A Life-Changing Event (The Transfiguration, March 2 2014)

Homily:  Yr A Epiphany Last, March 2 2014, St. Albans

Readings:  Ex 24.12-18, Ps 99, 2 Pet 1.16-21, Mt 17.1-9

“A Life-Changing Event”

“Jesus took with him Peter, John and James up the mountain.  And right before their very eyes he was transfigured, his face shining like the sun, his clothes becoming dazzling white and there appeared with him Moses and Elijah.”

Whatever it was that happened to Jesus on that mountain top, we know that for Peter, this was a life-changing event.  It was what we sometimes call a “mountain-top” or a “peak” experience, something that Peter would look back on as foundational for his life from that point on.  We know that it had this effect on Peter because in our reading from the letter of Peter, we hear the words that he spoke near the end of his life, a summing up of his experience for those who would carry on after him.  In those final words, Peter looks back to this event, to this moment when he heard the voice on the mountain, as the key, as the moment that transformed him, the moment he could look back on as the foundation for all that followed.

Have you ever had a moment like that?  How many of you have experienced a life changing event?  Perhaps it was what we might call a “mountain top experience”.  Perhaps it was more mundane, a joyful or a tragic event that shaped you into the person you are today.  Perhaps it was a simple moment of clarity.

About ten years ago, I was teaching a Sunday School class to a group of ten to twelve year olds.  In that Sunday School program we were using the Sunday readings each week, and this reading of the transfiguration from Matthew came up.  At first I didn’t know what to do with it.  Finally, as about 8 of us gathered together, I asked the youth the same question I just asked you.  Have you ever had a life changing event?  And then I was simply blown away as these young people, one after the other, shared the stories of their life changing moments.  There were tragic stories, stories of car accidents and family breakdown, and there were hopeful stories, stories of family gatherings and moments of joy.  But in each case the young people who spoke were able, like Peter, to remember particular moments that had transformed them into the people that they had become.

What were your life-changing moments?  How do you remember them?  How do you understand them?

There was a movie that came out in the 90’s called Pulp Fiction, about two mob hit men named Jules and Vincent.  It wasn’t a particularly uplifting film, not one I would normally use for sermon illustrations.  But near the end of the film, these two hit men are ambushed by one of their rivals, who shoots at them from point blank range.  Somehow all of the bullets miss them, and they survive.  That afternoon we find them in a diner, talking about what just happened.

Jules: Man, I just been sitting here thinking.

Vincent: About what?

Jules: About the miracle we just witnessed.

Vincent: The miracle you witnessed. I witnessed a freak occurrence.

Jules: What is a miracle, Vincent?

Vincent: An act of God.

Jules: And what's an act of God?

Vincent: When, um … God makes the impossible possible … but this morning I don't think it qualifies.

Jules: Hey, Vincent, don't you see? That stuff don't matter. You're judging this the wrong way. I mean, it could be that God stopped the bullets, or He changed Coke to Pepsi, or He found my car keys. You don't judge stuff like this based on merit. Now, whether or not what we experienced was an "according to Hoyle" miracle is insignificant. What is significant is that I felt the touch of God. God got involved.

Both Vincent and Jules witnessed the same event, but their response to it was very different.  As a result of that event, Jules goes straight.  He gives up the life of a mob hit man.  Why?  Because in that life changing moment, he felt the touch of God, he sensed somehow that God got involved and that he was being called to something new.

What about you?  When these moments, these freak occurrences, happen in your life, do you feel the touch of God?  Are there times in your life when you sense that God got involved?

There was a survey done in Canada by sociologist Reginald Bibby of the University of Lethbridge.  In that survey, people were asked if they believed that they have experienced God’s presence.  43% of Canadians replied yes, they believe they have experienced God’s presence.

When I read that statistic the first time, it surprised me.  After all, only 20% of us go to religious services regularly, so having 43% say they have had a direct experience of God seems like a lot.  I think that the figure also surprised me because most people don’t talk about these things.  We tend to keep our “religious experiences” to ourselves, perhaps because we don’t have the words to describe them, perhaps because we’re afraid of how others might react.  Perhaps it’s also because these experiences can be disorienting and it can be difficult and take years to figure out what just happened.

We get a sense of this by observing Peter in today’s gospel.  When he sees Jesus transfigured on the mountain top, the dazzling clothes and brilliant face, and when he sees Moses and Elijah appear, his first reaction is to try to do something.  He tries to stabilize the situation, to control it, to fit it into his belief system.  “Good thing I’m here,” he says.  “I’ll make three little shelters here, one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”  And while he is still speaking, while Peter is babbling on about what he’s going to do, all of a sudden he’s overshadowed by a bright cloud and a voice interrupts him, as if to say “Peter, enough already, stop babbling.”  The voice interrupts all of Peter’s plots and plans and announces that Jesus is none other than God’s Beloved Son and what Peter really needs to do is to be quiet and listen to him.

Peter, overwhelmed to be in the powerful presence of the living God, does stop talking.  In fact he immediately collapses to the ground in fear. 

And then Jesus comes and touches him.  He says to him “do not fear”, and he raises him up.

There are moments in each of our lives when we are taken by surprise, moments of joy and moments of sadness, moments that comfort and moments that disorient.  Our first impulse in these moments is often like Peter’s, an attempt to re-assert our control over what’s happening, and to reconcile what we’re experiencing with our usual way of doing and thinking.  But when our experiences are too powerful to be tamed in this way, we can be overwhelmed.  Perhaps we fall like Peter.  And sometimes it’s at that moment that we feel God’s touch, it’s at that moment that God gets involved, tells us not to be afraid, and raises us up to something new.

Let me tell you about one of my life-changing moments.  Eight years ago, I spent a summer as a student chaplain in the Royal Ottawa Psychiatric Hospital, trying to learn to provide spiritual care to patients with severe mental illness.  It was a challenging time in my life.  There were some serious health issues in the family.  I had just finished my first year of seminary and was trying to figure out if I should continue on the path towards ordination.   In the hospital I encountered despair and darkness like I’d never seen before in the lives of many men and women, and most of the time there wasn’t much if anything that I could do to help them.  It was a time of waiting, a time of waiting for test results, a time of waiting for patients to stop their slide into despair.  It was a time of questioning, a time when I wondered if I “had what it takes” to become an ordained minister, a time when I questioned whether I was going down the right path.

