Harvest's Sign

Joel 2:23-32

For people not tied to the land for their livelihood rain is so often taken for granted.  On the positive side, sometimes a rainy day is a welcome opportunity to stay inside and relax a bit, read a book and nap.  A brief shower on a hot day cools things off.  Other than that, rain’s a bummer.  It means you can’t go out and play.  It interrupts your plans.  It makes that trip to the grocery store all the more a chore.  It makes a camping trip an absolute nightmare.  Rain makes mud.  It ruins a parade. “Rain. Rain. Go away.  Come again some other day.” 

Every farmer knows the importance of rain.  Rain helps the crops grow and to produce their yield.  It keeps pastures providing grass for livestock.  Rain is so important that it can make you consider your relationship with God.  You can find yourself praying for more of it or praying for less of it.  It can make you wonder “Why God, what I have I done?” when just a couple of lines over, they get enough rain, but you’re corn looks like the runt of the liter for lack of it. 

When I was in seminary, I did a Summer Internship in a big country church in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.  One of the perks was that I got to live with a local farmer, Mc Sterrett.  He was a really good man, elder in the church, recently widowed. It was dry that summer and when it did rain it was spotty; a little here, a little there but never a good soaker everywhere.  The geography of Mc’s farm was such that you could stand on some of the hillsides and see a good distance up the valley.  From that vantage he could literally watch it rain on his neighbour’s farm while his looked like a dustbowl.  He would joke about that and say, “I must not be living right.”

In a society that is tied to agriculture the belief that having the right amount of rain is a blessing from God to his people is an obvious one, but a troublesome one.  In Deuteronomy 11:13-15 God makes the promise, “If you will only heed his every commandment that I am commanding you today—loving the Lord your God, and serving him with all your heart and with all your soul—then he will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the later rain, and you will gather in your grain, your wine, and your oil; and he will give grass in your fields for your livestock, and you will eat your fill.”  That’s a wonderful promise but what if you are faithful and yet there’s no rain.  Well, that’s the question Job asks and is a sermon for another day.

Though just a thought here; with the temperature of planet Earth rising, global weather patterns are changing.  Rainfall amounts, storm severity, and wildfires will be an issue.  Agriculture on planet earth in the next fifty years is going to be dramatically challenged by climate change and the change is happening faster than was predicted just ten years ago.  Maybe part of what it is to love and serve God is caring for his creation rather than dominating it for profit.  But, the later seems to be humanity’s track record and it’s gaining very fast on us.  Agriculture, food production, will likely be the canary in the coalmine of what’s coming.

This pending climate crisis puts me to mind of chapter one and the first half of chapter two of the Book of Joel.  God’s people as a whole had stopped keeping the way of God, so they became beschmitten with locusts, a plague of locusts and what the locusts didn’t devour their caterpillars did.  Drought also came upon the land and the people and the livestock starved.  Wildfires began to rage throughout the land.  God’s people were becoming a mockery among the nations for the way their God had let all hell break loose on them.  Joel, the prophet kept calling for God’s people to return God...and finally they did.  What’s more, if I’m reading 2:17-19 there seems to be a realization on God’s part that his letting his people suffer so was a bad witness to himself among the nations.  That also is a sermon for another day and I’m beginning to think that maybe a passage from the Book of Joel wasn’t a good choice for a day when we are gathered to say thanks to God for the harvest.

So, here we are.  Most of you are farmers and all the rest of us are tied to farming in one way or another if not in just the food we eat.  Farmers feed the world.  Here we are with most everything that’s going to be harvested now harvested, we are breathing a sigh of relief.  What God said through Joel to his people when he restored them after that locust plague disaster he says to us: “O children of Zion, be glad and rejoice in the Lord your God; for he has given the early rain for your vindication, he has poured down for you abundant rain, the early and the later rain, as before.”  Sing and dance in joy and rejoice in worship is a more accurate there.  Though we had our concerns as to whether this harvest would happen, it has. 

