He Called Her a Dog (Sunday Sept 6 2015)

Homily:  Yr B Proper 23, Sept 6 2015, St. Albans

Readings:  Proverbs 22; Psalm 125; James 2:1-17; Mark 7:24-37

He called her a dog.  Then she won the argument, and Jesus changed his mind and he did what she asked.

You know, I was planning to preach on the letter of James today.  In fact, I was looking forward to it.  The letter of James is all about theological integrity.  It’s about practicing what you preach, in real practical ways.  Do you really believe in our Lord Jesus Christ?  Well then let’s see what happens when a rich, well-dressed person and a poor, poorly dressed person walk through the doors of the church.  Do you treat the one differently than the other?  I was looking forward to preaching on that, because it’s good practical stuff, it’s stuff that happens in our lives every day and it reminds us that faith involves more than just affirming theological formulas, it really means a thorough re-orientation of our lives.  Our faith has to make a difference – otherwise it’s dead.

That’s what I was going to talk about this morning, and believe me, I can get into that stuff, it would have been a good sermon.

But then I read the gospel.  And he called her a dog.  Then she won the argument, and Jesus changed his mind, and he did what she asked.

Whoa!  That’s not the Jesus they taught me about in Sunday School.  What happened to the Jesus who is compassionate, who is always nice, who knows everything that’s going on and is always right so he wouldn’t ever have to change his mind.  Does anyone else here find today’s gospel a challenge?

So I figure that we should talk about this a bit.

In today’s gospel, Jesus enters foreign territory.  He goes northwest to the region of Tyre on the Mediterranean coast.  It seems like he just needed to get away.  Up until this point, his ministry has taken place in and around his native land of Galilee, in Jewish territory.  He’s been swarmed by crowds, he’s been called demon-possessed, the authorities are out to get him.  Maybe he just needs a break, so he takes off to foreign territory and holes up in a house there, hoping no one will find him.

But he is found.  There’s a pounding on the door.  A woman, a foreign woman, desperate, begs Jesus to heal her daughter.  But Jesus says to her, “let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

Now it was common enough in those days for Jews to refer to foreigners as dogs.  And the relationship between Jews and the people of Tyre was particularly bad as a result of a recent conflict.  Jesus may have been simply saying what any other Jew might have said.  How often after all, do we simply parrot the biases and assumptions of our own culture and society?  But it still sounds rude, and it seems to be out of character for Jesus.  And because of this various theologians and commentators on the gospels have done all sorts of mental gymnastics to get around this.  Some explain that Jesus used the diminutive word for dog, so what he was saying was “little dogs”, which sounds a bit nicer.  Others explain that Jesus was just testing the woman, or that the verbal exchange was purely for the benefit of unnamed listeners, or that Jesus, knowing what would happen, was simply setting the woman up for a witty reply.

To be honest, I don’t buy any of those explanations.  What Jesus said still sounds rude to me.  I can’t understand it, I can’t justify it and I can’t explain it. 

But I am very thankful that he said it.  Because through this exchange between Jesus and the woman, whether he intended to or not, Jesus has taught me a lot about two things:  First about the Kingdom of God.  And secondly about discipleship.

In the gospel of Mark, the kingdom of God is always portrayed as this surprising, exciting, boundary-crossing new reality that breaks into our world in the least likely of places.  Even Jesus himself is surprised and stretched when the kingdom of God breaks into his house in Tyre through this encounter with the Syrophoenecian woman.

And discipleship?  Well, discipleship is just a fancy word for “learning”.  We are called to be learners, disciples of Jesus.  And how is it that we learn?  It’s a new school year.  Many of us have just embarked on a new phase of our learning.  We’re taking courses, we’re going to lectures, we’re reading books, soon we’ll be writing papers and exams. 

All of these are good ways to learn.  But the best way to learn, the most profound and life-changing learnings, happen when we encounter and engage with someone who is very different from ourselves.

In today’s gospel, Jesus encounters someone who is different from him in just about every possible way.  He is a Jew, she is a Gentile.  He was born in the land of Israel; she was born in Syrophoenicia.  He is a man, she is a woman.  He’s single, she has a daughter.  He doesn’t know who she is; she’s heard all about him.  He’s seeking a time of rest and solitude; she’s desperate and it’s urgent.

I imagine that the reason that Jesus has holed up in this house in the region of Tyre is that he’s trying to figure some stuff out in his life.  He needs time to seek guidance from God the Father.  He’s trying to flesh out this mission he’s been given, trying to understand what this vocation of Messiah is all about. 

And I can imagine that as he is praying, as he is asking God, ‘tell me what comes next in my ministry’, there is a pounding on the door, and he opens it and the woman throws herself at his feet and begs for his help.

And immediately, Jesus is faced with a dilemma.  Because up until that moment his understanding of his mission, his own theology if you like, tells him that God’s kingdom, God’s grace and healing and salvation would be given first to the Jews, the children, and only later to the Gentiles.  This theological understanding wasn’t unique to Jesus, it was the usual Jewish way of thinking, the understanding reflected in the prophet Isaiah, and in the theology of Paul that you find in his letter to the Romans.  And so Jesus answers the woman by saying not yet, it’s not yet time for his ministry to extend to her and her daughter.

But she won’t accept this.  Sometimes human need trumps theology.  She responds with humility, with insight, with persistence and humour.  “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

There is enough of God’s goodness and love to go around, she is telling him, it doesn’t have to be confined to one people, and even a crumb of God’s grace will be good enough for me and my daughter.

