Pentecost 16A

An article, by American preacher Lillian Daniel has been circulating widely among religious professionals. In fact I think half my clergy friends on Facebook and Twitter had a link to it because it speaks to a common frustration among church folks.

The article has the provocative title “Spiritual But Not Religious? Please Stop Boring Me.” In her article, Lillian Daniel argues with those who create their own spirituality on their own terms. 

She scolds people whose heartfelt theological reflections lead them to the deeply profound and radical conclusions that they “find God in the sunset” or “during walks on the beach” or “while hiking in the mountains” as if we Christians never thought of finding God in nature before.

She waves a finger at them saying “Being privately spiritual but not religious just doesn't interest me. There is nothing challenging about having deep thoughts all by oneself. What is interesting is doing this work in community, where other people might call you on stuff, or heaven forbid, disagree with you. Where life with God gets rich and provocative is when you dig deeply into a tradition that you did not invent all for yourself...”

I understand her frustration. As one who has dug deeply into the Christian theological tradition, and discovered its riches, it can seem downright insulting to centuries of thoughtful theological reflection being pushed aside in favour of a “I find God in the sunsets” kind of kindergarten spirituality.

And we - YOU - as a church, who gather regularly to hear God’s word and receive the Holy Sacraments, YOU who work hard to build a strong church, YOU who give so much of your time, talents, and treasure to ensure that the proclamation of the gospel is heard within these walls and lived out in the community.

Those of you who’ve lived, breathed, and died the gospel message, might be offended to hear that some folks insist that their self-styled “walk along the beach” spirituality is a more authentic expression of faith than you who have holy dirt under your fingernails.

In my job I encounter these folks with self-created spiritualities all the time, folks who reflexively dismiss or challenge institutional religious traditions. But the weird thing is that they want me, as a religious leader, to affirm their religious rants, no matter how bizarre they are.

A conversation usually goes something like this, “Look, pastor, I know you are a Christian, but I believe that the earth is just a school for us to learn how to live on a higher plane of existence when we die, after which we exist as pure energy. And when we suffer in this life it just means we were meant to have that experience because in a past life we hurt someone and we need to feel the same thing in this life. That’s true right? ...RIGHT?”

And, of course, if I disagree with them, I’m forcing my religion on to them, being the typical tyrannical preacher who demands intellectual obedience, as if they weren’t doing the same to me.

I find those conversations annoying, if not insulting. As if their random musings are at the same level as thousands of years of rigorous theological exploration.

Many religious commentators have chimed in on why this “spiritual but not religious” phenomena is happening. Some say that it’s because of boring church services with long, tedious sermons that are out of touch with peoples’ daily lives.

Others suggest that we speak a religious language that does not compute in the brains of non-believers; that the words we use get lost in translation when they reach secular ears.

Yet others blame the growth of a multi-cultural society, where there’s no religious consensus, and so the religious waters have been so muddied that folks are forced to create their own spiritual meaning.

Still others blame a self-centered consumer society, where people get to pick and choose everything else in their lives, so why not their personal spirituality?

While I’m sure that there’s truth in all of these theories, I wonder if the rise of self-styled and self-created spiritualities are the unintended consequences of Christians behaving badly. Our cultural memory is long, and history doesn’t forget, many of the church’s past actions that have been less than loving and have hurt our proclamation and tarnished our reputation as good news people.

People remember the Crusades and the Inquisition. The know about the sexual abuse scandals and Residential Schools. The complicity or silence of Christians during the Holocaust.

People remember when the church was more interested in protecting its cultural and political power than in setting people free in Jesus’ name. 

People remember the angry, judgmental sermons and the mean Sunday School teacher. They remember being forced to memorize scripture, and they saw the harsh TV evangelist spewing hate.

They saw how some church leaders have tried to legislate so-called “Christian morality” on everyone else. 

They saw how some church-folks have tried to force people to live according to their “Christian” rules, without first receiving Christ their saviour.

