Christ the King - That Kind of King

This past week was Thanksgiving for our neighbours to the south, and it was tremendous.  Oh, the sales!  Oh, the sheer amount of STUFF you could buy, it was glorious!  And, the best part: we now have those sales here in Canada!  Come on, now, who took advantage of all those great deals?

‘Taking advantage’ of a great deal is a really good use of language.  Because you literally ‘take advantage’ of the person living in a third-world country who made the stuff that you bought – partly, it’s the benefit of living in Canada – that we can pay incredibly low prices for stuff that is made a a few thousand miles away, transported here, and eventually sold here.  Nobody’s making a fair wage in this system.  But, if you are lucky enough to live in the first world it is part of the system we operate in, and you can’t get out of it. 

Every so often, I’ll pick up a book about someone who’s voluntarily left North American society – usually to go to Thailand, or India, or somewhere that the climate is warmer and the western dollar goes a little further. They’re disconnected from a western address, but not from western society – they still communicate through telephone, email, cell phones, iPad, whatever.  There’s often a self-congratulatory tone to the book that centres around the author’s satisfaction with finding ‘spiritual awareness’ or ‘spiritual renewal’ in their avoidance of western culture. 

That drives me up a wall.  I’m too much of a Lutheran, too ready to confess I am captive to sin and cannot free myself, to buy into the idea that I can remove my awareness of my culpability, and participation in, systems that cause harm to other people.  I’m willing to admit that that’s likely the result of my education, forced awareness of these systems.  But I think it also is an awareness of the world; that a lot of the trappings of my life that I consider as necessary are, in fact, privilege.

Beloved of God, here’s an admission: the world we live in doesn’t work.  It needs a Saviour, it needs a Messiah, it needs a king; but I don’t know if we’ll ever agree on what kind of king it needs.  A king like David, say.  The reading from 2 Samuel today is the ‘last words’ of David – one of about 10 instances of last words from David in scripture.  Why are there so many?  Because David became the image of the perfect king.  If you know the history of David, even just a little bit, you’ll notice that’s pretty ironic – because David is not a nice man.  Murder, adultery, complicity in rape, and a few other things mar his record.  But David remains the king that looms large in Israel’s imagination.

If you’ll remember, though, God was not in favour of the Israelites having a king.  Earlier in 1 Samuel the Israelites go to Samuel and say “tell God we want a king”.  Samuel does, and God replies, ‘tell them they don’t, because a king is going to oppress them, tax them, drive them to war, rule them by force, and make their lives miserable.”  Samuel tells the Israelites just that; they reply “yada, yada, yada, we know; just give us a king, already”.  And along comes Saul, and then David, and then Solomon, and then a long line of others, down to a single point.

It comes down to an arena in Jerusalem: Jesus and Pilate stand, facing each other.  Jesus, the descendant of David, whom the crowd has called “King of the Jews”, and Pilate, the representative of the Roman empire.  The irony is that Rome is the empire that the Israelites asked for: mighty, controlling everything around it, complete with all the warnings and detractions that God warned them about.  They are mighty, over all; they rule most of the known world.  Jesus is their great hope: that he would be Rome, but tolerable; that he would bring oppression and fear to other lands, where before it was Israel that had lived in oppression, and fear.

But it’s gone, now.  And has been for over a millennia and a half. 

Two kinds of king stand, face to face.  One rules in might, with legions, and armies, the strength of economy.  One rules in love, with community, with boundaries, but with kindness.  But the people have already made their choice, and if you read on in the story you find that choice – we have no king but Caesar.  We admit to no king, but the one that can deliver us what we want, when we want it; we want a king who looks like a king, who acts like a king; who is going to let chosen people act with impunity and invulnerability. 

Two kinds of king stand, face to face.  One knows that he has the power of death over the other; but only One knows the power of life; the power of truth.  Jesus stands seemingly under Pilate’s judgement, and that of the people; but he stands as the king of all and all that is to come.

