Where Do You Put Your Trust? (Lent 1 Feb 17 2013)

Homily:  Yr C Lent 1, Feb 17 2013, St. Albans

Readings:  Deut 26:1-11; Ps 91:1-2,9-16; Rom10:8b-13; Lk:4:1-13

Where do you place your trust?

You who dwell in the shelter of the Lord, who abide in his shadow for life,

Say to the Lord ‘my refuge, My God in whom I trust.’

Today’s readings are about trust.  In whom, or in what, do you place your trust?

The psalmist urges us to place our trust in God.  In the beautiful words of psalm 91, which we sang in our opening hymn, we are given what is perhaps the greatest promise of our Christian faith:  that if we put our trust in God, if we make God our stronghold and our refuge, we will be made safe.  If we trust in God, we will be rescued from our troubles, raised up on eagle’s wings and protected from evil.  We will, as it were, be held in the hands of the angels, lest we dash our foot against a stone.

It is one of my favourite hymns.  Often when I sing it, I feel a depth of emotion well up within me, a feeling that seems to be a gut response to the beauty of the promise that is on offer, a promise that resonates with our deepest longings for assurance and well-being, for a solid place in which we can put our trust.

That’s what my gut is telling me.  But at the same time, my head tells me that all is not well.  Evil, and pain, and sorrow are a part of our lives, sometimes the largest part.  Those who trust in the Lord do dash their feet against stones.  It is easy to think of examples.  So how do we reconcile the promises of the psalmist with the very present reality of pain and suffering in our midst?

The psalmist knows the tension that exists between the promises of God and our present reality.  In psalm 91 he speaks of the plagues and pestilence that threaten human existence.  He knows that there are times of trouble, times of oppression when we call out for help.  He knows that despite the promise that all will be well, we live our lives in the wilderness.

And yet, he is able to put his trust in God.

Where do you put your trust?  When times are good, it is perhaps easy to say that we place our trust in God.  But what happens when you enter the wilderness?  When life gets rough, when obstacles get in the way.  Where then do you put your trust?

Or let me put it another way.  Suppose there was an alien from another planet who arrived on this planet earth, right here in Ottawa, and as part of her reconnaissance mission, she was given the assignment of reporting back to her superiors on where we as human beings place our trust, based on her observations of our behaviour.  What do you think that report would say?

It might say that some of us humans trust in ourselves, in our own power and abilities.  That we strive to be self-reliant people, people who put their energies into education and self-development, finding ways to increase their power so that they can be in control of their own lives.

It might say that some of us place our trust in our possessions, in our houses and our bank accounts, in our good jobs and our pensions.

It might say that some of us place our trust in our health, in daily exercise and good nutrition, in our access to good medical care.

It might say that some of us place our trust in powerful people or institutions that we can align ourselves with, trusting that in return for that allegiance, they will look after us.

It might say that some of us place our trust in drugs or alcohol, or in pleasure and distractions, allowing these things to comfort us or to numb us as we make our way through the wilderness of human life.

That’s probably what the report would say.  

But there is another way through the wilderness.

Our Gospel today tells us that Jesus was led by God’s Spirit into the wilderness where he was tempted by the devil.  In that wilderness, Jesus had no possessions.  He had no companions.  He had no power, no fame, no glory, no food.  The promise that he had received at his baptism, that he was God’s son, his beloved must have started to seem a bit ironic.  Was this any way to treat a beloved son?  And so the devil, the personification of the forces of evil and chaos and pain in this life, puts Jesus to the test.  He starts by sowing the seed of doubt.  “If you are the Son of God . . .”  Notice the “if”?  The voice at Jesus baptism had said “you are my Son”.  Jesus had been given an identity.  But the devil puts that identity in doubt.  “If you are the Son of God . . .”  Are you sure? And having sown the seeds of doubt, now he puts Jesus to the test.  Why trust God?  Why don’t you place your trust in your own power?  Change this stone to bread, not only can you satisfy your own needs, but those of others too.  Or align yourself with me, and you can achieve political power and glory.  Or if you still insist on trusting God, then put God to the test, force his hand and make him save you now in a display of power.

The journey into the wilderness is one of the central images of our Christian faith.  In our first reading today from Deuteronomy, we are reminded that the foundational story of the people of Israel is the story of the Exodus.  This is the story that gave them their sense of identity as the people of God.  In the story of the Exodus, God brings the people out of Egypt, ending their oppression as slaves. He makes them pass through the waters of the sea, declares that they are his people and leads them into the wilderness.  The wilderness is meant to be the place where the people come to know God and place their trust in him.  But the temptation to place their trust elsewhere is too strong.  The people complain about the lack of food, they put their trust in idols and false gods, and they put the Lord their God to the test, telling Moses that they’ll head back to oppression in Egypt unless God starts doing things their way.  In the wilderness, there is a great temptation to place one’s trust in the wrong things. Or to put it another way, when we fail to trust in God, when we forget who we are and whose we are, that is when we’re vulnerable to temptation.

The story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness that we read in our gospel is a deliberate re-telling of the Exodus story.  Jesus passes through the waters of baptism and the voice of God declares him to be Son of God.  He is led by the Spirit into the wilderness.  In the wilderness he experiences the same hunger and the same temptations that the people of Israel experienced.  But in response to each temptation, Jesus re-affirms his trust in God.  And ironically, he does so by quoting the words of Moses from the book of Deuteronomy, the very words that the people of Israel failed to heed during their time in the desert.

Jesus was led into the wilderness by the Spirit to show us another way, to show us that there is a way of reconciling the tensions of this world with the promises of God.  It is the way of faith, the way that puts its trust in God.  Our human journey will take us to difficult places.  We pass through the waters of baptism and we enter into the wilderness.  Our journey will take us to desert places where our experience of evil and suffering will cause us to doubt the promises of God.  It will cause us to question our identity as children of God.  There are times when we will wonder whether there is indeed a happy ending to our story.  And at those times we will remember the story of Jesus’ own journey, the story of a man like us who fulfilled his purpose in life not by avoiding pain and evil, but by confronting and overcoming them, bringing compassion and healing to those who suffer, light to those in darkness, and reassurance to those who place their trust in God.

