Tag Archives: Canada

Reformation Themes 2017

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The Day of Reformation (October 31) for Protestants, and especially Lutherans, calls us back to basic questions about who we are, as people of faith. Celebrating this day gives us the opportunity to ask again, “Who are we in the variety of religious expression on a diverse, social landscape?” And what do we have to offer?

For Protestants, the word itself may give us a clue. Protestants have often identified themselves as protesting against something. Many of us know the history: In 1517 Martin Luther nailed those 95 arguments on the doors of the Wittenberg Church. “Theses”, we’ve called them, were statements against certain religious practices and beliefs in the 16 century church. “Here I stand” has become a popular Martin Luther quote as he stood his ground and accounted for his beliefs before the Pope and Emperor at the famous meeting in Worms, Germany, shortly thereafter.
Many of us remember the Lutheran legacy as substantially a theological assertion: that you cannot ‘buy’ your way into heaven (by purchasing indulgences); rather, we are justified by grace through faith. Faith and salvation are fundamentally gifts from God.
And this is why the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) — a worldwide communion of 144 national churches — has come up with the theme of “Liberated by God’s Grace” for the 500th anniversary in 2017, commemorating Luther’s first protestant act in Wittenberg. Its sub-themes resonate with the indulgence debate: “Salvation not for sale; Humans not for sale; Creation not for sale.” 
In the pronouncement of these themes Lutherans worldwide and in Canada are claiming that we are not only celebrating something that happened in history. We are also asserting that we are a continually reforming church; that century-old themes can be relevant even today.
“Salvation – not for sale; Humans – not for sale; Creation – not for sale”. When something is not for sale, it is not on the market. We can not procure it by our means — any material means for that matter. When something is not for sale, it is a gift. We cannot possess it, in the same way we can never really possess God, salvation, anyone else, nor can we possess the earth.
The world today wants us to think and believe we can. We therefore delude ourselves into thinking and believing that we can buy salvation, that by our own hands, efforts and hard work we can earn God’s favour, God’s forgiveness. Do we go to church because we feel we need to manage our spirituality more as an insurance policy against hell, even though we are not sure about living out the mission of Jesus today? But God’s love in Jesus is unconditional. It is free. We have nothing to lose in positively living out our faith. Really! “Salvation — not for sale!”
Second, humans: It’s incredible that in the 21st century, there is still slavery practiced in the world; according to a 2013 study, there are still some 30 million slaves in the world today. Even in Canada, young people are gone missing and forced into the sex trade. Many Aboriginal women have disappeared, some murdered and some no doubt exploited in some despicable way. But, we claim: “Humans — not for sale!” What are we doing about this?
Finally, creation: As I said, our culture wants us to believe we can buy it. In fact, a recent survey measuring happiness revealed that our happiness is often dependent on ‘owning’ property. While the exchange of goods is in many ways an important building block of our economy, how differently would we look on our lives if creation (the environment, the land, the water and the resources therein) was not only something we must buy, possess and exploit for profit — but simply given as a gift from God that we share with all people? “Creation — not for sale!” Is finding meaning and purpose in life not the real sources of happiness? (“Money Really Can Buy Happiness, Study Shows”, thecanadianencylopedia.ca, 2013)
The confirmation class last week planted a tree in our church yard. Not only did we do this to respond to one of the Reformation challenges of our church (Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada) to plant 500,000 trees by 2017, we performed a loving and caring act towards God’s beautiful creation which we share with all living creatures.
  
When it comes down to it, and we are honest, we must confess that it is often very difficult to be loving. It is challenging, even though we say we believe in a God who loves us unconditionally, loves the world unconditionally, loves creation unconditionally. 

So, how can we learn to love better?

The life-giving gap

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“Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water?” (James 3:11)

The writer, James, makes a case for integrity and authenticity in the Christian life. For us moderns, living in a day and age where how we look, our reputations, our social standings and our bank accounts seem to speak louder than anything else about who we truly are and what we truly want. Is our joy at living based on these ‘worldly’ values, when we are honest about it? 

