Making room for Christ

This will more than likely be my last post of the year. In large part, because I am not preaching this weekend because it is Christmas and that means that the Bishop is here.  There is a double meaning this year as it is the Bishop’s last Christmas with us: he retires from full-time ministry at the end of the month. Getting ready to bid him farewell from active ministry leaves me with a range of emotions. I am happy for him – after more than 40 years he gets his freedom. I am sad in a way for us because we have had a consistent and practiced hand on the tiller for so many years and it is in a word, “scary” as we step out in faith to look for, find and consecrate a new Bishop for the Church.

It reminds me of an old story I heard retold recently. It’s about a little girl who was upset about the thunder and lightning storm that was raging outside her house. Her father came in and offered to pray with her, and they prayed together. When they were finished, her father asked the little girl, “Now doesn’t that feel better?”  To this, the little girl replied, “No! I need a God with some skin on!”

When I then consider what happen in the stable that night in Bethlehem, in the quiet and the dark, in the cold... remembering the pain and the blood, the joy and wonder of the birth in time of the timeless Son of God, it is a whole lot more that a small wonder.

It had been a rough road watching all the way along the length of the Promised Land, from Nazareth in the North to Bethlehem in the South. It was hard and dangerous. Road conditions, weather, thieves, and bandits for days on end, including a grouch pilgrim as well coming into Jerusalem from elsewhere for the Feast of Lights were enough to deal with on their own. Getting to Bethlehem and not having anywhere to stay until, until through the generosity of a local shepherd, Joseph finds a stable where they can stay because the time had come for the baby to be born (Luke 2.1-20).

God coming to us in our own flesh and blood is something that makes our faith, our Christianity unique amongst the world’s pantheon of religiosity. We have Emmanuel – God with us he has skin on. This is the moment when we discover that God has come to us and is going to visit us and redeem us through the life death and resurrection of His Son. The wood of the Manger will become the wood of the Cross soon enough. But in this moment, we can choose to make room for him and to welcome him into our lives so that he can make changes in us or we can choose to continue to ignore him and take our chances on being good enough and nice enough when the Judgement comes.

Choosing Christ does not remove the anxiety or the threats and hurts that can and do happen in life. Having Christ in one’s life allows us to walk through those dark things and to be healed when necessary that we might be stronger having been through it. Think about Joseph. He was a devout man, sincere in his faith and he wanted Mary to be his wife. He took his own council and decided on the best course of action and then slept on it. During the night, God spoke to Joseph in a dream – and where else would a Joseph hear from God but in a dream? – and God spoke his mind to the man. In the morning, Joseph chooses to take on Mary and the baby, not because it was the right thing, the religious thing or even a good thing, to protect both Mary and the baby. It was now a good thing and Joseph chose to make room in his life for Jesus to come in.

Will you not make room for Christ in your life this Christmas? Sure there may be lots of clutter with the presents, the paper and getting ready for a meal later in the day. And no doubt there will and excuse or two as to why you might not. You want Christmas to be real? Do you want it to mean something more? Then it is time to make room for him and let him in.

Jason+ 

The undomesticated God

The Gospel this week is about the unknown day and hour of the return of Jesus (Matthew 24.36-44). And as I say that, I recognize that the pericope (piece of the Scriptures) that we have to work with is too small. We actually need to include, at the very least what Jesus has to say about the fig tree and recognizing the season... when will it be summer again (v. 32-35)? I suggest this because to say that we know nothing about when the kingdom will come, is not true. There are things that we have been told will happen – things that will need to happen before Jesus returns. We know how to interpret the changing of a season from one to another. We will gamble on what we think the outcome of a role of dice or the outcome of a particular sports game or match will be. We can see when a human crisis is about to erupt and hear all about on a 24 hour news channel. But we still fail to see the coming of the kingdom of God.

We have been asked in the baptismal rites in the past few weeks, if we would seek Christ, loving our neighbours as ourselves and if we would serve Christ wherever we find him. We are asked to do these thing so that we are not passive about our waiting and watching for him. We’re asked not to concentrate on ourselves but rather to seek Christ in other places and spaces. We are asked to serve Christ by serving other people. We do this service to keep our faith and our lives from becoming selfish and idolatrous.

The problem is that our society has bought into the myth of progressive thinking and living. People think and believe that this world is basically a good place and what we need to do is make is a better and that will make everything good. Such thinking is not Christian thinking. If we were able to make this world a better place, would we have not done so already? More than that, f we could make this world into the kingdom that God desires to build, then why did Jesus come into this world to save us?

