Knox United Church Nepean

What Happens to Animals When they Die?

Welcome to the Knox Talks blog. Here you can find recent and past sermons relating scripture to a wide variety of topics. I would like to thank Shelley Rose for transcribing my notes into text for the blog.

“Ask Andrew” is an annual opportunity for Knox folks to ask for their spiritual or religious questions to be addressed in a sermon.

Ask Andrew (2023)

1: What Happens to Animals when they Pass Away?

Scriptures: Genesis 1:24-31 Matthew 6:25-30

Today’s question is one that many pet owners have asked, especially when they have lost an animal that has felt like part of the family, maybe even a best friend.

One challenge is that it presupposes that we know what happens to people when we pass away. The problem being that the Bible gives us very few details. Between the ideas of going to heaven, or being resurrected to a New Earth, or life simply ending, as was a common belief in the centuries before Jesus, I could write multiple sermons on this topic. I won’t do that now. Let’s start with the basic idea that people are given some kind of eternal life and then the question really becomes: Do animals have that too?

The bible does not tell us about animals in the next life apart from some horses in the book of Revelation. We do have some wonderful prophetic images of lions lying down with lambs, which are hopeful, but those are identified with this life, not the next.

Traditional theology usually denies animals a place in the next life, or even souls that could make the transition. I would argue that this comes from a very human bias in the people who were doing their best to write down God’s message in scripture.

In our Genesis lesson the bias is laid out very clearly: of all the animals on earth, we believe we were created in God’s image. No matter whether you interpret that literally or metaphorically, it sets humanity apart from the rest of creation. It gives us dominion, as that passage says: The right to dominate other creatures.

This is not just a religious bias. The scientific world, which often keeps itself quite distant from religion, has a strong bias in favour of humans being superior to other creatures. This shared religious/secular bias has permitted people to treat animals and nature in general in quite terrible ways over time despite clear laws in the Hebrew scriptures insisting that animals be treated justly.

We know the practical results of that human-centred attitude: the climate crisis we are now experiencing is a direct result of that kind of arrogance, that hubris, that pride that goes before a fall.

Scripture makes it clear that God loves “all creatures great and small”. Our Matthew passage today shows God giving love and care to the birds of the air and the flowers of the field. Yes, Jesus says that we are of more value than the birds and he says it again when he talks about the sparrow falling, but the fundamental point is that God sees the little sparrow fall because God cares deeply about that small bird. The point Jesus is making is that God’s great love, which encompasses even the smallest of creatures, is something that we can rely on too.

Jesus’ words are based in the understanding that God loves every living thing.

So, what about the soul? Scripture does distinguish between the spirit and the soul. The spirit is the source of life: the breath, the wind, the vital force that enlivens the world.

The soul is something more complex: it is the seat of our identity; it is the part inside of us where we live; it is our personality, our motivations, our self. In Hebrew it is called “Nephesh”. In Greek it is called “Psyche”, which is where we get the word “psychology”.

The Hebrew scriptures describe God as having a soul and part of the reason we ask today’s question is that we are witness to the fact that so many of the animals we know have distinct personalities. They have a sense of self, even if it is different than ours and it saddens us to think of those souls being lost.

The CBC this week has featured a scientific look at natural sounds beyond human hearing: infrasound and ultrasound and what we are learning as we use special microphones and algorithms to try to decode animal communications.

They have learned that at the deepest levels of the ocean whales whisper to each other. Why? What are they whispering about? And that bats use their ultrasonic voices not only to hunt and create a map for flying, but they talk to each other and even sing to each other.

We have learned that bats have economic systems. Some of them have lengthy conversations, basically negotiations, before trading sex for food, for example. And it is clear that they develop complex relationships with family, close friends, and even hold long-term grudges against some members of their communities.

The more we learn about our fellow creatures, the fewer distinctions exist that allow us to claim that humans are superior. Other animals have language and music; they have clearly demonstrated intelligence, even if we can’t always understand what they’re thinking and even if our own human motivations require us to develop more empathy if we want to understand them.

So, if we aren’t so different, if we aren’t as special as we like to think we are, how can we claim that we are the only animals with a soul? And if other animals have souls, how can we claim that God will not give them some kind of new life in eternity?

This is not a new idea within Christianity. George MacDonald, a Scottish Congregationalist minister, was a pioneering fantasy writer. He was a mentor to Lewis Carroll, a friend to Mark Twain and was called a “master” by C.S Lewis. He embraced a Universalist theology and preached that all people would be saved through God’s love, and that all creatures would be saved too.

His strictly Calvinist congregation didn’t approve and cut his salary in half after that. Maybe it’s not surprising that he switched from pastoral ministry to literature, where his beliefs would find wider acceptance.

After all these years of considering this question I think it is time to say that there is simply too much human arrogance in the traditional theology that reserves the next life for humans alone.

We should consider this an ongoing mystery that contains plenty of room for the hope that God’s deep love for animals – which is so profound that Jesus used it to prove God’s love for us – that God’s deep love for animals will carry them beyond this life into the next.

Last Sunday, Easter, we celebrated the understanding that God has given us the gift of eternal life. I hope we can be humble enough to consider that God will share that same gift with the other creatures God loves so well.

Amen.

Going Ahead of Us

Going Ahead of Us

Scripture: Matthew 28:1-10

There are so many wonderful messages in the events of Easter after the sorrow and drama of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. Discovering the empty tomb is a miraculous ending, full of joy, where we would have expected tragedy.

There is the larger message of new life given to us in the promise of an eternal spiritual existence that will bring us beyond this physical form. This offers us personal joy, not only because of the hope we have for ourselves, but also our hope for the people we love who are no longer with us,

There is a message in the way Jesus’ resurrection is first revealed to the women who were his disciples. They showed courage and went to the tomb when the men were still in hiding. In a profoundly sexist society, the impact of this message cannot be overstated.

I’ve discussed those in the past. The message I would like to pursue is what we are told twice in this reading: “He is going ahead of you”.

