Boy2 turned 1. the cake was the.best.ever.
mmm...cake....
and gifts!
Saturday, March 28, 2009
more new pictures
A baby gorilla at the Zoo that bears a striking resemblance to Boy2.
The Boy at the Zoo with a friend.
tire swing at the park.
Important scientific experiments regarding buoyancy, and such.
some updates!
Boy2 at the crawling stage -- it lasted about 3 weeks before walking. Holy cow!
close to $4000 dollars damage. Can you believe it? Not our fault, though, so insurance pays for the whole shebang.
the Boys have started playing together! so cute!
Boy2 deadpans whenever he actually sees the camera.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Happy Birthday!
Happy Birthday Boy2!
Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday to you!you look like a (small pink bald) monkey,
and.....
you smell like one too!
Love you.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Sunday, March 15, 2009
A Foolish God -- March 15/09
For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. (1 Corinthians 1:25)
I wonder if, when writing those words so many years ago St Paul had the slightest idea what was to happen to the church that he helped build.
Amid persecution early Christians gathered. They took in abandoned babies, fed the poor, tended to the sick and to the lame and to the suffering. To widows they gave hope and sustenance and to young women the early Christian community offered a way of life that didn’t mean marriage, childbearing, and early death. They valued the life that could be found through Jesus Christ. They lived on the hope that because they were baptized with Christ into a death like his they would be united with him in a resurrection like his.
But in 312 AD the Emperor Constantine faced his rival Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge. He ordered his soldiers to paint the sign of the cross on their shields and they won. And the cross of Christ turned from a symbol of God’s kerygmatic – his self-emptying – love for the world into a symbol of human strength and might. The power of God became synonymous with the old human categories of wisdom through dominance and strength through military might.
In the succeeding years the church went from being persecuted to being the persecutor; from priding itself on being powerless to being at the center of the most vicious and bloody power struggles of the time. Instead of a symbol of faith, the icon of the cross became the source of power : vampires, demons, witches, and all manner of things that go bump in the night were said to recoil at the mere sight of a cross, so great was the power of God in that object.
Crosses became jewelery; fashion statements made from the most brutal instrument of torture shameful death ever devised. Diamonds and gold symbolized the power that the bearers held in the world: money. Power. Authority.
And human wisdom – Greek philosophy, rhetoric, theology – began to come to define God’s wisdom. Ideas became more important than community; the right kind of thought became more important than a right relationship with God. Humanity’s neverending pursuit of power – embodied in ideals of wisdom and strength – became confused with the divine. Weakness became something to be exploited, to be condemned, not held sacred or protected.
That’s Darwin and Malthus, basically, I think. Human wisdom, left to its own devices, serves only ourselves. Survival of the fittest, the strongest survive. There are textbooks that explain the rise of Christianity that way – that because it could adapt faster to different cultural contexts, Christianity outgrew other pagan religions. No need for Christ. Nature, red in tooth and claw. Religion, grown in sword and cannon without the need for faith, or grace. Human wisdom – reason and logic – win because so-called human ‘strength’ hates weakness, even the weakness of God.
I have a number of books by Bishop John Shelby Spong, the Episcopalian Bishop who writes to ‘de-mythologize’ the Christian story to make it more palatable to reportedly rational people. He’s not the first;the urge to de-mythologize the Christian story is what led President Thomas Jefferson (note: thanks to those who caught that and corrected me) to cut out all the parts of his bible he didn’t believe could have happened. So all the miracles of Jesus -- the conception of Mary, the Resurrection, Jesus’ ascension into heaven – were cut, along with other select parts of the Old and New Testaments. What was left was a completely rational book that told people how to live a good life.
After all, many people argue, that’s the point. Miracles, though flashy and clever writing, don’t matter. Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross at Golgotha doesn’t matter. The societal ideal is to be a good person – preferably by how your own reading of Scripture lays it out, by and large ignoring most of the bits about giving money or service to your neighbour and altering that Golden Rule: from “do unto others as you would have others do unto you” to “do nothing, as you want nothing done to you.”
Those miracles are good for a show, aren’t they? One person surviving a car accident is lucky; two is fate; three is good engineering; three hundred surviving is a miracle. If those same three hundred died someone is going to call it God’s will, or God’s punishment.
Because, after all, it’s what you do that matters. If you’re good, God will love you. If you’re bad, God will punish you. That’s human wisdom. That God loves our strength. That’s what our brains are hardwired and culturally influenced to understand. That what we do matters. Pity the cripple, who can’t do something for his or her self; but for those of us who are able, we’d better get cracking.
Is that really what it is, though? That doesn’t seem to be the case in John’s gospel for today. Tear down this Temple, Jesus says, and I will build it again in three days. The Temple authorities want a sign. But this? No way can any prophet build in three days what had taken more than forty years to complete.
But eventually, after the resurrection, the disciples realize that Jesus was talking about the Temple of his body. That human strength would lose to God’s dying weakness. That human wisdom would crumble in the folly of a God willing to perish for his creation.
This is what Paul spends countless pages writing about. Jesus died on the cross. Jesus is Risen. The cross stands as testament to the power of God to give justification to all humankind through grace alone; not through works that complete some kind of law. And people didn’t get it in Paul’s time, and by and large we don’t get it now.
