“Moving on, but not quitting”

Text: Acts 1:6-14 & John 17:1-11 Ascension Sunday, May 4, 2008

Written and Preached by Rev. James Murray, Montreal West United Church

I must confess I am suffering from mixed emotions right now. On the one hand, I am sad that our nine year relationship will soon be drawing to a close. On the other hand, I am excited that my wife and I will soon be living in the same house.

While it is sad to see this relationship come to a conclusion, I think there is much to be thankful for. So I'd like to be clear. I am moving on, but I'm not quitting. We've had nine very productive years together. We've accomplished a lot of good here. This congregation is in healthy shape. Other ministers have already started sniffing around, wondering when they can submit their resumes.

The reason I am leaving is so I can be with my wife. Christine is also a minister, and last fall she took a call to Glebe- St. James United in downtown Ottawa. We've been doing the long-distance love affair ever since. And since it was my turn to follow, I've had to keep my eyes open for something in the Ottawa region. I had hoped to be with you for another year or two, but when this opportunity arose, I did feel called to take it. It was my turn to follow, because Christine followed me here to Montreal. When I was offered this position, she gave up her church and moved here, hoping she would soon get a church of her own. She was fortunate to have seven very good years with Roxboro. After she finished her doctorate, she was ready for a new challenge. And she has found it in Ottawa. This will mean some changes for our family. Our eldest son Nathan will stay on here in Montreal. He is in his second year at Concordia University and already has his own apartment. Our twin sons Peter & Scott will be making the move with us, and they hope to attend university in Ottawa. I will be taking up responsibilities at Dominion-Chalmers , which is a large church a few blocks from Parliament Hill.

For a minister to leave a congregation like this can best be compared to breaking up with a girlfriend you are still in love with. Together we have made this building more physically accessible. We have reached out into the community with our outreach. We have opened up our worship service making it more family friendly. We've laughed and cried together. We have shared our lives and our faith together. We've been living out our motto, which is Open Hearts – Open Minds – Open Doors. There are still more challenges which you can pursue, and I wish you well with them. For I am only moving on. I'm not quitting, and neither should you.

Speaking of not quitting, what do you think of the Montreal Canadiens? The Habs have become the most unlikely of heroes this year. No one thought they would do very well. Yet they finished the regular season in first place. They have been struggling in the second round of the playoffs, but they have not quit. Kovalev and Koivu are both trying to inspire their team, so they can rally back. It has been interesting to watch how Habs fever has been spreading across the city. My sons gave me this sweater for my birthday. The spirit of the bleu-blanc-rouge is growing.

So why is it we feel completely comfortable talking with complete strangers about how the Habs are doing, but we feel terribly uncomfortable talking about Jesus with people we know and love? Which is the religion we passionately live by, and which is the pleasant diversion we are entertained by?

The first disciples learned everything they knew from Jesus. Once they did not have Jesus around any more, they had to learn how to do things for themselves. And Jesus had told them that they would be able to do everything he had done. So they realized they had to learn how to do it for themselves. They looked back, and realized God had been sending them teachers and guides for a very long time. God had sent Abraham to find a new home, so he could be a blessing to all the peoples of the world. God had sent Moses to set the people free from slavery. God had sent John the Baptist to prepare the way for the messiah. God had sent Jesus to show the way to salvation. And now God was sending the disciples into the world, to show others what Jesus Christ had revealed by his life, his death, and his resurrection. God sent each of them, so they could be a blessing. By all they said and did, they were to be a blessing which reveals God's love for this world. They all received the power of God , to be his witnesses. They were all to live out the mission of the church.

Mission is something we talk a lot about in the church these days, mostly because we are not all exactly sure what our mission is supposed to be. We have come to realize that being a nice friendly welcoming community is not our primary mission- we are a community which exists for a purpose. But what purpose? We have come to realize we don't exist simply so community groups can have an inexpensive place to meet. That is not our primary mission.

Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that Mission is not something the church does. Mission is an attribute of God. Our God is a missionary God. The German theologian Jurgen Moltmann once said "It is not the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfill in the world; it is the mission of the Son and

the Spirit through the Father to save the world, and that mission includes the church." The church exists because there is this mission. The church didn't create this mission- we've just been invited to be a part of it. Our calling is to share in the mission of God. Since the dawn of time, God has been working to create, to redeem, to liberate, to heal, to inspire, to forgive, to transform this life. God has been blessing this world since the day it was created. This world was created to be a blessing. God has been sending us prophets and teachers and leaders and saints to make us aware of this blessing. And now God wants to send you. God wants to use your life to share this blessing.