It becomes particularly challenging for us Christians, whose value system is acutely counter-cultural. It becomes a real war, actually, to embrace the true source of our lives in a world of celebrity politicians and glory-seeking suburbanites. And I think, for the most part, we live a bifurcated existence. We say one thing — I believe in the God who asks us to bear our cross and follow him (Mark 8:34) — but so easily slip into a lifestyle that is really narcissistic, self-centred and selfish. The easy way.

It’s a rhetorical question. “Does a spring pour forth both fresh and brackish water?” In James’ mind, of course not. A spring will either bring forth, on balance, mostly fresh or mostly dirty water. The meter will lean one way or the other. 

Which way do you lean? In your work? In the way you invest? In how you spend your money? In how you spend your free time? With whom? In what and how you communicate?

In the Gospel for today (Mark 8:27-38), Jesus says some difficult, counter-cultural things about what kind of way Jesus — the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings, God incarnate, Almighty and Everlasting God — will travel the journey of life. And it is this God who beckons us to follow: in order “to undergo great suffering” (Mark 8:31). Really? That doesn’t sound right for a person claiming godly power!

In an upwardly mobile culture we are suddenly and shockingly presented with a downwardly mobile God. Naturally and understandably, through the lens of worldly value, we shudder. Peter rebukes Jesus. And it is in response to Peter’s communication that Jesus accuses Peter of being Satan.

The first lesson from Isaiah, the third chapter in the Epistle James and the Gospel reading for today are a call to discipline our speech — how we talk, and for what purpose. I would broaden this to say: How we communicate. The words we use. The body language we employ. They say that 70% of communication is non-verbal. I believe this truth is what prompted Francis of Assisi to say: “Preach the Gospel; Use words only when necessary!” It’s a cliche, but it’s true: Our actions speak louder than words.

We are called to pay attention not only to the words we use — important though they are, but our actions, our tone, our presence with another. We are called to pay attention to these details in assessing the quality of our relationships. Not to do so, to ignore and dismiss our attention to these aspects of relating, is evil. Not to hold ourselves accountable to what we say and how we say it to another is a satanic time-bomb waiting to happen.

The eighth commandment reads: Do not bear false witness against your neighbour (Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 5). This means, what we say about them. Of course, first we have to look around and ask: Who is our neighbour? On Meadowlands Drive West, in Nepean, Ottawa, and in Canada. Who are our neighbours today? Do we know their names? Who are they? And then, what do we say about them, to them?

In his explanation of all the Ten Commandments, Martin Luther makes clear these are not simply about ‘not-doing’ — not gossiping, not slandering — but even more important what positive behaviour we do for the sake of the neighbour. He writes that it is imperative that Christians should do all they can to protect the good name and social standing of their neighbours — and he lifts up particularly the “sins of the tongue” in this context. (Martin Luther, “The Large Catechism,” in the Book of Concord, ed. Robert Kolb & Timothy Wengert, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000, p.420)

I can’t help here to think of the millions of refugees fleeing the violence in Syria. I can’t help here but think of the many ways Muslims are disparaged in the media in the West not only in the press, but also in those malicious forwarded emails that circulate “like a hydra with multiple heads: so pernicious and so difficult to stop” (Kristin Johnston Largen, “Inter-religious Learning and Teaching” Fortress Press, 2014, p.57).

James concedes to our human predicament. In the end, no matter how hard we try to do right by this, “no one can tame the tongue” (3:8). It’s as if the narrative of Scripture accepts the impossible capability of us, on our own, to get it all right all of the time. Even though Peter is in one moment ‘Satanic’ he is, in the next, the rock upon which the church will be built against whom “the gates of Hades will not prevail” (Matthew 16:18). Martin Luther’s well-known paradox can help us frame this apparent contradiction: We are simultaneously saints AND sinners (simul justus et pecator). 

This ‘word’ today may make us feel uncomfortable. It does, me. And, probably for good reason. Yet, there is good news. God speaks into this confused darkness of our lives. God speaks the Word of creation into this murky existence (Genesis 1). A Word of forgiveness, mercy and compassion. 