What would happen if we really and truly believed that God alone comes down to us, down to our own sin-infested, selfish, helpless lives and takes on flesh and lives and walks and sweats and bleeds and screams and dies – and then on the third day rises again in glory to bring us all to everlasting life?
It would change everything. Our lives, instead of living in pursuit of bigger and better, more and more, would turn to living instead for our neighbor, for all of God’s creation. Instead of pretending that we can live to please God, we would please God to live.
But really, we don’t think that will happen. We think that’s nuts.
How many messages to you see every day that tell you that you need to be somebody, act in a certain way, do a certain action to meet God? We see it on TV, in movies, in books, in magazines, newspapers, every form of media imaginable conveys that message. That humans can encounter God through their own machinations, their own actions, and then leave God when they desire.
That scraping sound you hear is St Paul rolling over in his grave.
But we still proclaim that in the cross, God has bypassed our own attempts to set the agenda regarding the who and the how of our getting to God. That, instead of leaving another 10 Commandments, so twisted by so many generations from a testament of divine love and relationship into a means to pluck up and tear down, God instead through a single act of divine grace institutes the ultimate end and sows the seeds for a New Creation in which the cross has central place.
What that means, beloved, is that no more are distinctions made between godly and ungodly, between the elect and the reprobate. It means that in this time of reflection and repentance – and the Greek word for repentance literally means ‘turning around’ – we have a chance, a reason, an excuse to try a different way.
To see God with the wounded and the hurting instead of in the proud and the strong. To actually embrace God’s foolishness and become fools our selves. Why don’t we, being conscious of our own weakness, stop despising it in others. To try understanding, rather than demanding to be understood. To try giving, instead of expecting solely to receive from others. To act righteously, instead of seeking our own advantage even if it means losing something ourselves.
For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.
Human wisdom informs us that we need to be right and perfect before we go up to meet God.
God’s foolishness is coming down to frail humanity and taking upon himself human flesh. God’s foolishness is saying to each and every one of us “I love you, I have always loved you, I will always love you.” God’s foolishness is loving all of us even we are judged and condemned by our own sin as unloveable and worthy of eternal damnation.
Human strength tells us that we can pick ourselves up by our own bootstraps and change the way we are.
God’s weakness brings God down to us in the midst of our despair, our brokenness, and lifts us up. To healing. To wholeness.
The weakness of God is love of humanity. The so-called ‘strength’ of humanity is hatred of weakness.
But in our deepest, darkest, most shameful moments even the proudest of us admits that we are nothing without Christ. When we see that, when we truly own that believe that, we will be truly free. Because the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are dying in their souls – but to those who seek God’s face and believe God is with us, it is pure and unadulterated grace. Not reason. Not logic. Just grace.
And by that we are saved and freed to be weak, to be foolish, and to love others as we have first been loved.
May this be so among us.
Amen.
I wonder if, when writing those words so many years ago St Paul had the slightest idea what was to happen to the church that he helped build.
Amid persecution early Christians gathered. They took in abandoned babies, fed the poor, tended to the sick and to the lame and to the suffering. To widows they gave hope and sustenance and to young women the early Christian community offered a way of life that didn’t mean marriage, childbearing, and early death. They valued the life that could be found through Jesus Christ. They lived on the hope that because they were baptized with Christ into a death like his they would be united with him in a resurrection like his.
But in 312 AD the Emperor Constantine faced his rival Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge. He ordered his soldiers to paint the sign of the cross on their shields and they won. And the cross of Christ turned from a symbol of God’s kerygmatic – his self-emptying – love for the world into a symbol of human strength and might. The power of God became synonymous with the old human categories of wisdom through dominance and strength through military might.
In the succeeding years the church went from being persecuted to being the persecutor; from priding itself on being powerless to being at the center of the most vicious and bloody power struggles of the time. Instead of a symbol of faith, the icon of the cross became the source of power : vampires, demons, witches, and all manner of things that go bump in the night were said to recoil at the mere sight of a cross, so great was the power of God in that object.
Crosses became jewelery; fashion statements made from the most brutal instrument of torture shameful death ever devised. Diamonds and gold symbolized the power that the bearers held in the world: money. Power. Authority.
And human wisdom – Greek philosophy, rhetoric, theology – began to come to define God’s wisdom. Ideas became more important than community; the right kind of thought became more important than a right relationship with God. Humanity’s neverending pursuit of power – embodied in ideals of wisdom and strength – became confused with the divine. Weakness became something to be exploited, to be condemned, not held sacred or protected.
That’s Darwin and Malthus, basically, I think. Human wisdom, left to its own devices, serves only ourselves. Survival of the fittest, the strongest survive. There are textbooks that explain the rise of Christianity that way – that because it could adapt faster to different cultural contexts, Christianity outgrew other pagan religions. No need for Christ. Nature, red in tooth and claw. Religion, grown in sword and cannon without the need for faith, or grace. Human wisdom – reason and logic – win because so-called human ‘strength’ hates weakness, even the weakness of God.
