The Life of a wayward fisherman

There is an interesting phrase that fisherman use when they catch nothing in their nets: “waterhaul”. And interestingly enough, it is the same term that is used no matter where you are on the coast of Canada in a fishing community. To bring in an empty net was a “waterhaul”. So when we consider the Gospel this week (John 21:1-20), we go back to Galilee, back to when Jesus first found his disciples and called them to follow him and what where they doing? Fishing! And apparently, they were not doing very well at it.

This is a story of going back so that the community could go forward. This is a story about going back to that night when Peter made the bold promises of never leaving or forsaking Jesus even though others would – Peter would remain. But then he failed. He denied Jesus around that charcoal fire.

I link that to the life of the Church today. There are times when we as individuals and as communities of faith and mission have fallen short and fallen down and failed to listen and to do as God has asked. We did not heed the warning to not act precipitously and in doing so, have ended up in Peter’s situation. He has always wanted to be bold. He was the one who spoke up and proclaimed Jesus as Messiah first. He was the one who would not let Jesus wash his feet until he found out that he needed to have his feet washed. Peter tried to kill someone when they came to take Jesus away but failed. And most of all, when he could have stood up, he didn’t... and this is the man who is going to lead the Church?

What I find powerful is that Jesus restored him and Peter went on led a very powerful ministry amongst the Jewish people. He had to be shown how to love Jesus not just push a button and like him. That is why we celebrate the Eucharist on Sundays: so that we can eat and drink together so that in turn we can be empowered to go out and raise the dead.  Who would you take with you to the local cemetery to raise a dead person? That at the core of Christian ministry is what we are doing – raising the dead. Can you do it yourself? Of course not. It is about people meeting and beginning to see and know the person of Jesus Christ for themselves, instead of believing what the world thinks about Jesus and of him. It is why we eat together – so that we can proclaim the Lord’s death in real terms until he comes again. We preach the Gospel by taking Christ in through bread and wine and sharing his presence with those whom we meet and share every single day.

Our mistakes are not fatal unless we choose to live with them only, failing to seek forgiveness and reconciliation. Our deaths are not final unless we choose to abandon hope and community, God and neigbour

The Church is the community of the Net. We bring them in and Jesus makes them clean. But we must go out and catch them. As I have so often heard, the Faith is caught, not taught. Let us eat and then rise and go. There is fishing to be done. Christ is waiting.  

Jason+

Lessons from the back of a donkey

I like to think of Palm Sunday and the writing of that sermon as “Lessons taught from the back of a donkey”. It was and is not an odd thing in the Middle East to see people riding donkeys. But it is not the kind of animal that one would expect a king to come and claim possession of a city. After all, in human society, we often operate on a simple principle: “if you want it, get it; by all most any means necessary. Worry about the costs and the interest later. You want it and there for you need it. You must have it.”

What does Jesus teach us about what kind of king he is and what do we know about the nature of the kingdom of God because of this donkey ride? If Jesus had chose a great white steed and strutted in the gates of the city of Jerusalem, people would have understood that he had come to claim his earthly kingdom and there was going to be a war. He would fight to take and hold on to what was rightfully his.

What if he had come in on a camel? What would have been the reaction? Or what if he had come in, driving cattle or leading sheep? What if he had come in walking, with the 12 and other disciples in tow? In Luke’s Gospel (19.37) Jesus and his followers reach a point where once they past the road going down to the Mount of Olives and going into the City, the fork in the road becomes a point of no return. Choosing to go into the city means that Jesus is choosing to face down the leadership of the people and all that could potentially happen including his death. He made that choice before he got on the back of that donkey. He had made it time and again, including in the Garden when he ask the Father to take this cup of suffering from him but was prepared to follow things through saying, “Not my will but yours be done.”

A horse is an animal of war and of conquest. It is the kind of animal that we would expect the king to ride. It is not the type of animal this king will use. A donkey is a beast of burden and a symbol of peace. Jesus weeps over Jerusalem has he rides into the city and the Gospel tells of what he said, As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side.  They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you. (Luke 19.41-44)

This is a sharp contrast to what is happening around him as they make their way into the City and to the Temple. People around him are expecting conquest and for the return of the king and the good old days when they were a nation under David. They could have national pride, being free of the slavery and tyranny of the Roman Empire. They could be their own rulers and everything would be better if only Jesus would act.

