Union Church

Advent II
Luke 1: 5-19; 24-38

Stanley Ott in the forward to the book "Becoming a Blessed Church," tells the story of sitting in a hospital waiting room with just one other person, a guy waiting for a doctor to return with a prescription. Someone walking by said hello to the man and he replied, “Have a blessed day.”

A short time later, Stanley said to him, “Now that’s a great phrase, ‘have a blessed day,’ because it says you are trusting God to do the blessing.”
The man turned to him and beamed. “That’s right!” he said and went on to describe the power of his experience of Christ, explaining,
“Blessed means ‘He will make you rise!’”

After the doctor brought his prescription, this gracious man stepping into the elevator, turned around and said to Stanley, “Have a blessed day.”
Stanley waved and said, “He will make you rise!”

And the man was gone.

This is an example of an angelic visitation, of waking up to angels in our midst: Waking up to God.

Angelic visitations are not quite what we expect.

Our gospel lessons tell the strange story of two conceptions, John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth. One conception takes away an old woman’s disgrace.
The other initiates a young woman’s disgrace.
One occurs to one too old.
The other occurs to one too young.
One conception requires divine assistance.
The other conception requires divine intervention.
However both births require a wake up call.

November 29, 2009 Advent I
Luke 3: 1-6
I hate line-ups.
I avoid them like the plague but with the flu shot and my sermon about “just get it” I have been dealing with my issue of avoidance.

How is your avoidance index these day?
Who are the people we desperately want to avoid?
Which relatives are on the list? Which neighbour? Which co-worker?
Is there a church member on the list?
What situations have we told to avoid?

As children we were taught to avoid many dangers. Don’t talk to strangers.
John had to be in the house before the street lights came on to avoid the trouble he could get into in the cover of darkness.
I had to ride my bicycle along the gravel shoulder of the country road and stop every time a car or truck went by.

Then as teenagers what were we taught to avoid?
For my generation it was sex and drugs, but it was too late for rock-n-roll.
What was your generation’s taboo?
How about after you got married?

Grandparents know they are supposed to avoid interfering with the younger generations family dynamics.

What are the things we are supposed to avoid these days?
Holidays are the times we eat all sorts of fancy dishes that taste oh so good, but somehow we are supposed to avoid gaining weight.

In our Gospel lesson, John the Baptist certainly isn’t a parent, or a spouse, or a gourmet cook for that matter. But in talking about repentance he is really talking about avoidance. He is saying God is in our midst and we have to wake up and stop avoiding this fact.

November 8, 2009. Mark 12: 41-13:2.

Jesus is in the Temple.
His attention goes to a parade of wealthy patrons dropping their tithes into the Temple Treasury box.
A poor, destitute, out of place, widow arrives at the box and drops in 2 copper coins. A pittance in comparison to the wealthy patrons but all she has to live on.
Jesus draws attention to this situation. He praises the widow for her commitment.

Then there is a chapter break which obscures the rest of the teaching moment. The regular lectionary reading for today ends right there.

But in the very next verse as Jesus goes to leave the Temple, one of the disciples points out the permanence of the huge stone edifice. Jesus then says, “There won’t be one stone left here upon another, all will be thrown down.”

How can Jesus praise this woman who puts every last cent she has to live on into the Temple Treasury and then, in the next breath say this is all a lost cause?

What is going on here?

Is Jesus selling false securities in some kind of a Ponsi scheme or is there something more profound going on here?

In Quebec, we like our stone buildings.
We like the permanence they imply.
The foundational and enduring qualities they suggest.
Humanity has been building stone Temples for thousands of years.

It is easy to understand the widow going all in, supporting the granite grandeur of the Temple but then we hear that it is soon going to be cast down.
By the time Mark’s gospel is written the Temple has indeed been reduced to rubble.

November 1, 2009 Mark 12:28-34

Has anyone NOT heard about the H1N1 vaccination panic?

Authorities have gone from trying to convince Canadians for the past two weeks to get the shot, to trying to control the stampede this week of panicked demand for the shot.
The sound bytes are breathtakingly self-referencing and self-absorbed.

It has gone from “why I or my children won’t be forced to take the shot” to “why I, and my children should now be first in line to get the shot.”

I don’t know about you, but I am embarrassed by some of these publicized responses of my fellow Canadians.

We are a community wise northern climate country.
We know we can’t get through the winter on our own.

When did we lose sight of the common good?

This panic highlights how our society has lost contact with our Christian tradition which is reflected in the Great Love Commandment.

The point of the Great Love Commandment, “to love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, to love your neighbour as yourself,” is to get the flu shot regardless of your age and situation so as to reduce the risk of contracting and spreading it to others.

It has little to do with your possibility of serious illness and death.

It has everything to do with limiting these possibilities for others.

Grandparents, you will not die from this flu bug, but get the shot because your grandchildren or any others of the younger generation do face some sort of risk.

It is not about us.

It is about loving our neighbour as our-self.

Job 42:1-6

Scholars tell us that the book of Job is an adaptation of an ancient Egyptian folktale.
Remember, it is a drama not history. It deals with the confusion around the nature of God.

What is God like?
How does God relate and deal with us?

Job’s three friends each reflect different conclusions that Job rejects. However, Job himself is confused. He sees God as too small.
He sees God on a far too human scale.
And so, demands in a self-referencing and self-righteous way that God answer him.

When God does address the situation, God asks,
“Why do you talk without knowing what you’re talking about?
Pull yourself together, Job!
I have some questions for you, and I want some answers.
Where were you when I created the earth?
Tell me, since you know so much!
Who decided on its size? Certainly you’ll know that!”

You know, Job isn’t too far off the mark on how today’s society understands God.
Far too often God gets reduced and put into a human sized box. Then we get mad when God isn’t big enough to fix situations or people.

In our indignation, we say we no longer believe in this God. But we just shut ourselves off from what an amazing God can actually accomplish through our participation in God’s Dream.

The question that the book of Job asks is this:
Is your God intimate enough to engage your human heart and is your God big enough to engage and include all human hearts at all times?

MV 106I am the Dream.
I am the dream and you the dreamer.