I have a number of books by Bishop John Shelby Spong, the Episcopalian Bishop who writes to ‘de-mythologize’ the Christian story to make it more palatable to reportedly rational people. He’s not the first;the urge to de-mythologize the Christian story is what led President Thomas Jefferson (note: thanks to those who caught that and corrected me) to cut out all the parts of his bible he didn’t believe could have happened. So all the miracles of Jesus -- the conception of Mary, the Resurrection, Jesus’ ascension into heaven – were cut, along with other select parts of the Old and New Testaments. What was left was a completely rational book that told people how to live a good life.
After all, many people argue, that’s the point. Miracles, though flashy and clever writing, don’t matter. Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross at Golgotha doesn’t matter. The societal ideal is to be a good person – preferably by how your own reading of Scripture lays it out, by and large ignoring most of the bits about giving money or service to your neighbour and altering that Golden Rule: from “do unto others as you would have others do unto you” to “do nothing, as you want nothing done to you.”
Those miracles are good for a show, aren’t they? One person surviving a car accident is lucky; two is fate; three is good engineering; three hundred surviving is a miracle. If those same three hundred died someone is going to call it God’s will, or God’s punishment.
Because, after all, it’s what you do that matters. If you’re good, God will love you. If you’re bad, God will punish you. That’s human wisdom. That God loves our strength. That’s what our brains are hardwired and culturally influenced to understand. That what we do matters. Pity the cripple, who can’t do something for his or her self; but for those of us who are able, we’d better get cracking.
Is that really what it is, though? That doesn’t seem to be the case in John’s gospel for today. Tear down this Temple, Jesus says, and I will build it again in three days. The Temple authorities want a sign. But this? No way can any prophet build in three days what had taken more than forty years to complete.
But eventually, after the resurrection, the disciples realize that Jesus was talking about the Temple of his body. That human strength would lose to God’s dying weakness. That human wisdom would crumble in the folly of a God willing to perish for his creation.
This is what Paul spends countless pages writing about. Jesus died on the cross. Jesus is Risen. The cross stands as testament to the power of God to give justification to all humankind through grace alone; not through works that complete some kind of law. And people didn’t get it in Paul’s time, and by and large we don’t get it now.
What would happen if we really and truly believed that God alone comes down to us, down to our own sin-infested, selfish, helpless lives and takes on flesh and lives and walks and sweats and bleeds and screams and dies – and then on the third day rises again in glory to bring us all to everlasting life?
It would change everything. Our lives, instead of living in pursuit of bigger and better, more and more, would turn to living instead for our neighbor, for all of God’s creation. Instead of pretending that we can live to please God, we would please God to live.
But really, we don’t think that will happen. We think that’s nuts.
How many messages to you see every day that tell you that you need to be somebody, act in a certain way, do a certain action to meet God? We see it on TV, in movies, in books, in magazines, newspapers, every form of media imaginable conveys that message. That humans can encounter God through their own machinations, their own actions, and then leave God when they desire.
That scraping sound you hear is St Paul rolling over in his grave.
But we still proclaim that in the cross, God has bypassed our own attempts to set the agenda regarding the who and the how of our getting to God. That, instead of leaving another 10 Commandments, so twisted by so many generations from a testament of divine love and relationship into a means to pluck up and tear down, God instead through a single act of divine grace institutes the ultimate end and sows the seeds for a New Creation in which the cross has central place.
What that means, beloved, is that no more are distinctions made between godly and ungodly, between the elect and the reprobate. It means that in this time of reflection and repentance – and the Greek word for repentance literally means ‘turning around’ – we have a chance, a reason, an excuse to try a different way.
To see God with the wounded and the hurting instead of in the proud and the strong. To actually embrace God’s foolishness and become fools our selves. Why don’t we, being conscious of our own weakness, stop despising it in others. To try understanding, rather than demanding to be understood. To try giving, instead of expecting solely to receive from others. To act righteously, instead of seeking our own advantage even if it means losing something ourselves.
For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.
Human wisdom informs us that we need to be right and perfect before we go up to meet God.
God’s foolishness is coming down to frail humanity and taking upon himself human flesh. God’s foolishness is saying to each and every one of us “I love you, I have always loved you, I will always love you.” God’s foolishness is loving all of us even we are judged and condemned by our own sin as unloveable and worthy of eternal damnation.
Human strength tells us that we can pick ourselves up by our own bootstraps and change the way we are.
God’s weakness brings God down to us in the midst of our despair, our brokenness, and lifts us up. To healing. To wholeness.
The weakness of God is love of humanity. The so-called ‘strength’ of humanity is hatred of weakness.
But in our deepest, darkest, most shameful moments even the proudest of us admits that we are nothing without Christ. When we see that, when we truly own that believe that, we will be truly free. Because the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are dying in their souls – but to those who seek God’s face and believe God is with us, it is pure and unadulterated grace. Not reason. Not logic. Just grace.
And by that we are saved and freed to be weak, to be foolish, and to love others as we have first been loved.
May this be so among us.
Amen.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
2 Sunday in Lent
I sat across from her hospital bed, and listened. That’s the most useful skill we’re encouraged to learn in Seminary – not just how to talk, not just how to speak in grand theological terms – but how to listen.