You say that I am a king…for this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth…everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.

The truth is, that Jesus is the kind of king of who doesn’t do ‘kingly’ things; he heals the sick, loves the widow, the orphan, the adulteress, and the outcast.  Jesus is the kind of king who welcomes sinners, and eats with them.

We confess that we are captive to sin, and cannot free ourselves.  To be free we need a Saviour – a king who rules in love, not wrath; because life only thrives in love.

The crowds rejects that kind of king, because they want a king who claims power, and control; not glory, or dominion, from the Greek word referring to ultimate authority.

But give praise to God, beloved, that the kind of king you have is the kind of king who welcomes sinners, and extends to them an invitation to his table. 

Give praise to God, beloved, that the kind of king you have is the kind of king who stands before the kind of king you think you need and refuses to acknowledge that temporal authority can ever touch the eternal.

Give praise to God, beloved, that the kind of king you have is eternal; is the Alpha, the Omega, the beginning, and the end; and that all will see him when he comes in glory.

Give praise to God, beloved, that all will see him not because he comes with armies to conquer, but because they have seen him in you.  That because of your baptism into death, that kind of king has become part of who you are; that kind of king has brought you to be a part of something greater than yourself, greater than you can ever imagine.

Give praise to God, beloved, that that kind of King loves you, died for you, and lives for you; give praise to God, and live for that kind of king.

Amen.

November 18 - Pentecost 25

So last week, I mentioned that the end of the world is coming around – now, it’s December 21.  That kind of sucks – you’ve spent all your money on Christmas, but haven’t had the chance to enjoy your gifts.

There’s a story that my Seminary president used to tell about the Metropolitan Archbishop of New York, whose office was in a tall building. One day, a homeless man wandered into the reception area and asked to speak to the Archbishop.  When the administrator asked the man who he was, the man replied, “I’m Jesus Christ”.  In fact, the man was quite insistent that he was, in fact, Jesus.  So, the administrator buzzed up to the Archbishop’s office.  When the Archbishop answered, the admin said, “there’s a man here who wants to see you”.  “Who is it?” the Archbishop asked.  “He says he’s Jesus,” replied the admin, a little sheepishly.

Without missing a beat, the Archbishop replied, “quick – look busy!”

The moral of the story is, I advise you all to attend the midweek Advent services this year.  You never know – it might help…

A few people have asked me how the date of the end of the world is determined.  The answer is: I don’t know.  Usually, as in the case of Harold Camping and others like him, people claim access or understanding of knowledge ‘hidden’ in the bible, in certain passages of scripture, or prophecies that they’ve been able to understand.  In other cases – like this December 21 thing – it comes from the end of the Mayan calendar.  The Mayans, as you may know, where a civilization in the Yucatan whose culture collapsed because of climate change before their religious types could figure out if they were right about the end of the world.

Speaking of which, the end of our year is next Sunday – Christ the King.  Are we speaking of the end of the world?  No.  Well, today, we actually are.  Which, is not really one of my favourite topics; I tend to think that many Christians focus so much on the end of the world so they don’t have to currently live in this one.   That’s a ‘Lutheran’ thing – theologically, we trust that God can handle this whole ‘end of time’ stuff, and that when it’s necessary, he’ll let us know.  As Lutherans, we trust that Christ has accomplished the work of our salvation, so until his return our task is life, together.  We’re ‘expectant’ Christians: we expect Jesus to return; we trust it’s going to happen, and we wait.  We don’t keep watching the skies; we don’t keep charts, graphs, or diagrams.

So, it turns out, that in today’s gospel Jesus is talking about the end of the world, and he’s actually kind of creeping the disciples out. They walk through the forecourt of the Temple, and the disciples are totally amazed at the size of the architecture.  “What large stones, and what large buildings!” and Jesus looks at them, as proclaims that it will all be brought down.

