moving, change, and a side order of grief

So, we're moving on Friday, back to Saskatoon. I've changed the 'about me' section of my blog, sent out my 'change of address' notifications, and just generally gotten all my poo in a pile, so to speak.

I don't think I can describe how wonderful this year has been. Seriously, in many ways it's been almost like a 12-month vacation for the co-director and I. For the first time in our relationship I've not been a full-time student and the time that we've had together has been just...well, glorious. I've spent lots of time with my boys, have grown into fatherhood in new and exciting ways, and really developed my own identity as a pastor called to serve the church of Christ.

Some members of the congregation at Hope have told me they'd like me to come back as the second pastor (the congregation voted in January that instead of calling another intern next year they'd call an assistant pastor, instead), but being concerned for my senior pastor's mental health I gently thank them for their care and change the subject. (Dude is seriously cool, but I know I've been hard on him this year!).

So in the midst of all this packing, moving, and saying goodbye came something unthinkable for us. Saturday evening the co-Director started spotting a bit. It got a bit worse the next morning, and even though we'd gone down to Vulcan to visit my mother we went to Emergency there and saw the doctor on call. My dear and darling wife was suffering her first miscarriage.

Add a hefty side-order of grief, please. Extra crappy.

To my little wee one -- we miss you. I miss talking to you in the morning and kissing you goodnight, listening as your mommy chuckled as my beard scratched her tummy. We love you so much, and are so sad that we didn't get to meet you. Good-bye, for now.

There are a couple of people you'll meet in heaven, wee one. Don't let your great-grandparents fight over you too much; you've got lots of hugs and kisses to go around. Rest in the lap of your Redeemer, and enjoy the whole company of the heavenly host.

Into thy hands, O merciful Savior, we commend this little life. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech thee, a sheep of thy own fold, a lamb of thine own flock, a life of thine own redeeming. Receive her into the arms of thy mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of all the saints in light.

Rest eternal grant this wee one, O Lord, and may light perpetual shine upon her.

Sermon for Sunday, July 26 2009

Title: Living in the Promise of God: Part IV – Failure and Fulfillment
Text: 2 Samuel 11:1-15; Ephesians 3:14-21; John 6:1-21


Grace, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been talking about what it means to really live in the promise of God. To live knowing that God has made a covenant with us, lived out through Jesus Christ, that we are always His and are never alone. I’ve talked about how our lives are those of celebration and sacrifice, as we struggle continually to live faithfully in a world to whom ‘Christ’ is at best an anachronism, and at worst an epithet, about living in a way that shows that salvation is free, but discipleship costs. I’ve told you about the promise of Christ, that we really are never alone; that our salvation really does exist through Christ’s sacrifice.

I’ve told you a lot. In fact, I don’t think there’s a lot more on that I can cover in the time that I have left. But I think there’s enough to cover ‘failure and fulfillment.’

First off, let’s talk about failure. I don’t think there’s a single human being that doesn’t know the stink of failure that doesn’t wash off. But I also know that we continuously play a game with each other.

That’s not that bad. Let me tell you about me. Maybe you’ve heard it before. At certain church gatherings in other traditions when ‘testimonies’ are shared, a general formula works like this: 1 cigarette two months ago in a bar = chain smoking; three beers once a month whether they’re needed or not = borderline alcoholic. It gets pretty ludicrous.

Once I was sitting at a meeting when this was going on and I found myself thinking: jeepers, am I really worth this? What have a I done that’s so bad?

But that’s the point, isn’t it? Don’t we usually either, a) want to downplay our own, or b) play them up for sympathy? And we can spend a lot of time talking about ‘what makes a failure’, can’t we. Been off the wagon? Been on the ‘other’ wagon with the police? Struggle at home with anger, money, or passion – for your spouse, or for someone elses?

The president of the LTS tells of the time he was a missionary in Madagascar. The preacher who always preached about giving money to the church always had his finger in the pot, and the one who preached most about adultery was the one who was most predacious with women.

Certainly, given the number of politicians in the United States who have their failures cast about the world, we might be tempted to sit down and say, ‘well, I’m not as bad as that.”

