Christ on board!

As I am taking time to consider all that needs to be said and done for the last of Advent and for Christmas, there are some things that stands out loudly in the Gospel (Luke 1:39-55; for Sunday morning the 4^th Sunday of Advent) that need to be drawn to the fore.

For example, Mary. I marvel at her faith and openness to what God wants to do in her and for her. She is chosen to be the mother of our Saviour. She is called repeatedly as one who is blessed – that is – she is in a close relationship with the LORD. She is righteous before God and she will, from that moment, going to be called righteous for all the generations to come. What an overwhelming honour! God has been near her and watching her and she has been chosen to carry out the mission to bring the Saviour into the world. To at least some, she is going to have to endure the scorn of being betrothed and then pregnant. There was no small risk in taking on what God was asking of her. She would have to insist that she had not had sex with a man. She was going to have to carry on with things so that people could see the work of the Holy Spirit in her life. And she was going to have to prove her faithfulness and devotion to what Gabriel announced to her and call her new born son, “Yeshua” which means “God is salvation”. She had to believe that God was going to come and save his people.

Mary’s faith stands in stark contrast to what was happening with Zachariah. He and his wife Elizabeth were old and in the twilight of their years… having a son and the time to raise him was not possible and sounded beyond foolish, perhaps even insane. It is why when Zachariah told Gabriel that God could not do it, he spent the next several months in silence not able to speak. And when he was given opportunity to acknowledge that what was communicated to him was the truth – tht his son’s name was John, he immediately started praising and glorifying God, along with acknowledging what his son’s life and ministry will be and that he will lead others to the Messiah.  Elizabeth for her part, is the first to greet Jesus and acclaim him Lord, even before he is born. John responds to the presence of Jesus. Elizabeth can see what God is doing in Mary’s life and Elizabeth’s son will work as the Messiah’s forerunner – to announce his coming and presence to the people.

We need to remember that God is faith to his promises and his word. God is working out our salvation through his servants, including you and me. 

As I have been typing this has been rolling around in my head and I will share this song with you: The LORD has proven merciful to Abraham and his descendants and remains so for ever and ever; from generation to generation – including our own. The LORD cares of his son Israel and with his own strong arm, takes him by the hand and leads him in the ways that he should go. In coming down, God scatters the proud, pulls down the mighty and sends the rich away with empty hands. In rising up, the LORD exalts the humble, fills the hungry with good things and takes his children by the hand. The LORD holpens his people by coming to them and declaring the time of their salvation and that he has remembered his mercy, giving them grace to while being faithful to fulfill his covenant.  

So where does this leave and lead us? We as followers of the Lord Jesus, we carry him inside us. How we live is like having a sign around our necks, like the ones we used to see in cars saying, “Baby on board” except that ours might say something like, “Christ on board”. It would serve both as an announcement and as a warning to both the wearer and to those who approach that there is joy in this life and that God is coming to them for the purpose of redemption. God is coming to visit and to save his people. Maybe in the mean time and as we wait for that moment, we need to remind ourselves that it is not we who live, but Christ in us.

Jason+

We know the Judge.

This week’s Gospel (Luke 3.7-18) has two main things that it wants to talk about: salvation and judgement. And I am certain that the moment you read the word ‘judgment’, the hairs on the back of your neck our on the top of your head stood up. It is not a word we like to talk about, especially when it comes to God and eternity. I think there needs to be a recognition that judgement is coming, and it is important that it does because without it, there can be no mercy and no justice.

All of us will feel it, no matter who we are or where we live or how good or bad we have been. Jesus is the Judge and he will come to judge the living and the dead, the poor and the rich, the old and the young, the bad and the good. For us as believers, we need to live in the confidence that we know and live for the Judge and his kingdom. Our trust needs to be in God almighty not in the schemes of man. We need to be reminded that God himself makes that faithful surefooted and enables them to scale the heights of Sinai to enter into his presence because that is where our faith leads us… into his presence.