The Syrophoenician woman refuses to accept the limitations of Jesus’ theology.  She refuses to accept his timelines.  She has a greater vision of God’s grace than he does.  She is stretching him, and Jesus allows himself to be stretched by his encounter with her.  The abundance of God’s kingdom is breaking out in ways that surprise even Jesus!  And he goes with it, he learns from it.  He changes his mind!  He broadens his theology and expands his mission.  He heals the woman’s daughter, and then he goes on to travel through foreign lands, feeding crowds just as he did back home, making the deaf to hear and the mute to speak, the very signs that Isaiah had prophesied would mean the in-breaking of God’s kingdom here on earth.  Not just in the land of Israel, but throughout the nations.

Isn’t it remarkable that the same Jesus that calls us to be disciples, to be learners, also shows us what learning looks like.  Learning happens when we encounter someone who is very different from us, and allow ourselves to be stretched, to be transformed, to change our minds, to be led into a greater vision of what God is calling us to do.  Isn’t it remarkable that when Jesus calls on God for guidance, that guidance just may have come in the form of a surprise encounter with a hated foreigner who also happens to be a desperate mother.

And if Jesus can learn from his encounters, if he can be willing to go beyond his perceived limits, well, don’t you think we can too!

We have, right here in this community of St. Albans, an amazing opportunity to do just that.  Because as a new congregation in a dynamic urban neighbourhood right beside the university, we get to encounter new people every week.  How will this change us?  How will we as church be stretched and shaped into a more abundant and life-giving vision of the community we are called to be and of the ministries we are called to engage in?  What might we be asked to do now that we thought could wait until later?

Well, the answer is that we just don’t know!  What we do know is that we are called to be disciples, to be learners, and that our most profound learnings will happen when we encounter and engage with people who are different from us, who challenge us and stretch us.  May God bless us and surprise us by bringing these people into our lives.

Amen.

Song of Solomon: Talking Sex in Church (August 30 2015)

Homily Yr B Proper 22, August 30 2015, St. Albans

Readings:  James 1.17-27; Mark 7; Song of Solomon

We don’t get to read that in church very often!

The Song of Songs, sometimes called the Song of Solomon, is one of the most surprising books of the Bible.  We don’t hear it read very often, in fact, the Song of Songs only shows up once in our three year cycle of Sunday readings.  So I thought we should seize the opportunity to take a closer look at it this morning.

The Song of Songs is a collection of love poetry.  It is in fact a poem in which a man and a woman who are deeply in love call back and forth to one another, somewhat like the way we read it together this morning.  “The voice of my beloved!” calls the woman, “Look he comes, leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills.  My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag.”  And her male lover responds, “Arise, my love, my fair one and come away.”

The poetry is beautiful and sensual.  It overflows with sexual imagery, so much so that among the Hebrew people, young boys weren’t allowed to read the Song of Songs, because the images were considered to be too intense.  As we read it together this morning, some of you might have been wondering to yourselves what in the world this piece of erotic love poetry is doing in our Bible.  There is no other book of the Bible quite like it.  But I truly believe that this book, this poem, is a gift, a gift from God.  And in a culture like ours where sex is so often separated from loving relationships and even used as a marketing tool to sell more stuff, the perspective of the Song of Songs is something that we need to hear.

Now we weren’t able to read all of the Song of Songs together this morning, but if you were to go home and read the whole poem, it would give you a series of pictures of the relationship between two people, images which reveal not just the joy, but also the struggles, the longing, the heart-break and the complexity of this relationship which we call love.  Three times in the text, the woman warns her female companions not to awaken or arouse love until it’s ready.  Love is sacred, beautiful and mysterious, but it’s not to be treated lightly or frivolously.

As part of my reading on the Song of Songs I came across an article by a man named Nickolas Hiemstra, and he made the point that we don’t always get this sense of the sacred and spiritual nature of love in our everyday conversations. In the English language especially, we’re pretty cavalier with the way we use the word love.  I love my school, I love my new shirt, I love my wife and I love to eat hamburgers.  You see how the word love can lose some of its meaning by the way we use it so freely.

But in the Hebrew language in which the Song of Songs was written over 2000 years ago, in the language of Jesus, the language of Paul, there are three different words for love that are used in the poem.  The first of these is “raya” the Hebrew word which denotes friend or companion, even soul-mate.  “You are altogether beautiful my love, my raya,” says the man’s voice, “there is no flaw in you.”  The love between the man and the woman is first of all an expression of raya, of companionship, of wanting to be together.  Friendship is at the core of their relationship.

But their relationship blossoms beyond friendship into another Hebrew word for love which is “ahavah”.   Ahavah is the love of deep affection where both your mind and your heart yearn to be with the other.  It is loving with all your heart, with all your soul all your mind and all your strength.  It is the love of the will, a passion which becomes a commitment which becomes a decision to join your life to the life of another.  The root word in Hebrew of ahavah is the word for “I give”.  Ahavah then is love as giving, as a mutual giving of one’s self to the other.  In the Song of Songs, ahavah is portrayed as strength and endurance:  “Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame.  Many waters cannot quench ahavah, neither can floods drown it.”

But we’re not finished.  There is still a third Hebrew word which we translate as love, and that is “dod”.  Dod is the physical, sexual element of a relationship.  “Let him kiss me with kisses of his mouth!” proclaims the young woman, “For your dod, your love, is better than wine.” 

So here we have the threefold meaning of love which is expressed in the poetry of the Song of Songs:  raya, the love of friendship and companionship, the desire to be together which is at the core of the relationship;  ahavah, the willful love, the commitment, the joining of one’s life to another; and dod, the passion and intimacy of sexual relations, the physical embodiment of the love that two people have for each other. 

Now all three of these, raya, ahavah and dod, all of these are good.  All three are gifts from God.  God is the one who created us with the capacity and desire for friendship, commitment and sexual intimacy.   And the book of Genesis tells us that when God had created us this way, he blessed us and saw that it was very good.  Picture each of these loves, if you like, as a flame, the flame of friendship, the flame of commitment and the flame of sexual intimacy.  The message of the Song of Songs is that when two people can put all three of these flames together, that’s when you get a roaring fire.  This, I think, is what Jesus meant when he talks about marriage as the two becoming one flesh.  The lovers who join themselves together sexually are giving physical expression to their spiritual union which is based on the giving of themselves to each other in companionship and commitment.  Our sexual acts become spiritual acts, the expression of and participation in that sacred, beautiful and mysterious reality that we call love.  It has something to do with the way we were created by a loving God, in the image of a God who is love.