I listened as she told me her story. A perfect life: married 51 years, five children and numerous grandchildren, in her own words “a blessed life.” But then it all started to fall apart. Four of her children had divorced. The fifth had told his family he was gay and had been shunned since. A couple of her grandchildren – one in High School, one in Junior High – were pregnant and alone. A grandson was in a juvenile facility. Her husband had died of a massive heart attack a year ago and her own diagnosis of blood cancer followed shortly after.
“What did I do to make God angry?” she asked me. “I’ve lived a good life, that’s what matters. Why is God doing this to me?”
As I talked with her for longer, I realized that like many people she still considered God as a stern schoolteacher handing out grades – grace had no place in her life; for her, what she had done was what mattered most to God.
The word for that, in theological terms, is legalism. The idea that in our lives is a law to be fulfilled; we optimistically call it ‘God’s law’, but more often than not it conforms to our own cultural ideas of good behavior. This is the image of God as the terrible and frightening judge who crouches beside us, waiting to catch us doing something bad. So we try to be as good as we can.
But the truth of the matter – one of the truths revealed to us in the season of Lent – is that we can never be that good. We sin. It’s part of our own inherited human condition and we can’t help that. What complicates matters even more, though, is that we always seek the power in our own lives to make our own selves righteous.
Consider Peter. He, of them all, is portrayed as the most human of the disciples. Mark actually consistently makes Peter out to look like an idiot.
Immediately before our Gospel picks up today, Jesus asks the disciples the most loaded of questions: “who do you say that I am?” And Peter’s answer rings true for us today: “you are the Messiah.” Now, for Peter, the image of the Messiah is huge. The Messiah is a powerful figure, a great teacher blessed by God and revered by all humanity. This is the figure who is going to save the Hebrew people and defeat the Romans, bring peace and prosperity to the land, and enforce God’s law on earth. For Peter, the Messiah is power.
Peter is soon derailed. Then Jesus began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and on the third day rise again. This is not the image of the Messiah that the people want to hear. They want might and power, strength, and law.
So Peter takes Jesus aside and tells him to keep it quiet. “don’t say things like that!” we can imagine him saying, “the messiah is triumphant! What’s all this about death?” Peter wants to know who’s right, and who’s wrong. In Peter’s world, like ours, ‘good guys’ just don’t die. They get the prize at the final credits. They get the girl, and the glory. That’s why Peter’s confused.
It’s a legal formula: if you’re good, then God loves you, then God blesses you, then nothing bad ever happens to you. That’s why, in Peter’s culture, lepers were unclean. It had nothing to do with a contagious disease because the Israelites knew nothing about that. It had everything to do with the belief that if you were sick, or dying, then you had somehow angered God or not lived your live in a way God wanted. You were judged under God’s law.
So here is Jesus, whom Peter confessed as the Messiah, throwing a wrench into the works. He will suffer. He will be rejected by all those high authorities whom God loves. And he will die. This is not the way that God treats his favorites. Peter didn’t believe it.
Culturally, I don’t think we Christians in society believe it, either. All the successful people – the big spenders, the who’s who – if they go to Church or thank God as they accept their award we called the ‘blessed’. If we feel their wealth is unfairly acquired or that they don’t live what we think are ‘good’ lives, then we speak darkly of divine punishment and damnation. We set our minds not on divine things, but on human things. Law and punishment are things of our human world; they are not of our concern in the world to come.
But so many religious traditions base their organization on the ability to determine who is good and who is not. For some, the law – their legalism – is laid out book by book, brought to the people by their leaders, who in turn take their ideas usually from earlier writers. One of the common themes of is that ‘the church’ has gone astray from God’s law, and God has chosen a new group of people to restore it. Some of these are traditions that claim a ‘holiness code’ – that men and women can live perfect lives to the point where they have their salvation assured through what they do. While the grace of God is important, they acknowledge, what you do is more important. We Lutherans call this works-righteousness.
This is total and complete rejection of the cross of Jesus Christ.
For what does Christ call us to do? Take up your cross, he cries, and follow me, and lose your life. Because then you will find it. Take up the instrument of your own death, and follow Christ. Take up your sin, take up your sorrow, take up all the things that in your life destroy you and worry no longer if they are keeping you from grace. Instead of trying to be perfect in some imagined law until the day your eyes close, die to Jesus Christ. Because then you will find your true life. That is grace.
People struggle with works-righteousness. It’s part of what began the Reformation, when Martin Luther rejected the idea that humans could come to God through their own actions, through their own power. Luther taught that all the power in the relationship belongs to God – God gives grace, through our faith in Jesus Christ. That’s it. Legalism, while important to developing a moral compass, has nothing to do with justification.
I think that legalism has its place in spiritual development, as it does in child development. But perpetual legalism impedes growth and only encourages fear. That woman I talked to, so concerned about her family, was fearful of her final end because she felt she was judged as failing by the people who could see her life was falling apart. But, in the words of Paul, only our faith is reckoned to God as righteousness. Not what we do, not through our works.
To be certain, there is a place to say that our faith can be illustrated by our actions, by how we care for our neighbour. But those actions have nothing to do with our salvation; our salvation is through grace alone.
Paul makes the point that Abraham had more cause than most to boast of what he was doing. He was chosen of God to become the father of many nations – but instead of relying on what he did Abraham instead kept his faith that God would do marvelous things – make him a father again, when he was old and his wife far past the childbearing years.
