Genesis 1: 1-2:4a - Trinity Sunday, May 31, 2026

 

When I was sixteen years old I was pretty sure of two things.  I figured that my career would involve science in some way, confirmed by a part-time job at a drug store where I really thrived, and I deeply enjoyed Sunday Worship and my growing involvement at Westminster United Church in Regina.

Four years later, halfway through a Pharmacy degree, in the middle of the night I had a call experience in which God called me “to minister to others.”  Whether that would be as an ordained minister, or as a pharmacist who conducted himself in helpful and ethical ways was not yet clear, but again, the worlds of science and spirit were not far apart.

I share these snippets to make clear, that for at least fifty years I have seen no conflict between the world of faith and the world of science.  I believe in the creative intent of a loving God, which makes us kin with all living beings and with this planet itself.  I also trust the scientific process, of being curious about life and the world we live in, asking questions, testing the hypothesis, seeing if results and answers can be duplicated and verified, and publishing the results so that they can in turn be scrutinized, challenged and honed.   The things we think we know about the world need to always be questioned, and so do the things we think we know about our spiritual selves. I have long believed that intellect and reason are among God’s most generous gifts to humanity, so for me, thoughtful, probing Christian Theology and the theories of Charles Darwin can coexist very nicely, thank you very much.

Unfortunately, and increasingly, science has been attacked by the Christianity of literalism and empire, and one of the typical battlegrounds is the story of creation, which we heard in its glorious entirety this morning.  Insisting that the only way to understand creation is as six chronological 24-hour days, the work of the scientific community through radiometry, carbon dating and other techniques is rejected as false and faithless.  Understandably, in response there has been unfairly generalized pushback labelling all people of faith as simple-minded and obtuse. This is so unfortunate, and so distracting, as I think it misrepresents what science really is, and misunderstands the role of our sacred text. 

I have struggled to find words that are clear enough to describe how important it is to me to both respect science, and to love the sacred story that has come to us from our forebears in faith.  In this I am indebted to Karen Armstrong, a historian of religion whose work I find to be deep, clear and brilliant, and she offers these words:

“Our culture” she writes “trains us to look for the literal truths of the words on the page. We expect a text to express its ideas as clearly as possible… we are likely to condemn a work that is deliberately vague or paradoxical or that presents mutually exclusive arguments. There are many Jews and Christians who have come to apply the same standards to the Bible. Some, for example, have argued that the first chapter of Genesis is a factual account of the beginning of life on earth: they believe that God really did make the world in six days, and that those scientists who maintain that it took billions of years to evolve must be wrong.

“What we need to understand” she continues, “is that the Bible does not present its truths to us in this way. Reading it demands the same kind of meditative and intuitive attention that we give to a poem. We often have to wrestle with the text, only to learn that we are denied the certainty of a final revelation. Genesis has been one of the sacred books that have enabled millions of men and women to know at some profound level that human life has an eternal dimension…Genesis points to a reality that must essentially transcend it.”

Karen describes perfectly what I wish to convey here.   As someone who deeply respects the integrity and wisdom of science, my soul still yearns for the poetic rhythm of these words of Genesis, not as a construction manual of how to build a planet, but as a means to come close to the God of loving, creative purpose.  Each of these six legendary days, imagining the origins of water and dry lands and people and animals, expresses that holy purpose.  I come to these words with awe and wonder.

And when I do so, I wonder how I would have explained the beginnings of all that is, if all I had was my experience: the experience of planting the seeds and harvesting the fruit, the experience of the regular return of seasons, the experience of the joy and tragedy and complexity of human relationships. If all I knew about life was from my experience, and from the experiences of my neighbours and my relations, how might I have explained the miracle of existence itself?  What words or framework would God have led me to?

When I slow down, and set aside the silly “religion vs. science” tussle, and allow these words of Genesis to draw me back to the very beginnings of time, in the narrative of my long-ago spiritual ancestors, I am gifted with the beauty of language, and mystery, and wonder.