They experienced a Christianity that was about controlling peoples’ behaviour and demanding social conformity. 

They experienced a Christianity that celebrated obedience rather than freedom. 

They saw preachers who used their positions and pulpits for financial gain at the expense of the good will of people in their pews.

So, it’s not as if this “spiritual but not religious” phenomena is happening within a historical vacuum. People are rebelling against an institutional, authoritarian Christianity that hurt them, which is the only kind of Christianity that seems to make the news, and so perpetuates the myth that churches filled with angry, judgmental, people who just want to tell you how sinful you are. Should we be surprised, then, when people walk away and claim spiritual independence for themselves?

However, even knowing where it’s coming from, as a church leader, there’s something therapeutic in criticizing these self-styled spiritualities, especially when the inadequacies of homemade religion are so glaring. 

But criticism can easily devolve into smugness. It’s tempting to look down my nose at those whose faith has as much spiritual nourishment as a Big Mac with fries.

It’s easy to ask, “Why can’t these folks just see what they’re doing, and then get back on board with traditional Christianity?” 

That’s tempting. But that question speaks as much about what we’ve lost as much as our concern for those who are wandering in the wilderness searching for spiritual food that sustains.

Last Sunday was supposed to be called “Back to Church Sunday,” where we were encouraged to invite people to worship who haven’t been to church for a while. It’s supposed to be an evangelistic exercise designed to help churches return, once again, to a place of institutional prominence. Which is why I decided that St. John’s will NOT participate in Back to Church Sunday.

Back to Church Sunday, to my eyes, focuses our vision on the past - on what we’ve LOST rather than what God has for us in the future. The program wants to bring “BACK” our previous successes rather than to turn our gaze to what’s ahead.

To me, it’s clear that God is doing something new, by doing something old. God is calling us away from the cultural captivity of western culture, and asking us to learn again, what Paul was trying to teach the church in Philippi in our second reading.

“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others...”

While I think Paul overstates the issue when he says to “regard others as better than yourselves,” as he calls the church to humility, I also think he was on to something when he reminded the church that the heart of our life together is humble service to others, just like Jesus lived.

That’s why Paul goes on to quote from an early Christian hymn:

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human likeness, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross...”

As followers of the one who humbled himself, that is our calling. I’ve always said that the church of the future will be smaller, but stronger. As we break free from our cultural captivity to power and success, and as our institutional structures crumble, God will raise up a new church that is marked by humility, and revitalized by a deep spirituality rooted in ancient practice but with eyes open for God’s future.

We will no longer feel threatened by people with self-styled spiritualities or feel endangered by world religions that have migrated to our once Christian-dominated home. We will no longer worry about being a minority, but will embrace life on the margin. We will no longer look to the past with longing, but will look to the future with anticipation.

Because having been set free from institutional shackles and cultural entitlement, we will once again be a movement of good news people,

...joyfully proclaiming God’s message of life and salvation that God has given us in Jesus’ name,

...gratefully declaring freedom and forgiveness to a world trapped in selfishness and sin,

...vigorously announcing God’s justice and joy to those oppressed by destructive powers.

We will grow as a resurrection people with the resilience of the saviour who who died and rose again to defeat everything that would keep him down; indeed we ARE growing as Jesus’ risen body. Our future is NOW! Our time have ARRIVED! Christ has risen and so have we! Our eyes are open to the future that has been given to us in Jesus!

Together, may God open wide our arms to receive the future that God has placed in our hands.

May this be so among. Amen!

Pentecost 12A

Don’t you wish it were that easy? Wouldn’t it be nice to have such clarity? Wouldn’t you want to have such a moment of certainty that you knew - for sure - what God wanted for you and your life?

Hearing directly from God is something I think we all yearn for. We long for certainty in a world of doubt. We try to hear God’s clear voice in our noisy and chaotic lives. And so we might look at this burning bush episode and we might turn a noxious shade of green.

