Genesis 32: 22-31 and Luke 18: 1-8 - Sunday, October 19, 2025

This morning we have before us two incidents that involve persistence, conflict, and a resolution that teaches us of the power of perseverance: ours, and God’s.

The reading from Luke is self-contained and straight-forward. Jesus tells a parable about “a judge who neither feared God nor respected people” and a widow who was relentless in her pursuit of justice.  Eventually the woman’s persistence pays off, and the judge gives in, not because he is concerned for justice, because he’s had enough of her.

In this, I believe that Jesus is making two points.

1)    His first point is a rhetorical question, as he teaches his disciples to always consider the way things are now, versus how they will be in the Kingdom or Kin-dom of God: if a judge who respects neither God nor humans is willing to relent when a just cause is presented over and over again, can you even imagine how glorious it will be to live in the Kingdom of God, where such perseverance won’t be necessary, for the heart of God will be embraced by everyone and dignity will be respected without anyone needing to harp about it?

2)    His second point, views things from the widow’s standpoint.  Widows in that culture, unless remarried to a family member of the deceased husband, were in a really tough spot, with few options for financial support.  Rather than accepting defeat when she is cheated, this widow persists in expecting that the world should be a fair, just place for everyone, including her.  She raises her voice to the judge in court, and she presents her needs to God in prayer. And with this I can picture Jesus turning to us disciples and saying, “this is your role, too.  When there is injustice or oppression, don’t sit in polite silence.  Pray for those in need and insist on fairness from those in human authority, for that is what God intends.”  Bringing this into our current day, grass roots movements including the “No Kings” protests are saying enough is enough, and we recall the United Church of Canada’s new call and purpose, of deep spirituality, bold discipleship, and daring justice. Our calling is to dare to push for justice, even when injustice is entrenched, to be bold in speaking truth to power, even when that is awkward or scary, and to know that at its heart, every action we take on behalf of the marginalized, including our prayers, is an action that articulates our love and trust of God.

We set that aside for a moment, to be picked up later on, as we engage the more nuanced of our two readings, the story of Jacob, wrestling and striving and emerging with a new identity.  As an aside before doing so: I admit that I find it a lot easier to delve into this particular story, which speaks of the formative days of the people of Israel, at a time when there is at least a process of peaceful intent between Israel and Palestine.

Whenever engaging stories from the Torah, I attempt to find what a range of contemporary Jewish voices have to say, out of respect for the faith tradition that first received this text as scripture, and to come alongside the lively and enduring rabbinic tradition of truly wrestling with Biblical texts.  

And in so doing, Rabbi Dr. Elliot Dorff and the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks ask a question: “With whom was Jacob wrestling?” And then, they mull some possibilities: “it might be Jacob wrestling with his own conscience… According to the prophet Hosea, it was an angel. For the Sages, it was the guardian angel of Esau. The Bible text itself simply says Jacob was wrestling with “‘a man.’ And Jacob himself had no doubt - it was God. The adversary himself implies as much when he gives Jacob the name Israel, [which means] ‘because you have struggled with God and with man and have overcome.’” What intriguing possibilities!

This incident of Jacob, wrestling all night, does not arise from nowhere, so let’s review a bit about Jacob’s back-story.  Jacob and his twin brother Esau were the sons of Rebecca and Isaac, grandsons of Sarah and Abraham.  The sibling rivalry between these twins was intense right from the womb; the name Jacob means “heel-grabber” as when Esau was born, tradition says that Jacob was holding on to his brother’s foot.  This rivalry intensified as they grew to adulthood, with outdoorsy, impulsive Esau closer to his father, and the more analytical, domestic Jacob closer to his mother.  Esau, barely the elder of the two, was to inherit everything upon his father’s death, but Jacob extracts that inheritance from him one day when Esau was staggered by hunger, trading some well-timed lentil stew for the birthright.  This got sealed when Jacob, egged on by his mom, pretended to be his brother, kneeling down before his blind, ailing father to be blessed, wearing animal pelts to emulate his rugged brother. (Which makes me wonder, “just how hairy WAS Esau? But that’s a question for another time.) Interestingly, while I have always regarded this deception by Jacob as crafty, one of the Jewish sources I consulted (Chabad.org) saw the will of God in all of this, for by imitating Esau, his less capable, much more impetuous older brother, Jacob insures that Isaac’s blessing will go to the brother better suited to the complexity of the task ahead. Given what we’re seeing in the world of today when an impetuous person has too much power, I can understand this point of view.  

Needless to say, whether it was “for the best” or not, this reassignment of inheritance and blessing caused a huge rift between the brothers and Jacob spent much of his adult life in fear of his intense, angry brother. Recently (Genesis 32:6), Jacob heard “that Esau was coming to meet him with a force of four hundred men, and, in response tried diplomacy (sending lavish gifts of herds and flocks to Esau), prayer (‘Save me, I pray, from the hand of my brother’ Jacob begged to God) and when those did not work, he readied himself and his camp for war (dividing his household into two camps so that one at least would survive).

But one chapter later, in Genesis 33, when Esau finally appears, “all the fears turn out to be unfounded. He ran to meet Jacob, threw his arms around his neck, kissed him and wept. There is no anger, animosity or threat of revenge in Esau’s behaviour …and in reply, Jacob and all his household bowed down to the ground seven times before Esau.” They were reconciled.

Knowing all that came before and after Jacob’s night-time wrestling match, we wonder once more who he was wrestling with, and why?  Was he wrestling with Esau’s guardian angel? With himself? With God? I think the correct answer, is “yes.”  Jacob had a lot to answer for in his previous behaviour, and he had to wrestle with that.  His brother was furious with him and wanted him dead, and he had to wrestle with that.  And God saw special potential in Jacob in spite of all this, and Jacob had to wrestle with that too.  From this point on, God knew this man not as Jacob, the heel-grabber defined by his rivalry with Esau, but now as Israel, “the one who struggled with God and with humans and has overcome”, the one who would literally and figuratively be the father of the 12 tribes of Israel.

To me, this image of wrestling with self and others and God well-describes a healthy faith life. Whether one describes themselves as “spiritual”, or “religious,” or both, the humility and curiosity and engagement that it takes to wrestle with our beliefs and behaviours, knowing that we might need to change, suggests an openness that is so needed in the world of today.   Our faith life isn’t primarily about memorization or even being in the right; it involves actually grappling with the complexities of life, the complexities of human beings, the complexities of one’s own motivations, and the shortfalls of our knowledge.  

And to do that wrestling is in itself an important statement of faith.  To wrestle with God, to engage the complexities of human living as we struggle to discern God’s will, is to imply that there is a God.  There is something there, someone real and impactful and alive for us to wrestle with. And it’s not just the divine that we are to wrestle with; when we have the opportunity to have an honest engagement with those of a different mindset, we step away from labelling and dismissal, and in so doing we acknowledge their personhood.   And here, today’s two scripture lessons come together to make a point.

I know myself well enough to know that I like it when things are harmonious.  I don’t like it when people are upset with each other.  But as much as I would choose harmony if I could,  I have also seen enough situations, in workplaces and congregations and towns and provinces to realize that there comes a time when people must speak up against injustice, people need to “rassle” with their own thoughts and with each other in order to try to improve the lives of those whose lives are made a misery by public opinion or government policies.  To be a person of faith is not only to have things conceptually in order, but to do the hard emotional and spiritual work of confronting my fears and my shadow side.  To be a person of faith is to face both my doubts and my beliefs in ways that equip me to listen and to act.  And, to be a person of faith is to be persistent in taking up the cause of justice, even if that creates conflict, like the widow’s insistent pleading of her case before an unprincipled judge until he finally relented. It is so important that people of good will do this hard work, as we see horrible old attitudes leaking back into common conversation, and as governments take dead aim at women, immigrants and other people of colour, first nations and people on disability assistance and trans folks.  It turns out that fights for justice and equity I thought had been permanently won 40 years ago need to be won again.

