The Menno Melange

February was my month again to submit an article to the local newspaper on behalf of the ministerial. It includes some excerpts from my “sermon” from Patrick & Liz’s wedding. Enjoy.

It was an unconventional wedding. We had gathered in mid-January on a frigid Ottawa Saturday afternoon. Guests and attendants were coming from many different places and hadn’t been able to spend much time together before the actual wedding day. The couple met before hand to take photos. Contemporary weddings are often void of many of the rituals and images that were once viewed as normal, so maybe now the convention is to have a non-traditional wedding.
I was honoured to have been asked to officiate at this wedding. Knowing that the guests would be coming from a variety of religious traditions and faith experiences, I wanted to be careful not to overwhelm anyone with overly spiritual language or excessive Biblical imagery. However, I had been given the freedom to preach “the way I normally do, just shorter.”
I was surprised by the number and style of comments I received. Some of the “churchie” folk complimented me on my “pleasant homily,” despite the lack of pulpit, crosses or ornamentation in that log cabin chapel. At the other end of the spectrum, one girl told me that she liked my sermon because it was funny and it “wasn’t too religious,” despite the numerous references to God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit and that it was centered on a key Biblical text.
Since this week’s Gazette comes out on Valentines Day, I felt it might be appropriate to share some of the thoughts from my wedding reflection.
Throughout history, humans have set out to explain why we should love, what it feels like to love and to be loved, what love actually is, and where it comes from. There is no more frequent subject in music, poetry or drama. Yet all these creative expressions put together have not been able to encapsulate what love is. The technical definition of love, the rational understanding of love, wouldn’t leave room for many of these notions. Love is an emotion - an affection. According to the scientific ways of looking at things, love is merely the result of a chain of chemical reactions within the body that set off a series of electrical impulses. I don’t know about you, but for me, that description is simply inadequate.
With all the books I read, songs I listened to and movies I watched, I still wasn’t prepared for love. In fact, I thought that I was too rational to be swept up in love’s games. I thought that I was far too civilized and mature to ever use cutesy nicknames with my girlfriend, and if I did, that would surely stop when I got married. The unfortunate ones who have seen my honey-bunny and I together know that I was wrong. Just like the scientific definition of love, my preconceptions were inadequate. Love is not rational or predictable, and so it cannot be approached solely with routine and formulas.
Students of history will know that the image of an angry, vengeful God has been used to keep people fearful and obedient; parents with children, teachers with students, church leaders with their congregations and government authorities with their citizens. This image has also been used to justify military aggression and the brutality of war.
Now some of you may be suspecting that this is where I talk about God so that you’ll think about love in a more divine way. However, I want us, in our reflection of love, to re-envision who God is. “Love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” Isn’t that a nice image of God? So much better than the image of a God who blesses self-righteous people for being holier than everyone else or the God who justifies unnecessary wars. God is love, plain and simple. May we, God’s creation, be people of love as well.

I had big plans to do something radically different on a Sunday morning. As the weeks went by, I tempered my ambition with a realization that either I couldn’t carry out a particular idea well or that it likely wouldn’t achieve the desired outcome. By the time Sunday morning rolled around, most of my crazy ideas had fallen at the chopping block, but I did keep a few of them.

I’m certainly no pioneer, but some of these things were certainly new to the congregation and to me.
I wore jeans - Every time I preach, I wear a dress shirt and a tie, this Sunday I didn’t. Not only did I wear jeans, I also drew attention to it. In true Anabaptist fashion, I cited a lack of Biblical evidence for the tradition of dressing up for church and used it as a justification for my rebellious act.
I strayed from the pulpit (a little bit) - This is a personal victory. Every sermon I’ve ever preached is my own thought plus a few quotes from other places. However, since it’s written out in front of me, I am slavishly bound to the pulpit where I can find my sermon. I just don’t trust myself to do a 20 minute sermon from point form notes in front of me, or even worse, from memory. If the whole manuscript is in front of me, I’m stuck. This Sunday, I asked for a lapel mic and deliberately walked out from behind the pulpit to make a few points.
I invited input - My sermon required input from the congregation at various times. Their suggestions dictated the flow of that part of the sermon.

