Moments of Sudden Ministry

Have you ever wondered why we merit God’s attention? It was a question that I was considering carefully this week. And that’s when it dawned on me. In Christ, though the incarnation of the Son of God, God has visited and redeemed his people. It is a common theme that runs through the Gospel of Luke and is part of what happens in the Gospel lesson for Sunday (Luke 7.1-10).

With finishing Easter and moving into the Long green season of learning to be disciples. We pick things up again after Luke’s “Sermon on the Plain” which mirrors the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus returns home to Capernaum and is requested to go with some high ranking synagogue officials to heal the servant of a local centurion. The military officer had heard about Jesus and sent people from the community to find him and make the request. When the people get to Jesus, they make the plea for help, and try to sweeten the pot by pointing out to Jesus that he is worthy of this honour because he has done nice, even good things for the community and he cares for the Jewish nation; including building the place of worship.

One of the things that sticks out for me in this story, is that Jesus does not seem to notice or acknowledge the nature of the man that is making the request – that he is a nice guy who has been pleasant and giving towards his neighbours. He considers the life of the person he is being asked to heal and save because a person’s life, physical and spiritual is on the line. As I like to think of it, Jesus is faced with a moment of sudden ministry. There is a request and a demand for salvation. Without batting an eyelash, Jesus agrees to travel with the group that came to fetch him. Remember God is coming to visit and redeem his people. We should keep in mind that the centurion who asks for the healing is a gentile and that the person who needs the healing, is more than likely Jewish.

Ministry has those sudden moments when one is asked to act. It is a simple thing. Either you will or you will not. Its like a wife calling out to you from a hospital room because she is sitting with her dying husband. You know about him because for years he has declared to be an atheist. Facing his own demise and suddenly, maybe for the first time, sensing the presence of the Almighty at the approach of death needed hope and wanted prayer before death came. It is like doing a pastoral visit to an elderly couple who, when you arrive at the door, are invited into a rather loud discussion about the husband giving up his driver’s licence because he is 83 and has had three accidents in the last three weeks. Its like having a 16 year old girl show up at the Office door. She has been thrown out of her home by her stepfather. She moved in with her boyfriend, got into drinking, then into drugs and now finds out that she is three months pregnant and does now where to turn. Or it is like getting a phone call from someone who has a family member who is dealing with grief issues and PTSD. They won’t tell you who they are or where they are but they want your help to make things better all the same.

Where do you go and what name do you call on when you are in trouble? Remember God is coming to you and he wants to redeem, heal and rescue you. Jesus came not just to show us the way but to be the path. And if there is something that this lesson reminds me of it is this simple truth: where prayer is focused, power falls. We can consider the request of all these people to Jesus a prayer. And where prayer is made power falls.

So let me ask you a question then out of all of this, when will you as an individual, when will we as a community of faith put our trust in the living God? When will we take God at his word and begin to live in the hope and the strength that God gives to his people that the world might see Him in us? The world needs to see, to hear and to feel his life in us so that they might to begin to be open to the possibility that they can have this life too. It is time to do more in this Church than just survive. We are made so that we can thrive. The Father loves us and cares for us more than we can ever be aware of. The world needs to see this in us before they will accept that they are being called into the life of the Church. Once they can see that in us, then they can have it for themselves and begin to change the world around them.

And if there is need of encouragement, then remember this, we live our lives, do our ministry and die our deaths and we do it all in the sight of the Lord. As Scripture says “Precious in the sight of the Lord, is the death of his faithful servants.”  Psalm 116.15

Jason+

The Proclamation of Pentecost

Ever been afraid to take God at this word? Have you struggled to do what you believe he is asking of you? The Apostles were certainly in that kind of spot on the Feast of Pentecost (Acts 2:1-42). And yet they go from being behind locked doors and shuttered window because of the fear they had about what their lives were going to be like now that Jesus had returned to the Father.

Remember last week, how when Jesus was being taken up, he was blessing them. It occurred to me that he is still blessing them and us. Jesus lives to make intercession for us and to see that his Church is blessed. Therefore we need to learn to receive that blessing that Jesus offers, recognizing that we often don’t know what it is we are being blessed for until we actually get there. The blessing he offered them is there for us to live in, if we are smart enough to take it up and live in it. And if you need an example of what I mean, then consider this – the Bishop will bless the whole congregation at the end of the service on Sunday. What are you being blessed to do and to be this coming week? Do you know?

What I find most fascinating, is that in learning to worship and in worship to remember and recall all of the great things that God has done especially in Jesus, is that witness is the other side of that coin. When they were together, in prayer and in living in fear of what those who had Jesus put to death would do to them, the Spirit came to them and they suddenly found themselves outside boldly telling the world what they had known on the inside – that Jesus is Lord. People in the City for the Feast of Pentecost got to hear in their own languages (mother tongues) what God had done for the world in Christ. There was no denying what God was doing. No misunderstanding for people: everyone could connect with what the Church was saying because they were hearing in a way that they could easily comprehend. They had a choice. People could believe what was being preached and proclaimed or not.