And the Word that God speaks sets up the endless harmonic of sounds in the world. And as we speak, and try to speak truthfully, perhaps what we are doing is far less hanging labels around the necks of the things of the world. And instead we try to find those divine harmonics and speak and act ‘in tune’ with that Word first spoken into silence and darkness.

The image I like of creation is that God first makes a great cave. And then breathes into it. Speaks into it. A Word. And from the cave the echoes come back. Differently pitched. Differently aimed. A world of Word. And we find our place in that world listening to those harmonics, trying to speak and act in tune with them. Not to speak and act from our will or our passion for control. But to speak because we want to join in what an earlier generation would have called the ‘music of the spheres’. (Rowan Williams, “The Spirit in the Desert” Meditatio Talk Series 2015 B Apr-June CD).

Those of us preachers and public speakers, especially need to think more about this. Paul says that the Body of Christ is made up of all parts, each important in their own right (1 Corinthians 12:12-27) — you are a hand, you a leg, you the eyes, you the foot. This morning, I am the mouth! And, like James, Paul also says that greater scrutiny and possible judgement will be brought upon those who speak (2 Peter 2:3;Colossians 2:20;1 Timothy 1:2-4). A timely word, perhaps, in a season of political campaign, mindless rhetoric and questionable election promises.

How do we speak in such a way that is authentic and true? Only by looking for the harmonics that that Word of God sets up. By refusing the mass pressures of culture. By becoming in our speaking as in our living a kind of invitation into the gracious harmonics of God’s world, into the resonances and echoes that are set up by that primordial utterance of God into the cave of creation.

Simone Weil used the concept of ‘hesitation’ to describe how to communicate in a healthy way For her, part of the essence of spiritual maturity was leaving the ‘life-giving gap’ between you, the act, and the other person (quoted in Rowan Williams, ibid.). Learning not so much to project straight away our ego compulsions into the other person; learning not so much to move right away into solving a problem on our own terms. But drawing away momentarily to listen for the sake of the other. And for the sake of the truth.

At the end of the day, we are called to check the compulsion to speak. And move back into a momentary stillness into which God’s draws us, and out of which God calls us to speak and to act with integrity and authenticity.

We would make James proud.

Finding the Gospel in The End

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‘Each year I visit the doctor for my annual physical, and for no apparent reason. That is, I make an appointment, pay for parking, sit in the waiting room, and then have a complete physical examination. This is done all in order for a team of medical professionals to measure my wellness.

It is not entirely a comfortable experience. And I confess that I often want to avoid it. However, heart disease runs in my family.’ (1) And so the medical tends to focus on the coronary aspects of my physiology — blood pressure is scrutinized and cholesterol levels are monitored. And when I’m done, I have a picture — a snap shot — of my overall health. If medications or therapies have to be employed, I comply, to ensure my long-term wellness. The check-up, after all, could save my life.

These apocalyptic stories in the bible about the end times give an answer to an age old question: How can I be saved? How can I get to heaven?

In this Gospel reading (Matthew 25:31-46), an answer is given, to be sure. But it’s given as a wellness check. Its purpose is not to condemn or scare, but to provide a snapshot of our overall health. Its purpose is to lead us to new habits and ways of life. After all, as our doctor wants us to flourish, so does our Creator, Redeemer, Judge, and King.

So, how are we saved? “All the nations will be gathered before him” (Matthew 25:32). The text opens with a vision of glory: Christ the King sits enthroned above all people on earth, to be their judge.

And yet, we cannot ignore where the rest of this passage goes. That is, discovering God in exactly the unexpected, opposite places from where a God would normally be found.

Not in glory, but in humility. Not enthroned, but enslaved and imprisoned. Not in the mighty and spectacular, but in the meek and gentle.

Moreover, God is discovered. God is not attained, by all our toiling in good works to “find God” in our self-centred projects. In fact, the sheep — ‘the good guys’ (i.e. the righteous ones) — are surprised to hear they had indeed cared for the King of Creation.