But that doesn’t really make your heart feel any better, does it? Even when we can honestly say “I didn’t mean to,” that doesn’t actually fix our hearts, does it?

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The story of David and Bathseba is probably one of the most notorious that appears in our lectionary; I quite literally cringe whenever I see it coming up. It’s hard to listen to, as well, and some cynical part of me giggles like a schoolboy when the lector pronounces at the end of the lesson, the word of the Lord.

And the congregation responds, thanks be...to God??

How can we give thanks to God for this story? What does it actually teach us on the surface, aside from how to bollocks up your life?

But you know, I’m not convinced that David is the villain we like to make him out to be. I don’t think he intended to have an affair with Bathseba – and I don’t think that he intended the consequences.

How much of a bungler could he be? First, he recalls Uriah hoping that he will go and sleep with his wife, but his general is so faithful that he refuses to leave his mean in worse conditions. Then David gets Uriah drunk, hoping that he will go home and let nature take its course. But Uriah passes out on his way out the door. Then finally, in desperation, David sends Uriah back to the battlefield ironically carrying a letter that tells his commander to sent him to the forefront of the fighting. Faithful to the end, Uriah goes and dies.

Any of this David could have stopped, had he listened to himself, or repented of his crime. But he didn’t, and his adultery was compounded with his lying, compounded with his murder of Uriah. And yes, you’ll read in weeks to come that David does receive a terrible punishment.
But thanks be to God?

The disciples and Jesus sit down and look at the crowd that stretches out before them.

“you want us to feed them how?” they ask Jesus.

After the crowd is fed with another miracle, the disciples witness as the crowd agitates to make Jesus the king. Jesus refuses, and runs away. The crowd turns back to the disciples: “jeepers, what’s his problem?”

Matthew records that Jesus sent them on ahead, but in John’s gospel they get in the boat on their own. Maybe in their anger the disciples decide to leave Jesus behind, on their way to Capernaum. After all, he just turned down the greatest honour the people could bestow, turned down what could have been their lucky break, their ticket to the sweet life, a life of ease and success, not of dingy backwoods tents and bars, no sick and dirty people.

So they leave Jesus behind. In the middle of the night, they’re terrified that Jesus is walking towards them, across the water. The big strong men tremble.

Praise to Christ, that called people like this to follow him?

YES!

That is what being thankful is all about. It is one thing to sit in the middle of your success, surrounded by glory and all that glitters and write or speak movingly about ‘the power of God.” It is something else to be able to crumble to the ground in the midst of your own ruin and let your faith speak through cracked lips that thirst for the presence of Christ.

I can’t talk to you of my own monumental failures, because quite simply I don’t have any. I’ve not fallen far, or fallen hard. I started below the poverty line, and I’ve not yet really risen above it. I’ve been faithful to the only woman I’ve ever loved.

But I can talk to you of moving repeatedly and not being able to afford it. I can talk to you empty cupboards and bank accounts and the crippling and impotent anger that seizes a man when he cannot provide enough for his family. I can talk to you of being arrogant and presumptuous and being rightfully called to account for it.

I can also talk to you of repentance, forgiveness, and grace.

And I can still stand up here and promise you that God’s grace is enough. I can tell you that God’s promise to you will never been forgotten, because God fulfills his promises.

I can stand here, and join you in saying, thanks be to God, for the hearing and receiving of God’s good and amazing Word in this community of believers.

Thanks be to God for His amazing grace.

Thanks be to God, the fount of every blessing, whose presence attends to us in the morning and comforts us in the evening.

Thanks be to God, whose servants are blessed in community, in the joyful hearts of those who rejoice in their salvation.

Now to Him, who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.

Amen.

Sermon for Sunday July 12, 2009

Title: Living in the Promise of God: Celebration and Sacrifice

Texts: 2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19; Mark 6:14-29

Grace, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

“I’m justified by grace, I can do anything I want.”

I would love to attribute those words to anyone else but myself, yet I can’t. They were spoken by me as a joke, a proclamation to a friend of mine who’d asked if I could drink the way that I did and still be a Christian.