Imagine that.  Imagine me taking the congregation to the middle of downtown Edmonton, and proclaiming, “not a single one of these building will be left standing!”  You’d think I was a raving nutter.  Turns out, the disciples want to hear a little more from Jesus.  Later, four of them approach him, and ask what the signs will be that will bring about the destruction of the Temple.  And you have his answer: many false prophets, wars and rumours of wars, nation rises against nation, kingdom against kingdom, earthquakes, and famines.  I can see you thinking.  You’re thinking about all the news recently, about all these things.

Beloved, so were the disciples.  They didn’t have the media access that we do nowadays, but they still had ears.  And Jesus is speaking directly to their minds.  They’re thinking, but teacher, those things are happening NOW!  It’s truly terrifying, because Jesus knows what he’s talking about.  He’s not a random voice on a radio program.  This is the man who heals the sick, and raises the dead.  But then, Jesus adds one last thing: “this is but the beginning of the birth pangs”

I might point out: Jesus is not speaking to a group of well-enlightened, medically literate, educated men.  He’s talking to a group of superstitious peasants, who, by and large, believe that the simple fact that women menstruate means they’re being punished for something.  Birth, for them, is not a happy occasion: it’s weird, loud, and women obviously make too much fuss about it.  So, I’m pretty sure that when Jesus began talking about ‘birth pangs,’ the panic level of the disciples went up, not down – because it means that they might have to experience this awkward and scary event, too.

But you know, for a culture that is full of societal taboos and superstitions regarding childbirth and children, it turns out that God works a lot through those two events – look at the story of Hannah in 1 Samuel.  Hannah is the second wife of Elkanah, who is a good and faithful person; but she is barren (as Scripture describes it, the Lord had closed her womb, which is not a torment, but usually a foreshadowing that something bigger is intended for the person).  Hannah promises that if she can conceive and bear a child, then that child would become a Nazirite; one dedicated to the Temple from the day of his birth. Basically, if she has a child, she will give him to God’s service.  She goes to the Temple and prays, and the prophet Eli is impressed by her commitment, and bids her to go in peace.

The writer of 1 Samuel records that “…in due time, Hannah conceived, and bore a son”  - God’s faithfulness to her.  Taken as a single story, this little narrative becomes pretty standard Sunday-school fare: you want something, pray, be good, and God will give it to you.  But that’s not what this story is about, all in all – it’s the beginning of a narrative that stretches from this baby Samuel – who became a great prophet, who anointed the first king of Israel, who proclaimed the salvation of a great nation by the branch of Jesse’s tree – all the way to Jesus, sitting on the Mount of Olives, talking about beginnings.

Way back when the Lutheran theological tradition began to be formed, it came out of a time of great societal and cultural upheaval.  Martin Luther was not the only reformer; nor strictly speaking, was he the first.  Others rose up who proclaimed the end of the world; in the 16^th century doomsday cults drew as many followers as they do now.  People waited with breathless anticipation to watch the world burn and the undeserving be thrown to eternal punishment.  What Luther did provide was a sober second thought: yes, Christ would return.  Yes, the world would end.  But we are still called to form the church in the world.

It can be tempting to withdraw when we think things aren’t going well – many people do; in fact, there are people who are selling their houses, stockpiling food and weapons, for what they are certain will be the end of civilization, if not the end of the entire world. 

Yet that’s not what we are called to do.  As the writer of Hebrews said, let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful…and let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds…encouraging one another, as all the more you see the Day approaching.

Many of you have been there: you’ve been the expectant parents, grandparents, aunts, or uncles.  You’ve been anxious and excited at the same time.  Terrified, and topful of joy at the promise of new life before you. 

You’re expectant Lutherans, too.  Yes, the world looks like it darkens around us.  Yes, we hear reports from all around us that chaos is everywhere and the world is groaning like it is in labour.  Yet, look around our own community: here, you see signs of God’s faithful promise.  Here, you meet together to encourage and support, love and work, together because you hope that God is bringing forth something greater than us all.

