HELLO!

Ched Myers is one of my “go-to” Biblical scholars, someone I read to help me see the lectionary text as more than a personal “self-help” guide. If fundamentalist Christians read the Bible with an eye to who are the good people and who are the bad ones, if evangelicals read the Bible looking for how God can turn sadness into joy, if traditionalists are looking to the Bible for how the patterns of life can reveal a code to “right living”, then we mainline Christians can, and often do, look to the Bible for advice in our personal relationships. I think this helps explain why the United Church, in its current manifestation, is struggling to express our witness to the world. Our leadership is focused on social justice, righting the wrongs of our systems, social structures, and underlying beliefs and our local churches finding their footing in community and right relationships.

In the summertime I see this challenge come to life. The minister preaches a sermon on the plight of marginalized communities, the people I meet before and after the service want to tell me about the various ways they come together, build community, care for one another in good and hard times. It’s not that these two visions are incompatible, it’s more that they are rarely integrated. My colleagues lament their churches are not motivated by the larger issues of social justice, lay leaders lament to me they wish their ministers were more accessible in their community building. What I like about Ched Myers is how he takes a Bible story and opens it up to the larger issues of justice but at the same time unlocks the joy that results when God’s people come together in liberation.

The story of God feeding the Israelites in the wilderness (Exodus 16:1-18) has often been relegated to a sentimental children’s story, Myers said, when it should be viewed as the first set of lessons that the freed Israelite people are given. God provides all what the people need, Myers noted, and three rules come with the gift. First, don’t take too much, but take enough. This is a vision where there can be too much and too little, Myers pointed out, unlike our current economy where we have an infinite tolerance for both wealth and poverty. The second rule is to not store up God’s gift. And the third rule is to “make sure at least once a week you stop what you are doing to remember the first two instructions and have a party.” Myers emphasized, “Our task as people of faith is to give priority to the ongoing struggle to recover, nurture and advocate for community. That of course is not an easy task; it is a life’s work. If the church could become a workshop where we are all trying to figure out how to retain community that would be a pretty-powerful thing.”

Myers comes from the Anabaptist community (not to be confused with the Baptist Church, it includes Church of the Brethren, Mennonites, etc…) and thus justice is rooted in community witness, something other Christians often struggle to understand. I think this is the “sweet spot” we in the United Church can learn from, how to integrate our urge to find meaningful relationships with our call to proclaim justice. In our more recent smaller, aging, sometimes marginalized, configurations, the church rarely has the means to feed those who are hungry or convince the powerful to change the structures, but we do have the power “to be”, to be a witness to what can be, what should be. When the world sees the church as it was called to be (Acts Chapters 2 & 4) hearts and minds are changed, not only those inside the church (relationships) but outside as well (transformation to justice, not “just us”). Myers helps me get there.

Peace, Kevin

PS On your behalf I expressed our deep gratitude for the witness of Bruce Nauss as family gathered in a Halifax cemetery for his Committal service.