George Hermanson

It is all about relationships

 May 12, 2013,                      It is all about relationships           The Rev Dr. George Hermanson                                                           Fallowfield and Merivale United Churches

Have you ever noticed how your awareness is affected by what you read or are thinking about?  A certain theme floats around in your subconscious.  Then one day something catches you eye, speaks to you in what you have read.  Then you see things that you have not really noticed.  They become vivid.  They speak to you in new ways. Our habitual way of being is challenged.

Habit is interesting.  It helps us do things without reflection. It organizes our daily living.  This is Mother’s day for most of us.  The church tried to change it to Christian Family day but the habit of Mother’s day is just too strong.   The power of Hallmark is just too strong.  What it does is it appeals to our need of relating, for we would not be here without a mother.  Habit gets us through those mundane things and it can also make us miss a deeper meaning.  In the case of Mother’s day we have lost its original meaning.  In 1872 Julia Ward Howe, reformer and poet and the author of the lyrics to the Battle Hymn of the Republic, issued a Mother's Day Proclamation. She was the first in America to suggest that a day each year be set aside dedicated to honoring the ideals of motherhood and peace. For the next 8 years she celebrated the holiday, "Mother's Peace Day" with a group of women in Boston.  The women who originally celebrated Mother's Day conceived of it as an occasion to use their status as mothers to protest injustice and war.  In 1914 Anne Jarvis vowed to honor her mother's political activism by creating a national Mother's Day.  Thus Mother’s day.

I remind us of this history because it tells us of importance of relationship and the reason we gather to celebrate our relationships.  Also to remind ourselves that we need to ask questions about our habits, to find the meaning embedded in them.

Our desire to celebrate Mother’s Day speaks to our need of community.  The way it is used speaks to the fact that even good ideas can be corrupted and be used in ways that lessen our relationships. 

 Peter Berger called our time the homeless mind. What he suggested is we work out our identity in a world that has lost its center.  Our reality is defined by the question of whether we live in a society or an economy.  Society means we live in relationships for good or ill. Economy means we serve the interests of commodities - who we are is determined by our consumption not by what we do to enhance the common good.

We have become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and our democratic structures.  We are losing social capital. A sense that reality is created by relationships, by connecting with one another.

The good news is there is a way of being the church that helps us build relationships.  We can rebuilt habits of the heart that create a sense of ourselves as belonging to a community that cares about relationships.   Congregations are reinventing themselves, rediscovering the idea of holy hospitality. Which is all about relating to one another and the common good.  It is learning to discover spirituality that informs life.    It is to experience the lure of God as the basis for relationship, because the nature of God is the one who seeks relationships, not only seeks to relate but needs to relate.

If God is still speaking, what are we hearing? Or “are we even listening?” God’s voice seldom comes in a dramatic way. It is often a “sigh too deep for words.”  How do we listen for God in our lives?   Christian spiritual teachers have reminded us that hearing God in our lives is nurtured by commitment to prayer, meditation, worship, and hospitality. Are we quiet long enough to hear God’s still, small voice, or “whispered word” (Marjorie Suchocki) amid the storms of life?

Our reading of Paul is about  creating of relationships.  Paul goes to a new community.  In it is a woman who had been a god seeker - a gentile  who is part of some Jewish prayer group.  Paul speaks a word, Lydia becomes unbound-finds new energy in his words and is moved.  Notice the next action - she and her household are baptized.  Her household.  Now in our individualistic age we find this a bit quaint. After all have we not heard people say “my mother made go to church and that is why I don’t now.”  My answer is always is “I see your mother still determines your actions.”  The comment is a sign of the break down of a relational world.  What it signifies to me is we have failed to transmit the faith for what we have done is transmitted obligation - not the excitement of the spiritual exploration.

This is the negative side of relational communities. When they lose their dynamic nature they are in the mode of survival, or dogmatism, or the preserving of the status quo.  This is when faith is turned into community control.  When religion goes bad, like all repressed activity, it emerges in destructive and distorted ways. 

For a whole household to be baptized today means an encouragement of a relational community that celebrates holy hospitality.  This means the affirmation of seeking and searching, an affirmation of difference within a whole.  This is a community that does not seek for social conformity but one that seeks to create people fully alive, singing many songs, painting many images, weaving quilts of many colors, knowing each tread is crucial to the whole image.

