The House of Eli

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 House of Eli

Scripture: 1 Samuel 3:1-20

The people we find in the Hebrew scriptures are wonderful. Not like comic book figures: exaggerated examples of good or evil, but real people, complex and contradictory.

Eli, the high priest is one of these. Our lesson was about the call of the prophet Samuel but I would like to look closely at Eli, who made it all possible.

Eli was high priest at Shiloh, a holy place which contained the ark of the covenant. Samuel had lived there under Eli’s care since he was a small child, dedicated to purity and God’s service by his mother, Hannah. He was to become a Nazirite, as it was called, who would never drink alcohol and never cut his hair. The Judge Samson had been a bad example of this. Eli, who followed Samson in the duties of a judge, agreed to raise the boy in the tabernacle.

That’s remarkable since only the priests were supposed to enter the tabernacle. The Priests were all members of the tribe of Levi and Samuel was of the tribe of Ephraim; but there he was, living in the same tent as the ark of the covenant and serving the high priest.

Eli wasn’t a perfect man. When Hannah prayed outside the tabernacle to have a son, she prayed silently, her lips moving. Eli assumed she was drunk and told her off for making a spectacle of herself and disgracing a holy place. He relented when she told her story and why she was praying, and so he blessed her. When she returned some years later with this little boy, Eli accepted him into God’s service.

Eli was high priest because he was descended from Aaron. There are a lot of stories of how he replaced another high priest and the Samaritans and the Jews disagree even today about who was the legitimate high priest in those days.

But according to scripture, Eli was renowned for not keeping control of his sons who were to inherit the high-priestly duties when Eli died. They were self-indulgent; taking the best cuts of the sacrifices for themselves and committing adultery with the women who served at the temple entrance.

In other words, Hophni and Phinehas were corrupt. They were using their status as leaders to indulge themselves and they showed no respect either for the God they represented or the people they misused. Eli was condemned by God for failing to restrain them – basically, for making this high office a mockery by not training his sons to be good priests.

We heard the judgement of God on the house of Eli and it’s no wonder Samuel was reluctant to tell the old priest.

Within a couple of chapters we read where Hophni and Phinehas were killed in battle by the Philistines. They had brought the Ark of the Covenant to the battle, but instead of bringing victory, they were killed, the Hebrews routed, and the Ark captured.

When Eli heard the news of the battle from a survivor, he fell backwards off the rock he was sitting on and died of a broken neck. A grandson was born to the household that same day and named Ichabod which means “the glory has departed”.

With all that bad stuff happening, that curse fulfilled in such dramatic ways,

you would think that Eli had no redeeming characteristics. But what I find so remarkable is that this elderly high priest, who was cynical enough not to restrain his corrupt sons, who was self-indulgent enough that scripture says his great weight contributed to his broken neck; this very imperfect servant of God was able to guide young Samuel to make a clear and powerful connection to God.

For all his failures as a religious leader, Eli recognized the voice of God speaking to Samuel and gave him exactly the guidance he needed to start his journey as a prophet and the final judge of Israel.

I don’t get the sense that either of his sons could have shown the same wisdom or understanding. But Eli himself did and he was courageous enough to insist on hearing God’s message.

He must have had a sense that bad news was possible. After all, if the voice of God is speaking in the Tabernacle, why isn’t it to one of the anointed religious leaders? Why is it to this child of another tribe? And suspecting this, he insisted on knowing what God said. Actually, it’s pretty obvious that it was bad news since he had to threaten Samuel with additional divine curses if he held back any of the message.

This suggests to me that here is a man who knew what was supposed to happen; who knew what was right from wrong, but he’d become comfortable with the luxuries of his position and he’d indulged his sons in their own abusive behaviour.

With Samuel, he recognized the presence of God and he did what was right in showing the boy the right way to respond to God. And then he was courageous enough to demand to hear the truth, however painful it might be.

I suppose Eli could be held up as an example of the way God is able to work through all kinds of people, even very imperfect ones. The church has believed that for a long time, even developing a policy centuries ago that what happens in a sacrament does not depend on the worthiness of the priest, but on the action of God even through a faulty vessel.

That particular policy has become a real issue in recent years as priests who have committed abusive acts have been protected from criminal prosecution despite some very destructive behaviour.

Notice that God’s judgement stands: despite Eli’s help for Samuel, the house of Eli is cleansed of its corruption and his descendants banned from ever being High Priests again.

God has always made it clear that great position demands great responsibility.

Biblical prophets always saved their harshest words for those who abused their positions and took advantage of people in their power. And those who were in the highest places of all might end up personally redeemed but still faced the consequences of their bad actions.

Eli and his house are the prime example of this for religious leaders but the same point is eventually made with King Saul and King David. In all cases these were people who abused their positions and beyond that, set a bad example for the people who followed them; an example that said that God’s principals didn’t matter or maybe just didn’t apply to them because they were privileged.

It’s not hard these days to pick a leader we can apply this lesson to, but this isn’t included in the Bible just for rulers to hear. We are each in a position to serve as an example for someone. We are each better off than someone else. We all have people who work in our service, whether we know them personally, or whether they are part of the system that provides us with our food or the luxuries we enjoy.

In that way this lesson is for each of us to remember how we relate to others. In modern language: to acknowledge our privilege and to consider the principles God has given us: for how to treat others, how not to be selfish, and how to avoid hurting and abusing others.

None of us want to consider ourselves bad and we can each point to good things we have done. Eli could too: he showed wisdom and courage. We all need to do better than that.

Our daily lives should reflect our best lives. As we strive to follow Jesus, living out what Paul called the Law of Love, then our care for those who are in our power will be the true measure of our goodness and will become the example we set for others.

Amen.

How the Pandemic Made Me Update the 10th Commandment

How the Pandemic Made Me Update the 10th Commandment

Nobody worries about coveting anymore. I suspect our entire economy would collapse if we applied the Biblical 10th commandment literally.

Time for an update! This year of pandemic has given us the very thing we need to reclaim the 10th commandment.

Consider: To Covet is to disrespect someone by wanting to take what is theirs. In this pandemic, we have learned that to spread COVID is to treat others without respect, to spread a disease without caring how it hurts someone else. In both cases, it’s all about being selfish: ignoring God’s call to respect others.

So I propose a modern re-write. I have adjusted the King James Version because commandments sound so much more authoritative in Elizabethan English.

Exodus 20:17 KJV (alt.)

Thou shalt not COVID thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not COVID thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.

It’s perfect! God set out COVID restrictions for us thousands of years ago!

The general message is clear: we are not to spread COVID to our neighbours at all. Don’t COVID their house is the very first part of the commandment. Stay out of other’s houses. NO PARTIES!!