People were waiting and looking for the King that would take the nation back to the good old days of David and Solomon (which by the way were not as great as some would have you believe) when the kingdom was free and doing its own thing. Humanity has not changed that much in the last few thousand years. “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man” Jesus reminds us. People are going to choose themselves over God and are going to go their own way. Sin and evil are rampant. People are unaware that the next visitation is coming and that they are not ready. It reminds me of one of my favourite books, CS Lewis’ “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardorbe” when Mr. Beaver and Lucy are taking about meeting Aslan for the first time:

“Aslan is a lion- the Lion, the great Lion." "Ooh" said Susan. "I'd thought he was a man. Is he quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion"..."Safe?" said Mr Beaver ..."Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Following the King into the Kingdom is not about being safe. It is about meeting him and building a relationship with him that will lead you into living his life with him for an eternity. God made this possible because God did the unexpected. God came to a darkened manger in an out of the way place. He came through blood and water, through some fear and pain. He did not come to a palace with fanfare. He was received with joy by those who listened to the announcement of his birth by angels.

Christ’s coming to us caused Crisis in the places and spaces of power. There was palpable fear in the people of authority because the King could take it away from them. We shall hear of how these men will react in the coming days and months.

Advent is a time for preparations and for amends. It is time to take care of those things so that we are ready for his coming. He is coming. And until he does, we have as his Church been instructed and enabled to be his community in the world. We’re expected and required to seek him out and to serve him where we find him. Remember, he is coming back not as a baby in a manger, but as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess him but not all will do so happily or willingly.

And as we wait, watch and seek Christ out, remember to manage your expectations of neighbour and even more so of God. After all the Lion of Judah is not a tamed Lion; the domesticated God. But he is God, and God is good, all the time. And remember, God will do the unexpected. Don’t worry about what time it is.

Jason+

Of saints and the Christian soul

All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day have happened this week. And because All Saints is a major (Easter type) Festival and its also the anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood, I move it and celebrate it on the Sunday after. It is usually a good celebration and there are some times baptisms to do with it, like there will be this Sunday.

The Gospel this week (Luke 6.20-31) notes that people are coming to Jesus. They come for at least one of two and maybe more reasons. First, people come because they are seeing deeds of power being done: the blind are seeing, the deaf are hearing, the lame are walking and the poor are becoming rich. Plus, people are hearing what God is saying through Jesus – they are hearing words of power (dynamos) and they explode just like dynamite. Second people, because they are experiencing God, come to Jesus to be cured – made whole. People are coming to and find Jesus because they want to be whole and free like they have never been before. They finding that being with Jesus is making them whole and setting them free. It is in this context (Isaiah 61.1-3) that Jesus ministers to people healing every person that comes to him, without reservation, without caveat. And in some real ways the Church grows.

Jesus and the Twelve have come down from a spiritual mountain top into the places and spaces where most people dwell. Jesus sits down and talks to them about what is important and what the nature and work of the Church should look like. Looking directly at his chosen leaders, he begins to talk about blessedness or righteousness: “Righteous are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” Now, it is important to keep in mind that righteousness, from a Christian point of view is not something we do to become, but rather it is something that we are given by God and because we have it we need to act in a righteous manner. That is, we need to live as people who are in relationship with God – because we are.  So if we look at this, those who are economically disadvantaged, who are hungry because they have no food, who are weeping because they see and understand the state of the people and the Land – these are blessed and are righteous, because they are in the presence of God.

It is the inversion of what the world says and thinks blessedness is about. If you have lots of stuff – wealth, position, power you must be blessed. If you have lots to eat and drink and are able to eat five times a day, you must be blessed. If you have lots of friends and are able to party, laugh and carry on, you must be blessed. But that is not how Jesus and therefore God sees it. In fact he takes the time to warn people thusly by saying to them “Woe to you is coming if you have these things and do not bless”  Woes were used by the OT prophets to warn the nation and individuals about their impending disaster if they did not changes their ways and live a righteous life towards God and neighbour. These warnings were given because people had become arrogant and were ignoring the visitation of God for the purposes of redeeming them and shaping them into his priesthood, his holy nation.

God calls us to love our neighbours, ourselves, each other and even our enemies. We are commanded to act well towards others who we believe hate us. We are to do good to those who persecute us and to bless them. We are to move away from the idea of retribution, the eye for an eye mentality – no wonder we live in a world of sightless people. We are too busy taking out each other’s eyes and we live in a world that is blinded by fear and hate, by mistrust and self righteousness. We are too quick to try and take out the speck in our neighbour’s eye.

