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.