Joel speaks of early and later rain and he is referring to the autumn and spring rains in the Middle East and how they were abundantly just right back in Joel’s day when God restored his people.  We can rather tongue-in-cheek joke that the early rain in the spring this year for us was so abundant you almost couldn’t get on the land to get the crop in and then the later rain in late summer was so abundant you almost couldn’t get on the land to harvest the crops.  But the harvest is in – no locusts, no drought, no wildfire.  God has again been faithful and he has laid it upon our hearts to say thanks.

On a personal note, it gives me hope that there are still people of God among the people who produce the food that my family eats and whose generosity keeps a roof over our head.  It is Good (capital G good) to know that there are still people producing food who personally know for themselves that it is by God’s hand that we all are fed.  It is Good to know that there are people who know that farming is not simply a matter of higher crop yields and profit margins attained by genetically modified seeds, pesticides, and herbicides.  You love what you do.  You care about your land.  You care about livestock.  You care about your neighbours.  Every growing season is an exercise in faith.  Every seed is a mystery to be pondered in how one little seed can grow into a plant that feeds us and provides us with next year’s seed.  There’s the mystery of life in every calving and the mystery of sacrificial death when the stock truck pulls away headed for slaughter.  Every harvest is a sign of God’s love and faithfulness. 

Looking back at Joel again, that harvest was a sign of God’s presence among his people.  He writes: “You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, who has dealt wondrously with you.  And my people shall never again be put to shame.  You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I, the Lord, am your God and there is no other.”  Every harvest is a sign that God is with us.  God is with us.  Let us sing and dance with joy and give thanks.  Amen.

Continue On

2 Timothy 3:14-4:5

In 1967 a scientist by the name of G. R. Stephenson conducted a study on some rhesus monkeys that revealed a very human-like pattern of behaviour.  What exactly the experiment was is lost to time but the popularized version goes like this.  He put five monkeys in a cage, suspended a banana from the ceiling, and put some stairs under it.  Every time one of the monkeys tried to climb the stairs to get the banana all the monkeys were sprayed with very cold water.  The monkeys soon learned to leave the banana alone.  He then replaced one of the monkeys with one that hadn’t been sprayed.  It, of course, went for the banana and as soon as it attempted to climb the stairs the other monkeys attacked it.   It learned not to go for the banana but not why.  They then replaced a second monkey.  The same thing happened.  Surprisingly, the first “new guy” joined in on the attack not knowing why.  Stephenson did this until all five monkeys were replaced.  They all repeated the attack behaviour without knowing why.  Then, they introduced more new monkeys to the same result.  Without knowing why, the monkeys continued to prevent each other from taking the banana.

A young girl was helping her mother cook the Christmas ham.  They unpackaged the ham and the mother cut the ends off of it before putting it in the pan.  The young girl asked why she did that.  Her mother said, “That’s how my mother taught me to do it.”  When her grandmother arrived, the young girl asked her why they needed to trim the ends off the ham.  Her Grandmother said, “That’s the way my mother showed me to do it.”  Great-Grandmother arrives for Christmas dinner and the young girl, wanting to get to the root of the matter, asked her why she trimmed the ends off the ham.  Great-Grandmother says, “Oh, the pan I used was too small for a full size ham so I had to trim it down a bit.

Well, these two stories are popular among that group of people known as congregational redevelopment experts.  They are examples of that dreaded pattern of behaviour that congregations get into called, “The way we always done it.”  The experts seem to believe that the reason congregations haven’t been growing the last four decades is that they have gotten out of step with the culture around them and need to change.  So, they go to congregations and tell such stories.  Then, they predictably dish out the timeless definition of insanity: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and each time expecting a different result.  Then they predictably make the threat that if a congregation doesn’t change it will die.  Predictably, the congregations doesn’t change.