Now granted, that was almost ten years ago, though the memory is as fresh in my mind – if not more clear – than the recollection of what I had for breakfast yesterday morning. Like a lot of young people of my generation, alcohol played a huge role in my life. Every weekend, and often on more nights of the week than not, I stood at a party with a drink in my hand. I worked in a bar, as a nightclub bouncer, largely because I needed the job but also because I reasoned, if I’m here anyways I may as well get paid for it.

But after a few years of that lifestyle I had to face some realities: I wasn’t going anywhere. I wasn’t growing in any way that was actually meaningful to me. And I will, also, point out at this point that I was already a pastoral candidate – though maybe not the best one.

A summer spent managing the bar at my hometown golf course nailed that point home to me in some fairly definite ways: the same groups of friends a decade older than me from the same high school, coming to the bar to drink, to fool themselves into thinking they were having a good time, then to fight it out as alcohol wore down their inhibitions and what was left of their good sense.

Yet they insisted they were having fun. In the midst of their DUI tickets, fights, divorces, and family problems they still insisted they were having fun.

Then one Sunday someone I love very much surprised me with her own baptism. As I watched as she made those promises to God and was welcomed to new life, I knew that there was hope for that same new creation in me, too.

I could go from sacrifice to celebration, and then from celebration to sacrifice.

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There are so many different ways that we can name and claim our faith as Christians, but there’s a dichotomy of living that stands out for me: that as Christians, living in the covenant of God – the promise that God is always with us, will never forsake us -- we are called to live lives that are marked by both celebration, and sacrifice.

Or, as a theologian once said: salvation is free. Discipleship costs.

In many places in the Bible the Lord speaks through the prophets to condemn the behavior of the people of Israel. They’re partiers, let’s face it. If there’s a celebration to be had, a fatted calf to kill, they’ll be there. Throw in some dancing girls and abundant wine, and they’re there like a pack of dogs on a three-legged cat. They’re so anxious to party that they’d desecrate the altar of the temple if it meant they could get a rousing cheer.

But what are they celebrating? What do we celebrate all the time? The Calgary Stampede runs concurrently to the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. What do the events have in common? Well, they both celebrate the heritage of their cities. They both allow normally sane people to act like hooligans. One difference, though: in Spain, people get tossed around by the animals; here at the Stampede the animals get tossed around by the people. My two-year-old tried to bulldog a toy Tyrannosaurus the other day; I think moving may, in fact, be for the best.

I think that the truth may be that, if people are celebrating for the sake of being stupid, then they are not celebrating at all. In fact, they’re sacrificing their souls for the sake of a good time. But the gift of salvation, though – that’s worth celebrating.

King David danced before the Ark of the Lord, in a celebration of life. Having the Ark meant that God was bringing the blessings of His presence to David and his kingdom, and that was worth celebrating. The presence of God’s redeeming and enlivening grace in our midst is a treasure worth dancing for.

But Saul’s daughter – and, I might add, David’s wife – Michal isn’t so pleased. In fact, as Samuel records, “…she despised [David] in her heart,” for his unseeming display of joy. In Michal’s book – and her father’s example – kings just don’t dance.

It reminds me of some people Diana and I visited back when we were just dating. They were Lutheran, and their congregation had just recently built a beautiful new building. This was a rural church, mind you – and as we toured through it our friends made a point of telling us just how much they needed a ‘bright, young’ pastor to ‘bring the young people in.’ And I’ve got to admit, that kind of emphasis was flattering to me.

But as we followed them to another part of the building with basketball hoops and big-screen TVs my lovely wife blurted out, “You could even hold dances in here!” At that, our Norwegian pietist lady host turned on her heel and up came (what has become known as) the Finger of Lutheran Reproach: No! You don’t dance in church!

Like Michal, she was more concerned with staid, orderly worship – and the pietist theology of renunciation – than with actually celebrating the grace of God in her midst. Her, and probably about a hundred thousand other Lutherans in Canada.

Church becomes synonymous with sacrifice; lists of ‘don’ts,’ both real and imaginary, loom larger in our minds than the celebration of our salvation. But maybe – I think – that’s part of the problem. We want our lives outside of church to be as free and easy as ever, but want to hear the message in church that if we DO something right, then we can slip those other behaviors right past God.