On the floor where I was working, there was a woman who spent virtually the whole day moaning in a near catatonic state.  I had yet to go into her room, afraid I guess, that I wouldn’t be able to do anything for her.  One afternoon, for whatever reason, I decided to go into her room and I sat beside her.  I tried talking to her but that didn’t get me too far. I tried just sitting in silence.  No apparent awareness that I was there.  I was just about to give up and leave when the idea came to me that I could try humming.  So I hummed a few bars of Amazing Grace.  And to my amazement, the woman stopped moaning, straightened a bit and started singing Amazing Grace in a beautiful clear voice.

A few moments later, I was walking down the hall past the room of another woman who screamed non-stop.  Again, it was someone I’d never summoned up the courage to visit.  As I walked past, the screaming was particularly loud and agitated.  One of the nurses stormed out of the room, looked at me, and said “Go in there and do something.”  So, I walked through the doorway, glanced at the name on the way in, squatted down in front of the woman and said “Hi Angie.”  And again to my amazement, she stopped screaming, looked up at me and started talking to me calmly.  We talked a bit, and then I left.

That afternoon was a life-changing moment for me.  It was a moment for me when God got involved, when I felt God’s touch, when I was told to get up and not be afraid.  It was the moment that I realized that I didn’t have to worry about whether I had what it takes to minister in difficult situations, because it is God who raises us up for ministry.

Have you ever had a life-changing event?  And did you get the sense that God was involved?  Let’s talk about that in our open space together.

Amen.

A Doorway to Life (Sermon on the Mount part 3, Feb 16 2014)

Homily:  Yr A Proper 6, Feb 16 2014, St. Albans

Readings:  Deut 30:15-20; Ps 119:1-8; 1 Cor 3:1-9; Mt 5:21-37

A Doorway to Life

Today I am setting before you life and death.  Which do you choose?  Now, like Moses in Deuteronomy, I’m not talking simply about biological life, about whether your heart continues to beat or not, or how many days you’ve got left.  No, I’m talking about really living.  Life lived to the fullest.  The life we were created to live.  Abundant life, life that demands more and promises more.  The new life that Jesus is calling us to in today’s gospel, in his sermon on the mount.  He calls it life in the kingdom of heaven.  We’ve had glimpses of it in the gospels these past few weeks.  A life which is based on compassion and mercy, peacemaking and justice.  Living as salt and light.  Life in right relationship with God and with others, life in the kingdom of heaven.

Two weeks ago, as we began this series of readings on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, we recognized Jesus words as a call to revolution, to a world in which the economy of exchange is replaced by the economy of grace.  Jesus begins by blessing people who have no claim on God’s blessing.  God offers us his grace, his blessing, his favour, his love, as pure gift.  Throughout history, and especially throughout the history of religion, many people have found this idea of grace to be disturbing.  Because if we don’t have to earn God’s favour, does it matter how we live?  What then is the point of all these ethical and religious rules and practices, what we usually refer to as “the Law”?  Is Jesus telling us to ignore the Law, that we can just get rid of it?

Not even close.  In last week’s gospel, Jesus told his disciples, “I have not come to abolish the law. I’ve come to fulfill it.”  In today’s gospel, he starts to show us what that means.  You see, the disciples that Jesus was talking to were concerned about the law, those rules and commandments that had been given to Moses and had been passed down to them by their ancestors.   The established teachers of Jesus’ day taught that the key to life was obeying the law.  And they had codified that law into a total of 613 rules which they followed, scrupulously. 

The problem is that living life by simply following the rules is not enough.  It may be good, but it’s not good enough.  It’s not life-giving, in fact if following the rules becomes a matter of simply going through the motions or taking pride in our ethical accomplishments, it can even become life-draining.  Rules are meant to be pointers, they’re meant to guide us.  They point us in the right direction, but they’re not meant to be ends in themselves.

Think about when you sent your children off to school for the first time.  Did you give them any rules?  Of course you did.  Stay on the school grounds, don’t fight, be quiet when the teacher is talking and so on and so on.  Now, think about why you gave those rules to your children.  Was the purpose so that they could learn to obey rules?  Not really.  Learning to obey rules might be a good thing, following the rules might be a good thing, but the real purpose was to teach them how to be in a good relationship with their classmates and their teachers.  You see, the primary function of rules is to act as pointers.  The rules are there to point to and guide us to the things that are really important, things beyond the rules themselves.

Jesus gives us some examples.  Let’s have a look at the first one.  “You have heard that it was said ‘You shall not murder.’  That’s one of the ten commandments, it’s one of the biggies.  Now, I’m pleased to tell you that I haven’t murdered anyone today.  So I’m in compliance with the rule.  But before I get too smug, Jesus says to us wait, there’s much more to it than that.  What’s the commandment pointing to?  Why is it that we shouldn’t murder? 

We shouldn’t murder another person because that other person is a human being created by God in God’s own image, someone who is loved by God and was brought into life for a reason, someone who is God’s own child and therefore my brother or sister.  And if that’s who the other is, not only should we not murder our brother or sister, but we shouldn’t diss him, and we shouldn’t bear grudges, and we shouldn’t be angry with her, or insult her or call him a fool or put him down in any way.  In fact if anything gets in the way of my relationship with another, my first priority should be reconciliation.  I need to go sort out whatever’s gone wrong and get our relationship back on track.