Now this loving thing isn’t always going to be easy.  At one point the woman in Song of Songs turns in longing to her beloved, but he’s not there, and her heart aches.  Love isn’t always easy.  We know that.

Perhaps that’s why we often try to take shortcuts.  Maybe that’s why sometimes we try to have relationships based on only one of the three flames of love.  Anyone ever heard of Ashley Madison? 

When you have affairs or one night stands you may have the flame of dod, the sexual relationship, but the flames of raya and ahavah aren’t there.  No companionship, no commitment.  No wonder that people are often left feeling empty and unfulfilled.  No wonder that people get hurt.

Or we have friends with benefits, a relationship which tries to capture the flames of friendship and sexual intimacy, but at the same time puts up strict barriers to prevent the flame of commitment, because that seems to be the risky part.

Or, perhaps there’s a marriage where there’s still commitment, both the husband and wife are going to stick it out for the long haul, but the friendship’s gone, and they haven’t had sex for years.  Commitment is good; but there’s not much fire in that relationship, and there won’t be until the flames of raya and dod are rekindled.

Love ain’t easy.  Loving in a messy world that is at times beautiful and at times broken can be complicated.  Loving people who are at times saints and at times sinners can leave us vulnerable.  Our yearning for intimacy finds expression in many different ways, some of which are healthy and some of which are not.  But love at its best, the way God intended it to be, is sacred, beautiful and mysterious, a deeply spiritual way of knowing and being known, of relating to each other. God has given us the gift of love, love as friendship, love as commitment, love as sexual intimacy, love as a roaring fire when we can put all three flames together.  May we honour the way God created us in the ways that we love each other.

Amen. 

Did David Get Off Too Easily? Justice and Mercy (August 2, 2015)

Homily:  Yr B P18, August 2 2015, St. Albans

Readings:  2 Sam 11.26-12.13; Ps 51; Eph 4.1-16; Jn 6.24-35

On Thursday night, I witnessed a murder.  I went to see the 9^th Hour Theatre Company production of Arthur Miller’s The Creation of the World and Other Business, directed by our own Jonathan Harris.  It is the story of Adam and Eve, and their children Cain and Abel, an old, old story as retold by Arthur Miller.  And the climatic act of the play, as in chapter four of the book of Genesis, is the murder of Abel by his brother Cain.  This gruesome act raises questions of justice.  How should Cain be punished?  Who is to blame?  Is God to blame for creating a world in which such things can happen?  What are the consequences of sin and evil?

The play doesn’t answer these questions.  It simply ends there, with a dark acknowledgement of the shadow side of the human condition, and a plea for mercy.  The story from the book of Genesis does continue however, and it continues with an unraveling.  That first act of violence leads to more acts of violence, generation after generation until by the days of Noah, the Lord looks upon the earth and sees that the earth is filled with violence, and that the wickedness of humankind is great, and so he sends a flood to wipe humanity off the face of the earth, saving only a remnant with which to begin again.

Even in the world of the story, the great flood was, alas, only a temporary reprieve.  We were reminded of that last Sunday when we heard the story of David and Bathsheba.  How King David abuses his power by committing adultery with another man’s wife, against her will.  How he lies and tries to cover it up unsuccessfully.  How he then murders the other man, Uriah, by arranging to have him killed in battle, causing others to die with him.

I think that Zack in his preaching last week was particularly effective in conveying our collective disgust and disappointment at these repulsive acts performed by someone who until that point in the story we had regarded as a hero. 

Today, we take up the story again, and we begin with judgement:

But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord, because he had done what was evil in his sight.

And here are raised some of the same questions which were raised in the play I saw on Thursday.  What will be the consequences?  How will justice be served, if at all?  Has God left the building, have we been left on our own to figure this out?

No.  At least not completely.  In the face of injustice, God speaks to us through prophets.  The Lord sent Nathan to David.  Not, on the face of it, a great assignment for Nathan, let’s just say it was a bit risky.  So he comes at the king sideways, with a story. 

“There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor.  The rich man had very many flocks and herds; but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had brought.  He brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his meager fare and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him.  Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was loath to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb, and prepared that for the guest who had come to him.”

Which of us when we hear that story can fail to know what is right and what is wrong?  As humans we have an innate moral sense, an innate sense of justice.  We know what is right and what is wrong.  Sometimes, especially in our own day, there are people who try to tell us that everything is relative.  That justice and morality are merely human inventions and social conventions.  And while we can acknowledge that some ethical decisions get complicated, and sometimes there are grey areas, and sometimes we need to consider context and culture, we also need to assert that moral relativism in its absolute form is just plain wrong.  When we hear Nathan’s story, we know what is right and what is wrong.  Somehow God has given us the knowledge and the ability to make that ethical judgment across cultures and across the generations.

Even David gets this one right.  Freed from his own subjectivity and self-interest by Nathan’s third-person narrative, untainted by personal desire and the corrupting influence of power in this particular case, he is rightly angered at the rich man who takes the poor man’s lamb.  But his anger is soon turned inward.

“You are the man!”

It’s one of those moments when the light bulb suddenly goes on.  Have you had one of those, either a good one, or a bad one like the one David just experienced?  A sudden insight about who you really are as a person?  That’s what David is having.  It’s a moment of great insight, and it’s a moment of great fear.