Jesus will act. Yes there will be the flipping of tables, the scattering of coins and the howls of outrage over what he does. But instead of rebellion and overthrow, he offers his surrender. Jesus will be taken, mocked, brutally scourged and whipped, forced to carry a 200 pound weigh up the steepest road in the city and then had to endure the nails and the pain of crucifixion, and exposure. Finally when he can offer nothing more to give he turns over his life and his death not to those who screamed for it, demanding their way and their power but to his Father, whom throughout his life he had honoured and obeyed.

The kingdom of God is not about who controls the money or about who has the power and the authority – it is about those who can serve, heal and die. Power and authority are given to those who serve and those who heal. Authority is given to those who proclaim the kingdom both in word and in actions. It is about those who can offer their lives as a living and ongoing act of worship, knowing the Father who sees in secret is watching, caring and waiting.

Why did Jesus come and give his life as a ransom for many? Why did he die like that? It is because a) he loves us and cannot bear the thought of having an eternity without us and b) because he has need of you and of me as servants who are ready to live and prepared for death if necessary to show this world how much God really loves them. If we allow ourselves to open up to him and to be led by him, he will teach us not only how to die, but how to live. After all, God made you and he not only desires you, he has called you to go for him and to bear lasting fruit for his kingdom and the sake of this city.

So, which way to live will you choose? Will you decide to try and build your own little kingdom and have it all your own way? Or will you come with Jesus past the point of no return and learn to walk into the kingdom and the wider life that God has to offer you? You do get to decide.

Jason+

Moving into the Land and into the Promise

When I sat down to read the lessons at the beginning of the week, I was somewhat captured by the few verses of the Book of Joshua and what was going on in them (Joshua 5. 9-12) The children of Israel have moved out of slavery in Egypt, through the wondrous rescue from Pharaoh on the shores of the Red Sea and then into the wilderness at Sinai where things got “hinky”. At Gilgal, God removed the reproach of having been enslaved and the issues of the wilderness where the previous generation had been a royal pain in the divine backside. This new generation was on the verge of an eisodos – an in-breaking and the taking possession of the Land that God had promised to them through Abraham hundreds of years before.

The passage though short, is important to the life of the fledgling nation. It is a story of moving from scarcity to abundance, from the manna and other things that God has provided to sustain them into living from the Land that God is giving them. The Jordan River has been crossed. Joshua has the mantle of Moses and has taken charge of things. Moses has died and passed into legend having seen the Land but not being allowed to enter himself by the LORD. There is the first celebration of the Passover in the Promised Land and a time of thanksgiving for what is now behind the people of Israel.

This is a moment of pain and promise: there is an already but not-yet-ness about where they are as a nation. They are starting to live from the land and there are changes in the way things are happening, including worship and diet. There is the anticipation and hope of conquest that will come when the city of Jericho falls. There will be thoughts of building the great society and temple for God in the midst of the nation. But at the same time, the people of Israel are also continuing to be that royal pain in the divine backside. With war there will be injuries, pain and suffering and death. Yet there will still be the promise of what God holds for the nation that will draw them forward. The eisodos will happen and the Israelites will take possession of the Land but what kind of nation will they be?

As a congregation, we are in a similar place to those ancient Israelites. We have overcome a lot of hurdles in recent years Things are, out of necessity I would suggest, transforming because they need to so that we might be ready for whatever it is that God has next for us to do. Therefore let us not live as if God was never at the cross nor has never dealt with the betrayal of those he created or with the death of his own Son. It’s not true. We are on the cusp of a new eisodos into this society and this world and God is in the lead. The new eisodos will require us changing our point of view (pov) and starting to see things the way that Christ sees them.

We are called to help people in this world to see Jesus Christ. How do we, his Church, do that? The true Church is known for its faith in the face of pain and suffering and for a life that is dedicated to the service of God almighty and of others. The grace that God gives to us, his Church, is not meant for us to wallow in memories of ministry that used to be. Grace for this moment is not to get back to the future – to reclaim some glorious point of the past. Rather, it is for the moment that we might share it with our neighbours, friends and family that through us, they might see Christ in action. This grace and mercy for the Church is meant to see us through what St. Paul would call, “Light and momentary troubles”. It is the continuation of the pain and the promise until the fresh eisodos is finished on the Day of Christ Jesus.

Don’t be lemmings who just follow the herd over the edge. Be willing to see things as Christ sees things. Be ready to march into the Land, eating from the good of the Land and worshiping God as God desires. Be ready to follow Christ where he might lead. God is calling us to and be ready to be the Church that God has created us in Christ that we must become. With that life there is a promise and in that life there will be both praise and pain. Let it be.