Especially in this season of Lent, we too are called to journey through the wilderness, bringing light into the darkness, experiencing hunger and sorrow and temptation along the way, yet placing our trust in God, knowing that in him we are safe.  Jesus trusted in God and came through his time in the wilderness, and so will we.

“You who dwell in the shelter of the Lord, who abide in his shadow for life,

Say to the Lord ‘My refuge, my rock in whom I trust’

And he will bear you up on eagles’ wings, and hold you in the palm of his hand.”

Amen.

The Long Night of Empty Nets (Feb 10 2013)

Homily:  Yr C Proper 5, Feb 10 2013, St. Albans

Readings:  Isaiah 6:1-8; Ps 138; 1 Cor 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11

Many years ago I used to be a summer camp counselor.  I used to teach canoeing, and I remember one day I was out in the canoe with three small boys, a four year-old, a six-year old and a seven year old.  We were out on the lake and, as you can imagine with three small boys in the boat, we weren’t going very fast.  All of a sudden, out of nowhere, this huge gust of wind came up behind us.  It felt like someone had put a motor on the back of the boat and we were just flying across the water.  The three boys started screaming, and I was suddenly fully alert as I steadied the boat with my paddle, double-checked that the boys had life jackets on and tried to make sure we weren’t going to flip the canoe.

It seemed like that gust of wind lasted a long time, but it was probably only a few seconds.  Our canoe traveled farther in those few seconds than it had by our own paddling over the previous ten minutes!  And during those few seconds, I had a taste of what it is like to encounter and be overwhelmed by a sudden force of great power.

Today in our readings we have the stories of two people who encounter and are overwhelmed by a sudden force of great power.  Last week in our readings we heard the stories of what happened when the prophet Jeremiah and the people in the Nazareth synagogue encountered the word of God.  This week it’s the turn of both Isaiah and Simon Peter.  And as we discussed last Sunday, the encounter with the word of God isn’t just an exchange of information.  Rather, it is a dynamic encounter that is active and charged with power.  The word of God is the power that brought forth creation and it’s a power which seizes the hearer, transforms his or her self-understanding and demands a response.

The story of the encounter between humans and the word of God can be told in many different ways.  In our Old Testament reading, Isaiah tells us of his experience of the encounter with God.  Isaiah has a vision of the power and glory of God on his throne, filling the temple, surrounded by angels singing his praises.  He experiences the word of God as a burning coal that touches his lips and transforms him by taking away his guilt and sin.  When God asks “Whom shall I send?” Isaiah’s response is “Here I am; send me!”

In today’s gospel, Luke tells us the story of Simon Peter’s encounter with the word of God.  In the gospels of Mark and Matthew, we’re told that Jesus saw Simon the fisherman casting a net into the sea, said to him “Follow me”, and that Simon left his net and followed Jesus.  Luke, however, tells the story very differently.  He doesn’t just want to give us the facts about what happened.  He wants to give us a much deeper insight into the transformation that occurs when humans encounter the word of God.

 And so he tells us the story of the fishermen.  Fishing in the Sea of Galilee was normally done with long drag nets which were set out at night in deep water and then hauled into the boats around daybreak.  It was hard, back-breaking work.  There were no electric winches.  Simon and the others had been up all night, setting and pulling in their nets but had nothing to show for their efforts.  It had been a long night of empty nets.  And the work wasn’t finished.  They still had to wash and dry the nets, and put them away so that they would be ready for the next night.  After the nets were put away, the fisherman would return home, hungry and smelling of fish, but with no fish in hand, knowing they would have to face the disappointment of their families.

You can imagine that these fishermen probably weren’t in a very good mood when Jesus showed up early that morning.  And they probably grumbled even more when the crowds arrived, trampling on the nets that were laid out to dry, as people pressed closer to Jesus to hear the word of God.  The crowds were hungry for the word of God – the fishermen were just plain hungry.  Simon must have been surprised and maybe just a little annoyed when Jesus asked him if he could use his boat to address the crowd from the shallow waters!

When Jesus finished teaching, he turned to Simon, told him to put out into the deep water and to let down the nets for a catch.  Now, Simon was tired and hungry; he’d worked hard to wash and put away his nets so that he could go home.  He knew that there were no fish around, especially now in the middle of the day.  Letting down his nets again right now meant more work for nothing.  But there was something about Jesus and the things which he’d been saying that convinced Simon to do it anyways.

And when the nets were in the water, the fishermen must have seen the water ripple and darken as the fish surged into them.  Excitement raced through the boat.  The men laughed and shouted as they started to pull in the biggest catch of their lives.  The nets were heavy, heavier than they had ever been, and they started to burst as they came through the surface.  Fear now seized the fishermen as their small boat started to take on water and the nets began to break.  They called out for help to the other boat, and soon both boats were loaded so full of fish that they began to sink.  It was a chaotic scene, fish flapping, men shouting, boats sinking.  I’m sure that in that moment the fishermen’s hearts were racing, their adrenaline was pumping and that they felt fully alive.  And even after the boats had been brought to shore and the monster catch unloaded, feelings of awe and amazement remained.

Why does Luke tell us this story?  Well this story isn’t about fish, and it’s not just about Simon Peter.  It’s about what happens to you and me when we encounter the transforming power of the word of God, the dynamic presence of the living God in our midst.

All of us have known the night of empty nets.  Times when we’ve worked hard, and gotten nothing for our efforts, nothing but a feeling of emptiness.  Some of us have experienced it in our jobs.  Others may have experienced their empty nets in a difficult family situation, at times of illness or after the loss of a loved one.  We experience it in suffering, and we experience it in everyday life.  But today’s gospel is telling us that even in the midst of these empty net situations, God is inviting us to let down our nets and he will fill them, fill them to bursting with love, and with meaning, and with a sense of purpose that may not remove all our difficulties but can allow us to transform and transcend them.

