Zero-sum thinking: impoverishing in our spiritual lives

Zero-sum thinking — the belief that someone’s gain must come at someone else’s expense — is a poor philosophy for life, politics, or faith. It turns relationships into scorecards and turns ordinary choices into battles of power and loss. There is nothing beautiful in imagining that my joy requires another’s sorrow, or that my children’s success depends on other children’s failure. Love, gratitude, and the flourishing of a community are not measured by who falls behind so that others can surge ahead.

That same false logic corrodes our public life. When every policy, budget, or election is treated as a winner-take-all contest, the polity breaks down. Each side retreats into rigid defense, suspicious that any gain for the other side must be their loss. Even the language of “full” nations or “closed” communities can be used to suggest that compassion necessarily deprives those already here — as if hospitality, support, and welcome are a finite supply. But societies thrive when we remember that humane policy and common purpose enlarge the common good rather than diminish it.

Zero-sum thinking is especially impoverishing in our spiritual lives. Some Christians wonder whether heaven’s joy would be diminished if God were to save all people. That suspicion imagines God’s love as scarce, as though the divine table could run out. The Gospel tells a different story. When the rich young man walks away burdened by the cost of following Jesus, the disciples voice their fear too: “We have left everything to follow you; what then will we have?” Jesus answers not in scarcity but in abundance: you will receive a hundredfold and inherit eternal life. God’s economy is not subtraction; it is multiplication.

We are invited into a different practice: to give without counting losses, to rejoice when others are blessed, to build communities where generosity creates more life, not less. Gratitude expands us; service enlarges us; faith reorients us away from fear and toward trust. Dignity does not depend on another’s diminishment; politics should aim for the flourishing of all and our worship declare that God’s love is inexhaustible. In doing so we discover the comforting truth at the heart of the Gospel: abundance, not scarcity, is God’s promise. May we live and love in that promise.

See you in church,
Pastor Tuula

Living in Hope

I was in a meeting this week when one person - soft-spoken but convinced - named the latest political trend and painted it in dark colours. The conversation, which had begun with a dozen small, ordinary voices, shifted. Words tightened. A gray weight settled over the room. Before long, the air tasted of worry: lists of grievances, quick judgments, the kind of talk that pulls people into the same small, anxious orbit. Then someone asked about the weather, and it broke the spell. The moment reminded me how easily despair can swell - and how easily it can be softened when we choose otherwise.

There is another way to live in anxious, divided times: we can live with hope. 

At St. Philip’s, that’s not just a slogan. It’s the ground we stand on and the story we intend to tell. To be for something - to say yes to generosity, to healing, to neighbourliness - feels far more faithful and fruitful than standing forever against the things that frighten us.

One of the great gifts God gives us is freedom of choice. Those choices shape who we become, and they shape who we become together. A congregation that chooses hope makes a different kind of sound in the world: not naive, not indifferent to hardship, but steady, creative, and engaged.

Negativity rarely builds anything worth keeping. Complaints and cynicism provide cover - an easy retreat where it feels safe to judge instead of to act. Poet Christian Wiman says, “cynicism is a small refuge of superiority, a way to avoid responsibility”. 

Apostle Paul reminds us of another truth: “In [Jesus Christ] every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes’” (2 Cor. 1:20). That “Yes” is the kernel of hope - the force that creates, repairs, and makes a future.

Hope is not pretending everything is fine. It is choosing to walk toward the future we want and to help build it with the people around us. At St. Philip’s, we want to do that with you.

Please join us for a Lunch and Learn on September 28 after worship to hear how we plan to build a hopeful future and how you can be part of it. Your presence and support help keep our community a place that says “Yes” to life, to love, and to what’s possible. 

Thank you for walking toward that future with us.

What's in a name?

Your name may be your most important possession. As a Christian, I believe my baptism is even more critical to my identity than my name. But we never baptize anonymously. We baptize individual human beings with real names.

When my siblings and I were children, our mother used to mark our coats by sewing little name tapes into the collar, each hand-stitched with our full names. I doubt she went to this effort just to ensure the return of the coats if they were lost. My guess is that she wanted us to know, every time we put the coat on, that we were precious in her sight. Sewing our name into the collar by hand meant her love went with us wherever we went.

