June 26, 2011
Pentecost 2
Matthew 10:40-42
Genesis 22:1-14
(prayer)
To me, the story I just read from Genesis chapter 22 is one of the challenging in all of scripture. Not ‘challenging’ in the sense that it is hard to understand – it is quite straight forward, I think. It is challenging because it is a disturbing story – a father willing to murder his son as a seeming act of faith; and (more so) that God demanded this action as a test of faith. It seems against what we expect from parents and what we expect from God!
I worry it opens a door that (to me) feels like it should be nailed shut; is this the slippery slope of using religiosity as a justification for violence and murder?
The challenge (for me) is that even if that is what the text says, can I preach in support of that message? This passage from Genesis is the suggested Hebrew Bible reading for this 2nd Sunday after Pentecost in Year A of the Revised Common Lectionary (This lectionary suggests four passages for each Sunday over a three year cycle: one from the Hebrew Bible (OT), a psalm, a NT letter and a gospel reading). I was tempted to use my discretion to stray away from the lectionary or (since my usually pattern is to pick two of the suggested readings to focus on for a given Sunday) to simply not use the Genesis one. And yet, the challenge is before me and avoiding it doesn’t make it go away.
//
So, let’s begin by stepping back and understanding the context that brought Abraham to that mountain top.
The first stories in Genesis are sometimes called pre-history. They are very old and aren’t easily slotted into an historic date or time period (there are genealogies and people’s ages, which you can add up, but most biblical scholars don’t rely on these to date when Noah may lived or when the world was created). And they tend to be stories that set the world we know into context: legends or myths that explain why the world is the way it obviously is: the origins of the earth and the life it contains, the growth of the human population, the eventual diversity of culture and language among people.
When we get to chapter 12 in Genesis, we seem to find ourselves within a recognizable historical period. Scholars are able to do that because from chapter 12 through the rest of the book of Genesis is really one continuous story that melds history and theology. If fact, the next book in the Bible (Exodus) picks up the story and carries on. It is fair to say that (taking the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy out of the equation [books of worship rules and laws] Genesis 12+, Exodus, Numbers, 1st and 2nd Samuel and 1st and 2nd Kings are basically in historical order!
So, in a way, the story of Abraham is the beginning of the story of the Hebrew people.
[slide] Abraham (originally known as Abram) is one of the sons of Terah; the family lived in the Sumerian city of Ur near the mouth of the Euphrates River.
At some point, Terah made the decision to move the family from Ur to the land of Canaan. But when they made it as far as Haran, the plan changed and they settled there. Haran was located near the head waters of one of the source tributaries of the Euphrates River. Terah lived out the rest of his life in Haran.
It was while living Haran, Abram and God came to agreement. God asks for Abram’s unwavering trust. God asks Abram to just pack up and move to (as God says) “the land I will show you.” Abram was asked to trust God without knowing where God was leading him. In exchange God made a promise to Abram: “I will make of you a great nation.” Abram faithfully followed this call – the land God showed him was Canaan (modern Israel): “to your offspring, I will give this land.” Later this covenant would be summed up by God saying “I will be your God and you shall be my people.” (Lev 26:12)
Abram had traveled with his nephew, Lot, but sometime after they-all arrived in Canaan, they went their separate ways. The problem with God’s promise was that...with Lot and his family gone and Abram being childless (his wife Sarah [originally called Sarai] was assumed to be barren and Abram was already 75 years old when he left Haran), the possibility of a great nation coming from him or any offspring being given the land was very unlikely. Sure, they had followed God’s directions, but “why?”, for what purpose; [slide] Abram was not going to have any descendants from his own bloodline to live in this land!
Eventually (and there are lots of interesting details I am skipping over here), when Sarah (age 91) and Abraham (age 100) did have a son, whom they named ‘Isaac’. Nothing short of a miracle.
Isaac was the practical and theological proof of God’s faithfulness to the promise that “of [Abram will be] a great nation.”
So, Abram had to believe that God was living up to God’s end of the bargain. Today’s passage from Genesis 22 (in a way) is a check on whether Abram was still living up to his end – does he trust in God’s guidance; will he go where God tells him to go?
Isaac was still a young boy, perhaps as old as 10 or 11. Obviously, he had not matured enough to give Abram grandchildren. Isaac was the one and only child of the promise.
God wanted to know how firm Abram was in his faith. Would he still trust in God’s promise of eventual nationhood, even if Isaac’s part in that was threatened?
//
You heard the story. Abram passed the test. It appears that God never intended for any harm to come to Isaac: either Abram would refuse to do the deed (and fail God’s test) or he would be willing to sacrifice Isaac and God would stop it before it went too far.
//
I was reading a Genesis commentary by renowned Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann, this past week and he wrote that “If the story of Abraham had ended with the birth of Isaac, we would have a tale of origins. But in [Genesis 22], unexpected things happen. Only now do we see how serious faith is. This narrative shows that we do not have a tale of origins, but a story of anguished faith.” (Interpretation – Genesis, p185)
//
In order for me to explore this passage with any integrity, I cannot see it as a story about God (willing to command the murder of a child) or a story about Abraham (willing to commit that murder) – especially on a baptism Sunday – but I must see it for what I think is truly is - a broader narrative that highlights the strength of the bond of faith that binds people and God. This is not just about Abraham and God, it’s about all of us! It’s not just the people being faithful to God, it also God being faithful to the people: “I will be your God and you shall be my people.” We are in relationship with our spirit-creator – and that affects who we are to each other. Jesus certainly thought that when he linked together two great commandments:
Love God with all your heart, mind and strength (Dt 6:5) and Love your neighbour as yourself (Lev 19:18). God, Neighbour and Self – we are bound together by a covenant faith.
//
It is important for us to remember that (to the ancient Hebrews) who told and shared these stories of faith, God’s motives would never have been the issue. Genesis 22, like other passages hold messages about the people and how strongly they are able to hold to their faith, even in very trying times. Of course, to them, because God is the master of all things, even those trials would be seen as coming from God. In retrospect, God is always present in every good and bad moment in life. The message in Genesis 22 is about faithfulness to the covenant. Abraham comes away from this one looking pretty good!
Abraham is one of those biblical characters (like Job) whose level of personal faithfulness seems to far exceed what the average person may have, even the above average person. Thank goodness for nefarious characters like Moses or Samson or King David, who remind us that God does not give up on people; and that it is never too late for people to live up to their best potential!
//
//
11 years ago, just before I came to St. David’s, this congregation took part in a ‘Welcoming Workshop’ led by the Yellowhead Presbytery. [slide] I remember when I was being interviewed for the vacant ministry position here, there was excitement about trying to live out the church’s (relatively new, at the time) mission statement and motto.
I have to admit that this apparent excitement was one of the reasons why I accepted the Call to be your minister.
I think in the last 15, 20 years churches have made a valuable shift in how they approach people who might venture through their doors. The old model was that people would come in and be expected to fit themselves into what was already here. In other words, a newcomer would feel like an outsider until they had time to figure out all of the ins and outs of the church.
[slide] In 2006 I was a commissioner to the United Church’s General Council meeting. One of things we approved on behalf of the church was a new program of invitation and welcoming for the United Church of Canada – this program was called “Emerging Spirit”. You may recall seeing UCC advertisements in major magazines that encouraged people to deepen relationships with each other through conversation, like they might if they were meeting at the local coffee shop. The main vehicle of this program was a website called WonderCafe.ca. Along with that, the national church provided workshops for congregational leaders – all about true and humble welcoming.
It was a goal of the Emerging Spirit campaign to foster, encourage and create welcoming churches as part of a way to grow as churches of the 21st century. I am pleased that this congregation picked up on much of the thrust of this movement.
This church and others have begun to figure out that (since we are all made in God’s image and we are all God’s people) there must be an equality that precedes any notion of length of involvement. When we are here, we are one: regardless of any boundaries or barriers that might apply in other aspects of life – in the words of the hymn that will end our service later, this house is “where all are named, their songs and visions heard and loved and treasured, taught and claimed as words within the Word.”
It’s about the three-fold relationship which Jesus espoused: God-Neighbour-Self bonded in deep love and compassion.
[slide] Why is welcoming so important? Because, I would suggest, in a way it is a test of our faith to see if we really are prepared to see the Christ in others – that holy ‘spark’ our baptism candle represents.
40‘Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.’
This passage from Matthew is not saying things exactly as I am expressing here. The passage was part of Jesus commissioning his disciples to go out into the world. The exact context is ‘will people out there be open to what the disciples are saying?’ If they are they are not just welcoming these disciples, but Jesus as well – and even more basically, they are welcoming God.
Welcoming is not one way – it’s not just ‘will people accept you?’ but ‘will you accept them?’
**end**
Are we bound strong enough by faith (to each other and to our God) to endure the challenges that we face? God and Abraham entered into a covenant relationship that was based on each of them being stubbornly faithful to each other and the bond between them.
In the baptism today, we all made promises to support Isabella and her family and to support each other on this shared journey of faith we are on.
//
Let us trust in God’s ability to bind; and let’s trust in our capacity to see the value in sharing deep and strong connections to each other.
Let’s pray...
Welcoming God, create in our community an openness to your presence and an openness to the holy spark in each other. In Jesus’ name and example we pray, AMEN.
#670VU “Precious Lord, Take My Hand’
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Sunday, June 19, 2011
GOOD THINGS
June 19, 2011
Pentecost 1
Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Matthew 28:16-20
(prayer)
The word “genesis” has greek and latin roots: it means ‘birth’ or ‘origin’ or more simply ‘beginning’. The parallel word in hebrew is ‘resheet’. The first word in the original hebrew of the reading from Genesis today is ‘bəresheet’ (בְּרֵאשִׁית) [slide] which is well translated in most English editions of the bible as “in the beginning” – ‘at the birth’. The image being painted by these words is that there is NO story to tell prior to this point – this is the start, this is where it all begins. [slide]
בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים
אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ
Beresheet bara elohim
et-ha’shamium ve’et-ha’artetz
In the beginning God created
the heavens and the earth
The text goes on to say...
The earth was a formless void [tohu ve’vohu] and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God [ru’ah] swept over the face of the waters.
Then God said, ‘Let there be light’.
//
This narrative probably found its written form during the time that the Hebrew people from Judah had been sent to live in exile during the reign of the Babylonian Empire (6th c. BCE). The Hebrews had suffered a crisis of faith. For centuries, since the time of Kings David and Solomon, life had been stable for the Judeans. Jerusalem had been built as a new capital city; a temple of stone replaced the wood and canvas tabernacle that had travelled with the people since the time of Moses. For four hundred years, Judah had enjoyed relative stability. For a dozen generations, people had grown to assume that God dwelled with them in Judah, because that is the only place they had ever lived – and when a formal, stone and mortar worship site is built, with an inner sanctuary room called the ‘holy of holies’ where it was assumed that the Spirit of God literally dwelt, how could they imagine things any other way?
That life, those beliefs, were brought to a dramatic close when the people were forced to live as refugee prisoners by the rivers of Babylon. “How can we sing the LORD’s song in a foreign land?” (Psalm 137:4)
Their captors might have taunted them with claims that ‘my gods are stronger than your God!’ For many of the Hebrew exiles, they may have been worried that this could even be true. Were the gods of the Babylonians really in control of the future?
It is into this context that the creation story we find in Genesis chapter one emerges.
What we heard this morning was an assertion of God’s primacy using the language of sixth century people and their view of what creation entailed.
I am (personally) absolutely baffled by that persistent, vocal minority that unrealistically insist that the creation accounts in the bible are to be taken literally: things really happened the way we read it. Baffling to me! We did not hear this morning how things came into being, but we heard a proclamation that the Hebrew God is the creator of all that was known to exist.
We can see that in this Genesis One story.
‘In the beginning’ (as this story goes) the pre-existing-nothingness is described (metaphorically, not literally) as a dark chaotic sea (AKA the deep...people of antiquity believed the oceans had no bottom) – in this pre-existing-nothingness, the only thing that is distinguishable was the Spirit of God, which (in keeping with the ocean metaphor) is like a wind over the waves: it’s there but it’s illusive.
As the days of this story progress, more of the world known to the 6th century Hebrews emerges. At that time all of the people of antiquity believed the world was flat; we see that expressed in Genesis One. The sky wasn’t an ever thinning atmosphere leading out to open space, but to the people of the 6th c. BCE, the sky was simply a physical roof over the world.
It wasn’t possible for the ancient Hebrews, but if you could fly up to the sky-roof, you could touch it.
As we read Genesis One, the sky-roof had water below it and water above it: ‘Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.’ (the waters above the roof were the source of rain that could fall down from the sky); the waters below were separated by plots of dry land.
The sky-roof also contained several lights (that were observable by the people of the 6th c. BCE): a great one (the sun) which was seen in the daytime; and stars and a light lesser than the sun (moon) which were on the sky-roof at night – they also could see five of the planets in our solar system (as ‘we’ can with the naked eye), but of course they had no idea they were planets – they saw them as ‘stars’ that moved a bit differently than the other stars across the sky.
It’s interesting that even in our modern world we still use ‘flat earth’ language – the sun rises and sets, the sun, moon, planets and stars move across the sky, when most of the movement we see is because “we” are the ones who are actually moving, as the earth rotates.
Just because we use metaphoric language, doesn’t mean it’s literally true.
The world of Genesis One is made up of three environments: the sky, the land and the water – as the story goes (as the 6th c. People experienced), each environment was made teaming with living creatures: birds, fish and land animals (including humans on the land).
The message of the story –
this is...all...good!
//
The content within the story made sense to people with a worldview from 2600 years ago. It is not a literal account of how things came into being. It is a theological proclamation that God is the source of the order we experience in the world and that this created-order is ‘good’. To me, that far more powerful than a news report of an event.
How ‘we’ tell the story of ‘The Beginning’ has changed as our understanding of the universe has grown, and yet there is still a divine mystery at the heart. How did the big bang, begin its bang? That’s a scientific (and I would add, theological) mystery!
//
I do not believe that the world was created in six rotations of the earth. I do not believe that the first human was made out of dirt to look exactly as we do today (in the same way that an artisan shapes clay on a potter wheel). Female humans were not created out of the rib of a previously created male human; The creations stories beginning at Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 2:5 should not to be taken literally!
But… just because we shouldn’t take them literally doesn’t mean that shouldn’t take them seriously: we should! They are powerful theological proclaimations. We simply must embrace them for what they are. They are faith-filled storied (drenched in rich metaphor) claiming that God is the source of what we know and experience; that God is the beginning of everything; and that we can come to an awareness that we are able to reflect the image of God within our lives.
// And so...
Allow yourself to be challenged to believe these things; don’t get lost in silly debates about whether people from 2600 years ago had any inkling about ‘how’ all this happened.
//
I believe that the discoveries of science (particularly the complexity of the building blocks of matter and life and the vastness of the universe as a whole) make the possibility of a source (a creator) even more compelling.
