David: Loved Jonathan

We began today’s sermon singing together a couple of songs from our own subculture of a few years ago:

Bonnie Charlie's noo awa
Safely o’er the friendly main;
Mony a heart will break in twa,
Should he no come back again.

Chorus:
Will ye no come back again?
Will ye no come back again?
Better loved ye canna be;
Will ye no come back again?

Ye trusted in your Hielan men,
They trusted you dear Charlie!
They kent your hiding in the glen,
Death and exile braving.

Chorus

English bribes were a in vain
Tho puir and puirer we mun be;
Siller canna buy the heart
That aye beats warm for thine an thee…




In Days of yore,
From Britain's shore
Wolfe the dauntless hero came
And planted firm Britannia's flag
On Canada's fair domain.
Here may it wave,
Our boast, our pride
And joined in love together,
The thistle, shamrock, rose entwined, The Maple Leaf Forever.

Chorus
The Maple Leaf
Our Emblem Dear,
The Maple Leaf Forever.
God save our Queen & heaven bless,
The Maple Leaf Forever.

At Queenston Heights & Lundy's Lane
Our brave fathers side by side
For freedom's home & loved ones dear,
Firmly stood and nobly died.
& so their rights which they maintained,
We swear to yield them never.
Our watchword ever more shall be
The Maple Leaf Forever

They don’t make good old days like they used to – and nostalgia’s not what it once was! It was Pride Sunday, and the Sunday before Canada Day. It was also the 3rd of 9 Sundays of David, first ‘David:Chosen’, then ‘David:Hero’ and today ‘David: Loved Jonathan’. It was the Sunday after the deaths of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson, and sex scandals for the governor of North Carolina and Italian PM Berlusconi. As we echoed the anthems of mid-century WASP Ontario, some of us lamented what and who we had lost, and others were relieved it was over.

How the mighty have fallen…
(or as the King James Version says: How are the mighty fallen…)

Do we sing that verse gleeful that those who were great are not now, and have their comeuppance? Or do we recite with real grief and lament – over who and what is lost to us – since nostalgia’s not what it once was, and they don’t make good old days like they used to?


“How are the mighty fallen” was once a popular catch phrase, a proverb, for the powerful brought down low, each meeting their nemesis. Generations before us knew the story, and we knew the next line before its first use, “your glory, O Israel, lies slain upon your high places”, or the lines after the next repetitions, “in the midst of the battle”, “and the weapons of war are perished”. This was a lament, of real grief and mourning, if ambivalent at commanders’ deaths.

On this 29th Pride Sunday, up to a million folks parade to celebrate gay, lesbian, transgendered, bisexual, and queer communities as a public, not merely private, phenomenon. On this 142nd birthday of Canadian confederation, 30 million more will celebrate a political, national identity. How will we celebrate GLBTQ culture, part of our community and families? How will we celebrate a multicultural Canada of 21st century diversity? What’s it mean for me, us – or them?

My generation has not fought a war for our nation – though the generation before did, and the one after has already begun. My generation’s big conflict, in my vocation, was about recognizing, affirming, and celebrating GLBTQ Christians as full participants in our church and in its clergy ranks. We who remain could look back today, and simply celebrate that ‘we won’, and that we are a gay-positive church. We could also confess and blame where we were or are not yet fully inclusive, walking the talk. Today’s lesson invites us also to lament who and what we lost. For any who survive a conflict know the unholy alliances or moral quicksand of fights.

Pride Week and Canada Day invite us to celebrate who we are, in all our glorious variety. They tempt preachers to confess and blame, to teach and persuade. Lament is low priority, isn’t it? But we who can sing the songs of our subculture feel nostalgia and loss, not just triumphal unity and unanimity. We sang ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ and heard bagpipes skirl the march, mourning “the ’45”, Scotland’s failed Jacobite revolution of 1745, before Charles ran from the English. We sang ‘The Maple Leaf’, the marvel of British imperial and colonial identity subsuming the warring ‘thistle, shamrock, rose entwined’, symbols of Scotland, Ireland, and England. They teach us how to celebrate, go on to confess and blame, to reach wider sympathy and empathy.

How are the mighty fallen – and the weapons of war perished

Our sexual politics, like our nationalism, and our religion, can take various tones. We can devote compliant childish loyalty, in pre-critical naivete, to the affirmations of the powers that be, the high and mighty of our day, those whose speech is privileged as truth to be accepted and obeyed. We can deliver resistant adolescent kneejerk opposition, to the obsolete bad old ways or to the over- reaching of the new young turks. We can offer sympathy and mature collegiality to forging wider partnerships with our near neighbours under a bigger tent. Ultimately, we might aspire to riper, deeper engagement with the Others who express and act out different gender, orientation, national, or religious identities than our own.

Today’s reading from 2 Samuel was a song, an anthem of David’s lament for Saul and Jonathan. Israel was told to sing it - as Upper Canadians sang “Bonnie Charlie” or “The Maple Leaf”. What’s the bible got to do with cosmoplitan 21st century of sexual orientation, identity and expression, and multicultural Canada? It addresses individual and collective human nature. It teaches us to ‘read’ texts and people, in compliant, resistant, sympathetic, and engaged ways. Learn the skills and habits with scripture, build experience and expertise in local congregations, and you’re ready to ‘read’ who and what you meet tomorrow in the week and the world. (This is all developed from Adele Reinhartz, Canadian Jewish feminist biblical scholar now in Ottawa).

Each week, I’ve been reminding you of Jesus, 2000 years ago, and in turn of another century, 1000 years before Jesus, when a people went from the anarchy of tribes to a united monarchy, and back to division, under kings Saul, then David, then Solomon. As we read through David’s stories, and read repeatedly, we begin to see the cracks and joins of what came together, and how it came apart. A story that has been told and retold for 3000 years, from many perspectives, is richer and offers more depth than a 29 year old tradition of Pride Week, or even a 142 year old celebration of Canada Day, until recently Dominion Day. What did you see and hear?

Saul was the first king. David came next as Saul’s successor. Stop. Think. Who usually is the new king in most monarchies? Is it not the prince, the eldest son of the king? That’s patriarchy, that’s primogeniture. Who is Saul’s eldest son? Jonathan? What about Saul’s other sons, like Ishbosheth? Anybody knows that David should not have been king after Saul. Jonathan was the heir apparent, and after him other sons of Saul by other wives, like Ishbaal, or Ishbosheth, who had the backing of Saul’s general Abner.

Israel knew, and the nations knew, that David’s succession of Saul was suspicious. There were assassinations and intrigues. There was civil strife, treason, and civil war. It’s hard work for any spin doctor to tell David’s story. He was chosen. He was a hero. But Jonathan was to be king. After Saul died, David ruled in Hebron over part of the people for 7 years, then over all 12 tribes for 33 years from Jerusalem. Imagine the first provinces of Canadian confederation, along the Great Lakes, St Lawrence and Maritimes, then multiplying size and numbers to our current state.

1 Samuel tells how Saul was suspicious of David’s ambition. Saul kept trying to get rid of David not only banishing him to go fight, but also to get lost, and finally putting out an assassination contract on David’s life. Who stood up for David? Jonathan, who had the most to lose! We are told that David loved Jonathan, and Jonathan loved David. They kissed. Jonathan took off all his weapons, armour and clothes for David. Jonathan acted as spy, shooting arrows to signal David whether to run or come back into the court of Saul. David loved Jonathan, and sang:

Greatly beloved were you to me;
Your love to me was wonderful
Passing the love of women

Saul died with Jonathan at the hands of the Philistines, on Mount Gilboa in the north. Where was David? 2 Kings tells us David was chasing Amalekites, raiders from the Negeb desert in the south, whom he chased out of Ziklag. When David heard that Saul and Jonathan were dead, he coined the phrase: ‘how are the mighty fallen’. Was he gleefully celebrating their comeuppance and his good fortune? Was he crying the crocodile tears of a politician? Was he, the warrior, indulging in ironic tongue-in-cheek dismissal of lesser, failed fighters? I think that the lament is meant to be sincere grief and mourning – no more ambivalent about who and what was lost than anybody is in any bereavement, personal or political.

Yes, the bible tells a tale of the love between 2 men, with kisses, nakedness, loyalty, and lament. This culture is less homophobic than ours – and less prone to sexualize any intimacy. I’m happy to indulge you in the image of male to male intimacy, more or less homoerotic, in the bible. But I read not only that, but an appeal to something greater, ‘passing the love of women’ referring to a love beyond sexualized exploitation, with more political, ethical and religious resonance. So for the rest of today’s sermon, I tried to speak of that bigger - and gay-positive – good news.

Sure, the David stories are about his life and character as a historic leader of an actual people. But this actual historic state of mind is less important to his writer and to me as a reader, than how he is construed or constructed as an iconic symbol of the people moving from anarchy to united rule by a king, and in turn to division. These stories are how people remembered and sang the collective identity of Judaism, Israel and Judah through conquest, exile, restoration, a people under successive empires. And it was important to remember that David loved Jonathan.

David and Jonathan did not treat each other as enemies, in some zero-sum game where one would win and the other must lost. Others, like Saul, might project that polarization on them, but they resist the conventional narrative of monarchy and succession. They acted against their respective personal interests, in loyalty to their God, their people, and each other. That’s an intimate love of one man for another – and a political love surpassing even “the love of women”. Even upon the death of Saul and Jonathan, David demanded that the people tell their glory, and sing their praises, rather than rewriting them as villains, or ‘airbrushing them out of the pictures’.

