I don't think the way you think...
Third Sunday of Lent – Year C
Sunday, March 3, 2013

Let us pray: O God, your word invites us to reflect on what adds value and purpose to our lives. May these words I speak be ones which assist us in that reflection. Amen.

On Thursday evening and previously last Saturday afternoon I was given the opportunity to do presentations on the work I did while I was on sabbatical. The Thursday evening presentation was sponsored by the Yellowknife Public Library in recognition of 'Freedom to Read' week and last Saturday's presentation was at a meeting of Northern Lights Presbytery – a geographically regional circle of communities and congregations that stretch all the way from the area around Grande Prairie, Alberta to Whitehorse and Yellowknife including many of the towns along the highways that stretch in many directions around and between those places.

'Freedom to Read' week has been set aside to bring attention to censorship and book banning around the world. As I said on Thursday evening it was an honour for me to be there speaking in support of Freedom to Read as a minister in the Christian church, because it is unfortunately the case that some of the more conservative branches of our Christian faith are the worst offenders in terms of censorship and the banning of books.

I'm not going to go into any detail of either of the presentations that I offered on those two occasions. But I do want to make a connection with two discoveries that came to me during my four month break from worship and pastoral responsibilities – because I think they provide – as I suggested in my proposal to the presbytery when I offered to do the presentation – a glimpse of God – and today because there is a connection with the words we just heard from scripture. The focus of my research and reading is a community of people that is sometimes described as a sub-culture – the community of people who spend their working and for many, their leisure hours toiling away at the infrastructure which gives shape to our modern lives. These people are the developers who write the software that runs all the devices which are part of the basis and underlying web for modern North American life. If that description surprises you think of how many times a day you consult your computer, tablet, smartphone or phone in any given minute, hour or day.

In particular I was considering a subset of the sub-culture, the “open source” subset who offer their skill, ability and expertise in a model of sharing – exposing their work for everyone to read and examine and very often offering their work without expectation of financial compensation.

That very sentence should be enough to at least bring to mind a glimpse of God – especially a God who says – as translated by Isaiah and paraphrased in the version of the bible I read this week “I don't think the way you think”.

I described last Saturday, the connection I made with the sub-culture of geeky software developers that I first met in my university years and an image of Christian community that is mentioned in the book of Acts – where all members of the community shared what they had and made sure that everyone had what they needed – no more and no less. This sub-culture, through the web of connection that we know as the internet has moved into a virtual community that literall stretches around the world.

On Thursday I described this same community as a community which offered their talents and abilities without the dominant expectation of financial compensation. As I said then, they operated with a different currency. Some would say it was the pride of having your name attached to a beautiful piece of computer code, or to software that accomplished something innovative or particularly useful.

I cannot escape the connection between this worldview and the worldview expressed in the reading from Isaiah this morning – I don't think the way you think.

And in fact, that expression of God's economy is one that I find particularly provocative as I travel in my faith journey – for it reminds me that God is like that – always inviting and encouraging us to think outside the box, to imagine new perspectives, to think about new ways of being and doing that hold up people, situations and places in the light of grace, forgiveness and inclusion. God is a God of second chances, a differing economy and thinking and feeling outside the box.

I don't think the way you think, says our God, and whenever we think the way God thinks – outside the box – then we are offered a glimpse of that same God, and we expose the same God to others we meet in our faith journey. Amen.