Excelling In Generous Giving, Sunday October 28, 2012

"Excelling in Generous Giving:  The soul needs to create and give"

October 28, 2012

Rev. Kathryn Ransdell, writer, 

     with Lucy Baerg, Kendra Foster-Mitchell, Tim Scorer, speakers

Kendra:  There's some Sundays in the Christian year when a minister would not mind having laryngitis. 

Tim:  Just as there's some Sundays in the Christian year when a congregation would not mind if their minister had laryngitis. 

Kendra:  For Kathryn, having laryngitis on this particular Sunday of Stewardship is as frustrating as if she could not speak on All Saints, Christmas Eve, Good Friday, or Easter Sunday morning.  All of these are significant times when faith intersects the practical living of our days.   Today's text from Corinthians is one of Kathryn's favorites in terms of how it allows us to look into the lives of early Christians.

Tim:  Consider Macedonia.  A good guesstimate on the distance between Macedonia and Corinth is give or take 550 km.  It's a good 660 km between Vancouver and Nelson, just so we can locate ourselves.  One commentator describes Macedonia as a prosperous area, famous for timber and precious metals.  It was located on the plains of the gulf of Thessalonica and covered the great river valleys into the Balkan mountains. 

Kendra:  Paul was somewhere between Macedonia and Greece when Titus rejoins him, reporting to him of his experiences in the Corinthian churches.   This was the nature of Paul's letters.  He would start a house church, continue on his travels, then when hearing concerns after his apostles visited the churches, Paul wrote a personal letter to them.  Paul's letters most often were a response to a question or conflict within the house churches.  A thorough reading of the letters helps us to reconstruct the issue facing the house church that prompted the letter.  Paul was part-pastor and part-coach in his letters.  Paul's letters included prayers of thanksgiving, encouragement and doctrinal teaching.   In today's letter, Paul is following-up with the Corinthian churches on his teaching of giving to the church.  

Tim:  In Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, he gives directions on how to give according to what he taught the churches in Galatia:  "Now concerning the collection for the saints: you should follow the directions I gave to the churches of Galatia. On the first day of every week, each of you is to put aside and save whatever extra you earn, so that collections need not be taken when I come. And when I arrive, I will send any whom you approve with letters to take your gift to Jerusalem. If it seems advisable that I should go also, they will accompany me."

Kendra:  At this point, we need to remember the economic situation of the earliest Christians.  In the earliest of days, there were wealthy people in the churches, but the churches were still under extreme persecution by the Roman Empire.  There were also a great deal of poor people in the churches, including widows and children who lost husbands and fathers to the persecution.  It's important to remember that this was a time before the middle class, before RSPs and savings accounts.  Without generalizing or romanticizing, these are people who live hand to mouth in a bartering economy.  Very similar to the communities I work with in Ecuador (perhaps you want to make your own comparison here, Kendra.)

Tim:  Paul keeps it simple: Put whatever extra you earn aside.  But we have to remember that the money was going directly back into the Christian community.  Paul did not have the overhead of budgets and staff and printing and communications.  Whatever money was collected was redistributed to those according to need.  

Kendra:  Somewhere between that instruction and this letter, something happened among the Corinthian house churches that Paul needed to remind them on the practice of giving.  He tells them of the Macedonian people, who even while being persecutived, their joy + their poverty somehow created an overflow of generosity.  

Tim:  If that's not enough of an example, then Paul tells them to consider the sacrifice Jesus made for them.  We might call this a guilt-trip.  Paul calls it examples on how to be followers of The Way.  And if followers of The Way are to excel in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in eagerness and in love, they are also to excel in giving.  Giving is part of The Way.  At the very heart of all of this, is that each one of us makes a choice to fully give ourselves to faith, God, and this church.  When we fully give of ourselves in a friendship, marriage, relationship or vocation, we give not expecting a return.  We give because that is the nature of relationship...to outdo one another in love. 

Kendra:  Kathryn especially wants you to take note of verse 10.  Paul gives his opinion, the Greek word is pronounced "no-may."  His opinion is this:  It takes more than just beginning--you also need the desire to keep going.  Your readiness to desire something will get you started, but you have to keep desiring so that your abilities allows you to complete what you started.  

Tim:  This is good advice for any issue in life.  Here Paul applies it to giving.  For those in the early churches who heard the needs of the widows and orphans and the house churches and who were motivated to give, beginning is the first step, but then, you need desire and ability to bring something to completion.  There's something to having a practice in life of doing what you say, letting your yes be yes and your no be no. 