Michael Frost is a Baptist teacher from Australia. Frost is the Founding Director of the Centre for Evangelism & Global Mission, a mission study centre located at Morling College in Sydney, Australia. Michael Frost developed a simple system to help people reflect on how well they are responding to God's call to their lives. It involves five simple questions we are to ask of ourselves and our fellow Christians every week.

BLESSING: Who have you blessed this week through your words or your actions? Who blessed you? What learning, encouragement or concerns were raised by this blessing?
EATING: With whom have you eaten this week? To get to know someone requires us to spend time together. To eat together is a way to let someone into your life.
LISTENING: Have you heard or sensed any promptings from God this week?
LEARNING: What passages of Scripture have encouraged you? What other books, media or resources have enriched your growth as a Christian this week?
SENDING: In what ways have you sensed yourself carrying on the work of God in your daily life this week? Where is God sending you?

Blessing. Eating. Listening. Learning. Sending. B.E.L.L.S. Bells. What are the Bells calling out to you?

Come the end of August, I know where God is sending me. I'm moving on. I don't know what all is in store for me in my next assignment, but I know that whatever I end up doing, it will be part of

God's mission. While I am going to be moving to a new location, you will be moving on to a new stage of your lives as individuals and as a congregation. It will require a lot of blessing, eating together, listening to one another, learning about each other, in order to discern where God is sending you. For you too are moving on. You are moving on into God's future as part of God's mission for this community. May God bless you on this journey. Amen.

“No what without a why”

Text : John 10:1-10, Acts 2 :42-47
Written and preached by Rev. James Murray at Montreal West United Church, April 13, 2008

There's been a bit of a tempest brewing in the United Church of Canada over the past month. Just before Easter, a United Church minister, the Reverend Gretta Vosper released her first book which is called “With or Without God” The release of this book has been talked about in the Globe & Mail, MacLeans magazine, on CBC radio, and even in the United Church Observer. Reverend Vosper's book follows the old maxim that controversy sells.

In her book, Vosper says “In order to explore the concept of God, we need to open ourselves to all kinds of possibilities, such as God being light, or there being no God at all.” She believes any concept or teaching of the Christian church which has outlived its usefulness should be jettisoned. Vosper also claims that clergy have not been sharing the discoveries of Biblical Scholarship and faith development with their congregations.

Gretta Vosper was a classmate of mine at Queen's Theological College twenty years ago. I have some problems with what she is saying. For starters, as a denomination we've been working with this new scholarship since we introduced “The New Curriculum” in 1966. And I hope that my preaching and teaching over the years has opened your hearts to the possibility that most of our concepts and teachings of the Christian church, including the concept of God, still has great meaning and power for our lives here today.

Vosper's complaints are not new. They were first made in 1963 by the Anglican bishop John Robinson in his landmark book “Honest to God”. The book “Honest to God” did help many to hear more about what was going on than ever before. During the 1990's as American fundamentalism was pushing for a closing of the religious mind, the American bishop John Spong echoed much of Robinson's thoughts in his books. The forward to Vosper's book is written by John Spong. I have ordered her book , and I will be reading it in the coming weeks, just to see if there is anything new and worthwhile in what she says.

Much has changed in the half century since Bishop Robinson's famous book. We have learned to share what is going on in religious studies. Congregations are better informed than in any time in history. We have also learned there is more than one way to relate our Christian faith to our culture.

Vosper is simply the latest liberal to seek to make the gospel message credible to the modern world. She is not the first or last to ask that those things which are no longer believable to the modern mind, are to be jettisoned. This isn't new. Most of us were taught to not take the miracles of Jesus literally. Unfortunately, we spent so much time explaining how it could not have happened the way it is recorded in scripture, we forgot to ask what it means for the Bible to say that such miracles occurred.

What does it mean to say that Jesus walked on water or fed five thousand people? We have let the modern world determine the questions we ask of the scriptures, and we have forgotten to ask what the Bible is asking of us.

