Reflections from the Minister’s Study – Dec 18th, 2011

The Empire Strikes Back

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
Psalm 126 (VU p. 850 refrain 1)
1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
John 1:6-8, 19-28

Ever present God, as we pray, as we hear your words of wisdom and truth, the words come alive to us in new ways. May the promises of hope, peace, joy and love be truly felt today and throughout the year. May we take your Christmas message with us into our community and into our families. Amen.

How many of you every had a Mom or Dad that told you, “Never, ever, under no circumstance to ever put your tongue on a piece of cold metal in the winter?” How many of you listened? You probably did it anyway.

How many of you eat an apple a day. Remember the saying, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” How many of you do it? It is such a simple thing to do and it can’t hurt and probably does a lot of good.

Now the big one….how many of you eat raw cookie dough? What just me? Well it was really shocking to learn that the scientific community has officially declared that eating chunks of raw cookie dough can not only give you an upset stomach, but it could also harbour harmful bacteria like ecoli and salmonella. In fact researchers who investigated a 2009 outbreak of foodborne illness in the United States have declared that the outbreak was directly linked to the eating of raw cookie dough.

Mom’s and Dad’s the world over are always prone to being overprotective. It doesn’t matter what age you are but a parent is always a parent when they start a sentence with, “You know, you really shouldn’t do that.” This behaviour is probably made all the more unbearable since history and now science, seems to be teaching us more and more that parents are actually right sometimes! (I am being sarcastic) In fact, an argument could be made that parents have a lot in common with prophets. Prophets like Isaiah and John the Baptist were a lot like over protective and corrective parents.

Since time began the job of parents, and prophet, the world over, was to look around and to say what he or she saw and what needed to be changed. Prophets, called the people to account for what they had done, what they were doing and what needed to be changed to avoid catastrophe. They often used scare tactics, threatened fire and brimstone, and employed such phrases as, “You wait till your Father gets home.” They were prophetic. And usually like John they looked frightening as well. Not unlike my Aunt Ruby in her curlers, blue facial peel mask and her twenty year old bathrobe. Prophets went around saying, “You should do this and you should do that.” Now no one likes to be “should-on”. Well do they?! Prophets whether it was in biblical times, in our homes’ across the dinner table staring us in the face or on the TV, tell it like it is. And telling the truth can make people feel uncomfortable.

But there is no denying that the words of the prophets are just as relevant now as they were then. The world is in trouble, the climate is upside down, our lives are not making sense like they used to, and the good seem to suffer more than the wicked. The world has always needed those who point toward the light.

John the Baptist said that he was not a prophet to say what was wrong, but to say that something that would set things in the world right was coming. Jesus was the new Moses, not that he would lead them out of slavery in Egypt, but out of the slavery of Caesar. The slavery that comes from believing that what we see in the world is all there is. Jesus was the window through which the cure for this world would shine. And that cure was love, acceptance and grace.

This past week on CBC radio program called Shift, they had a program on being poor in Canada. They interviewed people and there was one woman who’s story impacted so many that the hosts had her back on the show to do another interview. The women being interviewed said that she was embarrassed to be poor. She had had a good job, and at one point she had cut back on hours to help her ill mother however soon after she had become ill as well. She was forced to go on disability. In tears the woman lamented that all she wanted was to be a contributing member of society but her health wouldn’t allow her to do that. She felt less of a person because people treated her differently.

At the end of the program, the host said that poverty is complicated. Often times it is related to things like addiction or mental health issues and more often than not it is based on policy. The host continues by saying that, “it was important to donate money to organizations to help people with the basic necessities but that that kind of help was going to bring about true justice for those in need. That kind of help was going to hurt.

Well giving does hurt. It hurts in the places that matter the most: our wallets, our time and most of all, our hearts. It hurts in our hearts because we realize that our neighbour in trouble could so easily be our mother, our father, our son, daughter or even ourselves.

Outreach to those beyond the walls of our church, beyond the walls of our family is difficult. But like the Baptist, or Isaiah, the prophets of old would say that is what God is calling us to do. Prophets exist in churches, politics, in the scientific community and in our homes. It is our duty to listen and to judge the truth of what they say and then to act.

Some would argue that the church shouldn’t be involved in politics but a prophet would say where the needs of God’s people are, that is where the church needs to be.

It may seem that the dark side is often winning in this world, for every step forward there seems to be another step back, but to borrow from the Star Wars movies, the empire of Caesar, the empire of wealth for the one percent, the empire that says that people get what they deserve, always “Empire Strikes Back”, but with the “Return of the Jedi”, I mean Jesus, may we find ways of bringing the true meaning of Christmas to all parts of our village, our city and our country.

Thanks be to God and may it be so.