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.
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.
When I was a teen, I had the
trip of a lifetime in going to what was then the Soviet Union. It was in the
time of Conservatism in the West (Canada had Brian Mulroney as PM and the
Americans had Ronald “Ray Guns” Reagan as their President). And there was the
evil empire of Communist Russia lead by Mikhail Gorbachev. The cold war between
Russian and the West was in full bloom. Along with about 35 others from my high
school, I went on a trip to Russia in the Spring of 1986.
One of the things that I
learned through my Russia experience was that school children were actively discouraged
from being people of faith, people of prayer. Children were asked to sit at
their desks and pray to God, asking for God to provide candy. They would wait
for a few moments. When no candy appeared, the teacher would point out that God
has failed to provide for them. Then the teacher would give them candy and tell
the children that the State and party could provide for them and that there was
no God. Their trust and faith needed to be in the Party and in their
government. The Communist government of the day was atheistic and the Party
believed that so should all the people be.
The trip took me by and into a
number of beautiful former church buildings that had been turned into museums
by the state since officially there was no God, and thus no need for prayer.
Each city we visited had beautiful churches and cathedrals, monasteries and
convents from Vyborg on the Finish border all the way into Moscow. Time and
again, we would see women, with their heads covered, enter into the churches,
they would “disappear” for a bit and return again, seemingly out of thin air. I
learned later that they were in these places to pray and to receive the
sacrament from the clergy – though it was totally unofficial and unsanctioned
by the State.
My trip to the USSR and my
encounters with Russian Orthodox Christians came back to my mind this week as I
am getting ready to travel for holidays and trying to keep my prayer and
spiritual life in order. The disciples come to Jesus early one morning and
respectfully wait for Jesus to finish his Morning Prayer time with the Father.
They knew the place and they went and waited and listened to Jesus as he prayer
to the Father. Then, they asked Jesus to teach them to pray, so that they could
be like John’s disciples, only better because the Lamb had taught them to pray.
Jesus’ disciples wanted to be one up and one better than John’s disciples.
So Jesus obliged them. He said
them, “When you pray, pray this way: Our
Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done
on earth as in heaven. Give us this day, our daily bread. Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us not into temptation but deliver
us from evil.” So if we want to examine how we ought to pray, let’s ready to
have what has been taught:
·Know who God is... He is God and he is Father.
He has revealed this through Jesus, his Son. It is how he wants to be known. In
fact, there is a place in the New Testament where we call out to him as “Abba”
or “Daddy” Father. Knowing God as Father in such away runs against everything
we see in our culture today where fathers are concerned. We seems to have
lowered the status of father from know who our father is through God to
thinking he is Peter Griffin of Family Guy or Homer Simpson. This is not who
God our Father is. He is caring and compassionate, loving and merciful as well
as all powerful and holy. God is present to each and to all, ready to respond
to each and to all according to his purpose and perfect will for each and for
all.
·Know that God’s kingdom is coming to this earth.
Are we ready to do his will on earth as it is done in heaven? Are we ready to
have God’s will done in earth, in us as it is done heaven? Living the way God
calls the world to live does not begin with someone else. Living out the
kingdom starts with you and with me. We cannot run away from it. If we are
God’s then it begins by allowing God to do the things in us, to bring us to the
coming perfection at the end of time when we will seek to do his will and serve
God in the way that God intended it to be all along. When we pray your kingdom
come, your will be done we have to be willing to let go of our agendas, our
lists and demands and allow God to bring things to pass in his way and in his
time.
·God knows what’s in our hearts, the question is
do we? Prayer is not so much about the
laundry lists we like to make as it is about preparing the person to be ready
to be an answer to prayer... and not necessarily one’s own prayers. Often when
we pray we are being moved to see the world for how it out of what God sees. If
you cannot steer a parked car what makes you think God can steer you if you are
unwilling to be moved by what you see?
·Don’t let
the good become the enemy of the best God has for you. There is a
temptation to see almost anything as an answer to prayer because we want answers
and we wanted them yesterday. We need to be people of patience who carry an
attitude of fortitude; people who will persist to seek God’s best not just what
we can scrape together in this moment and make it work for now. God’s life,
lived in God’s grace will never lack his blessing. Persist in this life that
you have been given that not only will you be blessed but so will the people
you love most. Prayer is not just about you and God: it is about the community
to which you are connected, that through you God will bless them too. So pray and live alongside your prayers. Don’t
give up - persist in prayer.