This Pride Week and this Canada Day, we have cause to celebrate and be proud of as in terms of our Canadian cultural, political, and religious identity. That’s a compliant, patriotic and loyal response to our current privileged voices. We have lots left to confess and to blame about too, not only in our past but also in our present failures to walk the talk of diversity and inclusiveness better. We are free to choose, vote, realign our participation in community, politics and religion to build wider partnerships with sympathetic allies of varied gender, orientation, ethnicity, or political partisanship. We might even lament and grieve today, as David did, over the Other.

Our generation has come out as avowedly “inclusive”, after decades of struggle, and unholy alliances on both sides of the issues of welcoming full participation in the church regardless of gender or sexual orientation. We proudly invite couples to celebrate here, regardless of gender, orientation, or previous partnerships. I dared today to lament who and what we lost on the way, and to say that I loved the homophobic and racist bigots of my roots, who raised me. Their parents had learned to unite with former blood enemies: Scots, Irish, and English. They learned after 2 world wars to be good neighbours to their German, Italian, and Japanese former enemies, ‘displaced persons’ of mid-century. They learned to celebrate, and even to confess or accept some blame to make that wider union. But when they lamented their past, I refused to weep too.

How are the mighty fallen –
and the weapons of war perished

Today we tried to learn that skill and habit with scripture a bit better, build that experience and expertise in church, to prepare apply it everywhere we go. Sure, we had better be prepared to engage in relationships with gay, bisexual, lesbian, transgendered, queer members of our families and community and nation. We had better be better at relating with people of other backgrounds and generations who don’t know the songs of our subculture. But we also need to learn how to engage the Other who are homophobic, racist, moralistic puritans, anti-choice pro-life activists.

Learning to lament who and what we have lost in our own conflicts with those who fought with and for us, humans and heroes, hard to love and harder to leave, equips us to engage the Others we will next meet in the week and in the world. Perhaps we will someday even learn to love our enemies, as David did, and as Jesus did. If we’re going to make peace, we’ll have to learn how. They don’t make good old days like they used to, and nostalgia’s not what it once was.

Carly Simon sang in my youth that ‘these are the good old days’. Around the same time, in 1978 in Montreal, an Italian immigrant Raymond Filip wrote this poem, with which we closed today, called in part “The Mighty Buck… Melting Pot Luck”:

Right off the boat, or Boeing
I admit being tongue-tied.
For I am the language that is lost
The name that is changed
The ghost of welcome houses & Saturday schools
I am men in sheepskin coats from the Old Country
I am their New Country descendants: women in Persian lamb.
I am Euro-paeans
Songs you won’t sing and dances you won’t dance.
I am hard money.
I am the inalienable right to alienation.
The Horatio Alger Algerian, the Haitian electrician
The Cuban security guard, the cab driver from Calabria
The Jewish landlord who lives in Florida
The Vietnamese orphan, the Romany musician
I am Hutterite, Mennonite, Wahabite, Bahai, Sikh, and Alcoholic.
I am the Canadian Mosaic: a melting pot on ice
I am always the next generation
The child with which good immigrant fiction ends.
I am that child grown up, writing in English,
Mother tongue in mind, adopted tongue in cheek
You were Commonweath, I am common loss.
Like a citizen of the world, in exile,
Or an overseas package return to sender
I am nothing left to be but Canadian.

Our prayer for grace today went like this:

God who creates us, who knit us together in our mothers wombs, who birthed us into family, community, heritage, who made each of us, part of all of us…
We pause to praise and celebrate your name, and bring our own many names – for you know us by all our names, as we are and who we are….
God who creates us – speak to us again now, reminding us who we are, and whose we are

God who recreates us, who invites and calls us to change, to grow, to be and to do all that we were made to be and to do, each of us, part of all of us…
We pause to confess to confess & blame ways we’re wrong, not yet at one with you, with one another, ourselves, and bring our many guilts & grudges – for you know our faults, our foibles, our foes, flaws, yet you still see & show how to make something of it all as we are becoming, as who we might yet become
God who recreates us – speak to us again now, reminding us who we are, and whose we are

God who sustains and steers us, who works in us and others to share creation’s joy, to transform opportunities into more truths and justice,
We pause to lament & mourn those who fought with us and for us; humans, heroes; hard to love, harder to leave, and we bring our many memories & hopes – for you know our direction from whence to whither, you who were always there, are now, and will be, present and pervasive in all our greatest and least bits
God who sustains us, speak to us again now, reminding us who we are, and whose we are.

God who creates us. God who recreates us. God who sustains and steers us –
What word do you have for our hearts. Give us ears to hear Amen

I promised some Canadian poetry that didn’t get air time, songs and laments related to this reflection on David’s lament over Saul and Jonathan – referring to Canadian history and characters on this same theme of lament for the lost):

Brave Wolfe (Traditional – 2 of many verses)

Brave Wolfe drew up his men
In a line so pretty
On the Plains of Abraham
Before the city.
The French came marching down
Arrayed to meet them
In double numbers ‘round
Resolved to beat them

Montcalm and this brave youth
Together walk-ed;
Between two armies they
Like brothers talk-ed,
Till each one took his post
And did retire.
‘Twas then these numberous hosts
Commenced their fire.

Northwest Passage (Stan Rogers – chorus only)

Ah, for just one time,
I would take the Northwest Passage
To find the hand of Franklin
Reaching for the Beaufort Sea
Tracing one warm line
Through a land so wide and savage
And make the Northwest Passage to the sea…


Macdonnell on the Heights (Stan Rogers – 3 of several verses)

Too thin the line that charged the Heights
And scrambled in the clay
Too thin the Eastern Township Scot
Who showed them all the way,
And perhaps had you not fallen
You might be what Brock became
But not one in ten thousand knows your name.

To say the nae, Macdonnell,
It would bring no bugle call
But the Redcoats stayed beside you
When they saw the General fall
‘Twas Macdonnell raised the banner then
And set the Heights aflame
But not one in ten thousand knows your name.

You brought the field all standing
with your courage and your luck
But unknown to most you’re lying there
beside old General Brock
So you know what it is to scale the Heights
and fall just shore of fame
And have not one in ten thousand know your name…


1838 (Dennis Lee- all 4 verses)



The Compact sat in parliament
To legalize their fun.
And now they’re hanging Sammy Lount
And Captain Anderson
And if they catch Mackenzie
They will string hi in the rain.
And England will erase us if
Mackenzie comes again.

The Bishop has a paper
That says he owns our land
The Bishop has a Bible too
That says our souls are damned.
Mackenzie had a printing press
It’s soaking in the Bay
And who will spike the Bishop till
Mackenzie comes again?

The British want the country
For the Empire and the view
The Yankees want the country for
A yankee barbeque
The Compact want the country
For their merrie green domain
They’ll all play finders-keepers till
Mackenzie comes again

Mackenzie was a crazy man
He wore his wig askew
He donned three bulky overcoats
Iun case the bullets flew
Mackenzie talked fo fighting
While the fight went down the drain
But who will speak for Canada?
Mackenzie, come again!


Flanders Fields – John McRae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.


Oh, Canada – (John Robert Columbo)

Canada could have enjoyed:
English government,
French culture,
And American know-how.

Instead it ended up with:
English know-how,
French government,
And American culture.



How are the mighty fallen…
In the midst of the battle…

How are the mighty fallen…
And the weapons of war perished…

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David: Hero

This is was the 2nd of 9 weeks of sermons on the bible stories of David. I’m speaking 3 times on David’s Choices, then Ruth will speak about David’s Journey, Doug Whidden gives us relief on August 16, while I finish with 3 stories of David’s Foes and Flaws.

Last week, our worship committee confirmed that this emphasis on David comes from the revised common lectionary, as printed on page 1004 of our Voices United hymnbooks. We heard some appeal that we avoid the violent and barbaric texts and select ones conveying loving principles. I’m afraid these David & Goliath tales fail the test, and I resisted concluding the sermon with ‘the moral of the story is’ summaries.

As I said last week, tales about David, his predecessor Saul and successor Solomon, take up a big chunk of your bible – not to mention all the Psalms attributed to David as a musician and poet. 1,000 years before Jesus, David’s century marked a change from anarchy to centralized kingdom to division. Reflected upon through fall, exile and restoration, the stories give deep perspective on the nature human nature and leadership. All the Gospels tell you that ‘if you don’t know David, you don’t really know Jesus, yet’ – born in David’s city, of David’s line, Son of David.

I had just spent 3 days at a conference on ‘Rediscovering Calvin’, 500 years after the birth of the French reformer who led the Reformation movement in Geneva. John Calvin is crucial to our roots in the United Church, and the North American Protestant experience ever since the Puritans and Pilgrims, the Scots Presbyterians and Dutch Reformed folks who shaped us. One keynote speaker, Pulitzer prizewinning author Marilynne Robinson, whose novels Housekeeping and Gilead resonate with traditions from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter through Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, explored and challenged stereotypes of dour, repressed, dark Calvinism. Union Seminary president Serene Jones, spoke of “My Three Calvins”, that one man a source for Bush imperialist exceptionalism, left wing liberalism, and academic secular humanism.

These were my people: a couple hundred academics and pastors. I was at least as aware of how I fit and resisted those stereotyped identities as I was engaged doctrinal and dogmatic content at the conference. What a lot of doughy, pale, vague, tweedy, bearded men and earnest murmuring women! People with little fashion sense, overdue for haircuts, told me how and what to preach or teach, often by demonstrating how and what not to preach or teach. It was often dull and esoteric, with few shining role models. I left with early summer resolutions to lose some weight and get some sun, having seen the reflection of myself in my peers.