We are to offer whatever it is that our neighbour demands of us and we are to bless them by giving and not withholding. We are to hold an attitude of love so that when we speak to them or about them we don’t offer insult and cause ourselves to sin. We are to pray for them and ask God to bless them even in spite of (or maybe because of) what they have done to us or our lives.  We can do this because God will “save us from the hands of all that hate us” (Zach 1.71)

What do we do when we discover that we are in the presence of God, that we are indeed being visited and redeemed? We must give and we must dance! We need to give to God and to others until it pinches our lives, The amount is somewhat immaterial – it is how you give and therefore how you chose to dance that matters. What matters is whether or not your heart, your life and your home are open and ready to offer self and hospitality to those who will come. We are to give without thought of reward or return.

As Saints of the living God, as Christian souls, if we work at that, then the Son can shine through us and that means an awful lot to a world that is lost in sin, fear and the growing darkness.

Jason+

The Tale of Two Trees and the men who climb them

This week, the Gospel tells the tale of two trees and the men who climb into them (Luke 19.1-10). The Two men? Zaccheus and Jesus. Both trees are instruments which bring salvation. The first is precursory and a foreshadowing of the second. The first tree and the events that surround it show who one man, who refuses to let Jesus pass by without seeing him and discovers that he is being sought by the one who seeks him.

The Zaccheus’ tree was planted decades before he needed it. But it was on the right street in Jericho – on the main road that the pilgrims used to make their way to Jerusalem. The road climbs a steep hill as it leaves the mostly abandoned part of the City. And along the way there is this forty foot sycamore tree with minimal stumpage and plenty of branches for a grown man to crawl into.   

Zaccheus was a man who was ‘vertically challenged’, meaning he was short.  People thought little of him because he was not only a tax collector and therefore a collaborator with the occupying Romans, he was often thought of as ‘irredeemable’ because he was a chief tax collector. To many, he was as corrupt as they come and too far gone for anyone to be able to reach. When Zaccheus heard that Jesus was coming and more than likely that he heard what happened with blind Bartimaeus getting his sight back, he made a plan and ran to his tree. He climbed for that one change to catch a glimpse of Jesus that he might know that God was revisiting and redeeming his people.

So the fact that Jesus would stop and ask to come to his house and to stay over was beyond anything that he could have imagined. It should not be lost that Jesus had no where to eat and nowhere to sleep that night. So hospitality was a must for Zaccheus – custom demanded nothing less. He gave his hospitality willingly and gladly. He got to walk with Jesus down the very same street that Jesus in morning would have to climb to continue on his way to Jerusalem and to his own tree as they walked to Zaccheus’ house.

Meanwhile, as they made their way to his house the religious people started grumbling to each other and asking if there was not someone better to hang out with for an evening because as it is , he has gone to be the guest of a public sinner. To show what the encounter with Jesus had done for him, Zaccheus openly declares that he commits to give half of what he has to the poor. Then he takes it a step further and says that anyone he has injured can come and lay claim as if he had stole sheep from them; repay them fourfold for the offense. These are not small amounts of money for Zaccheus was clearly a wealthy man. It makes clear that where there is repentance there is also joy and grace. Jesus himself points out in the Gospels that there is more rejoicing over one who repents than over 10 people coming into the kingdom who do not need to repent. Being willing to give and to offer of one’s won substance to the lives of other people is a sign of the fruit of repentance. Zaccheus took the time to stop and to stand still so that he could declare boldly for his neighbours to hear what God has done in his life – that he has been visited and been redeemed... and Jesus himself declares that Zaccheus is a son of Abraham.  That is also why Jesus declares that salvation has come and entered into Zaccheus’ life and house – he is living the message!

I think we miss something important in North American Christianity. Faith is not a formula to be figured out and solved. It is a life that must be lived in faith to the fullest and to work out our salvation every day with fear and trembling. To do anything less, is to stay up in the tree instead of coming down and going home. Moreover, with Jesus’ tree, we can see not only how far God will come down to climb this tree and call us to come home, it shows us how far we have fallen and need to be redeemed through coming to repentance.

One of the things that the series of stories in this part of Luke’s Gospel wants to communicate is this: be careful of appearances because they are often deceiving. Just because someone thinks that they are “All that and a bag of chips” does not that they have it all together. I have know people who could fake it real well for a time. And it also means that one cannot judge someone to be impossible for God to rescue; to be beyond the reach of God’s tree and mercy. Blessed are those who know their need of salvation for they shall know the arms of God.

Is your heart, are you open to that same invitation? Will you come down out of your tree and come home that you might be rescued and transformed by God and for the sake of your community?