And as we wrestle like Jacob, as we persist like the widow, we celebrate that even as we persevere, so does God.  Day by day, the outrageous behaviours and mean-spirited actions that fill our news cycles might suggest an absentee God, but thankfully, that is not the case.   God’s commitment to goodness and grace never ends. God insists that a love founded in truth, empathy and equity is the very power of life, and it will prevail.  God’s highest hopes for us, which we learn through our walk with the risen Christ, are truly relentless.

On this day of worship and praise, may all this be so.  Amen.

References cited:

Dorff, Elliot. https://www.aju.edu/ziegler-school-rabbinic-studies/our-torah/back-issues/wrestling-god

Kaminker, Mendy. https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2389625/jewish/Jacob-Wrestles-With-the-Angel.htm

Sacks, Jonathan (in memoriam), https://rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/vayishlach/jacob-wrestling/

Also consulted:

Crossan, John Dominic. In Parables: the challenge of the historical Jesus. NYC: Harper & Row, 1973.

Goldstein, Rabbi Elyse. The Women’s Torah Commentary.  Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2000.

Holbert, John. https://www.patheos.com/progressive-christian/surprise-of-grace-john-holbert-07-28-2014

© Rev Greg Wooley, Osoyoos-Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge, 2025.

Luke 17: 11-19 - Thanksgiving Sunday, October 12, 2025

I’ve never been in the habit of titling my sermons, but if I were to title this one, it would be “cleansed, cured and made whole.” This title is borrowed from Mark Davis, a Presbyterian Minister in southern California, who every week digs into the Greek of Sunday’s gospel reading and regularly unearths some absolute gems.  I met him last year, and thanked him for this. In his translation of this reading from Luke 17, he sees a move from cleansing, to cure, to being made whole, and that move has helped me to structure today’s sermon.

First, some background. Today’s gospel reading finds Jesus walking in an in-between place, between Galilee and Samaria.  This may sound like a throw-away detail, but it is anything but.  In those days, the long-held animosity between Jew and Samaritan was so strong that they would go around each other’s territory when traveling, greatly increasing the distance. Capernaum to Jerusalem, for example, is about 140 km by the most direct route, but 200 km if you skirt around Samaria.  In spite of adding one or two days to the journey, virtually every Jew travelling from the Galilee to Judea would take this bypass rather than risking interaction with Samaritans.

But Jesus does not do this, he walks right into this uncomfortable territory. I’m sure he would have had both Jews and Samaritans shake their heads at his disregard of social convention, but he ignored that cultural foolishness because (a) his life’s work was all about dismantling old boundaries to prepare for the Kingdom of God, where the old rules about power and prejudice will end, and because (b) according to Luke, Jesus Christ was God incarnate… and God does not play our games of labelling, judging and excluding those we regard as “other.” The hatred and avoidance between Jews and Samaritans was not of God’s making, so Jesus ignored these human constructs, and walked right in.

The ten men Jesus encounters are described by various Bible translations as “men with a dreaded skin disease” (Good News), “people with leprosy” (CEV) or just plain “lepers” (Phillips).  I “get” the desire of Bible translators to soften the harshness of the language, but I’m going to assume that these ten men had leprosy, a terrible, disfiguring bacterial disease of the skin and nerves that still exists, and creates terrible physical symptoms and devastating social isolation.  In their daily lives these men were seen basically AS their disease; their entire personhood was shaped by the term, leper:  unclean, diseased, to be avoided.  And Leprosy, or “Hansen’s Disease” is a cruel disease, for the severity of its disfiguring symptoms, for the social isolation it creates, and for the casual way that “leper” gets used to describe social outcasts who have been “rejected or ostracized for unacceptable behavior, opinions, or character.” 

The ten men with leprosy described by Luke, were in the land between the Jews and the Samaritans, partly because nobody else would go there, which gave them the ability to move around more freely, and partly because they were a mixed group of both Jews and Samaritans. In a way, this group of ten understood God’s will in a way that the divided peoples of Judea, Galilee and Samaria did not; they had to get past the differences, because of the terrible disease which unified them. As required by religious/civil law, they kept their distance and shouted, “unclean, unclean” but, according to Luke’s recollection, they also recognized Jesus as someone who could help, adding, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!"  And to that plea – and the plea of all who live on the knife-edge of hopelessness – Jesus does not keep his distance. He cleanses them.

And here we are, at the first of the three words put forward by Mark Davis: CLEANSE.

In order for these men to re-enter society, they would need to be cleansed, then inspected by the priest in order to be declared fit for re-entry.  Jesus, carrying God’s healing power but also knowing that he wasn’t formally designated as a priest, cleanses them and sends them off for this next, required step. And lest we feel unkind thoughts toward the nine men who hustled off to the priest without giving Jesus a second thought, they were overwhelmed by being cleansed and could not afford to mess it up by not following the rules.  To be cured, they had to see a priest.

So Jesus CLEANSED them, but he was not the one to declare them CURED.  “Cure” [ἰάομαι] and “cleanse” [καθαρίζω] are separate words in New Testament Greek; though Jesus clearly asserted some spiritual cleansing here, cleansing implies something akin to disinfection, and in the 21^st century would also involve antibiotics which can, thankfully, cure leprosy.  The proclamation of being cured or disease-free, however, was up to a priest, who had been trained to inspect the lesions, if healed over, would allow the men to re-enter mainstream society.

And this brings us to the third term proposed by Mark Davis: MADE WHOLE [σῴζω]. Jesus cleansed and initiated cure, the priests determined and declared that they were cured, but they wouldn’t be fully healed or made whole until they were re-integrated into their communities and families.  Then, and now, it’s one thing to get rid of a disease of the body, mind or spirit; it’s another thing to overcome the relationships twisted or broken because of the disease and the societal response elicited by it.  But there’s another thing that goes on in this gospel story, around being cleansed, cured and made whole: while nine cleansed and cured men continue their journey of restoration, one man pauses the process, and turns back to Jesus to express his gratitude.  it’s interesting that only at this point of the story does Luke tells us that this one man who returned to Jesus was a Samaritan.

Whenever the gospels refer to Samaritans, imagine the word in big flashing lights.  The animosity between Jews and Samaritans is not hard for us to imagine in a world where genocide is a reality, a world where the progressive political leaning of a city is enough to send in the National Guard under false pretences.  Raised amidst the bad blood between their people, the Jews, and their traditional enemies, the Samaritans, the disciples could not imagine that there was one shred of good in Samaritans, so Jesus decides to break down this bigotry, regularly casting Samaritans in a positive light, in his stories and in his daily interactions.

In Luke’s story, however, there is an irony: the moment that one man turns back to Jesus – an exemplary moment of giving thanks to Jesus and, through Jesus, to God – is also the moment where the group of ten divides. When they lived together as a cluster of men with leprosy as their unifier, their differences of ethnicity or religion did not matter but now that they are moving to being restored to community, those social separators kick in and matter a great deal. Now the Jews head one way, and the Samaritan goes the other way.  I recall Indigenous soldiers in Canada who remember soldiers of all backgrounds fighting as comrades in arms overseas, then coming back home and being segregated again: white soldiers, back to the city or farm, and Indigenous soldiers back under the thumb of the Indian Agents.  In hard times, the differences barely mattered, but in more normal times, the separateness of societal norms is reawakened.  It our gospel reading, it is a sad sidebar that once the men are restored to mainstream life, they are also restored to separation. We’d be completely off-target in saying that life in a leper colony was nice, yet there is a bittersweet loss of togetherness in this return to their two solitudes.