This was also Fathers’ Day Sunday. Those of us who were raised in the last century, by the men of the ‘Silent’ or ‘Civic’ generation of the Depression, WWII, and postwar prosperity, have particular role models and images of fathers: ‘Father Knows Best’. ‘Leave It To Beaver’, and ‘My Three Sons’. Many of you were those guys, sole breadwinners for nuclear families who provided homes and even cottages, education and support for your children. Thanks!

Our very nostalgia for those models of fatherhood suggests that we already know they are over. That version of patriarchy has passed. We are anxious about ourselves, our sons and grandsons as fathers – because they’re not the same. The models are less clear for my generation and the next, for being men or being fathers. Measured against our own fathers’ standards, we feel like failures more often than we feel righteous about rejecting the old models. Just as I was feeling how I fit and resisted stereotypes of academics and pastors at my conference, we all were feeling how we fit and resist the stereotypes of men and fathers, in our church, home, and community.

The Globe & Mail newspaper last Tuesday cited the Sunday Times of London, recognizing a new term, ‘mancession’. The term ‘mancession’ was coined to recognize that in the current recession, men’s jobs have been swept away faster than women’s. These papers report that 4 out of 5 jobs lost in the last 2 years had been held by men. The gender gap between unemployed men and women is the highest since the US started keeping statistics on unemployment in 1948. The Christian Science Monitor says this is the biggest shift in domestic roles since the depression and “if it weren’t so sad for families, this would be an incredible social experiment”.

Looking to the next generation of fathers, Dr Leonard Sax got a lot of press this winter on a local visit. I read his book Boys Adrift: Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men this week, and cited some of his diagnostic facts, if not his prescriptions:
• 1/3 of young men 22-34 are still living at home with parents, double the rate of 20 years ago, College enrolment is now 2 women for every man, from 50:50 in my day, 2 men for every woman in 1959, and over 70% male in postwar years,
• Diagnosis and prescription for ADHD (attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder) runs at 1in 3 white suburban boys, and lower for girls, less affluent, and non-Caucasian youth.
• Only 1 in 4 white boys in grade 12 with college educated parents can’t read at a standard proficiency level, compared with 1 out of 16 of their grade 12 female peers

During and after worship, many of you enthusiastically affirmed that these claims seemed plausible to you in our suburban middle class context. High school and college students in the congregation, of both genders, were not offended or surprised – though we did clarify that lacking high academic literacy and school motivation was not that same as lacking intelligence!

These were just reminders, as we gather on Fathers’ Day Sunday, about our nostalgia for the roles of males and fathers a generation ago, and about our anxiety for ourselves, for our children, and for our children’s children as males and fathers. We’re not a reactionary crowd seeking a return to unjust patriarchal privileges. (Some folks at lunch suggested that the ‘mancession’ might reflect that there were still too many men overpaid for their value to employers compared to underpaid women, and smart businesses were just completing corrections of old inequities.)

Nor are all these sociological phenomena utterly novel this year. In the Adventures of Huckelberry Finn, do you recall how Tom tried to impress Becky Sharp? The Sunday School offered tokens for every bible verse memorized. The person with the most tokens won a bible. Tom bargained for other people’s bible verse memorization tokens, and won the bible. The presenting adult invited Tom to show off his knowledge, asking him to name a couple of disciples. Tom replied, in his ignorance, “David and Goliath”?

I owed you a sermon on David and Goliath, not a collection of pop psychology panaceas. Plenty of people, in plenty of media, will offer you lots of ‘how to’ solutions. As we all reflected on masculinity and fatherhood, role models and anxieties, and I fretted about academics and pastors, and those role models and anxieties of mine, I proposed to simply retell the stories, and leave you to find yourself in the story, and reflect on how you might tell it differently than I do. My conference heard from Augustine (400CE) : ‘Preachers ought to leave difficult ideas to books’. We also heard from George Herbert (1650CE) : ‘Sermons are dangerous things… none goes out of Church as he came in, but either better, or worse’.

Last week I told how David was chosen, rather than making all the choices himself. Samuel set out to anoint Saul’s successor. Saul wasn’t ready to give up, but God had given up on Saul’s failure to follow through, and habit of creaming a bit off the top for his profit from Amalekites. Jesse the Bethlehemite paraded his sons for Samuel to anoint one: first Eliab, the big and buff eldest, then Shammah, Abinadab, and 4 more sons, his best and brightest. Samuel asked about the son Jesse didn’t talk about or show off. David, the youngest, the least and last, the youngest and most implausible or least likely to succeed, the part time musician, was not present. David was off at his McJob, doing lamb-care as sheep-nanny, security guard for the family flock, working in the unglamorous back office supply chain of the food industry, not even up front. That’s who Jesse saw, loved, and chose – as God sees, loves, and chooses.

Today, we heard parts of the story cycles related to David and Goliath. We heard a couple of clips or trailers, and I encouraged you to reread the whole thing, as if for the first time, this season. What we’re doing here is like the promotional website for a movie, which gives you teasers and tastes, but can’t replace the whole thing, which bears re-watching.

The first clip or trailer painted the picture of an impasse between Philistine and Israelite armies. On one mountain the Philistines camped. On the other were the Israelites. Between them lay the valley of Elah. Daily, the warriors would suit up, line up in the valley, stare each other down, and listen to the trash talk and taunts. Imagine the House of Commons, or the national anthems before a football or hockey game. Each team or party or army stands up for their people. Picture Goliath, 9 or 10 feet tall, draped in hundreds of pounds of brass armour, with lots of heavy weapons. Have you seen news coverage of the heavy equipment carried by Canadian or American soldiers these days in Afghanistan or Iraq? Here is the image of a champion, proxy for a whole army. He challenges Israel to provide a champion for sole combat. If Goliath wins, Israelites will serve Philistines. The Israelites listen to the bully for 40 days in a row – but they are all scared – and God knows none is equal to Goliath of Gath.

Things don’t change, do they? Combatants still line up in the Gaza strip, that coastal link between Egypt and Africa to the south, and Europe and Asia to the north. Young men stand up as warriors and champions, and they are scared, and they stand up for their people and nations, with the complicity of the rest of us. What’s at stake, and what’s at risk? I asked who noticed the 2007 movie ‘Valley of Elah’, and who recognized the reference to this bible story. I confessed that I had not either until recently. The movie is about a young American soldier back in Texas from Iraq, and his fate and unfinished business. Jason Patric is the heart-throb, Tommy Lee Jones his mother, with Susan Sarandon, Charlize Theron, and Josh Brolin playing roles written by Paul Haggis of London Ontario. We’re still sending young men to line up in the desert, along a line in the sand. It’s an old story, and an unfinished one.

Meanwhile, as Eliab, Shammah, and Abinadab are suiting up and lining up in the Valley of Elah every day, David’s back home doing his lamb-care, sheep nanny, security guard, food service and transportation McJob. His mother sends him to the front on an errand, to deliver a care package of food treats for his brothers, and for their officers. (It can’t hurt to have them onside!) David leaves the stuff at the Israelite mountain camp, and wanders up to the front, to experience the front line posturing and trash-talking for the first time. His brothers are mad, or embarrassed, but David is a cocky kid, who just gives Goliath as good as he gets. It’s a bit like a Bugs Bunny cartoon: ‘come back and fight like a man!’ says the pipsqueak to the giant.

We pretty much know the last scene. Saul gives David his own heavy suit of brass armour – but David can’t move, let alone fight in it. It’s a bit like a kid trying on a suit and tie for his first job, and feeling like an imposter, preferring business casual wear. David takes his slingshot, picks up 5 smooth stones form the wadi, and walks out to face the giant, the bully, the champion, Goliath. They exchange a bit more trash talk about whose body will feed the animals and birds – then David kills Goliath, improbably. Our lesson ended ‘and David did not have a sword.’

Lots of you, given a chance, identified with that moment of facing impossible odds alone, or at least like an imposter with too much expected of you. Some spoke of terminal illness, others of jobs in a failing economy. I have some empathy, as a United Church pastor through years of decline! I tried to lighten up for a moment with a chorus from the old ballad of “The Preacher and the Bear”, as the preacher is moved to pray:

O lord, you delivered Daniel from the lion’s den
Delivered Jonah from the belly of the whale and then
The Hebrew children from the fiery furnace
So the Good Book do declare
Now Lord, Lord, if you can’t help me
For goodness sake don’t you help that bear

I declined to finish with ‘the moral of the story is’, or some principle or ideal. You all know how to do that. David, the musician, the lamb-care sheep-nanny security guard food service transport worker, gets a new role as hero, improbable and against all odds. Is that a glorification of barbaric violent warfare or a satirical farce making fun of martial male pretensions? Can we be militant without being patronizing? Can we be masculine or paternal without being patriarchal and abusive? Heroic without war-mongering? How does it help us, to retell these stories, and re-imagine who we are and whose we are, and what we might do about it?

I was preoccupied today with being too doughy, pasty, and deadly boring, too much like my people the scholars and pastors, after a conference where the models were keynote women. Fathers’ Day made us a bit nostalgic for old models of masculinity and paternity, and anxious about current and emergent models. So we listened to a bible story about David and Goliath. How did I tell it, or you hear it, differently this time? How will you tell it and live it next time?

God knows what you made of it – or what God made of it for you. That’s no more or less my sole fault than my life can be credited to or blamed on my father alone. ‘Sermons are dangerous things… none goes out of Church as he came in, but either better, or worse’. How’d you do? Next week, give us another chance, on Pride Sunday, with bible stories of David and Jonathan, for David loved Jonathan, with a love that surpassed that of a woman. Don’t miss it!
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DAVID: CHOSEN

Text: 1 Samuel 16:1-16

This was the first of 9 weeks of David’s story. I’ll speak for 3 weeks on David’s Choices, then Ruth for 3 weeks on David’s Journey, then I’m back for 3 weeks of David’s Flaws and Foes. This is based on the revision to the common lectionary: Protestant churches like ours argued that we missed important stretches of the Hebrew scriptures in the old assigned lessons, and the ecumenical partners said ‘go ahead, take a run in the summer through some books’. Hence, last year we preached through Genesis, and this summer, through the David stories.

