Presented to River Street Cafe, 03 February 2017
Read Ecclesiastes 12:8-14
February 2nd: What happens on
February 2nd? What day is February 2nd? I have some friends from
Wiarton, Ontario; I usually send them a note on February 2nd. February
2nd is Groundhog Day. What happens if groundhog sees his shadow? What
happens if he doesn’t? What happens if one sees his shadow and another doesn’t?
What happens if they disagree? What happens if the groundhog is blind? Is that
cheating? When we lived in Manitoba, groundhogs were everywhere; how do we
decide which one did or did not see his or her shadow and which one’s view
matters more than the next? Yesterday 2/3 of the famous groundhogs did not see
their shadow; so do we just say 2 out of 3 ain’t bad and assume that Spring
will be early this year? What does it really mean if a groundhog sees its
shadow? Nothing.
I once heard Canadian elections cynically described
in terms of metal bars. You have four metal bars in front of you: a Liberal Red
one, a Conservative Blue one, an Orange NDP one, and a Green one. On Election
Day you choose which of these four metal bars you will be beaten with for the
next four years.
I saw a comic on one inauguration day in
the US. It was a picture
of the devil sitting on a throne with the American Flag behind him. He was in
the process of taking off a mask of the outgoing president and
putting on the mask of the incoming president. There is a line in a
favourite song of mine by White Lion,
that says, ‘no more Presidents and all the wars will end; one united world
under God’
This week we have seen some potentially horrific things – depending on how it all rolls out – in the US. The new
president has signed a ban on immigrants and refugees from 7 countries; he has
signed into construction a wall to keep others out of their country. I think
sometimes people think that all of this would change if the devil just wore
another mask, if they had elected someone from the other ruling party. Did you
know that the leading candidate from the other party, while she opposed the ‘wall’,
instead supported a ‘fence’ – same thing different name; and did you know that
that other party put a ban on Iraqi children entering their country when they
were in the most need. The events of this week may be horrible but really we are
just being hit with a different colour stick than we have been hit with before.
Now I am not saying that we don’t need to
stand up to horrible things: we do! As Christians we are told that we do need to stand up to against injustice. That is part of what shows the world
that we are Christians.
What we need to remember is this: don’t
to look to politicians or parties or philosophies or groundhogs to solve all of
our world’s problems. They won’t do it. They can't do it. As interesting as they are, they really
are meaningless, a chasing after the wind. What we need is to stand up
for the poor and the marginalized, but let us not do so in the name of party or a philosophy but in the Name of Jesus Christ because that is where our help comes
from. There is no other name by which mankind can be saved.
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