So nothing radically different in style, but with the weather and a few prominent families being away on holidays that particular weekend, I knew I could try a few new ideas. Perhaps my content may have been viewed as radical.

The lectionary story from that morning was where Jesus goes fishing with Peter, and afterwards calls him to come along and catch people instead of fish. Sure every metaphor falls apart somewhere, but I challenged them to take this fishing/gospel sharing image a little further. I asked them to think about different styles of fishing so that we could look at what they mean for living out our Christian faith that way. None of it was deeply intellectual, but if I can paint an image in someone’s mind, it’s as satisfying as a good joke and more effective than a mnemonic device I use to send my point home.

Here are a few of the images I came up with:
Ice fishing - involves a small isolated hut with an even smaller hole cut in the ice. Some Christians like to shield themselves from the elements, and only allow themselves a narrow avenue for the task they were actually sent here to do.
Trawling - is power fishing. You get a big lure attached to a big rod, dragged by a big boat with a big engine, hoping to catch a big fish. The fishing conditions can change dramatically, but you won’t know because you’re going too fast. I compared this style of fishing to the kind of Christians who leave gospel tracts laying around, but don’t stick around long enough to explain them to people.

The following Sunday, I found a gospel tract in my mailbox at the church, and nobody took credit for it. Is there some truth that I’m supposed to be convicted of, or does someone in the congregation have a similar sense of humour to me? I hope it’s the latter.

Here is the Lenten reflection I gave during a Thursday lunch service during the first week of Lent.

