's in another person's heart.

Sainthood? My Gut Reaction As A Protestant

I've been watching a lot of coverage about the coming canonization of the late Popes John XXIII and John Paul II. I have nothing against the Roman Catholic Church, but I have to admit that the idea of declaring certain people to be "saints" on the basis of supposed miracles attributed to their intercession strikes me, as a Protestant, as rather bizarre. I understand the desire to honour those who have made a major contribution to the faith - but it's the "miracle" part that bothers me, along with the fact that as far as I can see, "saints" are all those who are sanctified. You don't need to be dead and have a miracle attributed to your intercession to be a saint; you just have to be sanctified - by faith in Christ, according to traditional Christian thought. And as far as miracles are concerned, well - I rather stand on the traditional Calvinist perspective that God is sovereign. God will do whatever God will do, and God requires intercession from no one to act. So I really don't get the whole thing or all the hype. John XXIII and John Paul II may have been great figures of the faith and may have been worthy of honour in the Roman Catholic Church and beyond. But sainthood? Sometimes my protestantism just has to be expressed.