September 7, 2008 ---------  (Karen May, DLM)

Scripture:  Exodus 12:  1-14

                  Psalm 149

                  Romans 13:  8-14

                  Matthew 18:  15-20

In our Exodus reading this morning we heard about the first Passover – how God instructed the people to prepare for their flight – their deliverance – from Egypt.   

The Psalm talks about singing a new song to God, a song about bringing justice to all nations, making all rulers and their people accountable for what they do – what they/we do in the sight of God. 

In Paul’s letter to the Romans, we are given a very clear message about the importance – even the supreme importance – of the law of love.   “Owe no one anything but love,”  Paul says, as he points out that Jesus’ instructions to “Love your neighbour as yourself” supercedes even the Ten Commandments – because it actually includes them. 

And in Matthew, we are given the “key” to right action and reconciliation that leads to peace:  “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there”.  When we pray together, when we seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we will be led in the way of God.

 But we are not passive bystanders to this process.  We are called to participate.  Jesus gives us a four part course of action leading to reconciliation with our brother or sister.  We are not to gossip, or sulk about it – we are to confront directly and in private, the person who has injured us.  In love and after praying about the problem, we are to seek reconciliation.  If that doesn’t work, we are to take one or two others with us, and after prayer, to confront the person.  Our goal is always peaceful reconciliation, and the turning away from sin of the other person, their redemption in Christ.   

Failing in this, we must make public the offense, and ask the church, or the assembly for help with this problem.  All must be done with dignity and compassion, for the ultimate goal is to bring the offender back into community.

Only if all these steps are unsuccessful, do we separate ourselves from this person.  In this, we must also accept failure – failure to convince the person of the error of their ways, failure to turn them away from a course of personal disaster.  So only with regret, and for the greater good of the Body of Christ, do we isolate a person from the community.  In so doing, we must remember the Parable about the wheat and the tares, where Jesus suggests that the weeds or tares must be left until the final harvest, lest we pull up the wheat as well, and damage the crop.

 Sometimes we are caught between a rock and a hard place aren’t we?  This is especially noticeable in small communities such as ours, where everyone knows everyone, and most people are related to each other, if only distantly.  If we too brutally weed our local garden, there will be much collateral damage!

 All of this can be translated to the larger picture – the global picture.  The United Nations was established in  1945  in an attempt to bring to greater awareness our interdependence as member states in the larger international community.   

In the face of climate change and rapid global warming, and the increasing threat of religious extremism and terrorism, we are faced with problems of justice and reconciliation of epic proportions. 

Our challenge:  how to proclaim injustice and hold others accountable, without “judging”, without injuring the innocent, without abusing power and becoming the one who tortures and terrorizes? 

As a world community, guided by many Christians and their prayers, I’m very sure, we have taken some important steps.  As a result of serious mistreatment of prisoners of war in the past, we have written a document called “The Geneva Convention”.  To hold leaders responsible for their conduct, when in contravention of this document, we have established “The International War Crimes Court” at The Hague.  Our United Nations has become a place where nation states can talk about these things.  This is a place where discussion and negotiation can help us to come to agreement about what is right and good and acceptable behaviour – a standard of social behaviour that will support the survival of world community, and eventually bring justice and accountability to all. 

But, as world resources – notably oil and water, become more scarce – and our population continues to grow – we are finding ourselves in an increasingly difficult situation. 

As the waters of the oceans rise, and small island states find themselves threatened with extinction, we will find boatloads of refugees knocking at our door. 

As a world community – as God’s children who are to love our neighbours as ourselves – how will we choose to respond?  Will we do better in the future than we have in the past?  Or will we become increasingly militarized so that we can protect our borders from those who need somewhere – anywhere – to live, or food to eat, or water to drink. 

We need to urgently consider these matters – for we are not talking about some time in the hypothetical, far-off future – we are talking about the next few months and years. 

The island states of Fiji, the Maldives, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Samoa, Seychelles, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu, supported by Canada and Turkey, have come together to present a document to the United Nations this week.  They want the Security Council to address climate change as a threat to international peace and security.   

President Remengesau of Palau, a small island in the Pacific, recently said,

“Palau has lost at least one third of its coral reefs due to climate change related weather patterns.  We also lost most of our agricultural production due to drought and extreme high tides.  These are not theoretical, scientific losses – they are the losses of our resources and our livelihoods…For island states, time is not running out.  It has run out.  And our path may very well be the window to your own future and the future of our planet.”

 In addition, Bangladesh, with a population of 150 million, faces losing large parts of its land mass.  The experience of our planet’s most vulnerable communities (according to Avaaz.org – an independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization that works to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people inform global decision-making) serves as a warning sign of the future world we can all expect:  extreme weather growing in intensity, conflict over water and food supplies, coasts disappearing and hundreds of millions made refugees.

 Just as climate change is a huge global concern, I believe that the growth of terrorism is also a global threat of enormous proportions.  Recent polls show that Canadians are unhappy with our participation in the anti-terrorism efforts in Afghanistan.  But we as a sovereign nation need to think very hard about what will happen in the world, if the terrorist activities of fanatic religious extremists are permitted to grow and to spread around the globe. 

Our own history as Christians tells us very clearly that unchecked religious zealotry leads to corruption and moral disaster.  The indiscriminate slaughter of those whose spiritual beliefs and practices are not the same as our own, is not the fulfilling of God’s law of love.

 If we are to survive as God’s people, on this planet, we must learn to live together.  If we do not like what others believe, or how they pray – or don’t pray – we must learn to walk away – to treat them as “Gentiles and tax collectors”.  To force our beliefs on others is as great an injustice as the Taliban’s treatment of women in Afghanistan, or the burning of people at the stake during the Christian Inquisition of the Middle Ages, or the wholesale slaughter of Jews in Germany in the last century. 

 We are standing ankle deep in blood – all of us.  Our history is mostly about war.  There has been relatively little time of peace.  Reconciliation with our brothers and sisters is the way of peace, and the fulfillment of the law.  There can be no way out of our history of bloodshed and suffering, killing and terrorism, if we do not fully embrace the teaching Jesus came to bring us – the new covenant – the Law of Love.

 The winds of change are upon us.  We cannot escape them.  But Jesus’ gave us the key – “Where  two or three are gathered in my name – I am there – I am there.” When we come together as Christ’s church to pray – to listen for God’s will in any action we are contemplating – when we ask to be shown the path of love – the way of peace and reconciliation, we will be led.  Spirit will show us the way. 

Let us pray

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