"Finding Uncertainty" (John 12:12-16), Palm Sunday sermon, Mar 25, 2018

John 12:12-16

Were you happy with the Palm Sunday Rap we did together with the children? What part of it made you excited? What made you feel uncertain? Is uncertainty necessarily negative or bad in our lives? Or can it be a state of being in which we still engage meaningfully with ourselves, with the activity at hand, and learn something? 

We’ve all heard of some of the different intelligence categories: the most familiar may be I.Q..These days we talk a lot about the importance of E.Q. (emotional intelligence) and Multiple intelligences. I have one more addition for you - recently, I had an opportunity to learn about “Dynamic intelligence” at a workshop regarding children’s development and thought ‘That really sounds like theology or faith.’ 

What is dynamic intelligence? To put it simply, “It is the ability to make decisions, and to learn from our decisions, when we face something NEW.” 

Our lives continually present us with: 

Predictability: (which feels comfortable) and 

Uncertainty: (which is an opportunity for growth). 

(Several pictures of the ordinary moments of our daily lives.) 

Some of these moments require us to make a decision, some do not; it depends on whether we are faced with some degree of uncertainty. What represents Uncertainty among these pictures? (Traffic cones) 

Before we study the story from the Gospel of John which N read for us this morning, let’s try some exercises to see which parts of an activity are predictable and which parts are uncertain. 

Which part of this activity is predictable and which part is uncertain? 

The same question. (Which part of this activity is predictable and which part is uncertain?)

Some predictability is essential; it creates stability and consistency and helps with establishing a routine or a system to support peoples’ well-being. Yet, how about this? Think about children or ourselves. If we make a decision in a familiar situation and we already know how it’s going to turn out, we may feel comfortable (or even bored…) but we’re not going to learn or grow from it. 

Some uncertainty is not helpful. For example, if there’s only uncertainty dominating a situation where multiple people are supposed to work together, with no guidelines or protocol available to tell them what to do and how to do it, it would be nerve-wracking or at least annoying. However, how about this? Think about how children and we learn. If we make a decision and we don’t know how it’s going to turn out, we may feel excited or stressed. But we will learn something from our decision.

Dynamic intelligence affirms that some important growth and learning occurs when we continually experiment with new situations, especially when working in community (experimenting along with other people). We need to develop a balance of static intelligence and dynamic intelligence. We need both of them when we work in community. Yet, embracing uncertainty is particularly important because it is about making new decisions to create new norms. It is dynamic because we cannot know ahead of time the outcome of experimenting with new challenges and new opportunity. It requires us to adopt a growth mindset. This “growth mindset” is really a model of faith, and children are the natural teachers in this field: typically, children look for opportunities to learn from uncertain situations, while adults often look for ways to return to the predictable. 

Now, let’s engage with an exercise on today’s Gospel story, which is printed in the bulletin. There are some highlighters provided under your chairs, one yellow and one blue for two people to share. Read the passage and highlight all the parts you perceive as illustrating either Predictability or Uncertainty. Please highlight Predictability in blue and Uncertainty in pink (or yellow). Which part of this story is predictability and which part of this story is uncertainty? 

How many of you highlighted “Branches of palm trees” in yellow as Uncertainty? I did! 

Here’s the result of my own exercise: 

“The festival” is Predictability as it is the holiday all Jewish people were expected to observe.

“The great crowd” is Uncertainty. A large body of gathered people can present the potential of power: power to change or power to resist change. Power to rebel or power to oppress. When many people gather around a strongly held hope, it is perceived as a threat by the authorities. 

“Jesus coming to town” is Uncertainty. You don’t know what Jesus is going to do.

And there happened to be some palm trees. These familiar plants that had always been there, part of the scenery, become a powerful symbol of resilience and a banner of the dream for a new kingdom. People coming out to meet Jesus was a huge event, defying the people in power and authority. People even shouted with the loudest Hosanna! People declared, “Jesus is the new King!” Everything these crowds were doing was loud, shocking, explosive, dismantling, unsettling. 

