sunday WORSHIP

Well, darned if it didn’t happen again! The “Ever-Ready Bunny” made another appearance. Do you remember a couple of weeks ago, Pentecost Sunday when I was talking about the energy and enthusiasm of candidates being interviewed for ministry? I told a story about one who just exuded the Holy Spirit. He was so filled with God’s love it just poured out of him, something like what must have happened that Pentecost Sunday hundreds or years ago, when the excitement was so intense that people spoke different languages, and everyone understood exactly what was being said. Well, it happened again a week ago in Prince George at the Covenanting service which is always held at the end of our Regional Conference meetings. This celebration of ministry service recognizes new ministry personnel being ordained, commissioned, or accepted to the UC from other denominations. These individuals always have incredible stories to tell. But rather than relate one of the stories itself, I want to relate a segue.  One of the ordinands, P, is an individual in my age bracket. He is just coming into ministry at retirement age. That is in itself amazing, but more so is how his Holy Spirit, or perhaps the Spirit of a Community of Faith has affected others. I sat beside one of P’s congregants, an Asian woman who has been in Canada now about 12 years. She was over the moon about P’s ordination, but it was easy to see her joy was way deeper than that.  Our Conference theme was “Rooted and Grounded in Love,” words you heard Chris share this morning from our Epistle reding. And this individual had been listening. She was like a kid in a candy store, absolutely bursting with gratefulness. And she couldn’t contain it. Every fabric of her being was shouting out, “I am so lucky to be here, in this place, with people who love one another and love God.”  She projected a gleeful presence and in fact she apologized for being so talkative. I told her not to apologize and in fact to keep talking, especially to folks in her community of faith. Sharing God’s love, professing our faith experiences and impressions is so important, especially if it comes from a fellow congregant. Better yet if it is a stranger on the street. Someone in paid accountable ministry can share those things, but when they are expressed from the pews, the impact can be transformative. I wish I could remember the woman’s name, Lily perhaps. In any case she left me with an incredible sense of hope. Hope for the church and hope for the world. As you gleaned from Louise and my sharing during “spirit sightings,” there were many times throughout our meeting where we were reminded that despite what seems to be constant chaos and negativity around us these days, we are “rooted and grounded in love.”   The author of today’s Epistle reading was pointing that out to a questioning and struggling church, reminding them that regardless of their frustrations and doubts, God’s love for them was boundless. Reading the First Nation’s translation really helps me relate to this text.  The Chosen One will make his home in your heart. I pray that as you trust in him, your roots will go deep into the soil of his great love, 18 and that from these roots you will draw the strength and courage needed to walk this sacred path together with all his holy people. 20 I am praying to the Maker of Life, who, by his great power working in us, can do far more than what we ask for, more than our small minds can imagine. Our keynote speaker and presenter throughout the conference, Jeff Chu, spoke to us in depth of this wisdom, how he has seen it and how he has personally experienced it. He started by telling us that “our ministry will fail unless it is rooted and grounded in love.”  What did he mean by that? The church, and indeed our lives are messy he said. Amidst nurturing relationships and much joy our days are interspersed with grief, trauma, discomfort, conflict, and doubt. The church we well know can be a place of spiritual nourishment as we find enrichment in belonging, being accepted for who we are, being held in prayer and being loved through God’s ubiquitous holy presence. However, it can also be a place where we don’t accept our differences, pass judgement, and criticize. We don’t always live out our ministry together in ways that are life-giving. We don’t always walk our vision and mission.  Those are times Jeff would say when we don’t remain rooted and grounded in love, rooted and grounded in the Creator, a God who calls us into being the best we can possibly be.  He shared some personal experiences, stories that were heartbreaking. We heard about a gay man and his husband that were shunned by family. We heard that dreams of his ordination, a passionate desire to serve God, the church and its people have been denied, not on the basis of suitability, training, or theology, but simply because of sexual orientation.  Remarkably Jeff is not bitter. Sad and disappointed yes, but not bitter and resentful. How I wondered was that possible?   It is possible because he sees himself as part of a magnificent tapestry of divine potential. He is connected to something much larger than himself that provides healing, comfort, and assurance. Despite setbacks and personal grief, he feels worthy, and blessed, a child of the universe rooted and grounded in God’s love. And remarkably, Jeff exudes the same kind of faith-filled spirit enthusiasm as does the women I met last Sunday morning.  All of that comes from a knowing that he is connected to all of humanity. He is not alone. He is never alone. He is part of a much larger world, often broken, where others like himself find themselves wounded. Through the creator’s love all are held together in solidarity. A metaphor I was particularly fond of was an image of God as a kind of master quilter. In that, spirit shattered dreams, lost hopes, grief and doubt, like pieces of fabric are sewn together in healing love.  That is how Jeff has survived and it is also how he thrives, knowing that he is woven into creation itself. That is what being rooted and grounded in God’s love means to him. Through that web he somehow, miraculously not only survives, but thrives.  That miracle presents itself for all who stay rooted and grounded in love. It is the fabric which holds our ministry together. The woman in the pew next to me last Sunday experienced that grounding, Jeff does too.  Cast your doubts aside, and know that you are unique, gifted, and special. Know that there is always a place for you where your doubts can be heard, and your grief can be healed.  By staying rooted and grounded in God’s love, an incredible life-giving tapestry forms. From Ephesians this morning we heard, by his great power working in us, the Maker of Life can do far more than what we ask for, more than our small minds can imagine. We can say amen to that! Thanks for listening this morning.  