Rabbi Shai Held offers a fascinating interpretation of the Tower of Babel narrative. According to him, God dispersed the people because they were content to speak the same language and use the same words. They were not scattered because of their crazy ambition to undertake a tower project. It was because they had ignored their God-given uniqueness and lost their names in the process.

Plenty of 19th-century American slave stories remind us of people who sought to escape not only physical bondage but also the bondage of anonymity. “My name was Isabella,” Sojouner Truth said. “But when I left the house of bondage . . . I wasn’t goin’ to keep nothin’ of Egypt on me, an’ so I went to the Lord an’ asked Him to give me a new name. And the Lord gave me Sojourner, because I was to travel up an’ down the land, showing the people their sins, an’ bein’ a sign unto them. Afterwards I told the Lord I wanted another name, ’cause everybody else had two names; and the Lord gave me Truth.”

Each of us is blessed with our own name and corresponding significance. Faith calls us not only to celebrate the uniqueness of our own lives but also to delight in the diversity and value of all whom we meet.

See you in church!
Pastor Tuula

"Gratitude is one of the finest feelings in life"

I love greeting people before and after worship. Those brief exchanges are often my only engagement with certain individuals for weeks on end. Sometimes I say words of gratitude. “Thanks for coming today,” Or, “It is good to see you!”

My family asks me why I, as pastor, thank people for coming to worship. Worship is a voluntary experience, after all, and participants come because they want to, not because they are doing some favour for the pastor. If I believed they were coming for me, it would be a weird understanding of ministry and personal identity.

So why the gratitude? These people are part of the joy of the day. Their presence affects me personally. Even if they are passing through as visitors who may never return, we still get to feel the bonds of affection. Their eyes are honest. They have sung and prayed. They have hit the pause button on life to honour God. Had they not shown up, our whole worship experience would have been different and less whole. On this day, they gave a particular shape to the community, which will never again replicate itself. For that, I am grateful.

In the New Testament, the word charis may be translated as thanks or grace. It can define an act of either giving or receiving. When I say thanks to a worshipper, I don’t do it because I think I am returning something that is owed. The transaction is more about blessing than indebtedness. I feel lucky to be in the presence of that guest.

A host who throws a dinner party may thank everybody for coming. But their thank you is not connected with a sense of obligation to guests who happened to bring an appetizer or dessert. Gratitude simply wells up in the host’s heart because they are moved that friends brought happiness and love together.

My internship supervisor LeRoy Ness said that “gratitude is one of the finest feelings in life . . . nothing beats gratitude for sheer joy; it is, perhaps, the genesis of all other really good feelings in the human repertoire.” Anybody who ever got to witness LeRoy preaching or teaching saw what joy and gratitude did to him. They sent his adrenaline rushing.

See you in church!

Pastor Tuula

Less Grumbling, More Humbling

Grumbling! The crowd around Jesus—the “in” crowd, that is—was grumbling. Grumbling because Jesus welcomed those who traditionally had been set apart: tax collectors and sinners. Who are those who cause us to grumble? Whose seemingly undeserved handout or unearned status change filled our hearts with resentment this week? Jesus speaks to us today because we too often see life as a game with winners and losers, points and playbooks, offense and defense. Can we open our hearts and minds to hear [Jesus'] humbling good news? God’s love is freely shared with all: we cannot earn it, we cannot deserve it. When we attend worship, we do so out of thanksgiving and praise for God’s glory, hunger and thirst for God’s word and sacrament. We do not attend worship to achieve some status within God’s kingdom. When we help a neighbour, share with a stranger, assist the afflicted, or acknowledge the overlooked we do so because Christ first did the same for us. We respond to God’s grace and mercy with our own feeble attempts to emulate God’s perfect love. It is challenging, exhausting, never-ending, perspective-altering, radically humbling work. It’s work that is impossible to do without the inspiration of Christ, the nourishment of wine and bread, and the strength of the saints who have gone before us and with whom we walk Christ’s path today. Let us find those in our world who teach us about Christ’s unending reconciliation, so that we can all celebrate and rejoice as the family of God.

from Sundays and Seasons