Sunday, October 20, 2024

Ruth 1: 1-18 - October 20, 2024

 

In the story of Ruth we meet a strong, devout woman from the land of Moab.  Not Israelite, not Jewish, but from a nation east of the Red Sea whom the Israelites had battled a number of times over the course of a thousand years. Ruth’s story, on its own, is memorable and wonderful, but what we did not hear this morning are the closing words of her story (Ruth 4: 17-21): according to tradition, this Moabite woman, Ruth, was the great-grandmother of King David – and as such, in the family lineage of Jesus as well.  

Maybe it’s just because I live in such an intensely divided and divisive point in history that the inclusion of such a story in scripture strikes me as remarkable.  I would have thought that any story that suggested that King David - such a towering figure in our Judaeo-Christian faith history - was anything less than 100% Jewish by birth, would have been left on the cutting room floor when the decisions were being made as to which books would and would not be regarded as sacred texts.   

But in the Hebrew Scriptures, and in the Chrisitan Bible, there it is: the book of Ruth; and from the reading I have done I cannot find any point in our faith history when this beautiful, boundary-breaking story is on the outside of the canon of scripture looking in.  

From Ruth’s story, I want to lift up two themes and a challenge: Ruth as a story of women; Ruth as an intercultural story; and the enduring power of Ruth, for anyone willing to take up her cause.  

First, we engage Ruth as a story of women. 
About a decade ago, my kids introduced me to something called the Bechdel Test, which names the following three criteria for evaluating a movie: (1) it has to have at least two female characters, with names, who (2) who talk to each other, about (3) something besides a man.   You would be absolutely astonished at how many movies, from the classics of the silver screen to new releases today, fail the test.  Figures from 2022 indicated that while 57% of movies now pass all three standards, roughly 11% of movies do not even pass one of the three. And while it’s not exactly the same thing, if you go online to do academic research, including religious research, you will likely find what I find: that a solid 7 out of 10 articles, blogs and books are by male authors, even with the wide-open spaces of the internet.

We are, and have been for a long, long time, surrounded by a pervasive sense that says that men’s voices and narratives are of greater importance than women’s.  Theirs are the stories that get crafted for the big screen, feeding and being fed by worldwide patriarchy.  Though we know of matriarchal societies, particularly amongst Indigenous peoples, most formally recorded history is dominated by the words and actions of men, and their sons – particularly the first-born sons – carry the mantle of inheritance, agency, and power over the lives of others.

All this, once more, makes me impressed that the story of Ruth, written some 2500 years ago is even in the Bible. In the words of the late Roman Catholic Feminist scholar, Dr. Alice Laffey (p.209), “despite the patriarchal setting of the story, the women’s courage is outstanding.  Orpah was willing to leave her homeland to be with her mother-in-law; Ruth insisted on doing so.  Naomi wanted to leave her daughters-in-law in Moab, even though that would mean going back alone to Israel and a future alone.”  By her inner conviction and unshakeable stubbornness, Ruth willfully reaches past barriers of culture and gender to express the greatest possible loyalty to Naomi: “wherever you may go, I will follow; your people will be my people and your God, my God.”  That strength of resolve pushes this story to the front of the Bechdel test, as women talk to women and take life-changing steps founded solely in those female to female relationships.

Second, we look at Ruth as an intercultural story.
Though the story of Ruth is set three generations before King David, the evidence is strong that it was written much later, as the Jewish exiles returned from seventy long years of exile in Babylonia.  Now that they were returning home, the people had some difficult decisions to make.  Jerusalem, and the Temple, would need to be rebuilt along with their whole social structure.  In such a time of rebuilding, as they tried to shape their identity, how would they relate to people of other nationalities?

Two prophets writing at the time, Ezra and Nehemiah, were clear on the matter.  Ezra was particularly strident about this: there was to be no intermarriage between the Jews and non-Jews like the Moabites, there were to be no treaties between the peoples, and there was no reasonable pathway for a non-Jew to become part of the faith.