And Nathan doesn’t let him off the hook, at least not just yet.  He doesn’t say, “You are the man, but everything is going to be alright.”  No, he tells him that this is going to be the turning point in his life and that it’s all downhill from here.  There will be consequences.  There are always consequences to sin.  Sin has a terrible destructive and unraveling power.  Read on in the book of second Samuel.  David’s family is divided and destroyed.  His son rapes his brother’s sister.  The brother kills the perpetrator.  David’s wives are abused by another son, as part of a deliberate campaign to overthrow his father.  The kingdom of David degenerates into a series of violent plots and civil warfare.  Again, none of this should surprise us.  We know what happens to a family when there is a breach of trust, when violence and abuse erupts.  The negative effects can last for generations, claiming both innocent and guilty in their wake.

So there are consequences to sin.  There is a sort of justice that plays out, though I hesitate to call it God’s justice, or the form of justice that we might want.

Confronted by Nathan, David recognizes his sin.  He repents.  He confesses. “I have sinned against the Lord.”  The long version of that confession is in your booklets, it is the Psalm that we heard read together this morning.

In response, Nathan says to David, “Now the Lord has put away your sin; you shall not die.”  Nathan absolves David of his sin.  There will still be consequences, but there is absolution.  Forgiveness.

Does David get off too easily?

In the panel discussion after the play on Thursday night we talked about justice.  And mercy.  And how the pursuit of justice without mercy will be a hard road to follow.  And we also talked about how, maybe, the principal problem in the human condition as illustrated by the play is not simply injustice, but the bigger problem of alienation in our relationship with God and alienation in our relationships with each other, in which sin and injustice certainly play their part.  If the problem is alienation, then can the pursuit of justice alone lead to reconciliation?  Love, repentance, forgiveness, mercy – surely all of these also have a role to play.

And so what is the relationship between justice and mercy, how do we balance the two?

David repents, confesses his sin and receives mercy, while the blood of his victim Uriah still cries out from the ground for justice.

Did David get off too easily?

Amen.

More Than Bread: Taking it to the next level (August 9, 2015)

Homily.  Yr B P19, August 9 2015, St. Albans

Readings:  2 Sam 18.5-9,15,31-33; Ps 130; Eph 4.25-5.2; John 6.35,41-51

“I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

In the gospel of John, Jesus never does miracles.  The great acts of power that he performs are called signs, not miracles.  And like any sign, they are meant to point us to something beyond the sign itself, to point us to a greater reality, a bigger truth.  A truth so big in fact that it may take us a long time to get there. 

And that will raise questions.  Indeed, we see in John’s gospel that whenever Jesus performs a sign, the sign provokes questions on the part of the disciples and the crowds, questions which Jesus sometimes answers, but more often he uses as a spring-board to get to the next level, to point us to the greater truth.

We have spent the last few Sundays in the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John, which begins with Jesus going up the mountain, followed by a large crowd.  And there he takes five loaves and two fish, and he feeds the hungry crowd of more than 5000 people.  It is a sign – but to what is it pointing?

We know what it means to be hungry.  Perhaps not as well as the crowds of poor peasants who were fed by Jesus, but we know what it feels like to crave food, the gnawing in the stomach, the need to be fed.  And we know what it is like to satisfy that hunger, the relief, the pleasure, even sometimes the urgency of eating.

And so it’s not surprising that the people who have been fed search for Jesus the next day, hoping to once more receive their fill of bread.  And this is where Jesus takes it to the next level.  Because the sign which has been done with ordinary bread is not about ordinary bread.

“Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life.”

Sure, eating bread will keep your heart beating.  Maybe even for many years.  But there’s more than that to life.   Jesus points to a bigger understanding of what we mean by life.  We hunger for much more than bread.  We want much more than beating hearts.  We were made for more than that.  The crowd gets it.  And we get it too.  When we read Psalm 130 together this morning, when we heard that plaintive voice calling “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord” we know instinctively, we know from experience, that this is a cry which hungers for more than loaves of bread.

But what do we do about that sort of hunger?  When our stomach groans, we know how to feed ourselves.  When there is a groaning in the depth of our soul, how then do we go about getting the food we need?  Or do we simply try to pretend that this deeper groaning isn’t really there?

Earlier this week I met with a university student who was wrestling with this very question.  If I want to deal with my physical health, she told me, I know what to do.  I can go to a doctor or a health professional who can assess my physical health, and can tell me what I need to do to improve my health, what to eat, how to exercise, how to treat any illness that I have. 

And it’s much the same for mental health, there are people who can analyze my mental health, and diagnose any illness or other concerns and then prescribe a variety of things I can do to be healthier mentally.  But it’s just not the same for my spiritual health.  I don’t know who can help me understand where I am spiritually and what I need to do to be healthy.

The crowd asks Jesus the same question.  “What must we do to have this food that endures for eternal life?”

Perhaps the crowd was expecting the same sort of answer that I gave the university student.  Practice spiritual disciplines.  Pray.  Meditate.  Engage in reflection.  Serve others.  Practice generosity.  Study the scriptures.  Be part of a community of compassion, love and forgiveness. Open yourself up to what the Spirit of God is doing in your life.

That’s how I answered.  But that’s not how Jesus answers.

Jesus takes it up another level.

“This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent”

“And who has he sent?  Are you claiming to be the one?  Are you claiming to be greater than Moses, who gave us manna to eat in the wilderness?  How are you going to prove that?”

“I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.  I am the bread that came down from heaven.”

This is, first of all, a huge promise.  It is the promise of abundant life, of eternal life.  It is the promise that all of our deepest desires will be fulfilled, that all our spiritual hunger will be satisfied the same way that a piece of bread can calm the churning in our stomachs.

But it is also an audacious claim.  For Jesus is claiming for himself the name of God, claiming for himself a divine origin, and he’s promising us that by trusting him, by following him, by entering into relationship with him, by believing in him, we will receive life in its fullest, a life so full that even the bonds of death, time and space cannot contain it.