That’s what the commandment ‘you shall not murder’ is pointing towards.  It’s guiding us into a relationship with others, it’s pointing us towards a new way of living.  Sometimes we can make the mistake of thinking that all Jesus is doing here is extending the law by creating more rules.  It’s certainly true that Jesus is extending the law’s application.  But he’s not simply adding “you shall not insult your brother or sister” to the existing 613 rules.  He’s going way beyond this.  In Jesus’ teaching, the law becomes a doorway, a portal into something much bigger.  It becomes our entry point into a new life, to a way of living that’s not just focused on right behaviour but rather a life oriented toward love, to being in loving relationship with God and with others.

Let’s take Jesus’ second example.  “You have heard that it was said, ‘you shall not commit adultery.’”

Now every so often I get couples coming to me to talk about their marriage.  Imagine if you will that one day a couple comes in to see me, they sit down in my office, and the husband says to me, “You know, Rev. Mark, we have a wonderful marriage.”

“Oh, yes,” the wife agrees, “we’ve never committed adultery!”

Well I don’t know about you, but if I heard that, there would be red flags going up all over the place.  Because marriage is about a lot more than not committing adultery.  It’s about a relationship, about a relationship which was woven by God into the very fabric of creation when he created male and female and blessed their union.  It is about a life-long, committed, loving and faithful relationship which is much much bigger than not committing adultery, or filling out the right paperwork when you get divorced.  That’s what the law is pointing us to.  You see, the law is good, but the purpose of the law is to point towards the relationship, to guide us into a life which is oriented toward love.  

Jesus said, “I have come not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.”  And the fulfillment of the law is not more law, but something which is beyond law.  It’s life itself, it’s the life that God is calling us to, a life grounded in love, the life of the kingdom of heaven which is available for us right here, right now. 

Sometimes, like the people of Jesus own time, we get focused on the rules.  Sometimes we get focused on behaving the right way.  These aren’t bad things, they’re not to be abolished; but Jesus is calling us to much, much more than this.

This past week I had the opportunity to preach at the funeral of a friend.  He had been diagnosed with a terminal cancer a year before he died, and we had some really good conversations about what it means to choose life and not death in those difficult circumstances.  One of the things he learned was something I repeated in my homily:  to value relationships over accomplishments.  

That was a phrase that resonated with people.  So simple yet so easy to ignore. 

I’ve been watching the Olympics a lot this past week.  And I don’t know about you, but the Olympic moments that are going to stick with me are the ones that involve relationships:  a coach providing a ski to a competitor so that he could finish his race with dignity; two sisters holding hands while the third sister cheers; a speedskater giving up his spot so another could race in his place; Alex and Frederic Bilodeau arm in arm.

Some of you may have already heard the story of the Texan friend I met when I was on course preparing for an internship I did in the Seychelles seven years ago.  During that week long training program we would do bible studies and lecture sessions and site visits and group discussions and all sorts of things.  And after every session, no matter what it was about, or what was said, my Texan friend would lean back, look at the rest of us and say, “Well y’all know what?  It’s all about relationships”

Well y’all know what?  Today’s gospel is all about relationships.  It’s about choosing to live a life in relationship with God and with each other.  The law, all the rules that govern our behaviour, all our religious practices, even coming to church on a Sunday morning, all of this serves as a doorway that we can step through into the new life that Jesus models for us.

Later on in Mathew’s gospel, when Jesus is asked which of the 613 rules is the most important, he replies that it all comes down to this:  “Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself.”

It’s all about relationship.

Today I am setting before you life and death.  Jesus is not giving us more rules to follow.  He’s not urging us to behave better.  No, it’s way more important than that. Jesus is calling us today to new life. Life lived to its fullest, abundant life. 

The life of the kingdom of heaven.  Here, on earth.

Amen.

Jesus Hits the Reset Button (Sermon on the Mount part 1, Feb 2 2014)

Homily:  Yr A Proper 4, February 2 2014, St. Albans

Readings: Micah 6.1-8; Ps 15; 1 Cor 1.18-31; Mt 5.1-12

Jesus hits the reset button (Sermon on the Mount #1)

In 1990, George H. Bush gave a speech to a joint session of Congress in which he proclaimed a new world order.  It was the end of the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Bloc.  It was the eve of the Gulf War in Kuwait and Iraq.  It was a time of hope, of hope that the superpowers and the UN could work together to usher in a new era of peace.  And so President Bush proclaimed a new world order, one in which “the rule of law governs the conduct of nations.”

It hasn’t worked out so well.  As I speak, there is war in Syria, in South Sudan, and in the Central African Republic.   The USA and Russia are at loggerheads and the UN has been ineffective.  So much for President Bush’s new world order.

Now, this wasn’t the first time that someone had proclaimed a new world order.  This morning we begin the first of four Sunday readings of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, beginning in the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew.  And make no mistake, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is the proclamation of a new world order.  By the time he gets to the end, Matthew records that “when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astonished at his teaching.”  And we should be no less astonished.  Because beginning with the Beatitudes which we heard today, Jesus proclaims a new world order, a world in which the economy of exchange is replaced by the economy of grace.

Since the dawn of humanity, we are used to thinking in terms of exchange.  We say things like:

“you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”

“people should get what they deserve”

“That’s not fair”

“work hard and good things will follow”

“God helps those who help themselves”

“If you obey God, you will be blessed”

That’s the language of exchange.  Another language for this economy of exchange is to talk about Karma.  This past week, Romi sent me a link to an interview in which Bono of U2 talks about the difference between Karma and Grace.  In it he says,

“You see, at the centre of all religions is the idea of Karma.  You know, what you put out comes back to you, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics, every action is met by an equal and opposite reaction.  And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that.”

Grace is a gift of God.  Grace is the free and unmerited favour of God towards you.  You can’t do anything to earn grace.  You can only receive it, and respond to it.

Jesus in the sermon of the mount is proposing a revolution.  The economy of exchange, the idea of Karma needs to be overthrown and upended and give way to Grace.

Because we’ve got it wrong.  When Jesus looks at the world around him, when we look at the world around us, we still see a world that is dominated by the principles of exchange.  Even when we look at our religious tradition, which is supposedly based on the teachings of Jesus, we still can see the power of exchange at work.  In our Psalm that we read this morning, a psalm that Jesus would have read, the first line reads:

Question:  Lord who may dwell in your tabernacle, who may abide on your holy hill?

