One of my favourite Mark Twain quips is, “When I was ten, I thought my parents knew everything. When I became twenty, I was convinced they knew nothing. Then, at thirty, I realized I was right when I was ten”.
When I was a 20-year-old
kid in university, I remember bringing home all kinds of new ideas and opinions
to my parents. I think that I truly
believed I was doing them a favour. Sometimes they would challenge what I was
bringing home, especially if it was accusatory; sometimes they would be really interested in
the new perspective and we’d have a great discussion about it; most of the
time, I think that my half-baked new ideas went in one ear and out the other,
and deserved to be.
One of the places that
we had disagreements was in the whole idea of whose land we were on.
I had been raised with
a basic understanding that since my ancestors, the good folk of the British
Isles had done so much work breaking the land and providing organization and
leadership throughout most of English-speaking Canada, there was no
question. The land was ours, and anyone else
wishing to join us could do so but only if we said they could, and only if they
understood that the rules we’d set were THE
RULES. And until 1967, the laws of
Canada did more or less agree with this opinion.
In contrast to this,
one of the ideas I trotted home from University was the idea that all of us from
the British Isles were at one point newcomers to this land. Theologically,
we could say that the land belonged to God; politically, we could say that the
land was primarily the home of the various aboriginal peoples who inhabited it
for several millennia before our ancestors’ arrival; but there was not much to
support that me and my ancestors had a primary claim, and nothing to support
the breach of hospitality in the way we moved right on in. On this point, my parents and I definitely
did not agree.
Now that my kids are in
their early 20s, they’re challenging/renewing my thinking on such matters. One of our daughters, for example, never
writes Victoria BC as her return address – it’s always Victoria, Unsurrendered
Esquimalt Territory. As someone who is
just 4 years away from finally having our Calgary mortgage paid off, and has
become rather complacent and conservative as a householder, I guess I needed
the reminder that the issues that burned within me 30+ years ago are still live
issues. Whenever I start feeling possessive of the land, and culture, and
Church, in which I live, there is another voice correctly challenging my
understandings.
Today’s first reading,
the familiar and well-loved story of Ruth and her devotion to her
mother-in-law, Naomi, is an ancient story that challenged some of the
understandings of its day. Naomi, and
her daughters-in-law Orpah and Ruth were all widows, and they all needed to
make some big decisions. In this story Ruth
functions as the kid bringing new information home to mom (or, in this case, mom-in-law)
because her devotion to Naomi, held greater force than her trust in the common
wisdom of the day. Naomi was an Israelite so when her husband and sons died,
and there was a plentiful crop back home, it only made sense to return to
Israel. But Ruth was a Moabite girl,
Israelite by marriage only, so when she and Orpah were widowed Naomi said to
them “go back home and stay with your mothers.
May the Lord be as good to you as you have been to me and to [my sons].” But Ruth would not stay back in Moab – her
place was with her mother-in-law, her devotion was to the God of Israel. Common logic said, understand your place and
stay home. God’s call said something
else.
This is a beautiful
story of devotion. It is also a story
with a huge message about the interaction of peoples, of relations between
God’s people and those we might see as outsiders. In order to make sure that we get this
message, the book of Ruth ends (4: 13-22) with a tremendously important note
about genealogy: Ruth did go to Israel,
where she married Boaz and they had a son named Obed. Obed became the father of Jesse, and Jesse
was the father of David. So King
David, the great hero of Israel, was one-eighth Moabite. From a Christian standpoint, we can add to
this the genealogy of Jesus from the 1st chapter of Matthew, which
tells us that Jesus of Nazareth, 28 generations after King David, stands heir
to a line that includes Moabite blood.
From a
historical-critical standpoint one can look at these genealogies and say, “well
that’s lovely, but fanciful. Clearly,
those family trees are just make-believe.“
Which may well turn out to be true if we were able to unearth some
census records and do some fact-checking, but something else is even more
true. Those who determined what goes
in the Bible and what stays out looked at this story and wanted to deliver a
message to all succeeding generations, and the message is this: Don’t you dare treat this as somebody
else’s story. Don’t you dare point at
the Moabites coming across our border and say they don’t belong here. Ruth is one of our great-great-grandmas in
the faith. So every time you deal
with a migrant from another nation, every time you are faced with refugees
escaping famine in their land, treat them as if they were your own sister or
brother. Extend the kindness of
Leviticus 19:33, which specifically says (TEV) “Do not ill-treat foreigners who
are living in your land. Treat them as
you would a fellow-Israelite, and love them as you love yourselves. Remember that you were once foreigners in the
Land of Egypt. I am the Lord your
God.”
