Prayers for Pentecost (May 27 2012)

Prayers for Pentecost, inspired by U2's Mysterious Ways

On this day of Pentecost, let us pray to God the Holy Spirit

Come, Holy Spirit, creator, and renew the face of the earth.  You are the wave, you turn the tide.  You lift my days and light up my nights.

She moves in mysterious ways.

Spirit, talk to us about the things we can’t explain.  To touch is to heal, to hurt is to steal.  If we want to kiss the sky, better learn how to kneel.  We move through miracle days.

She moves in mysterious ways.

Sometimes we feel ourselves sliding down.  Some days we feel like we’ve been living underground, eating from a can, running away from what we don’t understand.

Help us to know that it’s alright, that you’ll be there when we hit the ground

One day, maybe today, we’ll look back and see that we were held by your love.  And that while we could just stand here, we can also follow this feeling and move on this moment.

She moves in mysterious ways

We pray that all might know the power of your love to lift our days and light up our nights.  We pray for the parishes of St. James Manotick and All Saints Beirut.  We pray for the military chaplains of our Diocese.  We pray for those who need our prayers, silently or aloud . . . .  Help them to know that it’s alright.

Listen to U2 - Mysterious Ways

We move through miracle days

Spirit moves in mysterious ways

Lift my days, light up my nights.

A Spirit-Led Church (Easter 6, May 13 2012)

Homily:  Yr B Easter 6, May 13 2012, St. Albans

Readings:  Acts 10:44-48; Psalm 98; 1 John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17

A Spirit-Led Church

If you were to take the booklet that most of you have in your hand and start reading from the beginning, you’d see that one of the first things that we say about St. Albans is that we aim to be a Spirit-Led church.  I’m wondering if you’ve ever given that much thought.  Do we actually want to be a Spirit-led church?  Do you want to be part of a Spirit-led church?  Have you ever thought about how shocking and scandalous, how uncomfortable and dangerous that could be?  What does it even mean to be led by the Spirit?

I think one of the best illustrations of what it might mean to be a Spirit-led church is something I heard at a conference on vital church planting that I went to in February.  The speaker was a man named Dave Male, and the image he used was that of competitive cycling.  Has anyone here ever done any serious cycling?

If you have you know, that the key to doing well, in fact the key to surviving a long grueling race, is to identify a leader and then to get within centimetres of that person in front of you without colliding.  In the language of cycling this is called riding in the slipstream, or drafting.  You get into the low-pressure, low-resistance area created by the rider in front, and you’ll find that the effort required to maintain your speed is reduced.

You literally get this close to the person in front of you, and his or her effort makes it easier for you to cycle.  Now that doesn’t make it easy.  You still might have to work really hard to keep up.  You’ll need to focus in order to maintain the closeness that is required.  And you certainly have to trust that the leader knows where he or she is going.  But it is essential to keep in the slipstream, because if you fall out of that slipstream, then you’ll get left behind.

That’s an image of what it means to be a Spirit-Led church.  We need to ride in the slipstream of God.  We need to stay close to the Spirit and follow where the Spirit leads, to get in the slipstream and work hard to stay there.

In some ways that’s what the book of Acts is all about.  During this Easter season you might have noticed that our first reading every Sunday has been from the Acts of the Apostles.  Some people think that the book of Acts is the story of how the disciples of the early church, people like Peter and Paul, how these disciples spread the gospel throughout the world.  But if you look a little more closely that’s not quite it.  What Acts really is, is the story of how God’s Spirit spread the gospel throughout the world and how the disciples scrambled to catch up with what the Spirit was doing.  Acts is the story of how the disciples had to scramble to stay in God’s slipstream.

Last week for example we had the story of the unlikely encounter between Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, the story of how an angel told Philip to get up and go from the big city of Jerusalem to a wilderness road in the middle of nowhere.  There, Philip encounters one solitary individual, and again prompted by the Spirit, he overcomes racial and legal barriers to proclaim to him the good news of Jesus.   The Ethiopian in turn carries that good news with him to the horn of Africa and today there are more than 50 million Christians in Ethiopia.  All because Philip stayed in the slipstream.

This week we get the tail end of an even more astounding story.  This time it is Peter, the acknowledged leader of the early church, scrambling desperately to keep up with what God’s Spirit is doing.  Today’s story from Acts is not only the decisive event in the history of the early church, it may well be one of the most decisive moments in world history.  Unfortunately, our reading cycle lets us down a bit today by giving us only the last four verses of an astonishing event, the story of the unlikely relationship between Peter and Cornelius, and the early church’s scandalous decision to admit the Gentiles as Gentiles.  So let me tell you the story.

Peter of course we know.  Peter is a disciple of Jesus and a good, faithful Jew, circumcised, a keeper of the Jewish law.  Cornelius on the other hand is a Gentile, a foreigner.  Worse than that, he is a Roman, a citizen of the occupying empire.  Worse than that, he is a centurion, an officer of the military force that occupies and terrorizes the Jewish people.  Remember what happened the last time Peter encountered the Roman military?  It was in the garden on the Mount of Olives, when the soldiers arrested Jesus, took him away and executed him.  There was no love lost between Jews and Roman soldiers.