Are you surprised that the crowd is offended by this?  I’m not.  It’s too much.  It goes beyond their understanding of who God is.  It certainly doesn’t square with their knowledge of who Jesus is, Mary’s son, raised in Nazareth.

I mean, imagine if my response to the spiritual yearning of the student I met this week had been to say that all she had to do to satisfy her spiritual hunger was to believe in me, because I am the one sent from heaven.  I hope that if I ever make a claim like that to any one of you that you’ll turn and run from me as fast as you can!

C.S. Lewis once made the point that it is impossible to be lukewarm about Jesus, to simply regard him as a good man, or even a great teacher.  And it is claims like this one in the gospel of John that he uses to make his point.  When Jesus says, “I am the bread of life that came down from heaven,” we are faced with a choice:   either profess him as the Son of God or run away from him as fast as we can.

Jesus’ claim to be the answer to their deepest longings and needs offends the crowd.  It is an audacious claim, an offensive claim.  It still has the power to offend today.  And I suppose it only gets worse when Jesus carries on and claims that “the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh”.

Now we’ve gone up another level.  Here is the claim that the answer to our deepest spiritual needs and longings, the need to love and to be loved, for belonging, for hope, for dignity, for meaning and purpose in our lives, for joy and hope, the way to all of these passes through the cross of Jesus.

And at this point, I am quite willing to admit that it’s all a bit beyond me.  Despite my work, despite my theological education, I have not got this all figured out. 

But there is something about Jesus that I can’t let go of.  Despite the audacity of the claims, they seem to have a ring of truth about them.  I like what all this is pointing to.  Jesus too seems to have a ring of truth about him.  And just as I don’t need to understand everything about how bread works to satisfy my physical hunger in order to eat, I don’t need to have everything all figured out in order to follow Jesus.   And so, I follow.  I trust.  I have faith.  And on that journey of faith, I experience life, that abundant life that Jesus talks about, not always, but often enough to keep me going.

Many in the crowd leave however.  So Jesus asks the twelve, his closest friends, “Do you also wish to go away?”  Simon Peter answers, “Lord, to whom can we go?  You have the words of eternal life.  We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

Today Nathan will stand with Simon Peter and countless others throughout the ages who have made the decision to follow Jesus.  We haven’t got it all figured out.  We recognize the immensity and audacity of what we profess.  But we come to Jesus.  We trust.  We follow.  And we believe.

“I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Amen.

Faith and Fear (June 28, 2015)

Homily:  Yr B Proper 13, June 28 2015, St. Albans.

Readings:  2 Sam 1.1, 17-27; Ps 130; 2 Cor 8.7-15; Mk 5.21-43

This morning in our gospel reading we return to the Gospel of Mark and specifically to one of the most carefully and artfully crafted narratives in all of Mark’s gospel.  It is two stories woven into one, with the story of the woman who suffered from hemorrhages sandwiched in-between the two parts of the story of Jairus and his daughter.  The two stories play off one another, displaying both parallels and contrasts:  the sick girl is introduced as a daughter, the woman is named at the end as “Daughter”.  The woman has been bleeding for twelve years; the girl is twelve years of age.   The woman has been unable to bear children because of her bleeding; the girl who is just reaching the age of child-bearing is at risk of never realizing that potential.  The girl has her father as an advocate, indeed it is Jairus who is the focus of the story; the woman must act alone.

But why does Mark put these stories together?   What is the point of the overall narrative that he has so carefully crafted for us?  It is at first tempting to give the easy answer, that this gospel text is intended to reveal to us that Jesus is a great healer.  But although that is true, it can’t be the gospel writer’s main purpose in recording these encounters.  After all, if we’ve been paying any attention, we already know by Chapter 5, that Jesus is a great healer.  Already in the first four chapters of Mark that has become quite clear.  Why after all, do you think there are such great crowds that gather around Jesus the moment he steps off the boat?  They know that Jesus is a great healer; the word is out, news has spread, as early as chapter one people were bringing all of the sick to Jesus.   They track his every movement and wherever he goes, he is swarmed by crowds.  Even modern day historians, some of whom read the gospels with a skeptical eye, all agree:  Jesus was a great healer and that’s why he attracted such crowds.  We don’t need another story to tell us that.

So what is the point of this story?  There is a hint in Mark’s intro.  “When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around him while he was by the lake.”  The lake, the Sea of Galilee, is the boundary between Israel and foreign lands, and Jesus has been moving back and forth across it in the first few chapters of the gospel, literally crossing the boundary between home and away, between where we are safe and comfortable and where we are not.  And as the story begins he is by the lake, again right on the boundary between land and sea.  That may not seem like much to us, but it would have had more significance for Mark’s original readers.  The sea symbolized forces that destroy humanity, chaos and evil.  The land is where we are at home, indeed, the home God created for humanity, safe, ordered, peaceful.  And Jesus places himself right on the boundary between the two.  And you’d be right if you suspected that both of the encounters in this story are going to involve some boundary crossing.

Each of these stories, indeed, has two stages, with an internal boundary that gets crossed.  Mark makes it easy for us to see where the boundary is in the story of Jairus and his daughter because he splits the story into two parts for us.  The second part starts with the report of the death of the daughter.  In the story of the woman suffering from hemorrhages, the second stage begins when Jesus calls her out and asks “Who touched my clothes?”   In both stories, the second stage marks the boundary where hope turns to fear.  It also marks the point where Jesus takes over as the principal actor and speaker.  Up until that point Jesus had yet to speak in either story.

At the beginning of the story of the woman who suffered from hemorrhages, despite her suffering, she is full of faith and hope.  She knew about Jesus, and she thinks, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.”  She is the one who drives the action forward – she sees her opportunity in the crowd, comes up behind Jesus and touches his cloak, and she is rewarded – immediately her bleeding stops.  But just then the moment she dreads is upon her.  Jesus, realizing that power had gone out from him, turns around in the crowd and asks, “Who touched my clothes?”  And the woman, knowing what had happened to her comes and falls at his feet, trembling with fear.

