Malala is the kind of woman we celebrated last Friday on International Women’s Day. This day has been a tradition for over a century, since some ordinary women, mostly factory workers, began to fight for the right to vote, for better working conditions, and for the rights of children. And yet, we are in an interesting time for feminism. As most of you will know, I live with an outspoken feminist, I call myself a feminist, and I hope someday my sons will as well.  But a lot of women, especially younger ones, get squirmy at the word. It has negative connotations, mostly unjustified. Perhaps they are influenced by women like Beyoncé, who dodge the phrase. More likely, they have forgotten the long history behind them – the women who came before Malala who risked their lives and their livelihoods to stand up for the rights of not just women, but all minorities. We live in a country that isn’t perfect: men, for instance, outnumber women in parliament by 3 to 1. But we also have six female premiers. We are creating the most educated population of young women in the world. We have pretty good maternity-leave benefits. And we are one of the safest countries in the world. The danger, of course, is that we get complacent. Because our lives are good, we forget to keep trying to fix the problems that still exist – like our poor showing on correcting child poverty and our poor outcomes for aboriginal women. That’s the risk of the good life: we get too comfortable and forget about those around us – and in the rest of the world – whose lives are far from good.

In a way, isn’t that what the story of the prodigal son is about: The risks of complacency and a lack of empathy for those who struggle? We could level this accusation at the son who stays, whose life is good, who never strays from his calling. He has it pretty easy. He has followed the rules, and things have worked out for him. That’s noble, it’s true, but having never left the safe confines of his father’s home, he also probably didn’t face too many challenges. He has been well-rewarded.

So when his brother returns, having strayed and suffered for it, he can’t relate to him. He sits back in judgment. He is short on empathy.  He can’t recognize what factors may have led to his brother’s straying from the path, or what unlucky turns may have befallen him.

What’s more, he is angry when his father rejoices at the son’s return and throws a party. “What’s up, Dad?” the son who remained asks. “I have been here all along: where’s my party?” And his father tells him, essentially, welcoming back your brother does not reduce my pleasure in your constant presence.

But here’s the truth of it: where God is concerned, we are all children who wander off the path. Not one of us is more like the son who stays, who never falters, who is constant. That’s because we are human: we mess up. We fall down. We, consciously or not, make bad choices.  The story of the prodigal son is the hope of redemption – that acknowledging our failures, we return to God. We keep leaving and returning over and over again. Our story ends with a party, but we don’t know what happens next to him. Did the wayward son dutifully remain and never make a wrong choice again? I doubt that. He is meant to represent us – in this constant state of distance and embrace.

This is important in our relationship with God and to the gospel. It is the way of human life, to blunder about, and try to make amends for our blundering. In trying to do the right thing, we often make mistakes. The gift of the gospel is that we get to keep coming back, and every time God throws a party. And then God sends us out again to take another stab at it. Not everyone can stay home to tend the vineyard.

It’s important to the nature of this relationship with God for two reasons. First, it prevents us from becoming like the son who happened to be in the vineyard when his brother came home. It stops us from casting judgment, from assuming that what we see on the surface tells the story of their lives. And it stops us from becoming mired in our own mistakes, and lets us see them as learning moments that strengthen our faith and empower the Gospel through us.

That’s also how we must teach ourselves to see the larger world. The son who stayed had stopped looking past the borders of his father’s land. His life was too cushy.  It’s an easy habit to get into. But we learn to see the world for how it is when we remember our history — those who fought a struggle before us — and when we educate ourselves about what’s happening elsewhere.

It’s hard to believe that anyone who knows that in Somalia, young women can expect to go to school for just two years, or that in Saudi Arabia, there is not one woman in Parliament, could not see the value of feminism.  That, still in many parts of the world, girls are forced into marriage, or blamed and beaten for sexual assaults, and not see the value for those of us who enjoy such benefits calling ourselves feminists.

Jesus was most certainly one: he took advice from women in a society that gave them little value, he spoke in their defence when no one else would, he honoured them by appearing first to his female disciples after he died. Perhaps Jesus understood that having suffered and chosen to follow, their faith was stalwart in a different way from that of the male disciples.  This is not to say that Peter, and the rest, were not valued equally – like the son in our gospel who remained in the vineyard. It says that God respects the struggles that life tosses our way and honours us for persevering.

We are all the prodigal children who go into the world and make our way.  But, as the psalmist tells us, God is the parent who sets us free: “I will instruct you and teach you in the way that you should go.” God is like the parent, always watching over us: “I will guide you with my eye.” And God is there, waiting at the gates, to throw a party when we return.

