A Three Stranded Cord: Hope, Peace and Love
Twenty-third after Pentecost - Year A
October 23, 2005

Let us pray: Loving and gracious God, may your word be spoken through my words, or the spaces between them. May they tell of your presence among and within us. Amen.

Often when colleagues who share a vocation or particular kind of work get together, especially when it happens infrequently, they end up sharing stories about funny things that have happened in going about their work. People who work in ministry are no exception. So, often at conference meetings or meetings of presbytery, you can see a group of them sitting together sharing stories about the funny things that have happened to them in their practice of ministry. There is a story that comes out of my year of internship that I have shared on a number of occasions. In fact, Sharon has heard it enough times that she is probably getting tired of it, but since I expect that most of you have not heard this story, and since it does serve to illustrate a point I would like to make, I’ll take this opportunity to tell it to you as well.

I need to set a bit of context for you. My internship was served with the people of the Wilkie-Scott-Landis pastoral charge in western Saskatchewan. Wilkie was the largest of the three communities. Therefore, claiming their size as a determining factor, Wilkie United Church held that they should be entitled to 11:00 a.m. as the time for their worship service. The other two communities could have some other times. Well, as you might imagine, this rather one-sided claim on the proper time for worship (that’s the way one disgruntled woman in Landis described the 11:00 a.m. time) caused a bit of dissent in the two smaller communities. So with a smidgen of grace about them, the Wilkie congregation gave in only slightly to the wishes of the other two congregations and agreed that in the month of June they would move to an evening service, thereby freeing up 11:00 a.m. for the other two congregations to argue over.

Evening services in June created a very interesting dynamic. First of all, I hold my predecessors in ministry in very high esteem, especially those among them who consistently led worship in the morning and in the evening, because in my experience it was not an easy thing to re-energise myself for worship in the evening after leading two services in the morning. So dynamic one - is a low-energy worship leader. Dynamic two is a congregation which looks much different from the regular Sunday morning congregation. First of all it seemed apparent that it wasn’t just the worship leader that was low in energy, for the evening congregation was much smaller than the regular Sunday morning congregations. However, there were also those in the community who felt that the evening was the only proper time for worship and so they would come out faithfully during the month of June and hardly darken the doorway at any other time of year. Finally, there were the few faithful who would come to worship whether it was in the morning or the evening or any other time.

It was my turn to preach and lead worship during that month of June. The congregation, given the dynamics I just described consisted mostly of one pew full of people. The faithful attenders were kind of seated in the middle of the pew. I had written a good academic paper to preach. However, that was the problem. It was an academic paper and not something that worked well in oral presentation. I remember thinking that to myself even as I offered it. "My goodness, this is boring" were pretty much the words I was speaking to myself as I preached it. Apparently, Sam, one of the faithful congregation members felt the same way, for he slowly nodded off. The only problem is that he nodded off in the direction of the person beside him, not his wife. Eventually his head was resting on Olive’s shoulder. Only willing to take this for a short time, Olive - a long time friend and character herself, decided to give Sam a little wake-up call in the form of an elbow placed squarely in his chest. Sam gave a very audible snort and sat bolt-upright in the pew, with everyone including me looking directly at him.

However, that’s not all, and it is what followed that prompted me to tell you this story. At the coffee time following worship I decided to tease Sam about his little nap. So, smart-alec that I was, I sidled up to him and said something about his deciding to nod off during the sermon. He quickly put me in my place by snapping back: "I heard every word of your sermon, it was about love, all your sermons are about love."

At first I was a bit offended by his rebuttal, but the more I thought about it, the more comfortable I felt about it. After all, I thought, if indeed my sermons were all on the same theme, then the love of God was not a bad one to choose.

I thought about that this week as I reflected on the themes that were running around in my mind and my heart in connection to the scripture passages that we just heard. At once they spoke to me of hope, peace and love, and then I thought, how cliché. I wonder how many sappy or syrupy messages get preached on hope, peace and love each week, and I wonder how many I have given.

But I could do no other. Even though at the worship committee meeting last week we talked about how many times peace seems to come up as a theme for worship, it just might not be enough. This is peace sabbath, and in a couple of weeks we will have a remembrance day service where peace will once again be a theme and then often in the season of Advent peace is once again the theme of the second week as we anticipate the coming of the Prince of Peace - as Isaiah refers to him. Why isn’t it enough? Because so many of us are still yearning for it. Because peace is one of the ways we define hope. Peace is not sappy when it’s tough edges are exposed, when it is seen as the outcome in a struggle for justice and not as a naive acceptance of the status quo which leaves some people oppressed while others try to rest comfortably and serenely, above or outside of the cries for liberation.