They were not aware, in their sharing of love to the disadvantaged and poor, that they were serving Christ. They just shared who they were with what little they had, freely and without expectation nor calculation.

It is clear, from this Gospel text that in God’s Reign, Jesus is looking for people naturally sharing their love with others — a free outflow of love — rather than calculated efforts designed to achieve a pre-determined result or image. This is not management-by-objective. Nor is it ‘the ends justify the means’.

I think it was Albert Einstein who said that we can’t solve a problem by using the same kind of thinking that caused the problem in the first place. In other words, we can’t move forward with solutions into the new thing God is doing using a frame of mind that also contributed to creating the fix we find ourselves in today.

Being religious, if we are not aware of it, can easily be co-oped by prevailing cultural norms — such as: dividing people into different groups, operating according to a tit-for-tat, either-or perspectives. It’s funny, when I think about it, what image first comes to mind in this Gospel story about the final judgement — and has endured from the first time I learned it as a child — is this image of dividing the sheep from the goats. That’s the dominant image, not clothing the naked and visiting the imprisoned. No, it’s all about ‘dividing and conquering’. It’s about winners and losers. Am I in? Or, am I out?

Religious history can be tracked by seeing how much ways of thinking employed to solve certain problems have only exacerbated them over time. Because the same frame of mind was used. Indeed, it is always easier to come up with solutions ‘designed’ to help others but are really only motivated by our own needs instead of a self-less orientation to working with and loving others.

Today, it seems hard to imagine that Muslims, Jews, and Christians can ever find peace on earth with one another. And yet, in Canada anyway, I believe we have an opportunity to witness to the world how it can be done. Jews, Muslims, Christians, Hindus — and all manner of religious expressions — can work together to love one another and those who are disadvantaged and underprivileged.

In Canada, at least, we live in a multi-cultural, diverse society; different world religions are not going away! They are here to stay! The challenge is co-existence, not eradication of difference, nor coercion towards ‘same-mindedness’. The solution is not to just exercise more power over our opponent. Be better, stronger, faster, louder. And have a competition, a religious ‘food-fight’.

Matthew 24:10-14 is another passage that describes the ‘end time’; it reads: “Then many will fall away, and they will betray one another and hate one another, and … the love of many will grow cold.” This suggests that growing antagonism and cooling love are among the most dangerous cancers of the heart facing followers of Christ. This involves ‘distancing’ ourselves from others who are different from us.

But it is possible to work together. The vision from Matthew 25 is concrete, not other-worldly. It involves clothing the naked, visiting those in prison, and providing for basic needs. That’s where we start. In the case of providing and advocating for affordable housing, for example, people of faith today, in Ottawa, can collaborate and cooperate — despite our differing creeds and doctrines — to fulfill Jesus’ vision.

Could it be, that the glory of Jesus includes you, who may be a loser in the eyes of the world? Could it be, that the kingdom — the glorious reign of Christ — includes you, too — the poor, the downtrodden, the marginalized and the underprivileged?

We may not like warnings or wellness checks; after all, they ask us to recalibrate our lives. However, they do provide a critical wellness overview that we are wise to tend, Particularly because ‘heart trouble’ plagues us all.

I believe we can show the world how it can be done! That all nations, and all classes of people, can indeed gather together, live together, stand together and serve together before the throne of grace. This is a win-win scenario. Let’s work together for the Reign of love in Christ Jesus!

And leave the rest to God.

(1) Many thanks to Lindsay Armstrong for the opening illustration about the medical exam as an image for preaching this Gospel text, in “Feasting on the Word” eds Bartlett and Taylor, Year A Volume 4 WJK Press, Kentucky, 2011, p.333-337

No partiality

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At the beginning of every congregational council meeting, members take turns sharing a personal experience of God — whether in their day, or in the past, or in childhood.

Last week a young adult member told us about participating in the ice bucket challenge that went viral on Youtube in the summer. At first he wondered whether this was not just another gimmick he should ignore.