Of course, there are some gender issues for the modern reader. Why is it okay to COVID your neighbour’s husband, but not the wife? What about a non-binary partner? Does this apply to cohabiting fiancé(e)s, or to simple roommates?

A traditional model of interpretation will help us here: we should generalize the commandment to capture its full intent, rather than look for exceptions. God is not giving us a loophole to COVID all husbands, or anyone in a non-traditional relationship. The examples in the commandment are illustrative, not exclusive.

The manservants and maidservants should be read inclusively too. The more generic term “staff” captures the meaning best. At its most obvious, we are being told not to COVID someone’s household staff. This takes on particular significance as we consider the elderly in their care homes. God is commanding the use of proper PPE, as well as safe practices for these vital workers.

This should also be generalized into other fields. Not only are we forbidden from sabotaging a competitor’s business by COVIDing their staff, but a full reading should require employers to provide proper protection for their own workers. Thou shalt not COVID anyone’s workplace, including thine own. As many passages of scripture will attest: God has always called for economic justice, and protection for workers.

It is significant that God included animals in this commandment. This tells us two things:

From the animals’ perspective: God makes it clear that animals can be infected with COVID. The only thing clearer would have been if minks had been included with the oxen and asses. God cares about animals! Keep them safe!

From the human perspective: There is a financial impact to COVID. When this commandment was written, animals were the main source of industrial strength and transportation. We have replaced them with machinery for most of our efforts now, but the message remains the same: disinfect all the machinery we use! Don’t COVID computers, cars, tools, or labour-saving devices. Wipe them down, don’t wipe them out!

And for those with an earthier sense of the word “ass” (you know who you are) the message is the same: don’t COVID your neighbour’s ass. Just don’t.

The updated 10th commandment is clear: Thou shalt not COVID. COVIDing is a sin. Deal with it.

Unintended Consequences

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.

Unintended Consequences

Scripture: Matthew 2:1-23

This is the first Sunday in Epiphany, when we usually hear the story of the Magi: the Wise Men. We celebrate the way that God extended the covenant to include all peoples of the earth as represented by these foreign priests of another religion.

Most years we quietly ignore the second part of the story: the flight into Egypt as the tyrant Herod murders all the Bethlehem babies under the age of two in an effort to hold on to his throne.

We don’t like that bloody and horrifying part of the story and we hope we never have to explain to our children why a king would kill babies. But Herod’s actions are a direct result of God’s action of reaching out to the Magi. This human brutality is a direct consequence of divine grace, and I wanted to talk about that.

When I chose these readings at the beginning of this week I expected to have to do some explaining about the lengths to which paranoid leaders will go to protect their power. And then, on Wednesday, we were all witness to the Trump-inspired violence in Washington. I feel like I have a lot less to explain, now.

This should give us a new appreciation for how people become refugees, the way Jesus and his family did, fleeing from a murderous government. I feel like I grew up in a fantasy world where things like that didn’t happen to us: it was far away in the past, or in third world countries, or maybe where communists ruled. Sure, Hitler did that kind of stuff but that didn’t count, because we stopped him. And besides, that was over before I was born.

I grew up with the understanding that we were decent people in a decent country, surrounded by other decent countries. This ancient story about a king murdering babies was so far outside our experience that it became a story of evil from long ago and far away. We would never do that; our leaders would never do anything that immoral, that entitled, that disconnected from a sense of right and wrong.

This has been a wake-up call for us. This kind of thing can happen anywhere. This dark side of human nature hasn’t gone away. We are not superior to other societies in the way we often assume we are. This kind of thing is a threat and we need call our leaders to a high standard if we want to avoid it.

I chose the title “unintended consequences” carefully. Obviously, Matthew is telling us that Herod’s murderous rampage was a direct consequence of the visit of the Magi. Matthew is also telling us that God used the flight into Egypt as a way to fulfill scripture so that Jesus would come from Nazareth despite being born in Bethlehem.

If we take Matthew’s intent seriously we have to ask whether God planned for all this to happen, which would make God ultimately responsible for the murder of the babies; or whether this was an unintended consequence, believing that God didn’t know Herod would do this.

It’s the old question of Predestination versus Free Will.

I don’t believe that our lives are all pre-programmed, which means that even God has the potential to be surprised by our choices.

So, hypothetically, we can ask: would a loving God change what happened, knowing that reaching out to the Magi would result in these murders?

Let’s skip the blue-sky happy-ending scenarios where the Magi avoid going to Jerusalem because God changes their star-reading to give them more accurate GPS coordinates, so they go straight to Bethlehem and Herod never hears of their visit.

Going to the palace was part of the point. That’s where anyone would expect a king to be born and Jesus was to be something new: a king born in humble circumstances. In this event God was openly defying expectations and bringing a much more inclusive, more welcoming approach to human leadership than anyone expected. How will the powerful know that something new is coming if you don’t tell them?

No, Herod had to find out, and so did his advisors and everyone else who supported his brutal rule. “Change is coming” is the message they needed to hear and when someone like Herod wants to stop change, anything can happen.

Herod the Great is known to have killed four of his sons because he believed they were plotting against him. When he died, he still had four sons left to divide Israel into four smaller kingdoms: Archelaus ruled in Judea and he was worse than his father: so bad that Emperor Augustus eventually deposed him and sent in a Roman Governor to take over. In Galilee, another son named Herod was in power and that’s where Jesus ended up.

So it’s no surprise that Herod the Great would do something nasty to defend his throne – he already had – and God still went ahead with this plan to reach out to the Magi.

So what should we learn from this? It would be easy to trot out some stock phrases about refusing to negotiate with terrorists, but that just plays into the idea of facing power with power: “we have to be stronger than those violent people”. That’s not the approach God is revealing here.

The issue remains: if we refrain from doing what is right because someone powerful and unethical might react violently then we are giving those people a great deal of power over us. We can even fall into the trap of self-censoring: failing to act because we fear the potential consequences.

The lesson here is that we should do what is right and if someone reacts in horrible ways to that, then we should deal with it.

Notice that God’s response was not to confront Herod’s power but to send a warning which triggered an escape plan: something last-minute, desperate; something we would call weak, rather than strong.

And Herod, when he couldn’t finding the specific child he was after, decided to kill all the children in town just to be safe.

We are never called to play by the same rules as powerful, violent, unethical people and we can’t restrict ourselves from doing what is right because of what they might do. That would be like believing the logic of an abuser: “I hit you because you made me angry”. An abuser, a Herod, any oppressive person like that will always blame someone else for their bad actions and if we start to accept that twisted logic, then we lose our own connection to the truth; we lose our ability to make change.

This passage gives us the message that we should do what is right, even if it may lead to nasty consequences at the hands of a terrible person. It also gives us an example of how to deal with the consequences: running away to safety is legitimate, even necessary. We don’t have to stand and fight by the abuser’s rules.