Jason+

The more lively liturgy

Lately, people have been asking “Why the church cannot be full and things be livelier in the service?” So I have been thinking about that issue and many other issues that impact the life of the Church on an ongoing basis.  It fits with what happens in the Gospel for this coming Sunday when the people tell Jesus about what a murderous Governor they have in Pontius Pilate and what he did to worshippers in the Temple (Luke 13.1-8).

Jesus asks the crowd, “Are these people worse than other people? Or did they deserve this death as opposed to living a good long life and quietly dying in bed many years from now?” Jesus then questions the crowd about the unsuspecting 18 people who died when the wall tower on the way to Siloam fell apart and fell on them. “Were these people punished more than others who deserved to be punished?”

I think one of the important parts about this whole encounter is the view that people have of death and therefore of life in general and of this life in particular. We as people tend to live like this life is all there is and that there is nothing other than this life. If you carefully consider how Jesus lives, preaches and acts, he does so in the full knowledge that there are things in this life worse than death. Jesus calls on people to stop and recognize that this human life is fragile. We need to know that this life is limited, finite. We need to take in that God came to us in the fragile frame of his Son to call us back to him and we nailed him to a cross for it because our will, our way and this life were more important to us than what lays ahead in the life beyond death.

What we need from God is mercy. Authentic, reliable mercy. Why do we need it? We need mercy because we are frail and prone to sin. We miss the mark and fall short of what it is that God asks of us. We forget who God is and we don’t love our neighbours as ourselves. We have not done those things that ought to have been done and we have done those things that we ought not to have done and there is no health in us; no salvation in us. We need mercy and we need a saviour. We need God’s mercy because God’s judgment is real. That is why we need God’s mercy to be genuine and powerful. We have fallen down and fallen short. We cannot get up. There is not one of us righteous, not even one.

Suffering and pain in your life are not an indication of a bad life. It is an indication that we live in a world that is affected by sin, death, and the grave. We need to know God’s mercy through hearing the Word from Scripture and by participating in confession and absolution. If you want the liturgy to be relevant, ask yourself what you want God to forgive you for. Then ask for it and then live like a person who has received it. If you really want your prayers answered, do you keep asking until you believe that you have an answer? Or is it a one and done for you, thinking that because it didn’t get answered right away? Have you considered that God is working on an answer to your prayer that not only answers it but goes well beyond to help and to bless others in the process?... That the answer that comes back is better than the prayer that was prayed – even if the answer might have been “No”?

Being religious or calling one’s self spiritual does not make you right with God. God does that through his own Son Jesus. Jesus came to make us holy – to set us aside as God’s one people, a holy nation and a royal priesthood who serve him. God shouts in our joy and he whispers in our pain and suffering to cut through the fear, disbelief and despair that happens because we think there is no hope and too many believe that this transitory life is all there is. God calls to us to show us mercy, grace and blessing that we might make a difference in this world. People are dying. People are scared and fed up. It is perhaps time we as God’s Church become the light and the community of mercy and grace that God can make us to be. Maybe it is time to call this city to repentance and belief because God is drawing close to us. Maybe we start with ourselves so that people can see God at work in us. Wouldn’t that make our services more lively?

Jason+ 

Outta our way, we're on a mission from God

What would it take, to scare you off doing what God has called you to do? What would it take for you to run in the other direction from what you know is God’s will for you? This week’s Gospel begs such a question (Luke 13.31-35). Pharisees come to Jesus and till him that Herod is plotting to kill him. Therefore the Pharisees urge Jesus to “Stop this noise and find a safe place to hide until things blow over.”

If you’ll bear with me for a moment, there are a couple of things that I think we can learn from here, using the barnyard analogies that Jesus used to shed some light on things. First, one needs to remember that Herod Antipas and the Pharisees have no love for each other. The Pharisees perceive Antipas as an extension of the hated occupying Roman Empire and as an outsider because Antipas is the son of an Idumean. Herod has no use for the Pharisees and thinks of them as religious zealots. So when the Pharisees come to Jesus, we can perceive the threat against his life is real. Like his father (Herod the Great) he has no use and gives no truck to those who might try to claim his throne.

Jesus’ response to the announcement that Herod wants and is trying to kill him gives rise to an interesting response: “Go tell that fox ... That sly and crafty man that I will finish what I have started. He cannot touch this!” If you know the Gospel of Luke, you know that Jesus and Herod will eventually meet and that even Herod will find Jesus “not guilty”. Jesus will be proclaimed in Luke’s Gospel as the “Innocent” and the “Rejected” Prophet. But if we go deeper, we see how Jesus has confidence in His Father to help him get to the goals that are set for the kingdom, and his commitment to making that happen. There is a fox, and that fox is apparently in the hen house. But this is not the time to pay attention to him – not yet. It is time work at protecting the children of the City and to focus on what is ahead rather than trying to be crafty and political to get what we want. It reminds me of that great one liner from the Blues Brothers’ movie, “Outta our way, we are on a mission from God!”