Debie Thomas, another of my favourite authors over the past years, is an Episcopal Church leader in north California.  She was born in Kerala, South India, and raised as a preacher’s kid in Boston, Massachusetts, and reflecting on this scripture she writes, “Like many children of immigrants, I grew up juggling a complicated and often confusing mix of identities: South Asian, New England suburban, evangelical, and feminist.”  As a woman of colour, as an American citizen and a person of south Asian ancestry who is not Hindu, Muslim or Sikh, she knows a bit about the kinds of complexities lifted up by the 17^th chapter of Luke and she writes,

“This week’s Gospel story is, of course, about thankfulness. Ten lepers experience healing; one experiences salvation. There is something about the practice of thankfulness that enlarges, blesses, and restores us. The leper’s act of gratitude points to the fact that we were created to recognize life as a gift and to find our salvation at the feet of the giver.

“But this passage also speaks to questions of identity—questions of exclusion and inclusion, exile and return. This is a story about the kingdom of God—about who is welcome, who belongs, and who stays. As a daughter of immigrants, I feel these questions in my bones. They’re not intellectual or abstract; they’re emotional and urgent. What does it mean to belong? Where is home, and what is my identity?”

These are key questions for us to consider as Church, as we look into the future.  It is my sense that even ten years from now, our denomination and its local congregations will be much more diverse in ethnicity and in gender expression than we are today. Churches that survive will be those who have learned to see things from the standpoint of those not presently with us yet who yearn for spiritual connection with others. We will learn to see this as the gift of new and unfamiliar ways, rather than the loss of the more comfortable and more familiar. Debie Thomas pushes me here, as she speaks from first-hand experience; I hear her questions, “what does it mean to belong…where is home… what is my identity?” as questions I need to understand, hard questions which are being asked around me even now by people I do not yet have a relationship with but who could, potentially, change my whole worldview.  And when I imagine that, as I imagine responding and building relationships, my worries about the future of our Church don’t magically go away, but many of my worries are lessened and replaced with a sense of wonder.

This is such a fine story relayed to us by Luke, about a time when Jesus disregarded social convention, walked into the scary place between two cultures, and initiated a process of restorative wholeness.   In this story, God and Jesus shine, with their ability to enact change and their disregard for our silly rivalries, and in this story a Samaritan’s behaviour (once again!) teaches a lesson.  Debie Thomas, furnishing my closing words, describes it like so:

By returning to Jesus, one of the men expresses gratitude, “but it’s also the expression” she writes, “of a deeper and truer belonging. The tenth leper is a Samaritan, a ‘double other’ marginalized by both illness and foreignness… [and] it’s quite possible that the Samaritan’s social ostracism continues even after the local priests declare him clean.

“So what does he do? What does his otherness enable him to see that his nine companions do not? He sees that his identity—his truest place of belonging—lies at Jesus’ feet. He sees that Jesus’ arms are wide enough to embrace all of who he is—leper, foreigner, exile.

“Ten lepers dutifully stand at a distance and call Jesus ‘Mas­ter.’ One draws close, dares intimacy, and finds his lasting home, clinging to Jesus for a better and more permanent citizenship. The tenth leper moves past obedience and finds friendship. He discovers what happens when duty gives way to love”.

May these words, of the good news of Jesus Christ, find a home in the hearts of our lives, our land, and the Church.  Amen.

References cited: 

https://www.cdc.gov/leprosy/about/index.html

Davis, D. Mark. https://leftbehindandlovingit.blogspot.com/2013/10/cleanse-cure-and-make-whole.html

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/leper

https://www.ictinc.ca/blog/indigenous-veterans

Thomas, Debie. https://www.debiethomas.com/ and https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2016-09/october-9-28th-sunday-ordinary-time

© Rev Greg Wooley, Osoyoos-Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge, 2025.

Luke 17: 5-10 - World Communion Sunday, October 5, 2025

How much faith is enough?  This may well be the most old-timey and “churchy” opening I’ve ever had to a sermon, but it’s a question worth asking. And on this World Communion Sunday, with many Churches not only sharing communion but following the same lectionary readings, I suspect there are preachers in the Philippines, Nigeria, Brazil, the UK and the US preaching on the power of even the tiniest bit of faith.

While there are many scholarly definitions of what faith is, I’m going to defer to the book of Hebrews 11:1 (NIV), which states “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”  To say that I am a person of faith, is to acknowledge that there is much about life and human destiny that I do not know and cannot know. It starts, then, with humility. But there is also within faith a profound hope in the power of love, counting on the foundational love of God on which all life rests, and the activated love of those who will not bend when tempted by something other than love.

But how much faith is enough?  I recall as a teenager being particularly worried about this, absolutely certain I didn’t have enough to meet God’s standards. Apparently, this was a concern for the disciples, too, as today’s gospel reading begins with a request to Jesus to increase their faith. It is as if faith were a commodity that one could either create or obtain. 

The great protestant reformer Martin Luther coined the term Sola Fide, or “justification by faith” as a way to steer Christians away from the notion that they can earn their way into heaven by their actions, and it's important to hear the fullness of what Luther was saying, and not saying.   Howard Griffith, interpreting Luther, writes “Faith is trust in God. Faith is not…an inward good work that takes the place of outward good works.”

Faith, then, isn’t a commodity we construct or possess in order to get on God’s good side, nor is it, as Howard Griffith says, an “inward good work.”  And while we’re attempting to define it, even the most confident faith does, and indeed must, still have questions.  As Paul Tillich wrote in mid-1950s, “Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it’s an element of faith” for faith is not the same thing as certainty. There are things about life and death, forgiveness and grace, and the nature of love itself, that are beyond our ability to know with certainty, and part of being human is finding ways to muddle through amidst that uncertainty. The term “faith” is one way to name that muddling through: a God-given tool that helps me live with humility and to trust in the power of God’s creative, invitational, forgiving love, even amidst uncertainty.

As Howard Griffith suggests, when we see the word FAITH in scripture we could substitute the word TRUST, and we would approach what the New Testament means.  While the word “faith” can be treated as something fixed, an unchangeable assertion of one’s belief in God and Jesus Christ, the word “trust” implies commitment to a relationship with something or someone that is trustworthy. To have faith in God is ultimately a statement of trust: first, that God exists and second, that the God we know from reason, experience, scripture and tradition is infinitely trustworthy.  In expressing my faith, I trust that God is creative and loving, God is attentive and forgiving, God is the source and destination of my soul.  And in the year 2025 in the northern hemisphere, where religious faith is frequently mocked as “believing in imaginary friends”, it is no small thing to say that in my deepest being I trust in the loving, personally engaged sacred source of creativity and love, that I know by the name, “God,” and the ongoing presence of the living Christ.   

With this, then, we turn to the parable of the mustard seed and its description of the amount of faith that is needed.  As a Canadian I am delighted Jesus used a mustard seed as his object lesson that day, for Canadian farmers produce almost 40 per cent of the world’s mustard crop and are the largest exporter of mustard seeds for the manufacture of prepared mustard.  But beyond my Canuck pride, it’s a relatable parable because most people can picture a mustard seed.  It’s not as tiny as some seeds we’re familiar with, such as a carrot seed, but when Jesus decided to tell a story about tiny beginnings leading to great growth, a mustard seed was his object lesson of choice.

Charles Price, pastor emeritus at Toronto’s People’s Church, shares a wonderful extended analogy, in which he connects one of his life experiences with this parable.

He recounts his first time on an airplane. He was heading from the UK to a newly-accepted position in Africa, and as he sat in the middle seat of a bank of three, he was pretty apprehensive about the journey ahead of him.

