Co-Lead Minister
Luke 17: 20-25
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This is the last Sunday in our series on Change-Makers and the focus is on creativity. Which makes me very excited because I think that being creative is what we are called to be about. Not only being creative but recognizing that we are creative beings. Now I know a lot of us recoil from that thought – I don’t have a creative bone in my body might be a common response. But hear me out.
We worship our Creator, God. We worship, or we’re curious about, or we are in awe of, or we have some questions and complaints for the One who created us, the Creator. And, we are created in the image of our Creator, God. Genesis 1:27: “So God created [humanity] in [God’s] own image. . . male and female [God] created them”. We are creations of God, creatures of God. Created, formed, shaped in God’s image. Which means that, we have the capacity for creating in our DNA. We are formed in the womb as artists. This does not mean we are all Picassos, which is a good thing because notwithstanding his art, he wasn’t a great guy. But we are all creatives, we are all artists in some way.
Please stand up if you paint, play an instrument, sing in a choir, sing in the shower. Please stand up if you bake, work with wood. Journal. Enjoy photography. Can fix a car. Have been involved in building a boat. Have helped with repairs in this building or elsewhere. Have baked a casserole for someone. Have helped raise a child – your own, your friend’s, your nieces, nephews, grandchildren. Please stand up if you garden, if you have helped water our gardens, if you have been part of the sacred gardens, if you have helped make a prayer shawl, or if you knit or crochet or quilt.
Don’t tell me you are not creatives. You have formed, shaped, molded, made something new or redeemed something old or broken. You have all had a hand in bringing to creation something that didn’t exist before your hands and your hearts got involved.
And here’s why that matters. When the religious scholars asked Jesus when the kingdom of God was coming, he told them it wasn’t coming with things they could see. In truth, it was already there, it was already breaking in, into the world and within the listeners. Within us. The kindom of God hasn’t been fulfilled yet, hasn’t fully arrived, but it has begun to take shape. It is hidden in plain sight. Like the photos that Jocelyne Cottier has shared with us, the kindom is beauty and wonder easily missed but once we see it, spell binding. As believers, and as occasional doubters, and the curious, we have two jobs: to train our hearts and our minds to see the kindom around us, and, help others see and experience it also. And that calls for our creativity.
The kingdom of God is not a spectacle that can be easily observed. It is a presence, a movement of grace, often unnoticed. It is love afoot, abundance offered, justice lived out. And part of the work of Christians, and those who are committed to living out justice and compassion and love, is to find ways to help people see where that kindom is present. And, to live as if it is present.
Makoto Fujimura is an artist and a Christian who has inspired me for several years regarding the connections between faith, beauty, religion and the kingdom of God. In the introduction to Makoto’s new book ‘Art and Faith: A Theology of Making’, theologian N.T. Wright says: “If we believe that God raised Jesus from the dead [however we might understand that], and that (as the New Testament insists) this has brought about the unexpected launch of new creation, of the ‘kingdom of God,” on earth as in heaven, then our present vocations really do partake of that new creation, bringing fragments and flashes of new creation to birth in the midst of the still-darkened and sorrowing world. We are, to that extent, like the spies whom Moses sent into the land of Canaan, and who brought back fresh fruit from the promised land to the people still in the desert.” That’s our vocation, our calling, to “…show an often-disbelieving world – and, sadly, an often suspicious church – what the future is like.” (N.T. Wright, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making, by Makoto Fujimura, p. ix)
Let me unpack that – our job as Christians, as people committed to justice and love, is to create ways in which people can see that the kindom, the love of God, is breaking into our time. To find ways to show what that looks like, what that feels like. To create moments that help people experience what the grace and compassion and abundance of heaven on earth is. To, as N.T. Wright says, come back like the spies that went to the promised land, with our arms full of fresh fruit and bread and honey and say, ‘taste and see God’s dreams for creation fulfilled’.
I believe that you people are sitting in the midst of a place that gives witness to what the kindom of heaven feels like. And I believe it’s possible you don’t see the depth and the profound nature of what you have created here.