Kendra:  Specific to giving, Kathryn wants you to take note of verse 12.  If the eagerness to give is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has and not according to what one does not have.  We must take this verse and root it deeply in our 21st century selves, who so often think we have nothing to give.  Everyone has something to give.  And, every soul needs to give.  So don't get caught up in an internal self-critic about what you are able--or not able--to give to the church.  

Tim:  Remember, Paul said that giving is one way we excel in being followers of The Way.  Giving is a spiritual practice, just like praying, fasting, attending worship, visiting the sick or caring for the poor.  We are called to give our money and our time, and right now, Kathryn wants Lucy Baerg to share her story of how the Spirit moved in a coffee moment with Kathryn in early September.  

Kendra:  Returning to our text, the remaining verses of this passage deal with the very real nature of what giving meant in the early Christian church.  When they gave, it directly helped the situation of another Christian who had nothing.  Paul's house churches were an experiment in a redistribution of resources so that there was a fair balance between abundance and need.  So that one person did not have too much or another person have too little.  This is the kind of radical economic practice that is required in places of extreme poverty.  Either share or go hungry.  

Tim:  2,000 years later, when we give, we are giving to a local church that keeps a budget to keep a building properly maintained, a staff employed, programs running, missions operating.  But the heart of giving remains the same.   Kathryn's mantra is this:  The soul needs to give.  She holds this mantra because we are so heavily weighted down in a consumerist culture.  Our worldview is shaped to believe our telos for being is to consume.  We make a radical statement to culture when we deny consumerism and instead live fully as people who produce...produce, create, give...when we dig down deep within ourselves and ask what we can do for someone else rather than what I need to do for myself.  

Kendra:  Kathryn's example of this week...when she was on day 4 of the flu, she began to have a pity party.  God stopped her cold about 2 hours into the pity party with this command (she put it in quotes not because she was hearing voices from her fever, but it was a clear message from God: "Pray for those who are chronically ill."

Tim:  Kathryn wants you to know that she believes the people gathered as the congregation of St. Andrew's-Wesley at this point in history have been brought together for a reason.  What Christianity shall be in a post-Christendom world has not yet been revealed.  And it is part of this congregations work to find the Third way--the new way--of being church in society.  

Kendra:  Kathryn also wants you to know that she knows how wise and able you are in accomplishing what you want.  In the best possible way, the people in this congregation have a way of getting done what they want done.  

Tim:  So let's get done what God wants done.  Some nudge, invitation, program or feeling brought each one of us to this church.  Let's throw ourselves wide open to Spirit, hold nothing back, and wade into this thing called Christian community.  In some ways, our "internal chatters" about the yearly Stewardship campaign reveals something about our willingness to hold nothing back in our relationships with one another in this church.  What we say to ourselves when we are asked to give reveals something about the quality and depth of our relationships with one another. 

Kendra:  Kathryn wanted to end her sermon with the story she included in Gleanings two weeks ago, the one about the power of giving, the power of 57 cents and the impact that can be made when a church has a kingdom-of-God vision.   

Tim:  A first-hand account of it is in a sermon delivered December 1, 1912 by Russell H. Conwell, pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Philadelphia.  Rev. Conwell said the little girl's name was Hattie May Wiatt. She lived near a church where the Sunday School was very crowded and he told her that one day they would have buildings big enough to allow everyone to attend who wanted to.  

Later, Hattie May Wiatt became sick and died.  Rev. Conwell was asked to do the funeral and the girl's mother told him that Hattie May had been saving money to help build a bigger church and gave him the little purse in which she had saved 57 cents. 

Kendra:  Rev. Conwell had the 57 cents turned into 57 pennies, told the congregation the story of little Hattie May and sold the pennies for a return of about $250.  In addition, 54 of the original 57 pennies were returned to Rev. Conwell and he later put them up on display.   This was in 1886 when 57 cents was no small savings account for a little girl from a poor family.  

Tim:  Some of the members of the church formed what they called the Wiatt Mite Society which was dedicated to making Hattie May's 57 cents grow as much as possible and to buy the property for the Primary Department of the Sunday school. A house nearby was purchased with the $250 that Hattie May's 57 cents had produced and the rest is history. 