Rev. Wayne Atkinson

When we sang the processional hymn this morning and came to the lines,  Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty, God in Three Persons blessed Trinity.   (VU 315)  Is this just nothing but a bunch of “religious abracadabra”, this business about ‘God is three and God is one’!  Remember just here we that Christianity is rooted in Hebrew soil.  The distinctive feature about the Jew was the Jew’s passionate belief in the oneness of God. While all around him, his neighbours flitted from one God to another, the Jew, at every synagogue service, recited the Shema; “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord...” (Deut. 6:4) One Lord! It would have been blasphemy for these Hebrew followers of Jesus to deny or abandon their belief in the oneness of God!   But then they had to reckon with something new -- a man who was bone of their bone, flesh of their flesh.  They called him the Rabbi. But that category couldn’t encompass Jesus, couldn’t hold him. He kept breaking that category. The words of Nicodemus illustrate the puzzle facing the Jews: “No one can do these signs that you do, unless God is with Him” (John 3:2). People were shaking their heads in amazement, for something was happening at the very core of their existence. He would say, “Your sins are forgiven”, and a strange peace would grip their hearts. When he taught, his words had the compelling ring of truth to them, so much so that his disciple would swear, “Even if it means dying with you, I will never disown you” (Matt. 26:35).  There were times when he touched a life, and that life became whole again (Mark 5:41). A verse from Luke’s Gospel illustrates the crisis of decision into which Jesus’ fellow Jews were plunged:  “They were frightened and bewildered and kept saying to one another: Who ever can this be? He gives orders even to the winds and waters and they obey him?’”  Saul, the Hebrew pharisee, answered the question as well as anyone when he stopped spitting out curses and instead confessed: “God was in Christ...” (2 Cor. 5:19)  One God and yet, somehow, present in the man Jesus.  But that wasn’t all. They had hardly absorbed the claims of Jesus when another factor emerged. This man Jesus talked gently about “Going away” (John 16:7), and about how that “Going Away” would be advantageous to his followers. It would open a new way for God being present -- present as the Spirit -- a presence that would be invisible as the wind is invisible, something that a news reporter’s camera could not pick up on film; but a presence that could be as powerfully felt, as the wind of the desert storm can be felt.  It was this experience of God that came out of the life of common, ordinary Jews such as Martha, Mary and Peter that presents the base for the concept of the Trinity.  On the basis of their experience, they knew they would not say all that they meant by “GOD” unless they said the Creator, Redeemer, and the Spirit. The doctrine of the Trinity came years later as an attempt to conceptualize, to explain in theological formula, what was the common experience of the ordinary Christian.  Now I wonder if many of us get into trouble with the concept of the Trinity because we make it mathematics, applying arithmetical notions to the being of God. We start adding it up: 1 + 1 + 1 = 3. That’s simple math. How, as the theologians insist, can 1 + 1 + 1 = 1?  Now I would like each of you to take a look at yourself and how you are perceived by various people.  Each of us are one person.  To you parents you are a son or a daughter.  Your way of being yours towards them is quite different from other roles.  If you have a significant other the way of being is quite different than your role as a child to your parents.  If you have children, they them you are a mother or a father.  If you are in a choir, your way of being yourself towards them is quite different again.  The list goes on - church member, member of a club, your occupation, and on and on.  Your role in each of these situations are quite different.  One person, but with very different ways of being yourself.  Different ways of being oneself!  That, as a matter of fact, was the meaning of the word “person”, or “persona” in the Latin, back when the Church was formulating its statements on the Trinity as “God in Three Persons”. “Persona” did not refer to separate individuals.  But rather to the role or parts an actor played.  