·       I picture myself looking upward, and wondering how the clouds stay in place, and imagining a dome holding waters above from waters below.  That same dome would hold the sun and stars safely in place.

·       I imagine standing on a lakeshore, and proposing that once upon a time water and sea were just mixed up in a sort of slurry, then the waters all came together, leaving dry land.

·       I recall how from I have since childhood been amazed at how shrubs and trees and seedbearing plants propagate themselves with no assistance from any human hands, and I cannot help but imagine a creator whose hands were initially involved.

·       I consider the diversity of birds and fish and mammals, how thrilling it is to see and hear a new one for the first time, and how fearful and activated I can be when I do not know their intent.

·       And I give thanks for this first account of creation, which describes humans, both male and female, equally bearing the image of God, and carrying the tasks of being God’s own stewards of all of this.   

Throughout this sacred text of origins, I notice that seven times we are told that God paused to observe what had just been made, and it was good. Not just okay, but good.  Godly good. And we also note that the reward of six days of creativity was a day of sabbath rest.  Even God gets to be satisfied in a job well done, and lay back and do nothin’.

Do I need this reading to function as a textbook, as if I were watching a YouTube video showing me sequentially, with timings, how to build my own heaven and earth?  No, I really don’t, any more than I would benefit from dismantling song lyrics that move me to tears each time I hear them, for to me, the story of creation is very much the love song of Creator God. I need those recurring words, “God saw that it was good” to seep into my very being, to renew my awe and wonder and love at the gift of life and the gift of the planet on which life is lived, even as I celebrate the scientific curiosity that helps us learn more and more about the miracle of life, and which warns us of the dangers of taking the earth for granted.   The slow, methodical presentation of the first chapter of Genesis truly helps me to “let go and let God”, to reframe each day as “gift” rather than “problem” and rest in the love of the Creator.

And with that, this message draws to a close with words from Karen Armstrong, as she writes about the first chapter of Genesis:

“This masterly account…emphasizes the purposefulness of God's creativity…. Key words are repeated throughout the chapter. God ‘said,’ ‘saw,’ ‘separated,’ and ‘called.’ The stately rhythm and repetition make us feel that events are following a serenely ordained pattern. Similarly, God's pronouncement that each stage of his creation is ‘good’ emphasizes the excellence, rightness, and wholesomeness of the universe. This God is not only powerful but completely benevolent. The structure of the text rises to a crescendo: the author devotes more time and space to each successive day.

“At the end of the creative process”, Karen Armstrong concludes, “God, having expended no effort, was not exhausted by these labors. God brought his work to an end, and on the seventh day rested and contemplated his creation in rather the same way as a craftsman surveys the work of his hands….God is in his heaven and all is right with the world”.

May our relationship with all that we know, all that we believe, all that causes us to worry and all that brings us hope, be truly spacious.  May we have the room in our lives, in the Church, and in the world, to engage the glories of our sacred story and the amazing discoveries of science, even amidst the anti-intellectual leanings of some of the world’s most powerful regimes. May we love this planet, our human neighbours, and all living beings, knowing that through God we are all part of one beloved realm. May the refrain “it is good” – God’s own assessment of all of it - be enough for us on this sabbath day.  Amen.

Reference cited:

Armstrong, Karen. In the beginning: a new interpretation of Genesis.  NYC: Knopf, 1996.  See especially pp. 9-12. 

© 2026 Rev Greg Wooley, Osoyoos-Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge.

1 Corinthians 12: 4-14 - Pentecost Sunday, May 24, 2026

 

The 2^nd chapter of Acts, read each year on Pentecost Sunday, tells us of the day when the Holy Spirit descended on a group of Galileans who had come to Jerusalem for the festival of Shavuot, a group who were Jews by birth and followers of Jesus by inclination.  The power of the moment is described as wind and flame, and they began to speak languages unknown to them, recognized by people who had come to Jerusalem. This weird, powerful, ecstatic event, the day of the first Christian Pentecost, is remembered as the day when the Church was born.  