Each gospel writer tells this story differently. Mark, the earliest gospel, ends with the empty tomb: no one meets the risen Christ but all are told to go to Galilee because he is going ahead of them. When Matthew re-tells the story, the women get the message from the angels just like they do in Mark’s telling, but then they meet Jesus as they flee. He greets them and tells them the same message again: “I am going ahead of you to Galilee”.

What is so important that this, of all things, is said twice?

Good Friday and Easter happened in Jerusalem, the holy city. Great and dramatic events of faith often happened in Jerusalem and Jesus had led his followers there in order to make the most dramatic prophet statement ever.

Galilee was their home. It was Jesus’ own home, where he had most of his ministry, where he gathered together his disciples. Jesus is saying that he will meet them at home and that he is going ahead of them.

They would be going back as changed people. That old saying about “you can’t go home again” says more about the ways we change than it does about the way home changes. They hadn’t been away that long but the experiences they had just gone through were transformational.

And simply going back would be life-changing, too. The men, at least, hadn’t seen Jesus. Coming out of hiding and going to Galilee would be a journey of faith. They would have to risk arrest and death to travel home. An empty tomb was startling and impressive; the testimony of the women was unprecedented; but would it be enough that you would risk your life?

They did go, and Jesus transformed them even more. They went on from there to change the world.

Home couldn’t be the same. They were seeing it through the eyes of people who had seen miracles. They were accustomed to thinking that miracles were possible. Healings in their world were always acts of spiritual power, like casting out demons, and lots of people claimed to do this very thing with followers who claimed to be healed by them.

Even the resurrection itself could fit into their existing worldview although it was a spectacular miracle no one expected. They believed that a human’s spirit stayed near the body for three days before returning to God and Jesus coming back to life fit within that time frame. That’s the significance of the raising of Lazarus: he had been dead for four days which attested to Jesus being able to do things way outside of human expectations.

What the disciples had experienced was the overturning of the world order. Jesus had defeated the mightiest empire of the world by being something they could all be: weak, poor, disregarded. The Roman empire had squashed Jesus and his movement like a bug the way they had squashed previous groups and messages and now Jesus was alive again.

The disciples didn’t have to be afraid anymore. Jesus had demonstrated that there was life after this life and that even when powerful people did their worst, God would bring them through it.

I’ve always been impressed with the way that these ordinary people, people who fished, and collected taxes, and had regular jobs, people who had spent the days after Jesus’ death hiding in terror suddenly were transformed into fearless speakers who travelled around into unfamiliar lands and places they knew to be dangerous, to share their excitement and their message of hope.

Most of them died in the process which is a remarkable comment on their level of courage and helps us appreciate that Biblical saying: “Perfect love casts out fear.”

Today the church is afraid of many things: there are obvious challenges like COVID; more subtle things like the way society considers religion irrelevant or even childish; and worse, the way that some self-proclaimed Christians seem determined to spread hate instead of love.

We could deal with these challenges better if we could really embrace the message of Easter. We have nothing to fear! God’s love has overcome everything, even death. It’s not as if the scary things go away, but they are no longer the final word. We are given the opportunity to live our lives based on love, not on fear.

Jesus told his followers to go home and start living their new lives. In fact, he told them he would be there ahead of them, to meet them when they arrived. What the disciples were doing was a new beginning, an unfamiliar way of being but they knew they could, because Jesus had gone first, showing them the way.

That reassuring Easter message is one that we can take to heart. Jesus was reminding us that there is nowhere we can go that God is not already there. That includes the future, however uncertain or unfamiliar that may feel. Living a life free from fear, a life based on love starts at home, where we can see what is familiar with new eyes and imagine what transformations God can inspire.

And then after that? Who knows? As individuals, our lives have changed a lot in recent years and more change is likely to come. As a congregation, we are actively trying to imagine the future and wondering what unexpected things we will encounter.

Either way, our calling is to go forward in love, not letting fear put obstacles in our path but embracing love as our guiding principle.

The message of Easter, of new life overcoming even the most shameful death, is not just about dying, and the fear that brings. It is about living; it is about living our lives without a shadow hanging over us; living lives where even powerful assumptions like the might of ancient Rome don’t constrain us because we know that God can do something unexpected and overturn even the most well-established order.

In the resurrection we are given the freedom to live lives of love, free from fear. Let us believe that message, and embrace that freedom.

Amen.

Room for Subtlety

Room for Subtlety

Scripture: Matthew 21:1-11

A lot of people want religion to be unadorned, to be plain-spoken and crystal clear about beliefs and doctrines. Many consider stark simplicity to be an important element of the truth. They want crystal clarity.

I can understand this desire. Clarity is part of the Scandinavian culture that produced me and very much part of the religious household I grew up in. When examples of subtlety appeared, my mother might admire them. Clever phrases with multiple meanings or even double-entendres would catch her imagination, although it might also be criticized as being naughty if that’s what she thought was going on.

Insisting on clarity is a privilege, really; something of a luxury. For some, it might even be laziness. We don’t want to have to work to interpret a lesson. We don’t want to have to think too hard. But when I say privilege, that’s not what I mean: only people who are accustomed to being in the majority can dismiss subtlety easily.

For people who are being oppressed, who have to live within a very dominant culture but are trying to keep their own identity, it is necessary to have more subtle ways of communicating. That’s where inside jokes come from: a small group trying to distinguish themselves from the majority, often in ways that fly under the radar as the majority carries on in blissful ignorance.

That was part of what was going on during the Triumphal Entry that Jesus made on Palm Sunday.

Of course, Prophets in Israel already had a tradition of using symbolism that required interpretation, not because they wanted to be obscure, but because they wanted the message to sink in.

You will remember a message better if you have to work to comprehend it. Sometimes they used other methods of being memorable, such as graphic imagery that sears itself on the imagination – remember the lesson of the Dry Bones? Or they might use high drama. Many prophets acted out their messages: Jeremiah bought a field; Hosea married Gomer, the prostitute. Sometimes humour was useful to get past people’s initial defences. The prophet Balaam being outsmarted by his own donkey was very funny and yet still managed to convey a deep message.

