Thursday, June 18

One of my favourite authors is Max Lucado. I am currently reading his book Facing Your Giants. In the book he uses the analogy of David and the five stones he chose when he defeated Goliath. The first chapter is entitled “Stone of the Past.”

We all have our own Goliaths. In his book, Max Lucado says “if we focus on these giants, we stumble but if we focus on God, these giants tumble.” Remembering God’s faithfulness in the past is essential as we face our giants today.

The account of David and Goliath can be found in I Samuel 17: 1-51. The story is about more than a shepherd boy killing the big giant but that will be the focus of today’s thought.

Goliath was big – nine feet, nine inches tall, with a 56-inch waist and a 20-inch neck. The armour he wore weighed 125 lbs. Goliath was a Philistine. The Philistines had been enemies of the Israelites ever since Joshua had defeated them 300 years earlier. Goliath was from the city of Gath, a city that was well known for having giants.

For forty days Goliath taunted the Israelite army. Morning and evening he called over to them: “Choose one man to come down here and fight me” (1 Samuel 17:8). No doubt many of the soldiers remembered their fathers and grandfathers talking about battles where there had been warriors from Gath and they were afraid because Goliath was a long-standing bully in the valley. They were focusing on the giant and not remembering how God had helped them in the past.

In contrast to Goliath, we have David. David was a young shepherd. Some commentaries say he was only about 22 years old. The only reason David was even there was to deliver some lunch to his brothers. When David began his day, he certainly had no idea that he would be doing anything else except tending to the sheep like he did every day. David heard Goliath’s taunt but unlike the others, he remembered how God had helped him defeat both a lion and a bear that were threatening his sheep. He focused on God not the giant.

David was a hero that day but this wasn’t always the case. He was an unfaithful husband and a bad father. Despite his failings, God still used him and David wrote the Psalm almost everybody knows whether they go to church or not. Psalm 23 is read and sung all over the world.

Our Goliaths probably aren’t an actual nine-foot-tall, sword-wielding giant, but they are just as real and just as dangerous. They might be a temptation we can’t resist, a person we can’t please, a doubt we can’t erase, a future we can’t face. Just like Goliath, our “giants” fill our thoughts. Sometimes it’s all we see; our giants may be dominating our day and destroying our joy. Just like David we need to face them with faith, confident in the knowledge that God is with us.

The giants we face may not go away but we can rest in the knowledge that God is walking along side of us and giving us strength to endure whatever we are going through.

In these uncertain times we know there are obstacles to God’s plan for All Saints. We may stumble and have difficulties but if we remember all the times in past that God was with us and saw us through, we will stay strong. I am thinking of the fire. We had to change our service time and location. Isn’t that what has happened now? God was with us then and He is with us now.

In closing, I leave you with some verses from Lamentations to remember the next time you face a “giant.”

Lamentations 3: 21-23: Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this: the faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is His faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning. (New Living Translation)

Prayer:

God when we face a crisis or problem, help us to remember your faithfulness in the past. Give us power to walk in daily victory and overcome every opposition against your purpose for our lives. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Tuesday, June 16

This coming Sunday we will celebrate fathers and paternal caregivers. The one Biblical Dad who always captures my attention is the unnamed Father of the Prodigal Son parable (Luke 15:11–32).

Many of us are familiar with the Prodigal Son, one of two brothers who demands his inheritance in advance, leaves home, and squanders his fortune to the point of complete poverty. The other son – let’s call him the At Home Son  –  remains  with his father, carries out his family duties, and also partakes of the comforts of the familial home and family resources. (This latter point is an important one, and sometimes offered as one of the teachings of the story. While the At Home Son may feel aggrieved, the fact is that no one took anything out of his pocket and he was no less loved just because his sibling got a party.  As the father says, “My son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.”)

Nonetheless, the prodigal brother who had been lost and come home again is treated to a special feast. “Kill the fatted calf! Get out Grandma’s good china! Never mind that it’s not even dishwasher proof!” Understandably, the At Home Brother is a little miffed and refuses to come to the party.

At some point in our lives, those of us familiar with this parable have probably positioned ourselves as the prodigal son, relieved and grateful to be received into good graces again, not just without judgement, but even with glad celebration. Others of us have been able to put our feet in the saintly shoes of the At Home Son, dutiful and seemingly uncelebrated, struggling to be able to rejoice in someone else’s limelight and happy ending (and as a result potentially missing out on one heck of a party).