·Recognize
that God will give what is right to give, when it is right to give it. Know
that some times, God for the good of the object of your affections might say
not now or no, not this way. God’s timing is perfect because he can see it all.
And we know that God is working all things for the good of those who love him
and are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28). We are being conformed
to the likeness of Jesus by the Father so that we can be like our brother. And
through our brother, we will become more than conquers though him who has loved
us. In God’s way, in God’s time we will be blessed.
·Contrition and confession: remember who you are
in the face of a holy, powerful glorious God. We are human, formed of the dust
and to the dust we shall return. Remember that God delighted in thinking about
you when he created first in his mind, then in forming us in the dust of this
creation and then seeing us formed in our mother’s womb. Remember to say you’re
sorry for falling short and for missing the mark. Always keep your accounts
with the Father short because the Father is merciful and swift to bless. Ask to
be healed and to be strengthened that you might live for God.
·Pray in a way that draws others into the
experience – Prayer and worship are not just about the words spoken: it is also
about the unspoken desires of the heart and the silences we keep that we might
here the still small voice of the Spirit who is within us. Seek and ask of God
the way a child does of a parent. Persist with honesty and recognizing that if we
know how to give to our children when they ask, how much more is God willing to
respond with his best when we seek and ask of him? If you worship and pray in
this way others will follow. So bring what is on your heart and the things that
you believe only God can deal with and put that on the altar as part of your
liturgy. Then you will see what difference that makes in your life beyond the
walls of the church building.
Take time this week to go to
your prayer closet. Take time once you are there to celebrate your Father and to bless his name
and the things he is doing in you and around you. Remember who you are in the
face of a holy and merciful God and give thanks for the abundance of grace and
goodness. Pray that your Father’s will shall be done in you and through you, that
his kingdom will reign on earth as it is in heaven. It is going to be a risk,
but one that is going to be necessary to take, if the kingdom is going to be
extended.
Martha was the one serving in this week’s Gospel. It must
have been somewhere away; away from the house in Bethany because Martha was in
a flap! She could not find what she was looking for and she wanted to fix a
nice meal because it had probably been a while since Jesus and the 12 had eaten
a proper, home cooked meal. She wanted this meal to be some special because of
that. Yet nothing was going according to plan. Everything was extra work and Mary had disappeared on her so she was rattling around the kitchen with her
frustration at the situation coming promptly to a rolling boil. She was ready
to spill over like a pot, cooking rice with too much water in it.
Then she, stormed out the group and spotted her sister
sitting at the feet of the Master, just like she was “one of the guys”!
"Teacher, don’t you care that I have been left alone to do all this work? Tell
my sister to help me out!"
With compassion for the work and the spirit of Martha,
Jesus points out to the flustered chief cook and bottle washer, “Martha, dear
Martha... Mary has made a better choice and she won’t have what she is
receiving taken away from her.” While some might consider this a ‘slap down’for impatience, it is
not meant to be – just an eye opener and a refocusing of priorities where all of the disciples are concerned. Martha’s
service was being accepted. What Jesus wasn’t going to accept was the
worry and the anxiety that Martha was expressing because of the elaborate
agenda she had set. One dish would suffice. It did not have to be a major
feast. The extra time and energy could be put to other, better uses. As it was
once apply said by a missionary, “God’s work, done God’s way, will not lack God’s supply. “
So what does one do when you're in a spot? What do you do when you think things are going to hell in a hand cart and you cannot tell one end of the egg from the other? Here are some thoughts about serving in the royal
priesthood of all believers:
1)Provision:
There are countless times recounted in
Scripture when God has provided for his people. He provided a son for Sarah and
an heir for Abraham; Abraham found the ram when he need it for the altar
instead of sacrificing Isaac. God gave Hannah a son and she gave Samuel back to
God that he might be a powerful prophet; and be the king maker. God led his
people out of bondage in Egypt, through the Red Sea and fed them in the years
out in the Sinai Desert. God provided a way home from exile in Babylon. And
most of all God have us all Jesus that we might have a way home to him. We need
to recognize that even the poorest man is equipped with everything that God can
give him. On the mountain of the Lord, it will be provided. Eat and be filled
then feed that others that you might be followed into the kingdom.