In the seat beside him was an older Scottish lady who was gripping the arm rests with both hands.  Like him, she had never flown before, and she was terrified.  If not for the fact that her grandchildren in Africa needed her, she would have happily gone through the rest of her life never having flown in an aircraft; but they did need her, and here she was. 

On the other side of Charles was a businessman who had flown hundreds of times before.  He settled into his seat, put his attaché case under the seat in front of him, lightly fastened his seatbelt, and casually started to read the newspaper.

In order to get on that airplane, Charles related, each of them needed to have sufficient trust that the aircraft was sound and that the pilot’s experience and ability would get them safely to their destination.   The terrified Scottish lady indeed only had “faith the size of a mustard seed” – believing that there was, at best, a 51% chance that she would not die on this flight.  By comparison to her faith the size of a mustard seed, Charles surmised that he had faith the size of, say, a potato; and the business traveler beside him had faith the size of a watermelon. 

Then Charles made a point I’d never even considered.  Not only did all three of these travelers arrive safely at the airport in Kinshasa, all three of them did so at the same time; the gent with the watermelon sized faith didn’t arrive three hours before the terrified Scotswoman.  Overlaid on the parable told by Jesus, the tiniest amount of faith, akin to a mustard seed, was all that was needed to safely arrive at their common destination.  

What did vary, though, according to the amount of confidence and trust each of the travellers had, was the quality of their trip.  While the experienced traveler relaxed, enjoyed his meals, read a bit and napped when he felt like it, young Charles got through it but never really “relaxed”; and the poor terrified woman remained in the grip of fear the entire journey, enjoyed none of it, and the half-of-one-meal that she attempted to eat didn’t stay down for long.  The more trust they had – with trust and faith being more or less synonymous - the more they enjoyed the journey.

In response to his disciples’ desire to increase their faith, Jesus held up a mustard seed, the tiniest seed planted in his culture, (1mm–2mm in diameter) and said “this much faith” is all that’s needed.  If, in the interplay between belief and doubt that goes into making up our faith, doubt and worry seem to be getting the upper hand, remember, my friends, that faith the size of a mustard seed is all we need.  If your faith is more the size of a potato, or a watermelon, bravo! - but a tiny little seed will do. As Charles Price related, nobody gets “more saved” by having more faith, but chances are pretty good that if you can release whatever is blocking you from trusting Christ’s kind, inclusive, diligent love to guide, protect, and re-shape your life, you’re going to enjoy the ride much more. I need to remember that in these turbulent days when so many seeds of hatred, are being sown. Seeds of love will grow into positive change!

As we engage the daily challenges of life, as we look into the future of this community of faith and wonder what lies ahead, as we think of ourselves in the context of Christian response in other lands, I invite you to faith: Faith, as in, honestly wrestling with both belief and doubt; Faith, as in, leaning into God’s trustworthy love, as promised and embodied by Jesus.  By that faith, with that trust, may your life and our life together truly flourish.  In Christ’s name we pray, Amen.

References cited or consulted:

Borg, Marcus.  Speaking Christian. NYC: HarperOne, 2011.

Griffith, Howard. https://journal.rts.edu/article/luther-in-1520-justification-by-faith-alone/

Mustard 21 Canada. https://mustard21.com/research-summaries/condiment-mustard-development/

Price, Charles. http://www.livingtruth.ca/LT/charles.asp

Revised Common Lectionary. https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts/?y=384&z=p&d=78

Tillich, Paul. Dynamics of Faith. NYC: Harper and Row, 1957.

© 2025 Rev Greg Wooley, Osoyoos-Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge.

Psalm 121: Sunday, September 28, 2025

 What follows are the leader’s notes from a Worship/Workshop presentation by Rev. Shannon Mang, September 28, at both Osoyoos and Oliver United Church congregations.

Psalm 121

I lift up my eyes to the hills-- from where will my help come?
My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber.
He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
The LORD is your keeper; the LORD is your shade at your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day nor the moon by night.
The LORD will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.
The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore.

Psalm 121 is a Song of Ascents, meaning that it was a song that was sung by pilgrims as they travelled to the Temple in Jerusalem for festivals. I wanted this psalm to be in our head and hearts as we look back at the patterns of Christian history, and United Church history and look ahead just 10 years as the United Church. The pilgrims sang this song as an assurance that they were being protected as they journeyed to the Temple for the great religious celebrations, and then returned home afterward.

A RUMMAGE SALE OF EPIC PROPORTIONS

Last week I gave you a “heads up” that we would be looking at the premise of Phyllis Tickle’s book called the Great Emergence. Phyllis was a historian who saw, and wrote about a significant pattern.  As summarized by Anglican Biship, Rt. Rev. Mark Dyer, “Every 500 Years the Church feels compelled to hold a giant Rummage Sale… we are living through one of those 500-year sales”

In Phyllis Tickle’s work, Christianity has gone through 3 of these every 500-year cycles… and we are in our 4^th great upheaval. The upheaval has three predictable results once the dust settles:

• 1. A new and more vital form of Christianity emerges
• 2. Organized Christianity comes out with two new creatures– a fresh expression of Christianity and a refurbishment of the former creature
• 3. The new expressions of Christianity spread dramatically in new geographic and demographic areas it has never been before

Christianity’s last rummage sale resulted in the Protestant reformation. Reformers had struggled to bring reforms to the church for at least 2 centuries- there was a coming together of political powers with the reformers in the church.

Luther was at the right place at the right time- the brand new technology of the printing press changed everything

• Luther’s- and all of the other Reformer’s movements– Wycliff, Müntzer, Zwingli, Knox, Calvin all brought the sweeping change of literacy to Europe teaching everyone across class lines, both men and women to read for themselves
• The Roman Catholic Church had to address the corruption in itself– the Counter Reformation
• There was untold political and religious chaos for decades as all the Reformation movements took hold- Calvinism, the Anabaptists, Anglicanism all brought freedoms… and warfare.

It paved the way for exploration and trade… and colonialism

·        the Protestant Reformation created the conditions for the industrial revolution,

·        And the double mandate of colonialism– to spread Christianity and to exploit the riches of the world…

·        and the trans Atlantic slave trade from the 15^th to the 19^th Century… The good that comes from the Rummage Sale plants the seeds of what ends up corrupt and needing another massive Rummage Sale 500 years later

DEEP – BOLD – DARING: TOWARD 2035

In mid May of this year, all United Church congregations and ministry staff received an Open Letter from our Executive Secretary, Michael Blair called Toward 2035. This was just prior to the Centennial celebrations of the UCC. The letter was an invitation to begin a conversation about what our United Church of Canada might look like in 10 years… 

I am going to share parts of the Towards 2035 presentation from the General Council meeting in August 7-11, 2025, in Calgary. The Towards 2035 project takes seriously what Phyllis Tickle was writing about, and this project is the United Church’s commitment to live faithfully in this chaotic time.  Trina Duncan, Regional Council Executive Minister for Pacific Mountain and Chinook Winds Regions, and Cameron Fraser, Director of Growth and Ministry Development led this information session in Calgary…

Introduction:

Toward 2035 is a denomination-wide strategy. Inspired by our call, this strategy needs to be rooted in truth - both decline and growth - and address the likely trajectories, toward a better future.  The United Church continues to be called to faithfully witness to the God of abundant love, the Christ risen among us, and the lively Spirit who works in us and others.  We are invited to embody this witness first and foremost in the lives of faithful disciples gathered in communities across Canada, in small rural localities, towns, suburbs, and the breadth of Canada's cities.