Answer:  Whoever leads a blameless life and does what is right, who speaks the truth from his heart.

I think most people hearing this would immediately think in terms of exchange:  If I lead a good life, then I get the goodies, in this case meaning I get to dwell in the tabernacle of the Lord.  Certainly that’s the way most of Jesus’ contemporaries heard it.  The religious authorities of the day had constructed a vast array of rules and regulations to assist them in leading what they understood to be a blameless life.

But according to Jesus, they’ve got it all wrong.  They’ve misunderstood what God was trying to teach them way back in the days of Moses.  When the people of Israel were slaves in Egypt, God heard their cry and responded to them, “Blessed are the slaves in Egypt, for I will rescue them from their oppression.”  That was grace, the gift of redemption in the Exodus.  It was only after the Exodus that God through Moses gave the people of Israel yet another gift, the gift of the Law which would teach them how to live together in community, how to be the people that God created them to be and how to be a blessing for others.

But for the most part, the people who came after misunderstood.  They forgot that the blessing came first and then the Law.  The dominant interpretation in the Old Testament became that of Deuteronomy, this idea that obedience to the law of Moses brings God’s blessing and disobedience brings God’s curse, the withdrawal of God’s favour.  A divine economy of exchange.

And so Jesus hits the reset button.  He goes back to the beginning.

Just like Moses, Jesus went up the mountain, up to the place where God and humanity meet.

When Moses goes up the mountain, he warns the people not to come up the mountain with him.  It’s too dangerous.  He sets limits around the mountain.

But when Jesus goes up the mountain, he invites his disciples to come up the mountain with him.  It is a new image of God, it’s the image of a God who looks upon us with favour and invites us into relationship.

When Moses speaks from the mountain, he proclaims Commandments.

But when Jesus speaks from the mountain, he does something different.  He proclaims not commandments, but blessings.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

What does it mean to be blessed?

I must admit that I wrestle with the idea of blessing.  Even though I am the person officially sanctioned in our tradition to do blessings, even though I bless people every week, I’m not always sure that I know what I’m doing.

One of the problems is that I often hear people say things like “I am blessed” or “count your blessings”.  Maybe some of you use that sort of language.  The problem is, when I hear someone say that they’ve been blessed, rarely are they talking about being poor or hungry or in mourning, like the people that Jesus blesses.  Instead, they usually mean that something good has happened in their lives, and they’re giving God some of the credit.  They’ve got a good job, or a nice home, or a loving family or whatever it is.

The problem is that this sort of language gets so easily infected with the language of exchange, with the idea that if you do good and if you obey God and you believe the right things, then God will respond by showering you with blessings, with good things.  And then, we can go one step further and turn this around and say to ourselves, “hey, my life is good, I’ve got money, and I’m happy and I must have all these blessings from God because I’m a good person.”  And then we go a step further, and do some sort of horrible integration between this sort of theology and capitalism and consumerism and we get what’s sometimes called the prosperity gospel, which says that those people that are healthy and doing well economically must be living good and faithful lives that are pleasing to God.  And then we use that to justify income inequality, and to look down on the poor and blame them for their own poverty.

And as soon as we even start to go down that trail, it’s time to hit the reset button and hear Jesus say again,

“Blessed are the poor, those who mourn, the meek, the hungry, those who are persecuted.”

Jesus is offering an alternative vision, a new world order, a radical, subversive, revolutionary way of understanding both the world and God based on grace.

What does it mean for you to be blessed?  It means that God sees you, is with you, cares for you, and will act for you.  Not because you’re good.  Not because your deserve it.  Not because you’ve earned it.  But because you are a child of God, and God loves you and God especially reaches out to those who are in need. 

Which is all of us, by the way.  It’s just that some of us don’t know it.  Some of us are rich in spirit.  We think we’re okay, we’re good, we got things under control, we don’t really need any help right now.  The economy of exchange works pretty well for us.  In fact it works so well that I’m just not ready give up relying on my own abilities, possessions, rights and actions and to rely on God’s grace instead.

But some of us are poor in spirit.  Crushed by life.  In desperate circumstances.  Aware of our own inadequacy, of our own sinfulness. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  The kingdom of heaven is all about grace, and the poor in spirit are ready to receive grace with open arms, just as those who mourn are ready to receive the gift of comfort and the hungry will take what they’re given.  People who are poor in spirit get this grace stuff.

Jesus blesses people who have no claim on God’s blessing.  It’s not a quid pro quo.  It’s pure gift.  Grace.

Amen.

Made for a Purpose (January 26 2014)

Homily.  Yr A Proper 3.  January 26, 2014.  St. Albans

Readings:  Isaiah 9.1-4; Ps 27.1,5-13; 1Cor 1.10-18; Mt.4.12-23

The Lord is my light.  So begins Psalm 27 that we read together this morning, and that’s where I want to begin this morning.  We are in the season of Epiphany, and one of the central images of Epiphany is the light that comes into the darkness.  It’s an image that’s picked up in both our Old Testament and our Gospel readings this morning.  Isaiah, in the 8^th century BC, longs for a light to come into the darkness of the lands of northern Israel, the first of the lands of Israel to be conquered, the first of the people of Israel to suffer military oppression, hunger, forced exile and depopulation.  Isaiah longs for light to come into this darkness, much in the same way that millions of people in Syria, and in the Central African Republic long for light to come into their darkness at this very moment.

For people in ancient times, in the days before electricity, there were two very different ways of picturing the light that comes into the darkness.  One image is the sun.  At the dawn of each new day, the light of the sun overcomes the darkness and chases it away.  It is a powerful image of light, a bright light that makes everything visible.  The sun is one way to imagine God as light, as the light that comes into the darkness.  That’s what Isaiah was hoping for in his day, that’s how Matthew, with the benefit of hindsight, sees Jesus:  a great light, a new dawn. 

