Gen. 1:26-31; Luke 15: 8-10                            We Sing of God                                E/DC/GR                April 15/07

1. E/GR What do we believe?  There are stereotypes and jokes about every faith.  As the United Church, I think the most frequent jibe is that “You don’t have to believe anything to belong to the United Church!”  The truth in it is that you don’t have to believe like me, or the moderator, or your neighbour beside you to belong.  But you have to believe.  Believe that you have the God - given ability to wrestle with God about what you believe and experience and know about God, and how you will act on it.  You dare believe you will not be excluded if your beliefs are different.  You will not be cut off if your actions turn away from God and what you believe for a time.  And you can come back!   Perhaps it’s at least as difficult to believe in this way.

1. This summer our General Council, people like you and me, reviewed and accepted a new creed for the United Church.  A creed that the Theology and Faith committee of the church had been working on for eight years, after consulting with congregations like ours across Canada.  It’s a nine-page document, so we won’t be saying the whole creed every week!  For good reasons it’s called a song of faith.  In poetic form it invites us further into the dance of faith, to take words and phrases of our 21^st century that connect with our questions and struggles, and make our faith even more relevant and life giving.

1. We begin: God is Holy Mystery, beyond complete knowledge, above perfect description.  Holy wisdom, love, strength, to whom we come for healing and wholeness.  Mystery so we still have some awe in life, and the humility to prevent us from being prideful that we have the only answer.  That we alone know the only path to God.  But holiness, mystery, does not mean distant or uninterested.

1. In fact the one eternal God seeks relationship, in love.  Our Bible witnesses to God’s yearning for relationship in order to be whole.  In fact all of God’s children are so beloved that the march of eternity cannot go on without each one.  Our scripture from Luke is the middle of three of the same parables or truths.  God will seek out the lost sheep, coin, and son ceaselessly till they are found.  And then rejoices wildly and with abundance when the lost is found.

1. We sing of God, Creator.  As another creed words it, God has created and is creating.  The scripture from Genesis shows God creating, and delighting in creation.  With each day of creation, God sees that it is good.  When God sees humanity, the Hebrew word is much more like “hot diggity dog!”  And immediately comes a caution about how we are to care for the earth and other creatures.  If we were faithful to the meaning of the Hebrew in our translations we would have read since King James, that we were to fill the earth and nurture it; and take good care of every living thing that moves upon the earth.  Quite a different image and result than subduing the earth and having dominion over every living thing.  You can’t pick up a paper or turn on the TV, without hearing of the importance others are now recognizing in our need to care for the world God has made.  To nurture and take good care of it. 

1. I hear people on the charge asking what can we do?  That’s the first important step.  Maybe that’s a conversation we can have as a church, to brainstorm ideas for this rural context.  Eating what grows near by.  Something our parents took for granted.  Now necessary to save the cost, pollution and fuel of transporting it.  Conserving the amount of water we use.  Considering the effect on communities if we take their water or resources for our insatiable appetite for growth, vehicles and electricity.  Using vehicles less.  Cutting back on processed food and therefore packaging and garbage.  Being discerning when you’re reading or listening to opposing views.  Asking yourself who benefits by and who pays for that particular view.  We are called to work with God as co-creators, no matter how insignificant our efforts seem to us, mending an aching world.

1. God yearns to mend our aching hearts as well.  A young man poured out his soul to a friend.  It seemed like he was continually being knocked down with the difficulties of life.  It was as though someone was messing with him.  He needed to wrestle with was God causing his pain?  Or with him in the darkness to help him with the changes needed, and living with what couldn’t be changed in his life.  Paul writes, “God works all things for good.”  Never to cause the chaos.  But bringing good out of even the most horrendous tragedy or loss, when we open ourselves to work with God.

1. Interesting, isn’t it, that in spite of God’s great yearning to be in relationship with us, to mend all that is broken, we turn away.  Sin.  We’re made to enjoy right and just relationship with family, friends, those we work with, fellow creatures, the planet and God.  But for so many reasons and excuses, we don’t get it right.  We turn away from the path to wholeness.  We loose the perspective of the creator.  We sin.  And no matter how hard we try to deny it, we recognize it is our choice. And our choice to repent, to turn back to God.  And sin we recognize, “is not only personal, but accumulates to become habitual and systemic forms of injustice, violence and hatred.”[i]    It’s hard to imagine the most dangerous of our corporate sins in Song of Faith.  Concentration of wealth and power, religious and ethnic bigotry, selfish individualism, or unchecked progress and limitless growth.  But perhaps it is the despair that lulls us into numb complicity with systems of domination.  In Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland, the world does not end with biological or nuclear war, but by people who fall asleep and let the world spin into chaos.

1. We could be overwhelmed by guilt, but that’s a useless waste of time after the initial few seconds to let us know there’s a problem!  A cheap substitute for faithful action.  Evil does not, cannot, undermine or overcome the love of God.  God forgives, reconciles and transforms.  This is grace.  God’s free gift that cannot be earned.  The scripture from Luke about God’s grace and forgiveness - sheep or son or coins is all about the miracle of God’s forgiveness.  “Grace keeps waking us up to our sin.  Grace also wakes us up to a new and faithful way of being in the world.”[ii]  Faithful because it is the way of God.  The way we too are called to live.  Dr. Anthony Bailey, a UC minister in Toronto tells of his struggle to deal with the racist attack in Montreal that he survived, though his brother died in his arms.  How could he deal with those who tried to kill him because of the colour of his skin?  With the help of friends and community he came to realize that he regularly receives God’s gift of grace, love and forgiveness for his wrongs.  Therefore he is constrained to offer forgiveness to others.  Even if they’re not contrite, or have not asked for it.  It is a gift, he says, we give, irrespective of the one who perpetrated it because the alternative is to host fermenting bitterness and rage that could be a cancer in my life.  It began as an act of obedience, and became a gift of insight and grace.[iii] 

1. Because we have received this gift of grace, we dare to hope in God.  We sing of a life beyond life, a future good beyond imagining.  Have you ever wondered what Jesus expected after his pain and suffering and death?  God.  He likely expected God.  We can’t count on any of the other trappings of people’s imaginations.  But we can count on God being present.  And Jesus was very clear in his life on earth that we count on life after life, while at the same time participating in eternal life now.  New life coming out of loss of careers, congregations, dreams, friendships, loved ones, marriages.  We see eternal life in the guest of honour, snoozing through her 102^nd birthday party until the touch and smell and sound of a baby brings her to full alertness.  Life coming and going.  Eternal.  Eternal life in those moments when we love our enemies, care for the earth, and dare to choose life.  Let us choose life.  Care for our gardens and our grandchildren.  Do random acts of kindness for the joy of it.  Laugh out loud.  Play with our friends.  Write to newspapers and go in marches. Work in elections and plant trees.  Join together for worship to pray, sing, hear the gospel and visit. 

1. We gather together to sing of our faith.  We come grateful for the faith we are receiving.  Open to continue to grow in that faith. 

Grateful for God’s loving action,

we cannot keep from singing. 

Creating and seeking relationship,

in awe and trust,

we witness to Holy Mystery who is Wholly and completely Love.  Amen.