God does not need to held within human limitations. 2600 years ago, they believed that things must have always been they were and just appeared at some point (that worked for them). Our brightest modern idea about the origins of the universe involve an infinitesimally small, unbelievably heavy, speck-of-everything exploding in a Big Bang and expanding and collecting into all that we see and know today (works for us, right now). Who knows what the people 2600 years from now will believe about the origins of the universe?
But I believe that (from a spiritual perspective), regardless of the best theories of “how”, that behind it all...is ‘a source’ – behind it all...is God and ‘that’ can be an eternal truth for us.
If the pre-existing-nothingness is a dark chaotic sea, you might say God was the wind over the waters speaking the first words of order. If that pre-existing-nothingness is the speck-of-everything, you might say that God was spark that ignited a Big Bang.
Our stories of ‘how’ depend on what we have learned about our own existence based on what we have experienced and observed. Those stories cannot be considered true for all time.
I love the line from Denys Archand’s wonderfully thought-provoking 1989 film, ‘Jesus of Montréal’ where the director of a documentary on the origins of the universe is asked “it leaves a whole lot of questions without answers, huh?” and he responds: “Yes and when you consider that these facts may only be true for a while.” Knowledge and understanding are never complete. That’s a good thing, isn’t it? We wonder and we discover; and we do it all over again.
The ‘how’ questions don’t matter as we read Genesis. What does it tell us about God? That’s the question!
• I believe that the most basic nature of God is that God is the ‘order within the apparent chaos’;
• In the context of the wider scriptural tradition I believe that God is love and that it is the kind of love that transcends reason (to paraphrase Jesus, to love, even when nothing justifies that you should).
• I believe that God is the good that is natural and possible in everything and within everyone.
• I believed that God is an active force is our lives. As Genesis puts it, we bear the ‘image of God’ as live and move and have our being.
//
It’s all about the perspective we choose to take in the world. Perspective is the first theme of the Genesis story: Let there be light! With the addition of light, darkness is broken up and tempered with shadow and depth and meaning. With light...knowledge and understanding can begin; the process of wonder and discover start. Light allows for perspective. Light allows for us to try and understand who we are and ‘whose’ we are. // end //
My hope...is that we can perceive that ‘a purpose of our existence’ is to live as if we have been called to let the image of God shine.
I hope that we perceive the truth that we are part of something ‘steeped in goodness’.
Today, we all took part in the wonderful ritual of Baptism with three little boys and their parents. We proclaimed (in word and action) that God is active in all of us from the beginning to the end of the age.
We have to believe in inherent goodness to be able to baptize and mean what we say.
If we are to be people of hope, justice and love, ‘that’ has to be where we begin.
Good Stuff!! // Let us pray;
Embracing God;
Help us delight in the wonder of your love and in the goodness of your created order. May we reflect your image in all that we do. Amen.
#580VU “Faith of Our Fathers”
Pentecost 1
Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Matthew 28:16-20
(prayer)
The word “genesis” has greek and latin roots: it means ‘birth’ or ‘origin’ or more simply ‘beginning’. The parallel word in hebrew is ‘resheet’. The first word in the original hebrew of the reading from Genesis today is ‘bəresheet’ (בְּרֵאשִׁית) [slide] which is well translated in most English editions of the bible as “in the beginning” – ‘at the birth’. The image being painted by these words is that there is NO story to tell prior to this point – this is the start, this is where it all begins. [slide]
בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים
אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ
Beresheet bara elohim
et-ha’shamium ve’et-ha’artetz
In the beginning God created
the heavens and the earth
The text goes on to say...
The earth was a formless void [tohu ve’vohu] and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God [ru’ah] swept over the face of the waters.
Then God said, ‘Let there be light’.
//
This narrative probably found its written form during the time that the Hebrew people from Judah had been sent to live in exile during the reign of the Babylonian Empire (6th c. BCE). The Hebrews had suffered a crisis of faith. For centuries, since the time of Kings David and Solomon, life had been stable for the Judeans. Jerusalem had been built as a new capital city; a temple of stone replaced the wood and canvas tabernacle that had travelled with the people since the time of Moses. For four hundred years, Judah had enjoyed relative stability. For a dozen generations, people had grown to assume that God dwelled with them in Judah, because that is the only place they had ever lived – and when a formal, stone and mortar worship site is built, with an inner sanctuary room called the ‘holy of holies’ where it was assumed that the Spirit of God literally dwelt, how could they imagine things any other way?
That life, those beliefs, were brought to a dramatic close when the people were forced to live as refugee prisoners by the rivers of Babylon. “How can we sing the LORD’s song in a foreign land?” (Psalm 137:4)
Their captors might have taunted them with claims that ‘my gods are stronger than your God!’ For many of the Hebrew exiles, they may have been worried that this could even be true. Were the gods of the Babylonians really in control of the future?
It is into this context that the creation story we find in Genesis chapter one emerges.
What we heard this morning was an assertion of God’s primacy using the language of sixth century people and their view of what creation entailed.
I am (personally) absolutely baffled by that persistent, vocal minority that unrealistically insist that the creation accounts in the bible are to be taken literally: things really happened the way we read it. Baffling to me! We did not hear this morning how things came into being, but we heard a proclamation that the Hebrew God is the creator of all that was known to exist.
We can see that in this Genesis One story.
‘In the beginning’ (as this story goes) the pre-existing-nothingness is described (metaphorically, not literally) as a dark chaotic sea (AKA the deep...people of antiquity believed the oceans had no bottom) – in this pre-existing-nothingness, the only thing that is distinguishable was the Spirit of God, which (in keeping with the ocean metaphor) is like a wind over the waves: it’s there but it’s illusive.
As the days of this story progress, more of the world known to the 6th century Hebrews emerges. At that time all of the people of antiquity believed the world was flat; we see that expressed in Genesis One. The sky wasn’t an ever thinning atmosphere leading out to open space, but to the people of the 6th c. BCE, the sky was simply a physical roof over the world.
It wasn’t possible for the ancient Hebrews, but if you could fly up to the sky-roof, you could touch it.
As we read Genesis One, the sky-roof had water below it and water above it: ‘Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.’ (the waters above the roof were the source of rain that could fall down from the sky); the waters below were separated by plots of dry land.
The sky-roof also contained several lights (that were observable by the people of the 6th c. BCE): a great one (the sun) which was seen in the daytime; and stars and a light lesser than the sun (moon) which were on the sky-roof at night – they also could see five of the planets in our solar system (as ‘we’ can with the naked eye), but of course they had no idea they were planets – they saw them as ‘stars’ that moved a bit differently than the other stars across the sky.
It’s interesting that even in our modern world we still use ‘flat earth’ language – the sun rises and sets, the sun, moon, planets and stars move across the sky, when most of the movement we see is because “we” are the ones who are actually moving, as the earth rotates.
Just because we use metaphoric language, doesn’t mean it’s literally true.
The world of Genesis One is made up of three environments: the sky, the land and the water – as the story goes (as the 6th c. People experienced), each environment was made teaming with living creatures: birds, fish and land animals (including humans on the land).
The message of the story –
this is...all...good!
//
The content within the story made sense to people with a worldview from 2600 years ago. It is not a literal account of how things came into being. It is a theological proclamation that God is the source of the order we experience in the world and that this created-order is ‘good’. To me, that far more powerful than a news report of an event.
How ‘we’ tell the story of ‘The Beginning’ has changed as our understanding of the universe has grown, and yet there is still a divine mystery at the heart. How did the big bang, begin its bang? That’s a scientific (and I would add, theological) mystery!
//
I do not believe that the world was created in six rotations of the earth. I do not believe that the first human was made out of dirt to look exactly as we do today (in the same way that an artisan shapes clay on a potter wheel). Female humans were not created out of the rib of a previously created male human; The creations stories beginning at Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 2:5 should not to be taken literally!
But… just because we shouldn’t take them literally doesn’t mean that shouldn’t take them seriously: we should! They are powerful theological proclaimations. We simply must embrace them for what they are. They are faith-filled storied (drenched in rich metaphor) claiming that God is the source of what we know and experience; that God is the beginning of everything; and that we can come to an awareness that we are able to reflect the image of God within our lives.
// And so...
Allow yourself to be challenged to believe these things; don’t get lost in silly debates about whether people from 2600 years ago had any inkling about ‘how’ all this happened.
//
I believe that the discoveries of science (particularly the complexity of the building blocks of matter and life and the vastness of the universe as a whole) make the possibility of a source (a creator) even more compelling.
God does not need to held within human limitations. 2600 years ago, they believed that things must have always been they were and just appeared at some point (that worked for them). Our brightest modern idea about the origins of the universe involve an infinitesimally small, unbelievably heavy, speck-of-everything exploding in a Big Bang and expanding and collecting into all that we see and know today (works for us, right now). Who knows what the people 2600 years from now will believe about the origins of the universe?
But I believe that (from a spiritual perspective), regardless of the best theories of “how”, that behind it all...is ‘a source’ – behind it all...is God and ‘that’ can be an eternal truth for us.
If the pre-existing-nothingness is a dark chaotic sea, you might say God was the wind over the waters speaking the first words of order. If that pre-existing-nothingness is the speck-of-everything, you might say that God was spark that ignited a Big Bang.
Our stories of ‘how’ depend on what we have learned about our own existence based on what we have experienced and observed. Those stories cannot be considered true for all time.
I love the line from Denys Archand’s wonderfully thought-provoking 1989 film, ‘Jesus of Montréal’ where the director of a documentary on the origins of the universe is asked “it leaves a whole lot of questions without answers, huh?” and he responds: “Yes and when you consider that these facts may only be true for a while.” Knowledge and understanding are never complete. That’s a good thing, isn’t it? We wonder and we discover; and we do it all over again.
The ‘how’ questions don’t matter as we read Genesis. What does it tell us about God? That’s the question!
• I believe that the most basic nature of God is that God is the ‘order within the apparent chaos’;
• In the context of the wider scriptural tradition I believe that God is love and that it is the kind of love that transcends reason (to paraphrase Jesus, to love, even when nothing justifies that you should).
• I believe that God is the good that is natural and possible in everything and within everyone.
• I believed that God is an active force is our lives. As Genesis puts it, we bear the ‘image of God’ as live and move and have our being.
//
It’s all about the perspective we choose to take in the world. Perspective is the first theme of the Genesis story: Let there be light! With the addition of light, darkness is broken up and tempered with shadow and depth and meaning. With light...knowledge and understanding can begin; the process of wonder and discover start. Light allows for perspective. Light allows for us to try and understand who we are and ‘whose’ we are. // end //
My hope...is that we can perceive that ‘a purpose of our existence’ is to live as if we have been called to let the image of God shine.
I hope that we perceive the truth that we are part of something ‘steeped in goodness’.
Today, we all took part in the wonderful ritual of Baptism with three little boys and their parents. We proclaimed (in word and action) that God is active in all of us from the beginning to the end of the age.
We have to believe in inherent goodness to be able to baptize and mean what we say.
If we are to be people of hope, justice and love, ‘that’ has to be where we begin.
Good Stuff!! // Let us pray;
Embracing God;
Help us delight in the wonder of your love and in the goodness of your created order. May we reflect your image in all that we do. Amen.
#580VU “Faith of Our Fathers”
Sunday, June 5, 2011
LEAVING AND STAYING
June 5, 2011
Easter 7 (last)
1st Peter 4:12-14 & 5:6-11
Acts 1:6-14
(prayer)
There came a time when the followers of Jesus had to go on without him. Of course, this happened most significantly when Jesus was a arrested and executed by crucifixion. But that wasn’t really the end. Jesus resurrected.
We're also told about a few times after the resurrection that the Risen Christ continued to be with the disciples (with women at the tomb; with Thomas and the others in the upper room), with Cleopas and another disciple on the road to Emmaus with Peter and others, fishing by the Sea of Galilee. But even that kind of relationship came to an end. Jesus ascended.
And yet, the people who were inspired by Jesus still felt a sense of purpose - enlivened by the Spirit – Jesus had promised them that the Spirit would not abandon them – they would continue to have a ‘helper, advocate, counsellor’ in the Spirit.
And so, in that same vein, we continue to celebrate what it is that still brings us together so long after the first disciples gathered around Jesus. We are the Community of the Risen Christ. Within this community is a passion for what Jesus was passionate about – there is mutual support and there is a hope that reaches beyond any limit we can imagine.
//
I am always struck by the faith and persistence of the members of the early church. I am amazed that the “Jesus Movement” survived beyond its first several decades. Look at the reading from the letter of First Peter! “412Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you.”
Life for many members of the early church included a fair amount of difficulty and suffering. The author of 1st Peter describes that this was certainly true for the community who received that letter. Members of that church were being “reviled”; they were “suffering”; they were “anxious”. The letter invited people to turn this experience around – to see these sufferings as badges of honour. We heard the strange language of rejoicing-in-suffering; of being blessed for being reviled.
It is a simple fact of their experience that being part of the early church lead to a certain amount of suffering and contempt by others from the wider community. The message of the letter is that this ‘ordeal’ may test their faith, but the hope of the author is that they will endure this time in the knowledge that God actively cares for them and that God’s grace will ultimately prevail.
The believers were encouraged to be humble, disciplined and alert. They were encouraged to resist the pressures around them that might “devour” the faith they held. Part of this encouragement was to point out that this particular church was not the only one experiencing these kinds of sufferings. It’s strange isn’t it that knowing one is not alone in difficulty can actually be comforting to a degree. The old adage “misery loves company” usually means that sometimes people can negatively get stuck in the low place because they are supported (enabled) in that situation by others. But I also believe that it is true that having company in a miserable time can be helpful. It isn’t as good as having no suffering to deal with, but it is a good response to suffering.
That is the context of today’s reading from 1st Peter: the suffering is happening and the author is responding to that fact. The response we read in this passage seems to have been intended as a theological support for these people who might have been questioning “why they were suffering”.
//
As I was thinking about this passage over the past few weeks, I re-read parts of Rabbi Harold Kushner’s 1981 book “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”. I did so, because I (ultimately) find the (implied all or nothing) thesis of the First Peter passage unconvincing – I find it hard to believe that the suffering being experienced by the people of the church was God’s choice for them, that it was a test and for the greater purpose of getting them to really appreciate the Glory of God when it is revealed in the fullness of time.
Kushner uses the story in the book of Job as an example. Job was presumed to be a very good and righteous person. He was the unfortunate guinea pig of a bet between God and (a character called) The Accuser (in Hebrew, the word for accuser is sah-tan’ – eventually, the word would become a proper name within Hebrew theology as ‘Satan’). The bet: Is Job’s righteousness tied to his prosperous and happy life? Would Job turn his back on God if life was less comfortable? The Accuser said yes; God said no. So to test the bet, Job lost everything: his land, his money, his health and even his family. After watching for a while, it appears that God won the bet, Job didn’t understand it, he even complained about to God, but he refused to ‘curse God’. The story ended with God getting his health back and replacements for all of the things he lost, including a new family.
In his book, Kushner speaks of God as being a ‘god of justice’ as opposed to simply being a ‘god of power’. The message in First Peter seems to focus on God’s power. God uses God’s power to allow the suffering for the greater purpose of teaching the people of the church a valuable lesson. And at a certain level, I think this is an attractive notion and could be language that is helpful for people who are suffering – their plight has a greater purpose and so the suffering is not all bad.
