"Perfection" MCC Windsor, Epiphany 7 (February 23, 2014)

 Readings

1 Corinthians 3:18-23

Do not deceive yourselves. If any of you think you are wise by the standards of this age, you should become “fools” so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: “God catches the wise in their craftiness”; and again, “The Holy One knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.” So then, no more boasting about human leaders! All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.

Matthew 5:38-48

Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.  And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Creator in heaven, who causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.  If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Creator is perfect.”

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Will you pray with and for me? Loving God, give us the courage to try to be like you. Remind us of your presence with us in our struggles as well as in our triumphs. Above all, grant us the grace to be willing to fall in our attempts to climb. In all your names, amen.

The Olympics. They have been the big news these last few weeks.  Skiing, ice dance, snowboarding, biathalon, curling, luge, bobsled and what’s that other one? Oh, yes, hockey! I hear Canada did very well... These Olympics, like so many, have been filled with politics—from the virulent anti-LGBT laws of Russia to the violence in Kiev and several places in-between…  But I  want to put aside the politics and the controversies about doping and judging irregularities. I want to talk about the athletes, just the athletes. It takes a lot to get to the Olympics. I think we can all agree on that. No matter what the sport, it takes discipline and hard work—there are qualifying competitions before an athlete is even close to Olympic quality—and then they have to be chosen for the team. If any of you have read out Olympic diver Greg Louganis’ book, “Breaking the Surface,” you will know what I mean. He details his long road to the Olympics from learning to swim at his neighbourhood pool to the high school competitions and then university and then the competitive diving championships and so on—all the way to the Olympics. It is gruelling and hard and many people fall by the wayside. A single mistake can ruin an athlete’s score.

I had a friend who was a competitive swimmer. Tina was good—so good that her family moved from California to Illinois so that she could train with a certain coach. But at university, she left competitive swimming. Why? Because she saw the toll that competition at that level takes on the athletes. She had a good friend who was in the running for an Olympic berth—and lost it because her race time was one one-hundredth of a second off the next best competitor, and she lost points and was dropped from the pool of Olympic hopefuls. One one-hundredth of a second—that’s not even the blink of an eye! And yet it made all the difference to that one person—and her family and coach and teammates… All that she had been building towards was done, over, in that moment.

The Olympics seem to be about perfection—there can be no mistakes, no errors anywhere on the road upwards to the Olympic Games. Every competition must be won, every “I” dotted and every “t” crossed. No half-measures, no short-cuts, no easy way out. It is a challenge not every one can meet.

I could never, even in my most athletic moments (which were few, I assure you, even many pounds ago) have competed in any sport at even the high school level. I had some sports I enjoyed playing—baseball, volleyball, dressage, canoeing—but not competitively, even when I could still do all of them. The only one I could probably still do is canoeing, by the way… Athletes have gifts that the rest of us do not have—just as scientists do, and great chefs and amazing parents. But they don’t come to those peaks of excellence easily. Everyone who has achieved something great has done so through hard work, discipline, dedication—and failure.

Yes, I said failure. Because the only way to really learn how to do something right, with excellence, is to do it the wrong way hundreds of times. Any athlete, no matter their level of competition or achievement, will tell you they have made mistakes, they have failed. How many times do you think Bode Miller fell when he was learning to ski? How many games of hockey have the players on the Canadian team lost in their careers? Look at the skaters…when they fall in the middle of a routine, they have to get right up and back into their routine. You can’t do that if you don’t fall very often. They have fallen many times before and they know what to do—you get back up and keep going. When I was learning to ride, I fell off several times. You wouldn’t think it was hard to stay on a horse, but when the horse is moving and you are too…well, let’s just say it is very possible. In the classes I took, we probably had two falls a week among the group of us. What did we do? We got back on and tried again.

Here’s the thing. When you try for perfection—in skiing, in parenting, in cooking, in learning a language, in knitting—in anything—you are going to fail at some point. It is simply the way things are—there’s always going to be something that is more challenging that your skills can handle at that point. But if you don’t quit, if you don’t give up, if you get back up and keep skating, if you try that soufflé one more time, if you unravel your knitting and redo it—then you learn. You understand that you turned a little too sharply, or that you had the oven too hot, or you dropped a stitch—and next time you can do better.

