Young at Heart Message
 
Have you ever experienced a stumbling block to your faith?
 
I have experienced several throughout my life.
 
The first stumbling block that I can recall - and perhaps the most impactful for a variety of reasons – happened when I was maybe 12 years old.
 
I didn’t go to Sunday school for some reason, and my cousin, who was the same age as me and also in my Sunday school class, told me that I was going to go to hell because I missed Sunday school.
 
I was distraught. I couldn’t understand how something out of my control would automatically doom me to hell.
 
It didn’t make sense. So I asked the smartest person I knew at the time – my Dad.
 
And I distinctly remember my Dad laughing when I told him about it.
 
Here I was, practically in tears, worried about my soul and wondering how I could be doomed so early in life.
 
I was probably the only kid in the world to commit myself to hell so soon in life.
 
And my Dad laughed.
 
But then he told me that if I was going to hell for something like that, then we were all going to hell for some reason or another.
 
And then he probably said something more about hell, but I don’t remember anything after that.
 
I just remember that he had assured me that I was not, in fact, going to hell.
 
But this scenario was a huge stumbling block to faith and religion and my path to God.
 
I didn’t know much about God or Jesus, but what I did know was that I had been taught that Jesus loved me. God loved me.
 
And if I was so loved by God, then how could a God who loved me be so flippant about condemning me to hell (or making people believe that other people were condemned to hell)?
 
Now of course, my cousin probably doesn’t remember this at all. And I can’t blame her for this – she was just repeating something she’d been taught at some point.
 
She wasn’t old enough to know any more than I did on the subject of God or hell.
 
But this was a stumbling block for me, nonetheless.
 
I have had other stumbling blocks in my life, too.
 
My natural curiosity and my propensity to ask questions and be skeptical of the answers I received turned me away from organized religion for a large chunk of my life.
 
But it also allowed me to spend many years asking questions, understanding what it means to love our neighbours as ourselves, and to approach God with wonder and awe.
 
I was free to explore, to stumble, and to be curious and open-minded, not just about religion but about God, about other people, and about myself.
 
Most of us have probably experienced at least one stumbling block to our faith in our lives.
 
An experience, a comment, something you read or heard, or something that just didn’t seem to jive with what you were taught when you were growing up.
 
Those stumbling blocks helped formed your faith as much as the things you’ve learned in church, in Sunday school, or in the world.
 
We meet Jesus and the disciples today at the precise moment when the disciples experience quite a large stumbling block.
 
The Message
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The disciples see a man helping people in the name of Jesus. But John says “he wasn’t one of us, so we told him to stop.”
 
Jesus then basically says “what?! Why would you stop someone from helping people just because they aren’t ‘one of us’?!”
 
The disciples are essentially separating themselves from everyone else.
 
They are implying that only people who are in their folds can do what they do.
 
If we look closely, John said “he wasn’t one of us.” The stumbling block they are experiencing is an “us vs. them” mentality.
 
And Jesus sets them straight by telling the disciples that just because someone isn’t walking with them directly doesn’t mean that the person can’t be doing good work and spreading good news in the world.
 
Humans can be very skilled at stumbling blocks, which isn’t necessarily something we would want to try to be skilled at.
 
Sometimes stumbling blocks are put in our path through no fault of our own, but often, especially when it comes to faith, we create our own stumbling blocks. And sometimes, we put stumbling blocks in the paths of others.
 
My cousin put a huge stumbling block along my faith journey without knowing it.
 
Which is exactly what the disciples do here. They started to think of themselves as “better than” or “more than” them.
 
And of course them is anyone who isn’t in their tight circle of followers.
 
So not only do they create their own stumbling block, but they drop this stumbling block onto the path of the person they told to stop simply because he wasn’t “one of them.”
 
How often do faithful Christians do these types of things to others, and by extension to themselves, I wonder?
 
How many of you have either believed that your denomination or religious tradition is the one and only “right” way, or know someone who has been taught that or believes it currently?
 
I know I have heard that, and I know people who believe it.
 
But Jesus uses some strong words to caution us against such notions of “us” vs. “them.” He cautions us against this idea that we are somehow better than them.
 