The story of the empty nets which are filled to bursting is the story of the transformation which happens in our own lives when we encounter the word of God.

What lessons can we draw from Luke’s story about this encounter?

First, the story tells us that the encounter with God can happen anywhere.  God is encountered in the ordinary stuff of human existence, in the daily activities of human life.  Simon Peter didn’t have to go to the temple or the synagogue to encounter the word of God.  He went fishing.

Second, even though clearly the encounter is God’s initiative, we have a role to play.  We have to be willing to let down our nets, even when it may not make any sense from a human perspective to do so.  It didn’t make any sense for Peter to keep fishing, but he was willing to do so in response to Jesus’ words. 

The third insight that we gain from the story, a profound insight, is that the transforming power of the word of God creates community.  The nets of the first boat were filled with so many fish that they had to call the second boat to help them.  If the second boat hadn’t come to help, the first boat may well have sunk.  The love of God is so great that it overwhelms us and obliges us to share it in community and to build relationships with each other.

My hope is that here at St. Albans we are a community that is constantly being transformed by our encounter with the word of God.  That we are a community that is letting down its nets, welcoming new people every week, building the supports needed for our community through our GIFT and financial campaign, starting new initiatives in support of our neighbours.  And in all of this we will have to support each other, because when our nets are filled, if the second boat doesn’t show up, we may not be able to bring in all the fish.

Because the story of the nets tells us that we may get more than we bargained for.  This story tells us that God is not a God of scarce resources.  He’s a God of abundant love, and he wants us to live fully.  Simon Peter is overwhelmed and amazed, and is overcome by a sense of his own unworthiness.  What is Jesus’ response?  He says, “Do not be afraid.” 

  

When we experience the long night of empty nets it is easy to despair.  When we encounter the word of God, it is easy to feel that we aren’t able to do the things that we’re called to do.  But don’t be afraid.  We are an Easter people, and more than anything else, today’s story is a story of the resurrection.  In fact, check out chapter 21 of John’s gospel, and you will see that John uses a very similar incident to describe the transformation of Peter and the disciples when they meet the risen Jesus.

If we as individuals and as a community are ready and willing to let down our nets and be transformed by the encounter with the living, dynamic, word of God, then amazing things will happen.

Just ask Isaiah and Simon Peter.

Amen.

Rocking Our World (Feb 3 2013)

Homily:  Yr C Proper 4, Feb 3 2013, St. Albans

Readings:  Jer 1.4-10;Ps 71.1-6; 1Cor 13.1-13;Lk 4.21-30

Suppose someone asked you to write your autobiography.  Where would you begin?  What’s the first story you would tell?

Isaac Stern, the great concert violinist, begins his autobiography as follows:

Early one October morning in 1937 I boarded a double-decker bus at 72^nd Street in Manhattan and disappeared.  I was 17 years old.

          For the next six hours, no one knew where I was . . . I sat on the top deck, gazing out at the streets but not taking in what my eyes were seeing.  I had to face a critical moment in my life, and I needed to be alone.  My head was filled with the reviews of my debut performance at Town Hall on the evening of October 10.  The reviews, I thought, were disastrous.

Isaac Stern’s autobiography begins not with his birth, but with a transformative, life-changing event.  He had hoped that his first solo concert in New York City would be the launch of his career as a solo violinist, but instead he was handed the hard truth that he wasn’t good enough yet.  It was a moment of decision for him.  Would he give up his dream of being a concert violinist and take a job with a symphony orchestra, or would he go back home and put in many, many hours of practice in the hope of improving his technique?  

The prophet Jeremiah also begins his autobiography with a transformative, life changing event:  He writes

“The word of Lord came to me.”

In the Hebrew scriptures, God’s word, dabar in the Hebrew language, is a dynamic and vital force.  In English we are more accustomed to think of “word” as something static, a collection of letters which conveys information.  But in the Hebrew tradition, dabar is a force to be reckoned with.  It makes things happen.  It is the word that summons the heavens and the earth into being at creation, the word that calls the prophets, the word that became flesh, the word that changes lives.

The encounter with the word of God is meant to be something that rocks your world, a powerful life-changing experience.  In our first reading we hear that the coming of the word of God to Jeremiah will change him from a boy that does not know how to speak, to a prophet who is appointed over nations and kingdoms, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.  The encounter with the word will transform Jeremiah into the man that God created him to be when he first formed him in his mother’s womb.

Today’s gospel reading further illustrates the dynamic power of the word of God.  The encounter with Jesus produces some extreme reactions in that little synagogue in Nazareth.  Recall from last week that Jesus has proclaimed in the reading from Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.”  Then, in today’s reading he tells them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  The initial reaction of his listeners is praise and amazement.  All spoke well of him!

But then, just a few verses later we’re told that these same people “were filled with rage”, and they take Jesus to the top of a hill, so that they can throw him off the cliff.  What the heck happened that led to such extreme reactions, and such a stunning reversal?

Well, let me ask you, what happens to you when something rocks your world?  When you’re confronted with a hard truth that either you weren’t expecting or didn’t want to hear?  I think that often when this happens, the first thing we try to do is ignore it, or gloss over it so that we don’t have to deal with it.  But what if that truth persists, what if events continue to rock your world in a way that can’t be ignored.  Then I think one of two things tends to happen.  Either it changes us and our lives are transformed as a result, or we resist that transformation and instead put our energy into re-establishing the status quo.

I think we see this same dynamic happening in the synagogue in Nazareth.  At first, people speak well of Jesus.  They ignore the life-changing, world-changing implications of his message, and instead marvel at how well he speaks, and how wonderful it is that one of their own, Joseph’s son, has become so learned and well-respected.  The people speak well of Jesus, but they don’t really get it.  In the presence of God’s word become flesh, they hear the word of God, but they aren’t transformed.  Instead of being changed by God’s word, they try to make it conform to their expectations. 