Kendra:  The first classes of Temple College, later Temple University, were held in that house. It was later sold to allow Temple College to move and the growth of Temple, along with the founding of the Good Samaritan Hospital (Now the Temple University Hospital) have been powerful testimonies to Hattie May Wiatt's dream. 

Tim:  Kathryn ends her sermon by saying, "Thank you" to the person who left the 57 pennies on her desk while she was in Rome, a reminder to her to keep God's vision ever before us, that united in the Spirit and empowered by our diversity, this congregation can keep its light shining as a beacon for hope, grace, acceptance and love.  We are called to be producers, creators, givers.  

Kendra:  May we cast off that which has divided us and may we embrace the call to be radical followers of The Way, excelling in faith, speech, knowledge, eagerness, love and giving.  Thanks be to God.  And may all God's people say, "Amen."    

How Much Is Enough? October 14, 2012

How Much is Enough? 

October 14, 2012  

Kathryn Anderson, Wilf Bean

Kathryn:

It is very good to be with you this morning, all the way from Nova Scotia. When Tim Scorer asked us to speak on the theme of “How Much is Enough”, we replied positively, thinking that the Sunday after Thanksgiving is indeed a good time to reflect on “how much is enough?” We will focus on the Proverbs verses. I will read them again now:

⁷ Two things I ask of you;
   do not deny them to me before I die:
⁸ Remove far from me falsehood and lying;
   give me neither poverty nor riches;
   feed me with the food that I need,
⁹ or I shall be full, and deny you,
   and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’
or I shall be poor, and steal,
   and profane the name of my God.

To be honest, I was not aware of this verse before this past month. Yet it is so succinct and clear. I am always stunned when I hear Scripture that speaks so directly and powerfully to our reality today. Clearly Hebrew society was struggling with what is enough, as we are today, although the stakes may be even higher today than in those days. The writer was challenging those who had begun to create a society where some had too little and some had too much, and reminding them that neither poverty nor an excess of material goods was a faithful response. This verse sums up the heart of Biblical teaching about wealth and poverty. Seek neither poverty nor wealth. Seek only enough for one’s needs. For if I am wealthy, I will feel full materially, yet I will deny the very heart of the universe, the Creator of Life and of love. Or if I am poor, I may be forced to steal, to act without integrity and harm others in order to obtain what I need, thus profaning the Creator and giver of life.

Although I have lived in Nova Scotia for the past 24 years, my awareness of the reality of wealth and poverty started here in Vancouver. I taught Sunday School to Intermediates at St. Andrew’s-Wesley while I was a Vancouver School of Theology student. In my early twenties I worked at First United Church, coordinating an inner-city summer day camp, as well as with the Strathcona Boys and Girls’ Club. It was in Strathcona that I began to reflect on poverty and wealth, and started to think that there just might be a connection between the poverty and vulnerability I was seeing all around me on the Downtown East Side and in the Raymur Housing Project and the wealth that I had grown up with, living in Kerrisdale. Both seemed to be accepted as normal. But since that time, neither wealth nor poverty have seemed normal or acceptable to me, perhaps especially because I was seeing the depths of poverty first-hand while at the same time coming to realize the radical nature of the Biblical challenge regarding “what is enough?”

Wilf:

Like the writer of Proverbs, our struggle with the moral question of “how much is enough” begins with the yearning to cut through the falsehood and lying all around us. Please, just tell us the truth of our situation, without spin, without manipulation! Particularly, can we break through the falsehood and lying which says that the more we consume, the better off we are. That happiness is always having more. That the only way forward is to exploit the planet more and more? That cutting back is the equivalent of returning to the middle ages.  Remove from us the falsehood and lying that tells us there are no limits to our material, economic, industrial growth, or to our right to exploit the planet, and each other.

 How do we work through to the deep inner core of truth that informs us how to live rightly?

The Proverbs writer goes on to say he or she wants enough so as not to live in poverty.  I think that is probably how most of us feel.  There is no joy, no spiritual gain in living in un-chosen poverty, and, I suspect, none of us wants to live in that condition. But how much do we need?

When asked how much is enough, perhaps many of us ironically feel like John D. Rockefeller.  Reportedly, when asked “how much is enough”, he quickly replied “just 10 percent more!”

Yet, we live on a finite planet. The United Nation tells us that at the present time we are using the carrying capacity of one and one-half planet earths and as our impact increases, our unsustainability becomes even greater.