The Changing Religious Context of Canada from 1991 to 2021:

In 1991, most Canadians identified as Christians, and half were Catholic, with the next largest group --very close to ¼ were made up of mainline Christians: United; Anglican; Lutheran; Presbyterian. 7% were “other Christians” and 4%  were other faiths.  In 1991 a new category, those who identified as “No Religion”, made up 13%. In 1991, it was normative to be associated with a Christian church.

In 2021, thirty years later:

Catholics went from 49% of respondents to 33%, The United Church went from 12% to 4%. The other Faiths category went in the opposite direction– it grew from 4% to 13% but the area that grew the most is that  “No Religion” category – it went from 13% in 1991 to 39% in 2021. In 2021, slightly more than ½ of the population still identified as people of faith, but Christianity in Canada has gone through a contraction in the past 3 decades.

Another way of looking at the same data from the last two slides, is that the Catholic line and United Church numbers are both in decline at approximately the same rate, the “Other Faiths” category has gone up at about the same rate as the Catholic and United Church lines went down…  but that “No Religion” line  grew exponentially.

My immediate family is reflected in the data of this 30 year period- there were 4 children in my birth family and 2 of us siblings continued to have a relationship with church in our adult years and 2 of my siblings did not. In the next generation of children and cousins, not one of them is involved with church– including my own offspring. Are your children and grandchildren reflected in that red line too?

Congregational Participation in The United Church of Canada

The next section of Treena and Cam’s presentation showed data from within the United Church of Canada, comparing membership, Sunday Attendance, participation in Sunday School and the total number of pastoral charges from 1992, 2023 and a projection to 2035 just using straight mathematics and a straight line projection.

Total Membership

1992: 767,055 > 2023: 321,054 > 2035 projection: 111,000

Average Sunday Worship Attendance

1992: 324,222 > 2023: 110,877 > 2035 projection: 8,174

One thing that jumped out for me in this set of figures is why were there only 324,222 people showing up for church  in 1992 when the membership of 767,055… in 1992 more than 50% of the membership of the UCC was staying home on Sunday mornings(442,833 were missing)

(In 2023—> 321,054 members-110,877 attendees= 210,177 –missing

In 2035 à 111,000 members- 8174 attendees = 102,826  -missing??)

The fact that more than half of our members weren’t going to church shows us that we were having an issue of relevance for some time.

Participants in Sunday School

1992: 185,033 > 2023: 18,048 > 2035 projection: 2,554

This slide shows us what most of us who have been in the church for the past 3 decades have  experienced directly. The overall national birthrate has been in steep decline, and those Canadians who are having children are simply not including church in their lives.

Sunday Schools and youth and young adult groups were an expected part of church life, but I now see any programming for children or youth is the exception, not the rule.

Total number of Pastoral Charges

1992: 2,423 > 2023: 1,976 > 2035: 1,633

The message of these numbers is a bit confusing after seeing the previous numbers.

If there are 8,174 people showing up for worship in 2035, across 1,633 pastoral charges, that shows that mathematically, we can expect about 5 people coming to worship in each Pastoral Charge--- which is goofy. Trina called this the thinning down, or a hollowing out of congregations, which is very prevalent now--- while there are fewer people in worship, congregations are proving to be much more resilient than we expected ten years ago in 2025.

Treena did say that we are, in fact only 2 years away from a national pivot point in the United Church where there will be cascading closures of congregations leaving large areas of Canada where there will be no UC presence.

2022 and 2025 public research results indicate that 60% of Canadians express a felt sense of stress or concern for mental well-being, wondering about living to life's fullest potential, lacking meaningful relationships. 49% express a belief in God or a higher power and 45% of these engage in a practice of prayer.  

In our current context, these 60% of Canadians DO NOT see the church as a place where they could have their needs met--- or they do not yet see the value of living out their belief in God or a higher power, or coming together to pray AT A CHURCH…

That is the hard news – the reality of us living through the current Rummage Sale of Epic Proportions…

And now some good news--- our story has not ONLY been about decline… let’s look at actual growth. In 2023, out of a total of 1976 Pastoral Charges, 205 reported an increase in membership; 604 reported an increase in worship attendance; 189 adults (12 years or older) were baptized; 316 people were welcomed by profession of faith. In total, in 2023 around 1500 people joined a United Church.

And there are Emerging Communities of Faith: 11 new communities of faith were funded within Pacific Mountain Region; 30 emerging migrant communities of faith supported by the General Council; other newly emerging communities are initiated by local congregations.

When taken as a whole, the following PREFERRED FUTURE FOR THE CHURCH IN 2035 has been stated for our denomination:

·        Resilient, inspired, diverse United Church communities of disciples, coast to coast to coast, urban and rural continue the story of Jesus, by embodying Christ's presence in our time and place.

·        In the broadest of terms, and in diverse expressions across the country, inspired communities embody all aspects of the denominational Call - Deep Spirituality, Bold Discipleship, Daring Justice.

·        The United Church as a whole, more closely reflects the racial and ethnic diversity of Canada, with Indigenous and Francophone presence, and includes the presence of all generations, notably children, youth, and young adults.

Like the pilgrims of old who sang Psalm 121 as they travelling to Jerusalem, we have been travelling through these last 3 decades and have witnessed huge changes in our communities and our congregations. We can be assured that God has travelled with us, and has been our protection. Our lived experience of the Christian church in North America going through a massive Rummage Sale, and changing dramatically has meant that those of us still gathering on a Sunday morning, have become a rare, but deeply resilient group.

(In twos and threes, attendees at the September 28 service were then invited to engage in conversation, with these questions: What do you take from what you’ve seen and heard today?  Where do you see God at Work doing something new in our communities of Osoyoos and Oliver?)

Luke 16: 1-13 - Sunday, September 21, 2025

 Decades ago, as a young preacher I read this good advice, from a long since forgotten source: when writing a sermon, rather than immediately going to the Bible commentaries to read and follow the scholarly work of the experts, pause for a moment, read the passage through, pray over it, and develop your own interpretation.  THEN, after you’ve made your preliminary case, go to the experts and see what they have to say. Be ready to change what you wrote in the first place, but make sure that they’ve made a stronger case than you did before you change too much.

Applying that method to this morning’s reading from Luke, I read the scripture, prayerfully sat with it, and got absolutely nothing, not a whiff of what was going on here.  Yes, it ends with the memorable punchline, “you cannot serve both God and mammon” but how that pearl of wisdom emerges from this mess of a story…? The actions undertaken by all of the characters involved are underhanded to a degree, the sneakiest sneak gets praised by the landowner, and Jesus (according to Luke) seems to just roll with it. Which left me not only confused as to the content, but as to why Luke included it in his gospel.  None of the other gospel writers included this parable in their collections, and, frankly, I’m with them.

So this week, I approached the theologians basically empty-handed, needing a LOT of help. And the first guide I found was a Lutheran seminary professor named Lois Malcolm. 

·       Admitting that this is a difficult text, she writes “The story itself sounds quite contemporary.

·       “A dishonest manager is about to lose his job because he has misspent his employer’s assets.

·       “Because he doesn’t want to do manual labor or receive charity, he goes around to all the people who owe his employer money and reduces their debts. He does this so that they will be hospitable to him after he loses his job”. This is particularly important, because as resident manager of the farming operation he is not only going to lose his job, but his home as well.

·       To his credit, he is not accused of pocketing any of the money himself, and is even congratulated by the landowner for having been crafty in a challenging situation…but the landowner will be getting much less financial return than before, and the manager is still very much fired. 

That helped me to at least understand the action, thank you, Lois Malcolm. But why would such a strange story be included in the gospel of Luke?  On to my next guide.