It’s time to change that; to go from sacrifice to celebration. To reclaim the proper order: that first we are called to celebrate the salvation of sinners; then turn our lives to the task of discipleship, of following Christ.

But even as our lives can turn from those of sacrifice to those of celebration, as Christians we are reminded again: salvation is free, but discipleship (following Jesus) costs. Our lives will again lead to sacrifice, just as Christ’s celebration in our midst led to the cross at Calvary. But then we know that our lives are then a different kind of sacrifice, one that in many ways celebrates the presence of God in our lives.

The account of the death of John the Baptizer in Mark’s gospel casts an ominous shadow on Jesus’ future, even as it does on our own. John spoke out against Herod Antipas for marrying his brother Philip’s wife (when Philip wasn’t dead). John called for Herod to repent, for which Herod had John put in prison.

But like many who hear but don’t understand the deep-rooted relationship believers have with God, Herod didn’t know what to do with John. He was “greatly perplexed…yet heard him gladly.” Herod didn’t agree with what John was saying, but he could not deny the truth – or at least the point – that John spoke. He knew that John was a righteous and holy man, and protected him. But those people who want to stifle the word of God will often find their way. Herod’s wife did, through the actions of her daughter Salome, and John paid the price for his witness and honesty.

But certainly, and especially in our North American context, the sacrifices of our Christian witness very rarely ends in death. But maybe for us and our opulent society, death seems an easier price to pay than living differently – more compassionately, with greater concern for the people among whom Jesus walked: the poor, the suffering, and the destitute. If we are John to another’s Herod – then we too, will be imprisoned, scorned, and ridiculed.

To accept the shame and scorn of our peers as we live our lives as Christians in the promise of God, daring to risk all that we have to preach the good news. And itit will cost us, because the message of Christ is foolishness to those who would rather die than have eternal life. And it’s easy, I would argue, to risk our lives; it’s far, far harder to stand up to our friends, our families, and explain why our justification has led us to a life of self-giving love.

I was sitting at the kitchen table having coffee with a friend when his wife came home. She came into the kitchen, barely glanced at me, and addressed her husband: I told our friends that we’d meet them for drinks tonight. My friend replied, “honey, you know that I have church council tonight, and I can’t miss that.”

And you spend too much time at that stupid church. Why don’t you just live a little, sometimes?

My friend left the church eventually, like many choosing to make his own hodgepodge of beliefs that caused as little friction in his relationships and friendships as possible.

Discipleship costs – sometimes dearly, sometimes more than we are willing to pay.

But we are called to be people of celebration and sacrifice; to dance before the presence of God and to accept the consequences of our commitment to God in ways that may cost us dearly.

Just like at my wife’s baptism I realized that at even I had been born anew, a celebration and sacrifice in the name of Jesus Christ, so have you. We dance with David before the presence of God almighty, and we die with Christ, so that we may have eternal life.

Living in the promise of God is living as justified sinners – lives of celebration and sacrifice, witnesses to the world of Christ’s own redeeming sacrifice and the celebration of the resurrection that makes all things – even those we thought dead – alive again in Christ.

May this be so among us, amen.

Yesterday, Today, and Tommorow

It seems, sometimes, like all my time really is moving around like yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Yesterday, we were driving back to Saskatoon, stopped for the night at Kindersley and spent the most uncomfortable night, ever, in a motel. But when we went to a part before bedtime my rural soul connected deeply with the silence, the stillness, the livingness of a small town.

Yesterday, we saw the place that we'll call 'home' for the next year. It felt familiar already, like I could look at the walls and hear the echoes of cries and squeals and laughs and chuckles; the familiar symphony of family that my wife conducts masterfully while at the same time keeping us all in the same key. We took the time to visit with some dear friends, people whose presence in our lives help us find joy, keep me honest (with myself and others), and whom our boys love.

Yesterday, I met Jesus, face-to-face. I was ministered to, with beer and ice cream, conversation and laughing. We love them, and they are wonderful.

Yesterday, we drove straight back from Saskatoon, so thankful that our boys travel so well, and fell immediately back into the routine of bath, bed, and pack for moving. It's that time of year again.