Hearing that their rejection of Jesus led to his death and that there was a second chance to put their faith and their lives in the hands of Christ caused thousands that day to do just that. And three thousand people became followers of the Lord Jesus. Making Christ known is what Pentecost and the life in the Spirit is all about.

I know Christians who have and continue to make it more about what a person has got in terms of spiritual gifts. As I consider Pentecost, that is not what the Spirit or the Feast are about. It is about proclaiming in a real and living way that the world put Christ to death but God raised him from the dead, vacating our judgment upon him and offering life in the name of the risen Lord.  The Spirit comes to teach us about Jesus and to reveal all the truth about him and his life with us – even yet. As we are prayed over and blessed; Jesus prays for you and for me that we would be united in love with him as he is with the Father that we might be one. He prays for the unity of his Church and for his Church as we live out his incarnation through the Spirit. This means that every Christian can and must produce the fruit of the Spirit. Jesus will make sure that each community has the gifting it needs to do the ministry that needs to be done. The Spirit makes Jesus real and present to us, “That we might know him in the breaking of bread and in the prayers, ‘ so that we might, “Do this, in remembrance of me.”

Jason+

            

Awaiting the "Go" sign!

Just where did Jesus go? And how are we to be his followers no if we cannot see him? Perhaps it is in the words of the angels, who are standing there with the disciples and ask them this simple question, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand here looking into the sky?” (Acts 1.11) The Ascension is not a goodbye or even a farewell. It is a hold on a minute, I’ll be back.”

But then you need to go further back in the Gospel of Luke (24.36-53) to the last of Jesus’ appearances in the upper room. The very same room where they celebrated that last meal together and from they went to the Mount of Olives where Jesus was taken, arrested and led away to his crucifixion. Jesus came to them and spoke his peace over them. He had to continue to show himself to them for them to believe that it was truly himself. As a final proof, he asked for something to eat and they gave him a piece of broiled fish. How many ghost or dead men do you know that can eat a piece of fish? And what did they talk about while Jesus ate his piece of fish? Were they quieted by awe and wonder or struck dumb by incredible impossibility

Then he took the extraordinary step of taking the time to sit down with them and open their minds to see and understand what the Scriptures said about him. It was one last attempt to really know Jesus and his true nature. It would vital for the disciples to know these things in the days ahead. They would be going out into the world and acting like crazy people, like Jesus and everyone else would recognize this.

It would be important to know the Scriptures because knowing who God is and what God has promised to his people aids us in what we need to do.  Knowing and studying the word of God allows for us to see and to know God. Having Jesus speak God’s peace over us is the covering we need to have the staying power necessary to do ministry in the places and spaces to where God calls us.  God’s word spoken over us, moves us from fear to faith; from misery to mercy; and from ignorance into mystery with awe and wonder. But it is so much more to the Christian life than that.

I remember preaching one Sunday morning about the necessity of discipleship in the Church. I thought I had done a reasonable job. I made lots of eye contact After the service I had a dear older soul come to me and quietly whisper to me, “Sir, that was a pretty good message, but I don’t need to be a Christian. I am an Anglican.”  Please understand she was thinking I wanted her to become Pentecostal rather than Anglican and that was not going to happen. She was a dyed in the wool Anglican and was not about to become something else.

So think I need to say two important things. The first is that all baptized people are followers of the Lord Jesus. We are all members of his Body. Anglican, Pentecostal, Roman, United, Baptist: We are all God's children. We need to know him in this life so that our lives can be different. That is what worship is for: so that we can see and hear and know Jesus through sacrament and in each other. We worship so that we can witness to the community beyond the sacrament so that we can show them who Jesus is and draw them into his presence. Sometimes it will happen fast whole other times it will be a long, slow process.

What do you do when you have been blessed and are waiting for the “go” sign? It seems clear that Luke thinks it should be about being in the presence of God for prayer and worship – for us as vessels to be filled to the brim with everything that God has for us and for those around us.

How do we continue the mission? We follow the footsteps of Christ in the dirt and we follow the lead of the Spirit in our hearts and minds. They need to be and are one. We pray to be led and then we act as we believe we are led by the Spirit. Do I and can we as communities of ministry make mistakes? Yes. We can. All of us can and do make mistakes. But on the other hand, I have never found myself in a place and space where God could not use me because I have prayed and stepped out in faith to follow my Master. We are blessed at the end of worship but we often don’t know for what until we get there and that is okay. 

Where did Jesus go? He went home but he’ll be right back.

Jason+

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+