RecentReflectionsMeditations - Yellowknife United Church

Broken Relationships
Sixth Sunday after Pentecost - Year A
June 22, 2008

Let us pray: O God, guide these words or the silences between them, that they may tell of you and that they may invite us to live more fully as your people. Amen.

   My heart was heavy when I first looked at the scripture passages early this week. As usual, the context had a lot to do with that. I reflected back on our community life from the past weeks and imagined what the verses from our faith book, the Bible, have to say to us on this day. So, as you heard, the first story I read was the one about Hagar and Ishmael, Sarah and Isaac and poor Abraham stuck between them. My mind bounced back to last week’s worship - “United for Peace” Sunday along with the marking of Father’s Day. I said a quick prayer of thanks that this particular set of readings were not on the list for last week. It wasn’t a particularly happy prayer of thanks, it was one twinged with sadness. It also wasn’t that long ago that we were celebrating Christian Family Sunday - a way of broadening the scope of what is more commonly known as Mother’s Day. I remind you that Mother’s Day was originally started by mothers who were concerned about their male children being called off to fight in wars - as a call for peace. Of course today, unhappily we know that it is not just male children that are being sent off to fight in wars. We also know that civilians of all ages and genders are the most likely candidates in any war. So while some things have changed, seemingly none of the changes are for the better.

   Well, as I said, that all served as context for the reading from Genesis today. It tells of Abraham’s solution to the domestic dispute that was brewing. It is a disheartening solution. Surely, Abraham was keenly aware that the desert was a dangerous place. Survival was not guaranteed. In fact, it was probably quite unlikely. Abraham, celebrated, venerated even as the father of many generations, does not hold up particularly well under the scrutiny of present day guidelines of what it takes to be a good father. You may recall that when faced with a similar kind of situation a bit later in his time as a male parent, he was ready although hopefully unwilling, to sacrifice his other son, Isaac as well. In fact, Abraham is a hugely bad example of what it takes to be a good Dad.

   The story gave me an opportunity to think about some of the other disturbing passages a group of us read during the past few months in our book and bible study. If there is one unifying theme to the stories depicted in Jonathan Kirsch’s book “The Harlot by the Side of the Road” it is that all kinds of unacceptable behaviour - sexual abuse, sexual exploitation, incest, are justified as long as there is ultimately a show of faith. It seems that to this list of unacceptable behaviour we can add family sacrifice.

   Well I believe that the stories of the bible are there not just to be preached about, but also to be preached against. Rather than a manual for successful living and the proper ways to be faithful people - the stories show us a via negativa - what not to do, how not to live faithfully.

   Sometimes you can do that by playing one passage against another. Quite often, the gospels are used in that way, because they carry a bit more authority for Christians, seeing that they tell the story of Jesus, the Christ, and seeing that in the gospel record Jesus is often seen to revise the normal course of thinking, adding thoughtful and insightful layers of interpretation and meaning.

   Not today! At least not at first. If you were going to look for a passage - a story from Jesus, a soothing and consoling word to help to heal broken relationship among family members, the gospel passage from today would not be one to choose. If anything, Jesus’ words from today’s reading make it worse. If things seem to be good among family members well watch out because true faithfulness can (perhaps even will) cause dissension among family members. They’ll be pitted against each other, because being faithful to God can put a strain on the family ties - being faithful to God upsets the priority system that is often based on family relationships.

   It just gets worse. Probably as a result of the news about flooding in the American midwest, lingering anguish about the Chinese earthquake and the continuing saga of misery and recovery for Myanmar (even though the news coverage has lived out its week of importance) after cyclone Nargis, and in juxtaposition with the worship resources that invited us to reflect on the beauty and wonder of creation I reflected not only on broken relationships among family members, but also our broken relationship with the earth.

   I’m sorry if this is starting to sound like a lament, but I also needed to add in the celebration of National Aboriginal Day in close proximity to the apology offered by the prime minster a week ago for the years of pain and abuse that were the result of the Residential School system.

   The apology and the responses to it, have actually become a ray of hope in what was otherwise a rather depressing week brought on by the passages assigned to this week in the church year.

   You see, as a person of faith I have to have hope. I believe it is part of the DNA of faithful people to believe that God can work change among us. I also believe that faith is not just something that we have. It is something that we do. God calls us to live out our faith.

   My story this week is one of redemption. All of these negative thoughts about family relationships, along with Jesus’ difficult predictions of more to come, coupled with concerns about the broken relationship with creation that is a constant these days, sprinkled with reaction and concern about the apology for the residential school system, while still there - and always will be there, found some resolution by the week’s end.

   Here’s a brief summary of how it happened. A group of friends decided to spend a bit more than a day together - twenty-six hours as it turned out. Originally it was to be on an island in Great Slave Lake, but a small craft warning had us gathering instead at a cabin on an island in Prelude Lake. Among the many other discussion topics, there was some curiosity expressed among members of the group about how this weekend of conversation, food, rain and sun would get woven into a reflection in today’s worship service. I had already chosen “Broken Relationships” as the title for this reflection and I shared that with them. An immediate response from among this group of people was that gatherings like the one we were experiencing could serve to heal broken relationships. One of the people, as we got ready to return to our homes yesterday, asked me if it the time had been a spiritual experience. Of course it was.

   Has anything changed? Well, no - the stories of broken relationship are still there. Jesus’ warnings of dissent among family members are still valid. Climate change didn’t suddenly take a “U-turn”. So, in all those ways, nothing changed, but to say that nothing changed would be wrong. I changed, and I expect that everyone in our group changed just a bit too. It wasn’t a transformational change, or even a change I hadn’t contemplated already. But I came out of the weekend a bit more optimistic, a bit more hopeful, because of the time we spent in community, because of the view of creation that I was able to experience, because of the reflection time I was able to experience at 5:00 am yesterday as I looked out on a perfectly calm lake and an already risen sun with its’s surprising warmth. You see it’s like the painting I showed when the young people were up here. Slowing down can change our perspective. Slowing down might actually do the world some good. Slowing down to contemplate our relationship with the Creator might actually help to improve it. Amen.

Well, thank you for this opportunity to speak to you today. Prior to being invited to give a talk I had been doing a lot of thinking about the story of Zacheous which we heard during children’s time and how this story relates to Christian discipleship. I have been asking my self questions like:

What is Christian discipleship?

Who is called to Christian discipleship?

How are we called to serve? (I will be using the terms Christian discipleship and service interchangeable)

What motivates us to serve?

Can we follow our own dreams and serve at the same time?

Or do we have to make drastic paradigm shifts in our lives in order to serve?

I will not be directly revisiting these questions in my talk as I do not have complete answers for any of them. And even if I had found answers they would not be applicable to everyone here today. However what I do want to accomplish in my talk is to present some ideas on Christian discipleship/service. Hopefully these ideas will help us generate more questions and perhaps some answers for ourselves.

When I began to prepare my talk I thought that I was speaking on June 8. Looking at the lexionary readings for this date I came across the story of the Oak of Moreh which ties in closely with the story of Zacheous. Thus I developed my thoughts based on these readings. So I apologize for being somewhat off the lexionary although the worship committee assured me that this was fine. Having been given the liberty to use non-lexionary readings I have also included the story of Moses and the burning bush in today’s talk.

Obviously these three stories all have to do with plants. Given that spring is in full swing a discussion on plants seems timely. Also I have an academic background in botany (which is the study of plants) and can provide some expertise in the area. Although Jaime would be the first to point out that it is aquatic botany not terrestrial and I definitely do not have a green thumb.

The scriptures, both Old and New Testaments contain numerous references to plants. Indeed our fall from grace, as the story goes, was due to our tasting of the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Plants are also excellent Christian symbols. If we look at Jesus’ life on earth it began with him being born into a wood working family and it was fulfilled with his death on a wooden cross and resurrection from a garden tomb.

Jesus often used plant imagery in his stories and teachings. I believe Jesus was inclined to use plant imagery and other imagery from nature because it is real. I think as people we often confuse what is real, truly real, with what society and culture tells us is real.

C.S. Lewis in his book “The Screwtape Letters” offers excellent insight to this issue. In one of his letters, Screwtape a senior devil recounts to his nephew Wormwood a junior devil this story related to how he was able to win people over to the dark side of the force, sorry I just had to include the Star Wars reference. Here is an excerpt from one of the letters:

“whatever odd ideas might come into a man’s head when he was shut up alone with his books, a healthy dose of real life was enough to show him that all ‘that sort of thing’ just couldn’t be true.”

Here I believe the real life that Screwtape is talking about would be that which society and culture tries to force upon us.

We could very easily go off on a tangent discussing what is truly real and what is not. This tangent would obviously expose my bias as a biologist and would involve discussions related to the natural world including plants. This tangent would also discuss how we have strayed so absurdly far from understanding what is real that we now have to assign monetary figures to irreplaceable and essential life giving natural processes such as photosynthesis in order for us to value them.

