Roses from heaven: Words at a Baby's Baptism

Psalm 145

Sermon from 7 November 2010

            A few years ago, Kaylan’s Great Grandma Irene gave me this rose angel at Christmas.  Irene was at the Lodge in Black Diamond.  She waited until I finished the service and then had this rose ornament wrapped in tissue and in a pretty gift bag.  Her daughter, Laurel, made the ornament.  Laurel is Kaylan’s grandma who died a few months before he was born.  Irene died last December.    When Laurel made this ornament, she was in between cancer treatments.

 There’s a tradition that’s developed around roses and a woman saint from the 19^th century.  It is said that anytime you see roses, St. Teresa of Liseaux is up in heaven showering you with prayers and love.  Apparently before her death in 1896 from tuberculosis she said:  “After my death, I will let fall a shower of roses.  I will spend my heaven in doing good upon earth.”

  Years ago, a lay pastoral assistant at a Catholic Church in a community where I worked, told me about this wonderful tradition about St Teresa:  When we see roses, some wonderful caring, loving woman up in heaven who we never met is showering us with love and praying to God on our behalf. 

I’d like to think today that two wonderful, caring women, Laurel and Irene, are up in heaven and showering us with love and praying to God on our behalf.

Showering us with love.  Sounds a lot like “grace” -- God’s unconditional love for us.  And that’s what baptism is all about.  God’s love pouring out for us.  We use water in the baptism act because water itself is life-giving.  An outward symbol of the continuous love that God gives to us.

 As I go about my week as minister of this church, I find much to give thanks to God—it seems every day there are little miracles happening around us:  Someone getting through surgery well, repairs done to the front stairs, a new volunteer for one of our outreach programs, excitement about the study we’re starting, people responding to what they’ve read on the minister’s blog, wonderful stories our men told in the men’s breakfast yesterday, knowing I’d see Kaylan’s family again today….a lot of many things that for me, add up to much to be thankful for.

Our Scripture reading is all about excitement that God is in the every day and in each moment.

 “All living things look hopefully to you,
      and you give them food when they need it.
                   You give them enough
      and satisfy the needs of all.” (Psalm 145:15-16)

God’s grace – always pouring out for us – if we have eyes to see it. 

I found some wonderful words on baptism this week “After baptism, our entire life becomes the overflow of those baptismal waters, which is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.”  Out of the grace of God’s love, flow our lives and we live in the abundance of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.   “Baptism is how we link our lives to the life of Jesus. We bind our lives to his. And we commit to a way of life that gives life—that shines new life, that multiplies life, like Jesus did.”

          Martin Luther said during the 16^th century reformation, “all of Life is Baptism.    All of life is baptism. We are always being submerged in darkness and chaos, the stuff of life that causes despair, but we are always reborn into new life through it all. All of life is baptism. It means that every painful moment that seems like a little death in our lives is also the moment of the outpouring of new life, the overflow of Jesus’ baptismal waters, the movement of the Holy Spirit. All of life is baptism means that God is always creating new possibilities out of the stuff that seems like a dead end. That is the way of our baptism. We are always on the verge of new life, no matter what kind of trouble we’re in.” (“Fully Alive,” by Isaac Villegas, www.rustyparts.com)

 

St. Teresa of Liseaux was not at all famous when she was alive.  She was a nun who lived   a relatively normal life.   It was her spiritual writings that were published after she died that made her famous.  And she was simply writing about finding God in the day to day but it was the simplicity that people desired and made her writings so popular.   Her way to God was simply about grace that she called “the little way.”    She was a determined young woman, fighting her father at age 15 to let her fulfil her heart-felt desire to a nun.        She suffered many years with tuberculosis.  During the painful times, she knew despair and pain – yet what shines through in her writings is the strength and goodness she constantly found in God’s love.    She continued to see the grace and that’s what she held on to and what gave her strength.  (from Robert Ellsberg's book All Saints, Crossroad, 1997)

Henri Nouwen, Roman Catholic priest and writer of many books, wrote this simple poem:  

"The one who created us is waiting for our response to the love that gave us our being.
God not only says: "You are my Beloved".
God also asks: "Do you love me?
And offers us countless chances to say "Yes."

Baptism is God's "Yes" to us.  May we delight in the joy of life in saying “yes” to God all the days of our lives.

A Baker's Dozen!!!

 Down in the Valley blog's first ever Give-a-Way was much fun!

