Let us pray: O God, guide these words and use them, that your voice might be heard in the sounds and silence which surround them. Amen.

    In preparation for their participation in the thirty-ninth General Council in August 2006 in Thunder Bay, commissioners received a large docket of material. Such is the case with all meetings of the General Council - the decision making gathering of The United Church of Canada which takes place every three years. The docket contains lots of information - accountability reports from the various groups that work on behalf of the church in many different areas, copies of the various resolutions and items of business that are up for discussion and decision at the meeting, and always a number of reports on various aspects of our work and witness as a church in the world.

    Included in the docket distributed to the commissioners was a report which soon gained the nickname “The Empire Report”. I must admit when I first heard that nickname, I thought to myself - “now what?”. Sometimes that’s the way it is with General Council reports. At first they seem over-the-top in their raising of issues, but upon closer reflection and consideration, they usually end up addressing something that I had rarely ever considered on anything more than a superficial level, but which are clearly things that I should have thought about. Often they help to clarify issues that have been on my mind - putting them in terms which help us to focus and identify the concerns and come together in common solutions and actions.

    Such was the case with the so-called “Empire Report”. Once I dug a little deeper into the issues that it presented, I realised that indeed, it was something that raised important issues, and affirmed some of the very things that have bothered me about the world we live in.

    Now don’t get me wrong - I still haven’t dug all that deeply into the issues or the report. I perused bits and pieces of it this week, as I prepared for this reflection this morning. I’ve read enough of it, and considered it sufficiently that I’m no longer asking the “now what?” questions. But there is still much more to learn.

    With that in mind, I therefore want to present an overview of the issues raised in the “Empire Report” with the hope that it will inspire all of us to do some more reading and research. I also want to describe for you how this report came to be the topic for today’s reflection, some thirteenth months after it was first presented in Thunder Bay.

    Let me follow that second direction first. Two aspects of today’s scripture readings spoke directly to me about the presence of “empire” in our contemporary lives. The first was Paul’s request to Timothy and therefore to us - to pray for leaders and kings. What should our prayers for leaders and kings sound like? What does it mean to pray for political leaders when there are so many obvious examples of the people disagreeing with the decisions made by their various governments in this day and age? What other leaders in this world are in need of prayer? We all know that power in our world is no longer confined to those who govern countries. You’ll hear a quote about that in just a moment.

    The second spark this week was a commentary I read in connection with the gospel reading about the shrewd manager. It was a comment which spoke to me at a level and with a perspective I’ve never experienced with that parable before - and it redeemed some of the negative feelings I’ve had about it in the past. Here is what a worship planning team had to say about this particular parable.

    Empire has the power to influence the decisions we make in this world. We, as North American consumers, buy into the ways of “Empire”. Notice how I used the term “buy into”? It practically proves the point. I thought nothing of using that phrase until after I had used it - I did not intend the pun, but it is a sign of the way that our thinking is organized. Our intentions and the things we believe in, are often described in economic terms. We know what we believe when we “put our money where our mouth is”, when we are willing to invest in something with our “hard-earned” dollars.

    However, I am getting ahead of myself. What is meant by “Empire” as described by the “Empire Report”? Here’s a definition from the introduction to a workshop that is meant to help study group members come to their own understanding of the role of Empire in today’s world. It comes from this special issue of Mandate Magazine, which appeared in May of this year, and which tells us that “Challenging Empire: The Call to Community” is the latest three year Mission Theme for the United Church of Canada. So, there will be more for us to study and learn and do. Unfortunately, I could only find two copies of Mandate. Now, hopefully that may be because there are copies circulating, but even if they aren’t, some of the key articles in this edition are available at the web site of The United Church of Canada: United-Dash-Church.ca Just put Empire and/or Mandate into the site’s search engine and you’ll find lots more to read, including the original report that all the commissioners received. Here’s that definition:

    For many people, the concept of empire is historic and they will not have applied it to the modern experience. Others may occasionally apply the concept to the current American political state, but without much reflection on how that concept fits or on what empire means in a broader, transnational context. The United Church has adopted the term “empire” to talk about the corporate, political, and military conglomeration of power that threatens social justice, the well-being of humanity, and “the whole of the earth” in the present moment. The shoe fits - and it doesn’t - but the decision to use the terminology has one key benefit. Jesus’ teachings provide the church with a specific kind of faithful response to the absolute power that he called empire.


     So, one way of describing empire is in terms of  the powers and principalities that Paul described, as having influence over our lives. However, it is not just our lives that are being affected. In fact, in many ways, as affluent North Americans, we often “benefit”, if you can call it that and don’t believe that our welfare is connected with the welfare of all God’s people.

    Here are a couple of other quotes with which I want to leave with you, that help to describe and define “Empire” in our lives today. These come from a book by Arundathi Roy, The Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire published by South End Press in 2004:

    “Today the world is run by three of the most secretive institutions in the world: the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization, all three of which, in turn, are dominated by the U.S. Their decisions are made in secret. The people who head them are appointed behind closed doors. Nobody really knows anything about them, their politics, their beliefs, their intentions. Nobody elected them. Nobody said they could make decisions on our behalf.” From Arundathi Roy, “Come September”in The Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire.

    Our strategy should be not only to confront Empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With...our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe. The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling...Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them. From Arundathi Roy,”Confronting Empire” in The Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire.


    Well perhaps those quotes stir you up, but with them I’ve barely touched the surface of the issues and the concepts referred to in the “Empire Report”. There will be other times and places to speak to it over the course of the three years devoted to this Mission Theme.

    We are called to live faithfully in response to God’s call. We also know that we live in a world which exerts many pressures upon us - pressures that are difficult to withstand, pressures that are beyond our own control. We believe, deep in our hearts, that some of these pressures are not the way that God would have us live. And so, as faithful people we must do what we can to make sure that the ways of the world are ways which reflect our understanding of the purpose and the worth of all people who inhabit this world.