We are still a people who are waiting for God to make things better, so that things can continue as they have been… but that is not where God is going! All that is in this moment, will be undone at the appearing of Christ. We are being given time to seek God and his salvation. Maybe it is a recognition that when it comes to divine judgement, we are not going to be able to argue with the Judge. It is not like when we think that the referee has blown the call and didn’t get it right and we’re going to let him know it. After all we like to be able to make our opinions heard, often so that we can say something like “I told so” when things don’t work out. It does not work that way with God and so there is a fair bit of fear and concern where God and judgement are concerned.

Luke’s Gospel points out that the Message that comes to us is a message that has both the notes of salvation and of judgement. What we do with what we learn is important – and it has consequences for us and for all we encounter. We have to take the chance and share what is within us, so others can hear the Message and experience the presence of God almighty. And we must learn to put our trust in God, confident that God is going to vindicate you. We need to understand that God has supplied us what we need for the ministry and life we are to live. Living and do for God helps to maintain a right attitude as we wait for the world to be made new.

A lack of a positive response to the Message leads to a fruitless life. We will not be allowed to endlessly use up the soil, so therefore, we must grow and produce the fruit that God has planted within us. We must strive towards salvation and stop worrying about judgement. We are called to the first and cannot control the last. But we do know the Judge. Trust him.

Jason+

A Message to shake the World with

Have you ever considered that we have been given a message that is meant to shake up the world, right to its every foundation? If you stop to consider the Gospel this week (Luke 3.1-6), that is what we are being set up for: a message that will shake the world awake and make its foundations quiver. But how does this happen?

First, let’s consider the context in which the message comes. The message comes to particular people at a particular moment in time, in particular place. Luke notes this for us: The Good News came to John, son of Zachariah (the priest), in the wilderness. But Luke goes further to show who the Message was going to affect, not just Tiberius Caesar – it was going to shake up the whole Roman world! From the person in the street to the fields, the angels of heaven to the local clergy, to the Herods (kings) and their tetrarchies; to the local Roman Governor and on to Roman and to Caesar himself.

If you want to think of it this way, here is what it might look like if Luke was writing to Theophilus in the here and now: “In the 69^th year of the reign of her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, when Justin was Prime Minister of Canada and Rachel was Premier of Alberta; when “the Donald” was President of the United States, and  during the episcopacy of Fraser who is Bishop of Athabasca… the word of the Lord came to the servant of the Lord in the wilderness.”

What was the message that God sent to John to preach? God is coming to visit and redeem his people – all of them. God chose John To be the one who would preach the message to have the people ready for the Word incarnate – the living Word – who is Jesus. John became the forerunner of the Gospel, calling people to come to repentance and back to God. Such messengers are not sent to be famous, powerful and rich. God’s messengers come to God’s people because they are compelled to make an impact on the life of the communities to which they belong. They live and work to make an impact on the people around them for the sake of the kingdom that is to be revealed through divine fulfillment.

The Word comes to the one who is ready and prepared; who has dared to et out into the wilderness and remove all those things that would hinder hearing God’s still, small voice. Going out into the wilderness enables us to put aside our things and our schedules and programs and demands so that we can be with God and allow him to speak to and provide for us. Going out into the wilderness means that we are going to learn that we are not n charge and can stop acting like we are in control and playing God. The wilderness teaches us that we need to learn again to listen and lean upon God for us daily bread. It is crucial because God is coming near, and he will, in and through Christ, redeem his people.

If that is not enough to shake the world up, then I am not certain what will. In the meantime, we must work, pray and preach the message to make the Message heard.