I am taking classes part time to finish my Bachelor of Arts degree. After taking a year off here and there, and switching from Math to Religious Studies, I’m usually a few years older than the average student in my classes, so I usually sit by myself. Sometimes while I’m sitting there waiting for the lecture to start, I overhear what other people are saying.
A few years ago, when the movie The Passion of the Christ came out in theatres, I was surprised to hear a group of guys sitting behind me talk about having seen the movie. One of the guys playfully hit one of his friends, as guys my age often do. A third guy jokingly criticized the attacker and said, “Didn’t Jesus teach you anything in the movie yesterday?” I was fascinated by that. These guys, whose conversations usually cover a long list of other unwholesome topics, went to watch this movie, even though they might get some moral instruction out of the deal.
I decided to see the movie as well, so I talked my dad and brother into coming with me. My dad hadn’t been in a movie theatre since he was dating my mom, and my brother was thrilled to see a movie if it meant someone else was paying for it, but neither of them were prepared to read subtitles all night. We got to the theatre a bit later than we had hoped, so the movie had already started. As we walked in, we saw Judas under the bridge being tormented by his own actions. He had given up Jesus, his teacher, his leader, his mentor, to be arrested, and afterwards, he wrestled with the demons within himself.
The passage in Luke says that the High Priests wanted to kill Jesus, that Satan entered Judas, and that he conspired with them, but there’s one key phrase that I want to highlight, that I think can bring a little light to the situation. Why did the high priests want to kill Jesus? Luke says that it was because they were afraid of the people.
If Jesus was just a wandering maniac, they could have dismissed him. If Jesus was just a popular religious teacher, they would have given him a promotion, but the high priests were uncomfortable with the kind of religion that Jesus was preaching and they were afraid of how easily the people were accepting his teaching. Jesus had new ideas, and he preached against the old structures that had perverted God’s way of doing things. So we can understand a bit why the high priests would want to get rid of him, they got their power from the very institution that Jesus was preaching against.
But why Judas? Maybe he was just an evil man that somehow tricked his way into the group of disciples. Maybe he knew that he could make some money from doing this, so the thirty pieces of silver was what drove him to do it. Maybe we’re supposed to take this passage to mean that Satan took control of Judas, an otherwise good man, and for that time, he had no power over himself.
We see later on that Judas feels remorse for what he had done. Unable to cope with the guilt for betraying Jesus, Judas kills himself. It looks to me that Judas knew what he was doing, but after he realized what it meant, he couldn’t handle the reality of it.
The priests were afraid of the people, but what was Judas afraid of?
It’s easy to pick on Judas, and see him as the bad disciple, but none of them really understood Jesus. Only after he visited them in resurrected form did they understand what he meant about rebuilding the temple in three days, raising himself from the dead in three days. Only then did they start to understand what he meant when he preached about the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom that wasn’t of this world.
There were times when they grumbled to him about when he was going to establish his Kingdom. They argued about who would get to sit on the right hand side of his throne. Some of them very clearly expected Jesus to set up an earthly kingdom, to get rid of the Romans once and for all. That’s part of the reason some of them were following Jesus in the first place. Then we see that Jesus starts talking about dying, about taking up our cross, about being led to the slaughter. How could their new king die before the work was done?
It seems to me that they got tired of waiting. I think that Judas got tired of waiting and wanted to do something about it.
It’s easy to do that. Have you ever got tired of waiting and taken a situation into your own hands? I know I have.
When I was a kid, I would sometimes help my mom with canning preserves, and for some reason it was so exciting to sit there and wait for the seal to pop. So exciting that I wanted to help it along a bit, until mom caught me doing that. Or when a batch of cookies just came out of the oven and I wasn’t allowed to eat one until they had cooled off. I burned my mouth quite a few times because I thought they were cool well before they actually were.
There are lots of times when we want things to happen quicker. We call the mechanic to try to rush the process of fixing the car. Farmers just can’t wait for the right time to take the crop off. Pregnant women just can’t wait for the baby to be born. Young couples just can’t wait until they’re married. There are lots of things that happen according to a schedule that we can’t control.
Judas tried to take control of Jesus’ schedule. He probably thought that by turning him in to the authorities, he could speed up the process. Certainly then Jesus would fight back and throw off the oppressors, right?
Judas gave up on Jesus. Judas gave up waiting for Jesus’ coming kingdom. He couldn’t wait anymore, so he took things into his own power. He gave up Jesus to the authorities thinking that finally Jesus would give up his slow pace and finally take power. When Judas realized what he had actually done. He couldn’t handle the consequences.
Many people use Lent as an opportunity to give something up. They give up a certain kind of food or drink, or a certain kind of technology, and they try instead to focus on Jesus. It’s easy to live by our own rules and our own schedule, but we need to give that up.
Rely on God. Rely on Jesus’ teachings, God’s love and rely on the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Don’t give up waiting, don’t give up hoping. Give up your own agendas, give them up to God.
Amen.

It was my turn to preach again on January 1. The sermon was well received, but what I liked most about it is that people were willing to respond during the sharing time which followed. Those discussions made the morning complete in my mind. Anyway, here is an excerpt from the sermon:

The wise men are strange visitors; they most likely don’t worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Why would God use these foreigners, these non-believers for his own divine purpose? Whatever the reason, it isn’t the first time.
The first scripture that I read from this morning was from the story of Balaam and Balak. It’s an interesting story from the time when the Israelites were marching through the desert. Balak is the king of the region and he doesn’t like the Israelites squatting on his land and he wants to get rid of them. They outnumber his own army, so first he wants to put a curse on them. To do that, he hires Balaam, the local sorcerer. Balaam agrees initially and sets out to deliver a curse upon these people. He has no allegiance to Yahweh or to the chosen people of God. He has a job to do and he practises his own type of sorcery or magic through different powers. But God intervenes. Balaam gets a visitor of his own. An angel comes to kill Balaam, but he is rescued by an unexpected source. After Balaam has an intense conversation with the donkey he’s riding, he realizes that an angel is blocking their path. The angel tells Balaam not to deliver the curse, so he doesn’t. Balaam then decides to listen to God and he blesses the Israelites, which quite upsets Balak. Balaam was an unexpected and uninvited visitor to the Israelites, but this Gentile sorcerer delivered a blessing upon them from their own God.
These wise men from the east and this desert sorcerer from the west are both outside of the Jewish religious system, but they both have a very important role within their respective stories. Despite their cultural and religious backgrounds, they carry out God’s plan, and they worship God in the process.

