Sermons

May 28 2006

Taking the 'Dis' out of Discernment: Part 2

Reverend Dr Cheri DiNovo

Acts:15

Last week I spoke about that dark night from which the birth of new lives always comes, the prayerful act of discernment that comes out of knowing that the will of God, that source of all love and creation, is rarely the same as our will. The slogan, ‘Let go and let God’ captures perhaps, better than any other, what needs to happen if we are truly to be children of God. And then there’s the roll of the dice.
For those of you who’ve bought lottery tickets, raffle tickets and God forbid, ever been to Vegas or Casino Rama, take heart, here in Acts is biblical precedent for what looks very much like gambling. It looks like gambling, and trust me, the puritanical stance toward some pretty minor amusements on behalf of United Church policy, has always seemed strange to me, although there’s no question that what we have now in is an unspoken tax on the poor, nevertheless what the disciples did in this casting of lots or shards of pottery, depending on the translation is their way of saying, our future is not ours, it belongs to God.

As faithful people we don’t believe in luck, neither do we believe ‘preparedness meets opportunity’. We actually believe as did our brothers and sisters in the early Church, that God has a plan for our lives. That God brought us here this morning. That God birthed us into this world for a purpose. That the promise of God is joy and justice and freedom. That if we prayerfully discern the path God would have us walk that we will be a blessing to the world, because the world will see the face of Christ through us. We actually believe that.

Our God is not uninvolved. Our God as the biblical witness tells us, is partisan. Our God struggles on behalf of the poor, the silenced, the elderly and the child. Our God struggles for and with us. Our God weeps when we suffer loss and our God rejoices when we, as again scripture tells us, when we rejoice in the right. That still small voice that is our legacy from God, lets us know what’s right and what’s wrong in any given situation. We are not alone, we live in God’s world so says the creed of this United Church of ours. This United Church, though perhaps bureaucratically impaired, still was the first Church to ordain a woman, the first to apologize for the horrors of the imperialist moves of Christianity in North America against our native brothers and sisters and the first main line denomination to ordain gays and lesbians and support same sex marriage.

So then, how do we discern? Let me share with you an example. It is my own. For the last few weeks I have agonized, prayed, lost a lot of sleep and invited a number of close and wise voices to help me discern an answer to a question in my own life. Finally, I gave up and let God do it. I didn’t throw lots but really looking back at this period I see that none of it was really up to me at all, my entire life as well, it was really all always in God’s hands. And finally that still small voice responded with an answer that was as clear and strong as if a coin had landed.

Part of that answer for me has been ever since I started in ordained ministry ten years ago, a scriptural one. Isn’t it interesting and absolutely no coincidence, that we have the lectionary passages that we have today and that, I promise I didn’t cheat and look ahead, the theme as given in the clergy resource I have is ‘Prayerful Discernment’. The Bible often speaks more surely than we do.

A couple of weeks ago, I was approached by our Member of Parliament, Peggy Nash on behalf of the nomination committee of the New Democratic Party and asked if I would consider running for the nomination to be the party’s candidate in this riding for the Provincial seat. My initial reaction was to be flattered and to say ‘no’. Some of the wonderful advise from loved ones I’ve received by the way I’ll share with you. Another way of looking at my initial reaction was what was voiced to me by Victor Hayes, our Ministry and Personnel chair, who said, "It’s very flattering to be asked to the prom by the captain of the football team but if you accept you have to spend the evening with a football player."

However I agreed to another meeting and to give it some thought. It’s indicative of the small town reality of neighbourhood life, that about a day after the idea was proposed to me, I heard I was considering running from Carol Reynolds who heard it from someone else. I responded, "News to me?" In politics as in life, a secret is something you tell to one person at a time.

Something seemed to be happening though with or without me. I have never, except in my wild and crazy youth, been a member of any political party, although if I were to join one there’s little doubt that it would have been the NDP. That’s how I’ve always voted. My focus, as you know, has been here. God brought me here, so that along with you, we could create this miracle called Emmanuel Howard Park United Church or rather, a more precise way of formulating that would be to say that God brought us together here to be evangelized by a series of evangelos, angels, who came and touched our lives, transforming them forever. In the process, we have come to live and work and have our being in a community that is as close to a democratic, true loving, faithful community any of us I believe, has ever witnessed.

What is miraculous about this place is not that we’ve broken even financially for the first time in thirty or so years, or that we’ve tripled in attendance or that we saw 1000 people here on Christmas Eve, a true answered prayer for everyone who’d worked and prayed so hard for that day, but that this is a community, a village if you will that models a new world.

We model a world where difference is not just tolerated, it is celebrated, where gay and straight, old and young, poor and middle class, all races, all degrees of normalcy and craziness, all peacefully coincide and agree to not just like each other but agree to love each other. A place where if you are ill, you are cared for. If you are poor you are provided for. If you need training and education and housing someone here will help you with that. Here God has wrought a place that has seen all faiths worship together, seen the tearful good bye to members who have passed from us and comforted each other, who have seen the joyful celebration of marriages for all people and celebrated with each other. Here God has set us an example not only in Parkdale High Park but for the entire United Church of Canada and since the Lambda win, for all of North America. This place is nothing if not the Kingdom among us. "Today you will be in Paradise" Jesus said and, thank you God, today we are, or as close as many of us have every experienced on this earth.