But then he inquired why people were doing this — to raise funds and awareness about ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. He watched another video of how this challenge began and learned what this meant personally to its promoters.

Citing the Golden Rule (Matthew 7:12; 22: 39) and the Good Samaritan story (Luke 10:25-37) from the Bible, the council member concluded his devotions with the Gospel message: that Jesus shows no partiality. God’s love extends to Jews and Samaritans — even though in first century Palestine they were in conflict.

As a result, followers of Jesus are also called to love our neighbour as ourselves. Just because only 3,000 in Canada have Lou Gehrig’s Disease (a small number compared to the entire population) doesn’t mean we can ignore those who have this degenerative muscular, and fatal, disease. Minorities — however we define them — deserve our caring attention, especially if they are suffering in any way.

In another confrontation with the religious leaders of the day, Jesus confounds them by his response (Matthew 22:15-22). What we sometimes overlook in this tense exchange is the heated political context of the time:

The Emperor was putting more pressure on the local leadership in Palestine to firm its grip in the occupied territories. Rome was exercising greater power over the population by imposing currency imprinted with the Emperor’s face, and rescinding the privilege of the Sanhedrin to execute sentences of death. The pressure on Herod and Pilate in the region was mounting; their lives were at risk should there erupt any uprising or public defiance against Rome (read Shusaku Endo translated from the Japanese by Richard Shuchert, “A Life of Jesus” Paulist Press, Toronto, 1973, p.52-53)

At this point in the narrative, many remembered the recent beheading of John the Baptist (Matthew 14:1-12). Those who opposed Rome recalled his charisma and powerful leadership. And now that he was gone, they looked to Jesus to carry the mantle of spearheading precisely such an uprising. All the various religious groups had stake in the politics of opposing Roman occupation of their lands — the Essenes, the Zealots, the Sanhedrin, the Pharisees and Sadducees. Would Jesus be the one to rally the troops? Many were thinking it. And that is why they ask Jesus another trick question, significantly focusing on the new coinage.

It is also significant, I think, that there is truth in the Pharisees’ opening question: They say the truth about Jesus, even though they are plotting against Jesus who is aware of their ‘malice’. “We know,” they say, “that you show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality.”

They knew, despite their devious motives to trap Jesus, what Jesus was all about. The truth of the Gospel of Jesus is surprisingly expressed by sinful people. They, of all people, get it! Jesus stands with all people — even the minorities, those who live under oppression in occupied lands, even to those who we would rather ignore, or not see, or even hate.

Aboriginal people in Canada make up only 4% of the entire population. And we know their plight. As indigenous people on this land we call Canada, they are particularly disadvantaged in the dominant culture and economy. Things have started to get better for some of them. But certain systemic problems exist and persist — like endemic poverty, education inequality for children, lack of safety for women, and lack of access to safe drinking water.

Do we as followers of Jesus, like the religious leaders in Jesus day, know what Jesus is all about? That’s a good start. But it’s the follow-through that’s just as, if not more, important. What will we do to be more than just a Jesus-fan-club? What will we do when we encounter opportunities to live out the Gospel of Jesus?

Are we ‘divergent’?

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Then Joseph could no longer control himself before all those who stood by him, and he cried out, “Send everyone away from me.” So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it. Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph…” (Genesis 45:1-3a)

The Joseph story in Genesis paints an incredible picture of personal endurance through hardship, a journey which resolves into a final and satisfying conclusion. It is story-telling at its greatest. Those words of Joseph near the end of the book of Genesis, “I am Joseph”, mark a cathartic climax to his tumultuous life in Egypt. We can feel Joseph’s relief when he reveals his true identity to his brothers who had to this point no clue that he was indeed their long lost brother whom they had betrayed. These words signify the forgiveness and reconciliation that Joseph then expresses with his brothers and father, indeed with his extended Hebrew family and identity.