Over the years, a couple of parishioners have told me of their appreciation of the work of Pastor John MacArthur.  John, who died two months ago at age 86, was for 56 years pastor at Grace Community (Mega) Church in California.  His opinions and mine don’t align well on many topics, but I’ve always admired his ability to wrestle with a Bible reading and emerge with something faithful and accessible.  And I offer him a posthumous thank-you, for his lengthy essay on this text which cracked it open for me. He wrote, “Keep in mind there’s nothing in this parable that’s secret or hidden or allegorical or mystical.” In other words, do not look for hidden meanings or identities as you might often do with a parable, such as assuming that the master is an allegory for God; in this case we just read it as written.

There’s a human master, a human manager, and human creditors, and all of them act exactly as one might think, in a world where cheating and side deals are widespread. A wealthy master has assigned management of his farming operations to an on-site manager who “has proxy to act on behalf of this very wealthy owner.”  The master correctly identifies that his manager is “irresponsible and incompetent” and correctly decides to fire him, but inexplicably doesn’t tell him to clean out his desk this minute. The manager, caught in his dishonesty but given a window of opportunity to soften his landing, curries favour with creditors by giving them a huge discount on their debts, as much as fifty per cent. And these weren’t small debts: John MacArthur estimates the amount of oil written down was the product of 150 olive trees, and the amount of wheat written down was the product of 100 acres. The creditors, astonished at their good fortune, take the deal before the ink dries.  

Curiously, the master praises the dishonest manager, but how he assesses these actions hardly matters, because the moral of the story is that it is not a moral story; it’s a description of the kind of underhanded dealings we deal with all the time in the world as we know it, the way things work in this age, and such dealings will have no place in the Kingdom of God.  The way we live our lives matters, in being truthful, in handling our finances ethically and faithfully, in mirroring God’s concern for those on the margins; these are ways that we invite the new way, the Kingdom of God, to reach into this broken world.   

If we take this gospel reading in this way, as a story contrasting the underhanded dealings of today with the promised Kingdom of equity, fairness, and inversion of the social order – the punch line fits. 

After spinning this yarn of a cheating manager who plays the current system, Jesus says “if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? ¹² And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own? ¹³ No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” (Luke 16: 11-13, NIV)

These words from Jesus are a stern indictment of the way things are in the world, but there is a generosity of spirit here.  In our current context, the temptations to cut corners are all around us and Christ is well aware that we live in this bind.  But he also says, softly but definitely, that there’s no future in selling out to the lure of chasing the almighty dollar.  Earlier in the gospel of Luke (9: 25), when speaking of the path of self-denial and taking up the cross, Jesus asks “ ²⁵ What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?” and I hear him reiterating that point here when he speaks of choosing which master to serve, God or money.  At no point does Jesus say that money is inherently bad, but he does say that it must not hold our hearts. So we must choose: do we give our hearts to God, the source of the creative and connective love that brings life alive, or do we give our hearts to money, status, and material wealth? 

Those questions are good ones to ponder on a regular basis, for as scripture says, “the love of money is the root of all evil.” (1 Timothy 6: 10).  Not money per se, but the love of it, and all systems of domination that make sure that there are haves and have-nots.  On its own, hearing this early Christian condemnation of capitalism is important, but today I want to look at one aspect where greed has had particularly devastating consequences.  

In this season of Creation, when we consider the beauty, the gift of nature, I want to reframe the choice Jesus puts before us, between lovingly tending this planet and all living beings that rely on it, or acting as unjust managers and treating earth as a consumable asset.  That’s a daunting choice for us to make, so start small: all the little things we do as individuals and as communities do make a difference, like purchasing locally-produced goods more often than things that needed to travel by ship, air, rail and truck before coming into our possession, and following the three Rs of reduce, reuse, recycle…which can get expanded into eight or nine Rs with rethink, refuse, repair, recover, regift, and repurpose! (guiding principles of our Osoyoos United Church Thrift Shop!!). 

But beyond that, the challenge Jesus places before us in Luke 16 comes down to our common heart as a society.  In some manner, we’re going to end up participating in the erratic and truly barbaric global economy: but will our engagement consider the consequences of our global carbon footprint, our impact on the fish and the birds and the mammals and the microbes in all the world, or does the saying “he who dies with the most toys, wins” sum it up more accurately?  As Jesus tells his story about the dishonest, self-oriented manager, I think of the number of side-deals made daily, deals to line someone’s pockets at the expense of public safety and environmental sustainability… and I grieve the shortfall of honesty, accountability and empathy.  Jesus yearns for us to treat all of humanity with lovingkindness, and to treat all this wondrous world with awe and respect, he calls us away from serving money and materialism – and yet, the choice is ours.  And at this point, we hear echoes from earlier in our faith story (Deuteronomy 30: 19, NCV), when the Hebrew people had a choice to make with implications not only for themselves, but for future generations: “Today I ask heaven and earth to be witnesses” said Moses, on God’s behalf. “I am offering you life or death, blessings or curses. Now, choose life! Then you and your children may live”. Choices made for the benefit of the planet are choices for life!

And as tempting as it is to pile on that point to try to make it even more forcefully, let’s leave it at that.  In telling the story of a non-resident landowner, a trusted yet slippery manager, and delighted creditors who get their debts miraculously discounted, Jesus moves our thinking from the way things are, to a promise of a new realm, the Kingdom or Kin-dom of God, a realm of human dignity and equity, a realm which respects this planet as an expression of God’s awe-inspiring work.  Our calling, the choice we are called to embrace, calls us to integrity and fair dealing, to respect the needs of our neighbour, to respect the planet itself and all who dwell therein.  May we and the world be freed from being shackled to the whims to the material gain, and opened to the new ways, the Kingdom ways of love, equity, and rebalance.  In the name of the risen Christ we pray, Amen.

References cited or consulted:

Crossan, John Dominic. In Parables. NYC: Harper & Row, 1973.

Funk, Robert W. et al. The Five Gospels : What Did Jesus Really Say? NYC: HarperOne, 1993. Pp. 357-358.

MacArthur, John. Grace to You. Luke 16:1-13, 2014. https://www.gty.org/sermons/90-467/a-good-lesson-from-a-bad-example 

Malcolm, Lois. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-25-3/commentary-on-luke-161-13-3

© 2025 Rev Greg Wooley, Osoyoos-Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge.

Luke 15: 1-10 - Sunday, September 14, 2025

 

This morning’s scripture is about being lost, and the one who finds us.  

Some experiences of being lost are fleeting and frustrating, but not particularly scary: missing your exit then getting turned around in an unfamiliar city, starting a job that had insufficient guidance, or not being able to find those miserable ding-dang keys.

Some remnants of being lost are harder and longer lasting. I hear stories from adults who can recall becoming separated from their parents in a store as very young children, or separated from childhood friends exploring the woods, and they can recall the panic of being lost as if it were yesterday. 

An ill-suited, even disorienting career can leave one feeling lost, and so can retirement from a career that suited one really well. The fading or ending of a primary relationship, by death, by dementia, illness, injury, or by choice, can leave one feeling lost.  Having one’s personhood absorbed by addiction or debilitating shame, can leave the person and/or their support system feeling lost.  For some, it could be an existential feeling of lost-ness:  the dark night of the soul, when meaning itself is up for grabs, a time of deep alienation from life and from God.   And this past week has been one of soul-searching, sorrow, fury and fear following the shooting of Charlie Kirk, whose name gets added to a list of adults and children whose lives were ended by hatred and violence; we pray for our neighbours to the south, and all impacted beyond their borders, as the overall situation in this point of their history feels very, very lost.