For those of you who don’t know the story, or haven’t seen the movie or the cartoon, we have Moses, having just murdered some poor soul in Egypt, escaped to Goshen, finding a wife, having kids, and getting into the farming business with his father-in-law Jethro.

And life is good. Egypt is a thousand miles away and he’s a different person now. He’s embracing the simple joys of life among the sheep. He loves his wife, and it looks like he’s finally found himself. He settles into this easy existence.

But that’s when God shows up and takes it all away. Again.

That’s when Moses sees this burning bush, but does not become consumed by the flames. So he has to check this out because his eyes seem to be lying to him.

And that’s when Moses meets his God, and tells Moses that the cries of the oppressed Hebrew slaves in Egypt. And so God is sending Moses back to Egypt to rescue the thousands, if not millions, of slaves under pharaoh’s rule.
That’s quite the task. And Moses wonders if he’s up to the job.

Why did God choose Moses for this venture?

Was it because Moses grew up in the imperial household, and knew all the power players?

Was it because Moses assembled a killer resume while in Egypt, building huge cities for pharaoh and overseeing a prosperous economy, and God saw in him a natural leader who could speak with conviction and strength?

Was it because Moses knew his one-time brother Rameses intimately, the one who now occupied the throne, and so Moses could exploit Rameses’ weaknesses to achieve freedom for their people?

That would make strategic sense given that pharaoh’s army was the strongest in the world, and his reach could summon a force greater than the mind could grasp. If God’s people were to be freed from this tyrant, they needed a leader equal to the task. And Moses looked like that leader. After all, you have to fight strength with strength, right?

At least that’s what it looked like on paper. Moses’ record of accomplishments was impressive. He had a first class education. He knew the Egyptian mind, and could speak the language. He knew how their system work, and could navigate their politics masterfully. He was immersed in Egyptian culture and knew their history. He looked like the obvious choice.

But if you read between the lines on his resume, you’d see a different Moses. A Moses who was conflicted. He was a man caught between two worlds. The Egyptian world he was adopted into. And the Hebrew world he born into.

He was caught between wanting to follow God’s will to rescue his people enslaved in Egypt, and living the comfortable life he had built with his wife and family in Goshen.

Moses was caught between wanting to do the work that God put in front of him, and knowing that he was wanted for murder back in Egypt, and would probably be tried and executed upon stepping on Egyptian soil.

His path was anything but clear.

So maybe that burning bush episode is anything but something to envy. That encounter probably sent a shiver of fear down Moses’ vertebrae. His life as he knew it was over. He couldn’t pretend he didn’t hear from God on that mountain. And he couldn’t erase from his mind the fact that God had asked him to do the impossible.

He was conflicted and scared. Stuck in an outrageous situation with no means of escape.

And this is where I’ve always had trouble with the way they show this story in the movie. Charlton Heston’s Moses seems so earnest, so sure of his path, so spiritually elevated, that he doesn’t experience the conflict of his impossible situation. His character is so far removed from most of what we see and hear and feel about God, that I find it hard to relate to him.

That’s why I think the movie has it wrong. The movie makes it look like Moses was chosen because he is such a strong leader and faithful servant of God who, may ask the occasional question, but nonetheless knows clearly that he’ll do whatever God asks him to do.

That’s why the movie gets it wrong. I think God chose Moses, not for his strength, but for his weakness. God wasn’t interested in Moses’ resume, God didn’t care about his knowledge of palace politics, God ignored Moses’ culture, education, and breeding. God couldn’t have cared less about Moses’ record of achievement. God dismissed everything we look at when we choose a leader.

God chose Moses because Moses was a stuttering, fearful, murderer. The only power that God would equip Moses with was God’s power. God stripped Moses of everything Moses had, and asked Moses to walk into enemy territory unarmed, but with one simple, four word message, “Let my people go.”