Amidst of these strong objections to the Moabites, the story of Ruth emerged, challenging the hard-line by telling of the devotion of a Moabite girl to her Jewish mother-in-law.   In addition to its relatable theme of devotion, this story is a corrective to the thoughts of the day about outsiders. Yes, the law of the Torah had always commanded the Israelites to pay attention to the needs of widows, orphans and foreigners, but in the case of foreigners there was no pathway for them to become a full part of the people of Israel.   The book of Ruth stands up to that and says, “why not?  Even King David’s grandmother was a Moabite, and what are you going to do about it?”

Curiously, the book of Ruth barely even mentions God, but throughout this story we continuously see the actions of a living, engaged God. Ruth is a story of courage, devotion, fidelity, honour and inclusion, pushing against notions that God’s love is exclusive and small.  I find it to be a healthy thing that this intercultural perspective of Ruth, and the more exclusive and isolationist perspective of Nehemiah and Ezra are both included in scripture,   it wasn’t a binary, winner-take-all choice between one perspective or another. Rather, these two very different approaches are held in tension within our Judaeo-Christian sacred text.  For healthy spirituality, my friends, can hold such things in tension, teasing the heart and mind into action. {And… as of October 19th, the BC Election results were split down the middle with no clear governing party, so we too will need to “hold things in tension” as differing ideologies find a path to governance!}

Ruth is a story of women, and a story of interculturalism. We now consider the challenge: how to allow the message of Ruth to keep speaking.

As I read the story of Ruth as a story of women, I am proud that The United Church of Canada has been ordaining women to Ministry since the Rev Lydia Gruchy of Kelvington, Saskatchewan was ordained in 1936.  The Very Rev, the Hon. Dr Lois Wilson, eventually ordained as the rules for women’s ordination became less strict, became the first female Moderator in 1980, and was Moderator during my first summer in ministry. As a young adult of the Church, I learned how important it was to watch the gendering of language, long before “political correctness” was a thing.  And for those of us who remain active in mainline Churches in Canada in the year 2024, it remains our task to tell the world around us that there is such a thing as Christian faith that does not subordinate women to men.  As a follower of Jesus Christ, I engage sacred texts about Ruth and Naomi, Mary and Martha, the Samaritan woman at the well and the ever-faithful Mary Magdalene.  As a follower of Jesus Christ, I carry a responsibility to uphold the importance of women’s lives, women’s stories, and women’s power to choose what happens to their bodies.

And, thinking of the obstacles that Ruth faced to make her home in a land different from her own, the Church has a critical role to play in countering the scourge of racism.  In addition to the work being done nationally by The United Church of Canada through the 40 Days of Anti Racism, there is work being done on this locally by the South Okanagan Immigrant and Community Services.  I want to get to know them and find out how we can come alongside their efforts, as true advocates for a Canada that is open to people from all nations, cultures and religious perspectives.   I celebrate that the communities in which we live have significant populations from India, Portugal, Mexico and elsewhere, and I lament that in the province of British Columbia, racism has been on the rise, significantly, in recent years.  As followers of Jesus, who repeatedly interacted with all manner of people he was told would ruin his reputation, who regularly crossed religious and ethnic barriers, we are called to be leaders in this work in our time and place.

I love the story of Ruth, a story of a woman from Moab who played a pivotal role in our fabric of faith.  I am so glad it is part of our faith history, and continues to spur us to be our best selves, to truly be the steadfastly inclusive body of Christ.  And with that, I invite you to remain seated as our voices sing her song of faith: “Wherever you may go, I will follow.”

 

References:

Berlin, Adele. “The Story of Ruth.” https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/hebrew-bible/the-story-of-ruth/

Bible Project. “Ruth” – video overview. https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/ruth/

Bronner, Leila. “Ruth and Lovingkindness.” https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/ruth-and-lovingkindness/

Guzik, David. “Nehemiah’s Reforms.” https://enduringword.com/bible-commentary/nehemiah-13/

Hamann, Bella. “The Biblical Bechdel.” https://www.andrews.edu/life/student-movement/issues/2023-03-09/ideas-biblical-bechdel-how-much-are-women-respected-in-the-bible.html#:~:text=In%20fact%2C%20the%20only%20book,Naomi%20have%20about%20finding%20food).