I am not, and will never be, a fire-and-brimstone, put-the-fear-of-God-into-you preacher.
 
That doesn’t feel like good news to me. If anything, it feels like bad news meant to scare you into running toward Jesus, rather than good news intended to remind you that Jesus’s arms are always open for you.
 
And I don’t think Jesus is a hellfire preacher either.
 
So why does he offer such strong words to the disciples here, and why does he talk about hell?
 
I think we need to put his language into the larger context of his entire life and teachings.
 
What does that mean? I think we need to read Jesus’s language as spoken with all the love and compassion in the world.
 
The disciples want to “copyright” their work, and the work of Jesus, so that only they own the rights to him and his work.
 
As far as stumbling blocks go, that’s a huge one because Jesus wants the exact opposite – he wants his message to get out to as many people as possible. He doesn’t want it limited to only a few who are “allowed” to share the message.
 
Putting themselves between people and Jesus to gatekeep is exactly the opposite of what Jesus wants.
 
This behavior only limits what should be open and available to everyone.
 
The disciples had good intentions, but ultimately, all their actions did was turn someone away from Jesus.
 
So Jesus feels like he needs to use some pretty harsh language with the disciples, but it ultimately comes from a place of love – not just love for them, but love for all those people who are following outside of the inner circle.
 
He tells the disciples that placing these stumbling blocks in the paths of others – “causing even one of my followers to sin” he says – would be terrible.
 
Just don’t do it, guys. Come on. It would be better for you to not follow me at all than it would for you to cause someone to turn away from me.
 
So, Jesus says, if part of you is causing you to sin, do away with it (metaphorically). It would be better to go into God’s kingdom with only one eye, for example, than to keep both eyes but be thrown into hell.
 
In other words, don’t allow yourself to get caught up in these antiquated notions of “us” vs. “them.” Don’t allow yourselves to believe that you are better than others when all they’re trying to do is follow me, too.
 
No one owns the good news. Not the disciples, not any one denomination, and not even the “big C” Church.
 
Jesus is reminding us that humility is important, and as much as we’d like to think so, we don’t know everything.
 
So let’s set aside any thoughts that we do know it all.
 
If the disciples teach us anything throughout the Gospels, it’s that they were far from perfect. And they had direct access to Jesus!
 
So there is no way we have perfect faith, either. So let’s not assume we do.
 
Jesus ends this passage by saying “Salt is good. But if it no longer tastes like salt, how can it be made salty again?”
 
In other words, if we stumble, or if we start placing stumbling blocks in the paths of others, how can we get back onto our own path and stop hindering others?
 
Jesus has an answer for that, too. “Have salt among you and live at peace with each other.”
 
There’s more than enough salt to go around. Have your salt, but don’t prevent others from having theirs, too.
 
Live at peace with each other.
 
One of my teachers this semester for my discernment class says “be at ease.”
 
Friends, be at ease. Live at peace with each other.
 
Don’t worry about who’s right and who’s wrong.
 
Jesus shares such good news with us, and his arms are open wide especially for each of us.
 
Not just for us individually, but for all.
 
It’s not necessary to scare anyone into loving Jesus.
 
Jesus’s arms are lovingly open wide for everyone, no matter how many times we might stumble.
 
Amen.

Young at Heart Message
 
One of our musicians wanted to incorporate what he calls a “Creature Feature” into our service today as part of our Young at Heart Message.
 
But, he felt like he wasn’t comfortable doing it himself, so I said I would incorporate it into our message today.
 
Most Sundays I try to offer a Young at Heart message as part of the Sunday sermon.
 
I do this for two reasons:
 
The first is because we no longer regularly have children present in worship, but if children do show up, I hope having a more accessible preliminary sermon is helpful and enjoyable for them.
 
The second is because often adults learn just as much from these messages as kids do!
 
Since we are all young at heart, I try to be creative with this part of the message.
 
So, Michael brought this animal for me to use today. His Dad received it as a gift at his school where he was a caretaker.
 
What kind of animal do you suppose this is?
 
