Mission, Here, There and Everywhere (February 13, 2011)
Salt And Light; Love And Justice (February 6, 2011)
Mission, Here, There and Everywhere
13 February 2011
This sermon includes materials kindly provided by our Mission Partners in 2011: PWS&D, Evangel Hall Mission, Actions Refugies Montreal and Mines Action Canada. We thank God for the work that they do on our behalf.
How can we express our thanks to God for everything that God has done for us; for all the ways that God has blessed us? Last week we heard the prophet Isaiah tell the people to show their thanks by the way they lived their lives. "Live like this" he said (Isaiah 58:7-8).
Share your bread with the hungry. Bring the homeless poor into your house. Cover the naked. Care for your own family.
On our behalf, our 2011 Mission Partners: Evangel Hall; Canada Ministries and PWS&D do things like this every day. Rejoice that through them - we can make a difference.
Evangel Hall Mission (ehm) was founded by the Presbyterian Church in Canada in 1913. In its first years Evangel Hall reached out to the new immigrants living around Bathurst and Queen. Today men, women and children come to ehm from across the GTA. It offers a continuum of care from emergency food, clothing and shelter to transitional and long term housing. Now I know my way to ehm on Adelaide Street West as I have delivered your Christmas gifts of mittens, hats, clothes and toiletries for the last couple of years. Evangel Hall is our "local" mission partner this year
Today we read Isaiah paint a picture of a mind-blowing feast of rich foods "filled with marrow"; of well aged wines "strained clear" - not just any old meat, not just any old wine, you notice. It's a decadent meal fit for a king. And in Isaiah's days only the king and his courtiers would have dined like that - and then only on high days and holidays.
None of the ordinary people who were listening to Isaiah could even have imagined such a spread. People then, like most people in the world now, lived close to a subsistence level. If they had flat bread and legumes with a cup of clean water, they were doing pretty well. Hunger was common. Famine was not unknown. Food was always scarce.
And yet here's Isaiah speaking of a menu beyond the comprehension of any of the folk who were listening to him: a vision of unimaginable plenty.
What's the point of teasing these people with this mouth watering menu? Seems a bit mean, doesn't it? But I think Isaiah isn't talking menus here. Isaiah's really talking here about the day of the Lord - a future world where God's will and word come true. Sometimes called the "Reign of God"; sometimes called "God's Dream". It's the way the world would be if we really lived out God's will for the world in our lives.
That world of plenty seems so far removed from the scarcity experienced by most of the world's population then, as now. How can our little missionary efforts make a difference?
Remember the story of Jesus on a hillside yearning to feed a vast congregation; his very heart aching for the hungry multitude. His friends wanted to send the crowd home. Jesus told them to give the people something to eat first. The disciples were confused; they felt inadequate. Where were they to get enough food for such a crowd?
The money in their communal purse couldn't even buy a takeaway for Jesus and his friends - and now he's asking them to feed a crowd of strangers! The disciples were overwhelmed by a sense of scarcity. But Jesus told them to bring him whatever they could find. It was just a few loaves and fishes—one boy's lunch! Jesus took this gift and blessed it. The meal not only satisfied everyone, but twelve basketfuls of leftovers were gathered afterwards! That blessing connected a seemingly inadequate and insignificant offering to the Giver of abundance. It was more than enough. People perceive scarcity. God gives plenty.
A few years ago Dr. Prempe, the moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, expressed deep gratitude for the gifts that his church had received from The Presbyterian Church in Canada. Then he added by way of affirmation, "Of course, such gifts are first given to God." Giving is spiritual before it is humanitarian. When we view what we have and what we need through this vital connection, the myth of scarcity is blown away—replaced by the blessing of abundance.
Presbyterian World Service and Development partners with MAC - not the makeup but "Mines Action Canada" our International Mission Partners in 2011. MAC is working towards a landmine free world. People on their way to school, work or home are often the victims of landmines - low-tech, inexpensive, horrific homemade weapons. Those who survive a landmine explosion are left with permanent disabilities. The purpose of creating a landmine free world is to create a safe environment for civilians to live, work and worship. Please help our mission partner clear mines and care for victims.
God's people wandered the wilderness of Sinai for forty years - refugees from the harsh and oppressive regime of Egypt. Centuries later, God's people wandered across the harsh landscape between Israel and Babylon - refugees from their own country. And later still in time, Jesus and his parents fled from Bethlehem into Egypt to escape King Herod's cruelty. God walked with these refugees and they found refuge at their journey's end.
Our national mission partners this year are ARM Action Refugies Montreal. ARM works with refugees by matching vulnerable refugee women with volunteers, making private sponsorship of refugees easier and visiting refugees held in an immigration detention centre near Montreal. God has always had a soft spot for the wanderers of this world. Do you have a soft spot too? Please support our national mission partners.
One of our members likes to share one of his favourite sayings: "how can you out give God? How can we out give the Creator of All that is? How can we out give a God who gave himself for us on the Cross? All our scarcity is transformed into plenty by the grace of a giving God.