We cannot all have 10 percent more.

On our planet, over half live in poverty, at least one of every five persons is severely malnourished, the rest of us live our lives in relative comfort. So in fact, many of us are already using way beyond our equitable share of the earth’s resources.

But the question of “how much is enough” is not just an individual question of how much each can use within the carrying capacity of the planet.

It is a question of who we are; what we seek, who we are as both material and spiritual beings.  What, for us makes us whole, feel satisfied in our own lives, what do we yearn for to give our lives deeper meaning -- and these are spiritual question. 

Sometimes we may feel this yearning to consume, conquer and exploit more, always 10% more, is deep within our genes as human beings. We are genetically wired to want more.  Well, I have good news. Throughout history there are many peoples on this earth, often indigenous or tribal peoples, who have lived within sustainable limits, and also found deep meaning in their lives. I know. I remember an example when I was in my early 20s and had just arrived, very fresh and naïve from the South, to live in a small inuit village in the Central Arctic.

I arrived in June and later that summer the annual barge arrived with the main supplies for the year. One young inuit hunter that I had come to know, had ordered and prepaid for a skidoo the winter before through the Hudson’s Bay company store, and a day or two after the barge left, he picked up his new skidoo from the manager. 

He asked if I wanted to come to see it.  I certainly did! Being who I was, in the south I had been strongly conditioned to see cars, motorcycles and other possessions as an important part of my identity. This sleek, shiny, powerful new skidoo really impressed me and as we talked, I shared my excitement over his wonderful new machine. 

I was surprised the next morning, however, when he came over and put the keys to the skidoo on my kitchen table. “It’s yours”, he said.  What?  I said, confused. “It’s yours” he repeated. “You obviously want it more than I do – it means more to you – so my wife and I talked it over and we think you should have it.”

I was totally unprepared for this, and don’t really recall how in my embarrassment, I somehow managed not to accept this free skidoo. But I do know that my whole understanding of the world was deeply challenged – by a people whose relationships with each other and with the land were far more important than private accumulation or ownership. Material possessions were important only for their capacity to contribute to the common good. An individual’s status was not at all from the material possessions one owned or acquired, but from their capacity to contribute to the well-being and sustainability of the whole community. 

My young, unschooled, inuit hunter friend knew much about the difference between needs and wants, and what is essential in life. I have since met many folk like him, in various parts of the world, and, without wanting to romanticize indigenous peoples, I know from these relations that people can truly live joyful and deeply meaningful lives without always needing 10% more!  Their lives are not lives of deprivation, but of a fullness that comes from knowing “How much is enough?”

Kathryn:

As I mentioned earlier, my journey of experiencing the reality of poverty, of not having enough for one’s needs and the needs of one’s family, began just a few blocks from here. However, that journey took another turn when I became involved with human rights solidarity with Guatemala in the mid-eighties. That journey also started in Vancouver when the World Council of Churches met here in 1983. I met refugees fleeing genocide in Guatemala. They changed my life. Some of them were dancers and singers. A few  months later they turned up in Montreal where I was living to share their story there. I met their friends, refugees in Montreal. I began to discover the reality of the worst genocide in the history of Latin America only a few hours to the South, yet a reality hidden from most Canadians. I joined their solidarity group and traveled in 1986 to Guatemala, to study Spanish and to learn more about the devastation that had caused them to come to Canada.

To put it simply, since that trip to Guatemala, there has not been a week go by when I do not at some point think about the question of “how much is enough?” for me personally, for Wilf and me as a couple, and for our world, so that no one has to live in destructive poverty and no one has excessive wealth. I know that nothing I have done in my life makes me more deserving and in fact I know that I am simply not capable of the hard work that many of them carry out day after day. Yet I have so much unmerited privilege. I am constantly tempted by our society to believe that my satisfaction, my joy will be in having more and more, and I start to want more, to purchase more, to think about, even obsess about, having more, forgetting that, as my Guatemalan friends remind me and what the Proverbs text teaches all of us, that we are filled as human beings, not by material goods but by opening ourselves to the love at the very heart of life, the love found in relationships with the Creator, with one another and with the natural world. I believe the call of my Guatemalan friends is that we take responsibility for the privilege we have. One aspect of taking responsibility is not to accumulate more and more, nor to feel guilty yet do nothing. Rather we are called to share the resources we do have, whether with the local church, the Mission and Service Fund of the United Church or those organizations to whom we feel drawn to share with.