Thank you to people who took time to leave comments or pushed your technological ability to figure out how to become a Blog Follower.  Six people became followers, four people left comments and another three emailed me that they'd at least tried to figure out the technology.  I figured that trying was worth getting your name in the hat!   So 13 names went in.


When the five-year old's hand reached into the big, pink summer hat, the name pulled out was Sherri Gussman.   She has received her copy of Wayne Dyer's Gift Edition of The Power of Intention.  Congratulations to Sherri, trail blazer extraordinaire, who was also the first person to sign up to be a Blog Follower!  She's pictured here, not wearing a pink hat!

The Power of Intention Give a Way was so much fun, I do believe another will be coming in the not-so-distant future!

First Ever Blog Give-a-Way

I have a copy of Wayne Dyer’s The Power of Intention (Hay House, 2010) to give away. All you need to do to get your name in the hat  is to either:

1 ) Sign up to become a follower of the Down in the Valley blog (see on right hand side)

OR

2) Leave a comment on the blog about something you’ve read on Down in the Valley.

Whether you follow us online or join us in worship, you can enter to have your name put into the hat by Nov. 13. This is the latest edition of Dyer's book with beautiful illustrations and just happens to be a resource for our November study, Praying to Make Manifest.

And remember – even if your name isn’t pulled from the hat on Nov. 14– we and God still think you’re really something!
P.S.  One way to leave a comment is to use the anonymous option and then sign it by leaving your first name and an initial.  Or to ensure I've a way to be in touch with you if your name is pulled from the hat, sign the comment by using your email address but put it down in safe internet form where you write out the "at" and "dot" i.e.  Shelleyinthevalleyatgmaildotcom.   

Meeting Erin Karpluk of CBC's 'Being Erica'

Last month Joel and I got to meet Alberta-born actress Erin Karpluk. On a whim I’d entered an online CBC contest and it was a wonderful surprise to get an email saying ‘two tickets are yours!’ We had a marvellous time at Milestones Restaurant in downtown Calgary with Erin and her co-star, Adam Fergus, and twenty some other guests. (Some drove from Edmonton and Saskatoon to be there for the two hours)

Being Erica is into its third television season and the Canadian show has become popular world-wide. I enjoy the series’ themes that our past doesn’t need to define who we are today -- which is a healthy reflection of our own Judeo- Christian beliefs of healing, redemption, new life and new possibilities. At the end of the evening, as we had our photo taken with Erin, we learned she was confirmed in the United Church in Jasper. It was wonderful to meet this talented Canadian actress whose skilled acting can take us through emotions of regret, grief, embarrassment, excitement, delight and out-loud laughter within an hour-long episode. But what Erin makes look easy, as she described for us, takes hours of careful work and deliberation over each script.

Watch for Erin Karpluk in the Hallmark Christmas movie, Mrs. Miracle, based on a book by Debbie MacComber. (The light-hearted novel is available to borrow from the church library)

The Gift of Friendship

Luke 19:1-10 and John 15:5-17

31 October 2010

Last Tuesday for our two seniors’ services, the theme was “The Gift of Friendship” as it is today. I brought a tote-bag full of homeless stuffed animals. We handed the animals out to those present at the beginning of the program as a symbol of friendship. By the end of the day, most of those stuffed animals – big and small – had found new homes.

All of us desire relationships outside of ourselves – even if it’s just a stuffed animal.

So it is with God – but of course, on a much grander scale, beyond our ability to comprehend. God desires a relationship with each one of us, whoever we are. So it’s no wonder then that Jesus walking along the road senses that Zacchaeus is up in that sycamore tree.

Surprisingly, it is Jesus who calls out Zacchaeus’s name and breaches social etiquette by inviting himself to this stranger’s house: “I must stay at your house today” (v. 5). “Must” is the Greek verb dei, which expresses divine necessity.

In the Mediterranean world, it is considered an honour to be the host. In Lebanon today, a host greets a guest by saying…… “you honour us.” Jesus must honour Zacchaeus by being his guest. In turn, Zacchaeus welcomes Jesus and experiences joy. He cooperates with the divine “must” or will by making restitution, symbolizing his repentance. (from Seasons of the Spirit lectionary resource for Oct. 31, 2010)

The encounter with Jesus is transformational for Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus is seeking Jesus and God is seeking Zacchaeus. The lost has found his home again in God.