Then Jesus came onto the scene, with a different kind of Uncertainty. He found a donkey - by the way, “finding” is Uncertainty: something happened to be there, and you had to happen to find it: the humble, small, young, four-legged animal. And Jesus “sat” on it, gently, unhurried, quietly. This peace, this warmth that Jesus embodies, almost invisible yet powerful, contrasting with the crowd’s loud welcome is the new norm of Uncertainty. At first, you are not sure what he’s doing – it seems very un-Messiahlike, acting with such beautiful, tender, feminine uncertainty… 

Remember young Mary on the donkey when she was pregnant with him and, after Christ’s birth, migrating to Egypt, travelling at night? The new King shows that love is the truest, most powerful Uncertainty, visually displaying the new norm of the peaceful realm of heaven on earth. Some people among the crowd who went wild for Jesus at first - who were enchanted by their own conception of what the new King should be like - betrayed this new peaceful Uncertainty and nailed it on the cross - because they sadly couldn’t understand Jesus’ new Uncertainty.

What can we learn from this story?

Palm Sunday is not about Predictability but Uncertainty. In most cases, society wants us to believe that to be successful we need to learn how to establish predictability through an aggressive, individualistic, survival mode of life on this land. But - relationship is a fundamental Uncertainty. People are Uncertainty. So in the pro-survival model, the need to build strong relationships often goes missing. Even the Bible tries to strengthen Predictability in today’s story. Is there anybody who highlighted this in blue? “As it is written: Do not be afraid, daughter of Zion. Look, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt.” Let us ask, if there had been no mention of the donkey in the earlier literature of Jewish history, would it make the Uncertainty of Jesus’ finding the young donkey less legitimate? Would it be less true if it has not been predicted? Like “If it is not written in the Bible?” 

The written prophecy in the earlier literature doesn’t make Jesus’ new norm of Uncertainty more or less true than what it is. It is Jesus’ own creative variance - finding a donkey and sitting on it. Faith is a beautiful and humble companion when we journey through and between Predictability and Uncertainty in our lives. Important spiritual growth happens when we let loose the reins of faith, adopt a “growth mindset” through Uncertainty, and run free on the road of Creativity. 

On this Palm Sunday, 2018, I hope you see the palm leaf in your hand as a reminder of the alternate, gentle kind of Uncertainty Jesus invited us to embrace to create and recreate beautiful variances of justice, peace, and compassion. May our faith, as the spiritual dynamic intelligence, be the reins for navigating Uncertainty through love, in our lives. Find your donkey. 

Untethered... Beyond Our Walls, Beyond Ourselves (John 12:20-33), Mar 18, 2018

Untethered… 

I don’t speak English as my first language, so I don’t know really until you tell me what 'untethered' means to you. Only over the last weekend, I learned that “untethered” could mean different things to different people.

You might be thinking these…. 

I was thinking of "a grain of wheat." Why? 

In today’s Gospel, Jesus says to his disciples, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” 

Imagine that you hold a grain of wheat in your palm - look at it. See how small it is. It is small, yet it has everything it needs in its tiny self. The outer shell, the ‘bran’, protects the seed. Its main function is to protect what it envelops: the endosperm which provides energy and protein, and the germ which is the nutrient storehouse, containing Vitamin E and healthy fats. That outermost layer’s main function is protection, yet the bran itself has essential minerals, too. That’s why we’re encouraged to eat whole-grain food.

The bran, the outermost part of the kernel, is an essential part of the grain. However, for a grain to be transformed in the soil and grow and bear fruit, this outer shell must open up in the earth. I think of it as being the same process that has to happen in our spiritual growth as an individual and as a church. The cycle of life is a mystery; dying is a part of our growth.

The shell is like our mind. Our mind does its job like a tool or a computer. It can be used to ponder great thoughts, solve scientific problems and serve humanity. It is where our identity lies - the belief about who we are and what we do. This analytical mind is also engaged in the process of risk assessment - protecting ourselves from perceived threat or danger. We want to make everything okay - we want to feel safe, comforted and in control. That’s one of the principal jobs of our mind - our mind is constantly telling us what to do. It tells us to go here, but not there, and to say this, but not that. It tells us what to wear and what not to wear – when you put on a warm coat in winter, thank your mind. Very often, that function of protection makes it challenging for us to engage in the mystery of dying and resurrection. 