It also tells us that when we find someone in that situation, fleeing as a refugee, we should welcome them, and help them, just as Jesus and his family needed and received help. Because regular people, doing loving things quietly have always had the chance to overcome even the most brutal rulers.

The message of the Magi stands: God wants us to reach out to others who are different: to welcome them and overcome the barriers that used to divide us. That’s the familiar part. Let’s also remember the rest of the story: that we cannot let fear stop us from reaching out, including the fear that some nasty person will react badly.

God will give us the tools we need to deal with bad reactions; and if we help each other, we can outlast even the worst abuser.

Amen.

Heaven and Earth

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.

Heaven and Earth

Scriptures

Ecclesiastes 3:1-13

Revelation 21:1-6a

The readings we heard from the lectionary are for New Year’s Day because that is what is on everyone’s mind, especially this year.

So many commentators have been keen to bid good-riddance to 2020 and all its challenges, and to welcome 2021 with its hope of an end to the pandemic and the success of the new vaccines we’re starting to use.

The challenges we have faced have inspired people, including Queen Elizabeth in her Christmas address, to reflect on past challenges. In her case, the second world war and the hardships our society managed to survive then; for some others, the history of the Spanish Flu 100 years ago which has paralleled our own experience remarkably.

I became aware of the Spanish Flu in my final year of seminary. Lori had a charge north of Toronto and after attending a funeral she conducted in Beeton, I wandered around the cemetery there, looking at gravestones. I was startled that this small graveyard had a couple of long rows of people of all ages who had died in the same year. It turned out that it was because of the Spanish Flu epidemic.

I was stunned, partly because I had never imagined the flu to be so deadly, but mostly because it was obvious that this disease had devastated a small town. It must have been an awful time.

The message many people are adopting now reflects our Ecclesiastes reading with that reminder that there is a season for everything. The comfort it offers us that we will get through this because we’ve gone through it before and God has provided a cycle of life to go back to.

It’s a message of resilience. It’s a message that there is a pattern to life which is longer and greater than we can encompass in a single lifetime which, nevertheless, is real and which will carry us beyond our present crisis.

That’s a hopeful message and as we enter the new season of a new year it is good to hear it.

But Ecclesiastes is not the only reading we have and we can’t stop there.

Is it enough to hope that we can ride out this cycle? To hope and pray for a return to “normal” later this year? Is it enough to wait for this bad season to end and a better season to return?

Our second lesson is from the Book of Revelations, sometimes called the Apocalypse, and it feels rather apocalyptic. Some interpret this lesson as part of John’s vision of the end of the world, where the New Heaven joins with the New Earth and God lives with us in a new and righteous creation.

This is a very hopeful vision although it does come after a lot of pain and suffering: plagues and curses; the four horsemen of the Apocalypse have done their worst as have the angels with their trumpets and bowls that turn the sun red and the seas to blood; cast down the stars and afflict the world with terrible curses and evil leaders. Like I said: apocalyptic.

But the end result is good: divinely good. Finally there is no gap between God and us. We get to live in a righteous and wonderful creation where Heaven and Earth are no longer divided.

This book was written during a time of horrible crisis. The Christian Church was being subjected to genocide; there was an open and active policy of persecution that was bloody: state-sponsored terrorism raised to an art-form.

And this is the vision that resulted from that: a clear picture of the horrors people were facing and expected to face before things got better, ending with a wonderful image with God and God’s people united forever – not in some distant heaven but right here, on earth – joined forever to God’s holy space.

This is an image of a crisis that has spun out of control and God is able to take it and re-make it into something wonderful! What can we do with that image?

Even before COVID many young people of our world were feeling pretty apocalyptic about life. Climate change and future prospects scared them. Many have chosen to have no children because they can’t justify bringing children into a world with so many challenges. Economists are lamenting the declining birth-rate this year because it will negatively impact economic growth.

So what do we, the church, have to offer the young people? Is it enough to be praying for a return to “normal”? Is it enough to ask God to lead us back to what’s familiar?

This pandemic is a shock to our system and that’s exactly what we need. What we have been doing isn’t enough, either as a church or as a society. Normal isn’t good enough and it hasn’t been for a long time.

The Ecclesiastes promise that we can get through this challenge because we have before is only the first step. We can’t rest there.

God is calling us to look for a better way to do things, a new approach to living. God is calling us to rebuild better, but without the political baggage or even cynicism that so often comes with that phrase.

This disruption in our lives should cause us to look differently at life; to remind us of what we really value; to challenge the things we do so easily to amuse ourselves and remind us of the deep worth of meaningful human contact with our loved ones, above and beyond superficial things like New Year’s parties or other distractions of the past.

This time of challenge gives us the chance to consider:

  • what it means to help others;
  • what it means to have borders;
  • what it means to have our air become cleaner because we are travelling less;
  • what it means to be healthy, not only in body, but in mind and spirit;
  • what it means to be a community;
  • what it means to be a family;
  • what it means to love others;
  • what it means to connect to God and to other people on a spiritual level.

We have done well in Canada compared to so many places. Our COVID death rate is low and even so, we mourn the death of all those who have died.

The risk of our medical success is that we may think we can simply ride out the cycle; that a new season will allow us to go back to our old life and resume doing what we have always done.

God is calling us to do more than that. God is calling us to move into something better; to look at what we have faced and to imagine what can grow out of this challenge.

This is not the Apocalypse; it is not the end of the world but it’s not just another turn of the cycle, either. This is an opportunity for growth and change. This is a chance to re-make our society; to embrace God’s vision for us and our world.

Let’s rise to this challenge in 2021. Let’s be open to God’s inspiration and let’s embrace the opportunity that lies before us.

Amen

Fulfilling Requirements

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.

Fulfilling Requirements

Scriptures:

Galatians 4:4-7

Luke 2:22-40

A new baby means that life has changed: there are so many things to do!

“Fulfilling requirements” is something we still do today. When a baby is born we know we have to register a name – the hospital won’t let you forget that one – get medical checkups done, schedule first vaccinations, buy a car seat, decorate the nursery, have lots of blankets and baby clothes in increasing sizes, diapers of course, and the house needs baby-proofing before this child gets mobile. The list can make a family crazy.

The requirements when Jesus was born were different. Obviously, some things don’t change: diapers have been needed for centuries, but that’s not what Luke was talking about.

Most of us know that Jesus would need to be circumcised on his 8th day, but Mary herself had things to do. Luke mentioned the special dedication and offering needed for a first-born son. As well, Leviticus 12 declared that a woman who gave birth to a son was ritually unclean for 7 days which meant that on the 8th day, in addition to the circumcision, she would need to have a ritual immersion in a special pool to become eligible to take part in worship again. If she had a daughter, she was unclean for two weeks – no one has a good explanation for this difference but it did allow her to be available for the circumcision.