Hence, as Karl Barth reminds us, the word “person” refers, not to separate individuals, but to the different ways an individual has of being herself, or himself, refers to his or her varying roles. Every time, therefore, we hear the phrase, “God in three persons”, we ought to translate, not three individuals, for that would be pagan, but rather the One God, who has different ways of being God’s self: the one who creates, the one who redeems, the one who is present as the unseen Spirit. Let’s move our thinking one stage further and ask the questions -- what does it mean to say, as the Book of Genesis insists, that you and I are made in the image of, and meant to reflect, this God of the Trinity?  1. For one, God is the Creator and the Human, made in God’s Image, as meant to be creative. This certainly is part of the theme of the Book of Genesis. It opens with the picture of God brooding over chaotic waters, bringing order out of chaos, saying, “let there be light”, “let there be a firmament”, and so on. But in the midst of the evolving world that God calls forth, there is the human. To him, to her, is given the uniqueness of being able to be addressed by God. To the creature God speaks a word: “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion...” (1:28) What the world is to be like is determined in part by our choices as well as by God’s! In the symbolic parables of Genesis, the human who brought forth on the sixth day and is given authority and vice-regency in the world is bidden to keep a Sabbath on the seventh day, so that life can gain proper perspective and come under the surveillance and command of God. Creativeness or chaos -- the human has the capacity for both, and it will be chaos if we don’t bring our powers into line with the loving will of God. Canada had the dubious distinction of inventing in Suffield, Alberta, the deadliest known nerve gas. Drop some on a person and he would be dead within 36 seconds. Creativeness or chaos?  The scientific bent that allows for a Frederick Banting and Jonas Salk giving the world the blessing of insulin and polio vaccine can also allow for Canada’s white-coated merchants of death with their extremely efficient nerve gas.  God is Creator, and the human, made in God’s image, is meant to be creative.  2. God is also Saviour and the Human, made in God’s image, is meant to be redemptive. This is the vital relevance of Jesus Christ. He defines God as Love, as the Forgiving One. God the Creator is known through Jesus Christ as one who says to sinful children: “I forgive you. Go in peace and sin no more.” And as humans, made in God’s image, we must see part of our purpose, in the light of the God who is Saviour. Recognizing we have the freedom which allows us to err in ways that pit ourselves against our fellow, our families, we are meant to be the creature who forgives, who turns hatred into love. We are to be “little Christs”. This is true, most certainly, in the sense commanded by Christ himself:  “Love one another as I have loved you.” And he loved us redemptively, forgivingly, meeting hatred with love, violence with kindness. The human, made in the image of God the Saviour, is called into a forgiving, redemptive life.  3. This finally: God is the Holy Spirit who calls us into Christian Community and the Human, made in the image of God, is meant to live and work in the community. Paul, in his letter to the Romans, said: “All who are led by the spirit of god are children of god.” (8:4) People find themselves drawn together and bound together because they have been claimed by the same God. They belong to each other because they belong forever to God.  Said the writer of first John: “If anyone says, ‘I love God’ and hates his brother, he is a liar...He who loves God should love his brother also”. (1 John 4:20) The Spirit of God creates community; the human, made in that image, is to live in community. The human, made in God’s image, has that task: to break down the boundaries of Indian reservations, to tear down and burn up the refugee camps of the world, to rip down the walls of apartheid and racism. God the Spirit, calling us into community, gives us the task of living and working in and creating a community of love and service. In traditional language: “Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.” “And God said: ‘Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness’”. 