The redevelopment experts seem to think that calling a congregation insane and threatening them with death will spark a congregation to make some changes to adapt the world around them and thrive.  Oddly, I have noticed that it’s the congregational redevelopment experts who might be insane.  They seem to keep expecting different results as they continue to do and say the same things over and over to congregations who in the end just continue to do the things they’ve always done.  The most disillusioning field of ministry to be in today has to be congregational redevelopment.

Personally, I have been toying around in the field of congregational redevelopment for over 15 years with a doctorate and a couple of pieces of paper that say “Certified In” to back me up.  But, I guess in an effort to preserve my sanity, I have come to the conclusion that “doing things the way we’ve always done them” isn’t really a bad thing just so long as no one gets hurt.  If like monkeys we pound on people, especially new people, every time they want to try something new, then there is a problem.  But, if there are things we do and ways of doing things that have become part of who we are, then that’s who they are.  They are part of what makes us to be us. 

 What’s more, I think most new people coming into a congregation come expecting to learn our traditions and ways of doing things.  I didn’t marry into my wife’s family expecting them to do things the way I would do them.  It’s best to learn the way they do things.  It’s part of who they are.

The problem with people not coming to church isn’t that congregations keep doing the same things the same way they’ve always done them not understanding why.  The problem is that an institutional expression of faith is not something the culture we live in has a desire for and there’s nothing we can really do about that.  For the most part, congregations and the individual Christians who make them up by doing the things they’ve always done actually do a lot of good in their surrounding communities.

For example, you folks…Three years ago when Williamsford flooded this congregation put over $15,000 towards the cause of helping people rebuild and that’s not even counting how you as individuals helped your neighbours.  You pray for each other.  You check in on each other.  You’re there for each other through the good and the bad.  If there’s a death, you’re there with arms wide open to comfort.  The dinners you put on give the community an opportunity to come together that wouldn’t be available if you weren’t here.  This congregation and each of you are assets in this community in the name of Jesus.  If this is just doing what you’ve always done, then keep doing it.  Indeed, well done!

Paul wrote to Timothy here saying, “Continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it.”  Timothy apparently had a pretty good knowledge of the Old Testament and how it pointed to Jesus and his kingdom and particularly the way of unconditional, sacrificial love that Jesus commanded of his disciples.  Timothy had learned a lot in that respect.  Yet, book learning isn’t exactly the type of learning Paul is talking about here.  Rather, it’s the type of learning where someone takes you under their wing so you can learn what you need to learn by seeing it embodied in your mentor…and Scripture is helpful for that.  If I were to offer a translation of what Paul said here, it would say, “Continue on in the things that you learned through discipleship and to which you are observantly loyal, keeping in mind the character of person who discipled you.”

  What Timothy learned is the Way of Jesus.  He didn’t learn this by studying the Bible.  He learned it from his mother and some other Christian role models in the congregation he grew up in, and from Paul.  And so, Paul tells him to keep those people in mind meaning that by reflecting on their character and the Jesus way of life they modeled he would continue to grow in Christ himself and be able to teach and lead others in the Jesus way, equipping them for ministry…and of course Scripture (back then it was only the Old Testament) was helpful in that task. 

We live in a day when people “have turned from the truth and wander away to myths”.  This is a day in time when people more than ever need us to continue being and doing the things you’ve always done.  So, continue to be not just role models but Jesus models to your families and neighbours, always ready to give an account for the love that’s in you.  Don’t be afraid to say “My mother taught me to be like Jesus, so did my Sunday School teacher sixty years ago, so that’s why I do what I do.”  Moreover, don’t be afraid to invite people to church assuming that they won’t want to come. 

Churchgrowth.org conducted a poll as to why people start attending a church.  2% said it was advertising.  6% said a minister invited them.  Another 6% said it was because of an organized visitation program (They must have been JW’s).  The rest, a whopping 86%, said it was because a friend invited them.  A personal invitation from a respected friend goes a long way.

• So, continue on in doing the things you’ve always done.  Continue being disciples of Jesus in front of your families and your friends.  Keep inviting them to come.  We don’t know when the Spirit of God is going to again begin to get people to hunger for Jesus and Christian community.  But the day will come.  So, keep the light on.  Amen.

