Knox United Church Nepean

The Time of Trial

While COVID-19 makes our in-person services challenging, Knox is providing podcast services. Not everyone can access these, though, so we are also posting my sermons on our Knox Talks blog. I would like to thank Shelley Rose for transcribing my notes into text for the blog.

The Time of Trial

Scriptures:

Job 1:1, 2:1-10

Matthew 6:5-15

I have had people ask me about the Lord’s Prayer, and particularly that line “Lead us not into temptation”. What kind of loving God would lead us into temptation? is the way it’s often put.

Part of the answer is simple: that isn’t the best translation of the meaning of the original words. “Don’t bring us to the time of trial”, as our reading today puts it, is a much better wording.

It’s easier to relate to, isn’t it? A time of trial is like saying “hard times”.

It’s a time where we are put to the test; where we have to deal with more than we thought we could. “Spare me!” is how we feel about the situations in life that push our buttons, that stress us out and challenge our very values and our ability to endure.

This pandemic has been a time of trial for the whole world. It is Biblical in scope, at least as bad as any of those floods, droughts, plagues or pestilences we find in scripture. It is as bad as anything most of us have ever seen, and compared to most of the world we are blessed! At least we have vaccines enough to give us a chance at a normal life; so much of the world has it worse.

One of the realities we face is the fact that the pandemic is overlaid on top of real life with all of its challenges and stresses. Medical things unrelated to COVID still happen and treatments are being delayed or cancelled; relationships are put to a stress test as some people have been seeing a lot more of each other than they ever planned, while others have been kept apart.

Everything seems so much harder and we start to wonder if we can survive. “Spare us this time of trial!” is our prayer because we don’t know if we can take it anymore.

In the Bible, Job is the gold standard of a time of trial. The story is brutal: this God-fearing man is literally put to the test. His wealth is wiped out, his children are killed in a freak storm and he himself is afflicted by something that in those days would be called leprosy. His big question is “Why?; What did I do to deserve this?”; “Why do bad things happen to good people?”

The answer to that question is often our focus when we read Job. It’s not satisfying: God says that we can’t understand all the reasons that bad things happen and the reason the story itself gives, of a bet between Satan and God, seems particularly insensitive and unjust.

At the core of this story is relationship. Job’s wife expresses a shared understanding when she says “curse God and die”. She and Job both understood that God is the source of life and she was basically saying that God had betrayed Job; that the relationship was faulty, maybe even abusive, “So, curse God for this betrayal, dump this unreliable friend”.

Job refused. By our modern standards, he used rather sexist language too, so if this is all about sinlessness or perfection, it goes off the rails. But it’s NOT about that either; it’s about relationship.

Throughout the book, God never loses faith in Job. The very reputation of God is put at stake, based on God’s faith in Job. And Job never loses faith in God.

The relationship is sound, solid; it’s also turbulent at this point: Job is furious. He feels unfairly treated. He demands to know: “How could you do this to me? How could you let this happen, if you’re all-powerful and all knowing? I certainly didn’t deserve it!”.

God sounds kind of miffed at the end, too and reads Job a lecture on perspective: “How can you know what my life is like?; How can you question my faithfulness when you can’t even create a whale or know how a mountain works?”.

The whole thing is unsatisfying from a human point of view; it reminds us that we often can’t understand the “why” of things.

But there are some very hopeful parts of this story that we don’t always remember:

First of all, Job passes the test! Job never gives up on God (being angry with God isn’t giving up);

Job didn’t let the terrible circumstances he was facing make him abandon what had been important all his life nor did he let the critics who called themselves his friends bring him down with their tag-team victim-blaming;

He managed not to doubt himself or the principles he lived by;

He also disproved that really cynical thing Satan said: “All that people have they will give to save their lives”. Job demonstrated that he could hold on to his principles even while complaining that God was being unjust.

The generation that went through the depression and WWII knew about challenges: the idea that we have to endure through hard times

and hold on to what we value.

The generation raised by them got tired of hearing that and we have taught ourselves to expect good times; to expect that we can always find a way out of troubles instead of having to work through them. We look for technological solutions or eternal economic growth or some other magic bullet that we haven’t found yet.

The lesson of hanging in, hanging on, enduring, is the one we are learning now. Learning that lesson is one of the things we pray to avoid.

The other lesson of Job that we really need to hear is that God remains faithful to Job through everything. Job can’t always see it; that’s why he gets so mad and starts complaining. But the whole story is possible only because of God’s faithful relationship to Job.

God never lets go and despite his suffering, Job never lets go either. Even when he can’t see a good reason for his troubles, he still hangs on to God’s love, even while demanding that God do more.

God doesn’t give up on us. I hope we can hang on to that understanding.

This time of Pandemic trial, we hope and pray, will be resolved one of these days if we can get enough people vaccinated around the world.

But that won’t be the end; there’s another trial already happening: the climate crisis. It hasn’t seemed as urgent which is why Greta Thunburg and her generation are so vocal, supported by urgent scientific studies and reports.

So we can’t just hope and pray that the time of trial will be over soon; we know that more is on the horizon.

Instead, we can learn from Job. As unjust as this all feels, as much as we have troubles to complain about, God is still there, sometimes hard to see but always faithful, never letting go of us.

We may not get all the answers we want; the question of “why” may never be resolved in a satisfying way, but God will keep hold of us, faithfully, even in the worst times of trial.

God won’t give up on us. Let’s not give up on God.

Amen.

Inherit the Land

Inherit the Land

Scriptures:

Leviticus 25:18-24

Matthew 5:1-12

This week we celebrate the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, also known as Orange Shirt Day.

There are SO MANY ways I could approach this in a sermon that it’s breathtaking. So, I thought I’d go back to the basics: back to the land.

The idea of the land is central to indigenous cultures. We are often told that they see this place as Mother Earth, as the life-giving home of everyone; and that the idea of owning and sub-dividing their Mother is just wrong.

Some idea of the land is central to every culture. One of the basic assumptions in the law of Canada is that the land technically belongs to the Queen, or more properly, to the “Crown”, which is why things like expropriation are legal.

In North America some people have tried to push this farther, to the idea that the owner of a particular property is King of that Castle. The “keep off government” signs found up the Ottawa Valley assert this idea of individual sovereignty over a plot of land. Anyone who has had to deal with our laws around mineral rights has learned the hard way that this is nonsense.

Our Canadian claims of ownership of the land are asserted over land that was taken from indigenous people. Back in Great Britain most of the land is still owned by the Crown or various nobility there. The tenancy of the people who live on the land has developed complex rights to protect them over time, since land ownership is something to which only a few can aspire.