The world is turning; it is turning into the creation that God made it to be; it is turning into the world that Christ redeemed as his own; it is turning into the great and holy place that God’s Spirit brings to birth – just as God is turning you to be his own people in this place; his own children.  God has waited for you, beloved of God: and you wait to see that your hope in God will be fulfilled, in turn.

Amen.

November 11 - Pentecost 24

Text: Mark 12:38-44

So, in case you hadn’t noticed, here’s something to note: apparently, the world is going to end.  This is not a repeat from last October.  Or, last May.  Or, from any other time when people have said that the world is ending.  Nope.  This time, it’s for real.  December 21, 2012.

In the disaster movie 2012, the opening scene is of New York city, flooded after bearing the brunt of a hurricane.  There are terrible winter storms.  Earthquakes rock the west coast.  There are Democrats in the White House.  Obviously, these are all signs.  Personally, I advise all of you to take all your money, give it to the church, and anticipate a welcome reception at the pearly gates.  This concludes today’s message.

What?  I think that’s a pretty simple way of looking at the gospel lesson for today: the widow gives her two coins – all, Jesus says, that she has to live on.  And he likes that.  What he doesn’t like is the scribes, or the rich people, the comfortably middle-class making between $200-$250k, and just give a little bit off the top. 

But something doesn’t sit right with me about that.  In fact, there’s something about that particular way of teaching that irritates me.  I think that I find it irritating because there have been times in my life when I’ve made a choice between giving to the church and buying milk for my children – and let me tell you, the children win out.  There’s no way of glossing over this: you can’t ‘but if you give more, you’ll be blessed more’ your way out of this.  There are two ways of interpreting what Jesus says about giving:

1)  that you should give sacrificially, even to the point of abandoning all that you have to live on, to support the structure of the church; or

2) that perhaps the widow is an illustration of Jesus’ words – not an example of the godly life that is characterized by giving the church lots of money.

I’m not intending to directly challenge a good two millennia of teaching on this passage.  I’m not; there’s an important dimension to good spiritual discipline that is tied to giving of financial resources; perhaps especially when those resources are abundant.  But I do think that it’s time to liberate this poor widow from the shadow of money, and let her bask in the light.

Jesus is talking to the disciples.  Now, if you have disciples, you’re pretty important.  If you hang around people that you admire; chances are, you’ll come to copy.  Consider Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum and his sweater-vest army; Justin Beiber is surrounded by fresh-faced young people who buy his brands; and even Prime Minister Stephen Harper is surrounded by young and vibrant staffers who start wearing bad suits, fluffy sweaters, and not making a lot of sense.

Those disciples are maybe getting a bit tired of following Jesus.  He’s poor.  He’s dirty.  He stays in others people’s houses and eats with tax collectors and sinners.  They’re looking around at the other successful religious types in their neighbourhoods; the private plane, mansion on the hill, scores of admirers; snappy dressers, the lot of them.  That’s looking a little more like the sweet life; why toil for little or no pay, get a lot of people mad at you, and get threatened; when you can be the go-to person for all of life’s little conundrums?  You can pack stadiums, rather than packing groceries.

Jesus sees them looking, and adds a warning: you don’t want to be like those people.  Sure, they dress nicely.  Yes, they’re well-respected in the community, and are invited to the best parties.  But: they devour widows’ houses and the for the sake of appearances say long prayers.  They will receive the greater condemnation.

Here’s the problem: the scribes aren’t scribes because they’re good people.  They’re not successful because they’re good preachers, theologians, or pastors.  They’re successful because they use the religious law to help them get ahead.  People didn’t give to the temple out of their generosity: they were taxed, and the scribes and Pharisees were in charge of administering the tax.

So if, say, your husband died, you were left a lonely widow on your own.  Their interpretation of Scripture then held that you were inferior; and for your own good your property should naturally go to someone else; say, a trusted religious authority.  In the face of people looking and saying, gee, I don’t think that’s right, they could stand in their piety and offer up prayers as a testimony of their own devotion to the law – so nobody questions such a good believer.

