Welcome to the Knox Talks blog. Here you can find recent and past sermons relating scripture to a wide variety of topics. I would like to thank Shelley Rose for transcribing my notes into text for the blog.
Vision
Scriptures: Proverbs 29:18 Galatians 3:26-29
If we are to be a visionary people, our King James Version reading from Proverbs is great. It’s not the most accurate translation of the lesson – it’s really about needing prophesy to call us back to God’s paths – but you can make a good case for that version: “Without a vision, the people perish”.
Sometimes we need those prophetic reminders, of course, but to have a vision to hold in our hearts and minds every day, to give us a picture of what God wants the world to be so we can shape our lives to create that world – that’s one of the amazing benefits of being the church.
We gather and we do all the human things that make us the church: we share; we laugh and cry together; we help and support each other; we learn together.
And in the midst of all of this, we remind each other and ourselves about what it means to be God’s people, to be followers of Jesus. We refresh and renew our vision so we don’t lose sight of it, so we can live into it during the week.
The young people of the Sunday School that we have just celebrated today represent different stages on the journey of faith. Some are just beginning to learn and others have recently become confirmed members who have promised to live out their faith and to try to live into that vision of the world God wants us to create. We have promised to help and support them, to be that loving, safe community that is both a shelter from the hard parts of life and a place where we develop the skills to live out our vision.
So how do we describe that vision? What is the best summary?
On numerous occasions I have mentioned that part of scripture where Jesus summarizes his own teachings by identifying the most important laws:
First: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, strength
Second: Love your neighbour as yourself
But in Galatians, Paul gives us a very practical application of this law:
Neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female.
Jesus spent his ministry demonstrating to outcasts that God has not given up on them and that they are very much part of God’s people and Paul is saying: “Jesus tore down these barriers; we must keep them torn down!”
He was advocating equality across all kinds of lines: cultural, gender, social status. We are all of equal value in God’s eyes and we are to welcome each other and treat each other in exactly that way and, more than that, we are to be a community that seeks the good in all these people, cooperating and sharing for the common good, not trying to climb above each other but trying to lift each other up as we go forward together.
Now there’s a vision we can hang on to for the 21st century: a vision of a loving, welcoming, sharing community, modelled on the teachings of Christ and lifting up all people as being loved by God and worthy of our respect and love.
Our historical track record hasn’t been the best. We haven’t always been willing to challenge what passes for “common sense” or social norms, and we’ve lost the vision.
That passage of Paul’s has been around almost 2000 years so far. It took us over 1700 years to abolish slavery; gender equality is something we are still struggling for in so many ways and yet we’ve had this reading for centuries!
We are making progress now but it’s not going to be easy to maintain this vision. Society is developing an attitude that supports privilege and creates division. We need to gather and remember the ideal world God wants. We need each other to work towards this just and equal world, to create this loving, sharing community that overcomes the barriers that seem to go up so easily these days.
It’s not just about remembering that vision, it’s about making this place, this community, a living illustration of that vision. It’s about having God’s kingdom, God’s vision of an ideal world, alive here, among us and growing through us as we carry that vision, that way of life, that practical expression of loving God and our neighbours wherever we go.
That is what we are teaching our children. Our latest confirmation class members have committed themselves to this vision and that is the vision we ALL have committed ourselves to embody.
May God guide us and bless us as we travel together into the future, bringing God’s vision to life in this world.
Amen.
Knox United Church Nepean 