This year, however, my preaching text for Pentecost Sunday is not the 2^nd chapter of Acts, but the reading from First Corinthians 12 which we read as today’s Call to Worship. 

If we envision that first Christian Pentecost, we picture all the believers simultaneously receiving an outpouring of the same Holy Spirit; but clearly, the gift didn't land the same for all of them, nor should we expect it would. For each one, then in Jerusalem and here, now, would have different spiritual and personal backgrounds, experiences, strengths and shortfalls, preferences, gifts, skills and aptitudes; and – just as Jesus did with the twelve disciples – at Pentecost, God happily worked with whatever those believers brought with them.  There is at one and the same time unity in the Spirit, and diversity in the believers.

This is one of the many beautiful aspects of how God has made us.  We are not all wired the same, especially in the way we respond to God.  In 1^st Corinthians 12 the Apostle Paul validates all of the spiritual gifts given by the Spirit and expressed by believers, and encourages us as Church to build up one another, honouring it all. Taken together, all these gifts and the way we express them make the body of Christ stronger: stronger in love, and stronger in service.

But by the time Paul was writing to the Corinthian Church, roughly twenty to thirty years after that day of Pentecost, it is clear that they had stopped honouring all of the gifts. Pridefulness had arisen, especially among those who had the ecstatic gifts of divining spirits, speaking in tongues or interpreting tongues, and Paul challenges that hierarchy by placing these most highly prized of all the gifts at the tail end of the list.  He doesn’t say that the gifts are illegitimate, but he wants to undercut their pridefulness in their gifts by asking: what does this gift do to build up the body of Christ, to build up the common good?  The gifts of the spirit, argues Paul, are to be tools of love that help the Church lift up those who are discouraged or demeaned or fearful or judged or impoverished, not prideful possessions.

In Paul’s list, we recognize some elements of Church life that are timeless:  knowledge, wisdom, faith, healing.  Less familiar to us are the gifts of prophecy, miracles, divination, tongues and interpretations.  In other lists, Paul adds additional qualities like generosity, hospitality and kindness, and roles like teaching and leading.  By presenting all these ways in which Spirit is expressed, Paul wants to encourage Church people as we respond in many different life-giving ways. Paul calls us back to the truth that there is one God, one Christ, one Spirit, but many gifted responses.

As these congregations in Osoyoos and Oliver move into separate callings, starting on July 1^st it will be particularly important to truly celebrate all the different ways we respond to God’s calling, rather than getting frustrated by people whose ways of responding to God may not align with our own.  As United Church folks and Anglican folks in Oliver learn how to be together at St. Edward’s, that will be extremely important, and it will also be important in Osoyoos, as you reach out to parts of the community you may not be all that familiar with, and supportively welcome and work alongside social service agencies you are just getting to know.  And with that, I turn my attention once more to Janet Gear’s “Theological Banquet”, which describes the various ways that Mainline Canadian Christians tend to respond to God’s gracious calling.   

Remember, none of the place settings is the “right” or the “best” – these are categories based on observation, to help us understand our own responses, and those expressed by others.

So, in a typical congregation there will be people in the yellow “evangelical” category, who have experienced God’s transformative love turn their lives upside down in the best possible way, and they are just bursting to tell people about that.  Those at the evangelical place setting may have had a “born-again” experience, or their new life may have come through sobriety and twelve-step support and a loving Church home.  “Evangel” means “good news” and for the evangelical group, it’s good news that just has to be shared.  

“Ecclesia” means “the assembly of the faithful”, and for the ecclesials the things we do together as Church comprise a huge part of their response to God’s calling.  That includes what we do on Sunday: worshiping together, sharing the sacraments, passing the peace, teaching Sunday School, connecting over coffee. Many mid-week study groups fit here as well, and so do the commitments made by committee and Council members.

The purple, Missional category, is the category of practical Christian service.  Offering hospitality, raising funds for good causes, working in the Thrift Shop or serving community meals, are all part of this familiar category.  Missionals desire to put their faith into tangible, hands-on assistance.  This place-setting is practical, pragmatic, motivated by need. The phrase “we are the hands and feet of Christ” fits this group.