Does that sound familiar?

So I wonder, is the house that the scribes devoured the one that offered shelter for the widow?  Is she at the treasury to offer her last two coins because she’s compelled too?  I don’t see the widow in this story as an example; I see her as a tragic figure, and I think Jesus does, too.  In Mark’s gospel, the next thing Jesus teaches is that the entire Temple – where that widow is leaving her coins – is going to be torn stone from stone.  All that money that everyone’s contributed to keep the Temple going will have been for nothing.

So, what is it that the widow is giving that Jesus sees as good?  The Greek text literally reads, but out of the poverty of her all, as much as she had, cast all the living of her.

Jesus isn’t talking about her money, beloved.  He sees her greatest contribution as her life; that as one oppressed and abused, that woman was still keeping the faith.  It is one thing to be the scribe, wealthy and powerful as long as the temple was there to be the symbol of religion for the people; but that widow’s faith was in God and not in the institution.

It seems, beloved, that around us all sorts of institutions are crumbling.  Indeed, there are earthquakes on the west coast.  That’s going to happen when you have a dense population on a fault like.  Yes, New York city is flooding and being batter by hurricanes.  That’s what happens when you build a substantial portion of a city on an island in the middle of a river on a coastline known for hurricanes.  And yes, the United States did just re-elect Barak Obama as president.  All sorts of old institutions are crumbling: old ways of doing things; the face of the world is changing..  But Jesus’ warning to the scribes is more pertinent now, than ever: those who cherish only the past will not be entrusted with the future (David Frum). 

Today is Remembrance Day; a time to remember the sacrifices made by members of the armed forces’ who fought to preserve some institutions, but also to destroy others.  As the world rushed towards war in their day, preachers proclaimed the end of the world as confidently as they do now.  And I wonder: what lessons have we learned from those who ‘cast all their living’…perhaps the most profound lesson learned is truly to beware those who use religion for power and influence.  In the First World War, armies on both sides marched to triumphant battle hymns that promised the continuation of their faith; by the time of the second the lines were just as clearly drawn and again, both sides marched to the assurances of divine favour and victory.

The reality was a bitter, bitter, pill to swallow.  But in the decades since then, conflicts have only gotten murkier; lines are not so clearly drawn.  Almost a decade in Afghanistan and young women still aren’t learning to read; warlords and corrupt bureaucrats are still the reality.  But into those spaces and places go those who are prepared to give all that they have to live on – not out of assurance of divine favour but out of conviction that the sacrifice would be worth it; that their own two coins given would be more meaningful than a lifetime lived standing on the sidelines and giving what they wouldn’t miss.

I don’t believe that Jesus looked at the religious world of his time and said that people who gave their lives to the system were more worthy that those who knew how to work it; I think that what Christ longed for and desired to see was one faithful person to actually trust God to fulfill the promises God has made, even in the face of oppression and evil.

On this day, may we all find that we can prepare ourselves to cast our lives to the care of God, even as we remember those who gave their lives for something greater than themselves: the lives of others.

May we all find, one day, that we would wake up to a world in which our Lord has returned; that tears are no more, that suffering, sickness, and death are no longer; that the sea and the grave have given up their dead; and that truly, the home of God is among mortals.

May we lift our voices then in the old prayer of the church: maranatha: our Lord, come.

Amen.

All Saints Sunday

Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

So, who was it?  Who, in your life, did you have to let go?  Wife, husband, child…there’s no end to it.  If there’s any one thing that is so frustrating about this life, it’s that it sometimes seems like we can live our lives always being touched by death – if not directly, then by the fear of death; the fear of loss that can often be just as eviscerating as the actual loss itself.  But living under that fear, in the end, only makes us angry: angry at the God who could make this unbelievably unfair world.

That’s the question that I’ve been asked the most in the years since I’ve been ordained: why did this happen?  Why are we the ones who are suffering?

