Sermon: Like A Wet Nurse, A Nurse Tree, A Nurse Log, ... (1 Thessalonians 2:1-8) Oct 29, 2017

1 Thessalonians 2:1-8

A nurse log. Credit: Phil Simonson

The Background to the Story...

Judy’s going to read the letter, and as we listen to it, I invite you to reflect on what we can learn from Paul about how we persevere with our faith, belief and truth when they meet with opposition. 

What images and metaphors might be helpful to understand who we are and what we can be, 

first, when our belief and neighbourly practice are challenged,

second, when we need to become a better community by learning from these experiences, 

third, when we need to challenge those who don’t see the value of our faith, truth and hope.

Message

Like a wet nurse, like a nurse tree, like a nurse log, like a ,,,

There are times when our beliefs or plans meet the opposition of others. There are also those times when we need to oppose the plans of others because we see in them something to improve, or something to change, something to disagree with. In the dictionary, opposition is defined as "Resistance or dissent, expressed in action or argument." For example, “There was considerable opposition to the proposal.” Opposition can also mean a group of adversaries or competitors, especially a rival political party or athletic team, in “They beat the opposition.” 

Opposition to some person, some group, or some project has the potential to evoke very strong emotions or strong disagreement, emotionally affecting both groups involved in the situation. These feelings and emotions like anger, disappointment and alienation are almost unavoidable. Strong emotions are part of our humanity, and they are natural human reactions to the intensity of being challenged. 

When we disagree, when we need to make a change (in organizations, in institutions, in society), when we have to break an oppressive silence, we engage with the process of opposition. I love to reflect on what Reinhold Niebuhr said: we, as mixed beings, good and bad, are not angels; sinful beings, yet still calling for justice. 

Therefore, if we really have thought it through and reflected on our thinking, and still believe that we must persevere with what we believe and that we trust the validity of our belief, faith, hope for justice, hope for love, we must move on with the truth of ourselves. We open to the discovery of new learning on the evolving path. 

Then - what would be our spirituality in this process - especially with our emotions? 

Our belief, passion and commitment to the better future and justice often calls us to take up our cross. When we lift up our voices to advocate justice for ourselves and for others, the actions and reflections we engage with deeply touch our whole being; because we are not just the “objects” but the “subjects” of the justice we lift up our voices for. Of course, we can be criticized as being “social justice warriors” if we fail to hide our anger or are seen as being “too passionate”, risking relationships. The emotions of anger and hurt need to be embraced and validated as true and valuable components of healing and action. However, these positions are not always accepted in places or discussions where we are expected to discuss things “emotion-neutral”. First of all, I embrace the important role that emotions play in our growth. I also learn truth from others. One day, I raised my voice to challenge the white privilege I saw at play in a particular decision-making process. When I sat with a very wise elder and questioned the process, she told me, with the best of intentions to help me, support me, and listen to me, “I hear from you ‘anger’ and ‘a lot of judgement.’” She said, she believes the learning happens when we are invited to the middle circle: moving from the definite comfort zone (first circle) to learn in the middle circle where we feel uncomfortable yet still feel safe. (Third circle: Panic zone) 

She said, in all situations, we need to make sure that no one feels attacked, erased, and disrespected because we all are children of God. No one should feel that their core - "beloved and loving" - is threatened.  

Now Paul, in his letter to the Thessalonians, has something to teach us about how we engage with each other in the second circle, or even in the third circle - when we are moved away from the unlearning, safe zone. These circles can be with family, with church members, with neighbours, with friends, in our workplace, any place where we are human, vulnerable, rigid, and in between... where we have to trust that there’s transformative power when we open to the Other to engage authentic conversation, …  Open to examine our truth while we also invite others to do the same.  

In the competitive, male world of his time, where masculinity were praised over femininity and social orders were extremely hierarchical, Paul adopted very striking image of “a wet nurse”. Verse 7, “We are gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children.” This verse reminds me of a cherished memory. My university professor, a catholic nun, was my mentor; she taught world religions and contemplative prayer. I looked up to her and followed and admired her, and she told me one day, “Ha Na. Be gentle like a dove, wise like a serpent.” Only a few days later, I found that her wise words came from the Bible. From Jesus, actually. Even at the time, the word “gentle” stood out to me. “See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” Or even in the King James Version, “harmless as doves.” "Gentle, harmless, innocent" was counterintuitive to my younger self who believed that to overcome our adversaries, we should be strong and outsmart the others. 