On other occasions, the prophets could be pretty blunt, especially when they were addressing some of the more stubborn rulers. Jesus was operating in the tradition of the prophets, so when he chose how to make a statement when he entered Jerusalem, he had a lot of options.

Jesus opted for a subtle, multi-layered message which has made this a challenging lesson for centuries. Jesus knew he had to hide at least part of his message from the occupying Roman forces who had been in control of Judea and Jerusalem for around 25 years. If he made too open a claim of authority, he would be arrested at the very gates of the city.

But Jesus also wanted to make a prophetic statement that people would hear, about God’s way being greater than any human empire. So, he rode in on a donkey.

It was a kind of code that the Romans would never get, but a Jewish person who read the prophet Zechariah might remember the passage about the king riding in on a donkey. The original Zechariah prophesy Jesus was referencing set the tone of his message well: it was an image of kingship that was tied closely to modesty, not a king on a warhorse but a king on a humble beast of burden.

Every aspect of Jesus’ ministry challenged standard human assumptions about power, worth, who was really “blessed”. Jesus talked about the first being last, so the image of a king on a donkey was perfect. It fit with his whole ministry.

It is hard to know how exactly the crowd was reacting. The branches and cloaks we hear about might have been welcoming Zechariah’s promised king, or they might have been mocking the Romans in power by celebrating this prophet on a donkey and playing along with Jesus’ challenge to worldly authority while the Roman soldiers looked down from the walls of the holy city, unable to intervene without starting a riot.

There are so many layers here that it has confused us over time. I can remember as a child in Sunday School that the excitement of this day was presented like people were really recognizing Jesus as king. It felt like it was really triumphant, worthy of royalty instead of a prophetic statement challenging the very core of the values that make Pomp and Circumstance possible.

It took the church years to transform this event from a day of triumph to a day of irony and challenge. In order to figure that out, we had to back away from the idea of Christendom: the idea of Triumphant Christianity where Jesus rules as king in a very traditional human way;

to re-discover the message Jesus brought from the beginning that denies all those assumptions of human power and glory and replaces them with equality, justice, grace and love.

Jesus’ prophetic message had to be subtle enough that the Romans wouldn’t arrest him right away. He had some things to do in Jerusalem

before he could afford being put on trial – more prophetic actions like clearing out the temple, which he did the day after Palm Sunday. There was no subtlety in that message. Jesus chose to be totally blunt in that holy place.

But on Palm Sunday there was room for subtlety, enough that his own disciples were not sure what he was doing. That wasn’t really new, they often didn’t understand his parables and had to ask for help in understanding them.

But this is all a good reminder that not all of our faith is plain and obvious. Many messages require interpretation. We need to look deeply, beyond the surface, if we want to get the full picture of what God wants.

Churches that offer simple answers are doing both God and their members a disservice. When we have to work to understand a message, when we have to dig deep and work through a mystery, we will have learned something that will stick with us, something that goes beyond lists of rules and commandments, that goes beyond black and white simplicities.

Jesus still invites us to dig into the deeper message of Palm Sunday: the challenge to human assumptions about power; the claim that God has something better in mind; that real authority begins with something as basic as a donkey; and that understanding should roll out to influence everything we do, and every relationship we have.

We do have one advantage over the people who saw Jesus ride in on that first Palm Sunday. We know about Good Friday. We have seen Jesus challenge the power of the mightiest empire of the world by dying on the cross.

That challenge looked like a defeat until we saw the message of Easter: that out of the humiliation of death on a cross comes new life that has no end; a spiritual life that casts a new, transformative light onto every part of this material world. It is only in that light that the subtlety of Palm Sunday reveals its message.

Amen.

Look Inside

Look Inside

Scriptures: 1 Samuel 16:1-13 Ephesians 5:8-14

I have mentioned before how often scriptures show God blessing someone unexpectedly. It is often the second son over the privileged first son: Isaac over Ishmael; Jacob over Esau; or someone farther down the list like Joseph, eleventh of 12 brothers, chosen over all the rest.

Today it is David, eighth son of Jesse:

David the shepherd boy;

David the gifted musician, who is credited with writing many of the Psalms;

David who would kill Goliath with his sling;

David the dear and faithful friend of Jonathan;

David who would replace Saul as king of Israel and displace Jonathan’s hopes of the throne;

David who would conquer Jerusalem, making it an Israelite city for the first time;

David who wanted to build the temple but was not permitted because he had too much blood on his hands;

David who would dance wildly before the Lord and disgrace himself before his wife (Saul’s daughter);

David who would abuse his power to have sex with Bathsheba and then would arrange the murder of Uriah, her husband, to cover it up (unsuccessfully) and marry her, becoming a poster boy for the “Me Too” movement;

David, whose eldest son Absalom would try to seize his crown (Absalom died in the rebellion and David went into anguished mourning);

David, who was called a man after God’s own heart.

David lived a passionate life and that included a passion for God. His passions could also distract him into selfish and hurtful behaviours. He wasn’t someone who did things by half measures and he needed people like the prophet Nathan to call him to account when he overstepped.

Nobody knew that all of this drama would be ahead. When Samuel went down to Bethlehem to anoint a new king, the people couldn’t see the future, but they did know that God had rejected Saul and that they needed a new king.

Samuel had the same kinds of assumptions in his mind as everyone else when he looked for a new king. When he looked at Eliab, David’s eldest brother, he saw someone tall and good looking, muscular and fit: a suitable look for a soldier. And since Kings were primarily responsible for defending the land, Eliab looked like someone who might command the respect of the men who would be fighting.

He looked like someone who might have charisma: that leadership quality that can persuade people to follow and to work together successfully. They weren’t stamping out coins yet in those days but having a monarch who looks good on the money can help a nation’s self-image.

Samuel was clearly surprised when his assumptions were wrong and even more surprised when six other brothers were also rejected and they had to send for David, the child minding the sheep.

He wasn’t fully grown yet. Clearly, God was more patient than the people since David couldn’t replace Saul right away. He’d have to grow up before he could lead. They could see he was healthy and good looking but he was not yet fully formed, had not reached his full stature yet. He was like any child: full of potential, but also full of unknowns.