But there’s another way we can picture light, and that is the light of the small clay oil lamps that were the most common way of generating a little light at night in biblical times.  The oil-lamp gives us a different way of imagining God as light.  The oil-lamp creates a small circle of light in the darkness, warm and reassuring, just enough to light up our hands and our faces and the immediate surroundings, but certainly not enough to dispel the darkness. 

It’s enough light to move around, to take a step.  But the light of an oil-lamp doesn’t light up very much of your path, maybe only the next couple of steps.  It’s not like the sun, which chases away the darkness and lights up your path as far as the eye can see, revealing any obstacles and twists and turns along the way.  No, with the oil lamp it’s just one step at a time.

And so I think it’s interesting that when we say things like, “The Lord is my light” and “the light that comes into the darkness”, depending on whether we’re taking the sun or the oil-lamp as our image of light, we are talking about two very different experiences.

With the sun as our image, we’re talking about an experience of illumination, of truth, of certainty, of knowledge.  We can see what lies ahead of us, the doubts and fears of the darkness have been cleared away.  But with the oil-lamp as our image, things are a bit less certain.  We have enough light to take a couple of steps, but beyond that, it’s still dark. Uncertainties and questions remain, and to take those first steps requires an act of faith.  Maybe Martin Luther King Jr. had the image of the oil-lamp in mind when he defined faith by saying that “faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”

I think that responding to God’s call is a lot like that.  When God calls, usually we only get an oil-lamp’s worth of light, just enough to see a few steps ahead but not enough to see the whole path.  And that makes responding to God’s call an act of faith.

Our gospel reading today begins in darkness.  John the Baptist has been arrested, and John’s followers, including Jesus, are immediately put at risk.  Jesus withdraws from Judea to go back to his home region of Galilee.  His life is in turmoil.  He leaves his family and his hometown of Nazareth.  Why does he leave?  Is it to avoid arrest?  Is it to protect his family?  Don’t know.  He heads north to make a new home in Capernaum.  And yet in the midst of this flux, this turmoil, this darkness, Jesus is aware of God’s call.  And in an act which is surely a gesture of defiance at the forces of darkness, Jesus begins to proclaim the exact same message that got John in trouble:  “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”  

And at that moment, as Jesus launched his ministry, I don’t know how far ahead he could see.  I don’t know if the full extent of his journey was visible to him, whether he’d already worked everything out.  I tend to think that, like the rest of us, the light that God gave him was more like an oil lamp than the full-on sun, and that those first few steps were taken without knowing where the rest of the journey would lead him, and that making that initial, dangerous proclamation was an act of faith.  Faith is taking that first step, even when you don’t know where the path is leading.

The gospel continues with the calling of the disciples.  Jesus walks by the Sea of Galilee, sees Simon and Andrew, calls to them “Follow me and I will make you fish for people” and immediately they leave their nets and follow Jesus.

As Matthew records it, it’s a pretty stripped down story.  Not many details.  I’d like to know some of those details!  Was this the first time that Simon and Andrew had ever met Jesus, or had they known each other for a while?  Did they know what Jesus was all about, had they heard him teach in the synagogue?  Was this the culmination of a series of planning meetings and discussions or did it really happen as suddenly as Matthew is suggesting?  When Jesus said to them “follow me”, did Simon and Andrew start running through a check list of pros and cons, did they ask any questions, did they take any time to think about it, or was it really a spur of the moment decision? 

That’s the sort of stuff I’d like to know!  But Matthew doesn’t give us any of that, just the stripped-down, bare-bones version.  Why?

I think it’s because Matthew wants to make it clear that responding to God’s call is an act of faith.  The Lord is my light, but I don’t usually get that as full-on sun.  I get the oil-lamp, just enough light to see one or maybe two steps ahead, but not enough to see the whole path.  We don’t always get the details, we can’t always see too far ahead, heck, most of the time we’re not even sure whether God’s calling us or not.    We don’t know anything about why Simon and Andrew, and then James and John respond to Jesus’ call.  But we do know that their response is an act of faith.

And how we respond matters.  Two weeks ago I talked about our altars in the world, the place where each one of us responds to the purpose that God is calling us to.  It was an idea that found some resonance here, and generated some questions and insights that some of you have shared with me over the last couple of weeks. 

For some of us, talking about our altars in the world helped us realize that what we do matters and what we do is sacred.  That is no small thing.  The Lilly foundation did a survey amongst church congregations in the US recently, and they discovered that most people in the pews don’t feel called, and they don’t feel that what they do outside the church is worthy of God’s attention and interest.  I want to say just the opposite.  God sees, God cares, and God calls us to participate in the work of his kingdom wherever we are.  Your altar in the world can be anywhere, but wherever it is, it is sacred.

For some of us, the image of an altar in the world resonated strongly because we were at a point of transition in our own lives, and because our lives seem to be so often in transition, and because transitions bring questions of meaning and purpose to the fore.  UCLA did a survey recently in which 4 out 5 US College students stated that “finding my purpose in life” is an important part of the college experience.  However that same survey indicated that only 1 in 5 college professors ever raised questions of meaning and purpose in their courses!  We need a place and we need images and metaphors that help us to talk about questions of meaning and purpose, especially when our lives are in transition.

For some, the immediate question whenever we talk about call and vocation, is how can I know what God is calling me to do?  To that question, which is a good question, the best I can offer from my own experience is that we don’t know.  Instead, we trust.  Most of us want the bright light of the sun that reveals the path that lies ahead.  Some people get that.  Many of us get the oil-lamp that allows us to see only a few steps at a time.  Taking those steps requires us to trust, and sometimes might even require us to back-track when we choose the wrong path.  Responding to God’s call is an act of faith.  But it’s not blind faith.  When Jesus is asked for guidance on how to live, his response is straightforward.  Love God, and love you neighbor as yourself.

For some people this whole conversation is difficult, because too often we associate  vocation with employment, and many people don’t find their jobs to be meaningful.  We spend a lot of time at our jobs, and if you are in a job that provides you with a sense of meaning and purpose, you are blessed and should give thanks every day of your life.  Many people are in a different situation, where work, is well, work.  But vocation is not the same thing as employment.  Vocation is at its core relational.  God calls us to be in relationship with others, to serve others and especially to respond to the needs of those who are oppressed or vulnerable.  Your work is just one of the places where you have the opportunity to be in relationship with others.

And finally, at least for this morning, one of the things that I find the most amazing is the radical inclusiveness of God’s call.  All of God’s children are made for a purpose.   Ordinary fishermen like Simon and Andrew are called to follow Jesus.  From the surgeon doing a heart-transplant to the infant with disabilities, all of God’s children are made for a purpose and called to that purpose.  Our purpose is grounded in our identity as God’s children, not in our giftedness, nor our abilities, nor in the situation in which we find ourselves.   Our gifts and abilities and situation will certainly shape our purpose and mission; everyone’s altar in the world will look different. 

But the truth that each one of us was made for a purpose is grounded not in what we are, nor in where we are, but in who we are:  children of God, loved by God, made for a purpose.

Amen.

A Time for Pondering (Christmas Eve 2013)

Homily Christmas Eve 2013 St. Albans

Luke 2.1-20

A Time for Pondering

One of my favourite verses in the Christmas story that we just heard from the gospel of Luke is the one that says “Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.”

Christmas is a time for pondering.  Of course you might never realize that with all the rushing around that we do, the shopping, the meal preparation, the traveling and the rest of it, but Christmas is a time for pondering.  Because at the centre of Christmas is this strange proclamation we make that the God who created the heavens and the earth became flesh and lived among us, and appeared to us not in the form of a powerful king or a mighty warrior, but as a newborn baby, born in humble circumstance, vulnerable and totally dependent as all babies are on others to nourish and look after him.  It’s a surprising story that we tell, and so it’s only fitting that we do some pondering.

Mary gets that right.  Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. And maybe it helped that she had just given birth to a child.  I think that childbirth puts us in the mood for pondering.  Mary was exhausted of course, but there was no way she was going to sleep with all the excitement and commotion swirling around her.  The birth of a child has a way of opening us up, opening us up to new dimensions of life, opening us up to a heightened awareness of the world around us, opening us up to a renewed sense of what really matters.  For many of us, it’s the closest we’ll ever get to a miracle.  For many of us, the love we have for that newborn child is the closest we’ll ever get to pure, unconditional, sacrificial love.  And so Mary treasured all that was happening around her, and pondered these things in her heart.

And surely one of the things that she must have pondered was, “Where did all these shepherds come from?”

 She wouldn’t have been expecting shepherds.  Shepherding was an occupation that was filled by the bottom rung of the social ladder, by people who were unable to find what was considered to be decent work.  Shepherds in Mary’s society were stereotyped as liars, degenerates and thieves. Religious leaders took a dim view of them because their work prevented them from observing the religious laws and practices, and so they were regarded as sinners.  Their testimony was not admissible in courts and many towns, perhaps even Bethlehem, had bylaws which barred shepherds from entering within the city limits. 

So Mary would have been surprised when the shepherds showed up.   And she was amazed at what they had to say, the angels, the birth announcement, the multitude of the heavenly host.  And as she pondered these things, perhaps she marveled at the fact that the first people that God chose to send his messengers to were the ones that society considered to be last.  The outsiders, the poor, the marginalized.  And many years later, when Jesus launched his ministry to the poor and marginalized, I’m sure that Mary remembered the shepherds.

But when God sends angels to the shepherds it is even more than simply reaching out to the marginalized.  The shepherds were marginalized alright, but after years of living in the fields, years of being shunned by decent and religious folks, years of disappointment, the shepherds were also people who had given up on God.  Maybe even given up on life.  Life can be hard, life can be unfair.  Disappointments add up.  At a certain point we let go of the dreams we once had, we give up hope, give up on God.

But even when we give up on God, God does not give up on us.  God sends his angels to the shepherds, and they are terrified, after all, how would you react to God sending angels to you if you’d given up on God?  But the angel says,

“Do not be afraid, for see I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people:  to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord.  This shall be a sign for you:  you shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”

And so they ran.  It was all too good to be true, but they ran anyways.  They went with haste and they found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in a manger, just as the angels had told them.   

That night, the shepherds were touched by the divine.  They experienced God’s presence, and though they were terrified at first, when they saw the child their fear melted away, because who can be afraid of a God who chooses to enter our world with all the fragility and vulnerability of a newborn child.

And Mary treasured these things and pondered them in her heart.

My hope is that you too will be touched by the divine tonight.  That as we listen and ponder and pray and sing and gather round the table, we will experience God’s presence in our midst, and we will know, as surely as the shepherds did, that God is with us.

But that’s just the beginning.  Because there are many people in our world who, like the shepherds, have given up on God. They’ve had too much hardship, or too many losses, or endured too many insults.  They’re in the fields, they’re in shelters, they’re in hospitals;  they’re in our neighbourhoods, they are in our homes.  And so my further hope this evening is that those of us who have experienced God’s presence here tonight, those of us who have encountered Emmanuel, God with us, we will bring glad tidings of great joy to all who need to hear.  Go to them, tell the story, offer a hug or a smile or a meal, provide a listening ear or a shoulder to cry on, proclaim the good news that the God who made the heavens and the earth cares so much for us that he was born as a child in Bethlehem.

Because tonight, we are God’s angels.  May we who have been touched by God this evening go out and touch others with God’s grace and love, so that they too will know that God is with us.

Amen.

God's Promises (Advent 4, Dec 22 2013)

Homily:  Yr A Advent 4, Dec 22 2013, St. Albans

Readings:  Isaiah 7.10-16; Ps 80.1-7,16-18; Rom 1.1-7; Mt 1.18-25

God’s Promises

Today in our gospel reading we get Matthew’s version of the birth of Jesus, told from Joseph’s perspective.  It’s quite different from the story we’ll get from Luke’s gospel on Christmas Eve just two days from now.  No angels,  no shepherds, no Bethlehem, no manger, no swaddling clothes, no singing.  There is absolutely no sentimentality in Matthew’s account of Jesus birth, no sense of awe and wonder, nothing you could put on the cover of a Christmas card. Matthew’s version of the actual birth compared with Luke’s is stunningly brief and spare:

“Now the birth of Jesus took place in this way . . .  Joseph had no marital relations with Mary until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.”