Jason+

Hope helps us to rise

There is a line that has been running through my head as we get ready for a new liturgical year and for the seasons of Advent and Christmas: “Hope: does not weigh the heart down.” And that is an interesting thought when so much of the Gospel this week is about the end of things, judgment and so on. The Church is liturgy this time of year likes to focus on hope, joy peace and love. We do this because of how the world is these days. All we would need is a sign in the wider creation and we would know for certain that the end of things, of this life was near. But I have to doubt whether we would get ready for Jesus to come and appear to us. Would we be ready or would we be like it was the first time, where we were not so willing to make room for him?

So often I hear something like, “What is this world coming to?” we are able to put robots that drill into the planet’s surface on Mars and send astronauts to Russia and then onto the International Space Station but seem to be unable to handle so many other things. Situations like Brexit, bombings in the Middle East, the shutting down of the GM Plant in Oshawa, dealing with the economic downtown in the oil and gas industry and the loss of 120,000 jobs, or dealing with the migrants at the US-Mexican Border.  How can we think about hope when the world around us is so hopeless? How can any of the things I have just listed, become good news for us and the community around us?

It is because of what Jesus asks us to do in the Gospel (Luke 21.25-36) this week. Jesus asks us to stand up and look up so that we can concentrate on seeing him and his coming. We love to celebrate the baby in the manger but that is not the advent that we are looking for. Jesus has already come that way. He is coming again on the clouds with his angels and he is coming to judge the earth. Strong talk for an Anglican I realize, but that is what the Word teaches us.

I suspect that there are some reading this who will be fearful of that idea and that I believe that – except that Sunday by Sunday we confess that we are looking for him to come, to judge the living and the dead, physically and spiritually, in the Creed and in the Lord’s Prayer. We confess and pray that Jesus is coming again and that we are looking forward and rejoicing in his coming. Please also understand that I say this to you not because I want to throw a good and proper scare into you. I say it because I know that I shall be doubly judged – for what I have done with Christ and what I have taught you as a leader in the Church.

Standing up, looking up puts us in a good position to be able to reach up. God is already reaching out, reaching down and stretching out to you. All you need do is reach up. Looking up helps us to keep our eyes on Christ. Looking up and focusing on Christ keeps us from the temptation to think that we are God and acting like we are God. We need to stop playing like we are God. That is going to seem like and maybe even feel like death but then God is in the business of redemption and resurrection.

We rise to greet Christ and to draw him back here to be with us forever. We are in the time of preparation to make that happen. There will be joy in getting ready, peace in the waiting and love to undergird us in all that needs to happen. And hope will help us to rise.

Lift up your life and see the coming King. He comes soon. Maranatha!

Jason+

The unrecognized King

I want you to stop and consider something as you read this blog, this week: If you were to be arrested and suspected of being a follower of Jesus, would there be enough evidence in your life to convict you? And I am not talking about the sales and the meetings and the other things you do around and in the building we call Church. What is there in your life that people could point to you and accuse you of being a Christian?

The Gospel this week (Mark 13.1-10) is for the Feast of the Reign of Christ the King. It is the focus of all that has been said and done since the Day of Pentecost and this is the end of another year in the Church’s Calendar. Next week will begin again preparing from the Feast of the Incarnation (Christmas) and the coming of the Living Word of God into our space and place.

In taking all of this in, there is a question that gets asked by Pilate in the Lesson that each and all of us get confronted with, “What is truth?”. Now please understand that I am a huge fan of the Star Wars movies. I saw my first one with my dad in May 1977. Ever since, I have always loved going to see the new one when it came out. And like every movie franchise, it has its catch phrases… like when Han Solo says, “I have a bad feeling about this.” There is another phrase from Jedi Knight Ben (Obi-wan) Kenobi and you might recognize it: “Everything things is true, from a certain point of view.” If you need a refresher or if you have never seen the movies, try this out:                             

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8uDQuWlnww

I point this out because it is the issue that is being addressed. Pilate is struggling with what the truth about Jesus really is and what the leaders of the Jews are accusing him of. What is the truth of all of it? Is Jesus rebel scum trying to upset the political balance in his favour or is he a spiritual leader who has irritated the leadership of the Jews? What is the truth of the situation and how is Pilate to know or figure it out? As a spiritual figure, Jesus is not a threat but if he is a king, then he is a threat to Rome and its maintenance of Empire.

