Let us pray: Creator God – use these words, or the spaces between them to speak your word to us, your people. We gather in celebration and anticipation. We see where we've been, we tremble with excitement and anxiety about where we might go. May our going be always done with a mind and heart on your way. Amen.

I don't know if you've heard of the South African hip hop group known as “Die Antwoord” which is Afrikaans for “The Answer”, but there's a pretty good chance that some of you have. The very fact that any of you have heard of them is most definitely a sign of our present times. Perhaps similar to Susan Boyle from the Britain's Got Talent contest, they became an internet sensation. I looked them up on Youtube (where else besides Wikipedia and Google does anyone look anything up these days!) Now don't get me wrong – I'm not recommending that you all go and do the same thing, although I expect that by me saying this, more than a few of you will do just that – but be warned the similarity to Susan Boyle ends with the internet comparison, While I'm not a big fan of hip-hop and rap music I am very curious about the social commentary that style of music provides, and I do say there are some very creative people producing in that style. So, I'm not recommending that you look them up, even though this mention might lead you to do just that . But be warned: their music contains many expletives and suggestive movements. So I had better explain myself.

I was intrigued by “Die Antwoord” for two reasons – one being the translation of their name – The Answer. Isn't that the way the Christian faith is often framed – as the answer - the answer to whatever questions we might have in life, even though that is an assertion you are going to hear me challenge in a few moments. The other reason I was intrigued by Die Antwoord was an interview I heard on CBC Radio this past week – in fact it was the interview rather than the internet which alerted me to the craze that has developed around this South African hip hop trio. A commentator compared the group and the attention it is getting to post-apartheid South Africa, which he noted has reached its teenage years. He suggested that the new South Africa is acting like a teenager. It's interesting to hear a country being likened to a person that shares its age. However, not surprisingly I found myself doing the same thing with our church in the weeks leading up to this day when we would be celebrating the 85th Anniversary of The United Church of Canada.

I found myself thinking about that number eighty-five and what I could say about it in this reflection on that anniversary of our church. Certainly in person years, eighty-five is a good long time. I travelled to Ontario last October to help my mother celebrate her own eighty-fifth birthday as the marking of a significant milestone in her life. And yet in church years, when we consider the length of time that the church has been in existence in its various forms, eighty-five seems very young. And so, the question that comes to mind is this: Are we celebrating the birthday of a young church or are we celebrating an organization that has reached a venerable age.

I wonder if those men and women, although unfortunately it was mostly men, who gathered in the Mutual Street Arena in Toronto on June 10, 1925 were thinking about this day – eighty-five years later. I wonder what they thought about the future of the church. I wonder if like the South African hip hoppers they thought their actions – bringing together three important protestant denominations – was the answer. I expect in many ways they did, and in many ways I agree that it was an answer, and a good one. But was it “the answer”? Well I expect some of them did think just that. It certainly was still a time of Christian triumphalism and the act of creating a United Church was a cog in that wheel. But as we know the United Church has always been one which recognised and acknowledged other voices – voices which drew attention away from some of the mainstream understandings. I just know that some of those voices were also present in that arena that day.

However, we can be pretty sure that none of them could imagine the kind of world we live in today. Could any of them have even imagined that something like hip hop music would even exist? Could any of them have imagined how easily a hip hop group from South Africa could become an internet sensation? Could any of them have even imagined the internet?

A good number of your presbytery delegates along with other church folks attended an educational event here at St. Paul's Church last February put on by The Emerging Spirit people. During that session we were shown a video called (and I have to say this carefully) “Shift Happens” - you can find versions of it on Youtube (and I am recommending this one) but there's a United Church version of it – the same one we saw in February. I found it on the website of Lakeview United Church in Calgary, and I highly recommend that particular one. It is both awe inspiring and scary – telling us as it does – just how quickly things are changing in this world. Our 1925 faith community ancestors would quite likely be sitting with their heads spinning if they could be here. How do I know? Because it makes my head spin!

