Change

anxiety squeezes your mind

Here’s a reflection on Covid-19, change, and uncertainty.

When we are anxious or worried our mind is squeezed into a tighter and more narrow view of ourselves and the world. It’s not a comforting hug. It’s a death grip.

You may be feeling squeezed right now by a constant barrage of information and uncertainty. Such anxiety squeezes God out.

Jesus spoke to a crowd of folks who were used to being squeezed by anxiety. He knew he was speaking to many who counted on each day’s work and each day’s decisions in order to make it into the next. The poor make multitudes of decisions everyday, asking themselves questions designed for survival. They are constantly working out opportunity cost. This is how scarcity works.

If I buy this I won’t be able to purchase that.
If I buy this will I have enough at the end of the month?
If I don’t buy this who in my family will miss it?
If we don’t get enough work in this day,
what else will we have to miss out on?
If I don’t get this now it won’t be here for me latter.
What’s going to make me feel better?

The answer to that last question is so important.
When anxiety runs deep it makes all of us poor.

Some of us have become masters of managing scarcity in order to make aspects of our lives work. Students are masters of this with time and their own energy. However, as I also discovered, students are masters of scarcity until they are not! We cannot be in control of everything all the time!

Jesus offers another way through His presence and the promise of His peace. To the anxious His words must have sounded outrageous.

Matthew 6:24-34, NIV

24 “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.


Jesus is brilliant.

Jesus knows that when we worry we have settled for a different master than our Heavenly Father. He knows that when we worry we have set our hearts and the issue of our security on other matters. He knows that when we worry we can settle for shortsighted acts of unrighteousness (like hoarding) in order to secure the future for ourselves. He knows that when we worry we are not able to see the opportunity of His Kingdom in each and every day.

Ugh! I write this with compassion for you and for me.

When the world worries are we going to act with love?
When the world worries are we going to live open to Jesus and His Kingdom?
When the world worries will we make adjustments with them and find the opportunity in this moment to love?

You and I can love by taking the advisable precautions.
You and I can love by reaching out to another and listening.
You and I can love by sharing resources from what we have.
You and I can love by praying with another and setting our hearts and lives together before our Heavenly Father.
You and I can love by reading the Word of God together.
You and I can love by setting our hope on Jesus.

The danger before us is not just a matter of what we run out of. The danger before us is a matter of believing we are alone.

Pause. Watch a bird. Look at flower. Locate yourself in this world.

Pray. Enter the embrace of God in His communion — The communion of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Locate yourself in His Communion.

Pastor. Reach out to someone else and invite them into the realities of Jesus’ Kingdom with you. Locate yourself in relation with others.

Prayer of the People, 29 December 2019

Heavenly Father,

We are grateful for the grace that has brought us into your communion — the communion of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Glory to your name forever and ever.
You created us and gave us the breath of life.
You redeemed us from the ravages of sin and death through the Cross of your Son.
You have filled us with your Holy Spirit and keep pouring your love into our lives.
We cry out to you — Abba Father!

Thank you for your care for us in this past year.
You have given us wisdom when we didn’t know what to do.
You have brought strength when we felt so weak.
You have been our comfort when we felt alone in our grief.
You have provided what we needed when we did not know how our needs would be met.
You have disciplined us when we went astray.
You have sent friends to give us a word of encouragement or correction.
You have sourced love, joy, and peace through your Holy Spirit. 

In the world’s leaders we hear and see a pattern of domination. Lord, help us to choose humility and service in how we relate to all people just as Jesus did.

In the student movements and protests, we hear a cry for justice. Lord, show us specific ways this week we can act justly and live mercy for our neighbours.

In the cry of the poor, we hear indictment at our ease and greed. Lord, we want to live in a way that stores up riches in Heaven. 

While we look back on 2019, with the best photos of this and that, the best and worst moments being paraded out, we acknowledge how You are our best.  You are the one who knits together s our lives. Help us see Your hand in how this last year unfolded, and more importantly help us look to You to set how 2020 will unfold. We want to abide in You, to love others, and to pursue righteousness. 

We seek Your face.
In Jesus’ Name 

Please join me in the Lord’s Prayer.

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one;
for yours is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory, 
forever. 
Amen.

Prepared by Craig & Ellen O’Brien

Prayer of the People, 22 December 2019

Heavenly Father,

You are in control — in control of the light, of the night, and of our lives.

We turn to You for peace this season, for comfort, and for joy. We enter by your grace into your communion — the communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Help us immerse our thinking in Your humility, Your love, Your wisdom, Your truth, Your wellness.  During this season, we are busy with festivities. And then sometimes we pause to look back over our year with you. We catch glimpses of the wellness of soul that You have made possible. Thank you for the many good promises you have fulfilled for us. It is well with our souls!


Give us courage to approach You and to fully live into the salvation You bring to us this season.

We need Your light and Your revelation. We ask for the light of Jesus to be cast on the dark places in us as individuals and in our community. Shine Your powerful, purifying presence and light

  • In India. Shine your wisdom in the hearts of students. Give lasting hope to Muslim immigrants facing the loss of security and home.
  • Shine along the US Mexico border. Bring justice and hope to those seeking a new life.
  • Shine in the hearts of those dispersed by oppression and violence all around the world that they may know their true worth in your eyes.
  • Shine in our hearts to drive out the spirit of domination that would crush another person and refuse them the dignity of your creation.

We bow to Your sovereign will and trust Your goodness to redeem what seems lost.

When we sing “Joy to the World”  we make that our prayer, so you can bring Your eternal joy into every sphere of our lives.  You are our strength and our Joy.

In Jesus’ Name.

Please join me in praying the Lord’s prayer

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one;
for yours is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory, 
forever. 
Amen.