Why David? The history books, the ‘former prophets’ in the Nevi’im of Tanakh, Joshua & Judges, 1 & 2 Samuels, 1&2 Kings, as retold and extended in the wisdom writings, Kethuvim, are grouped together to make up at least 1/5 of our bible, not to mention the Psalms, attributed to David. In the second century after Jesus, despite Marcion, the church decided you could not understand Jesus if you didn’t know these stories. I think they were right.

Imagine: 1000 years before Jesus, in the course of a century, the loose tribal anarchy responding to external threats by ad hoc alliances under charismatic judges moved to a united monarchy, then in split into 2 kingdoms, north and south, Israel to fall 750 years before Jesus to the Assyrians, and Judah to fall 600 years before Jesus to the Babylonians. They came home and restored something over the 500 years before Jesus.

The evangelists who wrote the gospels said Jesus was born in David’s town, of David’s line, called him ‘Son of David’, and said Jesus taught and argued by appealing to David stories. David is the type and shape of ideal leadership: warrior, prophet, and king. David is the measure of all future leaders, not only Jesus. But if you don’t know Jesus, you don’t know Jesus yet!

There are several voices edited together in the history books. The people said they wanted to have a king like other nations. Prophets asked if they were sure, and warned them to be careful what they asked for, lest they get it. The prophets pointed out that being a nation with a king like the rest of the world would mean taxes and wars. But the people prevailed, and God told Samuel to anoint Saul, and in turn David, who was succeeded by Solomon.

We’ve been at this for about 3000 years, telling the stories of that key century, a millennium before Jesus: Samuel, Saul, David, Nathan, and Solomon. We retold the stories in disaster and success, in division and exile and restoration – and the stories got better. If you want to know about Jesus, and if you want to understand your own leaders and nations, you need to learn the stories of David. So that’s what we’re up to this summer – I hope you join us.

I’ve also been reading this week about preaching, according to a famous guy called Willimon. He says that in the last century, preachers speaking to mainline congregations tended to narrative and inductive preaching, telling our own stories, then bringing familiar scripture to bear on it. He says that now, too few folks know the basic stories, and we have to preach longer, and spell out the old stories before applying them to our lives. I’m sorry for being a 20th century guy – but I will try on this theory, and see how it works for you. I hope you’ll give it some time.

I did ask you if you watched reality TV: The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, Canada’s Next Prime Minister, America’s Next Top Model, Survivor… you seemed unanimous in denying you watched them, or at least that you liked them. But you knew how they work, like beauty pageants or social Darwinism: survival of the fittest, fastest, or most glib.

I also asked you about graduations form college in this season, or at least report cards from the academic year now ending, and stories of admission to new schools, or hiring to new jobs. You knew more about that, if only in terms of your grandchildren and neighbours, and acknowledged that it seems to be tough out there for young people today.

The popular culture myths of meritocracy are dear to us in the middling classes, even if we don’t like the TV show, and regret the pressure on our kids. Hard work and talent pays off in upward mobility, our civil religion, and the best and brightest prosper. That’s what the world keeps telling us, and we keep telling ourselves.

What about downward mobility? Is the world sometimes unfair? Falling from Grace – the experience of downward mobility I the American middle class, came out in 1988, written by Katherine Newman. She pointed out that 20% of Americans experience downward mobility, blaming business cycles, recessions, or deindustrialization and other restructuring. A generation later, we know she was right, as the middling class thins out, and middle management is flattened in the new global economy. Some folks never catch up again. Is all their fault?

We in the middling class cling to the myths of meritocracy, but we know the anxiety of change: we’re worried about our kids finding a place in a world with a few much richer and more much poorer. We asked to become ‘world class’, in a global economy. Our prophets warned us that the glory came with the pain, and told us to be careful what we prayed for.

So it’s no longer just hard work and loyalty and middle management and union jobs, that let a generation have one breadwinner with a home, family and a cottage. A service economy has lots of hi-tech skills jobs – and also a lot of McJobs flipping burgers for minimum wage. We’ve got to admit we’d rather our kids and grandkids had rare skills that let them be consultants for Ehealth Ontario – but that most us have kids falling on the other side of the fence.

We’ve had a great century of economic growth and success – if we can forget the horrors of world wars and nuclear threats. We in the middling classes have nearly been able to hold on to the myth of meritocracy in the face of anxiety, as the 2/3 world joined us here in the 1stworld. Each generation of immigrants grabs for the same middling class myths, and finds the same anxieties – and we all drive the kids to do what they can to come out on the safer side.

I’ve quoted my mentor Jack Shaver before here, from early 80’s:

In our zeal to be blameless, we destroy our kids

Will they really be safe if they get more tutoring, enrichment, opportunity and education? Do we really not care about the ones who don’t? Don’t we worry about the commonwealth? Can’t we let the next generation take the credit for their own successes, or responsibility for their own failures? Have we left the social safety net in shape for those who inevitably will not experience upward mobility and win the various Darwinian games of economics and politics?

Here’s our story told another way, in an ancient way: 1000 years before Jesus, in one century, a people moved from tribal anarchy, to kingship, union, division – and for the next centuries lived out conquest, exile, and restoration. We might have something to learn from ancient layers of review of those experiences. The key is to tell a story, and learn the characters.

The people wanted to be a nation like other nations, with a king like other kings. The prophets warned them that they might get what they asked for, with the taxes and conscription and wars that went with it, but the people prevailed. Samuel anointed Saul as king.

Saul blew it. He had a chance to trounce the Amalekite bullies once and for all for all. But Saul, whether as a wimp or an opportunist, prefers plunder, pillage, ransom, and booty. He tries to take a bit of profit on the war, keeping hostages like the king for ransom. Samuel calls him on it, and beheads the Amalekite king in front of him, his most valuable asset.

God says to Samuel: ‘How long will you mourn Saul? I’m done with him! Go anoint another!’ Samuel says ‘Saul will kill me for treason!; God says to use religion as a cover. Go to worship, and do your political anointing in the middle of it all. One of Jesse’s boys will be the new king – invite them all to come to worship, and I’ll point him out to you there.

Jesse presents Eliab, the eldest, the big buff guy most likely to win at reality TV. But God does not keep score by the world’s rules. Eliab is not his guy.

Jesse presents Abinadab, Shammah, and finally 7 sons in all, but none of them get the rose of ‘The Bachelorette’, and none is revealed as ‘Canada’s Next Prime Minister’

Samuel asks, ‘Are these all you boys, Jesse?’ Jesse admits that ‘well, there is the youngest, but he’s off working at his Mcjob in the service economy, keeping sheep’ Who figured he was relevant to the search for leadership and blessing? Samuel says nobody sits or eats till the boy comes – and when he does, sure enough, he’s the one, the future.

David did not choose. He was chosen. He did not love first, but he was loved first. God saw him, even when his father and brothers overlooked him. He had ‘ruddy cheeks and bright eyes’ – nobody knows what that means, but I’m guessing he was not melanin deficient like me. This is a tale of providence, not prudence, of fortune, not merit.

David was the underdog, the youngest, smallest, doing the most menial work. What does it mean for the faith? What does it mean for Jesus? What does it mean for you? Are we not still making Jesse’s errors, parading our big buff boys first? Are we judging as the world does?

We in the middling classes are always eager to tell the stories of ‘my son the doctor’, of our upwardly mobile minority. You have to listen harder to recognize who’s missing, the children who are David, off keeping the sheep, and not even invited to the anointing at worship. We celebrate our college kids – but what about our honorable young people who work and live out other stories, in other ways?

What about the kids with trades, and service jobs, and talents? What about those who survive the psychiatric, social service, special education, or criminal justice systems? What if we could see as God sees, and love as God loves, and choose as God chooses? Wouldn’t we celebrate our Davids, and invite them to the party along with our Eliabs and Abinadabs and Shammahs?

Church – our church – should be a place that tells a different story than the world does. We’re not all about reality TV and social Darwinism. We should be about seeing the David that the world overlooks, so those kids know themselves known. We should be about loving the Davids that are not big and buff – but have their own beauty and charm, so those kids knows themselves loved not despite, but because of who they are. We should be about choosing the Davids, and telling them the potential that we see in them, and anointing them our future leaders.

More folks than usual seemed to make sense of this sermon. Perhaps Willimon is right, and I have been preaching wrong. Perhaps you heard a better sermon than I preached. After all, you’re the crowd that serves breakfast at the local school every morning, runs Handicapable for developmentally disabled adults every Wednesday, and Camp Handi for 50 of that crowd in July. It turns out that we all see, and love, and choose our own Davids – but we weren’t sure that the church did, or that God did. Apparently that needs saying again.

After all, we’ve known this for millennia, a thousand years before Jesus. We always said that you can’t understand Jesus if you don’t know David. The gospel of grace says it’s not all about us, but about God: seeing how God sees, loving how God loves, choosing as God chooses. That’s what Hebrew scripture means about a chosen people – what Calvinists mean by election. In this is love – not that we loved God, but that God loved us. We don’t earn or deserve or merit love – have to learn how to live as if we were already loved. Apparently that needs saying too.

That was the 1st of 9 Sundays this summer retelling the stories of David. I hope you’ll join us in reading a bible – or Joseph Heller’s novel God Knows, or renting the Richard Gere movie - or just reading these notes as half a dozen are posted on this blog, and all are available at Thornhill church library in hard copy. If you don’t know David, you don’t really know Jesus yet – and you may not recognize what’s coming next! Next week, we’ll revisit David and Goliath – and I’ll talk about ‘David: Hero’, with lots of reliance on Thomas Carlyle’s Heroes and Hero Worship.