All of this is completely alien to an indigenous understanding of human relationship to the land.

The system we created to restrict indigenous people to Reserve land and then restrict how they could use that land so they really couldn’t make a living off it, is a remarkable way to undercut their basic understanding and beliefs and to assert our culture’s dominion over them and the land itself.

As Christians, we should take our cue from scripture: we know that “land” is an important concept in the Middle East. Think about phrases like “The Holy Land” and “The Promised Land”.

Even in the Beatitudes, Jesus says: “The Meek shall inherit the land.” That is an alternate translation of “earth” which, in many ways, is a more accurate reading of the original Greek because it speaks directly to the centuries of Hebrew attachment to that land.

Jesus and his generation knew that the land could be conquered. Their land had been overrun by empire after empire; they knew that force and power could steal the land; they even knew that the Books of Moses recorded that it was by force and genocide that they had claimed the Promised Land centuries before.

That kind of Biblical imagery was very dangerous when the Europeans who first colonized the Americas decided that this land was a new version of the Promised Land, because that could permit a particular reading of Biblical history to justify the kind of genocide we would undertake here.

But the pure principle expressed in scripture is found in our Leviticus lesson, where portions of the Year of Jubilee laws were set out. Jubilee happened every 49 or 50 years (there is still scholarly debate over this) and in the year of Jubilee debts were forgiven, slaves were set free and land was returned to the family that previously owned it: either to the original owner or, more likely, the people who had rightfully inherited the land.

Today’s passage is part of a longer section which addressed the fact that “sold” land wasn’t actually sold: the value of the years of crops that came off it was sold, but the land itself, we are told, belonged to God and not to any human. We are all aliens and tenants, it says.

The land provides life for the people so the people could not be permanently evicted from the land, even for outrageous debts. And no one could accumulate a lot of land because it would have to be returned to the original owner or the person who had inherited it. This was a kind of social structure to prevent the development of what we now call the “1%”.

This principle directly contradicts so many things our culture has accepted: the idea that the Crown owns the land; the idea that a family can be permanently evicted from their land. The very concept of personal land ownership is denied. God owns the land, which reminds us that our place is not, ultimately, in charge.

This understanding is not identical to the idea of Mother Earth, but it shares enough principles that it should challenge us to go back to our own roots to re-discover our faith principles and consider how well we have applied them to our world.

If you research the idea of the Jubilee Year, you discover that a lot of ethical questions come with it. For example, scholars have asked when it first took effect because if it was to be applied as soon as the 12 tribes took possession of the Promised Land, they would have to give the land back to the Canaanites in the 50^th year, according to this law.

So it is argued that it wasn’t applied until 2 generations had passed, eliminating that possibility. Of course, slaughtering all the inhabitants of many areas also took care of that, but that didn’t happen everywhere.

It has also been argued that the law was dropped when the first great expulsion happened and whole tribes were taken away into Assyria,

or possibly later, when Judah was taken to Babylon, and then returned after 70 years. Again, the scholars can’t agree.

But just imagine what would happen today if the Jubilee law were still followed. All those settlements in the occupied territories would have to be returned to the Palestinians after 50 years, not to mention the land of the Palestinian refugees who fled in 1949.

Closer to home, what would happen today if we returned the lands of Canada to their original Peoples? How would it feel to give Knox back to the Algonquin people? How would it feel to give back our homes? Our cherished back yards?

Land treaties are complicated things and I’m not sure that the Year of Jubilee law is a practical way to administer our country. There have been debates for hundreds of years about how this actually would have worked and whether society could survive this disruption every 50 years.

But I would say that it provides a lesson for us in how far we have strayed from our principles as Christian people; in participating throughout our history in the claiming of indigenous land; in forcing indigenous people onto reserves; in restricting their land use and preventing them from making a living; in taking their children to residential school; and in forcing them to lose their teachings and languages so that they would have a harder and harder time challenging our claims to ownership, our claims to dominion.

I am saying that those claims we made were possible because we had sold out our principles. We believed in the empires we were part of; that the Crown should own the land; that we could legitimately conquer land by war. We came to believe that we could own the land and didn’t understand that by doing so we were usurping the place of God.

God who is the creator of all, is the owner of the land: the landlord to us, who are the tenants.

That’s not an exact parallel to the indigenous understanding, and an honest dialogue could teach us a great deal. We do come from a different culture, a different set of beliefs, and we shouldn’t pretend that we are all the same. That’s why we need dialogue.

But at the same time, the beliefs that led to the oppression of the first peoples of this land were not Christian beliefs, and should never have been ours to support or defend.

Truth and Reconciliation begins with Truth.

I believe we need to accept this truth before we can begin to have an honest and heart-felt conversation that might lead to reconciliation one day.

Amen.

Like a Child

Like a Child

Scripture:

James 3:13 – 4:3, 7-8a

Mark 9:33-37

Our lesson from Mark is a classic: Jesus tells the disciples, who were arguing over which among them was the greatest, that they had to become like children in order to be first in God’s order of the world.

When we read this passage, we bring to it centuries of baggage that we should address if we want to understand what Jesus meant.

Childhood didn’t exist until three or four centuries ago. Obviously children have existed for as long as there have been humans but we didn’t used to think of that stage of human life as anything special.

The history of the development of childhood as an idea is fascinating

and goes back to the time of John Locke, a philosopher who suggested that babies came into the world as tabula rasa: a “blank slate” that needed to be filled. This led to all kinds of ideas, to the invention of children’s literature, to artists actually depicting children as children rather than tiny adults.

Then the Victorians got a hold of “childhood” and decked it out with ideas of innocence while at the same time forcing the children of the poor to be chimney sweeps and factory workers. Eventually all of this led to reforms that sent all children to school and changed our attitudes in ways that affect us to this day.

Jesus didn’t have all this baggage to carry; childhood in his culture was not what we know today. Being called a child ended at puberty. That’s still reflected in the custom of Jewish children celebrating their Bar or Bat Mitzvas at age 13 – a celebration of them entering the adult world. Children were loved and celebrated. They were a gift from God and a sign of God’s favour.

At the same time, their survival wasn’t guaranteed. That was one of the advantages of a large family; at least some of the children could survive into adulthood.

The Victorian idea of innocence was irrelevant. Most poor children for centuries lived in a single room with their parents, often in the same bed in colder climates. Sex was not a complete unknown, even if they didn’t really appreciate it until they were older, and death was well known to all ages, especially when medicine was so rare and healing was so hard to come by.

