Readings April 27th, Easter 6a: Acts 17:22-31; 1 Peter 3:13-22; John 14:15-21

“Be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands an accounting for the hope that is in you – yet do it with gentleness and reverence.”

Times were hard. As our reading from Acts continues with the stories of the apostles shortly after the crucifixion & resurrection, we hear about Paul being ‘on the run ‘ …

Paul, Silas & Timothy had been traveling and preaching about Jesus – they had enraged the local hard-line Jews – and had to escape from Thessalonica. They went to Berea, and got into trouble there too, so Paul took a boat and went to Athens. While he was waiting there for Silas & Timothy to catch up with him, he got more and more angry with all the idols he saw around. He talked with people, and was eventually invited to present his ideas in public!

The part that precedes our reading this a.m. describes how Paul talked with people he met – various people – and shared his ideas and listened to them, and some agreed and some didn’t, but eventually he was invited to speak. He met some people of the community – explored his ideas cautiously til he found some supporters to put him forward. What a wise way to interact with strangers … with everyone! J

Paul talked of the hope that was in his – his belief that this Jesus was indeed the Messiah … but he was finally learning to do it with gentleness and reverence! (We know Paul didn’t always work that way, but it seems to have been effective in this case because he didn’t have to immediately run for his life or get tossed into prison!)

“Make your defense … with gentleness and reverence…”

I was away in Gatineau for a few days this week attending the annual conference of the Reseau des soins palliatifs du Quebec. We heard a lot about approaching people with the hope that is in us – in a gentle and respectful manner. When we work with people at the end of their lives, or at least who know that the disease they have will lead to their death, we must meet them where they are. We must get to know The Person – not simply what we see on the surface, the role they are playing, a sick person – or, as in Paul’s case, false gods. We must LISTEN, propose our hope gently and with reverence – respect who people are and what has formed them before we came along!

As I spent a few hours on airplanes, I was reading a book called “Three Cups of Tea”, a true story about a mountain climber – of the Big Stuff: not Mt. Everest, but others in the northern Pakistan Himalayas [K2, Gasherbrum, Mitre Peak…] . On one of his descents, he became separated from his guide, wandered off and eventually turned up in an extremely isolated little village in northern Pakistan. To make a long story short, he discovered that there was no real school for the children – they shared a teacher with another village, the children knelt outdoors on the rocks and scratched their lessons into the clay with sticks. His heart was opened to these people who took him into their midst and cared for him while he recovered, and he promised that he would come back and build them a proper school!

The story about the difficulties he faced is fascinating! Not just raising the money in America, but returning to Korphe and trying to do business as he was used to in the US: ordering materials, hiring transportation and workers. ….. Things just don’t work that way in the isolated areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. He had to do like Paul – he finally discovered: with a lot of help and mentoring from a few local people who shared his dream. He had to listen to people, and learn about them and their ways and then he could gently put forward his ideas. It takes a lot of time! But it works! (The 3 cups of tea = you drink the first cup as a stranger; with the 2nd cup your become a friend; with the 3rd cup you become family, and people will do anything for a member of their family.) Gentleness and respect …

It reminds me of when I first moved to Calgary – I was lonely, everything was strange, and I wanted to buy a piano (playing has always been a great comfort to me)… so I went to a well-reputed music store, and the salesperson started asking me a lot of questions – questions I found ‘personal’. I didn’t want to spend all afternoon! I guess I was being pretty short with him, and eventually he said, “You must be from Ontario: we don’t do business that way in Alberta. Relax! Take your time!” … He was trying to get to know me, to treat me gently, with respect, so that when he eventually led me to the piano he thought would be best for me, I would be ready to trust him and accept his suggestion. It works – in most situations ….

But what about Zimbabwe? Today we have been asked to especially remember the people of that country in our prayers… If you follow the news a bit you have heard about the election, and the lack of publicized results and the violence and terror that are happening there…There doesn’t seem to be any respect or gentleness being shown. How are people to react? How can they cope?

We see what happens when someone takes control and doesn’t treat people with gentleness and respect. Prosperous farms were taken from families who had worked them for generations, and given to Mugabe’s friends, who knew nothing about farming. They didn’t take time to listen and learn, and now there is no food! The land has been ruined and the country is in chaos. Some of the people have strong faith – they hold onto Jesus’ promise of a comforter – a paraclete – an advocate for them…and little bits of help get through, and people try to nourish the faith in each other.

For me, that’s the message of our readings this morning. Approach each other with gentleness and respect – not just our friends and the neighbours we like: that’s easy! But the people we don’t immediately like – the people whose ways are not our ways. Honour each other. Get to know the other person as a person – as a human being, created in God’s image! We’re not called to force our ideas on others, but simply to give account of our hope in a gentle, respectful manner.

And though we see and know that it is not always easy to do, Jesus promises us, as he promised the disciples, that we are not left alone. We are not abandoned to work this out for ourselves! We will receive the Holy Spirit – the Spirit of Truth - to be with us forever.

This is our Easter faith – the transformation of life by love and grace (gentleness & respect)– God’s work of resurrection!

How then shall I live?