I think it’s probably a tiger, but since it’s not coloured like any real animal, it could be a striped lion I suppose as well.
 
The fun thing about this tiger is that it isn’t just a pretty face - it also sings and dances!
 
I’ll play it for us, though some of you may not be able to hear it.
 
If you didn’t hear it, the tiger sings and dances to the song “Wild Thing.”
 
If you aren’t familiar with the song, it goes “Wild Thing! You make my heart sing! You make everything groovy. Wild thing! Wild Thing, I think I love you.”
 
If that doesn’t sum up how most of us feel about our pets, I don’t know what does!
 
Wild thing, I think I love you - even though you chewed up my shoes, or got muddy paw prints all over the floor, or got excited and jumped on the curtains and knocked them down.
 
Wild thing, I think I love you when you look at me with those loving eyes, or when you sing me a pretty song, or when you do something cute and endearing.
 
This tiger is funny and silly, but it introduces our sermon today in a fun way, and it is a gentle reminder that we are called to be caring and respectful toward all of God’s living, created beings.
 
The Message

Those of you who know some of my story before I moved to Calgary know that in my previous life - and at this point it truly does feel like a completely different life - I owned a dog daycare and boarding facility where I also worked with people to help train their dogs.

And while my expertise was in dog behaviour specifically, I have been surrounded by animal lovers of all kinds for a very long time.

I have shared my life with cats, dogs, hamsters, fish, frogs, a rabbit, turtles and a variety of other beings over the years.

I know the level of attachment that can occur when we are caring for one of God’s creatures.

I know the heartache when we lose one of our best friends - a being that we cared for, spent time with, and loved.

I know that there are times when it feels like our pets are the only ones in the world who truly understand us or will listen without judgement.

We have come to know the spirits of the animals we share our lives with on a deep level, and many people that I have talked with and worked with over the years will attest to a deep and unexplainable connection with their pets.

Likewise, there are many people who lean on the power of spiritual connection with wild animals.

There are books and resources available to help us understand our spirit animals, and indigenous people for generations have understood the connection between humans, animals, and the environment.

I cannot imagine that these relationships and connections with animals were not divinely inspired or created by and through God.

We have been placed here on earth to care for God’s creation in all its forms, including other humans.

But for those of us who share our lives with animals, we also know that God must have created animals to care for us as well.

Certainly, animals across the globe are bred to feed humans and nourish us, and that is a form of care.

Since the beginning of human existence, animals have worked with humans to help with agriculture, food acquisition, search and rescue, safety and protection, sniffing out specific odours, and of course deep companionship.

When we lose an animal that has been an important part of our lives, we grieve just like we might grieve over the loss of a family member or friend.

When I first began my ordination conversations with the committee that would ultimately decide if I was ordination material, one of the things I talked a lot about was the spiritual connection I have to my dogs.

The first dog I shared my life with who was mine and not a family dog walked with me on my journey through life in ways that I couldn’t even truly begin to appreciate at the time.

His name was Kodiak, and he moved into a new dwelling every single year of his 7-year long life with me.
He journeyed with me as I learned how to become a dog trainer.

He graciously allowed me to make a boatload of mistakes in his training and his care, and he still ended up being an incredible dog.

He began my journey into understanding dog behaviour and learning theory.

And, my journey with him led me down the path toward pastoral care and care for people in ways that I could not imagine had I not learned those skills through my experience with him and working with people who were deeply connected to their animals.

During my ordination process, I mentioned several times the importance of not just my connection with my own animals, but what I saw with my clients and their connection to their animals.

Over and over again, in my life and in the lives of everyone I worked with, I saw people connect with their animals in ways that can only be described as spiritual.

People would tell me how their animals helped them through so many difficult situations, and they would express deep and profound grief when they thought about losing their animals.

I am convinced that incorporating animals into our spiritual life is essential for many people.

In the book A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L’Engle, a deeply Christian author, she writes about the main character’s connection with the dog Ananda.

The main character connects with Ananda through a simple touch, and the dog helps her connect spiritually to her brother who is off in another time period fighting to save the world she is in from destruction.