When Paul was seeking temporary safety in Thessalonica, the chief city of Macedonia, a sea port, (see the picture of the Modern city of Thessaloniki) where people of many cultures and religions huddled together in a kind of urban slum, he stayed with a group of leatherworkers - young males. Paul set up shop in the leatherworker quarters, living and working among them. This was a tough male world, with only the occasional woman working with them when they made garments. There were many travelling popular preachers, who were selling their messages, obviously competing with each other. So, in this tough, masculine, competitive community, Paul adopts the image of a wet nurse – the most feminine of images, to tell his “brothers” what his brotherly love is for them. Verse 8, “So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.” 

Even in our contemporary world, where we fight for justice, fight to make our voices heard, fight to tell the truth of the lived reality of the vulnerable, the marginalized, the oppressed in our city, it seems that masculine, strong, images are preferred. What’s the message we most often receive from the world or media about how we survive? Be tough, endure, fight, compete, win, — dominantly masculine images. 

But nurse images are compellingly striking. Primarily, Paul presents himself as “nurse” to the fledgling congregation. Even a wet nurse caring for her children. Now I wonder whether I am willing to challenge myself to believe in the powerful holiness and effectiveness of the Divine femininity. 

I searched up other nurse images, following this reflection. I learned that when we reflect on the life of Jesus, the cross, and the resurrection, Jesus is really a nurse image. Feeding, caring, giving his own self.

I find the image of a nurse tree. 

A nurse tree is a larger, faster-growing tree that shelters a small, slower-growing tree or plant. The nurse tree can provide shade, shelter from wind, or protection from animals who would feed on the smaller plant. 

I have also found the metaphor of a nurse log beautiful. A nurse log is a very beautiful, sacred image for a church like us - not because we have fallen - No. We have not fallen. (Though - what’s wrong with being fallen?) But because we believe in what we can do, as a nurse log does: as Paul says, "Share with our neighbours not only the gospel of God but also our own selves.” 

These huge nurse logs are the key to new growth and the survival of the entire forest. So much of a fallen tree’s mass is taken up with other organisms, a fallen tree is more alive than a standing one. To speak from the perspective of a micro-organism or a worm, nurse trees or nurse logs are a poem. (from the book, There’s a Hair in My Dirt)

And the nurse log, the fallen tree, provides “ecological facilitation” to seedlings to enable the new small trees, growing with new hopes, dreams and possibilities. To a seedling, a nurse log offers water, moss thickness, leaf litter, disease protection, nutrients, and sunlight, from the gap in the canopy where the tree used to stand. 

Through my first two months here, knowing more deeply about Immanuel has fascinated me. 

What are our hopes, dreams, plans, risks, tensions?

I believe it is worth going back to the earlier questions. 

What images make sense to you and help you to understand who we are, and what we can be? 

Can you think of images other than the nurse images? 

How will we embrace the love Divine when we are challenged to be a better neighbourly community? 

When we need to challenge those who don’t see the value of our faith, truth and hope? 

The nurse’s wisdom: All are children of God. The core of every one and every being is beloved and loving. 

We give thanks to God.

Sermon: On Watt's Street (Exodus 32:1-14) Oct 15, 2017

Sermon: On Watt’s Street

Exodus 32:1-14

Introduction to the story

In today’s story from Exodus, Moses was away from his people for a very long time - forty days and forty nights. The people had no idea that Moses was in God’s presence and was receiving further instructions from God. They feared that something had happened to God’s spokesman and covenant mediator - the man who had led them out of Egypt. The people felt very vulnerable without Moses, so they built a ‘golden calf’ to worship; after all, Moses has disappeared, or even worse, he’s abandoned them – any protection is better than none. As we engage with the story and the reflection, I would like us to ponder how we seek God’s presence in a situation of deeply-felt absence. 

