And Don't Forget To Pray
Sunday August 26th, 2012
Rev, Kathryn Ransdell
Enjoy this sermon in audio format.
Sunday 26 August 2012
Monday 20 August 2012
Are We Asking the Right Questions? August 19, 2012
"Are We Asking the Right Questions"
1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14
Rev. Kathryn Ransdell
Aug. 19, 2012
St. Andrew's-Wesley United Church
I want to begin my sermon today by acknowledging that in our presence this morning is the Moderator of The United Church of Canada, the Right Rev. Dr. Gary Paterson and his spouse, Rev. Tim Stevenson.
Moderator, to have you with us this morning is an honor. Rev. Gary, colleague, pastor and friend, we are crawling out of our skin with excitement for you and for the United Church. Gary, if it was intimidating to preach with you in the room before today, well, you've raised the bar once again.
The Old Testament lesson was assigned for today long before the Moderator election and long before our Rev. Gary went off to Israel and heard this crazy call of God to step out and do something outrageous. Why would a person put their name for Moderator when they have such a great church here in Vancouver, the 3rd most liveable city in the world? Why would you willingly apply for a job that moves you to Toronto? (I apologize to all Torontonians present today; I really hold nothing against a city I never visited it just fit the rhetoric.)
A lot of us here in this room today have a lot of questions. I'm guessing the Right Reverend Gary Paterson and his spouse Rev. Tim Stevenson have quite a few. But only 40 other people have walked the path they now walk so they don't have a large circle where they can ask questions and have them answered.
But those of us who will be left behind, so to speak, have questions. We have had moments of amazement, and quite honestly, moments of sadness the past 72 hours. When our Scripture text speaks of David sleeping with his ancestors (yes, one of those Scriptures that makes for great locker room humor), and when our Scripture speaks of Solomon taking the throne of his father, it implies that there were people who were in the kingdom, whose lives were affected by the changing of the guard.
Tim Scorer, who I often say to him that he has no idea who he is (because he walks alongside some of the greatest theologians and scholars of our day and translates their work for us common folk) worked with Walter Brueggemann for the publication of a study based on the work Embracing the Prophets. I like what Brueggemann has to say about today's text:
"We have some interpretive options with this text."
1. "-We can take the narrative at face value as is often done in the church, the story of a successful young king." If we take this story at face value, it is like a Hallmark made-for-tv movie starring Meredith Baxter Birney. And we can quickly draw out of this story a nice suggestion that goes something like this: May God bless the hearts of those who pray for money; aren't we grand that we pray for wisdom.
2. "We can take the whole as a belated fabrication that wants to legitimate a new mode of public power." If we understand this story as a redaction by the Deuteronomistic editors who went to work writing down Israel's story, then we can understand that they wanted to show a cause and effect...that IF you stay close to God and follow God's commandments and do what God says, then God will bless you, give you a long life, and make your evangelical, prosperity-gospel loving smile bright and shiny. Certainly, there is a sugar coating to today's story, in the same way that when someone dies the person automatically becomes a saint who never said or did one wrong thing by what you might hear at their funeral.
3. "We can read the text ironically so that the high sounds of modesty, steadfast love, wisdom, and discernment mock and contradict the actual performance of monarchy." And there's a bit of honesty to this interpretation. The lectionary actually calls for the extended text to be read: 1 Kings 2:10 - 3:14. The part that we left out today between the narration of David sleeping and Solomon asking for wisdom when he could have asked for the world, is a messy little story where Solomon kills no less than three people and banishes a fourth. And speaking of Solomon, history has given him the gift of being the one who was so wise. He is credited with writing a significant portion of the wisdom literature. The same evangelicals who would go for interpretation No. 1 will probably also gloss over the fact that he had 700 wives and 300 concubines.
Brueggemann summed his three interpretive options saying, "Either way, we now read the text in the midst of our own preoccupation with “our next leader." I had no idea that Walter Brueggemann considered himself a member of our congregation. Oh wait, he was speaking of the next leader as being either Obama or Romney.