Kai, David. “Wherever you will go, I will follow” © 1996, More Voices #216

Laffey, Alice L. An Introduction to the Old Testament: A Feminist Perspective.  Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988.

Livius.org “Moab.” https://www.livius.org/articles/place/moab/

South Okanagan Immigrant and Community Services. https://soics.ca/anti-racism/

The United Church of Canada. “Forty Days for Engagement on Anti-Racism”. https://united-church.ca/social-action/justice-initiatives/anti-racism/40-days-engagement-anti-racism

Wikipedia.  “Ezra-Nehemiah”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra%E2%80%93Nehemiah

Wilson, Lois – memorial service https://www.youtube.com/live/TPRqkbxQUL8

 

© 2024, Rev Greg Wooley, Osoyoos-Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge.

 

 

Monday, October 14, 2024

Matthew 6: 25-33 - October 13, 2024 - Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a holiday for celebrating the bounty of the field and all our blessings, presenting the first and best to God. Although we often hear the US and Canadian Thanksgiving holidays traced back to a harvest feast shared by the English colonists of Plymouth Massachusetts and the Wampanoag people some 400 years ago, I’d suggest that the roots of Thanksgiving Sunday back go back more than 2,000 years, to the Jewish Harvest Festivals.  Much like the Oliver – Osoyoos area, where there are many harvests rom July to October as various fruits and vegetables are ready for harvest, there were three annual harvest times in Galilee and Judaea – barley in the spring, wheat in the summer, and fruits, grapes and olives in the fall.  Each of these harvests was marked by its own religious ceremony and celebration.

In our earliest days in Ministry, serving three small towns in eastern Saskatchewan, everything in the community, whether you lived in town or on the farm, relied on the harvest.   School started around Labour Day, but farm kids were often needed to help with harvest until late September, and I understand that in years gone by, this was the case here in the south Okanagan as well.  In our Saskatchewan congregations you couldn’t start Sunday School until the crop was off because you would have neither students nor teachers until then, and if it seeding had been late, or if farms had been hailed out, or if the frost came early, or if it was a bad year for crop diseases or pests, Thanksgiving Sunday was a bit moted. We still had carrots and winter squash and onions and zucchini and tomatoes on display, but things felt a bit shaky because a lean harvest meant a worrisome winter. 

It is a delight for Shannon and me to live in an area with so many fruit and vegetable stands.  The tomatoes have been amazing and sweet, and we’ve had local apples that are like an entirely new fruit, so crisp and flavourful.  But we also know that this has been an awful year for the vineyards and orchards and those whose livelihood rests on them, due to the prolonged deep freeze in January, and the closure of BC Tree Fruits made it that much harder.  And as we look at erratic weather patterns made so much worse by human-induced climate change we can expect many more such years.  As we gather for Thanksgiving Sunday we would love to offer unqualified thanks for a bountiful harvest, but this year, that to me would seem off-target, even dishonest.

So I ask: what does Thanksgiving look like when the harvest isn’t particularly bountiful? Or, more broadly how do we give thanks in any lean times – times of grief or loss, times of high anxiety, low hope or endless uncertainty, or times when your spiritual life has gone flat? 

Thankfully, the Bible – which we described as the “field guide” in our  Intentional Interim backpack– is well aware of life’s challenges.   Our friend in Canmore, the retired Anglican Priest Rev. Dr. Richard LeSeur, points out that the vast majority of the Bible was written when the Israelites and early Christians were overrun by some nation or other: the Romans, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Egyptians.  The various books of the Bible, then, shows deep awareness of life in hard times, and while these difficulties were duly lamented the people refused to be defeated by them.  They found ways to give thanks to God, for God’s past faithfulness and future promise, even  when all outward indicators were grim.

Our reading this morning from the gospel of Matthew (6: 26-29) has some thoughtful, lyrical words on how to reframe one’s life, asking “which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life?... Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them…. [and] consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these”.