Next is the blue category, the category of Social Justice.  While Janet calls it “ecumenical”, based on the Greek word “Oikumene” which alludes to the issues of the entire world, in my experience ecumenical always means inter-church, which sometimes works for social justice but often struggles to do so.  In any case, the social justice folks at this place setting are moved by the withholding of civil rights, and social inequity, and global suffering, and seek to respond in faith through social justice actions such as advocacy, resistance, solidarity, education and communication.   

And there is the green, “spiritual” place at the table.  This is the place of contemplation and prayer, and this may be a place where we meet people from other religious traditions, or young people seeking meaning without dogma, or people who are moved by the rhythms of the natural world.  The Spiritual place at the table includes contemplative traditions that meets God’s energy in art and beauty, in poetry and song, in prayer, in nature, and in silence. The green place setting is a place of awe and wonder and peace.

My hope is that these five place settings at the banquet will pique your curiosity.  The world is full of injustice, and our social justice folks can reach into that. The world is full of need, and our missional folks are equipped to respond.  The world is filled with emptiness and bad news, and the sharing of the Evangel of Jesus Christ is a wonderful response to that.  And to be equipped, the Church needs those who meet God in the silence of the spirituals, and in the gatherings of the ecclesial faithful.

When the Holy Spirit came to the Church, God knew full well that the gift was being given to a whole range of people who would be inspired in many different ways, and while that can at times be chaotic it can also be indescribably beautiful.  Whether you’re hearing the words of Paul talking about spiritual gifts, or the image he goes on to use about the different parts of the body working together, or Janet Gear’s image of the theological banquet, on this day of Pentecost we celebrate our unity in God’s love and the rich diversity of responses.

This Pentecost, then, we consider the goodness of the gift, and the glorious diversity of human response, and as we prepare to receive bread and cup at the table of Jesus, we pray that the banqueting table of this congregation will be rich and varied and filled with new ways of being, in the years God still has in front of you. Amen.

For further reading:

Gear, Janet. https://www.leadershiftpm.ca/the-theological-banquet

Gear, Janet. Undivided Love. © 2022. https://books.friesenpress.com/store/title/119734000231789479/Janet-Gear-Undivided-Love

“Spiritual Gifts” - https://www.gotquestions.org/spiritual-gifts-list.html

© 2026 Rev Greg Wooley, Osoyoos-Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge

 

Acts 17: 22-31

Imagine with me, being in Athens, 2000 years ago.

For those who have actually visited Athens, that’s probably not a hard thing to do, while for those like me who know Athens only from grade 6 social studies, it takes a bit more imagination.

The Apostle Paul had the task of spreading the good news of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles and now he has arrived in Athens, the centre of Greek culture.  As a Jew, Paul had grown up with a strict prohibition against idols of any sort, yet here he was in Athens, a city which honoured forty or more deities.  At first, it was “distressing” (Acts 17:16) for Paul to be surrounded by idols as idolatry stood directly in the face of the second commandment, which prohibited bowing down to graven images or even making them.  Yet at another level he couldn’t help but be impressed at how “religious” this place was. Even if the Greek beliefs were very different from his own, it was hard to go to Athens and just be offended.  

In the midst of idols to Athena and Zeus and Poseidon was an idol with the inscription, either “to an unknown God” or “to the unknown God.”  The Oxford Dictionary of the Bible puts it this way: “Although such an altar has not been found [in Athens] by archaeologists, inscriptions are known of altars [elsewhere] dedicated 'to unknown gods'. The reasoning was that one or other of the gods might show anger at having been overlooked. Such an inscription was designed to cover all contingencies”.

The oddness of this is striking: amidst all the specifically named idols, an idol to an UNKNOWN GOD, sort of a safety-net idol to appease any deities that may have gotten overlooked.  And so, in our imaginary tour of ancient Athens, we pause at this unusual monument and ask what Paul’s experience in Athens has to say to us in our time and place.