On Sunday mornings this community of faith gives witness to the kindom of God with your welcome of diversity, of all races and gender identifications and ways of believing and income, all the things you say each Sunday morning in your welcome. You are blessed with music, with the Gospel Choir and with the beautiful gifts of Julian, that lift hearts and spirits and create a thin space between heaven and earth. Last week Julian played Guide Me Oh Thou Great Jehovah in a way that gave me goose bumps, the Spirit was so near. That’s kingdom art. At the end of the service Marcus will offer a solo that gave strength to those struggling during the Civil War – the power of kingdom art. You are blessed with beauty every week through the creativity of Carol and those who work with her. Kindom art. Throughout the week you offer the ministry of Jesus through your programs and caring ministries, and through the exceptional gift of the Mental Health program which allows people to get critical support that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford. People who often have nothing to do with this church, and who will not ‘repay’ the church, although who knows what gifts they will be able to offer the world when they feel healthy again. That’s free grace, the work of the inbreaking kingdom.
But wait, there’s more. I believe that the Thrift Shop isn’t just a pragmatically useful activity that brings in money – quite the contrary. The Thrift Shop gives witness to your commitment to the care of creation by offering a way for things to be used and reused and re-reused rather than thrown into the garbage and so contribute to the degradation of creation. It gives witness to your commitment to economic justice, making things that people need affordable and things that people don’t need but love – fun new clothes and toys and art and things you didn’t even know you need but are delighted to find, available just for the joy of it. The Thrift Shop gives people opportunities to serve their community and form community and offers those who might struggle to make contributions in other areas to find meaningful ways to make a difference in their world. That’s the art of the kingdom.
The Café is increasingly offering a place for people to gather, to build community, to have a hot meal at an affordable price. It is addressing the deepest malaise of our society – isolation. That’s kindom art.
The gardens that have been here forever offer beauty, moments for people to stop and admire and little bouquets of wonder on the café tables throughout the summer. The art of the kindom.
The Sacred Garden and labyrinth and contemplative grove and prayer wall and wandering paths around the building, and the indigenous gardens and the children’s playground that is in the planning stages offer places of respite and meditation and fun but there is more than that. They give witness to the abundance of God – you didn’t need to do all that work. It’s out of abundance and grace you have done all that you have done – to give witness to what the kingdom of God looks like. It’s not pragmatically utilitarian – it’s beauty for beauty’s sake. It’s an offering of places to encounter the Spirit and leave notes to God and wander in wonder, not because you, the congregation, get any pay back with bums in the pew and increased offerings (that is utilitarian pragmatism at its most offensive), but because like God you love your neighbours enough that you’ll do whatever it takes to offer compassion and nurture and a place to take a breath. For free. With no obligation. That is grace fully lived out, fully illustrated. It’s kindom art.
I know that enormous amounts of work and thought went into all this: the way worship has evolved, the gardens that were initially created, the Thrift Shop, the evolution of the Sacred Gardens, the ongoing birthing of the Café. I know that planning and money and sweat and arguments and time and tears went into each part of what is now present on this land. And I wonder if you’re even fully aware that over the years you, in collaboration with God, have created a significant piece of heaven on earth right here. Do you really see, hidden in plain sight, the kindom in your midst?
Sometime ago, in another congregation, we were working with an architect from New York who helps congregations that are thinking of rebuilding or redeveloping. Richard Vosko holds that that your buildings need to give witness to what matters to you. With an outsiders’ eyes, I can see what matters to you, the people of Mount Seymour United Church. What matters to you is that you make the abundant love and the grace of God known and accessible in your community, whether they come on Sunday morning or not. I want to rename this community of faith: The United Church for Mount Seymour Community. Because I see that is what you have become. The kindom breaking in on the corner of Parkgate and Banff Court.
Renowned theologian Dolly Parton has said, “Find out what matters to you, and do it on purpose.” I think you have created, perhaps not fully aware of what you were doing over the years, an enormous pieced of art that illustrates what matters to you. And that your future is about now doing it on purpose. Growing fully into what with our Creator God, you have created.
The kindom of God is indeed among you and within you. Thanks be to God. Amen.