We now read the text in the midst of our own preoccupation with questions like:
What will this church be like without Rev. Gary?
Will we survive the absence of this person for three years?
Will the person sitting next to me in the pew still like this church when the face up-front is different?
In response to Brueggemann's comments about reading this text while being preoccupied with who will be the next leader of the United States, another theologian (who also has no connection to our congregation but based on his words you would think he is pew 5, writes:
(Timothy F. Simpson, Political Theology, 2012.) "Thoughtfully presented, pastors can use this sermon to give their parishioners something bracing from this text that will help them, not to choose the right candidate, but to have the proper view of the one that they do choose, seeing him or her as a full person, in all dimensions, rather than with blinders, through the ever-present advertising filter."
What he is saying is that God works through any of us. Even those who don't get their act together, which is every single one of us. Every single person is in need of the grace of God and every single person receives that grace of God because we serve a God who gives grace first and asks questions later, questions like, "Do you know that you are a beloved child?" "Do you know that you have a call on your life that is more than you can imagine?" "Do you know that you are not alone, no matter how lonely this life might feel at this very moment?"
We will get some things wrong (hopefully not as wrong as killing 3 and banishing 1), and we will stray from the path. But that doesn't mean that at any single moment God is not there more willing to hear than we might be to pray. And at any moment, no matter who we are or where we've come from or what we've done or not done, God's ready to hear our prayer for wisdom and grant it.
It might be easy to ask the questions that lead to this idea of whether or not we can find the right person to replace Gary. Let's face it. You don't replace a Gary Paterson. If that were the case, God would have created two of him. We give thanks for who he has been to us and for us and with us the past years, who he will be for the United Church and still for us as he stays our Lead Minister, and who he will be with us in 3 years when his term concludes.
We pray for wisdom asking God to help us to ask the questions that lead to wisdom. We pray for the wisdom to ask the kinds of questions that will lead us to the kind of ministry the Moderator described the past 3 days.
May we ask questions that shape our identity to find the Christ within our walls.
May we ask questions that so shape us that we seek the Christ outside our walls.
May we ask questions that allow us to set aside our fears and open us to all that really exists, which is love. And if we can fill ourselves with that love, if we can practice that kind of love...you know that love....the kind that is patient, kind, gentle, not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude, the love that does not insist on its own way but rejoices in the truth....the kind of love that believes all things, bears all things, hopes all things endures all things...
If we focus on this love, our questions will assure our hearts and minds that Love never ends; that this church won't end--we may very well radically change, but that's because God is working amongst us friends, and not because Gary is gone.
And now, it is my great honor to introduce to you the Moderator of The United Church of Canada, the Right Reverend Dr. Gary Paterson.
Pastoral Prayer written and given by Caroline Penhale
Holy One,
We are so grateful for the work of the commissioners to the 41st General Council. We give thanks to You for all those who gathered and served so generously and well. We give thanks for their faithful public witness. in these next few weeks, we ask for moments of rest and renewal for each of them.
Gracious God: hear our prayer
We give thanks for the freedom to discern, debate in an effort to bring greater justice to the World. We pray that the decisions and statements made at General Council help contribute to Your peace and justice. As we live into the resolutions of this General Council, we pray for an extra measure of Grace in our relations with our Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters. Help us to contribute to the mending of the world.
Gracious God: hear our prayer
With give thanks for Gary, our pastor, and now the pastor to the national United Church. We are grateful, delighted and proud that he has faithfully answered your call and we ask for your blessing of wisdom, grace, and love to enfold Gary and his family as he lives out this call.
Gracious God: hear our prayer
Many, many people in this community prayed for Gary and his family, as he stood for election as Moderator. Gracious God, we give You thanks for answering our prayers. May this community continue to feel Your presence and turn to you in prayer as we discern the way forward and respond to your holy invitations.
