Parkland Pastor

Advent 4

2011-12-18T08:05:00.001-08:00

What is the best news you’ve ever received in your life?

Do you remember how you received it? We all know about some of the ‘classic’ where-were-you-then stories that deal with bad news (the attack on Pearl Harbour, or the fall of Hong Kong for us Canadians, 9.11…) but what about the good news?

For those who’ve had the experience, how did you feel the first time you found you were pregnant? How about guys, the first time you were told you were going to be a father?

Today is a ‘good news’ kind of day for our lectionary lessons…we hear of a promise that God makes to David, some helpful words of promise from Paul’s letter to the Romans, but our psalmody and gospel lesson centre on the good news that was delivered to a young girl named Mary, and how she received it.

Mary is a bit of a…well, really a…controversial person for Protestant Christians. And Mary is at the centre of other controversies, as well: even though we confess in both the Nicene and Apostles’ creeds that Jesus was born of the virgin Mary, in my experience that one line is usually the one that people choke on.

Seriously, she was a virgin? What’s so important about that?

It is truly hard for many people to understand why there is an emphasis placed on that, or even why we mention Mary at all. Especially in the 19th - and 20th centuries the distinction came to be that Roman Catholics “worship” Mary, while Protestant Christians, especially Lutherans, claimed that we focussed solely on Jesus Christ. Still, in the 21st century, I find people – protestants across all spectrums and even some atheists – who vilify the Roman Catholic tradition for their veneration of Mary.

In our current context it’s a bit easier, I suppose, to reject what has become the ‘traditional’ understanding of Mary: the one who was dutiful, obedient, and passive, when all these things happened. And I can’t really blame those who do; for years, women who got ‘uppity’ were told to follow the example of Mary, to sit passively, have babies, and be quiet the rest of the time. And I get that: I sometimes wonder what would have happened if Mary had drawn herself up to her full height and barked right back at Gabriel: “blech. No way!”

Yet looking at the story that we have, you realize that Mary - who would have been around 14 or so – dealt with the visitation from Gabriel, the Holy Spirit, her family’s reaction to her pregnancy, her future husband’s reaction, all of the people of her village, and, as well, her local religious authority. In fact, Mary is quite possibly the least dutiful example of a woman in a religion: she didn’t obey her father, nor her husband, nor the expectations of her religious system.

She did what God called her to do. “The Lord is with you!” the angel announced to her. That’s not a command, beloved – that’s a promise.

A teenager, pregnant, with nothing but a fantastic story to tell that nobody is going to believe. Have you ever felt that kind of panic? That kind of despair, the knowledge that a whole host of relationships are going to be broken because of something you felt you had to do? If you have, then maybe you’re beginning to understand why Mary is so important to us.

If the word advent means ‘coming’, then maybe this season should be about us coming to greater awareness of what God With Us really means – that without Mary, without a mother, God would not be with us. Mary was not just a vehicle; an anonymous third-party that God used and then discarded.

It is Mary’s humanity, even Mary’s virginity, that means God could take on frail human flesh, could be carried and borne and nursed, and cuddled, and loved. Mary is venerated, not just because she was the one chosen by God, but because she was the one who could say to God “this is my body, given for you.”

The ancient church gave Mary the title of theotokos, a Greek word that means literally “God-bearer” – a reminder that God took upon frail human flesh for us.

Advent means seeing a new day – life in the midst of death, hope in despair, wholeness in brokenness: seeing the promise of God not in the health or wealth that surrounds us, but in the waters that are poured over our heads at baptism and in the bread and wine that are signs of God’s kingdom, given for you.

That God was born of frail humanity, that God was born of Mary doesn’t mean that you need to emulate any culturally-contrived images of duty or obedience, but that you can recognize in the children that surround you, the children that maybe you carried, and nurture, and support, that in caring for them in a real way you care for God; for they are made in God’s image. We carry the weight and burden of years, they reflect back the best in all of us.

We read of the baby – of the Annunciation – so that we and all people can understand that God truly is with us. The ancient world is full of stories of gods who became men, or who had sexual relations with women who then went on to birth demigods. But unless the women are some evil foil in the story, they are helpless, hapless, women who are long forgotten by history. But we read of Mary, who was perplexed by these things that happened (those things of which she was at the centre) – and who in the midst of that confusion sang a song of love to the God who grew inside of her.

Is it any wonder that we call Mary “the God-bearer”?

In her great life, Mary raised her infant son, lost him in the Temple when the family went to Jerusalem, bullied him into his first miracle at Cana of Galilee, then fed his and his hippy friends when they invaded her house to talk of strange things long into the night. She watched with horror as her boy was falsely accused, beaten, tortured, and finally condemned to die as a criminal.

“Greetings favoured one, for the Lord is with you,” were the first words she heard one clear morning. That promise was lived out through her life, as she alone is the only witness from the first stirring of our Saviour’s life in the womb to his final moments on the cross. What began one bright morning ended in darkness on Friday afternoon, when the fruit of her womb and the light of the world claimed ‘it is finished’ and breathed his last.

And it was finished; the reign of sin and its penalty of death in the world was finished, as the new creation of God With Us that began in Mary’s womb called the world again into being early in the morning, while it was still dark, when Mary heard the news that the tomb was empty and her son appeared to those who came to care for his body and told them the same message told to Mary more than three decades before: fear not – for then, the Lord was with them.

The promise of Advent is that promise; the promise that the Lord is with us, has taken upon God’s own self our humanity. We see the fulfillment of that promise in the same way that Mary did: not as an insulated cover that shelters us from the world and numbs our engagement with it, but as a call to be part of something larger than ourselves, part of a body that is out and active in the world, knowing that suffering and dying is part of our world…but not the dominant part.

“The Lord is with you,” means that the word of God is a word of life, and that word is spoken boldly into a sin-darkened world. That word is spoken into our hearts at baptism, so that what begins in life does not end in death.

“The Lord is with you” is the promise that you will see the dark Friday, but that Sunday’s coming.

“The Lord is with you” is the promise that you, too, will make the long journey, in fear and trembling, to Bethlehem, but there you will see the birth of the Saviour…there you will find the new morning that is heralded by the baby’s cries, by a mother’s tears of joy.

“The Lord is with you”…and the day is just beginning.

Let the people of God say amen.

some changes

2011-12-17T18:46:00.000-08:00

So, after four or five years, I decided it was time to revamp the ol' blog a little bit, to reflect my own changing life and occupation. When I first carved out my niche in the world wide web, it was a way that I could connect with family and friends from across the world, and feel like I was at least attempting to keep people updated about my family.

However, since my better half does that remarkably better than I over at Our Macintyre Family, I felt that I could better direct this little corner of the world to a particular focus. So, keep looking for sermons, musings, and reflections. Leave a comment, and I'll respond.

blessings!

Midweek Advent reflection 2

2011-12-16T09:42:00.000-08:00

It’s funny what we think we can know about someone.

We know each other well: when you have children, you certainly know them well. Even someone who has never borne children knows a child; maybe even knows more about them than they know about themselves: time, place of birth. Weight. Their first giggle.

After a while, that knowledge becomes power. Reminds us that we were there when that little trial was born. A reminder to them of parental power. “I brought you into this world,” my mother used to remind me, “and I can issue a recall.” Tough words, from a tender heart.

Yet we know little of one baby’s birth. A forced migration. Joseph lived in Nazareth, part of a forced resettlement years earlier. A hard time to travel with a pregnant wife. But when someone reminds you of the power they have over you – you, go! – you are sent.

We know nothing of the journey, save by its completion so was Mary’s time complete. No space at the public inn, but the stable close by: warm, perhaps even cleaner than some beds. Whimpering cries. Did Mary have company? A midwife, maybe? Someone to hold her hand, soothe her in distress, to let her know her baby would be delivered, and would be fine? Maybe not. Maybe only the calloused hands of a carpenter saw the King of kings into the world. Maybe even that’s more fitting: that clumsy hands that had not delivered another living thing brought into this world the incarnate Word that created it. It seems that God trusts earnest devotion more than learned teaching.

But later, later its easy to play games about how much we know. Someone once said to me: why December 25? The bible doesn’t say that’s the day. Why do you think it’s then? My response was short: why not December 25? Luke doesn’t care what day the baby was borne; nor does Matthew, nor Mark, nor John, nor any of the other countless authors. I know the official answer: Pope Julius I, in the middle of the second century, poured over Roman tax records until he worked out an approximate date. It also coincided with several other holidays, so perhaps it worked out easier that the Christians could celebrate and worship without the fear that accompanied his birth – fear of soldiers, fear of being found out…fear.

Wanting desperately to know all the details of the Saviour’s birth is a quest for knowledge borne, I think, out of fear. Fear that if we don’t know everything, then maybe none of it is true.

Luke is the compiler; Luke poured over countless sources to find the information he wanted. They were told to travel. They travelled. There was no space for them at the inn, so Mary gave birth to her firstborn son, wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger.

Yet knowledge is power to us. We sit like Augustus, wanting the world to registered so that we can know all things that are due to us. And in sitting like Augustus, watching the high places, we miss what is happening below, as the baby, God with us, comes into our world with only the barest of stories.

Not the way we may want it, but the way that God wants to meet us: in the barest of bare places, stripped of the things that we desire to give us power, so that all we have is the small glimmer of hope: hope that the advent of Christ, in so humble a place, would hold for us the greatest hope of all.

Advent 3

2011-12-16T09:35:00.000-08:00

*note before: with thanks to my friend, mentor, and colleague Rev. Kevin Powell, who lives in Japan now, but still resides on the internet here and here. I would call it an homage, what I do below - but let's face it: it was thievery, and I'm proud of it.

John the Baptist confuses me. I’ll admit that right off the bat.

John confuses me, because he doesn’t do things the way they ought to be done. He stands out in the desert, a howling fanatic dressed in rags, drinking only water; last week we heard that he ate locusts, and wild honey. He stands at the shores of the Jordan river (the wrong shore, I must add) and bellows at those who come: “repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand!”

He demands those who come be baptized as a sign of repentance, and elsewhere threatens people outright with terrible divine punishment if they don’t change and, in the words of Isaiah, “bind up the brokenhearted, proclaim liberty to the captives,” and right the wrongs that they have done.

And people flock to hear him. They’re willing to travel miles, on foot, out into the desert, to hear John preach. That’s not the way it’s supposed to be done.

A recent article I found at the Globe and Mail’s online site featured a prominent church in Calgary as the prime example of what a growing church should look like. A giant parking lot, free designer coffee, theatre seating and a professional five-piece rock bank got the credit for bringing the people in. The pastor’s messages, with his sound-byte tagline “if it’s going to be, it’s up to me,” – the writer of the article called them ‘kick-in-the-pants-style sermons’ -- focus on finding personal success through your personal relationship with Jesus Christ. The church’s $4.7 million dollar budget, I guess, is a testimony to the success of the model.

That’s the way you’re supposed to do it, I guess. But, as I commented on the online article: if that’s where the bus is going, I’m getting off. It’s not that there’s nothing good about this model: obviously, it reaches many people. But I do not like when worship looks like me, or a mirror of what I enjoy in life. Then, I’m not sure who I’m worshiping.

Where John preached, there were no distractions. People came to hear a genuine word from God that help hope, peace, joy, and above, love for them. In our world, the most populated churches are the ones that look like the mall; sound like the radio, and focus on you. And it’s everywhere. I was listening to the radio the other day, and I noticed something about almost all of the commercials that I heard: they were all about you. And I don’t mean about “the joy of giving” or anything like that; they’re about how much other people will like you, love you, respect you, when you find something they want.

The Pharisees, the religious elites in Jerusalem at the Temple, want to know if John has something they want. So they send the temple caretakers to ask him a question: “who are you?” They know that he’s a preacher, but they want to know a few things: who does he represent? Is he a known quantity? Is he toeing a line, or drawing his own? These are important questions. They need to know, because if John is a messiah, then he needs to know who they are, and where the power is.

And, as the writer of the gospel tells us, “…he confessed, he confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, ‘I am not the messiah.”

Wow. That’s a major letdown. That’s like me, every day, when my boys look at the presents under the tree and ask if they can open one and I say: “sure….on Christmas day!”

Please, don’t call the authorities.

The Temple authorities are looking for the messiah they know is coming. But they don’t want to get their hands dirty, or mess up their designer duds trudging out to the desert. But they don’t get any answer, at all. Or, they receive an answer that is no answer, at all. “Among you stands one whom you do not know.”

So what does his answer mean?

Have you ever looked at that silhouette of a vase that suddenly seems to disappear and form a background for two people's facing profiles? Artists describe the shapes created by the areas around objects as "negative space." It's not negative in any bad sense. These spaces help define objects but also may take on lives of their own. The not-the-vase space becomes two facing faces.

Today's gospel invites us to explore the surprising richness of what is not. The priests and Levites ask John the baptizer, "Who are you?" They offer him some options, including Messiah, Elijah, and prophet. John repeatedly responds, "I am not." The narrator describes John as "not the light." He describes himself as "not worthy" to untie the sandal of the one who is coming. Being clear about what he is not throws into sharp relief what John the baptizer is: a witness to the light, a voice in the wilderness, someone through whom all might come to believe.

John tells his questioners, "Among you stands one whom you do not know." When it’s paired with "among you," "do not know" becomes a word of promise. Although yet to be revealed, the Messiah is already here. Where? Who? These words invite us on a search for a gift already given: the presence of God in our long Advent nights. We discover the treasures of winter darkness.

The treasure of a Messiah who comes, not bringing pain and rejection and fear, but peace, hope, joy, and love.

Imagine being one of the crowed when John preaches. You think he’s a nutjob, but something catches your attention. Like a car wreck you can’t turn your eyes away from him. You want to know what is about this guy that so many people traveled so far to hear.

It’s not a message of “if it’s going to be, it’s up to me.” It’s a message of, “it is, because God has promised you.” But it’s easier to think that all of this – all of this Christmas, all of this religion, is about you and only you – and especially how well you can lie to yourself. John tells you that there’s more to it than that.

As a colleague of mine preached:

It’s when you push your way through the crowds that you know why so many have beaten you here: this guy knows you. I mean he REALLY knows you. He hasn’t met you before and doesn’t know your name but he has you all figured out.

He knows what hides in the secret chambers of your heart. He knows what you do when nobody’s looking.

He knows your shame and he knows your pain. He knows all that stuff you’d rather keep quiet and hidden. He can see it in your eyes. He can see in the way you keep staring at the ground while he’s preaching. He can see it in the way you walk. With your phony self-assured strut or with your hunched back, stooped from being beaten down by the world. He knows the secrets you harbour.

He knows your failings. He knows your broken places. He knows those moments of weakness that, if ever came to light, your life would end.

He knows about your cancer. Your failed marriage. The feeling that life is passing you by.

He knows about the grief that tearing your heart into rags.

He knows how your dad smacked you around when he was drunk, and now you’re afraid that you’ll do the same to your kids.

He knows how you just can’t let go of a lifetime of resentment.

He knows that some days you feel so lost and purposeless that you wonder if life is worth living at all.

Yes. He knows ALL of this. That’s why he’s so loved and so feared. But when he looks at you and excavates the buried hurts that lie in deepest alcoves of your soul, his eyes soften and he pleads with you, “Prepare the way of the Lord. Make his path straight.”

Instead of scolding you for your moral failings, or telling you to stop blaming others for your troubles, or tells you that it’s up to you to drag yourself up, he leads you to the shore of the Jordan River and reminds you that when the people of God were liberated from their slavery in Egypt, they crossed the Jordan which led to the Promised Land.

Then, looking so deeply into your eyes that you’re afraid you’ll melt, he opens his arms and says, “Enter the water of freedom. God is giving you a fresh start. It’s time for you to start over. It’s time for you to begin again.”

The Baptist was giving out second chances. That’s the gift we are given each and every day when we remember the gift of our own baptism. The gift of starting over. The gift of a new beginning. As we prepare the way of the Lord.

God turns the world around; we don’t. As you come to the table of the Lord today, give thanks that it’s not up to you; that God loves you for who you are, and whose you are.

You belong to a baby. You are owned by a King. You, you and all the baggage that you bring, are God’s joy – because God alone waits and wants to take that burden from you, so that you can know what it means to be called “child of God”.

Let the children of God say amen.

Advent 2

2011-12-16T09:22:00.000-08:00

*nb: at St. Matthew's, the Sunday on which we officially receive new members to our family is the second sunday in Advent.*

It’s coming up to Christmas! Did you know that Christmas is a season of introductions? It totally is, especially here. Today is our official “new member Sunday”, so this is the day we introduce ourselves “officially” to some people. Remember to be on our best behaviour. It’s an important time.

I know it’s important: Gord sent me an email yesterday, it was short. It said: remember to wear pants.

Apparently, the time I came in my bright green flannel pajamas is still a little close to his heart.

*Note to you who are joining our family today: it’s never boring.*

And of course, Christmas Eve is always a busy time. I get so many introductions at Christmas Eve services I think that I should be wearing one of those vests from Wal-Mart. I meet lots of people. There are people who come for the first time, who come seeking a little bit of this “Christmas” that we talk about with hushed and reverent tones. On that night, we introduce them to a baby – and, perhaps, it will be the beginning of a relationship for them.

Then there’s always the surprising introductions: “Hi, welcome, I’m Pastor Mick. Thanks for visiting!”

And the reply: “actually, we’re members here!”

Really? I stood in a garage for an hour once; it didn’t make me a car…

But I’m not trying to be mean. It’s just hard for me to understand that particular kind of faith commitment: it’s always been for me that developing a relationships with a faith community is a high priority.

And we hear introductions all the time, in our Scripture readings, in our devotional readings, and in our singing – we sing, yea, Lord we greet thee, born this happy morning; we read “the Lord God comes with might,” and we light candles to keep watch for the coming Messiah.

There’s an important part that we play, too: we are also heralds of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

So, let me ask you this: ff you were asked, if you could, how would you possibly introduce Jesus? No, I don’t mean, “how would you share your faith with someone.” We can talk about that later. I mean, if you were at a party, at a nice evening soiree, and someone tapped you on the shoulder and said “you’re good with words…and there’s this guy here I’d like you to meet.” How would you do it?

Would you take a page from Mark’s book, and just jump right in? That’s how he does it: no long introductions, just “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Or would you learn your lesson from John the Baptizer, and be all prophetic: “I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal…” ?

Or maybe, you’d be tongue-tied. I know that the few times I’ve had the privilege of introducing someone at a banquet or a fund-raiser, I’ve made certain that the introduction is memorable; something with a little ‘bazinga’ as Sheldon would say, from Big Bang Theory. But also, I’ve known people whose introductions have been along the lines of mumblemumblemumble... Not maybe the most moving introduction, but they’ve been petrified – suddenly scared to speak about someone whom they know, or hold in high esteem; or frozen by the faces of so many people looking expectantly at them.

(Boy, do I know that feeling. If I didn’t have a monumental ego, I don’t know what I’d do on Sunday morning.)

Seriously, though, how would you do it? Soberly, gravely, channelling Walter Kronkite from the glory days of black and white television? Now, folks, with me here today is one of history’s great figures exclusively in our studio today. Or maybe with a lot of the language that we sometimes associate with the old King James Bible: brethren, we gather here today, forewith to beseech the gladsome tidings of this, our most beneficent charge, who doth grace us with his heavenly presence…until you tied your tongue in a knot and sought medical attention.

Sometime it’s easy to miss the way that the gospel writers introduce Jesus – especially so with Mark. Matthew does a good job; the entire first chapter of Matthew is a list of Jesus’ genealogy – who his family was. Luke does a good job, as well, because it’s from Luke that we get the back story of angels visiting, and Virgins singing, and shepherds and kings and all those things that we think of at this time of year.

But other times…other times it’s hard to imagine what to say. Harder still to imagine that you might be the person asked. Or, even as I said earlier – you automatically associated ‘introduce Jesus’ with ‘share your faith’. And you’re right – faith is necessary to the task.

So let’s take a minute and hear how someone would introduce Christ. This is comedian Steve Harvey:

[watch video].

He’s good; I’ll give him that. The first time I saw that video was in one of my homiletics classes at Seminary – homiletics is the craft of preaching, rather than the practice of it. The assignment I gave you was my first assignment in that class: introduce Jesus.

There’s a catch to that though, and it took me a little while to realize what it is: we don’t introduce Jesus. It’s not like Jesus needs someone to block for him like the Lions quarterback on Grey Cup Sunday (but with the Blue Bombers’ terrible offence, did Lulay really need a blocker, either?) Yet often, that’s what we see. It’s one thing to do as Steve Harvey did, and emphasis the great stories of Christ; but is that really what Jesus is about?

How do you introduce Jesus, who spent time with tax collectors, prostitutes, and gentiles, people who at the time were regarded as the lowest of the low by their culture? You can’t, because Jesus doesn’t need to be introduced. But what Christ will do is introduce you.

He will introduce you as one of those who proclaims his coming. He will introduce you as one of those who is loved by God, for whom God’s only Son was born.

He will introduce you as God’s chosen and redeemed child, and bring you into a community of people who, like you, were called to follow: to follow a star to a stable, to follow a king to a cross, to follow a Messiah to life everlasting.

That is one of the greatest things that I am privileged to see as a pastor: I see you (all of you) introducing Jesus to each other, all the time. Not in specific words, but in your caring conversations, your concern for each other, your willingness to be bound up to each other in relationship to this community. You introduce Christ through your actions and your deeds. You proclaim the coming of Christ, as certainly as if you were clothed in camel’s hair and eating locusts and wild honey.

And as Florence, Brian, Lola, Suzanne, Kurt, Jenna, Nick, Jens, Kathryn, Lillyanne, and Patrick become members of our family today, they also will introduce us to Jesus in their own ways.

Even as a child, I loved new member Sundays, but in particular I like that here the day comes with the reading of the beginning of the gospel of Mark. And beloved, realize this: as these new family members come forward today, we could just as honestly cry out ‘prepare the way of the Lord!’ for them – because they will become part of the body of Christ in this place, waiting for the coming King.