What word do you have for our hearts, O God
Give us ears to hear. Amen
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INCLUSIVE OR DIVERSE

Text: Acts 10:34-48

Now I see
That in every nation
Any person
Who reveres God
And does what is right
Is acceptable to God.

My summary of the opening line of Peter’s speech in Joppa, after his dream of eating non-kosher foods, and before he welcomed uncircumcised Gentiles as gifted by God, was the bare bones of the message today, repeated with much commentary, some of which follows in these notes. Some of you may have missed the old King James language of ‘God is no respecter of persons’ or ‘fear’ toward God. Me too, but the goal is to hear, and hear anew, not simply to echo others.

This was Victoria Day long weekend, marking the beginning of cottaging and gardening seasons for some, or house hunting or beer drinking seasons for others. The week before we filled the place for Mothers Day, baptisms, and Doug Whidden’s preaching. Next week well fill the place for youth confirmations, as 9 teens speak on what it means to them. This was a ‘low Sunday’, a pause between the two more popular services.

Victoria Day is ‘the Queen’s birthday’. It’s not Queen Elizabeth’s birthday – but Victoria’s. Queen Victoria was born May 24, 1819 – and we celebrate on the Monday which is May 24, or the Monday before May 24 of it’s a different day. We shoot off fireworks, and march about a bit – but not as much as we did when I was a child. The map on the Sunday School wall showed much of the globe in pink, as part of the British Commonwealth, Victoria’s Empire. Not now!

Victoria was not the king’s daughter. William had 10 illegitimate children, but no heir – hardly a scandal compared with King George before him. He waited to die until Victoria was 18, old enough to succeed him, in 1837. These were troubled times for a young queen. There was rebellion here in Upper Canada, with armed men marching past this church (our congregation took both sides). The Americans were independent, our war of 1812 a recent memory, the Fenians urging Irish independence, and Napoleonic wars a recent memory.

By the time Victoria died in 1901, things had changed a lot. She had presided over the growth of an global empire, as ‘Britannia ruled the waves’. This was not an English empire – the Irish and Scots had enmity for English rule – but a British one. Victoria pitched a big enough tent that people could speak in their own accents, wear their own kilts, and serve in the same causes. Ours was a colonial and Victorian church and nation, melding ‘the thistle, shamrock, rose entwine, the Maple Leaf forever’. We knew how hard it was to integrate such an alliance.

What would they make of us today, those Victorians, and the common identity we share, and our relationships to our neighbours? How would they hear the lesson today, and how will we hear the lesson in our day? What would it mean for us, or others, to ‘revere God and do what is right’?

I invited you all to reflect with a survey, ‘TUC & Me’, about your own practice of ‘revering God and doing what is right. There are hard copies available where you get these printed notes – or go to: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=bqcVnGIKVLhxn_2fAwq1u2Ew_3d_3d

What do we celebrate, and why, in a United Church on a Victoria Day weekend? This weekend, the Sinhalese government finished off the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. That ethnic and nationalist fight has been going on for decades, arising from the dismantling of the old British Empire, and in that case the Raj becoming India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka in 1948. Middle Eastern conflicts share similar roots in European colonial transitions after two world wars.

We have been a great Victorian, colonial, and modern church and nation. We now live in new globalization, post-colonial and post-modern context. I nearly preached all that theory, but caught myself, as I do now in these notes, to return to the bare bones of the message, and to start again to put some flesh on those bones:

Now I see
That in every nation
Any person
Who reveres God
And does what is right
Is acceptable to God.

Our denomination was conceived at the height of the late Victorian age. The 20th century belonged to Canada, and we would win the world for Christ in this generation. Missionary movements were thriving – the World Council of Churches is celebrating a famous conference 100 years ago this week – and our founders actually thought everybody would join us in time, and we would be a ‘truly national church’. We were WASPs, and we were the ideal norm. Anybody who revered God, and did what was right, our way, could join us!

There was much to celebrate in our WASP and Victorian synthesis. It worked to unite us across many divisions we had brought with us from the old countries of the British Isles and Europe. Don’t make light of the courage and compassion it took to bridge those immigrants’ grudges in the next generations of Canadian-born Protestants building a United Church. We could do with more of that spirit and more of those community development and civil society skills today.

Assimilation, of course, has a shadow side. Our religious mission was inextricable from colonial and industrial political and economic powers of the time. Some of those ‘assimilated’ were coerced into joining us. Worse, perhaps was our attitude to visible differences of race. Even J.S.Woodsworth, one of our clergy, founder of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, later the NDP, saint of the social welfare state and parliamentary democracy, who was the only MP to vote against Canada’s entry into the second world war, got it wrong. He wrote Strangers Within Our Gates about immigration, arguing that European newcomers could be assimilated and integrated in one generation as white English speakers. But that Asians or Africans should be excluded since their colour could not be assimilated as easily.

We were never simply stupid, or ignorant, bigots following racist tyrants, even in assimilation. We still operate from an assimilation model, especially in public schooling. But it has limits, and for a church, can have unholy alliances with political and economic power. We must do better.

‘Inclusiveness toward minorities’ was our basic paradigm shift from ‘assimilation’ through the 20th century. We were operating dozens of ‘ethnic’ United church congregations, with Italian, Japanese, Hungarian, Chinese, and other languages and cultural identifications. First nations congregations maintained identity with their communities despite our assimilation ideology. We also ran our share of ‘settlement houses’, social service agencies directed toward immigrants. Over 25 years ago at one of those places, I met my first Tamil refugee, and offered advocacy.

‘Inclusiveness toward minorities’, of course, has its own shadow side. I used the example of ‘inclusive language’ to illustrate the problem: how dare clergymen like me recognize women as a minority, or presume to be the gatekeepers to ‘include’ women in our language and leadership? ‘Inclusiveness’ still assumes a norm that makes a ‘minority’ deviant, and retains the power to tolerate generously, rather than welcoming and equal. Our early good work on gender, sexual orientation, and multiculturalism has been overtaken by cultural trends, and found wanting.

None Is Too Many, Irving Abella’s book on Canada’s rejection of Holocaust refugees through the 1930’s and 1940’s, is familiar to most of us. He documents our political and popular rejection of refugees, even when shiploads reached this side of the Atlantic and were refused safe harbour. He argues that the churches said nothing – while privately, Christians in power led the anti-Semitic policies and practices of exclusion. He illustrates the shadow side of our first model of assimilation. We share the shame of the truth that he reveals, and say together ‘never again’.

Less familiar to us is the story of our ‘inclusive toward minorities’ reaction to the Holocaust, and also to Japanese internship. How Silent Were the Churches? Canadian Protestantism and the Jewish Plight During the Nazi Era by Alan Davies and Judith Nevsky, reviews Abella’s claim and concedes his point that the churches were too silent. It’s not, however, that nothing was said, but that the weight of the words was contradicted by their number and our inaction.

Great preachers from big pulpits like Bathurst and Bloor in Toronto, or Westminster in Winnipeg, spoke in sermons and from podiums at rallies – and so did many less prominent leaders. But the number of words, and the absence of our membership at those rallies, spoke louder about how we weighted our tolerance and inclusiveness within our comfort zones. Jewish and Japanese folks knew that there were some ‘safe’ congregations, some clergy ‘allies’, and some generosity of spirit from many United Church pew-sitters. But not enough.

If assimilation and inclusiveness have been overtaken by a truly diverse context of globalized postcolonial and postmodern culture, economics and politics, what are we to say now? Our denomination offers the new language of ‘intercultural’ ministry in dialogue with others, assuming that ‘we’ have more to learn than to teach. Perhaps that will be our next paradigm – or perhaps remain too few words, given too little weight or popular action. How will our children be embarrassed or proud of the witness we make and teach to them and to others?

Now I see
That in every nation
Any person
Who reveres God
And does what is right
Is acceptable to God.

What would Peter say? What would young Victoria see? How can we sin boldly in our turn?

Peter starts by admitting he may have missed something before: ‘now I see’. Eureka, epiphany, aha, oops – say it however you will, we start with re-viewing our reality. I asked you all to move a couple of feet in worship this Sunday, to see how your perspective changed, getting out of your familiar pew and position. We don’t have to reject the old position entirely, to test it a bit. We all grew up with assumptions, and took positions, some of which have served us well, including those related to ‘assimilation’ and ‘inclusiveness toward minorities’. What’s next: ‘now I see’?

Peter recognizes that ‘in every nation’ – the Greek worth is ‘ethnoi’, the root of our term ‘ethnic’ – he can find people acceptable to God. (And if they are acceptable to God, he ruefully says later, who is he to reject them?) Since ‘nations’ in our day are often in tension with states and ethnicities, we need to tread carefully through the minefields, real and metaphorical, of postcolonial and postmodern conflicts. But we should expect to find in every nation, in any nation, in any community or ethnicity, people acceptable to God. We can’t demonize groups.

Peter says ‘any person who reveres God, and does what is right’ meets the standard of what is acceptable to God. Of course, none of us meets that standard – not even J.S.Woodsworth, or the preachers on the podiums after Kristallnacht in 1938 – but none can be denied trying. The question is not one of how we are the ideal norms and gatekeepers choose to assimilate others or tolerate them as minorities – but how we meet them as generously as God does, and how we apply the same standard to ourselves as to others. How do you revere God and do right?

