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.