Here is the deep spiritual reality that transforms us from feeling anxious about not having enough. Here is a generosity that frees us from the tendency to protect our resources. Here we are enabled to be, to share, to risk. Here we see that God is committed to that ancient vision in Isaiah 25 of the mountainside banquet that welcomes a divided world to come together in celebration of God's shalom.
That vision of global peace and deep joy continues to inspire the work of our Mission Partners; here, there and everywhere. We meet that vision through the Spirit of the crucified Christ whose love has no limits. Believe it! God's riches are here!
Salt And Light; Love And Justice
6 February 2011
In Wednesday's Toronto Star, columnist Heather Mallick, writes on the trend for Canadians to run out on winter; to fly south; to exchange snowdrifts for sand between their toes. Fair enough - she's got a point. But then she gets into a completely unwarranted slander on us - us Presbyterians that is. Here's what she wrote.
"More and more Torontonians, raised Presbyterian even when they're not, have discovered a way to have fun - by leaving the country."
In this slander Heather (does she really deserve the name) perpetuates the image of Presbyterians as a party pooping, long faced, joyless crew. How on earth could we ever have acquired such a bad rap? On such a lovely morning when we have joyfully welcomed a lovely young person into our church community, how can we say to the baptized child "no we're not like that at all!"
My great aunts back home were what we called "pillars of the Kirk". Their grandfather had been one of the founders of Saint Andrew's, Kirkintilloch - so they had quite a reputation to live up to.
Their piety - the way they expressed their religious life -had some unusual characteristics. Now don't get me wrong - these were good Christian women who did their best to make a good Christian out of Duncan: teaching me hymns, teaching me prayers, giving me mint imperials to suck during the sermon at church, allowing me to view their slides of the Holy Land on Sunday afternoons when it was too rainy to walk to the cemetery.
My great- aunts regarded themselves as teetotal - they would allow no drop of alcohol to pass their lips - except for sherry. They thought of sherry as a very ladylike tonic to be shared with other church ladies on social visits. On more than one occasion they returned from such visits, red-faced and noticeably more jolly than usual. By the same token it was OK to play whist - but definitely not poker; golf but not the gee gees.
In such ways my aunties expressed their piety - the outward expression of their religious life. In such ways, both in Canada and Scotland, Presbyterians were too readily defined as people whose piety was expressed in terms of negatives and prohibitions. "You can't do this; you can't do that."
And those who did imbibe, or gamble or dance were judged as lacking in some way. It was a way of defining acceptable religious life by what you did not do rather than what you did do. Perhaps that's how our particular religious community acquired our totally underserved reputation as "the frozen chosen"; and we became the butt of jokes in the Toronto Star.
Isaiah and Matthew are both speaking to their particular religious communities in the scriptures we read this morning. Prophet Isaiah speaks about the forms of religious life that are pleasing to God.
Let's take a closer look at what Isaiah has to say about piety - and try to discover how his words, written two and a half thousand years ago apply to us today. How can these words help us to tell someone like the baptized child - or any other young person - this is who we are; this is the identity that has been bestowed upon you as you are welcomed into the family of God.
Isaiah's prophecy has three speaking parts: God; prophet; people. God speaks first. God commissions his prophet to "shout out"; to announce to the people that they are living in rebellion to God's ways. The voice of God indicts the people for seeking God out "as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness." The clear implication is that they are not; and they do not.
The next voice that we hear is the people. They complain to God that they practice piety and humble themselves. Why then does God not see them? Why then does God not notice them?
Prophet Isaiah then rebukes the people for their behavior on their so called "fast days". On fast days, unfortunately its business as usual - and oppressive business at that - as God's people quarrel and even resort to violence "to strike with a wicked fist."
And you have to wonder how God has seen the church through the ages with its history of violence and persecution: Roman Catholic and Protestant; Christian and Jew; missionaries and indigenous peoples. Has our piety, our fast day, been pleasing to God?
Isaiah was brutally honest with the religious community that he belonged to as he spoke the word and will of God.
"Just because you lie down in sack cloth and ashes and bow your heads does not make your fast acceptable to God!" thunders Isaiah.
The prophet condemns a form of religious life that has become essentially a negative, passive one. The people's piety is defined by what they do not do - rather than what they do. Isaiah advocates for a positive rather than a negative way of living out the will of God. Here's what he says:
This is the fast that I choose
To loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free; to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked to cover them, and not to ignore you own family.
Look at all those strong "to do" verbs; "share", "bring", "cover", "undo". Isaiah is saying "this should be your religious identity; this should be the way the your inner religious life is expressed out there in the world; not in terms of what you do not do but in terms of what you do."
And that has been the greatest strength of Presbyterian churches like ours. At our best we do; we act; we share. This is the form of religious life that will allow our light to shine out in the world.
When God's justice is done, says Isaiah, then God's people will live in the light of God's presence. By caring for others, God's people will find the healing that they are seeking themselves.
Next week we will be hearing about the mission projects that our church will be supporting in the coming year. These projects reach out to some of the very groups that Isaiah speaks about in his time. You can read about them in February's Life and Work. Pray for our mission and our missionaries - and find out how you can support those who are our boots on the ground when it comes to doing God's work and will in the world.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.