This weekend 16 youth are gathering to spend 40 hours together in an Eastern Synod congregation.  Their time will be spent developing a greater understanding of who they are and what they stand for.  Bullying is on the rise while character education is on the decline.  With increased demands on parents at work and financial realities facing our school systems, faith communities have an opportunity to feed a need in our society. tothisday

To This Day Project is a project based on a spoken word poem written by Shane Koyczan called “To This Day”, to further explore the profound and lasting impact that bullying can have on an individual.

Churches, schools and families are in desperate need of proper tools to confront this problem. We can give them a starting point… A message that will have a far reaching and long lasting effect in confronting bullying.

Animators and motion artists brought their unique styles to 20 second segments that will thread into one fluid voice.
This collaborative volunteer effort will demonstrate what a community of caring individuals are capable of when they come together.

http://www.tothisdayproject.com

http://www.shanekoyczan.com/

http://www.bullying.org

http://www.giantant.ca

]]> http://easternsynod.org/ministries/youth-and-young-adult/2013/02/27/to-this-day-project/feed/ 0 http://easternsynod.org/ministries/youth-and-young-adult/2013/02/11/%e2%80%9cfaith-alone-plus-10-percent-%e2%80%9d/ http://easternsynod.org/ministries/youth-and-young-adult/2013/02/11/%e2%80%9cfaith-alone-plus-10-percent-%e2%80%9d/#comments Mon, 11 Feb 2013 11:41:15 +0000 Joel Crouse http://easternsynod.org/ministries/youth-and-young-adult/?p=370 Last week when the restaurant Applebee’s tried to set an 18 per cent tip for a meal, the Atlanta pastor who’d dined out, crossed it out, gave no tip and wrote a note: “I give God, 10 %, why do you get 18?” The waitress posted it online and earned a pink slip. The pastor has been widely derided. Of course, as the following article in Slate points out, the minister’s math is fuzzy: a waitress is getting a portion of a restaurant bill; tithing is based on income – so it’s not like the waitress is getting more in the end. But the article goes on to make some interesting points about why tips have gone up, while tithing has dropped. Not all of it applies to Canada, where mega churches are not the norm, but still an interesting read.  http://www.slate.com/articles/life/faithbased/2013/02/alois_bell_applebee_s_tip_why_do_americans_tip_more_than_they_tithe.html

Last week, I was one of many people who was heart-warmed by this viral photograph. It shows a young policeman kneeling in front of a homeless man in New York who is barefoot on a cold winter night. The policeman is giving him a pair of boots. The officer, Larry DePrimo, is a member of the counterterrorism unit, and he did not know a tourist was capturing his good deed on camera. He’d just been walking by, he saw a man who needed boots and socks, and he popped into a story and bought them with his own money. He even saved the receipt as a reminder to care for those in need. If that’s not 1gift4good, I don’t know what it is. The picture went viral. Millions of people saw it. The tourist who shot the picture, and young, humble Larry DePrimo went on Good Morning America and were charming. It was heartwarming. A good deed gone well.

‘But hold up there’, John the Baptist would say, scrutinizing the facts. As many of you know, John the Baptist is one of my favourite people in the Gospel – he is the truth-sayer, the tell-it-like-it-is guy, a curmudgeon who didn’t suffer fools. If you wanted gentle words, he was not the guy. If Jesus planted the seeds of hope and faith, John was the guy who churned up the soil, who demanded we take a good look at the mud. Upon hearing the wrapped-up, tidy as a bow story of Larry DePrimo and his gifts of boots, John the Baptist would have been the first to say: now hold up, there. Take another look at that picture.

And of course, this being the internet age, when no one is really private, a few journalists did. The homeless man’s name is Jeffrey Hillman. He is a 54-year-old army veteran. He has a history of arrests. And, to make things worse, he’s not even homeless. He has a little apartment paid for by the taxpayer and veterans benefits. But according to a government source, he also has a history of turning down the help that’s offered. What’s more a few days later, he was barefoot again. Turns out, he’d hidden the boots away for fear they would be stolen. “They are worth a lot of money,” he said. “I could lose my life.” So, after all the good-feeling, it turns out the recipient of our good gift is not just a criminal and a fraud, but he is also ungrateful. “What do I get?” he asked, about the attention his picture had garnered. “This went around the world and I want a piece of the pie.”

