I was thinking that a subtitle for this reflection could be: An anatomy of the construction of a Sunday reflection. I want to make my reflection this morning a story about how this reflection came to be – kind of like a story within a story or a movie about the making of a movie. I do this for several reasons:

1. if I was to say that I was going to make a film about an archaeologist, I am not sure you would expect it to be an adventure thriller, but we all know that “Raiders of the Lost Ark” puts that idea to rest. So, just perhaps the story of the making of a Sunday reflection might be more interesting than it first sounds
   
2. sometimes the process behind the writing of a reflection reveals the idea, theme or message that the reflection itself was expected to deliver
   
3. there is more than one way to come up with a Sunday reflection and this week I think proves it
   
4. sometimes it is just interesting to be witness to the ways in which connections happen and that there is something about the presence of the Holy Spirit that brings the connections together.

So, here is a story about how this reflection came into being. It's not typical, but it is also not unique. And I think in telling this story I will answer, at least in part, the question that is asked by the original title of this reflection.

I will admit that when I first looked at the passages for this week I was not much inspired. I shared with Gwyneth on Friday morning – which is bulletin reproduction day – that the title muse had not really been working for me this week. That usually means that the reflection muse itself is also hidden away. In part, the difficulty came from the passages that we just heard Nancy read. As was mentioned, they all have something to say about authority, but perhaps my own attitude about authority was making it hard to come up with a fully formed direction. I had some vague notion that authority in this day and age is in a state of flux, and in such circumstances it is really hard to come up with something definitive to say.

So, it was difficult to come up with a title – which is usually an important first step for me in the writing of a reflection. Because it is important for me to have a title, I would rather have one – even if it sometimes ends up not fitting – than leave a blank in the worship bulletin. That's just me, but I know that it is also important to me for a the title of a reflection to have some kind of hook – something that will invite the listener to reflect or to be interested in the words that follow. I don't know how successful that is for me, but it is important. Let me just say, that this week, the title I came up with, was not doing a whole lot for me. But it was better than nothing – for reasons I have just described.

So, early in the week, I knew that the theme I was being called to reflect upon had something to do with authority, but just what the outcome of that reflection would be I was far from sure about.

I also know that I spent a good deal of time doing some other research. There was a board meeting this week and I knew that one of the items on the board agenda was the approval of my proposal for a sabbatical in the coming fall. I happened to be talking to a well known leader in the church a week or so ago and in the conversation I mentioned a topic I want to explore in my sabbatical. It's always a good thing to mention things like that to people. I've been pointed to a number of very helpful resources just because I happened to mention the topic of my sabbatical to a few people. It's kind of like having extra sets of antennae checking things out and reporting back to me. And that of course has something to do with authority – connection #1.

So, last Sunday morning I was sitting at Gate 7 at the Edmonton Airport, to return from a trip for a meeting in Alberta last week. I was hoping that the flight was on time. I arrived early and had time to check my email and put some finishing touches on last week's reflection. In that email was a greeting from aforementioned church leader along with a link to an interesting blog post. Even more interesting was the source of the blog post – the adaptation of something that the author had written in his book titled “Open Source Church: Making Room for the Wisdom of All”. With a title like that it couldn't help but be a helpful resource for my sabbatical theme. So I spent a few hours this week trying to track the book down and reading a bit more about it's author. I'll come back to this in a moment.

Fast forward a few days to Friday. I was heading upstairs from a conversation with Gwyneth and just after I had sent my newly minted worship bulletin and less than inspiring reflection title to the printer. I met my colleague Kirk from the Lutheran church on the stairs and as we passed at the landing he asked: How are you doing with this week's passages? Obviously, someone else was struggling. There is a certain comfort in knowing you are not alone.

I muttered something about the fact that my thinking was centred on the issue of authority but it wasn't coalescing into anything too inspiring and then before I knew it we had engaged in about a five minute conversation in which I was able to make all kinds of connections with Kirk and for myself with lots of things I had been thinking about over the week. I touched on the aforementioned book and what I had learned about its author's theories of church life. I touched on some other things I had researched in connection with the same author. I touched on a letter I had written to the Observer this week. I touched on some reflection I have done this week on my own faith journey and its current focus and the “Exploring Our Faith” sessions which begin this afternoon.

