On Fidelity

The theme of our upcoming Diocesan Synod is “Faithfulness to the Gospel”. The word “faithfulness” caught my eye and my imagination and so I thought that I might spend some time playing with it to see if I might learn something new about it that I could share with you. It might be that the word “faithfulness” is something that we all seek to be but often find that, sooner or later, we are not. We struggle mightily with this idea of fidelity (of being faithful). We find it almost impossible to be faithful to anything else, anyone else in our North American culture because by enlarge because only the self counts. We live as if only ‘I’ matter: it is my truth, my way, my life that counts. As a consequence therefore, faith and faithfulness fall by the wayside because a lack of faithfulness leads to the degrading of our abilities to communicate with each other, which cause our communities and our society as a whole to fracture and crumble.  

Fidelity, according to an online dictionary (Merriam-Webster.com) I consulted is the quality or state of faithfulness. Fidelity is an exercise in exactness, working to be accurate in detail. Fidelity is the effort one puts into whatever is being done to be true to the facts, to a standard that needs to be lived and to the original text of writing. So if I have my understanding correct, fidelity is living out the command that Jesus gave us: love one another as I have loved you. Faithfulness moves from being adverb to be a verb. Faith and faithfulness are not just some that a person has, it is something that a person becomes that quality, enters into that state by living it. And in order to live it, it must be connected to others, beginning with God and then to neighbour. The interesting thing about this word faithfulness is that according to the same online dictionary, faithfulness is “obsolete”.

We are moving into and have come to an age in North American society where we are able to create social situations of “liquid gender”. People are able to choose what gender they are and to create that reality for themselves. More and more in civil society, we are trying to uphold a person’s right to choose for themselves, without regard for the impact on and the consequences for the community in which everyone needs to participate to help maintain community and society. Even within the Church, we fail to recognize that such belief and social action have an impact on the sacraments of both baptism and marriage. So rather than dealing with what is going on, we being to act and sound like the rest of the world rather than resisting the tide and choosing swim upstream. And in living this way we create an inability to be true to the Scriptures and to our relationship with the Almighty.

So what can we do, to stop and try to reverse the degradation of relationships and fracturing of our society? We must be the Church, wherever and whenever we are and are together. We must be the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ when we are apart and be his Church when we are together for worship. We must be choosing to be in worship regularly, to participate in the Eucharist thereby ridding ourselves of our idolatries and being empowered to live his life in this world. And we must make strides to aid each other in our walks, day by day. None of us can do it alone. Being a faithful follower means that we know that God is here and we, as his Church are with him; for now and for always.

Jason+

Seek the help and the face of Heaven

                                     

This week’s Gospel (Mark 5:21-43) has two stories: one about a woman with an issue of hemorrhaging, the other about a little girl and the love of her father who would not let her die. The section picks up after Jesus returns from Gentile territory and the healing of the demonic on the far side of the lake (Mark 5.1-20). In his absence, the popularity of Jesus has not abated in the life of the Jewish community. Many people were seeking Jesus out, including the two people that come seeking him in the Gospel.

First there is Jairus. He has a little, beloved daughter – not quite yet a woman. She is sick and she is near death. Only help from heaven will save her from death. This is why Jairus goes looking for Jesus and when he finds Jesus, he pleads earnestly for him to heal his daughter. It is interesting that Jairus is seen and known to be a powerful man in the life of his family, his community and his nation and yet he is powerless to help his daughter. How the mighty must fall in the face of the things they cannot buy, cannot control and cannot coerce into their own worldview.

The amazing thing is that it does not take too much for Jairus to convince Jesus that he should do this for him.   Jesus is not only willing to go he is ready to go; immediately. I suspect that Jairus, being strong and powerful, was ready to do anything to get Jesus to respond to him and save his little girl. Therefore, I suspect there was some surprise at having Jesus ready to go.

Then, as they are making their way to Jairus’ house, something happens. Someone touches him and his healed - woman who had been hemorrhaging for 12 years. Like Jairus, she was a person of means and importance and she had been used by many who had tried to heal her. She had spent her fortune, lost her husband, family friends and her faith because she was constantly “unclean”. And because she had lost all these people, she had lost her heritage and chance at family, and she as a consequence, lost her nation. She was spent physically, emotionally, financially and spiritually. But she had this one last hope: if she could get to Jesus and touch the hem of his robe she would be healed. She reached him. She reached out for the hem of his robe and touched him, and she was healed.

It is at this point that Jesus stops and asks a question, “Who touched me?” And with what I discern as being a certain amount of sarcasm from one of the disciples because of the crowd pressing into see, hear and touch Jesus, comes the reply, “With all these people, you want to know who touched you? That’s nuts!” So Jesus asked again, “Who touched me?” and the unnamed woman comes forward, with fear and trembling and expecting wrath for touching Jesus because she was unclean. What she got was not wrath and indignation, but acknowledgement that she was cured and was being given a chance to confess her faith in Christ, her healer.

Reaching Jairus’ house, they find that the little daughter has died and the mourners had arrived to do their thing, weeping and wailing, especially wailing. Remember the boat and the commotion on the Sea of Galilee? Why do you still have no faith? (Mark 4.35-41) When Jesus questioned the uproar, I think he was challenging the disciples with him (Peter, James and John) to recognize and connect that moment and this moment and the people who come as mourners laughed at Jesus when he declared the little girl not beyond help.  But first Jesus put the mourners outside.  

And to reassure the parents and the disciples, when the little girl got up, he asked them to feed her because being dead does tend to make one hungry for the living God. It also proved that she was not a ghost and that she was indeed alive.

What matters most in all this is two things: (1) How willing are you to get people, including yourself to a place or a position where you know you are in God’s presence? (2) Have you ever noticed that the people who have been with Jesus, that his presence shows and shines in their faces? So will you be that kind of person this week, someone through whom Christ shines?

Jason+

Placing courage in our faith and our convictions

This week’s Gospel (Mark 4:35-41) has an interesting twist as I look at the choices that are before us as a congregation (in deciding how we are going to approach the future with regards to our beloved building) and the choices and decisions that are before the disciples as they row for shore in their boat. Now, let’s be clear about something. Many of those men in the boat were experienced fishermen. They knew the lake. They understood the dangers and they were accustomed to being on the lake in the dark. So it must have been a very scary situation to have been in with the water coming in over the gunnels, water spraying them in the face from every direction. And to top it off, this master is asleep in it all.

That is the twist – of a sort. Over the past few weeks I have had to ask myself over and over again – when it is just me, and things are hard, where do I go? What do I do? To whom do I turn? The natural thing, when looking at the Gospel, is to think, “Well the boys, went to Jesus ad they got told off because they didn’t have faith.” That’s not it. Those men had watch Jesus for days and days, healing the sick curing the lame, opening the ears of the deaf, loosening the tongues and driving out demons. Why didn’t one of them take a stab at trying to claim the storm themselves? Why didn’t they trust God enough to hear the plea and act on their behalf?

The different times that the disciples had to go and find Jesus because he had gone off somewhere else to pray or heard him pray something like, “I thank you Father for hearing me but I know you always hear me...” (John 11:42) Is it possible that we are so often frightened and fearful of the choices we need to make, because are not willing to trust and to pray? What I see in Jesus is the confidence he has in the Father. he is confidence enough to trust God for what is next so that he can continue to do what he needs to do is incredible. So incredible, that this kind of trust allows us to sleep and to rest when things appear to be at their worst and even when they could be deadly.

When Jesus responds to the appeal of his disciples he speaks peace to the creation and calls on the disciples to be still and witness what God can do when you trust him. We want God it make the sailing smooth. We want God to fix all our problems and to take away all the pain. That’s what we want. It is how we want life to go – nice and smooth. The difficulty is often that is not what God calls us to. He insists that we follow and walk with him through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. We are called in those moments not to be filled with fear but to take the time to recognize that God is here and we are with him. He gives the comfort we need and the strength we must possess to walk and to heal and to pray.

