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Sermon on Matthew 20:1-16 and God as trickster?

The following sermon was preached on 8 November 2022 at Wine Before Breakfast by Brenda Kronemeijer-Heyink.

As I’ve been telling Bible stories to my daughter, Lydia, I’ve remembered how fun it is to tell good stories: stories where there is suspense and surprise. Unfortunately, the way many Bible stories are told to children they clean up some of this suspense and some of the sneakiness of the characters – and I think we are all the worse for that.

So I’ve been naming some of that sneakiness in the Bible, and in my own family we see playing sneaky tricks on each other as a good thing. It is a way for me to practice being child-like, to being naive enough that I can be tricked. It’s a way for us to laugh with each other and to be surprised by each other.

It’s with this understanding of being tricked and tricking others that I want to explore the idea of God as trickster. This image of God who invites us into being foolish and learning to see the Bible, ourselves, and the world in new ways.

I also want to acknowledge that this image of God as trickster is still an image that I’m wrestling with. Few people like being tricked and neither tricking or being tricked are positive images for it messes with our understanding of what is fair. So I want to acknowledge that is not a comfortable image of God, nor is it necessarily an image of God that is or should be all-encompassing. Yet I also believe that it’s an image that is worth exploring.

The image of God as trickster is not one that we associate with Christianity; it’s an image that fits more with other religions, with myths and folktales. Yet, this quote from Byrd Gibbens suggests ways that we might learn from the role of tricksters: “Many native traditions held clowns and tricksters as essential to any contact with the sacred. People could not pray until they had laughed, because laughter opens and frees from rigid preconception. Humans had to have tricksters within the most sacred ceremonies for fear that they forget the sacred comes through upset, reversal, surprise.”1

What if a willingness to be tricked is part of what it means to be a Christian? As 1 Corinthians 1:21 says, “Creator knew that the world through its wisdom would not come to know him. So his heart was glad to rescue and set free the ones who trust in the ‘foolishness’ of the good story we tell.”

To explore this idea of trickster a bit more, the following are several Old Testament examples about tricksters and then move on to the parable that we read.

I’ll start with the story of David and Goliath. David shows up in the army camps, bringing in food for his older brothers. He asks why everyone is standing around while Goliath is making fun of them and their God. When he hears about Goliath’s challenge to fight a champion, he offers to go himself. Instead of intervening when David makes the offer, those in charge agree and offer to lend him armor, which doesn’t fit, kind of like a child playing dress-up.

When David approaches Goliath, Goliath makes fun of him – and probably doesn’t take David seriously. Because of that, David shoots him with a slingshot. Which probably violates all proper rules of combat. As a child I never questioned the unfairness of what David did – after all, God was on David’s side. As an adult, I appreciate how David won also because of how he tricked Goliath. And I wonder what it might look like to live in such a way that we allow God to use our trickery to do good for God – what it might look like to be as wise as serpents and innocent as doves, as Jesus commands us [in Matthew 10:16]

Then there is Joseph, who is introduced to us by his obnoxious habit of telling his family about how his dreams show how they’ll bow down to him. After Joseph is dragged off to Egypt and his dreams actually come true, he meets his brothers again. And while the story eventually ends with a tearful reunion, again and again Joseph plays tricks on his brothers. He returns their money, accuses them of theft and cheating him, takes one of his brothers prisoner, and even conspires to take his youngest brother for himself. As Joseph’s brothers experience his tricks, they are convicted of their sins, arguing that what is happening is God punishing them for selling their brother. The conviction goes even so far that Judah changes from being the person who was willing to harm his daughter-in-law, Tamar, to being someone who was willing to lay down his own life for that of his youngest brother – so that no harm might come to him or their father.

As I hear that story, I wonder how trickery might play a role in my being convicted of my own sins, of the church and society might be convicted of how we need to change.

One last story, the story of Abraham and Sarah. God tells Abraham that he would have a son. Abraham laughs. Abraham and Sarah try to make that promise true by involving Hagar and things get very messy. Then three visitors come and Sarah overhears them telling Abraham that in a year he would have a son. Sarah laughs. What kind of person is foolish enough to believe that someone her age would have a baby?

But babies don’t come from nowhere – and Abraham and Sarah were foolish enough to try to make a baby. And indeed within a year, Isaac is born. Isaac whose name means laughter, a constant memory of their being foolish. And how God was gracious enough to meet them in spite of and because of their foolishness.

In these Old Testament stories we see how God uses trickery and foolishness to convict and to work in and through us humans. Trickery and foolishness also have a place in the New Testament. The parables and Jesus’ very life rearranges our expectations of who God, how God works, and what it means to follow Jesus. How often did Jesus not say – you have heard it said, but I tell you… And then he would tell a saying or parable.