At first, I admit that I’m a bit amused by an idol with a question mark on it – but there is something both familiar and disheartening about a monument to an unknown deity.  For the fact of the matter is that in the year 2026, many communities in the northern hemisphere could truthfully have a billboard, plaque or building with this same inscription on it: “dedicated to an unknown God”.  The news keeps us apprised of the actions of religious extremists of all sorts, including Christian, who focus hatred in the name of the God of their understanding on those who are least able to defend themselves; but outside of that, to huge swaths of our population, God is completely unknown.  And in many corners of social media, anyone who speaks of God is mocked and eagerly dismissed, this notion of God a childish folly practiced by the deluded.  Recent figures indicate that some 35% of Canadians identify themselves as having “no religion,” and that number goes above 65% in places like Estonia and the Czech Republic.

Some of this is entirely of our own making.  Wars of religious origin push the entire world to think twice about the whole concept of God and religion. Hatred against the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, active limitation of a woman’s agency over her own body, the banning of books that encourage an open mind, are all actions inexplicably undertaken by religious folk in the name of God and happily publicized as if this what a true Christian should think.  Actions of cultural genocide, including the Residential Schools, generate shame that we will need to deal with for a very long time.  The Church, I’m afraid, has made it easy for God to be unknown in this time and place.

But it’s not that simple. In the forty-five years since I preached my first sermon, I have seen a steady increase in western Canada of people whose ancestors had identified as Christian for centuries, who now have no knowledge of the faith and no Christian memory, because neither they, nor their parents nor their grandparents had a Church connection.  My brother’s family falls into that category: he was a preacher’s kid in the 1950s and absolutely hated the judgmental expectations, so his kids were raised with no knowledge of Christianity except that the Church was narrow-minded and limiting, and then when they had kids, the whole “religion” thing didn’t even warrant a mention.   That’s a really common phenomenon in Canada and it has been happening since 1965, when Church involvement started its steady downward slide. Add to that other factors –Sunday shopping and sports, growing secularization, the un-cool factor attached to mainline Christianity, as well as the hateful things said by some Christian leaders, a statue with the inscription “to the unknown God” fits the bill.

But there is good news to be found as we seek present day connections. Paul used the idol “to an unknown God” as a door-opener, acknowledging how important religion was to the Athenians, then speaking of the God who was anything but unknown to him: God the creator, God the source of wisdom and dignity, God made known in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Some of his points were accepted, others were ridiculed, but it’s the way he presented it that impresses me.  Paul met the people where they were; he presented his beliefs clearly and rationally, without demonizing their beliefs. Rather than the “I’m right, you’re wrong” attitude that has marred so many religious interactions, Paul found a way into religious dialogue by respecting what was there as a starting point.

This approach is so important, right now, for mainline Christian Churches that hope to have a future: meeting people where they are, whether they are folks who used to be Church-involved but are now burnt out or wounded by the experience; folks who have no Christian memory; or folks of completely different cultural or religious backgrounds, who have religious leanings of a totally different shape. 

A case in point: thirty years ago, I served a New Church Development congregation in north Calgary, who had recently constructed a functional little Church building.  The main room in the Church, our Sunday morning sanctuary, was a bland multi-purpose room with no Christian symbols displayed. That was done on purpose, as there was a school of thought in the early ‘90s that putting up a cross or anything like that would turn people off.  In particular, there was a large Asian population in the area, many of whom were Muslim or Buddhist, and nobody wanted to cause offence when that space was used for voting, or community meetings, or rummage sales.  

But there was a space up high in the room just begging to have a cross put in it, and eventually I asked a woodworker in our Church family to hand-craft and install one.  And within ten days of installing the cross (ten days!) we got a phone call from a local Muslim group, asking if they might perhaps be able to do their Ramadan observances in our Church building.  To this day, I believe that it was our willingness to claim our faith that signalled to neighbours of different beliefs, that religion is something that mattered to us, as it mattered to them. When we installed the cross our sanctuary changed from being a room dedicated “to an unknown God”, to saying, like St. Paul did, “you and I know about God in different ways, let’s talk about it.”