Children, then, were seen as small people with potential but without experience; people who would grow into life, who would eventually become responsible enough to care for their elderly parents.

They were valued but they were expected to learn from their elders

at every step of the way.

Think about that as we consider the question of leadership. The disciples were arguing about who was best. If they weren’t walking down the road I can just imagine them arm-wrestling for the title.

The child example of leadership comes from another perspective entirely. There is built-in vulnerability; the child isn’t big and strong; the child needs help, needs cooperation to get things done.

There is no expectation for a child to have all the answers. The leader who is modelled on the child acknowledges the need to consult, knows that they have a lot to learn and is prepared to be respectful of those with more experience. You might expect naiveté, but that’s not right because that culture didn’t expect children to be sheltered from the realities of life. Inexperience, sure but this isn’t a calling to ignorance, especially not that peculiar kind of holy ignorance that some generations of Christianity have labelled “purity”. In other passages we are called to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. We are expected to know what is going on and then choose not to do bad things.

Children can be much more honest about their feelings than many adults are. I don’t think Jesus was talking about that because it was less of a problem in those days. Adults were quite up front about their feelings and still are in many middle-eastern cultures. But just because Jesus wasn’t targeting that issue doesn’t mean that we can’t benefit from some lessons in emotional honesty in our current culture.

At the core of this lesson, though, is the contrast between the competing disciples and the child.

We have accepted self-promotion as an important thing in our consumer culture and these guys were actively putting themselves forward.

Jesus was offering them an image of leadership that included vulnerability, a willingness to learn and the idea of service.

Sometimes, as adults, we forget that a big part of childhood is being bossed around by grownups: parents, teachers, coaches, random adults who want you to stop making noise in front of their house. Everyone gets to boss kids around and kids, if they’re lucky, might get to give orders to the dog or possibly younger siblings.

That’s not our image of leadership. The idea of being in charge carries with it the expectation that others will follow your orders. But Jesus pulls the carpet out from under that image. Jesus wants those who lead to be the servants of all.

That’s an image we have tried to develop over the ages with varying levels of success. Certainly, we talk about it in the church and apply it to ministers. But Jesus was offering this as a new way of living for all areas of life as a contrast to the power-based image of leadership; the image of boss that creates the word “bossy”; the structure of society that allows leaders to be abusive, that makes a “me too” movement necessary.

Jesus challenged our basic assumptions of human relationships and structures. He challenged us to choose to do things differently; to live in ways that heal and build.

So that’s why we are to lead with the image of children in mind: acknowledging our vulnerability, willing to learn and to respect the experience of others and resisting the temptation to become bossy, but accepting the role of servant of all.

Society is still having a hard time accepting this image, even after 2000 years. But after a particularly bossy leader we saw down south in recent years, I think this teaching of Jesus is more important than ever.

Amen.

Fire and Poison

While COVID-19 makes our in-person services challenging, Knox is providing podcast services. Not everyone can access these, though, so we are also posting my sermons on our Knox Talks blog. I would like to thank Shelley Rose for transcribing my notes into text for the blog.

Fire and Poison

Scriptures:

Wisdom of Solomon 7:26-8:1

James 3:1-12

Preaching on gossip might seem a bit silly these days. We live in a divisive society with horrible things being said on social media all the time; where people refuse to listen to anyone who has a differing opinion.

Even worse, we are in the middle of a federal election. Parties and politicians are being belligerent and some of their followers are getting really nasty. So why this scripture? Why this sermon?

The lesson happens to be of the readings in the lectionary this week. It spoke to me because I have seen the destructive power of gossip at work in the last few weeks and it has been really distressing. It has been a reminder of how important this simple teaching can be.

A neighbour of ours, a woman in her 40s, died of COVID recently, leaving behind a husband and children. The family belongs to a church that has a lot of unvaccinated members. At her funeral there was singing, which is considered unsafe enough that we don’t even do it outside yet. But she was an active members of that church and she decided for herself not to be vaccinated.

The husband, as he himself acknowledged at the funeral, is neuro-divergent: he is socially awkward; prone to saying things others consider inappropriate and I know that this bothers many people.

Even before the funeral the gossip had started and it got worse afterwards. There have been whispers of abuse; stories that the woman who died had begged to go to hospital and that he had refused (utter nonsense: I knew her well enough to know she would have called the ambulance herself if she felt that bad and it’s obvious that he loved her; he looks lost without her).

I have heard these and other pieces of gossip, not only from other neighbours but also from people who are members of their own church.

In my opinion, there are at least two sources for the gossip and both of them are based in fear: I believe that some of the people are afraid that her COVID death might happen to them – they are looking for stories to explain why they are safe when she was not.

I also believe that there is a deep misunderstanding of neuro-divergent people. This man is probably on the autism spectrum, functioning very well, but he scares people. They don’t know how to hear what he says and they start to turn him into a monster with their words.

It concerns me deeply that this family may become isolated, just as they are learning to live without their wife and mother. The children will have to live with these stories, not only the father. This gossip is not something I would wish on anyone and I wonder whether they will feel forced to move to escape the poison in the community.

The nastiness, the fear and loathing have been truly distressing to see and when I read our James lesson it was like he was looking down my street as he wrote it.

In preparing this sermon I had to consider the ethics of sharing this story: I didn’t want to preach against gossip by gossiping. I made sure that I have not shared any names and all the information I have shared has been publicly shared by the family already.

Refusing to gossip isn’t about “If you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything”; it is about being truthful and respectful, and loving.

Last week I identified that James set out a model for churches to refuse to treat people differently based on social status because we believe that all of us are God’s children; that we are all equally loved by God; that we are to treat each other with the respect due to every child of God, every human being.

That kind of respect should call us to speak respectfully at all times, not just in public statements but in every circumstance.

The fear that seems to be fuelling the fire of gossip is something that we need to work to overcome. We should remember that promise in John’s gospel: “perfect love casts out fear”. Perfect love isn’t easy. We need to work to develop it.

It’s too easy to fear people who are different. It’s too easy to condemn as a monster someone we don’t understand.

This teaching is basic: it’s not about political correctness or any other set of rules. It’s about speaking with love and respect at all times and it is a good place for each of us to start as we work to heal this divisive world.

If we could convince people to apply this principle, just imagine what kind of a difference this could make to the internet, or even to politics.