Anything involving a priest in Nazareth would have involved waiting for the travelling priests who came from the temple on regular rounds. But the family was in Bethlehem, so close to Jerusalem, so they could go to the temple to fulfill the requirements. That was a real bonus for the family.

In this case, their careful religious observances allowed them to meet Simeon and Anna. It’s hard to imagine what this must have felt like to the parents. Simeon and Anna were both very elderly, in their eighties in an age when most didn’t live long enough to get grey hair. Leviticus 19 commands people to “rise up before those with grey hair, and show respect to the elderly”, so they would feel obligated to give these strangers their voice and couldn’t just dismiss them as a crazy old codger and a loony old bat.

But it must have felt really uncomfortable. Simeon took the baby from Mary and Joseph and declared that he was content to die, now that he had seen Jesus; that this baby was a fulfillment of a personal prophesy and also a saviour for his own people and a light to all the nations. Simeon went on to make some scary predictions and said that a sword would pierce Mary’s own soul.

Who says something like that to a new mother? It’s scary enough if you suspect the man is crazy but when it sounds like he is speaking for God

it must be chilling. Mary must have been desperate to take Jesus back and have him safe in her arms again.

Then Anna showed up and started talking about the new baby to everyone who would listen. We don’t have her words recorded but we are told she focused on the redemption of Jerusalem. In those days, that would have more than religious overtones: there would be political implications too.

With king Herod on the throne and his willingness to kill babies to protect his power, this kind of public scene would be very ominous.

This is all what we might call portentous and since we know the whole story of Jesus’ life, we understand the portents, the predictions, of what he would do and what would be done to him.

Mary was being warned that Jesus would create amazing change and that she would watch her son die on the cross. It’s no wonder that Mary and Joseph wanted to get out of town right away. Luke tells us that they went back to Nazareth as soon as their religious duties were fulfilled.

Obviously Luke and Matthew have recorded different versions of what happened to Jesus at this point. Matthew portrays the family living in Bethlehem in the first place and fleeing to Egypt before finally ending up in Nazareth. Luke says they came from Nazareth first and had to come to Bethlehem for the registration and then went straight home as soon as they could.

There is no way to confirm the historical accuracy of either of these versions. We can’t find independent records of the registration for taxes or of Herod’s slaughter of the babies in Bethlehem but the people of that day knew very well that their rulers inflicted death and taxes on them every day, so none of this was out of character.

Instead, we can reflect on what the gospel writers are trying to tell us. They considered these stories of Jesus’ birth important enough to share them with their readers. We know that Matthew was a Jewish Christian: his inclusion of the Magi was a clear message that the Gentiles were to be an accepted part of Jesus’ ministry, a welcomed part.

Luke was a Gentile Christian, writing for people in the non-Jewish parts of the Roman empire and he showed us Mary and Joseph taking pains to fulfill the requirements of the law of Moses at Jesus’ birth. He also made a point of showing us these two elderly faithful people, whose Hebrew credentials are undeniable, making it clear that Jesus was destined to be God’s hand in the world, transforming both Israel and the other nations.

What strikes me about this, beyond the emotional effect it would have on new parents with their first child, is the determination of the gospel writers

to reinforce bridges between the Jewish and Gentile Christian communities which, at the time of writing, were coming under some strain.

Humans are, by nature, tribal creatures. We are most comfortable with familiar people, traditions, habits and we find it particularly easy to push others away when the world is disrupted and full of fear: 2020 has given us more examples of this than we can count.

But the gospel writers are clear that in Jesus we find someone to bring us together; in the birth of Jesus, as well as in his adult ministry and hopefully in the way we make real that ministry in our own lives. Luke and Matthew both call us to appreciate and welcome the contributions of other cultures and religious traditions, people whose roots are not ours, whose traditions may confuse us or even offend us. They call us to make a place for others; to respect them, and honour them even while the teachings of Jesus call us to transformation.

And there’s the challenging part: the transformation comes from God. It’s not our job to try to transform someone else, it’s our job to discover how God wants to transform us as we share the journey with those others, those people whose very differences may reveal something we need to discover.

As isolated as we may feel right now, we cannot escape the clear message in both Luke and Matthew as they share their versions of Jesus’ birth. They are both telling us that we are not on this journey alone; that we share God’s gift of Jesus with people from around the world; people who are unlike us in many ways; people who are loved by God just as much as we are; people who, despite our differences, have become our sisters and brothers in life.

Jesus came to transform this world, to bring it closer to God’s desire for a place of justice and peace.

Jesus came to transform us, not so that we and the other people of the world would all become identical – Jesus wasn’t a glorified cookie-cutter –

but so that we would all grow into different versions of people of love, of peace, of hope, of joy; able to share what we’ve learned and to learn from others as they walk with us.

As the world goes through some profound changes, the birth of Jesus gives us the clear message that we are not alone.

Thanks be to God.

Amen

Christmas Eve 2020

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.

Christmas Eve Meditation

It has been many years since our own children were born but there are some things you don’t forget: like how scary it all is, especially for a first child. You imagine how many things can go wrong and part of you is sure that the worst will happen, while you desperately hope for the best.

I was in the room when our eldest child was born and one of the nurses had to make me sit down and gave me a glass of orange juice to stop me from fainting.

So what was it like for Mary and Joseph, already stressed from the long journey? They can’t even get a hotel room; there are no fancy birthing suites in hospitals; they’d need to rely on a local midwife, someone they don’t know at all.

And then, just when you think it’s an irredeemable disaster, the baby’s born, you’ve counted all his fingers and toes and concluded that he’s the most beautiful child you’ve ever seen (of course he’s perfect, he’s your baby) and you are settling in to make the best of this . . . stable.

Just then, in come these smelly shepherds (they must be smelly, it’s the night shift, they’ve been out in the fields, basically camping) and they’ve got this wild story of angels proclaming and singing.

What would Mary say today? “What are you guys doing in here? Where are your masks? How can we keep a social distance in this blasted stable? What do you mean, angels sent you?”

That last bit might not have mattered so much since both Mary and Joseph had experienced angelic visitations some months before. They wouldn’t have considered the shepherds crazy, but they must have been intrusive.

Our dreamy Christmas imaginations rarely take into account how very human, how very challenging, this must have been. Mary and Joseph deserve medals for getting through all that stress.

It would have been hard. Normally, Mary should have been able to have her mother around when her baby was born to help her with all the stuff that needs doing, maybe even just to give her a chance to sleep, a break to recover from the birth.

And yet there she was, far from home, from her family at this most important time and while the shepherds undoubtedly meant well, would she really want them close to her baby? He could catch something from all these strangers!

