I had a conversation this week about church growth and what needs to be done to attract young people to the church as they are our future.  I was asked where MCC was having the most success attracting youth.  I responded we are seeing the greatest involvement by people under thirty years old in Eastern Europe, Haiti, The Dominican Republic, South America, and Africa.  The primary reason for this youth involvement is because we are seen as the church who speaks out against hatred toward same gender loving and sexually fluid people.  We are seen as the church that is willing to speak truth to power and particularly to the power of the church.  MCC stands in direct opposition to the political and religious authorities.  It has been true throughout history that the church has been its most powerful and effective in times of persecution.  One of the most effective ways to diminish the impact of the church is not to ban it, but to co-opt the church into sharing power with political authorities.

It is clear to me God never intended for the people of God to find their strength in political, commercial, or social organizations.  God grants the Israelites a monarch only because they want one to be like the nations around them.  God warns them a monarch will demand much from them and they will lose many of the freedoms they enjoy as a people ruled by God.  Governments almost always create classes of people, citizens and non-citizens, aristocrats and servants, leaders and followers, those in power and those out of power.  Some have said one of the worst things to happen to Christianity was when Constantine declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.  People were required to call themselves Christian if they wanted influential posts in the government.  Conquered people were forced to convert to Christianity.  Christian leaders became political leaders and the church functioned like a political organization.  People were forced to support the church, the leaders of the church controlled information and members of the church were forced to obey church orders or sacrifice their freedom and often times their lives.  Instead of bringing God’s word of liberation to the people on the margins of society, the church became one of the persecutors of the marginalized.

This is in direct opposition to the way God has been revealed throughout the Judeo-Christian sacred writings.  God has repeatedly spoken in defence of the marginalized, the aliens, the widows, the orphans, the poor, the ill, and the imprisoned.  In the story today, Ruth is an alien, widow, and poor.  She has come to Israel with her mother-in-law Naomi and they have survived on by gleaning in the fields of Boaz.  Some see this as a story of Boaz’s generosity and it is true he is kind to Ruth, but, by Jewish culture, Boaz owes Naomi and Ruth much more, he is their kinsman redeemer.  It is only when the marginalized Ruth uses her sexuality to prompt Boaz does he do what he was morally obligated to do when Naomi and Ruth returned to Israel.  We are like Boaz when we share with the marginalized out of our abundance and fail to recognize our real obligation to care for our sisters and brothers who cannot provide for themselves.  Real ministry to the marginalized occurs when we recognize their worth to God and our connection to them as children of God.  We are their kinsman redeemers.

The story of the widow’s might is also a story of a marginalized person, a widow with no apparent means of support.  She is recognized by Jesus as the one who has given her all, more than what the others have given.  For people who do not live at the margins, it is very difficult to understand why the widow would drop her last two coins into the temple treasury.  Surely Jesus wasn’t suggesting we should throw all we have into the collection plate.  It wouldn’t make any sense for everyone to just give all of their money to the church, it isn’t practical.  However, the marginalized widow realized she could not place her confidence in the coin of the realm.  Hanging onto those two last coins was not going to make or break her future.  She, like many marginalized people, realized her future was dependent upon the grace and mercy of God and God’s people.  She gave her future to God and did not trust in the symbols of the world.  Those of us who have sufficient resources to meet our basic daily needs find it difficult to surrender our futures to the grace and mercy of God.

There is much for us to learn from the faith and lives of the marginalized.  They very often live much closer to what they believe, they have determined what they can count on, and they have stretched themselves to survive in ways almost beyond our understanding.  To paraphrase Edwin Markham, the powerful drew a circle that shut the marginalized out, lazy, mentally impaired, criminal, heretic, different, a thing to flout, but God had the wit to win, God drew a circle that took the marginalized and the powerful in.”  Amen.

I like to eat; you do not achieve and maintain a body of this size without feeding it regularly.  There are very few food groups I don’t like.  I like restaurant food and I like my own cooking.  I like meals and I like snacks.  I even like crusts and crumbs.  But I do realize that not everything I eat is good for me.  Much as I like snacks and desserts, I know I cannot live a healthy life if they are all I eat.  I eat way too many snacks and part of why I eat so many snacks is because they are generally easy, they do not require a lot of time or effort to prepare.   Tearing open a bag of chips or popping a bag of corn doesn’t require any forethought or planning.  Living on the crusts of hearsay and the crumbs of rumor is the same.

Hearsay and rumor are the fast food snacks of communication.  Someone comes to us with a story of what is happening at work, at the bar, in the community, or at the church and we just eat it up right out of the bag.  We don’t have to take the trouble of checking with the sources of this tale, we don’t have to consider all the possible reasons this might be happening, we don’t have to wait while we think through the truth of the story or the possible impact of the story.  We just consume it and, like good social people we put the snack out for everyone else to share.  The same is true of a good rumor, we just pop it open and pass it around.  We don’t have to consider what went into making the rumor, it is like a communal flask, nobody really owns it or has control over it, everybody gets to experience the thrill of passing this rumor around to everybody else.  We don’t think about who has the right to share the rumor or the consequences of our passing it along.  If somebody gets hurt by the rumor, it isn’t our fault, we didn’t create the rumor, we just passed it along.  It is very much like after a party when somebody drives drunk and has an accident.  Nobody at the party feels responsible, after all they didn’t make the other drink, they just shared what they brought to the party with everyone else.  Hearsay and rumors are not healthy food for anyone and particularly not healthy for a congregation.