Let the people of God say amen.

Advent Reflection 1

2011-12-16T09:20:00.000-08:00

*a note before: at St. Matthew's we celebrate advent with a series of midweek suppers followed by advent vespers. This is the first reflection I wrote this year.

The beginning.

Do you remember the beginning? Of course you don’t. Not your own beginning, at least; certainly not the BIG beginning. But some beginnings you may remember.

The first Christmas you remember may not be the first Christmas you experienced. But it’s the beginning you remember. A tall tree, trimmed with decorations and brimming with all the anticipation of family, and friends, and food. So much bigger to a two- or three-year-old; they don’t make trees like they used to.

You remember other beginnings: the first ‘I love you’ you said; then the first time you said it, and realized you knew what it meant. Carrying your first child, knowing that life was inside of you, and sitting down and feeling the first butterfly flutterings in the core of your being.

Placing your hand on the swelling belly, and feeling the little knee, or elbow. The beginning. You’re going to be a father, or a mother, or grandfather or grandmother. The beginning.

Some beginnings are endings, too. The last spadeful of dirt shovelled into a winter tomb; the headstone tilted askew at the head of the grave, as tilted as crazy as your life has become. The words of a doctor, lawyer, judge: ending one life, and just beginning another. The feeling of being born again, into a world that you don’t understand, can’t fathom, and yet is familiar.

The beginning. We prepare for another beginning. Advent, we call it; the word means ‘coming’. We prepare, with no real idea of what the beginning will look like; no real idea of what will end in order for Christ to begin.

It’s a big beginning. A beginning like none other; for this too is a beginning for God. God, whom we call the Alpha and the Omega; both the beginning and the end – this advent is a beginning for God, as well.

God has not before felt the constriction of the womb, nor felt the pain and cold of labour. Has not before nestled next to a beating heart, not before been knit together, cell by cell, surrounded by warmth and water and love. This is beginning for God, as well.

God, the creator of the world, surrenders to the creative power of the life which God created: the Creator, who in the words of Athanasius is uncreated and unlimited, is found to be created and limited, bound to the heart and the hands of a poor woman. God, who stepped down from the highest lofts of the vaulted heavens now finds a home in a bumpy, jostled, busy, terrified world.

The beginning. Something new, for God and for us; something different, for the world and for all time. The beginning comes in surprising ways.

One beginning, in a womb and a world – the mystery of how the one who is Uncreated and Unlimited would choose to be both created and limited. Limited by flesh and bone; limited by hunger and thirst; limited by love and compassion.

In the midst of the beginning, we too share the beginning: the beginning of the good news; the beginning of new life and new creation, the beginning of all those things that celebrate as right and good in our lives;

For like a new mother, God is beginning to show, in the gently rounded belly; in the open heart and mind; in the blessing of peace and goodwill; those things that begin our world anew, each and every day.

First Sunday in Advent

2011-11-27T07:53:00.000-08:00

O, that you would tear open the heavens and come down…

So, I have good news today: according to the venerable Stephen Hawking, there is a perfect solution to all the worlds’ problems. A perfect solution to pollution, pornography, poverty, and possibly even war: and, best of all, it’s easy!

Get off the planet.

I’m serious! Isn’t that foolproof? Why waste time and money trying to fix our society’s problems, when we can simply get out of Dodge and make everything better? As the Huffington Post article quoted him saying:

"Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill. But our genetic code still carries the selfish and aggressive instincts that were of survival advantage in the past. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million.

"Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain lurking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space."

Now, that is the best solution that I’ve heard all day – why bother working together for a solution? Why bother with this obviously misguided talk of “peace on earth”, when our genetic code means it will never happen. And Stephen Hawking should know, right? I mean, this is the physicist who said “religion is bunk” and made national headlines. The last time I said, “theoretical physics is a bunch of hooey”, people just said “he’s a theologian, what does he know?”

All right. So maybe I’ve picked on this subject enough for today – but its frustrating to think that we’re to the point that this is regarded as a viable solution to our problems – of course, it has been since Ray Bradbury wrote his first book in the 1960s. Any fans of science fiction here? What’s worse, is that we seem willing, as a society, to spend the hundreds of billions of dollars on these programs, rather than investing in, say, education, the environment, and healthcare, which could perhaps fix those problems from the bottom up.

We’re not the first people to look at the world around us and think that it’s too broke to fix. You don’t have to look very far to find that people have often, if not always, looked at the world around them and wished that someone – or something – could fix the mess they’re in.

“O, that you would tear open the heavens and come down…” is there a more plaintive cry from Isaiah than what we heard today? His people have been in exile. They have lost touch with the God, they have sinned and fallen short of the covenant they made with God. The only solution that Isaiah can see is that God must come, now if not sooner, and set things right.

And Isaiah argues with God! “because you hid yourself we transgressed!” Isaiah shouts. And maybe, just maybe, Isaiah is right. God can be maddeningly silent and remote at times; especially at times when we feel we need God the most.

At times like that, we most often have one of two responses, and neither is particularly helpful: one, is to throw up our hands and say “that’s it, we’re in this for ourselves!”; and the second, is to start feeling like we’re responsible for God’s remoteness – and then the thought of God with us becomes a frightening possibility, fraught with judgement and ruled by terror. God’s perceived aloofness must be someone’s fault; it may even my fault.

Somehow, though, it’s not like that for Isaiah. Isaiah sees hope in God’s presence with God’s people; he sees the presence of the God who created all things as a good thing, a blessed thing, something that should be looked forward to with hope.

But we don’t, do we? At least, not for the most part. There’s a huge amount of baggage that we associate with our cultural conceptions of the day of Christ’s return. If you’re familiar with the Left Behind series of books you know that there’s a lot of fuss made about who’s going to be ‘the elect’ that Mark mentions in his gospel; a lot of speculation; no, a lot of “fact” about the signs that are supposed to accompany the return of Christ.

There are several Christian denominations that focus much of their energy and attention on what is imagined will happen on that day – judgement, hellfire, and damnation. The only way to avoid it, they say, is to make the right decisions for yourself, choose Jesus, and be prepared to watch everyone who hasn’t face the consequences of those decisions.

In that way, then, people are saved through their own actions – which, really, is what Stephen Hawking is saying. A lot of Christians, I think, would agree with Hawking that the world is headed to hell (though not necessarily in a handbasket). And, although they’d disagree with means, their solution remains the same – focus all of our attentions on the few, so that the cream of the crop can rise to the top.

In both scenarios – either Hawking’s colonization of space, or a fundamentalists’ judgement on the last day – only a few, the deserving, are saved. The vast majority of people are condemned, either to hellfire, or life on a planet from which all life has been driven.

Does either of those scenarios give you hope? I don’t find a lot of hope in the return of a Christ of judgement – I am too aware of my sins. And I don’t find hope at all in Hawking’s idea of colonization, because I know that neither myself nor anyone I know or love would ever be on the ‘list’ of people who would be moving off-planet. Both scenarios are for the elite; for the powerful. In one scenario it’s the genetically superior who are saved; in the other, it’s the spiritually perfect.

But this day, this season of Advent, is about hope. It’s about hope that God truly does “so love the world;” hope that Christ will return, not to judge the world to hellfire, but to judge the world in righteousness; because in Christ we share that righteousness – we are given, as Paul writes, the grace of God…in Christ Jesus.

O, that you would tear open the heavens and come down…down to a manger, down to a world full of sin and hopelessness, bringing the promise of hope, peace, joy, and love. God tore open the heavens and came down, bringing the promise of light that shines in the darkness; light that the darkness cannot overcome.

We are an Advent people; we wait for the coming of Christ. We wait for the birth of a baby – a baby we know has already been born, has already lived out his mortal life, and reigns forever as Christ the King. But at the same time, there is a very real longing – and maybe you feel it. Maybe you feel in yourself the deep-seated wish that the baby would be real this year – that rather than commemorating an event, we would have a real celebration.

We are an Advent people; we prepare for Christ’s return. We keep awake, we watch with longing for the coming of a Saviour – not a wrathful judge, but the deepest longing of our hearts that grace, and mercy, and love will one day reign in this world, will one day replace the grim grey reality of hatred, hostility, and helplessness that seeps into the core of our being and stiffens and cracks our compassion for each other.

We are an Advent people; we wait for the master of the house to come, we wait for the chance to rejoice at his presence. If you look for a picture of an announcing angel, or in particular see a statue of one as part of a religious structure, you will see that they face east; they look to the rising sun in anticipation of the king who comes with the dawn.

Beloved of God, look east, and wait with hope. Wait with hope that Christ comes to free from suffering, not cause more. Prepare for his return by caring for his body, the Church; and wait with peace because the king returns in power, and in glory, to end all suffering, and to redeem all those who trust in him.

Look east, and watch with hope. For the child is coming; the child is coming for you, for the whole people of God.

Let the people of God say amen.

All Saints' Sunday

2011-11-06T06:13:00.000-08:00

I have an announcement to make: I’m going to start a movement.

(And no, I don’t mean that I’m going to eat lots of fibre and lock myself away for the rest of the service with the latest issue of the Examiner.)

I’ve been keeping track, over the news and internet, of the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement. You’ve probably heard of it: around the rallying cry of “we are the 99%!” people created a tent city in New York to try to raise awareness of the growing gap between the rich and the poor. The movement spread, to other American cities and recently to Canadian ones, too. If you’ve been through downtown Edmonton lately, you’ve seen the little tents at Churchhill square. I kind of think, though, that a tent city has a slightly great chance of staying up in protest in California or Vancouver through the winter than it does in Edmonton.

That cry of “we are the 99%” is a reference to the economic reality that 1% of the world’s population are billionaires and thus disproportionately influence the lives of the rest of the population. And the protestors blog about it on their iPads and text each other on their iPhones and enjoy the close proximity to Starbucks.

And they call us hypocrites?

As I said, I’m going to start my own movement. I’m going to call it “Occupy Church Street,” and we’ll rally around the cry of “we are the 1%!”

And we are the 1%. Seriously; it’s not that we’re billionaires, but the population of Spruce Grove is around 23000 people; there are probably 250 people today worshipping here and at St. Augustine’s down the road. So, we really are 1% of the population.

So come on, and Occupy Church Street! Come for All Saints’ Sunday!

Flesh out that figure a little bit more to include the other churches in the city, and I think we could say that between 2500 and 3000 people are in churches here this morning – that’s a little better, more like 10% of the population.

And that’s really not all that bad. I read somewhere that on an average Sunday about quarter of any given churches’ membership comes to worship. So, 40% of people in our city would be members of some church in the area. How does that sound?

You’re either an optimist or a pessimist: either you thought hey, that’s not bad, or oh my goodness we need to do more evangelism!

But you know what? I think both are all right. After all, today is All Saints’ Sunday – a day when we remember that we take seriously that line in the creed about believing in the “communion of saints.” Today we are reminded by John’s letter that we should look and, “see what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God.”

Yup. Children of God, because God loves us. That should be enough, right? Then, we shouldn’t be spending too much time thinking about the 99% or the 1%, because we are truly all in this, together. This great work of life that will end when Christ returns again and bring peace and order to this troubled world…why can’t we all just get along?

Except…you all know that I’m not that naïve. And I know that you’re not. The world doesn’t work like that – we have rules, and boundaries, and we know that we have to work for what we have. We know that there are some people – some saints – who will have it better when Jesus comes again. And we may know who those people will be.

Certainly us. We, who are the 10%. And from that point, the list varies depending on who you talk to. But rest assured, there will be a list! There will be a list of ‘us’ and ‘them’. The ‘us’ go to heaven, and the ‘them’ go to hell. That’s something everyone can agree on.

Even the OWS people. Looking through pictures of the movement, I have seen some people bearing signs that say ‘blessed are the poor’, even some that say ‘the rich man went to hell’, referencing the parable Jesus tells about a rich man and a poor beggar.

Then, there are the people who protest the protestors, and they have signs decrying the behaviour and beliefs of those: “repent, or burn”, “Jesus can save you from hell”. You’ve seen some of those signs, yourself. Hell is a useful tool. It can cut through the chit-chat; it can end arguments quickly. It’s also a oddly comforting idea: knowing that hell exists means that those people who harm or oppress others, or believe differently than us are going to get their just desserts.

And today I’m certainly not going to debate the existence of hell. It’s in the creed; Jesus descended into it. I don’t think that Jesus descended into a metaphor; hell is a fact.

You can go to it, burn in it, roast in it, drive like it, preach like it, endure it, walk though it…like hell you will, like hell you won’t; like hell you could, but simply don’t. There’s a lot of hell out there.

In fact, there’s so much hell it’s a bit of a wonder that we can actually set aside a day and call it All Saints. Is there anyone left who may actually enjoy the pleasures of the resurrection? If it were up to us to judge, do you ever get the feeling that the list of saints would be a pretty short list?

But on all Saints’ Sunday, we need to reimagine our conception of hell. Yes, it exists. Yes, it is a frightening place. But our Saviour went there. And let me ask you this: have you ever looked at the creed, and wondered why, in fact, we confess that Jesus descended to the dead, or in the old language that he descended into hell? After all, what did Jesus do in his life that he deserved that?

The problem with thinking like that is that you imagine that Jesus descended to the dead as a victim. Jesus didn’t. Jesus descended to the dead as a conquerer, to drive open the very gates of the law and condemnation and preach to those souls that could never save themselves. Christ went to the dead for you; that death would have no dominion over you. For you, Christ damned death; for all the saints that have lived and will ever live Christ endured the cross and grave so that you may know what it is to be children of God.

To be children of God.

To be, children of God. See what great love the Father has for us, that we should be so-called.

Are you saved? I don’t know. I’ll tell you what a good Lutheran answer probably should be: Not yet. You have no need to fear hell; Christ has been there for you. But you are not in heaven, yet. Today we celebrate and remember the lives that have touched ours, however briefly, and who now rest. We know they rest with their Lord and Saviour, because of his great love for us.

Blessed are we. Blessed are those who mourn, who cry, who are poor in spirit, who are reviled, who are persecuted, who fear. Blessed are you, because now you are free. Free to live as a child of God, free to know that you are one of the multitude at the throne of the lamb, knowing that there is a day when mourning and crying will cease, that hatred and war will end, that persecution and struggle will be no more. Blessed are you.

Live like that’s true. Our Saviour tells us to rejoice, and be glad. There is no fear of death, no sting of hell. Rejoice, and be glad.

There’s a story told about a man who went swimming in the ocean with his two young children. They were laughing and splashing, and it wasn’t until it was too late that he noticed they’d gotten caught in a current that had pulled them far, far away from shore.

And the man began to panic, because he knew that he wasn’t strong enough to save both his children; he couldn’t swim to shore with both on his back, and by the time he made it back to shore with one, the other would be too far out to sea.

But he didn’t let his panic show. He said to his daughter, who was older: “sweetie, do you remember when daddy taught you that starfish float? You do? Good. Now here’s what I want you to do: I want you to float here, while daddy takes little brother back to shore. I’ll come back for you quick, you understand? Now go ahead, and float.” And the little girl said okay, and did just that.

And the man let his son grab onto his back and he struck out for shore, which seemed so very far away. And no matter how hard or fast he swam, it kept getting farther, and he was getting weaker. Finally, he reached the shore, and collapsed on the beach. He couldn’t rest, though, and he began to run down the beach yelling, “someone, help me! My daughter’s back out there on the water!”

And finally he found someone with a boat who was willing to help, but by this time his daughter was so far out to sea he desperately feared that he wouldn’t be able to find her. But they kept looking until, between the swells, he saw his little girl, still floating. And they moved to boat to her, and he swept her up in his arms and cried “my girl! Daddy’s so proud of you!” And she looked at him as said, “well daddy, I was just doing what you asked me to do, and when my arms got tired and I didn’t want to float anymore, I just remembered that you were coming.”

Blessed are you, children of God, for your Father is coming.

Let the people of God say amen.

Reformation Sunday

2011-10-30T08:06:00.001-07:00

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

Martin was at a loss. You see, Martin was the kind of person that we’d all like to be: a perfect student since kindergarten, he’d received numerous accolades for his academic work: a Rutherford scholarship and several other highly competitive scholarships funded his undergraduate education. He majored in business, because he understood that he had what it took to succeed in such a competitive field.

And succeed he did. Again, he received rewards and awards for his performance. Promotion followed promotion; he was invited to be guest speaker at his firm’s annual general meeting. He was everything that everybody was told they wanted to be.

More than that, he knew he was. After all, he had the yardstick against which he could measure everybody else. He’d always had one. When he was getting his education, he knew that if he worked hard enough and got good marks, he was better than those around him. When he began working, if he worked hard enough he got the promotions and the glory. It was the way the world worked: you could achieve anything, as long as you worked hard enough for it.

Do you know Martin? Of course, you can’t know the Martin in the story, since he doesn’t really exist. But I’d be willing to be that you know someone like him. Or maybe, you ARE Martin. It’s not a bad thing to be like Martin. The world likes people like Martin: they’re the most successful, in our eyes.

Yet sometimes being like Martin is problematic. You see, Martin had a secret. He had a secret so dark, so deep, that he knew that if it ever got out, it would destroy him and everything he’d worked so hard to achieve.

Martin suffered from depression. A depression sometimes so dark, so debilitating, that some mornings he could not get out of bed. His company offered psychological support and a good benefits package; but Martin chose to pay for a therapist and anti-depressive medication out of his own pocket, because the risk of what he would lose if anyone found out was too great.

He couldn’t understand why he was depressed; he had everything he’d been told was important. But he was also puzzled by the first question his counsellor asked him each day: how do you feel? Martin couldn’t actually answer that. He didn’t have anyone he could compare his feelings to – everyone around him looked just as happy and high-functioning as he was.

In a very real way, our lives are governed by the law that Paul speaks about today, that kept Martin trapped. They are controlled by it; it gauges our actions, lays out our motivations, and judges our worth. It’s a system that we are raised in – we judge ourselves and others by performance, dedication, and adherence to a set of rules. We hold those rules pretty highly; when we know what they are, it seems that we can figure out the secret of life and get on with business.

You know the expression, “wake up and smell the coffee?” it means that we’re supposed to be able to open our sees, and see the reality of how the world works around us. When we ‘wake up,’ life is supposed to be better.

Jesus and those who believe in him stand talking. They know the law; they want to ‘wake up and smell the coffee’. Jesus has been talking about love, justice, and God’s idea of fairness, which isn’t the same kind of fairness that the religious leaders of the day want to see. So they’re puzzled, especially when Jesus says, “if you continue in my word…you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Because in their minds, they’ve never been slaves to anyone. At least, not where it counts. There’s the slavery of the Egyptian kind that they remember at Passover, but that’s so far ago in the past that it might as well be an empty story. They believe that they are in control of their lives and destinies, what does Jesus mean that they “can be free?”

So Jesus lays it on the line: “anyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household, the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

The people to whom Jesus speaks have received the word; they bear the word to others. But in a way the lack the ability to really know the word, in the way Jeremiah talks about. Jeremiah tells the story of a new covenant, when people will no longer say to each other “know the Lord” (in the same tone my mother used to say “wake up and smell the coffee!”), because they will all know God. Because God will place God’s word directly into their hearts; it will stop being a yardstick to measure themselves against others.

Today is Reformation Sunday, the only Sunday of the church year that is set aside to commemorate a historical event, that began with the nailing of 95 Theses to the door of Castle Church in Wittenburg, Germany. The first of those little discussion points should stand out for us: “when our Lord Jesus Christ called us to repent, he called for the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.”

Those of us today who believe in Jesus Christ and his saving word are often confronted with the same sense of ‘huh?’ as those early believers. That’s because God’s word and work does not work the same as the culture we grow up in.

How many people here today would agree with the statement “I don’t know the bible very well, so I don’t know if I’m a good Christian – but I do my best to live a good life, so I think that God is happy with me”? You live a good life?

Welcome to the law. Because if it’s up to you, you will never live a life good enough to earn your salvation. You are slaves to an idea that is not your own.

But take confidence in this: you are loved by God because of who you are. Not because of what you’ve done. You are loved because of who you are. That was the original idea of Reformation that set fire to the world. That you do not work for your own salvation.

In our culture, ‘repentance’ is too often poorly understood as a one-shot deal. If that were true, then we should abandon all hope right now – or aim for the ‘deathbed confession’ system of belief. But we are called to live lives of repentance: lives that are marked by the word dwelling within us.

The theme of today is “knowing the word” – and you know the word when you are set free. When someone comes to you with the word ‘if’, then the word they bear is the law. “If you just do _____; then _______ will happen.” Have you ever read a self-help book? That’s a refrain in that kind of literature. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, and make your own way in the world. Then, look behind you at the unfortunate souls who have fallen behind, and grace them with your knowledge.

But you can know the word of God when it comes to you as a statement that sets you free: “because you are loved by God, therefore you live a life that is testimony to your freedom.” For God, there is no ‘if’. There is God speaking, and God acting, not out of sovereignty but out of mercy.

Do you ever feel like you’re on a journey, and you don’t have a map? Have you ever wondered if you can actually make it to your destination? That’s a very real fear, one that is deeply rooted in our culture, one that makes the gospel of Christ into a competition. Yet you shouldn’t worry.

The freedom that comes from knowing the word of God is the freedom to know that the end of the journey is assured; Christ will see you home.

But it also means knowing that, in fact, you may be on the wrong road. It means knowing that all roads may not, in fact, lead to Christ.

It means that there is no road, no trail, no rut, you will travel in this life that Christ will not walk down, to find you.

And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.

Let the people of God say ‘amen’.

Sunday October 02

2011-10-07T10:41:00.001-07:00

“Then God spoke all these words: I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.”

Every wonder just how closely we listen when God speaks? Or even, if God still speaks at all? It seems like almost every day I find someone who will lament to me the loss of public prayer in schools, or the perception of a ‘liberal’ agenda that wants to – and I use their word – eliminate Christianity from the public sphere. But really, is public prayer and using the government to push a socially conservative agenda really what “listening to God” looks and sounds like?