This spiritual and Godly connection with animals is a theme throughout literature, but it is also a theme throughout the Bible.

I have an entire book which references all of the animals mentioned in scripture.

Today, for example, we heard two different passages out of the many that include references to animals.

I preached a few months ago about Job, and when I gave that sermon, I summarized the entire book of Job.

The scripture we heard today is one of God’s responses to Job’s complaining heart.

God asks Job if Job wants to be the one doing God’s job.

God reminds Job that the world is complex, that living beings all have their own sense of autonomy and decisions they make both with regard to their survival and with regard to their own pleasure and happiness.

Job’s suffering is not the only thing happening in the world at that moment, and there are other beings that God is also responsible for.

God understands creation in ways that Job, and by extension all of us, could never fully understand.

When people try to explain their connection to their animals, they often have difficulty describing it.

Many people will describe their relationship with their pets as similar to that of their children.

But there is often something even deeper at play.

I think it has to do with the fact that we learn to communicate with beings that cannot communicate with us verbally.

We have to develop a much deeper connection with them in order to understand each other. In my formerly professional opinion, it is not all about giving commands and ordering our pets around.

Humans create meaningful connection with their pets that goes beyond an owner/subordinate relationship.

There is a deep and profound spirituality that comes when we discover this ability to communicate with our pets.

For example, I recently discovered without doing any training at all with my dog Kanyon, that he understood a new cue from me that I had never taught him.

He sleeps on the bed with me, and I have a big body pillow down the middle of the bed so that he doesn’t push me off the bed.

Sometimes, before I get into bed at night, I find him lying on my side of the bed.

I used to kick him off the bed and let him get back onto his side of the bed on his own.

However, one night, I just said to him, “switch sides buddy” and made a circle gesture to indicate I needed him to move over to the other side of the pillow.

To my complete surprise, he got up and moved over to the other side of the pillow.

At first I thought perhaps it was just a fluke.

But, the next time it happened, I did the same thing, and he moved.

Now, almost every night, we do the same thing, and he consistently moves without me ever having taught him a cue.

This happened because of the nature of our relationship, and the spiritual connection we have that allows us to communicate with one another despite the fact that we will never share a common verbal language.

I could talk all day about the connection we share with our animals so if that’s something you’re interested in, grab me after worship.

But, I will spare you for now, and leave you with this final word.

May you lean into your relationship with your animals, if you have pets living in your home with you.

And, if you do not have animals in your home, I invite you to explore the possibility of connection to animals outside of your home.

For example, appreciating the birds singing in the trees, the squirrels jumping from branch to branch, the deer peacefully eating along the side of the road, the coyote playfully hunting mice in the fields, or any other opportunity you might have to experience a connection with God’s creatures.

As you do so, take the time to thank God for all of the ways these animals help us and guide us along our spiritual path.

May God’s creatures be a blessing to you in a myriad of ways. Amen.

Let us pray:

Holy God, we thank you for the gift of animals in our lives. Through all of the creatures you have placed on earth, you have brought many blessings and opportunities. Today we pause to name our gratitude for the living beings we share our lives with in a variety of different ways.
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Thank you, God, for the love and compassion we hold and the opportunity we have been given to be stewards of your magnificent creation. Amen.

​The Message

Today, the Moravian Church celebrates the “Moravian Day of Service.”

This annual celebration can be honoured in a variety of ways.

Some churches will hold a short blessing service followed by different opportunities to go out into the community and serve their neighbours.

Some churches will not hold worship services at all and instead will encourage or organize mission work with another organization which serves people where they are at.

Some churches will hold a regular worship service but then have opportunities to serve one another within the walls of the church – writing cards to those who cannot attend worship, organizing and cleaning the spaces used within the church, etc.

Because I have only been here for just over a year, and admittedly because I was just on vacation and did not have the time to think through service opportunities outside of our church, I did not organize anything for us to do today.

However, I absolutely still think we can celebrate the Day of Service.

That said, I don’t see this as one day during which we should be serving, and then forgetting about it for the rest of the year.

