Recovering Service - The Overflow from September 26th
- bordenmscott
- Sep 28, 2021
- 8 min read
Welcome to the 3rd edition of the Overflow, a weekly collection of thoughts, resources, and whatever else might spill over from weekly messages at Faith Baptist Church!
This week's entry will include:
Sermon Summary
Quote Bank
Truth and Reconciliation Day Reflection and Resources
Devotional Moment
Off we go!
Sermon Summary
This Sunday we continued to explore themes around restoration and recovery, with an emphasis on service. You can watch, read, or listen to the sermon with the links below (just note that this post sometimes goes live a bit before the video or audio versions of the sermon are available).
You can read this week's message here:
You can also listen to it here or watch it on YouTube here.
In this week’s message I considered Jesus’ example as a servant (Phil. 2:1-7 is a prime starting place) and asked if we need to recover our servant attitude after living through the stresses and strains of the pandemic. Tough times often make people focus inward. Pain makes us selfish. In the moment of trial that is normal, but it’s important that it not stay normal. There’s no path to health and healing that neglects the life-giving practice of serving others.
In the parable of the landowner from Matthew 20 we’re reminded that the way the world sees things and the way God sees things are very different. From the world’s perspective it is skill and effort that matter most. God cares about the attitude behind the action - the heart of the servant (see 1st Samuel 16:7). “The last will be first and the first will be last” reminds us that those honoured by the world may not be those who are most faithfully pleasing God.
I tried to capture the last who may be first idea like this: The one who is actually first may be the frail widow who nobody even knows prays for everyone in that church by name each week. Or it’s the quiet tradesman who out-gives much wealthier members, and would never brag about that or try to leverage it for influence. Or it’s the hurting, broken person, beaten down by loss, who simply manages to drag themselves in to worship week after week and who hangs on to their trust in God. That’s all they do. That’s all they can do. But in God’s eyes they are certainly not last.
Serving God and others is central to following Jesus, and it has been through service and the people I’ve served alongside that I have often grown and learned the most on my journey of faith. Has the past 18 months of pandemic living dulled your desire to serve at home, at work, at church, or in the community? Are you seeking to serve because of what you expect to receive, or because you trust God to bless you?
Quote Bank for September 26th
Like the last few weeks I've ended up with too many worthy quotes to possibly use, so here are a few deep or pithy thoughts on service:
Have you ever realized that you can give things to God that are of value to Him? Or are you just sitting around daydreaming about the greatness of His redemption, while neglecting all the things you could be doing for Him? I’m not referring to works which could be regarded as divine and miraculous, but ordinary, simple human things – things which would be evidence to God that you are totally surrendered to Him. – Oswald Chambers
Selfishness is when we pursue gain at the expense of others. But God doesn’t have a limited number of treasures to distribute. When you store up treasures for yourself in heaven, it doesn’t reduce the treasures available to others. In fact, it is by serving God and others that we store up heavenly treasures. Everyone gains; no one loses. – Randy Alcorn
The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” But the good Samaritan reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?” – Martin Luther King Jr
Truth and Reconciliation Day Reflections and Resources
As a connection to the new Truth and Reconciliation Day holiday on September 30th I delved into the emphasis that the Canadian Baptists of Atlantic Canada have sought to bring to being good neighbours and better serve indigenous peoples.
After years of work by the Indigenous Working Group the CBAC Oasis meeting in 2019 passed “A RESOLUTION IN RESPONSE TO THE TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION” along with endorsing the apology first offered by Canadian Baptist Ministries in 2016 and providing a series of actions to take in pursuing reconciliation. You can read the full resolution, apology, and action items here.
Part of that apology reads: Many of our own church roots emerged from the Anabaptist tradition in Europe. Our forefathers suffered forms of persecution and exclusion in Europe, yet we acted in a similar manner here. We went from being excluded to being the excluders, from the oppressed to the oppressors. We failed to learn from our past and fully embrace the “other” when we arrived here, despite the hospitality that was extended to us.
Although Canadian Baptists were not directly involved in the Residential School system, we failed our Indigenous brothers and sisters by not speaking out against it, when your language, culture, religion and values were being assaulted and harm was being inflicted on your children. We sinned when we were not the voice of the oppressed. We looked the other way when wrong was being done. And when some Baptists, like Silas Rand who lived and worked among the Mi’kmaq from 1843 – 1889, challenged the colonial status quo, our churches silenced them.