One of the commentators that I was reading this week, with tongue firmly planted in cheek, said that this recounting of the birth of a child must have been written by a man, because the only thing that seems to be worth saying is that he didn’t get to have any sex until after the baby was born.

So why did Matthew write about the birth of Jesus this way?  If he isn’t trying to inspire us with a sense of awe and wonder about the birth itself, and clearly he isn’t, what is he trying to do?

For Matthew it’s all about promises.  God’s promises.  Matthew wants to tell us that the birth of Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promises which had been made to the people of Israel through the ages by the prophets.

We don’t usually read the beginning of Matthew’s gospel because it consists of a long genealogy, in which we read, in the old King James Version, that Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat Jacob and so on.  But Matthew puts that genealogy there for a purpose, or maybe several purposes.  One of the purposes of the genealogy is to establish that Jesus the Messiah is the Son of David.  And that is reinforced in the gospel text we heard today, where the angel addresses Joseph as “Son of David”.  And why does that matter?  It matters because in the book of Samuel we read that God through the prophet Nathan made a promise to David.  And that promise made to David was that God would raise up a son of David, through whom he would establish his kingdom forever, and to whom God says “I will never take my love away from you.  I will be a father to you and you shall be a son to me.”  This is the first promise that Matthew is pointing us towards.

The second promise that Matthew points to is the one made through the prophet Isaiah found in our first reading today.  In the book of Isaiah in the 8^th century BC, King Ahaz of Judah is worried because Assyria and Samaria are laying siege to Jerusalem.  But God sends the prophet Isaiah to King Ahaz and tells him not to worry, that Assyria and Samaria will not prevail, and that God will give Ahaz a sign:  “Look the young woman is with child and shall bear a son and shall name him Immanuel, ‘God is with you.’

And so if we put these two Old Testament references together, here is the promise:

God will always love us, and God is with us.  The birth of Jesus is both the sign and the fulfilment of God’s promise to always love us and always be with us.

But who is this promise for?  When God says “I will always love you and I am with you” who is God talking to?

In the Old Testament, in the passages that Matthew is pointing to, the prophets Nathan and Isaiah were speaking to King David and King Ahaz when they proclaimed these promises.

Are God’s promises just for kings, for the rich and powerful?

No!  At Christmas, in Luke’s gospel we’ll read that the first ones called to the birth of Jesus are the poor, poor shepherds.

Are God’s promises just for one particular ethnic group, the people of Israel?

No!  At Epiphany we’ll read that wise men, foreigners from the east, travel from afar to worship Jesus.

God’s promise to always love and to always be with his people is for all:  All nations, all races, for rich and poor, for the powerful and the lowly.

I think we get that.

But I also think that many of us have another question about God’s promises.  The question is this:  Are God’s promises active, are they relevant today, or are we simply remembering things that happened 2000 years ago?

During this season of Advent, we have been preparing for the coming of Christ.  Are we simply remembering the coming of Christ as a babe some 2000 years ago?  Or, are we looking forward to Christ’s return at some point in the future?  Or, are we preparing for something that happens in our time and our place, the encounter with God that happens now, in our lives today?

Let me tell you a story about something that happened while I was in my previous parish of Huntley.  It was almost exactly three years ago.

There was a woman in that parish named Ellen, whose mother Frances lived with her.  I used to visit them fairly regularly because Frances was in her 90s and couldn’t get out.  At a certain point, Frances' health began to fail, and her illness was assessed to be terminal, but it was a slow process and she had a nurse that came to visit and provide palliative care.  There was some thought that maybe she should be moved to the Maycourt Hospice, but for now she was being looked after at home.  All things considered, this was good for Frances, but it was all quite hard on Ellen who was very close to her mother.

So one day about two weeks before Christmas, I finished up some work at my office and was gathering up my things and looking forward to going home, when I had this thought come into my head.  “You should go and visit Ellen and Frances.”

So I picked up the phone, because I was always in the habit of calling before visiting, and I called, and there was no answer.  Maybe Ellen's gone out I thought, I’ll try again tomorrow.  But then I thought, maybe I’ll just drop by anyways on my way home.

So I drove over to Ellen's house and I saw that there was a car in the driveway.  A friend maybe, or perhaps the nurse that came by to look after Frances was there.  So once again, I figured that it was best not to disturb them, and that I’d try again tomorrow.  But just as I was about to back out of the driveway, another pesky thought, “maybe you should just go in and see what’s up”.

So I did.  And it was indeed the nurse who was there, and as it turns out, she was there by accident as well, she’d been scheduled to visit in the evening, but for some reason had decided to come in the afternoon instead.

While the nurse and I were there that afternoon, Frances died, peacefully, in her sleep.  And Ellen, who was profoundly affected by her mother’s death, was also immensely comforted to have with her at that moment her nurse and her priest.

That afternoon, I saw God having compassion on one of his people in need.  The God that promises to always love us, to always be with us was there with Ellen, acting to make good on those promises in a very concrete way.

God has promised to always love us and to always be with us.  That promise is as alive today as it ever has been.  And when God asks us to help, it is our privilege to be able to respond and share with God in the fulfilment of God’s promises in our time and place.

And this shall be the sign:  “the virgin shall conceive and bear a son.”  “And you shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”

Amen.