Jesus says to his friends, “Try for perfection. God is your model—God is perfection. Do what seems counterintuitive—give more than you are asked for, be more gentle than you think you can be, go further than you are asked. That is the road to perfect.”

It does seem backwards to us—to do the opposite of what we want to do, which is strike back, give up on that stupid knitting, that impossible soufflé, do only what is absolutely required. But Paul tells the Corinthians that is what they must do to—in order to be wise, they must be willing to be foolish. They have to be willing to fall off the horse, make a flat soufflé, drop a few stitches.

So Jesus isn’t talking about being perfect people everyday all the time. That is impossible.  But what he is talking about is making the attempt.

Yes, it’s a challenge. Yes, it is difficult. But we don’t try, we will never make it. The British author G.K. Chesterton once said, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” It is hard to do those things—to leave ourselves open to further pain when we have been hurt, to go further than we are asked.  But unless we try to do those things, we will never know if we could do them. We think they are hard—and they are. We think we can’t do them—but we don’t know. If we try and fail, what of it? We can always try again.  We can learn from our mistakes, our failures—those fallen soufflés, those ruined ski runs and knitting projects. We learn from them, and we try again.

The thing is, that when we get up and try again, we learn two lessons—what we should have done or not done that led us to fail, and secondly that we can get up and try again.  And again, and again and again. And when we have mastered that lesson—the right temperature for the oven, the right number of stitches, the exact bend of our knee to make the turn—another comes up. Did we beat the batter too much or use the wrong kind of yarn or the wrong sort of wax? We fall again, and get up and try again.

It isn’t easy, and we run the risk of looking foolish. While it is heartbreaking on many levels to crash out of an Olympic ski run, part of that pain is embarrassment; I was embarrassed to fall off my horse several times in one week when learning a new movement in dressage. But being willing to face that momentary embarrassment, being determined to try again, to reach for the perfection—that is what we are meant to be doing.

Are we up for that challenge? It is not a challenge to reach a goal—be able to bake a light soufflé, win a gold medal, make a sweater—but simply to be on that journey, to keep taking those steps, keep going even when you fall, or drop a stitch or the soufflé falls.

Can we take up that challenge? Living into the Christian ideal is difficult—but if we can only try, every day, reach for that perfection--then we are on that journey, we are working towards being more like God.

Don't be afraid to fall--for that is how we learn, and we are always learning, because we fall so often. Get back up and keep going--it is in that discipline, that faith, that determination, that we can reach for perfection. Take that challenge and strive for perfection. In all God's names, amen.

"Follow Me?" MCC Windsor, January 26, 2014

Isaiah 9:1-4

Nevertheless, that time of darkness and despair will not go on forever. The land of Zebulun and Naphtali will be humbled, but there will be a time in the future when Galilee of the Gentiles, which lies along the road that runs between the Jordan and the sea, will be filled with glory.

The people who walk in darkness
    will see a great light.
For those who live in a land of deep darkness,
    a light will shine.
 You will enlarge the nation of Israel,
    and its people will rejoice.
They will rejoice before you
    as people rejoice at the harvest
    and like warriors dividing the plunder.
 For you will break the yoke of their slavery
    and lift the heavy burden from their shoulders.
You will break the oppressor’s rod,
    just as you did when you destroyed the army of Midian.

Matthew 4:12-23

When Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he left Judea and returned to Galilee.  He went first to Nazareth, then left there and moved to Capernaum, beside the Sea of Galilee, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali.  This fulfilled what God said through the prophet Isaiah:

“In the land of Zebulun and of Naphtali,
    beside the sea, beyond the Jordan River,
    in Galilee where so many Gentiles live,
the people who sat in darkness
    have seen a great light.
And for those who lived in the land where death casts its shadow,
    a light has shined.”

From then on Jesus began to preach, “Repent of your wrongdoing and turn to God, for the realm of Heaven is near.”

One day as Jesus was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers—Simon, also called Peter, and Andrew—throwing a net into the water, for they fished for a living. Jesus called out to them, “Come, follow me, and I will show you how to fish for people!”  And they left their nets at once and followed him.

A little farther up the shore he saw two other brothers, James and John, sitting in a boat with their father, Zebedee, repairing their nets. And he called them to come, too.  They immediately followed him, leaving the boat and their father behind.