The Acts of the Apostles is a great record of the earliest church, moving in one generation, from the death of Jesus to the death of Paul in Rome 30 years later, from a wee band of Galileans to a cosmopolitan interracial intercultural movement from Spain through Europe and Africa to north India. How The original leaders got past their own religious and cultural assumptions about how to revere God and do right, to learn from new partners in faith, is a model for us.

On this Victoria Day long weekend, we celebrate and confess our roots as a nation and as a church in a British imperial and colonial modern context, and wonder a bit what that might mean in a newly globalized, postcolonial and post-modern context. I just kept repeated the bare bones:

Now I see
That in every nation
Any person
Who reveres God
And does what is right
Is acceptable to God.

Then I sent you off to put some flesh on those bones, get your own skin in the game. How will you revere God and do what is right? What will you answer to the ‘TUC & Me’ survey? How will you do it better, next? Come back next week and listen closely to what 9 teenagers will say about what it means to them. Go on, it’s your job, not just mine: you may be the only gospel your neighbour reads this week, so write the vision, and make it plain, that she who runs may read it. Christ within you, the hope of glory to come, go into the world with a tender and a daring love, for the world is waiting. And whatever you do, do it in love, and in the name of God who first loved you. And as you go, be strong and of good courage, do not be afraid. For it is the Lord your God who goes with you, who will not fail you or forsake you. Amen.
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US & THEM

Text: Acts 8:26-40

Look – here is water!
What is to prevent me from being baptized?

I began speaking this Sunday by filling our baptism font with water, and repeating what the Ethiopian eunuch said to Philip in the lesson from Acts. What is it that prevents folks from joining, from beginning to belong, believe, and behave like members of our community of faith? Who’s the ‘us’ that makes it hard, or the ‘them’ that finds it hard?

You see, we were welcoming a new member, Paul, transferring from another United Church – having visited us regularly for at least a couple of years. His grandfather was a United Church minister, and his uncle, and he himself spent years as an elder and leader in his former congregation. We celebrated that he was ready to say ‘I do’ to the basic questions: do you want to be a member, do you believe, and do you promise?

However, I looked out at you all, and remembered that I had sent 42 letters to people who have been new participants among us in the past year, inviting them to join with Paul. Looking out, I recognized that half of us who gather and participate are not ‘members’, and that half of the ‘members’ continue to speak of the church as ‘them’ or ‘your church’. I wondered aloud what it was that made it hard for people to be ‘us’ and invite and welcome ‘them’, and what made it hard for people who self-identify as ‘them’ to join.

One clue to a hypothesis came from the cover of Macleans magazine this week, as I waved it at you all. What do Canadians think of religious people? What do Canadians think of Sikhs, Jews, or Muslims – as if those folks were not within the class ‘Canadian’? What do Canadians, baptized by Macleans rhetoric as ‘us’, think of ‘them’ Christians? How did it feel to be construed and defined as ‘them’: misogynist, violent, dangerous, non-Canadian religious fanatics?

Another clue to a hypothesis came from the faces in our crowd of fewer than 200 people. Why are we not looking more like our city, our workplaces, or the crowd on the bus? Why are we older and whiter? Why do we dress like we are richer? Given that there are 2 billion Christians in the world today, and the majority live south of the equator, and the biggest crowd is Roman Catholic, how come we act as if we were still representing the dominant religions of Europe and North America back in the mid-20th century?

Who is it easy for us to welcome here, and who finds it least hard to join? Paul, deeply rooted in our denomination, chooses to transfer. Others come from Jamaica, Trinidad, South Africa, or the Philippines, and find us familiar, more like church back home than the other available options. We are not all old, white, and 3rd generation Canadians – but that sure seems to be presented as our norm, to which the rest of us are exceptions.

We were once a proudly assimilationist movement. J.S. Woodsworth, Methodist minister and founder of the CCF now the NDP party, once wrote a book called Strangers Within Our Gates, arguing shamelessly in favour of racist policies preferring more easily assimilable Eastern Europeans rather than visible minorities. Shame.

We were more recently a proudly multicultural movement. Our church boasted numbers of Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Hungarian, and other congregations defined by common heritage. We gathered a number of them in the ‘Church of All Nations’ on Queen St in Toronto. As later generations assimilated, most of these congregations weakened, but some still carry on. Meanwhile, we promoted programmes of multiculturalism, and congregations with pluralities of Filipinos or West Indians, which I have served.

We are now invited to become an ‘intercultural’ church, expecting to be addressed by other cultures and ethnic groups as dialogue partners, not necessarily within the United Church, but more like an ecumenical and interfaith discourse among equal alternatives. Recent national staff and budget changes may not bode well for implementing this vision and strategy for seeking gender and racial justice in our church.

In this Easter season, 50 days from Easter Day to Pentecost, we are reading our way through Acts, as outlined on a flyer, in daily readings and reflections posted at www.hereticslikeus.com and recorded in mp3 format and burned on audio CDs, and in weekly study groups on Sundays, repeated Wednesdays. I’m trying to preach on some key texts and themes, and worship will reflect the lessons and imagery. Remember last week’s Earth Day and tax season reflection on ‘Mine & Ours’?

We’ve already discovered that early on the Christian commune experienced conflict when the Greek-speaking ‘Hellenist’ members thought that the Hebrew and Aramaic speaking traditionalists were favouring their widows over the Hellenists’ in the distribution to the needy. So, they chose 7 new ‘deacons’, all with good Greek names, to ‘wait on tables’ and help the needy among the community fairly.

Today’s lesson is a nugget launching the theme of including Gentiles, those of other nations (in Greek, the word is ‘ethne’). Stephen got in trouble for his work as a deacon, and had to defend himself to the institutional leaders of his own Jewish people, before he was stoned to death as a heretic. Now Philip, another of the 7 who simply signed up to do some practical service to widows, finds himself required to give an account of the hope that was in him – this time to a real ‘them’.

Many of you chuckled ruefully, recognizing your own experience of agreeing to some practical service, only to have the volunteer work raise questions and demand answers from you, without some ‘bible answer man’ at hand to handle the religious stuff. That was my first suggestion: that many of you whom I characterize as ‘us’, and assume to have the job of inviting and welcoming and including new participants and members, think you are like Philip. You signed up for the service of a good citizen, and do not feel equipped to act as an evangelist. So you are shy. Get over it. Get on the chariot.

The other character in this lesson is the Ethiopian eunuch. For a denomination with a fetish for a Sunday School strategy of building a church with young families, since the children are the church’s future, inviting a eunuch is not promising. No kids, and none expected. That’s really the case for most new participants here, eh? We’re not all nuclear families asking the church to help raise our young families – just some of us are.

Why a eunuch? Some men used to accept castration, giving up the hope of children of their own, in order to advance in civil service. This way they had no distracting loyalties to family, and did not pose a risk of nepotism, favouring their own children against their rulers’ children. I asked if you could imagine somebody giving up that much for economic and professional success – and lots of you nodded – especially women.

The man is from Ethiopia, far away in Africa, in a rich land, trading through the Mediterranean routes that passed through the Gaza plain between Egypt in the south, and Asia and Europe in the north and west. He’s riding a chariot – pretty much a personal stretch limo in our world, only for the rich and powerful. He’s educated, successful, foreign – and, of course, black. He’s reading Isaiah, has been on a pilgrimage to the temple in Jerusalem – sophisticated, informed, and curious.

I suggested that we miscontrue the process of evangelism not only when we think that Philip has to know it all, but also when we assume that the eunuch brings nothing to the encounter. I admit that most of ‘us’ feel ill-equipped to give verbal account of the hope that is in us. I admit that most of ‘them’ actually bring more knowledge, affluence and sophistication to the encounter than we recognize.

I keep reading and hearing about ‘seekers’ as if there were an eager curious crowd, credulous and ignorant, waiting to be filled with our religion. I haven’t met one yet. Folks that come to us already have a thing going with God and spirituality, at least as coherent as most of ‘us’. They’re just looking for a place and some company to share it and make more sense out of it than they can do alone, or away from their original roots.

So Philip gets on the chariot with the eunuch, and they get talking about Isaiah, and one of the ‘suffering servant songs’. The eunuch says ‘was the prophet talking about himself, or about somebody else’? What was Philip’s answer about how Jesus was a model of a person living out the role of a suffering servant, or how Stephen had more recently lived it out – or how we might be called to assume such a role ourselves? God knows – Acts does not tell us – and we are left with a bible study group, like ours. Who reads alone?

So I left it with you this day, the question about what it is that makes it hard for ‘us’ to invite and include new folks, and what it is that makes it hard for ‘them’ to become ‘us’. Once Philip and the eunuch risked encounter and conversation, it was easy – no rules by committees to approve membership, no creeds to believe, no required behaviours first:

Look – here is water!
What is to prevent me from being baptized?

God forbid that it’s me that prevents anybody from being baptized, from taking the next step. God forbid that people are scared of being judged by ‘Canadians’, and excluded from full citizenship because their faith is thought to be a priori violent or misogynist, or more so than our culture at large. God forbid that we appear racist, ethnocentric, and heterosexist, and do nothing to correct that appearance. God forbid that what prevents ‘them’ from joining ‘us’ is a lack of Philips like you taking the risk to do what you don’t yet feel equipped to do, getting beyond being helpful, to start offering an account for the hope that is within ‘us’. God forbid we don’t recognize all ‘they’ bring ‘us’.

We’re inviting folks to baptism on Mothers Day, May 11, when Doug Whidden speaks – a young father spoke up after the service this week, and said he’d like to talk about it. Several others of you said you hadn’t received one of the letters, but hadn’t joined, and might consider it. So – what are you going to do about it?

Gracious one, ever faithful, ever sure,
Persistent, patient, calling to us, waiting for us,
We’re back, calling on you now, waiting on you now.