If I had to sum it all up, I would do so this way: Courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to act in the face of it. If you need courage then be at peace. Be still. Know that God is God (Psalm 46:10). It is much better and much easier to live as a peace filled person rather than trying to control everything in the world around you, so that you can have a peaceful existence.

Jason+

His kingdom, his way, growing in us.

The parables of the seeds are the focus this week. Farming and the best practices might be a model for Church growth. Maybe. Nevertheless, there is something more important that we need to consider here than the usual. For example, Jesus talks about the “sporous” or spores that need to be planted.  We translate the word sporous as seed in the Gospel (Mark 4.26-35) but in fact, we are talking this week about some things that are the smallest things in the plant kingdom, that we they reach their fullness are, in their various ways something to behold.

For example, spores are microscopic and need to protect by other plant life. Unlike a seed, they are unicellular and they must hide on the underside of leaves and move around as the wind blows them. And unlike seeds, they are not multifaceted things, with internal resources to draw upon. But you might wonder knowing about plant life has to do with the Gospel and preaching this week. Quite a bit actually.

Parables tell us about God and his nature, who he is and what he does. The parables of the seeds shows us that God loves to take the little things, things that we discount or cannot see and make them count for something. He can cause them to grow into things that we could not have imagined and would not have planned to have happen if we could have conceived of it. So is the nature of the kingdom of God. It is here on earth and in earth (us) and the kingdom is growing. One of the things that we often miss in the Church is that the community that is the Church, like the kingdom that is to come in God’s time, is built to grow. We are not responsible for its growth. We are only expected to participate in its life. We are meant to plant seeds and water the earth to help provide the right conditions for growth but we cannot make what we plant grow. As St. Paul points out to the Corinthian Church,

“What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, even as the Lord gave opportunity to each one. I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth.” (1 Cor. 3:5-7 ESV).

As Christians and as Christian community, we are called to participate in the kingdom that is in the world and in our lives and bodies through putting our trust in God and live our faith in the present tense. We need to do this because the presence of the kingdom of God in this world is a direct threat to the powers and principalities, dominions and princedoms that are in this world. The presence of the living God and his kingdom is slowly but inextricably growing in such a way as to crowd out and choke out all the other powers and places that would take his people away from him.

We can participate in the growth but we need to recognize that it is God who makes things grow and who gives the harvest in its due time. We need to concern ourselves with being the tool in the hands of the living God, sharp and ready for the next task. We need to be about the business of the king. We need to choose to live lives that are dedicated and consecrated to the kingdom. This means we are given solely to the goals of the kingdom and not to another purpose while recognizing that we are giving ourselves completely to God. To recognize that we actively pray for God’s will to be done “on earth (in earth) as it is in heaven.” Being consecrated to the kingdom also means that we chose to have no happiness, no w well being and no salvation other that what is given in the kingdom through the divine community of the Church. What should make each of us happy as believers and followers is the welfare of the community of followers of the Lord Jesus.  

So there is a challenge that St. Paul offered to the Corinthians that I will offer to you: Follow me as I follow Christ. The life of a follower of the Lord Jesus is a life that is meant to be lived in community with shared gifts and shared joys – something that goes well beyond personal appetites and satisfactions. And remember it’s not about us. It is about God and his will to bring us kingdom. It is Christ’s prayer and ours too.

Jason+

Celebrating the life in the Spirit

                                           

This week we celebrate the feast of the coming of the Holy Spirit – Pentecost. So I wanted to take some time to do some teaching on the Christian life as it pertains to life in the Holy Spirit. In the Church we call this “Pneumotology” or the study of the things of the Spirit. No let me say up front that most of the Christian life is not about the overt gifts that are given – especially the gift of tongues. While these are powerful gifts, this is not what is meant by life in the Holy Spirit. Gifts like prophecy and speaking in tongues (which are also a prophetic gift and must be given an interpretation by someone else) are meant for the edification of the Body of Christ and for the glory of God. These charisms (gifts) are an outflow of the life that is lived in the Spirit, but are not the base of that life.

If we are to get to the root of all this, we need to consider who the person of the Holy Spirit and what the ministry of the Holy Spirit is and does. The Spirit for example, is the creative power of the Father and the strength of the redemptive power of the Son as well as having the ministry of sanctifying the saints and bringing creation to its perfection through the redemption of the Son. The Spirit is present to the world for the convicting of sin and for making Jesus present to the Church and known in the world. The Spirit inspires the prophets and equips and enables the servants of God. The Spirit causes the stirring up of holiness in individuals and in the churches.

We recognize that the Spirit was and remains a part of the ministry of Jesus and of the Church that follows him. The Spirit was involved in the incarnation of Jesus – conception, baptism, ministry, passion, death, resurrection and ascension. The Spirit unites the Church to Christ and Christ with his Church. And because the Spirit indwells the Church, he is capable of transforming the Church into the likeness of Christ who is its head. The Spirit causes the Church to be faithful, producing the fruit that is in line with the Christian life: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. (Galatians 5:22-25 ESV)

The Spirit is a witness and a teacher of the Church. The Spirit shows and convinced the believers of the reality of the person of Jesus Christ in the Gospels and the presence of the Lord Jesus in their lives and that of the churches and the world. In essence, the Spirit is a spotlight on Jesus so that the Church can see him, know him and follow him in what he is doing in the world. Such seeing and hearing and doing results in the Church being obedient to Christ in everyday life.

Spirit also moves the Church to bear witness to the Christ we see and know through Scripture and in the world. In doing so, the Spirit enables the faithful to receive the divine witness: For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. (Ephesians 1.15-22 ESV)

So, if we are to live life in the Spirit, we ought to be aware that we are being, in this moment, led, fed and enabled to be the people we are called to be by God. We are called to live in the Spirit in everyday life. And we live this life in the full knowledge that we are the beloved children of our heavenly Father and are coheirs with Christ and the rest of the Church of the kingdom that is yet to come.

Until then there are two things to keep in mind: (1) each and every believer has a gift that God has given to them that is meant for the good of the Church and the benefit of the wider community, which ought to be used for serving God’s people and glorifying God who is the giver of all good gifts. (2) Remember that the giving of the Spirit is a present and ongoing thing – yes it happened all those years ago. It is still happening. The power is available for us today. The Spirit is still filling, still giving, and still working to bring about the coming of God’s kingdom in the lives of men, women and children. Let us avail ourselves of the blessing the Lord gives and the power he provides and actively proclaim all the wonders that God is doing in this world for the sake of the kingdom and those who would be a part of it. Go and live the Spirit filled life and do so in Jesus name.  

Jason+

He ascended with our scars

“Pax Dominum” (The Peace of the Lord be with you) – it is how Jesus greets his disciples for the last time in the Easter season and right before he is taken up to heaven. He has come to lead them out to the Mount of the Ascension and he is going to be taken into heaven from them.  But the question might be, “Where did he go?” According to the Creeds, he ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father. From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.

And then things got interesting. Two men dressed in white robes asked the 11 disciples why they were standing there, looking up into heaven when they should be focused on what’s next. Imagine how daunting that must have been. Jesus has been taken up, what do we do now? So I find what they did next all the more interesting. The Eleven worshiped and prayed. They went back to the Temple and to the City and they worshiped and prayed some more. And that it when it hit me: at the start of the Gospel of Luke, Zachariah would not thank God for the gift of a child believing that it was not possible and so could not bless people for nine months; not until John was born and he acknowledge what God had told him and did as he was directed.

That is a stark contrast to Jesus who is taken up from his disciple and continues to bless them as he is removed from their sight. Scripture witnesses to the fact the Jesus keeps on blessing as he keeps on proceeding to his rightful place, beside his Father. Jesus, according to the Scriptures continues even today to bless the Church. It has happened from that moment to this moment. Jesus is blessing his one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. But what does it mean for us to be blessed?

Well, for one, when you know that you are blessed, there needs to be a response starting with thanksgiving. Praise and thanksgiving are an important part of God’s economy. The peace that draws us into God’s presence also enables us to move from fear to faith; from misery to mercy and from bewilderment to fascination, awe and wonder at what God can and is doing. Give thanks that he has ascended with our scars. Worship helps us to focus on God and to let go of the things that hold us down and keep us back from him and all that he desires to give us and to do through us in the world.

