Pentecost 10 - Grace

What do you do with David?

It’s almost as if, in our idealized history that we draw from the Bible, David becomes a perfect and flawless individual – the great King who ruled over Israel, from whom came Jesus, who himself redeemed the world.  Christians love perfect people, we love ‘heroes of the faith’, who provide those tremendous examples of the perfect to which we should aspire.

When I was a little guy, I came across a book that was called ‘heroes of the faith’ – I have no idea how my family got it; we weren’t really ‘heroes of the faith’ kinds of people.  But I read that book, and it stuck with me.  It had Noah, Moses, David, Solomon, Paul…everyone you should expect.  I Googled that book a few years ago, and it turns out there’s an updated one: it includes people like Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Theresa…You can probably add your own names to that list.

As I got older, though, I realized that so many of those heroes…weren’t.

We’re reading through the story of David.  I met an older Baptist minister who once told me that four elders of his church once met him in his office after he finished a series of readings on 2 Samuel, following the life of David.  They told him that if he wanted to keep his job, he’d better stick to preaching, and not destroying people’s faith in God’s chosen.

My colleague (who was well into his seventies) told those elders that he was simply reading from the Bible – after all, that was his job as preacher.  But that wasn’t the point, it was argued – he should emphasize the great work that David did, and not mention his failings.

David was an adulterer, and a hypocrite.  You heard Nathan’s accusation against him today: “YOU are the man who has acted so unjustly.”  David, so ready to wreak terrible vengeance against a greedy man, ignores his own black sins.

But David isn’t alone.  Noah was a drunkard; Moses a murderer and Paul joined him in that dubious company.  If you’ve read some biographies, you’ll know that King, though faithful to God was not always to his wife; and Mother Theresa….Mother Theresa lived in a dark night of her own soul almost from the moment she entered her convent up until the day she died.  She doubted God – doubted God cared, doubted God was even aware of what was going on, doubted God even existed – but still she prayed.  Still she served.

I think you can probably add your own names to a life’s list of fallen heroes: people who we think we’ve known, or trusted, or learned from, but who’ve we then learned have failed, or made mistakes.  When people learned of King’s infidelities and Theresa’s doubts, many made noise that they should be forgotten, that they were somehow not worthy of being considered ‘heroes of the faith’ because they were not perfect people.

We tend to feel a lot of pressure as Christians.  Pressure to be holy, pressure to be right, to be perfect, to somehow live like we don’t desperately need God’s freely-given grace and forgiveness.  We act – and tell ourselves – that’s God’s grace should be earned.  We should work for it.  We should somehow try to “pay God back” for grace that we’ve been given.

We live in a debt-ridden culture that can’t fathom being beholden to God for something as amazing as grace.

I’ll share with you something that Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has written about our problem with being in debt to God:

…a human being is holy not because he or she triumphs by will power over chaos and guilt and leads a flawless life, but because that life shows the victory of God’s faithfulness in the midst of disorder and imperfection.  The church is holy…not because it is the gathering of the good and the well behaved, but because it speaks of the triumph of grace in the coming together of strangers and sinners, who miraculously trust one another enough to join in common repentance and common praise…humanly speaking, holiness is always like this: God’s endurance in the middle of our refusal of him, his capacity to meet every refusal with the gift of himself.

Grace, then, is God giving us what we need before we even know we need it.  And it is God continuing to give us what we need after we’ve found out we need, and then insist that we can somehow provide it for ourselves. 

However, visible blessings we can’t get enough of.  It’s like we’re the family that is in over our head in debt, but still scrimping together the monthly payments on the Escalade so the neighbours think we’re doing fine. 

That’s the crowd that hangs out with Jesus.  They go looking for him, but he’s left.  So, they all go looking for him.  Remember, this is the same crowed that numbered 5000 men, plus women and children.  That’s a lot of boats on a fairly little lake.  But they go looking, and they do find Jesus.

When they find him, though, Jesus doesn’t seem to pleased with their effort: “truly, I tell you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.”  Ouch.

But how many time do we hear that?  The millionaire athlete giving credit to Jesus for touchdowns, runs batted in, or more goals made.  Singers, actors, everybody loves the blessings.  Jesus is easy to love when there are blessings to be had.  But strip away those blessings…and who wants to put forth the effort – the investment – in something that doesn’t seem to offer a high return?

The crowd loves the work of God.  They love the loaves, the healing, the blessings.  It’s all good.  It’s so good, in fact, that they want to be able to do it for themselves: “what must we do to perform the works of God?” 

Surely, Jesus, there must be something we can do to make us able to be just like you.