Message

Last Tuesday morning, I was driving to church from my home in St Vital. My phone GPS has well-taught me to take Archibald Street, then, after Nairn Avenue, Watt Street. That’s my normal route for the morning before I get to Kimberley Avenue and Golspie Street, and here we are! (I think that’s the best route I have found so far for the morning commute - if you have alternative suggestions, you can tell me later.) Rather than taking the highway, I like to drive through those residential and industrial areas, where people live or people are busy. I trust that no matter what different life circumstances each of us may have, we all work hard within our life contexts and different capacities, to live well, to live decently, to live with purpose and meaning. Driving down Archibald St or Watt St in the mornings often gives me that feeling; I recognize my desire to commit to the ministry that God’s mission is with our neighbours, therefore with us. We are not complete without these diverse people for whom the “sojourning” of life is really lived day by day, here and now, working hard to meet the needs of today. I imagine that this context of our lives and ministry is relevant to reflect the story of Moses and Israel, Aaron and the golden calf. 

First, the golden calf. We often want a golden calf- we believe that we need a golden calf. We want some ‘sign’ of the presence of meaning, purpose and direction in our lives, and there’s nothing wrong with that desire. Because ultimately, at a deeper level, we all want to get close to what helps us feel the presence of something bigger than us, outside of us, especially when we are amidst a time of deeply-felt absence. 

I remember going through a very anxious time in 2004: I was just-married, felt lost in the direction of my future goals, and Min Goo and I lived in a makeshift roof-top house on the top of the four-story church building where he worked, which was a challenge on top of the struggle of finding myself in the role of a minister’s wife in the deeply patriarchal culture of Korean churches. To make things worse, the church was located next to a very wide highway that was on a hill. Whenever the heavy trucks and buses ran on the highway, the vibration and noise threatened my health - or at least I felt that way. As a result I became anxious – a young woman, isolated from her former life, living with constant noise in a rickety house on top of a church that was trying to form her into a smiling, silent angel… Things were bad. But one afternoon, when the anxiety was most intense, then I remembered the rosary my mom gave me as a wedding gift, bidding blessings and asking me to keep it close. And I held it, not because I believed that God was within this object, but because of the power of my mother’s love, and so of God’s love, who gave it as a sign of love, security and prayer. As long as I honour the meanings behind the rosary in my hands, it is no longer “fetishized”, but a gift. 

Let’s go back to thinking about the golden calf. Queer theologians like to invite us to think through things differently, and I really like their approach. Some of them say, looking at the rebellion of the people from a gay perspective, perhaps we can see more in them than just the negative depiction of a whining, ungrateful, faithless people. For example, we could see these people with Aaron, rebelling against the authority of Moses, actually providing a model of the critical role dissent plays in a community. Because the people are not unquestioningly following Moses, they prove themselves to be people who are thinking for themselves! They are willing to go against a powerful leader, and question his ideas and commands! 

In this sense, I hope that we can see the golden calf in a new light. What it symbolizes is not the abomination of a human act of worshipping or honouring objects or animals, “created beings”. Once we understand the spirituality of other religions, their ways of life, we learn that we shouldn’t judge or invalidate their beautiful ways to honour the sacred and “animated, proud and productive” power in all things.  What we are invited to learn from today’s story is a critique of our behaviour - how we find and seek God and God’s presence when all we can feel is God’s absence. We are invited to ask, in those times of absence, are we looking for a way to create new realities, new possibilities, or are we finding ourselves choosing the more visible expression and reality of the more familiar, comfortable, order? 

We ultimately seek God’s presence because it is energizing. God’s presence is not constrained by the here and now. We might be able to say more boldly, “God’s presence is never constrained by the tyranny of the present,” the realities of oppression, violence, patriarchy, hierarchy, war, heteronormativity, the neo-liberalism of the capitalist world, … Any false reality that tell us “There is no future but the here and now of our everyday life.” God’s presence means not just the present time stretching out into the future, but the future stretching back, critiquing the present of what is, casting a picture of what can and perhaps will be. God’s presence must be linked to hope. 

The prophetic task of Moses, therefore ours, is then declaring, believing and living that God’s future time, the Kingdom of God, lives in our action to challenge the dominance of the present time (of fear and anxiety) with the promise of energizing hope and possibility. Something is about to be given! The future will be a gift! Egypt was without energy, because it did not believe anything was promised or about to be given. Egypt, like every imperial and eternal now, believed everything was already given, contained, possessed – the present is composed of facts, hard facts which we cannot change.