The core message of this passage can be found in God’s words to Samuel: For the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.

Humans seem to have built-in prejudices when it comes to looking at both people and situations. We know what we find attractive and it may be caused by what we’ve grown up with: what is most familiar and comforting.

It may be caused by certain biological imperatives if you can believe certain branches of science: balanced and regular features suggesting good health and the prospect of healthy offspring.

There are all kinds of theories about what helps us develop our assumptions and prejudices but wherever they come from, they are mental and emotional short-cuts that save us from having to think too deeply in our day-to-day dealings.

The challenge of this reading is to resist those short cuts. If God looks past the surface, if God looks inside to see the truth, then it is our calling to learn to do the same. The writer of Ephesians refers to this as being children of light: walking in the light and overcoming what is hidden.

We’ve heard this lesson before as we’ve tried to apply it to our dealings with other people. We are called to look past the surface, to get past racial, cultural, linguistic and other differences, to see the real value of the person standing in front of us.

That is a good lesson but it’s not the direction I wish to take today. Rather, we should consider what the anointing of David says to us in our current situation as we consider the future.

That’s exactly what was at stake for Israel in the anointing of a new King – their very future.

Samuel went to Bethlehem with the expectation of a quick fix to find a young, strong, charismatic new king who could step in and replace Saul right away.

What God showed him was a new leader who would take some time, who defied expectations by being too young and smelling of sheep. Later, when David went to fight Goliath he was still too small to wear the armour. As an adult he proved himself as a general but he used unconventional means, not only against the giant but by becoming a guerrilla leader long before that word was ever invented. David could think creatively and move in circles when everyone expected straight lines.

Yesterday, Knox went through a visioning exercise to determine where we are now. The next step will be to discover where we want to go. As we look to the future it will be important for us to recognize our assumptions and prejudices, to look beyond the surface, to look past the quick fixes that might seem to offer solutions.

We will need to look inside: to discover the truth of what we can become; to find the unexpected inspirations that change the way we do things. This will take some effort – we are usually quite blind to our own assumptions. Samuel had to be prodded by God to overcome his, and we will take some prodding too.

We can discover our blind spots by listening to the voices of people who don’t usually speak up, or the people who present uncomfortable ideas. And instead of simply rejecting what we hear, we can stop and ask ourselves: “Why does this bother me?”; “ What assumptions am I bringing that I should examine?”.

It doesn’t mean we have to accept every wild idea that comes up but it does mean we have to look inside and see ourselves as clearly as possible, including all those invisible bits that need fixing.

We have gone through lots of visioning exercises before and while we have gained some benefits, we have not really been transformed.

I believe that we can be transformed and become the community God wants us to be, but only if we learn to look inside, discover what is truly within and take the time to realize the potential that God sees within us.

Amen.

Can these Bones Live Again?

elcome to the Knox Talks blog. Here you can find recent and past sermons relating scripture to a wide variety of topics. I would like to thank Shelley Rose for transcribing my notes into text for the blog.

Can these Bones Live Again?

Scriptures: Ezekiel 37: 1-14 Romans 8:6-11

Today’s lesson resonates with most people as a fun song for kids: “Dem Bones”, kind of like an anatomy lesson. I remember it being presented that way to me when I was small and when Kiersten and Ian were little it was Sharon, Lois and Bram who taught it to them.

It’s like “Humpty Dumpty” all over again. That children’s rhyme was originally about a violent battle, possibly involving King Richard III, or possibly someone else; scholars disagree.

In this case we have relegated a powerful Biblical story with frankly disturbing imagery into something light-hearted for kids. In the process, we have pushed aside the experiences of the African-American culture who created this song and the message of the scripture itself.

One thing we should remember as we consider today’s lessons is that in every Biblical language – Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek – the words for breath, wind and spirit are identical: they are the same word. Our challenge comes through English which insists on borrowing words from every language under the sun and then assigning specific interpretations to each word. It is great for being precise but it does mess up our understanding of other languages, where nuances and subtleties require us to consider which meaning a word might have, in context.

To consider the breath of God, blowing like the wind, becoming the spirit that gives us life, is not that hard to imagine. But it’s not the way we think. It does help us understand the traditional Jewish understanding that life begins at birth instead of conception because when does the first breath happen? At birth! The theology is, of course, more complex than that, but it helps us understand.

That’s the kind of understanding that informed Ezekiel and even Paul in our second lesson. That gives us that wonderful image of the very breath of God being inside of us, giving us life and inspiration. Even the word “inspiration” supports this. It means: the spirit or breath entering us. There’s your linguistic lesson for today.

Consider, now, the situation of God’s people when Ezekiel was at work:

Ezekiel was around when the Babylonians conquered Judah and entered Jerusalem, destroying the temple, the palaces and taking the people into exile for 70 years (although they had no idea it would be for that long; they thought it was forever as had already happened to the northern kingdom of Israel).

Ezekiel was around at the same time as Jeremiah and there are some who suggest that Jeremiah was father of Ezekiel. So, when Ezekiel had this vision of a valley of dry bones and he was sent to prophesy to the people of Israel, they were really depressed. They were likely already in exile by this point; they had lost their identity as a nation; they had lost their ability to go to the temple to worship; they had lost everything, which in those days was understood to mean that your god had been defeated along with your nation. How depressing can you get?

Remember the Raiders of the Lost Ark? The ark of the covenant was taken from the temple to Babylon and placed at the feet of Marduk, the chief god of Babylon as a sign of the triumph of the Babylonian god over the God of Judah. This was a traditional practise in that whole region. Even the Romans did that kind of thing over 5 centuries later during Jesus’ life.

So the people were discouraged. They were distraught; they were really “bummed out”. They felt like they were beyond redemption – how could anything save them?

And Ezekiel is prompted to give them this vision of a valley of dried bones, so dead that there’s not even any moisture left, so abandoned and alone that there’s no one left to bury them, no one to even remember them.

Ezekiel is not stupid. When God asks if these bones can live again, he knows that the obvious answer, “no”, will probably trip him up. So, he replies: “you know”, like saying “you tell me”.