It should be easy to hear God speaking, right? I mean, most of you have seen the movie The 10 Commandments with Charleton Heston: I always remember this one line: guns don’t kill people; apes with guns kill people!

Sorry, wrong movie.

Yet one thing we can generally agree on as Christians: when God speaks, we should be listening. And I mean, actively listening.

You have to wonder, though…what are all the words that God speaks? How can we know?

Probably, a good rule of thumb is that we know God’s word by anticipating the exact opposite of what we are thinking.

Then God spoke all these words: I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery…

The 10 Commandments are, without a doubt, an integral part of the religious life of at least three of the world’s great religions. Certainly, they are central to our lives as Christians, and as they form the first part of Luther’s Small Catechism, they are foundational to our Lutheran theological tradition. Sometimes they’re written in stone, - as they were on the tablets that Moses received – and maybe sometimes they’re written on the rock of our hearts.

And even though God reminded the Israelites that God brought them OUT of the land of slavery, we can turn a perceived obedience to the 10 commandments into just another kind of slavery.

Like clockwork someone can be counted on to refer to the 10 Commandments as justifying grounds for their own judgement of an issue: the 10 Commandments say…I remember once struggling to speak with someone who insisted that the 10 commandments included rules that forbade women pastors and said that homosexuals should be put to death.

On their surface, the 10 commandments are negative imperatives: you shall not…but in reality the ‘don’t’ part is only a little piece of what they mean. Taken as a whole, the 10 commandments are good, they’re comforting, and for the Israelites they form an identity, a purpose, and even a sense of security.

For Christians in the Lutheran tradition, our understanding of the 10 commandments is – or should be, rather – irreversibly tied to a juxtaposition: “we are to fear and love God so that we do not…but instead…” Fundamentally, the 10 commandments become about commitment to God and compassion for our neighbour. Rather than tying us down, they free us to be in relationship with each other and affirm God’s relationship to us.

To a people wandering in the wilderness when God speaks, God gives an identity, a rule, and words of comfort, life, and hope.

Then God spoke all these words: I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt…

God speaks often, even continuously. At the beginning of Genesis, it’s written that God spoke, and the world came into being. God is always speaking, and we try – try – to listen.

But what do we hear?

Most often, we hear the message that our sinful and self-centred hearts want us to hear: that the privilege of being spoken to is our right; rather than the responsibility of listening to the call to form a community.

In the gospel lesson today, Jesus is still answering the Pharisee’s question from last week: “by what authority do you do the things you do?” Having used the example of the two sons, Jesus today turns to a metaphor that his listeners would know: a vineyard. In particular, Jesus relates this vineyard to a song that the prophet Isaiah sings of another vineyard, one that bore bitter fruit.

The Pharisees know the story that Jesus refers to, but in his telling there’s something not-quite-right about it. Both parties in the story seem equally ludicrous – the folly of the owner, who twice sends slaves and once, his son. Having his slaves beaten, killed, and stoned, the owner reasons that the tenants will respect his son. The tenants themselves are right out of a comic opera: having beaten the servants, they believe that if they kill the son they will gain his inheritance. To the tenants, the vineyard has become their privilege rather than their responsibility.

When Jesus asks, “what will the owner do when he returns?” the Pharisees respond in a way that shows they understand themselves to be the owners of the vineyard: “he will put those wretches to a miserable death and put in responsible tenants!” Their response is to cry out for the death of the first tenants, and to give the vineyard to others.

Like us, they hear what they want to: what is going to give us power, or self-righteousness. The power of judgement, they believe, is theirs.

In the 10 commandments, we can’t ever really get past the first one: you shall have no other gods before me. We always know what’s best, or better, for everyone else. They just need to listen to us, right? We like to be the judge in God’s place.

But how does Jesus respond to his own question?

Then God spoke all these words…

Instead of answering his own question, Jesus turns instead to talking about architecture. It’s a bit of a tangent; but at other places Jesus refers to himself as the Temple, and reminds his listeners that the temple will be destroyed; but that it will be rebuilt in three days. To this end, Jesus refers to himself as “the cornerstone” of the temple, but not just any cornerstone: this cornerstone is so hard that any other rock that falls upon it will shatter, and any stone upon which it falls will be crushed.

The cornerstone – the incarnate Word of God – is far harder than the rock of our hearts. The Pharisees response (and ours) to the story of the tenants of the vineyard reveals their own hardness of heart. The Pharisees are aghast at the mercy of the landowner; so are we.

Because, beloved, the tenants are right: they will kill the Son, and collect his inheritance.

God will break our hearts until we see God’s own stubborn insistence on being merciful to us; because if the landowner condemns the tenants and puts them to death – after previously showing mercy – then the landowner becomes no different than the tenants, and their way of interacting with the world wins.

We are the tenants of the vineyard; we have received the inheritance of the son. We believe that we can keep the fruits of our lives and God’s gifts to ourselves. We reject those who may come to us in God’s name and ask us to share a portion of the vineyard’s harvest – to open our hearts. When the Son comes, we reject him, too.

We are dying for forgiveness. We are ready to kill others – to kill with words, with our actions in our communities, and even with weapons of war – we are ready to kill to show God how ready we are for forgiveness, for righteousness. What we miss is that forgiveness and life are offered freely, the whole time we are trying to gain it for ourselves.

And what does God say?

Then God spoke all these words:

“This is my body, given for you. This is my life, poured out for you.”

God’s word reveals God’s own stubborn insistence to show mercy to God’s chosen people. The word is not always good; too often it reveals what we thought to be right and good as wrong, and evil. It cracks and breaks the rock of our hearts, crushes our self-righteousness and self-centredness, stands in the midst of our brokenness as a model of what is whole – and holy.

The 10 commandments are some of the most enduring words given to us by God – but they also are a means of mercy to guide and direct us to a life centred on a radical commitment to God and lived out in compassion for those around us.

In the beginning, God spoke. And God still speaks, and the creative power of God’s word will bring about the new creation in our hearts and all around us. In our midst, God speaks to us, calls us to live lives that are centred around God’s healing and renewing mercy that breaks the rock of our hearts – but gives us life, and salvation.

Let the people of God say amen.

Sunday September 25

2011-09-25T08:04:00.000-07:00

nb: with a big shout-out to Kevin over at The Word Proclaimed. I use a story he tells as a example today. I remembered hearing the original sermon when he preached it. If you want to learn from a master, go check him out.

So, over the past year or so, you’ve probably gotten used to me asking the question during my messages each Sunday – what do you think about the gospel lesson that is read?

And today, Jesus asks the same question of the educated Pharisees – what do you think? They’ve been pestering him with questions, trying to trick or trap him into committing blasphemy by equating himself with God, or saying that he’s the messiah – really, they’ll take anything as an admission of guilt. The thing is, they know the right answers to their questions.

One of the problems of the Pharisees is that they took God’s truth and boiled it down to a series of legalistic requirements. Have a religious question? They have an answer to it. Have a question that stretches the boundaries of what they know is their good doctrine? Not happening. The problem isn’t their doctrine, they believe – in that case, the problem is asking a question that doesn’t fit the answers they have.

They want to know by what authority Jesus does the things he does. His way of interacting – or acting – with God is foreign to their way of thinking. So they want to trap him outright in an admission that he is wrong.

So Jesus asks them a question designed to make them think – did John’s baptism come from heaven, or was it of human origin? We’re given a glimpse into their thought process – if we say, ‘from heaven,’ he’ll say, then why don’t you believe him; but if we say ‘of human origin,’ this crowd will tear us apart because they believed he was a prophet”.

So, they’re pretty shrewd thinkers. Politically astute, we might say. But they’re unwilling to open their thinking to something that might change their minds about what they believe. But Jesus comes to shake their nicely laid-out faith to its foundations.

I’ve said before that faith isn’t about getting the right answers, but about learning good questions. Jesus is a master question-asker, and his questions stretch the simple answers that the Pharisees and the crowd have come to believe.

In the end, the crowd turns on him, enraged that his questions expose their faith for what it is – hollow dogma, memorized and regulated. It’s a faith that brings great comfort, and self-satisfaction in no small measure, but it can also leave people feeling empty.

And the empty tomb raises still more questions.

A friend of mine tells a story about his time as a pastor in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The week after the US invaded Iraq, a local TV station sent a reporter to his church, looking for a faith-related sound bite for the six o’clock news. My friends’ church had been holding weekly prayer services in the weeks leading up to the war and some reporters had already done pieces on the church.

But this time was different. The reporter who came was known for his confrontational interview style. And as my friend tells the story, it was clear he had an axe to grind.

As my friend tells it, the reporter

“knew that I and most of the congregation were opposed to the war and he tried to get me to say on camera that any Christian who supported the war was going to hell. Saying that high profile Christians were destined for damnation would have sounded great on TV.

I tried to convince him that reconciliation was at the heart of the Christian faith and that was one of the reasons why I opposed the invasion of Iraq. He kept needling me, pushing me, asking leading questions. Frustrated, he turned the question around on me and snapped,

“Where then, is this ‘reconciling God,’ when children are being maimed, lives destroyed, innocent people killed, all in the name of so-called freedom?”

I fumbled around for words, very aware that any bonehead comment I’d make would be broadcast across the country.

The only response I could think of was, “God is present when people suffer unjustly. When a child is maimed, God is maimed; when innocent people die, God shares their death.”

As my friend admitted, he wasn’t entirely satisfied with his answer. And from the disappointed look on the reporter’s face, neither was he. While my friend had offered as thought-out a response as he could in a short period of time, a quick, hard-and-fast condemnation would have made a much better soundbite.

Usually, we only think as much as is needed to form an opinion about something – and then we stop. As with the Pharisees, though, Jesus challenges us on that. So he goes on to tell the story of two brothers.

A fathers asks his two sons to go to work. The first son says ‘no,’ but then goes to the fields. The second son said, “sure I will!” and then didn’t go. Which one did the will of his father?

Now, before you give the short answer, think a little about it. You have two children: you ask them both to do something. One says ‘no’ outright; the other says ‘absolutely!’. You don’t stick around to see the results. Who is doing your will?

What we think about something influences what we do – regardless of what we say. The first son answered honestly when his father asked him to go and work in the vineyard: he didn’t want to. But he changed his thinking and went to work that day. The second son answered dishonestly – he told his father, “yes, I’ll do it!” but then didn’t. His actions showed what he was thinking all along.

Where does our thinking lead us as Christians? Does it stop at the altar: “I’m righteous, so I’m good. I don’t have to change anything, because I’m better than other people”? Or does it extend out into the good Lord’s vineyard – “all right, I have this tremendous gift of salvation from Jesus. What do I do with it now – how do I live in ways that show other people that they can have the same gift?”

The problem with fundamentalism of any persuasion is that it proclaims thinking to be the enemy – fundamentalism accepts no truth other than a narrowly defined legalism. On the opposite end of the spectrum there are people who label themselves as “free thinkers”, who reject religion outright usually in favour of something of their own devising.

What both groups have in common is that they’re the people who urge you to ‘have an open mind’ when confronted with some of their ideas.

But they don’t really want you to have an open mind – they want you to have an empty one - that they can fill with their own ideas.

So God doesn’t call us to give lip service to a prayer and then go home Sunday afternoon to our comfortable chair. Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.

So we strive to do the work of God who is with us – sharing the message of the gift of the kingdom of God, showing the world how we live – not as people who are burdened and defined by dogma or doctrine, but as a living, thinking people serving a living, thinking God. The doctrine that we learn in Sunday school, confirmation, and through preaching isn’t intended to be the stuff you have faith in; its purpose is to help you define what you believe, and help you to find clearer ways to live out your faith.

And why is it so important that God calls us to be ‘thinking’ people?

Look around you. It’s a nice contrast to the rest of the world.

Let the people of God say amen.

September 18

2011-09-18T07:32:00.000-07:00

nb: with a shoutout to David Lose, and an apology to Daniel Erlander for appropriating the idea of God's "manna way."

Think about this question for a bit: the parable of the workers in the vineyard is about ____________________?

There’s lots of good things we can say about it: it’s about love, about God’s fairness, God’s mercy. There are probably as many different interpretations as there are people here today. here are a couple of things that it’s not about: the parable is not about being just, or fair, or working hard for a living and reaping the rewards of a good life.

Some deeply cynical part of me points out that this parable is also about the workers who are in the vineyard. If the kingdom of heaven is like the landowner, then the landowner has to continually deal with people who are a bunch of whiners. So, in another way, the parable of the workers in the vineyard is a story about how we usually feel that we could do a better (or at least more fair) job of running the universe than God can.

On some level that’s true, isn’t it? It was true for the Israelites: they are brought out of slavery – and bear in mind that slavery for the Israelites was something they’d chosen to avoid a famine; it was only after a Pharoah arose who didn’t know Joseph that it became a burden to them. They’d seen the parting of the sea, the great pillar of fire that led them by night, and the cloud by day. They were familiar; intimately familiar with the works of God.

Out in the wilderness, though, it was something else entirely. Out of the familiar confines of Egypt, there arose some problems with management: “you have brought us into this wilderness to kill us with hunger!” What is Moses doing, what is God doing that they are now in the wilderness, with little food?

We know how God provides for the Israelites: he sends quails at night and bread in the morning. This bread, called manna, covers the ground and the Israelites are to take what they need for the day, and nothing more – except on the sixth day, when they are told to gather enough to last them for the Sabbath.

There’s another interesting human factor to the story, as well: it’s what the Israelites call the stuff on the ground: manna. The word manna means…well, it means what they say, the same thing that your children, and mine, say when confronted with the intolerable reality of a Brussels sprout for the first time: “What is this?”

“What is this that you’re trying to feed us?”

“What is this that God is doing?”

“What is this stuff that we’re given?”

What is this? is our reaction to God’s grace in our lives. It doesn’t look like we think it should. It certainly isn’t fair – partly because our gratitude to God’s presence in our lives is always tainted with self-interest: what do we get from God in exchange for being ‘good’ people? But what God gives, thought unexpected, is good, and it is gift, all the same.

The secret of manna is that God gives out what everybody needs – and only what we need. You can’t ‘store up’ God’s grace; you can share it with others, but not store it up. That’s God’s manna way – that grace is more than just a simple prayer before a meal.

We can live out a manna way of our own – because when we know that grace isn’t just a simple prayer; it becomes a way to live.

Yet that way is kind of hard. The manna way doesn’t make sense in our lives – I’ve worked as a manager, and I know that many of you own your own businesses and farms. Look at the parable of the owner of the vineyard: does that make sense?

In a word, no. It makes us ask, what is this? All over again.

But as I often ask you: who are you in this parable? Are you the landowner? (if you think you are, you may have delusions of grandeur).

Are you among the first hired? Or the middle, or the last? Do we really have a ‘heirarchy’ of believers in the faith? I sometimes think we do – certainly, there seems a certain amount of respect accorded to people who have lived in the faith for longer.

Let me share with you something that all those workers have in common, though. Why are they in the marketplace at all? They are there because they are the dregs of their society. They are the people who do not have regular work, do not have a business of their own or a fishing boat, or a plot of land to farm. They are the desperate, the destitute, and maybe even the damned.

And the landowner goes out looking for them. Four times during the day, the landowner goes out seeking them. He doesn’t ask for applications, doesn’t check references, doesn’t interview and then do callbacks. He’s looking for labourers for his vineyard, and not just anyone will do – he needs everyone.

But at the end of the day, he calls those hired last – those who had given up all hope of hire, but who remained because they had literally no where else to go – and gives them the usual daily wage. And those hired first see it, and begin to do some mental arithmetic. This could be the greatest payday they’ve ever seen.

And they receive the exact same pay. One day’s wage. Not a weeks; nor a months; nor a lifetimes; but one day’s wage. And they take it, not as grace, but as insult. Instead of rejoicing at the poor who were helped on that day, they assigned a worth to each group, and they were at the top of the heap.

And as preacher David Lose points out,

Jesus tells [this parable] to illustrate the hardness of heart with which those who deemed themselves righteous considered those who by almost any standards were not, begrudging them the grace and mercy of God and the attention of God's Son. But there's also an existential dimension that speaks as truly to our own day, time, and lives as it ever did to Jesus' original audience. Because this parable lays before each and all of us a choice as clear as can be. When we look at our lives, do we count our blessings or our misfortunes? Do we pay attention to the areas of plenty in our lives or what we perceive we lack? Do we live by gratitude or envy? Do we look to others in solidarity and compassion or see them only as competition? The killer thing about this choice is that it really is a choice as unavoidable as it is simple -- you just can't be grateful and envious at the same time. So which is it going to be?

Jesus is eventually killed precisely because he offers this choice. That is, Jesus is crucified not just because he proclaimed that the grace, and mercy of God was available to all, even to those deemed so incredibly unworthy, but also because his declaration revealed the hardness of heart, the stone-cold entrenchment of spirit, that is part and parcel of the human condition. His boundary-breaking generosity revealed the envy and competitiveness of those in power. His vision of another way of being in the world -- he called it the kingdom of God -- betrayed the lie told by the protectors of the status quo that theirs was the only way. Shamed by such a vision, and unable to embrace it, they put the visionary to death.

Yet God’s manna way continued, as the darkness of death faded to reveal a new bread from heaven broken for all people; fruit of the vine that brings to all people new and everlasting life.

Today is our stewardship Sunday – and maybe I think we need to rename it. In fact, I’m going to suggest it right now: instead of calling this stewardship Sunday, let’s call it ‘celebration Sunday’. Let’s call it “grace Sunday;” let’s call it “manna Sunday.” This is a day when we celebrate that we, who are hired last, who journey through the wilderness, we who are not worthy of the smallest tidbit of the grace of God, are given ALL.

This day is not a day when I’m going to flog you to open your wallets and “give”. This is not a day when we’re going to put a chart and graph, and say “this is where we need to be.” This is not the day when I raise up the ministries of the congregation and ask you to staff them.

I’m not going to do that because I already see your hearts open, and giving. I’m not going to do that because I know that when I tell you at the end of the service to “go in peace and serve the Lord” that you DO that; that you go out into the vineyard and work from sunup to dusk.

I want you to know that this is the morning we wake up and find God’s grace scattered on the ground so that we can live. I want you to celebrate God’s faithfulness and gifts to this community – and I ask you to celebrate the future we share together, because of that faithfulness and gift.

Today we will talk about a new initiative for our congregation’s future; we’ll talk about our hopes and dreams and visions. Most of all, today I want you to talk about you; we have shared in our labours together, and now we rejoice at the end of the day.

And for anyone who doubts that the Church lives like this parable of the workers in the vineyard, that the Church models the landowner who welcomes every labourer and gives to them freely, remember this: even if this is your first day in our home – or even if this is your fifty thousandth – you are welcome to join our celebration.

God has sought you out; you have been brought home. Join us, celebrate with us the great miracle of God’s manna way: that grace isn’t just a simple prayer before meal; that it isn’t a philosophical condition; that it isn’t a theological concept –

Brothers and sisters, grace is a way to live. Be at peace, for you serve the Lord and your reward is certain. Go out and find those who are desperately seeking; look for those who have given up hope. Bring them into the Lord’s vineyard and know that they, too, will receive all that they hope for – and just what they need.

Let the people of God say amen.

September 4 - Pentecost 12A

2011-09-04T10:32:00.001-07:00

Did you know that, here in the church, we practice ‘tough love?’ It’s true! Of course, tough love looks different from different perspectives.

I have a friend who left a church that practiced ‘tough love’ – if you did something that the pastor and church leadership thought was wrong, you got a visit from them. At that visit, you were told that you had to repent, but that you were going to be shunned from the community for at least some suitable amount of time before you could come back to church some Sunday and in front of the entire congregation confess the sin that had been pointed out to you and symbolically ask the forgiveness of Jesus. The pastor and elders of the church would confer, and after some uncomfortable silence would usually let you back in, noting at the same time that they were being lenient – lenient -- out of Christian love.

That was their tough love. But is that really the love that Paul talks about? “Owe no one anything, except to love one another.” As Paul writes – and he echoes the words of Jesus and other, even more well-respected Jewish rabbis – that the commandments are summed up in the words “love your neighbour as yourself.”

And that seems really, really, easy. In fact, some aspect of that is usually cited by people who describe themselves as ‘I’m-not-religious-I’m-spiritual’. If we’re not religious, but we’re spiritual, we can tell ourselves that ‘I love my neighbour as myself, so I must be good, then.” And honestly, that seems a lot easier of a way to live. It’s easier simply because then I can choose who my neighbour is.

But the difference between being spiritual and being religious is that when your are religious, you don’t get to pick and chose things based on how uncomfortable they make you.

You may find your neighbour in the homeless woman who sits outside of Safeway and asks for change,

You may find your neighbour in the person of little education but strong opinion who comes to talk with you because you’re “good church-going folk.”

You may find your neighbour in the young unmarried couple next door when they come over to ask if they can borrow some milk. They need to borrow the milk because he got laid off because of a DUI (which was SO not his fault), and they can’t get to the store to buy food for their kids. They become your neighbour when you load them down with food from your pantry, and grit your teeth instead of pointing out the huge party they had last week.

When you’re Christian, your neighbours choose you. And then you find what ‘tough love’ is really about.

It’s about loving when you really don’t want to. And finding that love and forgiveness are really, really, hard pills to swallow.

Today Jesus talks about what to do when your brother or sister ‘sins’ against you. It’s interesting that Jesus uses that word; in Greek, the word means “to miss the mark.” So, when someone else ‘misses the mark’ with you, Jesus provides a means of recourse. At first reading, it seems to be the kind of ‘tough love’ that we understand.

But think very carefully about what Jesus is actually saying in this text when he says’ “let such a one be to you as a tax collector and a Gentile”.

In classes at Seminary, I was always up for a good argument – I mean, class discussion. If a professor wanted someone to throw something out for the class to chew on, I was often the first to open my mouth.