I believe our task as a prophetic community is to do our work, engage with conversations, finding and showing what we can do together to make a difference. We can speak of our hope for God’s and our future time and share it with our neighbours who, like us, work hard to meet the needs of today, and at the same time, want more. Want to make a positive impact on the lives of ourselves and others, want to dream what is possible, what can be, what will be, want more than what the present offers. 

These days I have a one-and-a-half hour round-trip commute solely devoted to coming to church and then going back home, picking up the kids enroute. And I happily do it, because I come here to make hope, knowing that I will find that gift - hope - here, for myself and for you and for others. 

Then, on the way here, last Tuesday morning, I had this sudden, mystical illusion or illumination… probably in the junction of Archibald St and Watt St. The whole world looked to me like water, endless water, flowing and rolling all around me. When God gives us a vision, it is supposed to be astonishing and fresh to the one who sees it or receives it. What this vision showed me was that I used to think that some of the life realities I experience and go through are “hard”. By “hard” I mean, not “difficult” even though they are difficulties, but (knocking the wood of the pulpit), solid, heavy, having their own own existence, fixed, unchanging. Like quantifiable, “hard facts”. 

I have not undergone any real, significant economic status challenges. I have lived a fairly comfortable (with some exceptions) middle-class life both in Korea and Canada. Yet, I have known the formidable, tedious presence of every-day ongoing racism and sexism, because they go together and they are ever-present, and I so much detested them. I also agonized a lot on defining who I am - my identity -, what my role is, and how to start and build mutually embracing, equal friendships with white colleagues, white students... in the “White world”. These were my hard realities, hard facts – my past, and, to some extent, my present. It would be easy to believe that these difficulties could be with me – forever.

But - the experience of envisioning the whole world rolling like water suddenly invited me to see a new horizon of God’s future time. Specifically, God’s future time for me. In this vision the hard realities that I believed were hard are not so “hard”, because in between each and every hard reality, there’s “Teum” “Sai”, (in Korean; unfilled space, gap) and I see the rest of the world flows with it, through it, between all places. 

Then I realized that rather than feeling stifled or constrained by the weight and the close-ness of the hard realities, I can be in these unfilled, flexible, open, in-between spaces, and in these creative, fluid places, I can be playful, creative, prophetic, a day-dreamer, widening the gap, so that more positive, fun, exciting possibilities flow, like water, endless water, rolling down to the streets. 

Some people call this kind of creativity, “queering”. Queering as future time versus straight as present time. 

Today’s story again calls us to the prophetic task of creative imagining: where and how we find God’s future time and presence in the midst of our present time. We look for the future as a gift, energizing hope, opening creation. When the facts of today are hard, we build a reminder, even a golden calf, of God’s, and our future. Where are we? What will be? What can be? The future speaks to our present, pulling us out of what is to what can be.

Sermon: Human, very human (Luke 17:11-19) Oct 8, 2017

Sermon: Human, very human.                            

        Luke 17:11-19

The message I wish to share with you on this Thanksgiving Sunday is that we are human, not android. Sallie McFague said, “Spirituality is an exploration into what is involved in becoming human.” And today’s story from Luke, where ten are healed and one returns to offer thanks, is about a leper, the single, outstanding character in the story who is human, very human.

To begin with, I invite you to look at a story from the Gospel of Mark, which is slightly different from the story in Luke, yet it also tells the story of Jesus healing a leper. By the way, I am glad that you have already made two great story-telling projects with Nancy: The Mark project and the Luke project. That’s great! 

Mark was written earlier than Luke, which means that Mark was closer to the original events and given less ‘editing’. The stories in Mark tell us more about the original Jesus and what actually happened. In Mark’s story of the healing of a leper, (the earlier version), we can see a most striking difference, in comparison to Luke’s story. In Mark, Jesus touches the leper. In Jesus’ time, touching a leper was illegal. The action of touching those who were considered religiously and socially “unclean” transgressed the law – it was not only offensive, it was a legal offense. Mark tells us, “A leper came to Jesus begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’ Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean.’ This story is striking and compelling. By law, Jesus’ touching of a leper would leave both of them - Jesus and the leper - outside the community, a focus of controversy.