Remember Your Roots

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

It hasn’t been too long ago that people would have that great big family Bible prominently displayed somewhere in the house where everyone will see it. The great big family Bible was important as it was a symbolic way of keeping one’s family close to God.  It was also important for genealogical reason.  Usually in the front of those great big family Bibles was a place to record your family tree.  If it was passed down for several generations then the family history could be quite extensive.  Some great big family Bibles are priceless for that reason. Having the family tree in the great big family Bible makes us feel like our list of begets is included in biblical lists of begets, like we’re part of the story.

One thing that I think would be neat to do would be to get the whole family together and pull out the great big family Bible and get everybody to tell their memories of the people recorded there in the Family Tree.  And if you don’t have a family Bible, then pull out pictures and do the same, or just start making a family tree.  This would be a good thing to do once a year particularly at Thanksgiving.  It helps a family to remember who they are and from where they came.  I like the significance of the family tree in the family Bible because it directs us towards remembering who we are with respect to God, from where God has brought us, so that we can reflect on where we are now. 

It is good to share the stories of our families and ancestors and not just the good or the funny ones but also the stories that are sad and even hurtful.  It is also appropriate to ask have we done right by our ancestors and our God and just as important ask if our ancestors did right by us and by God.  I think this exercise in remembrance would be sobering and have the potential to be very healing.  You see, we are less apt to lie to ourselves and to one another and bear family grudges if we sit before God and tell our family stories and make our family confessions.  Moreover, it helps us to put our lives into God’s perspective.

The family story and the family confession before God and one another is what our reading here from Deuteronomy is all about.  It is a ritual of remembering that required the people of Israel to take the first fruits of the harvest before God once a year and in the process recite “The Family Story”.  The story begins with acknowledging that God had brought them to the land that God had promised to give to their ancestors.  God had been faithful to them.  It is a powerful thing to say, “I am where I am because God in his faithfulness has brought me here.”

Then the ritual called them to remember who their ancestors were.  Their forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were desert nomads.  This was a sobering thing to admit.  The land they settled was inhabited by city folk and settled farmers.  Admitting to being the descendants of nomads in that setting was admitting to the “civilized” that you were a child of a smelly, poor, unruly, wandering sheepherder.  Then they remembered that their wandering ancestors had “wandered” into Egypt where they became slaves - the grunt class, worse than nomads.  And, the story gets better.  They remembered their weakness and how their ancestors had cried out to their God because they were oppressed. 

Now here’s where the story gets wonderful.  The remembered how God had heard their cries and how it was by God’s hand and not their own that they were in this Beautiful Land.  Mercifully and miraculously God had heard the cry of their ancestors and by his mighty hand brought them out to a land flowing with milk and honey.  Then they offered their gifts and celebrated.  They were in no way a family of self-made Sinatra’s who did it their way. 

The ritual of remembering ended with the acknowledgment of one’s own faithful obedience in doing this one simple thing that God had asked them to do – bring a gift to God in thanksgiving and remember that God has made you who you are.  The intent behind this whole ritual of annual remembering was to keep the people of God grateful to God, thankful for all God had done for them even though they didn’t deserve it.

Well, back to this family Bible thing.  As I said early, Thanksgiving would be a good time to pull out that great big family Bible and go through the family tree in a way similar to this ritual of remembering.  And if you don’t have a great big family Bible with the family tree in it, just start remembering back as far as you can and do it this way.

First, remember your roots in an honest way.  Be honest about who your ancestors were.  As best as you can, remember their good qualities and their bad.  Then look at yourself to see how these qualities live on in you and if you’ve got some of their bad ask the Lord to help you remove it.

