St. Paul’s United Church Sunday, June 12, 2005

80^th Anniversary United Church of Canada

Is Anything Too Wonderful For God? – Rev. David Mundy

Genesis 18:1-15 Matthew 9:35 - 10:11

Eighty years ago this past Friday the Mutual Street arena in Toronto was filled with people who had come together to be part of the birth of something that was unprecedented in Canadian church history. Three denominations agreed to unite to form a new entity which would be called, fittingly, the United Church of Canada. As with any birth there was a great deal of enthusiasm and optimism about what this new church would be able to accomplish.

If you don’t mind, I will not give you a long church history lesson today. I will speak more personally although while I’m not quite as ancient as the United Church, I’m getting there! Fifty years ago I was born into the United Church, and I spent the first half of those years as a layperson and the latter half as someone “paid to be religious” as my brother once put it. I was born into the United Church but my parents were not. They grew up in the Salvation Army but chose the United Church as their new Christian community and my father eventually became a minister.

I grew up in the Baby Boom years when United Churches were full to the brim and both congregations my father served during my growing up years built big additions to accommodate burgeoning congregations. My mother was one of the midwives of the organization called the United Church Women, or UCW. She served on the Board of Women when the WMS and the WA were amalgamated in the early 1960's.

It may seem a little ungracious to admit at a birthday party that I have experienced a love/hate relationship with this denomination that brought me into the world of faith, but it is true. I got angry at the United Church early – during grade school, in fact. When I opened my lunch bag there was often a small cellophane package of sticky, gooey, blonde raisins that I detested. My friends had neat little red boxes with plump, dark raisins inside, which I coveted. And I knew the United Church was responsible! Although my parents were not what might be called social activists they cared deeply about the social issues espoused by our church. In that era we were asked to boycott anything that came from South Africa and the evil regime of apartheid. One of the little sacrifices our family made was forgoing food products from that nation. Years later when the racist system was finally dismantled I thought of my lunch-bag raisins. This was a small example of what has been called our “ceaseless meddling in the affairs of the world.” I learned early on that to be a bible-believing Christian means living out God’s call to justice in whatever ways we can and that salvation through Christ may be personal but it is never private.

Through the years I have heard the criticisms of the United Church for many things and at times I have joined the chorus. I don’t like everything we do, or how we do it, but I am still here because there is much more that I appreciate than don’t appreciate, and I have the freedom to say so.

As we come to our eightieth birthday as a denomination there are some who would say that we are in our dotage, that the United Church is old and tired and that there are other churches that are doing a much better job of attracting young people and responding to our changing culture. Others would say that we have been too controversial and that some issues such as the inclusion of gays and lesbians in church life and same-gender marriage have stretched us to the breaking point. There are people who laugh at us and say that we are self-destructive.

I thought it was appropriate that one of our readings this morning is about a geriatric couple who are told that they will soon be expecting their first child. Abraham and Sarah are visited by God who shares this news with them and as you heard, it is the prospective mom is not impressed. At age ninety her hopes and dreams for a family have come and gone and now she is told to get the crib ready and the nursery painted. She does what any sensible person would do and laughs. And it isn’t kind laughter. It ain’t gonna happen! But God says “is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” and promises that there will be a child.

When we go in the story we discover that Sarah does give birth to a healthy baby named Isaac and she laughs again, but this time with joy and delight. Sarah discovers that even the unlikely can happen with God.

What do you think, are we ready for the retirement home as a denomination or are we hearing God’s message that something new can be born as we move from our eightieth birthday toward the century mark? Is anything too wonderful for God?

To come back to my own experience in the church, I have been in the thick of some of the significant changes that have taken place in the United Church. Although we began ordaining women in the 1930's, it was not until my era at seminary that the number of women training for the ministry equaled men, and today the number of women in our seminaries and programs than men. The importance of equality in the ministry of Christ’s church has come home to me through the years in unusual ways. In one of the communities seven of the nine United Church clergy in the city were women, and we worked effectively with one another. Of course one of my seminary classmates and friends was the first woman minister of this congregation.

Some of the breakthroughs of the United Church have been relatively easy for me to embrace. One of them was what is called inclusive language, which has been discussed with vigor at every level of the church and has been the source of some controversy along the way. Put simply, it is language referring to both God and humanity in a way that makes room for everyone, regardless of gender and age. While I have never drawn attention to the use of inclusive language in worship, it has always been important to me and noticed by others.

In another community I served a young woman from the southern United States, a university student hoping to become a minister in her denomination, worshiped with us while at school. After she returned home, she e-mailed me to say that she appreciated the emphasis on inclusivity she experienced in the United Church and was struggling with what she heard as she was back worshiping with her family. It both surprised me and reminded me that our words do matter. Later she came back to visit from the States and spoke to me about the possibility of moving to Canada so that she could become a United minister. Whether she does or not, she felt that there was a place for her within this denomination.

These are some of the aspects of our church that I admire. We have often been willing to go first and face the criticism of others, only to watch as they eventually address the same challenges. There are plenty of other examples, including the Beads of Hope campaign which has raised more than two million dollars to assist those living with AIDS and HIV. How many other denominations have addressed this global crisis as generously?

As we reach this eightieth birthday I can’t say that I have ever really hated our United Church, despite what I said about my childhood raisin experience. There have been moments when I have wondered if we have become a little confused or even lost our way as to some of the foundational elements of faith. In 1925 the church mothers and fathers believed that their faith in Jesus Christ was leading them prayerfully into unity. I wonder at times whether we have become so concerned with the ends of justice that we have forgotten the importance of the means.

I have been reading a book called The Practicing Congregation which encourages mainline denominations to become intentional in their spiritual practices once again. The author Diana Butler Bass is convinced that churches with a more liberal theology can be as vital as those that are conservative if we remember those core elements and keep them in balance.

These practices . . . such as [scripture reading] and prayer, Sabbath-keeping, forgiveness, doing justice and hospitality – are drawn from, recover, or reclaim individual and corporate patterns of historic Christian living that provide meaning and enliven a sense of spiritual connection to God and others.

We honour Christ in our midst and in mission when we guided by scripture and prayer. It is in the gospel of Luke that we hear Jesus say:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim

release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.

Jesus, the Christ, stands in the line of the prophets of old, calling us into a new way of life and Christ must be at the centre of our life together.

What does the future hold for our United Church? Once again I will put this in a personal context. I’m told that I am eligible to take early retirement with full pension on January 1, 2017. I never used to pay much attention to this statistic on my pension readout but it is suddenly looming much larger on the horizon! Who will come next to provide leadership when my greying and thinning head is no longer around?

I think I got an inkling after our current moderator, the Right Reverend Peter Short spent time with us in May. I drove him back to Toronto and he told me that there are encouraging signs that younger adults are considering ministry in our denomination as a vocation after years of predominantly mid-life “calls.” This is really good news. What remains to be seen is how we make sure that we bring up our children and grandchildren in a faith that is life-giving and life-changing.

On this important anniversary of the United Church we can all commit ourselves to spiritual rebirth and renewal, because we are never too old to ask God to speak to us or for Christ to change us. And every one of us can make the commitment to practice our faith.

You see, nothing is too wonderful for God!