The miracle here is that somehow it all worked, despite how scary it must have been, despite how alone Mary must have felt. Sure, Joseph’s a great guy but they haven’t even been married a year yet

and he’s no replacement for the women of her own family at a time like this!

Despite the dislocation and the isolation, Mary was able to take into her heart all that the shepherds told her. She was able to start making sense of the deeper meaning of what was going on. She was no doubt wondering what the future would hold and she was starting to get the clues suggesting that everything would be different from now on.

The year 2020 has brought us a COVID Christmas and many people can relate to Mary as we are kept separate from those we love at a time that our whole world tells us we should be together, that we need to be together.

Can we follow Mary’s example as we struggle with the stresses of this time?

Can we adapt to doing things in new and unfamiliar ways?

Can we learn? Can we look for clues to a deeper meaning? Can we, perhaps, start to develop a vision for the future that will grow out of this challenging time?

That’s the example Mary set for us as she welcomed her first child, Jesus, with the conviction that God could make things work even as the world went crazy around her.

We can have that conviction too. God can do better than making lemons out of lemonade. God can re-invent our whole way of doing things, even when we are in the middle of a crisis.

That’s what God did that first Christmas with the gift of Jesus, in the middle of a time of upheaval.

God can do that now, too if we permit it: if we, like Mary, open our eyes and hearts to discover the hand of God at work in new and unexpected ways. It won’t be smelly shepherds and singing angels again: that ‘s been done. It will be something new, something unexpected.

So let’s keep our eyes and hearts open this Christmas. Don’t let the challenges close us down. God is at work, preparing to do something new. Let’s be open, like Mary, so we can be part of it.

Amen.

Calling in the Wilderness

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. 

Calling in the Wilderness

Scriptures:

Isaiah 40:1-11

Mark 1:1-8

The gospel according to Mark is the oldest of the gospels. The first eight verses make no mention of Jesus’ birth; they mostly talk about John the Baptizer.

Clearly, Mark considered this all the background his readers needed: Jesus was presented to the world by this prophet

Mark is careful to give us John’s prophet credentials. There’s the quote of our Isaiah reading and there’s John’s clothing: camel hair and leather belt, which echoes 2 Kings 1:8, where the prophet Elijah is described as wearing hair clothing with a leather belt. The kind of hair isn’t mentioned for Elijah. Goat hair was common, used by common people. Camel hair was an upgrade: more expensive

Many considered Elijah the greatest prophet of the Hebrew scriptures; the only one to be taken bodily into heaven. So, when John is compared to Elijah it makes a strong statement about Jesus who, according to John, is greater still.

What do we know about John the Baptizer? Luke’s gospel says he was Jesus’ cousin; the son of a priest.

Many scholars suggest he was part of the Essene community – the people who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls. These were rebel priests and their followers who rejected the leadership in Jerusalem and their compromises with the Romans. Their aim was religious purity; they isolated themselves from society and lived in a hidden community, preparing themselves for the coming of the Son of Man and the overthrow of all God’s enemies.

What John the Baptizer was doing was not typical of the Essenes. He was reaching out to convince others of the need to change their ways; what we call “repent” which literally means to “turn around”, change direction.

Mark’s picture of John quotes that lesson from Isaiah which is quite a lovely image: God rescuing the scattered flock of Israel like a loving shepherd, promising that the people have had enough punishment – a wonderful, comforting image.

Comfort is not the first thing I think of when I hear John’s name. Mark doesn’t go into detail but Matthew and Luke are very clear that John the Baptizer had a sharp tongue, calling religious leaders a “brood of vipers” – not just snakes, but poisonous snakes!

That kind of criticism fits well with the Essene philosophy but it sounds so much harsher than that comforting Isaiah lesson. It makes sense: how can the people get a break when their leaders are corrupt and leading them astray?

But it also sets up a clear contrast with Jesus who, although clearly a prophet, would not do things in a predictable way and who would bring a very hopeful message, much more in keeping with our Isaiah passage.

As part of our study on the Jewishness of Jesus we delved into the symbolism of the wilderness; a place not owned by any human. It is a wild place, away from the distractions of city, or town, or even farm.  It is a place of nature, not shaped by human hands and therefore a place to meet God, a place to be tested.

Like the 40 years in the wilderness of the Hebrew people and the wilderness of Sinai where the law was given,  even the wilderness of Horeb, where Moses encountered the burning bush, John was calling people to come to meet God in the wilderness, to leave Jerusalem and the countryside of Judea       and to be washed clean.

Baptism is not a Christian invention. Washing as a religious act is firmly established in the laws of Moses and happens many times for many reasons. But the symbolism has always been clear: there is a ritual washing that is designed to restore our relationship to God. It is an action that represents what the person and God are doing together.

The person is acknowledging their imperfection and symbolically washing it away; God is restoring them to a full relationship, in other words: forgiveness.

John has taken this process out of the formal washing pools that each community had to establish as a priority in their earliest days. He brings it out into the wilderness, emphasizing that this is happening on God’s terms, in God’s place; not the formal place of the temple or the pool, but the original place of the wilderness; the place where God’s people were first introduced to God.

There is some powerful symbolism going on here and no doubt John understood this well. It was part of the job of a prophet   to do, as well as to speak. Actions could speak louder than words and John set this stage well, with the prophet’s clothing and the wilderness location, the call to purity and repentance and the familiar symbolism of the ritual of washing, stripped of its protected indoor location and put back into the wild, into the river, into God’s country.

And this is where Mark introduces us to Jesus. Jesus hears the voice of God at the Jordan during his baptism and then goes deeper into the wilderness for 40 days of testing before beginning his ministry.

What a contrast: this powerful, symbolically significant presentation of Jesus’ advent, contrasted with the whole Christmas narrative of the birth of a baby boy. Every year, on this Sunday, we are invited to consider this other version.

Jesus didn’t begin his ministry as some naive innocent  nor did he come into a simple situation. The world of Jesus was complex, full of people who wrestled with their relationship to God and to each other; who made good choices and bad; who suffered under rulers who really didn’t care but just saw them as sources of wealth instead of people to be shepherded with love; or others who weren’t naturally sinister but who got onto a slippery slope of compromising their principles until they didn’t know how to stop.

Jesus came to set things right; to restore a sense of God’s perspective

and as we are reminded this week: to establish peace. He came to fulfill that image in Isaiah of the caring shepherd bringing healing and peace to the flock and comfort to the people. That wasn’t any easier then    than it is now because the world, and its people, are still muddled up in complicated knots; distracted by competing values and not sure which way to turn.

The distractions are worse today. At least the Romans hadn’t invented social media; something to demand your attention every few seconds.