Look at the birds of the air – consider the lilies of the field.  Using two analogies from nature, Jesus shines a light on the human propensity to make things worse by fretting about them.  Those of us who have lived with decades of depression or anxiety know that worry is not an easy adversary to defeat but there’s an important point for us to hear.  Middle East Pilgrimage leader Rev Dr Andrew Mayes states that the word “consider” used here by Jesus means to pay close and prolonged attention to something, so you may learn from it. Consider the way the lilies are resourceful by design, taking the nutrients from the water and soil and sunshine, transforming that into sustaining energy that blooms.  And behold how a bird shapes its day, combining its innate and learned abilities to build a nest, flirt, find food, nurture its young, migrate.  And as we pause to contemplate what we see in the daily and seasonal routines of the birds and the lilies, we are likely to experience awe and wonder in their innate abilities to survive and thrive even in scarcity.  We will also notice that neither birds nor flowers are ruled by a wristwatch or a calendar, and neither of them intentionally increase their anxiety by doom-scrolling through the alarming headlines on their smartphones.   Both plants and birds can and do experience stress, caused by weather, or predators, or invasive species, or scarcity of nutrition, or harmful human activity, but do not add to the stress by their own imaginings.  And the flowers, in particular, aren’t motivated by envy or jealousy or a fear of missing out; as Jesus said, even Solomon in all his glory wasn’t dressed in threads that could outstrip the natural beauty of nature.

Jesus’ words about the birds and flowers not wasting energy on things beyond their control remind me of the words of the serenity prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference”.  When the harvest is meager, we lean into this truth.  When life is hard, we are honest about that, with ourselves and with God, and seek positive, creative ways forward.   Many growers in the Okanagan had no stone fruit to sell this year, many vintners will not have a 2024 vintage wine and knowing this, many growers pivoted, quickly, to crops they could grow and sell in order to survive into 2025. And while it’s a very different thing from the crop failure, let’s face it:  in Church life the harvest hasn’t been all that great for quote a while; we’ve all seen the steady decline in Church involvement in Canada since the mid 1960s. A major part of our Interim time together will be to determine who God calls you to be here, now, even while acknowledging that Canadian Church life is not easy.  Thanksgiving in more meagre times still expresses gratitude, but does so as we realistically discern where we can make a difference, and where our efforts will be fruitless.

I mentioned earlier that our ancestors in the faith lived through some very grim times of being overrun by foreign oppressors, and still managed to find faith and gratitude.  So did our most recent ancestors. Both of my parents were born in the early 1920s, grew up in the depression and were teenagers at the start of World War II, and it shaped them – and by extension, shaped my brother and me, as we learned how to scrimp and save, how to mend and fix and never be wasteful, and how to be grateful for what you have, even if it’s not everything you expected.   

This fall, Shannon and I watched a British TV series from a dozen years ago entitled “Wartime Farm” where three adults, a historian and two archaeologists, lived together on a farm with the same surroundings, constraints and circumstances people would have faced in the war years.  One of the episodes spoke of how the Brits, during World War II, addressed Christmas dinner at a time when a Christmas goose or turkey was almost impossible to source.   The British Ministry of Food published instructions on how to make a mock Turkey, a pile of sausage and bread stuffing shaped like the body of the bird, with two parsnips peeled and carved into the shape of turkey legs.  To be honest, it looked kind of sad and ridiculous, but the people on the TV show who had been simulating farm life during the war years spoke in glowing terms about (a) how good it tasted and (b) how much it meant to do something “normal”, to celebrate Christmas even when the life of the nation was turned upside-down by war.  Here in Canada, folks grew Victory Gardens, and found other creative ways to keep on keeping on. In a way, those brave and creative efforts help to demonstrate our capacity to gives thanks in lean times: you bravely forge ahead, doing the best you can under the circumstances, and realize that a cultivated attitude of gratitude, especially if shared in community, will get you through a lot of things.  