I listened to the leader’s debate the other evening with my sermon musings in mind. I remembered a leaders debate from years ago and I realized just how much I miss Jack Layton.

I’m not making a political statement – that’s not what a sermon is for. This is a personal expression of respect for someone who impressed me with his grace and integrity in a profession that often seems to lacks it. I met Jack a couple of times; the last time was at the Canadian AIDS society gala some months before he died, where we sat at the same table and compared moustaches.

The outpouring of grief the nation expressed when he died wasn’t because of his political position – many of the people who mourned him would never vote for his party – it was because of the kindness he showed and the dignity with which he treated others, even when strongly disagreeing with them. Jack clearly believed that we should respect others; that we are called to respect every individual we meet.

People respond to that kind of personal integrity; it’s a breath of fresh air.

And this letter of James calls each one of us to do the same thing: to refuse to take part in the nasty whispers; to hold back from the destructive, poisonous trends of today; to hold as a value the idea of respect, speaking to others, and about others in ways that respect each person’s value as children of God, even when they are profoundly different from us.

And when a person or a group scares us because they are so hard to understand, we should be determined to love them and to do our best to understand them, so we can overcome our fear with love.

As Christians we are being called to be people of integrity, to be people of love, of respect; people that can build others up instead of tearing others down.

If we can do this we will set an example for an increasingly dysfunctional society. People will notice and it will make a difference for them. But that’s not why we should do this, that should be a happy spin-off. We should do this because we understand it to be at the core

of God’s plan for human life: we don’t want others to gossip about us; we want others to speak about us respectfully.

It’s that simple: we want respect for ourselves, so we should give it to others, in everything we say and everything we do.

Amen.

Sleeves Rolled Up

Sleeves Rolled Up

Scriptures:

Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23 James 2:1-17

I think that James was writing to his century’s equivalent of a middle class congregation.

The people he is addressing are in the middle: between the rich person with the gold rings and fine clothes and the poor person with dirty clothes and no adornment at all.

There is a natural tendency to be deferential to a wealthy person; who knows, maybe they will be generous to you; or some of their glamour will rub off and your friends will be impressed.

There is a natural tendency to be dismissive of poorer folk; perhaps out of fear that we might be associated with them; or even slip and fall into their ranks; or maybe the “great unwashed masses” are too smelly; or we fear that they somehow earned their poverty by being less good, or less able.

It may be the simple fact that we aspire to become richer and fear becoming poorer. None of this is logical, some would even call it superstitious.

James didn’t invent the understanding that faith without works is dead. He just put it into its most quotable form.

James is clearly following the many teachings of Jesus that are very practical in nature. And going back even farther, he is part of that tradition represented in our Proverbs lesson which points out that God created both rich and poor alike; that radical notion that we are all equal in the sight of God.

First century Christians knew well that we are not all equal in the eyes of society and the congregation that first received James’ letter was following society’s standards. They were not going so far as to keep the poor people out with an entry fee or exclusive membership, but they were still making distinctions.

That is what James is objecting to because it ignores that basic idea that God made us equal, and that we remain equal.

He was not demanding what our modern service industry demands,

where staff are ordered to treat all customers as honoured guests. The customer is not always right as shown by the increasing need

to remind people not to abuse the staff. This is not about the interpretation of Christianity that requires us to become doormats.

What James is talking about is at the core of Jesus’ teachings: it is about respect. Not respecting status, or income, or someone’s place in any hierarchy but respecting each person as a person, as a child of God, regardless of their outward appearance or the status they have in society.

It includes a demand that the other person show respect too, so that there is no servant and guest dynamic, but a place where the members of the community all belong together and more than that, help each other out, making sure that no one goes hungry or freezes.

James’ practical emphasis becomes obvious when we apply the language of respect: if you respect someone, would you watch them starve?

James is giving us a good, basic way to apply the teachings of Jesus.

Jesus talked about the first being last and the last being first; which could be taken as permission to target rich and powerful people for disrespect. This remains a temptation for some people trying to create justice.

But Jesus taught us ways to level the uneven ground, to take away the advantage of the powerful, to force the oppressor to take the weaker person seriously, to look at them as real people – not some lower category to be used and discarded.

Remember that injunction to go the extra mile? If someone forces you to carry their burden one mile, carry it two instead?

The Roman army had strict rules for its soldiers. They could force someone from an occupied country to carry their burden exactly one Roman mile – no further. When someone carried it two miles, it put that bully of a soldier in the person’s power because the soldier’s commanding officer would enact serious punishment on a soldier who abused this power. After all, Rome wanted to avoid unnecessary rebellions – the Pax Romana was built on strict rules as well as a powerful army. The soldier could no longer look at the person as a kind of pack mule; he’d have to see them as a human with some built-in dignity instead of just ordering them to pick up the pack and carry it 1000 paces (the usual measure). He might have to walk alongside and beg them to stop before his sergeant noticed the extra distance.

Similarly, the call to turn the other cheek is a call to claim respect as well. The person who struck someone else on the cheek would use a slap; an open blow, like a master hitting a slave. It’s a disrespectful way of putting someone “in their place”.

To turn the other cheek is to invite the same person to hit with the back of the hand, with the knuckles, whether in a fist or an open back-handed slap. It is a much more aggressive blow. It’s like an invitation to a fight: it’s something you would do to someone you wanted to challenge, not someone you considered your inferior. It is, again, a demand for respect.

Jesus talked to people under Roman occupation and gave them a way to regain their dignity peacefully; to demand to be seen as human; to have at least some basic respect.

James took this and applied it to the community of faith in a way that requires us today to examine ourselves and see if we really understood the core of Jesus’ words.

If we cannot treat the people in our own gatherings with equal respect, as children of God, then we have missed the point. Jesus didn’t limit this to people within the faith community and I doubt James would, either.

On this Labour Day weekend, we might see it as a call to respect the people who have to roll up their sleeves to work, or a call to ourselves to roll up our sleeves and make our faith a living thing, beyond a set of beliefs, that provides actual help to real people.

And all of that would be right, as far as it goes. But if we stop there, we don’t go far enough. This call to treat everyone respectfully and to call others to treat everyone with respect is so basic to Jesus’ teachings that it should be part of every interaction of our lives.

When we support the work of our Outreach committee we do some of this: supporting practical ministries and programs that help people get out of poverty or abusive situations, or other troubles; or that work to require that those with power stop looking at people as tools, as objects to be used in pursuit of a goal and then be discarded when the goal is achieved.

But it is personal too: Our calling is to be the children of God, sharing creation with God’s other children and respecting the people and creation itself in the process.