Underneath that layer of protection, deep within us, there’s the sea of energy. The energy moves, flows, vibrates, communicates. Deep emotions, memories, the deeper sense of life are stored in there. Mostly, they are fluid, like waves. And when they flow, they are the signs of humanity, the signs of vitality. Most of us have stored ‘spiritual blockage’, too, such as pain or fear. Pain and fear are hidden by the layers of our thoughts and emotions, so for most of us, learning, acknowledging and embracing our own deep sources of pain and fear takes life experience, courage, reflection or even a spiritual journey. 

Our personality is like building a house. We build it with our God-given gifts. At the same time, pain and fear, our weakness and vulnerability also play a big part when we build this house of ourselves. It happens to any individual, any organization, and any church, too. We build a church not only with bricks and mortar, but with culture and norms (For example, what may be the culture or norms we, Immanuel, may have as a United Church, but haven’t noticed yet? What does our worship tell you about us? I agree to Stan McKay. He said, when we had a conversation a few weeks ago, that United Church attempts to be monocultural. Our worship resources tends to be the through the eyes of middle Canada.) 

Our Mission Statement at Immanuel says that we seek continually to be formed as servants of God by “Reaching out beyond our walls.” What does that mean? Walls are solid. Walls are for protection. The rationale for any wall’s existence is that nothing is allowed to shake those walls. Culture, norms, identity, individual personality…. These are what constitute the “bran” in our grain. Bill Millar, (some of you may have known him), who was retired at Knox United Church, in Winnipeg, just last year, came to me after Linda Murray’s service and said, “Let’s have coffee.” We met at a tea house. He’s now very widely known in the United Church for his intercultural ministry at Knox. During our conversation, Bill took up the word, “dying”. When he began his ministry at Knox, at 400 Edmonton St. in the heart of Central Park, downtown Winnipeg, he looked around the neighbourhood and decided, “I will need to let go of all I have known in my life about how to do ministry” as a white person, in the white churches. And he did. That’s how Knox began to change its identity as a mainline-white-middle-class-Canadian church to become a community that welcomes people from all over the world. Even though the church is at the heart of Central Park, it wasn’t the church’s location that opened the doors. It didn’t open the bran – location alone cannot do that. What opens the church is trusting in mystery, open to the heart, open to the earth, open to what Jesus says: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” I wonder what would happen if we, Immanuel, opened fully to Reconciliation, embracing diversity. What change would we celebrate? What ‘dying’ would be part of our story?  

Last week, while I was having a conversation with a friend, I suddenly understood that some patterns of my particular experiences for the last five and a half years have been traumatizing me. (Anything that can occur like what the pairs of a boy and a girl in this video discover - marginalization due to racism, sexism, patriarchy, white privilege, etc, can deeply disturb my soul.) The result is I have come to build the layers of my own interpretation to understand things. My mind worked hard through the years. It made lots of temporary theories and analyses to protect me, prepare me and help me to more efficiently resist that which I perceived as oppressive. It has deepened my understanding, certainly, yet I have also become an indoor dweller of my own house. 

Even though it is very helpful to be resilient in certain situations, it would not be helpful if I hold the same or single “frame” or “model” or “expectation” or “box” wherever I go and whoever I meet, and still get the inner disturbance and suffer, when a situation or other person hits the edges of my upheld frame. I want to be a more relaxed, warm, safe presence, to invite others to rest with me and mutually build an important conversation that would change our lives. That means my passion for justice must be linked with an unfettered soul for the healing and wholeness of myself and the protection and love of others. I am beginning to explore the way to be transformational while untethered… 

Even though the “bran” (bricks and mortar, culture, norms, identity…) is an essential part for protection and it has its own nutrients essential for our health, there’s a time when we need to plant it deep in the earth with a prayer for an Easter mystery. Bran is solidity, like walls. Our spiritual growth occurs when we allow fluidity in our lives, always moving in a direction beyond ourselves and beyond our walls. It is the beauty of the wisdom of being untethered, growing faith in resurrection. Our life, our shared life, is really mystery, not management.