For even in the midst of hard times, friends in Christ, when the harvest is a flop, when we are missing loved ones who will not be sitting down at table with us this Thanksgiving, when we are dealing with challenging life circumstances, thanksgiving is not only possible, but helpful. We learn to see the good, we learn to count our blessings – not in a trite, dutiful way, but in a way that honours the very gift of life – and we seek ways that we can be of Christian service to others, even in hard circumstances.  And so we give thanks for past and present, we give thanks for future hope, we give thanks for the people with whom we share our lives, we give thanks, as we did last Sunday, for simple pleasures like a favourite song or a favourite place or a favourite flavour.  We lift a prayer for those who are in situations that need as much support as they can get.  Yes, it’s a lot easier for me to be upbeat and happy and grateful when things are good and bountiful and I’m feeling encouraged, but I have also found that I can authentically find and express gratitude without ignoring or minimizing the challenges. 

“Look at the birds of the air”, said Jesus, “they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them…. [and] consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these”.  May your lives, and the life we share as Church, truly flourish, this day and always.  Amen.

 

References cited or consulted:

Ekins, Carolyn https://the1940sexperiment.com/2023/09/24/mock-turkey-wartime-christmas-recipe-no-215/

Government of BC, “Tree Fruit Blossom and Harvest Schedule” https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/farming-natural-resources-and-industry/agriculture-and-seafood/animal-and-crops/crop-production/tree_fruit_blossom_and_harvest_schedule.pdf

Kohn, Daniel. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/pilgrimage-festivals/

LeSueur, Richard. https://www.fifthgospel.ca/

Mayflower 400. https://www.mayflower400uk.org/education/who-were-the-pilgrims/2019/july/the-story-of-thanksgiving-and-the-national-day-of-mourning/   

Mayes, Andrew. https://www.spiritualityadviser.com/

Wartime Farm: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2470814/

 

© 2024 Rev Greg Wooley, Osoyoos-Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge.

 

Sunday, October 6, 2024

Psalm 8 - 6 October 2024

I’m going to start today’s message with a task that I think you’re going to enjoy.  I want you to bring to mind some of your very favourite things in life, such as…

·       A song that lifts your spirits every time you hear it;

·       A special place on this planet, breathtaking, lovely, memorable;  

·       A favourite flavour – something sweet or savoury, delicate or robust, that overwhelms your senses with joy.   

As you sit with those life-lifting thoughts, consider that each of us has our own unique answers to the questions, and the variety of answers would only grow if we asked the same questions of even more people.  Each of us have our own distinct, treasured points of joy that shape our relationship with God, the creative and loving source of all that is.  And on this World Communion Sunday, we celebrate a whole world filled with sounds and tastes and vistas, each of us experiencing the glory of God in our own life’s context, each nation and each faith community and each worshiper lifting praise to God in a unique way.

If we could somehow bundle all of those life-lifting experiences together, in this room, in this town, around the world, we would start to approach the emotional landscape of today’s scripture reading, the 8th Psalm.  If reading the Book of Psalms from front to back, this is the first Psalm whose main task is to sing Praise to God, and it has inspired thousands of years of worship.

This Psalm begins by praising God and it ends with praising God, so pretty much every Bible commentator I’ve seen make the same point: if this is your Sunday scripture make sure, preacher, that you praise God too! In addition to starting and ending with praise, note that the entire Psalm is spoken TO God, no part of it is just speaking ABOUT God.  That’s quite unusual in the Psalms; most often, part of the Psalm addresses God, with wonder or gratitude or anger or regret, and then in other spots the Psalmist is clearly addressing the people, either recalling an experience with God, or calling on them to respond in some way.  Not in Psalm 8, though; here, every piece of it is spoken in a Godward direction.

And that’s important to consider, when we dive into the Psalm’s content.   Shauna Hannan, a professor who teaches preaching at the Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley, California, proposes that the author of the Psalm used this structure:

A – Doxology (a hymn of praise to God)

B – God’s work

C – Who am I?