That call to meet God in the wilderness; to come to a place without distraction; to get your head on straight in nature, is one we could learn from today. A bit of isolation is just what the doctor ordered in this pandemic and a place of nature, or whatever might serve instead of wilderness, can still shield us from distractions and help connect us to God.

Jesus sought out that connection as he started his ministry, starting in the wilderness with John and then going even deeper.

As we approach Christmas, and all its distractions, perhaps we would do well to step aside first to find that space, to re-discover God in nature and get our priorities straight.  Amen.

Why Are We Watching?

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.

Why Are We Watching?

Scriptures:

First Lesson: 1 Corinthians 1:3-9

Second Lesson: Mark 13:24-37

Every year at Advent, the lectionary reminds us of a particular reality. When we talk about the advent of Christ into the world we are faced with two realities, two time periods:

In the first case, the easy one to celebrate, we remember the Baby Jesus, born at Christmas and all that he would mean to us and the world;

But we also have to address the second case; the things Jesus said about the coming of the Son of Man; all those many passages that challenge us to wonder about things like the Second Coming or what it means for God’s realm to beak into the world.

And this part makes us uncomfortable, at least in the more liberal churches, because we don’t want to buy into some of those lurid and judgmental visions we often associate with our more literalist brothers and sisters.

The fact is that Jesus did speak of dramatic things: the idea of God’s realm breaking into human history to replace the violence and corruption of the world Jesus was living in, in an occupied state under the thumb of a superpower where state-sponsored terrorism, like crucifixions, was used to keep the people under control. And where national and religious leaders were persuaded not to rock the boat.

In recent weeks we’ve talked about the Sermon on the Mount and all the teachings Jesus gave us about what values God really wants to see in our lives and in our world and how these values are in real conflict with basic assumptions humans have made for centuries.

The conflict in values is pretty big, so it shouldn’t surprise us that this would be expressed in apocalyptic terms, sometimes even in terms of physical conflict, where those in power resist the change because they like the status quo.

Some of the apocalyptic readings, though, are more complex, like today’s lesson from Mark.

We are told to be watchful; to look for the signs, to be alert and ready because we would have no warning when the Son of Man would arrive. Some important bits we have sorted out: The Son of Man is an image from Daniel and represents the perfect human sent by God to restore justice to Israel and to rule over a restored world.

It is hard to know exactly who Jesus meant when he used that phrase, but as Christians we have decided that Jesus himself is the Son of Man and that his return to establish a rule of justice and peace is what we are looking forward to.

To be fair, some interpret this as the end of the world; when the old corrupt creation is replaced by the new creation of Revelations. That violent image came many years later when Roman persecution was at a blood-drenched peak. Jesus himself was talking about the restoration of creation, not its destruction.

Jesus isn’t naïve; he gives warnings of strife and conflict, like in today’s reading. These are signs that the time is coming for God’s reign to begin.

There’s a promise that the generation alive and hearing Jesus would see the arrival of the Son of Man, although that is balanced with the statement that only God knew when it would actually happen.

Clearly, the generation that knew Jesus has long passed, so if that statement were true it would mean that God’s realm has broken into the world, but in a spiritual way, not a physical way.

That’s one interpretation that many Christians really like. It’s why we re-set the calendar to start at Jesus’ birth. Back in the days when we had BC and AD for dates, AD stood for Anno Domine: the Year of Our Lord, an explicitly Christian claim that Jesus has ruled for 2 thousand years and that our job, as Christians, is to extend the influence of Jesus wherever we can.

It doesn’t rule out the idea of a second coming but it makes room for it to be seen in a spiritual way. There is space for a physical break into creation by God, or there is the personal break we each have at death where the rest of creation goes on but we meet Jesus and God ourselves, not in some mass judgement day, but in a very personal situation of leaving this life and entering the next.

With either approach our waiting loses its edge, doesn’t it? So why are we waiting? What are we waiting for?

If you expect an end-of-the-world sort of arrival for the Son of Man – we’ve been waiting almost 2000 years for that to happen – it doesn’t feel very urgent anymore. There are people who try to predict that day

and make money with the books that predict the end times, but that manufactured urgency is proven false again and again. And it’s hard to keep alert.

If you think about it as a personal judgement day, the time when you leave this life, waiting for that is exhausting, and not good for your mental health in most cases.

Our whole society is death-averse. We don’t even want to talk about it, so we live as if we are immortal and when mortality looks us square in the face, as it has done during this pandemic, we get really stressed out. In some cases we deny it all, which helps nobody.

Perhaps there’s another possible interpretation, though. If we are part of Jesus’ ministry, bringing a changed perspective, working to create justice and create a world where the meek really do inherit the earth;

if that’s what we expect from the arrival of the Son of Man and if we do believe that Jesus is that guy, then what we should be on the watch for are those opportunities that can arise every day: to make a difference; to demonstrate and apply those principles that Jesus taught.

We can be on the watch for those places where God wants to break in, to break the circuit of injustice, prejudice, abuse, corruption; to break all the assumptions we don’t question and offer new ways of thinking that really do treat all people as beloved children of God.

Our calling, then, would be like the doorkeeper in Jesus’ lesson: to be ready to open the door of our situation, our culture, our world; to the change God wants to create through us.

That kind of watchfulness doesn’t have to be stressful. It does call for creativity and an open mind and heart so we can see the opportunities as they arise. That kind of watching and waiting isn’t about the end of the world, it is about the transformation of creation and it’s not a one-time event. It can happen every day.

We can be part of the arrival of God’s realm in this world. We can help this vision break into our reality, where the second coming is not an event but rather a process that we help to create.

If we watch and wait for those opportunities, and then make a point of living out Jesus’ teachings, we can become the change God wants to see in the world, and the process of Advent will continue in us.

Amen.

The Lamb Upon the Throne

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 Lamb Upon the Throne

Scriptures:

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24

Matthew 25:31-46

I blatantly stole my sermon title from the second line of the hymn: “Crown Him with Many Crowns.”

I have sung this hymn for decades and I’ve always liked its power and enthusiastic tone. It could probably be described as “triumphalist”. The music almost feels a bit military in nature, which is a bit of a problem, as that approach to Christianity is often tied to the way we sent out missionaries to build our empire: to “conquer the world for Christ“.

But it wasn’t until this year as I looked at the recommended scripture lessons for today, which is called the “Reign of Christ” Sunday, that I realized how challenging and even absurd the first lines of this hymn are.

The readings are all about shepherds gathering together their sheep. The idea of a shepherd as king is challenging to begin with. Shepherds aren’t warriors; they do fight to protect their sheep but they aren’t necessarily going to invade the next pasture over, kill the other shepherds and oppress their new sheep as they build their empire of sheep.