Now, if I wanted to I could keep circling this block, finding one example after another of how the society we live in does not know God, of know God in vastly different ways.  But the inscription, “to an unknown God” is challenging in a good and very personal way, bordering on inspirational, because it pushes me to say, “well, how do I know God?  What does it mean to say I know God, given that God is by definition beyond my ability to really know or understand?

For me, much of the answer, is that we have a history with God, we know what it is to feel existential love, we have experienced freeing grace, we know how it feels to do something just and loving in Jesus’ name.  We cannot claim complete clarity and knowledge when it comes to God, nobody can, but we can identify those holy moments and blessed relationships where God is made known.

In Paul’s letter to the Colossians (1:15), he wrote that Jesus Christ is ‘the image of the invisible God.’  If we think back to the nativity stories, Jesus is known as “Emmanuel, God-with-us”, his birth a pivotal moment when God says to us, “I’m not going to leave you stranded and isolated, wondering how you could possibly know me; I’m going to live your life, experience the emotions you experience, and show you what it means to love one another even when you are despised or betrayed”.  As the one bearing the image of God, Jesus discloses what God is like; he is, for Christians, the decisive revelation of what God is like.  This need not imply that Jesus is the only manifestation of God, but for Christians, it does mean that in Christ Jesus, the person of God who lived, and died, and lives again, God ceases to be “unknown” or “unknowable.”

In the good news of Jesus Christ – his preaching, his embodied commitment to healing, his repeated demonstrations of love without measure – we experience that God is love.  And I, personally, have found that when I acknowledge that I am embraced by love, and attempt to live my life like Jesus, expecting to encounter God through love, then I will encounter God.  And that opens us to see God all around us:

We encounter God in the amazing presence of an infant, who has absolutely no barriers between herself and those who love her.  In the wide-eyed expectancy between a little one and her mother, we are reminded of what it means to completely trust in the loving gaze of our God.

We encounter God when people roll up their sleeves for a cause, whether the cause is homelessness, or hunger, or safe haven for refugees, or true welcome of the queer community.  (A shout-out here to my spouse who is a particularly fierce “Mama Bear”, as many moms of trans kids are).  We encounter God when people change their behaviour to be more loving.  We encounter God when people intentionally choose a path that serves others, rather than being motivated by their own greed. 

We encounter God in the living, breathing organism we call Mother earth.  In the rhythms of growth and decay, in the rain, in the enlivening power of a hot summer day or freshening breeze, in the interplay between waterway and soil and plant and creature, we feel God’s creative love in action.  As we anticipate another year in the orchards and the vineyards, God is known.

We encounter God in moments of prayer when we become completely quiet, shutting off the constant stream of thoughts and distractions in favour of her gift of silence.  And we can even encounter God in the holiness of death.  When this life reaches its end, and thankfulness is expressed, and gratitude is shared, and reconciliation can be found, God is there.

To quote the Apostle Paul once more, “in God we live and move and have our being.”  The God in whom we live our lives holds us in creativity and love, wisdom and justice and kindness all at once, and that guides us as we engage others in their sacred journeys.  It is a blessing to be on these paths, sometimes converging, sometimes diverging, sometimes criss-crossing, as we together with one another and together with all living beings embrace God’s amazing gift of life.  While I can understand the sentiment of “an unknown God” I am so thankful for the ways that God bridges that gap, to be known to us, and fill our lives with love. Thanks be to God. Amen.

References cited:

Oxford Dictionary of the Bible: available as an app on Google Play!. 

Smit, Jana Louise. https://historycooperative.org/greek-gods-and-goddesses/

Theoi Project. https://www.theoi.com/

Turcan, Robert. https://www.encyclopedia.com/environment/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/agnostos-theos#:~:text=The%20phrase%20agn%C5%8Dst,were%20unknown%20but%20who%20just

Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_irreligion

© 2026 Rev Greg Wooley, Osoyoos-Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge.