Its time to get to the table!

So we are eating yet again because “Turkey Day” is upon us. It has been a while since I have had turkey with all the fixings. I am looking forward to it since it has been a long time and I like to be fed... don’t you? Yet Jesus challenges those around him not to seek and satisfy with a meal that will not last forever. We are not just here to eat our fill or “stog our gobs”. We are challenged to consider our appetites and how we fill them. And we are called on to consider more than where the next meal might be coming from.

So what do we need to do to get a meal that is going to last? It has occurred to me that there is a parallel here between a regular meal and the Eucharist. Where else can you go aside from Church, and get a meal that is going to last you a whole week? Where do we get the strength, the vision and the drive to be the Church of Christ in the world, if it is not from the Eucharist? To get spiritual and therefore imperishable food, one must put one’s trust, faith and hope in the person of Jesus Christ. We are the community of God and we are expected and required to participate in the person and life of Christ.

Need a reason to participate in Christ? Want a sign that Jesus is the one to trust? Jesus himself points out that we don’t need to have someone stand between God and ourselves, mediating your relationship with God. God responds to you and your prayers. You need to learn recognize those responses and that is done at the table with those who are in the journey with you and I. Where we eat is where we pray. Where we pray is where we share the load with our fellow sojourners. Moreover, there is the issue of where does life itself come from. If life comes from God (and we believe as Christians that it does) and we are to participate in Jesus, then doesn't that make Jesus God? I believe so.

The people demand the eternal bread as if it is a commodity to be traded and bartered with when in fact it is a gift. “Give us this bread!” the people demand of Jesus. Jesus points out that they have him – “I am the Bread which has come down from heaven”... so it as true spiritually as it is physically: we are what we eat. But this then means that we must seek Christ in order to eat and to live. So why do you seek Christ? Is it because you like to have your fill, or because you seek life in his name? What you do with Jesus is an everyday table matter. It is also a matter of eternity: what will you do with Jesus? Jesus is the gift of God for the people of God. Jesus is the bread of life not just for you, but for your congregation and your city through you also.

And to be sure, on this weekend when we stop to give thanks for all of God’s good gifts that we find around us, some of those gifts are disruptive just like Jesus himself. God’s truth disrupts our systematic dishonesty and sin. God’s grace upsets our stingy selfishness. God’s mercy dislocates our hardened hearts to give hearts of flesh to deal with our predilection towards indifference to both God and neighbour. God’s justice disrupts and exposes our unjust nature, relationships and ways with both God and neighbour.

The gift of God’s presence through bread and wine disrupts our ideas and thoughts of what is normal and right as well as our trends towards complacency and self involvement. We need to stop and recognize this thanksgiving that our hands were empty and then God, our God filled them, allowing us to give and to serve others.

All good gifts around us are sent from heaven above – will you open yourselves to receive what God wants to give to you so that in turn, you might give thanks back to God and give to his people? Is about the harvest and giving thanks, yes! But it must also make us raise our expectation that the kingdom and the Eternal City are coming - after all another, much better feast awaits.

Happy Thanksgiving. Its time to get to the table!

Jason+

The need for holy listening

When I pooled the articles together for this issue of the Caledonia Times, I noticed something interesting. By happy circumstance there was an overall theme and tone to the issue... namely the need to listen. I am discovering that everybody wants to be heard and there are some who maintain that it is there right to be heard. Yet we need to stop and consider carefully that if all of us are talking and typing, who is going to stop talking and start listening. Might I suggest that listen is at the very core of what is to be a Christian? It is the start of obedience to God’s will for both ourselves and for others. It enables us to be followers and to be effective in our discipleship so that those around us are bless because we have listened, done and led as God has called and told us too. And yes I believe that God is still speaking to and enabling and leading his Church.

There is a verse of scripture that comes to mind here: “Be doers of the word and not hearers only” (James 1.22) failing to connect our doing with our listening does not make us disobedient. It makes the Church and its ministry obtuse and thus irrelevant. It is the very thing that so many fear and recoil from though seemingly they fail to hear and heed both the Word and the Spirit. Failing to listen to God and what God asks of us makes us irrelevant because we have not heard and therefore have not received what was needed; to have something to offer and give, we must first listen and receive. The danger is not in being unconnected to the world through our life and ministry but being irrelevant to God. It is his mission, his call and we are his people and his Church.

I think you would agree that you and I cannot steer a parked car. God cannot guide the motionless Christian. There is no spiritual life without listening. We have stopped up our collective ears and we are going to do things the way we think they ought to be done. What we need to do is to stop and listen for the Shepherd’s voice. We need to hear him so that we can be led to and through the valley, even if it seems like death. We need to quiet ourselves so that we can listen and then respond in appropriate ways with fitting action in the required time.

Failing to listen to God as individuals and as community causes us to become obtuse and irrelevant. In turn we then fall way (like lost sheep) and face both death of personal life and destruction of our faith communities. It is only in listening that we follow and find life. It is only in Christ that we live and move and have our being. And the obvious implication is that we find it nowhere else but in God who is in Christ.

Holy listening helps us to discover where our service and our sacrifices are to be offered. Holy listening helps us to discover where our altars are – those places and spaces where we discover we are needed and are needed by God to offer ourselves to him and to neighbour. We make the sacrifice and offer the gifts that others might hear and see so that they might live.

Jason+

In the Judge, we trust.

I remember a parishioner from a while back, coming to me and telling me that he was going out to his cabin for the weekend: thus he would not be in Church Sunday night. He wanted to let me know this because he and the family would not be back in enough time to be ready for Church Sunday evening. “That’s fine,” I said, “But know that you will be missed!” The man was shocked judging the look on his face. To my comment he replied, “And PLEASE sir don’t go preaching about cabins on Sunday... that it’s wrong not to be in Church because you are out in the cabin... sir, I loves me cabin!” I thought about this for a moment and realised something important. My parishioner wasn’t asking for permission to be absent from church, he was feeling guilty about not being there when everyone else was going to be. He didn’t want me to make an example of him and his choice not to be there. So I response, I reminded him, “You will be missed because you are not with us but will still love you. And if your conscience is bothering you, we’ll be there at Church and we hope you will there too.”

This story seems to be linked to the experience of the villainous manager (Luke 16:1-13) who was charged with squandering his master’s resources. The Master must have believed the charges that were brought to him by people from outside the household, because when the manager arrived to attend his master, his master fired him. The manager was using what was not his in a very poor and scandalous manner – similar to that of the prodigal son who devoured his portion of his Father’s wealth by living lost and near death (Luke 15).

If the manager had been a household slave, the matter would probably have been life or death. But this man was a free man. He served the master as a free man and he was not a member of household. He had to make his way in the world. He evaluated his situation and realized that he could not do for another house as he had done, his career as a manager was done and his reputation was in tatters. He was not built to dig ditches, He was too proud to accept charity through debasing himself to beg the generosity of strangers but he needed to be able to look after himself. So he devised a scheme.

He called in all of his master’s debtor’s and had them remove the interest and his portion of the dealings (to which he was entitled) so that when he was penniless, he would have friends to whom he could go and stay because he was kind to them and reduced their financial burdens. The more mercy he showed the mater’s debtors, the more places he would have to stay. It would be a better existence than being on the street begging from them and others.

What is interesting is that the manager didn’t try to deny what he had done. He didn’t plead for leniency or seek the mercy of the master in the face of judgment. All he could consider was how to save himself in the moment. The manager wanted to spare himself the pain and anguish of having been caught and now fired for his indiscretions. The shocking thing about this story is that the master complimented the unsavoury manager for his ability to look after himself. He wanted to secure his immediate future and did a good job doing it. The master did not compliment the manager for how he had acted in office but for looking out for himself in light of his new circumstances.

Security, peace and plenty are what most people seek. Riches and fame might provide them for a while but such things are fleeting. They are actually a false sense of security and wellness precisely because they are temporary things. How we deal with such things shows how we will act and treat eternal things, which have the ability to give life. We have to decide who or what we will serve. Service leads to sacrifice and sacrifice becomes worship. Whom shall we serve?

If we found ourselves before God tonight and we are each asked, “Why should God let us into his heaven?” how would you respond to such a query? Consider carefully that from that moment and that place, what one is going to need is not a clever plan or a series of willing hosts but the very things I have already mentioned: grace, mercy and clemency. There is a need in this moment to ask for those things, knowing that God is waiting and ready to offer you and all who ask. We need to ask God not to be good to us but rather for God to be God; our God. We need to be willing to ask the Master to forgive and to lead us in “into green pastures, beside still waters, into right pathways and even through the valley of the shadow of death... even for his own name’s sake.” (Psalm 23) Be prepared not only for eternity, be prepared for the moment and be ready to honour and serve God, wherever he may call and send you.

Jason+

Don't stay lost, get found!

Maybe you have heard the joke about the airplane that was flying from Vancouver to Toronto early one morning. On route during to Toronto, the plane crashed in a horrible ball of fire right on the 49^th Parallel, the border between Canada and the United States.  The question was asked of the officials overseeing the awful scene, “Where are we going to bury the survivors?”

Of course one does not bury the survivors. And that seems to be the point that Jesus is making to the Pharisees in telling these series of parables in Luke 15. “Sinners” are coming to Jesus: the least the last and most definitely the lost of the nation are coming to Jesus because they want and need to be found. Being lost is not just about finding one’s self. Being lost or getting lost is to cause and face utter and total destruction. And people are coming to Jesus that they might be found. They are coming to Jesus because they can see that life is different with Jesus. Following and being with Jesus means that things in your life can and will change. Your life will find a new purpose and that such a life is going in a new direction and often in opposition to the life that has been previously lived.

Religious people tend to not realize this very thing. They are often satisfied with their lives: earning a descent wage by holding a respectable job, owning a home, has the right kind of life, clothes and food to  eat. Such people are glad to show up at Church services on time sitting in their special spots showing up to see who else is showing up and what they are like. Such people don’t need to be found because they don’t know they are lost.

Jesus notes in his stories that there is only one sheep and one coin that is lost. What most don’t consider carefully is that the Shepherd leaves the flock in the care of hired hands and goes to seek that one sheep. There are risks, for the sheep, the Shepherd and for the flock, who, complaining that the black sheep is gone again from the flood and the shepherd is seeking her. All the while the rest of the flock are muttering, “it is all baaaaad, yet agaaain!”

A powerful image of the stories is comparing God to a woman who has lost a coin and is going to look for it. There is a plan and a lot hard work to sweep the floor and make a careful search for the coin. She lit the lamp and is careful with each stroke of the broom on the dirt floor as she looks for the coin.

And when the lost are found and are safe from harm and destruction, the community is called together to celebrate the found and the great things that God is doing in the lives of the community. It is not enough in our modern day to seek out people to be members of our congregations just so that we can be proud of the pew numbers and hopefully pilfer the pockets, purses and accounts of the willing to support material ends. The mission of the community of God is to draw people to Christ by how we live our lives so that others who are lost can be found, find purpose for the life that is being given and join us in drawing of the city to Christ. After all, Jesus himself came to seek and to save that which is lost. So let’s get found and found together. Let's live like we are survivors and not be buried with the rest!

Jason+

Time to stir it up!

This is an important Sunday for our parish is some ways: 1) we are making our worship time start a half an hour later than it has been in the past few years, 2) we are facing some major building and finance issues around roofs and other things, 3) we need to fill some key leadership roles, in particular the treasurer and the Secretary for Church Committee, and 4) this is the start of the third year of my four year term as Rector and Dean. So I think it is important that we start this third year together with this prayer, this collect:

Stir up, O Lord, the wills of your faithful people,

that richly bearing the fruit of good works,

we may by you be richly rewarded;

through Jesus Christ our Lord,

who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and forever.

As I reflect on the words of this collect and consider the words of Jesus in the Gospel for Sunday (Luke 14:25-33) to those with him on the journey to the City of Jerusalem, there are some things in our lives that we need to relinquish and some things we had better do. First of all, we had better relinquish the things that are going to keep us from following Jesus as his disciples. What needs to be given up, will vary from person to person. For some it is going to be financial things, for others it is going to be relationships of one kind or another. For some it will mean letting go of advancements at work while others will have to deal with failing health. We are all going to have problems, issues, threats, challenges, and hurdles which are going to have to be overcome.  We are going to need to make Christ and his kingdom, the centre, the top priority and the focus of our lives.

And as the costly, crossly way of life becomes more of a reality in us, as we follow Christ and seemingly move further and further away from what family and friends, neighbours and communities think we should be doing, they are going to think that we “hate” them. We won’t look like them, sound like them or act like them. Our goals, our plans and what makes us happy won’t match up. Our priorities, our objectives and our way of living is going to make us stand up and stand out and not necessarily in a positive or pleasant way. Our families will think that we have abandoned them, though nothing could be further from the truth.

Jesus calls us: Ibis ad crucem! (to the cross you go!) in plain thinking and speaking we are asked to make the kingdom, seeing it grow and mature in our lives and in the lives of others the top priority of the work of our congregation and diocese. We are called to come and accept then go and bear the crosses given to each of us for the sake of all. We are called to be imitators of Christ. We are called to be there in the mess that is this life and to faithfully live the dyings and risings of the Lord Jesus that must be lived out in everyday life. And we are going to need support in doing that which is what makes me happy about the first line of the collect for Sunday: “Stir up, O Lord, the wills of your faithful people...” God will come to those whom Christ has called will renew, revive and refresh those who are working to see the kingdom of God come in the earthly community. It is not all on us. We are undergirded by the presence of God himself. God is already there in each moment. God has already foreknown would needs to happen and what needs to be done. And we need to come and participate in these things – bear our good works, that in the doing, we would be a blessing and then in turn be mightily blessed... not because we are gifted, creative, successful or even great or nice but because we are being faithful to God and focusing on the Kingdom.

We need to be aware that we are going to be called upon in moments of crisis. We are going to be set upon by circumstance. We are going to be troubled by lack of resources. But we are not asked by God to be nothing more than faithful to Jesus in towing our crosses up the hill after him.

What do we first as individuals, and then as a faith community, need to renounce and relinquish this week that we might chase Jesus up the hill? What will it takes for us to have hearts that want Jesus and the kingdom more than anything or anyone else?

Jason+

I know what we are going to do today!

There is a cartoon show my boys like to watch called "Phineas and Ferb". If you have not seen it, its about two, very imaginative, very industrious boys who look to fill each day with adventure and their teenage sister who is always looking to "bust" her brothers. My favourite tag line in the show is this, "Ferb, I know what we are going to do today! Hey where's Perry?

This Sunday is an interesting situation (Luke 13:10-17). Its about being all tied up. It is about being freed, loosed from those bonds. It’s about being free and able to praise and worship God uprightly. It is about being blessed that we might give to others, and others see who God is and how God works to seek out those who are bound and bent over because they are oppressed by evil. God comes to seek and to save that which is lost: his people, his sheep.

It is a repetition from what Jesus proclaimed from the prophet Isaiah at the beginning of his ministry, “The Spirit of the Lord, is upon me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s jubilee.” (Luke 5:1-19)  Jesus clearly says that “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” But then he does not leave things there. Over time Jesus lives his life to make the fulfillment of the scriptures an earthly reality.

That’s why in the middle of things, in the middle of worship and teaching, Jesus stopped everything. He looked at this woman, a daughter of Abraham, had been bound by an evil spirit for 18 years. The captivity had taken her way from being able to praise and to worship God. It had taken away to receive blessing and to pray properly. Jesus looked at her, was moved to proclaim her freedom from the disabling spirit and then lay hands on her to bless her for the next steps in the journey. This allowed the woman to stand up straight and being to live and to worship as she ought too.

But the story doesn’t end there because the president of the synagogue objects to the work of healing being done on the Sabbath. The confrontation between the president and Jesus leads to the religious people, the rabbis, the president, the lawyers and Levites to feeling humiliated. Jesus went as far as calling them “play actors”, essentially calling them empty and useless vessels while the ordinary folks were praising God and thankful for the release they were feeling from the oppression of the demands of the everyday Law and religion.

We are challenged and called to the same things: to recognize how we and others around us have been bound to things that are not godly, and to evil. We are called to work for release and for freedom for ourselves and for others. Most of all we called to work with Christ to seek and to save that which is lost: his people so that we can together enter into all the freedom and abundance  of the life of the kingdom of God through service, first to Christ, then to one another. In this way we will have grace to turn to the Lord and stand in faith and wonder; stand to be shown mercy that we might have forgiveness; lift our eyes and hand to heaven because we know peace and God’s peace causes us to participate in that full life and be blessed in order that we might give and bless others to help the world to praise God with everything we are.

So what are we going to do today?

Jason+

ON holidays in August...

Just a quick note to readers to let you know that I am on holidays and will return to writing at the end of August. in the mean time, enjoy what is below.