At our best we live this relational reality.  It is checking in with a neighbor.  It is to offer communal prayers for one another and our world.  It is to explore the insights that push us into new insights.  It is to find the lure of God in unexpected places.

This is this church’s gift to this community - the willingness to risk and let go.  Is this not the reality of God’s love for us?  Which is always said metaphorically - a Mother hen who cares for her young.

We honor the need for relationships by Mother’s day.   To honor the gifts given we need make them our own.   It is to build on the positive gifts of relationships. 

A Spirituality for Our Time with Jay McDaniel

A Spirituality for Our Time with Jay McDaniel
On June 17 to June 19 the Madawaska Institute for Culture and Religion will be hosting Dr. Jay McDaniel.  A Spirituality for our Time
He will examine the questions of prayer, ecology, interfaith, and aesthetic so we can form a spiritually that will ground us in our faith journey.  
*Through Buddhism and Christian traditions we will deepen our faith. 
*Through poetry and jazz we will celebrate the harmonies of the universe. 
*Through conversations we will add intensity to our experience.
*Taking seriously the complexities of our time we will form a theology that will sustain us and our actions.  We will work on creating two kinds of harmony: harmony among people and harmony with the earth.        
*We will work on a bridge between cultures that is socially just, ecologically sustainable, and spiritually satisfying.
 Dr. Jay McDaniel brings with him a grounding in Buddhism and Process Theology. He will also bring his current experience of working with Process Centers in China.  He teaches  at Hendrix College as Professor of Religion and Director, Steel Center for the Study of Religion and Philosophy.  His current work includes the development of an organization called “Ecological Civilization International.”
 
He says "My aim as a teacher at Hendrix is to help students understand how people live and think in different parts of the world when they are shaped by religious points of view.  It is also to help students develop "philosophies" and "theologies" of their own in dialogue with the many religions and also with people who are not interested in religion.  I think of myself as a "constructive theologian" and encourage my students to recognize that they, too, can be creative thinkers in their own right.  Understanding others and creatively responding to what one learns: these are the guiding ideals of my teaching."
For more go to http://www.jesusjazzbuddhism.org/
The cost will be $225.  It will be located in Burnstown Ont.  To register contact George Hermanson at george@hermanson.ca  Pre register by May 15, deposit of $25 and the event will be $200.

The Shepherd

                The Shepherd as Outcast
 John 10: 22-30            The Reverend Dr. George Hermanson           Easter four, April 21,2013

In works of literature we always have an introduction to the characters, and as we read or watch we get to know them better.  This is the case of todays texts - have two main characters - the lamb and the shepherd. First we are introduced to is the lamb.  Psalm 23 is told from the viewpoint of the sheep, not the shepherd.

However, the image of us being sheep can be problematic.  It can be used to put down those who follow without a thought.  It is kind of mindlessness that some critics of religion place on believers.  I think most of us are uncomfortable with being thought of as unthinking, sheep like followers. Helpless like sheep.  We are not really happy with this sense, for after all do we not have strength and power to deal with the issues of life?

To understand the characters we have to move back in time to see how sheep and shepherds were understood.   The lamb was the symbol in the Passover of the liberating acts of God, from slavery to freedom, from no people to a people.  It was the risk and venerability of the lamb that the poet was getting at - in the 23th Psalm - it was from the view point of the lamb who now has no fear, for the rod and staff comfort.  The shepherd of shepherds cares for me, as the hymn puts it.  Now I can face my enemies - external and internal - and overcome in love.  It is a realistic understanding that there are wolves who seek the end of the lamb.  There is danger out there in the world. The obvious image is the role of the shepherd is keep the wolves at bay - to protect.  Comfort.

Yet while we have the image of the shepherd as a protector within the culture of the time,  
shepherds were the outcasts of society - like the fishers they were unclean by vocation.  The were threatening and not turstworthy.  Competing images.  Comfort and threat.  Unthinking following and being cared for from a place it was not expected.

The writers of the bible play with images because in the tradition there is the whole kingly image of the shepherd.  But it is a strange image for a king - the boy shepherd David becomes the king. A reversal of all conventional images of power and prestige. So the image the power of God as that of the shepherd again would be a puzzle - protection that comes from being from persuasion not coercion.

