Wednesday Wondering - November 29, 2023

Scripture

James 2: 14 – 17

14What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? 15If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, 16and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? 17So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

Reflection

I have been wondering, as we enter this time of Advent about this thing that we call faith. Quite often as Christians we speak a lot about faith. We speak about holding fast to those things that we can’t measure, see, or quantify in the world and in particular our beliefs. We hold fast to our faith. We pray. We come together to worship in community. There are many of us who do such good work within our communities, doing the work of building up the community in faith.  Then there are those who move beyond the community and bring their faith to the world. The scripture from James speaks directly to this but I think that it goes beyond that as well. It speaks of our faith, which is something that we believe deeply in, as that which only lives when we allow it to impact our actions in the world. Our faith is not something that we only think about, contemplate, or exists only in our churches, rather it is something that we embody in all that we do in the world.

I received an email from someone this week with a poignant quote from Muhammad Ali, the famous boxer, who said, “I don't trust someone who is nice to me, but rude to the waiter, because they would treat me the same way if I were in that position." More often then I care to acknowledge I have seen people who call themselves Christian be nasty to others around them. I myself have been the brunt of this more times than I care to remember. We have seen those videos of so many people in customer service being berated for doing their jobs. This email went on to speak of two very important points that I will paraphrase in my own way here. The thing is that as a Christian, as a human being, we are not defined by what we say that we believe, not at all. We are defined by what we do. We are defined by the way that we treat people. I wonder if that is one of the challenges that Christianity faces these days, the perception that we talk the good talk, but beyond that there is very little, we don’t walk the walk.

As the reading from James says, “faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” As Christians we are called to live into our faith, to embody or faith, in all that we do, from the way that we treat the person who serves us in the drive through, to the driver who is impatient behind us (yes I am speaking to myself here), to the person sitting in the next pew, to those who are doing their best to steer our communities of faith through these times. To all of these and more our faith should be shining through, if it is not we need to rethink how we engage with the world. The second point that was made is that the world truly needs more kindness. We are living in a time when so many are struggling and let’s be honest here, most of us don’t have a clue as to the struggles faced by other around us, so let’s make a decision to be kinder and in that way fill this world, which can be so hard, with kindness. It is important that our faith brings us to action and that action can be challenging for us as individuals.

The scripture from James goes beyond just being kind, it speaks to an action of transformation. It speaks to action that can change lives. We oftentimes in our churches offer prayers for those less fortunate but how many times does it stop at offering our thoughts and prayers. We are called to action, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to visit the lonely, to offer our gifts and blessings to the world. It is a challenge and yet it is so important. It is another way to bring a deeper kindness to this world. Our faith, that which we believe is important, some might even say it’s foundational, in how we understand ourselves in the world. So, then let us embody that faith for all to see and in doing so bring kindness to the world.

Prayer

God who challenges us to action, help us to see our faith, not as something that we say we believe, but rather as something that we do each and every day in our lives. Help us to hear you call to action, to an action of love, kindness, acceptance, and forgiveness in the world today. Give us eyes to see that so many are trying to do their best under difficult circumstances, some are so very tired, and let us lift them up rather than tear them down. Let us be conduits for kindness in the world today and bring or faith to action so that we might truly change lives. Give us the wisdom to know that we don’t know that others are struggling with in their lives and so let us gentle with ourselves and others, not demanding and callous. We ask all of this in the name of the gentle shepherd who came to guide, your son Jesus. Amen.

Wednesday Wondering - November 22, 2023

Wednesday Wondering - Wednesday, November 22, 2023

Scripture

Matthew 6: 5 - 13

5 “And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 6 But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. 7 “When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 “Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. 10 Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread. 12 And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.

Luke 4: 43

But he said to them, “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other cities also; for I was sent for this purpose.”

Reflection

I have been wondering a lot about this idea of salvation. What does it mean when we talk about salvation? I think that for many of Christians, when they hear the word salvation, they think of this idea of going to live with Jesus, God, in heaven at the end of days. In many ways this is based on an interpretation of the Book of Revelation, that is seen as a prediction of the end of the world and the coming of Jesus again to take up to heaven the select who have accepted Christ as their personal saviour. This all seems to based on this idea that Jesus came for us to worship him rather than Jesus coming to proclaim the good news of the coming of God’s kingdom. This kingdom would turn everything upside down. It is a kingdom that is based in love, rather than power. It is a kingdom that is based in inclusion, rather than exclusion and marginalization. It is kingdom that is based in nonviolence, rather than war. This was the kingdom that Jesus lived as he walked the roads of the ancient world. I wonder if we might have forgotten that this was Jesus’ mission. N. T. Wright, Anglican Bishop and New Testament scholar in his book “Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church,” speaks to this in the following way, “Jesus’s resurrection is the beginning of God’s new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord’s prayer is about.”