An Exercise in Repentance (Advent 2, Dec 8 2013)

Homily:  Yr A Advent 2, Dec 8 2013, St. Albans

Readings:  Isaiah 11.1-10; Ps 72.1-7,18-19; Rom 15.4-13; Mt 3.1-12

An Exercise in Repentance

“In those days, John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’”

Each year during the season of Advent, we hear about John the Baptist.  Who is this John the Baptist?  Why do all four of the gospels, including Matthew in the reading we heard today, why do the gospels begin their account of Jesus’ ministry with something about John the Baptist before launching into the story of Jesus himself?  One reason is surely because the gospel writers believed that the coming of Jesus is so important, so earth shattering, that it requires preparation.  We need to get ready.  And so John is seen as the one who gets us ready, the one who prepares the way of the Lord, as was foretold long ago by the prophet Isaiah.

And what’s with the camel hair clothing and the leather belt and the diet of locusts and wild honey?  Is Matthew just trying to let us know that John’s a bit, let’s say, different?  Perhaps, but he’s also giving us this description and these details to let us know that he sees John as the return of the prophet Elijah, one of, if not the greatest of the Old Testament prophets.  Elijah is a hairy man with a leather belt, and at his earthly end the Hebrew scriptures tell us that he was taken up into heaven in a whirlwind of chariots and fire.  And why does that matter to Matthew and his first century Jewish contemporaries?  It matters because in the very last verse, the closing words of the Hebrew scriptures, our Old Testament, the prophet Malachi prophesies that before the coming of the Messiah, before the coming of the day of the LORD, God will send Elijah back to the people of Israel, to prepare the way for the Messiah and to get people ready for his coming by turning their hearts.

And so Matthew is claiming here that in John the Baptist, Elijah has indeed returned, and that the one for whom he is preparing the way, Jesus, will indeed be the Messiah long-promised by God, and that in order for us to get ready for his coming, we need to turn our hearts.

“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

We read these scriptures in Advent because Advent is for us a time of repentance, a time to get ready for the coming of the Messiah.

But repentance is a misunderstood word.  Too often it has the connotation of looking back at our lives and expressing remorse for the wrong things that we have done, and then perhaps doing some sort of penance to make up for these things.  But the actual word used for repentance, metanoia in the Greek, doesn’t really mean this at all.  Repentance is rather a turning around, a turning of the heart and of the mind, a re-orientation, a change in perspective.  For those of you who have studied philosophy, it is the word that Plato uses in his allegory of the Cave to describe the moment when the prisoners physically turn from looking at the shadows on the wall of the cave to looking at the actual objects creating the shadows, and the light shining through the cave entrance.  Repentance is a turning around, a reversal, a change in direction.

And to help us get the point, Matthew has filled this short text on John the Baptist with images of reversals.

At the time of John the Baptist, Jews from all over Israel and beyond would regularly journey from the countryside up to Jerusalem for the major religious festivals.   Four times a year, a great stream of people would flow into Jerusalem.  But in today’s reading we hear that all of Jerusalem streams out to the wilderness to be baptized by John.  The wilderness itself is transformed, from a place of loneliness and desolation to a place that is full of people. This is an image of repentance, a reversal, a complete turning about and change of direction that leads to transformation. 

Similarly, faithful Jews knew that if you wanted to confess your sins and receive forgiveness, the correct procedure was to go to the Temple in Jerusalem and to offer the proper sacrifice.  But here we have John in the wilderness, about as far as you could get from the Temple, proclaiming not a sacrifice but a baptism for the forgiveness of sin.

And John’s use of baptism itself was unique.  In those days, baptism was normally a ritual performed for non-Jews who wanted to convert to Judaism.  But in today’s gospel John is baptising Jewish people.  His action declares that it’s his own people who need to be baptised and converted.  Even those people who were comfortable, who thought they were the people of God by virtue of their ancestry, they are pushed out of their comfort zones and told to change the direction of their lives and experience the baptism of repentance.

Repentance is about reversals, changes in direction, re-orientation and transformation.  And it’s not just theoretical, it’s about the way we live.  As John says, we don’t just need to repent, but we also need to “bear fruit worthy of repentance.”

And because all of this is intended to be practical, not just theoretical, I thought we’d do a little exercise together here today, as part of our Advent preparation.

So here is the first step.  We now have 2 ½ weeks to go before Christmas, and I know that this makes it a busy time of year for many people.  So let’s get organized!  I want you to take one of these file cards and a pencil, and at the top write “To-Do” and then make a list of all of the things that you need to do to get ready for Christmas. 

(allow time for people to prepare a list)

Okay, are you ready for step 2 of our exercise?  This time I want you to take another card, and on this second card, I want you to write down your hopes and dreams for this Christmas and beyond.  You’ll need to give this a little thought.  And I want you to allow yourself to think big, to get in touch with your deepest hopes and dreams.  By all means you may want to write down things like Christmas dinner with family.  But don’t be afraid to go beyond this.  Allow yourself to be inspired by some of the visions of hope that we’ve heard already this Advent season.  By Isaiah’s vision of peace in which the wolf and the lamb can lie down together.  By Paul’s vision of all nations, Gentile and Jew, praising God together.  By Martin Luther King’s vision of a nation in which people would not be judged by the colour of their skin.  By Jody Williams vision of a world free from landmines, so that children can play safely in the fields.  By Nelson Mandela’s vision of “a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.”

So think for a moment and then write down on that card your hopes and dreams, the ones that are specific to you and your situation, for this Christmas and beyond.

(give people time to think and write)

And now for part 3 of our exercise.  You’ve written down your hopes and dreams.  Read them again.  Then go back to your to do list.  And put the two together.  Which of the things on that to do list will actually contribute to your hopes for Christmas and beyond?

Circle those that will.

You may want to cross out those that won’t.

And then you may want to add a few new things to your list.

(give people a little time to reflect on the list)

I know that when I do this exercise my list changes, and perhaps surprisingly, the one thing that I’ve forgotten that always seems to make it back to the top of my Advent to do list is prayer. 

Now, I don’t know how much your list changed, but if it did, and if those changes actually translate into a change in how you live out your life for the next 2 ½ weeks and beyond, that’s repentance.

Repentance is a re-orientation, a change in perspective, a commitment to turn and live differently, a turn towards God.

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.

Amen.

(With thanks to David Lose for his suggestion for the exercise found on www.workingpreacher.org)