The Bible is telling us a story, which it hopes, will make us believe in God. And not just believe in God. It wants us to join a great adventure, a way of living. It wants us to live in the world, based on the truths that have been revealed to us in the life, the teachings, the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

About twenty years ago, two liberal theologians felt we were shooting ourselves in the foot every time we tried to pare back Christianity, making it conform to the scientific modern world. Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon felt we were selling the Church short when we tried to accommodate Christianity so it would easily co-exist with the world around us. Hauerwas and Willimon say “Each age must come, fresh and new, to the realization that God, and not nations, rules the world. We cannot know this by accommodating ourselves to the world. We can only know this by conversion. We cannot understand the world as it really is, until we are transformed into persons who can use the language of faith to describe the world as it really is. Everyone does not know what we mean when we speak of prayer. Everyone does not know how to look at their own life critically enough to recognize sin. Everyone does not know what liberation, forgiveness, healing and reconciliation are. We must be transformed, over time, by the experience of a God who is righteous and just, who judges us on the basis of something far more significant than what feels right for us.”

The full title of Vosper's book is With or Without God -Why the Way We Live is More Important than What We Believe”. I believe you can't have a 'why we live the way we do' , without having a 'what do we believe' to justify it. In order to do the right thing, you need to know what is right. You can't have an ethical way of life which isn't based on some concept or experience of what is true, right and good.

Hauerwas and Willimon say “That which makes the church radical and forever new, is not that the church tends to lean towards the left (or right) on social issues, but rather that the church knows Jesus , whereas the world does not.” We should be no more allied with the left than the right. Our calling is to look at this world through Jesus' eyes.

God is not an intellectual concept we are to evaluate. God is an experience we are to have a relationship with. Our task is not to be a social service agency or a country club. We are to be a school which teaches people that God's ways are not our ways. God is not some distant deity who created the world and then left us alone. The Bible is a record which shows that God doesn't want to leave us to our own devices. God seeks to be a part of every moment of our lives.

We are called to be a school of virtue, a training camp for discipleship. We are part of a community which began long before we arrived on the scene, and it will be continuing long after we are gone. Salvation is much more than just what God can do for me. The story of salvation began without us, long ago and far away. God has been at work redeeming this world for a very long time. We are invited to be a part of the story. Our faithfulness is our participating in the story, as we live God's ways. As we practice the gifts of hope, peace , joy and love. We put ourselves into the story every time we offer hospitality to the stranger, or when we are reconciled with the prodigals in our lives.

The early disciples showed what such a life could look like. They broke bread together. They shared what they had with all who were in need. They prayed together. They felt the risen Christ was with them. And we can just sense the electricity they felt as they lived this purpose-filled life together. They were part of God's story, and amazing signs and wonders were happening, which confirmed for them how important all of this was.

When we see ourselves as part of the story of faith, the different parts start to make sense.
Why does Jesus perform miracles? So we will be open to unexpected possibilities for our lives.
Why did Jesus feed five thousand people? So we will trust in God to provide.
Why did Jesus walk on the water? Because with God nothing is impossible.
The gospel story is simple enough that a child can understand it,
and it is challenging enough to amaze you , your whole life long.

Like the character of Alice, you will have to find your way through the looking glass, so you can enter in. In order to feel a part of such a story, you will have to ask questions. You will need to seek, to study, to grow. You will need to be open to new possibilities you hadn't considered before. There is a reason doubting Thomas is part of the story. We are all encouraged to seek and to question. Some parts of the story may not work for you. Some part may not be meaningful. Just because we don' t understand them all right now, does not mean we should throw them out forever.

When I started in ministry, I had a hard time figuring out Saint Paul. He came across as being very anti-women, and very judgmental. Paul had often been used to give the definitive answer as to explain what the gospels meant. I didn't preach on his letters until I could understand his words in a helpful way. Part of my breakthrough came when I realized Paul was written first, and the gospels came second. The gospels are commenting on Paul, and not the other way round. That helped me to place Paul's teaching. It also helped me when I read through his letters in chronological order, so I could see how his thought develops over time. The Bible has them in order from the longest to the shortest, so there is no consistency in their message, which makes him very hard to follow. It takes time and effort to get things like that sorted out so they can make sense.

Next month marks the nineteenth anniversary of my ordination. And I'm still growing in my understanding of what God is doing and what all of this can mean for us. God isn't finished with me yet, and God isn't finished with you either.

Jesus our Good shepherd is calling us.
He is inviting us to join him in this great adventure we call faith.
He is inviting us to be shaped by this story of salvation.
He wants the story of God in the world to become the story of your life.
Our shepherd is calling- he is calling your name.

Resources:

Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon – Resident Aliens, Abingdon Press 1989
Gretta Vosper, With or without God. HarperCollins 2008.
John Robinson, Honest To God, SCM Press 1963
John Spong, Why Christianity must change or die. HarperSanFranciso 1998