Today, I sat in my office and stared at the walls, not motivated to do anything. It was like anticipation of moving had sapped my desire, my drive to continue. What can I do? I thought. I've only a few weeks left. Then I went to the hospital to visit someone who was about to undergo surgery. Being in his presence, with his wife, and feeling as they ministered to me even as I did to them left me shaking my head at the presence of God in my life. I drove back the office to find an even greater number of people who took time to stop by the office or call today, each one a blessing for me.

Today, I met Jesus, face-to-face. They were wonderful, and I love them and don't think they'll ever know just how big a difference they made.

Today, I came home early. I came home to find that my children have, in turn, perfected some of my least favourable traits. I could not, in all honesty, do that much damage with an axe, a day off work, and a mission statement. In the midst of the chaos stood two very proud and disorderly boys. They are bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, and we love them. As I write now I can hear them, chatting when they're supposed to be in bed, trying to squeeze out every eye-opened minute.

It turns out that Jesus speaks even when there's no words to use.

Tomorrow, I know I'll meet Him again. But I pray that his light with shine as brightly through me as it does through others -- that light that shines in the darkness and even the darkness cannot overcome it.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever, amen.

Sermon for Sunday, July 5 2009

*NB -- for the month of July, I'm preaching a sermon series based on the lectionary readings from 2 Samuel using illustrations from the Gospels. The series is called "Living in the Promise of God", and last weeks' title was "Covenant".

Title: Living in the Promise of God: Covenant
Text: I Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10; Mark 6:1-13


Grace to you and peace, from God our Father and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

A hot news article on Google recently was a tasty tidbit about the Orthodox Church in Ethiopia – which presumably possesses the Ark of the Covenant -- debated as to whether or not it would show the artifact to the world, or keep it to itself. The latter course of action was apparently chosen.

In some Christian traditions the language of ‘covenanting’ has come to replace the standard language of marriage – instead of ‘marrying’ someone, you ‘covenant’ with them, instead. I think that that’s largely a difference in nomenclature, but I did read once about a woman who desired to have a covenanting ceremony with a beloved pet – wherein she promised to love, look after, and provide for the wee dear as long as she was able.

The media had a fit with it. “Woman marries dog!” was the headline. And I thought sheesh, what a riot. What’s all the fuss? But then I began to look around me at the things that make us promises we desperately hope they’ll keep – because we often don’t have the strength to keep our own promises.

A jeweler’s ad bite on the radio: Diamonds so big she’ll love you forever! (Really? I’d hope that she’d love you forever because you’re a good person, not because you bartered for it)

A billboard for a face cream: Taking years off your life! (Wait. Didn’t you live those years for a reason?)

An add for some kind of baby junk: the perfect way to make baby fit your lifestyle. (Um…you did have a choice to have the kid.)

The conclusion that I’ve drawn is that we are, as a society, absolutely stretched so thin that we can no longer really believe anything is permanent or promised. An ad on Facebook promotes a business called Untie the Knot – it’s a divorce service. But I think also that part of that distrust is because we want everything our own way – we don’t want to have to meet halfway, or worse, all the way to be in relationship with someone.

When I was in high school there was a girl I knew who was obsessed with getting pregnant and having a baby. She was from a not-very-nurturing home herself, and I was puzzled by her frantic search for a partner. So I asked her one day, as we were waiting for class to begin why she wanted that baby so badly.

“So I have someone who’ll love me all the time, and who I can love back,” she replied. At 16 I didn’t think that was a good answer. But she did, and by the end of that year she’d gotten what she wanted.

Just this last time I was home visiting my mother I ran into that young woman’s mother, who was shopping with her now 11-year-old granddaughter. A few years after the baby’s birth her mother had met a new man. For this one the title of ‘stepfather’ didn’t fit, so the young woman had given the baby to her mother to raise.

Five or six partners later, she’s still looking for someone who will love her all the time. Each successive partner has promised love, promised fidelity, and fallen short.

Even our culture’s crippling divorce rate aside, we struggle even in our friendships with people. Gossip remains an ever pervasive and ever-appealing sin to try to avoid. But who’s often the first to spill the dirt on us when we’re down? Not our enemies, but more often our friends.

But there is a kind of covenant that is everlasting. This is the covenant that God makes with us, not that we make with God.