Our story begins in the late afternoon, when Cornelius, who is a devout man, has a vision by which he is instructed to send for Peter and told where to find him in a nearby town.  The vision fills Cornelius with terror, but he sends a delegation to seek Peter.  The next day, as the delegation is on its way, Peter also has a vision.  Peter is hungry and wanting something to eat, and he sees the heavens opened and something like a large sheet lowered down, filled with all kinds of creatures and reptiles and birds, and he hears a voice commanding him to “Get up, kill and eat.”  He refuses.  The animals in the sheet were considered by the Law to be unclean and profane, and Peter as a faithful Jew had never eaten anything unclean or profane in his life.  But the vision is repeated a second and then a third time, each time ending with the voice that says to Peter, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”

And just then, there’s the sound of men calling from the gate of the house where Peter is staying.  It is Cornelius’s men, calling for Peter.  And the Spirit tells Peter to go with them, and Peter goes, despite his misgivings, even though he knows that it’s unlawful for a Jew to visit a Gentile.

And when he gets to Cornelius’s house, Peter starts to tell them the good news of what God has done in Jesus.  But before he can even finish, while he’s still speaking, the Holy Spirit falls upon these uncircumcised Gentiles and pours out its gifts upon them.  And we are told that the circumcised believers who had come with Peter are astounded.

It’s hard for us in our day to get a grasp of how astounding this was.  It’s hard for us to understand how controversial it was to baptize Gentiles and admit them as full members of the people of God without requiring them to be circumcised.  We are so far removed from the days when the military ruler Antiochus Epiphanes tried to assimilate the Jews by decreeing that circumcision was illegal, and Jewish parents had their babies circumcised in spite of this decree because it was the sign of God’s covenant with the Jewish people, and those babies were then taken away be soldiers and killed.

My friend and colleague Gary Hauch has written the following:

“Admitting the Gentiles as Gentiles [that is, without requiring circumcision and adherence to dietary laws] was a shift of seismic proportions in how the traditions were perceived and handed on. Yet it was precisely this shift that the Holy Spirit guided the early church to make in order for it to embody and hand the story on faithfully.”

  

Peter’s decision to baptize Cornelius and his Roman family was a complete reversal of everything that Peter had been brought up to believe.  And it was controversial.  When Peter returned home he was met with immediate criticism.  He had acted unilaterally.  He had ignored the teaching of scripture.  But ultimately the Spirit prevailed, and Peter and the rest of them scrambled to catch up.  To get in the slipstream.  To follow where God is leading.

That’s what it means to be a Spirit-Led church.  We have to get close to God, to listen to the voice of the Spirit and to go where God is leading.  And if our reading of the Acts of the Apostles is meant to give us a picture of what that looks like, chances are God is more likely to lead us somewhere uncomfortable and disturbing than somewhere comfortable and familiar.

Do you still want to be part of a Spirit-led Church?  If you do, then keep in God’s slipstream and get ready for the ride of your life.

Amen.

It's All About Relationship (Easter 5, May 6 2012)

Homily:  Yr B Easter 5 May 6 2012, St. Albans

Readings:  Acts 8-26-40; Ps 22.24-30; 1 Jn 4.7-21; Jn 15.1-8

It was just about five years ago today that I got on a plane and traveled to the Seychelles Islands.  I spent three months working there, as an intern, as part of my theological training.  And to get ready for that posting, I took part in a 10 day orientation program before I left. That program was for people like me who were going overseas to do various types of work for the church.  We all met in Toronto, but the people taking part came from all over North America.  It was a great group of people, with a lot of different backgrounds and interesting stories to tell.

And I remember in particular one man from Texas.  He was tall and slim, and he had the usual Texan accent, greeting us with a “Howdy y’all” when he entered the room.  Now my Texan friend didn’t talk a lot, he was a fairly quiet guy.  But as we were going through the sessions and various exercises, whenever he did speak, he almost always said the same thing:  “It’s all about relationship”.  If we did a Bible study, invariably at some point he would chime in “Well, ya know, it’s all about relationship.”  If we did a session on how to work in a culture we weren’t familiar with, he’d say, “Well, it’s all about relationship”.  If we were getting training on issues of poverty or justice, same thing.  And y’all know what?  My Texan friend was always right.

And so if my Texan friend was with us today, and I was to ask him what he thought about today’s readings, I’m pretty sure I know what he would say., “It’s all about relationship.”  And ya know what?  I think he’d be right.

In our first reading from Acts we have the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch.  What an unlikely relationship!  The Ethiopian is rich and powerful, riding in a chariot. Philip is a poor Greek Jew who owns nothing but the clothes on his back.  The Ethiopian is heading home, through the desert along a wilderness road.  Philip would never even have been within a hundred miles of him if he hadn’t been prompted first by an angel and then by the Spirit.  And as a Jew, Philip shouldn’t even have approached the Ethiopian eunuch, for according to Jewish law, eunuchs were treated as outcasts.  While he was in Jerusalem, this Ethiopian, for all his wealth and power, wouldn’t have even been allowed inside the Temple to worship.  He would have had to stay outside, on the periphery.