All of a sudden, something that had been quite vague and really uninteresting took on a new focus. I was worried I wouldn't have much to say and I worried about how valuable it would be and now I was worried that there was too much to talk about and I knew that the thought processes regardless of how valuable they were for anyone else, they were certainly valuable to me.

My mother had a keen ear for a weekly Sunday sermon. In her mind, it was always important to have a good joke either at the beginning – that was often preferred, but if not at the beginning, then somewhere in the middle. I do not ascribe to this philosophy in total, but a good joke or funny story does have the positive attribute of gaining or keeping the listener's attention and if can be highly descriptive of the point you want to make then it is a great idea.

I was thinking of a joke this week about authority. One of the points made in some of the things I read and researched this week is that theology is contextual. It will mean different things in different places and in different times. A sermon on authority in an oppressive state would be much different than a sermon on authority in a democratic, free society like ours. Now you may quibble with how free we actually are – as would I, but nonetheless there are lots of other places where freedom is clearly more limited. So I offer this joke on authority in the context in which we live as residents of Canada or as Canadians. It goes like this: How do you get Canadians to evacuate a swimming pool? The answer: You quietly say, “Could you please get out of the pool?” The point is that in general Canadians defer to authority. We respect it and probably based on good experience, we don't question it a whole lot – as long as it seems to be appropriate. That's our context. And it is the context in which we are invited to think about where our authority comes from.

As you heard, this week's passages concern the issue of authority. Who or what defines the authority we consult or obey in our lives? What guides our faith lives? Those are the questions that mulled unresolvedly in my head for most of these week, and then answers kind of popped out with all kinds of connections in a five minute conversation on the stairs right out here.

We live in an age where authority is in a huge state of flux. The inherent democracy of social networks, virtual community, crowd sourcing and easily accessible knowledge has meant that we need to rely on the expertise or knowledge of others a lot less than we used to. If we don't like what our doctor has to say to us, we can go get a second opinion from Google. Or we can do some preliminary research and diagnosis before we head off to see a physician. Now of course there are risks involved in that, but there is also a huge benefit – in terms of how much we can do for ourselves. I think all of this has huge influence on how we perceive authority. It used to be that the church and the priest, minister or pastor was an important authority, not just on spiritual matters but lots of other things as well. Starting with the printing press and the Gutenberg Bible, we know that the authority that once rested in the church and its leaders has been dispersed in many directions – most of them good, but not all.

The author of “Open Source Church”, Landon Whitsitt, from what I've read in the reviews – I haven't been able to read the book yet – I could have if I had a Kindle, but my hard copy version is on order, writes about church community forming around the same model as the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. I'm sure that you know that Wikipedia is a community edited encyclopedia. Any one of us, could contribute to it, if we so wished. I've added a few edits myself – none recently, other than the correction of a few typos, but a few years ago when the encyclopedia was in its infancy I made some contributions on a number of topics. I'm pretty sure my edits are all gone now, but the point is that any one of us could participate. That's a huge shift in authority especially when we consider that Wikipedia is likely the Encyclopedia that is most often consulted in our present age.

How much of an authority is the Bible for you? What about Jesus? On what do you base your granting of authority? Is it someone's knowledge, or intellect, compassion, passion, love, power, the loudness of their voice or the gentleness of their spirit?

These are all the questions that bubbled about in my brain as I reflected on the topic of authority.

I could go on and on and on. I won't as I expect the authority you grant to me would dwindle with each passing minute, but I hopefully have sparked some reflections for you. I just want to conclude with a restatement of the fourth point I offered at the beginning of this reflection and a comment about it. I said: “sometimes it is just interesting to be witness to the ways in which connections happen and that there is something about the presence of the Holy Spirit that brings the connections together.”

And that's the final point I want to make. The connections lead me to affirm my belief that all authority comes from God – it is God that allows for us to gather knowledge. It is God that has given us intellect, compassion, passion, love, power and the discernment to recognize how these are authentically invested in us by Creator God. It is the presence of the Spirit that helps us make connections – some of which I have alluded to in this reflection. As usual this reflection will be posted on our church website, but this time there will be more in the online version. I will also include links to many of the things to which I have referred.

Finally, let me conclude with an adapted version of the prayer I used at the beginning: O God, may we use the authority you give to us so that we may live toward your desire for the community of Earth to be whole and for all the connections we make as we live in this community of Earth. Amen.