And Jesus does give the crowd an answer.  But to a crowd that is used to the system of the Law with its requirements and obligations, it’s not the answer they want.  They want the economic system they’re expecting.  You give something tangible, you get something tangible, touchable.

But Jesus says: “This is the work of God: that you believe in him whom he has sent.”

That’s it.  That’s all.  The great work of God that we partake in is nothing less than to believe in the One sent by God; the Alpha and the Omega; our beginning, and our ending.

God’s economy doesn’t look like the temple.  It doesn’t look like the Pharisees.  It doesn’t look like the Law, which is meant to establish order and keep people in line.  God’s economy looks like grace – given but not deserved, and recognized the most by those who know their relationship with God has been fractured beyond all hope of human repair.

Because when things are beyond hope of human repair, we finally realize that our only true hope – our only true sustaining force, our only true bread – is Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world, the grace of God, and our only true repentance.

That is the gift that David found.  Having known that he irreparably fractured his relationships in the world, all he had left was to trust that God would remain faithful in the face of David’s own incorrigible faithlessness.

And God did; the fruit of his promise to David realized in another promise to a teenage unwed mother that the child in her womb would save the people from their sins.

And that child did just that.  From the womb, to the cross, from the cross, to the grave, and from the grave to everlasting life Christ bore out the promise of God’s own unending and unbelievable grace – the promise that YOU are the beloved of God.

You are the beloved of God because of Jesus’ love for you; the beloved because you believe.  Not what you do.  There is nothing you will ever do that will make God love you more; there is nothing you will ever do that can make God love you less.

Believe in the Son.  Find what it means to never hunger or thirst again; because all you need has been given.

Find what grace is: those things of the Father, and of the Son, of the Holy Spirit; those things that are part of you in your baptism.

Let the people of God say amen.

Thirty Chubby Toes

We just got back from a week of camping.  Well, sort of camping.  When we go on our holidays in summer we bring with us our big tent - one that fits all of us, from the least to the biggest - and that makes nights a little easier.  Our family tends to take up a lot of space when we go places, and staying in hotels all the time just isn't possible.  So, we bring our big tent and set it up in Amma's (my mom) backyard, or in the yards of friends with whom we stay when we wander across the prairies on our summer adventures.

This past week took us to Little Bow Provincial Park, at a reservoir down in the coulees of southern Alberta, where I grew up and where my heart, for the most part, still lives.  The series of reservoirs draws like a scar across the prairies, uninterrupted vastness as far as the eye can see until the earth opens and the glacial till reveals the sculpted break of land.

My inlaws, the Co-Director's parents, sisters, and their spouses and kids all had neighbouring sites.  There were 22 of us altogether - 8 adults and 14 children, the eldest of which - a cousin - was 10.  It was beautiful chaos, filled with love and passion and that bursting bundle of raw emotions that a child becomes when new surroundings, new experiences, and an astounding lack of sleep combine.  I pitied the people next to us.  When we went to the beach it looked like an invading army of munchkins: that beach was owned, pounded by related toes and feets, sandcastled, sand-fortressed, and expurgated under the relentless excursions that brought us to the water, and back.

At the end of the day my littles were done.  I mean well-done.  Eyes that drooped in sleep glowed with manic intensity as they strove to keep on playing, to squeeze every last drop of togetherness and family out of their cousins, as if they had to stock up until the next time they saw each other.  I couldn't blame them.

But eventually, fatherly prerogative overruled my desire to let them play.  But they were filthy.  So I took the two boys and our big girl to the only place in the campsite that had hot and cold running water; a shower room.  Well, showering with all of them would have been like trying to corral a group of slippery eels.  So, we took over the broad counter with two sinks, and I sat them up on the counter and I took a towel and set to the business of getting them as clean as possible.

From top to bottom I scrubbed: sun-reddened foreheads, little bits of stubborn sand at the corners of their mouths (from throwing toys at each other), grit that gathered where sunblock and sweat rested in the little folds of their skin.  Dirty little hands became...somewhat...shiny under my care, though such deep-seated dirt was not going to come clean without application of chisel, a day off work, and a mission statement.  I cleaned them all the way down to their toes.

It was as I cleaned those thirty chubby digits with my towel that I peered up into three sets of eyes - all different, yet all mine; flesh of my flesh, and bone of my bone.  They looked at me, trusting me not to tickle but hoping I would at the same time; trusting that I, their father, would make sure they were ready for the next days' fun.