One day, we were talking about this text, and how we are provided with this model in Matthew 18. I tossed out the example of the church that my friend attended, and then said that, apparently, it was after all ‘biblically sound.”

And my professor looked at me and said, “really? That’s biblically sound? Then answer me this: who wrote this gospel?”

And I said, “Matthew.”

And she said back to me, “and what did he do?”

I said: “he was a disciple.” “And what was his profession?” “He was…a tax collector.”

And she reminded me of the gospel story of a few weeks ago, of the woman who came to beg Jesus that her daughter would be healed. “Where was she from?” my teacher asked. And the light slowly dawned as I said, “she was a gentile.”

That was the beginning of my realization that ‘bible study’ meant more than just memorizing dogmatic answers to tradition texts. ‘Bible study’ means letting the text speak to its own understanding, not the meaning we want.

Jesus says, ‘and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”

Bring them into your community and love them. Bind them to the love of God in Christ, and they will be bound in heaven. Loose them, and you will lose them.

Now that’s ‘tough love’.

I’ve said before that I think there was unity in the church for maybe fifteen minutes at the foot of the cross. Conflict is natural in any situation where culture, values, and mixed experiences are present, and Jesus knew that. There are a couple of stories in the gospels that begin “now the disciples argued among themselves…”

If you live by the law, your entire life will be lost, because the Law is hungry: it’s easy, really easy, to point out the flaws and sins of everyone around you. You can, in fact, make a church around that kind of idea. But Paul reminds us to live by love: love that poured out for us in the cross of Jesus Christ.

Being Christian means acknowledging that Christ died for your sins: but honestly being Lutheran means admitting you drove the nails in, while at the same time Christ says to you: Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.

Tough love is not destroying someone utterly so that we can feel righteous in ourselves.

Tough love means loving the unlovable – and maybe even admitting that that includes ourselves. Paul reminds us, “salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers,” possibly because when we come to understand and know the love that Christ has for us we can come to understand a bit better what it means to both be saved from and saved for.

Saved from death, and sin.

Freed for love, for community – because Jesus never, ever, uses an example of just one person. Where two or three are gathered, there will always be conflict. Yet it’s funny that it’s in this place that Jesus also promises us, “I am with you.”

Maybe that’s because Jesus knows that we will always sin – we will always ‘miss the mark’. We will always fall short as a community because, well, we’re not Jesus – but we bear his name to the world, despite our failing, despite our sins. And then, together, we move forward as a community of two, or three, or thirty, or three hundred, knowing that as we are gathered in the name of Jesus Christ here is here among us, that we owe each other nothing, other than to love one another, as Christ first loved us.

And there is nothing that can ever separate us from that love.

Let the people of God say ‘amen.’

July 24, 2011

2011-07-24T08:19:00.001-07:00

A seed. Yeast. A hidden treasure. A pearl. A net full of fish. These are the things to which Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven.

Really? That’s the best that Jesus can do? And then we find that the disciples do, in fact, on occasion, lie to Jesus: do you understand this? He asks. Er….yes? So he gives them another: “every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

I’m going to let you ponder that. So, as far as Jesus says today, if you think you understand what he’s said, it’s as simple as going through your treasure (whatever that may be) and separating it into two piles: old, and new.

Then what, Jesus? Where’s the punchline? Should we not keep what is old? The next time I visit my mother, should the 300-year-old cut crystal Macintyre christening bowl be given to my children?

Because the truth is, our treasure is both ‘old’ and ‘new’. Even the ways we interpret the treasure of Scripture: we find joy in Paul’s passages about the love of God poured out for us in Christ, but widely disregard the number of things that are labelled as ‘abominations’ by the various writers of the books: eating with Egyptians, leftovers, eagles, inaccurate weights and measures…the list is long. Jesus eats on the Sabbath, eats with sinners, looks for the lost…his treasure, too, is both ‘old’ and ‘new’.

So maybe that’s why Jesus picks such a diverse group of things to which he can compare the kingdom of heaven: old and new, small and big; unlikely things are made precious when God is involved. What’s most interesting about these little parables: Jesus makes it clear that the kingdom of heaven is NOT someplace we go when we die. He’s not telling a story about the halls of Asgard or Olympus or Hogwarts; no, he’s using fairly worldly examples.

I remember coordinating a VBS one summer when one volunteer came to me. “I have a problem,” He said. Anticipating any number of things, I went running back with him to his area. There he unveiled his problem to me: it’s not big enough! I need to find another, a better one! It’s got to be bigger!

Do you wonder what his crisis was? It was simple: he’d looked for a picture of a mustard tree, and had found one. To his dismay, he found that this ‘mightiest of trees’ was about three and a half feet high. He was trying to trace it onto the wall of his room, but had found the picture too puny. He was expecting a redwood; not a shrub.

And I remember the first time I thought I’d help my mother and make bread while she was out getting groceries. I put all the ingredients together, but one thing didn’t make sense: 8 cups of flour and one freaking tablespoon of yeast? Had to be a mistake. So I used 1 cup of yeast.

We never did get the dough out of the cupboard, and that house probably still smells like a distillery.

Something so small that we overlook its significance – that’s the kingdom of heaven.

And then there are the people Jesus talks about: a treasure-hunter, a merchant, a fisherman. Are we them? Are they us? I don’t know. I don’t think so.

I think Jesus uses those stories to show us just how passionate God is about seeking us and finding us. Think of God grubbing through the dirt and mud of a world in search of us, finding us, and then running out and buying that entire world just to make us his own.

Or God as the merchant of fine pearls, seeking high and low. And finding one pearl of great value, rushing out sell all that God has to redeem it.

Or God as the fisherman, bringing up the great harvest of ourselves, patiently winnowing through us until he has cast all that is empty and dead and sinful away and has left only what is good and right and perfect; only what is mindful of God’s Son.

I think Jesus tells us stories about the kingdom of heaven so that we stop thinking of it in terms of something we can sneak into if we’re good enough, and instead start living like it’s right here, within, and amongst us – as he says later in the gospel of Luke, chapter 12.

Today, we get a sneak peak of that, as Gabriel Micha is brought by God into the kingdom of heaven through the sacrament of holy baptism. Gabriel is born into this world; a world that doesn’t work the way it should – a world of sin and death. But today, he is becomes part of much larger story, a story were trees and bushes mean that God loves him more than life itself; that God was willing to die so that little Gabe can live forever.

And today Gabriel joins a rather exclusive family, too – a family of pearls, of great treasure that has been uncovered - as everybody here today on this great occasion is caught in the great net of God’s love. Because – and I’m sorry if I didn’t make this clear when we did baptism prep together – today Gabe is caught. Caught in the love of God, who through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus -- purchased the world.

And as the apostle Paul promised, and he saw in his world how people quickly corrupted the gospel of Jesus, and then how those who believed were persecuted – if God is for Gabriel – if God is for us – then who can stand against us?

Nobody. Nobody is a better seeker than God, nobody is a better fisher. And what’s better – what’s even more important than that – is that God is a keeper. For he keeps what is his. In our baptism, we become the pearls of great price that are purchased at such a high cost, as God gave himself so that we may be become members of his body; and nothing can separate us from that grace and love of God in Jesus Christ.

I am convinced of that: neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Let the people of God say amen.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

2011-07-12T10:51:00.001-07:00

The prophet Isaiah recounts the words of God, who made heaven and earth:

¹⁰For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,

and do not return there until they have watered the earth,

making it bring forth and sprout,

giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

¹¹so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;

it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,

and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

That’s pretty heavy, isn’t it? I mean, ALL of what God wants to accomplish with the Word is going to be done? That’s a loaded theological statement. What about the bad things in the world, then? Does God want those things to happen? How do we reconcile our claims of a just and righteous God with a world that seems, at times, beholden to the merest whim of fate?

Perhaps the secret lies in big rocks.

I come from southern Alberta, and not far from where I grew up is the site of Big Rock – the tremendous glacial erratic that was deposited by a glacier some 10 000 years ago. If you’ve been there, you’ve seen that the rock has been split in two.

What you’ve maybe not seen, though, is the lichen and other growing things that cover some of the smaller pieces of the rock, breaking them down into smaller and smaller pieces.

One little seed of grass or moss can bring the largest mountain crashing down, simply wearing down hardness with eons of stretching, and growth.

Something living overcoming something of stone: cold, and dead.

That’s what a seed can do.

Today, Jesus sits down with his friends and tells them about the way God relates to them, but in a puzzling way. Speaking to a group of fishermen, he uses a farming analogy. But it’s probably harder to be a farmer than a fisherman.

(I hope there’s nobody from either coast here today).

So he tells them a parable: a sower went out to sow. And some seed he threw on the rocky ground, some among the thorns, other seed he threw on the path, and still more he threw on the good soil, which was deep, and rich, and receptive.

Birds ate the seed off the path; the thorns choked out the plants that grew among them; the sprouts in the rocky soil withered under the glare of the sun; but the seed that fell on the good soil returned 30, 60, even a hundredfold of the seed sown.

So I’d like you to think a moment about the field this sower must be standing in: it must be really, really small. It’s got three times as much useless soil as good stuff: there’s a path, rocks, and weeds. In fact, this may be the crappiest field in all of creation. But there’s a small part of it that produces amazing results.

Which is a good thing, because that sower really stinks at his job.

In the time that Jesus lived, seeds were a precious commodity. From every crop you harvested, you washed, cleaned, and kept some of it for next year’s seed. You had to preserve it, so that you had a future. What the sower does in this parable is ludicrous. You don’t waste good seeds on bad ground. How many rocks must there be in this field? How many thorns?

When I was a kid, we had a neighbour who was working on bringing a field of pastureland under cultivation. He was a old-timer, which meant that he didn’t just hook up the 700-horsepower John Deere to the harrow or the plow. Every afternoon, he would go out and spend an hour or two with a wheel barrow, picking rocks.

Well, one summer’s day I’d been working, and a friend of mine called and asked if I wanted to go into the city to see a movie with him and another friend. We did. On the way home, another friend called and invited us to a party. We had time, we were young, we went.

And the next morning I came home with the worst case of the “flu” I had ever had. I was deeply disappointed when I realized that I wouldn’t die; it seemed such a waste of good suffering.

And my mother was, of course, a deeply caring individual, a delicate and godly woman who trusted her youngest son. And seeing him in such deep distress on the one of the hottest days of the summer, she had mercy upon him and sent him out, into the field. To pick rocks.

That is the cleanest field in Vulcan county, I’m proud to say. Sad that nothing will grow in it. But very clean.

The sower in the parable could have learned something. Or maybe we can learn something from that sower.

We can learn to trust.

Are you familiar with the tale of the prodigal son? Well, this is the tale of the prodigal sower. It the tale of God, who casts the seed of his word with incredible abundance, so that it lands in every nook and cranny of our lives and our hearts, so that not one little bit is missed. It is the story of God, who scandalously wastes grace and love on those who don’t deserve it, and yet is ready again to sow when the ground is ready.

And it’s also the tale of the ground of our being; the rock of our hearts and the thorny thickets of our minds.

And the good soil of our souls.

God casts the seed into our lives; and some withers, and dies. We are vulnerable to our own needs and desires, likes and dislikes, sinfulness and self-centredness. But when it finds root in our heart, it grows, breaking down the rock at our core and replacing it with something much, much more alive: something that when it grows, it expands up to a hundred times bigger than the little seed that began it.

And then WE become the seed; breaking down the hard hearts of our world. Withering, dying, and being sown and raised up again by the word of Jesus Christ.

And our lives fulfill their purpose; returning the word of God to where it was spoken, knowing that we are part of the great narrative of God’s creation; word spoken, which creates; word claimed, which heals; word killed, which breaks down; and the Word proclaimed, which gives eternal life.

Our national church meets in convention next week – and it will be contentious. There are issues being debated that have polarized many in the church, but one thing must remain clear: the word of God, once spoken, will not return empty. We are equally sinful; were are all in need of grace.

When it is over, the face of our church may look different; it may look like the face of that Big Rock where I grew up – split, pained, and hard. But still, in that rock, is the seed of life that we proclaim to be the Spirit of the Living God, at work among us, declaring to us that when God has spoken his word will not return empty.

No, it will not return empty. We will return it. With joy, because of what we have first received. With peace, because God is bigger than we are.

And with grace, because our hard hearts have been broken, and only Christ remains.

Let the people of God say ‘amen’.

June 12 - Pentecost/Confirmation Sunday

2011-06-15T08:28:00.000-07:00

I would like you to do something for me: if you’re sitting on the end of a pew, I’d like you to lean over, and look at where it rests on the floor. Is it bolted to the floor? I think it is.

It is?

Well, let me tell you a story – not about the pews, not about this church – but about the screws that hold those pews to the floor.

When the Church itself was young – when the presence of Christ was fresh in people’s memory, his breath on them, his ascension, and his promise to come again: it was a wild place.

People came in, shared a meal, shared stories of a church in which the Spirit of God was like a wild thing; it would pick people up and deposit them far from home; it would heal some, restore others, and brought faith to all people. It gave gifts to everyone it touched; gifts of healing, gifts of leadership, gifts of being able speak boldly to authority (for that is what prophecy is – divination is foretelling the future).

When the Holy Spirit moved through the church, it left seats overturned, banners waving, and it drove people out of the door to exclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. Wherever they went, the Holy Spirit went with them; it unsettled people, made a mess out of carefully ordered lives, put to shame the empty religiosity of the Roman gods.

And the church grew. With every baptism of every man, woman, and child, the Holy Spirit was poured out freshly upon the people. And the people who watched were amazed that ordinary men and women could do such things, but most of all they were amazed that those ordinary men and women were so eager to talk about their God and their faith – a task that was normally left to the priests of the temple. And some made fun of them, but even their mocking laughter could not be heard above the joy of the Spirit.

As the church grew, it became necessary for the Spirit to raise up some people as teachers, as securers and guardians of the truth; they were the first people who formed doctrine out of faith. And that was a good thing – because even the Spirit would not prevent humankind from abusing the good news of Jesus Christ; to do so would infringe upon their free will.

But those in the church knew that there is really no free will; our wills are bound to sin. So they trusted completely in Christ, and the Holy Spirit moved among them with power, and the presence of God burned as flames in their hearts.

And then, the church was old, and hundreds of years had passed. The living memory of Christ was lost, and the persecutions began to ease, the Holy Spirit still moved in the church, sending out hundreds of eager men and women, young and old, who shared dreams and brought the vision of God’s redemption to the world. It still left seats and benches overturned, and the simple meal that the community shared reminded them of Christ’s presence in their midst.

And one day, an elder in the church was approached to form a part of a new government; an appointment that would mean respectability, income assurance, and more opportunity for leisure. But, he was told, those who would employ him were uncertain of his religion. It was so messy, they told him, and they worried that the mess and uncertainty that were the hallmarks of the Spirit would be brought into their carefully ordered universe.

So the man went back to his church, and began to speak with the elders there. Not that there was anything wrong with the Holy Spirit, he said, but could we possibly secure the benches to the floor, so that when the Spirit is poured out, they stay upright?

And the elders agreed. After all, it would save on cleaning costs. So the benches (which we call pews) were bolted to the floor in churches all over the world. So it was more…respectable.

And after a while, respectability began to be the reason for the church. And the garments that signified the people of the church – the alb, pristine white for the righteousness of Christ; the stole that marked one as ‘ordained’ to serve the community; and the chasuble, worn to denote the special meal that was shared – became solely the propriety of the minister.

But the Holy Spirit still moved in the church; it was just harder to see. And as the teachings that were necessary to understand God working among the people became emptier and emptier; sacred rites became empty rituals, because the church had become the center of all that was…respectable. As people discarded old ideas of what was respectable, they came to discard the church, as well, seeing only those rituals as what marked one as belonging, as Christian.

So generations were lost. But many stayed; many who had experienced the Holy Spirit in their lives, who had lived – on the surface – quietly boring lives, they stayed in the community and devoted their time, as in the days when the church was young, to the apostles’ teaching, the breaking of bread, and prayer. But the pews remained bolted to the floor.

And they were bolted with traditionalism, ethnocentrism, boredom, and ignorance.

---------------------------------------------

So, today is Pentecost Sunday, a day when we celebrate the presence of the Holy Spirit in our midst, in this church, and it also the day of confirmation, when these 3 young people will take upon themselves the promises made for them by their parents at their baptism.

For those of you who are the parents or perhaps the baptismal sponsors of the confirmands here today – and those who have young children – did you know that you made promises before God to teach your children the Christian faith?

And let me ask you this: have you kept them? Bear in mind, I know the answer to that already.

But I’m not being judgemental; this is a day of celebration! Because today, along with these young people, the whole people of God in this place have a chance to affirm their baptism, and to experience again the presence of God in their lives.

So I urge you today to remember a few things. Just a few:

Remember that what we call ‘church’ isn’t a burden or responsibility; it’s a community, it’s a gift.

Remember this gift is always here for you: school, work, friends, nothing else will be. But wherever you go in this world, anywhere you go in this world, you will find a community who will welcome you into their midst, because you bear the name of ‘Christian’.

And remember, like every gift that is free, just because you don’t pay for it doesn’t mean it’s worthless: it’s priceless. But if you mistreat it, ignore it, or abuse it – well, we’ve already crucified Christ, I don’t expect that we’ll treat his body (which we call the church) any better. Ignore it, mistreat it, or abuse it – we will still love you. But the further you go from our midst, the darker the world around you becomes. Christ is the light of this community. Remember us, for we will remember you, and the Holy Spirit will always go with you.

But also remember that the Holy Spirit in your life does not bring you safety, prosperity, or affluence. It will bring you chaos, uncertainty, and trouble: but it will be chaos, uncertainty, and trouble in the Name of, and in the presence of, Jesus Christ.

And there is no life like it, in this world, or the next.

Remember: Christ chose you. In turn, this day, and on every day that follows – choose a community that actually means something in this world. Not a sports team or a club, but a community of people who will love you for you, wherever you go.

Let the people of God say amen.

June 5, 2011

2011-06-05T07:48:00.000-07:00

What’s the oddest thing you’ve ever prayed for? A parking spot? I read somewhere that that is, in fact, the most often-prayed prayer in our culture. God, get me a good spot, somewhere close to the door, but not too close to where the teenagers park… In my experience, though, maybe the most often one comes in times of trouble, often phrased as God, take this away from me and I’ll be a better person. That’s the ‘barter’ prayer, when any and all things are promised if God comes through on his end.

I’ll take a minute to remind us all that the founder of our church – our own Martin Luther – took his monastic vows because he promised God he would if God but let him survive a raging thunderstorm. So, at least there’s a long and good history behind it.

Although those ‘barter’ prayers are common, they’re still not very silly, you know? I mean, I bet even atheists pray for good parking spots. They’re pretty rare.

There was a young preacher in his first parish who decided to make a point of praying always in the Name of Jesus Christ. So every time he prayer, he ended his prayer, “In the Name of Jesus Christ, amen.” Every Sunday, a little boy just sat in the front pew and smiled as he prayed. And that young preacher just thought he was doing the best job he could – he was even reaching the youngest member of the congregation!

After about six months that preacher got a surprise, though. Sitting on his desk on Sunday before church was an envelope, with “pastor” written on it in crayon. He opened it, and to his surprise found a note written in crayon, that said: Dear Pastor, you owe me a hundred dollars. Thanks.

It was from the same boy who sat in the front pew and smiled. After church the preacher stopped the boy and his dad on the way out and asked the little boy about the note. The boy proudly beamed at him and said “well, every time my daddy prays ‘Jesus Christ’ he has to give me a dollar for the swear jar. I think it’s fair if you do, too!”

So, aside from the frequency of the G-D and J-C prayers that we utter, why do we often have such a negative reaction when we’re confronted with prayers for things that we may just not think deserve a prayer?

When I was younger – seventeen or so – I was worshipping with a congregation that had a children’s message after the lessons, and after the message the children were asked if they had anything they wanted to pray for. Usually, they’d tell whichever adult was leading the talk, and then the adult would pray.

Cue me. I’m pretty confident, I grew up in a home where prayer was a relatively common practice. So this one Sunday I asked the children “what would you like to pray for?” and I was met by a sea of big, earnest, brown and blue eyes.

And a little girl stood up and walked over to me. She was holding a teddy bear by its middle, almost cradling it; it was just as cute and cute could be. And she handed that teddy bear to me and said “Teddy has a sore paw. Could you pray for him?”

So prayed for that teddy bear. I prayed that God would be with all small creatures who brought comfort, all friends who sit with us, but most of all, I prayed that Teddy would get over his sore paw.

Well, one of the matriarchs of the congregation took me aside after church that day and did her best to put the fear of – well, her – into me. “You DO NOT pray for stupid things like that bear!” She offered the invocation the next week when we dedicated a new wing that had been built on to the church. And I stood there thinking…why?

It seems that as we grow up we get a list of things in our mind that are good to pray for, especially in church. World peace, health, safety, church growth, church health, church peace…the list goes on and on. Maybe especially as Lutherans, we can get caught up in the language we grow up hearing – the elegant eloquence of the prayers used in the litany of our services.

At the church where I interned, we asked our confirmation students to pray at the beginning of each session, but most often when a student was asked they look at me plaintively and say, “but I don’t know how!”

And they look exasperated at me when I tell them that’s the perfect place to start. The best prayer to pray is one that you don’t know the words for, one that comes out from your heart and past your lips before your brain can tell you it needs to be edited.

Jesus prayed for the disciples, as he prayed on behalf of those who would come to believe in him through their word – he could have prayed those long prayers that are liturgically sound, but instead he prayed from his heart. He prayed for his friends, that they would be kept holy, protected, nurtured, and empowered with his joy.

What kind of prayers do you offer? Do you, as we are encouraged to by James, “pray without ceasing?” Or is prayer something that is done on Sundays, or before meals?

Of course, if it’s a meal at a church people always ask the pastor. After all, we do it so well. But let me tell you something.