Thing is, Jesus is not a king like any other nor is his kingdom recognizable because of it borders. Jesus speaks to the lowly and the down trodden. He eats with outcast and sinners. He serves rather than demanding service from others. His kingdom is not built on military might or through violence. Those people who belong as citizens of his kingdom, are born from above and are powerful because they have been given power to live that life by God the Father. I spent some time watch footage of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation as the 39th Monarch of the United Kingdom.  The moment that caught my imagination was the “Recognition” when the people pay homage to the about to be coronated queen. Four times the people are asked if they will obey her and each time they resoundingly say yes.  Watch it here:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjxpzBvJ5HI

We know well of course what happens next. Jesus is denied by Rome and rejected and revived by his own. He was then taken beaten and scourged. Then he was marched outside the city walls where with two other men, was crucified and died. His throne was a cross and his crown a circle of thorns. The Good news in all that is that his death and burial are not the end of the story but the beginning. God the Father raised the Son from death and things went on from there.

So what happens when you have the truth standing in front of you? What happens when you are asked to give an account for the hope that lays within you? Would people be able to convict you as being a Christian person?

Jason+

This is not the end

I have never really been good at preaching on eschatological passages of Scripture, of which this week’s Gospel (Mark 13.1-10) is a part. What is eschatology you ask? It is the study of the end times. I know that most Anglicans tend to live and believe that the world is becoming a better place, slowly but surely. More than likely many believe that the world will slowly become a better place without help. This is something called process theology. Yet the evidence points to the contrary; that things are getting worse in this world, not better. So, it would be natural and normal for us as human beings when considering this world, ask how we will when things are going to be made better, or even perfect? And how will we know when such a thing is going to occur so that we can be ready for it?

This leads me to ask a simple question: what is expected of us as believers and follows of Jesus, in a world that is falling apart? In the last couple of weeks in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus has been noted and seen Turing his back on the Temple treasury and then on the temple and its system in its entirety. The Gospel places Jesus in a position of opposition against what is perceived to be the status quo.  This is a dangerous place to be because the mighty and the powerful want and need to keep the system as it is, to keep them in power and in control. So, it would be fitting to respond to the discussion between Jesus and the unnamed disciple as the disciple saying to Jesus, “This place is so great and so massive. Are we really,... we are going to fight all this?”

It has also occurred to me that when Jesus points out that no stone will be left in its spot on top of another, he also seems to be speaking of the stone on his tomb – that it too will be moved. In doing so, will render the changes that the world, that we as people have been looking for. And maybe this is a good time to point out that the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus happen in the middle of a city that is in an occupied mess in a world that is in the midst of total upheaval. Jesus did not come to turn the world upside down, to bring it right side up and to turn the community of the Church, inside out. Remember too, there is no faith or trust in self reliance. That is what the faith of the nation had become – a desire to be self reliant and for the maintenance of the status.

Status seekers and those who want to maintain things are in a for a rude awaken because change and the transformation of this world and this life into what God wants it to be, is coming and we cannot stop it. We cannot make deals to prevent it. So, either we are going to have to learn to transform and to live within the will of God, or we are going to have face the chaos. Our faith cannot shield us from the chaos, the pain and the panic that comes from change, but it can guide us through it. Changes are coming to all of us which are going to upset and disrupt our status quo. There is no doubt about that. What is left to us is how we are going to navigate what happens and who we are focused on. Such times are going to force us to either live the courage of our convictions or we are going to have to capitulate to the flow of our society into whatever they believe will make us better.