But as he is returning home from Jerusalem, something different happens.  Philip, instead of treating him like an outcast, actually gets into his chariot beside him and takes the time to answer his questions, and to explain to him the scriptures and the good news about Jesus.  The Ethiopian goes from being an outcast to being a companion, a friend, a brother.  The relationship changes.  And the Ethiopian’s response is to ask to be baptized as a sign of this new relationship, and he goes on his way rejoicing.  It’s all about relationship.  In fact it seems like this God of ours has a way of orchestrating even the most unlikely of relationships.

And just as Philip by his very actions invites the Ethiopian to think about and experience God in a new way, John in the letter that we heard in our second reading invites us to think about and experience God in a new way.  Often, we think of God as a being, maybe the “supreme being” that philosophers like to talk about.  Or we think of God as a person, and we use human analogies such as king or creator or father to think about God.  Or we think of God as a kind of super-person, some kind of superman with the amazing ability to create the heavens and the earth.  But John in our second reading talks about God in a very different way.  Twice he says, “God is love”.  Theos Agape Estin.  Notice that he doesn’t say “God loves”, as if God is a person doing something, nor does he say “God is loving” as if loving is an adjective describing what God the being is like.  No, he says “God is love”.  Think of God not as a person or being, but as a relationship.  The essence of God is the relationship of love.

Now there are a number of ways that we can think about this.  In the ancient world, according to Greek natural philosophy or what we would now call science, it was understood that the universe consisted of four elements and two forces.  The four elements were earth, air, fire and water, and the two forces were love and hate.  Love was the force of attraction, the force that brought things together, and hate was the force of repulsion that drove things apart.  So on one level, to assert that God is love is to make an analogy with the unseen force which permeates our universe and draws the elements together, draws things into relationship with each other and creates the wonderful variety that we find in our world.

The early theologians of the church, as they thought about John’s assertion that “God is love” eventually fleshed this out into our understanding of God as Trinity, the idea that there is one God in three persons, the Father, the Son and the Spirit, and that at the core of this one God is that relationship, the relationship of love between Father, Son and Spirit. A thousand years later, St. Thomas Aquinas, a theologian of the 13^th century pointed out along the same lines that love is a unifying force, that it brings the many into one.  We see how this is meant to work in marriage, where we talk about the “two becoming one”, and we use this same understanding when we talk about God as Trinity, where the three become one.  God is a relationship, and we are created in God’s image.

I think that this is a new perspective for most of us, and that’s in part because we’re so used to thinking of ourselves not as a relationship, but as individuals, independent, autonomous and separate.  This way of seeing ourselves comes from the modern sense of identity that has been with us for about the last four hundred years:  what makes me me is that I’m not you.  I’m separate and distinct from you.

But what if John is right, that God is a relationship.  And what if, as the book of Genesis tells us, what if it’s true that God is our creator and that we are created in God’s image.  We would have to change our way of seeing things.  We might even have to change the way we see ourselves.

Suppose we change our vision.  Suppose I was to realize that what makes me me is my relationship with you.  Suppose I was to realize that my very identity, my meaning and purpose in life is to be found in my relationships, in the network of relationships that we call community.

In both his letter and the gospel that we heard today, John talks about “abiding”.  Living in each other, dwelling in each other.  “Abide in me as I abide in you,” Jesus tells his disciples.  If God is love, then those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.

  

It is these relationships, our relationship with God and our relationships with each other that make us who we are and give us life, abundant life, the life in all its abundance that we talked about last week.  It’s these relationships that allow us to grow into the people that we were created to be.  It is these relationships that are fruitful, in a beautiful variety of different ways that are all underpinned by the commandment to love one another.

Jesus tries to sum this up for his disciples by giving them a picture, the image of the grape vine.  The vine is of course a tangled network of relationships.  There are the roots which go down into the earth to draw out nourishment for the whole organism.  There are the branches which both grow leaves to take in the energy from the sun, and produce the grapes.   And there is the vine which ties it all together.

In this image, we are pictured as the branches, connected and rooted in this wider network of relationships with the other branches and with the vine.  As branches, the only way we can produce fruit is if we remain in the vine.  Imagine, for a minute that there was a branch that decided that it would be better off if it left the vine and struck out on its own.  How do you think it would do?  Would it produce any grapes?  Of course not, in fact once it was separated from the vine, it wouldn’t even be the branch of a grapevine anymore.  It would just be dead wood.

None of us want to end up as dead wood.  We want to be alive, with energy and nourishment coursing through our veins, full of love and vitality, living lives that are fruitful, in relationship with God and with each other, loving one another.  Now that isn’t always easy.  Anyone who has grown grapes knows that the grapevine needs a lot of tender loving care and attention, digging here and fertilizing there, and tying up the branches and pruning as necessary.  Our relationships and our communities are no different.  But just like in Jesus parable, there is a gardener, a vinegrower who is there to tend the vine, to help it and encourage it to grow good fruit.  The name of that vinegrower is love, and it is that love that makes us who we are.  And as my Texan friend would say to y’all, it’s all about relationship.

Amen.