Gracious God: hear our prayer
We give thanks for the way in which the entire staff of St. Andrew's Wesley have led and nurtured us through this process and will continue to lead and nurture this community in the days and months ahead. May the staff be held in your loving care and may we all know in our bones that all shall be well in Your abiding presence and love.
Gracious God: hear our prayer
We pray for those of us in need in some way this morning: either through mental of physical illness, through grief and loss or in facing some other challenge. We ask that you bring healing, comfort, and peace and resilience to each one. We thank you that you are always with us in times of sorrow and in time of joy and celebration. We are never alone.
Gracious God: hear our prayer
Please join me in a moment in silence to offer your own prayers of thanks and need.
and now will you pray with me the Lord's Prayer as printed in your bulletins.
Our Mother, Our Father…
Sunday 12 August 2012
Nobody Has it All Together, August 12, 2012
Nobody has it all together
Rev. Kathryn Ransdell
August 12, 2012
St. Andrew's-Wesley United Church, Vancouver, BC
Phyllis Tickle and others in the emergent church movement suggest that if the church is to transform itself it we must go back to experience first, belief second. Even Karen Armstrong discussed this when she visited Vancouver in March on her Compassion Tour: the early Christians had an experience of Jesus, or Spirit, or whatever you might want to name it, and that experience was so profound that it literally changed their outlook on this life and the way they participated in this life.
Their experience changed what they believed about this world. And, their experience changed the way they related in this world. Because the experience and the belief and the ways of being are connected, on purpose, by God, who likes to mix it up just a little bit. God didn't create it to be this way then leave us to our own devices. -- Goodness knows that we are not creatures of change. -- God then poured out grace on this world that produces a real change in those who open their hearts.
As we wade into this text from Ephesians, we might find that we have categorized this passage prematurely, calling it good advice. It is more than good advice, though. It's almost like the creation story in Genesis...take a little dust, then have God sneeze on it, and voila, you have humans. In some ways, this text is just as mythical...take a few actions, add God's grace, and voila, you have the building blocks for Christian community, not the kind we already know, but the kind that we ache to be, the kind that keeps our souls restless wanting something more, something deeper, something whole.
That's why we can't too quickly dismiss what Paul commands the community to do as advice, proverbs or suggestions. We can't dismiss them as easy or quaint or possible to learn, practice and master by spending 1.5 hours each week in church. In fact, you could say that there is a difference between the movement of Jesus and the Christianity of Paul: While Jesus was here, the people followed one person and listened to that person and deified that person. In the Christianity of Paul, that person is no longer with them so it becomes their experience of one another and their ability to live the way he taught them to live that mattered.
And it mattered because the day-to-day living of the Christian life is the experience of a miracle.
The day-to-day living of the Christian life is the experience of a miracle. Don't believe me? Then think of it this way, with all the ways we argue amongst ourselves, and all the ways we pick fights with those beyond ourselves, and all the ways we refuse to adapt so that the outsider feels welcome among us, it's nothing but short of a miracle that the church is still here.
The day-to-day living of the Christian life is the experience of a miracle for another reasons. If it were not, then all our moral choices and all our pursuit of holiness would be done in our own strength; it would signify our own merit and it would be about us and our ego. This is the constant slinky game we are in...when we are relying on our own strengths and when we are relying on God's grace to shape our way of being in this world.
So there are immense things at stake in the ordinary issues of truth-telling, and anger, and stealing which Paul deals with. Let's take a look at a few of them:
So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors,
for we are members of one another.
Be angry but do not sin;
do not let the sun go down on your anger,
and do not make room for the devil.
Paul tells us to speak the truth to our neighbors and then follows it with "Be angry but do not sin." I think we must be missing some punctuation from the original Greek as if Paul was a referee, "You, speak the truth," and, "you, be angry but do not sin."
Go deeper with me. To speak the truth to one another in love then we have to be with one another. We have to learn how to respect and care for one another. We have to love one another not just a little bit, but that we have so great of love that we are willing to lay down our lives for one another. If I'm coming to church and I don't even know your name, then that might be an indicator that the kind of community that Paul calls us to, the kind that speaks truth to one another, hasn't been built.
"Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil."
Paul is using two different Greek words, the first rightly translated: "Be angry." The second use, "do not let the sun go down on your wrath."
It may be stating the obvious, but I think it's worth saying that there are some basic teachings here:
1. There is a time to be angry. Christians aren't called to be nice all the time. We are called to be angry at systems of injustice and oppression. We are called to be angry when we see the symptoms of society's brokenness: hunger, poverty, homelessness. And there is a time to be angry as we live together as a community.
2. But be with your anger, don't put it on others. You can be angry, but don't cause brokenness in your anger, ie, write the letter but don't send it; scream at the wall, not in the phone; go for a long run and come home rather than running away.
3. The time to be angry is short. "Do not let the sun go down on your wrath." We have relegated this to proverb status dealing with relationships and making couples feel that they cannot go to bed angry with one another. And I've met people who have been married for 50+ years and they said, "The key to a happy marriage is not going to bed angry." There may be a day when I have enough maturity that this might be true, but some things don't get resolved in 3 hours. So for right now, I follow Psalm 4: " In your anger do not sin; when you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent. Offer right sacrifices and trust in the LORD."
4. There is not a time to hold a grudge. -- do not make room for the devil. If there is anything that can be more destructive to building Christian community is the practice of holding things against one another and not allowing all of us to be on a process of maturing, changing, growing, learning, failing, and getting up and trying again. God help us if the best we will ever be is the first day we ever walk into a Christian community.
The very meaning of being in a Christian community is that we change, we put off our false selves that hold on to being insecure, fearful and small and instead embrace the self as God sees us--beautiful, whole, people.
And sometimes we just misunderstand that the person beside us, in front of us, behind us, is a beautiful creation of God. We misunderstand their action, their motive, their body language. We misunderstand their intent.
I'm reading a beautiful book called "Dancing with a Ghost." It is the story of a crown prosecutor who applied his own cultural standards to the actions of those within the First Nations community and in so doing, he now knows he drew wrong conclusions. As his awareness of traditional Native teachings few, he found that areas of miscommunication went beyond the courtroom into society and causes cross-cultural misunderstanding and too quickly leads to ill-informed condemnation.
Perhaps you saw the Globe and Mail article about the First Nations community and Enbridge. Enbridge interpreted a symbolism of peace as a hostile act, and recorded it to be that way in their minutes.
The Christian experience is all about practicing what it means to put away all bitternness, all wrath, all anger and wrangling and slander. It doesn't mean we get it right, but it means we learn how to do this. We learn how to give up our ego, our need to be right, we give up our arrogance, we give up our need to be seen as if we have it all together.
Because in simple terms, "Nobody has got it all together."
And that's okay. Welcome to the church, where we are not saints, but sinners who keep on trying.
Paul's directions for his community were meant to be more than nice phrases meant for needlepoint pillows. His directions are nothing short of the experience of a miracle.
Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another,
as God in Christ has forgiven you.
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love,
as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us,
a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
I must admit, I am hungry for this kind of community.
This past week, a person who I have admired, came through Vancouver. She is an ordained Methodist minister and she was in what we call that "first group." She was part of the first group of women that sought ordination and fought that very hard path of acceptance. She is right to say that my generation had it easy, and yet, there is still very real gender biases today. She rose up the ranks of ministry, pastoring a large church in Dallas, until she took a significant life shift, became a spiritual director, moved to Austin, TX, reconnected with her passions and now serves an accepting, reconciling, artsy church in one of the few "blue" oasis-es in Texas.
I made a comment about the op-ed in the Globe and Mail about the collapse of the liberal United Church. In the back and forth, she said, "History might bear out that any attempt at being church in the 20th century was not sustainable."
And she might be right. Because we created a church that was about following a pastor and keeping up the appearance that we have it all together, rather than wrestling with the challenge of community, admitting that we are still in process in this thing called humanity, and experiencing the miracle that is life together. We might look successful in the short-term with buildings, and staff and large budgets, but if we do not have love--love for one another, love for the other, love for the unloveable, then we have nothing.