Competing images.  Comfort and threat.  Unthinking following and being cared for. The good shepherd, the shepherd who guides you through the valley of the shadow of death, evokes a sense of calm and strength.  And the lamb was an image of sacrifice, so here is the shepherd who is both lamb and shepherd. 
 

Here the good shepherd is the sign of divinity.  The lamb of sacrifice being the force of love that overcomes the threat of Imperial Powers.   It turns all images of kingship and power upside down. From the outsider comes redemption.  From the edges of experience comes resurrection life.  It reinforces the biblical theme that God upsets the notions of respectability.  It reinforces the images that the God of love welcomes all who society would call the least.

In the shepherd and the lamb the different parts of experience are brought together.   Shepherding in this sense creates us as persons and as communities.  The shepherd illuminates the lure of God that unites in beautiful, symmetrical harmony things we often see as unrelated.   Our varied, complex pluralistic world, with many different perspective are in the shepherding care of God formed into a complex unity.

It is the lamb of God who experiences our suffering with us and is not overcome.  It is the shepherd who walks with us, feels with us, who gives us the strength to be the lamb and shepherd for others. 

This is a story of empathy.  It is the dual function of God who is both lamb and shepherd.  It is a powerful image of the God who protects us  and suffers with us. The protection takes place in suffering and we are not stuck there, we are not defined by it, for with support and love we can live with it and through it.  With the help of others we can overcome suffering.  Together,  we can build a new kingdom of love on earth.

The images speak of an inner reality that binds us together.  Empathy is the spiritual ability to feel our way into another’s place, to feel our way into another’s person.  It is the ability to indwell in the other, and this is the ability to connect.   We come to know our selves through our interactions with others.

It is not what we say, look like or believe that is crucial.  What is crucial for the common good is how our faith leads to action.  It is to be surprised by love.

We need love.  We need the unconditional love of persuasive love to get on with the getting on.  What we need to do is to recognize it breaking out in the unexpected places.

We know those people, named and not named who can be counted upon to speak justice and compassion to the forces that seek to destroy.  We know those who use persuasion to bring hope to chaos.  They are the Nelson Mandals, the Martin Luther Kings and those whose name never hit the front page.  We have all had a shepherd who revealed to us the persuasive love of God for all of creation.  Know what.   We too can be that shepherd.  Know what. We have been that shepherd who brings healing comfort to those in pain, who feel in our very being the fears of the world and are not undone.  We have been those who have kept the wolves of life away. We are called to this vocation.

Can we Trust God?

Can We Trust God?
Second Sunday of Easter  -  Dominion Chalmers United Church Ottawa
Acts 4:32-35
 John 20:19-31
The Rev. Dr. George Hermanson
This Sunday is called Low Sunday.   There are fewer people and less energy. This is because of all the energy that went into Holy Week and Easter services.  The numbers return to the faithful who are here week after week or some variation of what is regular attendance.

We are like those who gathered in the upper room asking what is next?  They were there waiting for things to settle down.   They were in hiding and asking now what?  Then they have an experience of Jesus and he says “peace be with you.”   Then he reminds them they are now going to be sent out to live the way of compassion. They were sent back into the world full of danger and joy.  They were asked to return to the world that had crucified Jesus.  They had to leave a safe space.
Into the story come Thomas.  It seems he had missed the other experiences his friends had.  They have told him of their experience and he responds  “show me”.  He wants what they had.
Thomas’ simple statement; “Show me” echoes down the ages and compels us to examine the basis of our faith, just as he examined his. We hear it in the phrase, "show me the money." He has been criticized as the doubter, the one whose faith was not sufficient to the task of believing in the resurrection.

However, to call Thomas a doubter is to miss the point of the story.

I find in Thomas a person of modern sensibilities and one who can serve as a model for our own questions of faith.  It is more a question of trust.  What is it that we can trust?  Without trust it is hard to act.  He wanted more than their words. He did not trust their witness.

We live in a world based on trust. Often we don’t think about that.  Living  in community demands cooperation, and that means mutual trust. This is essentially a religious question. For it is a question of moral leadership.