In the parable we read today, many people see it as showing how salvation is about grace and that we can’t actually earn it with all our hard work, no matter how early or late we come to know God. The parable is also seen as a reminder that how God treats people doesn’t necessarily fit with our ideas of justice.

Yet, parables are meant to convict, like tricksters do. While God might need to convict us of our envy of how God treats others differently than me, perhaps the parable has an even harder lesson. After all, if the parable is really about how abundant God’s grace is for the first and the last, then why are people not actually being paid abundantly in the parable? All of the workers in the vineyard get paid only a day’s wages.

Amy-Jill Levine notes that the workers focus on how things are not fair but the landowner instead shows them what is right. She argues that “the point [of the parable] is not that those who have ‘get more,’ but that those who have not ‘get enough.” Furthermore, “If the householder can afford it, he should continue to put others on the payroll, pay them a living wage (even if they cannot put in a full day’s work), and so allow them to feed their families while keeping their dignity intact. The point is practical, it is edgy, and it is a greater challenge to the church then and today than the entirely unsurprising idea that God’s concern is that we enter, not when.”2

I think her words are both hard and convicting, especially right now when we in Ontario are surrounded by a conversation around how much education workers are getting paid. And while I don’t know enough about the situation to be able to speak to which degree each party is both right and wrong, I am struck by the truths of this parable. God cares that people have enough to live on. And this parable argues that those in power should do what they can to make sure that happens.3

I hope and pray that people, including ourselves, will use what influence we have to try to ensure that people do receive a living wage – that people can feed their families and themselves, have safe housing, and do so with their dignity intact.

As a final example of God as trickster, I’ll acknowledge that as much as I think it’s important to pick texts that are relevant to today, I’m a little unsettled by how relevant today’s text is. Alongside of all these OT examples of tricksters, I wanted to share a parable. The reading from today seemed fitting because of how it convicts us that our understanding of fairness might be wrong. I wasn’t expecting the conversation of fariness and a living wage to be one that the whole province was having and arguing about. And hopefully Christians have been praying and thinking about.

Even after all these examples, I’m not sure how well this image of trickster will connect with you – and that’s okay. But I do hope that you find joy and hope in God not always working as we expect. That you can find comfort in how God convict those who need convicting. That it will give you hope that people can change, including ourselves, and that the world can change so that more people will have a living wage and more people will have safe and affordable housing.

I pray, too, that you might open yourself to being naive and open to being tricked, so that you can make space for God to work and space to be surprised. And last of all, I pray that you might experience laughter and that this might help you to better know and love God, yourself, and others.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

1 Byrd Gibbens, quoted epigraph in Napalm and Silly Putty by George Carlin, 2001. Taken from wikipedia article on tricksters.

2Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus, 218.

3After all, Jesus “tends to focus less directly on ‘good news to the poor’ than on ‘responsibility of the rich.” Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus, 218. Cf. Deuteronomy 15:11

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Prayers of the People – God as hiding place

The following prayers were used at the WBB service on November 1, which focused on Psalm 32 and God as hiding place. Some of the prayers is an adaptation of prayers written by Carrie Bare from “On Prayer: At the Start of New Year.”

God of comfort, you are our hiding place.
You know who we are
in our inmost parts,
You see what is beautiful
and what we are ashamed of.

You know this world in which we live,
from the CN Tower to research labs,
from city hall to grocery stores.
You know what has wasted away
in ourselves
and in the world around us,
and you do not hide.

[Silent and spoken prayers of confession and lament]

God of comfort, you are our hiding place.
You grant forgiveness and healing,
reviving our strength,
restoring creation.

You provide a safe resting place,
may we create places of safety for others.
Help us to listen.
Help us to notice.
May we see your presence.

God of comfort,
we pray especially for the university.
May professors and students be full of grace
so that classrooms are conducive to learning,
to discovering together what is possible,
to being places of joy and hope.

You provide a safe resting place,
Where there is anything toxic going on in any of the departments, bring wholeness.
Bring peace and good will.
Help us honour one another as your image bearers.

[Silent and spoken prayers for the university]

God of comfort, you are our resting place,
and we are so often in turmoil.
Provide wisdom to those who are struggling,
bring peace to those who are anxious,
help those who are lonely to find friendships.

You are our resting place,
and too often our strength is dried up.
Refill us with the energy we need to live well.
Renew us, restore us,
and set us back on good paths,
so that we can use our gifts to your glory,
to help the university, the church,
and our workplaces.

[Silent and spoken prayers for wisdom and restoration]

God of comfort,
Please help us discern
what is actually ours to do, and what is not.
What you are calling us to do,
and what you are not calling us to do.
Help us be attentive to your Holy Spirit
so that we receive guidance and help and insight,
and the courage to do what lies before us.
Help us not to over-commit,
over-extend and fail to finish well.