You see, since the time when his mischievous, jealous and evil-doing brothers sold Joseph into Egyptian slavery, Joseph was essentially a stranger in a foreign land: a Hebrew man of God living in the polytheistic religious culture in Egypt. What is remarkable, is that Joseph is able to use his gifts and street-wise talents to climb the ladder of success in this foreign culture, to the point of being appointed Pharaoh’s right-hand man during one of the greatest crisis facing the region at the time — a seven-year famine.

The main character, Tris, in the popular series of books by Veronica Roth entitled “Divergent”, struggles with her identity. It is no doubt to my mind why these books and movie are popular among young adults seeking to establish ‘who they are’ in this world. In this distopic vision of earth in the future, humanity is divided into five factions; each faction has a particular function in society: to advance knowledge, defence, care-giving, truth-telling and working the land. The goal of this culture is to keep people in only one of those factions throughout their lives. Of course, reality is not so cut-and-dried.

Young people are tested for their aptitude and then they need to make a choice, which faction they will join. Once that choice is made, they cannot change. Tris discovers she doesn’t fit the mold; she is ‘divergent’, meaning she has an aptitude — the gifts — to belong to more than one faction successfully. She becomes a threat to the leadership of the society who wants to stamp out all divergents and keep things in the society simple, clear-cut and easily controlled. Similar to Joseph, this, too, is the journey to discover and embrace one’s true identity.

But I believe it is a journey not just for young adults, but for all of us. Even in the church, as we week-by-week come here to re-connect with our religious identity. In next week’s Gospel reading (Matthew 16:13-20), Jesus himself asks his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” The question of identity is crucial in our understanding not only of God but of ourselves in Christ Jesus, the Body of Christ. Who are we, as Christians and as Lutherans, in the world today some two thousand years after Jesus walked on this earth? And what is our purpose, our mission?

A while ago some of you expressed interest in exploring more our Lutheran history and identity — and how we communicate that identity in our Canadian context. I found a good summary of this from a retired professor from Waterloo Lutheran Seminary, who a few years ago gave a talk at Luther Hostel about Lutherans in Canada (“We’re from Away: The Lutheran Experience in Canada”, Robert Kelly, Luther Hostel 2011, pages 4-7).

Professor Robert Kelly asserts that Lutherans came here as immigrants who did not speak English. We came to Canada, essentially, as “Foreign Protestants”. This reality posed some challenges and reveals potential strengths in our identity.

Perhaps the most serious issue we face because of our history, Kelly writes, is how it has impacted our sense of mission. Most of our Lutheran churches began as groupings of people who shared an ethnicity and a language. Because our roots were in Germany and the Nordic countries our understanding of mission centred on making contact with immigrants from the old country who were already Lutheran. The British Government helped us with that in the 19th century by settling people of the same ethnicity and religion near each other. Our mission goal, then, was to get them into our congregations and keep them in the fold before some other group got them. Our mission was to make sure those who came as Lutherans remained Lutherans. We weren’t so interested in finding people who did not share our language and ethnicity. We were most certainly NOT a “church in mission for others.” Our mission was to care for ourselves and people like us.

Nevertheless, the fact that our ancestors came here as “foreign Protestants” who did not speak English is a strength we can build on. Kelly writes that “in a country that is defined by the diversity of its immigrants, we were one of the original groups that was neither French nor English. We have in our history an understanding of what it is like to come here and be perceived as different. In our historical experience is the possibility that we could relate to the present experience of immigrants from all over the world.”

Being “foreign Protestants” also put us a bit outside of the mainstream of society. This can be an advantage especially as the mainstream of society does not hold the values and beliefs of one of Martin Luther’s most enduring doctrines, “justification by grace through faith”.

That is, there is a tendency in the mainstream of our culture to blame the poor, the underprivileged, the minority, the unemployed or the victim for their situation. The roots of this negative attitude lie in the religious mainstream of British Protestantism: the idea that our prosperity in the world is a sign that we are the elect of God. It is this mainstream that promoted and still promotes the idea that we secure our place in the world through hard work and positive thinking. It is pretty much like the slogan at the heart of much of late Medieval theology: If you do your very best, God will not fail to reward you with grace.