But God’s word will not be ignored.  It will not be tamed, it will not be domesticated to suit someone else’s agenda.  It is a powerful, dynamic force that seeks to transform all that it encounters.  And so Jesus, the word become flesh, God’s agent of change, Jesus provokes these same people that are speaking well of him, and challenges their core beliefs.  And he does it by hitting them where it hurts, by speaking the truth about their own prejudices towards non-Jews.  Jesus’ mission will not be just to his blood relatives, but to all peoples.  Just as Elijah and Elisha did in Old Testament days, Jesus will bring good news and healing to foreigners, to Syrians and northerners, to the enemies of his blood relatives.  God’s promises are offered to all nations, not just the nation of Israel.

And this throws them into a rage.  It is too great a challenge to their core beliefs and assumptions.  The change demanded by God’s word is too great.  The extension of God’s promises to their enemies enrages them.  And rather than allowing themselves to be transformed by this truth that is rocking their world, instead they reject Jesus in a desperate attempt to re-establish their own comfort and security.  It is after all, sometimes easier to shoot the messenger.  And so they march Jesus up the hill.

But Jesus, the word of God, will not be ignored, nor will he be pushed off a cliff.  And even later, when those who refuse to deal with his truth finally succeed in putting him to death, even then, death cannot contain him.

The encounter with God’s word is meant to be a powerful, life-changing experience.  Some will reject this experience.  Others will allow themselves to be changed, to be transformed into the people that God created them to be.

The reason that we’re here, the reason we come to church each Sunday is to encounter God’s word.  It is meant to be a life-changing experience for us.  It is meant to challenge our core beliefs, to examine and correct our unspoken and unexamined assumptions and habits that hinder us from being the people that we were created to be when God formed us in our mother’s womb.

Our faith is meant to be a dynamic, not static.  It’s meant to be active, not passive.  Jesus thought that is was better to provoke his listeners to rage than to leave them comfortably where they were.  Jesus posed a profound challenge to his community.  The word of God that we encounter in our worship should pose a profound challenge to our community.  Their challenge was to accept foreigners as God’s children.  What is the challenge being posed to us today?

Well let’s go back to that mission statement.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Then Jesus says, “This scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  Or, to translate it a slightly different way, “The fulfillment of this scripture will happen when you hear it.”  You see, you and I are being invited to participate in bringing good news to the poor, in giving sight to the blind, in releasing the captives and in making the year 2013 the year of God’s favour.

Does anyone hear a challenge in these words?

The encounter with God’s word, our worship together week by week is not meant to entertain us or amuse us.  It’s not meant to inform us.  It’s not meant to make us feel good or to elicit praise.  No, it’s meant to change lives.  Week by week, day by day, our encounter with God’s word is meant to transform us into the people that God created us to be.

Is it happening in this place?  Do we allow God’s word to be a dynamic, powerful force in our midst, or do we seek to tame it and to make it conform to our expectations?  Our faith, our relationship with God, should be dynamic.  After all, as Christians, as the Church, we are in the business of changing lives, starting with our own.  

Amen.

Excerpt from My First 79 Years, by Isaac Stern and Chaim Potok, De Capo Press 1999.

Epiphany? What Epiphany? (Epiphany, Jan 6 2013)

Homily:  Epiphany, Jan 6 2013, St. Albans

Readings:  Isaiah 60:1-6; Ps 72; Eph 3:1-12; Mt 2:1-12

For those of you keeping track, yesterday was the twelfth day of Christmas. For many churches around the world, particularly those in the eastern or orthodox tradition, January 6^th is the big celebration, the most important day of the holiday season. Today is the feast of the Epiphany, a season which will extend from now until Lent in February.  And of all the seasons of our church year, I dare say that Epiphany is one of the least known.  All of us are familiar with Christmas and Easter, and we probably know a little bit about Advent and Lent as well.  But what is this season of Epiphany that we’ll be journeying through for the next two months? 

The Epiphany story that we’re most familiar with is the one that we heard in today’s gospel, the visit of the wise men from the East to pay homage to the child Jesus in Bethlehem, bringing their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.  Matthew, our gospel writer, has woven many threads into this story.  The birth of Jesus is given a historical setting:  it is situated historically and chronologically within the reign of King Herod, around the year 6 BC.  We learn right from the start that the story of Jesus will be a story of conflict:  the scheming of Herod shows us that even within a few months of his birth the conflict between Jesus, as the king of Israel chosen by God, and Herod and his successors as the kings of Israel chosen by the Roman emperor has already been set into motion.  Jesus is clearly identified as the Messiah, God’s anointed one:  his birth in Bethlehem is shown to be the fulfilment of the Messianic prophecies of the Hebrew scriptures.  And the arrival of the foreign visitors, the wise men from the East gives us a hint that Jesus’ birth is important not just for the people of Israel, but for all the nations.

But Epiphany is not simply about remembering the visit of the wise men.  In fact, it’s more like the reverse.  The story of the wise men is meant to be an illustration of what Epiphany is all about.  So let’s back things up a moment.  What exactly do we mean by the word “epiphany”?  Have you ever had an epiphany?  The word “epiphany” at one level simply means to make known.   A manifestation or a showing.  The child Jesus was shown to the visitors from the east.  But when we use the word epiphany we’re usually talking about more than a simple showing.  To have an epiphany is to see something for the first time.  It’s an illuminating discovery, a sudden realization of the essential nature or meaning of something.  To have an epiphany is to get something all of a sudden, to be struck with an intuitive grasp of reality.

Paul in his letter to the Ephesians that we heard in our second reading talks about his own epiphany as the revelation of a mystery.  Sometimes we talk about an epiphany as an “ah-ha” moment.  There are famous examples.  Sir Isaac Newton, as one example, had his epiphany when he saw an apple fall and realized that it was the same force of gravity which caused the apple to fall and the moon to orbit about the earth.

