I've got the power!

Our Gospel this week is Matthew 21.23-32 and it concerns itself with power and authority to teach and preach. It occurs to me that in this world, there are many who want authority and many more who seek power, thinking that possessing these things will make them secure and safe.  What Christians often miss is that power and authority are not for personal use but for the good of the community in which they participate. Power and authority are given to the Church by God to serve him in the world and others through his power motivated by God love and compassion for the world. All power and authority belong to God. Power and authority are gifts, given to be held and used for the sake of others not to be used as weapons for maintaining the status quo of the powerful and the gifted.

The strength of a Christian’s life is the witness that is put forth for the world to see. You see, it is not enough to come within four walls and pay what amounts to lip service to a creed and expect that this is all that there is to the Christian faith. If you do get involved and you don’t become active, then how do you know that you actually believe? I know many people around me these days who will openly say, “Oh I’m not religious. I spiritual.” It is not that they don’t want to be identified as believing in God, it is that they do not want to identify or have others identify them as being a part of the Church. they stand back and look at the state of the Church and recognize that the Church in North America has moved away from the teachings of Scripture to try and be popular and trendy so that people will give to support burgeoning budgets for buildings and programs.  Show me a person who claims to be “spiritual” and I will study them and explain their religious liturgy to you.

This is why we need to work on our own relationships with God and with each other so that we can bring a different, a better relationship for the disaffected, the disillusioned, the disinterested to discover. Jesus came to us to restore and rebuild those relationships. And if that means a little death for the institution of the Church and the personal agendas and plans of the Church’s leadership, so be it. We need to learn again to listen to the voice of the Lord and to submit ourselves personally and corporately work together for the sake of the coming life and kingdom.

Don’t just have a faith – even the devil manages this. Have the courage and the conviction of that faith to let your faith move you into places and spaces where he can bless you even more than you are now, that you might serve him in greater and mightier ways and the kingdom through your ministry combined with all our various ministries, builds for the day when he comes again and the kingdom arrives in its fullness. He will give you the power (energy) you need to do this and the authority to accomplish it. He who has called you, is faithful and he will do it.

Jason+

Offer mercy, not a sacrifice

“Why does your Teacher eat with those traitorous tax collectors and other publicly known sinners?” It is an interesting question from this week’s Gospel (Matthew 9.9-13 for St. Matthew’s Day). It is often assumed in our faith that because we are formed in God’s image, we are like God and therefore, God must be like us. The ways in which Jesus acts and speaks, the ways in which he loves and heals are totally different from us. This is seen most clearly in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.

The cross and death of Jesus shows us how God acts, how God brings salvation to us. The Cross also shows us who we are and it is not a pretty picture. God in the Old Testament rejects the kind of religion that allows for someone to praise God with fine sounding prayers and great but allows the heart to remain empty and far away for the realities of how God sees us and how God is at work in the word, especially through his own Son. The question posed above operates on an assumption: that God has to act in the same ways that the very religious do. This is an assumption not only of the religious elite, it is also an belief of those who are not involved with organized religion. This is why Jesus challenges those around him to, “Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy not sacrifice’”

It is more important, as I understand it, for us as people of faith, to be people who are active in offering mercy. What that means is we are willing to go and seek out the least, the last and the lost and stand between them and their impending disasters and call them, draw them to yourself. We do this so that we can have the opportunity to show compassion and in doing that, to show them who Jesus is for us and who Jesus wants to be for them.

What is the better faith? To offer and empty sacrifice and think one’s self safe and righteous before a holy God or consider the blessing of being merciful, risking one’s own life – remember the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.

The Gospel this Sunday is for the Church; to get us to question our loyalties and priorities. The Gospel challenges the long held prejudices about neighbours and strangers we find both outside and even more inside the Church. We need to offer God, the neighbour, the stranger, and each other a superior religion, than that which we have offered in the past. We need to learn what it is to be merciful and sacrificial, first for God and then for neighbour.  We need to learn what it means to live a life in Christ that is going to enable and encourage others around us to live that kind of life with us and for others. We need to offer the same grace, mercy and blessing that continue to transform our lives as we await the day of Jesus Christ.  If we go on and read the rest of the chapter, we see what we need to do – restore, heal, forgive and when necessary, raise the dead even thought those around us are going to scoff and laugh at us to scorn.

Who are the least, the last and the lost of this city? Who are the shunned people of our congregation that need to be called back to the life at the Table? Perhaps we are “the community of no consequence” in the eyes of the world because we are seen as weak, uniformed, and useless but that is not how God sees us. Maybe we are the gathering of the unwanted and the unpopular but that does not remove our identity in Christ.  And who just are we? We are his called, his chosen, and his sent people. We are God’s people and we are powerful in the eyes of the Almighty Father. God can do through us more than we can ask or even begin to imagine.