The second thing you’ll want to do is to admit that you are a slave in your spirit and cry out to God for help.  Be honest about the things that you are enslaved to in your spirit: things like thinking too poorly or to highly of yourself, like anger issues, lust, greed, serving self – all those things that you have wandered into that have left you powerless and ashamed.  Ask God to deliver you and remember this might mean you will have to follow God through a wilderness.  If you need to talk to someone about you problems do it. 

We must never be too proud to admit our weaknesses.  Pride and shame are taskmasters.  They are as powerful as Pharaoh and they will keep us from being the people Gods wants us to be.  But by the same power that he raised Jesus from the dead can and God will raise us from the death of our enslavements to new life in Christ.  Another thing to do along this same line is to acknowledge God’s deliverance.  If God has delivered you from some form of slavery acknowledge that God has answered your prayers, heard your cries for help and made you a better person.

Third, acknowledge how God has gifted you both materially and spiritually. The greatest gift God has to give us is his love which heals us of shame and guilt.  If we have tasted of God’s love then being loving and being forgiving to others is the greatest thank offering we can offer.  It is in essence returning to God the fruits of the Holy Spirit, the spirit of Jesus’ new life that is at work in us.

Fourth, acknowledge whether or not you’ve done what Jesus has asked you to do in the past year.  Jesus gave his disciples one commandment that we love one another as he has loved us.  Have you laid your life for your spouse, your family, your friends and loved them unselfishly?  Or have you continued in self-destructive and abusive ways?  Or have you just not cared?

So, this Thanksgiving as you gather as families take some time to remember who you are and from where God has brought you.  This exercise just might prove more beneficial than fighting about the next election.  Amen.

The Peace of Christ

John 20:19-23
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The people in my first church in West Virginia told stories of a local woman named Rita.  Rita lived with a mental illness and spent a good bit of her day sitting in front of the church on a bench smoking and talking to something.  Back when they used to leave the church doors unlocked for people to come in to sit and pray, Rita could sometimes be found in the church, smoking, and playing the piano.  Even Sunday morning it was not unusual for Rita to show up in the middle of the service to stand quietly in the back of the sanctuary and listen and smoke.  

One particular Sunday Rita came, late as usual.  Instead of standing in the back she started walking down the centre aisle.  As she went, she would tap someone on the shoulder and ask, “Is Jesus here?”  After receiving a rather helpless glance she would move on to another and again ask, “Is Jesus here?”  

“Is Jesus here?”  That is a very good question to ask a congregation on a Sunday morning.  How would you know?  What sort of indicators would you look for?  Jesus has promised that wherever two or three are gathered in his name that he would be in the midst of them.  Okay, but then how does one know?  Would we see something?  Would we feel something?  Would things happen?  How do we describe the presence of the Lord among his people on Sunday morning?

Well, in the Old Testament they spoke of God’s presence using the word Kabod which we translate as glory.  The word means weightiness but with respect to God it is how God makes his presence known; everything from specific acts to the cloud of his glory filling the temple, a cloud so heavy the priests couldn’t stand to do their work (1Kg. 8:11).  The Rabbis of early Judaism used the word Shekinah to speak of God’s presence with his people.  It means dwelling and this was their way of speaking about the Holy Spirit.  The Shekinah could be felt.  It was experienced as light, a felt light.  The nature of light is that light itself cannot be seen, but it makes things see-able.  When Jesus spoke of himself being present in the midst of two or more, he was indeed tapping into the rich tradition of the Rabbi’s and their experience of the Shekinah of God.

With that in mind; it’s Easter evening.  The disciples are in a locked room afraid for their lives and confused.  The tomb was empty and Mary Magdalene said she had seen Jesus alive.  Jesus appears and says “Peace to you”.  He shows them his new seal of identity, his scars.  They see it really is him, alive and really in their midst.  They rejoice.  What else could they do?