In the Gospel of Matthew the disciples have asked Jesus how they are to pray. Jesus says that in prayer they are to begin, “Our father in heaven, hallowed by your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” We all know this as we often recite it, but do we hear these words, “Your kingdom come,” and “on earth as it is in heaven.” Jesus is telling the disciples, and us, that the coming of God’s kingdom is not some cosmic kingdom in the sky that we work to enter. The coming of God’s kingdom is something that is to happen here in this world in this time and in this place. It is not in some distant future, but it is to happen in the here and now. The challenge for us is that for it to happen we might have to shift our understanding of our faith and our salvation.

It might just require us to shift or faith from worshipping Jesus to emulating Jesus in all that we do. It might force us to see that our salvation is not something that is tied to my own personal piety, or my own individual worship of God, but rather that salvation is found in community. Salvation is found in living lives as Christ lived, loving the least loved, embracing nonviolence in a world that seems so violent, forgiving when grudges are so easy to hold, and compassion when anger and marginalization can be so easy. We so often hear the voice of Jesus as the voice of salvation, but we hear it coming from heaven that it drowns out the voices of the downtrodden, the marginalized, the grieving, the lost. The reality is that for most Christians this heaven based salvation is easy to hear, who wouldn’t want to enter into eternal life in heaven, and in only focusing on that idea of salvation we might just be missing the actual point of our faith. In focusing on this heaven based salvation many Christians will therefore organize their entire lives around this focus and in doing so they loss sight of God Incarnate, Jesus with us, the coming of the kingdom of God to this world and in doing so we lose sight of the transformative nature of Jesus and what he preached. Jesus spoke of the coming of the new kingdom, the coming of God’s kingdom, the transformation of the world as we follow and embody Jesus in all that we do. It is the challenge of our faith to shift our focus from the heaven based salvation that only save me, to the coming of God’s kingdom, as earth as it is in heaven, that transforms the world for all. Which one will we choose?

Prayer

God of salvation, open our eyes, our hearts, and our minds, so that we might see Jesus as the one who came to bring God’s kingdom to our world. Give us the courage to truly follow God as this world is transformed as follow Christ’s example and live lives of grace, compassion, love, forgiveness, and mercy, so that all people feel their worth in God’s kingdom. Give us the wisdom to see when we are focusing on our own heaven based salvation rather than the salvation, redemption, and transformation of this world. We ask all of this in the name of the one who came to show us the way, your son, Jesus. Amen.

Wednesday Wondering - November 15, 2023

Isaiah 1: 17

Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.

Ephesians 2: 10

10For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

Reflection

The scripture passages today speak to the work that we are called to do as God’s followers in the world. It speaks to what we, as humanity, were created for in the world and in many ways it speaks to the creation of a world that is much different from the one in which we currently live. So often in this world it is easy to just go along with the way things are going, it sometimes seems easier to just go with the status quo. I have been wondering about this idea of status quo and what the means for us, I wonder if, in some ways, it stops us from thinking in a new way. I wonder if it stops us from embracing change because we just sit back and say that “this is just the way it has always been.” I wonder if it stops us from dreaming of something different for ourselves, for others, for the world. I would like to share with you this quote from Harriet Tubman; “Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars and to change the world.” Harriet Tubman was born in 1822 into a life of slavery. She escaped and made 13 missions to save 70 others who were, at that time, slaves. She was a political activist and ardent abolitionist. She dreamed of a new life for herself and others and she found the strength and courage within her to life into that new life.

In our scriptures we read the stories of the prophets, those who were chosen by God to speak truth to power and to the people. Yet I believe that we, too, are called to speak words of truth to the world. Walter Brueggemann, the American Old Testament Scholar and Theologian, speaks to our call in the following way, “The prophetic tasks of the church are to tell the truth in  a society that lives in illusion, grieve in a society that practices denial, and express hope in a society that lives in despair.” It is in doing all of these things that we speak of something new in a world that seems so tied to the status quo of anger, hatred, war, and violence. It is to speak in a new way to the world and to envision a new lift, not only for ourselves, but for the world.

That is what I believe God has created us for, to live into a new life that God has created, and is creating. for each and every one of us. A life that is based in God’s love, compassion, care, justice, and mercy. We have been created in love, to live into that love each and every day of our lives. We need to trust that we have the strength, the patience, and the passion, to do this important work in the world. We are challenged to approach all of this work, trusting in God to guide us, so that we might live into what God calls us to be each and every day. We are called to live into, not the status quo, but rather our dreams for our lives where we truly reach for what God desires for each of us. We are called to the prophetic task of offering a new vision of the world so that we might see that something else is not just possible, but that it is desperately needed in our world today. To live into God’s call for our lives, to speak prophetically to the world about a new future, for us all, and to be people who transform rather than live the status quo, that is doing God’s work and that is work that might just change the world.

Prayer

God who created all things, help us to live into the life that you dream for each and every one of us. Help us to not be satisfied with the status quo but rather always dream of a new world. Be with us as we continue to work to live into the world that you have called us to make, guiding us, offering us strength, and companionship. We ask all of this in the name of the one who came to make all things new, Jesus. Amen.