We know our own lost moments of being disconnected from God. Rejoicing happens for ourselves and God when we come home again to God.

God is determined to have a relationship with each and everyone of us. So that in turn, we might be in relationship with one another. That’s true for Zacchaeus. His choosing to return home to God means also coming into relationship with those he’s previously hurt by making amends. Earlier, by taking from his neighbours, he was choosing to NOT be in relationship.

If we are created by a good and gracious God, we are also connected to each person and everything that God has created. To follow Jesus means to value the goodness in one another. And we know, we have been blessed and enriched by the God-given goodness of one another.

That’s what friendship is about.

Author and Theological Wendy Wright says our Spiritual Life is facilitated, encouraged and shaped by people we journey with. It is not a private journey of faith but rather it happens in community (from “A Conversation with Wendy Wright,” Alive Now, Jan.-Feb., 1999, pp. 10-15)

Our journey as Christians is one of awakening love. Friendship is a form of love. And friendships help us grow in our capacity to love.

Friendships are mutual relationships. They are reciprocal. Sometimes one is giving, another time another is giving. Sometimes both are giving at the same time. A relationship between a parent and a child is not a friendship. Yes both love each other, but it is not a relationship between peers.

Christian friendships have at their core a shared love for God. It doesn’t mean that the friends are always talking about their faith. But simply that both know they have a love for God that draws us together. The relationship itself can be one that encourages and deepens their love for God.

One of the blessings of Christian friendship is that it can seem that God has sent us to each other. Together, we challenge, sustain and support one another.

There are challenges to friendships in our culture today. People move frequently. “Good friendships, like any kind of relationship are richer the longer you live with them.” Our busyness gets in the way also. “We’re all so efficient and motivated to produce that friends get left out. We also have a very difficult time feeling as though it’s OK to be drawn to people and love people. We’re afraid of deep love.” (Wright)

“We really do think of ourselves as autonomous individuals….but hyper individualism robs us of the sense that we are interconnected.” (Wright)

It is important that we celebrate our relationships with one another and value them.. Here’s where the church comes in. We hold up an alternative model to the rest of society. We value our connection with God and with on another.

Jesus expresses in John’s Gospel his great love for the disciples of which we are. “This is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer because the servant does not know what the master is doing but I have called you friends because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.” (John 15:12-15)

Jesus says, ‘I have passed on to you everything that I know about how to be good, faithful friends to one another. Go and bear fruit. Pass on this abundance of love to one another.’

It’s our privilege to go about life bearing witness to God’s abundance, delighting in the relationships that we were given in the past and that are being offered to us today.

Praying to Make Manifest - Nov. 9, 16 and 30

Is it selfish to pray for what we want? Directly, or indirectly, many of us were taught that it is.

This past Summer I was introduced to the practice of praying to make manifest through a course on meditation. Together, let's explore further this positive form of spirituality. Please join me on three Tuesday evenings in November at United Church in the Valley, Royal Ave. at Hubert St, Turner Valley, AB. The dates are November 9, 16 and 30 at 7 pm.

For part of our discussions, we'll be looking at a PBS presentation by Wayne Dyer called the Power of Intention. We'll also be exploring how Christian Scripture applies to the concept of praying to make manifest. Wayne Dyer's book, the Power of Intention (Hay Publishing, 2004) will be used as a resource for our study but isn't a reading requirement. If you'd like us to order you a copy of the book, please email us at unitedchurchinthevalleyatnucleusdotcom.

When the Ego does us in

Luke 18: 9-14

Sermon from Oct. 24, 2010

"Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self.” -- Wayne Dyer

⁹He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: ¹⁰“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. ¹²I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ ¹³But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ ¹⁴I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” "

One of my new Lutheran pastor friends from this past summer in Virginia wrote this on facebook on Tues:

“Preparing a sermon for a group of pastors for tomorrow.”

A colleague of his responded:

“You have a good text for that. Hit them hard. They are all pharisees! They are all self-righteous! They ought to be humble - like the tax collector... (by the way, I won't be there tomorrow) :)” And he ended it with a smiley face. (facebook exchange between Eric Hullstrom and Mike Strangeland)

Of course, there’s some truth in what my friend’s colleague wrote. A lot of people think that anyone who is religious i.e. attends church regularly or is a minister, is self righteous. Some people have had a bad experience of religion and they category us all with the label of self-righteous and judgemental. Or they’ve never been to church in their life -- yet still we have this label of being judgemental.