However, for now I will focus on plant imagery in the Bible as it relates to discipleship. Specifically looking at Moses’ Burning Bush, Zacheus’ Sycamore and to some extent Abram’s Oak of Moreh. On a side note God also showed used Oak trees, the Oaks of Mamre, as a setting to proclaim to Abraham the arrival of Isaac. If we approach these scripture readings not from a literal or historical context but from a mystical interpretation we see that they are similar in that in all three stories plants helped people see God’s plan not only for themselves but for all of creation. However, the way the Sycamore and Oaks transmit their messages differs greatly from the approach of the burning bush.

The day that the Oaks and the Sycamore helped show God’s plan to Abraham and Zacheus respectively were no different than any other day. The trees grew that day, although ever so slightly, and photosynthesized just as they had done the days before. These miracles of growth and photosynthesis which is the changing of light energy to chemical energy, resulted, in the case of the Zacheus story, in a tree with limbs strong and tall enough to offer that vantage point for Zacheus to see God’s plan namely Jesus. In contrast, the day the bush helped reveal God’s plan to Mosses was far from ordinary. Prior to that day the bush did not burn with out being consumed and I can’t imagine that it continued to burn after its encounter with Moses.

I believe that sometimes when we think of Christian discipleship we have a tendency to feel inadequate unless we have had that other worldly experience such as the burning bush. However, many Christian mystics would caution us that other-worldly or special experiences are harmful if they are confused with the core of Christian mysticism which is understood as inner transformation.

I think too that there is a danger for us who have not had a burning bush experience to say well I have nothing really yet to offer in term’s of Christian discipleship. I think the Canadian poet, Leonard Cohen either intentionally or unintentionally sums this type of excuse up beautifully in his song Waiting for the Miracle – An excerpt from this song is as follows:

“I've been waiting night and day.

I didn't see the time,

I waited half my life away.

There were lots of invitations

and I know you sent me some,

but I was waiting for the miracle,

for the miracle to come”

If we can get to that point where we can truly open our soul’s eyes we would see that the miracle is here with us. The miracle of photosynthesis is no less amazing than the miracle of a burning bush (of course the formula for photosynthesis would not fit as nicely on the United Church of Canada’s crest as an image of the burning bush). Each one of us has been given divine miraculous gifts. We must have been given these gifts for we have been created in the image of God. If we want to live a life of Christian discipleship I believe we need to first learn to recognize and then accept and fully utilize these divine gifts.

How do we recognize a gift as divine? Well I think that could take on another whole meditation or series of meditations but for now I would offer this quotation from ecologist J.A. Weins that I think is a good starting point

"because we are clever at devising explanations of what we see [we feel], we may think we understand the system when we have not even observed it correctly" Spatial Scaling in Ecology. Functional Ecology 3:385-39

Have the distractions of what Screwtape would call ‘real life’ prevented us from being able to observe our system correctly?

Or perhaps we welcome and embrace these distractions because we don’t want to know what our soul’s eyes would see if they were fully opened. Maybe we are afraid that what we would see wouldn’t fit with the comfortable life that our affluence has brought us.

Episcolepalian priest and author Kate Moorehead offers a story in her book Organic God about a woman who was afraid to observe the system correctly because she thought God might call her to go to Africa. Moorehead goes on to discuss how this person like many of us probably thought that following God’s will was like taking a multiple choice test in that there is only one correct answer per question.

As a grade 12 science teacher at Aurora College I am currently helping my students prep to write the standardized departmental test in biology. As a class we have been spending a considerable amount of time learning standardized test writing strategies. How much knowledge is missed how much is lost when we confine our students to standardized testing. Thankfully God does not administer standardized tests.

When I hear people say that they find religion such as Christianity confining I would have to agree. Religions such as Christianity can be like taking a standardized test. They can create a lot of anxiety as people question did they get it right or not. However, if we consider Christian faith, which I would argue should never be confused with religion, we would see a much different situation.

Jesus says “I am the vine you are the branches” (John 15:5). Another plant reference. If we think of how vines grow and I think of one of Jaime’s plants that was in our kitchen window the plant had a number of options but for some reason grew between the strings of an ornament that was hanging on our wall. A vine does not have a predetermined growth route. It’s not worried about playing a guessing game with God concerning God's will. It does however recognize its miraculous divine gifts such as tropisms which is the growth towards or away from certain stimuli and photosynthesis and uses them appropriately.

Hopefully we too can learn to recognize and accept our divine gifts and then just as the Sycamore in the Zacheus story we can help ourselves as well as those we encounter to find what professor of divinity and author Bernard McGinn would describe as that:

“mysterious inner realization beyond both intellect and will, where we become

one with God with out distraction.”

Amen