Jesus traveled throughout the region of Galilee, teaching in the synagogues and announcing the Good News about the Kingdom. And he healed every kind of disease and illness.

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Will you pray with and for me? Light of the World, remind us of your presence with us; give us grace to hear your true words and courage to act on them. May all that we hear and see and speak and do be a reflection of your love for us and for the world. Amen.

Next Sunday, February 2, is a special day for millions of people in North America and, indeed, around the world, on military installations and embassies. It is a day when friends and family gather in each other’s homes to celebrate, to eat more than they should of foods they know are unhealthy, and, for some, to drink more than they should. It is a day that sometimes unites families, and sometimes, sadly, divides them.

I am speaking, of course, of the Superbowl. For those of you who are sports-challenged, that’s the championship-deciding game of USA football. It is played in four quarters with a football on a field; for every time a team gets the ball across the opposing team’s goalline, they receive 6 points—if they then are able to kick the ball through the goalposts, they receive another point. It is played in a different place each year—this year, it is in New Jersey, in what may prove to be the coldest Superbowl ever. The two teams who are the finalists this year are the Seattle Seahawks and the Denver Broncos.

Now, if you are going to a Superbowl party, you will be asked who you are rooting for to win. Since neither of these teams are located near us here in Windsor, that may be a difficult call for you—I tend to root for the team from my home town, or from somewhere I have lived. Last year, for example, I backed the Baltimore Ravens, with great glee—they won. But this year, I don’t have an easy way to make that decision—so who will I root for this year? Who will I follow?

Peter, Andrew, James, and John had a similar, if vastly more important, decision to make when Jesus called them away from their nets to follow him. Would they follow him?

Now my choice is harmless, and at the worst will get me some ribbing if my chosen team loses. It won’t affect my livelihood or my way of life or relationships. It cannot cost me my life.

But for those first four disciples, this was a crucial decision—one that would very much affect their lives. Jesus is asking them to give up their way of life, their work, to change their relationship with their families—Peter and Andrew were working with their father—to make a choice that might, in fact ultimately did, cost them their lives.

How do you make a decision like that? How is it possible to choose, in a moment, whether to follow this teacher or stay where you know everyone and everything, where you have a place and are comfortable?

And yet they did. It is always possible that they had already heard Jesus teach, or had heard of him—but they still had to make that choice, that decision, in that moment when he spoke to them—“Come, follow me, and I will show you how to fish for people!”—to follow him.

And from that choice grew the whole Christian church. These four are the only disciples that we know that Jesus called personally. All the rest came to Jesus from hearing and seeing the other disciples, from watching the group and learning from them. Only Peter, Andrew, James and John were directly called by Jesus.

That call to follow him made such an impact on their lives that in spite of occasional back-sliding, they were the four cornerstones of the church. We usually think of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as being the foundation of the church, but that’s because we think of the four Gospels that bear their names. But in reality, it was the first four disciples, followers, that Jesus called that were the basis of all that came later.

Our decisions, our choices, about whom or what to follow matter just as much—whether we choose allegiance to things that pull us away from our true selves, like addictions to substances or money or food, or acting out of spite or anger, and so on--or whether we choose alliance to what allows our best selves to shine—caring for others, patience with ourselves, openness to the guiding of Spirit. Sometimes it is hard to know that it is such a decisive moment—and sometimes we know clearly that it is such a time.

Who do you follow? Who is your role model? If your role model is a human being, you are bound to be disappointed. Even Peter, the first disciple Jesus called, the one who was closest to him—even Peter failed in the acid test, and, in fear, denied knowing Jesus three times. Don’t pin your hopes for guidance and an example on a human being—we all fail, at some point or another—in courage, in understanding, in integrity, in strength.

The one to follow is the one who doesn’t fail, who in fact gives us courage, and strength, and leads us to understanding. Jesus called his first disciples directly, and the rest saw what they did and how it changed their lives—and so they wanted to follow Jesus, too. When we can live lives that offer a glimpse of what that life is like—then others may follow Jesus too. It is not because we are wonderful or marvellous, but because we show them what following Jesus has done for us.