Our local ministerial group (pastors of all the local churches) take turns contributing articles to our local weekly newspaper. December was my turn simplifying the choice of theme. It was printed yesterday in the Christmas edition of the paper. Here is the article, quoted in full.

Walking into a shopping centre during the month of December and hearing festive holiday music stirs up mixed feelings in many people. Some feel joy and are filled with the Christmas spirit, and for them the holiday music couldn’t start soon enough. Others however feel less excited, and would prefer to hold off playing Christmas music as long as possible. As someone who spent many December days and nights working in a retail environment, I often fall into the second category. Too often, the same CD full of popular musicians singing popular Christmas songs would cycle through our store speakers all day long.
In our sterilized commercial atmospheres, one song that survives the secular filter is “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” by the 1984 charity supergroup Band Aid. What was a fundraising effort to help starving Ethiopian children has left an indelible mark on popular music, and especially popular Christmas music.
The lyrics of the song suggest that for various reasons (hunger, fear, drought, poverty, lack of snow, etc.) Ethiopians, especially children, might not know it was Christmas at all. Much has been said about this Western-centric view of Christmas, but it brings to mind the mindset that many people have that if certain things are missing, Christmas is either ruined or it just doesn’t happen. So Christmas is a happy time, but only if certain things are included.
Sadly, the lack of gifts can ruin Christmas for children and families. Many great charities are in place to collect and distribute appropriate gifts to children from poorer families. Your donation to these charities helps to ensure that poverty will not ruin Christmas in these homes.
Food is another item that charities gather for increased distribution around the holidays. This time of year highlights the difference between rich and poor. When food is already short, a tight December budget can make food and gifts compete for dwindling incomes. In those situations, it is helpful when others respond to the call for food donations. By contributing quality food items at the grocery store or during the Santa Claus parade, etc., we can alleviate the stress too many people feel at this time of year, and help to ensure that empty cupboards won’t ruin Christmas in these homes.
The holidays are also often a time for families to gather, so when loved ones are not present, the tone of the celebration changes. When children or siblings leave the area to work or study in other parts of the world, costs and/or scheduling complications can make a trip home an unjustifiable expense. With the improvements in communications technology and the decrease of the related costs, having Christmas together is at least partially possible. Annual gatherings of families can also be powerful reminders of losses of loved ones suffered over the past year. To help families cope, it is important that their friends remember their time of sadness and remembrance. With extra sensitivity, we can make certain that our families and the families around us are comforted in this time, and try to ensure that the absence of loved ones won’t ruin Christmas in these homes.
Finally, another thing that people feel is necessary to fully enjoy the Christmas season is a positive Christian atmosphere within society. Many bemoan the loss of religious content in the holiday celebration as a sign of decreasing moral values in our society, claiming that generosity has been replaced with greed, religion has been replaced with materialism, the baby Jesus has been replaced with Santa Claus and Christmas has been replaced with Xmas. For many, there is nothing wrong with buying expensive gifts, indulging in mythical figures or using Greek-based short-forms. Many people however are angered when the Christian content is taken out of the holiday, or made less important. For them, Christmas is less enjoyable because they see other people “disrespecting” the holiday. The time when Christians were the majority has passed, but being in the minority is no reason to fret. Christians all over the world manage to celebrate Christmas without special sales, a government mandated paid holiday, or even church buildings in which to gather. To truly celebrate a holiday, we need to be celebrating within, despite the climate around us. With that in mind, hopefully we can ensure that Christmas is not ruined in our homes.

