Moment of Clarity With Rev. Lorrie Daly-Price

July 28, 2019 | The philosopher John Hick once observed that if you collected all the images of God that have been created by religion, they'd form a book the size of a telephone directory.  In the Egyptian section of the Royal Ontario Museum I imagine you would find many examples of god. One person talked about the museum in their city where they met the god Sobek, pictured as a man with the head of a crocodile or consider the Hindu fire god Agni, he has two faces smeared with butter, seven tongues, gold teeth, seven arms and three legs.

Despite our many divisions there is one thing that has united Christians for two thousand years every Sunday almost every Christian in every country around the world prays the prayer that Jesus taught us in this week's gospel,“Our Father in heaven.”

Luke writes how the disciples asked Jesus, "Lord, teach us to pray."  Implicit in that request was their admission that there were many things that they didn't understand about prayer.  Jesus didn't commend any technique or regimen. Rather, "when you pray," he said, trust the character of God.

July 21, 2019 | The story we hear this week from Luke’s gospel is the story of Mary and Martha, two beloved friends of Jesus. We find Mary listening to Jesus, giving him her full attention. While Martha is busy about many things, feeling anxious and alienated from her sister. Martha is in need of a Sabbath. She needs to let go of perfection to welcome her friend. Yet, Martha is absolutely necessary to healthy spirituality and social concern: Martha gets things done!We need Martha’s in church and community. Mary is near to God, but there is the temptation that “she will be so heavenly minded that she is no earthly good.”

Mary and Martha together represent the fact that faith and works go together. We need, in our congregations, to nurture the Mary within the busy Marthas and encourage Martha to come forth in contemplative Marys.

July 14, 2019 | In this week’s readings, it appears that God has a preferential option for the vulnerable and marginalized, for those we disregard or pass by. God loves everyone, even the oppressor, but God has a special care for the lost and forgotten.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan that we hear this week, the hero is a stranger, looked down upon by the good people of the community. The passage does not condemn the religious leaders who walk on by, it simply notes that they believed that they had better things to do than to help a wounded pilgrim. The Temple needed to be cared for and services led. Order needed to be maintained in the religious realm and this trumped the call of the moment, even if the call is to respond to obvious human need. Only a hated foreigner, an undocumented worker, a refugee, a person of the “wrong” race, stops to help and then gives generously. God not only hears the cries of the poor. God inspires the outsider to be our spiritual teacher showing us how God is moving in the have nots as well as the haves.

July 7, 2019 | The story we hear this week from Luke’s gospel is about Jesus sending seventy out ahead of him. This was a kind of “internship,” training time while Jesus was still with them. The mission was the same as Jesus’ own ministry: “cure the sick” and “say to them, ‘the kingdom of God has come near to you.’”

Jesus sends them ahead to every town and place where he was heading himself. He was on his way to Jerusalem and would likely travel through villages where he had not been before.  Rumours of what Jesus was doing had undoubtedly spread into Samaria so the seventy will announce his coming by giving people a preview of his own work.

They are to travel “in pairs”, which we can assume is for safety and for mutual encouragement. If you have to do something dangerous or risky you want to have somebody with you. It’s also a sign that “we’re in this together” as followers of Jesus.

June 30th, 2019 | In the reading this week we find Jesus with his small band of disciples in the wilderness. Through the course of the day, he’s attracted a crowd of 5,000 men and their families. And now it’s dinner time. So the disciples point out to Jesus that they are in “a deserted place, and the hour is now late;” and they suggest that it might be a good time for him to “send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” But Jesus says to his disciples: “they need not go away; you give them something to eat.”

The disciples are perplexed, even overwhelmed, by Jesus’ response. “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” They cannot imagine feeding thousands of people given their limited resources.

I have to admit, I’m with the disciples. What on earth is Jesus thinking? How are the disciples supposed to feed 5,000 families with five loaves of bread and two fish? It’s just not possible! But then, Jesus does exactly that! He does the impossible!

June 23, 2019 | In our reading this morning Luke gives us a story of demons. What catches my attention in this story is the man hidden in the centre of the story, the man possessed by all those demons. He is somebody we all have seen, somebody we may know. And he’s somebody who asks us to look at ourselves.

He’s a man who has lost himself. He had been “a man of the city” known to his neighbours, a member of the community. But now he lives in death, “among the tombs” Luke says, out beyond the city walls.  He has nothing, no home, no clothes, no name anymore. He has no voice. He is lost to himself and shattered into unrecognizable pieces of his former humanity. He is at the mercy of powers beyond his control, driven to the brink of existence.

Then Jesus comes along and gives the man an identity again, or tries to, and the healing begins. Jesus reaches across the isolation and separation so characteristic of illness and calms the storms in this man, speaking to him and treating him like a human being.

How do we respond to the possibility of healing in our lives, our communities: do we choose to hold fast to the old ways or do we step forward into liberation?