Maybe that is why I am encouraged to hear Jesus say that these things that we are going through are the beginning of the birth pangs. Or more importantly, this is the beginning not the end. Wars and massive destruction are not what we are looking for, but we recognize that we are going somewhere. Yes, there is pain and suffering in the journeying. Mistakes and misjudgments will be made. We will get distracted and off track and need to be drawn back to the narrow path. What is expected of us is to be who we are in Christ – no more and no less either. And at the end of it all, there will be a new creation that will have new life. With that life there will be a celebration, a feast, the likes of which the earth and heaven have never seen but will rejoice in all the more.

Jason+

For all the souls, through thick and thin

At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, the guns fell silent, signalling the end of what has become known as “The Great War” or “The War to end all wars”. I have been privileged to have known and served with a number of people in a variety of uniforms over the years. People like my maternal grandfather who fought in World War II with Canada’s Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry and with Lord Hugh Connaught’s Battalion. As I understand it, he was with the Canadians in Scilly and Italy as well as in England where he taught others to drive various machines. My grandfather told me that his main duties were to go and get vehicles of different kinds off the battlefields and bring them in so that the machines could be repaired and used again. I remember vividly our last Remembrance Day together in 1987; just a short time before he died.

He told me that as bad as the sights were, what was worse for him was the smells of things that would invoke memories. Crossing battlefields and doing your job to keep people moving, to keep winning battles no matter what, there are things: sights, sounds, smells that always stay with you. He served in the Canadian Forces from 1940-45. And though he never said it, life when he came home was forever changed and forever different because of what he went through and what he remembered of those years.

In ministry, I have also had to bury members of the Canadian Forces and help to bury members of the RCMP. Boys (and yes, I mean boys) like Private Steven Maynard and Private Justin Jones. Steven died in a car accident on a Manitoba highway, trying to keep a friend from running into a problem. Justin died with two other members of his unit on a road way in Afghanistan when their armoured vehicle set off an Improvised Explosive Device (IED). And there is Corporal Jason Derry of the RCMP who died suddenly at the Detachment in the community where we lived. He was a neighbour and used to delight our younger son with a flash of the lights and a blip of the siren when he would pass the house in his work vehicle.

It was hard at first, to understand what all this has to do with this week’s Gospel (John 6.35-40) and to connect it with Remembrance Day and the memories that such a day invokes. If there are somethings that these and others have taught me, here is some what I have learned from what they taught me:

·        One cannot fully and truly live, until one learns to go and in the going, unselfishly give.

·      In order for one to know peace, one first needs to receive the grace that only God Almighty can give; without it there can never be peace.

·       Until we are peace filled people, this will not be a peaceful world.

·       That God is not an unknown factor in the equation of life but rather a well loved Father.

·   That hope comes from knowing Jesus and experiencing his resurrection – the mistakes we make don’t have to be fatal and the deaths that we die do not have to be final.

·      That the hope and therefore the life that Christ offers cannot be changed, muted, faded or worn away. Faith needs to be tested (heated) to prove itself and so that it can be found to be genuine.

·         Courage is not the lack or absence of fear, but rather the ability to act in the face of it.

·         Jesus brings divine purpose to our common life and service.

·      Whether we come home to the arms of those who love us or fall into the hands of the One who created us, we are safe and secure.

It is Jesus who gives us bread to eat and life to live, not just for the here and now, but for eternity. Jesus changed the standard and made himself our source for life. Hope for the Christian person therefore comes from being in the presence of and fed by the hand of Christ himself. Christ offers each and all of us hope and life that is spiritual, untainted by fear and mistrust, and that cannot fade away (1^st Peter 1.3-9). It is kept for us by the power of God because we trust and believe in him.

Maybe that is why there are no atheists in foxholes or on turbulent airplanes. Like those who have lived and died in battle, each and all of us understand that the only place to find true peace and rest is to know Christ. It is his grace that leads us to mercy and then into peace. Once at peace, then there can be real growth.

Rest eternal grant unto these O Lord and let light perpetual shine upon them. May their souls and the souls of all the departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

Jason+