I hear it slightly different than usually asked.  I hear it as Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.  In the feeling of utter helplessness that comes with waiting and watching and walking along with those who suffer, God dies.  God dies, not because of God’s own actions, but because in the experience of something so much more powerful than us – the power of death – the power of God, the power of life made manifest in Christ becomes eclipsed, covered up in great darkness.  Thick, suffocating, darkness.

In that darkness, there are some glimmers of light: the friends who come with a hug and a shared tear; the anonymous ‘thinking of you’ card that comes when you think you have no more energy; the quick phone call when you’re feeling desperately alone.  Those glimmers of light remind you that you are not alone; that others have walked that road before you and walk along beside you; they remind you that you do not wait alone.

And you do wait.  You wait as did the people of Israel, who longed for rescue, longed for God to come down and bring with him a new creation that would mean they would not have to watch their nation; their people, suffer, and die.  And God made them a promise: 

          And he will destroy on this mountain

          the shroud that is cast over all peoples,

          the sheet that is spread over all nations;

               he will swallow up death forever.

          Then the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces,

          and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth,

          for the LORD has spoken.

And they wait for that promise to be fulfilled.  A promised fulfilled by a commandment at a tomb:  unbind him, and let him go.

Jesus has wept at the grave of his friend, been berated by Mary, and in the face of the condemnation of the law, Lazarus has been raised from the dead.  Old Hebrew tradition held that the soul stayed in the body for three days after death; someone who had been dead for four days was ‘truly’ dead.  Prohibitions against touching the dead abounded, and now the crowd has a dead man in their midst.

A dead man, for whom moments ago they were crying.  Maybe not just crying; wailing, because the loss of the male head of a family would usually mean destitution and poverty for the female members of the family left behind. 

Jesus comes, the dead man is alive again; and the horrified crowd looks on, making Jesus’ instructions a necessity: unbind him, and let him go.

It’s small wonder that it is the raising of Lazarus that leads the Pharisees to understand that Jesus is too real to let live; if the crowd makes him king, the Romans will destroy their people.  From one life, comes death, and the crowd must then learn: unbind him, and let him go.  Unbind Jesus from their expectations, from their hopes, and let him be the Saviour that they need.  Death will still reign unless the Son of God can defeat death.

They also must unbind Lazarus from their fear, and let him be the man whom Jesus raised.  Fear, it turns out, may be as binding as the shrouds in which the dead are wrapped.  “See how much he loved him,” the crowd marvelled as Jesus wept; and Jesus did.  While the crowd and his sisters feared for Lazarus, feared for a future without Lazarus because they loved him, but they love imperfectly.  Jesus loves perfectly, and in the words of his friend John some years later, perfect love casts out fear.  Perhaps easy, for the Son of God; but an altogether different proposition for those who live and love in this world.

When my eldest son was born, I was a very proud daddy.  In fact, I was so proud I was probably floating two feet off the ground.  He was very little, but he showed promise early.  That pride was tempered with no small bit of anxiety; we were due within a week of his birth to move to Saskatoon for me to start my Seminary degree. 

A friend of ours who was a pastor came to visit us in the hospital, and after she’d ooo’d and aww’d a bit over the baby, she looked at me and said, “it’s amazing, isn’t it?” and I allowed that it was.  I was expecting the ‘soft paws’ approach to pastoral care.  But my friend looked at me, and continued as she said “it’s amazing that we can invite something so beautiful into our lives, but also realize that we’re inviting them to death.”

That sounds like a real downer.  But my friend is a very good pastor, and what she said stuck with me because to invite someone (anyone) into our lives is to invite them to death; and to invite grief.  Yet, I still hold my friend’s challenge to me as important because of the way I grew into my calling as a husband and father: I grew into fear.  Where I had never known fear of death – despite losing both sets of my grandparents before I turned 18, I felt largely untouched by fear.

That changed.