Most of us deny that we are part of ‘us’ –
We speak of ‘their’ church or ‘your’ church –
Safely distancing ourselves from responsibility or complicity
Above it all, beyond it all, visiting like anthropologists
Or engaged as a perpetual service auxiliary, happy to help out –
But God forbid we should have to speak of ‘my’ faith, or ‘ours’
We feel like victims, excluded, ignored, forgotten –
Blame our distance on others’ failures to welcome and care for us
Absolving ourselves for our end of a dialogue never begun

Most of us feel like we are part of ‘them’ –
Too young or too old, to new to Thornhill –
Not part of a happy nuclear family,
Not third generation WASP protestants –
We have our doubts and uncertainties – not that we’ve worked at resolving them
We have our reservations about how much time and money we want to commit
We set standards for belonging, believing, behaving that are safely too high to reach
Though you never set them – though your church never met them
But we are safely separate from all that the media derides as ‘religion’

A few of us are almost ready to claim to be part of this ‘us’, and to act like it –
We are not prepared, but willing to risk beginning an invitation or welcome of another –
And pray for your presence and spirit to help us get on the chariot and start talking –

A few of us are almost ready to stop being only ‘them’,
To add this to the many identifications that together make up our identities
And pray that we can bring our whole selves to the dialogue, with all our gifts –

So we pray with an ancient Ethiopian eunuch: Look, here is water!
What is to prevent me from being baptized?
What indeed – what word to you have for our hearts O God, give us ears to hear. Amen

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MINE & OURS

Have you filed your tax return yet? Did you get your refund already? April 30 is the tax filing deadline. It’s not too hard for me to file a T4, and a few charitable and political receipts – then the government sends me a windfall. A lot of you were nodding, familiar with the annual ritual, though others after worship described more complex tax filing challenges, with balances owing.

I know too much about taxes, and even wrote a little book about taxes for the United Church a dozen years ago. The basic operating presumption of taxation is that my stuff is mine, and the government has to prove that any tax levied is justified. Mine. Not ours. The money to pay for health, education, social services, infrastructure, and or general commonwealth is assumed to be grudgingly paid by resistant people who prefer to keep it all for themselves.

There is a modest tax incentive encouraging people to give to charity. When I volunteer to pay some of my money to charities to share benefit and control as if that money were ours, I get a tax receipt, and a tax credit. In the 2007 tax year, Canadian tax filers reported donations of $8.6 billion dollars to charities, and got tax relief for doing so. After all, Canadians are good people, generous people, and not just selfish folks who can’t think beyond what’s mine, to what’s ours.

I tried some simple statistics to examine the charitable exception to the standing presumption of what’s mine is mine at tax time. About 1 in 4 tax filers report charitable donations. 3 out of 4 do not claim any charitable deductions. The median donation among that quarter of us who report, the level where half of us give more, and half of us give less, is $250. The average donation, taking the whole $8.6B and dividing it by the quarter of tax filers reporting gifts, is about $1,600.

How does this news from the Canada Revenue Agency relate to other surveys, in which 85% of Canadians assert that we give to charity? Sure, all those folks are buying chocolates from children to support school trips, or sponsoring a friend in a walkathon or a fun run for charity. Don’t we all? But that sort of giving is simply not large enough to bother with charitable receipts and claims. We convince ourselves that we are a generous people, and repeat that perception of ourselves as truth. Which is right: our opinions of ourselves, or our tax return?

Another popular claim is that nearly half of all giving goes to religious charities like this one. That is true, even if our share in the charitable sector is a bit smaller at 45% than it once was. However, an older study showed that of the donations going to non-religious charities, more than half was coming from donors who also gave to religious charities. You know that is true – your donations are not only to church. I expect typical United Church folks to give at least as much to non church charity as they do to church. We learned how here – but didn’t stop here, did we?


In 2007, about 350 of you gave about $420,000 to TUC. The median gift was even lower than the national tax-filing median, and the average gift was smaller. I said without fear of contradiction that the median giver kicks in about $20 a month, and average giver $100 a month to the church. Of course, most of the total comes from the minority of large givers – and less than $10,000 comes in loose cash on the plate from all of us.

Many tell me that you just give money on the plate, claiming moral superiority since you don’t ask for credit or recognition in a tax receipt – but it’s a lot like the 85% who say they give to charity, and just don’t tax file receipts. We also often hear that you give of your time and talent instead of your money, and buy things at sales and fundraisers instead of envelope or PAR gifts. Sociologist Reginald Bibby tested those theories for the United Church a few years ago, and reported instead that there is a tight correlation between active participation and generous giving – the same folks do both.

There is a gap here between rhetoric and reality, talking the talk and walking the walk. There is a lot of self-deception going on, and people sincerely feeling generous and charitable while acting selfish and greedy. I don’t think people are lying, as much as they are telling themselves what they want to be true, convincing themselves and then telling others to reinforce the illusion. It happens in the church – and it really happens in our culture. What do you think about these rates of charitable giving as reported by the Canada Revenue Agency: 1/4 of tax filers have charitable deductions, with a median claim of $250, and an average one of $1600, and while almost half of the gifts go to religious charities, half of the rest come from the religious donors.

What I was talking about this morning was ethics. People expect the language of ethics to be principles and ideals, and moral norms. Propositions about what is good, and ‘should’ statements of prescription and prohibition, are familiar elements of ethical talk. But if that’s the limit of our ethical discourse, all we’ve got is self-righteous moralistic talk. Who’s against motherhood? Who is not in favour of going green? We should recycle, and use less power, eh? How much should we give? What values should we hold?

What I wanted to focus on were two other elements of a sound ethical model: sources and practices. The distinctive contribution of the faith tends to be in these areas. The roots of our morality, and the voices we weigh most heavily, are our sources. The habits of action, the small disciplines and routines of living, are our practices. If principles and ideals, and moral norms, risk becoming rhetoric disconnected from reality, sources and practices ground us again.

So we began in this first week of Easter season to read our way through the Acts of the Apostles. Daily readings, available on audio CDs, with daily blog entries at www.hereticslikeus.com, and weekly study groups on Sunday and Wednesday, will continue until Pentecost, late in May. The Acts of the Apostles is our source. It’s not the ideas or ideals of the apostles, nor is the good intentions of the apostles. It’s the Acts of the Apostles. Their actions and behaviours, the way they walked the walk, may inform our own practices – beginning with daily attentions. Try it!

Now the whole group of those who believed
were of one heart and soul,
and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions,
but everything they owned was held in common.

What did you think of the early Christian commune? ‘From each according to his means, to each according to her needs’, eh? If our culture presumes what’s mine is mine, and only reluctantly surrenders some of our stuff to become ‘ours’, part of the commonwealth, this was the opposite. Cana you imagine a community of pooled resources, not in a monastic remote retreat, but in an open urban community? How long would that last? Read on in Acts, and find out.

Now Barnabas sold his field and gave all the proceeds to the common pot. He committed himself and his stuff completely, and he became one of the great leaders of the early church with Peter and Paul. But Ananias and Sapphira held some back – and each dropped dead. Folks were scared – who wouldn’t be? Peter saw right through them, and called them on their deceit. He said it was their choice to sell the land, and their money to choose what to do with the proceeds – but not right for them to lie, and act as if they were giving, when really they were holding back.

I hope that doesn’t need much more explanation. As Ron Sider titled a book 20 years ago, we are Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. We’ve got a lot of stuff, that we call ‘mine’. We’re not very good with the idea of ‘ours’, resisting taxation and grudging in our charity. We hold back big time, at the opposite end of the spectrum from that early Christian commune. I get to choose what to do with my stuff, and how to spend my money – and consumer marketing is eager to tell me how to get more ‘me’ stuff. We don’t often talk of this commonwealth of ‘us’.

John Chrysostom in the 4th century, wrote this:

Tell me, then, whence art thou rich? From whom didst thou receive it, and from whom he who transmitted it to thee? From his father and his grandfather. But canst thou, ascending through many generations, show the acquisition just? It cannot be. The root and origin of it must have been injustice. Why? Because God in the beginning made not one man rich and another poor… God left the earth free to all.

As the Marxists put it, ‘behind every great fortune is an equally great crime’. Aboriginal folks have something similar to say about where we got so much of our stuff. This is about reaching deeper into sources, weighing other voices, to balance the dominant ideals of success and progress and prosperity, the language of ‘mine’, with some reminders of ‘our’ commonwealth.

Augustine put it this way:

Greed is not something wrong with gold; the fault is in a man who perversely loves gold and for its sake abandons justice, which ought to be put beyond comparison above gold

We’re more familiar with Wesley’s sermon on ‘The Use of Money’, building on Augustine’s idea that money is not intrinsically good or bad, but that our use and attitudes may be:

1. Earn all you can
2. Save all you can
3. Give all you can

I’ve preached that before here, and will again. The Methodists who built this community over 200 years ago, and the Methodist Mafia who led Toronto’s industrial boom 100 years ago, could recite that with us. The Massey family did not just build farm tractors, but also, by saving, built banks, and by charity built colleges and social services. We remember the 3 part plan – it’s just that most of us never get past #1!

In our generation, our consumer choices have a global impact. The more we say ‘mine’, and deny others’ place and participation in ‘ours’, the worse it gets. I decided not to speak today about incremental choices of environmentally friendly ‘shoulds’, but to stick to these source and root issues of who we are and whose we are. You may think I was selling my product to pay my own bloated salary – but I think you get plenty of consumer marketing to balance my claim.

