Always being in trouble

Are you in trouble? Do you want to be in troubled waters? Then consider this:

 There once was a man who was trapped on the roof of his house in the middle of a flood. The waters swiftly surrounded the house and kept rising and rising. In the hopes of rescuing him, a neighbour drove his pick up to the house of the trapped man and shouted, “Jump in the back! Jump in the back! I’ll get you to safety.” But the man on the roof shouted back, “My God will save me! My God will come and save me.” So the neighbour left and the waters continued to rise.

A short time later, two people in a boat came along and wanted the trapped man to come and get in the boat. They pleaded with him saying “Jump in! Jump in! And we will get you to safety.” But the man refused and so they pair left him there on the roof waiting for God to save him.

Not long after that, as the water was to the roof now and the man who was trapped could feel the house moving in the water, a helicopter came along with a basket on the rope. The pilot called down to the man on the roof trying to urging him to get in the basket. He told him that the house was about to be destroyed and the man had no time left. But still the man on the roof steadfastly refused to get in the basket and go to safety, claiming that God would save him. As the pilot hovered and watched, the man on his roof was swept away in the current with his house and he drowned.

When he appeared before the throne of God he was cheeky and asked the Almighty why he had not come down and rescued him from the flood. God said to the man, I did try to save you. I sent a truck, a boat, and helicopter. What more could I have done for you that I did not do? Next time, jump and get in!

The Gospel this week deals with troubled waters but these waters had a good purpose. If you could get in when the waters were stirred up, you could be healed. But you had to get there first and that meant that there was going to be some of the necessary pushing, shoving and bullying to get there. The man in the story that is confronted by Jesus has been infirm for a long time. 38 years he has been in this situation... had he been in this “House of Mercy” (for this is what Bethesda means) for all of that time trying to get better by getting into the water but not getting any help to get there. So there has been years of futility and possibly one is on the verge of giving up if one has not done so already.

So in my mind, the question Jesus asks, “Do you want to be healed?” is a logical one.

Are you ready to be healed or have you given up. It is a question that all of us need to face from time to time. And the healing that comes may not what we expect. God does not always ask and sometimes people are healed when no faith has been seemingly present. Jesus looks at this man, his faith (or lack thereof), the pain, the sorrow and the mounting frustration and chooses to offer him another way.

One of the things that we need to consider is that in this part of John’s Gospel, the sovereignty of God is being tested. How does and how should God act? Why does he offer mercy to one person in a place of mercy and not to another? Why should someone be healed on the Sabbath? Isn’t that against how God works because there are six days in the week to do work and only one to rest? No rule breaker can be on par with God! Does this Jesus really believe that a man can be on par with God?

And where did Jesus disappear to when the Jewish leaders wanted to know who it was that performed this miraculous work on a Sabbath. Remember something important: it was not yet time for there to be a blatant confrontation between Jesus and the authorities. What John’s Gospel is trying to show us is the differences in the people who do believe and don’t believe in Jesus. He is showing us what happens when one person – a cripple has his whole life true and upside down - by saying yes, not only to being healed but in saying yes to Jesus.

So I would put the question to you gentle reader: who is Jesus and who is he to you? There were many in Israel who claimed to be believers in God but would not accept Christ because they looked at him from a purely human point of view. They were not able to see the “signs” God was doing in Christ and the lives that were being changed as a result. Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ and do you receive his abundant, eternal life as your own?

Let this Church be a Bethesda – a house of God’s mercy for those who are in trouble - so that people can come in and find rest and healing. Let every day in this place that there is between now and when Christ comes again be a Sabbath where people can come in and find the “rest” of God Almighty and in doing so find physical recuperation and spiritual refreshing.   

Jason+

How would you live if love were real?

L

ove is a word that gets thrown around a lot in this day and age. Many people use the word and often link it with sex. To be loved is to get sex and to have sex one must be loved or at least desirable in some fashion. But there is none of this in the Gospel (John 13.31-35). The command to love one another is born out of the love that Jesus (and therefore the Father has for us). Jesus calls on his followers to love each other in the same manner that he has loved each and all of them.  

So it is important to note the conditions under which the command is given. According to the Gospel we are into the “Farewell Discourse” and Jesus is talking to his followers about what is important for him and for them in the hours, days and time ahead. Within this context there are two things that we must be mindful of: a) Judas has just left to arrange for Jesus’ arrest and b) Peter’s impetuous insistence that he will go to the cross and to death with Jesus. He will fail and deny Jesus three times over that night.  Therefore the command to love each other comes in the midst of both betrayal and denial. Love and forgiveness will not find Judas but it serves to bring Peter back after failing and falling.

If we go deeper, the call and command to love one another means that we are going to “agapaos” or love those we know best. It may mean that we have been hurt by that person, possibly believe we have been betrayed or even denied in some fashion by someone within the Church. We are still called to love that person as Christ loves them. There is no other standard. We are called to love in all circumstances and occasionally in spite of them.

Jesus points out that God is glorified through our relationships and the working out (with fear and trembling) our salvation just as he has been glorified through the incarnation ministry of his Son Jesus. If God is glorified through us loving and looking after each other then how you live this life matters. It matters to you, to God and to everyone around you. Your life matters in every moment. Your life matters from here to eternity. Know this, how will you live your life from here on out? Will it be all about you? Will it be about drawing people into the kingdom and into eternity? What will you do with your life?

In this moment, as Captain Raymond Taylor used to tell us when I was in College in Toronto, “Be ready boys! Be ready to preach, pray or die at a moment’s notice and maybe do all three.” We are being called to the new creation and to inhabit the new City. We are called on by Christ to love and care for each other in ways that will draw others. We must live in such a way as to show others that we are ready to live in the new City and not just prepared to by into the old ways of the old life and the Empire. The new creation is sacred and there is a future for humanity with abundant life, and is filled with hope and peace. There will be no more death, or tears or mourning or terrorism. There will be no more sickness, disease, or malnutrition. God will make all things new. God will do this for those who follow and those who believe. And love will be brought to its perfection.

Jason+

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+