Equally, perhaps even more so, the Guatemalan experience and the Proverbs writer challenges what is enough for us collectively and questions what is normally accepted here in Canada. Over time I have developed relationships with Mayan and Salvadoran community groups, including United Church and KAIROS partners resisting mining developments by Canadian companies. In one case, aboriginal indigenous communities were never properly informed about the arrival of a Canadian company, Glamis Gold, on their traditional lands, much less consulted or their consent sought for a huge open-pit gold mine.  A few years later, Goldcorp bought Glamis.  The lack of formal consultation and consent processes continues to this day, even as the mine expands in the Department of San Marcos and another mine is being developed along the Guatemala/ El Salvador border. 

You might ask why these groups do not want these mines, when ostensibly it will bring more material wealth to their communities. While gold earns enormous profits for Canadian companies and its shareholders, including the United Church Pension Plan, very little profit stays in Guatemala. Meanwhile communities experience negative health, environmental and social impacts and long-term risks related to the huge amount of water used, including the drying up water sources, and the presence of a gigantic leaching pond with potential long-term impacts of heavy metals seeping into the water system over generations. Already some arsenic is showing up in testing downstream from the plant.

Interestingly these communities of resistance are made up of people who are poor and who are still seeking to have enough for their needs. For example, they want to be paid just wages when they migrate to the South Coast to pick coffee. Yet more than anything else they do not want the land to be destroyed, the health of the people affected, their culture broken, all for gold, perhaps the greatest symbol of excessive wealth in our society, as gold mining is not necessary to meet our needs. There is enough gold already available today, without mining, to meet any of the medical and technical needs for gold. In fact most gold is mined simply for adornment and to be put into storage as gold bars. As Sister Maudilia Lopez, a member of the Sisters and Brothers of Mother Earth Committee of the Catholic Parish of San Miguel Ixtahuacan, where a Goldcorp mine is located, asked us this past Easter: “What is the difference between killing people with a gun in one second and killing people slowly, psychologically, physically, spiritually, killing all that makes for life in the culture of a people?” After much consideration, including more than a few sleepless nights, I have come to realize that we as Christians are being deeply challenged regarding our seeking of wealth at the expense of our poorer sisters and brothers and the land to which they are so deeply connected.

Wilf

As I mentioned, one of the most formative times of my life was the ten years I spent working in Canada’s North. In the 1970s, in addition to several years in the Arctic, I worked with the Dene Nation, the First Nations peoples along the MacKenzie River through the period of an inquiry into a proposal to build an Arctic Gas Pipeline down the MacKenzie River Valley. 

Justice Thomas Berger held hearings in every community affected by the proposed pipeline. I attended many all day and almost all night hearings in small settlements along the river as the Dene spoke of their love of the land, their way of life, their concern that what was being proposed as “development” was not in fact going to benefit them. And I recall many non-native Northerners who agreed that there should be limits to this kind of “industrial development”. 

It was a time of speaking truth to power and slowly it became clear to almost all, that the impact of such a large mega-project would be destructive of both the land and the people at that time. It was a time when, as a society we began to hold a public dialogue about “What is enough?” Almost everyone in the North participated, as well as many from the South, including a strong church coalition known as “Project North”.  The inquiry remains to me a proof that we do know how to hold large, public, participatory, democratic discussions about “what is enough”, if we have the will to do so.

As you may know, supported by the strong voice of the First Nations Dene People, Justice Berger courageously ruled that there be a ten-year moratorium before any pipeline could be built.

In working with the Dene, I was profoundly challenged, both personally and spiritually. I became aware of a different understanding of what my life was about, of what is enough, of what it means to live well between poverty and riches. I came to recognize that the Dene concern for their land went far beyond financial concerns. That the vision of industrialized, resource exploitation called “development” was only one possibility – that there was in fact another vision which the Dene had for themselves in which development meant people would be renewed and transformed, their communities would become stronger, based on their culture and traditions, so that all may live sustainably within the northern web of life.

Finally, the writer in Proverbs asks what we would all ask “Feed me with the food that I need”

On this journey of seeking neither poverty nor excessive riches, how do we find the “food that we need?”