What they don’t know is that we have the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector to keep us humble. God is more jubilant over the tax collector making a choice to change his life, than the Pharisee who follows all the religious laws to the nth degree.

Tax collectors were known for their sinfulness in Christ’s time. They were in cahoots with the Romans who ruled the land. They had a certain, painful amount that that needed to take from all the citizens on behalf of the Roman Empire and they had to add an amount to secure their own livelihood. They could take more money than required from the common citizens because they were backed by the Roman Empire and its army. They were sinful, greedy people.

Of course, the Pharisee could look down upon the tax collector. Yet, the Pharisee is not valuing the man as a person of God and does not know that the tax collector is repenting of his ways. The tax collector is choosing to change his life to God’s ways.

What the Pharisee was dealing with and what we often deal with is the hard shell of ego.

When we are born, God creates us as beautiful pure essence. As we grow up, we can be hurt by hurtful things that are said or done to us. To protect ourselves, we make a defensive shell around us. That’s called the ego. The ego provides a shield that we become comfortable living our life behind – but it separates us from God and from living life as our real self.

Wayne Dyer says ego “is like a ghost that we accept as a controlling influence in our lives.” He says, “I look upon the ego as nothing more than an idea that each of us has about ourselves. The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self.”

Ego can cause us to believe that we are what we have or what we do or what others think of us. It can cause us to think we are separate from one another, not connected “It sends us false messages about our true nature. It leads us to make assumptions about what will make us happy and we end up frustrated. It pushes us to promote our self-importance while we yearn for a deeper and richer life experience. It causes us to fall into the void of self-absorption again and again, not knowing that we need only shed the false idea of who we are. – (From Wayne Dyer’s e-newsletter, “The Ego Illusion” Sept. 13, 2010. )

Ego can cause us to believe that we are what we have or what we do or what others think of us. It can cause us to think we are separate from one another, not connected.

I think ego is the way to look at this passage of the Pharisee in our day and age. God wants us to be adults, of course, but adults who know their true essence comes from God. We know that we can get caught up in letting outer things make us happy – what our possessions are, defining ourselves by what we do in our job or what we do each day. We can become caught up in thinking about in thinking only about ourselves and that we are alone – not that we are connected to each other.

The Pharisee is caught up in a type of selfishness. He builds himself up by putting others down. And he’s not seeing his connection to those he puts down. That he and each person is made by God and so each are his brother and sister. He’s not seeing his own potential to be a sinner as much as the tax collector is. That’s an important aspect of our humility as Christians – that we have an awareness of our own vulnerability to sin.

Part of Dyer’s definition of ego has quite struck me. It’s his words “(Ego) leads us to make assumptions about what will make us happy and we end up frustrated.”

These last months we’ve been horrified by the arrest and conviction of the former Colonel Russell Williams. In recent weeks, the police investigation has unfolded in the media. Somehow a respected military leader develops a fetish for breaking into homes and stealing women’s underwear. He’s not caught, the immoral and illegal habit escalates and two women are brutally killed.

The police set up a road check. But it’s not necessarily to check for drinking drivers as much to match the wheel base to tracks they found near a victim’s home. The Colonel is stopped. The police officer who talks to him, recognizes him and waves him on.

You see, Russell Williams is like a Pharisee. He has a respected position in the community, a position of authority. He is waved on.

But another officer was checking the wheel base. He doesn’t know the status of the man behind the wheel. The wheel base matches the tracks they find. Surely the head of Canada’s largest air force base could not have done such a crime. But as they check into where the Colonel has lived, the locations match where similar burglaries have taken place. The illusion falls away.

The person who was respected for his position of authority turns out to be a deadly criminal. The person who was respected turns out to be a sinner.

On Thursday, Russell Williams spoke to the Court, he told those gathered he is deeply ashamed, that he is aware of the hurt he’d caused.

Not matter how much revulsion we feel at what Williams has down, we

have to know that God is looking upon him, if he is truly repentant with great love. With the love God showed for the tax collector who had violated so many common people over whom he had control.

But the key is this: God’s love won’t necessarily flatter our ego, allow us to live puffed up in ourselves. God’s love for Russell Williams and for us calls us beyond our ego and its falsehoods to authenticity and Honesty. Honesty like that of the tax collector: “God be merciful to me a sinner.”