Rev Rachel

Pilgrim Road: A Sermon for Sunday June 30, 2019

The following sermon was preached at saint benedict's table on Sunday June 30, 2019.  You can also listen to the live recording or subscribe to our podcast. Just click here.

Before we move into the readings I want to take a moment to thank you all for all the ways you have supported and encouraged me as I went through the ordination process.  It’s been an eventful five years and I am endlessly grateful for each one of you.

Most of you will know that I was ordained as a priest about two weeks ago but what you may not know is that June 17th was already an important date for me.  Five years ago on that day I completed the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route across Northern Spain.

A pilgrimage can be a literal journey to a physical place, but it is also common to use the idea of pilgrimage as a metaphor to describe our daily lives. People casually talk about their lives as a journey and we devour stories like The Lord of the Rings and the Wizard of Oz.

There are lots of references to pilgrimages in the Bible as well. You could even say it’s one of the main themes in the Bible, it’s that common.  It’s there, but it’s subtle, one of those themes you can easily overlook. I’ve been reading the Bible my whole life and I never really noticed all the references to pilgrimages, until I did notice them, and then I couldn’t believe it took me so long to see something that now seems so obvious.

For example, scholars note that Luke frames his entire gospel narrative in the context of a pilgrimage. NT Wright observes that, “Travelling in obedience to God’s call is one of Luke’s central pictures for what it means to be a Christian. Following Jesus is what it’s all about.”

Jesus’ contemporaries would also have been familiar with the stories of the pilgrimages of their ancestors. Stories like the Exodus when their ancestors travelled from Egypt to the Promised Land.

They would have known the story of Ruth and Naomi’s pilgrimage to Bethlehem.

They would have sung the series of psalms (120-134) that speak directly to the idea that our lives are a journey and are commonly referred to today as the pilgrim psalms.

They would also likely have had their own personal experience of pilgrimage. Jewish people who lived in Galilee regularly went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. A journey that would take about three to four days.

A lot of the action in Luke occurs as Jesus and his followers are on pilgrimage to Jerusalem and Neil Elliot has observed that, “All that Jesus teaches about justice, about the right use of wealth, about prayer and steadfastness in his cause, he teaches as he leads his followers toward a final confrontation in Jerusalem.”  (People’s Bible)

Our reading from Luke begins, “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” (51)

Jesus has his game face on, his do not mess with me face, his nothing is going to get in my way face.

I have a friend whose face gets like that when she decides it’s her turn to pay for dinner. When that happens, there is no point in arguing with her. I let her pay.

Jesus is going to go to Jerusalem by way of Samaria. That’s an odd choice given that Jews and Samaritans aren’t supposed to get along. Most Jewish people in Galilee would have avoided going through Samaria by walking along the Jordan Valley and beginning the ascent to Jerusalem at Jericho.

By the way, have you ever noticed that a lot of older churches are built in such a way that you often have to climb a set of stairs to get inside and then another series of stairs to get to the altar?  All Saints is built like that. The purpose of this design choice isn’t simply to frustrate folks with mobility issues – although I am sure it does frustrate them – it’s designed to mimic the fact that in order to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, you had to climb up a hill.

Jesus is determined, he has set his face towards Jerusalem and nothing is going to get in his way.

Well, some things may get in his way.  Luke tells us that Jesus sent scouts ahead of him who went to a Samaritan village to prepare things for his arrival but “they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem.” (53)

Now our gospel reading doesn’t make this clear, but it’s possible that Jesus has been spending time and gaining a following in Samaria. He may not simply be passing through Samaria on his way to Jerusalem, he may have already been in Samaria for quite some time.

This is suggested by the story in John of the Samaritan woman at the well. (4:4-41)

In that story, Jesus and a woman from Samaria have an in-depth theological discussion and one of the things that the Samaritan woman discusses with Jesus is the correct location for worship. Samaritans believed it was Mount Gerizim while Jewish people believed it was the temple in Jerusalem. Jesus explains that this debate no longer matters because he has come to bring about a new way of worshipping God that is not dependent on location. The Samaritan woman believes this is truly good news and she becomes one of the first evangelists, sharing the gospel with her neighbours.

If people in Samaria have begun to hear and believe this good news, Jesus’ choice to go to Jerusalem would be confusing.  “Hey Jesus, after years of hearing our Jewish neighbours say that Jerusalem is better that Mount Gerizim, you came along and said that location doesn’t matter and we believed you but now, now you’re going to privilege Jerusalem by traveling there?”

This pilgrimage to Jerusalem might seem like a betrayal. It might very well be why they are now angry enough that they would refuse to offer Jesus hospitality.