I imagine that most of you have experienced some sort of “ah-ha” moment at some point in your life.  So what is that flash of insight that Matthew is hoping his readers will have when they read today’s gospel?  What is the great mystery that was revealed to Paul when he encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus?

The epiphany for both Paul and for Matthew’s community was the realization that not only had God made himself known in Jesus, but that God’s intent was to make himself known not just to a select group, to the Jewish people but rather to all peoples, all ethnic groups, all nations.  God’s plan is the uniting of both Jews and Gentiles into one community, a community based not on blood-lines but rather on adoption into one family as children of God, and Jesus the Messiah was sent to bring this plan to its fulfilment.

We may have difficulty realizing it today, but this was a totally radical idea two thousand years ago.  The Jews were expecting a Messiah who would defeat the foreigners in battle and reestablish the kingdom of Israel, not someone who would end hostility and gather all together into a single family.  The self-understanding, the identity of the people of Israel was based on their covenant relationship with God.  “I will be your God and you will be my people.” That was the promise given to Moses on Mount Sinai.  For over a thousand years, the people of Israel had kept themselves separate, forbidding marriage with foreigners, practicing circumcision as a mark of identity, and keeping their own dietary and purity laws.  The idea that God now wanted to end that separation and re-establish his people to include both Jews and Gentiles was absolutely unthinkable.

Yet that’s exactly what happened in the early church.  It didn’t happen without a struggle.  Imagine what it was like for the first generation of Jesus’ followers based in Jerusalem when this upstart Paul started advocating full and equal membership in the church for Greeks and other foreigners.  And not only did he want the foreigners included, but he wanted all the rules changed in order to accommodate them.  No longer would circumcision be required.  No longer would the dietary laws have to be followed.  No longer would Jerusalem hold the place of honour in the church.  No longer would your status be determined by who your parents were or how well you kept the law of Moses.  No longer would foreigners have to follow Jewish practices before they were allowed to eat at the same table.  Two thousand years ago, this was radical stuff.

This is the Epiphany that we’re talking about today, the sudden flash of insight that Jesus came for all humanity, that God’s plan is to bring all people into his family.  This is the “ah-ha” moment that radically changed and shaped the early church.

For the people of Israel it was a radical change in their vocation, in the mission that they’d been called to by God.  It was not totally unforeseen however.  More than five hundred years before Jesus’ birth, a prophetic voice had called for Israel to take on this new mission.  “Arise, shine,” the prophet Isaiah calls to Israel in our first reading.  “I will give you as a light to the nations.”  “Nations shall come to your light and all will be gathered together.”  Isaiah foresaw that one day all nations would become God’s children by faith, and that Israel’s role was to be a light that shines in the darkness and draws all people to it.

Now, Israel as a people, wasn’t too successful at breaking down the barriers between nations, and so the responsibility passed to Jesus as God’s chosen one, and from Jesus to his followers in the early church, and from them, through the centuries, to whom?  Well, to us.

We are called to be a light that shines in the darkness for all people, so that God can be made known, and all may come to his light.

God’s plan is still to draw all people to him, and to gather all together as his children.  Our vocation as the people of God, what we call the church, is still the same mission which was prophesied by Isaiah so long ago.   

How are we doing with that, here at St. Albans in downtown Ottawa, at the dawn of the year 2013?  Are we a light that shines in the darkness?  Are we making God known?  Are people drawn to God through us?

We’re doing some things right.  The most visible thing that we’ve done is welcome Centre 454 back into our building this past November.   We’re working on partnerships with Centre 454, the Mission and others, to find ways to serve those with particular needs.  And guess what?  When we do these things, people notice.

When we uphold justice, when we act to meet the needs of the poor and oppressed, when we love one another, our light does indeed shine in the darkness, and people are drawn to God’s light when they see it reflected in us, however dimly.

But when people are drawn to God through us, how do we receive them?  Do we greet them as family?  Are we willing to make the sort of difficult changes that the early church had to make in welcoming the Gentiles?  Or do we simply assume that newcomers are the ones who have to make the effort, and that they will have to adapt to our ways rather than the other way around?

The truth is that often our churches are not easy places to enter for people who are unfamiliar with them.  And yet despite our solid wood doors and the windows that you can’t see through, despite our strange language and customs, people come.  Every Sunday, we have new people who join our worship.  And any time our door is open during the week, people walk in.  Do they feel welcome?

Many of you made New Year’s resolutions this past week.  For our new year’s resolution as a community this year, I would like us to re-commit ourselves once more to the practice of hospitality.  How can we do better at welcoming people into our church community?  Do we talk to visitors?  Are we willing to make changes in how we do things in order to integrate all people into our worship and activities?  When we discover barriers to hospitality, are we willing to dismantle them, even if it is difficult or time-consuming or expensive?  Do we simply wait for people to walk into church, or do we find ways to bring church into the community?

If we want an example of what it means to practice hospitality we need look no further than the early church, which allowed itself to be completely transformed in order to draw in those who were considered outsiders. 

We tell the story of the wise men each year at Epiphany to remind ourselves that the birth of Jesus is not just for insiders, not just for any particular group of people, not just for our community, but for all.  God wants all of us to be members of his family.

Amen.

Whose Birth Are We Celebrating? (Christmas 2012)

Homily:  Christmas Eve 2012, St. Albans

Readings:  Isaiah 52:7-10; Ps 98; Heb 1:1-4; Jn 1:1-18

There is nothing more joyful, nothing that makes for celebration like the birth of a child.  The pictures, the phone calls, the tweets and posts and emails.  This is good news, good news worth sharing. 

Tonight, we celebrate a birth.  But whose birth are we celebrating?

Well, you might say that we’re celebrating the birth of Jesus.  And I suppose you’d be right.  But did you notice that in the gospel reading that we just heard, that’s not the answer that John gives us.  John is definitely writing about birth; but it’s not Jesus birth, it’s ours.

