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Join us for Worship Sunday at 10:00 AM followed by fellowship and refreshments in the He/SheBrews Café
- ADVANCE NOTICE – The Urban Retreats Garden Tour is going to be held on Saturday, June 22. This is the largest fundraiser of the year for 1JustCIty and the United Church of Canada Community Ministries. Each year gardens in a particular neighbourhood are opened to receive visitors while a tea, craft, and plant sale is held in a central location. This year the Garden Tour is in Charleswood and the tea, craft, and plant sale will be right here at Charleswood United Church! Tickets are now on sale for $20 through the church office. For more information on volunteering please visit: https://www.1justcity.ca/garden-tour or to volunteer email gardentourvolunteers@1justcity.ca
- For news and events, please have a look at Life & Work on our website: Life and Work
Dear Friends
Welcome to worship for Sunday, May 19, 2024.
I have long held that Scott Peck was right when he wrote that ‘serendipity is grace.’ A happy coincidence is not to be taken as something random or mere chance. Rather they are gifts we have not earned and should be taken as such.
Serendipity is two recent conversations I had, completely independent of one another, but which touched on the same subject. Two people I admire and respect each asked me what I thought about evil. The context was also the same. In my preaching both said they hear that God is love, a broad and universal love, always love, but they wondered why I don’t talk about evil, at least not that much.
The problem of evil is an ancient one in the Judeo-Christian tradition. How do we reconcile a loving God with the evil we see around us? The very first story in the Bible probes this question. And it comes back throughout the entirety of scripture.
So, the first place for someone who believes God-is-love to begin is acknowledging two truths. The first is that evil is real. It is powerful, persistent, relentless, seductive, and has always been. If I don’t talk about evil a lot, it is not because I don’t fear it nor underestimate it. And the second truth I believe is that evil never comes from God. Evil is not God’s punishment or anger or judgement. The sickness, violence, heartache that are part of life do not come from the God who loves us unconditionally. As Jesus taught about his healing ministry, “a house divided against itself cannot stand”. In other words, if Jesus embodies God’s love and healing he cannot also embody evil.
What then is the Christian response to evil? How do we name it and confront it while still adhering to a profound belief in redemption and salvation? The answer we find as we look to the cross. If we say that we find the evil of the world being brought to bear on Jesus (“he who was without sin nevertheless accepted death on the cross” – Philippians 2) then the response of Jesus offers a glimpse into what is possible. Richard Rohr has said that there were three possibilities for Jesus in dealing with the evil he faced. He could reflect it back on the perpetrators (i.e. return violence for violence). Rather he taught that to live by the sword is to die by the sword. The second choice was to deflect it (i.e. re-direct the violence he experienced onto another innocent victim, also known as scapegoating). Or finally he could absorb it with the hope of transforming it into love (i.e. resurrection).
It is important for us to say that we are not Jesus. Absorbing violence is not a call to martyrdom nor to remain in violent and abusive situations. Just the opposite, by knowing God’s love for us we find the power to challenge the principalities and powers of the world without being drawn into their emptiness. Scripture does not tell us that faith removes evil from our being, it offers us the hope that evil will not draw us into its sphere of influence and way of being.
Pentecost is an enactment of faith in the face of evil. The Holy Spirit comes upon the followers of Jesus and they are transformed. They become new people. They become those who will now proclaim that God is present in the world with a love that unites and does not divide, that welcomes and does not reject, that is open and is not closed. The Holy Spirit becomes the presence Jesus was while he was in the world, a power for healing, wholeness, and love. The very thing that evil cannot abide.
A brief letter is hardly the place to answer a question as perplexing and enduring as evil. But it is a forum to continue a conversation about a topic that always has and always will confound people of faith. It is in our life together that this conversation should be held.
Grace and peace,
Michael
- Did you know you can support this ministry by e-transfer, automatic withdrawal (PAR), and gifted securities, in addition to weekly or monthly cheques? For Offering Information please visit: https://charleswoodunited.org/support/ We have begun to receive donations for this summer’s Roofing Project which will be held separate from Operations and Mission & Service. Thank you for your generous support.
- Through the United Church of Canada’s membership in the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, an appeal for donations has been issued for the Humanitarian Crisis in the Middle East. For more information and to donate please visit: Humanitarian Crisis in the Middle East Appeal
- Share the service with friends by forwarding this email or using this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4sFOXoKm_0
- Read this week’s scripture lesson here: Acts 2:1-21