And I wondered what Jesus thought as he cleaned the feet of the disciples on one particular night.  Did he see them from the beginning, or who they were becoming?  Christ, the greatest of all, became the servant of those whom he loved - even the servant of the one who betrayed him.  There was no action, no potentiality, that brought anyone out of the love of Christ.

I withered under those six earnest eyes.  I looked into them, trying to discern their future: happy, sad, exhuberant, tragic?  I thought of all the endless cliches that surround parenting, especially fatherhood - the sappy, meaningless drivel that is supposed to give joy to someone who's idea of being a father is buying hockey equipment - and I realized that they were all wrong.

I cannot protect my children.  I am neither big enough, strong enough, or powerful enough to protect them from all the things that life will throw at them.  I cannot save them from bullies, from bosses; I am even powerless to protect them from someone intent on bringing one of them to harm: I an neither omniscient, nor omnipotent.

But I am their father.

And because I am their father I can care for them: I can scold them, encourage them, get them dirty and make them clean again - as their heavenly Father made them clean in their own baptismal waters.  Scrubbing thirty chubby toes clean, I realized one thing: of all the memories I hope I make for my children, rather than a toy, or a holiday, or an experience - I hope, I pray, that they remember the day their daddy washed their feet.

And I hope I remember those thirty dirty toes my whole life long.

•  

Laughter

Laughter

At Little Bow, as always, I ran in the morning.  Unlike other occasions, running at Little Bow is marked by a whole lot of 'up', as I run along the road that snakes its way from the coulee floor the level of the prairie above.  As I ran today, I found myself meditating on the akedah, the biblical story of the binding of Isaac.

Do you know how Isaac got his name?  It means 'laughter' in Hebrew.  The little boy was called laughter because his mother Sarah laughed at the heavenly messenger who told her that God's promise to her husband was going to be fulfilled in her own barren womb.  

I wonder if, so many years later, Mary laughed when her own heavenly messenger came to tell her that God's promise to his people was going to be fulfilled in her - of her, through her.  Do you think you would have laughed?  I think I would have.  The narrativist Luke notes that "she pondered in her heart that which the angel had told her" - I laugh out loud at ponderables every day.  I hope Mary was no different.  I wonder if the angel told her to call her baby "Jesus" because he was afraid there was another Isaac in the making.

The story of Isaac, though, is tainted by near tragedy.  Or maybe it's a farce.  An angel tells Abraham "take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and offer him up as a sacrifice to God."  Abraham is asked to sacrifice his only son in order to prove his own love and devotion to God.  But Abraham is ready, and he prepares to do just that.  He takes Isaac, binds him, and prepares to offer him as sacrifice BUT, at the last possible moment, the angel intervenes.  Abraham has proven his faith.

But there comes a time when another Father is called to give up his Son.  But this time, it's not God who demands the sacrifice, not at all.  This time, the crowd does; the leaders do; we do.  All our judgements and hard-heartedness demands that the interloped who dared to proclaim God's love and forgiveness to all should be judged himself, by our own, more rigorous standards.  Because we who love sin more than forgiveness turn instead to God and demand that he sacrifice his Son to prove his love for us.

But unlike God with Abraham, we do not relent.  We are not welcoming of that kind of mercy.  There is no last-minute reprieve.  There is only the crowd, the cross, the crown, and death.  But even the One tied to the altar intercedes: forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Laughter, indeed.

Because I think on that Easter morning, when the stone rolled away from the tomb and Jesus walked out of the gates of hell, the gates of death and to the glory of his Father, I think, I think, that the garden rang with the sound of a delighted Father's laughter; that the Son was clothed in the best robe and given the best seat at the table, while the proud Father looked at his work and beamed.

It is finished, the Son said.

It is finished, indeed.  And may we find at the end the joy of the Father's laughter reveling in the delight of his Son - his only Son, whom he loved, whom he offered, whom he gave, whom he raised, and in whom he delights.  

Heaven is a Father's un-ending joy, ringing out through all creation.

Holy Trinity - June 03

Do you know what déjà vu is?  It’s that feeling of having been somewhere, or done something before. In fact, it’s that feeling of reading the 3^rd chapter of John’s gospel for the 3^rd time in 12 weeks.  I’m almost at the point that, when I die and go to heaven and meet Nicodemus, I’m going to kick him in the shins.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with Nicodemus, and certainly, John 3:16 speaks as clearly to my own heart as it does to that of any other Christian believer.  But it’s not all there is in the gospel.  Not by a long shot.  It’s a beautiful synopsis; a clear snapshot of the gospel in a few words.  If it is all you have to guide your faith by, you will find little better.  But the fact of the matter is that Christians have more – much more – revelation and Scripture to use to guide their faith that just John 3:16.