The 15^th chapter of Luke begins with a series of three stories by Jesus, that speak of something or someone being lost.  We heard the first two of those stories today: the lost sheep, and the lost coin.  The third story is a much longer one that we looked at separately a few months ago (Sunday, March 30), the story of the lost or “prodigal” son. In all three of these stories, something gets lost: a sheep wanders off, a coin gets misplaced, a son chooses to cash in his inheritance and then squander it.  And – SPOILER ALERT! - in all three of these stories, there is a reunion: a shepherd rescues the sheep, a woman’s diligence finds the coin, a Father rushes out to embrace his disgraced son.  Each of the stories tells us about being lost, and the God who so deeply wants us to be found and restored to a place of health and love.

Emmy Kegler, Pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, authored a book six years ago entitled One Coin Found: How God’s Love Stretches to the Margins.  

She writes (pp. 2-3): “Sheep wander.  That’s what they do, it’s in their nature.  Most herd animals do it.  That’s why, when humans domesticated cattle and goats and sheep, there arose a new role: the shepherd, the rancher, the cowboy.  Someone’s got to keep the herd together, because otherwise they’ll go wandering off.

“And sheep wander for good reasons. They wander because they’re hungry…. [or] sometimes the sheep are sick, or injured, or cold…. They drop to the back of the herd, lie down somewhere to rest… And sometimes sheep run.  A hundred sheep are a hundred potential meals for the wolves..[and so] the sheep run, fleeing as fast as their hooves can take them, getting them lost but keeping them alive.”  So the task of the shepherd is complex and demanding, watching out for wolves, ensuring that all the sheep can graze and drink, and that none have wandered to the margin without notice.

Moving from the lost sheep to the lost coin, Emmy writes (pp.4-5) “The funny thing about coins is that they can’t get lost by themselves.  [They have no will,] they can’t roll away on their own.  Coins get lost because their owners aren’t careful…. Covered in years of grit they fall…to the floor or a car or the sand of a sidewalk, dropped and forgotten.”   Traditionally, we understand that these coins were likely from the woman’s dowry, originally attached to a necklace or headdress, and we surmise that the woman was perhaps now a widow without family support; so the loss of even one of those coins could be the difference between stability and starvation.

Emmy reminds us that in this gospel reading, the sheep and the coin were not just left to be lost forever: God the seeker went looking.  She writes (pp.5-8), “God has never been careless with us, [even if] those who claim to speak for God have. … God has donned a shepherd’s cloak, …clambered over rocks and climbed down cliffs.  God has found us, [hungry] and … hurt and terrified, and cradled us close to say: No matter why you left or where you went, you are mine.   [As] lost and dusty coins, we have gone unnoticed, rusted from others’ indifference, misspent and misused, and our friends and leaders did not see our neglect. But God has picked up a woman’s broom and swept every corner of creation. God has tucked up her skirts and flattened herself on the floor, dug through dust bunnies and checked every dress pocket.  God has found us, dustier and rustier and without any luster, and held us up to the light to say: No matter how you rolled away or what corner you were dropped, you are mine.” Emmy writes from  the perspective of a queer woman, so she has far too many first hand experiences of being judged as “lost” by others (including Church folk), but very much loved by God.

Although these parables clearly put God in the role of the searcher, part of our calling as Church is to join in this concern and, where needed, open ourselves to being found by God when we start to drift away.  And we note that in these parables, thankfully, those who were lost are found.  

In this Season of Creation, we think of some of the big ways that things can move from being lost to being found.  After some meagre harvests, particularly last year, we give thanks to God for a ridiculously abundant harvest in the south Okanagan, which feels to me like a move from lost to found.  We hold gratitude for this land we live on and the people who were here before we were, we give thanks for what it means to be Canadians who recognize the need for reconciliation with our Indigenous hosts. This one is a work in progress, still unfolding.  And perhaps tangential to the Season of Creation, I also want to give thanks that the people of this pastoral charge can come together in worship and praise each Sunday, and for our commitment to keep our hearts open and our eyes looking outward at the needs of our neighbours.  [Osoyoos: Do not underestimate the difference that the thrift shop makes to people who are feeling the financial crunch, or the difference that all manner of community outreach that happens from this building makes to folks who need caring connection.]{Oliver: As we flesh out the plans for who we want to be and where we want to be, I know that your collective heart will not only be caring about our needs as a congregation, but the needs of our neighbours}.

But we also, in this Season of Creation, identify the places where there is enduring lostness.  We remember the harmful, shameful things that have been done to this planet for the sake of economic growth and human ease, and we express sorrow that there is hunger and malnutrition in a world that produces so much good, healthy food.  We continue, as the United Church of Canada, one of the denominations responsible for the Residential Schools, to work with Indigenous nations to address past wrongs, and we struggle to get out of the way as Indigenous Churches and leaders attempt to find their healthy path forward.  And we name those places where we, as Church, aren’t as deep, bold and daring as our call and vision statement would suggest, in our approach to local inclusion, and in our engagement of the brutal circumstances faced by much of the world.

We bring all this to God, along with all forms of lostness we carry on this day, with sorrow, with commitment, with yearning, and with hope: a belief that God, ever-loving, ever-searching, ever-mending, desires us to be restored to wholeness, absolutely and completely found.  God is both the one who seeks us in our lostness and brokenness, and the one who empowers us to go seeking for the broken hearts around us, with gifts of compassionate kindness, rugged advocacy, and healing grace.   God, the shepherd, leaves the ninety-nine sheep while he secures the safety of one who wandered off.  God, the woman who turns her house upside-down looking for a coin that was both precious and lost, will not cease her searching until the lost is found.  In these messed-up, mean-spirited days, my friends, there are days when a belief in a God of infinite goodness and boundless love is the main thing that coaxes me out of bed in the morning, but that is more than enough.  For whatever reasons that there is lostness, the very heart of God wants us to be found, and to be those who create safe, loving places for those who have been cast out by life.

In his classic bestseller, All I Really need to know I learned in Kindergarten; Robert Fulghum reflected on a game virtually everyone has played, hide-and-seek, and I’d like to close with his words on this topic because for me, he adds an important note of joy and even whimsy into our discussion. He wrote (pp.54-56), “Did you have a kid in your neighbourhood who always hid so good, nobody could find him?  We did.  After a while we would give up on him and go off, leaving him to rot wherever he was.  Sooner or later he would show up, all mad because we didn’t keep looking for him.  And we would get mad back because he wasn’t playing the game the way it was supposed to be played.  There’s hiding and there’s finding, we’d say.  And he’d say it as hide-and-seek, not hide-and-give-up.” After some further reflection on some hard life lessons around being lost and giving up, Robert Fulghum continues, “Better than hide-and-seek, I like the game called Sardines [where] the person who is IT goes and hides, and when you find them, you get in with them and hide with them.  Pretty soon everybody is hiding together, all stacked in a small space like puppies in a pile.  And pretty soon somebody giggles and somebody laughs and everybody gets found…. I think old God is a Sardine player,” he concludes, “and will be found the same way everybody gets found in Sardines – by the sound of laughter of those heaped together at the end.”

In the name of the God who yearns for all people who feel lost and for the healing of situations that feel hopeless, in the name of the God who helps us to be found and enlists us as accomplices in searching for others who are lost on the margins, in the name of God who loves to be found by us: Amen and Amen.

References cited:

Fulghum, Robert.  All I really need to know I learned in Kindergarten: uncommon thoughts on common things. NYC: Ivy Books, 1986.

Kegler, Emmy. One Coin Found: How God’s Love Stretches to the Margins.  Minneapolis: Fortress, 2019.

© 2025 Rev Greg Wooley, Osoyoos-Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge.