Why does Jesus eat with traitors and sinners? Because he calls them home to the Table and to the Great Wedding feast. He calls those who will listen and who will live at the Table and eat a merciful meal and not just think of themselves.  

Jason+

What do you see when you look at the cross?

What does the cross mean to me when I look at it? What the cross mean to us as a congregation, faith community? It is a question that was put to me earlier this week in a chat that I use a part of my sermon prep. I can remember people being horrified by the movie, “The Passion of the Christ’ and its well documented violence and brutality... but what I find we often missed is the last moments of the movie, and of the Passion narratives themselves. Jesus is raised from death and leaves the tomb. I have placed the video from Youtube for you to watch and would encourage you to do so before you and I continue...

So often, we tend to forget that the plan for salvation was God’s idea. Jesus was born in a stable, to a faithful couple who were open to what God was planning to do in the life of their child, even thought it was hard to see and difficult to understand much less explain to anyone else. The disciples were in that same boat. They could see that God was doing something marvelous in the world through Jesus. They had their own thoughts on who Jesus was and what Jesus should do – to the point where one of them betrayed him into the hands of the authorities to try and force him into open war and rebellion as a way of trying to make a new world and a new life by force. Another disciple, after promising that he would be faithful to follow even though only the two of them be left to face death together, denies that he even knows the man he vowed to follow into the gates of death and hell. God chose the way that salvation is provided for us. God chose the method. God chose the time. Christ chose the nails.    

So when you look at the cross, what do you see? When I regard the cross, I remember him who possessed it as a throne. I see God’s mercy in the face of hostility. I see and hear forgiveness when pain is inflicted. I discover and possess grace for the time of suffering and brutality. I hear and experience the cry of accomplishment and victory at the completion of the mission. I know the helpfulness of community and am grateful for the hospitality of a borrowed tomb. Most of all, I see that the cross and the tomb are empty and that he who died, lives to be with us.

If that is foolishness to the world, so be it. It is self serving and self destructive to think only of one’s self and serve only number one. If you believe that you are fine and that you don’t need God or the community which he calls his own then I suspect that God will honour that choice. If the sight of the cross and the one who occupied it for your sake cannot make you see that he has your lumber and nails; that he has taken on himself your stripes and pain on himself, then you must be truly good and lost. And you have my pity.

God chose the foolish thing to confound the wise and the weakest way possible to make the strong stumble. Was it foolish for God to love us and to choose the nails? I believe that God deliberately chose to love us and to receive the nails. Those amongst the people of the world who would see, hear and respond to him and use the foolish/weak/the thing that are not to nullify the things that are wise/strong/that are seemingly permanent by the worldly standards. Those people are you and me, as God works out salvation among all his people. And he does it to make sure that this world will one day find itself upright and the way it was intended to be, as it was in the beginning.

So what do you see now, when you look at the cross?

Jason+

The reverberations of Heaven

I have realized of late that there is a real need for me as a Christian leader, as a pastor and a teacher of the Christian faith, to give more of a vision of not only what God is like and what life around him is like. I have come to realized that much of our teaching and preaching along with much of our music and worship tends to focus on God being great and awesome but at the same time transcendentally aloof. And we seem to like it that way. It is as if we are saying to God, “You can love me, but keep your distance. You can care for me, fulfill my demands and my needs but you are not allowed to impose yourself on me. You just keep your distance, do as we pray and everything will be just fine.”  It sounds like we think we have God over a barrel, up the proverbial creek and held hostage... doesn’t it? If we so have God in this heavenly headlock or arm bar (and we don’t) why is it that we so often pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”? Why do we ask for God to enable us to have his will done in us and to know the will of the living God, if we are not going to do anything about it?

The Gospel (Matthew 18.15-20) the last couple of weeks has been about binding and loosing. That is, whatever you bind or lose on earth will be bound or loosed in heaven. We need to recognize a couple of important things about God and God’s people. First, there is the reality that God has free will. God can choose to bless and to curse, to cure and to punish because his judgment in holy. Things are done in heaven according to only one will – God’s. Period. Finito. Kaput. End of story. Therefore, our daily work is to be about binding and loosing on earth below what we see bound and loosed in heaven. We are meant to work to give a perfect reflection of what happens in heaven above.