When we fail, may we know your grace,
may we find in you a resting place.
May we be surrounded by your steadfast love
and find joy in you.
Amen.
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Opening and Closing Prayers on Mark 4 and Creation as God’s Body

The following opening and closing prayers written by Sarah MH were used at the WBB service held on October 25 which focused on Mark 4:26-41 and Creation as God’s Body.

Opening Prayers

God, we are full of hope and desire for goodness
in this city this morning,
For the Kingdom of God is here, and coming.

It is like someone scattering seed on the ground.
By itself, seed cannot grow,
But with water, darkness, soil, warmth and light
The seed grows into itself with stalk, leaves and fruit.

God, we are ready for goodness and healing in this university, this city, this province, this country.
For the Kingdom of God is here, and coming.

It is like a mustard seed, small and fragile at first,
But full of promise as it grows big enough to shelter all the birds of the air.

Give us patience as we wait,
Let us be strengthened
for the harvest that is coming.
Amen.


Closing Prayers

Creator God,
You scatter seed on every kind of ground,
And give what is needed to grow that seed into
deep roots, strong branches and bountiful fruit.

Remind us that for all the gifts you bestow on us,
You do so thoughtfully and with joy.
Give us patience to see those gifts through to fruitfulness
to hold on to the promise that we will be a shelter to many.

So we boldly proclaim, 
filled with hope, courage and perseverance:
Glory to God, whose power working in us,
can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.
Glory to God from generation to generation,
in the Church and in Christ Jesus,
forever and ever. Amen.

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Prayers of the People connected to Mark 4 and Creation as God’s Body

The following prayers of the people written by Deb Whalen-Blaize were used at the WBB service held on October 25 which focused on Mark 4:26-41 and Creation as God’s Body.

Creator, Sculptor, Breath of Life
You brought life into being in the darkness and quiet
Where you were priming, preparing,
nurturing, and growing.
Bring us to stillness and slow breathing
Pause to our anxiety and make space for hope
May we trust that you are with us.

(Silence in which to breathe and be still before Creator God)

We praise you, for you show yourself in Creation:
Your strength and your beauty
Your endurance and resilience.
And you have created us in your likeness

Though we sometimes forget.
When the storm clouds gather, our brows furrow
When the leaves begin to wither,
we wring our hands
Sometimes the spirits of deception
Convince us the end is near.
Where we have been worn down,
and fear has set in
Restore our faith in you and in your presence
Remind us who you have created us to be

(Prayers spoken and silent for places in our own lives where we need healing, nurturing and restoration)

Despite our doubt and our callouses
Hope persists like a sprout in concrete
Defying imprisonment and death
And refusing to give up.

May we see our hope and our faith
Grow thick as mustard and plentiful as mint
And when we are fearful or wounded, O Creator,
May we find nourishment in the faith of one another,
In the relentless hope you have planted in each of us
May we find home in its thick brush
Shelter from the storms that trouble us so

(Prayers spoken and silent for the needs of U of T, our neighbourhoods, workplaces and churches)

Where we fail to serve, O Creator
Forgive us
May we not turn inward or crave dominance
But revel in what you have given us to do for one another.
Help us to celebrate life together,
Cultivating connection and balance.

We pray for places around the world
Where life is threatened;
Where humanity and dignity are disregarded;
Where injustice is used to stockpile power,
Causing suffering for so many.

(Prayers silent and spoken for places around the world where Creator’s justice, compassion and welcome is needed)

We pray, Creator God,
That your justice and balance be restored;
That suffering be tended to, down to its source.
We trust that where harm has been done
You are powerful to correct and to heal.

May our prayers be pleasing to you, O God,
Reaching your ears like the lapping of waves
And rising like the fragrance of wildflowers.
We pray all these things in the name of your Son,
Jesus, Creator Sets Free,
Amen.
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God of Action – sermon on Mark 11:11-25

A version of this sermon was first preached on October 18 at Wine Before Breakfast by Matthijs Kronemeijer, a Dutch theologian. It has been expanded and revised after feedback.

Mark 11:11–25

Dear friends,

“God is action”. This is our image for the day, as we consider images of God this season.

God is action. These words create a tension, a question.
If God is action, what action is this, and who acts? If God acts, where are we? If we act, where is God?
If there is no action going on, does that mean that God is somehow absent, not paying attention? What should we make of this inaction?

A lack of action can be hard to endure. It makes people impatient. I know that all too well myself. I have been unemployed since my family and I moved to Canada two years ago. Being unemployed does not equal being inactive, but even so, it can certainly lead to a sense of impatience. Especially when the urgencies seem to pile up around one, as I have experienced, both in the United States and in Canada.