A while ago, two airline pilots were disciplined when their airliner was found to be 150 miles off course. The pilots blamed a faulty guidance system; the airliner accused the pilots of being asleep.  The actually cause is probably somewhere in the middle: both bodies could have, and should have, been more responsible for their own actions.

I know that many of you remember the story of the Gimli Glider, a Boeing 767 enroute from Montreal to Edmonton that ran out of fuel and was forced to glide to a landing at the thriving metropolis of Gimli, Manitoba.  The cause?  Fuel in the aircraft had been calculated using the relatively new metric system, but recorded in the traditional manner of gallons and pounds.  There had been a fundamental shift in the way that airlines and air travel operated, but the individuals involved still clung to their previous ways of doing things.

It’s kind of like distilling the entire bible down into John 3:16, and then decided that one verse is all you ever need.  As good as it is, if you build a theology around just one verse of Scripture, you will miss countless others that will break you down, and build you back up again.  Because just one verse of Scripture can’t stand alone out of the thousands that are contained in the Bible; there are many verse that seem contradictory, confusing, consanguineous or corrupt.

As a result, the church through time has developed doctrines that help define or bear witness to a traditional understanding of theological things; since today is Holy Trinity Sunday, in a practice first set aside in the 10^th century we celebrate the only festival day that commemorates a doctrine of the church.

And yes, the Holy Trinity is quite possibly the most confusing doctrine of the church. Far more learned scholars than myself have gone on record to say that there is no rational, static, definition that describe the Holy Trinity without confessing some very old heresies.  It is best describing using language that is active, relational, and dynamic – in short, using language that speak of God being, rather than God doing.

That is to say then, that we need to re-orient ourselves out of the traditional Lutheran practice of believing doctrine for doctrine’s sake, and into the experience of God made manifest and visible to us through the written Word, the Word proclaimed in the church, and the Living Word of Jesus Christ.

So, perhaps John 3:16 is kind of a magnetic north, that can keep us oriented in our lives; but what the Holy Trinity then supplies is not something as antiquated as a road map or as direct as a GPS; but rather the guarantee, and promise, of companionship on our journey.  If we simply fix our sight on that magnetic north and strive for it (as many polar explorers have throughout our own history), we will leave our path strewn with broken relationships, bodies, and become even more alone and isolated than we thought possible.

So, think for a minute about what it might mean to truly experience God.  To be close.  There’s a whole heap of devotional literature that longs to describe it; God as a gentle, loving Father; God as the righteous judge; God as one’s best friend.

And turn to Isaiah, and see what Isaiah saw.  Isaiah 6 is a vision; it’s a dream, or an oracle, and Isaiah describes actually experiencing God.  And it is terrifying for him.  Isaiah is standing in the Temple, where God lives; God's presence is so large, that the hem of the Lord's robe alone fills the temple space. This is vastness. Strange and wonderful creatures envelop the throne. Smoke obscures the whole scene. We are used to the images of fire and smoke, cloud and height being associated with God. It is all here. And, in comparison with that grandeur, we see ourselves, along with the narrator, as puny and inadequate.  In some classical artwork of this scene, and along with some commentary on this lesson, people have captured the expression on the faces of those seraphs not as ecstasy, but agony at being so close to the pure, unadulterated holiness of God.

But God's power to cleanse and make whole is ready to do its work.  It not something that Isaiah does for himself; instead, recognizing that his is unclean and powerless in the presence of God he is overcome with guilt, and one of those seraphs – itself a servant of the Lord – comes and bear God’s redeeming power in the form of a burning coal.  As he is made clean, Isaiah joins the hosts around God’s throne, and as a cleansed servant of God is sent out again to bear the word of God’s own work: that Israel can be saved.

But of course, Israel doesn’t listen.  Instead of coming together in the promise of God (who promises to all people), they remain fragmented and aloof, trusting in foreign powers and the rich and mighty of their own society and ignoring the few and needy among them as unworthy and untouchable.

All this happens before the revelation of God made flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. On the other side, is Paul, writing to the fledgling church in Rome, itself fragmented and conflicted.  The church was struggling with relationships both within its own walls and with the culture that surrounded it – as was every church then, and now.  Paul’s response was to write to them, and remind them that their faith looked very different from the faith that centred around the Temple and it’s actions.

What Paul did was to describe that the relationship between believers mirrored the relationship that God has with God’s own self: it is the Holy Spirit that leads us to recognize that we are children of God the Father, and sisters and brothers with Christ, the Son.  The Spirit that we receive – the same one given on Pentecost, received at our baptism – is a Spirit that should lead us out of fear and into freedom.