Jason+

Praying the Liturgy in everyday life

The Gospel this week (Luke 18.9-14), continues on the need for prayer and to keep praying without losing hope. I am reminded of some things that Jesus has said when I read this passage like, “I did not come to call the righteous but sinners...” and “Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy not sacrifice.”  (Luke 5.32; Matthew 9.35)

The setting is a worship service where there are these two men, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. In the practice of ministry I have notice that there are two types of worshipers: those who believe that they are fine the way they are and then there are those who know there need of God’s mercy. One who is more concerned about himself and the other worried about how God sees him and knows that he is a day late and a dollar short. This puts him a position of contrition and humility while the other stands and blithering way, talking more to himself, thinking that God cared to listen.

It reminds me of a time early in my ministry when there was a change of Rectors in the large parish were I was serving at the time. Many times over several months and in many different ways and venues, the new priest thought it okay to be publicly critical of how I prayed and when I prayed, because to him, I “prayed too much.” The prayers were too long and it took too much time from other things that might be more important. Thing is, I have always found that I often end up in places and spaces that I was always needed but rarely anticipated. I have seen and continue to see that God uses me to help people even when they and/or I am aware that this is what is going on.

To me, prayer is more than the words that we offer to God – though the words we offer are important. Prayer is more than the silences that we keep and the things that the Sprit prays for us when we are a loss and do not know what to pray. Prayer is the attitude with which we approach God, people and life in general. We need to live this life as if we are in continuing mode of worship. Offering ourselves to people knowing that we have God’s grace to spend and to be spent ourselves in the service of the kingdom.

The Pharisee’s prayer was one out of his peripheral vision: letting God how great and awesome I am and how much better I am than the person next to me... just in case God has not noticed the other because I am so great.

The tax collector was focused on God, who God is and then who he saw himself to be in the light of the glory of God. This man experienced the holiness and judgement of God. Because he submitted and humiliated himself he finds that God’s mercy and grace are effective and real – he gets to go home with the understanding that he has got what he needed: mercy and forgiveness. These things have the potential to transform his life, his family’s life and the community and nation around him. The tax collector went home justified because it is God who forgave him and justified him, not someone else.

How then will you live your liturgy this week. Will you pour your heart out to God in prayer or will it us be a passing fancy? A thing you do to get God to give you what to think you want?

Jason+

Persisting in prayer, justice and equality

The Gospel this week (Luke 18.1-8) has three important words connected to it: prayer, persistence and justice. The first two I know lots about and the last, because of its usage in parts of the Church these days, is something that makes me cringe. The word justice makes me cringe for one simple reason: most people don’t know what it is they are asking for when the ask God for justice. It gets applied to the personal situation and to what might be perceived as the unfairness of the current social state of the community, but that is not what justice is. What people are searching for is not justice, but equality.  So let’s carefully consider what justice and equality might look like from a biblical perspective and then look at our own situation to consider how it might be understood and applied.

Jesus in Gospel lesson, tells his disciples and the Pharisees and the lawyers who are gathered around him talking, the parable of the unjust judge. At first I thought about pointing out the widow and how she harangued the judge until he decided in her favour. But then I remembered being thought that we need to learn what we can about God and how God acts and reacts, which puts the judge in focus.

So let me ask you, how do you pray? What is your thing to do? My normal thing to do is to come to the office and the first 20 minutes and the last 10 minutes of the day are spent in prayer – for the people I minister to, for the people I minister with and for other needs that I want to mention to God – things that I think are important both personally and pastorally. And I would note that there are things which I pray for a long time for as well as things that I have received almost immediately.

The parable encourages us to consider carefully the nature of God and how God judges people, situations and other things. And if we are going to do that we need to consider Scripture to hear how others have experienced God. Take the prophet Isaiah for example. Consider these words from Isaiah experiencing his call to be a prophet: 

And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke. Then I said, "Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts. (Is.6.4-6 NASB)

Isaiah went to worship and was allowed a glimpse of God for who he really was – he got to see the glory of the LORD (Elohim). Thing is, after seeing God’s big toe, he then was confronted by reality. Seeing who God was made Isaiah turned and considered himself and the life of the nation, he could see things he did not before. He saw the state of his life before God and the state of his people and the Land they had be given by God. It made him crumble. The passage goes on to note that his lips are touched by a holy coal from the altar and then answers the call to go and speak to the people what he has seen and what God needs to communicate with them. God asked, “Who will go for us, whom shall I send?” and Isaiah replied, “Here I am. Send me. “

What I take from that is this: we need to pray. We need to pray to gain the attitude of altitude. We need to spend time in God’s presence. And we need to learn to pray for what is requisite and necessary for the body as well as the soul. It is not so much about how you pray it, but rather that you mean it. We need to learn to pray and not give up because we are praying in the face of the reality of the coming of God’s kingdom. The world will act to preserve itself and its own interests because it is all about self interest and self preservation. For the Church, this life is more than just about having lots of faith or possessing the correct doctrine, (thought there is need of them both) it is about the pursuit of divine justice because in that is the Church’s hope. The Church must persevere through trouble and hardship wade through whatever besets it.

