Rev. Susan Lukey

Passage: Romans 12:1-2 & Romans 12:9-18    

  Description: When you walked into the sanctuary this morning, what was your focus? Were you noticing the decorations or the people who were already present? Were you thinking about what you need to do in worship or later today or who you might need to talk to before you leave the building? I’m wondering if any of us, myself included, were thinking about presenting ourselves to God. I wonder if any of us were seeing ourselves as moving into the presence of God, onto holy ground. As the apostle Paul puts in in the letter to Romans, were we presenting ourselves as a living sacrifice, a holy offering, and a precious people? I’m not asking this to create guilt or point out failure. Rather, I’m inviting us to consider how we approach worship and our faith. In some faith traditions, you would take off your shoes as you enter the sacred space, an action that profoundly marks the transition into being in the holy presence. In some Christian traditions, you would pause, cross yourself, and bend the knee, showing honour and reminding yourself that you are on holy ground. In some churches, the organ or piano is playing as you enter (something we have found hard to do with the choir having a practice just before worship). The music signals the transition and acts as a reminder to settle into the presence of God. Now, we believe that God is with us everywhere, but this is a particular, special, holy place in which we intentionally come into God’s presence. I think that we all have a sense of the sacredness of this space, a sacredness created by the generations of those who have worshipped here. Each of us have our expectations and ideas about how this space should be treated and how we should act in this space. It jars us when someone does something we don’t see as fitting in this place, though we may have different ideas about just what is appropriate or not appropriate. For example, a few years ago, I came into the sanctuary for a wedding rehearsal, and found the bridal party sitting on the communion table. My gasp, I hope, was inaudible. But then I realized that no one in this group understood the meaning the table holds for those of us who gather around it to share in the gift of the Lord’s Supper. So I took a moment to ask them not to sit on the table and to explain that it was sacred and special to the congregation. Then, we went on with rehearsal. Sacred. Holy. Blessing. Sacrifice. Offering. Worship. Salvation. Confession. These are words connected with this space in which we gather. They are words which also hold special meaning for us, words that hold less meaning, different meaning, or perhaps no meaning in the broader secular culture. I read an article this week that talked about the decline in religious language. It wouldn’t surprise most of us that conversations that touch on faith and spiritual matters are becoming more rare. A recent survey, by the Barna Group in the United States, showed that 75% of people do not have or only rarely have what they consider spiritual conversations, and that includes all those who name themselves as committed to faith groups. Only 7% of people indicated that they talk about spiritual matters regularly. I imagine that most of us find ourselves within the 75% group, who rarely have spiritual conversations. I’ll come back to why that may be, but the other interesting piece offered in this article indicated that spiritual and religious words are fading from the vocabulary. Now, we might not be surprised that words like “salvation” or “blessing” are used less and less within our culture. However, the study also found that words connected with virtues, or what we as Christians call “the fruits of the Spirit” are declining. Words such love, patience, gentleness, faithfulness and humility are being used less and less, both in written and oral language. Words such as compassion and kindness and thankfulness have dropped in written and oral usage by 50% in the past century.

Passage: Deuteronomy 6:4-9 & Mark 10:13-16    

  Description: We are the church – together – in this place. We are sitting in a church building which we have built, gathered as a church community which we create each time we gather. 1885 is the official date of the start of this congregation as The Presbyterian Church of High River, though Christian worship happened on this spot in the decades before that. This area by the Highwood River, known as “The Crossing,” was, for the Indigenous Peoples, the sacred wintering ground of the buffalo and the healing place of the Medicine Tree for thousands of years before white settlers began to arrive. It is holy ground on which we gather, to be the church together, in 2018 in High River, Alberta, under the banner of The United Church of Canada. But why? Why do we gather? Why do you choose to be here this morning? This is a question unique to our generation. For the first white settlers, who held worship services in each other’s homes, and the Methodist and Presbyterian itinerant preachers, who rode into town on horseback and preached in the waiting room of Buck Smith’s Stagecoach Stopping House & Saloon located on this very spot, the question would have been quickly answered. If we were able to ask them, “Why do you worship?”, the response would have been clear. “Because we must give glory to God. Because human beings are created to praise God. Because we can not live our lives without worshipping God.” Today, however, we live in a time when fewer and fewer people in North America make worship a part of their lives. “Why bother!” is an acceptable response to the practice of faith in our culture. Yet, for many of us in our growing up, it was assumed that one belonged to a church. For many of us the regular practice of attending worship on a Sunday was a given. For most, it was rare to miss church, except due to illness or an extended holiday or perhaps harvesting the fields. Everyone claimed a faith affiliation, even if they didn’t attend. But those days are gone and aren’t coming back. Sunday shopping. Sunday morning activities and sports practices. These are the new norm. And even those of us who want to make Sunday morning worship a weekly part of our lives are caught when other family members and friends plan events, which we need to attend, at a time that conflicts with Sunday worship. We are more and more the exceptions, we who choose to be church together.