In Kushner’s book, he gives example after example of people who have experienced deep tragedy, who have trouble accepting that the reason behind the suffering was to get the lesson. When that tragedy involves the death of a young, innocent child – what sense is there to say that this child had to die for the benefit of their parent’s enlightenment? Kushner makes reference to the book “The Bereaved Parent” by Harriet Schiff and quotes what someone said to her after the death of her young son during an operation. Shiff was told by her clergyman: “ ‘I know that you will get through [this painful time] all right because God never sends us more of a burden that we can bear. God only let this happen to you because He knows you are strong enough to handle it.’ Harriet Shiff remembers her reaction to those words: ‘If only I was a weaker person, Robbie would still be alive.’ ”
It is a phrase I have heard a lot: ‘God will not burden us with more than we can bear.’ I know that it is a helpful statement of faith for many people, I don’t want to belittle that. I am simply bothered by the seemingly random nature of the burden of suffering that I seem to observe in the world. Sure, much of life is quite logically dictated by the choices we make – we reap what we sow for the most part. But it is the exceptions that make a blanket theology about the good being blessed and the bad being cursed hard to swallow: decent, giving, good people suffering; and nasty, selfishly-evil people enjoying the good life. How is that right?
I understand the value of the message in the book of Job and in the letter of First Peter: don’t give up on God – God believes you can get through this, just be patient. I just can’t take it to the next level and say that God wants people to suffer – even if something good might result in response to that suffering.
The proverb ‘God will not burden us with more than we can bear’ is not actually from the bible. It’s close to a passage from the letter of First Corinthians (10:12): ‘No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.’
The word “testing” here refers to whether one can endure the temptation to go against their faith. There is a subtle distinction between ‘God actively burdening us with some suffering’ and ‘God aiding us as we seek to endure the suffering of life.’
That (for me) is the helpful distinction from Rabbi Kushner’s book “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”, God is a not so much a god of power, but a god of justice. If our God is a God of Justice, then God will not abandon us in times of trial and difficulty.
That is the theme of the poem by Mary Fishback, about the footprints in the sand, where the person assumes God has abandoned him during the hard times because (at those times) there was only one set of footprints > the divine voice of justice says “my precious child, during those times, it was then that I carried you.”
For all of my concerns about how the author of First Peter penned the theological explanation of suffering, I do like the phrase that we are to “cast all of our anxiety on God”.
Misery not only loves company, it needs it. When a time of suffering ends up yielding some measure of good in our lives, it is (I believe) a result of how much care and compassion we inject into those difficult times. We don’t need to redact the history and say that it was good that we suffered because we learned something valuable. But we can say “in spite of the suffering”, we moved forward in hope and promise and it was that atmosphere of care and compassion that lead to the latent good result. We always would like to relive the time and get the good lesson some other way, but ‘time moves forward not backward for us’ so discussions about what could have been, are seldom helpful because they are not possible.
//
When the disciples of Jesus realized at some point that they would not have the benefit of Jesus in their midst any longer, there was a moment of lamentation. They looked up into empty sky and were stuck in that moment of loss. The message they received was to focus on where they were now and to live this life before them in all faithfulness and devotion. And so they may have gone up on the Mount of Olives with the Risen Christ as their physical companion, but they came down alone. And...their faith was not shaken or broken or irrelevant – they returned to the room in Jerusalem, and the men and women among the group of Jesus’ followers devoted themselves to prayer. The ‘church-after-Jesus’ began.
Over the past 20 some-odd centuries, the church has prospered and struggled. And people of faith have done the same – we’ve prospered and struggled. And...we are still here. That says something.
//
I think we are here because we are drawn to a god of justice – we are drawn to what seems fair, we are drawn to what feels right.
God does not have to be seen as this supernatural, mindless algorithm that simply responds to the inputs we offer with pre-ordained responses. We don’t have to believe in a vending machine sort of God.
We can believe in a God whose essence is justice: a justice based on compassion, mercy and love. We believe in a God that is aware of this moment in time and is able to react to us and how our lives are going. That’s the basic message of the Jesus story the early church too away from the life, death and resurrection of Jesus – that God looks past the ups and downs of our lives and simply loving forgives what fell short.
I can’t say that God only gives us what we can handle – in other words, allowing more pain and suffering for the strong-willed and less for those who could be called weaker. I base this on my own eyes and ears - I have seen good, strong people pushed beyond their limits. And if I have to give God the credit for that, I can’t reconcile that with the god of justice and compassion who Jesus represented in this life.
But I will say that God is actively with us no matter what. God is dynamic and able to respond to the needs of our lives, so that no matter what we are facing, we don’t need to try and handle it alone.
In a few minutes, we will take time to recite together the United Church Creed – let those words “We Are Not Alone” become a life-anthem for you.
Over the next few weeks, we will have the opportunity to share in the experience of baptism with four families. As we do so, they and we will make promises of encouragement and support. When we do take note of the language we will us. We will respond to the invitations to take on these roles with words like, “I will, with God’s help!”
//
When the author of Luke-Acts describes the Risen Jesus leaving his disciples for the last time, at first, they are stuck in the moment, unable to look away from the empty sky. Then the message comes to them, “why are we looking up towards heaven?” There next actions tells us what there answer was – they re-focused on the world they were in, they went back to their community in Jerusalem.
Next week, we will hear another story from Acts that inspires this young community of faith. They will move beyond this moment of separation by connecting with others throughout the known world through their experience of Jesus Christ. They now looked at God in a new way and they knew that this God of Justice and Compassion was with them always.
Even as members of this early church encountered hard times, they would hold fast to that truth: We are not alone. Thanks be to God! That’s our truth as well!
Let us pray:
Help us see, O God, that you are always with us. In Jesus’ name, AMEN
**Offering**
Easter 7 (last)
1st Peter 4:12-14 & 5:6-11
Acts 1:6-14
(prayer)
There came a time when the followers of Jesus had to go on without him. Of course, this happened most significantly when Jesus was a arrested and executed by crucifixion. But that wasn’t really the end. Jesus resurrected.
We're also told about a few times after the resurrection that the Risen Christ continued to be with the disciples (with women at the tomb; with Thomas and the others in the upper room), with Cleopas and another disciple on the road to Emmaus with Peter and others, fishing by the Sea of Galilee. But even that kind of relationship came to an end. Jesus ascended.
And yet, the people who were inspired by Jesus still felt a sense of purpose - enlivened by the Spirit – Jesus had promised them that the Spirit would not abandon them – they would continue to have a ‘helper, advocate, counsellor’ in the Spirit.
And so, in that same vein, we continue to celebrate what it is that still brings us together so long after the first disciples gathered around Jesus. We are the Community of the Risen Christ. Within this community is a passion for what Jesus was passionate about – there is mutual support and there is a hope that reaches beyond any limit we can imagine.
//
I am always struck by the faith and persistence of the members of the early church. I am amazed that the “Jesus Movement” survived beyond its first several decades. Look at the reading from the letter of First Peter! “412Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you.”
Life for many members of the early church included a fair amount of difficulty and suffering. The author of 1st Peter describes that this was certainly true for the community who received that letter. Members of that church were being “reviled”; they were “suffering”; they were “anxious”. The letter invited people to turn this experience around – to see these sufferings as badges of honour. We heard the strange language of rejoicing-in-suffering; of being blessed for being reviled.
It is a simple fact of their experience that being part of the early church lead to a certain amount of suffering and contempt by others from the wider community. The message of the letter is that this ‘ordeal’ may test their faith, but the hope of the author is that they will endure this time in the knowledge that God actively cares for them and that God’s grace will ultimately prevail.
The believers were encouraged to be humble, disciplined and alert. They were encouraged to resist the pressures around them that might “devour” the faith they held. Part of this encouragement was to point out that this particular church was not the only one experiencing these kinds of sufferings. It’s strange isn’t it that knowing one is not alone in difficulty can actually be comforting to a degree. The old adage “misery loves company” usually means that sometimes people can negatively get stuck in the low place because they are supported (enabled) in that situation by others. But I also believe that it is true that having company in a miserable time can be helpful. It isn’t as good as having no suffering to deal with, but it is a good response to suffering.
That is the context of today’s reading from 1st Peter: the suffering is happening and the author is responding to that fact. The response we read in this passage seems to have been intended as a theological support for these people who might have been questioning “why they were suffering”.
//
As I was thinking about this passage over the past few weeks, I re-read parts of Rabbi Harold Kushner’s 1981 book “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”. I did so, because I (ultimately) find the (implied all or nothing) thesis of the First Peter passage unconvincing – I find it hard to believe that the suffering being experienced by the people of the church was God’s choice for them, that it was a test and for the greater purpose of getting them to really appreciate the Glory of God when it is revealed in the fullness of time.
Kushner uses the story in the book of Job as an example. Job was presumed to be a very good and righteous person. He was the unfortunate guinea pig of a bet between God and (a character called) The Accuser (in Hebrew, the word for accuser is sah-tan’ – eventually, the word would become a proper name within Hebrew theology as ‘Satan’). The bet: Is Job’s righteousness tied to his prosperous and happy life? Would Job turn his back on God if life was less comfortable? The Accuser said yes; God said no. So to test the bet, Job lost everything: his land, his money, his health and even his family. After watching for a while, it appears that God won the bet, Job didn’t understand it, he even complained about to God, but he refused to ‘curse God’. The story ended with God getting his health back and replacements for all of the things he lost, including a new family.
In his book, Kushner speaks of God as being a ‘god of justice’ as opposed to simply being a ‘god of power’. The message in First Peter seems to focus on God’s power. God uses God’s power to allow the suffering for the greater purpose of teaching the people of the church a valuable lesson. And at a certain level, I think this is an attractive notion and could be language that is helpful for people who are suffering – their plight has a greater purpose and so the suffering is not all bad.
In Kushner’s book, he gives example after example of people who have experienced deep tragedy, who have trouble accepting that the reason behind the suffering was to get the lesson. When that tragedy involves the death of a young, innocent child – what sense is there to say that this child had to die for the benefit of their parent’s enlightenment? Kushner makes reference to the book “The Bereaved Parent” by Harriet Schiff and quotes what someone said to her after the death of her young son during an operation. Shiff was told by her clergyman: “ ‘I know that you will get through [this painful time] all right because God never sends us more of a burden that we can bear. God only let this happen to you because He knows you are strong enough to handle it.’ Harriet Shiff remembers her reaction to those words: ‘If only I was a weaker person, Robbie would still be alive.’ ”
It is a phrase I have heard a lot: ‘God will not burden us with more than we can bear.’ I know that it is a helpful statement of faith for many people, I don’t want to belittle that. I am simply bothered by the seemingly random nature of the burden of suffering that I seem to observe in the world. Sure, much of life is quite logically dictated by the choices we make – we reap what we sow for the most part. But it is the exceptions that make a blanket theology about the good being blessed and the bad being cursed hard to swallow: decent, giving, good people suffering; and nasty, selfishly-evil people enjoying the good life. How is that right?
I understand the value of the message in the book of Job and in the letter of First Peter: don’t give up on God – God believes you can get through this, just be patient. I just can’t take it to the next level and say that God wants people to suffer – even if something good might result in response to that suffering.
The proverb ‘God will not burden us with more than we can bear’ is not actually from the bible. It’s close to a passage from the letter of First Corinthians (10:12): ‘No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.’
The word “testing” here refers to whether one can endure the temptation to go against their faith. There is a subtle distinction between ‘God actively burdening us with some suffering’ and ‘God aiding us as we seek to endure the suffering of life.’
That (for me) is the helpful distinction from Rabbi Kushner’s book “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”, God is a not so much a god of power, but a god of justice. If our God is a God of Justice, then God will not abandon us in times of trial and difficulty.
That is the theme of the poem by Mary Fishback, about the footprints in the sand, where the person assumes God has abandoned him during the hard times because (at those times) there was only one set of footprints > the divine voice of justice says “my precious child, during those times, it was then that I carried you.”
For all of my concerns about how the author of First Peter penned the theological explanation of suffering, I do like the phrase that we are to “cast all of our anxiety on God”.
Misery not only loves company, it needs it. When a time of suffering ends up yielding some measure of good in our lives, it is (I believe) a result of how much care and compassion we inject into those difficult times. We don’t need to redact the history and say that it was good that we suffered because we learned something valuable. But we can say “in spite of the suffering”, we moved forward in hope and promise and it was that atmosphere of care and compassion that lead to the latent good result. We always would like to relive the time and get the good lesson some other way, but ‘time moves forward not backward for us’ so discussions about what could have been, are seldom helpful because they are not possible.
//
When the disciples of Jesus realized at some point that they would not have the benefit of Jesus in their midst any longer, there was a moment of lamentation. They looked up into empty sky and were stuck in that moment of loss. The message they received was to focus on where they were now and to live this life before them in all faithfulness and devotion. And so they may have gone up on the Mount of Olives with the Risen Christ as their physical companion, but they came down alone. And...their faith was not shaken or broken or irrelevant – they returned to the room in Jerusalem, and the men and women among the group of Jesus’ followers devoted themselves to prayer. The ‘church-after-Jesus’ began.
Over the past 20 some-odd centuries, the church has prospered and struggled. And people of faith have done the same – we’ve prospered and struggled. And...we are still here. That says something.
//
I think we are here because we are drawn to a god of justice – we are drawn to what seems fair, we are drawn to what feels right.
God does not have to be seen as this supernatural, mindless algorithm that simply responds to the inputs we offer with pre-ordained responses. We don’t have to believe in a vending machine sort of God.
We can believe in a God whose essence is justice: a justice based on compassion, mercy and love. We believe in a God that is aware of this moment in time and is able to react to us and how our lives are going. That’s the basic message of the Jesus story the early church too away from the life, death and resurrection of Jesus – that God looks past the ups and downs of our lives and simply loving forgives what fell short.
I can’t say that God only gives us what we can handle – in other words, allowing more pain and suffering for the strong-willed and less for those who could be called weaker. I base this on my own eyes and ears - I have seen good, strong people pushed beyond their limits. And if I have to give God the credit for that, I can’t reconcile that with the god of justice and compassion who Jesus represented in this life.
But I will say that God is actively with us no matter what. God is dynamic and able to respond to the needs of our lives, so that no matter what we are facing, we don’t need to try and handle it alone.
In a few minutes, we will take time to recite together the United Church Creed – let those words “We Are Not Alone” become a life-anthem for you.
Over the next few weeks, we will have the opportunity to share in the experience of baptism with four families. As we do so, they and we will make promises of encouragement and support. When we do take note of the language we will us. We will respond to the invitations to take on these roles with words like, “I will, with God’s help!”
//
When the author of Luke-Acts describes the Risen Jesus leaving his disciples for the last time, at first, they are stuck in the moment, unable to look away from the empty sky. Then the message comes to them, “why are we looking up towards heaven?” There next actions tells us what there answer was – they re-focused on the world they were in, they went back to their community in Jerusalem.