We put up walls when we should have opened doors. These practices have created a context wherein Indigenous peoples in this land today experience disproportionate poverty and oppression, the result of which are negative stereotypes, high rates of mental and emotional illness, suicide, violence against women, substance abuse and intergenerational pain. When we should have challenged our churches, institutions and governments to respond to systemic injustices, such as the lack of access to clean water and educational opportunities, we were silent.
Every nation has its great sins. For Canadians the treatment of indigenous peoples may be our greatest. But I sense a growing awareness and desire for a better way forward today, and the Church would serve God and our neighbours well by being champions of reconciliation.
To be servants in this area is a complicated task, one that often starts with improving our understanding. Our church will be seeking to provide some resources and opportunities to learn more about matters related to indigenous peoples and ways in which we can pursue reconciliation. I’m linking a few resources from (or provided by) CBAC and CBM that can serve as a starting place:
A link to the CBAC’s “Walking In A Good Way With Our Indigenous Neighbours” online course. (Anyone can sign up for free using an email address. There is a lot of content, but you can look at whatever parts you prefer without having to go in order.)
Devotional Moment
This week's devotional moment comes via Steve Bell, who performed at our church several years ago. At the time he had just launchd a new album, Where The Good Way Lies, which is also the title of its first song. You can click to listen now, or read some of Steve Bell's explanation of the song below first to gain some perspective on what it is about.
From Steve Bell's Blog (Original can be found here)
The title itself is derived from an Old Testament text:
Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way lies, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. – Jeremiah 6:16
Let’s recall that the early Christians didn’t call themselves Christians, but rather, people of The Way. In our own day, Christianity has become so laden with cultural and ideological trappings that it’s sometimes difficult to see the forest for the weeds. My friend, Indigenous Mi’kmaq elder Terry LeBlanc, finds the term “Christian” too freighted to be of much use any more and prefers to simply refer to himself as a follower of the Jesus Way.
Those who know me know I’ve had a long engagement with Indigenous peoples. I’m ever taken back with the strength of their traditional wisdom: that is, an affirmation of the goodness of the Creator, the fundamental goodness of creation, and a path of renewable relationality that ensures well being among all that God loves. “All my relations!” as Indigenous folk love to say.
In Indigenous teaching, courage, humility, honesty, truth, respect, wisdom and love are the seven virtues of a good and reliable way. There are slight variations across traditions of course, but always seven. And I’m reminded of how important the number seven is in Judeo-Christian thought and memory: seven days, seven lampstands, seven churches, seven elders, etc. Seven is the number of perfection. But perfection should not be misinterpreted as perfectionism, which implies a cruel exactitude no mortal can hope to attain, but rather suggesting wholeness, or shalom, with all its beautiful derivatives: justice, righteousness, mercy etc.
For reasons too long to delve into here, my engagement with Indigenous peoples and Indigenous wisdom has deepened significantly in the recent past. Rather than draw me away from my fundamental Christian faith, this neighbourly engagement has helped me to glimpse my faith, if only in brief flashes, in its unsullied form, which, I believe, has the potential to bring about a renewed energy and hope in a somewhat unflattering season of Christian witness.
This song began in an unlikely way. I was humming a song a friend of mine (Gerry St. Cyr) wrote over thirty years ago. As I hummed, the melody suggested new paths and I realized another song was presenting itself that built on an older one. Around the same time, my wife showed me a quilt that a friend of hers, a Metis woman named Ruby Payette, had made. It was an infinity star quilt… that is, a seven pointed star with each point referencing one of the seven Indigenous sacred teachings. Soon, lyrics formed:
Seven sacred days creation took So the ancient stories tell When all was done the maker called it good And it was good So long ago Long ago
Holy wind and water, earth and fire North to south and east to west Red and yellow, black and white in-spired And all was blessed So long ago Long ago
Seven sacred words creator spoke So the elders ever tell To walk again the ancient path of hope The good way known From long ago Long ago
Courage Humility Honesty Truth Respect Wisdom Love
When it came time to record the song, I felt there was room yet for more input. I called rapper Fresh I.E. and asked if he thought there may be room for input from him. Fresh knocked me out with what he brought to the table.
I then called traditional pow-wow singer Co-co Ray Stevenson to see if he felt like he would have something to contribute, and what he brought moved me to tears.
So the song and production end up being a rather unlikely soup. But I think it works.
A Prayer For Today
Grant us patience, O Lord, to follow the road you have taken. Let our confidence not rest in our own understanding but in your guiding hand; let our desires not be for our own comfort, but for the joy of your kingdom; for your cross is our hope and our joy now and unto the day of eternity. Amen. (St. Augustine)
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