2)Prayer:
Where prayer is focused, power falls. I remember a gentleman telling me that he
would not pray the Lord’s Prayer because he didn’t need bread, he had lots in
his house. The point of prayer is not to get things but to communicate thanks
and ask “those things which are requisite and necessary for the body as well
for the soul (BCP).”Give us this day our daily bread is to ask God to provision
the day and the demands that are going to be place on our resources so that we
can be faithful to proclaim the kingdom, that the kingdom would finally come. Prayer
provides the connection between God and ourselves, both personally and
corporately to have the power and the direction we need to proclaim and the
power to do it well.
3)Power:
there is a little chorus we used to sing all the time: “For I am building a people
of power, and I am making a people of praise. We are given by God through the
Spirit “dynamos” or dynamite. Power in God’s kingdom is not given to
those who rule but to those who serve. Leadership is not about position,
provision or power. It is about those who serve and those who need to be
served. Power is given to enable the servant to serve the least, the last and
the lost not ourselves. Divine power is not given so much to turn the world
upside down as it is given to turn the Church inside out.
4)Persistence:
Christianity is a way of life that we need to persist in: day by day, day after
day. It is the only way in which the Church is going to grow and mature into
the Body of Christ. We need in our modern society, to learn how to persist in
prayer, in wisely using the provisions we are given and sharing, and operate sensibly
with the power and authority to serve and care for those who are around us as
neighbours. We need to persist in blessing and being blessed. Blessings are not
just for fair weather but for the every day – fair or foul weather. We continue
to sail on, even when life is heard and the going not so clear. Life may not be
what we would call “fair” but we do know that God is always faithful.
5)Proclamation:
we are to announce the coming of the one, true King and to tell how God has
provided for you and for the community, and to let people know that the same
kingdom is coming near to them, whether they respond or not. When the world
recognizes that we are being provided for, that we are active in prayer and in
being answers to prayer, in being powerful and persistent servants of the
least, the last and the lost in the name of Christ, then do we make the kingdom
fully known to this world of God’s.
There will always be the worries of ministry and somehow will
some things get done. Nevertheless, when we recognize that there is provision, prayer, power, the need for persistence and the need to proclaim the greatness of God's grace and love, we are well
on our way home.
I can remember the first time I ever got to drive an
ambulance “Code 3”. That’s when you know things are serious because it is
lights and sirens. You need to get there and you need to get there as swiftly
and yet as safely as one can. Driving an emergency vehicle does mean that you
get to drive however you want. It means that there are extra rules and one must
drive with extra care so that you can get wherever it is that one needs to be
without hurting everyone around you, including yourself.
I had undergone a lot of training to be in that driver’s
seat. We had to learn how to drive our large ambulance and how to handle it
under a variety of conditions so that we could get there. Then we needed to be
able to assess the people who needed our help, treat their wounds, illnesses
and if necessary transport port them to a place where they were going to get a
higher level of care.
How does this relate to the week’s Gospel? In a lot of
ways!
Where, first of all, are the bystanders? Where did they
go? Why didn’t one of them wait with the injured man. They have left. One of
them had his cell phone and called in the 911 emergency that had us coming,
lights flashing and siren blaring. We had to use the search light in the
growing dark but thankfully we did find the man. He was in the ditch, nearly
hidden from view. He was bruised bleeding and near death.
Consider and evaluate the scene of this incident: The
injured man appears alone. There does not appear to be anyone else with him.
Thus there is no one else who is injured and in need of assessment and
treatment. Plus there is little to no threat to the team in the vehicle. That’s
important. Those who committed the crime have fled the area with their ill gotten
booty. We can get out, assess and begin to treat the injured man.
This is simple and easy enough. It is the ABC’s of
emergency medicine. Is his airway open and is he breathing. Yes. But his
breathing is shallow. Give him oxygen. Has he got a pulse? Yes? Good. Is he
bleeding? Yes. Get bandages and pressure on the wounds. Get a “C-collar” to stabilize
his neck. Get him on a back board the main stretcher and then get him in the vehicle
so that we can get him to a place where we can care for him better... With me
so far? We are on our way to the nursing station and relaying information to
the nurse so that she and the staff are ready. We spend time at the nursing
station with the man and the nurse, helping and caring for the injuries until
it is time to take him to the airport.