Being oriented to fear leads us to curve inwards, putting our own needs and desires ahead of others.  Fear – fear of death, fear of the unknown – is what drives us to consume and define ourselves by what we have, or what we can get.  It’s the “he who dies with the most toys” mindset; the same one that equates our self worth with our net worth.  Paul knows what he’s saying when he points out that way leads to death.

It’s fear that drives us to define ourselves over and against another group – and fear that divides us.  The greatest moral challenge of the Lutheran church in the 20^th century was when it began to form ecumenical agreements with other Christian bodies and participate in ecumenical ministries – instead of sitting back and refusing to engage with others until they agreed we were ‘right’, the bodies that became the ELCIC began to see that if, indeed we had received a Spirit of adoption, then we can remain ourselves and still be in relationship with others in our community.  That, in fact, unity did not mean or require uniformity.

They re-oriented themselves so that, rather than their own (obviously) correct orthodoxy at the centre, the Trinity became that centre and their own relationships – flawed though they were – modelled after the God who called them, gathered them, and enlightened them, just as every Christian has been called, gathered, and enlightened by the power of the Holy Spirit working in the world.

And perhaps, beloved, that is the biggest thing to learn from a doctrine of the church.  That doctrine does not save us, but is meant to satisfy us to some extent that God is indeed active and working in our lives.  The Holy Trinity – an ancient doctrine of the church that bears witness to God who exists in unity and in community, in turns bears witness to us that we are called into modelling that relationship with others – orients us to understand that in the relationships in our community that we bear witness to our own adoption, and our own salvation.

Bearing witness to the fact that, indeed, God did so love the world that God redeemed it, cleansed it, called it, and sent it out as the body of Christ in that same much-loved world.

Be that body, beloved.  Your souls are won.  In your baptism you are adopted into the family of God and become beloved children.  Live in that family.  Love each other.  And make it your priority to enlarge that family – multiply our smiles here, beloved, because God smiles on us.

Pentecost Sunday - May 27, 2012

Mortal, can these bones live?

The prophet Ezekiel stands at the edge of a valley; it is full of bones.  He does not know why it is full of bones; but full, it is.  Bleached white by the sun, they stretch as far as the eye can see and, as the Lord leads him around he sees that there are many, and they are very dry.  There is nothing left; nothing to bind bone to bone, to animate them, to give them life.  There is nothing, not even hope.

Where did those bones come from?  Ezekiel doesn’t know, only that they are the bones of the whole house of Israel.  Israel.  The great kingdom of David; the kingdom of Solomon, the nation of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob has fallen.  They are bones.

How does that happen?  How can it happen?  A great calamity, a great catastrophe has befallen the great nation - upon which rested the promise of God – and they have become nothing less than a valley of dry bones.  What could that have possibly been?

In C.S Lewis’ book The Screwtape Letters, the author imagines conversations between the under-demon Wormwood and his boss, the uber-demon Screwtape.  It is Wormwood’s challenge to afflict one particular believer, to undermine his faith.  Screwtape’s advice to Wormwood is that the “safest path to hell is a gradual one,” in which the main challenge is to confuse, conflict, and eventually corrupt a person, rather than tempt them to evil. 

At one point in the letters, Screwtape notes that the greatest weapons they have are disinterest, dis-connection, and dis-heartenment.  After all, it is not necessary for the tormentors to incite a person to evil – it is enough simply to let their faith slide off into nothingness, into a valley of relativity and self-pleasure, where they become nothing but dry bones.  Screwtape encourages Wormwood to promote passivity and irresponsibility in his charge, noting that “God wants [people] to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.”

Maybe that’s what happened to the bones.  Maybe, faced with the challenges of faith, they found it easier to disconnect from the life-giving community and their bones each joined the bones of others who found that, alone, they could not sustain themselves.  The Spirit of God and promise of God was not given to just one individual, but to the nation that sprang forth – and that God’s word is liberating not just to one individual, but through community.

Peter stands with one community that is learning the Spirit of God is moving among them.  They’ve been fractured, but they’re beginning to pick up some of the pieces.  Their grief is still raw, yet it is tinged with something else.  It is hope?  Maybe.  They’re standing in the valley, and it is full of bones.  The bones have names: joy, community, hope, peace, love…the future.  They are very dry, but somewhere, a wind is stirring. 