Throughout the Bible,
the people of God were occasionally the settled ones, but more often we have
been migrants, refugees, nomads, people without a home. Scripture does not let us neatly divide the
world into us and them, insiders and outsiders, and God does not allow us,
ever, to close our eyes to the plight of the world, no matter where people are
located or where they are from. Whether
we are trying to find right relations with our aboriginal sisters and brothers
who pre-date us on this land, or are welcoming others who are new to our land,
our community, we need to realize that new and old, central and peripheral, are
labels that easily change with time and at all times, kindness and compassion
are the order of the day as we deal with one another.
Keep that understanding
in mind as we turn to the reading from the gospel of Mark. In both Matthew and Luke, the question about
which commandment was greatest was portrayed as a set-up, designed to get Jesus
into trouble. But here in Mark it is
remembered differently. Here, a teacher
of the law who was already impressed with how Jesus handled other questions
comes to Jesus privately and asks an earnest question: “which commandment is
the most important of all?”.
The answer is
two-fold: a foundational commandment and
well-known worship element from the 6th chapter of Deuteronomy, to
love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind and strength; and a lesser-known
scripture from Leviticus 19. This was
the same chapter that contained the rules about not harvesting the corners of
your fields so the poor would have some gleanings, the same chapter that
contained the rules about referred to earlier about fair treatment of
foreigners in the land. From Leviticus 19 Jesus picked obscure little verse 18
as primary: to love one’s neighbour as oneself.
Jesus challenged his
hearers then and his hearers now to keep those two aspects of our life
interlinked: our love of God and our love of neighbour. Neglect neither, for together they create a
great balance. Whole-hearted devotion to
God with no recognition of the needs, or
even the presence, of others, is not our calling. But similarly, while we are directed to be
engaged in healing the hurts and alleviating the troubles of those in need, our
calling is to do this as an expression of a deep connection to the loving,
forgiving power of God. Jesus has told us that these two commandments taken
together, to love God and love neighbour, are the lenses through which we
evaluate all else in life. Whatever else
I do, whatever else I believe, gets measured by whether it brings me closer to
God, and whether it expresses Christ’s own love of neighbour.
No matter what issue we
are trying to figure out, that two-fold great commandment holds the day. They are the first two questions to have in
the back of your mind when making ethical decisions, something like the WWJD
bracelets from a few years back that encouraged us to wonder “what would Jesus
do” - except that the two-fold Great
Commandment does not just ask “what would Jesus do” but “how would Jesus think
this one through?” From our response to
Canada’s recently - changed immigration laws, to our expressions of hospitality
here at Church, to our understanding of ourselves as sojourners on first
nations land, our willingness to love God and love neighbour frames our
thoughts and actions and identity.
In a few moments, we
will share in the ritual meal that Jesus has given us. It’s a meal that puts the great commandment
into action: the great thanksgiving prayer gives praise for the ways that God
is active in the unfolding of history, and the meal itself is shared with all
neighbours who seek the path of Jesus.
Whether we are feeling close to God at this moment, or are feeling
separated for some reason, we are invited to share in the bread and the cup. Whether we’ve been part of this Church
forever, or just walked in the door this morning, we are equally called and
equally loved. Whether we feel a bit out
of place, like Ruth, or are totally devoted to God, like Ruth, or are more
important to the faith lives of others than we would ever imagine, like
Ruth, this table and this house of
worship are intended to be home for us. The Bible may not let us get
comfortable in identifying insider vs. outsider in our understandings of faith
and life, but the invitation of this table is clear: all are fully invited to
come to the table of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In the light of same
fairly blunt Biblical admonitions this morning, I have to say that I am proud
to be serving this congregation. I
believe that RCMUC has a real heart for the ministry of welcoming. Marshall, Donna & others do a great job
meeting new worshippers at the door and then it continues as all of us become
involved – at coffee time, in the pews, when you see someone you’ve not yet
spoken to, when you spot someone on the edge of a social gathering or not
staying around real long after Church and invite them to join in, when you go
from this place and engage newly-arrived neighbours with the gift of
hospitality. The newly-instituted Benevolent Offering on Communion Sundays is
another way we express our connectedness to our neighbours and their needs,
whether those needs are spiritual, material, or both. As a community gathered in the name of
Christ, we are called to continually invite others and the great thing about it
is, that as we invite new people we, in turn, will be changed by their wisdom,
and bolstered by the strength of their faith.
In that spirit of
invitation, and by the power of Christ’s love, please rise and greet one
another in the name of Christ. May the
peace of Christ be with you all. Amen.
For further reading:
A Christian reply to
Canada’s Immigration Legislation, Bill C-31, from Kairos Canada:
http://www.kairoscanada.org/dignity-rights/migrant-justice/protect-refugees-from-bill-c-31-joint-statement/
United Church of Canada’s
efforts for right relations between the Church and First Nations: http://www.united-church.ca/aboriginal
Some pithy Mark Twain
quotes, at http://www.betatesters.com/penn/twain.htm
© 2012 Rev. Greg Wooley, Ralph Connor Memorial United Church, Canmore AB
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