And God shows him in disturbing detail how the flesh is regenerated on the bones and the bodies are re-formed. I’ve seen enough CSI type shows to imagine how gross this would be as a vision; you’d never forget it. That’s why it was so vivid for Ezekiel and his people. They all knew death; they had all seen decaying animals; they knew what this would look like, even in reverse.

And even with this unforgettable physical revival, it’s not enough. All these bodies in the valley need more: they need the breath, the wind, the spirit of God, to return to life.

This reminded the people in exile that physical reality isn’t everything, that even without a temple, a palace, a place to call home, God could still be with them. God could still inspire them and there are some scholars who suggest that the idea of the synagogue, the congregation, began there in exile as a way of being the people of God in a new way, cut off from home, still faithful, still connected, still God’s people.

As we emerge from the isolation of the pandemic and still take great care to keep each other healthy, we find ourselves wondering about our future. We are conscious of our new financial realities and the fact that we cannot simply go back to being the church the way we used to be. I believe that as we consider our options, we can take a great deal of comfort from this passage.

The people who first heard about the dry bones had no way of knowing that after 70 years they would be able to return home, but they were. History has shown us that this message was fulfilled. God restored the people to life and health, not only as a nation but as a people able to deal with existential challenges. This time in history has served the Jewish people very well. They have since survived multiple exiles and many terrible persecutions.

Our present challenges pale in comparison to some of the historical challenges people have overcome, including people alive today who remember the Great Depression and World War II. It is hard for us to remember that as we feel anxious about our own future, but let’s take comfort in the knowledge that over and over, God has helped people through some incredible problems, to overcome remarkable obstacles and has inspired us to learn new things from the challenges we have faced.

In this situation, we are so much better off than our ancestors. COVID has required us to learn to use tools of communication that were just science fiction when I was a child. We’ve had people discover Knox through the podcasts and in the Knox Talks blog and become involved as a result.

I am not suggesting that technology will save us – although we should always remain open to unexpected possibilities!

I am saying that this is evidence from our own experience that God is already active, breathing life into our dry bones so we can live, and thrive.

When we gather to develop a vision for the future we will be actively seeking God’s breath, God’s Spirit, to inspire us, and bring us new life.

I hope as many of us as possible can participate in this to discover the new life that God will offer us.

Amen.

Who Can You Trust?

Who Can You Trust?

Scripture: Genesis 12:1-4

Romans 4:1-5, 13-17

Faith has become a very meaning-filled word. Nowadays, it can refer to a whole religion – “People of the insert name here faith” – which is interesting because it causes us to approach religion in a particular way that focuses on what a person or group believes.

This arises out of the Protestant Reformation that took passages like today’s reading from Romans and made this understanding of faith the very definition of our identity.

Five hundred years ago it was a fight between Martin Luther’s “salvation by faith alone” and the existing Roman Catholic understanding that Christianity needed to involve many rituals and practices, which the Protestants rejected.

The churches of the Reformation developed creeds: statements of what they understood were the things a person needed to believe, in order to be right with God.

That’s an oversimplification, but for many people it became the way religion works and that understanding of the word “faith” colours how we read scripture even today.

Paul defined righteousness in terms of Abraham’s faith in God. He was creating a contrast with the idea of following strict rules: adherence to the law, something that mattered a lot in the ongoing debate between the new Christian take on Judaism and more traditional forms, namely the priesthood and Sadducees who emphasized sacrifice and rituals and the Pharisees who emphasized the law.

Paul was making a point about the nature of righteousness and the way Abraham was counted as righteous, not because of what he did, but because of his faith in God.

That’s harder to get our minds around these days. Righteousness is not something we talk a lot about and when we do it is very much in religious terms, sort of like faith.

Let’s re-position this so we’re not carrying the weight of all those centuries of meaning.

When Paul was talking about righteousness he wasn’t talking about Abraham’s score sheet, although he is suggesting that others may think that way. He was referring to a relationship to God: Abraham being connected to the Creator: “in tune with God,” if you will.

And when Paul talked about faith, he wasn’t talking about believing the right creed. That would have appalled him. It’s just another version of trying to follow the law except that we’ve replace a set of rules about behaviour with a set of rules about belief.

So when Paul says “faith” here, we should think: “trust”. Abraham trusted God and that made all the difference.

When we read our Genesis lesson, we can see just how much that trust mattered. Abraham, at age 75, trusted God enough to pack up his household and leave the land he’d settled with his father to go off on a crazy quest for a promised land where he and his elderly wife would proceed to have countless offspring and become a great nation.

It’s insane! Nobody wants to start from scratch in their 70s! That’s the age when you want the comforts of a real bed rather than a sleeping bag rolled out during a camping trip that would take years. And what about all that child-raising stuff? Midnight feedings and colicky babies? That exhausting stuff belongs to the younger generation!

The whole point of being a grandparent is that you can spoil the kids and then give them back to their parents and go home to peace and quiet.

But God made Abraham an unbelievable promise and Abraham trusted God enough to set out on this incredible new life at the age of 75.

It changes things, doesn’t it, when we stop saying “faith” and start saying “trust”? We are a community of faith, by definition, but are we a community of trust?

In some ways we are in the position of Abraham. We are a congregation of “a certain age” and we are being challenged with an unexpected future, a future where we may have to leave behind comfortable and familiar things and discover new ideas, new people and new ways of doing things.

God is promising us a future full of potential and mystery. We simply don’t know what to expect. We can’t say for sure what will happen.

Can we be like Abraham? Can we trust God enough to let this future unfold to follow God into unexplored paths?

That is what “faith” is supposed to mean: not believing the right things;

but trusting God enough to be scared and still go forward; to be willing to be changed as we adapt to the future that is ahead.

Change is part of this. In our Genesis lesson we heard about Abram and his wife Sarai. As they went forward God re-named them Abraham and Sarah. Their very identities were transformed, they were transformed by the journey of their lives.

That’s the call facing us now: God is calling us into the future, to be changed, to be transformed, to grow beyond what is comfortable and familiar and discover the new experiences that will re-shape us.