As part of our requirements, us intern pastors have to complete a course in Clinical Pastoral Education before our internships. CPE is a hospital or care home internship, where we fulfill the role of student chaplains so we don’t mess up too badly when we get to a parish. It’s a good theory.

But sometimes a better name for it should be “place where young pastors go to get their heads chewed off.”

I interned at St Paul’s Hospital in Saskatoon. After the first couple of months I found myself with full range of the hospital – med units, ICU, emergency, you name it, I was the chaplain-at-large (no pun intended). The first thing I learned was that the Pastoral Care course I took at Seminary didn’t really compare to the real thing. Especially in Palliative or Critical care.

You see, most people don’t go to church, even if they identify themselves as Christian. They usually have the Sunday School faith complex – if I’m good God will heal me – and some, if they’ve been interested at all in the past, may have some inkling of faith. Some take the ‘strong and trusting’ stance, but most people want to pray with a chaplain – and they don’t want wimpy little ‘thy will be done’ prayers; on the whole, the chaplain should be calling down all the hosts of heaven to make them better.

So I waded into it. Out of 200 required clinical hours I filled in close to 300. I prayed holding hands, holding heads. For those who could speak I gave my language to their prayers and for those who couldn’t I gave me voice. By the end of five months I was pretty confident I could pray nearly as good as Jesus.

And having a gift of talking helped, too – no “Jesus wejus’” prayers for me – nope, I was appropriate, formal, comforting, all those things that a good chaplain should be.

And I stopped praying for all those things I thought ‘silly’.

The silence was deafening. Oh, I could still do daily devotions and still pray off the cuff in chapel, but the joy that I had found in prayer was lost.

And then one night in Saskatoon I was putting my eldest son to bed, and we say bedtime prayers. After our little bedtime prayer, I asked him,

“Is there anything you’d like to pray for, son?”

And my little boy held up froggy – a little, stuffed, gangly-legged frog that he was given all the way back when he was born.

Well, I sat on the edge of his bed and I looked at froggy for a long time. And I thought of all the people I knew who needed prayer – Erich, my friend who had been diagnosed with throat cancer, a member of the congregation we attended who had miscarried for the sixth time, a lady I had met at the hospital who couldn’t walk – no words came.

Then I thought of my life, of the promises I have been given, that I have been brought into the truth of the Gospel of Christ, that I am cared for and loved. And I thought of my little boy, whom I prayed for (and still do) daily, and about my wife who was at work so that she could go on Maternity leave when our second child was born.

I prayed for froggy, just as I had prayed for Teddy. Nobody took me aside after I came out of his room. I looked, and there’s no suggested prayer for stuffed frogs in the book of Occasional Services. It probably wasn’t liturgically sound.

It sounds silly, but at that time I found joy in prayer again, praying in the spirit and the unity that was promised so long ago by Christ.

It is very easy to get caught up in the right and proper ways of doing things – and prayer is no exception. Yet it remains a precious gift, one given to us in grace and modeled for us in Christ who prayed for us. When we pray, we are witnessing to the Father and the Son, that they are one and that we are in them – and all our concerns may rest with them and that we may find peace.

Prayer is a gift – the gift given to us by Christ, so that we may be whole and live in relationship with each and with God. It’s a gift to be cherished because, yes, we can pray for those little concerns that niggle at our minds and keep us bothered at night. We can commit those concerns to God and rest knowing we have been heard.

So pray. Pray for each other, pray for the church, pray without ceasing. Praying as a community doesn’t make the hard times disappear, but it can make them bearable, reminded that we are held in God’s love.

Sometimes you need to be careful what you pray for, yes. I read in the news about a small community in Texas that was dominated on one side of town by a fundamentalist Baptist church on one side and a roadhouse bar on the other. The roadhouse was undergoing a renovation that would double its capacity.

And members of the church did what fundamentalists do best: they protested. They promised fire, damnation, and disaster to that bar and its owners.

And the week before the grand opening, the bar was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. The church was very vocal in the community about the role they’d played in that.

So the owners of the roadhouse took them to court, citing that since they were directly responsible for the destruction of the roadhouse, they were responsible for paying out costs of reconstruction.

But the lawyers for the church argued that they had no responsibility whatsoever; it was nature, or accident.

A reported asked the judge presiding what he thought of the case. The judge replied: “I have no clue. On one hand, I have the owners of the bar who believe strongly in the power of prayer; and on the other a church who swears they don’t!”

Become like a children again – in joy, pray for anything, because Christ prays for you. He prays that we would be a community in this place, that we would be one together, as he is with the Father.

Yet remember one thing: ‘grace’ isn’t just a little prayer you say before a meal. It’s a way to live.

Let the people of God say, ‘Amen’.

Palm Sunday - On Plan and Purpose

2011-04-19T10:09:00.002-07:00

I’ve always found Palm Sunday a difficult day to define…traditionally, the proper title for this day is “Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion” and the reading that is used as the gospel is not the selection from John 11 that I read, but rather an account of the passion of Christ from one of the other gospels. In that way -- as in real life -- the crowd that first acclaimed Jesus as king and messiah in their midst, later calls out for his death.

It’s hard, coming through this season of Lent; a season that call us to remember our baptism and all that it means, to remember that Jesus comes to us as a servant. And that as we read in Isaiah today, that Jesus comes to us a suffering servant; suffering because it was seemingly demanded and foreordained by God that it was good for him to do so.

And that’s a hard row to how. But Jesus, as the servant of us all, shows us that it is not the accolades, success, or prosperity of this world that shows our worth and value – but rather that true worth is shown through obedience to the purpose God has for us.

What does it mean to be a servant who comes in love, reaches out to those marginalized in society, opens the eyes of the blind, and restores the dead to life – but is then spit upon, beaten, and nailed to a cross? It seems almost capricious, that God would visit the worst punishments upon God’s own son, so that we would be spared the soul-torturing reality of the death that is brought upon us by sin.

But there’s often disconnection between understanding the difference between a plan and a purpose. The Israelites – John refers to them as Jews in the gospel – knew that a messiah was coming. God had promised it. But they didn’t know what the messiah would do. They thought they did; they thought they knew exactly what God’s plan was – to restore the kingdom of Israel through power and might, throw off the Roman oppressors, and let them oppress everyone else around them.

In other words, they believed God’s plan to be exactly what they would do, if they were God. But they missed God’s purpose, which was to reconcile the world, to heal it through a mightily stubborn love and free gift of grace that brought light to a dark world. In Jesus, God's purpose was to bring the whole world to God…but the world didn’t like that very much – and neither, really, do we.

Like the Israelites, we want to see a great, monolithic, written-in-stone plan of God. Preferably, we want a plan that involves the smiting of our enemies and those who don't agree with us – while we watch, and gloat, since that's how we would it. But like the Israelites, we miss God's purpose.

I've noticed that when I talk with people who like to use the phrase `God's plan` usually use it to separate `us` from `them` -- to keep the people who agree with what they think in one category, and those who disagree in another. So that rhetoric creates an angry, wrathful, spiteful, vengeful God – and then creates Jesus as the heroic older brother who saves us from an abusive parent. Is that how we want to think of God?

Jesus was the fulfillment of God’s purpose; a purpose that was shown forth when the crowd welcomed him into their midst in Jerusalem and blessed his presence among them. That purpose – God’s purpose, which we know from Scripture – was to show that ways we draw ourselves further from God, and then breach them through God’s own actions through Christ Jesus.

And Jesus lived in obedience to the divine purpose of his earthly life…and we, too, have a purpose here in life. It’s not as grand a purpose of reconciling the world from sin, but it is important nonetheless.

We are the people of God, and through our baptism God brings us in to be part of God’s purpose for humanity: to live in community, to gather life, strength, and hope through Jesus Christ. We can never know God’s plan – no matter how much we might think we can, we cannot think like God – but we can acknowledge God’s purpose for our lives and our participation in that purpose.

In our baptismal liturgy we announce that purpose clearly: to “profess faith in Christ Jesus, reject sin, and confess that faith of the church…renounce the devil and all the forces that defy God…and to renounce the ways of sin that draw us from God.” That’s God’s purpose for our lives. When we began this journey of Lent I asked you to consider what it meant to be human, and to remember whose we truly are – and if we are created by God, then we are part of God’s purpose.

And when that little corner of us then demands “but what do I have to do to be part of God’s purpose” we can turn around to is, and recite that purpose, and then ask “is this really just a mental commitment? Or am I to participate in this purpose with my whole body, soul, and strength?”

It was humankind’s rejection of that purpose that led to the crucifixion – Caiaphas’ knowledge that one man dying for the people would be better than the whole nation dying. Nations exist for the people and the systems that form them – and Caiaphas was afraid of Rome. So afraid, in fact, that he more or less accidentally foretold the fulfillment of God’s purpose through Jesus Christ.

Because as far as Caiaphas was concerned, he knew God’s plan. He was High Priest – this was not a easy job. He knew the right answers. He was a good theologian, a good pastor (being a good pastor is easier when you just tell people what they need to do or believe). But in his myopic vision of God’s plan, his human eyes failed to see the purpose.

There are ways that we embrace that purpose, and ways that we reject it…we reject it by making choices that harm our relationships with others, that are selfish or self-serving rather than godly. In fact, usually if we think that we know God’s plan for our lives, or start feeling that what we’re doing is what God plans for us (and we know this because we feel good about it)…then we should probably approach the world from a different angle…like down on our knees.

If we live our lives trying to deduce God’s plan for us, then we are condemned to become part of the crowd, and just that. One minute acclaiming Jesus as Lord and Saviour, and the next minute rejecting him and calling for his death because he doesn’t look or act how we expect and want him to; he hasn’t saved us as we want to be saved. Instead of pointing to our enemies and declaring their faults, Jesus welcomes them and eats with them, and then reveals our own hard-heartedness as a more grievous offense. But then, even worse, he still welcomes us, as well.

But when we live for God’s purpose, we become part of his church, the Body of Christ…and we become part of the great narrative of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. In reality, we become a living thread in the fabric of God’s kingdom; fulfilling our purpose and being one part of many.

Living to God’s purpose is not always pleasant – as the cross shows us, it too often involves suffering and pain. But because God understands this life – and the great Christian claim of God in Christ proclaims that God truly does understand – God also knows the purpose is greater.

Living God’s purpose for us gives us a glimpse of the world to come, so we understand that it is not an easy life, or the cheers of the crowd that give us worth – but like our saviour, obedience to the divine purpose of our God.

And if you doubt that, that God’s purpose for you is that you live eternally, then walk through this coming Holy Week. Come, imagine your saviour washing your feet and feeding you on Maundy Thursday. Come and be witnesses to his execution on Good Friday.

And then, on that great feast of Easter Sunday, come and see that God loves you so much that more than being willing to die for you – your God is willing to live for you.

Let the people of God say amen.

Lent 4 - On Returning to God

2011-04-19T10:09:00.001-07:00

“One thing I do know: that though I was blind, now I see.”

A recent survey on about religious questions asked, “what do you have to do to get to heaven?” The results showed that close to 80% of respondents believed that if you lived a good life and didn’t hurt anyone, you’d get to heaven. Being Christian was not the requirement. Simply “being good” was.

So what does it mean to “be good”? What yardstick do you use to measure that? The truth is, the only measure that we use to determine whether or not we’re ‘good’ is more often than not our own opinion. And it’s always easy to be good when we’re the judge, isn’t it? We tend to only consider ourselves as ‘not good’ when we look at our past selves.

It’s funny – and sad – how often the culture we live in picks and chooses the kind of baggage it can carry along. TV and movies still largely carry the message that you should live your life as you choose, not caring what other people think of you. You are the last and best judge of your actions.

And the same plot plays itself over and over and over again: someone commits a grievous error, hates themselves, and tries desperately to find some way to make amends through their own actions. If they’re successful, it’s a happy ending.

In the movie Seven Pounds, Will Smith plays a character who killed seven people in a car accident. To make amends he chooses seven people to help. He donates parts of his body and vital organs to people, first making certain they’re worthy to receive his gift.

As he lives, he chooses who will receive these things. Finally, he finds the last two candidates to whom he will donate his seven pounds of flesh – a man who’ll receive his eyes, and a woman to whom he (literally) gives his heart.

Having found them, he then commits suicide, having arranged through a friend that the deserving recipients will receive his gifts. He dies, they live. As he lived, he satisfied his own conscience, met his own criteria, found his own forgiveness.

And you know, we want to be able to fix everything, to make everything better, to clear our own conscience. On some level, we know we can’t. Yet that’s what we consistently try to do. Take charge of ourselves, take charge of our lives.

It’s good to hear that redemption is within our grasp. It’s the stuff of powerful Hollywood stories. The bad character can redeem themselves at the last possible moment. It’s the last way we can tell ourselves that we control our lives, our destiny, our salvation. Then we can answer that question: “what must I do to get to heaven,” with “anything I want.”

So, there’s a man in the gospel lesson for today who was born blind. We don’t know who he is, but we do know as we have come to understand the culture of the time that he would have been worthless. Being born blind, if he was lucky enough to come from a wealthy family he would have been sequestered at home.

Since he wasn’t – and we can know this from the way the Pharisees treat his parents – he was probably a beggar. Sitting by the side of the road with a bowl, dependent upon strangers for alms to help his family and support himself. This is where Jesus meets him, as he walks along the road.

And his disciples ask the question: who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? It’s a question that the disciples have to ask. In their religious system, if you have done good things then God looks after you and blesses you. If you have done bad things, then God will curse you and possibly your children. If you are born blind, then either the man or his parents must have done something to deserve it. Later on, when the Pharisees are driving him from the synagogue, they accuse him – “you were born entirely in sins!”

Because that’s always the big question, isn’t it – if God exists, then why do bad things happen to good people? That question has been at the root of many people who have walked away from the life of faith, because that question and its reverse – why do good things happen to bad people – struggle and strain at our hearts and our minds. If we are responsible for our own salvation, then if something is wrong in our lives then that must be our fault, too. It must be someone’s fault.

But as often as we think of those questions, we don’t remember the Saviour’s answer: Neither this man nor his parents sinned. Jesus doesn’t just answer the question with a ‘no,’ he negates the entire question.

It’s not about ‘who sinned,’ but rather that a man was born blind so that God’s work might be revealed in him. Jesus gives the disciples a better question to ask, which is “how will we see God at work in this man’s life?” And to think of it, that must have been the question they were asking. Because the blind man is still on the side of the road until Jesus takes some direct action.

The man wasn’t blind because of something he or someone else had done. He was born blind so that people would see that God’s grace is for all, perhaps even especially for those who didn’t think he deserved it. After all, the Pharisees who question him aren’t interested in his answers, only in that he’s not asking what they think are the right questions.

And it’s those questions that really define this gospel lesson, don’t they? From the very opening to the closing of the passage:

Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

Is this the man who was blind?

How were your eyes opened?

Where is this man?

Who is this man?

Are you trying to teach us?

Do you believe in the Son of Man?

Surely, we are not blind?

Place yourself in the story: Are you a disciple? Are you the man’s parents, trying to defend a religious position against attack while not feeling safe enough to place yourself in with the group under attack? Or are you a Pharisee, safe in your own righteousness and knowledge, able to denigrate and dismiss someone else’s miracle and attack the source of their hope and their identity because your safe answers are in jeopardy?

Actually, I think, in this story we’re the blind man on the side of the road. Our minds are filled with questions: who am I? Why am I here? How do these things happen to me?

The blind man doesn’t know who comes to heal him; in the same way that at our baptism we don’t know this Jesus who comes to us. In fact, we might live most of our baptised lives never actually feeling like we are part of the family of God: it’s easy to forget. If there is a monumental failing of the Lutheran church it’s that we pastors haven’t always been direct in connecting the pew, the pulpit, and the altar to the baptismal font. You are here and you are baptised – you are not here because you were baptised. You are here because you are.

It’s really easy to forget something that we might not actually remember; a day long ago when a pastor held us and sprinkled water on our head. When God is so far away from us, it does indeed seem that the world we know – the dust of the road, people passing by, our own internal thoughts – is all there is.

Jesus does not let us remain that way. He doesn’t even speak to the blind man before he does something about his affliction. Kneeling down, Jesus makes mud in the dust of the ground and forms it over the blind eyes. Telling the man to go and wash, he says nothing else to him. The man isn’t healed because he deserved it, or because he’d done something good in life. He’s healed because Jesus sought him out, and brought him into the kingdom of God.

And the man is left, on his own, to reach his own conclusions about what happened to him. Indeed, to reach his own conclusions about this man who healed him; who re-created his own eyes with the dust of the earth even as God created those first two humans in the Garden.

And when he is put to the test by the Pharisees who demand he admit that the man who touched his life is no different than anyone else, he can only offer one testimony in reply: this man may be a sinner. But one thing I know: though I was blind, now I see. And after he is put out of the synagogue for his troubles, Jesus comes seeking him again. The one who was blind and now can see has traded places with those who, though able to see, blind themselves to the presence of God in their midst.

Jesus calls the Pharisees blind because they willing blind themselves. In the comfort of the traditional answers they have, they don’t want to be moved beyond what they know. If Jesus is, in fact, the Messiah, then their carefully constructed system is about to fall down about their ears. The solution, then, is that Jesus cannot be the Messiah. He just can’t.

And I’ve said before that the Pharisees are good people. They’re not big bullies, the way we make them out to be. They follow the rules, they know the answers, they are the textbook example of good people.

And maybe they are a good example why it might not be enough to say that ‘good’ people are automatically fit for the kingdom of heaven. Maybe the question that survey should have asked instead was, “who is outside of the kingdom of heaven?” But that wouldn’t get many good answers, or at least, answers that would get good press. The old questions are much to be preferred. The old questions – what must I do to get into heaven? – are the ones the Pharisees ask.

And in much the same way, we become willingly blind through some of our own questions, when either we don’t want answers or the old answers we have are too comforting to let go. A few hundred years ago, there was no way that anyone who wasn’t Lutheran was going to go to heaven. It just wasn’t going to happen.

But over time pluralism and ecumenism worked to bring us together, and now we count many, many other Christian traditions among our coworkers in the vineyard of the Lord. Of course, they may not always count us among their coworkers, but we spend a little less time thinking about that.

As we sit, blind on the side of the road, and even later with our eyes newly opened, Jesus seeks us out. In our community we seek out the questions and the answers that the world asks of us: who is this Jesus, and what is he to you?

And we may spend several thousand more years trying to determine better answers to those questions than those we already have. Doctrine and dogma, the Small Catechism and the Lutheran Confessions all contribute to those discussions.

But let us, in this season of Lent, share our answer with the blind young man who was questioned by the Pharisees – what do you know about this man?

One thing we do know – once we were blind, but now we can see. Once we were asleep, but now we are awake. Once we walked in darkness, but now Christ shines upon us. Not because we earned it, but because we received it as gift.

Let the people of God say amen.

Lent 3 - On Being Known

2011-04-19T10:08:00.001-07:00

So, let’s try something different this morning.

I want to you to close your eyes and picture yourself. Picture yourself as you see yourself – what you do well, what you love doing, what your greatest joys are, your favourite pastimes. What do you look like?

Hold that image for a minute. Do you like what you see? Of course you should – that’s what self-esteem is all about, after all. We can construct an idealized image of ourselves and work to fit in it.

But now imagine this: you walk outside of church today, and see a man leaning up against your car. You begin to speak with him, and eventually realize that somehow he knows everything you’ve ever done. With a shock, you realize that it’s Jesus. And he’s talking about your salvation. And he knows.

Everything. Even those things that you try to keep hidden from yourself.

You can open your eyes. How do you feel now?

Did that imaginary encounter make you feel a little uncomfortable? Knowing that Jesus would know those silly little secrets you keep hidden from everyone?

It’s often hard to think of it, but that’s exactly what Jesus does with the woman at the well.

A few months ago I was out for supper with a very good friend of mine who is also a pastor. We were chatting with our waitress, and through our conversation we found that she worked two jobs, and had recently moved. My friend and I began to speculate about her situation. I guessed that she was paying off student loans and had left a relationship. He disagreed, thinking that she had bought a house and moved into it.

To settle our little contest, the next time the young lady came around my friend simply said to her, “so, do you like owning your own home?” And the look on her face was simply priceless. She almost dropped her tray, completely flabbergasted and weirded out that my friend knew she had bought a home. She spent the rest of the evening trying to figure out how my friend knew, even when he explained to her how he had reached his conclusion.

Now, I don’t think that she went away telling everyone he was magic. Actually, I think she found the experience totally creepy. And that’s how it is – when somebody knows something about us that we think we keep hidden, and we think is personal, we most often respond by wanting to hide ourselves from that person and from the knowledge they have about us. We try to bury our feelings – our shame? – rather than live with the knowledge that person has about us. Because we know that they may use it to cause us hurt.

As we’re gearing up for another federal election, now is the season that attack ads and scandals are unleashed upon us. Can you imagine being one of those leaders – hoping, praying that something from your past won’t become fodder for the nightly news? It’s unbelievable. Knowledge is power in our society, and the wrong kind of knowledge about the right person is an incredibly powerful tool.

In today’s gospel lesson we met the Samaritan woman at the well. It’s worth mentioning that she’s there at noon – the time when she should be gathering water is in the early morning, when all the other women are out. She speaks with Jesus. As a Samaritan, she shouldn’t even be seen near a Jew, let alone a male. This isn’t looking good for anyone.

But they have a conversation about water. It’s actually kind of cute – a glimpse into the humour and repartee that Jesus could have with people. “Give me a drink…why do you ask me?...if you had asked me, I would have given you living water…you have no bucket, where do you get it?...everyone who drinks this water will never be thirsty, it will become a spring in them, gushing up to eternal life…sir, give me this water so that I don’t have to come here anymore.

Then Jesus tosses in a comment that derails the entire conversation: “god and call your husband, and come back?” Why does Jesus say that? Can you imagine how that woman felt? Her downcast look, the sudden flushing of her face with shame and embarrassment? Any of you here who have experienced first-hand a divorce, either as a spouse or a child, knows the pain that questions like that automatically cause.

