Pastor John Van Sloten

Too many times lately I’ve had word justice-olatry run through my head.  And I know its not fair or even right.  Helping the poor is a huge part of what the church needs to be.  Jesus’ teaching and example clearly illustrate the need to help those on the fringes, the last, lost and least.  So all churches need to do it.  But it can’t be all that churches do.  Because “justice” doesn’t stop with the poor.  Nor does the definition of “poor” stop with the poor.  Oil industry executives are poor too; they’re doing business in a way that falls short of the glory of God, that could be so much better.  Families in our city are very poor; the love that flows between them is drying up, spouses aren’t being loved as they should and kids are being ignored or abandoned.  The academy is also feeling the pinch.  Competition has so decimated collegiality that learning potential has been left severely impaired.  Everything that happens in our city is suffering from a severe form of poverty, at all levels.  

And I’m convinced that it allneeds to be addressed at the same time; that the traditionally defined poor will only find lasting justice as the rest of the poor find justice as well.  When the Oil industry, families, and academia are as they should be, when every person in this city, doing whatever they do, is made right, then, and only then, will the problems of the traditionally defined poor will be dealt with in a lasting way. 

I think Jesus needs to be recognized as the Lord of all things; work, leisure, sport, song, relationships, etc…  By keeping the definition of justice too small, we miss out on his bigger kingdom plan.  Now I realize the false dichotomy I’m creating.  And after this I’ll stop carping about it.  But sometimes we need the hyperbole to help us see the point.  And the point is that Jesus is most wholly worshipped as all of creation comes under his Lordship.  So its a both/and thing I guess.  While speculating about what a heaven on earth oil industry might seem esoteric…  while dreaming about a perfect university, sporting event, family, economy, and internet  may seem impractical, or less urgent, I think we should know that it isn’t.  We need to take the biggest view of Jesus’ saving presence in this world in order to save it.

“While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of Simon the Leper,  a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table.  When the disciples saw this, they were indignant. “Why this waste?” they asked. “This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.” Aware of this, Jesus said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me.  The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. ¹² When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. Truly I tell you, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”  Matthew 26

There’s this lady I know, she’s no more than five feet tall, and in her seventies, and she delivers flyers in our neighbourhood.  Two or three times a week she pulls a heavy, homemade, wooden, wobbly wheeled, wagon, filled with flyers  through our streets; up and down all the the hills, up and over curbs, through rain, snow and heat.  Every time I see her do it I’m amazed, and a bit saddened (I think of my mom having to do something like that). 

Often, I’ll say hi, or talk to her for a few seconds as we pass each another.  Today I decided to stop and have a conversation.  “How’s it going today?”  I asked. “Fine,” she said, ”Today is my last day!  For 20 years I’ve been delivering flyers in this neighbourhood and today is my last day.”   “Wow, 20 years, that’s amazing.  I’ve watched you over the past 5 and I can’t believe that you’ve been strong enough to pull this heavy thing…”  (I grabbed the handle of her wagon and pulled it a few inches – it must have weighed 40 pounds!)  “It’s not so bad… you get used to it.”   “So why now, why retire this year?   “Over this past year I’ve just realized that I can’t do this any more… you just know these things.  I’m thinking of working at Walmart.”   “That would be great for you, better weather!”   She didn’t catch my joke and said, “Walmart will at least keep me warm in the winter.” 

And then I started to feel a bit bad.  This is her last day, I thought, her retirement.  Is there going to be a big party later tonight? A gold watch? Speeches?  “Well then I better thank her,” I thought.  

“You know, you must have helped thousands of people in this community save money over the years – with all those coupons and sales flyers.  Thank you for that!”   She just paused and took it in for a second and then said, “Yeah I guess so.”  Then she smiled.  I said thanks again and then I asked her what her name was.  “Colleen…”   “Hi Colleen, I’m John…” and then shaking her hand I said, “All the best in your retirement.”  And then I continued on my walk, and she picked up her wagon handle, looked over her address list one more time, and pulled her stack of flyers to the next house.  I had to take a picture as she walked away.   I’ll miss her.

Too many times over the years I’ve felt a disdain for the flyer industry and everyone attached to it.  All that wasted paper, and recycling hassle.  All that endless consumer pressure.  But for Colleen it was her job, her life in some large part.  

I can only hope to do what I do with as much dignity, perseverance and strength.

This Sunday I’m going to be preaching on a modern day parable about the crash of a Nicaraguan drug plane.    (here’s a pdf of the story)
What do you think God is saying through this?
Short video of this sermon – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5I-CBSl5R0A
Full video – http://blip.tv/file/3508929

One day I’d like to preach on the justice system; how God is revealed through our society’s laws. Yesterday I found a great sermon introduction in the person of James Lockyer…

Lockyer is a defense lawyer famous in Canada for his work in freeing those unjustly imprisoned. Reading a short biography of the man in the Globe and Mail this weekend, I couldn’t help but think about how Lockyer’s heart is reflective of God’s.

“Each time he accompanies an exonerated murder defendant out of a courthouse and into a crush of reporters, James Lockyer lives a sublime moment that most lawyers can only dream of experiencing. As Mr. Lockyer stands off to one side, content and vastly relieved, his startled client – so recently reviled as the worst of the worst – struggles to describe what it is like to be welcomed back to the human race.”