Instead of following the conference suggested Advent material, our church has decided to follow a simpler schedule, using a few character studies from the Christmas story and the other regular programming to fill in the time. This past Sunday was on Mary. Here is an excerpt from my sermon:

That’s the great thing about the Christmas story. Christ comes into our world in such a way that all the traditional hierarchies of Israel, all of the ladders of importance, of class, and of respect, get turned upside-down. Mary is someone who would normally be at the bottom of the hierarchy structure. It’s as though all of the women of all time were lined up for selection and God chose Mary. He didn’t choose from the wealthy women. He didn’t choose from the women with royal blood. He didn’t choose from the women with good reputations or from the women with all the connections. He didn’t even choose from the women who were already pregnant. He chose Mary. No money, not status, no husband, Mary.
Mary was also quite young. The Greek word used to describe Mary is ‘parthenos’ which means virgin or young woman. It’s the same word in Greek. What God intends for sex, is not a recreational aspect of youth culture or subject matter for various television shows and commercials; sex is supposed to be a part of a covenant. First time sex is supposed to be husband and wife making a lifetime covenant with each other. Sure there were still people at that time who deviated from that model, and there are people who deviate from that model now. Mary had not deviated from that model. She was a ‘parthenos’ who was engaged to be married.
Just how young was she? We know that she is engaged, so she isn’t too young to get married and she knows why it would be impossible for her to have conceived a child, so we know she’s not too young to have children herself. She is however too young to be important. But despite that, God chooses her to bear the Saviour of the world. Not only does he choose her, but also in choosing her, he puts her in a position that could move her even farther down the hierarchy. Mary is blessed. She knows that what has happened to her is a blessing from God. Her fiancé Joseph knows it too; well at least he figures it out after a while. Some people believe their story that she is pregnant by the Holy Spirit, some people don’t. The few that do believe it give her instantaneous honour. Those who don’t believe it reject and despise her.
But through this act, Mary doesn’t move from the bottom of the hierarchy ladder to the top, the whole ladder gets flipped around. God doesn’t choose the rich, he chooses the poor. God doesn’t choose royalty, he chooses a peasant. He doesn’t choose the extraordinary; he chooses the ordinary.

The world is full of wedding experts, but like us, most of them are already married. As we stumbled through the whole process, we discovered which things came easy and which were quite difficult. Each couple has their own problems, but for many, the guest list is a significant one.

I had always envisioned having a huge wedding, like a community celebration. I don’t like going to weddings in half-full churches. Out of my own vanity, I viewed a full church as a mark of popularity and achievement. I didn’t imagine that I would have difficulty choosing who to invite, because I would just invite everyone imaginable. It didn’t quite work that way. A few things got in the way:
1. Our hometown connections weren’t as solid as they once were, so many of those friends had fallen out of touch with us.
2. Not everyone likes going to weddings, so an open invitation isn’t sufficient for a lot of people.
3. Our celebrity status hadn’t really extended beyond our own small community.
We still had quite a few people come out, a few reasons:
1. My job as youth pastor makes me a public figure.
2. We’re both members of loving and supportive church networks.
3. Our social groups didn’t overlap much.
4. I have a larger than average family.

We started with a small list of people that came to our heads most automatically. We were told we could sit 250 people at the reception comfortably, so we had a higher ceiling than most, and we wanted as much as possible to not let money get in the way. We didn’t do much trimming, that is to say we didn’t do any trimming. As the weeks went by, there were quite a few people that came to mind that should perhaps be on the list. Some were added, some were not, but our original list was quite extensive. Our meal was served and prepared by a committee of volunteers, so we were able to cut food costs. In some ways we had too many friends there, as we were not able to talk to all of them personally before the night was over.