Josefina Martinez is a Guatemalan friend of ours. In her long life she has experienced the violence of the 1980s and later lost her husband to military repression. One morning, I woke up early and together we stood in a humble yard, amidst the tragic beauty of Guatemala, looking over a misty valley towards a volcano over which the morning sun was beginning to appear.  Almost to herself as much as to me, as the first rays of the sun glistened over the side of the volcano she whispered in Spanish “Every time I see the sun rise, I know we are a people who are blessed.”

I have not forgotten that experience.

Feed me with the food that I need! As we seek the food we need, we may realize that indeed, in many ways we have enough already, we as humans, are already blessed; what we do need more of is not material stuff, not more things, not more wealth, but the loving friends who help us become more fully human, who help us recognize we are connected to the greater Spirit of all Life. Perhaps what we do need more of is a vision of a world that lives in peace, justice and sustainability, a vision that invites us to become engaged in living this vision in our daily lives.

And so, in the end, How Much is Enough?

Perhaps ultimately this is a question to be lived out in our lives, a question to be answered not with words but with our actions and choices. A question to be lived recognizing that it is both an ancient question asked by Hebrew people many centuries ago, and also, for us, a question of critical urgency for our times.

May we carry with us the wisdom of the writer of Proverbs:

Remove far from me falsehood and lying;
   give me neither poverty nor riches;
  but feed me with the food that I need.

Who Loves You?, October 7, 2012

THANKSGIVING SUNDAY,OCTOBER 7,2012

"WHO LOVES YOU ?"

Genesis 3:1-13; psalm 139; Matthew 6:25-33

Minister Emeritus, The Rev. Tom Miles

A couple with a teen-age daughter pleaded with her to come to church.
"Dear,it's Thanksgiving.please come", they asked. 
"NO', she replied. And plaintively,they asked
"But why?" 
"Because the minister's a dork and his sermons give me a migraine."
We all have our faults and the world holds several of our critics. 'Creation' was September's theme and Kathryn has provided thoughtful and moving sermons. I'm going to extend that theme a further week. I'd like to explore the final act of creation just before God pronounced "All was Good".
That final act in Genesis was the creation of human beings. "God created human beings, in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female. And God blessed them." The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden has come to us from thousands of years ago. Long remembered and told and re-told through generations.
Some take the Bible as the living word of God, not to be questioned. They accept it as written.

Others have wondered - was this to be taken as actual fact - or is the story a brilliant, profound parable about human beings, and a very personal story of life's journey for each of us? We know good and bad.We encounter temptation and challenge. We know about goodness and achievement and we know about failure and the sense of shame and guilt. As scientific thought spread in the 17th century, there were debates that emerged about creation. Did it all happen in 6 days? How was that possible? And how long ago did it happen? Some Christians took this as an attack on the faith and the Bible.
So, in the 17th century, a very respected Bishop in the church of England set out to find the date of creation. Studying history, the Bible, astrology and methods of dating, he announced creation occurred on: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 4004 BC.
Day after tomorrow, Tues. ,Oct.8, then will be, when you add 2012 AD to 4004 BC, the 6016th Birthday of Bishop Ussher's creation date, adopted in 1703 by the Church of England.
175 years after Bishop Ussher's death, a 22-year-old Englishman named Charles Darwin signed on to a scientific expedition. It was a 5-year contract to study in the remote, isolated Galapagos Islands.

There were 13 islands located 500 miles off the coast of Equador and 1000 miles from Panama. The islands were known for their huge tortoises ('tortoise' in Spanish is 'Galapagos').
Darwin studied the vegetation and creatures on these islands. Birds, particularly of the Finch family, varied between the different islands. Although of the same family,their size, the shape of their beaks,differed somewhat from island to island. Twenty years later, Darwin produced 'The origin of the species'(1856).
He came to believe that Nature provides a way for living beings to adapt to their environment.
To some christians, this again attacked the Bible, God's Holy word, which plainly stated everything was created and completed. It created heated public debates and angry dispute among christians.
The differences continue today between 'Creationists' and 'Evolutionists'. Some believe scientific Atheists are attacking the faith of True Believers accompanied by cartoons of scientists evolving from apes. No one has asked the apes if they feel insulted.