Why is she so afraid?  Where has her hope gone, where is the assertiveness and determination that she showed just moments before?  Where is the joy that should come from her healing?

She trembles because her greatest fear is at hand,and that is the fear of being shamed, publically, in full view of the crowd.  You see, that was something she’d been dreading for twelve long years.  In her society, bleeding would have made her impure.  Unable to marry, an outcast in society.  Unable to have children, unable to have a normal family, with all the shame that that entailed.  As someone who was impure she shouldn’t have been in the crowd, certainly she shouldn’t have touched Jesus.  Maybe she’d been keeping this hidden for all those years, living with her shameful secret.   She had hoped to remain anonymous, nameless, but she was being outed.  The moment of public shame she had feared had arrived.

“Who touched my clothes?”

In fear and trembling she falls at his feet and confesses, telling him the whole truth.  And then Jesus surprises her.  There is no shame, no condemnation.  “Daughter, your faith has made you well.  Go in peace and be healed of your disease.”  Not only has she been healed of her disease, but more importantly she has been absolved of her deepest shame and relieved of her greatest fear.  No longer is she nameless, rather she has been given a new name.  Daughter.  Child of God.  One who is in relationship, part of a family, no longer anonymous and isolated.  Not only has she been healed; she has been made well.

Jairus too is hopeful at the outset of his story.  He comes to Jesus, he falls at his feet, he begs him repeatedly, he tells Jesus exactly what he wants. “My little daughter is at the point of death.  Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and live.”  Jairus may be desperate but he is forceful and his faith is strong.  Jesus goes with him.  But as they go, people from the leader’s house (notice how Jairus loses his name), people come from the leader’s house to say, “Your daughter is dead.”  With those words, Jairus loses his name and never speaks again in this story.  His greatest fear has arrived, the death of his daughter, and with it his faith and his hope dissolve.  And again, it is at the point where hope dissolves into fear that Jesus who has not yet spoken in the story of Jairus, Jesus takes over and begins to speak and to direct the action.  His first words go to the heart of Jairus’ state of being:

“Do not fear, only believe.”

And he goes to the girl, and takes her by the hand and say to her, “Talitha cum” which means, “Little girl, get up!”  And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about.

Two amazing stories, one amazing narrative.  What does it mean for you and me?  Well, let me ask a few questions:

Does anyone here have a fear of being publically shamed?  Of having their deepest, darkest secrets exposed for all to see and condemn?  

Is anyone here afraid of death?  Their own death, or the death of a loved one?

Has anyone ever been to that place, been at that boundary where hope and faith dissolve into fear?

I think that the point of these stories is to let us know that when we get to that place, that boundary where hope and faith give way to fear, Jesus will be there waiting for us.   Waiting perhaps until the moment when we are speechless to speak, telling us not to fear, uttering no words of condemnation but naming us once more as a beloved child of God, assuring us of what we need to be well, to move once more from fear to faith.

Amen.

The Welcoming of St. Alban (Jun 21 2015)

Homily, St. Albans Day, June 21 2015.

Readings:  Wisdom 3.1-9; Ps 68.1-8; 2 Cor 6.1-13; Mt 10.40-42

“Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”

Welcoming matters, in fact it is one of the most important things that we do as a church community.  And yet, far too often, we take welcoming for granted.  We take a bland, passive approach, thinking that if we put a sign up outside that says “All are welcome”, we’ve somehow become a welcoming community.

But the welcome that Jesus is talking about is a much more active, a much more radical, indeed even at times a subversive and a dangerous act.  During his lifetime, Jesus was often chastised for eating and drinking with the wrong people, sinners and tax-collectors.  That scandalous, welcoming behaviour was one of the reasons that Jesus had so many people in the establishment out to get him.  Welcoming is a boundary crossing activity.  It upsets people, it upends social norms.

It can also be dangerous.  On the night that he was betrayed, Jesus welcomed Judas to the table, and offered him bread to eat and wine to drink, knowing full-well that that same Judas would betray his hospitality and indeed his life later that same evening.

Today, we celebrate St. Alban, the first English martyr, who was put to death because he welcomed a fugitive into his home.  You’ve heard the story, how in a time of persecution of Christians, a priest who was being pursued made his way to Alban’s home, banged on the door and was given refuge by Alban.  In fact, not only was he given refuge, but Alban hid him from the authorities at great risk to himself, and then when the authorities finally tracked down the fugitive, Alban donned the fugitive priest’s clothing and offered himself up to the authorities in his place, leading to Alban’s own execution.  This is serious welcoming, radical welcoming, dangerous welcoming that is a on a completely different level than simply posting a sign outside the door saying that “all are welcome.”

This week, the people of Mother Emmanuel Church, a black church with a long history, a church which is a symbol of the struggle to end slavery, the civil rights movement and the deep racial wounds that exist in the United States, these people welcomed a young white man into their church in Charleston, South Carolina.  He came in, and they made him part of their weekly prayer meeting.  When they had prayed together for an hour, he took out a gun and he murdered nine people.   Welcoming is not bland and benign.  It can be dangerous.  What happened in Charleston is terrible and reprehensible. We hold that church community in our prayers.  We also pray for those who must take action to end the racial hatred which continues to exist and to plague our southern neighbour.  And we remember our need to take action to end racism and engage in reconciliation in this country, particularly in these weeks following the release of the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and on this day, Aboriginal Day in Canada.

When we as a church community held our first retreat in 2011 to talk about our core values, the first value that emerged from our prayers and conversations was welcoming.  So what are we going to do about that?  What sort of inspiration do we draw from our patron saint, Saint Alban, how do we model ourselves as a community after Jesus himself when it comes to welcoming?