Every family has their own political turmoil, even mine. I’ll try to be as generic as possible, but in my extended family, a few weddings have been boycotted/unattended for theological reasons. I personally disagreed with those theological reasons as well as with the idea of using a wedding as the soapbox from which your views are preached. So I could have responded by neglecting to invite those who refused to show their support to others. I spoke to a few victims of those boycotts and asked if they wanted me to do that. Since they were indifferent, I went ahead and invited them anyway. (I use italics in this paragraph to diminish the meanings of these events. What happened hardly justifies using such weighty words, though that’s essentially what they were)

Weddings to me are public celebrations, not opportunities for revenge, spite or theological debate. For me to boycott those people for boycotting other weddings would be textbook hypocrisy. There’s no room at weddings for hypocrisy either

For the second year in a row, I was entrusted with the Thanksgiving Sunday sermon. Earlier in the month I had been talking with a friend about the role of recurring sin in the life of a Christian. He had been holding off baptism until he could resolve the issue in his mind. He didn’t fully resolve the issue, but decided to become baptized anyway, realizing that one issue should hold him back. He said that he wasn’t comfortable asking for forgiveness for the same sins over and over again. My response was that the church should ultimately be a place of forgiveness, and the example that came to mind was the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. I thought about the parable more over the following weeks, and decided to use it as the basis for my thanksgiving sermon. Here is an excerpt:

We live in the Western world, an extension of the American Empire, which had its roots in the British Empire, which had its roots in the Roman Empire, which philosophers often call the Judeo-Christian tradition. For centuries, all of the biggest schools, businesses and governments had very solid connections to the church. Up until very recently, these stories were common knowledge to almost everyone in society. So it’s almost impossible to read these stories in a new way, in a way as though you were reading it for the first time.

The Golden Rule is something that everybody knows, but not everybody knows that it comes from the Bible, Matthew 7:12. At one point, it would have been a pretty revolutionary idea, but for us “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is pretty common knowledge. In its time, Jesus’ parable about the Pharisee and the tax collector would have been quite revolutionary as well.
“To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable:” (Luke 18:9)
I think we all know people like this. We see them all the time, and they drive us crazy. They make us feel bad because we’re not as good as they are. Most of the time when we see a group of people like this, we leave. These people don’t always care about everyone else; they often just want to share their righteousness with the rest of the world. Sometimes you notice that something is missing in a conversation with these people. Something is missing because they’ve had this conversation before; they’ve practiced it. They expect certain responses from you, and then when you say what they are expecting, then they say what they’ve rehearsed. What’s missing is sincerity.

A while ago, when I was away at school, I had two Jehovah’s Witnesses come visit me. After a short conversation, they left feeling confused and unsure of themselves. A week later, they came back, but with an older, more experienced guy who wasn’t ready to back down. He had this conversation before, or so he thought. His answers were very well rehearsed, and he got frustrated because I kept repeating myself, but I was repeating myself because he wasn’t paying attention the first time I said it.

It isn’t a sincere conversation when one person just says back what they’ve practiced over and over to say, that’s a tennis game. This kind of conversation isn’t sincere, and that’s why we feel uncomfortable around this kind of group. These kinds of people don’t understand their audience, and for that reason, we don’t understand them, and so we leave.

Jesus didn’t leave, and not only did he not leave, he approached and started to try to teach them. Now this isn’t surprising for us. After 2000 years of research and biblical study later, we see Jesus, not only as God’s son, but also as God here on earth with us. So knowing that, we aren’t surprised that Jesus isn’t afraid of these guys. After all, who is more righteous than Jesus? Of course God would approach these guys who had an incorrect view of their own righteousness.

Jesus starts into the story by presenting us with a dichotomy. He gives his audience two opposites. These opposites are so different that the goal of the storyteller is to immediately conjure up images in the mind of the listener.
“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.” (Luke 18:10)
When we read this now, we know that Jesus doesn’t always get along with the Pharisees, and we know that a lot of his friends are tax collectors, like Matthew, who was one of the twelve, and Zaccheus. These Pharisees get a bad rap sometimes. Jewish history books tell us that at that time, there were four main schools of thought among Rabbis, and the Pharisees were one of them. When we compare the teachings of Jesus to all four groups, Jesus lines us most closely with the Pharisees. They held to a strict moral code, and unlike the Sadducees, they still believed in the resurrection. The image of a Pharisee was supposed to make people think of a very pure man, well educated, and a guy who lived very closely with the system that God has established. Forget all the other stuff that you know about Pharisees, and pick someone who you think embodies this image, pure, successful, and with a great reputation. Maybe it’s a pastor, a scout leader, a coach, and a country music singer, just pick one and remember it.