Next week, we will hear another story from Acts that inspires this young community of faith. They will move beyond this moment of separation by connecting with others throughout the known world through their experience of Jesus Christ. They now looked at God in a new way and they knew that this God of Justice and Compassion was with them always.
Even as members of this early church encountered hard times, they would hold fast to that truth: We are not alone. Thanks be to God! That’s our truth as well!
Let us pray:
Help us see, O God, that you are always with us. In Jesus’ name, AMEN
**Offering**
Sunday, May 15, 2011
DAY BY DAY
May 15, 2011
Easter 4
Psalm 23
Acts 2:42-47
(prayer)
I want to start by calming some fears you may have after seeing the title of today’s message: no, I am not planning on singing songs from Godspell. Besides, as far as early 70s hippy-culture-religious-musical-movies go, I’m much more familiar with the soundtrack from Jesus Christ Superstar.
//
“Day by day, they ...
• Spent time together in the temple;
• Broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts;
• Praised God;
• Had the goodwill of all the people.
Day by day, the Lord ...
• Added to their number those who were being saved."
This section from the book of Acts is an early account of what it meant to be The Church of the Risen Christ. I guess I am wondering how well it might translate to today.
//
The 21st century in North America is NOT the 1st century in the Middle East. I think it is fair to say that we live in a very complex time. Our world is bigger. Now, I know that (physically) the earth is basically the same size as it was for Peter and the other members of the early church (although they had no idea of the physical shape and scope of the world) – but unlike them, we live in a time when we are aware of so much more that goes on outside of where we live. We have much greater access to travel to see people and places for ourselves: not everyone has the means to do this, but certainly more than in Peter’s day. And we access to information about what is going on in the lives of others around the globe (sometime as things are happening).
The disciples lived in a simpler time, by comparison. By in large, they ate foods that were produced locally, rather than shop the vast array of imports we come to expect every time we walk into a store. Often times they lived day to day, where we might only have to live paycheque to paycheque (although many in our culture today have savings that would have been the envy of the ruling class of the first century).
At the time of Peter, the followers of Jesus participated in the religious practices and structure of the national Hebrew spirituality. Although by the time the book of Acts was written, this was no longer the case; the movement had spread out into others communities within the Roman Empire. It is unclear how long the group in Jerusalem was able to maintain its cohesiveness - certainly they were around 20 years after Peter, as some of the letters of the Apostle Paul contain fundraising requests for the “saints in Jerusalem”, but were they still active another 20 years down the road when Acts was written, I can’t say.
//
So, how relevant can the way of being church in the 1st century be to us in the 21st century?
//
Relevant or not, I think that the communal simplicity of the early church way of being is something attractive for people who seek Spirit in our day and age.
I feel quite confident in saying that most spirit-seeking-people of today appreciate a true sense of community – a ‘belonging’ that invites us to enjoy the benefits of shared joy and generosity.
I believe that this is attractive because in so many ways true community is hard. Modern people are busy: they work as much as they can; most retired people I know are even busier; and so much of young people’s lives are scheduled and structured. We live in a culture that has to schedule a time to be spontaneous. Our technological advances have made it easier to star at a screen (TV or computer or smartphone) rather than sit across a table from an actual person. I have 236 facebook friends, most of whom I never have an in depth face to face conversation with and a few of which I have never actually met outside of the Internet.
Now, there is a real upside to this cyber-community; I have been able to connect with others who share common interests to me from all over the world (music, theology, politics, sports...). That’s pretty cool. But ... there is still a longing for something more direct.
Within the wider United Church, I am active in both of the governing committees of Yellowhead Presbytery (the Presbytery Council and the Operations Team). This past Friday, I had a meeting with the Presbytery Council; this one was a conference phone call. It was to be a short meeting, so bringing people into the capital region from Edson and Grande Cache made little sense. But the sense of community is not the same connecting to people by phone as it would be face to face. It’s funny, the conversations can be the same, the business can be the same, but the community is different. When the Presbytery Ops Team meets this coming Thursday, we will all travel to Spruce Grove to share a common space. Even the person who thought they’d have to join us by phone, now says she’ll be there in person. Something about that feels ‘good’ and ‘right’ (for a church and maybe for more than the church).
In our lifetimes, we have noticed that the world is changing. Included in that evolution is the reality is that the Church is changing as well. In fairness, in some ways “the-way-church-is-done” has been slow (even reluctant) to change. {insert church lightbulb jokes}
Something I have noticed in my ten and a half years as your minister here is that St. David’s is not a congregation that insists on hanging on to traditional practices for tradition’s sake. For the most part, my observation is that (in this church), we move on or hang on with a purpose. There’s almost always ‘method behind our madness’. My overall impression (from what I have experienced here) is that this church accepts that we must be a people of faith today, not simply bearers of a wonderful ancient testimony.
//
To Peter and the others, the sense of shared spirit drew them together. I believe that many people in this church and community see value in such a union as well.
So, the answer I suggest to my own rhetorical question is “Yes” - there is much we can gleam from the example of the church described in Acts 2 to help us be a relevant community of faith in our place and time as well.
//
So, let’s look at those Acts 2 church characteristics. What does the text say they did?
Verse 42 of chapter 2 says “They devoted themselves to the apostle’s teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” That verse starts this week’s reading from Acts 2 and it was the final verse of last week’s reading. A week ago, we heard Simon Peter inviting people to turn to God anew and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. So compelling were Peter’s words that the text tells us that some three thousand people joined the followers of The Way. And that these people ... devoted themselves to the apostle’s teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
The aspects of ‘church’ that are described here (in reverse order) are:
1) Involvement in ‘the prayers’: this is most likely a reference to the daily prayer rituals of the Hebrew traditions. At this point, the early Christian movement remained fully enmeshed within the Hebrew tradition. The entire body of the church in these early days were Jewish. The closest they came to starting a new religion is that they were becoming a distinct popular sect within Judaism. In the passage today, it implies that this was not something that created conflict - at least not initially: “[they had] the goodwill of all the people” (v47).
2) Another aspect of this early church was they engaged in ‘the breaking of bread’: Keeping in mind that the book of Acts was written by the same person who wrote the gospel of Luke, modern theologian and biblical scholar, William Willimon, has said that “Each dinner-time episode in Luke is a time of fellowship, revelation and controversy. Jesus was criticized for the company he kept at table. ... He failed to make proper distinction between persons at his table. We know, from contemporary experience [Willimon continues], that social boundaries between persons are most often rigidly enforced at the table. Eating together is a mark of unity, solidarity, and deep friendship, a visable sign that social barriers, which once plagued these people, have broken down.” (Interpretation Commentary Series: Acts, p41). I doubt that in this very early time of the Christian movement that the sharing of bread had been simplified and ritualized as a communion or eucharist yet, but I suspect that for many of that group, this act of sharing a meal meshed nicely with Jesus’ last supper desire that they “take and eat, and do this in remembrance of me”.
3) Thirdly, the church is in ‘fellowship’ There is a community bond here. It came out of the Pentecost experience of having people from all over the known-world share in a unique outpouring of the Spirit, resulting in a unified body of believers. So united (as it says a verse later in Acts) that they pooled their resources to ensure that each person had what was needed. This was not simply a community of those who could afford the luxury of coming together – it was a community that mutually supported itself to ensure its wide inclusivity.
4) Finally, the first description of this church in Acts 2:42 - there is a desire to learn: “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching”. The push that brought people into this group may have been the dramatic events of Pentecost, but that kind of charismatic experience is only momentary. That kind of frenzy and emotional is hard to sustain. Ironically, if it was an ‘every-time’ experience, the impact would diminish over time. And often the frenzy and emotion doesn’t allow for much depth. The response of the crowd was not to expect more drama and high level excitement, but to realize that learning and reflection often requires a calmer setting and mood. They were hungry to hear from Peter and the others, those who had been with Jesus in his life time, those who proclaimed his resurrection. William Willimon has a good phrase about this as well: “The church is not to drift from one momentary emotional outburst to the next ... rather the church moves immediately to the task of teaching, keeping itself straight about what it is and what it is to be about”. (ibid. p40)
//
All of these aspects of the ancient church, sound relevant to our time and place to me. And we practice much of this as part of our regular life together as St. David’s United Church.
Now, we haven’t chosen to create a compound or commune or kibbutz where we all literally live and work together 24-7. But we do hold each other in other ways. When we share of ourselves within this church (sometimes financially as offerings, and practically, helping with various church programs and projects), we are engaging in the same spirit as that post-pentecost church. During our Sunday services, when we take the opportunity to greet each other in the Peace of Christ, we are proclaiming a unity and connection that makes us more than a bunch of individuals who happened to wander into the same room at the same time. When we join our voices and minds in song, we are literally finding the harmony that is possible between us.
There is a sense that not one of us is able to (or expected to) go it alone. As our United Church creed proclaims: We are not alone! Thanks be to God.
We do pray together; we do create opportunities for fellowship. And in the long standing traditions of The Church, we sure do plan times when we can eat full meals together (and we do intentionally engage in the ritual monthly commemorating of Jesus’ last supper as part of our church worship services).
//
I do think that this model of church modelled for us in Acts, chapter 2, can be relevant for us today. I certainly believe that (generally) people long for this type of true and welcoming community.
//
And I know that it is hard to do this really well all of the time. Not all of us are able to be part of this community in all of these four basic areas:
The worship life;
The learning life;
The sharing life; and
The social (fellowship) life.
We do have all of these aspects, but how many of us are to be fully engaged?
Fortunately, one of gradual changes we have seen in this church over the years is the intermixing of these different church lives – Sunday worship can also be a time of learning, sharing and fellowship.
Virtually all the various ways people serve the church (committees/groups) include as part of their activities time for devotion, prayer and shared support. I’m not sure how many of you know that at each Church Council meeting over the past number of years, we include in the agenda of the meeting time for prayers of support: before we pray we share what is on people’s hearts, who is on their hearts – and then we pray, not as an add on to the business of the meeting, but as part of it. As well, it is hard to leave a Church Council meeting in a bad mood, because we usually end meetings by sharing news about what things people are happy for or celebrating in their lives: again not as an add on to the business, but as part of it. At the Council, this was an intentional evolution from what I would call a business-efficiency model to a mission-opportunity model. Both can work, but the later seems to be a better fit for ‘church’ governance.
I sit in on a lot of committee and group meetings around this church and I see this desire and practice of fellowship all over the place.
I know that the people who were able to devote themselves to the Strengthening the Branches course that our recent student minister was able to lead as a means to do some of her own learning while here, found that a really valuable experience. The scuttle-butt that reaches my ears is ... more, more.
That’s good.
I have enough humility to know that this has virtually nothing to do with me, or any minister or other staff this church could have. This church is going to be what “WE” make it.
“Seek justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God”: this is what the prophet says is required of us. In and through all of the aspects of church I have been talking about today, I believe should (implicitly and explicitly) be founded in our common story of God’s compassion and fairness: a story that includes the impact of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. As “church” we are to be interesting in figuring out what it means that God’s welcome is wide, with God there is comfort – and that this as true now as it has always been.
In all of this we are to honour that God is our companion on this journey – the wise and caring shepherd and guide, the overly generous banquet host, who invites us into an eternity-long relationship based on compassion and peace.
If we don’t give ourselves the fullest opportunity to experience what we can offer to each other, we will find ourselves lacking. I’m quite certain of that!
And so, today, from this passage from Acts 2, I hope we can see that church is not supposed to be one-dimensional, we are to know fully what it means to be engaged in:
• shared, spirit-felt worship,
• real fellowship,
• meaningful sharing and
• a devout prayer and reflective life.
We are hungering for these things, aren’t we? Well, we know what to do then...day by day!
Let us pray
(ad lib)
#657VU “He Leadeth Me”
Easter 4
Psalm 23
Acts 2:42-47
(prayer)
I want to start by calming some fears you may have after seeing the title of today’s message: no, I am not planning on singing songs from Godspell. Besides, as far as early 70s hippy-culture-religious-musical-movies go, I’m much more familiar with the soundtrack from Jesus Christ Superstar.
//
“Day by day, they ...
• Spent time together in the temple;
• Broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts;
• Praised God;
• Had the goodwill of all the people.
Day by day, the Lord ...
• Added to their number those who were being saved."
This section from the book of Acts is an early account of what it meant to be The Church of the Risen Christ. I guess I am wondering how well it might translate to today.
//
The 21st century in North America is NOT the 1st century in the Middle East. I think it is fair to say that we live in a very complex time. Our world is bigger. Now, I know that (physically) the earth is basically the same size as it was for Peter and the other members of the early church (although they had no idea of the physical shape and scope of the world) – but unlike them, we live in a time when we are aware of so much more that goes on outside of where we live. We have much greater access to travel to see people and places for ourselves: not everyone has the means to do this, but certainly more than in Peter’s day. And we access to information about what is going on in the lives of others around the globe (sometime as things are happening).
The disciples lived in a simpler time, by comparison. By in large, they ate foods that were produced locally, rather than shop the vast array of imports we come to expect every time we walk into a store. Often times they lived day to day, where we might only have to live paycheque to paycheque (although many in our culture today have savings that would have been the envy of the ruling class of the first century).
At the time of Peter, the followers of Jesus participated in the religious practices and structure of the national Hebrew spirituality. Although by the time the book of Acts was written, this was no longer the case; the movement had spread out into others communities within the Roman Empire. It is unclear how long the group in Jerusalem was able to maintain its cohesiveness - certainly they were around 20 years after Peter, as some of the letters of the Apostle Paul contain fundraising requests for the “saints in Jerusalem”, but were they still active another 20 years down the road when Acts was written, I can’t say.
//
So, how relevant can the way of being church in the 1st century be to us in the 21st century?
//
Relevant or not, I think that the communal simplicity of the early church way of being is something attractive for people who seek Spirit in our day and age.
I feel quite confident in saying that most spirit-seeking-people of today appreciate a true sense of community – a ‘belonging’ that invites us to enjoy the benefits of shared joy and generosity.
I believe that this is attractive because in so many ways true community is hard. Modern people are busy: they work as much as they can; most retired people I know are even busier; and so much of young people’s lives are scheduled and structured. We live in a culture that has to schedule a time to be spontaneous. Our technological advances have made it easier to star at a screen (TV or computer or smartphone) rather than sit across a table from an actual person. I have 236 facebook friends, most of whom I never have an in depth face to face conversation with and a few of which I have never actually met outside of the Internet.
Now, there is a real upside to this cyber-community; I have been able to connect with others who share common interests to me from all over the world (music, theology, politics, sports...). That’s pretty cool. But ... there is still a longing for something more direct.
Within the wider United Church, I am active in both of the governing committees of Yellowhead Presbytery (the Presbytery Council and the Operations Team). This past Friday, I had a meeting with the Presbytery Council; this one was a conference phone call. It was to be a short meeting, so bringing people into the capital region from Edson and Grande Cache made little sense. But the sense of community is not the same connecting to people by phone as it would be face to face. It’s funny, the conversations can be the same, the business can be the same, but the community is different. When the Presbytery Ops Team meets this coming Thursday, we will all travel to Spruce Grove to share a common space. Even the person who thought they’d have to join us by phone, now says she’ll be there in person. Something about that feels ‘good’ and ‘right’ (for a church and maybe for more than the church).