David remains the greatest king of whom stories are told in the Bible. No one else has succeeded more fantastically or fallen more catastrophically, than David. There are always beginnings, and in the reading for today David is anointed king over all of Israel – he’s finally united the warring tribes – and makes a covenant with the elders of Israel at Hebron.

The true covenant here, though, is not the one that David makes with the elders of Israel (which is a fallible human covenant) but rather the one that the elders of Israel see that God – YHWH – had made with David: “The Lord said to you, it is you who shall be shepherd of my people Israel,” – the promise that God would be with David. Verse 10 lays it out: “and David became greater and greater, for the Lord, the God of hosts, was with him.”

That one single short sentence, “I am with you” is at the heart of the good news of the Bible, it is at the heart of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, it is at the heart of our very own lives.

The greatest promise that is made in our lives has nothing to do with us. We can stand before a minister and make our wedding vows – though I often think that the whole vow should be “I will, and I ask God to help and guide me” – but they mean nothing if we don’t believe that God is with us. We can bring our children to the baptismal font and make those promises that are empty unless God is truly with us. I can kneel before the Bishop and make my ordination vows but they are nothing unless the spirit of God is with me.

And the best part of the message is that truly, God is with us! If there is any truth of human experience is that we will always forsake God in our relationships – but the truth of divine experience is that God will never, ever, forsake us. That promise alone should give our lives hope and passion in the promise.

As David rises a new king after Saul we can almost feel the excitement in the story: what’s next? There is a palpable sense of hope, one what we can relate to in remembering the feeling of our first job, our first love, or even if we’re lucky the feeling of each new day. But that excitement was not born from just from newness or the freshness of a clean start – but that is the purest experience of God with us that we can ever feel. God is with us. Those words alone were enough for David, and they should be enough for us.

The disciples and the people of Judah had the privilege of walking with God incarnate, even though they minds were often too clouded to understand the truth of the amazing man they called ‘teacher’. But people still didn’t believe. When Jesus went back to Nazareth the people of his hometown were first astounded, and then dismissive of him: “who is this? What about all this wisdom?” and the then snide remark as they remember who he is: “oh, it’s just Jesus, who wandered off into the desert. What a nutjob.”

And even Christ is amazed at their unbelief. But God’s promise remains, and Jesus sends out the 12 on the very first mission trip in the world.

And they go. Not with the best gear Mountain Equipment Coop can provide them, not with space-age tents and shoes and clothing, but with nothing except the promise that God is with them.

That is the greatest challenge for us, too. That we don’t wait until the opportune time, or place, to share our faith. But that we do it boldly and risk everything we hold dear for the sake of the Gospel.

But if we are to proclaim to people that they should repent, we should first understand what they (and we) are to repent from. The word ‘repent’ comes from the Greek word literally meaning “to turn around”— to turn from our wordly compromises and collaborations and to place our entire salvation on the promise of God: that because God loved us first we are saved, not because we can show how much we love God back.

If there is any article on which the Lutheran church stands and falls, it is this: that we are all, at the same time, justified and sinners. God’s power is made perfect in our weakness, because when we are weak then we finally realize just how much we desperately need and cling to the promise of God.

The tenderness of the promise of God is not that God will hover over us and directly steer us in the right ways. Our great sin directs us to paths that lead us completely away from God, and we can never, ever, eradicate that sin on our own because even if we try to we are falling back even as we try to move forward. The tenderness of the promise rests on the fact that God does not forsake us and is always waiting for us, watching, with open arms to welcome back the sheep that was lost.

Our covenant is not a promise that we make to God, because then it would fallible and given to failure. Our covenant is a gift from God, made manifest in the person of Jesus Christ, in the promise not that Christ came to show us what it meant to be divine – but that when we rest in the promise of God we can know what it means to be truly human, to reach out in love, and faith, and trust, to bind up the wounded, offer sanctuary to the tired mind, and to gently cradle the broken heart.

May this be so among us. Amen.

Happy Canada Day!

Happy Canada Day everyone!

In the great patriotic spirit of Canadians everywhere, I humbly present to you the greatest artistic expression of patriotism our country has ever seen:

a beer commercial.