“But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood, or the will of the flesh, or the will of man, but of God.”

The birth we celebrate tonight is our own birth, our own birth as sons and daughters of God.  The good news we share tonight isn’t just the story of a baby born to a peasant woman in Bethlehem two thousand years ago.  No, it’s much more personal than that.

Christmas is the story of who I am.  It is a story of identity for each one of us.  If I was ask you the question, “who are you?”, how would you answer?  Often the answers we give to the question of identity are quite limited.  We tend to see ourselves as autonomous individuals.  We have a name, we have a physical body that is distinct and separate from other physical bodies.  We may identify with our job or other things that we do.  Perhaps we identify with our personal histories, perhaps we identify with our thoughts and beliefs.

But I think that we start to get a much richer answer to the question of identity when we leave behind the notion of ourselves as distinct and separate individuals and instead embrace a vision of ourselves as relational beings.  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 and through my relationships.

And suppose, just suppose that the one who was in the beginning, the one through whom all things came into being, the one who is the very source of life and light and the universe itself, suppose that this one that we call God wanted to be in relationship with me.  I think that if such a relationship was possible, its impact on us would be so dramatic, so life altering that the best image we could find for it would be that of a new birth.

But is it possible?  As I expect you know, the basis of any relationship is good communication.  Any decent marriage counselor can tell you that.  And that’s where the unfolding story that we’re part of hadn’t been going so well.  You see, as the author of the letter to the Hebrews tells us, for thousands of years, God had been trying to communicate with our ancestors in many and various ways, apparently with limited success.   You see, none of us have ever seen God, and as a result, communication with God has been a challenge.

So God decided to speak with us in a radically new and different way.  God has spoken to us through a Son.  The Word which was in the beginning, the Word which was with God, which was God, that Word has become flesh and lived among us and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a Father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

The Incarnation that we celebrate at Christmas is the ultimate act of divine-human communication.  In Jesus, we get to see what God is like.  We get to ask our questions.  We get answers, in words we can understand and actions that we can relate to.  No one has ever seen God.  But it is God’s only Son, Jesus Christ, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

And this opens up for us a remarkable possibility, the possibility of entering into relationship with God himself.  Because if the message of Jesus birth, if the message of Jesus’ words and deeds, can be summed up and distilled, it would be, it continues to be, quite simply, that God loves us and wants to be in relationship with us.

God has gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure we get that message.

And now the ball is in our court.  Christmas is an act of communication.  The message has been sent.  Do we receive it?  The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.  Do we believe it?  Our response matters, because as John tells us, to all who receive him, to all who believe in his name he gives the power to become children of God, born not of flesh and blood, but of God. 

There is a sort symmetry here, isn’t there.  God became the child of human parents, so that we could become children of God.  The good news of Christmas for us is that God, by becoming human and living among us has announced the truth about who we were created to be:  children of God, loved by God. 

And this is the life which is offered to us at Christmas.  John tells us that it’s the Word that gives life.  And he’s not talking about mere physical or biological life, but rather life in all its abundance, life that is plugged into the truth of who we were created to be. 

All of us received our biological life by being born of our parents, but the life that John is talking about comes not from being born of human parents but from being born of God.  It is the life that is hinted at in the joy we experience at the birth of a child and in the ecstasy of falling in love, the life that is glimpsed when we feel ourselves lifted up by our Christmas celebration or any other celebration.  It is life that is more than just daily existence, it is the life that is the light of the world, life that overcomes darkness, the life that we long for.

The good news of Christmas is that through the mystery of the incarnation God is telling us that he loves us and wants us as his children.  Does this make a difference?  I think that it does.

In our time and place, here in the twenty-first century, there are two narratives about life which are offered to us.  One is the narrative of biological life.  This first story tells us that our lives are the product of chance, that our bodies are collections of atoms, and that compared to the vast expanse of time and space in the universe, we are small, insignificant, and meaningless.  The immense force and energy of the world in which we live are indifferent towards us.  Our choices and our actions are either physical reactions to chemical changes within us or arbitrary decisions that have no intrinsic value or universal meaning.  We’re born, we live, we die.  End of story.

And then there is a second narrative, one that tells us that we are more than material bodies, more than the product of chance.  We are created beings, created for a purpose with lives that overflow with value and meaning.  We have the inherent dignity of being made in the image of our Creator.   We were made to love one another and to enter into relationship.  Behind the immense physical forces of our world is a sustaining presence which is even greater, a divine presence which is not indifferent to us, but rather cares for us and reaches out to us.   The source of life, the creator of all things, loves us and wants to draw us into a relationship which will endure beyond our biological lives.

The good news of Christmas is that this second narrative is our story.  The joy we feel this night is no delusion but rather a taste of what we were created for.  The birth of the child that we celebrate this night is indeed good news for us.

May it fill your hearts with peace and joy.

Amen.

Making the Connection (Advent 4 Dec 23 2012)

Homily:  Yr C Advent 4, December 23 2012, St. Albans

Readings:  Micah 5.2-5a; 1 Sam 2.1b-10; Heb 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-55

When I was in Grade 8, one of the kids in my class was a girl named Liz.  She lived not too far away from where I did, and we knew each other, not close friends, but friends nonetheless.  One day she didn’t show up for school.  And she didn’t come back.  I wondered about that.  I heard later that Liz had left town because she was pregnant.  For me, 13 years old at the time, it was a surprise.  I expect that for Liz and her family it was quite a shock, and a source of shame.  I guess that’s why she left town.  I don’t know for sure, I never saw her again.