Can we do this? Can we look at the person in front of us and respect them and insist that they respect us no matter our differences in beliefs, status, cleanliness, or sanity?

Can we challenge the ideas we use to write people off and find ways to respect them instead?

If we can do that, we will be well on the road to making Christianity as real in our lives as it should be.

Amen.

A Passion for God

A Passion for God

Scripture: Song of Solomon 2:8-13 James 1:17-27

Last Sunday I remarked that the Reformed branch of the Christian church strives to be very rational. We put an emphasis on education: clergy must at least have a Master’s degree and many congregations prefer someone with a doctorate. I can remember one professor at Knox College declaring: “God does not call illiterate people to ministry!” We all felt very bad for the classmate who was the target!

I’m not sure what that professor did with the suggestions that Jesus himself was illiterate, given that Jesus didn’t leave any of his own writings behind. He probably could avoid the issue since he was the professor of Old Testament studies.

That powerful emphasis on rationality has allowed our tradition to shake off many old ideas to challenge things we now consider superstitions. It has allowed us to call ourselves “the Reformed Church, always reforming,” to stay open to new understanding and to embrace critical thinking and careful study.

The problem with that should be familiar to fans of the original Star Trek series: the constant debate between logic and emotion. It also plays into another familiar dichotomy: body and spirit.

Since the earliest days of the church we have bought into the Greek philosophical understanding of a division between body and spirit. We tend to think of spirit and spirituality as being in the realm of the mind and emotions as being tied to those messy glands that come with our physical forms. Important, of course, and part of life but somehow impure; something to be disciplined, even suppressed.

That was quite explicitly stated in those early days of the church when hermits were popular as the ideal of what a Christian should strive to be: disciplining and denying all earthly appetites in pursuit of a purer spiritual existence,

That kind of split is at odds with the image of spirituality we inherit from the Hebrew scriptures.

Judaism doesn’t traditionally divide body and spirit the way we do. This was a distinction Jesus made in his own teachings, but he came from a religion and culture that understood people to be animated flesh: bodies that had been given the divine spark of life rather than spirits that had been wrapped in flesh.

Quite a lot of Hebrew scripture is quite “earthy” by our standards and many of the images we are given speak to the very physical human urges that are part of our lives, but do so in relation to God.

The Song of Solomon is, frankly, ancient erotic literature and it’s worth noting in our very modern world that if Solomon really wrote it he was able to express appreciation for both male and female beauty, male and female sexuality.

So why is this in scripture at all? Because we have always seen in it an expression of the passionate relationship between God and the people of God, of the desire of each for the other.

That’s not something we’re used to saying in the Reformed tradition but it has always been there: a burning fire pulling us towards our creator, just as compelling as any sexual longing we might know.

Leonard Cohen taps into that with a lot of his music, this combination of sensuality and spirituality, and look how many people have responded, whether they call themselves people of faith or not.

A good example can be found in the lyrics of Cohen’s “Hallelujah” where he calls on the image of King David, the harpist, that very imperfect king who was still called a man after God’s own heart.

David was impulsive and lustful, passionate and sometimes very unwise. He danced before the Lord so vigorously that his kilt spun up and he exposed himself before the crowds. His wife criticized him for this undignified display but the clear message was that God was pleased that David was unrestrained in his zeal for God: that he cared more for God than for his own dignity.

That visceral sense of our faith often makes us uncomfortable. Within this branch of the church we look at people who are passionate about their beliefs with suspicion, or disapproval or sometimes with amusement.

Too often we allow our rational and academic approach to keep us safely isolated from those disturbing feelings that faith can generate.

The problem is that those emotions are what make our faith practical. If we try to make it all about what we believe, getting the right understanding or faith statement, then we make our faith sterile.

That’s the point James was making in his letter.

James was clear: we can believe all kinds of things but if we don’t make it real, it’s worthless. Our faith can’t be all intellectual or all spiritual, for that matter. Our faith has to have skin on; it has to have a physical expression or it’s empty words. “Faith without works is dead” is the way James says it, and he’s right.

What did Jesus tell us was most important? To love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, and to love our neighbours as ourselves. Love is at the core of our faith and love doesn’t spring from our minds; it is body-based, it’s very human and often messy.

Of course, we need our minds to develop our love, so it’s not just for a few, select people – I’m not saying we should stop thinking – but at its core our faith is not about thinking; it’s about a passionate relationship with our creator and the world around us. We are invited to take part in that love song that God sings to us and all people.

In the Song of Solomon we see the image of the lover calling the beloved to leave the safety of the house; to come beyond the walls into the springtime where growth and new life are happening, where anything can happen.

It is a call to step beyond safety into an exciting world, where possibilities are endless.

That time is coming for us. The winter of this pandemic will be over some day and we must let the feelings of our faith draw us out of our hiding holes and show us once again how to reach out in love; how to get past interesting but sterile theories into that place where faith is made real, where lives are touched and healed, where people are helped and hope grows again.

It may not be what we are used to, but we have it within us to be passionate about our faith. It is part of the way God has made us. It is the place where humanity meets spirituality at its most basic. We must never lose that.

Amen.

Ask Andrew 4 (2021): Modern Approaches to Scripture: Re-considering the Books of the Bible

Ask Andrew 4: Modern Approaches to Scripture:

Re-considering the Books of the Bible

Scriptures: 2 Timothy 3:14-17, John 1:1-5

Today I will address two questions about our approach to scripture in light of modern scholarly understanding:

First: A question asks about updating the books of the New Testament. It says that councils of the church ratified the current canon 1700 years ago and says that we might make very different choices today in light of conclusions scholars have reached about who actually wrote which books and which ones were excluded as “heretical”, when some formerly heretical teachings are quite popular now.

I recommend having a look at the Wikipedia page about the development of the New Testament Canon. It gives a good short overview of a very slow and complicated process.

Writers of the New Testament didn’t think they were writing scripture. Our lesson from 2 Timothy contains a reference to scripture which most likely meant the Hebrew Scriptures, or more accurately the Septuagint version which was a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures plus a number of books where the original Hebrew versions had long been lost.

Modern scholars question whether 2 Timothy was written by Paul. Some early church authorities asked the same question. Some excluded both Timothy letters and Titus from the New Testament.

Modern scholars suggest that these “Pastoral Epistles” may contain original material from Paul but also a lot of stuff someone else added later.

