ON THE ROAD TO BROWNSBURG, QC

On Thursday afternoon this week I headed out to visit friends whom I had not seen for 28 years. Before they moved to Edmonton in 1974 they had been parishioners at St Philip's Church in Montreal West were I began as a curate. Each year they return to enjoy the lovely seclusion of Sixteen Island Lake where they have a beautiful cottage. I say seclusion because the only access to the cottages on Lac des seize iles is by water. The lake is between Weir and St-Sauveur in the Laurentians.

It was a brief visit. I returned to Ottawa on Friday afternoon. But it was a good renewal of friendship with them and a chance to meet several of the other families on the lake I have know for years. On one of the sixteen small islands is a church and on several occasions I have been invited to take one of the services they hold every Sunday in high season.

On my return trip to Ottawa, I picked up a young man hitch-hiking to Brownsburg which is small town just north of Lachute. He was a 23 year old francophone. The trip to Brownsburg was only about 10 minutes. We never got around to introducing ourselves; but in that short space of time he dumped the trials and tribulations of his life upon me. He was in some distress over an altercation he had had the previous evening with his best friend. Indeed, their arguing led to shoving and hitting. Consequently, the young man had been left on the banks of the Rouge River with no way home.

I listened to him as we drove along. I'm not sure that he wanted much more than that I commiserate with him and suggested that he speak with his friend, but he was so upset by the violence he had experienced that he saw no way of restoring the relationship.

It was one of those strange encounters that leaves you wondering about what happens next. I will never know- or at least not likely. I let him off on the main street of Brownsburg as I passed through, he thanked me profusely, for what I don't know and our lives parted forever. I assume!

Just before offering the lad a ride I had been thinking about what I might say this morning. I was weighing the pros and cons of each of the readings. I thought, the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel, or whomever it was, provided lots of room for speculation. Who was this other, God, himself, Jacob's alter ego, some of each? Well, you see where that could go. The outcome of this night of struggle was that Jacob felt blessed by God. In the words of scripture, "..I have seen God face to face and yet my life is preserved." (Genesis 32:30).

On the other hand, it seemed to me that to develop this theme would result in a sermon too long for a hot Sunday in August. As for the gospel story about the feeding of the great crowds with the loaves and fishes, nothing fresh came to mind except the reflection of the famous monk, Henri Nouwen, who commented that it is a story about the value of small people and small things. While the world likes things to be large and impressive, God so often choses the small things that the world ignores to make God's presence known.

Maybe my encounter with that young man was one of those small things. So brief. So fleeting. Yet their was a meeting of souls. One man's distress met by another's compassion, if that is what you could call my listening. It was at least compassionate on my part to pick him up when we are warned that picking up hitch-hikers is dangerous!

His unburdening reminded me of Paul's letter to us this morning. Paul starts off by saying, "I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart..For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for sake of my own people, my kindred according to the flesh" (Romans 9:2-3)

Paul is all torn up inside by the fact that so many of his own people, the Jews, reject the gospel of Jesus Christ. As Christians we acknowledge that that cry of anguish has echoed down the ages becoming a great roaring fury in the Holocaust. I think it is fair to say that Paul is sharing with the believers in Rome his broken heart: a heart cut in two by his love of Jesus and his love of his own people. It is surely on of the great tragedies of western history that Paul's broken heart should become a bitter and vindictive heart among Christians for which the Jews have paid a high price.

This confession follows upon Paul's comments to the church in Rome last week in which Paul poses one of the all time great questions for Christians. Paul asks, "Who will separate us from the love of Christ?" Paul confesses what nearly separates him from the love of Christ: it is the wedge driven between his faith and his own people.

But what is it that will separate you from the love of Christ? Paul's list starts with human calamities - trials, distresses, persecutions, hunger, nakedness, danger, wars, and then he moves on to forces both good and evil that are more than human- angels, principalities and powers. When he talks about heights and depths he is referring, it seems, to the supposed powers of the stars to influence or even determine earthly events. In Paul's day many believed in this and some people still do.

It is an interesting list because Paul covers three basic areas where we can be confounded in our faith. Three paths which can lead us away from the love of Christ. The first path is an obvious one: some terrible event in our personal lives that stands us on our heads, like a disease, or a tragic death, or the end of cherished relationship, or the loss of income or position. None of us escape the sense of desperation and abandonment which such events cause in us. Some of us find their way back and some of us do not.

Then Paul moves on to mention the second path when he speaks of things that are quite often good in themselves which he call angels, principalities, and powers. Walter Wink, a contemporary theologian, has done yeoman's work in bringing us back to an understanding of the power these forces over us. Concretely, I would describe them as the forces which operate in our culture in general and in the cultures of particular institutions. You may work in one of those institutions or environments that are hostile to faith. Maybe it is a university, or a political movement, or government, or your family, or maybe even your church. Not St John's, I hope. Wink would say that every institution has some kind of dominant spirit or power and some of these are destructive to trust in God. There may be good people doing good work in these places but still the atmosphere discourages the nurture or sharing of faith.

Truly, there are many other good things in life which can separate us from the love of Christ. Will a chocolate sundae after church separate you from the love of Christ? Or love in the afternoon? Or hockey practice on Sunday morning? Or the cottage on the weekends? Or the expensive things you want to buy for yourself? These are things that give us pleasure. They are good things in themselves. But at what point do we give these good things the power to separate us from the love of Christ? It happens all the time. Only you can answer.

And then Paul refers to the forces that are beyond our control. In a contemporary list of this sort I would place forces such as the those that drive international affairs: economic globalization, debt relief, wars over oil or other resources, the Kyoto Accord, nuclear disarmament, global warming, to mention but a few. If ancient peoples believed that their lives were determined by the movements of the star, most of us here today are more likely to believe that our lives are determined by different power structures quite beyond our reach. But the result is the same. We live with a certain sense of quiet desperation that so easily turns to cynicism and apathy in our culture.

As you wrestle with the things in your life that separate you from the love of Christ, what is the blessing that you would ask of God? Jacob wanted God to give him a name- one might say a clearer sense of personal identity and purpose. And God gave Jacob the new name of "Israel", which means, "wrestler or scrapper with God" The people whom God choses are to be wrestlers. God is not asking for quiet uncritical obedience, God wants passionate reasoned commitment. God expects us to challenge, to be defiant and energetic in our conversations with God so that the discussion is real and fruitful.

The final word that I leave with you this morning is the one that runs throughout all three of our readings: the assurance of God's presence. What we need to hold on to above all is that nothing ultimately can separate us from the love of Christ. All forms of separation , whether they be the ones we chose or the ones that are beyond our control, are not outside of God's love.

This conviction leads Paul to recognize that the failure of the Jews to embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ, while a tragedy in one sense, has meant that the riches of God have been opened to the all (the Gentiles) and he concludes that one day the Jews will be fully included. He doesn't know how. How and when he leaves to God whom he know loves them as much as he loves the Gentiles. It is this conviction that enables Paul to move on.

As I left the young man in Brownsburg I asked God to give him a blessing. The young man is wrestling with himself and that which has separated him from his friend. He may not be aware that he is surrounded by the love of Christ, but then, how often are we?.