It may feel like starting from scratch sometimes. It may feel like nothing we’ve experienced before and it may be very scary or even very exciting.

But it can only happen if we trust God, because that is what being people of faith really means.

Amen.

The Quick and Easy Way

The Quick and Easy Way

Scripture: Matthew 4:1-11

The three temptations of Christ in the wilderness can serve a lot of purposes for preachers.

They can serve as a personal example of how to resist temptation which has the added benefit of requiring you to learn your scriptures really well so you can quote helpful verses when you feel tempted.

They can serve as a basis for political commentary: talking about the foundations of power in the world and the inherent evils of empires and totalitarianism as well as the risks of populism; playing to the camera to get everyone’s attention with a flashy stunt like jumping off the temple as well as the risks of self-indulgence; abusing your power to satisfy personal hungers. I wonder how many preachers used this passage to talk about Donald Trump?

Today I’d like to comment on another aspect of this series of tests. After all, that’s what temptation is: a test. In the Lord’s Prayer we say “lead us not into temptation” which is better translated as “lead us not into the time of testing”.

Jesus was about to begin a ministry based on overturning the assumptions of power that held the Roman Empire together and were taken for granted by a lot of the world. So, his temptations all tested his commitment to his new vision.

The vision of the world Jesus teaches takes time to share. People have to experience Jesus’ truths in ways that really sink in. It all has to become internal, real and accepted and that’s the very opposite of superficial. It means you can’t skim the chapter and pass the test.

There is no Quick and Easy Way to do this. Turning stones into bread is absurd when you consider the whole process of growing wheat, grinding flour, and baking bread.

Our whole society today is all about convenience. You can order food so easily and quickly that it’s not really all that different than magic. We are part of a society that celebrates short cuts: we really like to find the Quick and Easy Way to do everything. But Jesus refused.

He refused the cheap thrills of jumping off the temple to be saved by angels. Everyone would have been impressed; his video would have gone viral and he would have had countless followers who liked the miracle he had performed but who had no idea of the message he was bringing.

He also refused the offer on the mountaintop: the empires of the world with all their armies. This is the temptation Christianity has failed at over and over. We bought into the power of the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Holy Roman Empire and all the subsequent world empires of Europe to the point that Protestant and Catholic missionaries competed to make indigenous peoples fit the cultures of England, France and Spain.

Giving into that temptation made us partners in Colonialism and we are still learning the full extent of the damage that this has produced.

Jesus resisted that one too – not only because of the offensive idea of worshipping Satan but because he knew it was a Quick and Easy Way that would fail. Because all the Quick and Easy Ways have one thing in common: none of them take the time needed to make the human connections that matter.

As our congregation gathers to make plans, let’s keep that in mind. We will be looking to the future and a lot of ideas will come up, not just today but over the year ahead. As we consider our options we should keep in mind the kind of choices that Jesus made, all of which avoided quick and easy solutions and instead dealt with real people taking the time needed for his profound message to sink in.

We look for quick and easy solutions when we are afraid we don’t have the time to do things properly. Depending on which gospel you read, Jesus took either three years or one year to change the world. Either way, we have more time than that. We don’t need to panic. We don’t need to rush.

Let’s follow the example of Jesus, resist our own temptations and take the time to do this right.

Amen.

Who Comes First?

Who Comes First?

Scriptures: 1 Corinthians 3:1-9 Matthew 5:21-26

People can get tied into knots worrying about approaching God. That anxiety often gets transformed into rules: “You have to wear your best clothes to church” is one I remember from my childhood.

There is a long history of stricter rules, like: “You can’t take communion without confessing your sins first”. That one has a formal structure around it in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions but is harder to nail down in the Reformed tradition where we did away with formal confession 500 years ago.

In my first pastoral charge, communion was held four times per year and one congregation still followed the old Presbyterian tradition of the Preparatory Service. The original idea was that you went to the service where general prayers of confession were shared and then you were given your communion token, a rectangular coin that you had to present on Sunday to be allowed to take communion. Presumably you also had to avoid all sin between Thursday night and Sunday morning.

We had the services and the prayers, but the coins were long gone. They didn’t prepare us for those ancient services at seminary. It’s a good thing I already had an idea of the history involved so I could cobble together a service that seemed to satisfy the congregation.

But at the core of all of this is the idea that God is big and scary and potentially very judgmental. The particular concern about taking communion in an unworthy manner has led to people refusing communion all their lives just in case they were somehow unworthy and might fall into judgment.

Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth has a kind of resonance with this, not so much with the idea of God judging us, but with the idea that God is at the core of everything we do, at the core of all we believe in and stand up for.

Who is Paul? Who is Apollos? Clearly this question divided the congregation, but Paul made the point of reminding the people that neither one of these leaders had any position except as servants of God working for a common goal: God’s goal.

Paul was reminding people to put God and the work of God ahead of divisive personal loyalties.

What do we do, then, with the advice of Jesus? He tells his hearers to leave their gift for God at the altar and run off to reconcile with someone they have wronged, before offering anything to God.

It is almost like Jesus is putting direct human relationships ahead of our formal standing with God. The teachings of Paul and Jesus aren’t in direct conflict, but there is a question of priorities here that is worth exploring.

Jesus wasn’t concerned about the rudeness of getting up to the priest and then dropping everything and running off. Not good behaviour: the priest would be inconvenienced and might well have some strong words for this flaky person who appears to be abandoning their duty to God in favour of some personal drama.

Jesus clearly thought it was worth it. As shocking as that must have seemed to his first listeners, Jesus says it is necessary to be reconciled with each other before we try to be reconciled with God.

What is common to these two lessons is the need for reconciliation: we are not supposed to be part of the kinds of divisions that tear communities apart. That is worth remembering in this era of extremist views where people seem to have trouble even talking to someone who disagrees with them and where it seems so natural to troll someone or criticize them while remaining safely anonymous online.

At the core of both Jesus’ and Paul’s messages is the need to hold a higher perspective. Paul talks about it in terms of each person belonging to God. Jesus talks about it in terms of needing to sort things out with our fellow humans before we can claim we’ve sorted things out with God.