But today, I am thinking about the Father in this tale. I think all of us can agree that that this Biblical father is himself one Prodigal Pop. He is crazily lavish … giving away half his fortune prematurely, dashing across the field in full sight of the hired help, and flinging his arms around his filthy wastrel son without even requiring an apology, and then conspicuously robing and ringing his son and setting a fancy banquet out for him. I mean, really! There was even music and dancing … an entire reception thrown together in an afternoon! This is a father whose love is undiminished, whose forgiveness is unrestrained, whose joy is overflowing. As one of my work colleagues famously remarked in a weekly chapel discussion, “that is one crazy father. That is crazy love.”

Now, by some trick of an earworm, the phrase “crazy love” always makes me think of  … not Van Morrison’s hit single “Crazy Love” (as you might expect), but rather his 1989 hit, “Have I Told You Lately” (the song covered and popularized by Rob Stewart). My mind always goes to these particular lyrics:

 [you] fill my heart with gladness,
Take away my sadness,
Ease my troubles, that’s what you do.

I imagine this is what the prodigal son must have been thinking as he collapsed into his father’s arms without even having to explain his mistakes and failures. I believe it’s what the father must have felt, finding that his sons were home with him …. and not just his prodigal boy who was very obviously lost and thinking he must come back as a slave, but also his first born who stayed home and had also lost himself in more subtle ways by considering himself as a servant in his own family.

Van Morrison’s song is understood as a romantic ballad, but it’s not hard to see that it was originally written as a prayer. Consider the bridge:

There’s a love that’s divine
And it’s yours and it’s mine
Like the sun.
At the end of the day
We should give thanks and pray to the One.

My colleague who identified the prodigal Father’s ‘crazy love’ concluded her thought with recognition that thankfully we all have an insanely generous Father. That Father – the “One” in the song lyric — is the ultimate wildly forgiving and joyful parent who is always ready to welcome and celebrate each of us, no matter how distant we get or how often we stray and make our way back again. Like the Sun, this is the Father-God who is constant, but who also is radical in showing His love and mercy. Thanks and praise to the One!

Prayer:

We praise you that, despite all our weakness and disobedience, you view us not as subjects,or as servants, but as children. And we rejoice that you want us to see you not as some deity remote in splendour, nor as a jealous God demanding our homage, but as a father, watching over us with infinite care and tenderness. For the wonder of your love, we praise you.

Teach us that however far we stray from you, however much we may reject your love or ignore your guidance, still you go on reaching out, longing to draw us close once more. For the wonder of your love, we praise you.

– Excerpted from a prayer by Nick Fawcett,
and posted on the Mother’s Union website.
http://www.themothersunion.org/

Our Return to Church Worship

You will be aware that the Ontario provincial government has allowed places of worship to open today with 30% attendance and the proviso that all the COVID-19 protocols are in place (i.e., wearing of face masks, remaining 6 feet apart, washing hands, etc.). Whilst the decision is to be welcomed, it is fraught with danger and I would not like to be a Priest-in-Charge who allows my church to open and then have one of my parishioners die from this dreadful disease as a result. I could not live with that.

As a consequence, I and the churchwardens at our executive meeting this week decided we would continue to follow the Diocese of Toronto’s recommendation not to open before September 1st and maybe not even then if we are not allowed to have some degree of normality. Can you imagine a service with no communion, extremely limited singing, and certainly no formal choir, with the congregation sitting 6 feet apart, no coffee before or after, etc., etc? I think it would be a very “atmosphere-less” service and would not have the good “congregational feel” we have created through our weekly Zoom services, especially now that Adriaan, our organist, Amanda, our chorister, and myself are back in church. I hope you all fully understand and are prepared to wait until it is safe for us to return to church for meaningful, less restricted services.

Pride Month

All Saints’ Whitby is a LGBTQ2S+ friendly church and is also a church where marriage is open to all regardless of gender. For many years, Proud Anglicans have been a part of the celebrations, which have had to be cancelled this year because of COVID-19. Nevertheless, our Diocesan Bishop Andrew Asbil has issued a letter of support for Pride and I quote from it: “As we join in the celebration of Pride once again this year, may we continue to live into our baptismal covenant, striving for justice and peace among all people, and respecting the dignity of every human being.” Happy Pride, everyone! We at All Saints’ stand with you!

Black Lives Matter

In the same spirit and attitude towards our LGTBQ2S+ friends, we at All Saints’ join our provincial bishops in their support of black and indigenous people in our country in their stand against racism, injustice and unfair, often violent, treatment by the police forces in our country. Both RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki and other provincial chief police officers have admitted to there being systemic racism within their forces and in every Canadian institution. We stand with Commissioner Lucki and others as they seek to ensure our country is “free of racism, discrimination and bias.”

the Rev. Geoff Lloyd, Interim Priest-in-Charge