Actually the official New Testament canon wasn’t fully agreed across the church until less than 500 years ago. When it comes to the Jewish writings, there are still different Bibles. Anyone with a Jerusalem Bible should have noticed that.

Books of the Septuagint with no Hebrew originals were rejected by Jewish Masorete scholars. The Christian church kept using many of them but there are still differences today between specific churches. Syrian Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox and Greek Orthodox disagree about some Septuagint books and all disagreed with the Catholic church about Revelations until a few centuries ago.

Protestant reformers decided to trust the Jewish understanding and threw out the same books Judaism threw out. This didn’t change the New Testament canon but it did change the canon of the bible overall.

Actually, Martin Luther did change the New Testament canon. He wanted to remove the letter of James as heretical but contented himself with making it the last book of the Bible in his German translation.

You can see, this is not a static process. Calling a new Church Council is nearly impossible; the Roman Catholic church calls them every few decades but only for Catholic bishops to participate. The Orthodox branch of the church does the same kind of thing less frequently. Again, it does not include the Western church and neither group invites any Protestant churches to participate.

The closest we get to such a forum is the World Council of Churches. The Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches won’t join as full members; they wish to remain as observers and will not be committed to any decisions made by the whole body.

Some churches have tried to expand the canon with new books. The Latter Day Saints church is the most famous with their Book of Mormon.

Lori tells me that at one point people were trying to get the writings of Martin Luther King Jr. Canonized and although that hasn’t worked so far, he is on the road to becoming a saint in the Roman Catholic church, and is already recognized as such in an Orthodox sect. Quite ironic for a Baptist pastor!

Modern scholars, like the Jesus Seminar, have gathered and voted on which words and actions of Jesus they consider authentic and if we were to limit the gospels to the parts they can agree are original, we would have a lot less to read.

There’s just too much disagreement; too many opinions.

Even if we called a council of protestant churches right now, a huge percentage would reject all that modern scholarship out of hand! Then we’d have a centuries-long fight about what to add because each group would have its favourites, which is exactly why it took centuries to settle the first canon. Human nature doesn’t change.

Reformation scholars had some questions too but they took a particular perspective on how to relate to these ancient writings which have challenges but have been useful to the church for a long, long time.

This brings us to the second question:

When you read the scripture lesson you always say; “Hear the Word of God.” And yet current interpretation tells us that it isn’t actually the ‘Word’ of God but what was written by a plethora of mostly male scribes from since Before Common Era. What is the underlying meaning and importance of ‘The Word’ for us today?

The original Reformed theologians really loved rationality. They wanted logical lines of thought to define our faith and identify its foundations, but they recognized that they couldn’t just cook that up out of their own minds. The authority for our faith had to come from beyond mere human thought.

They knew that there were challenges with scripture but they also believed that God had worked through these scriptures over and over down through the centuries. They also believed that scripture provided the most reliable connection to the ministry of Jesus we could find.

So, they developed a theology that was a bit mystical: they based it on our John reading in which the “Word of God” becomes flesh in Jesus.

The idea is that when I invite you to hear the Word of God, I am asking you to hear Jesus’ message for you. The Bible is called the Word of God because it testifies to Jesus and the work of God leading up to Jesus’ life. But that’s not what you’re being called to hear: it is the message of God as embodied in Jesus and as recorded in scripture.

In that same theology the sermon is also a form of the Word of God:

it is the Word of God proclaimed.

Obviously people like John Calvin didn’t think that preachers would never make mistakes, but he did demand that we apply our best understanding to interpreting the scriptures for the church constantly;

to give our most honest and insightful perspective on what the writings said and what Jesus would want for today.

It is, frankly, intimidating and any preacher who doesn’t approach this with respect and a sense that they are not just writing their own opinion isn’t doing a good job. We are called to do our best to convey the Word of God.

And the mystical part of this is that in the context of worship, in the prayers, the singing, the reading, the sermon and the sacraments, the people of the church are called to encounter God. Since we Reformation types are so rationally based, we call ourselves to encounter God through the Word.

My job is NOT to “Speak the Word of God so that no one can gainsay it!”. The role of the minister is to create a fertile ground where God’s Spirit can speak to our hearts and minds and inspire us to love, to justice, to wisdom, to grace, to all the things that we believe are gifts of God.

The books we call the Bible will not all be used with equal authority but then, they never have been. But they do have a long history of helping and inspiring God’s people, of connecting us with God.

And if we do add to them, then we would be wise to choose writings that have proven their ability to move beyond a simple fad or temporary enthusiasm into writings that have meaning for many ages and many people.

Adopting new scriptures could, indeed, be done but if we do it, we need to proceed with respect, with wisdom, and the patience to remember that for a 2000 year old church a couple of centuries isn’t that long to work on something this important.

It’s how long we took last time.

Amen.

Wisdom Going Forward

Wisdom Going Forward

Scriptures: Proverbs 9:1-6, 1 Kings 2:10-12, 3:3-14

The wisdom of Solomon is legendary. It has influenced Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Our reading from 1 Kings today is where it all began.

There’s an order here: King David was faithful, mostly, and loved God passionately. Solomon started there, with deep commitment to God and when he became king he demonstrated his character by asking God for the gift of wisdom.

He had seen his father David divide his own kingdom by following his whims and appetites, by being self-serving over and over. So, Solomon asked for the ability to rule wisely; to serve the kingdom well; to do what was best for others.

That request suggests he had a good basis for wisdom already. He understood the relationship between a ruler and the people; that the ruler is there to help the nation; that the nation isn’t there to take care of the ruler.

The end result, we are told, was the beginning of a golden age. Solomon expanded the kingdom of Israel to the largest extent it ever achieved. He was revered by other rulers for his wisdom; he had treaties with a record number of other rulers which is why he had so many wives. (That was how you did treaties in those days: you connected your households by marriage and hoped your in-laws wouldn’t invade.)

It may not have been perfect. When Solomon died the people wanted his son to reduce taxes and he refused, which led to the dividing of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. But while Solomon was alive, things ran well.

Solomon’s wisdom included the ability to think ahead, to plan for the long-term benefit of his people. That’s why he was able to build up his kingdom into a small economic powerhouse. It took years but he was granted a long life, so that worked out well.

Maybe we could do with some long-term wisdom today.

This past week has seen two significant things: the publication of a report on climate change that warns us that it’s too late for many things and that we have to work really hard just to slow down the results of the things we have done in the past; and the serious threat of a federal election for September 20^th.

The climate change issue calls for wisdom: long term thinking and planning for decades ahead – the kind of profound understanding that made Solomon legendary.