Thomas is our connecting point. For we are like him. We stand with Thomas. We are the community of John's time, a minority in our hostile culture. We are the church that is reforming and struggling with how it will be the church."Show me the money," is the expression when we express skepticism about the truth of someone's statement. Where we really do not have trust in the witness. Before we commit ourselves to something, we want to know whether it will work thus worth the energy or commitment.
William James writes about first hand and second hand faith.  While important, second hand faith does not give us the energy for action.  It is first hand faith that builds trust and energy for the flourishing of life.

We share the same issues with Thomas. He wanted first hand faith.  Like him, we don't want second hand faith. It is not good enough for the flourishing of life. Nor did he want blind faith, for that is too easily misused. Blind faith does not encourage  us to probe the surface reality we experience. Blind faith allows to cruise through life without really living its joy and danger. Blind faith appeals to our prejudices or ideology or the way things are without questioning.

Thomas wanted the experience of deeper vision or sight.  We see this in the play on the words seeing, touch, thrust.  He wanted to access the inner workings of reality. Like Thomas we, too, want a real experience of God. Like Thomas, we want to access that experience of God, the experience we need to change our perception about what is real.

The three easy-to-miss words mark the fact that this story will not end in a feeble spasm. Instead, the momentum Thomas will bring the burgeoning Christian movement will be far-reaching. Think of the tradition of Thomas founding churches in India.

"After eight days," the text notes, Christ appeared to Thomas. References from the Old Testament encourage us to consider the divine blessing and commissioning that occur on the eighth day. The eighth day is the fulfillment of priestly ordination, the day for dedication of the firstborn, a day to mark in circumcision the covenant relationship, a day of gratitude and offering. Could it be that Thomas will be marked on this eighth day and commissioned for service?
When Thomas has his closed-door encounter with the raised Christ, unbelief isn't the issue. Perception is. He applied critical faith.

Critical faith is based on trust in God. It is first hand faith.  It is to have faith that God is working toward beauty and the good, and will not turn aside from this task. God is dependable. Critical faith knows we can deepen our faith by asking critical questions of our tradition and inherited belief statements. Critical faith knows that all life is lived in faith. We know this by the language we use. We speak of optics or the lenses; templates; models; patterns; metaphors; and myths. These images remind us truth is always seen through images and thus must be tested.

We do that in living by practice, by living in new ways, thinking new thoughts, imaging new reality.  This is critical faith. We can test the truth of God by the walk of faith. We can test the truth of our faith by how we live.

If we truly believe that Jesus preached an inclusive kingdom where God loved all of creation then that will concretely change the way we live. The experience of Risen Lord brings a new, second creation to those whose animating spirit has been blocked, thwarted, or disillusioned. We are in wonder so we live with wonder.

God is here, in present reality and when we let that guide us, God will become even more present in our living. God is related to all that now is, touches all living in this moment. God is not only related to all the past and present, God opens the future. Resurrection is the statement that God is faithful to us and God has chosen us.

To begin here is to see a Mystery of love so deep and compelling that we cannot escape it, even when we deny it. This mystery of Grace that affirms us and trusts our free human will. God is faithful and has chosen us. It is to know we are acceptable.

This is the ground of moral leadership, for we are called to be witnesses to God's grace so that when others look at us they can take courage. If we live that vision, we become a beacon to others.  Now what? is intentionally  living the faith of an inclusive community

Kitchissippi United Church March 17, 2013, The Rev Dr. George Hermanson John 12 - 1-8 Misdirecting the issue

Kitchissippi United Church March 17, 2013,    The Rev Dr. George Hermanson
John 12 - 1-8   Misdirecting the issue

 The gospel of John brings together a story found in the other gospels with a puzzling addition of  “the poor will always be with you.” A phrase that has been misused over the centuries, to justify economic systems that maintain a class of poor people.

To get at the story we need take at trip back to those days, to understand it in its worldview  If we do that we will get the first level of transformation.

Society was organized in an honor/shame structure.  It gave all who were part of it an identity.  Those who were not part of it or resisted it were consider non human.  They were disposable.

We have hints of honor/shame in parts of our world.  We see it in the Arab world where women cover their face and head.  It was in our past where modesty was the highest moral action of women.