Secondly, we need to know when to get home for worship and to be resupplied and when to get out of the house. It has been said that “timing is everything.” It may be, but it is not the only that needs to happen. When it was time, things moved forward. The Spirit came upon the Church, Peter preached, people responded and the Church grew because the community had been both blessed and empowered for the work that was ahead.

So this then, raises questions like, ”Can you wait? Can you wait faithfully and keep on praise and worshiping God? Can you celebrate being left behind?” If you want to, then lift up your heart, lift up your life and allow God to direct it as he sees fit and may the Lord continue to bless you in the things he has called you to.

Jason+

Would it be like Jesus to do something like this?

This week in our parish, we return to the teaching and preaching of the Creeds and what is in them. In particular this week, we are gong to consider one phrase: “the forgiveness of sins”. In doing so, I could not but help recall a story I heard a while back about a man who was at home and received phone call. It was the police and they asked him some questions about his wife and his whereabouts for the past several hours. Apparently the man’s wife had been badly beaten and left in a ditch on the side of a country road having been given up for dead. The police anted to know if he could come and identify his wife. “Oh my goodness!” the man exclaimed, shaking and shuttering “I’ll be there as soon as I can!” When he arrived, the police arrested the man for attempted murder? Why? He knew where the body was opposed to be.

So it is no wonder that the disciples on the road and the disciples in the upper room in Jerusalem were nothing short of shell shocked when they discovered that the Lord Jesus was alive (Luke 24:13-49). After all, the dead don’t rise and the followers of Jesus knew that they knew where the body was supposed to be. Nevertheless Jesus stood among them and greeted them as simply as he could – as he always had: with peace. He invited them to come to him and see and touch and examine him to know that it was the truth. He wanted them to know that he was really alive. He ate in front of them. He taught them one last time like used to on the roads, in the boat, in the fields and in the places and spaces of worship and most of all around the table. Jesus prepared them for his departure. He geared them up for what was next and what lay ahead of them as the mission of the kingdom was ahead of them. He reminded them of what the Word says, giving those who will lead and those who will follow hope and strength for the days and trials ahead. Most of all, Jesus told them to remain in the city and wait until they got power from on high before they moved out to live in the blessing.

In this moment of encounter with the risen Lord, these folks needed peace more than anything else. They had been distraught over the crucifixion and the burial. And now there was all this nonsensical talk about the body not being in the tomb and some who are saying that they have seen Jesus – even Peter who denied Jesus that night had seen them. Beleaguered, embattled and bewildered they suddenly find that Jesus is there amongst them offering his own peace and his own self. Wouldn't such a moment cause you to take a pause and consider what it is that is going on? Wouldn't it be like Jesus to do something like this?

During their chat, Jesus tells them point blank, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high. (Luke 24.44-49 ESV)

I am always amazed at the number of people I encounter in the Church who have yet to come to a place where they know and believe that in Christ God has dealt with their sin and believe that there is still an atonement that needs to be made. Sin came because of Adam and because of sin there is death. We are by the virtue of being of Adam’s race then subject to death. God sent Jesus to be the second Adam so that through faith and trust in him, there would be life. There is nothing that we can do to save ourselves and to make ourselves good enough in God’s eyes. There is nothing we are and nothing we possess that can pay for the judgement made against sin. This is why we need Jesus. God laid on Jesus the price of our lives; the iniquity of us all. In turn, through the gifts of grace and faith we can receive Christ and “all other the benefits of his passion.”

Being a Christian does not make one perfect – by no means. It does mean that there is work to be done on relationships starting with God to make sure that we live the kind of life that is righteous. It means that we need to live the kind of life where the fruit of a righteous life, a life lived in the Spirit are evident in increasing measure. And we need to keep in mind that “that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 1.6) God will bring the perfection. We need to be faithful and boldly declare that there is forgiveness, repentance and the nearness of the kingdom for those who will come and do so.

Jason+