Paul’s Epistle today reminds us that we are co-inheritors of the promise of Abraham through Abraham’s faith, not through his works or through his physical descendents. Because, Paul points out, if the promise comes through law – through being only the physical descendent of Abraham – then faith is not necessary, and the promise of the inheritance of the world only applies to a few.
The Law is not enough - because we all sin, and fall short of the glory of God. We can not attain the kingdom of God by anything we can do on this world. It all depends on grace, grace justified through faith in Jesus Christ.
This is what Peter occasionally had trouble understanding, what our own faulty humanity keeps throwing in our way. Our inability to understand, our selfishness – that blinds us to the biblical witness that in God’s eyes, we are all – at the same time – sinners and justified. God doesn’t make distinctions between kinds or types of sins. We have all sinned – in thought, word, and deed -- and that takes us away from God. Only through the grace of Jesus Christ are we just.
You can always tells a legalistic tradition by a couple of conjunctions: if, and, but, after, or then.
If you accept Jesus and live a good life, you are saved. But, if you sin, you aren’t any longer. After you sin, then you must ask forgiveness.
Our Lutheran heritage instead favors a few others: because, for, while.
While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Because of this, we are justified; we are saved.
No ifs, ands, or buts.
We all sin, and yet we are loved. This is the greatest message that we can share with the world, this is the message to bring to others – by grace alone we are made right with God -- because this is the faith that makes a claim on our lives.
Amen.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
So I'm more than halfway done my internship. In another five months, we'll pack up and head back to Saskatoon; back to Seminary. Out of life.
That's what it feels like to me, at least. The issue I have is being in Seminary with a young family -- especially when you're willing to move and experience the upheaval and excitement and experience that comes with internship -- that Saskatoon is only ever a waypoint. It's not really 'home' in any sense of the word.
I've moved to Saskatoon with a 7-day old baby, and to Calgary with a two-year old and a four month old. I'll move back to Saskatoon with a three-year old and a 20-month old. Add it up, and my eldest will have moved four times in four years, at least 600 km each trip.
It was my (our) choice to have a family -- after all, I'm the one who asked the co-Director to marry me. I could have stayed single. Could have moved by myself. But I was not about to put my life on hold for anything.
But the past seven months has been fantastic. Of the places we've lived, Calgary is my favourite. I would love to stay here; but know I can't. The past seven months have been the best growing experience for myself and my family -- on a variety of different levels. Sure, we could use a little more space than our cramped little suite. But it's the people here, and the friendships here, that make this place 'home' in our hearts.
It's going to be very hard to pack up and leave. Someone on my internship committee asked what I thought the hardest part about the return to Seminary would be. They figured I would say the hardest part would be getting back to studying.
Simply, no, that doesn't worry me. I've been a very good student for seven years; if one year out of formal study is enough to crack that habit I'll be very surprised. I have the utmost confidence in my skills as a student, and that's the root of what worries me.
I'm worried that when I return to Sem, all the people here and the experiences I've shared with them -- laughing, crying, sharing our joys and fears -- will just become abstract illustrations for some presentation.
There is a sort of thick-hided habit in ministry that keeps people at arms' length. But these people are in my heart; I want to keep them there.
A very wise friend of mine (who's also a very good pastor and theologian, far better than I will ever be) told me before I began Seminary studies to be very careful. "Talking about God all the time makes you crazy," she said, "talking to people keeps you sane."
I'm good with sane. I really am.
That's what it feels like to me, at least. The issue I have is being in Seminary with a young family -- especially when you're willing to move and experience the upheaval and excitement and experience that comes with internship -- that Saskatoon is only ever a waypoint. It's not really 'home' in any sense of the word.
I've moved to Saskatoon with a 7-day old baby, and to Calgary with a two-year old and a four month old. I'll move back to Saskatoon with a three-year old and a 20-month old. Add it up, and my eldest will have moved four times in four years, at least 600 km each trip.
It was my (our) choice to have a family -- after all, I'm the one who asked the co-Director to marry me. I could have stayed single. Could have moved by myself. But I was not about to put my life on hold for anything.
But the past seven months has been fantastic. Of the places we've lived, Calgary is my favourite. I would love to stay here; but know I can't. The past seven months have been the best growing experience for myself and my family -- on a variety of different levels. Sure, we could use a little more space than our cramped little suite. But it's the people here, and the friendships here, that make this place 'home' in our hearts.
It's going to be very hard to pack up and leave. Someone on my internship committee asked what I thought the hardest part about the return to Seminary would be. They figured I would say the hardest part would be getting back to studying.
Simply, no, that doesn't worry me. I've been a very good student for seven years; if one year out of formal study is enough to crack that habit I'll be very surprised. I have the utmost confidence in my skills as a student, and that's the root of what worries me.
I'm worried that when I return to Sem, all the people here and the experiences I've shared with them -- laughing, crying, sharing our joys and fears -- will just become abstract illustrations for some presentation.
There is a sort of thick-hided habit in ministry that keeps people at arms' length. But these people are in my heart; I want to keep them there.
A very wise friend of mine (who's also a very good pastor and theologian, far better than I will ever be) told me before I began Seminary studies to be very careful. "Talking about God all the time makes you crazy," she said, "talking to people keeps you sane."