It is a quiet ride to the airport where we watch the air ambulance
coming. There is lots of lights on the spot where we make the transfer of the
man in our care, wishing him a safe journey and thanking the staff on the
flight who will take charge of our ward until he gets to hospital further
away. Then it is back to the fire
department to park in the ambulance’s bay where we clean up, restock our
supplies and ready the ambulance for the next time that it is needed. We know
we will be going again. It is a matter of time.
The focus is on the care and love shown toward a person
we have never met before. We care for him as a person, tending to his wounds,
reassuring him in his fears and comforting him in the pain of the journey. Isn’t
that what God in Christ does for us? Isn’t that what we as a community of faith
and of ministry are meant to do for the city of people around us?
People will only know what we believe by how we love each
other. Its how the world measures who God is. It is why Jesus commanded us to
love each other as he has loved us. He loved us so much that he put his life on
the line. In the cold and in the dark, as he surrendered himself, we were on
his mind. Can we learn to selflessly love each other, having been shown by
Christ how to do it? Will we not allow the Spirit to move us in to acts of
kindness that will bless, rescue and heal people who are hurt wounded and dying
spiritually as well as physically? Remember: the Lord visits and redeems his
people. God is seeking to rescue that which is lost. His people. You and me. Will
you let him?
Every so often I like to take
a “time out” to reflect on ministry. Not just about where I have been and where
I need to go. I try to reflect on what I have learned and what I still need to
learn. I consider what I have taught and what I still need to teach to those
who are around me. What do they need to hear, to see and to experience?
The Gospel lesson this week
helps us to focus our personal and our corporate missions and to, as someone
once wisely said, “Keep the main thing, the main thing.” It is a lesson that we
as people and we as Church need to keep on learning over and over again. We are
called to announce the kingdom to the people, places and spaces that we find
ourselves connected to and with. We are commissioned to go to our appointed
places and spaces and uphold the kingdom and its values, constantly and
consistently that people and places would know that the kingdom of God is real
and true.
So how do we do this – how do
we uphold the kingdom? First we need to recognize that we are sent people, as
those disciples were. We are sent before the Lord’s “flinty” face to prepare is
way because he is coming to them and he will visit and redeem them. And we are
sent “without” guarantee of success and security of person. Ministry makes us
vulnerable. We are sent without budgets, strategic plans; without libraries and
computers. We are sent into hardship and into danger like lambs amongst a pack
of wolves. We proclaim our scarcity though our learning to depend on God and lean
on each other to provide the things that are needed for ministry to the people
of the places and spaces.
And in the going we are to
take the peace we have with God to other people. When we enter a country, a
city, a home we are to pray God’s shalom over each and every country, city and
home we enter. We do so not just to try and remove the wrong but also to pray
in the abundance of God’s blessing and justice so that the wrong and the sin
cannot displace the good God intends to offer. We are to keep in front of us at
all times, that we are about the kingdom and God’s business. We are to uphold
the kingdom and its life.
We also learn about how to
deal with people’s reactions to the kingdom being announced. If we are not
heeded – move on and take nothing with you – not even the dust on your shoes. Leave
it behind so that it does not stay with you. Ministry is about making the
kingdom and its life known and available to others. We are christened into
this. We are not responsible for being successful nor for the failures do we experience.
What we must be is faithful and learn to leave the rest to God almighty. This
Church, this city cannot afford a “no biggy Gospel”. If the message we share
with others is true and if it is real, then it is a big deal because it is life
giving and we need to share it with those we find around us.
We have a unique role for each
other and with each other. We are entrusted with the Good News of God in Christ:
that God is visiting and redeeming his people. The word of God is living and
active in this city and that it is incarnational (that it has flesh and bone).
We are being drawn into this flesh and bone ministry of God to help birth a new
generation of Christians in Canada and for the world. We are to be humble and
possess humility so that as we encounter others, they can respond, be
transformed and live the life of the kingdom with us and never be the same
again.
So what can we accomplish for
the kingdom of God in the next week?
If there is one thing that I have notice about Christians
of all stripes of late, it is the struggle over keeping churches going. This
was on my mind when I went to visit a parishioner recently. This person is very
elderly. This person’s hearing and eyesight are nearly gone. Age limits
mobility. Age limits time that can be spent somewhere and doing something. And
yet there is a remarkable resilience in this person who made two things very
clear as we visited: (1) Christ is her King and (2) she can pray because she
knows her King is listening and will act. And then she began to sing a little
chorus to me about following Jesus, leading a holy life, shunning the wrong and
choosing the write and the Lord will make a way for her and me.