Setting that example of following Jesus will guide others onto that same path. It is not because we speak well, or become perfect once we begin following Jesus, or because we are just like Jesus. It is because Jesus shines through what we do, and others can see that we are trying to be the best of ourselves—that is why they come, because they want to be able to do that too.

Those four fishermen saw something wonderful in Jesus—and so they left everything they had known and followed him. We aren’t expected to leave everything we have, but we do leave our past—whether it was something to be proud of or not, when we follow Jesus, we move forward into a new part of our lives, a new future. We can leave behind everything that did not serve us well—our old ways of thinking of ourselves, our old behaviour, our fears and our self-destructive ways, and our habits of numbing ourselves to the difficulties of life through addictions to food, sex, drugs, work… All that is not building us up, but is pulling us down—we can step away from that when we turn and follow Jesus.

Just as Peter, Andrew, James and John turned away from fishing and began a new life, we can too—and as often as we need to do it. They went back to fishing once or twice…and Peter denied knowing Jesus…and Thomas doubted…and they all ran away when the soldiers came. And yet in the end they returned, and claimed Jesus, and refused to turn away from the better way he had shown them, even being willing to die for that better way and the faith they had in what he had taught them.

As often as we need to, we too can return to Jesus, can try again—and again and again and again—to be like him, to follow him.

In all God’s names, amen.

“Are You the One?” Advent 3 A (December 15, 2013), MCC Windsor, Rev. Martha Daniels

James 5:7-10

Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Holy One. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of God is near. Beloved, do not grumble against one another, so that you may not be judged. See, the Judge is standing at the doors!  As an example of suffering and patience, beloved, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Holy One.

Matthew 11:2-11

When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind?  What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’ Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

 Will you pray with and for me? Holy One, you who bring us joy, give us the wisdom and grace to recognise your presence in our lives, and the courage to live as your people, not only at Christmas, but all year. In all your names, amen.

John the Baptiser. Sometimes he reminds me of the family’s eccentric cousin or grandparent or family friend. My extended family had a relative like that—a distant cousin who came every year for Christmas dinner, and brought a gift without fail, but sometimes they were—odd. A pillow in a shade of orange never seen in Nature is the one that stands out in my mind. And yet her heart was in the right place—she wanted to give the host a gift. And of course her gift was accepted with a smile and thanks and enthusiasm—that branch of the family was from Tidewater Virginia, where the art of gracious responses to awkward situations were invented.

I have a sense that John the Baptist’s question had somewhat the same effect on Jesus and his followers. Jesus has been performing miracles all over the place, and here’s John with a pointed question. He seems to be trying to get Jesus back on what he considers the “right track.” John’s heart is in the right place—he is longing for the coming of Messiah, the anointed one—because John thinks Messiah will set everything right, will bring down destruction on the heads of Romans and free Israel, bring in a new realm of justice and righteousness, everyone will repent, and the realm of God will be at hand.

But John doesn’t see Jesus doing any of this—he’s not planning a rebellion, or preaching against the Romans, or even calling for the people to repent. Jesus is just healing and feeding people—that’s not what John had in mind at all.

So he asks this question, which is almost threatening—are you Messiah, or should I proclaim someone else Messiah? In other words, you’re not what I expected, that’s not what Messiah should be doing.

But Jesus’ response is interesting. He doesn’t say “Yes, I am.” He invites John to look at the role of Messiah in another way—not as the avenger, come down to judge the people, to call them to repentance. On the contrary, Jesus acts to show God’s love for people—healing them, feeding them, and caring for them. It’s not what John expected, and so John isn’t sure he likes it.

Do we behave like John? Do we set expectations on God and God’s promises? We want God to do something for us, but we want it in a certain way and time, and when we get it, we complain because it wasn’t done the way we wanted it to be done.

When I was preparing for my internship, I knew just what I wanted and where I wanted to be—and I was. It was a wonderful placement, with a church that had trained many future clergy, and the congregation was very open to experimentation and new ideas, and best of all, my mentor was the pastor. And then suddenly she was appointed elsewhere, to a church in crisis where her skills were desperately needed. I complained to God that I had wanted a good internship, and how would I have that now, with Kay pastoring elsewhere, and a complete stranger coming in as pastor? And yet, Hattie, the newcomer,  proved to be a gift—we were never close, as I was to Kay, and often her example was a negative one, what not to do—but most probably  I would not have seen what “the wrong way” looked like, or understood just why it was wrong if I had worked with Kay as I wanted. Most importantly, I might not have learned how to speak up for a better way. In my discomfort with some of Hattie’s actions, I was forced to look at why I was uncomfortable and how and why I would do things differently. I also have learned from speaking with others since that she actually was supportive in ways I didn’t realise at the time—many interns did not have the opportunities that I had to lead committees and work areas and to implement projects stemming from my classes, such as the memorial garden I created. I did not want to intern with Hattie, but it proved to be rewarding and probably of more use in teaching me what I needed to learn.