If you know the story you’ll know that it takes a while, and a lot of pain and suffering on both sides, but pharaoh finally gives in. God’s people are free. Not because of Moses’ brilliant tactics, but because of the simple power of God’s message. “Let my people go.”

Of course we could say that Moses also had visible signs and wonders, and even the power over life and death, at his disposal. But we remember that Moses was only a vessel, or a mouthpiece. Moses could claim no credit for what God achieved. Only God could claim recognition for this liberation.

So maybe that’s the good news in this story. Since we’re not in charge of results, we can live in the freedom of knowing that failures don’t meaning anything in God’s scheme. In fact, God uses your failures to create miracles. God uses your weaknesses to bring strength. God uses battles and lost to win God’s war.

It is in your falling that you rise.

And we as a church continue in Moses’ footsteps. We will walk into the imperial halls of suffering and grief, armed with nothing but the word and promises of God. We will enter the fortress of despair and depression as mouthpieces of God’s liberating healing. We will confront the empire of pain and death with words of God’s freedom.

It’s your scars, not your strengths, that qualify you for this ministry of rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep. It’s your wounds, not your wins, that allow you to walk into peoples’ hurting lives. 

It’s the parts of your that others put down that God lifts up. It’s those moments when you’ve taken up your own cross with Jesus, and followed him into your own grave of fear, hopeless, and grief.

Moses could have traded on his inside knowledge of palace politics, he could have devised an action plan based on his experience in pharaoh's house to launch an attack against those who would enslave his people.

Instead, Moses found out that God can use the stuttering tongue of a murderer to achieve liberation for God’s people. Moses found out that records of achievement aren’t what God is looking for when God chooses someone for a job. Moses found out that earthly accomplishment is nothing but a flimsy veneer, a smoke screen thinly hiding our own insecurities when God stripped Moses of everything he had, his status, his success, his swagger, all his worldly power, and in their place, set in Moses' mouth God’s simple words of freedom.

And that’s the same for all if you. It’s not the battles that you won that give you wisdom, but the battles that brought you to your knees.

It’s not your achievements that qualify you for ministry in the church, but the wounds and scars that you try to cover up.

It’s not the easy successes or simple wins that put you on the front lines of God’s healing work, but it’s your failures and fights that authorize you to speak God’s words of freedom to those who are trapped in their own personal bondage.

Your most powerful work rises out of your pain. God looks down into the deepest, darkest, parts of your lives, the parts you’d rather keep hidden,
the moments of a memory that you’re ashamed of,
the stumbling blocks at your feet and the doors slammed in your face,
the scraped knees and the bruised hearts,
the crushed dreams and the thwarted ambitions,
the squandered past and future denied,
those times when you’ve landed face-first in the dirt and wondered if you’ll ever get up again, and God says, “Yes. This is someone I can work with. This is someone who knows what life is like. This is someone who’s fresh from battle and is living to tell about it.”

If God can use a stuttering murderer to speak an entire nation into freedom, God can and will use YOU. God will place words of liberation in your mouth when you recognize the suffering of others.

God puts God’s message of a new tomorrow on your heart to those who can’t see a future. God puts in your eyes the vision to see the path that leads from slavery into release from the chains that keep those stuck in the tyranny of a painful past.

It may not be a burning bush you see, but God calls you to be a healing presence. God is calling you be a liberation agent to those who are in bondage to sin. God is calling you to speak God’s message of a new and abundant tomorrow to those who can’t see that life can get better.

You are Moses. God only uses those scarred and bruised by life to bring salvation and freedom to the world.

And God sends you out, God arms you with one simple, four-word message: Let my people go!

May this be so among us. Amen.

Pentecost 11A

What a short memory they had.

“Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph...” the bible tells us. It’s a different book, but the story continues. How could Joseph be erased from memory? What Egyptian could forget Joseph? And so quickly. And if Pharaoh chose to forget who Joseph was, why didn’t anyone remind him?