Our democracy creates a fertile ground for short-term thinking, for the kind of ideas that get politicians elected for a short four-year term, where decades long plans are hard to sell, so most don’t even try.

This doesn’t mean that we should ditch democracy and install a king or tyrant instead.

It does mean that we need to take our own role in this seriously. The call for wisdom is landing on our shoulders. People are supposed to be at the heart of a democracy, not any particular party or ruler. So, it falls to us to develop the wisdom we need to rescue the future for the generations who will inherit the Earth.

That suggests to me that this upcoming election is an opportunity to let every candidate running in every riding know what we think needs to be done: what steps are required for the future.

As Christians, we have always expressed the belief that this is God’s world and depending on which parable we read, we may end up in the role of the bad tenants if we’re not careful. You remember: the ones the king evicts “with extreme prejudice”; the ones who treated the property as if it were their own and who were utterly selfish and greedy.

Wisdom, in scripture, is often portrayed as having a life of its own: setting feasts, being utterly equipped to run things smoothly and generously.

Wisdom always reminds us that God is at the heart of things, that we can’t make ourselves the focus of life. Solomon knew that right from the beginning of his rule and he was an exceptional ruler as a result.

If we want our rulers to show wisdom then we have to show them the way; we have to demonstrate our commitment to long-term care of God’s earth.

We have to call leaders to long-term thinking and planning however much it is against the nature of the system we have created. And we have to inspire them to work cooperatively, however much it is against the nature of our adversarial system.

For quite some time now we have lived in a society where excessive consumption has been celebrated; where we are encouraged to be selfish. And we are reaping the results, as the weather changes and as our world suffers around us: as more of God’s wonderful creatures are threatened or become extinct.

It may feel overwhelming when we hear these reports, but we are not powerless.

We can learn about things we can do personally. That is one part of the process that makes sense to many people: the changes we can make to our homes and vehicles; to our life choices.

But we can also learn about bigger things – the issues we normally consider beyond our reach. Because they AREN’T!

We get to choose the government and we get to tell them what the priorities should be. They’re not all-powerful, of course, but they can do a lot as our representatives. If enough of us “ordinary citizens”

tell them what we consider important, we can inspire them to stretch outside their comfort zones, we can inspire them to wisdom: to be good rulers; to make long-term plans; to consider the needs of the next generations, maybe even seven generations, if we wish to borrow Indigenous wisdom.

If we become cynical; if we simply accept that the system we have will always lead to short-term results, then we will change nothing.

But as people of faith, people who believe in a higher perspective, a perspective that sees whole centuries and makes deep, long-lasting plans . . .

As people of faith we have a call to hope; a call to seek wisdom and to bring it to whatever we do, even to the job of governing ourselves. We don’t have to accept a future of gloom and disaster. We can require our leaders to work for a better future regardless of political stripe.

Solomon was wise enough to ask for wisdom to help all his people; not just his friends or favourites; not just his family or tribe.

We can ask our leaders to be wise, to help all the people and the planet just as Solomon did. And an election is the perfect time to do that.

Ask Andrew 3, 2021: Is there a Trickster in Christianity?

This sermon is part of the Ask Andrew series that has been posted on this blog for several years now. Previous questions are still up there, if you want to look for them!

Ask Andrew 3, 2021: Is there a Trickster in Christianity?

Scriptures: Genesis 25:19-34, 27:5-17

Re-statement of Question for Brevity:

The question notes the existence of a Trickster character in many traditions and religions, including North American indigenous spirits and cultural heroes, as well as gods from Greek and Norse mythology. At the base is the question:

Do we have a space for a trickster in Christianity? If so, who fills that role? Prophets, Jacob and Jesus are all suggested as possible answers.

This is a challenging question. Tricksters do different things in different cultures ranging from the brave person who challenges authority to a jerk who does really dangerous stuff and serves as a bad example: “don’t do this”.

Traditional Christianity, particularly as developed by a powerful church, has built a theology that doesn’t handle tricksters well. God is presented as perfect and unassailable, something that the religions and cultures with tricksters never have in their pantheons.

The insistence on monotheism – that there is only one God – does not leave much room for challenge of an all-powerful, flawless God who is the source of all being and existence. Even our image of Satan that has developed over time presumes that he is doomed to fail, which might fit with the image we have of Loki in the Norse pantheon, but has little in common with the tricksters of North America.

The role of the prophets is indeed a disruptive one but the authorities challenged are always the human ones: the government or the religious establishment. Some prophets did things which left them open to mockery as a deliberate way to deliver God’s message which can remind us of tricksters.

Judaism is more comfortable with this than Christianity which is a failing on our part I believe; one we need to work to correct because it demonstrates the way our past has allowed us to buy into the kind of power that Jesus himself challenges.

Judaism has a clear sense of personal relationship with the creator, kind of like a marriage at times, between God and Israel where the relationship can show signs of strain. There can be anger and difficulty between the people and God and where there are fewer absolutes than Christian theologians appreciate, more sense of complex personality in our Creator.

The case of Jacob (who was re-named Israel) is an interesting one, even challenging. Our scripture lessons give a couple of key bits that we need to understand:

Rebekah, Jacob’s mother, is told by God that the two nations warring within her will result in the younger supplanting the elder. Jacob takes Esau’s birthright by himself because Esau traded it away for a pot of stew. Esau clearly didn’t respect what he got by tradition: the right to a double inheritance and the claim to be leader of the clan. It was like giving away his crown to eat a pizza.

Then, in the second situation Rebekah helps Jacob trick Isaac, the father and patriarch, out of his blessing. Consider: Isn’t Rebekah just following God’s plan? (Lori has always felt that Rebekah is criticized unfairly by the church.) And if God’s plan overturns the established and accepted order, the Patriarchal order, literally, then can you call them tricksters?

Maybe. There was trickery involved and there is a clear understanding in the Hebrew scriptures that people at the edges, the marginalized, need to resort to trickery to survive, to thrive, to fulfill God’s plan for them.

In the stories of Jacob it is clear that God blesses this sort of thing and by re-naming Jacob as Israel God blesses this approach for this chosen people who will always be a small nation in a world of great empires.

Christianity became a great empire through Rome and through successive nations over the centuries. The people in power in both secular and religious terms didn’t want this sort of trickery to flourish; it undermines authority, after all.

The Christian approach to God has been more rigid than the Jewish approach:

Early and influential theologians embraced the idea of absolutes. Thus, God is portrayed as the epitome of power, holiness, perfection: all knowing, all seeing, all wise. How could a trickster challenge perfection? The very existence of a trickster questions the idea of absolute right.