Readings: Acts 2:42-47; 1 Peter 2:19-25 and John 10:1-10.

First of all, let me promise you that you’re not going to hear another ‘good shepherd’ story this morning! Most of you know that I was a shepherd for 5 years – in the Ottawa Valley – and so I’ve heard lots of sheep stories. But you know, sheep herding was so widely practiced in Palestine in ancient times that stories such as our gospel this morning made sense to the people. Well, perhaps they didn’t understand it fully – people seemed to rarely understand what Jesus was really trying to tell them – but they could appreciate the concept: they knew about sheep folds, and the lack of a gate, and shepherds singing to their sheep so they would know his voice. It’s not a scene that relates immediately to our lives – we do better with the fishing stories, perhaps…

Rather, I want to look again at the question: How, then, shall I live? It’s a question that keeps coming up for me – all the time – and I hope it’s important to you, too, because if we say we’re Christians, and we live in this very complex world, it’s pretty challenging to know what’s the right thing to do, in so many situations.

[I went to Honduras a few years ago, and we visited the Coke bottling plant there. They had been in the news a lot for their unfair management practices and people in N. Am were being encouraged to boycott Coke. We talked with the leaders of the employees there, and asked if this was a way we could help. And they said no – please don’t do that! If you boycott Coke, they will shut down the plant, and we won’t have any work at all. Wait to see if they will negotiate fairly with us, and then we’ll get the word out if a boycott would help….]
it’s so hard to know what is the right thing to do…
[ When I walk down the street and someone puts out a hand asking for money – do I give freely, because I have enough for my needs today, or do I say to myself that this person will probably use the money for drugs or booze and I don’t want to encourage that? …] These are the kind of difficult decisions most of us have to make every day, if we think at all about what’s going on around us, and how to live the life God calls us to ….

I’ve chosen one line or sentence from each of our readings this morning… to see how they might help us to live more faithfully in our time.

• From Luke’s writings in Acts, we hear:

They devoted themselves to teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayers…
This was the early community of apostles. It sounds like a good way for a community of people to live – and Luke says that many signs and wonders happened, and more people joined them…

So, how are we doing? Could you say we devote ourselves to Teaching? Fellowship? Breaking of bread? Prayers? Well, I think those are the things we try to do on Sunday morning … but what about the rest of the week? And are we doing them with a sincerity, with a commitment, that leads to great things happening, and others joining us? What might that look like? Bible study / teaching/ discussions during the week? People gathering at any time to pray for each other and the local and larger concerns – and expecting God to hear and answer our prayers? Fellowship: what might that mean for us in this community? I think we do it better in the summer – with our breakfasts that give people a chance to come together and break bread and share their stories – tho’ the fellowship in the kitchen is pretty exclusive! … but what can we do in the winter, when many people are homebound or depressed or discouraged; when the days are short and the nights seem long? How can we practice fellowship on a wider scale than Sunday morning? And the formal breaking of bread – we might do that more often, … and do all of these things in an intentional way, with the intent of becoming more of a vibrant Christian community, more like the early church, trying to learn and live by the teachings of Jesus.

• Peter’s letter to the faithful in Asia Minor says that we have been freed from our sins…we have been healed.

What does it mean to live after we’ve been healed? What does that look like?

Some of us have experienced healing in the physical sense: cancer survivors tell me that they look at life in whole different way - usually with a sense of radical gratitude. One lady said that every morning when she got up the first thing she did was to open her blinds and look out at the world and thank God for the gift of another day of life! “We know just how precious health and life are!”

So to be freed from our sins – to be ‘healed’ in our innermost selves – is more than precious. And since we know that we can do nothing to earn or demand that– our freedom, our forgiveness, our healing is a free gift from God – then the only thing we can do in return is to be grateful. “Radical gratitude”, as Mary Jo Leddy calls it … a gratitude that fills our whole being and overflows bounteously into every aspect of our lives. If we live each day with gratitude, gratitude for the very breath of life, for the privilege of being part of God’s creation … not judging, not complaining about others, about our lot in life… that’s really living! Jean Shinoda Bolen, in her book called Close to the Bone ( life-threatening illness and the search for meaning) says,
“What we do between being born and dying is what matters”.
“What we do between being born and dying is what matters”.

How we live every one of our days – not how many days, not how much money or possessions or success – but how we live … with gratitude.

• And finally in the words of John’s Gospel,

“I am come that you might have life – life in all its fullness” or
“have life and have it abundantly”, or
“more and better life than we ever dreamed of” (depending on your translation).

Not a life of fear and scarcity: abundant life!

Think for a minute about who (and what) are the ‘thieves and bandits’ of our day, the ones Jesus referred to as robbing the people of life… how about greed? Self-interest? Fear mongering: those who encourage people to fear for their safety, to distrust those who are different from themselves, to be afraid that there isn’t enough for everyone in God’s world, and so we have to hoard what we have for ourselves, for fear of ‘going without’…. Those worries don’t add anything to our lives – they take away from us. They cause us to close in on ourselves – to narrow our focus…and as soon as we do that we take our eyes off God!