The point of the UCC Shift Happens video is to point out that the context in which the United Church was born in 1925 has vastly changed. Communication has multiplied in both speed and the number of ways we can use it. Entertainment has proliferated. Media is everywhere – with creative minds and many times with gobs of money supporting it – although the number of options available for people to communicate with relatively little money is also huge – how many times have I mentioned Youtube in just this one reflection, for example.

And so what does this all mean? Are we to consider our church as a venerable eighty-five year old: not quite up to speed with all the changes around, thinking more about the great life that has passed than the adventures that lie ahead, remembering times when it was okay just to have one phone in the house, and never one that you could take with you wherever you go, and when there was no such thing as texting, when verbs could be found in the dictionary and grammar manuals, when a telegram was the quick way to get a message to someone, and email and facebook were the same as gobbledegook and when birds twittered and tweeted, not people, and a cell phone was something smuggled into prisons. Or is our church the raging granny of eighty-five year olds – singing out for justice, raging against the wrongs of the world, responding with humour and sarcasm to the empires and powers that think they rule the world.

Well, who among us has not questioned the way things are today and remembered with fondness the way things used to be, who among us has not looked forward with fear and backward with longing. I think these are natural human reactions. In fact, they are reactions we find throughout the biblical record. Remember the Hebrew people grumbling so much they called the spot Massah and Meribah – Grumbling and Complaining, where they were sure that the oppression of Egypt was still better than the unkown destination to which they were journeying and the present wilderness of drought and famine.

This is not to say that everything new is better. Sometimes things were better in the past, but we sometimes put on rose-coloured glasses when we look back – remembering the good parts but forgetting the bad parts. Do we really think that the triumphalism of past Christianity is synonymous with the good, old days. I for one don't think so. But I also quake at the idea that the new global market and multi-national corporations are good for us too. The Christian church found roots in part in opposition to the empire all around. People formed community in ways that were counter to the empire culture that was dominant for the time.

I truly believe that our time is ripe in many of the same ways. We don't have to look too far to see signs of empire all around us. But we also see many signs of counter-cultural resistance and reaction – often from those new-fangled ways that scare or worry us. I was reading just the other day, on the internet of course, that a political commentator John Perry Barlow in Washington, DC said that the internet has in large part broken the political system. He said there is too much going on at every level in Washington DC for the government to keep up. It's too much to handle. He went on to say that this is not bad. In fact he commented on the political campaign of Barack Obama and how Obama's election, driven largely by small donations, has fundamentally changed American politics. He said a similar bottom-up structure is needed for governing as well.

Shift Happens and I've come to believe that in large part – shift is all about the faithful journey. Do you remember singing, Eternal, Unchanging, God Only Wise. I remember a healthy little debate about that one from my seminary days – does God change or not? Whether we believe it about God or not, we know that change is clearly a part of God's plan for us. We are people who believe in transformation and what does that mean but change – change that is hoped for, change that is believed in, change that is good for the world and for us.

I really believe there is something stirring in the spirit of the people who dwell on this earth. It's a spirit that calls to us in new ways, a spirit that has us organizing in many different patterns, its a spirit that in some ways is ethereal, virtual, not in one place, but everywhere, and I believe it is a spirit that calls to us from the heart of God. I believe it is a spirit which like a raging granny pokes holes in puffed up people, exposes injustice for what it is, invites us into communities of love and care that speak not triumphantly about how great our way is, but with open minds and spirits to the good we can learn from each other.

As I pondered the choice of a title for this reflection, I consulted a number of different sources – the reading from Acts which tells of Peter's blanket dream of openness and inclusion, and a number of United Church themes and ideas that would tie in with the message I think God has for us on an important anniversary. Ultimately I chose the theme that was offered to us by the national church. Except I looked at the French version, which is quite a bit different than a translation of the English. It talks about Singing our Future – an image I love – for song says so much more about us, and to us. And I also imagined this raging granny of a church – 85 years young and still singing – urging us on into a future unafraid. And that's the way I want to close this reflection today: in singing – please join with me when it is comfortable for you to do so....

Don't be afraid – my love is stronger, my love is stronger than your fear. Don't be afraid, my love is stronger and I have promised, promised to be always near. Amen.