Rosedale United Church

‘Hankie Not Included’                                                           September 27, 2009

                                                                                                Rosedale United Church

(James 5:13-15 , Mark 9:38-41, Numbers 11)             Doug Norris

 

 

A story to begin with.  It’s a stewardship story.   From a couple of weeks ago.   At the reception following a funeral here, a  man came up to speak with me.  He didn’t look familiar, but he did walk directly up to me and said he had a question for me.  He said he wanted to know if we have a lost and found.  But he had a twinkle in his eye, and before I could answer he said – never mind – but let me tell you a story… 

 

He told me that he had grown up here at this church, in the days of McGregor Grant, and could remember being sent to church as a wee lad with a nickel each Sunday for the collection plate.  I remembered my father telling me the same kind of story – only in his story he was sent with two nickels – one for collection and one to get into the hockey rink after church.  He liked to tell me about the one Sunday he lost a nickel and had the terrible quandary of trying to decide whether he had lost the church’s nickel or the hockey nickel…

 

Anyway, this man went on to tell me that one such Sunday he came to church with his nickel safely tied up in a handkerchief, and as the collection plate came around he found that he couldn’t get the knot untied – tried and tried and just as the plate got there knew what he had to do – put the hankie in, nickel and all.   And then, he  told me – he never saw the handkerchief again.

 

Now – this next thing I’m going to say may sound risky – but here’s what I saw.   I saw the pictures of all of my noble predecessors hanging in the corridor over there – and there is Bill Steadman in a jacket and tie, and Bob Wallace with the clergy collar – and then McGregor Grant – and you look at that picture and tell me if his ‘preaching tabs’ don’t  look a lot like a handkerchief carefully tucked into his collar…

 

Here’s the little thing I take out of his story – he had what looked to be a question of resources, finances – would his nickel get into the plate – and it turned out to be a matter not of finances but imagination.

 

Resources, and imagination – I’ll come back to that…

 

——–

 

Let me turn to another story.   I read just the first part of it a few minutes ago.   (And I almost hate to bring it up – it’s such an old story, a dusty story, it belongs to another people and another place).  The defining experience of the tribes of the Hebrews as they left slavery and oppression and laboured through a harsh wilderness on the slimmest of promises that some better land – the Promised Land – would be found for them and the only possible reason for us to still be interested in this ancient and perhaps even highly unlikely story is that it is actually a perennial story – one of the basic human stories, and when the taxi driver picks you up on Bay St and he is a clean cut articulate Iranian man in his 50’s who looks like a doctor  he may well be but he has left a place of oppression and he is driving his way through a wilderness on the slimmest of promises that some better land will be found, and when you climb onto the bus one day and you accidentally bump a woman ahead of you and she gives you an icy stare and she radiates anger and you are astonished that on such a nice day someone can be so mean and she may well have some other good days but she has just left a home that is abusive and violent and now she is putting one barely surviving foot in front of the other on her way through an urban wilderness on the slimmest of promises that some better place will be found, and when you see the colleague in your firm one day when they don’t know you are looking and this person has pretty much everything and is a senior partner and has a handsome husband and sweet kids and a house in the country but you see her and at that moment you understand that she is empty inside and all the everything has amounted to nothing and she is contemplating leaving a place where there is no life and entering a valley of wilderness on the slimmest of promises that some better day will come…

 

That’s why we still read  this story – because maybe it is your story, and it is most certainly one of your neighbours’ story…   And it is a stewardship story.   On our wilderness journey toward Shalom, will we have enough, to get through?

 

So I have read the first part already – you may recall I have described it as a drama in three acts :  The People Grumble,  Moses Crumbles,  God Fumbles.

 

This homeless tribe is wandering in the wilderness, desperately hungry and edgy.   Moses has no idea what to do – he is the whole G20 all in one and he has run out of ideas.  Says – ‘God, I can’t carry this people – I didn’t plan this – I can’t feed them – if this is your idea of liberating us, just shoot me now…  I’m done…’   This is not a story that starts out cheerful.

 

Let me pick up the story in Numbers, chapter 11 – God’s response :

 

“So the Lord said to Moses :  Gather for me seventy of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the wise elders and the respected leaders – bring them to the tent of meeting and have them take their place there with you.  So Moses went out and he gathered seventy elders of the people and he placed them all around the tent.”  (vv 16,24)

 

Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him and took some of the spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders; and when the spirit rested on them they prophesied…” (v 25)

 

And I am baffled by this.  If I took the Bible literally it would a very confusing story.  As it is I don’t get why God would respond to a hungry people with a show of religious fervour, but no food.

 

Now this is a setting we can recognise – the General Council has gathered.  Seventy elders in a tent.  If this were a United Church gathering, here’s how it would have gone.

 

We would have put the seventy elders in Table-Groups of 6 or 8 because nothing in the United Church happens if we are not in Table Groups of 6 or 8.  Everybody would share their feelings about being hungry and homeless and then we would have formed a Task Group.   The Wilderness Hardship Farming Feasibility Task Group.   (WHIFF)  And before the meeting had ended some small group would also have formed a co-operative to market Fair Trade Manna.   It’s how we do things.  We know how to organize for fixing hunger.

 

Of course that’s not how it rolls out.  In fact the way it rolls out looks a lot to me like the way the Pentecostal Church might have organised it.  The people were hungry and what they got was a religious show.    And I say this not  to mock anyone – that’s the only other church I’ve ever been part of, and they see things differently.

 

If the United Church errs on the side of a very human and managerial approach to fixing the world – it has been called doing the work of the gospel without the power of the Spirit, then the Pentecostal Church errs to the other side – a vivid and dramatic experience of the presence of God – ecstasy and speaking in tongues – but not always getting down to where the people are hungry.

 

Here’s the thing.  At least, here’s what I get.

 

What seemed to be a question of resources may in fact have been a question of spirit.   Moses put it bluntly – if you’re not with us God we may as well just die out here in the wilderness.  We thought we were going somewhere new.  A new and hopeful community – a light for the nations…

 

 What appears to us to be a managerial, stewardship question of securing pledges to undertake the next year of our work may actually be the question of conviction and shared vision.  Where are we headed together?  Toward what

 

Our pressing work right now may not in fact be the question of resources but of imagination.    Mike and the Finance team have put together a careful case for why we hope you’ll put your nickel on the plate – but what we really want is the whole hankie.

 

By which I mean don’t carve off some money and send it in – (well, do that, but don’t just do that) –  wrap yourself around your gifts and bring your experience of the presence of God  – bring your experience of the wilderness, and your delights and fears.   And out of all of this we will find our way.

 

Here’s one of the things I see, one of the things that will require our imagination.

 

   There is a whole generation out there – let’s say from their 20’s and into their 30’s and 40’s, and we have largely stopped bringing them food.  And many of them are famished in spirit, even to the point of deep despair, and some are dying and some are grieving – and for all of our best intentions and finest practices, we are barely if at all on the radar for where they might turn to find life.    And we ought to be profoundly eager to understand the nature of your journeys and the shape of your wildernesses and the foods that bring you delight.

 

And it will take not only our money but our deep spiritual imagination to see what we will next be.    To do the things we believe we are here to do : to build community, to nurture the spirit, to honour the past, and to build a better future.

 

One more step along the world we go…