The experience of the kind of life that Paul describes is a miracle. When we experience this miracle, then, and only then, will we believe.
Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires (James 1:19-20).
Friday 10 August 2012
50 Shades of Grace, Aug 5, 2012
Ephesians 4:1-16
50 Shades of Grace
Rev. Kathryn Ransdell
Sunday August 5th, 2012
She lived most of her life sickly, until someone told
her about a man who could heal her.
After visiting him and finding herself healed of her ailments, she
became a believer in what he taught. It
came to be known as "New Thought" in the 1800s, and one of its basic
tenets is that illnesses could be caused by someone wishing ill on you,
literally. The sickly woman healed by
these teachings was named Mary Baker Eddy and she went on to found the
Christian Science movement, which in its 20th century rational thinking, has
tried its best to separate itself from those original writings.
New Thought taught a form of animal magnetism, which
has a deeper teaching that in essence, there is one energy, matter, substance,
that we are all apart of and unites us together....there is a connectivity
among us even when we don't name it.
I still get people who buy into some form of this
thinking, most likely because they have been brainwashed by a cult. I don't believe anyone has power over us...I
believe that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ Jesus, not height
nor depth nor angels nor principalities nor anything else can separate us from
the love of Christ.
Yet at different times in history Christians have
believed in a very strong inner power and external power. There is even a conspiracy theorist who is
Christian who believes that the ringing of the English bells to start the
Olympics was being used by Satan so that when the bell run, the powers of Satan
would be unleashed on this world. He
needed enough of his believers focusing together at the same time the bells
were ringing to create a spiritual wall to bind these forces. Seriously.
That's where I got the idea of asking all of us to
pray at 11 am for 31 days. Just
kidding.
There is nothing wacky or supernatural or abnormal
about asking this community to come together at a certain time to hold
spiritual space outside of the chronos of our day. Maybe it will call you into the present
moment; maybe it will call you into prayer for someone in our community; and
maybe it will be something that annoys you just enough to get an email each day
that you find your spirit opening despite yourself.
Pausing at the same time every day as an individual is
a personal spiritual discipline.
Pausing at the same time very day as a community is a
corporate spiritual discipline.
Both are a means of grace. Before we go there, let's take out and
examine what we mean by this 5-letter word "grace." It's a word thrown around by us insiders in
the church. Outside the church, most
people don't have a use for the word. So
what is our use for the word here on the inside?
Grace is more than a warm and fuzzy. Grace has to do with the connection between
us and God. God's grace is a living,
active force in this world and inside you and me. God's grace always starts with God
first. There is nothing that any of us
can do to either earn the love of God or lose the love of God. God constantly pours out grace upon grace,
and we meet God's presence through what we call the means of grace.
If grace doesn't feel deeper than a warm fuzzy, then
it's time to build your spiritual muscles.
The grace of God is also poured out when we are
focusing on other's needs, doing good works, visiting the sick, visiting the
imprisoned, feeding and clothing those in need, earning, saving and giving all
we can, seeking justice, focusing ourselves on society's needs.
Grace isn't just a generic catch-all kinda word. We are speaking about something specific what
we hold to be true. We are talking about a word that has power to
shape us, move us in new directions, change our hearts, and dare I say, change
our minds. Grace has the power to open
doors and unlock closets.
Grace starts with God but it doesn't happen without us
taking part, diving in, trusting, and opening ourselves.
So what exactly is the nature of grace?
1. Is grace imparted on our behalf or imputed
into us?
2. Does grace create a relative or real change?
The good news is: it's not an either/or. It's a both/and. Yes, grace is imparted on our behalf but it's
also imputed into us. It's in our
hearts. It's here. Grace is somehow mixed in with our cells, our
blood, our breath.
Grace creates a relative change. It might mean we go to church, who
knows. But grace also creates a very
real change in our lives. It's a very
real power that's quite different from mustering the energy to make it to
church for the start of worship.