We have had the experience of being fed someone else’s hearsay.  We have had the experience of being like Bartimaeus, crying out for mercy and being told by others not to disturb God with our petitions.  If we believe their hearsay, we will go away despondent and believing we are outside of God’s love and healing grace.  Or, we can take the time to keep seeking to hear God say, “Come to me.  What can I do for you?”  The only way we will know what God desires to do for us is if we take time to feed ourselves on the word of God.  I am aware that many, maybe all of you wish we wouldn’t read all three texts from the lectionary each Sunday morning.  However, I ask that we read all three texts because I think there is value in our hearing the way God has revealed God’s self to us over time.  I use the texts as support that what I am saying in my reflection isn’t just hearsay, I have researched the story, I have allowed it to cook in my mind and soul, and I have asked the Spirit to season it so it is good food and not crusts or crumbs.  I choose The Message Bible paraphrase because I want us to hear the words in new ways so we will think about the stories in new ways.  It is like preparing a food we are very familiar with but changing up the ingredients a little bit.  We can fall in love with the stories all over again.

I can assure from my own experience, when I spend too much time with the snacks of hearsay and rumor, my soul becomes sick, my spirit becomes weary, and I lose sight of the wideness in God’s mercy.  Amen.

We have been talking about the value of direct dealing to create a healthier church.  The idea is one goes directly to the person they feel has wronged them and the one wounded uses “I” statements to tell the other the impact of their behavior on the one wounded.  Direct dealing facilitates conflicts being resolved before a number of people are drawn into the conflict.  The belief is that many conflicts that have the potential to splinter a congregation will be resolved by the people involved before others choose sides.  The first way direct dealing reduces conflict is by causing the wounded person to think about whether the action of the other is sufficiently severe to warrant speaking to them directly about it.  If it isn’t worth mentioning to the person who did it, it isn’t worth mentioning to anyone else.  Secondly, direct dealing permits the one who wounded to clarify their words or actions, and, if appropriate, make amends to the harm their words or actions caused.  The theory makes good sense and the practice has proved effective in reducing conflicts and splinter groups within a congregation.

I have been told by some people that they don’t think they want to hear what others think about their words or actions.  They don’t know what they are supposed to do with the information.  My first response to this concern is to suggest they consider the source.  If the person offering criticism is someone they admire and trust, then it would make sense to consider how to speak or behave differently and perhaps to seek a way to make amends.  If the person is someone unknown or someone whose opinions have proved faulty in the past, then you may want to take the criticism less seriously and use the information more to inform you about the person.  Someone offering a criticism of our speech or behavior does not require us to accept their opinion as fact, it is just their opinion.  Another response to criticism is to thank the person offering it for being willing to share their impression of what was said or done.  It can be seen as showing interest in us.  Receiving criticism from another may be an opportunity to learn more about ourselves and how we are perceived.  Responding to criticism in this way does not require us to accept the truth of the criticism.  We can use the criticism to have a better understanding of the impression we make on others and make decisions about whether we wish to change that impression.  There is no good reason to fear criticism as we cannot be required to accept another’s view of ourselves as our own.

However, hearing what God thinks of us is not so easily managed or dismissed.  I have often said I am looking for God to post the day’s agenda on my refrigerator each morning.  One of my colleagues responded that, if this happened to him, it would greatly improve his diet control.  I think he is probably right.  If I knew what God wanted me to do was posted on my refrigerator, I would go to my refrigerator much less frequently.  The rich person who came to Jesus wanting to know what he needed to do in order to be saved had followed the law from his birth but realized he was not right with God.  He asked Jesus what was expected of him and was disappointed when he got the answer.  I believe too much emphasis has been placed on this person’s wealth as his barrier to getting right with God.  I believe Jesus was saying we have to let go of those things we cling to too tightly.  It is the things we are hanging on to that will prevent us from passing through the eye of a needle.  The rich person doesn’t have to steal, or take another person’s spouse, or cheat, or lie because they can get what they want or need without doing those things.  The rich person can honor their father and mother because they have received much of what they have from their parents.  Such a person may believe God is lucky to have them seeking God rather than thinking they have need of God.  It may be our strength, our intellect, or our nationality that causes us to believe we have no need of God’s blessing.

The story of Job is about a person who had wealth, health, intelligence, and great political power and was beset by tragedies.  At first Job believes he has a case for arguing with God about how he has been treated.  Many of us who read Job want to argue about whether God, as we understand God, would permit all of these calamities to strike Job.  We want to hold God to our standard of what is fair.  God’s response is you don’t want me to treat you fair.  No one really wants God to give them what they deserve based on their words and behaviors.  We all want God’s mercy rather than God’s justice.  We want to hear God’s words of reassurance rather than God’s critique of how we are doing as a child of God.  If we apply the principles of direct dealing to our relationship with God, we should be more open to hearing God’s critique because God is a valued source who has been accurate in assessing behavior and consequences.  Even if it is hard for us to hear, we must be open to God’s words if we hope to live a life of meaning and worth, a life where we will hear, “Well done good and faithful servant” when we transition into God’s direct presence.  Amen.