Then, Jesus again says, “Peace to you”.  But this time he adds that he is sending them with the same ministry and mission that the Father had sent him.  He then breathes on them.  “Receive the Holy Spirit,” he says.  He fills them with the new life of the Holy Spirit.  The Kabod, the Shekinah, the real presence of God is now upon them, in them, like the air we breathe.  Jesus then quantifies the mission they share with him – the ministry of reconciliation.  “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” 

To let you in on a little secret, what Jesus is doing here is making his followers to be God’s temple, God’s dwelling place on earth, and this has implications that shapes their purpose.  In the Old Testament, the Temple wasn’t the place where the Israelites “went to church”.  All the reasons you can think of for people going to church today had nothing to do with what the Temple was for in Ancient Israel.  Then, it was the place where sin was dealt with.  As God was present in the midst of his people and his people are his image, sin and its effects, which mar the image of God, had to be cleaned up so that God would remain among his people.  The Temple was the place this happened.

We have a very legalistic misunderstanding of sin that we inherited from medieval Christianity.  We think of sin as a list of moral things that God says “If you do these things, I’ll send you to Hell.”  You won’t find that kind of thinking anywhere in the Bible.  Sin is not a simple list of “Do not’s” that we constantly feel compelled to do.  Sin is a profound disease that we have that effects our relationships and our self’s.  Sin makes human community in the image of God impossible.  Sin is the way we self-interestedly break trust with each other and cause one another to hurt. Sin is a relational matter over and above being a behavioural problem. 

So, we as the Body of Christ, the Temple of the Living God, must be the place on Earth where sin is dealt with.  We can either be the place on Earth where people can heal from sin or we can be the place that begrudges people their sins and makes them believe they are unlovable even to God.  Throughout its history, the church has done a better job of the latter, than of the former.  We’ve more often judged and begrudged rather than brought reconciliation and healing to troubled, broken self’s in troubled, broken relationships. 

Well, back to the question of the day: how do we know if Jesus is here?  I have another story.  Not long after I arrived at my last church in Caledon, I decided I would try something new one Sunday morning, something that the ancient church used to do but back then they did it with a kiss – a holy kiss, a kiss of love, a kiss to symbolize the peace that arose from the presence of Christ Jesus in their midst.  Don’t assume things.  I did not ask them to kiss.  I asked them to turn to the people next them and greet them with the peace of Christ.

Usually, in larger churches who greet with the peace of Christ they just turn to the people around them and say, “They peace of Christ be with you” and the person would respond, “And also with you.”  But that morning at my church something wonderful happened.  A woman named Judy (I’ve changed her name) jumped up and went and greeted every single person there with the peace of Christ and it caused everybody to follow suit.  Everybody greeted everybody with the peace of Christ…and they did that nearly every Sunday for the next nearly ten years I was with them. 

When you ask people in small churches to greet each another, they will likely do it that way.  It’s like a rule of small group dynamics.  But this was different.  Judy was in her 60’s and was going through a bitter divorce.  She was profoundly hurting.  But that morning she welled up with joy.  The love, the fellowship that she had with her family in Christ there was her anchor.  At the time, that church numbered in the 30’s.  Nearly all of them had come from churches were they had had bad experiences.  The congregation had suffered the effects of a bully, particularly the leadership, a bully who drove their last minister away…and here they were moving forward again.  They were joyful that morning.  That spontaneous eruption of healing fellowship truly embodied Jesus and his peace.  He was there bringing healing.  The Kabod, the Shekinah glory of God shone forth among us that morning.

Greeting one another with the peace of Christ is an ancient practice of the church that they did in worship.  There are liturgies reaching back to the 500’s that have it in it.  They did it as an embodiment of what Jesus did that Easter evening.  Greeting one another with the peace of Christ is a real act of peace, of reconciliation, of hospitality; of saying he is here with the ministry and mission of healing forgiveness.  By this act we share in that ministry and mission. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus and the Father, is here and we must really respond.

Jesus is in our midst with healing forgiveness and he has empowered us to share in his ministry and mission of reconciliation by breathing the Holy Spirit into us…and, like it or not, this is why we greet one another with the peace of Christ.  Friends, please greet one another with the peace of Christ.  Amen.