I'm good with sane. I really am.
working through
I'm working through a difficult sermon. The one thing I dislike about supply preaching (I'm down in Granum -- about two hours to the south -- this Sunday) is that it's completely without context. I have NO idea what the congregation's about.
Ah well. Should be fun.
Ah well. Should be fun.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
First Sunday in Lent
She stumbled through the bitter night. The wind bit and tugged at her coat, far too thin for the bitter northern chill. Her baby, wrapped in a thin blanket, wailed as he sought comfort and warmth that wasn’t to be found. Across the street she saw the building, the parking lot full of shiny new cars and the sound of music floating across the wind. She crossed the street and went into the building.
Welcome.
Welcome to this place; this building, this community.
Welcome to the body of Christ.
Did you know that? You are part of the body of Christ. Maybe, you realize. You know that you’re part of this body, and you know that this body has just begun a journey.
It’s not a journey with any geographic reference; we’re not going to send everyone to the tiny republic of Togo. It’s an inward journey; the journey of Lent. This time – 40 days – reflects the same time that Jesus spent in the wilderness after his baptism.
This Lenten journey is for many things; reflection, repentance, discipline. Reflection on the sacrifice of atonement Christ made for our sins on the Cross at Calvary; repentance for the sin incurred in our lives that form the nails that held him here, and discipline, as we seek to follow Christ’s example in our own lives. This journey isn’t about giving things up; it’s about taking things on that build on the character of your faith.
This is not an easy time. Looking inward never is; in our society a sense of ‘discipline’ is only applied to athletes and then it is admired; those who seek a sort of spiritual discipline are often branded ‘flakes’ or ‘fanatics’. As we read about Jesus in the wilderness and are urged to likewise take the time to discipline ourselves we find a too-ready excuse: , “yeah, but he was Jesus; I can’t do anything for that long.”
Yes, he was Jesus. But it’s too easy to forget that he was human. Christ’s forty days in the wilderness, the temptation he faced, and the strength of character it took to sustain him were just as real as the inner strength you have access to in your own spirit. If you have not taken the time to build it, it will be weak. If you have perfected the fine art of avoiding it’s use, it will be lazy. But it is the same character.
The character of your faith as a Christian speaks as loudly – if not more loudly – as any other facet of your life about who you are. Lent is a time for the building of that faith, faith that our salvation is assured through the saving grace of Jesus Christ. It is a time to expose our own thinly-disguised self righteousness as the insult that it is to the Cross of Jesus Christ.
As she sought out someone to talk to, a well-dressed man rushed up to her through the haze; her baby’s crying echoed in the cavernous hall. “What do you want?” he asked. She heard, somewhere in her mind, the sound of a hammer driving a nail.
There is nothing we do to earn or perfect our salvation, because all the work has been accomplished. As St Peter writes, “for Christ also suffered for sins once, for all…in order to bring you to God.” In theological terms, that’s ‘vicarious atonement.’ This means that the penalty for our sin – death and the utter rejection of our existence – is paid by Jesus rather than by us. Because while we were still enemies, Christ died for us so that we may have peace with God.
Biblically, it is how we have received salvation from our hard-won condemnation. Peter is speaking to a group of people undergoing great trial and suffering for their faith, and his aim is to encourage them until the end. We are saved through baptism, Peter writes, because it unites us with the body of Christ and thus to the Resurrection.
This is a time to reflect on the blessings of our salvation from the burden of sin and its penalty of death; for as surely as the angels ministered to Jesus throughout his forty days in the wilderness Jesus himself ministers to us in our lives. Through our baptism, through the Holy Communion that we share, and in the pronunciation of the forgiveness of our sins Jesus shows that he is with us always, that we are not alone, and that he alone has dominion in our lives.
Peter tells us that in his Resurrection, Jesus has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him. All powers -- even death -- are subject to Christ Jesus who through his death on the Cross and his Resurrection opened for us the way of everlasting life.
A lot can be done in forty days. New life can begin.
‘Forty’ is a recurring theme in the Bible when it comes to talking about faith; Noah and his family survived the waters of the flood for forty days and when they receded, God established a New Covenant with Noah; that no longer would the world, though sinful, ever again be subjected to divine destruction. God, who created all things in due time, makes a covenant with more than just Noah – for the new covenant is with all living creatures. They who, through faith, have been delivered through water become partakers of the blessing of God
“I saw—“ she began, and stopped again as her baby fussed louder. The well dressed man firmly grabbed her elbow and ushered her towards the door. “We’ll give you some change, and that’s it.” She heard the hollow hammering again.
In our Lutheran tradition our baptismal prayer makes reference to this, as we pray “through the waters of the flood you delivered Noah and his family,” and we continue later in the same prayer with a reference to the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan river. The same faith that led Jesus to be baptized by John also led him into the wilderness – drove him into the wilderness – despite that spectacular assurance of divine interest: this is MY son, the beloved.
The Gospel of Mark gives the abridged version of this, really; the account of Jesus’ baptism in the Gospel of Luke is much more fleshed out – literally. What Mark relegates to two sentences Luke expands into a whole narrative. Jesus, alone in the desert, is tempted with all manner of things from material wealth to immortality to absolute authority and rejects them. But the lies he rejected are too often the same things we embrace. If nothing else, the galling truth of Lent makes us see that the lives we claim are wholly dedicated to Christ are, in fact, mere shadows of what they should be.