Now it is interesting that, in Luke’s story, Jesus never touches the lepers. The author of this story wants to portray both Jesus and the lepers to be more legally-observant and safe. “When Jesus entered a village, Jesus was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices, ‘Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.’ When he saw them he said to them, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went they were cleansed.” So, first, the lepers keep their distance and do not approach close to Jesus. Second, Jesus sees them but never comes close enough to touch. Third, he tells them immediately go to the Temple. All the characters in Luke’s story keep their distance. Healing occurs by word, not by touch. The diseases are cured but the social order is not challenged. Nobody in this story dismantles the deeply segregated lines of who’s clean and who’s not clean. Seeing Jesus conforming to the boundary controls of his time and keeping his distance from the lepers is unsettling, uncomfortable – especially if you recall the account from Mark. 

Lepers are “unclean”. Tradition decrees: they shall always cover their upper lips and cry out, “unclean, unclean.” They shall remain unclean as long as they have the disease; they shall live alone; their dwelling shall be outside the camp. But, do you know why the lepers are supposed to be untouched, outcast, considered socially “dead”?  The reason is not because the disease is contagious, disabling and potentially fatal - a threat to public health - the lepers in the Bible are not actually suffering from leprosy. 

John Dominic Crossan, the most renowned “Historical Jesus” scholar of our time, finds out that translating the Hebrew word, sara’at or the Greek word lepra into the modern term “leprosy” is flat-out wrong. What we call leprosy is caused by Mycobacterium leprae, a bacillus discovered in 1868 by the Norwegian physician Gerhard Hansen. That disease was, in fact, known in New Testament times, but had a different name. The lepra in today’s stories, suffer from a rather repulsive scaly or flaking skin condition, like eczema or psoriasis. It has no power of contagion. Then, what was the matter? Why so much fuss over psoriasis?

What mattered was the pores, the orifices, the holes, the body openings of the sufferer’s skin! In ancient times, tiny Israel was constantly threatened by the dangers of being absorbed by more powerful empires and cultures. It always had to withstand imperial absorption on a political, military, cultural and religious level. So the care it took to protect the political and cultural unity of this minority group was intensely important. So the high emphasis on social-boundary protection was symbolized by an emphasis on bodily-boundary protection. In this symbolic connection, their care for the unity and purity of the physical body of their members takes precedence over the importance of other matters! So these specific skin conditions … the “porous", "multiple openings” … “when would-be orifices start to appear where no orifices are meant to be” … threaten the symbolic system of security, purity, integrity. Unpredictable, messy openings are considered dangerous. The fear centres on the inability to determine what is incoming, what is outgoing – the symbolic lack of control, integrity, that could break down the system! 

In Luke’s story, Jesus is not quite the same as the Jesus in Mark’s story. He’s more like an android, than a truly human/divine presence. Possibly, “edited”, to make him a better fit to the legal system of his time. 

Luke’s story almost sounds like a story about androids. Androids lack what is essential to make a human being, human. Androids simply perform their roles and look for and do what they are expected to do. 

Luke’s story may have ended up as a bland android’s story. Jesus is far from the lepers, keeping his distance. The story doesn’t tell us what were the other nine lepers’ feeling or responses. It is really an un-feeling android story until the last leper returns after being healed. If, in the original story of Mark, Jesus “chooses” to touch the leper, this last leper in Luke’s story “chooses” to transgress the assigned distance, turns back, comes to Jesus, and falls on his face at Jesus’ feet. I think this is really the most beautiful, compelling moment in this story. This unexpected act of the last leper changes the whole story from being an androids’ story to one full of human possibilities. 

He expresses gratitude. But “Jesus healed ten people but only one said thank you” is not all we can say about this great story. He doesn’t just express gratitude. What I invite you to see is he also creates a new space between the afflicted and the healer: now close, now intimate, now human, now touchable, now growing in grace. It is not just a space but also a time. It spills out a new possibility for a new world, a new future, enabling hope. This leper is not just a foreigner or a Samaritan. He beautifully demonstrates himself as being a human, who feels and who wants to create the space surrounding him to be more inclusive of him, more loving, more kind. He feels a difference, feels change, feels hope, feels the time - the new social order, new possibility dawning, opening. It is enabled when human beings spontaneously, joyfully find each other in gratitude, free of fear. 