A large part of what I have done over the past year and a half is study the gospel of Mark. Mark is the gospel of action, of God’s action. Mark presents Jesus’ ministry as a sequence of fast action, especially towards the beginning and end. The middle section has room for something different: it has more reflections, and it tells the story of Jesus’ disciples being led up the mountain where they hear God’s own voice. “This is my Son; Listen to him”.

The general plan of action in Mark develops a bit like the hymn we are going to sing in a moment, “The love of Jesus calls us” (Common Praise 434). After the initial joy and wonder at God’s mercy there follows a period of reorientation and transformation to be true followers of Jesus. And after that comes a time to challenge the status quo, the powers that be, by means of direct action. This is where the confrontation with ongoing abuse and exploitation can get pretty overwhelming – as it does for Peter and the other disciples in our chapter 11.

There is also a part of the action plan in Mark that is missing in the hymn, but I’ll come to that. Before I get deeper into Mark, I want to consider an obvious point about God as action, so obvious that I neglected to mention it when I preached this sermon live. “God has no other hands than our hands”. Thus runs a famous saying attributed to St Theresa of Avila, a 16th century nun, who was both a contemplative and a woman of incredible action.1 God has no body but ours, and thus we should act for God, use our hands and hearts and minds. If this is so, if our works can be the works of God, this is one way for God to be action. But you will agree that this understanding of God’s action is not too prominent in our passage. I would not want to read this text as an exhortation to smash the furniture of this lovely church or a call to do good works of love and mercy. We have many other Bible texts about good works, and the fate of the furniture in this church should be left to its congregation. Although I fancy it would make a great banqueting hall, if a suitable cover for some of the windows could be found.

In one word, our passage is about a home-coming – Jesus coming into his true home. We have skipped the story of the homecoming parade, 11:1–10, which has Jesus on the colt entering the city. (I am not sure if you do that at the University of Toronto, but we did at Michigan State). The verse we started with is a spectacular example of (seeming) inaction. After Mark has raised all these expectations, Jesus does nothing more than go to the temple and look around. It is almost like he takes a glance at his watch and decides it is time to walk back to Bethany. After all the royal hosannas it feels like a letdown. Where is the action?

Action kicks in the next day. Jesus and his disciples are back on their feet, walking from Bethany to Jerusalem. And the action is negative – Jesus curses the fig tree. I find the image of the cursed fig tree profoundly sad and in fairness, disturbing. We would want our God to stop random destruction, least of all to carry it out himself. To me, this image evokes the ongoing news of the ongoing destruction of our natural environment that clamours for action. It also captures the apparent futility of so many of our efforts, including mine, to produce meaningful change. We might well wonder: Was this destruction really necessary, given that it was not even the time for figs? And does this destruction also foreshadow our own, unable as we are to produce good fruit at a critical time?

Jesus’ true homecoming, the next day, leads to his most dramatic public action, the “cleansing” of the temple. Jesus puts an end to the work of sellers of cattle and of doves for sacrifice, and to the work of moneychangers. We hear of him overturning the tables they use, the seats where they sit, and prohibiting the carrying of any gear, “vessels” or merchandise. (There is something in these words). Now why did Jesus do that, and what is happening here?

One explanation for Jesus’s actions can be found in the verses Jesus quotes to support his actions in the temple. “My house shall be called a house of prayer before all peoples”. As a Jewish friend and bible scholar suggested to me, this verse is the key to Jesus’ actions. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the selling of animals, the changing of money, or the carrying of merchandise – except that in Jesus’ view they got in the way of the core function of the temple. That is: to be a house of prayer, for all people.

Jesus truly comes into his own here. The actions that Mark squeezes into four verbs show how Jesus acts as messiah, king, and prophet. He exorcises evil, establishes his authority, and teaches. The need for an exorcism fits with his claim that the temple is a “den of robbers” – the second verse Jesus quoted. A den that is being purged, at least temporarily. Temporarily, since after all, the temple is going to be destroyed.

As I read Mark, he comes very close to the belief that the synagogue and the temple were to be replaced by the Christian church. This means that the words Jesus speaks in the temple can also be applied to the Christian church. Understood in this way, Jesus’ words suggest that to live up to its calling, the Christian church should be exactly this: “a house of prayer for all people”. And to be sure, it needs to be uncorrupted by commercial interests. For us who live in North America, where Christianity long sustained a culture of exploitative colonialism, domination and slavery, leading to all forms of internal corruption and also sexual abuse, that criticism hits home. By their subservience to these abuses, our churches and other Christian establishments have become “dens of robbers” too, in spite of the good intentions and true devotion that were and are still present in them. (Chapter 12 of Mark captures these tensions very well). Some Christians continue to align themselves with the political heirs of racism and colonialism, and in any case, the negative patterns created during earlier times – defensiveness, a closed mentality, self-protection – are still ongoing. To some degree, perhaps a significant degree, our churches are still corrupted and in need of cleansing.