What we expect from God and what God sends us are often very different. We think we know what we need and want, and that’s what we demand. When something else shows up, we’re disappointed and insist on a recount, on a return, on refusing it because it’s not what we had imagined.

And yet…. Often what we thought we didn’t want turns out to be wonderful. We think we are looking for certain things in a partner, and then meet someone who doesn’t have any of those things but takes our breath away. We have an ideal job in mind, and take something else, just to get us through for a while—and discover we actually love that “temporary” job. We have an ideal home in mind and insist to our real estate agent that we won’t look at anything else—but he shows us something else and we instantly feel at home.

My friend Lynn was married to a US Army officer, and he was sent to Germany.  Lynn was distraught, terribly upset at the idea of uprooting her then pre-teen and teen-age daughters, leaving her family, going to a place where she didn’t speak the language, and had no idea of what the schools would be like, much less how to keep one of her daughters involved in the gymnastics she loved. I tried to encourage her, telling her about all the travel opportunities, and reminding her that Germany also had medalists in the Olympics, so they must have good trainers and coaches. I shared with her the wonderful experiences I had had there and how every much I enjoyed living in Germany. She was having none of it, sure it would a miserable three years of exile and determined to return to the States for visits as often as possible. They left, reluctantly, one June.  That Christmas, when we spoke again, she had turned completely around. She loved their apartment, the neighbours were great, she was picking up enough German to shop at the local bakery and farmer’s market and butcher, the gymnastics centre in town was better than the one they had left, and they were already planning a trip to Paris for the summer and to Greece for the next winter.  Lynn had found that their years there would be a blessing. When the time came for them to return to Virginia, she was as reluctant to leave Germany as she had been to go!

I think this experience speaks to two things. One is a willingness to have an open mind, to try new things even though we don’t think they are what we want or are looking for.  John had an image, a picture, of how Messiah should be, and when Jesus didn’t fit that image, he was disappointed and felt that maybe he had been wrong. The other is that even when we don’t receive what we asked for, it is what we need. I would never have learned some of the lessons I needed to know if Kay had been my supervisor. Lynn’s family would not have grown as close as they did in Germany, travelling together and sharing new experiences. And if Jesus had come as the Messiah John wanted him to be, he would have shared John’s fate rather quickly. Instead of an overthrow of an earthly political system, Jesus brought news of a radically different way of living, a new way of interacting with other people and with ourselves, living to help and serve and heal and comfort and feed people around us, to make the world a better place not through violence or imposing our will on others, but through our example and our actions to others.

Jesus made a difference because he showed us how to care for others—not how to dominate them. He reached out to people, all people, not only the educated or the wealthy or even just the people who had a stable place to stand in society. Jesus spent time, a lot of time, with people who were the undesirables of his day—the tax-collectors, the sex workers, the ill—because sickness was seen as a curse from God—the people on margins of society, not the ones in the centre with the power. He spoke to women, to children, to people with physical challenges, and even to people who might be expected to hate him, like the Romans—and he healed and comforted and cared.

Quite a difference from the avenging Messiah that John envisioned—remember the winnowing fork and the fire from last week’s reading? Jesus is having none of it—“That’s not who I am,” he is telling John.

Jesus is not what John expected—and yet Jesus is the one to teach us how to bring about God’s rule—because God’s rule is about a realm where no one is hungry or cast out or scorned or considered “less-than.”

And that is the joy of this Advent Sunday—Jesus, our Teacher, has come to remind us of who we are and whose we are, and what it means to bring about God’s realm—not violent overthrow, not shaming and scolding and threats of eternal punishment—but love, healing, comfort and care.

Jesus was not what John expected—but Jesus was what we needed.

In all God’s names, amen.