Let pause from history for a minute.
The Garden of Eden is a story about two human beings who made a big mistake. They did what they had been asked not to do. It got them in trouble - with God and with each other. There is no one here who hasn't disobeyed someone important to them. when caught,the first reaction is to hide and to see how to lessen the blame. What's the best way to prove "IT'S NOT MY FAULT?" Blame someone else.
That may be your older brother or sister, but a friend will do. Psychologists tell us our character is formed by
our morals, ethics and beliefs. We need to be free to make our choices in order to develop into maturity.
Without that freedom, we would be persons without choice. We would be like robots whom others may control by their presence, or by their authority or by our shrinking from decisions and asking them to tell us what to do. 
Is God free to act, choose, change? 
Of course. 
Are we also free to act,choose and change too?

If so, we're beyond blaming Adam and Eve for all the sins of the world. we're responsible for who we are.
We're responsible for our good decisions and our bad decisions.
Our choices are not the fault of parents or partners or children. This is not to suggest we're not influenced by others. But it is to say you may become the kind of person God invites you to be. The poorest person may be kind and the richest person may be compassionate. Until we accept that truth, we'll be stuck where we are forever.
There is one other challenge freedom brings which Adam and Eve show us. 
Martin Luther wrote: 
"YOU can no more control the thoughts of your mind than you can control the birds that fly over your head. But you can prevent the birds from building nests in your hair."

There is a Greek Orthodox Monastery on Greece's Mount Athos. Female persons are banned from its lands and buildings. In the 14th century, a local ruler begged that his wife be allowed to stay there
to save her from a plague that was sweeping through the villages. Reluctantly, permission was given but with conditions: she was to remain indoors confined to a room designated, and if she needed fresh air, she could be taken on the grounds in a covered basket, hidden from sight, on a carriage - but her feet were never to touch the sacred grounds of the monastery. Nevertheless, the knowledge of the lady's presence was said to have disrupted the spiritual lives of the monks.
Eve has left her sisters with one heavy burden to bear. As a source of temptation, Adam is lured into her wicked and disobedient ways and he accuses God of being responsible.
"The woman whom you gave me, she gave me the fruit of the tree." 'Not my fault !'
And Eve said: 
"The serpent tricked me." Not my fault! 

Imagine if Adam was the one was the one who had taken the apple. How would that have changed how
we understood the story? Would we brush it off or would we send him to Guantanamo Bay for re-education while we said "oh,poor Eve.I knew he wasn't be right for her."

The point is both disobeyed, both tried to hide from God because of their fear and guilt; Adam blamed Eve and God for his disobedience while Eve blamed the serpent for enticing her by saying the apple would make her as wise as God.

Women have not had a role in public leadership in the church until the past century. At present, over half the ministers in the over 150 pastoral charges in BC conference are women. 
In Kathryn and Jennifer, you have 2 of the best to join Gary, one of the best male ministers. There are also a host of  committed, capable volunteer women whose gifts inspire and guide every congregation. 

There is one group, however, which does not celebrate this gift. I thought it would be men but apart from the odd fellow, I haven't found it so.
What surprised me was that there is a smallish minority of women who prefer ministers who are male. Flattering as that may seem, it's distressing, because I've worked with women, here and elsewhere,
who have shared an insight, understanding and spiritual depth that I envied and from which I learned.
Adam and Eve, for me, is a parable with amazing insights. But I suspect it was told by a man. Otherwise Adam would have had that first bite and be blamed for humanity's hardships and had congregations shun him for his bad behaviour.

To conclude : We have freedom to choose how we may live. Whatever your history or your circumstances.
You are the final arbitrator of who you are. How can Jesus say:"Don't worry so much" ?
God has known you since before you were born. God has followed your life through the years, seen
the good decisions, seen the ones that turned out badly.
God knows the temptations that are part of you, and the frustrations that make you angry or bitter
or drive you to tears. God knows the heartaches and the sorrows as well as the hopes and the dreams you
carry.
How can Jesus say: "Don't worry so much ?" God cares about you and your life. If you will ask God's guidance and help, you will be helped find a life that has meaning and purpose. You will find you don't need to hide and the things you now worry about are not nearly as important as you believe.

Find the life God meant for you to live. Choose to act consciously once each day as Jesus asks - in kindness, generousity, helpfulness to someone. 
It can be as simple as calling someone - but done out of faith. 
You don't need to talk about it. 
Just do it.
Let faith grow inside. 

"Examine me,O God,and know my mind;

Test me, and discover my thoughts.

Help me with the needs I dare not share.

show me how to trust in your love. Guide

me in your pathway to a real and

fulfilling life beginning now.