The disciples have seen Jesus ascend into heaven.  Matthias now stands in their midst, taking up the responsibilities of Judas.  They are faced with a hostile crowd, still anxious and ready to put to death anyone who wants to question the status quo. 

Into the reality of a group that has seen their leader die and experienced the wild hope of resurrection, when they have already scattered and been brought back, it is going to be easier to walk away, to stop caring and stop engaging in the community, to become a safe face in the crowd. 

They’ve seen the cost of believing.  The cost of what they do is the price of who they are.  It is a high, high, cost to pay – but what is it worth to them, for forfeit their lives to be part of something greater?

Somewhere, they can hear the question: mortal, can these bones live?

Today is a bit of a rare occasion; Pentecost is commemorated once a year, and of course in the congregation there is an awareness that confirmation Sunday should happen at some point in time – but, perhaps you’ve noticed that I did not, in fact, have a youth confirmation class.

But then three people expressed interest in the same themes and ideas, and we began to meet together, and I did suggest that they could, on this day, choose to publically affirm their baptism.  On this day, they do, indeed, think more about what they do and less about what will happen to them.  There is no huge price for them to pay today – but in their faith lives, they have each intimately known the cost of discipleship.  We affirm our faith together; individuals affirm their baptism.

We all have our share on trials and temptations, and I think we can all likely track our own struggles with the Christian faith.  Whether we believe in such a lively sort of temptation as CS Lewis, or simply become aware of our own periods of indifference and disengagement, we can understand together that faith is never our job.

As Luther affirms, and as we believe, teach and confess in the explanation to the Third Article of the Apostles’ Creed (Small Catechism): “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or understanding believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him. But the Holy Spirit has called me by the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, sanctified and kept me in one true faith… even as he calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies the whole church.” The Spirit is alive and active in you and in me, re-making us in the very likeness of God.

Ezekiel stands in the middle of the valley, surrounded by bones.  But I would, with some confidence, guess that many of you know what that valley looks like, don’t you?  You’ve been there in your personal life, your professional life, your family life.  You know what it’s like to be surrounded by death and without hope.

So I ask all of you this, today: mortals, can these bones live?

YES! Those bones can live.  You know they can – you have been those bones.  Those bones are very dry, ALL of our bones – our beings – are very dry.  In the waters of baptism they are given life, and as at Pentecost the Holy Spirit breathes life into them, and raises them up from the pit in which they lie, and they have life – but more than that, they have abundant life.

The bones live, they have life, they are built and brought up and out by the power of nothing less than God’s own Holy Spirit.

From dry bones that have no life to the bodies of the whole of Israel that rise up and worship their Redeemer; liberated from the hopelessness of death and the endless weariness of life – they are restored.

Instead of more scorching heat of fire, God breathes life into the dry bones.  Those who said, “we are dried up and our hope is lost,” find hope restored to them and they are raised up by God.

Mortal, can these bones live?

Yes, these bones can live.  Though dry and tested and weary by days and years in the wilderness, they will find life.  Those who felt their hope cut off, find that they are restored. 

“I will put my spirit within you,” says the Lord,  “and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil, and you shall know that I am the Lord thy God.”

Be the church together, beloved.  Pray that the Holy Spirit will continue to move in the lives of those who today affirm and renew their baptismal covenants; pray that the Spirit will continue to move in your lives, and in our life, together.  The Holy Spirit is the gift to the church of God’s renewing presence.  Pray and sing, taste and see that the kingdom of God is with us, and among us; with you, and among you, and know that your bones will live, and find life everlasting through the magnificent gift of God.

Easter 6 - Fruit that Lasts

A long, dark hallway.  That’s what I remember. 

Odd, because hospitals only have long, dark hallways in the movies – especially when there’s some psychopath hiding, ready to jump out and attack you.  But there was no such luck in this hospital.

It was my second year of Seminary, my first month of clinical pastoral education; a eight-month hospital internship that was supposed to help me a) hone my pastoral skills; and b) become more self-aware about myself and my call to ministry.  The long, dark hallway represented my first ‘near-death experience’ – not my own death; but the first time that I, as a chaplain, was called to minister to someone who was dying, and was called to care for their family.

Quiet panic was the order of the day.  As I walked down that hallways, I was filled with all sorts of thoughts and doubts – thoughts about what I would say, what I would see; doubts about my abilities, and doubts about my call and vocations.

And this verse wandered through my head: “you didn’t choose me.  I chose you.”  And somewhere in the deep, dark recesses of my mind I thought: “gee, thanks Jesus.  I’ve been chosen.  Now what!!??”

“Now what?” Jesus replies: “now, go and bear fruit that lasts.”

I think that one of the hardest experiences we may share as Christians is that seminal moment when we’re called to put our stated faith into action; to go and sit with the family of a dying person, to bring a casserole to the mother whose husband just left her, to knock on the door of the home of the family that just lost a child, take a deep breath, and love them.

That’s bearing fruit that lasts.  And curiously enough, that’s something Christians don’t do often, or well.  Because we live in a society of instant gratification, we think that because we spout out a sound byte, or shake our heads at a culturally appropriate time, that we are bearing fruit: it’s quick, easy, and makes us feel good.  Like buying an apple at a store, and declaring it to be ‘our apple’.

But like Christianity that is purchased at a church, that apple has been picked too soon, commercialized, chemicalized, and commodified.  It may not even wither and die – it will remain waxy and glossy on the surface long after it has rotted at its core.  If you have ever tended a fruit tree, though, you know the work that is required to produce good, lasting fruit.  Incessant pruning, caring, and hard work is necessary to bear good fruit, and that fruit does not last long when it is removed from the tree.

So, US President Barack Obama made history this week, when he became the first President in US history to go on record as stating that he supports gay marriage.  Rush Limbaugh stated that Obama has declared war on marriage – but his first, second, and third wives couldn’t be reached for their opinion.  Being homophobic is not showing support, or love, for family.

But, interestingly enough, if someone hangs out a sign promoting ‘love for families’, or ‘support for families’ they risk being immediately labeled as exclusive, fundamentalist, misogynistic, or some combination of all three – because of the association with fear and violence that reactionary, hateful rhetoric of the debate has come to represent. 

Fruit that lasts isn’t opinion, or repeating verbatim what some pastor said.  The only fruit that lasts is love; and love shows itself in action.

There is probably no word more mis-used or mis-understood in the whole of the English language than ‘love.’  People ‘love’ chocolate (and I’m going to avoid pointing at my wife at this point!), they love sports, money, vacations in Mexico, their car, their hairstylist, and we all know that most men just love beer.

We also know that with a divorce rate approaching 50%, love for beer and chocolate is often considered far more important than love for one’s spouse.  There are appreciation days for ‘beer lovers’ and ‘chocolate lovers’ and ‘shopaholics’ – “free love” was my the anthem of my mother’s generation, the Beatles sang “love is all you need” and there’s a sign outside a store I drove past the other day called “The Love Boutique” (I somehow don’t think that’s a therapy group). 

The way we love shapes our families: it’s a hard rule to learn about parenting: it’s easy to say words to build up a child, than it is to say words to repair an adult (I know enough adults struggling to repair damage done in childhood by hurtful words spoken by parents).

When I was younger, a friend of my mother’s was trapped in an abusive relationship.  Her husband beat her, threatened her and her children, controlled her in terrible ways and made her life almost unbearable.

One evening I overheard my mother talking to this woman.  My mother asked, “why do you stay?”

And her friend replied simply, “he says he loves me.”

Beloved, we love as we have been shown love

You’d think, for all the community-awareness campaigns for domestic violence, that the rate would be going down.   But it’s not.  It’s going up.  The only war that’s being waged on the family is the one that happens when love is confused for control.

The love that is given to us – that is modeled for us by the Saviour – is the love that we need: love lived in sacrifice, in community, and in joy.  There are so many interpretations of the idea that someone can ‘lay down their life’ for another.  But here’s something to think about:

There is only one person in all of history who chose to lay down his life, and that was Jesus – because only Jesus did not have to die.  Everyone else does.  No one chooses to lay down their life, because it is not theirs to lay down.  Through sacrifice, suicide, or stupidity, we can chose to end our lives early – but they are still going to end.

Christ, the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the by whom we became children of God chose to lay down his life in death so that our death would not be the end; and we he picked his life up again he raised us up through his power so that the fruit we bear would be eternal fruit.

We bear fruit that lasts because of the gift of Christ within us; the living waters of baptism in which we are washed, blessed, cleansed, and claimed by God.

Because of God with us, we bear fruit; because of Christ within us, we bear fruit that will last eternally: the proclamation of love and grace that we are part of something greater than ourselves.

We did not choose to bear fruit; the fruit tree, left to its own devices grows gnarled and notched.  But beloved, we have been chosen to bear fruit; to be the stones out of which Christ builds God’s holy church.  Every stone in a wall is under pressure, but that pressure is shared by every other stone.  Every piece of fruit on every giving tree is nourished by the same nutrients that come from the root; there is none that is by nature better than another.