The shepherd image sets a tone for leadership, a tone for royal rulers that such people would be wise to remember and follow:

a shepherd wouldn’t exist without sheep;

a shepherd is dedicated to protecting a flock; and

while the flock benefits the shepherd, you know that the sheep are in the shepherd’s care, not under the shepherd’s thumb.

Ezekiel shows us God as the shepherd, who gathers a scattered flock together and brings them safely home. It’s a wonderful and reassuring message for a people in exile, and is based in real life experience.

Shepherds often let their flocks graze together and were skilful at separating their sheep because they had a relationship with the animals: the sheep really did recognize and respond to their voices.

Matthew shows us a different vision where the shepherd has divided up the flock between sheep and goats. This is less reassuring for some, although I have pointed out in the past that there is no real Biblical bias against goats.

The shepherd image is abandoned. The Son of Man is called a king. The king welcomes some people and rejects others and all of it is based on the question of justice: where one lives a life in which they help others, show mercy, care for the poor and oppressed. Those are the ones who are rescued and embraced, very much in keeping with Jesus’ teachings all the way back to the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes.

You can imagine a king sitting in judgement, as the Son of Man is shown doing, so that kindly shepherd image for the king could fit the Reign of Christ theme, although rejecting so many because they don’t belong is uncomfortable. The people are simply facing the consequences of their selfish lives: no one made them live that way. But the image of the shepherd king breaks down a bit here when faced with the need to deal with human self-centredness.

But look: our hymn goes past shepherds into a new image: “The Lamb upon his throne!” That image is absurd. Lambs are not known for their good judgement or their power or their ability to defend the flock from predators. Lambs are the most vulnerable part of the flock, not a standard image for someone who reigns!

Of course, the idea of Jesus as the lamb is portrayed in several books of the New Testament. He is said to be the sacrificial lamb; the Passover offering to ward off the angel of death. That image has been embraced over the centuries: a picture of a lamb holding a staff with a cross at the top and a banner or pennant with a cross was sometimes used by medieval knights on banners and tapestries. They not only wanted to prove their piety, but also wanted some protection against death, or at least reassurance that they would go to heaven when they died.

Once again, we encounter that absurd combination of the image of a vulnerable little lamb tied into a very military vision of Christianity. Why do we keep doing this? Have we not listened to ourselves over the centuries? Have we not looked seriously at our own symbolism?

The idea of rule in human history is often tied into violence and military might to such a large degree that we have imagined the Kingdom of God in the same terms. This is terrible, because it overturns the very foundations of the teachings of Jesus.

We don’t have to look all the way back to heresy trials, crusades, witch-burnings, or the many other atrocities committed in the name of Christianity. We just have to look to our more recent Canadian history: to the residential schools where the church cooperated with the government to impose religious and cultural values on indigenous children, using our power to force change on the most vulnerable.

One of the truly sad parts of that process was that so many of the people doing it felt justified and really thought it was a way to further the kingdom of God: “it’s for their own good”. Some people still think that way. The CBC broadcast – “White Coat/Black Art” recently broadcast a story of a First Nations medical doctor who leads workshops for doctors on cultural sensitivity – she got an anonymous note from another doctor: “Residential schools worked: you’re educated”. That happened just a couple of years ago.

Whenever we get an image like the “reign of Christ” into our heads and let the traditional ideas of “reign” influence our thinking, we become unmoored from our foundations. We lose sight of the real meaning of Jesus’ ministry, which was about sharing the truth, not imposing it.

I understand the attraction. If you’re someone who is at the bottom of the ladder and you see powerful people getting away with crimes and you can’t do anything about it, then the image of Christ stomping in and taking care of all those unrighteous people in a powerful judgement day must be very attractive.

But it’s not the way to live. It’s not the way to relate to others; not if you want to be a follower of Jesus. Jesus taught, and healed, and shared, and called out corrupt leaders. He had no army. He had no legislative capacity and yet he changed the world.

More change is needed: principals of help and caring, sharing and lifting up the weakest and poorest actually do have a place in our discussions in the world and can influence policy profoundly at times. The teachings of Jesus have gained a foothold in the secular world.

But the voices of those who want to promote fear and hatred, who justify selfishness and greed, are still strong. Whenever we let them persuade us we betray the principles at the core of Jesus’ ministry: where the first shall be last; and

the weak shall be strong; and

the meek shall inherit the earth.

Let’s keep our heads on straight and resist the temptation to force others into our ways. The teachings of Jesus have been described as a treasure; something we can share, and offer to others. How much more profound will be the change in the world when people believe these teachings because they choose to, not because they have to?

Amen.

The Runaway

This week’s sermon was actually a play for Children’s Sunday. It can be heard by accessing our podcast services. I would like to thank Shelley Rose for transcribing the script for the blog.

The Runaway

November 15, 2020 Children’s Sunday, Knox United Church

Cast (in order of appearance):

Narrator – Andrew Jensen

Prodigal Daughter: Claire Healy

Father/Mother: Barb Healy

Older Brother (and the voice of the Daughter’s conscience): William Healy

Narrator: Today we’d like to re-tell the story of the Prodigal Son from the Bible. Let me introduce our cast. In the role of the Prodigal Son, we have Claire Healy.

Claire: Why can’t I be the Prodigal Daughter?

Narrator: Um, sure. Why not? In the role of the Prodigal Daughter, we have Claire Healy.

Claire: Yay!

Narrator: In the role of the father, we have Barb Healy.

Barb: Hello.

Claire: If I can be the daughter, why can’t Mom be the mother?

William: If you were listening to the story earlier, you’d know that there is no mother.

Claire: Why not?

Narrator: Jesus didn’t put a mother in the story. He was talking about a single-parent family.

Barb: That’s hard. Even if you don’t believe in different “dad jobs” and “mom jobs” there’s still twice as much to do.

Narrator: Actually, it looks like Jesus had that in mind. At the end of the story . . .

William: Wait! Spoiler alert!

Narrator: No spoilers. I was just going to say that at the end of the story, the father talks to the prodigal more like a mother than a father from those days. People who heard the story then would have known that. The father was being a mother, too.

Barb: So I can be the mother, then?

Narrator: Sure.

William: What about me?

Narrator: I was just getting there. In the role of the jealous older brother, we have William Healy.

William: Okay.

Narrator: That’s it? You don’t want to change anything?

William: No. I can handle this. I’m a professional.

Narrator: Then on with our story.

Once upon a time, there was a father, um, I mean mother, with two children. Not brothers: one of each. What they used to call a millionaire’s family.

Barb: Am I a millionaire?

Narrator: Well, you’re pretty wealthy. And that’s where the trouble starts.

Sound of footsteps getting closer, then stopping.

Claire: Mom, I’ve decided to run away from home.

Barb: Why? What’s wrong?

Claire: You make me clean my room all the time, and I have to eat yucky things . . .