In our lifetimes, we have noticed that the world is changing. Included in that evolution is the reality is that the Church is changing as well. In fairness, in some ways “the-way-church-is-done” has been slow (even reluctant) to change. {insert church lightbulb jokes}
Something I have noticed in my ten and a half years as your minister here is that St. David’s is not a congregation that insists on hanging on to traditional practices for tradition’s sake. For the most part, my observation is that (in this church), we move on or hang on with a purpose. There’s almost always ‘method behind our madness’. My overall impression (from what I have experienced here) is that this church accepts that we must be a people of faith today, not simply bearers of a wonderful ancient testimony.
//
To Peter and the others, the sense of shared spirit drew them together. I believe that many people in this church and community see value in such a union as well.
So, the answer I suggest to my own rhetorical question is “Yes” - there is much we can gleam from the example of the church described in Acts 2 to help us be a relevant community of faith in our place and time as well.
//
So, let’s look at those Acts 2 church characteristics. What does the text say they did?
Verse 42 of chapter 2 says “They devoted themselves to the apostle’s teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” That verse starts this week’s reading from Acts 2 and it was the final verse of last week’s reading. A week ago, we heard Simon Peter inviting people to turn to God anew and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. So compelling were Peter’s words that the text tells us that some three thousand people joined the followers of The Way. And that these people ... devoted themselves to the apostle’s teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
The aspects of ‘church’ that are described here (in reverse order) are:
1) Involvement in ‘the prayers’: this is most likely a reference to the daily prayer rituals of the Hebrew traditions. At this point, the early Christian movement remained fully enmeshed within the Hebrew tradition. The entire body of the church in these early days were Jewish. The closest they came to starting a new religion is that they were becoming a distinct popular sect within Judaism. In the passage today, it implies that this was not something that created conflict - at least not initially: “[they had] the goodwill of all the people” (v47).
2) Another aspect of this early church was they engaged in ‘the breaking of bread’: Keeping in mind that the book of Acts was written by the same person who wrote the gospel of Luke, modern theologian and biblical scholar, William Willimon, has said that “Each dinner-time episode in Luke is a time of fellowship, revelation and controversy. Jesus was criticized for the company he kept at table. ... He failed to make proper distinction between persons at his table. We know, from contemporary experience [Willimon continues], that social boundaries between persons are most often rigidly enforced at the table. Eating together is a mark of unity, solidarity, and deep friendship, a visable sign that social barriers, which once plagued these people, have broken down.” (Interpretation Commentary Series: Acts, p41). I doubt that in this very early time of the Christian movement that the sharing of bread had been simplified and ritualized as a communion or eucharist yet, but I suspect that for many of that group, this act of sharing a meal meshed nicely with Jesus’ last supper desire that they “take and eat, and do this in remembrance of me”.
3) Thirdly, the church is in ‘fellowship’ There is a community bond here. It came out of the Pentecost experience of having people from all over the known-world share in a unique outpouring of the Spirit, resulting in a unified body of believers. So united (as it says a verse later in Acts) that they pooled their resources to ensure that each person had what was needed. This was not simply a community of those who could afford the luxury of coming together – it was a community that mutually supported itself to ensure its wide inclusivity.
4) Finally, the first description of this church in Acts 2:42 - there is a desire to learn: “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching”. The push that brought people into this group may have been the dramatic events of Pentecost, but that kind of charismatic experience is only momentary. That kind of frenzy and emotional is hard to sustain. Ironically, if it was an ‘every-time’ experience, the impact would diminish over time. And often the frenzy and emotion doesn’t allow for much depth. The response of the crowd was not to expect more drama and high level excitement, but to realize that learning and reflection often requires a calmer setting and mood. They were hungry to hear from Peter and the others, those who had been with Jesus in his life time, those who proclaimed his resurrection. William Willimon has a good phrase about this as well: “The church is not to drift from one momentary emotional outburst to the next ... rather the church moves immediately to the task of teaching, keeping itself straight about what it is and what it is to be about”. (ibid. p40)
//
All of these aspects of the ancient church, sound relevant to our time and place to me. And we practice much of this as part of our regular life together as St. David’s United Church.
Now, we haven’t chosen to create a compound or commune or kibbutz where we all literally live and work together 24-7. But we do hold each other in other ways. When we share of ourselves within this church (sometimes financially as offerings, and practically, helping with various church programs and projects), we are engaging in the same spirit as that post-pentecost church. During our Sunday services, when we take the opportunity to greet each other in the Peace of Christ, we are proclaiming a unity and connection that makes us more than a bunch of individuals who happened to wander into the same room at the same time. When we join our voices and minds in song, we are literally finding the harmony that is possible between us.
There is a sense that not one of us is able to (or expected to) go it alone. As our United Church creed proclaims: We are not alone! Thanks be to God.
We do pray together; we do create opportunities for fellowship. And in the long standing traditions of The Church, we sure do plan times when we can eat full meals together (and we do intentionally engage in the ritual monthly commemorating of Jesus’ last supper as part of our church worship services).
//
I do think that this model of church modelled for us in Acts, chapter 2, can be relevant for us today. I certainly believe that (generally) people long for this type of true and welcoming community.
//
And I know that it is hard to do this really well all of the time. Not all of us are able to be part of this community in all of these four basic areas:
The worship life;
The learning life;
The sharing life; and
The social (fellowship) life.
We do have all of these aspects, but how many of us are to be fully engaged?
Fortunately, one of gradual changes we have seen in this church over the years is the intermixing of these different church lives – Sunday worship can also be a time of learning, sharing and fellowship.
Virtually all the various ways people serve the church (committees/groups) include as part of their activities time for devotion, prayer and shared support. I’m not sure how many of you know that at each Church Council meeting over the past number of years, we include in the agenda of the meeting time for prayers of support: before we pray we share what is on people’s hearts, who is on their hearts – and then we pray, not as an add on to the business of the meeting, but as part of it. As well, it is hard to leave a Church Council meeting in a bad mood, because we usually end meetings by sharing news about what things people are happy for or celebrating in their lives: again not as an add on to the business, but as part of it. At the Council, this was an intentional evolution from what I would call a business-efficiency model to a mission-opportunity model. Both can work, but the later seems to be a better fit for ‘church’ governance.
I sit in on a lot of committee and group meetings around this church and I see this desire and practice of fellowship all over the place.
I know that the people who were able to devote themselves to the Strengthening the Branches course that our recent student minister was able to lead as a means to do some of her own learning while here, found that a really valuable experience. The scuttle-butt that reaches my ears is ... more, more.
That’s good.
I have enough humility to know that this has virtually nothing to do with me, or any minister or other staff this church could have. This church is going to be what “WE” make it.
“Seek justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God”: this is what the prophet says is required of us. In and through all of the aspects of church I have been talking about today, I believe should (implicitly and explicitly) be founded in our common story of God’s compassion and fairness: a story that includes the impact of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. As “church” we are to be interesting in figuring out what it means that God’s welcome is wide, with God there is comfort – and that this as true now as it has always been.
In all of this we are to honour that God is our companion on this journey – the wise and caring shepherd and guide, the overly generous banquet host, who invites us into an eternity-long relationship based on compassion and peace.
If we don’t give ourselves the fullest opportunity to experience what we can offer to each other, we will find ourselves lacking. I’m quite certain of that!
And so, today, from this passage from Acts 2, I hope we can see that church is not supposed to be one-dimensional, we are to know fully what it means to be engaged in:
• shared, spirit-felt worship,
• real fellowship,
• meaningful sharing and
• a devout prayer and reflective life.
We are hungering for these things, aren’t we? Well, we know what to do then...day by day!
Let us pray
(ad lib)
#657VU “He Leadeth Me”
Sunday, May 8, 2011
JOY CAN RISE
May 8, 2011
Easter 3
Acts 2:14a;36-42
Luke 24:13-35
(prayer)
So, Simon Peter said, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation”. I wonder how much has changed. Dictionary.com defines the noun corruption as “dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power”. The adjective corrupt can describe the actions of those misusing their power but it can also describe the wider impact of those actions. Sometimes corruption’s effects extend beyond those most directly involved.
As many of you know, I am a news junkie. When I watch TV, it is most likely to be on a news channel (or Star Trek or Survivor or Man v Food or a football game). I enjoy the ins and outs of politics and governance. Like many others (I am sure) I enjoyed watching Donald Trump make a fool of himself grabbing headlines by clasping on to the lunatic fringe of the so-called "American birther movement". All of his investigations and predictions turned out to be nothing but hot air. He was a fair target at the comedic national correspondents’ dinner last weekend.
All of that seemed extra trivial when we saw what happened on Sunday night. When the United States' military found and killed Osama bin Laden, I was watching and waiting for The Donald to attach himself to (what is now tongue and cheeky being called) the Deather movement: those who doubt that bin Laden has expired and insist on seeing some proof (photos, video, etc.). Now this movement is smaller than it may appear given the amount of press the issue is getting – most of the people calling for pictures are not really doubters but are simply morbidly curious.
I suspect that we all can think of examples that show, to some people, past experiences of political secrecy and corruption have resulted in an inability to see everything relating to government as corrupt.
//
The context of the reading from Acts this morning is the story of the Pentecost festival that immediately followed Jesus’ resurrection. We will celebrate the full events of that day in five more Sundays at the conclusion of the Easter season. According to the Book of Acts, Peter tried to explain what had been happening to the crowd. As we will hear in a few weeks, Peter spoke about an outpouring of God’s spirit. Then as we heard today, he told the crowd about his experience with Jesus and his belief that Jesus is (in fact) the Messiah of God.
Last week here at St. David’s we heard the story of the disciples getting to see the risen Jesus on easter-eve and again one week later. Part of Jesus message for them was that they were to continue to preach (in his name and example) about the forgiveness and reconciliation God offers. This was the same message John the Baptist was sharing before Jesus even began his ministry. It appears as we read Acts that this is also what Peter is telling the Pentecost crowd: be reconciled to God and know the gift of God’s spiritual presence in your life!
Before Jesus, there was John the Baptist. Luke chapter three recounts it this way: 3[John] went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
After Jesus, there was Peter the Baptist, whom the same author (Luke and Acts were written by the same person) recounts Peter saying: 38... ‘Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven.
These are the bookends of Jesus’ ministry: calls to Baptisms of repentance and forgiveness. So it makes sense that this was the general focus of Jesus as well. The oldest gospel, Mark, describes the start of Jesus’ ministry this way: 1:14...Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, 15and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’
//
Sin is a topic that (especially in more mainline, progressively-minded churches) we often avoid. Perhaps that is because for some rather zealous and boisterous preachers it has been the only topic that the subject of sin is hard to broach without all that TV evangelistic baggage.
I’ll try anyway.
For me, sin is best thought of as that which clouds our ability to know and appreciate the presence of God in our midst. As such, it is fair to say that sin is that which separates us from God – even as God is not separate from us.
I think “sin” can be thought of in two ways. We could say there is a narrow definition and a broad definition. Narrowly, sin is a thing, a specific action, or even thought. Sin is something a person does – it is individual and personal. That is the favourite focus of the fire and brimstone preachers.
Broadly, sin is situational, contextual, attitudinal. Sin, in this way, is corporate and may be easy for an individual to say, well that’s not me, it’s not my fault - I can’t change that.
The prophet Micah summarized the faithful life with three phrases: to seek justice, to love kindness, to walk humbly with our God. I find it helpful to see these (along with Jesus’ instruction to Love God with our whole being and to love our neighbour as ourselves) as the benchmarks of faith-filled living. To do otherwise, I suppose, could be called “sin”
Individually, we can each work on setting up our life to appreciate God in our midst (humility), we can approach others with love and compassion and kindness and fairness. That might be fine for dealing with narrow sinfulness. But I believe that broad sin is the bigger problem in our world.
We tacitly accept systems of society and relationship and economics and governance that are not rooted in fairness and justice, that are devoid of compassion (kindness is irrelevant) and that see greed and selfishness as signs of strength and achievement; humility on the other hand is seen as weak, even silly in this dog-eat-dog world and something to be shamed.
This tacit acceptance could be called “sin” as well – community/societal sin. This kind of sin, which is enlivened by fear and greed can make spirit hard to grasp. It’s as if the whole environment has been corrupted.
“Save yourself from this corrupt generation!”
The root meaning of repentance is to change direction. Broad repentance is a desire to buck the trends of this life that encourage and reward: injustice, hardness of hearts, selfishness.
I believe that (as the first chapter of Genesis says) that we are created in goodness and that our basic nature is to be loving and fair and humble. We are drawn to that original goal – we want that kind of life and world to live in. Maybe that is why in the few days that followed Peter’s Pentecost speech that some three thousand people welcomed his message, we baptised and became the first of a new generation of followers of Jesus’ way.
//
I wonder if what we need is the courage to see what is possible. Is there enough openness amongst all of the cynicism that is all around us to see the hope and promise that is truly in our midst.
//
It was the late afternoon of the first Easter. That morning, the women had found the empty tomb and brought back a story about seeing angels that spoke of resurrection. Cleopas and his partner were from Emmaus, a village a few kilometres from Jerusalem. They counted themselves among those that were with Jesus in Jerusalem. We don’t know anything else about them – how long they had been part of the group, how much time they had spent with Jesus, did they travel with him, or did they simply catch the wave of excitement after the Palm Sunday parade? However it had been for them, they were devastated by his execution. They had hoped Jesus would be ‘The One’ who would redeem Israel. But now there was no reason to stay with the disciples – they were going home! It was over.
//
It was over but it wasn’t forgotten. So, when the fellow traveller on the road showed the slightest interest in their lives, they opened right up and told him the whole story. It is a common aspect of resurrection stories across the gospel accounts – often the risen Jesus is not recognized at first: Mary thought he was a gardener until she heard her name spoken; the fishing disciples just saw him as a nosey person on the beach shouting out advice, until that advice yielded a miraculous catch. And here, these two Emmaus disciples were talking about Jesus with Jesus and couldn’t see that it was Jesus. But something about this person was is intriguing that they were hesitant to part company, even when they arrived at their destination. They discouraged the traveller from continuing on: “stay with us”. I know that night was approaching and it would be un-wise for travellers to stay on the road in the dark. That would be a good enough reason to be welcoming to a traveller. But I like to imagine that there was a less tangible reason that these two disciples didn’t want this person to leave them, just yet. Perhaps, they had a sixth sense that they could be irrevocably changed by sticking with this guy. “Stay with us!”
I think that it is fair to assume that these two disciples were with Jesus three evenings earlier sharing supper with him on the night when he arrested: the night that the New Testament quotes Jesus as saying: “take and eat, this is my body broken for you; do this in remembrance of me!” It had to be a moment that was etched in the minds of all who were present – it was the last time they enjoyed Jesus’ company; just a couple of hours later he was in custody. As the story was re-told over the years, the followers of Jesus’ Way would look back on that meal and call it The Last Supper.