So there you have it: that neatly wrapped, tidy as a bow feel-good story. Ripped to shreds. Now there are several ways to react. And thanks again to the internet, we could track them all.  Perhaps this commentator spoke for the ugly voice inside all of us when he said: “Thanks for ruining a good story. Manipulative deadbeat dirt-bag who preys on the sympathy of suckers.”

Now, tough-talked though he was, if John the Baptist was faced with that guy, I imagine it would be quite the friendly chat. If John was laying the path for Jesus, it was the idea that we should repent our foolishness, our weakness, our judgment and our pride. John’s down in the mud remember, and he’s rubbing our faces in it. That’s the two-step of the gospel: to fall over our own folly, and then to have the tools to react properly to the stumble.

So how do we react? Do we heap scorn on Jeffery Hillman for failing to meet our expectation? Do we pity ourselves and Officer DePrimo for being taken in? Do we decide to never get “suckered by sympathy” by giving another stranger a pair of metaphorical boots?

The answer, of course, is not simple. But what’s the underlying lesson here – the really instructive part? Well, there’s the obvious one: sometimes the people we want to help, don’t respond the way we’d like. How many times, have you attempted an apology that ended up in an argument? Or a favour that was unwanted? However Mr. Hillman ended up barefoot on the street, it’s a complicated one, a solider’s story, a story about poverty, and mental illness, about a lost life. It’s hard not to see anyone us getting to Mr. Hillman’s place and not feeling screwed over by the world, wanting a piece of the pie that life never served. If we only set out to help “nice” people as we define them, our good gifts don’t travel much farther than our doorsteps.

So then we get to the next messy part about trying to do good, about trying to follow the gospel. It doesn’t always work. Maybe it doesn’t even work most of the time. A lot of the time, we extend a hand, and get it slapped right back. Does that diminish Officer DePrimo’s good deed? What’s more should it stop him from helping the next homeless stranger? All we can do is keep extending the hand, over and over again. Except for this: There’s an old line from Albert Einstein: the definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. And that’s true here. If we don’t learn, we fall into the same spot everytime. If we’re getting the apology or the favour wrong, we should perhaps listen to what the other person needs.  Perhaps the lesson that we learn from Mr. Hillman is to no assume what others might need, to not project our lives upon them, to see them as they are.

Basically, that’s how John the Baptist saw his role – why he shows up in advent, as we wait for a stable in Bethlehem. He is showing us the way. And most importantly, the road to Bethlehem doesn’t lead to a tree with nicely wrapped presents under it. It leads to a smelly dirty manger, crowded with strangers and bright with potential. And standing there are all the Officer DePrimos and Jeffrey Hillmans, the givers and receivers, the students and the teachers. The path of God may be straight. But it’s not smooth. It’s not pretty. It’s life.

Here’s a link to a story about the book: http://www.churchmarketingsucks.com/2012/08/giving-away-the-collection-plate-by-john-richardson/

PS: I recommend you check out the website that posted the story, Church Marketing Sucks. Not every particular aspect of the site resonates with me, but they do raise some interesting notions about church communcation, the importance of pastors blogging and generally how churches need to do a better job of publicly promoting their mission, both online and in the community. Here’s the home page: http://www.churchmarketingsucks.com/

It’s easy and engages youth and young adults in a practical way.

1gift4good Christmas Pageant

There’s a great story about the seven-year-old boy who called 911 after his Grandpa passed out while driving him to soccer. The little boy, Evan, figured out how to make the call on his cellphone and spoke calmly with the 911 operator for 13 minutes until a police car could arrive. It struck me that this is also a reminder of how we might use our Sunday mornings for practical lessons as well – such as teaching our children how to handle emergencies. (It was important that Evan could give his full name and his grandfather’s as well as a phone number for his father.) A Sunday morning session can be a good time to enforce some of the lessons and even do a 911-cheat sheet poster that families could stick on the fridge. (For example: here’s a 911 cheat sheet.) A big part of teaching our kids how to be leaders, is making sure they have all the skills to do so.

Here’s the story about young Evan: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/boys-911-call-saves-grandfather/article4801732/

Here’s a quick 911 cheat sheet you can build a class around : http://www.onsitefirstaid.ca/resources/onsite_quickguide_kids_cheatsheet.pdf

A quick resource to what to tell them, and how to teach it: http://www.pediatricsafety.net/2010/07/the-importance-of-teaching-kids-to-use-911/

To check out the full Pew study, click here: http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Political-Engagement.aspx#src=prc-newsletter