Second there is the issue of rejecting the message and the messenger – doing so has consequences. It would seem logical, that the purpose of any journey is to reach the destination of the journey. A journey has a purpose and s destination that one must reach. Anything else would seem to be wandering aimlessly. So if I leave my house to go to the grocery store and the post office and then come home but never do, is that not a wasted trip? Remember that Jesus has set his face like flint (stone) towards the goal of reaching Jerusalem (Luke 9.51), the Cross and the Day of the Resurrection. If Jesus does not get there; if he does not rise from the grave then there is no rising and we are all dead people. Jesus makes this journey so that we can have healing and deliverance from sin and death. He also was raised from the dead so that we can draw others into that same life, to know that same forgiveness and mercy and learn to really, truly live this risen life that has been given to us.

And we must countenance that there is going to be struggles and pain. There will be afflictions and suffering for delivering such a message to our city and our culture. Such a message that calls this culture, this people to repentance (starting with this congregation and this priest) is not going to be popular or welcomed. And because people have forsaken the mercy of God, their house (temple) has been devoid of God’s presence. It will eventually be razed and removed from the earth. This is why it is important to consider carefully the message that God is sending to us through his prophet. God will have mercy on those whom he will have mercy. We are called to strive to make it through the narrow door and into the banquet before the door is shut and none will be able to open. Live life n such a way that you will enter through the narrow door and so that your life is not just an offering, but an act of worship.

Jason+

Cliffhangers!

Home. It is the place where we don’t have to ask if we can come in and where there will always be a welcome no matter where you have been, how great or bad you are, or how late it has gotten. There is hopefully a place like that for all of us that we call home. And the way that Luke describes Nazareth like that for Jesus. It was the place that nourished Jesus from the time he was little until he left to find his cousin John receive baptism and go into the wilderness.

When he comes home again he does what he has been doing all along: he goes to the Synagogue and is invited to preach – because they have heard about what he has done elsewhere. There is a certain amount of expectation that he is going to do something spectacular because, after all he is one of them. He follows his usual pattern but only to a point. They applaud him for his kind words and declaring that salvation is coming and that there is going to be freedom.

Bu then things get harder and worse and difficult because Jesus also tells them that there will be no grand demonstration of grace and power because they were expecting something without really believing in him. Jesus then goes onto point out that enemies of Israel were save in the days of both Elijah and Elisha but not any of the widows and orphans in Israel. In doing so Jesus pointed out to them that the Gospel is for those who know their need of God and his salvation and are ready to received it – regardless of who they are. The Good news of God is meant not just for the few or the nation. It is meant for everyone who knows their need of God and is willing to put their faith in Jesus.

Having been accused of wanting a dog and pony show and worse of being faithless, many in the own are enraged and they move Jesus out of the synagogue out into the streets and to the edge of the hill on which their town is built so that they can throw Jesus off of it and stone him to death. The situation becomes in a real sense, a “cliff-hanger”. Yet Jesus walks away and takes his disciples and makes for Capernaum.

What does this all mean? Well, I think first what we can take from Isaiah and from Luke is the understanding that God is in control. And just as importantly, he has anointed his servant and sent him as an ambassador from him to us, to you and to me. And Jesus has been sent for a purpose: to fix the broken hearted, to free those bound by sin and despair and to find those who are lost and in need of God’s salvation and bring them home to the Father. Most of all, Jesus and by extension, his Church,  is sent to proclaim jubilee – freedom from all debt and a clean slate in life so that one can begin again.

And if God is in control, then it is God’s mission that we are on, not our own. Did Jesus himself not say to his own disciples, "You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you.” (John 15.16 ESV) I take this to mean that God wants spiritual fruit from all of us not for some of us to be religious nuts.

One of the things that I think is important for us in terms of remembering, is to realize that God is not calling us to be what we were in the 1970’s and 80’s. Many think that this was the golden aged of the parish and the diocese. It is often thought of as the “good old daze”. Either we own our past or it will own us. Those days carry powerful memories for many including myself but we are not there anymore and if we continue to put our hand to the plow and keep looking back we are going to find that we are of no use to the kingdom to which we are called.

We must become a fresh revelation of the man Jesus Christ to the city in which we live. As a pastor, priest and teacher of the Church, I present Christ to all of you through word and sacrament so that together, we can represent Christ to this city. We can do these things because we have sought and seen Christ in worship and prayer together. Thus, as we live our lives, others can be shown who Christ is through who and what we are and are becoming.

We must treat others better than ourselves – those who are less honourable with dignity and with more honour; to share the pain and difficulties of another. In short we are not to live like the rest of our culture but rather to live as God would have us live. Even if that means that we must live counter culturally to the world around us and potentially in conflict with the wider culture. Be prepare to be more like Jesus and understand that we may become a sign to be spoken against, even within the Church.

Most of all, remember that the Gospel is meant for every person you meet. Live so that you can shine the light and the life of Christ in your own life; so that others may see Christ in you and give glory to our heavenly Father. We do this for him and for the sake of the coming kingdom.

Jason+

Miracles are possible, but they are not cheap.

The Gospel this week could be preached on in several different ways. Most would probably deal with the ideas around marriage and the culture we live in. Others might home in on things like motherhood and family life and what our communities might look like if this or that was to happen. I remember treading that line in front of my newly elected Bishop during a sermon a number of years ago now at a Diocesan ACW Conference. People wanted me to speak out and to confirm at least their suspicions about other people if not expect me to confirm their entrenched positions. But that is not where I am heeded this week. I am headed into service and to serve the Lord and his people in ordinary time.

Do you know what “ordinary” time is and means to the Church? Ordinary time is that space where there is no major celebration or festival going on. No Christmas. No Easter or Pentecost to deal with – just ordinary time in which we get to see and to learn to follow the Lord Jesus. The Gospel for Sunday (John 2.1-11) is a lesson in learning how to listen and do as God tells you.  Obedience we call it. To listen and then do as directed. To not listen and not do as we are directed in God’s ways, does not make us disobedient. It makes us irrelevant. God can use that but it is not the same as listen, understanding and doing as God the Holy Spirit compels us.

Mary is the person I would focus on here. When she is told of the problem – there is no more wine – She goes to Jesus with it. Not to the Steward/MC. Not to the host of the feast. She goes to Jesus. And seemingly, Jesus gives her a hard time (grief) tormenting over being asked to deal with it. “What is the fact that there is no more wine got to do with you and even more so me? My time is my time.” Now I am fairly certain that Jesus had a smile on his face when he said this and I am certain that he was teasing her. He also I am certain recognized that his mother’s faith in him, not just as her child but know that he could handle what was given him – it is why she was depending on him. And we know this because after he teased his mother Mary, she turned to the household slaves and gave an instruction as a person of authority: “Do whatever he tells you to do.”

It took some celebration time to get those large washing jugs filled: 60-80 gallons each. While glasses were clinking and people were reveling, the household slaves were packing the water in from a well somewhere in the community. And they did as they were instructed, filling each vessel to the brim and each could hold no more. And there was I am sure, some fear and awkwardness when they were sent to the MC with water they had just brought in. It is only when the MC taste the water now turned into wine (not knowing the background to all of this) goes to the groom and compliments him for being a great and kind host. Why? Because the household is bringing out better and better tasting wine instead of bring out the inferior wine because nobody can taste or cares about the difference.

What does this tell us about God? And what should it say to us about our relationships with Jesus, individually and as a Church. Well, first we need to pray. We need to ask God for “those things that are requisite and necessary for the body as well as the soul.” Then we need to trust that God is going to do something with those prayers. I have heard the concerns of many in the parish that we cannot replicate the same minor financial miracle of last year and do what was done last year. But then I would point out that we didn’t know how we were going to survive last year either. But by the grace and will of God, we did. And in doing so we were blessed. And not only were we blessed but we blessed the Bishop, the Diocesan Executive Committee and the other parishes by giving what we had to give.  We need to recognize that this is God’s church and that we are God’s people. We are indeed blessed. And because God is blessing us we need this “ordinary” time to be a blessing in this place, in this city and beyond. We must, if we are to be effective in our faith, good listeners and then put what we believe we are hearing into actions that will glorify God and draw people into his kingdom.

I leave this piece of Scripture with you to think about: 

Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. 2For he says,

“In a favorable time I listened to you,
and in a day of salvation I have helped you.”

Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation. 3We put no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, 4but as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, 5beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; 6by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love; 7by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; 8through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; 9as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; 10as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything. 11We have spoken freely to you,^a Corinthians; our heart is wide open. 12You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections. 13In return (I speak as to children) widen your hearts also. (2 Corinthians 6:1-13 ESV)

Jason+