Clearly, for Cleopas and the other Emmaus disciple, the events of the Last Supper touched them at a sub-conscious level because when their guest blessed and broke the bread for the evening meal on that Sunday night, the memories came flooding back. This was Jesus, risen and among them. It had been Jesus who walked and talked with them on the road, for some reason they weren’t able to notice. As soon as their eyes were opened to the truth of who they were with, Jesus was gone. But in that momentary recognition they were changed. They immediately grabbed on to the memory of the events they had just experienced. They recalled the scriptural conversation they had along the road – they began to see Jesus as strongly rooted in their tradition and quite possibly The One sent by God to redeem the people.
Any concerns over travelling the roads at night were ignored and they ran back to the city they had escaped that afternoon. They found the others and proclaimed (as the women had done a few hours earlier): Jesus is Risen.
//
Out of despair, joy had risen.
//
For the Emmaus disciples, the grief and tragedy (they had been part of) had corrupted their ability to hope in what was possible.
Another way to use the word corruption is to speak about something that has been messed up in some way – none of us wants a computer that has a corrupted hard drive. When things are corrupted they are not going to be able to do what they are designed to do.
//
I believe strongly in the notion of a ‘good’ creation. I know that this world is good, because of the natural balance I see in the earth at its best. I see the natural goodness with humanity all the time – not as an act of gaining favour or exploiting charitable acts, but as natural goodness shining through. I also see the imbalance. I get worried when people become reigned to that imbalance, even to the point of giving up on the possibility of good.
As we begin to accept that goodness cannot dominate our lives, it can be said that we have been corrupted. I would go further to use the language of sin, when speaking of giving up on the possibility of good.
//
I think what has turned so many people off of ‘church’ is that perception that the focus is on sin and guilt: the focus is on the worst of who we are: using a fear of the impact of that way of living as a motivation to repent. “You’d better repent, or else ...!”
And repentance does imply a turning away from ‘sin’ (however we define it). But it can also be a turning toward a well-focused life – where we love God and all that God has made (including ourselves and our neighbours). If all we ever focus on is what we are leaving behind, we are not giving repentance its full due.
I cannot conceive that thousands of people would come to Peter for baptism out of fear – they had to be focused on the good life that was possible in the wake of Jesus’ resurrection.
//
We, too, I believe are called ‘to’ something, not ‘away’ from something. There are possibilities for good work and ministry together for us here at St. David’s as part of the wider Body of Christ.
If we are not - in the present - looking forward, then we might very well have some corruption issues to deal with.
Last week, I encouraged myself and you-all to be open to what is out there as possible for us. Today, I hope we can be enlivened by those moments of clarity and encouragement that remind us of the best of our potential. Next week, we will continue to read of the example of the early church and how they developed ways of relating that defined their sense of community and what it means to be a movement becoming a church.
May we know that God walks with us on this journey. Let us pray:
Stay with us God, even when we don’t notice you – especially when we don’t notice you. Be patient and persistent in your love for us until we see our potential to live as Jesus did. Amen.
#182 VU “Stay With Us”
Easter 3
Acts 2:14a;36-42
Luke 24:13-35
(prayer)
So, Simon Peter said, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation”. I wonder how much has changed. Dictionary.com defines the noun corruption as “dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power”. The adjective corrupt can describe the actions of those misusing their power but it can also describe the wider impact of those actions. Sometimes corruption’s effects extend beyond those most directly involved.
As many of you know, I am a news junkie. When I watch TV, it is most likely to be on a news channel (or Star Trek or Survivor or Man v Food or a football game). I enjoy the ins and outs of politics and governance. Like many others (I am sure) I enjoyed watching Donald Trump make a fool of himself grabbing headlines by clasping on to the lunatic fringe of the so-called "American birther movement". All of his investigations and predictions turned out to be nothing but hot air. He was a fair target at the comedic national correspondents’ dinner last weekend.
All of that seemed extra trivial when we saw what happened on Sunday night. When the United States' military found and killed Osama bin Laden, I was watching and waiting for The Donald to attach himself to (what is now tongue and cheeky being called) the Deather movement: those who doubt that bin Laden has expired and insist on seeing some proof (photos, video, etc.). Now this movement is smaller than it may appear given the amount of press the issue is getting – most of the people calling for pictures are not really doubters but are simply morbidly curious.
I suspect that we all can think of examples that show, to some people, past experiences of political secrecy and corruption have resulted in an inability to see everything relating to government as corrupt.
//
The context of the reading from Acts this morning is the story of the Pentecost festival that immediately followed Jesus’ resurrection. We will celebrate the full events of that day in five more Sundays at the conclusion of the Easter season. According to the Book of Acts, Peter tried to explain what had been happening to the crowd. As we will hear in a few weeks, Peter spoke about an outpouring of God’s spirit. Then as we heard today, he told the crowd about his experience with Jesus and his belief that Jesus is (in fact) the Messiah of God.
Last week here at St. David’s we heard the story of the disciples getting to see the risen Jesus on easter-eve and again one week later. Part of Jesus message for them was that they were to continue to preach (in his name and example) about the forgiveness and reconciliation God offers. This was the same message John the Baptist was sharing before Jesus even began his ministry. It appears as we read Acts that this is also what Peter is telling the Pentecost crowd: be reconciled to God and know the gift of God’s spiritual presence in your life!
Before Jesus, there was John the Baptist. Luke chapter three recounts it this way: 3[John] went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
After Jesus, there was Peter the Baptist, whom the same author (Luke and Acts were written by the same person) recounts Peter saying: 38... ‘Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven.
These are the bookends of Jesus’ ministry: calls to Baptisms of repentance and forgiveness. So it makes sense that this was the general focus of Jesus as well. The oldest gospel, Mark, describes the start of Jesus’ ministry this way: 1:14...Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, 15and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’
//
Sin is a topic that (especially in more mainline, progressively-minded churches) we often avoid. Perhaps that is because for some rather zealous and boisterous preachers it has been the only topic that the subject of sin is hard to broach without all that TV evangelistic baggage.
I’ll try anyway.
For me, sin is best thought of as that which clouds our ability to know and appreciate the presence of God in our midst. As such, it is fair to say that sin is that which separates us from God – even as God is not separate from us.
I think “sin” can be thought of in two ways. We could say there is a narrow definition and a broad definition. Narrowly, sin is a thing, a specific action, or even thought. Sin is something a person does – it is individual and personal. That is the favourite focus of the fire and brimstone preachers.
Broadly, sin is situational, contextual, attitudinal. Sin, in this way, is corporate and may be easy for an individual to say, well that’s not me, it’s not my fault - I can’t change that.
The prophet Micah summarized the faithful life with three phrases: to seek justice, to love kindness, to walk humbly with our God. I find it helpful to see these (along with Jesus’ instruction to Love God with our whole being and to love our neighbour as ourselves) as the benchmarks of faith-filled living. To do otherwise, I suppose, could be called “sin”
Individually, we can each work on setting up our life to appreciate God in our midst (humility), we can approach others with love and compassion and kindness and fairness. That might be fine for dealing with narrow sinfulness. But I believe that broad sin is the bigger problem in our world.
We tacitly accept systems of society and relationship and economics and governance that are not rooted in fairness and justice, that are devoid of compassion (kindness is irrelevant) and that see greed and selfishness as signs of strength and achievement; humility on the other hand is seen as weak, even silly in this dog-eat-dog world and something to be shamed.
This tacit acceptance could be called “sin” as well – community/societal sin. This kind of sin, which is enlivened by fear and greed can make spirit hard to grasp. It’s as if the whole environment has been corrupted.
“Save yourself from this corrupt generation!”
The root meaning of repentance is to change direction. Broad repentance is a desire to buck the trends of this life that encourage and reward: injustice, hardness of hearts, selfishness.
I believe that (as the first chapter of Genesis says) that we are created in goodness and that our basic nature is to be loving and fair and humble. We are drawn to that original goal – we want that kind of life and world to live in. Maybe that is why in the few days that followed Peter’s Pentecost speech that some three thousand people welcomed his message, we baptised and became the first of a new generation of followers of Jesus’ way.
//
I wonder if what we need is the courage to see what is possible. Is there enough openness amongst all of the cynicism that is all around us to see the hope and promise that is truly in our midst.
//
It was the late afternoon of the first Easter. That morning, the women had found the empty tomb and brought back a story about seeing angels that spoke of resurrection. Cleopas and his partner were from Emmaus, a village a few kilometres from Jerusalem. They counted themselves among those that were with Jesus in Jerusalem. We don’t know anything else about them – how long they had been part of the group, how much time they had spent with Jesus, did they travel with him, or did they simply catch the wave of excitement after the Palm Sunday parade? However it had been for them, they were devastated by his execution. They had hoped Jesus would be ‘The One’ who would redeem Israel. But now there was no reason to stay with the disciples – they were going home! It was over.
//
It was over but it wasn’t forgotten. So, when the fellow traveller on the road showed the slightest interest in their lives, they opened right up and told him the whole story. It is a common aspect of resurrection stories across the gospel accounts – often the risen Jesus is not recognized at first: Mary thought he was a gardener until she heard her name spoken; the fishing disciples just saw him as a nosey person on the beach shouting out advice, until that advice yielded a miraculous catch. And here, these two Emmaus disciples were talking about Jesus with Jesus and couldn’t see that it was Jesus. But something about this person was is intriguing that they were hesitant to part company, even when they arrived at their destination. They discouraged the traveller from continuing on: “stay with us”. I know that night was approaching and it would be un-wise for travellers to stay on the road in the dark. That would be a good enough reason to be welcoming to a traveller. But I like to imagine that there was a less tangible reason that these two disciples didn’t want this person to leave them, just yet. Perhaps, they had a sixth sense that they could be irrevocably changed by sticking with this guy. “Stay with us!”
I think that it is fair to assume that these two disciples were with Jesus three evenings earlier sharing supper with him on the night when he arrested: the night that the New Testament quotes Jesus as saying: “take and eat, this is my body broken for you; do this in remembrance of me!” It had to be a moment that was etched in the minds of all who were present – it was the last time they enjoyed Jesus’ company; just a couple of hours later he was in custody. As the story was re-told over the years, the followers of Jesus’ Way would look back on that meal and call it The Last Supper.
Clearly, for Cleopas and the other Emmaus disciple, the events of the Last Supper touched them at a sub-conscious level because when their guest blessed and broke the bread for the evening meal on that Sunday night, the memories came flooding back. This was Jesus, risen and among them. It had been Jesus who walked and talked with them on the road, for some reason they weren’t able to notice. As soon as their eyes were opened to the truth of who they were with, Jesus was gone. But in that momentary recognition they were changed. They immediately grabbed on to the memory of the events they had just experienced. They recalled the scriptural conversation they had along the road – they began to see Jesus as strongly rooted in their tradition and quite possibly The One sent by God to redeem the people.
Any concerns over travelling the roads at night were ignored and they ran back to the city they had escaped that afternoon. They found the others and proclaimed (as the women had done a few hours earlier): Jesus is Risen.
//
Out of despair, joy had risen.
//
For the Emmaus disciples, the grief and tragedy (they had been part of) had corrupted their ability to hope in what was possible.
Another way to use the word corruption is to speak about something that has been messed up in some way – none of us wants a computer that has a corrupted hard drive. When things are corrupted they are not going to be able to do what they are designed to do.
//
I believe strongly in the notion of a ‘good’ creation. I know that this world is good, because of the natural balance I see in the earth at its best. I see the natural goodness with humanity all the time – not as an act of gaining favour or exploiting charitable acts, but as natural goodness shining through. I also see the imbalance. I get worried when people become reigned to that imbalance, even to the point of giving up on the possibility of good.
As we begin to accept that goodness cannot dominate our lives, it can be said that we have been corrupted. I would go further to use the language of sin, when speaking of giving up on the possibility of good.
//
I think what has turned so many people off of ‘church’ is that perception that the focus is on sin and guilt: the focus is on the worst of who we are: using a fear of the impact of that way of living as a motivation to repent. “You’d better repent, or else ...!”
And repentance does imply a turning away from ‘sin’ (however we define it). But it can also be a turning toward a well-focused life – where we love God and all that God has made (including ourselves and our neighbours). If all we ever focus on is what we are leaving behind, we are not giving repentance its full due.
I cannot conceive that thousands of people would come to Peter for baptism out of fear – they had to be focused on the good life that was possible in the wake of Jesus’ resurrection.
//
We, too, I believe are called ‘to’ something, not ‘away’ from something. There are possibilities for good work and ministry together for us here at St. David’s as part of the wider Body of Christ.
If we are not - in the present - looking forward, then we might very well have some corruption issues to deal with.
Last week, I encouraged myself and you-all to be open to what is out there as possible for us. Today, I hope we can be enlivened by those moments of clarity and encouragement that remind us of the best of our potential. Next week, we will continue to read of the example of the early church and how they developed ways of relating that defined their sense of community and what it means to be a movement becoming a church.
May we know that God walks with us on this journey. Let us pray:
Stay with us God, even when we don’t notice you – especially when we don’t notice you. Be patient and persistent in your love for us until we see our potential to live as Jesus did. Amen.
#182 VU “Stay With Us”
Sunday, May 1, 2011
OPPORTUNITIES
May 1, 2011
Easter 2
Psalm 16
John 20:19-31
(prayer)
Happy Easter!
No, I didn’t look incorrectly at the Calendar. And no, it is not Orthodox Easter on the Julian calendar (2011 was one of those rare years when both the eastern and western church shared the same day for Easter Sunday).
I say Happy Easter because Easter is more than one day in the church – it is a whole season – a seven week season in fact. If you have one of those Canadian Church Calendars that our women’s group sells in December, you will see that every date in May is coloured white – in fact it is white from April 24th all the way to June 11th. Easter is a 49 day season that runs from Easter Sunday to the day before Pentecost.
//
Over these next few weeks, I hope that our times together in worship can build on the big theme of Easter: that is...
• With God all things are possible.
• Trouble and difficulty do not have to be the final word.
• Out of despair, joy can rise.
• Jesus can still be known and experienced – resurrection gives us that opportunity.
All of these things are not statements of unequivocal fact for us (none of us was there at the empty tomb or in the upper room; none of us broke bread with Jesus in Emmaus or ate breakfast fish with him by the shores of Galilee) – these Easter themes are not statements of unequivocal facts, but are declarations of faith. And yet, they may not be based on blind faith – for us, there may just be a logic behind what we have come to believe. [more on that later]
//
Our reading from the gospel of John begins on Easter Sunday evening. If you were at the 8am service last week, you would have heard the first 18 verses of John, chapter 20.
As we heard this morning, the context of verse 19 is that Sunday evening has come; the followers of Jesus are huddled behind locked doors in their rented room. They were afraid that the temple guards that had come and arrested Jesus 3 days earlier would be coming for them as well.