Spirituality is “an exploration into what is involved in becoming human”. We attempt to grow in sensitivity to self, to others, to the non-human creation and to God who is within and beyond the totality. We are not beings that are fixed into our time, our culture. We are fluid beings: we are able to look both inward and outward to anticipate, to hope, to determine what we want to be, and what we need to be - a dignified, true, powerful human being, being equal, being brave, being open, secured by faith in God’s liberating love for us. Because we are not an android, but human, we listen deeply, feel intensely, hope radically. Because we are not an android, but human, we question what we do, out of our love for ourselves and for the others who we care, asking “Is it what it always has to be this way?” Then we can choose to listen to what our heart tells us. “What does my heart tell me right now?” "What is possible?" In the depth of our humanity, we touch our questions, touch our strength, touch the time of change. It is a radical calling, looking for the “unexpected”. If we don’t look for the unexpected, we will miss it! It is an exciting journey to find our own definition to be human, very human. Let us rewrite a larger map of ourselves, our lives, and challenge our society to dismantle segregation of any kind, hierarchy of any kind. Our calling is always new, and always renewed. Thanks be to God. 

The Veil, Sermon for World Communion Sunday (Oct 1, 2017)

World Communion Sunday 

Sermon: The Veil                                          Exodus 17:1-7

In the 1930s, a unit of the Sinai Camel Corps (which you see in the picture on the screen) stumbled into a seemingly long dried-out wadi bed, (without need of any further explanation, right), a very long, dry stretch of ground. With this picture, you can imagine an overlapping image of the Israelites, with Moses, in a desolate place - most likely, in the same desert, parched with thirst. The soldiers and their camels were also thirsty until a Bedouin, who was attached to this unit, came forward and wielded a spade, shattering the weathered, crusted-over limestone. What followed was beauty - the crack he opened spewed forth a small geyser, to the astonishment of the British. Bystanders cried out, “Look at him! The prophet Moses!” 

Where does the beauty lie? Not in the evocative act, but with the Bedouin’s knowledge of the land, and, more strikingly, the beauty of the water, the “small geyser”, that spewed forth in a most unlikely place. 

When we read today’s story, we may not always realize it, but we are quite well-trained to see where and on whom we focus to understand the story. Who and what are the active agents in this story? God? The people? Moses? In today’s story, it seems that Moses is the most dynamic agent. He is the mediator - mediating the conflicts between God and the Israelites. The Israelites accuse Moses and God, challenging, “We have followed your leadership, Moses, believed in you, because we believed that God was leading you and us, but now it seems to us that it is doubtful. Maybe the thing you called us out to - the promised land – doesn’t even exist.” 

They want proof, (that’s the meaning of the name of the place, Massah), they want a test. Yes, they are thirsty. They are undergoing physical, painful thirst. Yet their deepest thirst may be not the physical one. They want to have an issue resolved. They thirst to know “Is the Lord among us, or not?” Because more dreadful than the temporary, physical thirst, may be not knowing where they are - their direction - faced with the issue of life and death, … in other words, they are questioning the future. Is their future life or death? We can certainly relate to this question. The future matters! The future of the local church, the future of the United Church of Canada, the future of our lives, the future of our children, the future of reconciliation, the future of … You name it. If the future means arrival, as one end of the story, with the other end being departure, we certainly want proof, proof of the future, proof that we have this map, and we will get there - the future as a reachable place, a reachable time, a reachable goal. 

At Yellowstone National Park

The tension intensifies until people see the water gushing out from the rock, from that old, weathered, crusted-over limestone. And there, they learn, the water, as the “deep and hidden thing”, the water has always been flowing, was and is flowing, and will flow under the ground on which they travel. The water knows no arrival, no departure; it is always present. The wide, wild, dried-out desert ground was only the illusion or the veil that needed to be pierced in order to see past the surface to what is beneath. People are amazed by the “animate, proud and productive waters” flowing under the ground which quietly and radically sustains and preserves life, even in a desert. 

