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