Barb: That’s healthy food!

Claire: . . . and I always have to do my homework. It’s not fair! So I’m running away.

Barb: What are you going to do for money? How will you eat? Where will you stay?

Claire: I’m going far away, where you’ll never find me. I’ll get takeout to eat. And you’re going to give me the money. I want my inheritance.

Barb: You don’t get that until I die!

Claire: I want it now! Gimme! Gimme!

Barb: Some of it is tied up in real-estate. I’ll have to sell part of the back yard: the bit with the tree-house.

William: Hey! I like that tree-house!

Claire: I don’t care. I want it now!

Sound of door slamming

Narrator: So the Prodigal Daughter got her inheritance, and moved far away to an unnamed city.

Sound of bus driving down the highway

Claire: Aah, Cornwall. No one will look for me here.

Narrator: The Prodigal Daughter was sad about leaving her friends, but since she had a party in her apartment every night, with three kinds of take-out pizza all the time, she soon had a lot of new friends.

Sound of dance music.

Claire: Party! Party!

Narrator: But one day, something terrible happened:

Sound of dance music stopping abruptly

Claire: My Netflix is cancelled! They’ve turning off my internet! What’s happening?

Narrator: Her money had run out.

Claire: That didn’t take long. What a rip-off.

Narrator: Those were all premium pizzas.

Claire: Speaking of pizza, I’m hungry. How am I going to eat?

Narrator: So the Prodigal Daughter had to get a job. Too bad she’d never finished school: she couldn’t get a job that paid well. She entered the short-term job “gig” economy, with no benefits and lousy pay.

Claire: Wait a minute, what about minimum wage?

Narrator: She got paid piecework: so much per pig fed.

Sound of pigs grunting and eating.

Claire: I’m feeding pigs?!

Narrator: It got worse. Soon she was so hungry, even the pig slops looked tasty, but the boss wouldn’t let her snack.

Claire: Eeww!!

Narrator: And as she got hungrier, she couldn’t work as fast, so she got less and less pay. Soon she was living on the street.

Sound of pigs stop, replaced by city traffic noises.

Claire: Wait! Now I’m homeless?

Narrator: Yes, and winter’s coming on.

Sounds of traffic fade, a cold wind whistles in the background.

Claire: This is awful! I’m starving, and I’m cold! I’m going to die! Maybe I should go home.

William: You can’t go home. You were mean to Mom and me.

Claire: Who are you? You sound like my brother, but he’s not here.

William: I’m your conscience. Feeling bad yet?

Claire: I’m feeling awful. But Mom would take me back, right?

William: You treated her like she was dead! You were selfish and mean. You took your inheritance and ran away, and never even texted. She’s worried sick!

Claire: I never thought of that. I feel awful.

William: You already said that.

Claire: This is different. I really was mean. How can I go back? But I have to, or I’ll die.

William: You’re not part of the family anymore. You’re like a stranger.

Claire: You’re right! But Mom hires strangers to take care of the garden, and clean and cook, and work on the farm.

William: You’re a terrible cook. And you hate cleaning.

Claire: It doesn’t matter. I’ll tell Mom that I’ll do any job she has. I really will! It’s got to be better than feeding pigs. I know it’s better than starving to death.

Sound of the wind stops.

Narrator: So the prodigal daughter went home. It was a long walk, and she had time to practice what she would say.

Sound of slow steps in snow in the background

Claire: Mom, I treated you badly, and I’m not worthy to be your daughter anymore. No, wait, I should start by saying “I’m sorry.” . . .

Sound of steps fade out

Narrator: But as she got to the edge of the property, her mother, who had never stopped watching, spotted her.

Barb: I see her! I can’t believe it! She’s back!

Sound of a door slamming and running feet moving away

Narrator: And abandoning all dignity, the mother threw aside the jacket of her power suit, and ran as fast as she could to meet her daughter.

Sound of running feet get closer, and skid to a stop

Claire: Mom, I’m sorry, I . . .

Mother: Baby! You’re back! I missed you so much! Mmwah! (sound of a big kiss)

Narrator: The mother hugged and kissed the Prodigal Daughter so hard she couldn’t get out another word of apology. And as they walked back to the house together, the mother insisted on planning a welcome back party.

Mother: I’ll put you in my best clothes: yours are all rags. And jewellery, of course. We’ll invite all your friends. And we’ll have your favourite food. We’ll kill the fatted pizza!

Claire: What does that even mean?

Mother: I kept your favourite pizza in the freezer. I’ll pop it in the oven.

Claire: Mom . . .

Mother: No, you’re right. It has to be take-out. Nothing but the best for my daughter.

Claire: Actually, Mom, I’m tired of pizza. But I’d love some of your macaroni and cheese. And maybe some asparagus?

Narrator: So they got dressed up, and the friends came over, and the party started.

Sound of dance music returns

Narrator: Then the older brother came home. He’d been working hard outside, and he was really angry when he found out about the party. He even refused to come into the house.

Sound of door closing, dance music becomes muffled

Barb: Why don’t you come inside, son? Join the party.

William: Are you kidding? After what she did? She treated you like you were dead! She wasted all that money! She behaved really badly, and now you’re treating her like a princess!

Barb: But son . . .

William: You’ve never once thrown a party for me and my friends. I don’t get it. I work hard for you, and I get nothing. She behaves badly, and you reward her!

Barb: Son, why are you so jealous? Everything I have is yours. But I have to celebrate. Your sister was dead, and now she’s alive again. She was lost, and now she’s found.

Narrator: And that’s the end of the story.

All music stops.

William: Wait a minute! What kind of ending is that? What happens next?

Narrator: Jesus didn’t say.

William: But the Prodigal Daughter was a total brat! She was selfish and mean. She doesn’t deserve a happy ending.

Claire: The brother was a selfish jerk, too. He couldn’t even be happy for his mother, when she was celebrating. Who does that?

Barb: Neither one of the children behaved very well, did they?

William and Claire (together, reluctantly): Not really.

Barb: So maybe the story isn’t about them.

William: Who’s left?

Claire: The mother?

Narrator: Yes. Remember, this is a parable, and the people in it represent others. The mother stands for God, and the children stand for all the people who fight each other, and are selfish, and mean, and jealous, and don’t behave very well. What do you think the message might be?

Barb: With all the bad behaviour in the world, we are all still brothers and sisters, even when we don’t want to be.

Claire: And God loves us, even when we do dumb things. Even when we don’t feel like we deserve it.

William: God wants us to love each other, and be happy for each other. God doesn’t want us to be jealous or mean.

Barb: You know the part I liked best? The mother never gave up looking out for her daughter, and hoping she’d come home. God never gives up on us.

Narrator: Now that sounds like a good place to stop.

All: The End