This is not a new rule to create obstacles between us and God. There are times when someone refuses to even talk, when they simply won’t try to settle differences. That sort of thing can go on for years, and since reconciliation involves both parties, I don’t believe that God will allow someone else to drive a wedge between us and God.

But I also think that God doesn’t want us to give up on someone. Even the most stubborn of people are still God’s children. It doesn’t mean we have to give unreasonable people whatever they want, but the way Jesus presents it is if we have wronged someone else, it us up to us to go and try to heal the relationship.

That’s always the temptation for people: if you believe that God has forgiven you, you feel less urgency about doing the messy work of getting that person you hurt to forgive you too. This is about taking personal responsibility for our lives; not trying to use God as a way to avoid it.

This isn’t about strict rules around approaching God. In fact, it is about preventing that kind of rule-bound thinking from interfering with real life, with our relationships with each other.

Saying the right prayers isn’t enough. Offering the right offerings isn’t what we need. Following the right rituals and rules won’t swing God into a position to let us off the hook.

We need to reconcile with each other if we want to claim we are right with God.

There are lots of implications to this principle: reconciliation with indigenous people obviously comes to mind and since it is our culture that has wronged theirs, the onus is on us to seek reconciliation, to leave our offering at the altar and go to re-connect. Yet how often have we relied on them, the wronged party, to take the first step?

But there’s more. Jesus used the example of personal relationships to make his point. And he did that because he knew very well that each one of us has something that we need to sort out with someone. His words could include actual family: sister or brother, all the way to someone who may not be personally related but may feel they have cause to begin a lawsuit.

Jesus is saying that in all our relationships: personal, business, social, whatever; we are to be reconciled in every aspect of our lives.

Symbolically, reconciliation ties in to the idea of communion, not as a rule, but as a statement we are making with the sacrament: when we share the bread and cup we are claiming a connection with each other that is so close that it turns us into one body.

That kind of connection takes work; that level of reconciliation is profound and it is our calling to try to achieve it.

No wonder Paul called the squabbling Corinthians “spiritual babies” if they were taking sides between leaders, as if they were competing sports teams. Paul knew from personal experience that reconciling with others could be very hard indeed but he considered it important enough to publicly put his own ego aside and invite us to consider a higher calling where God comes first, of course, and where we realize that to approach God we must not put ourselves first but instead seek to reconcile in all our relationships.

Amen.

Enriched

Enriched

Scriptures: Isaiah 49:1-7

1 Corinthians 1:1-9

When I was a child, TV and radio commercials made a fuss about enriching things: milk was enriched when they added vitamin D; flour was enriched with other vitamins, and so were breakfast cereals.

I thought the word had gone out of style – it certainly was not the compelling marketing term I remember from the 1960s. Then I looked it up while preparing this sermon, to discover that the educational field still believes very strongly in enrichment courses and activities, to the extent that some people are prepared to offer systematic advice on how to enrich the lives of your farm or zoo animals, or your dogs at home.

Some of this shift has to do with the usual changes that come with language. Words are trendy in marketing for a time and then get replaced with the next hot topic. Or, words can transition from being broadly-used, into something highly specialized.

In this case, though, I think something deeper is also going on. The idea of enrichment has hit the obstacle of a society that has been thinking for a long time in terms of scarcity: “We’re running out of resources; We have to cut back and make do”.

It even feels that way when we talk about climate change. In reality, the thing we are running out of is time. We have plenty of other resources. We just have to learn to be responsible with them.

The language of scarcity can become a self-fulfilling prophesy. When we talk about resources being scarce, we respond by planning to do less. This challenge has haunted the wider church since the late 1960s when people started turning away from traditional religion and churches started to see a decline in attendance.

That dates back to the early years of Knox – this congregation responded very well, by building a sensible little sanctuary and sticking with it, when other churches were finding their huge buildings echoing in emptiness.

Scripture, like our lesson in the first letter to the Corinthians today, invites us to talk about abundance, about enrichment.

Sometimes that has been turned into a joke, like the minister who addressed his congregation: “I have good news and bad news. The good news is we have enough money to pay off our debt; the bad news – it’s still in your pockets.”

There is also a darker side, like the so-called “prosperity gospel” that was popular a few years ago. It used a corrupt reading of scripture to declare that if you were faithful, God would reward you with riches and good health providing, of course, that you gave 10% to the church. The inverse logic of that is that if you are sick and poor it must be a sign that God has condemned you. It’s a dreadful theology, completely opposed to my understanding of Jesus’ words.

Part of the problem is the fact that “enriched” has the word “rich” at the core of it and that makes us think about money.

But look at the way Paul talked about the church at Corinth. He said they were already enriched by God, working through Jesus Christ. Paul says the Corinthians are enriched in grace, in speech and knowledge of every kind, so they are not lacking in any gift.

The Corinthian church was not “rich” financially. Like most early Christian churches, they drew most of their people from the common folk including a lot of slaves. There might be a handful of wealthy people and when they were generous, they might be held up as examples. Some are mentioned in scripture and a very large percentage of them were women.

But that’s clearly not what Paul was talking about. He was referring to riches like wisdom, kindness, a willingness to share and to help others; an ability to see what really matters in life; to look at the person in front of them and see someone of value.

Paul was talking about being enriched in ways that cannot be purchased; that cannot be bought, sold or traded. That’s why he said that they were not lacking in any gifts. He doesn’t mention investments or resources or treasures. He talks about gifts meaning things we are given.

This is at the very core of Christianity, that we offer alternative values to the rest of society. Jesus was always talking about turning expectations upside down: the meek inheriting the earth; mourners becoming joyful; the weak becoming strong; and the last becoming first.

These are the kinds of gifts the Corinthians had acquired. They had learned them from Paul and other Christians originally and continued to learn them from each other in an ongoing way by practising what they believed, by becoming living examples of God’s way of valuing the undervalued people of the world.

This is one of those areas where I truly believe it is possible; to “create wealth” as the expression goes.

When we work with each other in the church, we find within ourselves, and we witness others finding within themselves, untapped skills and abilities, hidden treasures that we didn’t know were there and which might have remained hidden except that someone was prepared to take time, offer encouragement and take the risk that things might not be perfect, only to discover an unexpected talent.

There are many examples of musicians who discovered their talents in churches. I am aware of people who first stood up to speak in public, or to do some simple acting in the loving, safe space that a church creates. I have seen people discover skills in interpreting the Bible as they have been in Sunday School or in an adult study; skills that have allowed them to look critically at what they are told and to weigh it in light of the values they have learned. They have gained an ability to look for the justice in a situation because they have learned what justice looks like, that it is something more than a set of rules – the profound idea of God’s justice, which is inspired and shaped by love.

That’s the kind of enrichment Paul was talking about 2000 years ago and it is the kind of enrichment we still practise today. Except that we don’t talk about it much, do we? We go along, quietly doing this and when we talk it’s to fuss about other resources, the kind that everyone in the world worries about.

I think it’s time to talk about enrichment again, to remind ourselves of the work we do in the church every day: the sharing of values; the building up of people; the transforming of lives one small step at a time; the creating of a safe and sacred space where love is the law and where we can encounter God when we meet each other.

There is profound value in all of this. We should remind ourselves that this is the kind of enrichment that we gain, and that we share, when we come together as God’s people.

In this place, people can grow in grace without having to take anything away from anyone else. We enrich each other and we are enriched simply by being God’s people for each other.

These are the gifts and values that will carry us forward into the years ahead. Let us never lose sight of them.

Amen.

Being Creatures of Light

Being Creatures of Light

Scriptures: Isaiah 60:1-6

Matthew 2:1-12

Images of dark and light are ancient. Living out in the country makes it clear why: without streetlights or houselights, the night can be incredibly dark. It is the dark of night that scares us; the light of the day shines to show us where the roots and rocks are so we don’t trip on them. We don’t have to worry if a bear or a pack of wolves is lurking around that big tree over there. We don’t have to be afraid of each shadow because the light shows us what is really there.

It’s a natural thing to consider light to be good and dark to be bad. Sadly, this has been abused over the years to be used in racist ways, to unfairly categorize people. Something we can’t forget as we talk about this ancient imagery is that even good and useful ideas can be twisted and corrupted to hurt others.

Epiphany is a season when the ideas of light and dark get a real workout in Christian tradition. There’s a natural connection between the images and in our northern experience. Before Christmas, the days were getting shorter and shorter with more and more darkness, less and less light. Now that Epiphany is here, it is clear that the days are getting longer again. In Pagan and Heathen times, this was celebrated with all kinds of things, like bonfires.

In Christianity, we talk about the Magi, the Wise Men following a star and we associate that with our reading from Isaiah, which was written centuries before. It talks about how the nation of Israel would stand out like a light in the dark and be so attractive that other nations would come to know God through their brightness.

An important part of the way Matthew presents this to us is that it is a message of welcome, of tolerance and acceptance. The Magi were priests of a foreign religion: the law of Moses forbade Jewish people from trying to read the future in the stars. Nobody questioned the idea that God could speak through the stars or any other part of creation but the thought that God would speak this way to these foreigners was shocking.

Matthew was a Jewish Christian, writing for other Jewish Christians and addressing the issue of all the pagan people who were joining their ranks. “Don’t worry,” he is saying “this is the realization of Isaiah’s hopeful vision. Don’t be afraid of them, welcome them!”

Jesus used images of light and dark in the Sermon on the Mount, also recorded by Matthew. He tells us not to hide our light under a basket; he says that the lights of a city on a hilltop cannot be hidden but instead can be seen for miles.

That’s not as dramatic an example as it used to be. People live in cities these days where light pollution is a problem. There is so much light at night that it is hard to see the night sky sometimes. Light pollution is so bad in Los Angeles that in 1994, when an earthquake knocked out the power, people actually called 911 to ask about the strange things they were seeing in the sky: it was the Milky Way galaxy!

When you are out at night in the country, away from all the lights, it is so very dark that you can see just how far the light of a single bulb, or even candle, can shine. Rather like the Magi following the light of a single star across the miles, it doesn’t matter if the light is small. It can still be seen in contrast to the darkness around it.

I have met people who worry about what it means to be a good follower of Jesus. Some have even had the sense that all Christians are called to be preachers or experts at explaining theology, or people who can quote a scripture reference for every situation.

But Jesus didn’t call us to talk. Jesus called us to live. Jesus called us to shine in the darkness by our lives of love, of welcome, of kindness; by our lives where we build bridges to reach the strangers, the people like the Magi from other places, languages and traditions, who are also beloved by God.

And we don’t have to be brilliant, either because of how far it is possible to see the light of one small candle in the darkness.

Preparing this sermon, I couldn’t help thinking of a Sunday School song I was taught in the 60s: “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine”. I remember how reassuring it was when I was a child because it told me that I could do something good, even if I was small. This is still a powerful message today and right in line with the teachings of Jesus.

It’s possible to talk about the darkness that surrounds us – the war in Ukraine is an obvious choice – but there are all kinds of other issues going on as people near and far flee from violence, try to feed their children without adequate resources, or simply try to cope with the disasters caused by climate change.

Every one of us can make a difference if we live lives that show God’s love even in simple ways. We don’t have to be flashy and we can still shine out in the darkness.

I was amazed to learn that this simple Sunday School song written for children in the 1920s, which I thought had faded away, has become a song of peaceful protest in the American civil rights movement today.

I think that has happened because it is the simplest lessons we remember the best. Jesus understood that. We don’t hide our light under a bushel basket; we let it shine. We don’t let the darkness overcome us; we let our light shine!

God’s love can be seen in the simplest acts of kindness: in helping and sharing; in walking with someone through a difficult time; and our light can shine in all these things.

Being creatures of light isn’t a dramatic calling, it is something each of us can do, from biggest to smallest, youngest to oldest.

And the darker things get in life, the more clearly our lights will shine.

Amen.