This does bring me back to the two people in the parable. The widow does persist in seek a judgement in her favour. So much so, that the judge who does not care about man or God actually beginning to worry about self preservation. He chooses to vindicate her in her small financial matter because he will be the worse for wear if he does not.

Consider then how God answers prayer: is it unfair that we have to wait? Why shouldn’t prayer be like a drive through window where we can order what we want an pick it up so we can get on with our busy little lives. Answer? There is a cost and there is a time. Somewhere in the middle of trying to get what we want there is a cost. Besides, a delay is not a no – what about timing. An answered prayer may take time to answer. Maybe there is something that God needs to do in us before a prayer is answered. Otherwise, how do we develop and grow as people of faith if it is not taught and tested? When he returns, will he find faith in the world? Wouldn’t you want to be one of those people? it is God who meets out justice because in his eyes we are all equal. 

Jason+ 

Of thanksgiving, faith and mercy

Should we not just learn to get along with other people’s ingratitude? If God has to deal with it from people shouldn’t we learn to live with it as well?

The Gospel for this week (Luke 17.11-19) has an interesting, biting edge to it, especially when one considers that this is our time to give God thanks for another year of harvest, hunting and provision. We catch up with Jesus, his disciples and the rest of the folks who are following Jesus as they make their way to Jerusalem and to what is to be sure, a confrontation with authority of gargantuan proportions. And we are not totally sure of where they are except to say they are in the North and therefore are in foreign territory.  That’s important to the piece of Scripture that we are studying but I will come back to that. It is enough for the moment to know that they are in an uncomfortable place and in an increasingly uncomfortable moment.

Jesus and the crowd enter a village and as they do, they are approached by 10 men who were lepers. They did what was required of them by society. They stayed a respectful, careful distance away and gave warning that they want to speak to Jesus. In fact they cried out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” They make a plea for mercy so that they can be restored to wider society and their former lives with the families and so on.

It is important to point out that not all of the lepers are Judeans (or Southerners). A least one of them is a local Samaritan a “Northerner”. The North and the South don’t get along on much. Often they would disagree and argue over things not unlike the arguments currently going on in the Anglican Church of Canada on matters of human sexuality. People often segregate each other by geography and theology in the Church. It is the same now as it was then. And we are more comfortable in arguments and thinking that is the way to unity than working to discover and do what God has called us to do and actually do it.

So let’s start with giving thanks... are you thankful for what God has given you in the past year? Are we as a congregation thank for how the Lord has supported us over the last year? How often do we receive something from another person and thank them for the gift but then forget to thank God for making it possible? We are often swift to recognize and call out the inhospitality and the ungraciousness of others but at the same time fail to see it in ourselves?

Giving thanks and remembering God in doing so is at the core of the Eucharist. We take the time on Sunday mornings to give thanks to God for all that God has done and is doing in our lives both as individuals and as a faith community. Even the very word eucharist means, “thanksgiving”. In taking time to give thanks, makes us both stronger and a better community. We do not let those things that we have, buildings, theologies and spiritual gifts to be our possessions though we received them from the hands of Christ himself.  By taking the time to give thanks on a regular basis, we kept our possessions and our theologies from being idols and ourselves from being self idolatrous. We are blessed not because of being in possession of the gifts we have received but rather that we know and are known by the Giver of every good and perfect gift.

Faith as an ongoing act of thanksgiving and praise, is not a choice and commitment to a particular set of beliefs and doctrines but rather a striving to remain within the relationship and calling to abide in God and in Christ on a daily basis. Giving thanks allows for us to recognize the presence of the living God in this place and to understand that wherever we are, every patch of land that we inhabit, is a sacred place. And because God is in this sacred place, he is in this city. Therefore we need to seek the welfare of this place because we are sent to it.

One last thought. Jesus asked why only the local Northerner returned and not the other nine. All ten men, this little community of lepers were healed, right? So where is the thanks and praise that is due? Is it not possible that the one man who returned found something in his healing that the others took for granted? Mercy gets us out trouble. Grace makes us whole, an entire person. Faith makes us ready for what’s next, for the life that is yet to come in God’s kingdom. Faith makes us ready for salvation. How many people, having been shown mercy and given grace by God for healing for get to be thankful, even on a weekly basis?

Jason+