All those things that in our world are paramount Christ rejects. Power, money, the tabloid success that paints our lives would fill him with disgust. Those things that we grasp at to make our lives better destroy our faith; they don’t make it easier or stronger.
Faith appears where we least expect it – in hunger, in poverty, in discipline – and falters where it should be thriving. Churches that minister to the poor in India, Asia, Europe, and both North and South America are bursting despite that they have no budget, no staff, no programs. Too many multi-million dollar buildings echo for emptiness of both their hallways and all too often the souls of their people. It is easier to have faith when you have nothing else; that leaves you totally dependent upon God, rather than a perfunctory prayer before a meal, or patting oneself on the back for a dollar dropped to a beggar.
Lent is time for our self examination: of our faith, and of things that destroy it – our own sinfulness, our own selfish inclination, self-absorption, and self-importance. A time to realize that the cultural works-righteousness we aspire to is a zero-sum game; we sin more than can be redeemed by ourselves. Karma doesn’t work.
We confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. Period. We have sinned against God and against Jesus Christ in thought, word, and deed; by what we have done and by what we have left undone. If sin were our currency, we would be rich. But the wages of sin is death. We cannot help but sin, and sin draws us away from God. There is nothing we do ourselves that brings us closer to God’s saving grace. The scandal of the Cross at Calvary is that through an instrument of death and agony God accomplished for us the ultimate work of love, joy, and peace. Atonement: so that we could be ‘at one’ with God.
There rests our faith; that is the ‘good news’ of Jesus Christ.
For the last time, she tried pointing at the roof of the church as the man brought her outside. “Yes, this is a church,” said the man, “now go”. And he turned and went back inside. She heard the hollow hammering again, a third time. As she crossed the street again and entered the warmth of her home, she looked at the smoke coming from the church and she spoke to her child. “Baby, what are they doing that is so important that they just sit there, even when their building is on fire?”
The salvation that we have received by grace through faith frees us from working for our own redeeming; it assures us that we are never apart from the love of God. But this in turn invites us to another kind of discipline, as modelled by our Savior – self-examination and repentance, prayer and fasting, sacrificial giving, and works of love. Opening the doors of our hearts and welcoming in those whom we don’t know; and looking critically at the way we are with the rest of the body of Christ – these are the disciplines we are called to.
They are not easy. But let us lay our earthly burdens at the foot of the Cross through this season of Lent and take up his yoke and learn from him. Be gentle, and humble of heart; for we will find rest for our souls. For his yoke is easy, and his burden is light.
Let us pray. Accomplish in us, O God, the work of your salvation that we may show forth your glory in the world. By the Cross and passion of your Son, our Saviour bring us with all your saints to the joy of his Resurrection. Amen.
Welcome.
Welcome to this place; this building, this community.
Welcome to the body of Christ.
Did you know that? You are part of the body of Christ. Maybe, you realize. You know that you’re part of this body, and you know that this body has just begun a journey.
It’s not a journey with any geographic reference; we’re not going to send everyone to the tiny republic of Togo. It’s an inward journey; the journey of Lent. This time – 40 days – reflects the same time that Jesus spent in the wilderness after his baptism.
This Lenten journey is for many things; reflection, repentance, discipline. Reflection on the sacrifice of atonement Christ made for our sins on the Cross at Calvary; repentance for the sin incurred in our lives that form the nails that held him here, and discipline, as we seek to follow Christ’s example in our own lives. This journey isn’t about giving things up; it’s about taking things on that build on the character of your faith.
This is not an easy time. Looking inward never is; in our society a sense of ‘discipline’ is only applied to athletes and then it is admired; those who seek a sort of spiritual discipline are often branded ‘flakes’ or ‘fanatics’. As we read about Jesus in the wilderness and are urged to likewise take the time to discipline ourselves we find a too-ready excuse: , “yeah, but he was Jesus; I can’t do anything for that long.”
Yes, he was Jesus. But it’s too easy to forget that he was human. Christ’s forty days in the wilderness, the temptation he faced, and the strength of character it took to sustain him were just as real as the inner strength you have access to in your own spirit. If you have not taken the time to build it, it will be weak. If you have perfected the fine art of avoiding it’s use, it will be lazy. But it is the same character.
The character of your faith as a Christian speaks as loudly – if not more loudly – as any other facet of your life about who you are. Lent is a time for the building of that faith, faith that our salvation is assured through the saving grace of Jesus Christ. It is a time to expose our own thinly-disguised self righteousness as the insult that it is to the Cross of Jesus Christ.
As she sought out someone to talk to, a well-dressed man rushed up to her through the haze; her baby’s crying echoed in the cavernous hall. “What do you want?” he asked. She heard, somewhere in her mind, the sound of a hammer driving a nail.
There is nothing we do to earn or perfect our salvation, because all the work has been accomplished. As St Peter writes, “for Christ also suffered for sins once, for all…in order to bring you to God.” In theological terms, that’s ‘vicarious atonement.’ This means that the penalty for our sin – death and the utter rejection of our existence – is paid by Jesus rather than by us. Because while we were still enemies, Christ died for us so that we may have peace with God.
