Family Secrets” Sermon for
St.Andrew’s Picton
January 21, 2007: Luke 4:
-I don’t know about some of
you but when I was very young, it was made quite clear to me that it mattered what the neighbours thought
-I don’t know if you can relate
-it came from my mother’s
side of the family-- my grandmother in New Zealand in that very typical British class oriented way wanted to ensure that the
family name was never tarnished
-and so she established very clear
rules around what her children were and were not allowed to do
-her own children did a fair job
of living up to her expectations but things started to fall apart with her grandchildren
-now my mother raised us in Canada
so we could do no wrong or none that she was aware of
-and when we got up to our own antics
and my mother was beside herself, we would just grin and exclaim, “What would nanna say?”
-and of course, she never found out but I had these cousins, one in particular
who from time to time well…
-like there was the time when she
decided to get married to this guy
-she’d only known him a month
before he went to prison and well she ended up marrying him in prison
-it so happened that it was the
first marriage to be performed in prison in New Zealand so it made the papers
-well, my uncle ever worried about
nanna, hopped on a plane to spend a few days with her and to break the news gently
-a lot of the stuff was laughable,
you know; I could tell you stuff about my family that just mortified my mother that was hilarious really, just us kids getting
into normal kid trouble
-but not all family secrets are
laughable; some family secrets hold people captive for years, some for generations
-and then there are secrets that
are not really secrets; they are like the elephant in the room that everyone knows is there but no one talks about and so
they create a really weird unhealthy dynamic
-sometimes these secrets are in
family, sometimes they are in churches and sometimes they are in entire communities.
-it’s the stuff that everyone
knows but no one talks about
-so I think this town has a family
secret and I’ll try and put it as politically correct as I can
-there is a significant underprivileged
community in this town, maybe throughout the entire county but it’s certainly obvious here
-it’s not immediately obvious
unless you hang out at the post office or park yourself on main street
-when everyone tells you that the
County is a most wonderful place to live they don’t mention that it is becoming a community of have’s and have-not’s
-they don’t mention that it
may have the highest rate of teen-age pregnancy in Canada
-you certainly you won’t find
any statistics to support this on a Prince Edward County website and I don’t think that the yacht club, and the many
other organizations that are going gung ho are catering to this underprivileged community
-yet this piece of information has
touched me in a way that I am not completely comfortable in admitting
-you see just about everyone I met
once I moved here would ask me right off, “where are you sending your kids to school”
-and I began to wonder why that
was such a popular question and now I know
-and after the parents committee
the other night , one member admitted to Phil that just a few of years ago Queen Elizabeth school was considered the roughest
school in the board and they are working hard to turn it around
-so I find myself in an unenviable
position when I think about the proportion of underprivileged families in this community
-as a minister, I have one way of
looking at the situation
-as a parent, well, that’s
all part of the family secret isn’t it??
-we don’t want to admit that
we want our children to fraternize with kids whose families are like us—it sounds so elitist-and it is
-and it is clear as I drive around
this town that there are a lot of families living here that are not “like us”, whose kids don’t get the
trips, or the music lessons or the opportunities or most important of all… the stability
-so there, I’ve let the cat
out of the bag
-I couldn’t help but think
about the community secret, the elephant in the room when I read this week’s gospel lesson
-Jesus, a faithful Jew, is in the
synagogue—it is the Sabbath and he is reading from the scriptures—the book of Isaiah to be exact and then he goes
on to reveal that the mission articulated by the prophet Isaiah, a message of hope and liberation for the poor, the oppressed,
the broken-hearted will manifest itself in him
The Spirit of the
Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor etc. etc.
-I met a minister
when I was in New York City at this conference I’ve spoken about before;
-his name is Sam
Wells and he is now the dean of the Duke chapel, a fairly prestigious position
-for about 15 years
he was a priest with the Church of England and he had a small parish in one of England’s most impoverished communities
-I heard him speak
and be interviewed and in the interview he said that he read the bible a great deal as a teenager and what became clear to
him was that Jesus spent an awful lot of time with people who were poor and he determined at that point that if he wanted
to learn about Jesus, then he too would need to spend time among the poor
-you see once again
we have this biblical passage that is multi-layered and opens up a really big conversation about Jesus’ ministry and
our ministry because we are meant to walk in his footsteps
-but it seems to
me that if Jesus was bringing good news to the poor, well, that began by being among them simply acting as a sign that they
too we loved and accepted and included as God’s children
-there were not big
signs that many of them stopped being poor but then poverty didn’t seem to be a problem to Jesus in the same way that
it is a problem for us
-being poor has become
a shameful thing
-it has become the
community secret
-it used to be other
things, like living together, or getting divorced, or having a child and not being married or not going to church
-but none of these
things are family secrets anymore and that’s a good thing—family secrets are usually not life-giving
-and it’s interesting
I think if you look at the demographics of churches across this country
-in churches you
will find a substantial percentage of divorced people, people living together, people who have had children and not been married
but you will not find a substantial percentage of poor people
-I wonder what that
means for us
-so usually when
someone let’s the cat out of the bag, you know calls a spade a space there are a couple of different responses
-1st relief-big
sigh, someone has finally said it, now we don’t have to pretend any more
-the 2nd
response and we may read about this next week because it was the response of Jesus community and that is ANGER-what, what
are you talking about, how dare you suggest…
-in the end, however,
what matters is how we as a church are going to respond to our own community
-because we are followers
of Christ and one of the signs that we follow Christ is that we have good news for the poor
-and perhaps the best news of all is that in Christ there is no them and us, only us—all
of us—those of us who have landed on our feet and those of us who haven’t
-and the truth is
we could probably all tell a secret or two about those times when we almost didn’t land on our feet
-when well, it could
have gotten a lot worse, we could have ended up in a bad way but we were rescued somehow by family or friends or good timing—by
God
-so I certainly don’t
have a plan—it’s just that I couldn’t help but notice that the kids who I saw visiting the food-band the
other day with their baby seemed awfully young
-and I wonder what
good news would mean for them
-and then there is
the guy that I see going through the garbage on main street and the boy in my son’s grade who doesn’t live with
his mother and well these are our neighbours, God’s own—in need of
good news
-The Spirit of the
Lord is upon us because he has anointed us to bring good
news to the poor. He has sent us to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed
go free, 19to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