Passage: Isaiah 25:1-8    

  Description: We need a vision for our individual lives, for our life as a faith community, for the community in which we live, for our country and our world. Without vision, we are lost and scattered, we get pulled in too many directions. As Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a Harvard business professor says, “A vision is not just a picture of what could be; it is an appeal to our better selves, a call to become something more.” That’s what vision does for our lives – calls us to become something more, calls out our gifts and our skills, challenges us to learn new skills and try out new possibilities. Vision is the inspiration to create in own lives, our communities and our world a place of hope, justice, peace and compassion for all people. In today’s scripture, we read of a vision – a dream, a hope, a picture of the best of what can be.

Passage: Luke 17:11-19    

  Description: Kyrie eleison! Lord have mercy! With those words, the lepers by the side of the road call out to Jesus, expressing the deep yearning of human hearts for healing and wholeness. Kyrie eleison! Lord, have mercy! Mercy is a deep and complex word. It does not mean “forgive me,” as is often thought. Rather it is about something freely offered, with no expectation of action or a returned favour. Mercy is compassion, kindness, gracious favour, an understanding of what the other person is going through. To offer mercy is to open one’s heart unconditionally to the other. So, when the ten lepers call out for mercy, they are not asking for forgiveness. They are not even asking specifically for healing. They are asking for something so much more than either of those. They are saying: We are shunned and ostracized by society; look at us & love us as we are. Kyrie eleison! Lord, have mercy! We are worn down by our disease; understand what it is like for us. Kyrie eleison! Lord, have mercy! We long to be touched and cared for; open your heart to us. Kyrie eleison! Lord, have mercy! We have done nothing wrong, nothing to deserve this;show us compassion Kyrie eleison! Lord, have mercy! Mercy – that’s what the lepers ask for. Mercy! “Leprosy,” in the time of Jesus, was not likely the leprosy, or Hansen’s disease, today. Lepers could have had any manner of skin diseases, defined in Leviticus 13 as “a swelling or an eruption or a spot, with white hair in it and/or more than skin deep.” This could have included what we would call today ringworm, psoriasis, eczema, allergic reactions, boils, burns, among other skin irritations and diseases. In fact, houses and clothes could be declared to have leprosy if they had reddish or greenish spots appear – perhaps a type of mould or lichen. Strict rules were followed if it was determined by a priest that leprosy existed. The person wore torn clothes, let the hair on their head be disheveled, covered the upper lip and cried out, “Unclean, unclean,” if anyone came near. They had to live alone, outside the village, until a priest declared them to be clean, at which time they had to go to the temple to make specific offerings before being welcomed back into their village. Kyrie eleison! Lord, have mercy! When the lepers call out for mercy, they are asking for compassion, for understanding, to be treated as human again, to be welcomed back into the community – which would require healing from their skin disease. This is a fascinating story. The writer Luke, in just 12 sentences, touches upon multiple themes. I’ll explore just a few.

Passage: Proverbs 8:22-36    

  Description: It has been hard watching the news in this last month. Even as we watched and wondered about the huge piles of snow melting in our yards & streets, we have been hearing day after day of the flooding in Taber area, in Vulcan County, and other parts of Alberta, and now the pictures of the St. John River in New Brunswick overflowing its banks. It is all eerily familiar, and creates that uneasiness for us, here in High River. We are a town who now knows what that means. We watch those pictures & we understand what is happening behind the scenes in homes & basements. When evacuation notice is given, we are acutely aware of what that means. Two years ago, at this time, it was the Fort McMurray fires. Last year, it was extensive fires in BC, fires & mudslides in California, multiple devastating hurricanes hitting the Caribbean and the southern US. And I haven’t even left our continent yet. It is not just because we have such immediate and easy access to news that there is this overwhelming sense of natural disasters. Statistically, there really are more natural disasters more often in our world. The climate is changing. Humans are, at least, part of the cause of that change. But my point today is not to get into a debate about how much of this is a natural cycle on the earth and how much is human caused. Humans have a part to play in addressing climate change and my point today is to talk about what it means for us as people of faith.