Let me first acknowledge, especially in light of what happened in Charleston, that part of being a welcoming church is also to be a safe church, to provide a space that is safe for all, those who are part of this community and those whom we welcome into the community.  The same Jesus who urges us to welcome also reminds us to be both as innocent as doves and as wise as serpents.

But to rephrase my question, as a church that explicitly values welcoming, do we have in mind a welcome which is cheap or costly?

Some of you may recognize that distinction as one borrowed from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who as a young man in the 1930s, wrote a book called the Cost of Discipleship.  In this book he introduced us to the distinction between “cheap grace” and “costly grace”.

“Cheap grace,” wrote Bonhoeffer, “is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ."

Costly grace, on the other hand, “costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a [person] to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: "My yoke is easy and my burden is light." "

I believe that the same distinction can be applied to welcoming.  Cheap welcoming is putting up a sign that says “all are welcome” without much further impact on us as a community, without risking the way that we do things.

Costly welcoming, well on this day, we need look no farther than St. Alban as our example.  Costly welcoming is courageous.  It is a risk-taking act, it takes effort on our part and has the potential to change who we are and how we do things in order to fully welcome the one who is the stranger into our midst.

So, as a community that has made welcoming one of our core values, what are we going to do about it? 

Some things we do well.  Many people do feel welcomed when they visit us here.  Many of you put time and energy into welcoming strangers and guests into our midst, learning and remembering names, meeting and greeting guests and visitors during our coffee hour rather than always chatting with the same friends.  We do get out of our building in order to engage with the community, whether it’s through our campus ministry or The Big Give or the work of Centre 454 which many of us support.  It’s good to celebrate these things.

But there are also challenges.  To mention just one that was brought to my attention this week, I’m sure that most us would be quick to say that aboriginal people are welcome at St. Albans.  However as the TRC final report pointed out, Sir John A. Macdonald was one of the architects of the residential schools program that was part of the policy of cultural genocide that was imposed on our aboriginal peoples by our government and our church.  And this particular church of St. Albans was the church of Sir John A. Macdonald, something that we mention and indeed celebrate in our communications, something that is written in those white booklets that many of you have in your hands.  Is this a good way to welcome aboriginal people to St. Albans?  What are we going to do about that?

I’m not suggesting that all these matters are straightforward.  What I am suggesting is that if we aspire to be a church inspired by St. Alban and by Jesus himself, if we are serious in our desire to make welcoming one of our core values, then we have to take welcoming seriously, and be ready to pay the cost.  Because when we do, we welcome not only the other, but also God himself into our midst.  As Jesus said,

“Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”

Amen.

The First Stone (June 14 2015)

Homily:  The First Stone.  June 14 2015

It’s good to be back. . . 

Guylaine and I spent the last month in Northern Spain, walking the ancient pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela, the Camino.  You may remember that on the Sunday before we left, John came up here and told us about one of the sites along the Camino, Cruz de Ferro, and he brought two stones which you passed around and then gave to us to take to Cruz de Ferro and leave them there.  This morning I want to tell you the story of one of those stones.  It’s not a linear story, because the Camino has a way of messing with your sense of time.  Things happen, thoughts emerge, words are said.  Making connections and drawing out meaning happen in their own time, with little respect for chronological order.

Every journey has a dual nature.  There’s the journey outwards, traveling to distant lands, encountering different cultures, making new friends and going to places you’ve never been before.  And then there is the journey inward, the journey that takes you to destinations within yourself, some of which may be familiar but some of which may also be places you’ve never been before.  It is the mirroring of these outward and inward journeys that makes walking the Camino a powerful and rewarding experience.

One of the insights I had on the Camino was that Jesus spent most of his life walking, walking with his disciples, his companions along the way.  And there is something about walking which lends itself to spiritual exploration.  Perhaps it’s the rhythm.  Perhaps it’s because we have lots of time.  Perhaps it’s that mirroring of the outward and inward journeys that I experienced.  In today’s gospel, Jesus is walking with his disciples, somewhere in the rural part of Galilee.  And as they walk, they ask him questions.  “What’s God like?” they ask.  “What do you mean when you tell us that the kingdom of God has come near?” 

And so Jesus points to the field where a man is sowing seed and says “the kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and it grows, and he does not know how.”  And then they walked some more, until Jesus spots a bush with yellow flowers which produces a tiny seed. “You want to know what God is like?  Imagine a tiny mustard seed sown upon the ground which grows into the greatest of all shrubs.”  And they kept on walking.

That’s what we do on the Camino.  We walk.  We talk.  We think.  We look, we listen, we smell.   One morning I walked with an American woman named Lori.  We started talking.  I asked her a question.  She hesitated for just a moment. And so I said to her, you can give me the long answer if you want, we have time.  And so she did.  She reached way back in her life and spent the next hour telling me her story.

Some people walk the Camino for specific reasons.  They might be between jobs.  They might be asking the “what am I going to do with my life?” question.  They might be trying to leave a relationship behind or figure out whether to embark on a new relationship.

I went to the Camino without a specific agenda, at least not one that I was consciously aware of.  In fact, I intentionally spent the first week trying not to bring any agenda to my thoughts, instead allowing the walking and the encounters to open me up.  Later I realized, and only as my walking was drawing to an end was I able to articulate, that my Camino did have a purpose, and that was to come to know God and to know myself more deeply.  Maybe that’s the underlying purpose of any pilgrimage.   And that brings me back to the story of the stone which you gave me.

Cruz de Ferro, the iron cross, is located at the highest point of the Camino, some 1500m above sea level.  It is a tall slender cross, not particularly impressive in itself when compared to some of the beautiful crosses encountered along the way.  What is impressive is the large pile of stones at the base of Cruz de Ferro, as high as a house, with each stone having been left by one of the millions of pilgrims who walked the Camino before us.