And she replies – “I have no husband…” and Jesus goes on, and digs even deeper. She’s right, he tells her, she has had five husbands, all dead or divorced, and the one she is with is not her husband. What that likely means is that her last husband died, and she became the property of his brother or half-brother; such a union had no religious rite under the law, and such people were usually second-class citizens.

Thus, we find her here. At the well of her shame, outcast from her community, having known the shame and stigma of abandonment, of loneliness. And this man, this man in whom for a moment she was beginning to have a microscopic glimmer of hope, this man just dashed it again.

And she acknowledges that he is a prophet, but she knows that prophets only denounce women like her. She’s a example, and not a good one. She’s a “scarlet woman” – it doesn’t matter what her former husbands may have done; since she’s a woman the fault is hers.

But the prophet, the Messiah, the Christ, keeps speaking with her. He doesn’t denounce her; he doesn’t make her an object lesson. Knowing her deep secrets and desires he takes the knowledge of them and instead of using them to hurt her, he returns to her her dignity. The woman who came to the well to draw water instead comes to the font of living water, and finds the wellspring inside of her.

We often toss off a cliché – Jesus knows your heart, and we usually mean it in a pretty passive-aggressive way. If you don’t agree with what I’m saying, Jesus knows you’re wrong. Or, as an excuse – he might be a pretty nasty piece of work, but he’s got a good heart. But those don’t really matter. Jesus is going to show you all those deep wounds in your soul, wounds that are as deep as that well where the woman sat.

And when our wounds are that deep, we come to them to draw our own water, seeking endurance, character, and hope through our suffering. But that gets old, quickly. And as endurance fails, hope fails faster. As our own supplies of spiritual water that give us strength fail, we become angry, turned in on ourselves, and ready to vent our anger at anyone, and especially at those who we think might dare to lead us. When we come to depend on ourselves instead of Christ for our spiritual food, we come up empty, but find that we can’t blame ourselves and instead find fault with the institution, its leaders, and its Saviour.

But when we are thirsty, and when Christ comes to us and offers us that living water, we can drink deeply and often, and we find that it truly does form a spring inside of us, a spring from which the Holy Spirit flows in, around, and through us.

God, who can bring water from a rock, can even bring from our own wounded and fragmented hearts abundant life; life that is restored to relationships we thought long dead, to feelings we thought long dormant, and to a Saviour we thought was laid in a tomb.

As in those days of the Israelites God struck the rock and water poured out of it, on that darkest day when our Saviour hung on the dead wood of the cross, God struck that tree and from it came the spring of eternal life.

From the dark stain of death and suffering came endless and eternal life, the gift of God through Jesus Christ, who reconciled us with God so that we may sit with him at that eternal well, dwell with him in glory, and join in the work of the harvest.

Let the people of God say amen.

Lent 2 - On Being Born Anew

2011-03-19T10:36:00.000-07:00

I was sick this past week and lost my voice entirely. So when I finished writing my sermon Friday night and my voice seemed all right for the moment, I recorded it just in case I lost my voice again Sunday.

If you've never recorded anything trying to hold a baby on your lap, let me tell you it's a new experience!

The production quality stinks and it was recorded at my kitchen table, but hey - it's a step in the right direction...and for those of you for whom the content may be less than interesting, at least enjoy the antics of The Girl.

Lent 1 - On Being Human

2011-03-18T20:04:00.000-07:00

What does it mean to you, that you are human?

Maybe it means that you were created. That’s a good place to start. There’s an ongoing debate that pits ‘new atheists’ Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins against the biblical witness that we are created creatures of God. At issue isn’t just the simplistic argument: does God exist; but a deeper one: if we are spontaneous organisms at the end of a long evolutionary path, then why bother being in community? Why bother coming together – for any reason – at all?

The funny part is that both arguments begin at the same place. Everything is created out of dust – something both science and faith can agree on. Coming out of Ash Wednesday, when we heard the words “remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return”, it can be good to realize that there’s at least one thing that isn’t worth fighting over.

But what comes after that? God creates the first human out of the dust of the ground; even the word, adamah, means ‘earthling’ or ‘mudling’. But once that creation is finished, what then? Well, the man is put into the garden, dependent upon the grace and goodness of God to provide. We remember that when we learn Luther’s explanation of the first commandment in the Small Catechism – “we are to fear, love, and trust God above all things.” That’s where I think we are today.

But it turns out that that is harder to do than we think. Even for those first people, who turn from God so readily. Because that’s something that we miss – the serpent doesn’t actually force them to do anything – all it does is put the merest shadow of a question in their minds – do we really trust God?

It is the temptation to be self-sufficient and self-determining that seduces the first humans, nothing else. Somehow, though they are part of God’s good creation, that willingness to turn from God is a part of who they are. Instead of doing what they were created to do – to fear, love, and trust God above all else – they change their focus instead to wanting to be like God.

They turn inwards, caring more about who they are than about whose they are.

And that first, innermost sin spreads like a virus throughout history and all of humanity. It comes to us in the pre-eminence of human agency in our society.

‘Human agency’ is probably the single most overemphasized concept in our society. Because of it, we are led to believe that we can choose everything we want, and that lack of choice infringes on our ‘rights’ as human beings. We can choose grocery stores, sales, music, lifestyles; choice is always presented as a guaranteed fact.

But really, we don’t want that agency to extend to the consequences of our choice. We just want that agency to be total freedom of the consequences of our choices – really, we want to be how we so popularly conceive of God: absolute power; no responsibility.

And that is endemic through our society. People smoke, yet blame tobacco companies when they get lung cancer; drink to stupidity, and blame the alcohol for the tragedy of the day. Every day people die in silly ways as a direct result of their own choices…yet the blame is spread around…and usually, it gets laid on God.

We don’t often realize that the agency we demand is the agency that God gives us – the freedom, not just to make choices, but the total freedom which includes the consequences of those choices.

Remember: the serpent simply asks Eve and Adam if they really, really trust God. Everything else is their actions. They don’t anticipate that their choice is going to result in putting themselves in direct opposition to God; they just want to be in control, to be “all that they can be.”

In the same way, St. Paul wrote to the church at Rome so many years later. In the excerpt from the epistle lesson for today, he really just tells them: you want your agency? You have it. But here’s the bad news. That means everything is up to you. And if your salvation is up to you, then you have no way out. Even if you’ve never heard of Christ. But, Paul points out, if sin spread through one person’s choice, then shouldn’t God’s choice remove it?

When we think about our ‘humanness’, isn’t it curious that we automatically start by trying to explain what makes us, in and of ourselves, human? We try to define ‘who’ we are, and forget all about whose we are.

A crucial part of the Christian journey is honesty, both with ourselves and with God. If we are not willing to be honest, to be vulnerable, then we will never find a relationship deeper than the most casual acquaintance. St. Paul knew that – throughout most of his letter to the Romans he keeps asking questions of himself:

Why do I sin?

Why do I fall short?

And you know, those are the same questions we ask ourselves. Nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks, “today, I’m going to make my friend feel miserable by gossiping about her. I’m going to sin, and I’m going to enjoy it.”

Even like we do now, Paul found that there was nothing he could do to avoid sin. And then, he realized that through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ we are pardoned and forgiven. If that is true – if, in fact, God acted in Jesus to pardon us without our permission – then our salvation rests not in who we are or what we do, but in whose we are. We are to fear, love, and trust God above all things.

So our spiritual journey then, does not become one of moving towards a goal that God has set for us in the future – as we often think – but rather in becoming more truly human, fully dependent upon God for all things. That is the example that Jesus shows in the wilderness, that strength is found in relationship with God.

The story of Jesus in the wilderness is a familiar one. Again, he’s in the desert for 40 days. The Holy Spirit leads him there after his baptism. And there, he meets the devil.

The devil tempts himself with Jesus’ power. The devil wants to see Jesus be independent – do it on his own, thereby committing the same mistake made in the Garden.

But Jesus refuses to establish his own worth and identity on his own terms, and remains in relationship with God. In short, he knows who he is by first remembering whose he is. He fulfills the first commandment, remembering to fear, love, and trust God above all things.

And that’s an interesting lesson. Because then the gospel lesson – and Lent itself – becomes less about resisting temptation, defying the devil, and growing spiritually, and becomes more about becoming aware of how insufficient our agency really is. That it is our belief that we can do things on our own that kills us – kills our relationships with others, and with God.

And now we think: C’mon…it’s not that bad. I don’t pretend to be God. But I can run my life without God. God is for Sunday…for funerals…for weddings…

But aren’t you just pretending you can dictate to God when God is allowed in your life? That, in fact, you are still trying to be God in God’s place?

The season of Lent reveals to us that Jesus did not come to show us how to be divine. He didn’t come to show that we could defeat the devil by proof-texting him into oblivion.

Instead, Jesus came in weakness to show us what it means to be truly human; to accept that we are created to be in relationship with God and with each other.

Through our baptism into Christ, God names and claims us as God’s own children, a gift that is given to us because God wants to give it.

Our human-ness may come from a realization that the Holy Spirit is always with us, and leads us to places that we may not like – that our agency is really only in our minds.

In Mark’s version of this wilderness story, Mark writes that the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness, in the same way a swarm of bees can drive a herd of cattle into a thicket of brambles. These forty days of Lent, then, teach us not that God can be found through fasting or prayer – but that we might find ourselves in those disciplines, and the courage to live out our own baptismal covenant that calls us to return from our high and lofty places, and be led by the Spirit into our own wildernesses.

And I’ll point out that Jesus just had wilderness to contend with. We have 21^st century society, and given a choice between the two I’d probably take the wilderness. The bare wilderness of the desert is for Jesus – our wilderness is a wilderness of conflicting ideas, conflating principles, and increasingly nightmarish moral and ethical dilemmas that continually confront us.

But our human-ness and our connection to community comes with trusting the Spirit of God that leads us out of this place and into those wild places, bearing nothing but the promise of the gospel and the presence of Christ. The same Spirit leads us to be witnesses for our faith in word and deed even when that witnessing exposes us to the shame and ridicule of Christ on the cross.

And it is in our realization of our dependence upon God – God on the cross, God in the tomb, God raised eternally -- that we become, truly, human: created, chosen, baptized, and redeemed.

Let the people of God say amen.

Ash Wednesday

2011-03-10T09:26:00.000-08:00

I was reading on a news website the other day about a group that is travelling from city to city across the United States warning everyone who will listen that the end of the world – the day of Judgement – will be May 21, of this year.

That’s right, you have slightly more than two months to live. Of course, it depends a bit on who you talk to – some of the people, who are all followers of Family Radio Worldwide, say that May 21 will be the day of judgement, while others just say it will be the beginning of the day of judgement. I guess there is such a thing as hedging your bets on such an important topic.

But I don’t mean to sound flippant. The end of the world; the end of all time; the end of all flesh has long been a fascination of the Christian church, from the earliest church fathers to its latest messiahs. But I do have to wonder: what are the motivations of this group? They believe that only a small percentage of people will be saved from God’s wrath. A heartrending interview with a 8-year-old girl revealed that while she hoped she would be saved, she knew she wasn’t, “and was really afraid burning for eternity.”

And I ask myself: what good does that do? What comfort is there to believing that what God redeemed in love he will later destroy in wrath?

But no matter how we view the beliefs of other faith communities, when we as Lutherans embark upon the journey of Lent, when we repent and ask for God’s forgiveness, we are anticipating the same end of the world. We know it will come. And we ask God’s mercy.

But we do things a little differently. For the sign of the cross marked on your foreheads today with ashes – like the one at your baptism – isn’t put there in case you die. It’s in case you live; because it’s easy to die in the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ – but it’s something else entirely to aspire to live in it. You are marked with ashes today not just as a remembrance of your own mortality; but you are marked with the cross of Christ, through which you will gain everlasting life.

The Lenten season begins today and will last for more or less 40 days – though if you were to count, you’d find there are in fact more like 45 days until Easter. Sundays aren’t included in Lent, because they are always celebrations of the Resurrection. And just so you know, the word ‘lent’ originally meant ‘spring’.

And maybe lent has more in common with spring than we might think; spring is a time of newness, rebirth, and renewal out of the death of winter;

lent is a time to reflect on our baptism and its basis in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

As we opened this evening in the litany: for if we have been united with Christ in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. You may have recognized that from Paul’s letters. But maybe you recognized it for what it’s greater meaning to this worshipping community: the opening of our funeral liturgy.

As we reflect on the death of things past and things to come, lent becomes a time for rebirth and renewal in preparation for the celebration of Easter. Ash Wednesday is the lens through which we see ourselves in relationship to that crucified and risen Christ.

For lent, and today especially, is a time of reflection and penitence, and thinking about our own mortality and our own being. We become part of Christ through our baptism. We remember that God forgives and justifies us because of our faith in Jesus, who took our sin on himself. Ash Wednesday is for us to recognize the scandal of a God who chose to die so that his children could live.

About thirty years after the resurrection of Jesus, Paul wrote to the Corinthian community and begged them: we entreat you on behalf of Christ: be reconciled to God. In effect: let Christ be your Saviour. Stop insisting that you are an agent in your own salvation. You are not.

On Ash Wednesday, we consider how we have been drawn into God’s dialogue with creation, how God in Christ took on our sin, bore the brunt of our unrighteousness in putting him to death, and still gave to us his own righteousness, the righteousness of the Passover lamb, the utter and complete forgiveness of all our sin.

Tonight, we reflect on how we can be the recipients of such awesome gifts, and still remain the sinful and self-worshipping creatures that we are. And we come to admit our fault, our guilt, our culpability in Christ’s death.

But we also rejoice in our new life in Christ.

And this is part of the great Christian mystery, a paradox at the heart of our Lutheran theological tradition – and mystery is something Lutherans do well. But Luther wasn’t original in his idea; Paul wrote to the Corinthian community about that same paradox, how he could have all things through Christ, but that still the reverse was true, as well:

…be treated as an imposter, and yet are true

…as unknown, and yet well known

…as dying, and behold, we live

…as punished, and yet not killed,

…as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing

…as poor, yet making many rich

…as having nothing, yet possessing everything.

And the scandal of the Christian life is that we are justified – we are made right with God solely through the actions of Jesus Christ – and yet, at the same time, we remain sinners. Because our treasure lies coated, stained, and wrapped in sin.

Our treasure should be the grace and mystery of God. But we find our treasure in what we can do for ourselves, be it for our salvation, or simply to crown our own selves the regent of our own lives. We are caught in that, as we confess so often that we are captive to sin and cannot free ourselves.

We can’t change that treasure. We can repent, and turn from it, but we will return to it again; faith is not a straight line; it is a winding path that leads to the kingdom of heaven. But we do not give up hope.

And Jesus says, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” It can be depressing that because there is nothing we can do – we can never work hard enough to make a sign to God that we believe – that we give up, and so consistently reject the presence of God in our lives,.

We can’t change our treasure. But God can change our hearts. And we find, that through our baptism, God does, in fact, do exactly that. Because when our hearts are buried with Christ through the waters of baptism, then it is God who changes our hearts, who creates them clean and new, speaks words of hope and healing, and gives us a treasure absolutely beyond compare.

This is the one day of the year when, if you don’t scrub your forehead immediately after the service, everyone will know you are Christian. You are serious enough about it to let someone smudge ashes onto your head. But consider this: when others talk about the need to repent, for the end of the world is near, you are marked with ashes today as a sign that the new world is near: that God’s kingdom is coming, and that you are created new each and every day.

Someone once asked Martin Luther if he thought that the end of the world was coming. Martin replied that certainly, the end of the world was coming. But, “even if I knew for certain that the world would end tomorrow, I would still plant my apple tree.”

And your world might end tomorrow. It might end on May 21. But God will still keep planting the seeds of his kingdom in your heart, and watching it change and grow.

Because are worth more than dying for. You are worth living for. I don’t mark you with ashes because you should die. You are marked so that you may live.

So that the tree on which was hung the Saviour of the world might become for you a symbol of hope, of renewal, of resurrection. You are grafted onto that great tree of life; but dust you are, and to dust you shall return.

But God created the world out of dust. What more will God do with you?

Let the people of God say amen.

Transfiguration

2011-03-06T14:14:00.000-08:00

It’s beautiful up on the mountain.

It’s a calm, clear day. Jesus and the disciples have travelled far; a few days earlier Jesus had made his most intense demand of those who would be his disciples – that they should deny themselves, take up their own cross, and follow him.

Now Peter, James, and John follow Jesus up to the top of the mountain. They don’t know why they’re picked; they just know that if they’re going up to the top of a mountain, it’s probably going to be good.

You see, only good things happen on the tops of mountains. It’s like an immutable law of religion – if you want to find God (or any god) you find yourself a mountain. At the top of the mountain you can build an altar; you can receive stone tablets, you could maybe even get a supplicant’s eye-view of a little divine smiting, if you’re very lucky.

Everybody likes to be on the mountain. And maybe even yourself…maybe you’re the ‘faith is found in the mountains’ kind of person. Or, your husband is, or your children are, and that’s why they’re not here today. I can’t disagree; indeed, it’s beautiful up on the mountain.

On the top of the mountain those three disciples see Jesus transfigured before them; his face shines like the sun and his clothes become dazzling white. The Jesus who walked up the mountain with them, with whom they’ve spent the last few months and years...suddenly, he’s not that Jesus anymore. He’s vastly different.

And Moses and Elijah appear talking to him; we’re not certain how Peter, James, and John knew who they were; this is certainly before the days when they could be Facebook friends with them. But appear they do, and those three Apostles stand dumbfounded as their teacher speaks – on equal terms – with the two individuals that their own religious tradition epitomizes as the Law and the Prophets. There’s not supposed to be anyone equal to these two; even the Messiah is supposed to be answerable to them. But Jesus speaks with them as an equal.

In his awe of what is before him, Peter is the first of the three to speak: “Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

If that seems a bit odd for you, remember that in the Jewish tradition the festival of tabernacles – of tents, or booths – is a time to recognize and remember when they carried God with them in the wilderness of Israel for 40 years. Peter is only suggesting what he believes to be religiously appropriate.

But that is not to be, because even as he is speaking a bright cloud overshadows them, and they hear a voice crying out “this is my Son, the Beloved, with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” or as a more accurate translation, “hear him!”

Certainly, God speaking is reminiscent of Jesus’ own baptism. The cloud that surrounds them is quite likely the divine presence itself, but to whom is God speaking? Does God speak to Peter, James, and John, who already follow…We can make a lot of those three. Seeing the baptism, seeing the miracles, we can make ourselves feel a lot better by saying that we recognize Jesus as the Christ, when they didn’t.

Or does God speak instead to Moses and Elijah; and to those who insist that it is the Law and the Prophets that bring salvation, rather than the Son? Because it is only the Master who can determine the worth of a servant, and perhaps here God foreshadows that great Easter morning, when the grave yawns open and death is swallowed up forever.

Yes, it can be beautiful up on the mountain. And it is hard to come down from the mountain.

We all have those ‘mountaintop’ experiences, don’t we? Those times when we’re on top of the world, and everything is going our way – or so we think. But then sometimes, we come down from the mountain in a very hard way, and we land in the valley below.

I met a man named Dave who knew what it was like to fall from the mountaintop to the valley. Dave had been an engineer, a very good one, who had lived the storybook life. He’d married a nurse, raised three beautiful children. Had his own office, his own secretary. Dave and his wife celebrated their 25^th wedding anniversary with a month-long stay in Hawaii. They renewed their vows on the beach, using the words of the simple Christian ceremony of a quarter-century before. It was the pinnacle of their lives.

When they returned home, They found how quickly you can fall down the mountain, and how hard it can hurt. They came home to twenty messages on their answering machine from his wife’s doctor. A routine blood test had showed something wasn’t right. Subsequent testing showed breast cancer. Found it too late. Absolutely going to die.

Dave’s wife died in agony, four months after their anniversary. And the alcohol that Dave relied on to soothe the hurt of the vast aching emptiness he was left with came to control his life. And Dave lost everything. His home, his children even stopped speaking with him after two or three embarrassing incidents.

I met Dave when he came by the church I interned at, asking for a handout. As well as that, I sat down with him, and listened to his story. Dave told me he figured that his problems began when he got too comfy where he was in his life, and because he was feeling so blessed and close to God, God wanted to “teach him a lesson.”

It is hard to come down from the mountain. I’d imagine that everyone here knows the feeling of hitting the bottom of the valley, hard.

But God isn’t capricious; God doesn’t wait hiding for you, waiting for you to come seeking so God can smack you down. God is more surprising than that. God is more unexpected than even that.

Peter, and James and John got a foretaste of what it’s really like to be in the presence of the Divine; and they find that the divine tastes like dirt.

As they see and hear what goes on around them, the three of them are overcome with fear and fall to the ground. Then Jesus, just plain Jesus, touches them and says simply, “be raised, and do not fear.” It is the touch of the Saviour that raises them from the death of their fear, his presence that gives them new life.

And then, wonder of wonders, does Jesus stay on the mountain, on this holy place?

No. Jesus walks back down with them. This divinity just revealed to them continues to walk in the same dust and dirt. The glow is gone; the clothes are back to rough and dirty. But this is God who comes down the mountain with them. This hasn’t happened before. Fifteen centuries earlier, when Moses came back down the mountain, he had to veil his face so that the Israelites wouldn’t be so terrified of him, for his encounter with the Divine had forever changed his appearance – his face and beard were shockingly white.

Jesus is either a madman, bedazzling his followers with some well-timed illusions and hallucinations, or he is the Incarnation of the greatest mystery that the universe has ever known – because humanity and divinity don’t mix half-and-half. Plain humanity meeting the righteousness of God is death. Divinity meeting humanity forever alters that person.

But Jesus remains just plain Jesus. The measure of humanity, and the fullness of deity.