It does not mean that we are working to Plato’s idea of a utopian, ideal plane... by no means! All relationships, both with God and with one another are going to need work and are going to need to be maintained. What we do need to remember is that being connected to God means that He is going to have impact and influence on our nature, on our thoughts and our way of living. You see faith is not just about you, or even just about you and God. It is about God you and others. Community and faith are part and parcel of being Christian. I need you and you need me. And we have a personal and a collective need of God. And remember what Jesus said, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” The Church, the ekklesia (called out ones), are meant to be the core of the life and the society that is to come.

This is why Matthew’s Gospel takes some time to show how conflict in the community is to be dealt with. Every effort is to be made to win people over. Please note that it is not to show them where they are wrong but to win them over with grace, care and love. When all that has failed then, treat them as people Jesus loved best – outsiders. Faith is a great gift and it needs to be wielded very carefully so that the community is preserved and protected from bitter rancour and pointless debate and dissention. Expulsion from the Body of Christ is not just a matter of conflict management for harmonious congregational dynamics. Spiritually speaking, being expelled is a matter of eternal life and death. Remember, the things we say and do reverberate in heaven.

Therefore, we need to work to win over those with whom we disagree; with those who have tried to hurt us, who have worked to discredit us, and called our faith into question. We are to draw on the grace and the compassion, on the strength and patience that God can provide and win them over, overcoming with them and for them whatever it is that keeps you apart. In this way, we fulfill the command of Christ, “Love one another as I have loved you.”

Jason+

What kind of rock are you?

What kind of rock are you in the life of the Church and of the world? Are you the kind on which God and others can build up a spiritual temple? Or are you the kind of rock on which others stumble and fall and over which many will grumble and complain?

This is the dilemma that Peter and the other disciples face in the wake of last week when Peter made the great declaration of Jesus as the Messiah and this week of Peter’s denial of Jesus teaching of death and resurrection (Matthew 16.21-28). In essence, we need to ask ourselves a question – what kind of rock are we: both personally and corporately. It is going to be something that Peter is going to struggle with all the way through to that moment at the end of John’s Gospel (John 21) when Jesus restore Peter to fellowship after the denials of Maundy Thursday when he proclaimed “I do not know the man.”  

From that moment of first denial to his restoration on the beach, Peter was less of a foundation stone and more of a stumbling block. It took time before he objected to what Jesus was teaching about the way of his life and the cross, his death and resurrection. He had made the right proclamation in the face of all the world’s religions in Caesarea Philippi – Jesus is the one that had been anticipated. He was God’s anointed one – that is what “messiah” means. Where Peter and many of us fall down is in understanding who Jesus is what his mission was, is, and remain for us.   

Up to now, all the wonders of making wine from water, the healings, the teachings, the exorcisms and other signs were suppose to be leading up to something greater – a renewed Israel. The Messiah was supposed to make a country for the Jews free of the tyranny of Rome and other foreign powers. It would be a place of worship and religious righteousness; a kingdom that would bring back the glories of David and Solomon and that kingdom would never end.

The problem is that, such a kingdom would be self centered. We are tempted often to think that what is coming is about us: what we want and how we want it to be. We have our thoughts and agendas, our plans and mission statements and because of that, we often lose track of the fact that the life to come is not about us. The reality is, that life - life in the kingdom - is not about us. It is about God and the fact that God desires to love and to be in relationship with us. It is about God and being present to and in a relationship (personal and corporate) with the living God.

Jesus calls on all who will follow him to deny themselves, take up their crosses and follow him. Maybe we have been encountered by Jesus and by others as stumbling blocks. We are in fact now invited to get in line with Christ, learn what it means to love, to care and to follow and become the polished, living stones that we are meant to be. And remember that there is no such thing as a volunteer or part time disciple. The call to self denial, to living the cruciformed life, and to following faithfully behind the Lord Jesus begins in this moment. It begins with recognizing him as present to us in the eucharistic sacrament and then in going out into the world to do what he calls us to do. And in that we decide this week what kind of rock we are going to be – a foundation rock or a stumbling block. Which stone are you this week?

Jason+

How has the word of God taken hold of you?

Have you ever reflected on the power of a “word”? And no I do not mean a single word but rather word that is a statement. For example, have you ever said to someone, “Get out!” or “hide!” or even “Now!” wanting to protect them from harm or consequences of something that you know to be dangerous, possibly even deadly for them?

Jesus stops in this week’s Gospel (Matthew 13.1-23) to reflect on the nature of the kingdom of heaven and the power of the word that is being preached across the region by him and his disciples. Some are expressing joy at seeing all the things that are happening: people are being healed, given their sight, their hearing, their ability to walk. There are people being freed from evil and people who were not in the community that are now in the community. They are even working on raising the dead! Jesus and the disciples are making other people aware of the nearness and the presence of the kingdom of God. People of the world are coming to know that we have a heavenly Father, and that this is his world.