"Go beyond... Life is helping us." (Immanuel's Newsletter, March, 2018)

“Go beyond… Life is helping us.”          

Message from Ha Na 

Last Sunday, March 11, I experienced the “Spring of joy”. It was still the middle of Lent, but there was a sense of accomplishment about the journey we were making through the four Lenten services. Our series of “Steps on the Journey towards Reconciliation” received very positive feedback, but the most important reward for me was to see how people truly seemed to feel their worship experience and learning about reconciliation was heart-changing and meaningful. I could see in people’s faces how pleased, how uplifted, how contented by the spirit of truth they were, when they were leaving. That observation filled my heart with living water to become a spring of joy.

If you have joined one or more of our last services on Reconciliation, please do this activity with me as you reflect on what we’ve learned together in community: 

What were the highlights or the words you wished to remember? 

For me, the highlight in the first service was “Unravelling” our past history in a ritual where we actually unravelled strands of wool. (Joan McDonald, who knitted an unfinished shawl just for this service, said that it was harder to knit mistakes than to make it right.) At the end of the service, as Benediction, we connected everyone in the circle with the unravelled strands, passing and holding them.

In the second service, Lorraine Kakegamic, our own church member and a member of Keewaywin First Nation, encouraged us to do more study and action as church. She said, “The healing has begun and is happening. There is action to be done. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission made recommendations and issued Calls to Action, and mentioned the churches in the calls to action. Reconciliation is an ongoing process and will require commitment from everyone.” 

I am grateful that in the third service, Stan McKay shared with us this memorable wisdom: 

“The shared life is mystery, not management.” 

I took that piece of wisdom this way: Reconciliation is really a journey to go beyond ourselves, willing to let go of the unnecessary burden of trying to make everything fit to the limits of our model, our control. 

I agreed with Ruth Campbell, our Guiding Elder of Living our Faith in the World Cluster, when she said, after all of our four services finished, “We all became a massive team who had a common vision, and we pulled it all off. Now we need to think of what comes next.” 

The question “What’s next?” invites us to think about which seeds we will plant next. Not just one, but many seeds, planted in multiple ways. I was challenged by Stan McKay when he encouraged us, during his message, to consider displaying the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in our bulletin or in our space. We are also planning to create an ecumenical workshop on Truth and Reconciliation for the churches and the people in East Kildonan neighbourhood and nearby areas, inviting all who are interested to plan it with us. 

In fact, we can find many ways to go beyond ourselves. Ultimately, the word “Beyond” captures the true meaning of spirituality. In its most basic sense, going beyond means going past where we are now. It means not staying in our current state. 

In the remainder of the season of Lent, please continue your journey of going beyond. Easter is Mystery. It is the event and experience of encountering the risen Jesus. It is Mystery because no one can plan out the resurrection here and now.  Easter as Mystery is something we can only plant like seeds, with open hearts, open minds, open doors. When we go through a hard situation, we can still plant one beautiful thing. Resilience and resistance, healing and inner peace must go hand in hand. 

In faith, we must believe… 

Life is surrounding us with people and stories that stimulate growth.

Life is helping us.

God is with us.

Lent Four: "We are All Treaty People" Worship, Immanuel United Church (Steps on the Journey of Reconciliation) Mar 11, 2018

Mar 11, 2018 

"We are all Treaty People " Worship 

Act Justly, Love Tenderly, Walk Humbly 

Prelude 

Ha Na sits in a lawn chair next to the Lenten Campfire. 

There will be a few more lawn chairs. 

Everyone sing Open our Hearts (MV 21), three or four times, sitting, until all are ready and open. 

Choral Introit: MV 21 Open Our Hearts 

Open our hearts, open our minds.
Open our lives to you
O loving God. Repeat 

Last time Open our hearts. 

Welcome: God, Children & Us 

Raise your hand if your ancestors were Indigenous. 

Raise your hand if your great-grandparents were born in Canada. 

Raise your hand if your grandparents were born in Canada. 