So this visit made me stop and think: what does it mean
to be a follower of Christ, in this digital age? That’s because we live in a
society that sees people increasingly isolated and insulated from each other because
of where we live, how we live and most importantly what we live with. Canadians
are increasingly living in large urban and suburban areas, in large homes. They
seldom get to know their neighbours and spend time with them. People are
avoiding community clubs, organizations and fraternal societies in favour of
being in front of the television, the computer, on the phone or on a game
system. The days of the kind of “community” that my great grandparents knew are
virtually gone. Affluence allows us to pay somebody else to do the things we
don’t like or want to do. We have become
a society who will “like” something on Facebook, but will never really buy into
that thing or be in a real, substantive relationship with that person. We live
in world where we believe that we can do it all on our own, leaving both God
and each other out of the equation.
The Gospel this week confronts that kind of thinking and
that kind of living on different levels. There is nothing new about humans
wanting their own way, wanting it how they want it and wanting it when they
want it. It has been going on since the first people rejected God and began to
sin. Oh, just in case you think that there is something new or improved about
you, me and us over them, remember this: there is nothing “original” about your
sin. One of the “in” thing these days is to claim something like, “Oh, I am not
religious, I’m spiritual.” In fact I was reading an article recently that there
is a new trend in North American Christianity where apparently it is cool to
use profanity in one’s speech to prove that you are a rebel unfettered or
otherwise restricted by the Church and its rules.
Well consider carefully then what is said in the Gospel.
First of all, we are told that Jesus walks with a “flinty” face towards his
goal – the city of Jerusalem and his date with the cross. He found his resolve to
live and to walk as God wants him to walk. Going into the capital and facing
what will happen is a choice. His choice. It was not fate or an accident that
put him there. It was not a cruel joke nor was it a simple mistake. It was
Jesus’ choice to go. He decided and then he walked; others went with him. Along
the way there are various people and a certain community who see Jesus and they
react to the fact that he is going to Jerusalem and apparently to his death. The
community rejects Jesus because he favours going to Jerusalem rather than
hanging out and agreeing with them. Jesus is in charge and is free to serve. He
knows where he is going and knows what it is going to cost to get us there. A couple
of his followers go to him and ask to be allowed to call down fire from heaven
like Elijah did on the prophets of Baal to wipe out the village to teach them
and the rest of the world whose right and whose wrong. Jesus resists this idea,
telling them to keep quiet and keep going.
Then a man known to
Jesus comes and makes a grand gesture by publicly announcing that will
go wherever Jesus goes and do has he is told. A brave thought but there is a
problem or two here. First, there is the issue of choice. Those who follow
Jesus don’t just choose to follow him. They are chosen by the Master. He gets
to decide and he calls. Thus we need to make sure that we are ready to answer
that call and to know what we have to bring with us when we leave. We will
travel far. We will travel light and we will travel fast. There is urgency in
what we have to tell people. He is King and He is coming again. We need to let them know Jesus is King and
that he is coming. Therefore we need to make the city ready. We need to
straighten the road and prepare the streets. Then we need to go out and meet
him as he comes to us and comes to this city. And as we work away at welcoming
the King we need to act in his name and do some of the following:
·When you go leave. There is no reason to agree with
Jesus and then do nothing he has asked of you.
·Walk with resolve. That’s what it means to have
a flinty face. Count the costs both of what it will take for you to follow
Jesus and what happens if you stay home.
·Talk with love and with urgency. What you have
to share is important news. It has both eternal benefits and eternal consequences.
We need to share with people about the life, the kingdom and our King.
·When you leave, leave alone what you leave
behind. It is hard work to plow the field, scatter the seed, patiently watch
and tend the field, and harvest the crop at the right time. Constantly looking
back means the furrows are crooked which makes more work and causes pain and
pressure for the farm. Learn to let go of the past so that the future is
bright.
·GO even if it means that you miss your father’s
blessing. There is now time like the present to go and share the kingdom with
the city around you. Our heavenly Father who is the source of each and every
blessing will provide what you need and you progress and walk your way to him.
Therefore, let us go in peace, to love and to serve the
Lord, to build his city and drawn in his community and tell his people, he is King and he is coming home.
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