With that in mind, let us look at Jesus’s surprising response to Peter’s remark on the withered fig tree. I will admit to finding this the hardest part of the text and of God’s call to action. Not because it is unclear or unappealing. What stands out, first of all, is the compassion Jesus displays to his disciples. No more dramatic action centered on Jesus, but an exhortation to pray with confidence. To pray, specifically, the Lord’s Prayer, which Mark’s readers would have known by heart. Because it seems to me that this prayer is what the text is hinting at in vs. 25, where Jesus refers to God as the heavenly father of his disciples. As for Peter, who alerted Jesus to the withered fig tree, he might have been torn between different feelings: Awe at the power of Jesus’s curse, or regret for the loss of the fig tree. But the fig tree was always Jesus’s own anyways, as God’s son and the heir to God’s vineyard. (This story opens Mark 12). The delightful little book of the prophet Jonah shows that God can grow and give trees as he wishes, and take them away. As Christians, we have no entitlement – to the land, to the fruits of the land, to goods, even to life – only to God’s promise, never to give up on us, the people of God. God did not give up on the sinful people of Nineveh, much to Jonah’s chagrin. So Jonah sulked while God acted, even through him, perhaps in spite of him.

Jesus talks about prayer, which is exactly where the temple and its community had fallen short. Where I fall short. Prayer, for Christians, is God’s action per se – through the Holy Spirit that is moving in our hearts. It is a STILL kind of action, what contemplatives call the ‘opus divinum’, divine work. It is very hard to accomplish and to get oneself to do. Thankfully, some people are better at it than others. A great friend taught me that in prayer to God as our heavenly father, we can permit ourselves to be immature and demanding – like little children. Perhaps that image suits the kind of father – a father who is also very much like a mother – that we could allow our God to be. After all, we are told here (as elsewhere in the New Testament) to ask for the whole world. So that is another part of the action we are invited to engage in.

That said, I still much prefer more dramatic action. “You will say to this mountain”, Jesus says, “be taken up and cast into the sea”. No more dramatic action than that can be imagined, to move a massive heap of rock. But is that necessarily what the text is telling us?

Consider that “this mountain” is the temple mount, which as we just heard is corrupted by forces of evil and has become unsuitable for prayer. Next, consider that the sea can be a symbol for the waters of purification, perhaps even of baptism. Does that change our reading?

To me, it makes it sound much less supernatural, and more realistic – and more impossible at the same time. The stains on the temple mount are going to be washed away, even the blood that after an intermezzo of centuries is again shed on it. The stains on our churches are going to be washed away, even if our buildings risk being sold or destroyed, and many probably will be. That is the impossible possibility we are being confronted with.

Many young and young-at-heart people are ready to overturn tables and chairs, to unseat the powers that be, and to try to prevent commerce and exploitation from running our societies into the ground. Some form of radical action, of revolution in short. I agree that it is needed. But I suggest that we, as Christians, are not ready yet. Our action is not God’s action simply because what we do seems right and necessary to us. In matters of charity and good works that may usually be the case, but in matters of faithful engagement in politics – where the bigger challenge lies – not so much. I suggest that contemplation and deeper thinking are still needed more than action, which is also in large part why I choose to focus on it, for the present time. And perhaps we all need to have some of our convictions and sacred beliefs overturned before a way forward opens up.

The church should be a house of prayer for all nations. This speaks to me, as a Dutchman who is caught between countries, church communities, languages and cultures. It speaks to me about the need for action in the form of contemplation – watching, observing, reading scripture and meditating. But this form of action cannot be undertaken alone. If the church is going to be what she is meant to be, Christians must pray in communion with others. The needs of the present world are too overwhelming for individuals or broken communities to carry.

More practically, it suggests to me that before we pray for God to intervene and ideally solve our problems as if by magic, we followers of Jesus should work to carve out a truly Catholic space where the concerns and needs of all nations can be weighed and explored in comparative safety. Where the lives lost through war in Tigray and Ethiopia weigh as much as those in Ukraine and Russia – and here. In connection with this exploration there is a need for proper discernment and analysis. This is where the work of universities, think tanks, opinion leaders and civil society groups comes in. There is failure in politics, but also integrity, and the need to shoulder burdens that may seem to heavy to carry.

Let us dream of a temple square where people from nations and cultures large and small, poor and affluent, humble or prestigious, can meet in sufficient equality and freedom to understand each other’s needs and perspectives. For to all of us God has said, in the words of Isaiah (chapter 55), “My thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways”. The realities of our countries and of our part of the world are certain to look very different in the eyes of others, as theirs do to us. Only in dialogue and prayer can we lift them up to God and move mountains. Let that be God’s action plan.

1 For another version see https://www.ncronline.org/spirituality/soul-seeing/soul-seeing/christ-has-no-body-earth-yours

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Prayers of the People – Mark 11:11-25

Opening Prayers

How long, O God,
until things are made right?
How long before you act?

We lament the brokenness in the world.
We lament how hard it is
to discern your actions,
to see the Spirit’s presence.

As we come to worship,
grant us your table-flipping,
mountain-hurling convictions,
and may we recognize your presence
in your house of worship this morning.
Amen.


Prayers of the People

God of power,
you entered Jerusalem on a colt
and with an army of peasants.
You entered the temple,
became angry and raised your voice, 
and overturned the tables of injustice.

Tear down the injustices in our churches,
the university and our workplaces. 
Remove those who have abused their power,
reveal racism and ableism.
Let exploitation and thievery wither
so that restitution may grow in its place.

May your house once again
be a place of prayer for all peoples. 
May the university and workplaces
be spaces where all may flourish.

[Prayers for the church and the university]

God of power, you have promised
that if we say to a mountain 
‘Lift up and go into the sea,’ 
with hearts that believe and do not doubt, 
then it will be done.

But, O God, we doubt.
Our world is filled with mountains of oppression,
valleys of polarization we cannot cross.
We are weighed down by heavy burdens
placed on ourselves and one another. 
What sea can hold these mountains?
How do we not drown from our efforts?

Help us to imagine a different world,
a world where rulers humble themselves
and fight for the poor and oppressed.
Help us imagine a world
where we tear down mountains together
and where all creation flourishes. 
 
We lift up ourselves and those close to us.
Help us to trust in you.
Help us to believe your promises.

[Prayers for ourselves and those close to us]

God of power,
we believe you hear us. 
May we trust in you. 

As we wait for your answer,
give us courage as we fight for justice,
give us wisdom to rest in your presence,
and fill us with hope.
Amen.

Text borrowed partially from WBB service in March 2022 and January 2017.

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Prayers of the People – Numbers 14:13-25

The following are the prayers of the people that Robert put together for the WBB service focused on God as pilgrim (Numbers 14:13-25) held on October 11, 2022. Some of the following text has been borrowed from An Iona Prayer Book by Peter Millar and Gathered and Scattered: Readings and Meditations from the Iona Community by Neil Paynter

Lord of every pilgrim heart,
you are beside us and before us on the way,
surprising us through your Spirit
at every turning on the path.

Yet, like your disciples on the Emmaus road,
we often fail to recognize our companion.
In this morning hour,
and in whatever the day may hold,
help us to recognize your presence,
so we may celebrate with you the gift of this day.

[Prayers of thanks for people, places and moments that have shown us God is near.]

You lead us through the day and to our rest.
We are not afraid,
for your sun and moon are above us.

God of the pilgrim path
and of every pilgrim heart,
reveal yourself in situations
we would prefer to pass by.
Lord of the excluded,
help us to notice those who are different from us.

Lord, kindle to our hearts within,
a flame of love to our neighbours.

Go with us on this pathway.
Weave our walking with yours,
that the steps of our feet
may be a journey with your Spirit.

Be with us, like a pillar of cloud by day
and a pillar of fire by night. (Numbers 14:13)

Lord of the land, Creator,
it is so easy for us to reach out
and take what we want from the world.
Help us to see when our bargain
is someone else’s impoverishment.

[Prayers for our neighbours near and far,
who are in need.]

Journeying with you, Creator God,
is to journey in your world,
full of marvels and beauty in sky and sea,
and the earth and rock beneath our feet.

Journeying with you, Holy Spirit,
is like journeying with the wind.
Enable us to move to your wild music
and then to sing your song.

May the journey ahead
be blessed with your joy, O God,
As well as with your silences,
your peace, and all your surprises,
- perhaps all in one day.

[Prayers for God’s presence where there is need in this city, at the University of Toronto, and across the country.]

Pilgrim God, be with us
on every road, on every hill,
and each step of the journey. Amen.
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Opening prayers for God as pilgrim

The following are the opening prayers written by Deb for the WBB service which focused on God as pilgrim. The service took place on October 11, 2022, the day after Thanksgiving. 

Creator God, Pilgrim, Sojourner:
As we walk with you, from day to day,
We wonder:
How is it that you never tire?
We are in awe,
But our feet are sore
And we miss home.

It is so hard to imagine what’s ahead
And so easy to remember what we left behind.
May we not forget that you are with us,
And you are the Eternal One,
Who was and is and is to come.

This morning, we pause to take stock
To look at you, O God,
And give you thanks
To see how far you’ve guided us,
And give you thanks
To hear your clear, clean whisper,
And give you thanks
To be refreshed and inspired for our next steps
And give you thanks.
For your word, for your love
And for your guidance, O God,
Who was and is and is to come
We give you thanks.
Amen.
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God as Mother – a sermon

The following sermon was preached by Sarah MH on October 4, 2022 at Wine Before Breakfast.

God As Mother

Today I am preaching on God As Mother. As most of you know, I do not have any human children, although I do have a dog and a cat, and lots of plants. For that very good reason, I was surprised when Brenda asked me to preach since Jess is probably going to have a baby any minute now, but I suppose that’s what I get for requesting that we explore the image of God As Mother in the survey Brenda and Deb sent out in August.

Like maybe some of you, I grew up knowing that God was my Holy Parent. God the Father was never something that was overt, he was there, however it was really only when we talked about the Trinity that God was Father. As a child, our bedtime prayer was “As a hen covers her chicks with her wings to keep them safe, spread out your wings and protect us this night”. In my family, it is the women who lean towards ministry. My grandmother, Nell, wrote her chaplaincy thesis on women in ministry in the Bible. My other grandmother is one of the most prayerful people I know, and has dedicated her life after retirement to being a church leader and missionary. Women and God have always been closely intertwined in my life.

It wasn’t until I was old enough to go to youth group and then really pay attention to what was going on at summer camp that all of a sudden God was really Father, and somehow God was really manly, or in the words of a girl in my youth group: Daddy God. Because of the guys that camp attracted- macho, “manly” and very loud- and because camp ran on a framework of patriarchy and submission, I came to understand God as a Father who was deeply disappointed with me and my feminine side, who was strong, powerful and not afraid to use force or guilt to turn my heart to him. The version of God that I learned about at Evangelical Christian camp was strictly patriarchal.

Yet, as I grew up and began to distance myself from camp and youth group, as I came into my own faith, away from Hillsong, Bethel and Jesus Culture, back into mysticism and tradition, I found a God that wasn’t all Father, somewhat like Mother, and sometimes very much like neither at all, Parent God.

The reality is, God is neither male nor female, yet this was never obvious as a child. I feel like I was cheaped out on, in what I could have learned as a teenager and young person and taught as a leader. Yet, God as Parent was always there, hazy in the background, waiting for me to discover them. My Heidelberg Catechism taught me that God is a Spirit, and has no body as we do. Genesis teaches us that God created humans in their own image, from two most holy things: the breath of the Holy Spirit and dirt from the earth God created, and God saw that both humans created were very good, neither less good than the other. So as I came to terms with God as Parent, God as Mother became more believable. I started to look at the language of the Bible and early Christian teachings, and I began to see the fluidity of God as Mother, Father and Parent; the Trinity.

While the first two members of the Trinity are the Father and the Son, and those are the two that most modern Christianity leans on, I think it is in the Holy Spirit that we find Mother God. I’ll explain more as we go along today, so if you are ready to walk out, please stay and hear me out! For me, the Holy Spirit is the balance that I was craving in my relationship with God the Father. The Holy Spirit has escaped our need to gender everything and yet I feel the most close to God the Mother when I look at how the Holy Spirit is symbolized in scripture, with wind, fire, light and water. For myself, a solid definition of the Holy Spirit is: the inspiring and freeing power of God let loose on the earth. This allows me to hold space for both God the Father and God the Mother.

It should be noted that the word spirit was translated as masculine with the Latin form of spiritus, however was originally feminine with in the Hebrew word ruach, and the Greek is neither male nor female with the word pneuma. The activities of the Spirit as creator, nurturer, protector, as a force of nature, seeking out the needs of her children to empower and encourage them is remarkably parallel to that of women’s experiences. Some of the ways the Spirit has been mentioned in Scripture with the traits of a mother are as a God that gives birth, nurses her young, protects them and attacks those who would harm her children.

Isaiah 49:13-16 reads: Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing! For the Lord has comforted his people, and will have compassion on his suffering ones. But Zion said, ‘The Lord has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me.’ Can a woman forget her nursing-child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me.

Even more precise of an image of God as Mother is Isaiah 42:14 in which God identifies as a mother who’s forceful labour lays waste to the land and leads the children to paths and high places and will not abandon them. However, a few verses before this, God identifies as a warrior and a soldier, proving to be mighty against enemies. While we think of being a warrior and a soldier as being traditionally masculine, there are women in the Bible like Jael and Deborah who are fierce warriors too. It is unhelpful to say that military might is explicitly masculine. In any case, God here is comfortable with being on both ends of the spectrum that we humans have created in gender: both the masculine and feminine side and God is comfortable being both in the middle and outside the spectrum.

The theologian Lynn Japinga wrote in her book Feminism and Christianity that language about God should help us to understand and encounter God, but we should not confuse the reality of God with the limits of our language [Feminism and Christianity: An Essential Guide, Abingdon: 1999, p. 64]. God is beyond gender, the pronouns are only there so that we can more clearly understand God who is beyond our understanding. God is clearly comfortable with identifying as male, female and non-binary, it’s us who needs help and understanding, not God who needs more labels.

Using feminine images for God is not new or radical, it’s part of early Christian history. Lynn Japinga also writes that in the second century, Clement of Alexandria mixed his metaphors in his description of Christians nursing at the breast of God the Father. Medieval mystic Meister Eckhart described God’s daily activities: “What does God do all day long? God gives birth. From all eternity God lies on a maternity bed giving birth.” [Feminism and Christianity, p. 65]

Yes, it is problematic to reduce the Holy Spirit to a mother figure only, not all women are mothers nor do all desire to be a mother, nor does motherhood define femininity. However, those who transcribed the scriptures and continued the early church teachings found a lot of material in the contemporary cultures about women’s roles in society which helped to articulate the Spirit’s function. When Jesus meets with Nicodemus, he provides a birthing metaphor: “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit” (John 3:5). Jesus explicitly describes the Spirit as one who births. In addition, the Psalms describe the Spirit as a midwife, a washerwoman and one who knits life together inside the womb. In addition, the bird symbolism that we see all over the Bible, from cover to cover, was commonly employed to represent female deities in the ancient near east.

From this, the Bible and what we know of the times in which the Bible was transcribed, there is a Biblical case for the feminine in the divine: God as Mother, nurturer and just as much female as male. God’s creation of humans in God’s own image signifies that God is the fullness of femininity, masculinity and non-binary, God transcends gender binaries and constructions. The creation of women in God’s own image means that the realities women live offer helpful metaphors for describing “divine mystery”. There is room for creative, spiritual re-imagining while remaining true to what the Bible says, embracing God’s femininity, mothering and the God-given giftedness of women. Some of us, for too long, have heard one version of the Bible and that has hurt and crippled our relationship with God. When we include the femininity of God in our perspective of the Trinity, we are restoring Scriptures to what they once were and taking the Bible more literally than those who claim God only reflects male characteristics alone. How can we understand God fully if we are only seeing part of God and part of the Trinity? How can we be a complete and authentic community if we do not see the Trinity as equally feminine, masculine and non-binary? Our need for harmony in community is reflected in the perfection of the Trinity. The Father, the Son and Holy Spirit exist in complete mutuality and dependence without a hierarchy of leadership importance and it is the Spirit that reconciles us to model together perichoresis, the authentic and reciprocal community between human and divine in each other. Together, the Trinity sets the example for all people of their God-given capabilities to birth, tend and care, as well as to protect and provide, like a Mother and like a Father. The Trinity is bringing us to an awareness of the fuller picture of God’s being so that all people can find themselves in God’s embrace. Friends, may you find all of yourself in the embrace of Mother God today.

Amen.

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Prayers of the People – God as parent

The following prayers were written by Amy for the Wine Before Breakfast service on October 4, 2022. The image of God we were exploring was God as mother. As that can be a messy image for some, Amy was asked to pay special attention to gender in the prayer. Thus her prayer focuses less on the image of mother and more on parenting and children, and I hope it is welcoming to people for whom the images of God as father or mother can be complicated. 

God, Source of all life,
you oversaw each of us being knitted into being,
within that dark place of mystery.
We are, only because You are.

You oversaw us being stitched together
from the very substance of our parents' bodies.
You knew us when we were carried in secret, beneath the rhythm of a reassuring heartbeat.

You provided us with what we needed for growth
within that mysterious sanctum
until we were birthed through great straining,
and we drew our first breaths,
and took our first taste of milk.
Our bodies now separate from our mothers,
at birth we became vulnerable,
dependent on others for all our needs.

In our dependency, we learn
what it means to be loved and cared for.
May ALL children experience loving care
at home, in the church, at school, in society.
May all little bodies get what they need.

[Prayers, spoken and silent, for children, care-givers, and all those for whom childhood and parenting has been painful]

God, Three-in-One, El, Creator,
You transcend and encompass
the genders you created us in,
all to be Image-Bearers of your own being.

Holy Source of all Life,
you are Parent of us all.
May we reflect you.
May others see how we resemble
or 'take after' you.

May ALL people know, deeply,
that they bear your image,
regardless of sex or gender, or skin tone.
May we each learn to seek to see this in one another.

God, you are neither alone nor lonely,
And you knew it was not good
for people to be alone.

Thank you for designing us to be in relationship, with yourself and others.
May our human connections reflect your love,
your compassion, your presence, your very essence.

[Prayers, spoken and silent, for all our relationships: family, communities, companionship, and other partnerships.]

God, Three-in-One, El, Creator,
Teach us to love each other
as you have loved us,
like a mother with her nursing child.
Teach us to forgive as you forgive,
to create joyfully,
and to be good stewards of Creation.
Amen.