Of course, Martin Luther had trouble with the basic idea that what makes us right with God is our work, our efforts to earn God’s favour. As Lutherans our history and theology has at its best opposed the mainstream approach. As Lutherans we say that our place in the world is not something we can earn, but is a gift of God’s unconditional promise in Christ. That is what the Lutheran Reformation was all about.

“Luther’s basic insight was that any scheme of salvation that is based in us and our ability to do our very best — whether that is defined as doing good works or believing the proper doctrines or hard work and positive thinking — is really no scheme of salvation at all. Rather it is a guarantee that our lives will either be wracked with anxiety or lived in the shallowness of self-righteousness. The ideology by which our society lives is precisely the ideology which Luther spent his adult life opposing” (Robert Kelly).

The Lutheran alternative in understanding the Gospel is that it is not about us and what we achieve, but about God and what God is doing. It’s about joining God’s activity wherever God is — which puts our preferences and comfortability at risk. The cross of Christ is the path of salvation, but it isn’t easy. The promise, of course, is that through the difficulties — like it was for Joseph — we do find our way.

Many Christians have stumbled at Jesus’ response to the Canaanite woman in the Gospel text for today (Matthew 15:21-28). It’s hard to make sense of first Jesus’ arrogant silence to the woman’s request; and then Jesus’ downright rudeness in essentially calling the woman a ‘dog’. This language is not what we expect of Jesus, it it? To be sure, we can explain the behaviour of Jesus in a way that we can easily grasp; for example the fact that Jesus talks at all to a Canaanite woman is a radical affirmation of her personhood (Dock Hollingsworth, “Feasting on the Word” Year A Volume 3, Bartlett/Taylor eds., John Knox Press New Westminster, 20011, p.361).

But perhaps the point of this Gospel text is simply to suggest to us the truth that Jesus and his Way does not always come through for us as we may expect. Jesus does not always conform to what we hope for. In other words, God is experienced in unexpected places and people. We cannot put God in a box.

We Lutherans have an important mission in Canada today. That mission is not, I believe, to find the lost Lutherans and bring them back to the orthodox fold. Rather, our mission — in the words of Robert Kelly — is “to be communities of people who speak the Gospel, the Good News of unconditional promise, clearly and who speak it to, for and with anyone who needs to hear it no matter where they come from or who they are.

Jesus does, in the end, grant the Canaanite woman her plea, as an example of Jesus’ radical inclusion of a Gentile. Here is another biblical appeal for the broad, unconditional reach of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

“Our mission is to be communities of people who have heard the Good News of God’s promise in Christ and who live in the world as if that message is true. When we do that we have fulfilled the promise of our history” and our identity. We are being true, to who we really are.

Church and Money – setting a postive tone

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Many church leaders will be facing their annual congregational meetings in the next month. And a lot of the conversation will likely revolve around money.

I hope I can help set a positive tone for these discussions to encourage my parishioners — and indeed Canadians from all Christian denominations — to be generous, as their expression of love for God, for Christ’s Church on earth, and for the world in so desperate a need these days.

Recently a Huffington Post article presented some interesting statistics. These facts may provide a helpful background for pastors, priests and church leaders as they prepare their hearts and minds for these annual meetings.

– Of the provinces and territories in Canada, Manitobans are for the 14th year in a row the most generous of all Canadians in charitable giving

– Even so, Manitoba ranked 39th out of 63 jurisdictions including all the states in the USA, provinces and territories in Canada

– Utah, which ranked 1st in generosity, made charitable donations totaling about three and a half times more than what Manitobans gave

– The extent of charitable giving by the provinces hasn’t improved as donations have plummeted since 2010, especially in Ontario

– Charles Lammam, Associate Director of the Fraser Institute said, “Had Canadians donated to registered charities at the same rate as Americans, Canada’s charities would have received an additional $9.2 billion in private support in 2010”

Given these facts, I am encouraged to reflect on something stewardship resources and voices have affirmed over time: God has already given us enough of what we need to do whatever we feel called to do, in Jesus’ name, with the Church, for the sake of God’s mission in the world today.