B1 – God’s work

A– Doxology

The Psalm begins and ends with the same exact statement of praise, “O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” 

Just after the beginning and just before the end, God’s work is made evident in the babbling of babies, the stars in the heavens, the lives of birds and fish and livestock. All these make up that “chorus of all creation, the song of all living things” we sang about two Sundays ago. 

In the middle of the Psalm, between those words of praise, are words to be considered with care and caution.  Here, the Psalmist asks God a big, somewhat rhetorical question:

what are humans that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?

(repeat) what are humans that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?

Indeed, amidst the vastness of galaxies, how could we humans even expect to be on God’s radar?  The Psalmist, anxious to fill the uncomfortable silence, answers his own question, like so:

Yet you have made them a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honor.  You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet.

On their own, these words come off as deeply arrogant, as if the sun and the moon and the stars bow down before us godlike humans.  Admittedly, there is a degree of human-centeredness here that makes God’s love for ALL creation a bit hazy. And more dangerously, taken out of context, they seem to suggest that God has given humankind carte blanche in doing whatever we want with this planet, using the soil and the trees and every creature for whatever personal benefit we choose.  But that ignores the whole point of this Psalm: it’s a love song to God.  

The key word, “dominion”, found in the verse 6 of this Psalm and in the legend of creation in the first chapter of Genesis (vv. 26-31), must not be misunderstood, accidentally or intentionally.  This is not permission to do whatever we want, relative to the plants and animals entrusted to our care, but is rather the trust that a loving parent has entrusted in their children to be kind, respectful and responsible. Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about this in her wonderful book, Braiding Sweetgrass, as she articulates the unwritten but broadly understood First Nations rules of the “honourable harvest”: (p.183)  “Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life…. Never take the first. Never take the last. Take only what you need…. Never take more than half. Leave some for others…. Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken. Share…. Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever.”  Indeed, we humans as a species have a choice to make. We can live in harmony with our surroundings, and steward it in healthy, sustainable ways – and as Robin Wall Kimmerer details in her book, this kind of stewardship can and does happen - or we can let carelessness and greed take over, and watch the majesty and intricacy of the earth and all that dwell therein be crushed to powder.  In stating we are just “a little lower than God” this Psalm insists that we pay attention to the love that God has for the world, an attentive love of constant renewal, and calls us emulate that. We are called to be wise stewards, care-takers, those who with sacred intent restore and reclaim that which has been entrusted to our care, so that God’s holy harmonies can be heard once more.  

In this season of creation, on this World Communion Sunday which shines a light on our interconnections with believers everywhere, we pause once more to think of all the things we brought to mind at the start of this message, things that make life so extraordinary – the tastes, the sights, the melodies, all that makes our hearts sing.  We bring sober thought to the fragility of this planet, and our responsibility to care for it, not diminish it.  And we open ourselves to the God who is not only at the beginning and end of this Psalm, but at the beginning and end of our lives.  To that God, we give our trust, our love, our thanks and our praise.  Amen.

 

References cited or consulted:

Duck, Ruth. “It’s a song of praise to the maker”, More Voices #30, verse 4 © 1992 by GIA Publications, Chicago IL.

Forsey, Eugene et al. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/dominion

Hannan, Shauna. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/the-holy-trinity/commentary-on-psalm-8-18

LeMon, Joel. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-27-2/commentary-on-psalm-8-19

Mast, Stan. https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2016-05-16/psalm-8-3/

Purdie, Silvia. https://www.conversations.net.nz/psalm-8-out-of-the-mouths-of-babes.html

Quanstrom, Danny. https://www.aplainaccount.org/post/psalm-8-1

Stott, Joan. http://www.thetimelesspsalms.net/w_resources/pentecost1a_2014.htm

Wall Kimmerer, Robin. Braiding Sweetgrass.  Minneapolis: Milkweed, 2013.

 

 © 2024 Rev Greg Wooley, Osoyoos-Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge.

 

Luke 1: 26-38 - December 15, 2024 - Advent III

  The word “angel” can evoke a wide range of responses.   For some folks, the visits of angels, exactly as described in the Bible align nice...