I began to have nightmares as I had never before.  I started to panic at the thought of my wife in hospital or my children – especially that first wee baby – getting sick.  It affected my health; it affected my capability to fulfill my calling.  Eventually, I had to realize that my fear was due to my love for that little family; but that my love had its roots in control: I want to control their health – even the to the extent of being God in God’s place, to dictate when, and where, and how.  But then I hear the words of the Saviour: unbind them, and let them go.

I had invited great love into my life; but I also invited them to be part of a creation in which death is a reality.  In the midst of my own darkness of fear, I had to let the light of Jesus Christ shine through – because God is NOT dead; God unbinds us and our love from the fear of death and decay.  God lives with God’s people as they care for each other: I learned that I did not care for my family alone.

In that understanding, you can raise your own voice with the people of Israel:  Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us.  This is the LORD for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.  There is nothing I can do to save my family.  But, we can be together with all God’s people, and together we can wait, worship, and praise.

Yesterday, today, and tomorrow, we are tied together by Christ, and we are tied to Christ through the gift of our baptism.  When death comes for each of us, Jesus unties us from this earthly life and releases us to eternal life with him.  Like Lazarus, we are raised.  We are eternally bound and tied together in Christ, tied to the past, tied to the future.

Today is All Saints’ Sunday, remembering all those who have been gathered to everlasting life in Christ.  Today, as we gather as a community around the table of the Lord, you have the opportunity to come and light and candle for the ones you love.  A light to show that you know the darkness won’t win; a light to know that their everlasting life is real; a light to know that in the midst of your own great pain, you can unbind the ones you love, and let them go.

Let them go to Christ, who loves them, who weeps with you.  Let them go as they let you go; not to loneliness, but to the community that gathered and gathers still around you: God with you, and you, God’s people – for the home of God is with us.

And let the people of God say amen.

Thanksgiving Sunday

Happy Thanksgiving.  Well, kind of.  I have this small problem with greeting card holidays.  I don’t like Valentine’s Day; tend to gloss over Mother’s Day and Father’s Day…on the other hand, I always remember “International Talk Like a Pirate Day.”  Facebook always reminds me.

But thanksgiving here in Canada is a bit of a mystery.  I remember in school colouring pilgrim’s hats; making those hand-print turkeys, and hearing the story about the first pilgrims to North America sharing this great feast.  Does this sound familiar?  I hope I’m not the only one.  There’s a problem, though: you guessed it – that’s the story of the holiday that was created by our neighbours to the south.

Here in Canada, we can trace the origins of this October festival to the dim mists of time, all the way back to…1872.  It was in April, then, and was declared a holiday to celebrate the recovery of the Prince of Wales from a serious illness.

Seriously?  If the Prince of Wales became seriously ill and then recovered nowadays, a full two-thirds the population of Canada would think: blast!  Willie was a bit closer!

Over the years, the time of year and date of an official thanksgiving holiday changed back and forth until 1957, when it decided it was to be the second Monday in October.  That’s right, folks, Monday.  If you’re in church on Thanksgiving, you can thank some very good marketing from the church folks back in the fifties for that.  It’s amazing what cultural guilt can do, isn’t it?

You see, my problem with the Thanksgiving holiday is purely linguistic.  Can you guess what it is?  I’ll tell you straight.  It’s the difference between a noun, and a verb.  A noun is a person, place, or thing.  That’s it.  It’s static.  I’m standing at a pulpit.  It’s just sits here.  It doesn’t really get used during the week; Sunday worship doesn’t centre around staring at this lovely piece of architecture, and to be honest, I’m not thinking that a lot of you faithful people think longing thoughts about this lacquered lectern throughout the week.

This pulpit isn’t alive unless there’s preaching that comes from it that can connect with you; with your hearts and minds and faith.  In the same way, thanksgiving is actually a verb.  It’s an action word.  Thanksgiving isn’t a holiday; there shouldn’t be a need to guilt people into realizing how good things are, or to remind farmers that giving thanks after a harvest is a good thing.  Thanksgiving isn’t a holiday; it should be a way of life.

