Rev. David Boyd

It was interesting to me last week as I reflected on our worship together, we never once mentioned the election. Maybe some of you appreciate that... a chance to escape from the everyday and immerse ourselves in a different way of being and thinking. Maybe some of you wondered about that... thinking that it was on everyone's mind anyway and didn't need special mention. But maybe some of you were concerned that we didn't mention the election in either asking God's blessing on the people of BC or just trying to raise awareness in general... thinking that it should have been named in our prayers and referred to in the sermon.

Part of it was that I was not feeling well and was just focused on getting through the worship. But what was of interest is that while I spoke of stewardship—we've begun our stewardship campaign—I just assumed that people would make the connection beyond the religious sphere of this church. Maybe that isn't fair. I certainly believe that of course politics and decisions are about our faith and religion. Of course what happens in our lives outside of church is part of what happens inside of church. There is no separation between our faith, our spiritual lives and our everyday lives. Stewardship is everything we do after we embark upon a spiritual path. And as Jim Wallis, of the Christian political activist Sojourners Community in Washington, D.C., says "God is personal but never private." How we live out our lives of faith and spirituality is never private because we are whole beings.

There isn't much left to say about the election now that everyone has had 5 days to comment, digest and blog about the results. I think it was a surprise to many of us that Campbell won as many seats as he did. I think it was equally a surprise that the Single Transferable Vote failed and that there would be such a low voter turnoutÉ less than 50%! Perhaps part of the stewardship question with respect to the election results is that people don't see voting as an important part of their lives. Perhaps this is a symptom of the fact that we live fragmented and compartmentalised lives and don't see or look for the interconnections between our lives, our ethics, our faith, our spiritual path and our civic responsibilities. What to do about this is entirely another matter and open to debate as no one seems to know. But I want to affirm that for the Christian tradition, there can be no compartmentalization; there can be no fragmentation; we are whole beings.

This was Peter's learning from the story in the book Acts. Acts tells the stories of some of the disciples as they began to develop some sense of what it meant to be a follower of Jesus after he was no longer bodily present. Peter, in his usually blustery way, had made certain assumptions about Gentile believers becoming Jewish and about Gentile believers in general. Of course they would become Jewish, thought Peter. They would eat according to Jewish law—no pork, no shellfish, etc.—and the men would have to be circumcised. Peter wasn't even sure that he should be dealing with Gentiles—non-Jews—in the first place, let alone baptising them.

Peter's little speech, which we heard this morning, was part of a larger story, a wonderful story of two cultures, two ways of seeing the world, coming together. Peter enters into a relationship with a Roman, a Roman leader to boot, a Roman Centurion, which is a Roman army officer. Could there be anything more repugnant to a Jew in Jesus' day and age than a Roman? What is more extraordinary about this story is that the Roman Centurion, Cornelius by name, is a rather devout individual and he has a vision of God. In his vision he is told to go and see Peter and bring Peter to his home.

The extraordinary nature of the story continues. Peter, at his lodging, went to say his prayers as he normally did at the 6th hour. And while he was praying, he had a vision. A great sheet was let down from heaven in this vision and on this sheet was every kind of creature. A voice spoke to Peter and said, "Go ahead; you're hungry. Eat of these animals." But Peter said, "No, God. I can't eat anything that is prohibited by your law, anything that is unclean!" A voice responded, "What God has made clean, you have no right to consider unclean." Three times this back and forth occurred and then the sheet was lifted to heaven. When Peter receives the emissaries from Cornelius, he was trying to figure out what his vision meant. As the men knocked on Peter's door, Peter heard God tell him to pay attention to these visitors. They told him that Cornelius had had a vision and Peter was to come to him. And Peter went off with them the next day. When Peter arrived at Cornelius' home and heard that he was truly a God-fearing man, he said that initially he had thought that Jews and Gentiles were not to mix. But he repeated the vision he had had and told Cornelius that he thought God was indicating that there are no favourites. All are welcome to be part of God's holy people. Peter then gave his little speech and baptised Cornelius and his entire household.

I have always loved this story. It has so many layers and so many nuances to it. Ultimately, it is a story of radical inclusionÑall are welcome to be part of God's holy people. There are no requirements other than a willing spirit and an open heart. But it is also about having our own preconceptions exploded by God. Peter had his life figured out, fragmented and compartmentalised. And God just simply exploded the myths and assumptions that Peter had made about who were acceptable to God and about the fact that we are whole people.

This is what stewardship does. It explodes our assumptions and preconceived notions about who is ok and who is not. Another example of God exploding our assumptions comes with Jesus gathering with his followers in the Upper Room and telling them, "I no longer call you servants, but friends." Servants and slaves were part of the culture and everyone present, while they didn't likely have any servants or slaves themselves, certainly knew the rich people who did. And they would have known how the servants were treated. Some gathered there themselves may have been servants. And here was Jesus telling them that servants were not servants to their masters anymore; they were to be friends. The jump, which the followers may or may not have been willing to make, was that God was calling them friends. God was calling them to be equals in creating communities of love and justice.

This is where the radical notion that we are co-creators with God of a world of love, a world of justice, a world of equality, a world where transformation changes people, a world where everything is part of a greater whole and nothing and no-one is to be excluded and left out!

Stewardship is the radical notion that we are generous friends one to another, and with God, and that we are co-creators with God. It is helpful to remember that in its earliest roots, the precursor of the words generous, general, genes, generation, meant "to produce or to create." Generosity, then, is all about creating and producing. We are co-creators with God in generating love, in creating life, in creating wellness, in mending the world, in producing enough for all. Being generous, practicing good stewardship, is the way in which we create new ways of thinking about life, we initiate friendships and create radical communities of love and justice.

Being co-creators with God explodes the myths and assumptions by which we live life and leads us to live generous lives of joy and grace. All of which leads us back to the Psalms where we praise God with a deep and abiding joy, and so I leave you with Nan Merrill's paraphrase of Psalm 98, a wonderful expression of hope and joy in living life.