Jeremiah 31: 27-34 - Sunday, September 7, 2025

a sermon preached by Rev. Greg Wooley at a joint communion service and picnic of the Osoyoos-Oliver United Church pastoral charge

This morning we embody our connection with one another as people of faith: coming together from Oliver and Osoyoos for worship, sharing communion to recall the life-force of God coming alive in Jesus, and enjoying one another’s company through the shared picnic to follow.  It fits, then, to conclude our three-week mini series on the prophet Jeremiah, with a scripture that speaks of our commitment to God not just being a string of meaningless words, but something embodied: written on our hearts.

Without getting into the fine points of who was conquering whom at the time of Jeremiah, his nation, the land of Judah, was on the verge of falling; it was so bad that some of his people were already being exiled.  Within these profound hardships, Jeremiah saw transitions they needed to make, for as he looked at his people, he saw them focusing on the minutiae, the specifics of the 613 commandments of the Torah, while missing the main thrust of what God intended. While the people saw embraced the letter of the law, Jeremiah noted that in their hearts the spirit of the law, that is, God’s urgent desire for justice-infused love, was not embraced very much at all.

The prophet saw few signs of hope in the actions of his people and distrusted the guidance offered by their so-called leaders.  But while he did not hold out much hope, God was still hopeful, as God always is.  And God, through Jeremiah, promised the people that following all the trials they were presently going through, there would be a new day, shaped by a new covenant, a law written, not on scrolls but on their hearts.  A day would come, when the Divine principles of power-filled love that gave coherence to the Torah would become second-nature to the people; and the heart of God would be as close as the blood pumping through their arteries and veins.  Each breath, each moment, would be infused by the gracious love of God, each choice they made, each loving action undertaken, would be evidence of God. The old hierarchical, xenophobic, male-dominated, rule-bound ways would be replaced by new ways of being that would bring hope to everyone, most especially who had been judged or excluded by the old ways.  

Many Christians see a prefiguring of what God would later do in Jesus Christ in these words shared by Jeremiah.  Jeremiah wouldn’t have seen it that way, as he was in a crisis at that moment, and God needed him to speak to what was happening right in front of him, but God is capable of doing two things at once.  People were being sent off – deported to a land other than their own, if you will – and God needed Jeremiah to engender hope for the day when the people could come back to Jerusalem, perhaps even within their own lifetimes.   One chapter later, in the book of Jeremiah chapter 32, the prophet buys a plot of land in the midst of all this commotion, as a symbol of hope, a promise that the people would have a place to dwell on their return.  Jeremiah, understandably, has a shorter and more local horizon, but I do believe that it is legitimate for Christians to hear the hope spoken here through Jeremiah, as something God wishes not just for the people of Judah 2600 years ago, but for the world and its people in 2025.  For in Christ, we experience covenant, embodied.

The first covenant, between God and the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, did not need replacing; but the way it got put into practice sure needed to change.  And I find the words spoken by Jeremiah so rich and deep here: in a new way, God’s commandments would be written on the heart of all who love God, and the profound love and justice of God would be lived out in all its fullness.  In his time and place, Jeremiah needed the people to start seeing the forest of God’s holy intent instead of just focusing on the trees of each individual rule; he needed them to trust the core of scripture, the call to love and justice, rather than nitpicking the fine points.

And what about for us, in our day? What it would mean to have the law of love really written upon our hearts?... and how might this happen?  A plain-spoken American professor of Christian Ethics named Stanley Hauerwas has written extensively on this.  Stanley has described as a left-leaning evangelical, which in these divided days strikes me as a really good voice to be heard. His basic idea is that the process of making good, ethical Christian decisions is not  a matter of memorizing all the rules so you don’t goof up, nor is it even having a principled, well defined decision-making process.  For him, the key to Christian decision making is the development of good old-fashioned Christian Character.   Rather than some mechanistic process of decision making, he calls for something that is in the bones:  you learn about the love of God, preferably when you are a child, you keep checking your life against the measuring stick of the great commandment – love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself – and don’t sweat the details.  For me, that’s very much what “a law written on the heart” is all about: having the love of God “in our bones” as it were, not external to us but as close as our next breath.

And so when I think of God’s law written on our hearts in the year 2025, I can picture the word LOVE being so deeply held and boldly displayed in our collective character, that it has the power to over-write everything else that tries to say that it is closest to the heart. (And here, I mean the full, Shalom-style love, a love that insists on justice and inclusion, a love that breaks down barriers so that all may have full opportunity, full and equal access to the things that make life delightful.) 

·       Imagine with me, then, the lies we hear constantly, from the present regime in the US but not just from there, calling people to be selfish in all the worst ways, and imagine that getting over-written by LOVE, so you can barely even see the word “selfish”.  

·       Imagine a world where hatred of “the other” and fear of “the other” got over-written by LOVE, so you couldn’t even make out where hatred and fear had previously been.    

·       Imagine a world where all those simplistic black-and-white dualities could get overwritten by love: imagine if we could take the present white-supremacist narrative being sold by governments as if it’s “common sense”, and defuse it, along with all its sub-points, that there’s only one allowable way to understand things politically, only one allowable way to embrace and express one’s sexual personhood, only one preferred colour of skin, only one legitimate way to worship God.  Imagine over-writing all of those either-ors with both-ands, overwrite the black and white binary with the exquisite colour pallette of God’s extraordinary world, take all of those no’s and overwrite them with the great big YES of God’s love. 

·       In the world of today, Empire is trying its best to divide us, to get us angry at one another rather than angry at injustice, and in this glorious prophecy of Jeremiah we are given the gift of resisting this, in the name and power of love.  We can as individuals, as people of faith, as citizens of the world,  focus our efforts on ending war, at restoring dignity, at doing the hard work of building justice when Empire wants us to be distracted. We can, by the power of the Holy Spirit, paint the world LOVE on top of all the miserable, soul-eroding things that empire would want us to do.  And that, to me, is the essence of a heart that bears the imprint of God.

God’s hopes for the world, written on the heart, applies to our life as a pastoral charge, our life as The United Church of Canada, and our life as believers.  All people – Jews, Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, people who carry Indigenous sacred teachings, secular folks  who just want the best for their neighbour – all are called to participate in doing what we can to make the world a better place.  Our task, as Christians of (mostly) somewhat advanced years, is to trust and live into Christ’s vision of a world where the poor, the humble, the meek, the persecuted, will be restored and honoured.  Our calling, in the way we are right now and in the transitions we will be making as congregations in the coming months, is to have God’s word shape our hearts and actions… and to prepare to work hand-in-hand with other people of good will, as they seek that too.  That vision, of God’s powerful love written on our hearts and our lives, is a bigger and stronger source of hope, than all of the demoralizing messaging that pummel us each day.  The more we trust that love, the more we will realize that the messages designed to build hopelessness and fear are authored by those who are scared silly of what things would look like if God’s law of love were actually written on our hearts and expressed repeatedly in our actions.

On this day when we celebrate communion, and enjoy one another’s companionship, we recall Jeremiah’s longing for a day when God’s intention for love will live, not just in words but in hearts that have been changed.  We give thanks for the way that the words and teachings and ongoing presence of Christ answer these hopes, at the same time acknowledging that the world we live in falls well short of this goal over and over again. And we accept the responsibility for opening our hearts to this path of love and justice, as people of faith striving for greater inclusiveness, as citizens of the world concerned for a sustainable future.  May love, written on our hearts, make all the difference.  In the name of God, Creator, Christ and Spirit, may this be so. Amen.

References consulted and/or cited:

https://bibleproject.com/guides/book-of-jeremiah/

Hauerwas, Stanley. http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape10/PQDD_0026/MQ52032.pdf

Mang, Shannon.“Jeremiah 32”
https://gwsermonsite.blogspot.com/2024/11/jeremiah-32-october-27-2024-and.html

Wines, Alphonetta. http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3017

© 2025 Rev Greg Wooley, Osoyoos-Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge