Sermons

August 18th 2005

Wherever You Go There You Are

But Your Luggage Is Another Story

Reverend Dr Cheri DiNovo

`Many of you are familiar with the saying, "Wherever you go, there you are." This is a little added incentive. I’m going to try to unpack some of our luggage this morning together with your assistance because I know that we all come in to this holy place, this sanctuary, carrying it.

I also opened my daily calendar yesterday, a Christmas present from Joanna Mills, a calendar by Ambrose Bierce, called ‘The Devil’s Dictionary’. For any of you who are familiar with Ambrose Bierce, you’ll know that he’s quite a wit. The dictionary definition of the day was, "Misfortune: The kind of fortune that never misses."
It seems to me there are two reasons why folk come to Church and these are they; the first is that they feel in some way shape or form, that they need God’s help whether or not they even believe in God. The second one, and this is mainly clergy, is they think that God needs their help and that’s why they show up on a Sunday.
You’ve probably heard that the United Church clergy are thinking of establishing a union and I have nothing against unions. I grew up in a union household but clergy are a slightly different matter and one of the problems I think with the concept of forming a union for clergy in the United Church is that if we went on strike nobody would miss us. You’d just kind of wave goodbye to us at the door and save yourselves a whole whack of money. In the protestant Church we are all considered clergy, we minister to each other. That’s what we’re called to do.

On a more somber note it seems every time I open the newspaper these days I read about some clergy’s misdeed. This past week I know many of you read about the Christian Alliance Church minister who was arrested by the RCMP for trying to lure a twelve year old girl. My prayers go out to that congregation and community. I can only imagine what they’re going through this morning. Of course it’s not the first time. We know that The Roman Catholic Church has suffered through billions of dollars in lawsuits. We know that just about every Church has been wracked by this kind of problem. And so, my prayer goes out to clergy, who are always tempted to break the first commandment. It’s a breaking of that commandment that has you thinking God needs you more than you need God. It is to have other idols before you.

There’s a more positive spin on a possible need of God for us. We have here a most beautiful, beautiful story from the Bible. It’s a very unusual one as well. It’s interesting because as I go to see what others have made of this story, what others have said about it I discovered that almost to a person (I was going to say to a ‘man’ which would have been in this case, truer) the way in which this passage ahs been dealt with is that it’s been held up as one of the first signs that Jesus’ ministry is for everyone, not just for Jews but for everyone, for gentiles, for the whole world. Christ’s ministry is not just, and we could extend this, and I think we should, not just for Christians but for everyone. Christ’s ministry is to extend around the globe to wherever people are in need and need healing (in this instance). That’s the most common way of interpreting it.

The less common way but another way that people have of interpreting this story is that it is a story about prayer. Here is a woman sitting at the feet of the divine and she’s praying and she doesn’t give up. She prays despite the fact that they won’t allow her to pray, despite the fact that they try to chase her away and yet she keeps praying and coming back. She also keeps praying for the impossible, the impossible healing of someone she loves and the prayer is granted. So it’s a story about the reality of answered prayer when there is persistence of faith in prayer.

But I think there’s something more about this passage. I think there’s something downright revolutionary about this passage. Because if we take Jesus as God incarnate, as Emmanuel, as God’s presence with us, then what happens in this passage? A woman, who is not a member of the faithful, who is an outsider, who is ‘unclean’, changes God. That’s what the story’s about. She changes the mind of God.
I have an image of Jesus, the light bulb going on, saying in our parlance, "Whoa Dude!" That this woman, this unclean Canaanite woman, knows better about some reality of the universe than God, God’s self does! That she in fact is a co-creator with God of the reality around us. We are, all of us, co-creators of the universe, along with God. God needs us, just like we need God. That’s profound!

If you think back to Genesis you can see it happening there. I mean after all, why on earth, did God create humans? Look what we’ve done to this beautiful planet? Look what havoc we’ve created? Genesis tells us very clearly that God created us because God was lonely and God needed our company. God created us in God’s image so that God could have a conversational partner and a co-creator in this incredible reality. That’s what God created us for!

Nelson Mandela once said that what’s so terrifying about us is not so much that we’re powerless but that we’re powerful beyond our wildest dreams. There’s a little book I’ve been reading and it’s something I would suggest that you all leaf through. It’s a book called, "The Hidden Messages of Water" by Dr. Emoto. What Dr. Emoto did was to take extremely enlarged electron microscopic photos of water crystals in bottles with various thoughts or words expressed or written on them or crystals exposed to music of various kinds.

Where love or gratitude or a blessing had been bestowed, the crystal was perfect, lovely, like a wonderful snowflake. Where hatred or anger had been expressed, the water had a difficult time even forming crystals and was simply messy looking. This is what we do to water. Now we are 80% water. Isn’t that powerful! Isn’t that astounding! Our world is mostly water. If this is what our prayers (because they’re prayers whether angry or loving) do to water, imagine what our prayers do to us and to our universe.

If this were just another new age book we could walk by it but this is a new kind of science that physicists and others are engaging in, looking at how we effect the universe we live in and how it then effects us back. So we can see scientifically now, how we change the mind and the heart of God. How God, in fact, listens to us and to our prayers however you conceive of God. We change God and God changes everything. This is profound. This is what the story of the woman who will not leave Jesus alone is about. It is unlike any other passage in the New Testament. Jesus changes his mind on the behest of a human being. Another way of looking at it is that here is a beautiful feminine aspect of God. Maybe this woman is God? When you read this passage this way it’s very difficult to go back and see it any other way. Who else changes the heart of the divine but someone else who also owns divinity?

I wanted to close this morning with a poem but before I do I wanted to talk about the baggage we began with, that we brought in with us this morning. This is a house, your house, but a house unlike any other. This is a house that despite appearances to the contrary, has no doors, walls, roof or floor. It is called a Church. The winds of God blow in and through here. The winds of our divine spirits blow in and out of here.
Gil and I were guests at a wedding this summer, a Jewish wedding complete with a Chuppah . The Chuppah is a beautiful symbol. It is a tent of sorts but without walls and the symbolism is in it stand a couple and they stand strong despite everything that comes and goes in and out of their lives and home and they stand strong because of course they do not stand alone. They stand in the light of God. They stand in a holy house. Whatever brought them there, they are now to understand they need God, they cannot live without God and also, beautifully, God needs them. God can’t do God’s work without them. They are given a sacred trust. They leave that symbolic house to create their own open sided, open to the universe, house. It is a house where they can safely unpack all of their own baggage because it is divinely not only humanly, protected.

I love Rumi’s poems so I’m going to close with one:

This being human is a guest house.
It brings every morning a new arrival, a joy, a depression,
A meaness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and
entertain them all, even if they are a crowd of sorrows who violently
sweep your house empty of its furniture. Still treat each guest
honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door
laughing and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes.
For each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

Amen.