Whispers Seem Louder In Dark Alleys

“Because this people has rejected the gently flowing waters of Shiloah…”
                                                                                                   Isaiah 8:6

Send me to the gentle flowing waters of Shiloah.
I would flee these tall halls reeking of despair,
where men move like ghastly shadows
and women are chased by whispers in the air.

O, the normal people with eyes that do not see.
They ascend in cages to empty rooms
but are no better — hearts without space for keys
and glassy views staring back with gloom.

Anxiety stalks us equally no matter the hour.
No enemies are required for this disease.
We yearn for an eternal healing flower,
yet no peace is found in a lonely ease.

Whispers seem louder in dark alleys.
Send me to the gentle flowing waters of Shiloah
and I will consider your grace in all my valleys.
I will drink deeply of your spring, Yeshua.

Thanksgiving as my culture

We the people by Danh Vo on display at the Guggenheim

It’s Thanksgiving in America. I am thank full. I’ve been celebrating Thanksgiving twice each year now for 25 years. My Canadian day comes in October and the American day comes — well today in November. That’s half my life, yet I still miss the way life is organized around this holiday in November — in America. At least I miss how it was organized in my family.

I realize that in 25 years even Thanksgiving in America has changed. The anticipation of shopping on Friday after Thanksgiving has given way to a whole week of ads and sales meant to agitate us because we are missing out, or there are new gadgets we really need, or our stuff is wearing out, and the special persons in our family need to know they are special to us and that is only possible if we buy them something — a lot of things. It’s not Thanksgiving in Canada, but this script is the cultural language of this very week in November!


So now I find myself asking, how do we make this week a genuine set of holy days?

Reckoning

I find the mythology of Thanksgiving to be insufficient for the demands we experience today to reckon with history as it’s told to children and to reconcile with peoples whose ancestors experienced the rush to occupy the land by whatever means. As hopeful as some settlers may been that settling could be a peaceful endeavour, their venture was often prepared through some kind of violence.


I don’t bring this up to generate guilt. Rather I bring up the rough centre of our history so as to generate humility and mercy.

The wealth enjoyed today came at someone’s expense. Not only did someone work hard, but someone else may have been displaced or denied an opportunity. The belief that we are each a self-made people is fundamentally flawed. Our economy has a context. For there is in our enjoyment of liberty in America (and in Canada) an idealism formed of complex thought and fundamental views of human rights. The ideals have many sources and can be traced to indigenous people in North America, to British and European philosophical streams, to the tradition of decision-making councils of North Africa and to biblical ideas extending back to Jesus and then to Israel. Yet, this idealism is fragile; it can be overtaken by blindspots, and it may even be dismantled. Our ideals have been selectively applied. If we are to name the blindspots one of them would be hubris.


When hubris and amnesia runs it course justice gives way to dehumanizing language and then oppression, slavery, and exclusion. Thanksgiving days have become for me an inescapable marker for hubris and selective amnesia and a counter play: the deliberate and desperate attempt to treasure what is more important in our relationships to God, to self, to people, and to the stuff of earth. These plays take shape as reckoning, receiving, repenting and remembering. And then hopefully rejoicing.

Receiving

Last night at a birthday celebration for one of my children we reviewed the gift that is in each person’s name. Two of my children have names that are derived from Micah. The question generated in the name “Micah” is “Who is like God?” The question is meant to generate humility and an attentiveness to God’s call by a people who historically had journeyed from a place of enslavement to a place of liberation:

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6:8

Early in the history of Israel God warned them of the deathtrap created by hubris and its accompanying amnesia. In Deuteronomy he says, “When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the LORD your God for the good land he has given you. Be careful that you do not forget the LORD you God… Otherwise when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your hearts and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. He led you… He brought you… He gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never known, to humble and test you so that in the end it might go well with you. You may say to yourself, ‘My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.’ But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth…” (Deuteronomy 8:10-18)

Repenting

Hubris is a terrible burden. It has many sources. One of its sources is greed. Some in our congregation were recently surprised by the power of four words, “greed which is idolatry.” Writing to the church in Colossae, The Apostle Paul assigned greed as one of the powers of our earthly nature that we must put to death, otherwise it will dominate our lives (Colossians 3:5). One of my friends was stunned by connection of greed with idolatry. But that’s how it is — our hearts will follow our treasure and our treasures will define our hearts. Our relationship to the stuff of earth is fundamentally a question of worship. It has been noted by others that you know some thing is an idol the moment someone tries to take it from you and you feel crushed at the core of your person. Such idolatry leads to the death of justice.

Sadly our histories and therefore many of our collective holidays are shaped by greed and by hubris. When holidays are shaped like that humility and mercy and then justice will slip away. Let’s redeem the holy days.

Remembering

Perhaps a good way to start is the very way we see Jesus dealing with the temptation to meet the desires of his body with a self-directed act of power. You may recall Jesus was compelled by the Spirit of God to go from His baptism in the Jordan to meet with God in the wilderness. After a long season of fasting and prayer we get to listen in on the devil’s temptation, “If you are the Son of God tell these stones to become bread.” Jesus defeats the devil by recalling the work of God in the wilderness, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:3-4). What has Jesus done? He has remembered.

The context for Jesus’ quotation of Scripture is Deuteronomy. He recalls the call Moses gave to the people of Israel to remember God when they are no longer pilgrims but have become settlers. The call goes this way:

“Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.” Deuteronomy 8:2-3

Three questions to evaluate our memory

Thanks giving requires remembering.
Who are we remembering?
Who are we forgetting?
Does humility and mercy and then justice flow from our thanks giving into our relationships?

And then comes rejoicing.


Notes on the picture: For more on Danh Vo’s work, We The People, read his story in the notes provided by The Guggenheim.