[ASIDE: Sadly, the gospel of John has been used by Christians for centuries to justify anti-Semitism. This is because of the authors labelling of the opponents of Jesus in Jerusalem simply as “The Jews”. An uninformed reading of these texts (like John 20:19) might assume that all Jews were to be feared by the followers of Jesus. That is of course absurd because the followers of Jesus were, themselves, Jews. Jesus was a Jew. Clearly the reference in John 20:19 is to be understood to mean that the disciples were behind locked doors for fear of the Jewish authorities: the members of the Temple hierarchy that saw Jesus as having committed blasphemy: the ones who took Jesus to the roman governor, Pilate, who then sentenced Jesus to death for treason against the empire (claims to kingship). Now, John’s gospel is generally agreed to be the last of the Biblical gospels to be written – perhaps as late as the 90s of the first century – that’s sixty some years after the events they describe. John’s text is not simply an historical record – it is a theological record. It not only includes accounts about some of the things that Jesus said and did, but (also) those stories are interwoven with 60 years of theological and Christological development: what was believed about God and Jesus. For example, in John 8:12 when Jesus is quoted as saying “I Am the light of the world” or in 6:35 when he says “I Am the bread of life” or in 14:6 where we read “I Am the way, the truth and the life”, these are more than historical quotes, they are statements of faith from the late first century Christian movement: John’s church was proclaiming that (for them) Jesus is (like) Light [guide, warmth, comfort], Bread [nourishment], Jesus is the Way, Truth and Life [a sure connection to God].” These sayings had become true for the church of the 90s. Back on topic about anti-Semitism, another truth for the Christian church of the 90s, is that they were no longer a strictly Hebrew movement – over the decades they had evolved to recognise that the love of God, in Christ Jesus their lord, was not restricted to one group or another – Christianity may have begun as new kind of Hebrew sect, but as it grew, it no longer fit neatly within traditional Judaism: in the language of the Apostle Paul “in Christ there was no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female” – all of these types of people still co-existed in the church, it’s just that divisive labels didn’t matter. However, within just one generation or so after the first Easter, even the groups of largely Jewish Christians in Judah and Galilee, found that they no longer had a place in the synagogues. And so we can understand how, to a Christian of the late first century, ‘The Jews’ were seen as separate from ‘The Christians’. Some of them in the 1st century may have even been comfortable extrapolating the historic opposition to Jesus from the temple elite to the entire Jewish nation (we saw the Nazis of the early 20th century make the same extrapolation) – but that is not something that is historically accurate, and it is certainly not helpful for us in a diversely spiritual world of the 21st century: where we have seen far too many examples of how fundamentalist religious zeal feeds on the hate that brews within holy divisions. And so, back to the text, a fair and right interpretation of references to “The Jews” in the gospel of John is to see them as limited to “the Jerusalem Temple Authorities”: not every Jewish person of Jesus’ day and NO Jewish person in our day!]
Now where was I?
Yes, in the locked room on the first Easter eve. The tomb was discovered empty in the morning by Mary Magdalene – that fact was confirmed by Peter and another disciple who went and inspected the site themselves (the testimony of two reliable male witnesses would even stand up in a first century court). An empty tomb was not a sign of resurrection; it was a sign of vandalism – Mary and her male companions all assumed that someone had taken the body away: not that Jesus was risen.
When Mary later came running back saying that she had seen and talked with a risen Jesus, this news caused more confusion that it did celebration. It was just Mary; this time there were no other witnesses. This insignificant testimony by a woman experiencing deep grief was not enough to overcome the fear they felt.
You-all heard what happened next. Somehow Jesus slipped past the locked door and was seen and heard by the group of followers in the room: his message “Peace be with you. You are enlivened by the Holy Spirit and sent out by God to share the good news of God’s forgiveness.”
The disciple known as The Twin was not there when Jesus’ came. Even though there were lots of witness this time, Thomas was as sceptical about the words “We have seen the lord” as he was when Mary spoke them a few hours earlier. “Unless I see and touch for myself, I will not believe.”
On the first week anniversary of the resurrection, the disciples (including Thomas this time) are together again – still behind locked doors / still afraid? – Jesus comes again, especially for Thomas – “Peace be with you. Touch and see.”
As with all of the gospel of John, these words are not merely an attempt at passing on historical quotations – they are theological statements for the church of the late first century.
We might be right to assume that there was virtually no one alive in John’s church that ever meet Jesus in the flesh (during his lifetime or a resurrection appearance) – John 20:29 is not really words for Thomas but for the church (the church of the late 1st century right up to our day):
“Blessed are those who have not seen
and yet have come to believe.”
These are not words that speak of so-called blind faith (see, I said, I’d come back to this). It does not say ‘blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe’; it says, ‘blessed are those who have not seen and yet HAVE COME TO believe’.
Faith is not a destination that we instantly transport to (we can’t ask Scotty to just beam us there); faith grows and develops along the way. I would even go so far to say ... that faith is dependent on the opportunities and experiences that come our way. A message from our gospel today is that just because one of those opportunities does not include viewing crucifixion wounds up close, doesn’t mean that faith is impossible. There are still paths that can get us there. We can still ‘come to believe’.
//
So, for us now – May Day 2011 – what opportunities and experiences might be in front of us that can strengthen our connection to the mystery and holiness we hope is all around us?
What opportunities and experiences might be in front of us that can strengthen our connection to the mystery and holiness we hope is all around us?
//
//
I feel a bit lonely up here this morning. I feel blessed to have been able to walk with Alex as she was here from September to April as a student minister.
I know that this internship experience was only 8 months long. That’s only 6% of my time as minister at St. David’s (127 months since Oct 2000) and 3% of the time I have been an ordained UC minister (251 months since June 1990) and less than one half of a percent in lifespan of this congregation’s history (since 1989).
I know that this experience was only eight months long and that the absolute primary focus of that time had to be on Alex’s learning, but I have found myself this week reflecting on how that time was an opportunity for me to learn and grow in faith. And, oddly enough, I am not lamenting what is no longer here because the internship is concluded, but I am grateful for what I have gained: I have been thinking about how that has been true for me personally and how I imagine it to be true for our church as a whole.
I wonder where we go from here.
//
“I wonder where we go from here”: it’s a great question. And it’s a hard question. I know that if we gathered a half dozen people together from this room right now, we would likely have a variety of ideas of what might be desired – I doubt we would have an instant consensus of what might be necessary and possible. “I wonder where we go from here” is the start of a deep conversation.
I know I have mentioned this before, but I’m going to again: when my wife Patti and I brought our first son home from the hospital and put his delicate, sleepy body in his crib for the first time, we looked at each other and both wondered: “so, now what?”
I imagine that Mary and Peter and Thomas may have looked at each other after Jesus left that locked room and wondered the same thing: so, now what?
Jesus had said, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Did the disciples stare into each other’s eyes and say, “I wonder where we go from here.”
Well, we know what their first step had to be. If they were truly to take the notion of ‘being sent’ seriously, they would have to leave the security of the locked room – they would have to set aside the paralysing fear and venture out in hope and faith, trusting (as Jesus said) they had the Holy Spirit as a companion.
In spite of what we might assume about today’s story concerning Thomas, throughout the gospels and other parts of the Bible, the biggest obstacle to faith is not doubt, but fear.
“You of little faith, why are you afraid?” Jesus once told them in the boat during a storm (Mt 8:26).
The path of faith begins by moving away from fear! That message comes out clearly in the last half of John, chapter 20.
Jesus gave his disciples an indwelling of the Holy Spirit to be their companion along the way. This was not necessarily new: ancient Psalmists (like the author of Psalm 16, which was read this morning) fervently believed that God was “spiritual companion”: In you, I take refuge ... you show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy. (Ps 16:1,11). On that night in the locked room, Jesus reminded his followers that they have what their tradition has always believed –
They enjoyed an indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit. And so, maybe they didn’t need to always be afraid. They didn’t need to take refuge in a locked room ... God is their refuge.
//
Of course, fear pops up here and there along the way – often for good reason – because fear is tied to uncertainty, and there is a lot of uncertainty in life and in the world in which we live. We worry about the impact of choices we make – we wonder about what joy/calamity an uncertain future might bring.
[Uncertain future ... now, I’m not really speaking about the election tomorrow, but since I brought it up – I do encourage those of you citizens 18 and older to be sure to take your whole self into the voting booth: mind, body and spirit. In faith, believe that you have received the Holy Spirit and that this blessing influences how you look at the world. So citizen, be guided by your morals, your sense of justice and a desire (as Paul wrote in a letter to the Corinthians) for the ‘common good’ for yourself and your fellow Canadians. That’s all I’ll say about that for fear of breaching the non-partisan expectations of religious charitable organizations.]
But I digress... where was I?
Oh, yes, ‘moving beyond fear’.
For faith to be grown – to be able to ‘come to believe’, we need to journey into the opportunities and experiences where we might discover the Holy.
That practically demands that we wonder where we should be going from here.
//
Be thinking about that,
meditate on that,
pray about that,
be open to acting on what you discover.
To do anything else is akin to hiding a stagnant faith behind a locked door.
“Blessed are those who come to believe.”
Thanks be to God. [END]
//
Let us pray:
Holy Spirit,
may we embody your grace and carry that good news to a waiting world.
AMEN.
Page 806VU “O God, Our Help In Ages Past”
Easter 2
Psalm 16
John 20:19-31
(prayer)
Happy Easter!
No, I didn’t look incorrectly at the Calendar. And no, it is not Orthodox Easter on the Julian calendar (2011 was one of those rare years when both the eastern and western church shared the same day for Easter Sunday).
I say Happy Easter because Easter is more than one day in the church – it is a whole season – a seven week season in fact. If you have one of those Canadian Church Calendars that our women’s group sells in December, you will see that every date in May is coloured white – in fact it is white from April 24th all the way to June 11th. Easter is a 49 day season that runs from Easter Sunday to the day before Pentecost.
//
Over these next few weeks, I hope that our times together in worship can build on the big theme of Easter: that is...
• With God all things are possible.
• Trouble and difficulty do not have to be the final word.
• Out of despair, joy can rise.
• Jesus can still be known and experienced – resurrection gives us that opportunity.
All of these things are not statements of unequivocal fact for us (none of us was there at the empty tomb or in the upper room; none of us broke bread with Jesus in Emmaus or ate breakfast fish with him by the shores of Galilee) – these Easter themes are not statements of unequivocal facts, but are declarations of faith. And yet, they may not be based on blind faith – for us, there may just be a logic behind what we have come to believe. [more on that later]
//
Our reading from the gospel of John begins on Easter Sunday evening. If you were at the 8am service last week, you would have heard the first 18 verses of John, chapter 20.
As we heard this morning, the context of verse 19 is that Sunday evening has come; the followers of Jesus are huddled behind locked doors in their rented room. They were afraid that the temple guards that had come and arrested Jesus 3 days earlier would be coming for them as well.
[ASIDE: Sadly, the gospel of John has been used by Christians for centuries to justify anti-Semitism. This is because of the authors labelling of the opponents of Jesus in Jerusalem simply as “The Jews”. An uninformed reading of these texts (like John 20:19) might assume that all Jews were to be feared by the followers of Jesus. That is of course absurd because the followers of Jesus were, themselves, Jews. Jesus was a Jew. Clearly the reference in John 20:19 is to be understood to mean that the disciples were behind locked doors for fear of the Jewish authorities: the members of the Temple hierarchy that saw Jesus as having committed blasphemy: the ones who took Jesus to the roman governor, Pilate, who then sentenced Jesus to death for treason against the empire (claims to kingship). Now, John’s gospel is generally agreed to be the last of the Biblical gospels to be written – perhaps as late as the 90s of the first century – that’s sixty some years after the events they describe. John’s text is not simply an historical record – it is a theological record. It not only includes accounts about some of the things that Jesus said and did, but (also) those stories are interwoven with 60 years of theological and Christological development: what was believed about God and Jesus. For example, in John 8:12 when Jesus is quoted as saying “I Am the light of the world” or in 6:35 when he says “I Am the bread of life” or in 14:6 where we read “I Am the way, the truth and the life”, these are more than historical quotes, they are statements of faith from the late first century Christian movement: John’s church was proclaiming that (for them) Jesus is (like) Light [guide, warmth, comfort], Bread [nourishment], Jesus is the Way, Truth and Life [a sure connection to God].” These sayings had become true for the church of the 90s. Back on topic about anti-Semitism, another truth for the Christian church of the 90s, is that they were no longer a strictly Hebrew movement – over the decades they had evolved to recognise that the love of God, in Christ Jesus their lord, was not restricted to one group or another – Christianity may have begun as new kind of Hebrew sect, but as it grew, it no longer fit neatly within traditional Judaism: in the language of the Apostle Paul “in Christ there was no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female” – all of these types of people still co-existed in the church, it’s just that divisive labels didn’t matter. However, within just one generation or so after the first Easter, even the groups of largely Jewish Christians in Judah and Galilee, found that they no longer had a place in the synagogues. And so we can understand how, to a Christian of the late first century, ‘The Jews’ were seen as separate from ‘The Christians’. Some of them in the 1st century may have even been comfortable extrapolating the historic opposition to Jesus from the temple elite to the entire Jewish nation (we saw the Nazis of the early 20th century make the same extrapolation) – but that is not something that is historically accurate, and it is certainly not helpful for us in a diversely spiritual world of the 21st century: where we have seen far too many examples of how fundamentalist religious zeal feeds on the hate that brews within holy divisions. And so, back to the text, a fair and right interpretation of references to “The Jews” in the gospel of John is to see them as limited to “the Jerusalem Temple Authorities”: not every Jewish person of Jesus’ day and NO Jewish person in our day!]
Now where was I?
Yes, in the locked room on the first Easter eve. The tomb was discovered empty in the morning by Mary Magdalene – that fact was confirmed by Peter and another disciple who went and inspected the site themselves (the testimony of two reliable male witnesses would even stand up in a first century court). An empty tomb was not a sign of resurrection; it was a sign of vandalism – Mary and her male companions all assumed that someone had taken the body away: not that Jesus was risen.
When Mary later came running back saying that she had seen and talked with a risen Jesus, this news caused more confusion that it did celebration. It was just Mary; this time there were no other witnesses. This insignificant testimony by a woman experiencing deep grief was not enough to overcome the fear they felt.
You-all heard what happened next. Somehow Jesus slipped past the locked door and was seen and heard by the group of followers in the room: his message “Peace be with you. You are enlivened by the Holy Spirit and sent out by God to share the good news of God’s forgiveness.”
The disciple known as The Twin was not there when Jesus’ came. Even though there were lots of witness this time, Thomas was as sceptical about the words “We have seen the lord” as he was when Mary spoke them a few hours earlier. “Unless I see and touch for myself, I will not believe.”
On the first week anniversary of the resurrection, the disciples (including Thomas this time) are together again – still behind locked doors / still afraid? – Jesus comes again, especially for Thomas – “Peace be with you. Touch and see.”
As with all of the gospel of John, these words are not merely an attempt at passing on historical quotations – they are theological statements for the church of the late first century.
We might be right to assume that there was virtually no one alive in John’s church that ever meet Jesus in the flesh (during his lifetime or a resurrection appearance) – John 20:29 is not really words for Thomas but for the church (the church of the late 1st century right up to our day):
“Blessed are those who have not seen
and yet have come to believe.”