Liz, of course, isn’t the first 13 year old girl who had to run away from town because she got pregnant.  Our gospel reading this morning tells the story of another unmarried, 13 year old girl who had to run away from town because she got pregnant.  As Luke tells it, “in those days, Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country.”  There, she took refuge in the house of a relative, her cousin Elizabeth.  And for Mary, in her day, it was probably even worse than for Liz.  An unmarried girl who got pregnant would be “put away” in the words of Matthew’s gospel, that is, if she was lucky and she wasn’t stoned to death for committing adultery.  She would bring great shame on her family, and would be unmarriable, destined for a life of solitude and poverty.  No wonder Mary had to run out of town.

Now perhaps some of you are thinking, yes, it’s true that everyone in Mary’s village would be talking in terms of shame and disgrace, and, yes, that’s why Mary had to get away, but at least Mary knew what was going on.  After all, she’d had a visit from an angel!

Well, let me address a few misunderstandings about angels in the Bible.  The Greek word angelos, which we usually translate as “angel”, is actually the word for a messenger.  In the Bible, an “angel” is someone sent with a message from God.  No wings, no halo, no trumpets, no glowing white clothes.  Just someone with a message.  A messenger.  And just because a stranger shows up with a message doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily going to believe him.  In the first chapter of Luke, an angel tells Zechariah that his old wife is going to have a child.  You know what Zechariah’s response was?  Yeah, right!  And Zechariah was a priest.  You’d think if anyone could figure out that they were being given a message from God, it would be the priest, right?  Well, apparently not.

But Mary gets it.  She’s able to see the presence of God in the person of the messenger.  She’s able to hear the voice of God in the messenger’s strange story.  She’s able to see her own experience as part of a bigger picture.  She makes the connection between what she hears from the messenger and the promises that God made to Abraham thousands of years ago.  She has a vision of God’s trajectory, a vision of where the story that she’s being invited to become a part of is going.  And when she accepts that invitation, she joins in by singing.  She sings with unadulterated, celebratory joy.

“My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my saviour”

Now, I want you to notice the choice that Mary makes here, in response to the angel’s announcement.  Mary could just as easily have uttered the following words:

“My soul curses the Lord and I am in despair because God has ruined my life and condemned me to suffering.”

Because Mary’s life has been irrevocably changed by God’s intervention.  She will endure insults and shame in her village.  She will raise a rebellious child.  She will see that child grow into an adult who appears to have severe psychiatric problems, who will wander around homeless, who will routinely be called demon-possessed.  She will see her son clash with the authorities and be put to death before her eyes, perhaps the worst fate any mother can imagine.  On that day when she arrives on Elizabeth’s doorstep, Mary could just as easily utter a lament rather than a song as a consequence of her encounter with the divine.

But she doesn’t.  She sees what’s going on in her experience as part of a bigger picture, and she sings the song we call the Magnificat, a song of joy, a rebel song.

“my soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour. 

For he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant. 

Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; 

for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.

He has brought down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly,

he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away.”

I think that, like Mary, you and I also have experiences of the divine.  I believe that God is present and active in our midst.  But I also think that much of the time, we just miss it.  Or, like Zechariah, we dismiss it.  Or, even when we do seem to notice something, we aren’t able to make the connection between what’s going on in our experience and the bigger picture, and as a result, we fail to grasp what’s really going on.

I think we all have a lot to learn from Mary, and from the song she sings.  Here’s what Mary does.

The first thing that she does is she names her experience of God.  “He has looked upon me with favour.  The Mighty One has done great things for me.”  Mary sees with the eyes of faith, she names what’s going on, she articulates it and she tells someone, in this case her cousin Elizabeth.

Then, she makes the connection with the bigger picture.  She situates what’s happening in her life in the bigger story of God.  She moves from the personal to the communal.  She recognizes God’s promise to Abraham that he would work world changing history, and she sees that world changing activity taking place in and through her own life.

Then she situates her experience not just in God’s past promises, but in God’s trajectory towards the future.  She has a vision of where God is headed.  She declares that God will consider, care for and act on behalf of the poor, the hungry and the oppressed, and she sees what is happening to herself as part of that trajectory.

And finally she accepts the invitation.  She chooses to become part of the story, not just a mere observer, not simply collateral damage.  She enters into God’s promise to lift up the lonely, those who mourn, those who weep, and she sings. 

Isn’t it remarkable that an uneducated, 13 year old girl, scared and on the run, has so much to teach us.

Learn to connect your life to the bigger picture by:

Naming your experience of God.

Situating it in God’s story

Seeing the trajectory

And choosing to become a part.

Now I know it’s not always going to be simple.  I know life can get messy.  I know that it’s tricky discerning what God is doing in the midst of it all.  And even for Mary, at the time it was probably a bit messier than the 30 verse summary that Luke gives us.  But give it a try.  Learn the story.  Get ready for the one who is coming into your life.  And don’t forget to sing.

Amen.

Good News? (Advent 3, Dec 16 2012)

Homily:  Yr C Advent 3, Dec 16 2012, St. Albans

Readings:  Zephaniah 3:14-20; Isaiah 12:2-6; Phil 4:4-7; Luke 3:7-20

Good News?

Every Sunday here at St. Albans we have a couple of people who volunteer to be our greeters.  This week it was Rob and Julie.  And their job, as you know, is to welcome you when you arrive, to make you feel comfortable and at home, and to provide you with our booklet and any other information you might need.  I imagine they might say things like “welcome” or “good morning” or “good to see you”.

They probably didn’t say to anybody “You brood of vipers!  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”

You see, as much as we try to uphold the ideals of inclusiveness and participation of everyone here at St. Albans, the things that Jonathan spoke to us about last week, I think that if John the Baptist offered to be the greeter at our door on a Sunday morning, we’d probably suggest that there might be other ways for him to be involved.

John the Baptist doesn’t exactly make people feel comfortable does he?  He’s got a bit of an edge to him.  He is after all, a prophet, and prophets are sent to stir things up, to shake people out of their complacency.  I think that John manages to do that pretty well in today’s gospel.  Listen to what he says:

        “you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come”

 “the ax is even now lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire”

Then, he tells people they have to change their lives.  And then he warns them that someone even more powerful than he is coming, and that for those who don’t shape up, this more powerful one will “burn the chaff with unquenchable fire”.