Certainly they couldn’t forget that Joseph was the one who saved Egypt from starving to death. Surely they remembered that it was Joseph who managed the Egyptian economy so effectively that vanishing resources wouldn’t affect their prosperity.

But they forgot him.They ignored his achievements. And instead waged war on his legacy by enslaving his kin who came to live with him.

Pharaoh looked out his window and he was afraid. He was afraid that the Israelites - Joseph’s family - were growing too numerous, large enough to become a threat to his empire if they got their act together, organized themselves, and rose up against him. 

He was afraid that it would be him who would go down in history as the one who destroyed Egypt’s greatness. He was afraid that he would look weak when put up along side the great rulers of the past, rulers who made Egypt what it was.

Pharaoh ruled out of fear. Not out of a vision of a better tomorrow, or hope for a more abundant future. For him strength meant dominating others, oppressing and enslaving those under him, forcing them to build large cities to match his enormous ego. Ruthlessly starting wars with other countries simply to steal their riches.

People were just instruments to create his vision of himself, they were to be used to build his greatness, then be tossed away.

He ruled out of fear because he forgot Joseph. He forgot his peoples’ story. He forgot how this lowly slave from another country was lifted to the highest position he could attain in order to save a country that was could have been destroyed by drought. He forgot what God had done for them. And he put himself in God’s place.

He forgot his story.

But in his defense, that’s easy to do. Especially when we don’t KNOW our story. When we stop telling it.

I heard a lecture recently about a poll taken last year involving the biblical literacy levels of average churchgoers, asking them basic biblical questions.

The answers were depressing for any pastor. Many could not identify David as king. Some said that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. Others believed that “Christ” was Jesus’ family name and not his title. Some said that they would go to heaven when they died because they are “basically good people” and not because of what Jesus had done for them.

Furthermore, they mis-identified popular aphorisms as biblical passages. These ones especially are most often mistakenly named as scripture:

“The Lord helps those who helps themselves,” they say with great piety. But of course this was said by Benjamin Franklin, not Jesus or Paul or Isaiah.

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime,” some utter as if it were biblical wisdom, but is actually a Chinese proverb and not from scripture.

“Neither a borrower nor lender be,” they hum with their best English accent which, but not realizing what is apparent to anyone who took grade 12 English that the quote is by Polonius from Shakespeare’s Hamlet and not a biblical proverb.

People didn’t know their story. And if they didn’t know their story how could they live it when they left church each Sunday.

And I suspect many of us would have similar problems telling our story to others let alone living it in our lives. Even among church folks, our story is less and less familiar.

I say this NOT to point the finger at anyone. It’s a different day than it was 20, 30, 40 or more years ago. Church used to be the social centre of peoples’ lives. It was the moral and spiritual gathering place for a society who had a silent agreement with the church, who was to play a significant part in people’s personal development.

But some say that churches abused this responsibility. And instead of being a place where people received love and and forgiveness, church became a place of rules and regulations. 

Instead of learning about care for others, justice for the oppressed, peace between enemies, healing for the sick, or resurrection for the dead, church became a place where power over people’s lives and behaviour was more important that setting people free in Jesus’ name.

As a pastor, most of the angriest anti-church people I encounter are those who’ve been hurt by the church. A brutally strict pastor who demanded rote bible memorization. A Sunday School teacher who yelled at her class and ordered her students to sit up straight and do what they were told. The oppressively boring confirmation classes that droned on for hours. The condemnation of other religions as “satanic.” Threats of eternal torture presented as “good news.” A place where people hate sin more than they love forgiveness.

When people lash out at us Christians, it’s often because of what we’re doing wrong rather than what we’re doing right.

Non-believers lash out at us when we try to dominate society and dictate to people what they should believe and how they should live. 

Non-church folks lash out at us Christians when we spend more time judging and condemning rather than loving and forgiving. 