In that sense, there is no place in traditional Christianity for a trickster and I cannot comfortably identify anyone as filling that role. A super-human trickster would stretch the principle of monotheism: of the existence of only one God, while a human trickster, like Jacob, becomes pale in that role when you realize that he isn’t really challenging the ultimate authority.

Having said that, I am not forgetting the scene where Jacob wrestles at Peniel with a divine being. It’s not clear if it is an angel or God but Jacob assumes it was God. This striving with God has always been an uncomfortable story for Christianity while it remains a foundational idea for Judaism.

I believe that we have to be careful with a word like “trickster”. It doesn’t fit Christianity well especially as we have developed our theology in the past.

I also believe that Jacob and others represent an element of our faith that is strong in our roots in Judaism and that we have shied away from: an element of challenge to authority; an element of being able

to overcome power and position with the tools of the powerless;

the skill to play the system; the courage to work outside the rules; the nimble ability to duck and dodge as needed.

Jesus challenged authority and the very basis it claimed for itself, both in religious and social terms. Instead of keeping that practice of challenging authority alive, we have enshrined Jesus as the new authority and told people they mustn’t question the people who speak in his name.

In the Reformation we challenged that again but as soon as rebel protestant churches became state churches we were no longer comfortable with further challenges to authority and we fell back into old patterns.

In Matthew’s gospel Jesus is quoted as instructing his disciples to be “wise as serpents and as innocent as doves” which suggests to me that Jacob’s approach to life and faith is something that still belongs in our faith as much as we have denied and suppressed it; as uncomfortable as we might be taking serpents as role models.

I don’t think we can claim tricksters for Christianity but I do think that the tricksters we find in other faiths can call us back to our own faith story, can remind us that God is not bound by flawed human notions of absolutes.

As our final hymn (More Voices #138 My Love Colours Outside the Lines) will remind us: God doesn’t call us to colour inside the lines. We limit ourselves, often without thinking, too often by assuming that what society does is right.

God is the Creator and part of our calling is to be creative which means doing new and unexpected things and challenging the status quo.

Let’s recover that part of our faith. God gave Rebekah a vision that led her to subvert her Patriarch of a husband and undermine the whole system they lived in. God led Jacob into new places and gave him a vision for the future that included unsettling a lot of people, including whole nations.

That is a major part of our faith. It’s time we reclaimed it and pulled it back into the mainstream where it belongs.

Amen.

The Power to Name

The Power to Name

Scriptures:

Genesis 2:18-20

John 10:11-16

It’s amazing how people try to put our human race above other animals; try to prove how unique we are.

Over my life I have heard all of these arguments:

we have language, animals don’t (except maybe whales, dolphins, etc.);
we have opposable thumbs (so do other primates);
we make tools (so can most primates, dolphins, elephants, corvids, squids & octopi, even some insects);
we can manipulate numbers (crows can do basic addition and subtraction at least).

The latest I have heard: we have reason, animals have only instinct. This might be true, if you are thinking about the kind of reason you learn in a philosophy class.

BUT I remember watching Siggy when she was a puppy, discovering the joys of cause and effect; not just the “if you chew on this pillow you get in trouble” kind, but the understanding that if you stick your nose in the grass when it smells like frog, the grass explodes and a frog flies out in some random direction and if you stick your nose in the new place the grass explodes again!

Instinct may be where it starts, but it’s not all. She shows no interest in eating the frog but she finds it highly entertaining and she is using a basic kind of logic to make these connections.

The people who keep trying to elevate humanity to a lofty place above other animals are just wrong-headed theologically, like they have only read the first creation story in Genesis 1, where God creates the universe and saves humans for the end, as a kind of crowning glory. That’s not the only lesson of Genesis 1, not even the main lesson but it’s the one that people love.

But there’s another creation story, in Genesis 2. The order of creation is reversed; humans (Adam) created before the other animals and given the job of naming them.

It’s important to note: this change of order is not a theological problem: the Bible was never intended as a Science text. Each version of the creation story has a different theological truth to reveal, a different aspect of the relationship between God, humans, and the rest of creation.

This one shows God involving humans in the life of other animals,

by naming them.

Think of the power involved in naming! Say someone moves like a tiger: a compliment (scary, maybe, but a compliment). Say someone moves like a sloth: well, no chance that’s a compliment!

The way we name things influences their lives hugely. A campaign to save an endangered species of butterfly is much more likely to be successful than a campaign to save an endangered species of dung beetle.

By taking on that power to name, we have entered into a relationship with other animals around us. In the Genesis 2 story, God is explicitly trying them out as companions for Adam. They are not the same as we are but they are worthy to be considered our companions and as anyone who has pets knows, they can be amazing companions.

The relationship between people and animals in the Bible does not support arrogant human superiority. The lesson from John’s gospel is founded on the understanding that the good shepherd will be willing to die for a flock of sheep.

It makes a great metaphor BUT it was literally true. David the shepherd boy faced down lions and bears with only a sling. If he’d failed, he might well have died. It was a very realistic risk which is why the spiritual metaphor works so well. People really did die for their animals in Jesus’ day and had done for generations.

People sometimes remark that we, in the Western World have become spiritually empty, barren and in one sense it is often true. We have made it acceptable for people to be utterly selfish, putting themselves above other people and inventing economic or cultural theories to explain why it’s okay. Also putting people so far above the other creatures around us that we get to destroy their habitat, hunt and fish them to extinction and even experiment on them in sadistic ways.

God did not create the universe for Human beings to live alone and did not give us skills to manipulate the world around us so that we could use those skills to destroy.

God put us in the world to be with the other creatures around us in a relationship with the life around us that works in many directions at once.

As our Genesis lesson puts it, they are worth considering as our companions but we have the power to name them, which is a good metaphor for all the powers we have over them.

And with that power comes the responsibility to treat them well, to see them as good – just as God has declared them all to be good – to love them and protect them following that example of the Good Shepherd.

We need the animals in our lives; they are ongoing reminders of God’s love, of our connection as humans to the rest of the life in God’s universe.

With their own lives they show us joy, loyalty and faithfulness; they give us their trust and love; they can stretch us in ways that people haven’t managed, helping us to grow.

Whatever their particular genius in our lives, the animals around us are a blessing from God.

Let us consider how we can be a blessing to them and all their wild cousins as we thank God for them and seek God’s blessing on their lives.

Amen.