The beauty essential to today’s story is really water, because here water becomes a place where people quench their thirst and begin to understand that the future is not so much about ‘arrival’; it is about imagination, creation, and prophesy, when we are confronted by the issue of life and death, when we are challenged by our call to make a just and sustainable future, toward, “life togetherness.” I would like to stress here that one powerful leader’s mediation is not enough. Moses, or any single leader, is not the one who makes the future - the future opens when multiple voices - a voice for ecology, a voice for economics, a voice for race, a voice for gender, a voice for sexuality, … your prophetic voice... - all come flooding up like a geyser to wet the heat-scorched, soul-parched place. 

Today we celebrate World Communion; we are standing at the water as the prophetic place to witness unveiling, or revealing. Unveiling the real divide between churches, across theology, denominations, political policy. Unveiling the urgent calls for solidarity coming from the churches of the world, especially for those whom justice-seeking and hope are the real life-and-death issues: one example: 

When I attended an event at Thunderbird House in 2015, The Rev. Mark MacDonald, the National Indigenous Anglican Bishop, reflected on the Veil of Death (Isaiah 25). It was powerful, memorable. 

On this mountain God will make for all peoples

a feast of rich food and superb wines, 

delicious, rich food and superb, elegant wines. 

On this mountain God will destroy

the veil which covers the face of all peoples, 

the veil enshrouding all the nations. 

God will swallow up death forever. 

God will wipe away the tears from every face, 

and God will remove from all the earth 

the disgrace God’s people suffer. God has spoken. 

MacDonald said, “The heart of the problem relating to each other is not just physical death. How we misperceive each other can cause the ‘death’ of the other people, of someone else’s humanity.” The “veil of death” is the way in which people see the humanity in other people - diminished. Crushed. He said we all are mass-hypnotized by ways of thinking of indigenous people – as primitive, at an earlier stage of development – not like us, and “If they are given enough training, education, good stuff, they will become like us.” We become hypnotized into thinking this way. When the indigenous congregation went to a church conference held in Toronto, they were appalled when somebody in leadership came to them and said, “We will have to show you what to do.” 

The issue that often, very often, and crucially and destructively what many racialized, black, indigenous, queer people have to deal with routinely even here in Canada is to create, to build a coalition to make a future together where they are no longer to be treated less than human, where their identity is to be perceived just as what it is (they would say, if we say “what truly is” it is limiting, because their identity, their race, their culture is always and inherently a strength, a powerful deep thing.) Stan MacKay was present at Thunderbird House too, and he added, “Yes, we all need to throw away the veil of death.” when, even in church, even in communion, even though the indigenous sisters, brothers and two-spirits are baptized Christians, the church still see them/us as the Other. 

In Second Corinthians, Paul speaks about a “Spiritual battle”, and it is not between the mind and the body. To battle spiritually is to fight our imagination - how we think, what we perceive, why we dream. 

World Communion or communion is Massah, Meribah (the names of the place that today’s story records. Massah/Meribah means dispute, test, proof. “Is the Lord in our midst, or not?”) People put things to the test, demand proof, issue disputes. And remember how God responds? God answers, physically, intimately, incarnationally - in a carnal, corporeal, fleshly way - by becoming water. Drink Me! God is the small geyser, the astonishing water gushing from the small opening. Communion is an event to imagine, an event to participate in, an event to see the deep and hidden thing flow, flood in, pour into our heart, coming from the Other, an offering. 

Here… and now, let us see each other… Take one minute, in silence, in a carnal, corporeal, fleshly way! Yes! Literally! Look at each other – the person next to you - in the eyes! For one minute! Try to really see that other person – but don’t have a staring contest. We see here, each other, is also the small geyser, also communion, an opening into a miracle below the surface. We need to remove what restricts us from truly encountering the divine in each other - because we can only know the world through a person, and we can only know a person through her/his world. Race is a world. Gender is a world. Sexuality is a world. Class is a world. Poverty is a world. Immigration is a world. The act of seeing the Other past the surface is beauty! Water that quenches the parched, justice seeking, soul-searching world calls you, you who can see the beauty! Because our longing to be known, our longing to be acknowledged, our longing for intimacy is deep and radical, and friends, it is time for worship, it is time for communion.