 The tradition is that each stone represents a letting go of something, the unburdening of a weight carried by the pilgrim but now released.  That tradition is grafted onto an even more ancient tradition that tells us that it is upon the mountain top that we encounter God.

In the morning I began the ascent to the mountain top, some seven kilometers away.  Halfway there I stopped for breakfast in the last village before Cruz de Ferro, and as I was leaving I opened up my pack and took out the two stones you gave me.  I carried one in each hand as I walked.  It was a beautiful, clear, blue-sky morning.  I knew that the stones I carried were sacred, having been blessed by you as you passed them hand to hand, carrying the intentions and thoughts of some of you.  I hadn’t actually given any thought as to what those stones would mean to me, what it was that I might need to let go of, what sort of unburdening.  But walking the Camino has a wonderful way of giving you the thoughts you need when you need them.  As I walked those last few kilometres, it became quite clear to me what the stones were for me.  As for the one in my left hand, the smaller one, well that’s a story for another day.  The larger stone in my right hand came to represent all the things that prevent me from experiencing forgiveness. 

Now that came as a total surprise to me, because I didn’t think I had an issue with forgiveness.  Heck, I’ve even preached sermons on God’s grace, on how God forgives us, how God sets aside all of our issues and brokenness and misdemeanors and loves us, now, just as we are.  But it was as if a voice said to me, “Sure, you know all about forgiveness in your head, and your theology of grace isn’t bad at all.  But have you experienced it?” 

And I remembered there was that thing that I still felt badly about, that I still try to justify every so often rather than just accept forgiveness.  And then, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I spend a lot more time and energy trying to justify myself than I do accepting forgiveness.  I like being right, I like being good.  In fact I like being better than other people.  My competitiveness, my tendency to compare myself to others, my desire for self-justification, my pride in accomplishments:  as I walked up the mountain, I realized, or you might say I was taught, that all of these things actually get in the way of forgiveness and create an inability in me to accept at the deepest level that I am forgiven.  And so, I would have to let them go.

Forgiveness is an ancient theme on the Camino.  In the middle ages, the reason that pilgrims walked the Camino was to receive forgiveness.  About ten days before the end of the Camino there is an old church that dates from the middle ages in a village called Villafranca which has a door called the Puerta de Perdon.  The door of forgiveness.  Mercy.  Pardon.  Pilgrims who were too sick to make it over the Galician mountains to Santiago were able to receive forgiveness at the Puerta de Perdon.  These days, we often smirk at the superstitions of the middle ages, and ridicule the church for its practice of indulgences.  The notion that forgiveness is obtained by walking seven hundred kilometers or more to see the relics of a saint seems silly to us, and, at face-value, is also bad theology.  God’s grace is freely given.  Whatever was needed for God to forgive was done through the mystery of the cross.  Walking hundreds kilometers on bruised and blistered feet adds nothing to what God has done.

But despite this theology of grace, how many of us in our own day truly experience forgiveness?  How many can forgive themselves and others?  How many of us struggle with doubts about self-worth?  How many still experience guilt?  How many know in their hearts that they are loved, with no strings attached?  How many are still captive to the brokenness of shattered dreams and crumbled relationships?

  

God wants to unburden us from all these things.  Forgiveness, grace is freely given.  But what does it take for us to receive it, to accept it, to experience it deep in the core of our being?  Perhaps the ancient beauty and mystery of the Camino is that the outward journey really does mirror the inward journey that we need to make to come to an acceptance of forgiveness.  When a pilgrim of the middle ages came to know that she was forgiven at the Puerta de Perdon, was it because of the path that had been walked, or was it something much deeper?  Perhaps it was because over the course of those many kilometers she had come to know God as a gracious and forgiving God, full of steadfast love and mercy, and the gift of forgiveness had been accepted a little bit deeper into her heart with every step she took along the way.  Perhaps that’s the deeper meaning of the Camino as a quest for forgiveness.

We’ll never really know the experience of a twelfth-century pilgrim.  But 21^st century pilgrims also need to receive, experience and come to know the grace of God.  Perhaps it’s more important to make the journey and arrive at this destination than to have a theologically-sound explanation of how to get there.

So when I climbed to the top of the pile of stones at Ferro de Cruz, I dropped my stone.  I let go of all that it had come to represent, all the things, known and unknown, that prevent me from experiencing forgiveness.

I came down off the stone pile.  I waited a bit.  I wondered if anything was going to happen.  I put my pack on and I started walking again.  Then I remembered the hug.

 A couple of days earlier we had arrived at the albergue, the hostel, after a long 30 km plus day of walking.  My feet were sore and my ankle was swollen.  Just off to the side of the albergue lobby there was a massage therapist with her table, working on tired pilgrims.  Guylaine said to me, “Maybe you should get some work done.”  So I booked a time and went to the therapist.  She introduced herself with a shake of the hand as Sylvia, asked me what was wrong, and went to work, mostly on my feet and ankles, and my shoulders which were groaning a bit from carrying my pack.  Afterwards, she took the time to explain to me what I needed to do to care for my feet and the best way to tend my blisters.  Then to my complete astonishment, she wished me Buen Camino, and gave me a hug.  A big, long, firm hug.  It surprised me.  It moved me.  It felt absolutely great.

As I walked away from Cruz de Ferro, I remembered the hug.  In fact I experienced that hug again, fully present once more in that moment.  It was a hug that said you are loved.  A hug that said “you are my beloved child, with you I am well pleased.”  It was what we in the church might call a sacrament, an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.  And I came to understand that it was God who was hugging me through those arms, letting me know in the embodied language that I can understand at a gut level that I am forgiven, and that I am loved. 

And having experienced that, I suppose I will never quite be the same again.

And that is the story of the first stone.

Amen.