Instead, I think today can be an opportunity to celebrate all of the ministry and service we do throughout the year here at Good Shepherd.

I have often heard over the last year from many different people about all of the ministries that Good Shepherd used to offer.

Many of those events and ministries fell off the radar during COVID.

COVID of course made it difficult to do big events together because of the need to socially distance.

Dropping many of the ministries we used to offer during that time also made it very hard to start them again – partly because people were slow and cautious about gathering, and partly because people just didn’t seem to have the energy for them anymore.

And, since arriving here, I can hear the nostalgia and a bit of sadness in people’s voices when they talk about the things we used to do here.

I can also hear the pride and excitement as people share what some of those ministries used to be, how they felt, and how they served the community.

I think sometimes church members can feel disappointed in themselves when they see the evolution of their ministry offerings, and when they can see how many things they used to do that they no longer are physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually able to offer.

But, I don’t see these changes as failures or disappointments.

I see it as a necessary part of the life-cycle of any organization.

We cannot possibly expect that offering the exact same ministries forever is the best way to serve our communities, ourselves, or God.

People change. Communities change. We change.

We still do so many things that we can and should be proud of at this church.

I spent some time this week going through my work log since I arrived at Good Shepherd.

In doing that, I came up with a lengthy list of ministries and services we offer here, and in honour of the Moravian Day of Service, I would like to acknowledge them.

The list is long, and it is something we should be proud of.

Here are many of the ways that the people of Good Shepherd are serving.

Some of these ministries are internal, and some are external.

And much of what we do as a community allows our members to take their loving and serving hearts out into their communities to serve, not necessarily as representatives of Good Shepherd Church, but as representatives of God’s love for neighbour and community.

It should be mentioned that this list is probably not exhaustive, so if I’ve forgotten anything, please know that it was not intentional.

It is also worth mentioning that I have grouped things together in ways that I think make the most sense, but it may be that some of these ministries could be in more than one category, or don’t quite fit into the category I chose but I couldn’t find a better option.
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In a nutshell, I am not perfect, so forgive me in advance if I have made any mistakes. ☺ 

​As you can hopefully see, we do incredible work together. Some of what we do serves this immediate community, but much of what we do serves the wider community – not just the communities in which the church sits, but the wider Calgary community as well as the wider Moravian Church.
We are an amazing group of people doing amazing work on behalf of God, and that is worth celebrating! Give ourselves a round of applause!
I am not sure how many of you are aware, but each year on or around September 16th, pastors in the Moravian Church gather in our local areas to celebrate Cup of Covenant.
This is not just a celebration of past ministry, but it is an opportunity to re-commit to doing ministry for another year.
In the Canadian district, because Edmonton and Calgary are so far apart, we gather annually to do a retreat together to celebrate Cup of Covenant.
This retreat just happened this past week.
We gathered together and recommitted ourselves to ministry for another year, sharing our joys and the griefs and sorrows we have each experienced over the last year, and sharing our hopes for the upcoming year in ministry.
Then, we solidified our covenant with one another through a sharing of Holy Communion – a receiving of God’s grace and God’s steadfast love for us as we prepared for another year of ministry.
In a few minutes, we will be celebrating Holy Communion together here.
I would like to suggest that on this day when we celebrate our mission and service together, that we re-commit to another year of ministry.
The beauty of the Moravian way of celebrating Holy Communion is that we all partake of eating the bread of life and drinking the blood of Christ together, as one.
May we receive God’s grace, as usual, but may we also re-commit to God’s call to service and ministry to each other, to our neighbours, to our communities, and to the world.
May we remember our purpose for being a church, may we celebrate the amazing work that we do together in service to God and in the footsteps of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.
May we leave the sanctuary today, in unity and with renewed dedication to our mission. Amen.
Let us pray: Gracious and Loving God, we are so grateful for the events in each of our lives that ultimately brought us together to be a church. We could not possibly do all that we do, serve the people we serve, or love each other as deeply without your blessing or your guidance. We a grateful for all that we continue to be able to do together as a community, and we pray that you would continue to lead us in service to each other and to those around us. We pray all of this in your Holy name. Amen.