However, in the honor/shame, the word shame is used differently.  It was to be sought.  To be immodest was to act without shame - shamelessly.  A good girl was always shameful ... knew her place and role, and accepted the father’s protection.  To be shameless was to dishonor the father, and to lose honor was destruction of that person. 

When we see the world as it was, the honor/shame as a system of meaning, we will experience the radical nature of this woman.  For she acts without shame.  She bursts into this room of men and touches Jesus in very intimate ways.   A servant or a male could have done the feet washing but not a woman.  As well, she takes down her hair and with her tears washes Jesus feet.  We have echoes of that in folk songs about taking  down your hair, so we know the narrative is a challenge to some preconceived notion of intimacy.

John adds to this story by giving the woman a name.  This means she is part of the group, has a place within the group. Mary claims a place within the community by her shameless act.  


Mary’s action is an affirmation of abundance of unlimited love that can motivate us now and we can share with others.

The narrative opposes the nightmare of scarcity, questioning the empire’s anxiety which is based on a preoccupation with scarcity Jesus’ response is one of mercy, for Mary and by extension to all of creation. Mercy to the oppressed.

As a good story teller John brings in Judas.  Judas is the great. let us change the subject.  The great diversionary technique.  Something radical and transformational is happening and someone steps in to divert us.

Diversions always appeal to some good, some value we have.  Judas accepts that reality is scarcity - if you give to one thing you exclude another thing.  It is a preoccupation with scarcity.  Of course in one sense he is correct - think of the poor that could have been fed.    The problem: he diverts us with his appeal to our humanitarian side.

John’s use of Jesus’ response about the poor is not a justification for maintaining a society where poverty is accepted.  It is not an either/or situation, but one of paying attention to the issue before us.  Of course the reality of poverty was there, and is still here.  That does not justify it, it only reminds us that our vocation includes creating a society that will make poverty history. 

This is still an active question before the parliament. Churches and others continue to remind MPs that a commitment that has been made to make poverty history.  Even  if we solve this there are other issues to deal with.

The claim of mercy must be have been a stunner to those who view the world out of a scarcity model, so “soft, so human, so risky. It is a challenge to all who have penultimate power because ultimate power is mercy.  Judas represents the interests of idea of scarcity of love, and catches us with his appeal to the poor. 

Like any good prophet Jesus brings us back to the issue of mercy to be practiced by those who are claimed by the resurrection.  By extension he is alive in the care of the common good

Policies we put in place political have implication to the kind of the world we want to create - how do taxes really benefit the poor?  So the Empire is expected to be merciful even to those who were vulnerable and subject to poverty.

However, Judas’ response is a protest against the prophetic poet:  “you never said anything about mercy!”   Of course not.  It does not need to be voiced. Mercy is implied.  It is always the will of the persuasive God: anyone who comes to power must know this if they understand at all the true nature of power - God wills mercy.

The story imagines the world from the point of view of abundance, that it can be different.  Smell the rich perfume being spilled, filling the room with its sweet smell.  And Jesus saying let her be!  Live with the fact of my presence - So now we hear the comment about the poor in a new way, as place to share our abundance.

We, as the community of Jesus’ way, are equipped with this master story, the narrative, story and poem.  It continues by irony and by otherness. 
James C. Scott of Anthropology teaches that the oppressed live by a hidden transcript, a coded account of reality.  The hidden transcript empowers, to eventually defeat the false script of scarcity.

The hidden script is one that we utter and enact every time we take part in liturgy, in worship, whereby we imagine the world differently.  We commit ourselves to a  master story over against the one of scarcity, we live in one of abundance, the unlimited love of God.  The life of faith requires irony, whimsy and shrewdness. We learn that task by learning to read and hear the text.  It is to listen to the subversive wonder of God’s unlimited love as real power.

Luke said, Blessed are the eyes that see.  We gather around Jesus to become the body that sees and knows that power is persuasion, not force.  We gather around that strange term mercy. We will know that it is call to action, to remake the world in the image of the inclusive kingdom of God, where all are feed and poverty is no more.  It is a visionary actions that we have seen lived by others  Now all we have to do is live it ourselves.

Based on
Alien witness by Walter Brueggermann