Just plain Jesus who walks down the mountain, facing fixedly towards Jerusalem and the next mountain he will climb. A mountain called Golgotha, upon which, instead of being transfigured, he will trampled under the heels of our sin. Yet Jesus still comes down the mountain; God still walks with us. And God knows how much it hurts to come down from the mountain.

I’ll tell you, though, that Dave is back working. He works as a handyman at a homeless shelter. On day, getting a meal Dave noticed that a load-bearing beam was beginning to crack. Drawing upon his background in engineering, he helped the shelter fix the problem with a minimum expense. In return for his work, Dave gets a small cot, his meals, and a stipend every month. Dave is still invisible. There’s no powerful story here – he didn’t go back to his corporate culture, didn’t get a new wife, new life. He’s still Dave. But there’s something different about him.

There’s a story told about an old violin that was brought out as the last item at an auction. It was dusty, battered, and scarred, and looked like it had seen many, better days.

And the auctioneer began his calling, saying “one dollar, who’ll give me one dollar? One dollar, maybe two dollars for this old violin?” And nobody moved. Nobody wanted it.

And from the back came an old man who walked to a place beside the auctioneer. He took the violin from his hand, wiped off the dust, tightened the strings, and rosined the bow. And tucking the old violin under his chin, the old man began to play.

And the sounds that came from the old violin then rivalled the song that the angels sing in glory. When the old man was done, he set the violin down, and walked back to his chair, and sat back down.

The auctioneer cleared his throat, and started again: “one thousand, who has one thousand? Two thousand? Who’ll make it three thousand?’

But some people didn’t understand what had happened. “What changed its worth?” they asked.

“Well,” the auctioneer replied, “it was the touch of the master’s hand.”

Beloved you may know that there’s more than one ending to this story. But let me tell you this: the value of the violin changed when people heard that it could be useful to them – but to the master, it was always priceless. It is through use – and misuse – that fine instruments become worn. But to the Master, they are always priceless.

And it’s beautiful when they can sing, and wonderful when they’re heard. But we discard them too quickly when we think they’re past their best, when they’ve gone from the mountaintop to the valley.

But through it all, the Master knows their worth. It is beautiful to be up on the mountain, when everything is clear. And it is hard to come down from the mountain. But that same Jesus who is lifted up before us, is the same one who will take our hands, touch us, and raise us up when we are battered and worn from our journey, and once having touched us, will never let us go.

And we will go up the mountain to see Jesus. But when we come back down into the valley it is Christ who comes with us, bears our burden, heals our hurts, and guides us home.

And let the people of God say ‘amen.’

blog updates

2011-02-23T08:18:00.000-08:00

so there are a few blog updates today -- I've posted my sermons from the last few Sundays. My apologies for my tardiness -- here in Macintyre-land I've just had trouble motivating myself. One week it's +3 and sunny, and the next it's -43 (I wish I was kidding).

And I've been spending some time reflecting on what this 'pastor' thing really means. So look for a posting in the future.

blessings~

Epiphany 7

2011-02-23T08:16:00.001-08:00

When we were in Saskatoon, Diana and I often attended services at a Lutheran church that was close to where we lived. To get there, we walked past a large ultra-conservative charismatic church that had its own school (the kind where women had to wear dresses and couldn’t hold office in the church aside from the music ministry or elementary Sunday school teachers), a Roman Catholic Church, and another large evangelical church. Now, before you think that we were walking five miles in the snow, uphill both ways, realize that our walk was maybe six or eight blocks.

But I loved reading the church signs that the churches had. One Sunday the Roman Catholic Church had a sign advertising a festival for its patron saint. The charismatic church sign then said “all saints are welcome” and the evangelical church sign said “you don’t need to be a saint to come here.”

Another Sunday in the middle of summer the Roman Catholic church posted a sign on its door warning worshippers that the air-conditioning unit had broken. The charismatic church sign said “there’s no air conditioning in hell” and the evangelical church sign said, “come in and cool down, our air conditioning is working.”

But my favourite church signs centred around the gospel lesson for today. One day the Roman Catholic church sign said “remember the Golden Rule,” the charismatic church sign read “Sermon Sunday: who are the enemies of Christians?” and the evangelical church sign read “Love your enemies; it confuses them and makes them uncomfortable.”

A journalist once asked the great Mahatma Gandhi what he thought about Christianity: “your Christ I like,” Gandhi replied, “but your Christians I can’t stand.” And you know what? He had a certain point. How many times have you defended your faith with the statement “we’re not like that!” or “those people in that church see things differently than we do.” As Christians, it seems that we fail deeply, and often, at being good representatives of our faith. Instead of focusing on living in community, we can shift our focus to ourselves.

It becomes very easy for us to imagine that we are solitary travellers on the road of the gospel, because our vision becomes very focused on what we perceive to be at the end of the road: God‘s kingdom.

Think of the last time you made a trip to say…drive to Calgary. When you can see the skyline of the city north of Airdrie, have you ever noticed that you stop paying attention to what’s going on around you? You become so focused on those big tall buildings that they begin to represent everything for you - the end of your journey.

But you don’t go to those buildings, do you? No, chances are you go to a tidy house in the suburbs or a nice hotel. You may never go near those big tall buildings that were your focus; but they remain your focus nonetheless. In the same way our passion -- our good and right desire -- for the kingdom of heaven can sometimes get in our way of understanding what Jesus means when he speaks directly to us. And we’re not alone in that.

Today’s gospel lesson continues the Sermon on the Mount in the gospel of Matthew; telling the story of what life looks like the kingdom of God. For us, it takes four or five weeks to read; but for Jesus it takes about fifteen or twenty minutes to speak. So far, after two thousand years of studying it, we’re still trying to unpack all that Jesus was saying.

There’s one thing that remains abundantly clear: as a moral teacher, Jesus doesn’t really fit the bill. You see, already Jesus assumes that the people he’s speaking to are moral people -- that they have a sense of what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’ -- but he also repeatedly emphasizes to them that mere morality is not worthy of the kingdom of heaven.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’…but I say to you, do not resist an evildoer.”

“You have heard that it was said ‘you shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy‘…but I say to you, love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you…for if you love those who love you, what reward to you have?”

Those two “you have heard that it was said…” are basic moral laws. One, you should right wrongs when you see them or when they are done to you, and two, that you should hang out with those people who are like you and avoid those who aren’t. They’re constants, repeated throughout just about every moral system.

Does Jesus make sense? Do you think that the crowd gathered around him is listening with delight? I don’t think so. In fact, I think that the disciples are completely mind-boggled about this entire business. What is the point in becoming a disciple of a great religious teacher if you can’t wave a bit of your own piety in everyone else’s face?

Because think for a moment where Jesus’ teaching is going to lead you. Have you ever heard of anyone who completely modelled this kind of behaviour? Sure you have - Jesus did, in the book of Acts, Stephen did, Paul did (eventually). And they all have something in common: what is it?

Let me give you a hint: they all died. Directly because of living out these words. Jesus likes morals and morality; I’m not for a minute going to say that he doesn’t. But what Christ knows is that morals and morality are not going to save you from hell. They will provide guidance, good ways of living your life, but they cannot save you. Because morality and hypocrisy are soul mates.

In the US right now, the national debt is become the huge moral issue of the day. “How can Obama run the debt up so high? It’s immoral and unchristian!” And you know what? They have a certain point: running up a debt so high that it will take 5000 years to pay off is never a good idea.

But the same people who are protesting the immorality of Obama’s spending on health care and education are the same people who supported his predecessor when he picked two wars, cut taxes for the rich and doubled the national debt.

As one commentator in the States put it, “it seems that every pure moral claim is mixed with hypocrisy.” That shouldn’t surprise anyone - when it’s you who is claiming an eye or a tooth when you’ve been wronged it’s easy to being righteous; but when you’re the person from whom the eye or tooth has been claimed the issue may not seem so cut-and-dried.

Someone comes among you preaching sedition and blasphemy, threatening to overturn your centuries-old model of faith and religious life. What do you do? Morally, you remove the sickness, like a surgeon excising a tumour. But as you’re doing it, you’re also killing the Saviour of the world.

Liturgically, we confess that duplicity every Sunday: “we have fallen short of the life you desire for us” or, more traditionally put: “we confess we are captive to sin and cannot free ourselves.” Morality - which is how we respond to sin by moving away from it and putting it farther from us-- is not equal to God’s response, which is to wipe sin away entirely.

The last verse of today’s gospel lesson is directly responsible for my own desire to study the Greek language during my undergrad years. “Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect,” Jesus says, and it appears to us like Jesus is saying that’s it’s a perfectly fine and reasonable expectation that we should be - not try to be, not strive to be, but that we SHOULD BE - just like God.

But the interesting thing about language is that it changes with time and use. In our culture now, perfect means ‘without blemish’ or ‘flawless’. The Greek word that is used here means “complete” or “finished”. We are not flawless, but in God’s world we are complete. We are not called to artificial smoothness but to wholeness - to holiness - for no other reason than Christ calls us to be.

We are called to love our enemies -- whomever they may be -- as a reminder that God loves all of creation, that God alone is sovereign and God alone is the source of all mercy.

Jesus speaks to us out of the knowledge that the law cannot provide salvation for us; but only the gospel gives salvation. And certainly, the law can guide us or drive us to the gospel - to the person of Jesus Christ and his suffering, death, and resurrection -- but it can never be the means of our salvation.

That’s part of the reason why Jesus always carries the law to the most extreme examples of which he can think - so that his listeners (and us) can understand that worrying about our own worthiness or unworthiness is not a fruitful task.

But rather, Christ seeks to help us understand that all things in our lives come from God: good and bad, just and unjust. Human beings can be great moral teachers, but as Paul reminds us “let no one boast about human leaders…for all things are yours.”

So remember, when you are aware of the ways that you fail to live perfectly, when that little devil on your shoulder reminds you of all the stinging things that you’ve done in life…that none of it matters. Not life or death or present or future - for all those things are part of who you are, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.

And the next time that you are speaking with someone about your faith, and they bring before you their negative experience in a church, you can look at them, and honestly say to them - you’re right. We’re not perfect, and we know we can’t be. But still, we all belong to Christ.

In that way, you will proclaim the kingdom of God, and be complete.

And it saves us having to buy a bigger church sign.

Let the people of God say amen.

Epiphany 6

2011-02-23T08:15:00.002-08:00

So where does it “get” you today? What part of Jesus’ words today sting your heart?

This is not one of those “in-the-original-Greek-it’s-different” texts. Jesus has been speaking with the group about kingdom life – what life is like in the kingdom of God. It’s a place where the meek, the mourning, the weak and the wishy-washy are blessed.

It’s a place that blows away the expectations of those who want to find the ‘deserving’ people there. Yet not in a good way - in the gospel lesson today Jesus takes ‘deserving’ to a whole new level, one that lays out exactly what God wants from us.

And it’s an impossible expectation. If there’s one thing Jesus doesn’t do, it’s leave things at a halfway point. To those who would argue that “by grace we are saved after all we can do ourselves,” Jesus ups the ante. If you look at someone with hate, you commit murder. If you look at someone with lust, you commit adultery. If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. If you arm causes you to sin, cut it off.

They are hard words. Words that sound foreign to ears that are raised in a culture of personal-driven success and steeped in the doctrine of a God whose love is pointless, whose relationship is dependent upon ones own personal choice.

Today, Jesus tells us the deepest matters of God’s own heart, and there is nothing we can do to avoid the inescapable fact that no matter how much we can be affirming to ourselves, we still fall short of the goal set for us by our creator.

We know we should not murder, but we still hate, despise, and argue with each other. We are willing to kill relationships with others, to maintain our own self-righteousness.

We know we should not commit adultery, but we still disrespect others and treat them as less than fully human.

Today, we find that our hearts and God’s heart are mutually exclusive.

God listens to our hearts and knows that even if we can keep from swearing falsely, we are still willing to manipulate others with our words, to lead others astray by what we say, to let our words be meaningless rather than let our yes mean yes and our no mean no.

The diagnosis: our hearts are diseased, unhealthy, disheartened.

And so, in God’s mercy, God gives us law. In the teaching of Jesus, this is law that will not let our hearts fall short of loving as God would have us love. It is law that would have us love in a way that care for others and world Gdo made, as we say in our baptismal promises.

And it is law that ultimately convicts us, because what it demands of us, we cannot do. There’s no way around it. The law always kills – it kills what is bad in us, and it does that by showing us God’s love.

And here again the law shows us God’s love, by showing us our failing and driving us into the arms of our merciful God. St. Augustine put it this way: “The law was given for this purpose: to make you, being great, little; to show that you do not have in yourself the strength to attain righteousness, and for you, thus helpless, unworthy, and destitute, to flee to grace.” The grace of God is there, offered for us. We need only to stop rejecting it.

Moses, the old preacher, sits on the side of a mountain overlooking the Promised Land. He’s old, he’s tired. He’s tired of mediating petty wars and empty hearts. He’s tired of combating the forces of idolatry, idleness, and irateness that abide much more fully in the Israelite congregation than does any genuine love.

But the old preacher still has breath for one last sermon, and so he begins to preach the same message that he has time after time.

“See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity.”

Life or death, Moses says, is a choice.

But it’s not just a ‘today I’ve decided to follow Jesus’ choice. It’s a choice that his congregation will make and re-make every day in their hearts, surrounded by hundreds of other gods and idols demanding their service. It’s a tough choice.

“If you keep the laws, ordinances, and commandments of the Lord your God, you shall live…if you turn your hearts away, you will perish.”

These are tough words. But is what Moses says any different – in fact, are they any harsher that what Jesus says? Not at all.

Yet we want Jesus to be gentle-Jesus-meek-and-mild. We want Jesus to be the exemplary not just of the God of love, but the God of our kind of love, the kind our culture thrives on: shallow, fleeting, not demanding of oneself, empty and easy to please.

In the past, in an effort to separate the dichotomy between the Old Testament and the New, some people claimed that the ‘God of the Old Testament” was a god of wrath, while “the God of the New Testament” was a God of love.

In an effort to keep their own hearts from God, they created two gods; one whom they could stomach and control, and one whom they could abandon.

And Christ stands before us with bleeding hands and heart and cries out “is THIS what I died for?”

God is a god of love; a love so fierce and all-encompassing that it created the world, called God’s people back unto God and kept God stubbornly insistent on mercy, even to the point of death. The law, given to the chosen people, pointed towards God’s love.

The law reveals to us God’s heart; it reveals God’s stubborn insistence to be merciful to us even when our own nature rejects and rebels against God. You know the rest of the story after Moses finishes his sermon today. Do the Israelites actually do what God asks of them through Moses?

No. But time and time again, God reaches for the chosen people. Grafts all of humanity onto the Tree of Life, and fulfills the law in Jesus Christ. As Jesus said in last week’s lesson, “I came not to abolish but to fulfill the law.” Faith in Christ, letting our hearts be as the heart of Christ, let us hear the rhythm of God’s heart.

Discovering our failure to love as God loves is not then a cause for despair. No – it is a call back to God, into the arms of God, who loves and strengthens us, and sends us out to love again; bids us love more fully, more perfectly, because although showing perfect love is impossible for us, nothing is impossible with God.

Do we make a choice to follow God? Absolutely. We choose a hundred ways every day whether or not to follow God, or follow our own desires. We choose life, which fulfills and strengthens, or we choose death, which destroys relationships and shows our faith to be nothing. But still God reaches for us. Still God loves us; still God is willing to go to the cross for us, so that we might choose life again.

Choose life, beloved. Put your trust in the heart of God, and accept the love that was given to you on the cross of Jesus Christ – a love that through dying, lives eternally. Let the law kill your own self, and the love of Christ will raise you again.

Let the people of God say amen.

Epiphany 5

2011-02-23T08:15:00.001-08:00

When I sat down to write my sermon this week, I actually had to check the forecast before I could really begin, because I needed to know the chances of being tarred and feathered for talking about spring if today’s forecast called for -40.

Since it only called for -20, I’ll take my chances. So let me talk to you about spring.

I said back in October that my favourite day of the year is the first day in fall when you step out of your house and your breath mists the air, and you hear the crunch of leaves under your boots and everything smells so crisp. I love that day.

But my second favourite day of the year is the first day that I can step outside and smell ‘spring’. And this past Friday, when I stepped out of our little house to come to the office, that’s what I smelled. What does ‘spring’ smell like, you ask?

It smells like salt. Salt, and light.

What does light smell like? Well, I don’t know. But it’s funny how humans can remember places as smells. Every time I come into the church alone, I walk into the sanctuary here, and I watch the silent pews, and I smell what to me will always be the house of God – the smell of wood, of wax, and of prayer. What does prayer smell like? Well, I can’t bottle it, but maybe it smells like the distilled essence of hope.

And on that first ‘salt and light’ day, I smell the salt in the air as the water on the road dissolves the salt spread to stop ice from forming, and the light I smell just comes from the world being warmed as the sun shines it light on all that was dormant, and dead.

Salt, and light. New life from old, precious things from things we thought long dead.

Jesus sits near the top of a mountain and looks at the crowd gathered around him. He’s blessed them all; the meek, the mourning, the hungry; his words have been for them. But then he does something…different.

“You are the salt of the world,” Jesus says. “But if salt has lost its saltiness, how can it be restored? It is thrown out and trampled underfoot.”

There’s a lot to be said about those words, and certainly a lot of moral commentary has been made about them in the past – I received a book in the mail a couple of years ago that urged me to be part of a ‘revival of salt’ – a call to a Christian life; whatever that was, before the country lost its salt and was trampled underfoot.

But that got me thinking. Which is always a dangerous proposition, I know. How does salt ‘lose’ its saltiness? Salt is made of two essential elements – sodium, and chloride. It can’t lose its saltiness.

My mom has had a fancy salt and pepper set that’s sat in the china cabinet since before I can remember. A couple of years ago, while setting up for a family dinner I snuck a deviled egg from the tray, put a little pepper on it, and popped it in my mouth. But you know what? No pepper taste. So I sprinkled some on my hand and gave it a taste. It didn’t taste like anything. Turns out that pepper will lose its flavour. But salt…salt always tastes like salt.

It’s like light. A bushel basket is like a wicker basket – not very tightly woven. So, even if you put a candle under a basket (and I think Jesus is just as mystified as to why you’d do that), in a dark room it would still give off light. Jesus doesn’t say “blows it out,” he talks about hiding it.

There’s a good story there, I think. Jesus tells us that he came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill. Indeed, Jesus reminds us that not one letter of all those laws in the Torah – all 613 of them – will pass away until all this around us has, too.

The law will not pass away until heaven and earth – light and salt – have passed away. The gospel of Jesus Christ – the good news of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ – fills heaven and earth. It is salt and light, something essential, something pure.

But Jesus tells us that if we have more faith in the law, the belief that we have to do something for that salvation, can weigh the gospel down. It’s like the bushel basket put over the candle, or salt that’s cut with chalk. It can make the words of hope seem a little dim.

Salt and light never lose their essential characteristics. They are both always exactly what they are meant to be – but we can interfere with them. We can put a basket over a light. We can ‘cut’ salt with anything. In the same way, our faith, the great gift from God that defines our Christian life, can become stale. It can be lost under a burden of anger, or fatigue, it can take a back seat to our own interests and wants. In our own human tendency to seek out what makes ourselves righteous, we run into the danger of putting our faith in the law – in our works – to make us right with God.

In Egypt right now there is more political strife and unrest. Probably about a month ago there was a story in the news about Christians being killed when their church was bombed after worship. In North America, and particularly in the United States, there is talk of legislating against the Muslim faith, and of course every time a new mosque is built, there’s going to be a group of (and I use the term loosely) Christians protesting against it.

But I read a story this week that gave me a great deal of hope; an assurance that no matter what happens there is still hope. In the midst of all the violence and protests, groups of Christians are forming human shields to protect – not to protest – groups of Muslims at prayer.

Let your light shine…

We may be far more aware of how we have grown stale and hidden whatever light we once thought we had. We may feel dull from anxiety and stress, in danger of being snuffed out or trampled underfoot. In naming us salt and light, Jesus is not making a simple statement of the obvious, but is bestowing an affirmation from a loving and creative God. Jesus is expressing God's faith in our acceptance of God's gift of grace—grace that empowers us to love one other. God's grace alone frees us to serve; it alone brings real joy.

"Let your light so shine," we say, and we hand the newly baptized or parent a candle, a miniature pillar of fire. It is the light of Christ—shining before we receive it—that will never be snuffed out.

Let the people of God say amen.

epiphany 4

2011-01-30T08:37:00.000-08:00

(nb: with help from workingpreacher.org)

The Beatitudes – the collection of pithy saying in today’s Gospel lesson – are probably among the best-know words of Jesus. They’re read at funerals, they’re quoted by notable people all over the world.; in fact, they’re widely regarded as some of the most moral teachings in Christianity.

But if they’re the best that Christianity has to offer the world, both the world and our faith may be in deep trouble.

Most people – both inside the faith and outside of it - have pre-conceived ideas of what they are about, or have a pronounced scepticism about their ability to convey any meaning beyond what they apparently say.

The beatitudes are pervasive in popular culture, from politics to pop psychology. The spirit and religion message board on "Oprah.com" – and please, just don’t ask how I know this - suggests that it might be enlightening "if we could each of us look within ourselves" and "pick one [beatitude] that showed us who we believed ourselves to be." If we look carefully at Jesus' words, however, we find that they are much more than moral platitudes or mottos to live by.

They turn our lives, our world, and our way of understanding both upside down.

Jesus takes what is ‘known’ about our world – that some people are more blessed than others, that others naturally have more than others (of any quality), and gives us a peek at the kingdom of God.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” But who are the poor in spirit? It can be pretty easy to point out the poor in spirit – usually, we have an image of these people as little shabby huddled masses, But let me ask you this: have you ever asked God, why? Have you ever been so offended at some ignorant platitude that someone’s offered you?

Your life is in shambles, you say? “It’s all part of God’s plan” is the answer that completely misses the point. It’s an empty answer, it doesn’t mean anything, but the person who says it can feel wise, and spiritually richer than you.