A tax collector on the other hand was generally understood to be the scum of the earth. They had sold out and were working for the Roman government, taking taxes from the people, some for the occupying Romans and a little off the top for themselves. For you a tax collector in a modern setting might be a lawyer who over charges for his services and treats you like an idiot. For me a tax collector might be a crooked mechanic who lies about the work that needs to be done and has poor workmanship for the things he does do. So pick a tax collector, someone who makes you sick, maybe someone whose lifestyle doesn’t jive with the way you see the world, maybe someone who only looks out for themselves and hurts everyone around them.

Now keep those two people in mind, and I’m going to tell the story over again, with a few changes. When you hear me say Pharisee, picture your own Pharisee. When you hear me say tax collector, picture your own tax collector.

“Two guys went to church for Thanksgiving Sunday, a Pharisee, and a tax collector. During a time of prayer, the Pharisee raised his arms up to sky and prayed, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like all of these other people, liars, crooks, and all around losers – and especially not like this tax collector. I read my Bible, I pray, I tell people about you all the time, and I give ten percent of everything I get back to the church.’ But the tax collector sat still, with his eyes open, looking down at the floor, and he prayed, ‘God, if you can hear me, take it easy on me. I’m pathetic.’”

Now what Jesus has done in this story is he has developed his dichotomy. He has taken the things that we assumed and made us rethink them, or at least a little bit. In a lot of ways, this Pharisee is better than everyone else; they do more good things for the church and for the community, so maybe they are a little bit justified for thankful for that. And, let’s face it, the tax collector is pathetic; they mess up everybody’s lives, they don’t seem to care about anyone else but himself or herself. So maybe these prayers are normal. But then Jesus throws in the twist.

“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Luke 18:14)
Jesus here is not preaching against people being thankful, rather he is advocating a more sincere kind of giving thanks. If you look closely at this Pharisee, is he really being thankful at all? Basically what he is saying is “I am thankful that I do not steal, that I do not commit evil, or commit adultery, and especially that I don’t collect taxes for the Romans.” He’s really only thankful for the things that he already does. So he’s really thanking himself. Why should God smile on this man? Why should he leave the temple justified before God when he hasn’t even talked to God?

This tax collector walks in humbly, prays quietly, and leaves, humbly. The tax collector likely had much to be thankful for. He was likely quite wealthy, and a government job has all sorts of perks, but he isn’t thankful at all. Despite his wealth and financial and civil security, he only thinks about his heart, his soul. He doesn’t rank himself above anyone else, he only acknowledges himself as a sinner and he asks for mercy.

Again, Jesus is presenting us with a dichotomy, opposites. He says that if you spend your life lifting yourself up, you will fall, but if you lower yourself humbly, then God in heaven will lift you up.

This is an excerpt from my sermon on Sunday. Our recurring them was “Lead on, Cloud of Presence: Life on the Road”. Part of my imagery was contrasting two driving incidents I’ve had. One where I rolled my car and this other time.

My more recent brush with automobile peril ended more safely, but my mindset was different. I wasn’t convinced that I would be fine. I knew I was capable of losing control. Despite the cold, dark night, I was ready to climb out of a broken car and get help. I knew that if I wiped out, it would be mostly my fault. I knew that I would face criticism from my girlfriend, my family, and likely some of you. My focus was on straightening out my car, but I knew that if I didn’t, life would go on.
Maybe it’s because this time my car had collision insurance. Maybe it’s because this was my second time through. Or maybe it was something else.