Surely this is God’s heart of justice for all of us!

I just saw this image in an old TIME LIFE book. The caption read, “A six year old orphan from Austria ecstatically embraces a brand new pair of shoes just given to him by the Red Cross.” It’s a powerful image, and in my mind it’s a parable; The parable of the prodigal son…

When that self-orphaned prodigal came home again, his gracious, Red Cross-like father embraced him, and gave him a new pair of shoes. Surely he felt like the boy in the photo. Surely this is the same parable. Surely Christ has authored both stories.

(The boy’s tattered old shoes reminded me of this Van Gogh painting)

And the images became this Easter Sunday sermon;

Walking the other day, I was, once again, thinking about how to better wake up to my life. I don’t want it to pass by in a blur. I want each day, each moment to be alive; to be filled with eternity. Nearing my home, I saw an older Filipina woman struggling across the street…

She was trying to pull a fully loaded grocery pull cart up over a curb. (You know those carts that people sometimes use. I used one when I delivered newspapers as a kid. Looking back I was pretty good at manipulating my overloaded charge).

Anyway I notice this lady struggling, and my conscience whispers, “Help her.” A day earlier I’d attended a university lecture where a Cambridge professor spoke of how God’s Spirit impresses an “imperceptible persuasion on our wills.” Sometimes the voice of conscience and the Holy Spirit’s whispers seem synonymous. Whenever this happens my first reaction is to squelch that voice; ignore it. Slowly I’m learning how not to do this. So I crossed the street and offered to help.

Her groceries weighed a ton. Her load was way beyond her axle limit. No sooner had I gone half a block, two of the cart’s four wheels disintegrated. The woman looked at me and said, “That’s what I was worried about. They were starting to go.” I tilted the cart on an angle and pulled it the rest of the way home. “She’d never have been able to do this,” I thought.

Walking that last block we talked a bit (as much as she was willing to talk with a total stranger). Within two minutes she’d told me about her ongoing breast cancer treatments. The cancer had come back and moved into her lymph nodes, now disabling her right arm. Only then did I notice that her arm was in a sling underneath her coat.

Deeply moved, all I could think was, “What if I didn’t come over?”

Within a few minutes I’d lifted the cart up into the foyer of her modest townhome. “Do you have someone to care for you,” I asked. She said she had a couple of children (they were at work at the moment). Then she thanked me and I headed home; shaken… fully awake.

I’m still wondering if I should buy her a new cart. I keep imagining one with big all-terrain wheels and a heavy duty axle.

Right now the media seems to be laying a lot of the ‘financial mess’ blame at the feet of Wall Street. I think this is a cop-out. While investment banks certainly play a big part in this debacle, they are not the only ones who are culpable. We all are…

As a consumer society who continually insists on ‘getting what we want’ – a new house we couldn’t afford in this case, we fuelled the housing bubble. As investors who continually insist on ‘getting what we want’ – ever higher rates of return (remember the ads? 18%, 21%?), we closed our eyes on the derivative deceptions that made up many recent investment products. As a government who continually insisted on ‘giving us what we want’ – eyes were closed to reasonable regulation, to the potential for greed driven excess. Why change a thing if everyone is happy?

What happening now is a bit of an indictment on the entire capitalist system (it’s extremes at least). A market driven by self interest will always risk exposure to self serving behaviour. This kind of behaviour will inevitably lead some to cross moral and ethical lines. The folks on Wall Street are poster boys in this regard, but what we see in them is a reflection of us.

We all want what we want (Woody Allen).

And sometimes wanting too much, too quickly, and too lavishly can lead to problems. The housing bubble is a symbol of an overly bloated society. The current financial hangover – when will this head splitting pain end? – is telling us something about our unhealthy consumption patterns. But will we listen?

Two days ago a Scotiabank economist said that these events are all about the “socialization of capitalism.” His comment reminded me of a sermon I preached on the Sub-prime mortgage crisis back in March. In my introduction I recalled a notion I’d had back when the Berlin Wall came down and communism collapsed,

“When communism collapsed a while ago, I remember thinking about God and how God in the bible would, over history, raise up nations and bring down and humble certain nations. And I thought, a morally bankrupt, atheistic social system with no democracy and no freedom; that couldn’t stand. Then I wondered if the same thing needed to happen, in some way, shape or form, for the other superpower’s worldview; for capitalism. Would the market economy’s downside – its shadow side – the places were we fall into greed and lust and gluttony and idolatry and all of the inequities that sometimes result from our system; would that be needing a correction as well?”

I wonder if this is that correction.

Here’s a link to that Sub-prime sermon…

“This will be very positive for China’s civil society, for volunteer and charity work. People are being lifted to a higher moral ground. They are emotionally involved. When they see the media coverage, they feel that it is real and true. A more open and transparent society is mobilizing people to take positive action.”

Wenran Jiang, Political Scientist, University of Alberta (Globe and Mail, May 17, Shock of Consciousness)

It’s amazing to see the democratizing influence an earthquake can have. What decades of external diplomatic pressure and years of Tibetan protests and Tiananmens have been unable to dislodge; a tremblor has seemingly unleashed.

It almost seems miraculous, redemptive, like an act of God.