Be the church together, beloved.  Support each other.  Care for each other.  Love each other.  You have been given the gift of joy – share that gift.

Easter 4 - Good Shepherds

So, we’ve just been through an election.  You may have noticed.  You may also have noticed that, to paraphrase U.S novelist Mark Twain, that reports of the death of the PC party were greatly exaggerated.

Really, if my own prognostications about the direction St. Matt’s was headed in were as accurate as the pollsters who covered our election, you would rightly boot my big bald head right out of this pulpit and make sure I was settled into a profession where I couldn’t do any damage – like, say, provincial politics.

And, having gone through our own democratic process, I can help but turn my attention a little bit to our neighbours to the south, where the Republican nomination process continues with slightly less fanfare.

By ‘slightly less’, I mean that some of the media hype has been toned down a bit.  For a little while, the rhetoric was so exaggerated that I began to think that the second coming of our Lord would get less press than Newt’s campaign.

But I don’t think that the language used was unintentional.  All the campaigners used the language of ‘strong biblical values’ to garner votes.  All of them – some more than others, granted – sought endorsement from prominent church figures in the United States.  And what amazes me (what absolutely confounds me) is that if the delegates could get an endorsement, it came with the assumption that the thousands, if not tens of thousands, of votes from the followers of those people would be theirs.

Because those church leaders would literally – and did – tell their congregations that certain delegates were ‘anointed,’ ‘ordained’, or ‘chosen’ by God, and thus worthy of their support.  And there was no middle ground, either – there was only going to be one flock, and either you were in, or out.

Does that make them shepherds?  Is that what shepherds do – tell the flock where to go, and what to do?

Does that make them ‘good’ shepherds?  Somehow, from a means of describing the Saviour, it has become a competition: the best shepherds have the largest flocks, where the sheep go to be seen.

It’s something to think about.  Because it doesn’t seem to be how scripture describes them.  The image of the shepherd is one of the most powerful metaphors that scripture uses to describe God.  It mixes descriptions of leadership, servanthood, responsibility, and love at the same time – and then holds that up what the world expects, or wants.

Turns out the world falls short.

What the world wants most in a leader is someone who will give them what they want: lower taxes, better wages, free healthcare, free money, free cable TV….the list is endless.

What the shepherd shows us is different: because David can say “the Lord is my shepherd,” he can also say “I shall not be in want.”  Shepherds don’t give the sheep what they want.  In reality, I haven’t the foggiest idea what sheep actually want out of life.  But a shepherd gives the sheep what they need.

On the fourth Sunday of the Easter season, the focus of the readings shifts from accounts of the Saviour’s resurrection and turns more toward focussing on the question of who is Jesus – not a simple question to answer, so our understanding becomes rooted in faith, not a descriptive or biographical tradition.

And that faith starts with the image of the shepherd, but a very unique one: the gospel of John points out that the good shepherd is willing to lay down his life for the sheep.  And there’s something else: when Jesus says to his people “I am the good shepherd,” their first thoughts would have gone to the Psalm, but also the prophet Ezekiel, where God the Father speaks and says “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep.”

Small wonder, that a few verses later in John’s gospel, the crowd takes up stones and accuses Jesus of blasphemy.

The prophet Ezekiel - long before Jesus walked on the shores of the sea of Galilee - talked about a shepherd, too:

I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord GOD. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice. They shall know that I, the LORD their God, am with them, and that they..are my people, says the Lord GOD. You are my sheep, the sheep of my pasture and I am your God, says the Lord GOD.

The crowds wanted to stone Jesus.  What kind of flock are we to be?

We are meant to be a flock that follows, understands, and tries to be like our shepherd.  There’s one thing that separates us from sheep – we have the capacity to love each other, and to serve each other.  It’s in this very human dynamic that a two-centuries-old metaphor begins to fall apart.  There are many people who claim to be followers of Jesus – even better followers than others – but who also say that they don’t ‘do’ organized religion.

To them, I say: come to St. Matt’s.  We don’t do ‘organized’ religion, either.  But at some point, to profess faith in Christ is to realize that you are in need of a shepherd; and a shepherd is going to bring you to a flock.  That flock won’t be what you want; it may be, though, just what you need.  There will be black sheep, white sheep, brown sheep, fluffy sheep, shorn sheep; sheep that are wounded and broken; sheep that are weak, and sheep that are strong.

But they are all members of one flock: they all have one shepherd.

You are that flock; you serve the shepherd and there is salvation in no one else.  Abide with Christ: serve each other.  Love each other, and God will abide in you.

Let the people of God say ‘amen.’