Have you ever just sat back, looked up at the sky, and howled at God? Wanted to call God to account for the all general messiness of life, because the joke just isn’t funny anymore? Welcome to “the poor in spirit.” Because the point of the matter is that we can never, by our own will, or desire, or work, create enough faith in God to keep ourselves believing. Faith itself is a gift of God, and because of that gift, yours is the kingdom of heaven.

The beatitudes – and the Sermon on the Mount, which they begin, are at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry. The apostles have just been called; they’ve become the ‘fishers of people’ that Jesus promised they would be.

They’re called to a very particular kind of life – a life lived for the kingdom of God. A kingdom life, Jesus says, is a ‘blessed’ life: not in the sense of ‘holy’, and although the Greek word also means ‘happy’, not in the sense of a good mood. A kingdom life is a fortunate life, a life that is lived beyond the wants and desires of a worldly life.

So Jesus has called the apostles, and he’s shown them what this new kind of fishing is, by preaching the good news of the kingdom of heaven to people and manifesting its power by healing every kind of disease and affliction in the last part of chapter 4. Jesus shows the disciples that the presence of this kingdom of heaven liberates. Then, Jesus climbs a mountain with the crowd he has so excited and sits down in the posture of a teacher encircled by his newly-called disciples. They are the primary targets of his instruction in the principles of life in the kingdom of heaven.

And as Jesus begins to speak, a new picture of life comes out. The kingdom life isn’t about good feelings and right answers. It’s a speech given to the unfortunate, about unfortunate things. But more than anything, it’s a speech about life.

The beatitudes open with an affirmative statement – “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” But after that, for the next few lines Jesus uses the future tense.

“’Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” People in Jesus’ day were just as quick to listen to someone who promised to take all pain away. But mourning is a part of life – if we didn’t love, losing someone wouldn’t hurt so much. But the promise of the kingdom life is that we will find comfort through Jesus, in this life, and also in the life to come. Jesus doesn’t promise to become an insulating woolly blanket from this life – he promises to be our salvation at the end.

After listing the beatitudes, Jesus says, "Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account". The kingdom of heaven belongs to those who suffer because of their faithfulness to Jesus. Jesus’ words stand in opposition to the dominant cultural ethic of both his time and ours – that the rich and powerful are better than anyone. Jesus says that no-one is better than anyone, but that some people are closer to understanding.

But Jesus is also calling those people he was teaching – then and now - to follow his own way, since he himself will suffer for his faithfulness to God, trusting that God will vindicate him.

The promise of future vindication does not mean, however, that the focus is entirely future. Jesus insists that God has the final word, bringing assurance into the present. This is why he can say, "Blessed are those who mourn...blessed are the meek...blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness...blessed are the merciful...blessed are the pure in heart...blessed are the peacemakers." Jesus gives his followers eyes to see that the future is certain and this transforms the present.

That’s the problem with the beatitudes, why I said that if they are the best moral statements Christianity has to offer we’re in trouble. Because as moral statements they don’t do anything. The beatitudes become so clichéd because we don’t live like they’re true.

Paul wrote to the Corinthian community that the power of the cross is the foolishness of God, and that God chose what is foolish in this world to shame the wise. What does he mean?

The message of the beatitudes make no sense unless they are seen through the lens of the suffering and death of Jesus Christ – because only the one who has understood all suffering can promise that it will come to an end – and not just at the end of life.

The wisdom of this world that Paul speaks of – we’re steeped in that. It’s the wisdom that tells us that we should look out for ourselves first, and then share what resources we can with those around us. Wisdom tells us that there’s a cause for everything, and an effect that stems from that. But the gospel of Christ isn’t ‘cause and effect’ – it’s action and response.

Those who are peacemakers are blessed; because they will be called children of God. Jesus doesn’t say, “because of their good work, the peacemakers will be renowned as my God’s children.” That’s cause and effect. The gospel of Christ is love in action and love in response.

And that’s a very foolish way to live, beloved. Because it leaves you vulnerable to all kinds of general nastiness and disdain – and wisdom hates the weak. In 2005 when members of a Christian Peacemaker Team were kidnapped in Iraq, Christians all over the world tripped over themselves trying to tell the world that they were crazy. The world’s wisdom is pretty obvious, isn’t it?

The world’s wisdom is – to quote Randy Bachman – to keep looking out for number one. To venerate the unholy trinity of me, myself, and I. That’s not the wisdom of God – the wisdom of God is found in a community that dies to itself and lives for the gospel.

Jesus calls us to join a radical kingdom. He gives us a radical vision to match, that the kingdom of heaven infiltrates our present. We can continue fishing for people, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom at great cost to ourselves, opposing oppressive powers in the name of Christ. We can suffer for the sake of Jesus and the gospel, with the assurance that God has the last word. When we see people receiving the word of God, and finding healing and freedom in Jesus' name we can announce, "the kingdom of heaven has drawn near."

Let the people of God say, amen.

Epiphany 3

2011-01-23T14:28:00.000-08:00

“And when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew.”

Jesus withdrew? That doesn’t sound like the Jesus we know, does it? Don’t we have an image of the Jesus who never avoided trouble, who never needed to reassess his aims, or his motivations, or his mission? That tends to be the idea we have, I think.

Every culture creates a conception of Jesus that reflects the dominant values of that culture. And, just so you know, they can justify it in Scripture. To the impoverished people of South America, Jesus is seen as one of the poor, a figure standing in opposition to those who control the means of wealth and oppress the people. To the slaves of 19^th century America, Jesus was coming to set them free.

But there are a few interesting views of Jesus and of faith that became prevalent in 20^th and 21^st century North America. The first is that Jesus acts alone – at a church conference once I heard a guest speaker say that Jesus could play (and did play) all the positions on the football field at once – he’s the quarterback calling the plays, the offensive (never defensive) line, and the running back scoring the touchdowns, all at the same time. He was trying to illustrate God’s grace, and was using the metaphor to illustrate that salvation is won by Christ alone.

Coming close on the heels of that idea is the belief that we act alone – that we by ourselves work out what we believe. That we should pick and choose what we believe in order to live a “moral life” – which usually means “as long as what I do doesn’t harm anyone, why not do it?”

And those two ideas – that Jesus acts alone, and that we act alone – usually bring to reality the conception that churches need to find their ‘entertainment appeal;’ the so-called ‘magic bullet’ that will fill pews and plates and give them success. Church-shopping has become a favourite pastime of many people.

A few years ago I was greeting people after a Sunday service when I shook hands with a nice young couple with a young child. I asked them how they were, and if they were new to the area. They said that, no, they weren’t, but that they were church shopping, looking for a church that met their needs.

I didn’t see them again. Apparently, their needs – whatever they were – weren’t met. But I did debate calling after them – please! Choose us! We have low monthly interest, no fees, no hassles, and we’ll work for you! (If Capital One can do it, why can’t I?)

In reality, I think that that emphasis on the ‘me first’ is a symptom of a desperation that many people feel. That feeling of desperation is the result of seeing that we cannot save ourselves, but still insisting that we have to try.

One day as Jesus is out walking, he sees two sets of brothers working in their boats. And he calls to them, tells them both to come with him. It’s interesting that he doesn’t choose them one at a time – you’d think a little more one-on-one instruction would benefit them. But Jesus calls Andrew and Simon, James and John, to follow him.

And they did.

It makes you wonder: why? What did Jesus offer to them that they didn’t already have? They were fishermen. In their society they wouldn’t have been rich, but perhaps as close to a comfortable lower-middle class as you could be. It’s a hard life, a lot of work.

Maybe they were attracted to a life of quiet study. I grew up in the country, doing chores, raising horses, helping with calving and harvest and all the hard work in between. When I went to University, it was a like a window opened. “Hello, the sweet life!”

Yet as Andrew, Simon, James, and John found: being called as a disciple is not an invitation to the sweet life. Have you ever noticed that of all the miracles Jesus did, not one was for the disciples? They benefited from them, as Jesus calmed the sea and fed the 5000. One or two were object lessons – full nets of fish. And of the thousands of people who deserted Jesus and called for his death, only the disciples – who had been sent out in poverty to preach with nothing but the clothes on their backs – continued to meet. Jesus’ call to discipleship doesn’t make for large crowds; in fact, it thins them out. Anyone with a full belly finds it easy to believe – the disciple, in turn, believes when all has been taken away.

A story is told of Guiseppe Garibaldi, who freed Italy from tyranny in the 19^th century. One day, as he set out to liberate Italy, Garibaldi saw a group of smartly-dressed young men hanging out on a street corner. He asked them to follow him.

“Follow you?” they asked. “What do you offer?”

“Offer? I offer you hardship, hunger, rags, thirst, sleepless nights, foot sores and long marches, privations innumerable, and victory in the noblest cause that ever asked you.”

When you are called be the disciple of Jesus, be aware that it costs. In the society that lists self-esteem and self-fulfillment as paramount values, the gospel will falter, because being called to the life of Christian discipleship is not being called to be a lone ranger, but rather it is a call to become part of a community. A community defined by the cross of Jesus Christ.

The apostle Paul both founded the church in Corinth, and worked to keep it moderately honest with itself. At one point, he threatened them with a stick if they didn’t stop fighting with each other (1 Cor 4:21). Now, it’s easy to get a chuckle at that, but Paul knew that one of the hardest tasks that we are called to as Christians is living with one another in peace.

That is a tall order in any group of people – and maybe even a taller order when faith is involved. That’s because – if you think back to what I talked about earlier, about the ‘me-first’ tendency – we all like to think we know what Jesus wanted for the church.

And you know what? It’s been that way from the very beginning. In the Corinthian church, people were quarrelling over which preacher was correct. Paul, Apollos, Cephas….there’s a long list. We like to listen, and to follow, those people with whom we agree. And certainly, as preachers, we all have those aspects of the gospel that speak most eloquently to us.

Yet Paul reminded the church in Corinth that the point of being a disciple is not about who baptised you, or who you listen to the most. The call to discipleship is a call to bear the cross.

As Paul writes, the power of the gospel is the cross of Jesus Christ – foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved it is the power of God. What does that mean?

Imagine that you’re drowning. You’ve somehow landed in the middle of a bottomless lake. But you’re a strong swimmer, so you can tread water, which you keep doing for hours and hours. After a while, you see someone standing on the shore, which seems an impossible distance away. So far, in fact, that until you saw that person you didn’t even know that was the shore.

So you strike out for shore, swimming for all you’re worth. And your muscles are burning, your lungs are exploding with all the air you’re trying to gulp. After a while, you pause and tread water again. The shore doesn’t seem any closer. The figure on the bank throws you a rope, and amazingly it lands right next to your hand. The rope is there. Your safety – your salvation – is right there.

But you don’t need that rope right now. You reject the offer of life. “Don’t worry!” you yell, “I can swim closer! You don’t need to throw it that far!” And you begin to swim again, getting more and more exhausted. Again you stop, to find that you’re no closer to the shore, and that the rope is still right at your hand. But you refuse to grab it.

Does that sound silly to you? I bet it probably does. But that’s the same metaphor that Paul uses.

You are dying, drowning in sin. You are captive to sin, and you cannot free yourself. But you are saved solely by the power of cross of Jesus Christ. You don’t meet Jesus halfway, don’t do a little bit better each day until you accept his help.

But as you’re dying, it seems ridiculous that you don’t have to do anything, that this ‘salvation’ is a free gift. You’re treading water, keeping your head up, refusing the rope that is a few inches from your hand.

But when you grasp that, when you are being saved, you hold on to that rope so tight you know that by the time you get to shore its fibers are going to be a part of who you are.

You are called to be disciples – to take hold of the rope, to trust in the cross of Jesus Christ, even to share with Jesus that death on the cross. To be a disciple is to be crucified with Christ, to die to those self-centred longings that characterize our lives.

A.W Tozer tells a story of a young man who came to an old saint to understand the life of discipleship. The young man said to the old, “Father, what does it mean to be crucified?”

The old man thought for a moment and said “well, to be crucified means three things. First, the man who is crucified is facing only one direction.”

And the old man scratched his head and continued. “One thing more, son, about a man on the cross – he is not going back. When you die on the cross, you have said goodbye.”

And he went on: “another thing about the man on the cross, son – he has made no further plans of his own.”

Today after worship we will gather for our budgetary annual general meeting. We’re a lucky enough congregation that we get two of them, one now and another in May. But as we gather for it today, I want you to bear three things in mind:

The first is that you are called to be in this place, called to be a part of this community. It cannot function to the full extent of its potential without you. You look in a common direction.

The second is that this community is called to be a part of who you are. You cannot be a solitary disciple of Christ. The gospel calls you into relationship. There is no going back.

And the third is this: Your end is assured. You are saved from sin, death, and the devil by the power of Jesus Christ. Cling to that cross, take hold of that rope, never let go, until that rope leaves it mark on you and you are safely on the other shore.

Let the people of God say amen.

January 9 - The Baptism of Our Lord

2011-01-09T06:45:00.001-08:00

Martin was adopted. He had lived a life of foster homes from the time he was born until the time he was ten; his numerous behavioural challenges had resulted, time, and time again, in his being shifted from foster care to group care, to back again. He had seen therapists and counsellors, specialists and doctors, but still, Martin would act out, and his ‘family’ would send him down the road. “If you keep this up,” his social worker warned him one day, “it’ll make it harder to find you a family.”

But Martin knew what the problem was. He was unlovable. He had learned from a young age that as he knew it, love hurt. It was conditional on his being a ‘good boy’ – and everybody has a different idea of what good is – and his doing the chores his foster family wanted him to. To be loved, he had to do good in school, not act up, and be invisible.

Where do you fit in? I read once that the endless pursuit of ‘stuff’ that characterizes our culture has at its root a feeling of displacement, of ‘not belonging’ to any one group. Because we feel we don’t belong to anything, we try to acquire things that will fill the void in our lives. Those things can be expensive toys, relationships, anything that we feel can give us a frame of reference for who we are.

And it applies to our religion, too – it can sometimes be hard to find a frame of reference to give meaning to the word of God. Consider the gospel text for today, the baptism of Jesus. John’s out baptizing in the wilderness, and Jesus is there, too. But there’s a couple of other players in the game. There’s a great voice from heaven, and a Spirit that moves through the air (just note: though we like the notion that the Spirit appears as a dove; the text just says it descends like a dove. That’s a simile – a comparison. The almighty doesn’t likely have feathers.)

Every time, Martin felt a little safe, a little loved, he would do something that would destroy his life again. With one family, just when he was beginning to relax, he noticed the bathroom tap dripping. Wanted to be helpful, he took a wrench from his foster father’s toolbox and tried to fix the sink. One call to the plumber, another to the flood restoration specialist, and yet one more to his social worker, and Martin was done.

Another time, he took the clippers to the cat that was very hairy during a hot summer. After a while, his behaviours came to be related to his own sense of alienation from his own life – when he started feeling safe, he would act out in an effort to keep his family at a distance. It worked with depressing frequency.

In the gospel text today, John assumes about his relationship to Jesus is a power dynamic. John is out baptizing in the wilderness, and Jesus comes to him to be baptized. The first thing John tries to do is stop him. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Not so fast, Jesus. You know how this works – you have the power. You take over, baptize me, and we’ll get this party started.

And Jesus balks at that. To fulfill all righteousness, he says, he needs to be baptized by John. But what about that? What ‘righteousness’ does Jesus need to fulfill? Only one thing – Jesus will not upset the relationship of John to the Word of God.

The Word of God needs to be proclaimed; it is not about force or power. It remains the master of all; yet it is also the servant of all. It is right that Jesus is baptized by John; that is all that is needed. And Jesus goes down into the water.

The summer after he turned ten, Martin was told that he was being adopted. Ma and Pa Jacobsen had four other children, and of them Martin was the only one adopted. They were ‘weird’ by Martin’s standards – Ma Jacobsen stayed at home all day, while Pa…well, Martin wasn’t certain what Pa did, but he seemed to enjoy his job more than anyone Martin had ever seen.

The three Jacobsen boys all shared a room, while Martin and the Jacobsen’s daughter each had their own room. It was the smallest room that Martin had ever had – not like the family he lived with when he had a gigantic room with his own closet, and TV, and game console. This was more like a closet.

But the Jacobsens did everything as a family. When they watched TV, they did it together. When they played on the Wii, they did it together. They ate meals together, after preparing them together. And it puzzled Martin that this was done with a minimum of fuss. They seemed to genuinely enjoy each other’s company.

As Jesus is baptized, a voice from heaven exclaims “this is my son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased,” and the Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus. This anointing – the word “Messiah” means ‘anointed one’ – proclaims Jesus’ own unique relationship as a member of the Godhead; the Holy Trinity.

So we don’t get voices from heaven. How do we know how God acts? If God is, as we say in the Nicene Creed, three persons in one being, then how can all three be present at once?

That’s called a mystery of faith. But I can tell you this: this little glimpse into how God is shows us that God is present in relationship, and in community. Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God, the Lord is One. That Holy Spirit of God calls us into this community, makes us holy, and brings us to God through Jesus Christ.

One night Martin came upstairs to get a drink of water, and partly because he heard voices. He was worried that, like one family had, they would argue and fight until someone left and Martin went back to group care. But Ma and Pa were sitting together on the sofa, a pot of tea between them, just talking. They had a book open on their laps and would read from it, then talk about it.

After a while on his best behaviour, Martin began to act out. But as much as he acted out, Ma and Pa didn’t seem to mind. He took markers from his pencil case and coloured and wrote on the walls of his room. Ma came in to get his laundry while he was lying on his bed one afternoon, and he tensed, certain that he was going to get in trouble.

But Ma just looked, and asked where his markers were. Knowing he was in trouble, Martin gave them to her, never expecting to get them back. But Ma took one out of the case, and corrected his spelling and grammar on the wall. “very colourful,” she said, and left the room.

Another time, Martin sat on the kitchen floor with a screwdriver and made scratches in the old linoleum floor. When Pa came in and caught him at it, he took the screwdriver away and left Martin sitting there as he walked away. He came back with a scraper and gave it to Martin. “Needs replacing anyways,” he said, “just always use the right tool for the right job.”

Sometimes, we like to make distinctions about who is ‘in’, and who is ‘out’ in our churches – usually based on some grand assumptions about behaviours or a loose interpretation of what Scripture actually says. Certainly, the most press that Christianity receives deals more with the fascination about who’s ‘in’ and who’s ‘out’ than anything good that churches actually do.

But nestled right in the middle of the story that we tell so often at Christmas is a neat little look at how God works in the world – and beloved, God doesn’t work the way we want God to

Have you ever wondered where the wise men fit into the Christmas story? Actually, they’re not part of the Christmas story at all – they come along after, perhaps even as late as two years after the birth of Jesus.

The wise men appear in Matthew’s gospel. They’re not Jewish, either; they’re gentiles, probably coming from Persia (present-day Iran) and, they’re pagans. They’re astrologers, who saw the signs in the heavens and came to find the Messiah. So the first people who sought out and worshipped Jesus weren’t good Jewish people at all – and probably never were. Now of course, popular mythology has turned the three of them into converts, but there’s no evidence of that.

One Saturday, after a particularly bad week, Ma and Pa called Martin and the other kids upstairs after supper. Martin had been in trouble at school, and had yelled at the Jacobsen boys when they were playing together and Martin wanted to play a different game. That day, there at the kitchen table and surrounded by paperwork, was Martin’s social worker.

Martin couldn’t speak, but he knew what was about to happen. Wordlessly, he went downstairs and packed a small bag. It had happened before; again, he was leaving. He was too much for this family. It was probably for the best.

But when he came back upstairs and began to gather his coat, Ma stopped him. “Where are you going?” she asked. “I don’t know”, he replied, “but I guess I’m done here.”

The day that the wise men found the child is celebrated as the feast of Epiphany, 12 days after Christmas. If you come from Eastern Europe, your family probably celebrated “little Christmas” on Friday – going back to the days of the old Gregorian calendar when Christmas was later.

We don’t often consider that the first people to worship Jesus were the least-likely suspects - Much like we don’t expect to find Jesus being baptized in the wilderness. Yet God still works in these strange and unexpected ways, often when we least expect it, or feel like we deserve it.

I’ve met a lot of people who can tell me that they feel closer to God outside, doing something they love doing. And I’m happy for them, and I agree with them – certainly, I feel closer to God when the world is going my way and I’m enjoying myself.

But there are the times when the world isn’t going my way, and I feel pretty far away from God. Like Martin, I try to push God away, so that God can’t see my failings and frailty.

At times like that, and in places like this, I need to know that despite how I feel about the situation, God is closer to me.

“What do you mean?” Ma asked.

“Well, with the social worker here I know you’re sending me back. I’m sorry I’m not a better kid.”

Pa came and stood beside Ma, and the other four children came and stood around them. Martin noticed that they were all crying, and he began to feel a little panicky, as his heart leapt into his throat and tears began to sting his eyes.

“Martin,” Pa said as he wrapped him in a hug, “we’re not sending you away. Your social worker is here so she can sign your permanent papers. You are our son, a part of our family, and we love you. We want you to be part of our family forever.”

You can find God anywhere, that’s true. But here, in this place, God is present; God in relationship with us. God in community; God with us. The Spirit of God is what has called this community into being; that means that God is here.

And everything changed that night. Martin and the other kids painted his room (though now Martin had to share it with his younger brother), and Martin helped Pa with the new flooring in the kitchen. As he learned what it meant to be loved, Martin settled down, and began to grow. And he knew, he knew that he was part of a forever family.

It’s when you think that you are outcast, outside, down and out that the Spirit of God comes to you, and shares with you one simple vision, your own Epiphany:

You are my beloved. With you, I am pleased. And together, as God’s beloved, find that this, this group of people chosen by God as witnesses of a great redeemer and Savior of all humankind, is our forever family, because we are all children of God. And God’s vision – of a people created, nurtured, bound together by the same relationships that bind God’s own self – becomes our own.

Let the people of God say amen.