As the remnant of liberal Protestant Christians, we
must constantly be asking ourselves where we have sanitized for the sake of
making it easier on us, privatized it for the sake of not offending or
ritualized because we just don't feel it in our hearts and souls anymore.
Which is why I totally understand Paul's plea in the
opening verses of chapter 4. Paul says,
"As someone who has given it all for this Jesus thing: my previous faith, my profession, my friends,
my family...I beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have
been called."
I beg you. Not
just inquire as to whether it is comfortable for you to possibly consider
living the life God has given you, but beg you. To the church at Corinth, Paul said, "We
have this treasure in clay jars so that we may know that this power comes not
from us but from God."
This treasure is your life. You have been given your life in this clay
jar. And this life is to be marked by humility,
gentleness, patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to
maintain the bond of unity.
Those words are so powerful that for some reason we
reigned them in and made them "nice
and polite" ways of being and put aside the radical notions of what it
means to live this way.
"For each of us is given grace according to the
measure of Christ's gift." I like
that I have this Scripture verse memorized.
I quote it quite often.
Especially in this unique time of life with the twins turning 2
tomorrow. Can you believe it? Those sweet little babies that once cooed
--they are still sweet, but let me tell you, they are monkeys. They are everywhere, into everything. So when I think I don't have enough in me, I
quote this verse. Now I'm probably
mis-applying it just a bit, but that's okay because it works for me. Remember, though, grace never stops with me,
the individual.
Our Christian belief is not supposed to stop with
making us feel good. Christian belief shapes
us from the inside out through the means of grace and makes us people who live
in this world as people defined by grace.
Each of us is given grace according to the measure of
Christ's gift. What does this mean? How do you measure Christ's gift?
Christ's
gift is unconditional and unlimited.
Unconditional and Unlimited and Accountable. We are to give grace as God has given to
us. Our souls need to give. We must
learn to love ourselves unconditionally so that we can love
unconditionally.
Let's go back to the Scripture: "The gifts he
gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some
pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for
building up the body of Christ. Paul
says these gifts have been given to us so that we are knit together as one body
until we reach maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.
The full stature of Christ...I like to think of this
as conscious living, as being woken up from all that has put our souls to
sleep, of being healed of all the wounds that keep us guarded and of being so
grounded in ourselves, in intention and in love, that our very living changes
this world.
Speaking of things that are changing some people's
words, have you heard about the series of books called "50 Shades of
Gray." The 3 books in the series
are No. 1, 2, and 3 on the NY Times Bestseller list, and have been so for 22
weeks running. I think it's surpassed
the Harry Potter series in its printing.
The book is creating a sexual revolution. Apparently women are finding renewed romantic
interets in the bedroom after reading this book. I was telling my husband about how this book
is the must-read for the summer and how it is affecting women afterwards. To be
blunt, one mommy-blogger said, "After finishing this book, you will
want to have sex with your husband. A
lot of it." There is even
discussion how at the end of this year and into the first quarter of next year,
there will be a Shades of Gray baby-boom.
The very next day, in wanting to help me keep up with what's trendy, he
downloaded all 3 books onto our iPad.
It's interesting that this series of books has been
able to take something very old, that's been around for a long, long, long
time, and make it new, and spicy, and exciting ... and for a lot of partners
out there, it's changing lives.
The church is an old institution. It's been around for a long time. And some want to pronounce that the church's
time has passed. But I believe that God
has not abandoned this world, that when we stick with practicing our means of
grace, we are downloading shades of grace, not just on ourselves, but on every
person we come in contact with. That
which has been around for a very, very, very long time becomes new again. Our hearts soften and our eyes begin to see
possibilities and our lives shift course.
Our hearts evolve and our souls awaken.
We tap into the kind of oneness that Paul describes, a
oneness that is not about exclusivity but about inclusivity...there is one, and
if there is just one, then that means you and I are somehow both part of the
one. And even that knowing, for me, is
grace.
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