By admin, on February 8th, 2012%
Sermon from January 29, 2012 (AGM Sunday). Mark 1:21-28
I recently watched the movie The Help with Erin one evening. It’s the story, as many of you will know, of black maids in the American South in the 1960s who were raising children and cleaning floors and cooking meals for white women and what their lives were like. You learn how they raised babies, loved them like mothers, and then later went to work for those grown babies, who treated them like slaves. Or that their employers built washrooms in their garages believing that they’d get a disease if they shared a toilet with a black person. Or that books could not be shared between black and white school students. You watch it and you think that this seems like a time we have learned from. But of course, it’s only the context that has changed, really: as humans we are still pretty good at segregation, even if we now have different targets. Muslims. Poor people. Mentally ill people. Disabled people. Different people.
By admin, on January 22nd, 2012%
3rd Sunday after Epiphany—Mark 1:14-20—January 22, 2012
How moral are we, really? When push comes to shove, will we do the right thing? Some sociologists who study these kinds of questions did an interesting experiment recently in the Netherlands. They asked psychology students whether they would blow the whistle on an unethical experiment, one that would put the participants in harm’s way, or impact them negatively. This is against the code of social experiments. Eighty percent of the students said yes without question. But then the researchers did another experiment, with a different group of students but a similar sample: this time, they asked the students to write a letter recruiting people into the same experiment, the one that would negatively impact participants. This time, only 8 per cent of the students refused to do so and reported the experiment. The rest dutifully wrote up the letters.
This week, most of you have no doubt been reading a lot about the accident involving the Costa Concordia and especially the actions of its captain, who was among the first off the boat and then refused to follow orders from the coast guard officer in charge and go back on board to help save people. The captain has become a national coward; the coast guard officer a national hero. Certainly, the captain failed his call to service: he failed to follow his duty as the person in charge of the ship. People died as a result of his failure to do the right thing. But let’s go beyond that. We can pass judgment on him – and he certainly appears to deserve the charges he faces. But here’s an opportunity to discuss a bigger question and a more personal one: Are we moral ourselves? Would we fight over the life jackets, or give them up to the people least able to get off the ship on their own?
Continue reading How moral are we, really?
By admin, on January 8th, 2012%
January 8, 2012
John the Baptist has for me always been a fascinating character study. While the other disciples come across as gentle, even tentative, and certainly, with exceptions, dutiful to Jesus, John has the rebel in him. He comes across as a guy who didn’t mess with pretence, who wasn’t big on pretty words, who told it like it is, whether you wanted to hear it or not. He was rough around the edges, and he is often depicted in art – and in our own minds – as a little scruffy, a little disheveled, and usually with crazy hair and an intensity that would make a crowd weary even while they couldn’t resist hearing what he had to say.
Continue reading Baptism of Our Lord
By admin, on January 8th, 2012%
Christmas Eve 2011
This month, a woman walked into an American Kmart store, asked the clerk to see a list of the store layaways and paid off several that were for children’s toys and clothes. She did so without getting any credit and left the store quietly. But her act started a chain reaction, and across the country, others began doing the same, making sure struggling families were able to puts toys under the tree for Christmas. In a year in which we began, around the world, to consider what it means to live in a moral society, what our obligations are to one another and how we might correct the stark social inequalities that we have allowed to develop, it was a story of human goodness and charity – not for a name on a building, or media fame. Just because it felt right and good and worthy of the season. Something to restore a little faith.
By admin, on October 13th, 2011%
Pentecost 16- October 2, 2011—Matthew 21:33-46
Ah, the perils of power! In the gospel, we can just imagine how it went: those tenants getting fat and cushy off the land, figuring the owner had forgotten all about them. When the landowner – that is, God – finally sends some people to collect the produce from the land, the tenants kill them to keep the goods for themselves. The landowner sends another group and the same occurs. The son is sent and also dies. But in the end, though the price is steep, the landowner gets his way. When Jesus told this story, we hear in the Gospel, the Pharisees, the religious and political leaders, shifted uncomfortably in the crowd, still plotting: they knew the parable was ultimately about them, trying to remain the masters.
This parable has a lot of layers to it, but certainly it is about that familiar line about power corrupting. The tenants in the story had become so complacent in their holdings that they assumed the role of landowners. Even if their original intentions had been good, they had been corrupted by the power. We all know people like this and we have all seen institutions like this: those who enjoy the power of a position a little too much (or at least more than the actual good that the position does), and places where people in power have long stopped listening to any new ideas. The church certainly has its share of this problem. In fact, the people we often want to place in positions of power – the heroes we want to see in movies or books – are people who were thrust into power without ever desiring it. These are the people who have balanced two important roles in life: the benevolent master and the other-centred slave.
Continue reading Sunday Sermon
By admin, on June 27th, 2011%
June 26, 2011—Matthew 10:40-42
Last week, I preached on the riots in Vancouver, and the escalation of a mob mentality. Now we have the sequel. So the mood turned quickly — from commiseration, to shock, to anger. By Sunday, people were outing the rioters on Facebook, identifying them based on pictures that ran on the Internet. Some of the pictures, showing young people smiling in front of damaged cars and store windows, could inspire only our outrage. One young woman, who went into a store and stole two pairs of men’s pants — for a souvenir, she said — lost her job. A few parents turned their kids in to police, forcing them to take responsibility for what they had done. A 17-year-old delivered himself to the police station and owned up to stuffing a lit rag into the gas tank of a police car.
The reaction by citizens has been angry and hostile. Parents have reported getting death threats to their homes. One family has even moved out. People who participated in the riots have been attacked verbally online. Even those who were on the streets when it happened — and as one woman explained on CBC this weekend — and who could not easily escape when the riot began have been the subject of nasty critics.
There’s a line here, and we need to ask ourselves whether it has been crossed: have we passed from righteous indignation to self-righteous scapegoating? We want to think that this was the work of disenfranchised thugs, but it wasn’t: many of these people were youth who are from families that are stunned they would act this way. It could have been any one of us. As parents, it could have been any one of our kids. We want to believe otherwise. But those parents, the ones forcing their kids to own up to what they have done, also believed it to be so.
The gospel this morning gives us specific directions most importantly, in these words from Jesus: Whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple — truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward. We know our calling: to serve and tend to others, especially the little ones.
Continue reading Sunday Sermon: Pentacost 2
By admin, on June 20th, 2011%
Matthew 28:16-20
This week, on the eve of Father’s Day, I am sad to say, we saw true evidence of man’s weaker nature – on display, in Vancouver, for the rest of the world to see. And I say man on purpose, because the pictures prove it was mostly men, and young men, trashing their own city after a hockey game. A hockey game which seems big until you start comparing it to the reckless damage they caused. On one Facebook post, a young guy – foolish enough to openly use his real name – bragged about punching a police officer and flipping cars – “smart” cars, especially, the environmentally friendly ones. In his post, he goes on to brag how he is going to be on the news: he writes one word – history!
But it was one video in particular that struck a chord with many of us. In the video, one man emerges to stand before an angry mob, throwing rocks through windows. He’s a regular looking guy – a regular looking dad kind of guy - a bit overweight, balding, wearing a Canucks hat. He stands in front of the mob and declares: “This is my city!” and orders them away. The mob pauses as one unit. They aren’t sure what to do. And then one person steps in and punches the guy, and the rest follow. The man eventually falls down, beaten and kicked. This video will go around the world in less than 24 hours. Not a proud advertisement for the Canadian hockey fan—or for the Canadian male, for that matter.
 Michael Fry plays a violin adaptation of Luther Vandross' "A dance with my Father"
And so, this morning, Paul tells us: Put things in order. And we have this horrifying and shameful example of how disorder trumps order so many times. This is an especially nasty one: how could a hockey game rank higher than the life and safety of even one person, let alone thousands? It is a concrete visual example of the power of mobs, especially ones with muscle.
By admin, on May 19th, 2011%
Sometimes, in Canada, we make the mistake of looking with a long lens for poverty issues that require our attention. But in truth, we don’t need to look very far at all. In Canada, the two real divides in this country are not French and English or East and West. They are First Nations and non-aboriginal. The grim conditions on First Nations and Inuit territory taint every international standard on which Canada is measured. When researchers list the best places to live in Canada, reserves are always at the bottom. While we grumble about the quality of our classrooms, the children there go to schools where mucky water comes out of taps, if they run at all, or the buildings are contaminated with mold. While we are renovating our living rooms, their houses are crumbling around them because they were not built to withstand the weather conditions. They have the highest rates of poverty, addiction, school drop-out, and teenage suicides. This last is at epidemic proportions. First Nations men and women will crowd our soon-to-be-built super-prisons. And these issues build with each struggling generation: there are currently more aboriginal children in foster care – often far from their communities – than ever attended residential schools. Western provinces expect these numbers only to grow. And meanwhile, children who live on reserves receive significantly less funding for education and other services than our own privileged children.
We should be ashamed of this. Instead, too often, we are overwhelmed by it. Or we say it is the government’s responsibility. Or worse, we cast blame that borders on racism. We see only what is close up and not the big picture – the abject poverty, the mental health problems that linger from a history of persecution, the lack of opportunity. There are no easy solutions to this, but it’s hard to hear both our second lesson and our gospel today and not hear clearly that we should be doing something.
Continue reading Fourth Sunday of Easter
By admin, on May 19th, 2011%
May 8, 2011
It is one of the failings of human beings that we put so much value on appearance and first impressions. A limp handshake makes you doubt a person’s strength of character. Attractive people are naturally assumed to be smarter and more intelligent. Even your name causes people to decide who you are before they even get to know you. The whole concept of speed-dating is based on the idea that we can learn all we need to know about a person in five minutes or less. In my experience, people are sometimes – but more often not – what they seem. And we often get in the quick-to-judge trap and miss out on friendships or romance.
Continue reading Mother’s Day
By admin, on May 19th, 2011%
The day before an election is probably not the best time to be preaching on blind faith. If ever there was a time when we should be asking our leaders to put their cards on the table, to prove there promises are real, this is it. In fact, that’s actually our job as voters – to question and challenge, not to settle for hearsay and conjecture. It’s our job to be the doubting Thomas – and ask for evidence.
Continue reading Conformation Sunday
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