So many times people have told me stories of their childhood, and said “we didn’t have much, but we were rich”; or “we were pretty poor, you know … but we had a loving family”; or “we hardly had enough to eat ourselves, but momma would always take something to the lady next door, cause she had all those little children to feed”… Isn’t that what abundant life is? Love, peace, acceptance, sharing …. “Life in all its fullness”: the opportunity for every person to grow into the image that God has in mind for each of us – that image of Beloved One.

So perhaps as we face our difficult choices and decisions this week, perhaps as we ask ourselves again “How then shall I live?”, we might find some help in these three readings...
They devoted themselves to teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayers… those are the things we must do as a community to support us in our life – to keep us accountable to each other and to God, and if we do them well things will happen!
we have been freed from our sins…we have been healed… the appropriate response is radical gratitude – and when we’re radically thankful I believe we see the world around us through different eyes;
“I am come that you might have life – life in all its fullness”… that’s for everyone. If God wants abundant life for every single person, then our choices must not in any way limit life for someone else. But also, what a gift! Another reminder of what God wants for us – what Christ did for us ….
LIFE IN ALL ITS FULLNESS!
Thanks be to God!

The Road to Emmaus

Easter 3a – April 6, 2008

Based on the gospel reading Luke 24:13-35 the Road to Emmaus
“At that moment…….. open –eyed, wide-eyed, they recognized him”!
How do I recognize you, Lord?
When and where have I recognized you?

I hope you each have your own story of a time when your eyes have suddenly been opened – wide – and you recognized Jesus… and if you haven’t, keep watching!

I’d like to share one of mine with you this morning.
It was Palm Sunday, in New Westminster, a joint Ang / UC service, where we started the service at the Anglican church, and then paraded up to the United church for the 2nd part of the liturgy. The children were invited up to sit on the large ‘stage’ at the front, and while someone was telling them a story, my eyes were drawn to toddler. She couldn’t have been more than 2 – still a bit wobbly on her feet as she stood up and began to pick her way amongst the other children. She had a container of something in her little hand – cheerios I assumed – and as she walked among the children she carefully picked one out and gave it to each child. Just one each - sharing what she had – equal piece for each – no preference for her ‘favourites’, or best friends … utterly spontaneous. As it dawned on me what was happening, something warm opened up deep inside me – a recognition (a re-knowing) – it was Eucharist!
Many people saw what was going on, I’m sure: did they all experience what I did? Probably not … we have different experiences of the Risen Christ, as did the disciples: Mary in garden, the disciples gathered together, Thomas, the ones Jesus cooked breakfast for on the beach…

The Road to Emmaus story is a very intimate encounter… (something special about walking & talking together – when we’re troubled, trying to work something out, trying to find our way….I’ve heard people here say they go down to the point to ‘walk’)

• Time spent (7 miles –‘a long way’)
• Stories shared – listening (both sides)
• Relationship established…
• Hospitality offered (they invited him to come in & stay),
• Recognition!

What about our ‘road to Emmaus’? (the journey that leads each of us to the Risen Christ)…

• Where’s Emmaus? perhaps it symbolizes for us the place people go to get away – ‘the town for broken hearts’ – the disciples were trying to get out of town, to escape their confusing situation …the fear, the reality… it might not even be a place, for us; it might be an addiction, a way we escape…

• Takes time – we tell our story, Jesus listens to our disappointments, our sadness, what we’re running away from …. And we in turn hear God’s story – history, creation, salvation, faithfulness, love …

• Through this sharing and listening we build a relationship

• In that relationship we open up– enough to offer hospitality. An invitation to come in… to see us at our most vulnerable. (We don’t ask every stranger we meet to come into our homes, do we? Usually we need to feel safe with the person, because our homes reflect who we really are. We can put on a façade when we’re out, we can dress in our best clothes, or behave in ways that we think will make us acceptable to society, but the inside of our homes … that’s pretty private. That’s where people will see who we really are – the condition of our lives, how we live, what we have to eat…) We know that Jesus stands at the door of our hearts and knocks: but he leaves it up to us to open that door, to offer hospitality – to invite him to come in….

• And in that place of vulnerability – our eyes are opened! We recognize our Lord & Saviour – in his actions, his response to us … We recognize that he IS still alive – wants to be very present to us … IS with us, walking beside, listening… hoping to be invited into our hearts.

There is a ‘warmth’… the disciples mentioned it: “weren’t our hearts on fire?” …. A feeling of peace and love, …. and excitement! God with us! God here among us!

So let us watch for him – this Risen Christ!

• Make time to get to know him – it takes time … like becoming ‘best friends’… tell him your troubles, listen to him talk to you of God (read the scripture, come to church),

• invite him into your life – make yourself vulnerable and open to him, perhaps in a new way – trust him,

• and he WILL reveal himself to you….reveal himself with you –

Then Resurrection Hope will take hold and give you courage to go back into the fray (like the disciples went straight back to Jerusalem) …. to go back and face the unknowns of life.
Let him walk with you!
He was crucified for you!
He was raised from the dead for you!
He offers you his body and blood as food for the journey …your life’s journey!

Thanks be to GOD