Raise your hand if your parents were born in Manitoba. 

Raise your hand if you live in Treaty One.  

We are all Treaty People, here in Canada. We are all one people. We all come from one Creation…

Acknowledgement of the Land

As we gather to worship, we acknowledge with respect that we live and work and worship on Treaty One Land, in the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, and Dakota peoples, and in the heart of the Metis Nation. May we live in peace and friendship with the peoples of this land, honouring their relationship with the land and water, the plants and animals through the many generations. 

Call to Worship from “Lamentation”* 

Introducing the Hymn: MV 66 Senzeni Na? 

“Senzeni Na?” is a traditional South African song, an outcry against injustice. When an injury is done to some of our human family, then all sisters and brothers should take up the cry. “Senzeni Na?” means: “What have we done?" 

After each time of tearing cloth, the congregation sings "Senzeni Na?"

Put each length-wise torn strip on the Lenten Campfire.

We cry out to you, O God,
as ones who have been hurt and as ones who have hurt others.
From our places of struggle, we cry to you together, O God.
We cry out to you with tears born of broken dreams and unfulfilled potential. 

Tear Cloth

Senzenina - what have we done? 

We cry out to you, O God,
as ones who have been hurt and as ones who have hurt others.
From our places of struggle, we cry to you together, O God.
We cry out to you with pain of loneliness, misunderstanding and isolation. 

Tear Cloth

Senzenina - what have we done? 

We cry out to you, O God,
as ones who have been hurt and as ones who have hurt others. From our places of struggle, we cry to you together, O God. We cry out to you with anger at being excluded, ignored and made invisible. 

Tear Cloth

Senzenina - what have we done? 

We cry out to you, O God,
as ones who have been hurt and as ones who have hurt others. From our places of struggle, we cry to you together, O God.
We cry out to you with bewilderment and dismay. 

We are paralyzed; we do not know where to turn. 

Tear Cloth

All: Senzenina - what have we done? 

Silent Reflection 

Prayer 

We place before you torn pieces of the fabric of our lives and our communities. Day by day, God is witness to every thought, act and word.
God holds our pain and cries out, “how long O my people, how long?”
We place our pain and our hope in your hands, loving God, trusting in your holy power to liberate and make all things new. Amen. 

Children go to upstairs with Jen for their program. 

Hymn: VU 226 For the Beauty of the Earth 

Scripture: Job 12: 7-10
“Ask the animals and they will teach you; the birds of the air, they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you; and the sh of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of God has done this? In God’s hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being." 

The Choir Anthem: O for a World

Reflection … Loretta Ross

Hymn: VU 701 What does the Lord Require of You 

Micah 6:8Introduction: the way the Bible Thinks about Justice (Walter Brueggemann) 
“The work of liberation, redemption, salvation  is the work of giving things back.”
“Justice is to sort out what belongs to whom, and to return it to them.”

1. What does the Lord require of you? What does the Lord require of you? 

2. Justice, kindness, walk humbly with your God.

3. To seek justice, and love kindness, and walk humbly with your God. 

Offering

Sung Dedication: VU 540 Grant Us, God, Grace 

Grant us, God, the grace of giving, with a spirit large and free, that ourselves and all our living we may offer faithfully. 

Prayers of the People

Sung Response: MV 14 Where Two or Three Are Gathered 

Where two or three are gathered in my name, 

I am there, I am there. 

Gather all our prayers together, O God. 

Then scatter our love 

on the winds of the Holy Spirit’s breathing, 

to meet peace, true understanding and healing, 

in all aspects and places of our lives. 

The Life and Work of the Church

Commissioning and Benediction 

Walk through Lent, into the future 

believing that we go into Holy Company. 

And may the Holy Spirit guard and guide us, 

Christ Jesus speak clearly into the challenges, 

and the Eternal God create a new way to sing a song of faith, love, justice, before us. 

Choral Extroit: MV 86 Give Peace to Ev’ry Heart 

Give Peace to Ev’ry Heart 

Give peace to ev’ry heart. 

Give peace to ev’ry heart. 

Give peace, God. 

Give peace, God. 

Postlude