September 6, 2026
READINGS and MESSAGE
EXODUS 12: 1-14
So welcome to our first reading for this Sunday…it may seem a little graphic to some of you but many parts of it are still practiced today by our Jewish brothers and sisters all over our world…they are the instructions for the first Passover and what the folks need to do, so when God passes by and sends a stern message to the Egyptians, they will be safe from harm…and the Passover is so central to Jewish faith for years later, especially in the times when Jesus was on Earth, folks would come from all over to places such as Jerusalem to celebrate such an event…it’s a perpetual ordinance or a forever regulation from Yahweh or God so that the Jewish people and their Lord would be ever connected…let’s take a listen to some of the words from Exodus…
ROMANS 13: 8-14
The central theme throughout this passage from the Book of Romans or this Letter to the Romans is that love – fulfills – the – law…law must serve love of God and neighbour, not the other way around…law must bow down to the demands of love…it must carry love’s desire for justice…and we struggle with this…and so also does the major Middle Eastern religion struggle with this… we try and put law first and quite often, love takes a back seat…well, this love is not a secret to be kept among the small circle of believers in a congregation, or in one’s heart…there is to be no mystery about how we act in God’s name…we’re not called to be subtle and secret – we need to be what we profess to be, people of love and people of hope and we’re continually encouraged to let it out!!!
MATTHEW 18: 15-20
As we listen to the words from Matthew this morning, they remind me that the church is not fundamentally an institution or a denomination, but any place where two or three or more people live together in mutual interdependence… under Christ…so this invites us to cast off our sometimes individualism and enter into a profound trust and commitment to people different from ourselves…and this means exactly what it means – there will be conflict but it’s through conflict that we model for the world how to let things go…so in essence what we are doing is witnessing to the world Christ’s ministry of reconciliation and we become, collectively, the ‘body’ of Christ which I’ll speak to a little in a few moments…but firstly, let’s take a listen to Matthew 18: 15-20….
It’s What’s Inside That Counts!
Many years ago, I had taken many trips to the Qu’Appelle Valley in Saskatchewan to take my courses to fulfill the mandate of becoming ordained in The United Church of Canada…there were 12 of us in this program – In Community Program for Ordination - ICPO…we as an ICPO group first studied the Book of Revelation for one week and then, on the second week, we delved into the mysteries of inclusivism – exclusivism – and pluralism…these are pretty super-charged words and can mean almost anything in our understanding of where our denomination – The United Church of Canada stands in relation to all other faith traditions…whether locally or abroad…we are unique in our minds and we envision ourselves as carriers of the truth…yet others may look at us with derision and would only wish that we would see the light…at least in their understanding of where their religiosity stands and what precepts they follow – possibly gender issues, etc. but we are all ‘Christian’…
Whether we are Orthodox – Roman Catholic – Baptist – Salvation Army – or one of many countless other denominations in this world – we still hold up the Bible as our authority and how we interpret it becomes the point of contention…
And how the writers of it interpret their social and economic and political slant on the times and how it had a bearing on the final result…or, who canonized which books to legitimate what the scripture really had to say…there are so many factors which bear weight on the equation…there are so many other “ways”, to worship God but one thing is central…
It’s what inside ourselves which counts…it is how we relate to each other and how we live together upon this earth…
In the Judaic faith tradition, God is known as Yahweh or ‘breath’…in the Islamic tradition, God is known as Allah…we personify God as Father or the Almighty… whichever name we give to the Supreme Being matters not…what is of much more importance is how we live out the tenets of our faith…
The Five Pillars of Islam for instance are prayer, giving alms to the poor, fasting, the Hajj or the trip to Mecca, and the creed…which we all share in different words…the Judaic faith call it the Shema and we call it the Lord’s Prayer…
When we follow these words of what our religion says to us, we are all the same…what sets us apart is that our salvation and our redemption comes through the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus Christ…Jesus is God revealed, the Torah in the Jewish faith is God revealed, and in the Islamic tradition, God is revealed through the words in the Qur’an and through Muhammad…we are all people of the book, just different books because God continually reveals himself or herself through people…and again, it’s what’s inside us, which counts…
On the last Saturday morning of the two weeks in the Qu’Appelle Valley, we took a trip into Regina…our learning circle came together and spent the entire day in worship and in discussion…for three hours in the morning, we attended a Jewish synagogue and were part of their worship service…the rabbi was so gracious to us and during the tour of the establishment after the luncheon, which we all shared, Jeremy, the rabbi, spoke to a few of us who lingered behind in the teaching room and shared these words with us –
“The prophets in the Old Testament or the Torah, Abraham, Moses, Isaac, Jacob, and others, argued with God…and fought with God…and Jeremy voiced that he continually wrestles with God in the same way in that he yearns for peace upon this earth and it begins with people like ourselves coming into his sanctuary and becoming part of the great mystery of God”…
We were touched deeply by his candid and hopeful message…what Jeremy was ultimately saying was that, to become whole, to become a new creation, meant that we had to wrestle our way back to our baptismal waters and to relive what it means to be, as a child of God…loved and cherished…and oh so special!
And this message came through loud and clear as we spent the rest of the afternoon at an Islamic school and listened to the pain and the torture which these people were bearing over factions such as Osama bin Laden and what he adhered to…which to them, was not the true Islamic belief…and these people were wrestling with their God or Allah as they put metal bars on their windows to stop people in Regina from breaking them and vandalizing their premises…
So as some of us wrestle inside of what God may mean to us, be cognizant that we are not alone, this is a universal action…it’s a multi-denominational and multi-faith issue…
I think that I’ve said this before but it rings so true with these words that I’m sharing with you this morning, faith is a verb and God does not want us to be sedentary in our faith but to go out into the world and profess who we are because, it’s what’s inside which counts…kind of reminds me of this little story of little girl at a country fair who was carrying this humungous big fluff of cotton candy on this stick – it was almost as big as she was…this gentleman stopped and asked her, “How can a little girl like you eat all that Cotton candy?”
“well, “ she said to him, “I’m really much bigger on the inside than I am on the outside!”
We are big inside and Creator God is inviting each of us to open ourselves to the different ways in which God becomes visible in this world…
And I offer a prayer:
O Gracious One….we share a common earth. We stand among each other. We share our planet, we share birth, death, hunger, and love. We are the people of pain and fear, we are the people of anger and joy, we are the people of compassion and grace. In all of us is a longing for a life that has not yet come, for a world that is free and just, a dream of hope for all people. So God, stir us up and make us angry enough to make a positive difference in this world…for thine is the kingdom and the power, through Jesus Christ and through all of your creation…Amen.