Have you filed your taxes yet? What does your tax return say about what you really believe about what’s ‘mine’ and what’s ‘ours’? How does it compare with the early Christian commune, and Barnabas or Annanias and Sapphira? How does it relate to our religious tradition of charity? What small first step or next step in practice will you take, to walk the walk less badly? What will your tax return look like next year?

God, creator, who brought order out of chaos
God, whose spirit moved over the face of the waters
God, whose word was from the beginning
Make some sense of it all, make some sense for us, with us now.

For we live in constant chaos, confusion rising around us
Too much data, overwhelming inputs, inviting, demanding -
Cacophony crashing our silences with noise and nonsense
Environmental and ecological harm done with our complicity

God, creator, bring order to our chaos again
Sort out what matters about us, for us, with us now
What’s mine, and what’s ours – and who is in the ‘us’
Give us a glimpse of the promise of your commonwealth
To help us see and hear and feel and act with truth and integrity
And then it turn to embody your gospel, citizens of your promised land
Walking the walk, trusting that in our daily practices, you will provide. Amen
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Who Did Mary See?

What most people remember from last Easter was that the new minister, in a white dress, ran up and down the centre aisle, making all the children look well-behaved, and revealing himself as sadly out of shape and out of breath. Not too many remember that I tried to connect that with the story of disciples running to and from the empty grave, and missing the main event of Jesus raised to life. This year, I ditched the robes, and stuck with the quieter story, up front.

I mused aloud about what people say they remember from worship, and from preaching. Many of you tell me you have counted the bricks on the front wall of the sanctuary – more are showing now that we replaced a big curtain and cross with the new window by Sarah Hall, featured on the cover of this month’s Canadian Roman Catholic missal. Others prefer to look up, and know how many laminate wood rafters rise above us, and how many boards run between each rafter.

Once you had remembered last year’s run, and refocused on the brick front wall, and then the rafters and ceiling boards, I quoted from John Ratey’s bestseller, A User’s Guide to the Brain, which popularizes current neurological understandings. Did you know that each time you refocused your field of vision, 126 million rods and cones in your eyes sent as many electrochemical messages through the lateral geniculate body, which relays electrical messages across synapses to various locations in your cortex? Imagine the complexity!

Ratey goes on to outline how beyond perception and sensory experience of eyes, ears, tongue, nose, or skin, the brain operates to make sense of data, in relation to our physical and social life. Our brains can change, and develop new pathways even when damaged. The truism Ratey often
cites is ‘use it or lose it’.

If once we construed seeing and thinking with mechanical engineers’ tiny models of the world inside our skulls, and language as referential reproduction of each thing in existence with a matching word, surely most of us are learning imagine software engineers’ operating systems of programs guiding flow and process as more plausible analogies to our own seeing and thinking. As the postmodernists put it, language is differential, not referential – compare and contrast, not match and replicate. We make sense by association, recognizing similarity and difference.

Semiotics is the study of signs and signification. Rather than metaphysical speculation about what happened to Jesus body, and what primary sensory empirical data reached the first witnesses, I invited you to some reflection on what signs people saw, and what sense they made of it all. As one recent commentary on John by Malina and Rohrbaugh puts it, our ‘objectivity’ in practice might be better described as ‘socially supported types of subjectivity’. What we see is shaped by our assumptions and expectations. I invited you to say aloud a term for part of the complex process of how we ‘see’, beyond sensory date: ‘semiotic awareness’. Say it with me!

Have you noticed that when you buy a new car, suddenly you see that kind of car everywhere? They were always there – but now you see them! Fashion follows a similar pattern – once you notice a trend, or adopt it, you see it everywhere. That’s semiotic awareness. Say it with me!

I confessed that when I was working with a congregation mostly Filipino, I started noticing folks I’d been oblivious to before, and when serving a congregation mostly of Caribbean background, I began to notice and expect to recognize another set of faces on the TTC. I noted that I rarely expect to recognize our church folks on the TTC – but that as I get older, I begin to fear strangers on the street, who will recognize what was always true, that I am unable to run or fight. These are all patterns of semiotic awareness – about myself and others. Who do you ‘see’ – or not see?

Ratey’s colleagues in neurology are learning the mechanisms of how we build neural pathways, using the same patterns of synapses until they are routine and nearly automatic. Riding a bicycle or playing a sport like curling can be routinized, and recovered even after a long break. Of course, as those who see me curl once a year, or roll out of the church on my bike, my lack of regular practice impairs my practice of those sports. Religious behaviour learned in childhood, but infrequently practiced, may be similar to my clumsy occasional curling and cycling – poor.

The Toronto Star today had an image of a Canadian Forces helicopter hovering over Somali pirates, showing the universal sign of a red octagon, meaning ‘stop’. Semiotic awareness may be nearly universal for something like a stop sign – but I note that there are exceptions. Driving in Thornhill, I believe that local signification of a red octagon is understood as ‘slow a bit’, or ‘merge with traffic at the corner’. What people see, and how they make sense of it, is contextual!

So, who did Mary see? John’s version of the gospel says that only Mary Magdalene showed up at the grave on Easter morning. The other gospels say that three women came, or two. John says it was Mary Magdalene – though it was the semiotic awareness of centuries of men who lumped the sign and signification of ‘Mary’ to either ‘virgin’ or ‘whore’, conflating gospel stories of several different women with or without the name of ‘Mary’ into one or two poor archetypes.

First, Mary sees nobody. What she sees is a stone rolled away. She sees that something is missing – or at least, not as she expected to find it. She makes sense of it by leaping to some associations: ‘they have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him’! She runs to get Peter and the disciple Jesus loved – who confirm that they see nothing in the tomb. She sees something is missing, or not as expected, and draws fearful conclusions.

Second, Mary sees two angels. What she sees are two figures in white at the head and foot of where the body had been, and cloths like those which had wrapped Jesus’ body. She sees that something is left. She makes sense to them of why she is crying: ‘they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him’. God knows, and hasn’t told me, what sensory empirical data her eyes might have received – but she’s still making sense, seeing the same thing.

Finally, Mary sees Jesus. But she doesn’t recognize him. She continues to see what she expects to see, in this case a gardener who is a grave robber. Expecting the worst, that’s what and who she sees. She does not recognize Jesus until he calls her by name, and she responds ‘Rabbi!’

Who did Mary see? Nobody? Two angels? Jesus? Set aside for this day the metaphysical speculation about what provided the sensory stimuli, and wonder with me about the semiotic awareness of a first witness to resurrection. What did she see was missing, or not as she expected to find it? What did she see that was white in the tomb, angels and cloths? What did she see that made her think ‘grave robbing gardener’? What kind of semiotic awareness, or defensive paranoia, is all that?

Who did Mary see? Who do you see? What signs do you perceive, and what signification do you associate with those sensations? How do you make sense of what’s missing, or not as you expected it? How do you make sense of the hints you find in the dark? Must it always be the investigative journalist’s conspiracy theory of ‘they’ having done something wrong, and ‘we’ being innocent and powerless? What makes you assume that the next person you meet is likely a grave robbing gardener? What kind of semiotic awareness is operating for you?

I used the benediction today ‘may you see the face of Christ in every one you meet – and may everyone you meet see the face of Christ in you’. How will you make sense of what you see, and how will you re-present yourself and God to your world? We can, perhaps, contribute to semiotic awareness, to how we ourselves, or at least our children, see our world, on this Easter Day and through this Easter season. I left you with Dorothy Law Nolte’s famous “Anthem”:

A child who lives with criticism
Learns to condemn
A child who lives with hostility
Learns to fight
A child who lives with ridicule
Learns to be shy
A child who lives with shame
Learns to feel guilty
A child who lives with tolerance
Learns to be patient
A child who lives with encouragement
Learns confidence
A child who lives with praise
Learns to appreciate
A child who lives with fairness
Learns justice
A child who lives with security
Learns faith
A child who lives with approval
Learns to like herself
A child who lives with acceptance & friendship
Learns to find love in the world




God of Easter
Light at the end of any tunnel
We’re looking back at our own tunnels
The ones that got us this far – to here and now
Show us again where we’ve come from –
How’d we do so far – and with whom?
Help us now to catch a glimpse of where we are at now
Help us now to recognize some of who’s here with us.
Remind us again who we are, and whose we are
Reorient us again, in the light of a new day
God, you know us all – so show us, now, and give us eyes to see

Some of us are regular visitors: regular, not frequent.
We’re spiritual, civil – not religious, or fanatic.
We visit this dead end to make sure the stone’s still there
The church we remember, the religion of our own nostalgia
The hopeless tragedy confirmed, sadly sentimental –
This whole meaning & purpose thing just the way we left it
When we decided we were above it all, and beyond it all…
God, you know it all – so show us again, now, and give us eyes to see

Some of us have been running hard to get this far
In ruts so deep they have become tunnels
God bless our busyness, that dares not pause lest we look and see
We don’t notice our frantic pace till we slow it down, and look around
That the paths we once chose freely are becoming traps
We are making great progress, fine time – but to what ends, in what directions?
We will race off from here and now to the next place or thing
As if we knew exactly what we were doing – why – how…
Unswerving & driven, in our politics, business or religion
God, you know it all – so slow us, and show us now, and give us eyes to see

Some of us feel a bit in the dark – here and elsewhere
As if other people were insiders in a conspiracy
As if we were left out, shut out, left stupidly disoriented
If there were some light at the end of the tunnel, we’d try not to see it
Fearing that we might freeze like deer in the headlights –
Feeling panic that the light might be a train coming to run us over
We could use a bit of light to our darkness – open truths, not dark secrets
God, you see it all – so show us, now, and open our hearts to see

God of Easter
Light at the end of any tunnel
As we return to your Easter promises
May we see the face of Christ in everyone we meet
And may everyone we meet see the face of Christ in us.
Amen
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