SUNDAY, JUNE 16 2024 - LIFE TOGETHER
June 16, 2024
Life Together
Carolyn Smith
At the risk of sounding shallow, I’d like to try here to make a quick list of
expressions of diversity in here -
• ages - young, old middle. In denial. Boldly embracing age?
• Genders - male, female, non-binary, trans
• Lots of ability and differing abilities
• Born in different places - Scottish, Irish, British, Indian, Korean, Dutch, Russian,
• Languages - English, Korean, Marci & Rodrigo in Brazil speak portuguese,
• How about hobbies? Anything interesting? Tracy in the office races Dragon
boats sometimes. I like roller coasters more than some people.
Lots of diversity of experience, perspective, I WONDER about your hobbies.. I
am curious about your last trip. I wonder how that changes your outlook or
dreams or worries.
Now, let’s make a list of things we all have in common - - we like St. Paul’s. We
have fingers and toes, we breathe air, (etc etc)...
Sometimes people say our commonality is what is most important. Sometimes,
we hold up Diversity as a biggest blessing. Where these meet: is right *here.*
Look around, enjoy your friends, including the ones you don’t know so well yet.
Right here we all chose this Community today - a life together with both
commonality and diversity at the heart of it. As we hold up our community joys
and celebrations each week, along with the worries and care, it’s something we
acknowledge - both the good and the bad, the differences and the shared
experiences are really important to us, and enrich us in a way that one or the
other couldn’t do.
Today brings a confluence of remarkable days here - all the celebrations and
memorials we’ve noted already; Indigenous Peoples’ Day comes on Friday,
Today is Father’s Day for all the ways we experience that, it’s Pride Month. The
100th year of the United Church has begun: so Life together - with all these
focuses and causes and celebrations is diverse - a diversity of emotions and
priorities, of your ideals and causes are about Life Together, and the common
part isn’t always so easy to pinpoint. Looking around this room even, in the
truth of your lives, of families, of calendars and energy, Life this month will go in a
million directions, not a common one. And may it be so. That’s as life happens.
The reading today was from the book of Acts - Jesus has died, and this book is
about how his friends moved on, how they acted together, and how the church
came to be as people heard the stories. And what an inspiring hopeful story this
was about Life Together! The people heard Peter and thought - wow, I need to
be part of this way of Jesus. I’m going to support this whole bunch of people and
stop hoarding and saving for myself. 3000 baptisms, they ate and sang and prayed
and laughed together.
This story is how we all want to live life! We want our family gatherings and
church meetings and business dealings and nation-building to look like this Acts
story. I bet they were singing Kum By Yah and eating s’mores around a campfire.
It sounds quaint and happily-ever-after, and if they had not been surrounded by
EMPIRE, by a demanding social structure, conquest and persecution of the
Hebrew ways, maybe it would have been happy. Somehow the early church kept
their sense of joy and purpose alive in the face of Empire and persecution, but
bravely, carefully and only because something about this radical,‘Life together’
mattered MORE than punishment or just forgetting about it.
We hold our moments of Kum By Yah in our hearts, we have fleeting memories
of perfect times, we hold them as the ideal; AND so rarely is life so reliable and
easy. Some of you are lost in fond thought in this moment, pondering memories
in your heart. And I know that some of us here are aching a little bit right now..
because of how often real life ISN’T like this.
Home life is impacted by all sorts of things. Father’s day isn’t easy for everyone.
Pride Month can be more battle than party, and many of us heard the stories here
of Palestinians last week. Tragic, complex and difficult. The dream of the Acts
story of the people sharing life together is *here* -it’s an ideal at one end of the
line. The worry and real pain is over here at the other end of the line when life
together is painful, and even irreconcilable.
And here in the middle, is the invitation today.
If I had some teenagers here, I’d have them give some Community-building a try...
Do you remember a fun activity where 2 people sit on the floor back to back,
arms linked and try to stand up? They push and they pull, they argue and
communicate about how to hold hands or leverage or lean on each other. They
wobble and lose their balance. If they were separate, it would be no question. If
someone lifted them, it wouldn’t demand anything of them. They must work
together, with each other’s strengths and weaknesses and rise together. And
when they’re both finally on their feet, they laugh, maybe grumble a bit but mostly
celebrate their achievements. The challenge took work and sweet success
wasn’t easy. (We had a video of siblings Matt & Kate working on this! Thanks!)
From time immemorial, human nature means that communities and nations have
had to wrestle with one another, and so often. And even when one event has
turned out well, with all the hard lessons learned: “Never AGAIN” they said,
“We Remember” they said. New people, new communities must do their own
wrestling and jostling and figuring things out. Time immemorial again and again,
In our homes, our nations. In our communities at every level.
Thanks be to God for communities who keep turning towards each other than
away. For those who catch their breath and get brave and remain open. Those
who choose the time-consuming whole-hearted work of hearing stories, learning
and unlearning, searching for empathy and speaking their truth. I do not mean a
Person in unsafe living situations. I do not mean a person in an abusive home.
This is not the time and the message for that. Safety and a separate path for
healing and thriving is the right answer there.
In community though, thriving means reconciling: As we at St. Paul’s have
gathered around tables to talk through hard things about our future together, and
then found ourselves singing and laughing and hopeful, we are doing this hard
work of community building. And a few months ago, we voted as a congregation
in support of the Remit on the Indigenous Church- and so that work has begun
too - not easy, not singing Kum By Yah, but hard storytelling, trust-building, one
more step along a journey of Reconciling. Slowly we the brave United Church of
Canada will be partners with, face to face, knee to knee, with a gracious
Indigenous Church discovering deep spiritual learnings, an understanding of the
Great Spirit that binds all things together. Imagine what the Great Spirit calls us
to: the laughter and relief and peace of life together as challenges are wrestled
with and reconciled.
This dream remains a lofty Vision of the future, but each step we, as individuals, as
congregations, as the wider church take now either moves us forward or moves
us away. Here, we’ve shared Indigenous books to read and CBC specials to
watch that help us grow in relationship. We can find restaurants or cookbooks
for squash soup and cranberries. Next week, why not come over to the Meeting
House with me for an hour for National Indigenous Peoples’ Day. It might feel
like a challenge, like jostling. I’m sure we will be happy we went.
This work is ancient, always ongoing, part of our creation stories and wisdom
teachings from every culture.
Maybe that’s why on our last week with the Lord’s prayer theme and these few
lines as Jesus taught, speak not of celebrations and singing together, but of ‘How
to fix trouble.’ How to be together: Our daily bread - cultures rise and fall
when inequality reigns so it is OUR bread, not mine. And then ‘Forgiveness:’
how to make amends and repair and move forward. How to choose the Good
path, away from things that tempt us to evil and disconnection.” It’s not in
good, easy laughing times we find ourselves wondering how to pray , but when
things are hard.
We are good here at celebrating with each other and enjoying life together.
From that fill up your spirits, take courage, take bravery to trust our rainbow-
diverse but loving, hopeful commonalities, and let’s lean in for life together.
For Time Immemorial. In community, for the good of all, it will always require
effort. And maybe even it’s a blessing to be part of that work. It’s a blessing to
do it with you.
May it be so.