Earlier in the spring, my mechanic took my car out for a spin and told me that my transmission was on its last legs. I don’t know why I keep buying Fords. I knew that I couldn’t afford to buy a new car and I couldn’t afford to replace or rebuild a transmission. So when I got home and parked my car, I got out and walked around to the front, put my hand on the hood and said, “Look, I need you to keep working, so here’s the deal. I’ll drive gently, and I won’t rush you when you need to change gears, but I need you to hold out for a little while. When it’s time for you to give up, I’ll be okay with it.” I’m not making this up; I actually did say that. My mechanic said I’d be lucky if it lasted another month. That was a year and a half ago. Everyday since than has been a bonus.

What do we as human beings deserve from God? In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus taught the disciples to ask for daily bread, forgiveness, and deliverance from evil. Everything beyond that is bonus, it’s unexpected, it’s grace.

The Israelites in the desert lost sight of that grace, they expected the unexpected and complained when their bonus wasn’t big enough. Standing at the Red Sea, the Israelites quickly forgot about the grace they had been given. Instead of turning their face toward God, they turned their face toward their troubles. They didn’t think God would save them, but they have forgotten that God had already saved them quite a few times, and would save them quite a few times again.

When your car loses control, you keep your wheels faced toward where you want to go. What I needed to do was forget about the car, forget the consequences. I needed to look away from things that were troubling me, and look toward where I wanted to go.

In our troubles, we need to turn ourselves toward where we want to go. We need to turn our face toward God. We need to focus our ears toward what God is saying, focus our eyes on what God is doing. We do that through prayer and meditation, through regular Bible reading, through giving of ourselves to those around us in need. It also means turning away from our fears, turning away from our material comforts, and turning away from our selfishness and discontent.

I brought the message at my church on Sunday. This summer we’re taking the opportunity to focus each week on a different Old Testament story. My story on Sunday was from the book of Esther. The whole sermon basically was a summary and retelling of the whole story. It’s quite an interesting one. I won’t quote part of that retelling as it would be out of context, but here is part of my introduction.

After a lifetime of education at school and lectures from family, TV, roommates and girlfriends about too much sugar, too much fats, and not enough fruits and vegetables, some of it is starting to hit me. Candy doesn’t sit in my stomach as nicely as it used to. I eat salads at buffets now. I usually only take one serving of dessert. The eating habits of my childhood and teenage years are giving way to the eating habits of adulthood.

In our lives, in our relationship with God, there are certain things, like prayer, acts of charity, and reading scripture that are nourishment for our souls, spiritual food. As a child we understand God in a certain way and as we age and mature, through prayer and study of the scriptures, we see God differently. God hasn’t changed, but we begin to see him in different ways. Candy-coated Bible stories that were once cute and cuddly still have meaning but they lose that cutesy charm that worked in Sunday School. Noah’s ark is a story about the drowning death of thousands even millions of people. David and Goliath ends with Goliath’s head being chopped off and paraded around the country. These gruesome details are ones that we keep from the children, but they are a part of the story that we as adults cannot ignore.

The story of Esther is no different. As a children’s story, it’s a tale of a virtuous young woman who honours the instruction of her elder cousin and faithfully saves the nation of Israel from extinction. An adult reading of the story paints it a little bit differently. The Bible is full of great stories like this, and we can keep reading them long after we’re not children anymore.

The story of Esther is quite redemptive, but there are a few problems with it, some that I mentioned during the sermon, and some that I didn’t. I did mention how God isn’t mentioned at all.
I did mention that the resolution to the royal edict declaring Jewish genocide is only resolved by making another edict whereby the Jews can fight back and kill their enemies. I also mentioned how Queen Vashti is quite justified in refusing to obey her husband’s drunken demand that she dance naked at his little party.
I didn’t mention that Esther becomes Queen by capitalizing on her sexual skills. I didn’t mention the over-indulgence taken in the past in the name of the fest of Purim. I didn’t mention the historical debate over whether it belongs in the canon or whether it even happened, or that no historical evidence of Vashti or Esther ever appear anywhere outside of the Bible.

I came to appreciate the story a lot more in my deep analysis of it in writing the sermon, as weird and improbable as it sounds. It’s a great story of making the best out of lousy circumstances and it’s way more interesting to read as an adult.