These days I tend to talk often about the energetic tendencies of my dog Duffy. He is still very young, which means he is always enthusiastic and exuberant. As Ollie would say, “he is a crazy dog.”  He just cannot help himself with excitement when he greets someone. The characteristic wag of the tail and half his body with it as he buries his head between your knees is comical. The vision of the “Ever-Ready Bunny” from TV commercials comes to mind. With the exception that there are no batteries needed.     This past week I experienced that kind of enthusiasm, exuberance, and incredible energy a little differently. It came in human form during my participation in the regional Mountain Candidacy Board process. For those that don’t recall, I am a member of an interview panel that reviews the potential suitability for candidates seeking a career in U.C. Ministry.   The “ever-ready” bunny presented himself to us during one of my interview sessions. His excitement was palpable, his energy and enthusiasm for ministry was clear and pronounced. The Holy poured out of him. There was no stopping it. This individual sees his journey as a living transforming experience, a journey that he said was not about him. It is about seeing Christ in everything he told us. He used the words “Christ Soaked.”  When he did that the four of us on the panel could not help but smile broadly. A “Christ Soaked” theology. The batteries powering this individual were natural and infinitely renewable, they were Jesus’ batteries.   On my travel home from the coast I was pondering a message to convey for this Pentecost time, and it came to me that our experience during this interview was a Pentecost Moment. This was a moment when the spirit broke through in a gust of wind filling us with awe. A fire broke out in our candidate, and it singed us with remarkable hope. It was inspirational. Our candidate was drunk in God’s love, comprehending the possibility that he might be able to share that in the world. It was so encouraging for us to experience such a clear call to ministry in these times when there are more and more communities of faith struggling to survive. For those that are, there are less ministry personnel available to fill the vacancies. None of that mattered to our candidate. That was incredibly hopeful.  On this June 5 morning we come together in worship and celebrate the beginning of the Christian Church. We are also just a few days shy of the 97th Anniversary of the United Church Union (June 10).   The fact that the Christian Church and the United Church itself has survived this long is really quite remarkable given our tumultuous history. Perhaps Pentecost moments have something to do with that.   Peter said to the Jews in his community,      “God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,     and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions,     and your old men shall dream dreams. 18 Even upon my slaves, both men and women,     in those days I will pour out my Spirit,         and they shall prophesy.” These visions were glimpses of opportunity, realizations that a new tomorrow was a possibility, understandings that the elixir of “saving” was within grasp. God was speaking new possibility into the people, a great melting pot of peoples from near and far. They all got the message, God’s loving and healing spirit was real. It was right there in front of them, and they became giddy with the realization.  Reality check, God is among us, we are not alone. Imagine that! Can we imagine that today?  Can you remember the last time you were giddy? (And I don’t mean because you had one too many gin’s, single malts or glasses of wine). When were you last so filled with joy and exuberant awe that you wanted to just shout out loud? Perhaps that was at the birth of a grandchild. Perhaps it was at a graduation ceremony. Perhaps it was a moment when healing came to you or someone you love. Perhaps it might be a few weeks from now when you will be looking at your garden and saying “yes,” “wow,” “look at all that!”  I had a Pentecost moment when I first arrived here in 2016 because I was received with such love and acceptance. I had to pinch myself, was I really here among you standing at the pulpit?  I had another, strangely enough when we had our flood. Pentecost came in the fervor of folks rushing about rescuing goods, getting, and operating pumps, mopping floors, hiring contractors, making coffee. God of the Pentecost came rushing through you all as you served this COF, and I was awed by that.   I had a Pentecost moment yesterday as we celebrated the life of our dear friend Ann Kruse. The Spirit of the Living God blew through our time together holding us, drying our eyes, helping us sing the Hymns Ann loved and in telling our stories afterwards during fellowship.  I had a Pentecost moment during that interview last week when it was so clear that our creator is doing something special leading another disciple on a journey in ministry. And I know I will have another Pentecost moment this afternoon when we visit Athena and celebrate her 6th birthday. It will burst in with hugs and greetings. It will flow through gleeful expressions of surprises. It will make me giddy with joy, laughter, and pride.  I think there are many, many Pentecost moments in our lives and this is in part why we keep on the doing in our ministry together. That has been the case since the church began and it continues to be the case now.    Love blows into the spaces when needed but not expected. Compassion floods into the lives of those who are lonely and desperate. The warmth of healing comes as rays of the summer sun. All come from that Holy Presence we call God among us.   Pentecost moments can break in at any time. Be on the lookout for them. Embrace the fire of Holy Passion that is present when together we pick up the pieces of broken dreams. Let the love of peace and hope flow through you like spring flood waters. Gaze into the bright sun of promise that assures us of opportunity. And hold on to the possibility that we might be giddy in the light of God.  Thanks for listening this morning. Amen