A word about parables: gives us a chance to see and understand who God is – in this particular parable it might be that God could be seen as ”a lousy farmer” – who would broadcast his seed into places that are not prepared to receive it and prove to unproductive. He does watch to make sure that the seed doesn’t go to places it cannot produce the fruit of what has been planted. It goes everywhere – the path where everyone in the house walks, into the thrones and bushes, and onto the shallow ground where it has no root.

But the parable does not consider the nature of the farmer beyond the fact that the Farmer gets the perfectly good seed to the land. The Parable actually points to the ground, and how the ground responds to the seed – and the people to the word of the kingdom. Those who don’t respond are choked out by different things. Some people are unable to receive because evil steals the word before it can take root.  Some have insufficient roots to withstand the test of faith. Other people are snarled up by the cares, changes and chances of this life while yet others are drawn inextricably to wealth and fame.

God sends his word and it does not return to him null and void but accomplishes that for which it was sent. The word of the Lord endures forever. It is a word of promise to his people who are cut off and far away from their homeland and think they are never going home again. They believe that God had been beaten and that they are by consequence, forsaken. Therefore God sends his word to his people. It is a word of promise that the bonds of affection will be renewed, that they will return and that they have not been forsaken. A “word” is sent forth to cause both action and a change in circumstance both personally and corporately.

In a Christian context this means that we need to deal with the things that will choke us out. We need to get our priorities sorted and deal with the sin in our lives. We do this by being in Christ. This does not mean that we have more faith in Christ but rather at we are in him and he in us.  It means that through baptism we have died with him and have been raised with him to live his risen life. It means that we leave behind the old life with its structures, its sin and death. We leave it behind to discover that we are living his life – the gift of an eternal life in freedom and in service to him. We are not ruled any longer but sin and death – we are truly alive in Christ.

So ask yourself this week, “How has the word of God taken a hold of me?” Consider how have the roots of your life in Christ taken hold of you, shaped you and strengthened you? The word is not just words – it is an experience too! After all the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.  So go! And in the going make disciples!

Jason+

Engaging our city and our culture with the Faith of our fathers

I remember once being in a discussion group with a bunch of my peers. All of us were teenagers and there may have been one or two 20 somethings in the mix. We were at a Provincial AYM youth conference discussing one of our favourite topics – how to be Christians in a non Christian world. There was a young lady in this group that said something that I will never forget: “I would rather be known for what I am and be alone,” she said, “than be known for what I am not and be lonely.” I was reminded of this statement this week when I went to read Sunday’s Gospel (Matthew 11.16-30).

I will confess that it both enrages and saddens me that the lectionary removes what Jesus has to say about communities that reject the messenger and the message that would bring so much to the community. It is as if the creators of the Revised Common Lectionary believe that everyone will be fine and safe because, in the end, God won’t reject anybody. Jesus died and everybody gets saved... the problem with that is that is does not square with the overall message of Scripture. God in the Old Testament rejected Israel and punished them with exile and the loss of the Promised Land. And as I read it, it was a lack of respect for God and a willingness to listen and do as directed through the judges and prophets that lead to the situation of exile in Babylon. Do we really think that God will not discipline the Church in the same kinds of ways?

This brings me back to the young lady and her statement. We have a proclivity as human beings to make religion about what we can believe and prove. We burden each other with things like proof rather than calling on each other to reach out in faith. There is a reality in the Christian faith. Proof is not faith nor is rule keeping a sign of salvation. Faith displays the truth. Faith reveals the truth. People look at each other through their own lenses, passing judgement without the facts and try to shape their beliefs to benefit themselves rather than working on their relationship with God and neighbour. People in need do not need to be told that they are need. They are in search of the fulfillment of the need. People need answers and response to their needs – God is willing to engage our city and our society in real and meaningful ways... but is the Church ready?

Faith is meant to open people’s ears and give people their sight where God is concerned. The Church has made mistakes and has fallen into error in working out its ways in mission. The greatest mistake is to think that we can be a better Church by looking and sounding like the world with its life and regulations than trying with everything we have and are to live the life that God has called us to.

We need to trade burdens with Christ. We were not designed or destined to carry the weight of the world, but rather to carry the weight of the cruciformed life. We are made to live a live that is moving towards the glory of God, to know and to be in his presence. We need to seek his face, together in hope, alone if necessary. It is time that we looked for God’s handiwork in our society and joined him. It is time that we live our Master’s life and enter fully into the incarnation. Let us respond to the call of the kingdom and participate.

Jason+