My personal agony has been the thought of the possibility of leaving here. How could I? How could anyone? Now of course, in politics there are never guarantees, the tossing of lots, extends everywhere. I still don’t know what God has in store for me. It is interesting that for example, I didn’t even know my book was entered in the lambdas until Lydia Perovic, another congregant, sent me an email telling me.
Even if I agree to be a candidate for nomination I may not get elected. Even if I got elected in the party it’s a far, far, cry from being elected to Queen’s Park. Neither did I ever have any inkling that I would even be asked. All, more or less, completely in the hands of God.

And then of course there’s the issue of politics itself, the dirtiest of businesses outdone in it’s dangers and dirtiness only by organized religion. One friend described it as something he wouldn’t wish upon his worst enemy. Another described the NDP with the chant (we’ve all heard at demonstrations: What do we want? Peace. When do we want it? Now) What do we want? Modest reforms. When do we want them? As soon as strategically realistic. Finally, politics is the art of the possible.

I couldn’t as a person of faith, be more cognizant of the grueling aspects of a political life. This ministry has been good preparation for that, death threats, hate mail, no sleep, constant work, and the run of the mill intrigue, rumor mongering and attacks on one’s character that are part of all life with others of God’s beloved children.
Someone said, that presiding on Sunday morning while in the early stages of the campaigning would mean no sleep and little or no time for sermon preparation and I thought, "I usually get little sleep and have little or no time for sermon preparation!" For example this modest effort was composed between 4 and 5AM on Thursday morning and revised this morning at 1-2:00AM. That’s not a complaint. That’s ministry.

Others said ,"Go for it! It will be a broader ministry, win or lose, and it would be an honor." Finally though here’s what I heard God saying and of course I may be as wrong as humanly possible but this is the voice I heard grow in strength until it crescendoed above all others. Only God will ultimately tell.

I have agreed to run for the nomination of the NDP candidacy in this riding. Here’s why: what we have accomplished at Emmanuel Howard Park is clearly bigger than anyone of us. We have truly become a house of prayer for ‘all’ people. Just as the early disciples did not stay in one place but moved out from a base of love and justice, so the love and justice that is now part of the fabric of this place calls out to be shared with everyone. Parkdale High Park is a good start, Ontario a better one. All people in this province and riding whether Christian or not, whether able to reach us or not, deserve to live in a place that cares for the weakest among them, upholds the faithful notion that it is the most oppressed and the poorest and how we treat them that marks the humanity of a community.

Unless we engage in that world of politics we will never see our poorest in Parkdale receive an adequate living allowance or our working poor, a living minimum wage or our health care system, used more by the weakest among us, strengthened, or schools that run without parents having to hold fundraisers for that other group that God loves, children. Unless we at least attempt to change the world, we are not doing the biblical ministry of Christ, who changed the world. Unless brave souls were willing to dirty their hands in the politics of this kinder and gentler nation we would not have a welfare system in this country or public health care or free schools or the vote for women and unless women were willing to engage in the work of men, I would not be standing here.

I love standing here and always pray to be part of this family of God. God willing I may come back after my vacation this summer and that’s all it should take me away from you, at least initially, a wiser and older minister. God willing, though, I may be your voice to not just dozens of people but hundreds of thousands of people who would love to have the life we have created here in their own lives. God willing I may do more service to you both individually and collectively in Queen’s Park than here at Emmanuel Howard Park. Wouldn’t it be just like us to be part of a city where there is no homeless, raise our children in schools that are truly free and offer the best of educations, or cared for in Hospitals that don’t have to beg for money while private clinics thrive? Wouldn’t it be just like us, if we had a government that wasn’t about to invest millions in nuclear energy but millions in cleaning the air and the water? That is what I hear God’s voice saying to me. it is time to share this answered prayer to us with everyone.

You know I am already joyful. This is not a move I make because I am in any way dissatisfied. It is because this Church and you can do it so well without me. God calls us all to turn outward as we always have done, asking, ‘where is the need and how can we help?"

It is enough to have had the honor and privilege of being your servant in Christian ministry for as long as I have. I love you. You have transformed me. You have enriched my life in ways I cannot express. You have written through me. You have challenged and tested me. You have taught me and healed me. You have stretched me and molded me. You have been the very face of Christ for me. You, brothers and sisters, through this long and absolutely blissful experience have finally and simply, loved me back. I invite you to walk with me out those doors, into Parkdale High Park and beyond to share the rallying cry that a new world and a better world is possible. After all, we have just such a world right here.

Whatever God has in store for all of us we are family now. That I would never change. With God’s help, the result of my discernment and our experience, will carry hope, peace, justice and a new world to more than we could ever fit in here, even on Christmas Eve.

Again, I love you and I always will. Fear not, said Christ, perhaps his most important words. Remember why we adventured in the first place. Remember what the disciples learned. Remember what the early Church learned. We did not gather and pray, sacrifice and suffer, to only change ourselves but to change the entire world.
Amen.