Then, after all that, Luke, the gospel writer, the narrator, adds this little note:

“So, with many other exhortations, John proclaimed the good news to the people”

Umm.  Did Luke just say “good news”?  Maybe he missed the part about snakes and wrath and axes and unquenchable fire?  No he couldn’t have, he’s the one that wrote that down.  Maybe it was a typo.  Did anyone else catch the good news in what John had to say?  Obviously Herod didn’t.  He took John and threw him into prison, and not long after, had him killed.  Not much good news there.

Where is the good news in today’s gospel?

Some time ago, a friend of mine was told, quite suddenly, that she had a serious illness, and that it would require major surgery, and that she might not survive.  We spent some time talking, and during the course of our conversation I asked her if she was afraid.  She told me that she wasn’t afraid of dying, but that one of her fears was that in 50 years, no one would even know that she had ever existed.  It would be as if she had never been.  And that got me thinking.  It got me thinking first of all about her courage in the face of death.  But also got me thinking about how one of our greatest fears is insignificance.  The thought that we don’t matter, that we’re not worth anything.  That what we do is of no consequence, that are lives are fundamentally irrelevant.  That fifty or a hundred years from now, when the memories of people around us are no more, it will be as if we never were.  In this vast cosmos, perhaps we’re less important even than a grain of sand which will at least continue to be around long after we’re gone.

But the message of John the Baptist is that our lives do matter.  That there is a God who cares so much about us and our individual lives that he will judge us and hold us to account.  That there is a God who cares enough about human suffering that when he sees it, he gets angry.  In stark contrast to the Greek and Roman religion of 2000 years ago, in stark contrast to the materialist worldview of our own day, each of which in their own way proclaim that human beings are ultimately insignificant and irrelevant, the proclamation of John the Baptist is that each one of us is significant in God’s eyes, that the God who created the heavens and the earth is moved by our pain, and that we will be held to account for the way in which we live and the way in which we treat each other. 

I think that this is good news.  But it is good news with an edge to it, isn’t it?  It’s good news that’s meant to shake us out of complacency, to get past our excuses.  John’s listeners get that, and they ask the question that each one of us should be asking.

What then should we do?

And here, you might expect John to call for something radical, something heroic.  You might expect him to tell them to abandon the world they live in and to come and live with him in the wilderness.  You might expect him to tell the soldiers to become pacifists, or the tax collectors to quit their jobs. 

But he doesn’t.  Instead, he’s surprisingly pragmatic.  To the poor, John tells them that if they have food they should share it, or if they have two coats, they should give one to the person who has none.  To the tax collectors, notorious for overcharging and skimming off the top, he tells them to collect no more than the prescribed amount.  To the soldiers, he tells them to stop abusing their power by extorting money through threats and false accusations.

This is all within reach.  It’s doable.  Faith doesn’t have to be heroic.  John responds to each individual in the crowd in front of him by urging him or her to do justice in her daily life, wherever she is, whatever his circumstance.  That’s what it looks like to bear fruit worthy of repentance.

And this too is good news.  The things that God is calling us to, the way of life that matters to God, is within our reach.  We are being invited to participate in the work of God in a meaningful way, in our ordinary lives, in our homes, in our streets, in our families, in our jobs.  We don’t have to be heroes.  We don’t have to study theology.  We don’t need to become monks or nuns or firefighters or politicians.  We simply need to do justice in our daily lives.

But I don’t want to let you get too comfortable.   John the Baptist never lets us get too comfortable.  His double-barrelled good news that our lives matter and that the way of life we’re being called to is within our reach is delivered as an ultimatum.  Enter into this new way of life, or face the consequences.  And there are consequences to the way we live, to the choices we make, for us and for those around us, in this life, and beyond.  Having lives that matter is a double-edged sword.

Just ask Steve.  Did any of you see the article in the Ottawa Citizen yesterday about Steve Emmons?  Steve was one of the volunteers from The Ottawa Mission’s Food Services Training Program that came and cooked for us at our student BBQ in September.  He’s just graduated from that program and will be going to Algonquin College next year.  A former member of the armed forces, he became an alcoholic and then a crack cocaine addict.  Bad choices, bad circumstances, whatever.  His life fell apart.  His marriage broke up.  He lost contact with his children.  His money was consumed by crack.  He hit bottom.  He lost his will to live.  I think that when John the Baptist talks about the chaff burning in the fire, Steve would know exactly what he was talking about.

The good news that John the Baptist delivers leaves us with a dilemma.  Despite the fact that the way of life he holds out for us is within reach, we know that often we fail to reach it.  In a world with more than enough food, people still go hungry.  Like a crack addict that reaches for cocaine, most of us will spend more on unnecessary things this Christmas than we will give to those in need.  And the word of divine judgement that John the Baptist speaks to us in today’s gospel, would, if we really believed him and if we were honest with ourselves, it would scare the shit out of us.

John’s word is a word of God; but thankfully for us, it is not God’s final word.  One who is mightier than John is coming, one who will be powerful enough to burst through our dilemma in a way that not even John ever imagined or dared to dream of.  There is one coming into our world, into our midst who will proclaim the good news, the good news of our redemption.

Steve Emmons knows a thing or two about redemption.  He crashed and found himself in the Mission’s Lifehouse Rehabilitation program.  He spent five months there, he got help, he was stabilized, got off drugs.  Then he spent five months in the Food Services Training Program, from which he just graduated.  When Steve was asked about the most valuable thing he had learned during his time at the Mission, his reply was simple: “I learned that I’m worth something.”  Reminds me a bit about a story Jesus told about a father and a prodigal son – but we’ll get to that later.

Today’s gospel kind of leaves us hanging, it leaves us waiting in expectation of more.  It is Advent after all, and there is more to come.

John the Baptist proclaims good news.  And it’s going to get better.

Amen.