These are not words that speak of so-called blind faith (see, I said, I’d come back to this). It does not say ‘blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe’; it says, ‘blessed are those who have not seen and yet HAVE COME TO believe’.
Faith is not a destination that we instantly transport to (we can’t ask Scotty to just beam us there); faith grows and develops along the way. I would even go so far to say ... that faith is dependent on the opportunities and experiences that come our way. A message from our gospel today is that just because one of those opportunities does not include viewing crucifixion wounds up close, doesn’t mean that faith is impossible. There are still paths that can get us there. We can still ‘come to believe’.
//
So, for us now – May Day 2011 – what opportunities and experiences might be in front of us that can strengthen our connection to the mystery and holiness we hope is all around us?
What opportunities and experiences might be in front of us that can strengthen our connection to the mystery and holiness we hope is all around us?
//
//
I feel a bit lonely up here this morning. I feel blessed to have been able to walk with Alex as she was here from September to April as a student minister.
I know that this internship experience was only 8 months long. That’s only 6% of my time as minister at St. David’s (127 months since Oct 2000) and 3% of the time I have been an ordained UC minister (251 months since June 1990) and less than one half of a percent in lifespan of this congregation’s history (since 1989).
I know that this experience was only eight months long and that the absolute primary focus of that time had to be on Alex’s learning, but I have found myself this week reflecting on how that time was an opportunity for me to learn and grow in faith. And, oddly enough, I am not lamenting what is no longer here because the internship is concluded, but I am grateful for what I have gained: I have been thinking about how that has been true for me personally and how I imagine it to be true for our church as a whole.
I wonder where we go from here.
//
“I wonder where we go from here”: it’s a great question. And it’s a hard question. I know that if we gathered a half dozen people together from this room right now, we would likely have a variety of ideas of what might be desired – I doubt we would have an instant consensus of what might be necessary and possible. “I wonder where we go from here” is the start of a deep conversation.
I know I have mentioned this before, but I’m going to again: when my wife Patti and I brought our first son home from the hospital and put his delicate, sleepy body in his crib for the first time, we looked at each other and both wondered: “so, now what?”
I imagine that Mary and Peter and Thomas may have looked at each other after Jesus left that locked room and wondered the same thing: so, now what?
Jesus had said, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Did the disciples stare into each other’s eyes and say, “I wonder where we go from here.”
Well, we know what their first step had to be. If they were truly to take the notion of ‘being sent’ seriously, they would have to leave the security of the locked room – they would have to set aside the paralysing fear and venture out in hope and faith, trusting (as Jesus said) they had the Holy Spirit as a companion.
In spite of what we might assume about today’s story concerning Thomas, throughout the gospels and other parts of the Bible, the biggest obstacle to faith is not doubt, but fear.
“You of little faith, why are you afraid?” Jesus once told them in the boat during a storm (Mt 8:26).
The path of faith begins by moving away from fear! That message comes out clearly in the last half of John, chapter 20.
Jesus gave his disciples an indwelling of the Holy Spirit to be their companion along the way. This was not necessarily new: ancient Psalmists (like the author of Psalm 16, which was read this morning) fervently believed that God was “spiritual companion”: In you, I take refuge ... you show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy. (Ps 16:1,11). On that night in the locked room, Jesus reminded his followers that they have what their tradition has always believed –
They enjoyed an indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit. And so, maybe they didn’t need to always be afraid. They didn’t need to take refuge in a locked room ... God is their refuge.
//
Of course, fear pops up here and there along the way – often for good reason – because fear is tied to uncertainty, and there is a lot of uncertainty in life and in the world in which we live. We worry about the impact of choices we make – we wonder about what joy/calamity an uncertain future might bring.
[Uncertain future ... now, I’m not really speaking about the election tomorrow, but since I brought it up – I do encourage those of you citizens 18 and older to be sure to take your whole self into the voting booth: mind, body and spirit. In faith, believe that you have received the Holy Spirit and that this blessing influences how you look at the world. So citizen, be guided by your morals, your sense of justice and a desire (as Paul wrote in a letter to the Corinthians) for the ‘common good’ for yourself and your fellow Canadians. That’s all I’ll say about that for fear of breaching the non-partisan expectations of religious charitable organizations.]
But I digress... where was I?
Oh, yes, ‘moving beyond fear’.
For faith to be grown – to be able to ‘come to believe’, we need to journey into the opportunities and experiences where we might discover the Holy.
That practically demands that we wonder where we should be going from here.
//
Be thinking about that,
meditate on that,
pray about that,
be open to acting on what you discover.
To do anything else is akin to hiding a stagnant faith behind a locked door.
“Blessed are those who come to believe.”
Thanks be to God. [END]
//
Let us pray:
Holy Spirit,
may we embody your grace and carry that good news to a waiting world.
AMEN.
Page 806VU “O God, Our Help In Ages Past”
Sunday, April 24, 2011
THE REACTIONS
EASTER SUNDAY - 8:00am
“This is the Day that God has Made”
Each one of the biblical gospels tell stories of what happened early on the first Easter morning – none of them agree on the exact details, other than that Mary Magdalene went to the tomb that morning. Matthew, Mark and Luke have at least one other woman go with her. John’s gospel mentions only Mary.
JOHN 20:1-10
1Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. 2So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.’ 3Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went towards the tomb. 4The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. 6Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, 7and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. 8Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 9for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. 10Then the disciples returned to their homes.
DISCOVERY AND FIRST REACTION
I know that many of us are familiar with the ultimate climax of the Easter story.
But as we gather here this morning, let’s remember that for Mary and the other disciples, death was the final word.
On Thursday evening, Jesus was arrested. On Friday, he was executed; he was hastily buried before sunset. From sundown Friday through the daylight hours of Saturday, it was the Sabbath day.
And the Passover Sabbath at that (not a time to go to the tomb). And when the Sabbath ended, it was too dark to go to the tomb Saturday night.
So Mary Magdalene ventured out before dawn on Sunday morning, so she could be there at first light, only to make a horrific discovery: the large stone that protected the grave was rolled away.
John’s gospel says that Mary didn’t go in, but she instinctively knew what had happened – someone had taken away Jesus’ body and so she ran back to the disciple and told them what had happened.
Two of them, Simon Peter and one simply described in the Bible as the ‘other disciple’ ran back to see what Mary had seen. Church tradition has decided that this ‘other disciple’ is John. I have no idea if that is true or not, but let’s agree to call this other disciple, ‘John’ for simplicity’s sake.
John gets there first, sticks his head in and sees only the grave cloths. Peter arrives and walks straight into the tomb and takes a good look around – it’s true, Jesus body is gone, only the linens remain.
The other disciple, John, eventually goes in and confirms with his own eyes that the tomb is empty.
John and Peter had confirmed Mary’s report (two male witnesses’ testimony would even stand up in court; but this was not a legal matter, it was a matter of grief and anguish) – the tomb was truly empty, that’s all they needed to know; none of them were not thinking resurrection at this point.
It was just another horrible thing in a serious of horrible things. So, they hung their heads in defeat … and left.
It is hard to take those first steps away.
I have known the experience of being at bedside in hospital when a loved one dies. It is hard to muster the energy to leave. It’s almost as if you don’t leave, you can still hang on to some hope.
How hard it must have been for John and Peter to walk away – knowing that the worst of situations had actually gotten a bit worse. They would have to bearers of the bad news to the others.
JOHN 20:11-16
11But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look* into the tomb; 12and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. 13They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’ 14When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ 16Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher).
SECOND REACTION AND DISCOVERY
Less than three days earlier Jesus had asked his followers to remember him and now they wouldn’t even be able to visit his grave.
After John and Peter had satisfied themselves that Jesus’ body was indeed gone and there was nothing else they could do, the eventually decided it was time to go back to where they were staying.
The gospel implies that Mary wasn’t quite ready to leave, so they others went on without her. Leaving her alone in the garden by the tomb.
Her own selfish grief would not allow her to walk away. I guess she needed what John and Peter had: a firsthand look. Remember when she first arrived, she had only witnessed the stone rolled away, she never went in.
Peter and John had discovered an empty tomb, except for the grave clothes. Mary did not discover an empty tomb according to the fourth gospel.
Two figures in white ask her: why are you weeping? The Bible tells us these were angels, but Mary doesn’t seem to have noticed because she is still concerned about the lack of a dead body.
She leaves the tomb and another voice with the same question: why are you weeping? The Bible tells us that this was Jesus, but Mary doesn’t seem to have noticed because she is still concerned about the lack of a dead body.
The people Mary has just met are strangers to her, but then something very familiar: her name - spoken by that distinctive voice that had told parables, offerred healing and insight - the voice of Jesus, her lord.
Now resurrection is part of the conversation.
By now, Peter and John will have delivered the bad news to the rest of the group. Mary will soon return with good news (gospel)!
JOHN 20:17-18
17Jesus said to [Mary], ‘Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” ’ 18Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her.
Now, legally, this was just the word of a 1st century peasant woman – it held no authority. Anything she said could be dismissed. Her claim was just words. In the gospel of Luke, when the women came to the disciples with stories of angelic messengers proclaiming Jesus’ resurrection, these accounts are dismissed as “idle tales.”
For herself, Mary may be convinced because of what she has seen and heard, but Mary’s words are not proof of Jesus’ resurrection to anyone else. They’re just words: maybe even idle tales.
We are not here because of proof. We are here in faith and in hope.
We are here because at a level beyond logic, we know it feels right to believe in the everlasting nature of God – that (as the Apostle Paul would write ~20 year after Mary shared her gospel/goodnews): “neither death, nor life … nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God.”
Easter is ‘believing beyond the evidence.’
Easter is stubborn hope and faith.
Easter is our reminder that God reaches beyond the violence, the injustice, the tragedy and the grief and calls out our name in familiar loving voice.
And we can respond by living as if Jesus’ way of living and relating to each other is not dead and buried.
We don’t have the indisputable evidence to prove why we believe these things. Neither did Mary.
Good News indeed!
“Hallelujah, Give Thanks”
Blessing
“Christ is Risen From the Dead”
“This is the Day that God has Made”
Each one of the biblical gospels tell stories of what happened early on the first Easter morning – none of them agree on the exact details, other than that Mary Magdalene went to the tomb that morning. Matthew, Mark and Luke have at least one other woman go with her. John’s gospel mentions only Mary.
JOHN 20:1-10
1Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. 2So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.’ 3Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went towards the tomb. 4The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. 6Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, 7and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. 8Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 9for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. 10Then the disciples returned to their homes.
DISCOVERY AND FIRST REACTION
I know that many of us are familiar with the ultimate climax of the Easter story.
But as we gather here this morning, let’s remember that for Mary and the other disciples, death was the final word.
On Thursday evening, Jesus was arrested. On Friday, he was executed; he was hastily buried before sunset. From sundown Friday through the daylight hours of Saturday, it was the Sabbath day.
And the Passover Sabbath at that (not a time to go to the tomb). And when the Sabbath ended, it was too dark to go to the tomb Saturday night.
So Mary Magdalene ventured out before dawn on Sunday morning, so she could be there at first light, only to make a horrific discovery: the large stone that protected the grave was rolled away.
John’s gospel says that Mary didn’t go in, but she instinctively knew what had happened – someone had taken away Jesus’ body and so she ran back to the disciple and told them what had happened.
Two of them, Simon Peter and one simply described in the Bible as the ‘other disciple’ ran back to see what Mary had seen. Church tradition has decided that this ‘other disciple’ is John. I have no idea if that is true or not, but let’s agree to call this other disciple, ‘John’ for simplicity’s sake.
John gets there first, sticks his head in and sees only the grave cloths. Peter arrives and walks straight into the tomb and takes a good look around – it’s true, Jesus body is gone, only the linens remain.
The other disciple, John, eventually goes in and confirms with his own eyes that the tomb is empty.
John and Peter had confirmed Mary’s report (two male witnesses’ testimony would even stand up in court; but this was not a legal matter, it was a matter of grief and anguish) – the tomb was truly empty, that’s all they needed to know; none of them were not thinking resurrection at this point.
It was just another horrible thing in a serious of horrible things. So, they hung their heads in defeat … and left.
It is hard to take those first steps away.
I have known the experience of being at bedside in hospital when a loved one dies. It is hard to muster the energy to leave. It’s almost as if you don’t leave, you can still hang on to some hope.
How hard it must have been for John and Peter to walk away – knowing that the worst of situations had actually gotten a bit worse. They would have to bearers of the bad news to the others.
JOHN 20:11-16
11But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look* into the tomb; 12and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. 13They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’ 14When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ 16Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher).
SECOND REACTION AND DISCOVERY
Less than three days earlier Jesus had asked his followers to remember him and now they wouldn’t even be able to visit his grave.
After John and Peter had satisfied themselves that Jesus’ body was indeed gone and there was nothing else they could do, the eventually decided it was time to go back to where they were staying.
The gospel implies that Mary wasn’t quite ready to leave, so they others went on without her. Leaving her alone in the garden by the tomb.
Her own selfish grief would not allow her to walk away. I guess she needed what John and Peter had: a firsthand look. Remember when she first arrived, she had only witnessed the stone rolled away, she never went in.
Peter and John had discovered an empty tomb, except for the grave clothes. Mary did not discover an empty tomb according to the fourth gospel.
Two figures in white ask her: why are you weeping? The Bible tells us these were angels, but Mary doesn’t seem to have noticed because she is still concerned about the lack of a dead body.
She leaves the tomb and another voice with the same question: why are you weeping? The Bible tells us that this was Jesus, but Mary doesn’t seem to have noticed because she is still concerned about the lack of a dead body.
The people Mary has just met are strangers to her, but then something very familiar: her name - spoken by that distinctive voice that had told parables, offerred healing and insight - the voice of Jesus, her lord.
Now resurrection is part of the conversation.
By now, Peter and John will have delivered the bad news to the rest of the group. Mary will soon return with good news (gospel)!
JOHN 20:17-18
17Jesus said to [Mary], ‘Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” ’ 18Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her.
Now, legally, this was just the word of a 1st century peasant woman – it held no authority. Anything she said could be dismissed. Her claim was just words. In the gospel of Luke, when the women came to the disciples with stories of angelic messengers proclaiming Jesus’ resurrection, these accounts are dismissed as “idle tales.”
For herself, Mary may be convinced because of what she has seen and heard, but Mary’s words are not proof of Jesus’ resurrection to anyone else. They’re just words: maybe even idle tales.
We are not here because of proof. We are here in faith and in hope.
We are here because at a level beyond logic, we know it feels right to believe in the everlasting nature of God – that (as the Apostle Paul would write ~20 year after Mary shared her gospel/goodnews): “neither death, nor life … nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God.”
Easter is ‘believing beyond the evidence.’
Easter is stubborn hope and faith.
Easter is our reminder that God reaches beyond the violence, the injustice, the tragedy and the grief and calls out our name in familiar loving voice.
And we can respond by living as if Jesus’ way of living and relating to each other is not dead and buried.
We don’t have the indisputable evidence to prove why we believe these things. Neither did Mary.
Good News indeed!
“Hallelujah, Give Thanks”
Blessing
“Christ is Risen From the Dead”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)