Non-Christians lash out at us when we forget to live OUR story, and put religious language on the dominant culture’s - or Pharaoh’s story.

We think that if we occupy places of power than we can change the culture. If we elect the right people than we’ll take a leap forward for the kingdom of God. If we enact a specific political agenda, then we can force others to live according to our values.

We confuse what the world calls “power” with what God calls “power.”

God’s power is different. God’s story is not about wielding worldly authority. Just ask Pharaoh. He learned that lesson the hard way.

When Pharaoh forgot God’s story, God inserted Moses as a reminder. Moses was sent to be part of Pharaoh's family NOT because God wanted a good and righteous man in a position of power to rule over the nations. That’s not what happened because that’s not what God is interested in. Moses became part of the royal household to humble it, and to tell a different story.

Of course we know that the story took a long time to tell, and Moses often leaped between narratives. And it wasn’t until Moses returned to Pharaoh decades later after living a completely different life, with nothing in his hands but his shepherd’s staff and God’s power, to prove to Pharaoh the strength of God’s story.

But Pharaoh couldn’t hear it. He clung to that old story of power and empire and domination and oppression so tightly, that he lost a generation of Egypt’s first born.  He clasped his hands around that old story of anger and violence and selfishness that too many mothers buried too many sons because of it.

He grabbed hold of that old story of enlarged ego and unrestrained ambition until his actions affected him personally. Until finally, he had to admit defeat, he understood his story brought death, where God’s story brought freedom.

What’s YOUR story? How is YOUR story playing out in your life? What is driving YOU? How does your story and God’s story connect?

Is it a story of selfless service, giving to others without of thought to yourself? Or is it a relentless pursuit of prosperity, putting values aside and striving to get everything you ever wanted?

Or is it somewhere in between? A mixture of self-serving ambition and care for others. Perhaps even at the same time. Maybe forgetting which story is which.

That’s why we gather here each week. We Christians tell and live a unique story. We come to church to hear that story again and again and again and again and again, until it becomes part of us. 

You may not be able to quote the bible chapter and verse, and you may have forgotten everything you learned in confirmation, but I’ll bet that your life bears witness to God’s love in ways you don’t even recognize. I’ll bet you are living God’s story in ways you can name, and in ways you don’t even see.



That’s because God’s story is within you. God planted it there and watered it in baptism. You live God’s story because it is God who tells that story through you - and through us, together.

Of course, there are moments when we put up a fight, when we cling to that old story of selfishness and ego, of anger and violence, hurting those around us, hurting the world God made, and hurting ourselves.



And when we do, when we forget our story, when we insert ourselves in God’s place as chief-storyteller, God humbles us, calls us out, and reminds us of God’s story, where we all play a role in God’s story of freedom and forgiveness. God’s story of care and healing. And we then again live that story.

It’s a story that God has given YOU, a story that God put on your lips when you offer words of encouragement and forgiveness. It’s a story that God puts in your hands when you help someone up when they fall. It’s a story that God puts in your heart when you reach out in compassion.

It’s a story of generosity to those in need. It’s a story of be-friending those without a family. It’s a story of welcoming new faces.

It’s a story that Bryn has just been baptized into. It’s a story that God has included him in. It’s a story of life and love. It’s a story of abundant futures and vast possibilities. It’s a story of renewal, where God will use Bryn’s giftedness for service to others. It’s a story of healing and justice. It’s a story of freedom from whatever chains will threaten to weigh him down.

It’s a story that he might forget. It’s a story that WE might forget. But God certainly doesn’t. Despite our forgetfulness, God keeps telling that story over and over and over and over and over again, until we become that which we hear and receive, and the story ends when we join the chorus of those who are numbered within the narrative, the great company of storytellers, those whom God has drawn together to share how God has told the story through them, until all people reach that happy ending, and all voices join together in the finale of joy and peace.

May this be so among us. Amen.