Biblically, it is how we have received salvation from our hard-won condemnation. Peter is speaking to a group of people undergoing great trial and suffering for their faith, and his aim is to encourage them until the end. We are saved through baptism, Peter writes, because it unites us with the body of Christ and thus to the Resurrection.
This is a time to reflect on the blessings of our salvation from the burden of sin and its penalty of death; for as surely as the angels ministered to Jesus throughout his forty days in the wilderness Jesus himself ministers to us in our lives. Through our baptism, through the Holy Communion that we share, and in the pronunciation of the forgiveness of our sins Jesus shows that he is with us always, that we are not alone, and that he alone has dominion in our lives.
Peter tells us that in his Resurrection, Jesus has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him. All powers -- even death -- are subject to Christ Jesus who through his death on the Cross and his Resurrection opened for us the way of everlasting life.
A lot can be done in forty days. New life can begin.
‘Forty’ is a recurring theme in the Bible when it comes to talking about faith; Noah and his family survived the waters of the flood for forty days and when they receded, God established a New Covenant with Noah; that no longer would the world, though sinful, ever again be subjected to divine destruction. God, who created all things in due time, makes a covenant with more than just Noah – for the new covenant is with all living creatures. They who, through faith, have been delivered through water become partakers of the blessing of God
“I saw—“ she began, and stopped again as her baby fussed louder. The well dressed man firmly grabbed her elbow and ushered her towards the door. “We’ll give you some change, and that’s it.” She heard the hollow hammering again.
In our Lutheran tradition our baptismal prayer makes reference to this, as we pray “through the waters of the flood you delivered Noah and his family,” and we continue later in the same prayer with a reference to the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan river. The same faith that led Jesus to be baptized by John also led him into the wilderness – drove him into the wilderness – despite that spectacular assurance of divine interest: this is MY son, the beloved.
The Gospel of Mark gives the abridged version of this, really; the account of Jesus’ baptism in the Gospel of Luke is much more fleshed out – literally. What Mark relegates to two sentences Luke expands into a whole narrative. Jesus, alone in the desert, is tempted with all manner of things from material wealth to immortality to absolute authority and rejects them. But the lies he rejected are too often the same things we embrace. If nothing else, the galling truth of Lent makes us see that the lives we claim are wholly dedicated to Christ are, in fact, mere shadows of what they should be.
All those things that in our world are paramount Christ rejects. Power, money, the tabloid success that paints our lives would fill him with disgust. Those things that we grasp at to make our lives better destroy our faith; they don’t make it easier or stronger.
Faith appears where we least expect it – in hunger, in poverty, in discipline – and falters where it should be thriving. Churches that minister to the poor in India, Asia, Europe, and both North and South America are bursting despite that they have no budget, no staff, no programs. Too many multi-million dollar buildings echo for emptiness of both their hallways and all too often the souls of their people. It is easier to have faith when you have nothing else; that leaves you totally dependent upon God, rather than a perfunctory prayer before a meal, or patting oneself on the back for a dollar dropped to a beggar.
Lent is time for our self examination: of our faith, and of things that destroy it – our own sinfulness, our own selfish inclination, self-absorption, and self-importance. A time to realize that the cultural works-righteousness we aspire to is a zero-sum game; we sin more than can be redeemed by ourselves. Karma doesn’t work.
We confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. Period. We have sinned against God and against Jesus Christ in thought, word, and deed; by what we have done and by what we have left undone. If sin were our currency, we would be rich. But the wages of sin is death. We cannot help but sin, and sin draws us away from God. There is nothing we do ourselves that brings us closer to God’s saving grace. The scandal of the Cross at Calvary is that through an instrument of death and agony God accomplished for us the ultimate work of love, joy, and peace. Atonement: so that we could be ‘at one’ with God.
There rests our faith; that is the ‘good news’ of Jesus Christ.
For the last time, she tried pointing at the roof of the church as the man brought her outside. “Yes, this is a church,” said the man, “now go”. And he turned and went back inside. She heard the hollow hammering again, a third time. As she crossed the street again and entered the warmth of her home, she looked at the smoke coming from the church and she spoke to her child. “Baby, what are they doing that is so important that they just sit there, even when their building is on fire?”
The salvation that we have received by grace through faith frees us from working for our own redeeming; it assures us that we are never apart from the love of God. But this in turn invites us to another kind of discipline, as modelled by our Savior – self-examination and repentance, prayer and fasting, sacrificial giving, and works of love. Opening the doors of our hearts and welcoming in those whom we don’t know; and looking critically at the way we are with the rest of the body of Christ – these are the disciplines we are called to.
They are not easy. But let us lay our earthly burdens at the foot of the Cross through this season of Lent and take up his yoke and learn from him. Be gentle, and humble of heart; for we will find rest for our souls. For his yoke is easy, and his burden is light.
Let us pray. Accomplish in us, O God, the work of your salvation that we may show forth your glory in the world. By the Cross and passion of your Son, our Saviour bring us with all your saints to the joy of his Resurrection. Amen.
for your consideration;
it's not that I'm not blogging now that I'm on facebook. I've been ignoring that as well.
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