In his letter to Timothy, Paul reminds his young friend to offer thanksgivings for all things and for all people.  ALL of them.  And a part of us thinks really? All things?  There are things that I am darn well NOT going to be thankful for.

But again, a reminder: Paul tells Timothy to give thanks for kings, and people in high stations.  In their time, though, most kings and people of high station thought Christians a nuisance at best; at worst a plague that needed to be exterminated.  These are not circumstances under which we could possibly consider being thankful in our day and age. 

We all have those things that cause us to be bitter and resentful around thanksgiving.  Certainly, we are surrounded by those things that are good, and that we are thankful for.  But beloved, I think you know in your heart what grates on you.  Maybe it’s your child who’s too busy to call once a week, once a month, let alone come and visit.  Or, it’s the child who won’t leave home.  Maybe it’s the test results that aren’t looking good, or the person in your life who is so adversarial that you wake up in the middle of the night feeling panicky.  Or when you think, what do I have to be thankful for, all there is left is a hospital room, a funeral, and a memory that you don’t want.

Yes, beloved, that is hard.  But I’m going to say that it’s harder to go through life hardening your heart and persisting in worrying about those things, than it is to root your thanks in God, and find life in Christ.  As Paul writes, the root of thanks should be rooted in praise of God, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.  And the truth is, that unless we learn thanksgiving as a way of life, rooted in God, then when we will never find fulfillment in our lives as individuals, or as families.

When Jesus speaks to the apostles, he talks to them about a problem that is consistent throughout our history: they worry.  In fact, they worry A LOT.  But then again, they don’t have jobs, homes, income, or a retirement plan.  They’re surrounded by people who don’t like them and their boss likes talking about what’s going to happen when he dies.  You could maybe understand a little bit of their worry.  Jesus covers just about everything – food, clothing, shelter.  As he reminds the disciples, even the wild things are clothed and cared for by God, and they are much, much, more important to God that those wild things are. 

But then Jesus gives the punchline: strive first for the kingdom of God.  He urges the disciples to live like God’s promises to them are real.  That’s the secret.  The disciples, like us, are used to all of our modern conveniences of faith: a whole lot of lip service for those things that we’ve already gotten that are good.  But Jesus has revealed that they’re still full of worries.  Worries, it seems to Jesus, are a sign that we are more confident in our own problem-solving abilities than in God’s. 

So Jesus gives us something else to think about – God already knows those things are needed.  But strive for God’s kingdom, and all those things will be added to you.

Is it that simple?  You can sit back and chortle to ourselves…after all, you’ve heard about Hope Mission, and the Bissel Centre, and all the other social organizations who are desperate for donations so they can help people who are in desperate need.  Where’s Jesus, then?  Do they just put their trust in God, and things mystically happen?

Well, it turns out that it is maybe that simple.  Because, beloved, the kingdom of God that Jesus tells you to strive for begins with you.  It begins with you acting together and coming together in praise of Jesus Christ so that you become signs of God’s kingdom for others.

Because here’s the thing:  Jesus tells the disciples not to worry, because Jesus knows what it’s like to be human.  Do not worry?  Really?  The people I know who worry about money the most – and are the most reluctant to share it.  The people with the fullest closets are the people who claim to have nothing to wear.  The largest house is the one that can house the most problems.  The pursuit and worry of things are distractions.  So Jesus challenges you to focus on the kingdom of God around you:  those people, who you see and who you don’t, but whom God desires to be brought to Christ.

So be thankful, beloved of God.  Go and bear the good news, and share your blessings with others.  Share your burdens, because you don’t need to bear them alone.  This is the family of God; this is part of the kingdom that is promised. 

Let thanksgiving be the hallmark of your life; let grace be a way of living, rather than just the prayer you say before your meal today.

And let God’s people say ‘amen’. 

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.

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