Whatever the reason, the villages won’t receive Jesus and James and John are not impressed. They turn to Jesus and say, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” (54)

Sooo… I have a couple of questions for the disciples, but the first one is: What makes James and John so sure that they are capable of calling down fire from heaven?

We don’t have any stories that indicate this is something they have ever been able to do. Calling down fire from heaven to destroy a village isn’t even something we’ve seen Jesus do, let alone one of his followers. But James and John offer to do just that as if they are sure that they can and as if they believe that Jesus will appreciate this offer. As if they are doing Jesus a favour.

It’s like there are saying, “Step aside Jesus and let us handle this one. We’ve been waiting our whole lives for a chance to smite some Samaritans.”

Where does this sort of profound confidence – overconfidence? – come from?

But there will be no burned villages or villagers this day. Jesus rebukes James and John, and their pilgrimage continues.

Incidentally, if you decide to walk the Camino de Santiago, the way of St James, it is this James’ burial space you are purported to be walking to.  He may seem like a bit of a mess now, but James does learn along the way and eventually becomes a man worthy of admiration.

As Jesus and his disciples continue their journey to Jerusalem, Luke describes a series of encounters with three different people along the way (57-62).

Now before we look at those interactions, there are a couple of things I think we need to keep in mind. Firstly, these three people are three individual people and when Jesus interacts with them, he is interacting with them as unique individuals at a unique point in his earthly ministry.

Remember that Jesus has “set his face towards Jerusalem.” He is a man with a mission that will require all of his focus and concentration. There is no time for anything or anyone who will try and distract him from doing what he knows he needs to do.

And if we want to follow him on this road, we need to be willing to be equally focused.

I had a lot of great adventures on the Camino, but I also turned down an equally large number of them because I needed to be in Santiago by a particular date. By saying “yes” to the Camino, I had to say “no” to other things.  I had to say “no” to good things, important things even, because those things conflicted with the thing I had said “yes” to.

When Jesus meets these three people along the way, they all say they want to follow him, but Jesus tests them to make sure that their “yes” is really a “yes.”  Do they understand what they will have to say “no” to in order to say “yes” to Jesus?

The first man Jesus meets says, “I will follow you wherever you go.”

Which is a pretty audacious statement. You’ve got to admire this guy’s confidence. Over confidence?

I mean really, you’re going to follow Jesus wherever he goes? How can you even say such a thing when you have absolutely no idea where he is going? This journey will end with death on a cross. Are you sure you’re prepared to go that far?

We make these kinds of audacious statements all the time, when we sign leases or job contracts, in church services, marriage liturgies, ordinations….

Will you obey your bishop?

I will.

And I mean it. And I have no idea what that means.

And while it is impossible to fully understand what we are agreeing to in those moments, in a healthy process the person who we are pledging such unfailing loyalty to should do their best to let us know something of what we are getting ourselves into.

And Jesus does just that, he says to this man, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” (58)

These are some of the conditions of following Jesus.  Saying “yes” to following Jesus on this pilgrim road is also saying “no” to security, safety, and stability.

Jesus directly asks the next person he meets to follow him, and this man is willing to do so, on one condition. “First let me go and bury my father.” (59)

But Jesus says, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” (60)

That’s pretty harsh don’t you think?

Now it’s not clear what the man meant by “let me go and bury my father.” Has his father literally just died and is about to be buried?  Is he near death? Or does the man simply mean that he won’t be able to follow Jesus until some unspecified point in the future when his father is no longer living?

We don’t know.  What we do know is that it was a sacred Jewish obligation to make your father’s burial your top priority.  It was more important than even saying your daily prayers.  So Jesus’ statement that the man should let the dead bury the dead would certainly have caught people’s attention.

The man’s willingness to follow Jesus is conditional and that just doesn’t work anymore.  You can’t put something or someone ahead of Jesus. You can’t say, “My first priority is to bury my father and then I’ll follow you.”

And I think this issue, this idea of priorities is what Jesus is speaking to rather than literally condemning the importance of burying a family member.  And church tradition seems to agree.  Some of our most beautiful liturgies are our funeral liturgies.

Jesus is on an urgent, time sensitive mission.  He can’t be distracted or allow anything to get in his way, and he needs the people around him to be similarly focused.

In times like this, our priorities need to shift and some things that are normally highly valued need to be put on the back burner.

Kalyn Falk once said to me, “I mean, Sabbath is truly important and we should all practice it, but if your house catches fire on the Sabbath you need to stop resting and get to work getting everyone out of the house.”

Then a third person comes forward wanting to conditionally follow Jesus. “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.”

I will follow you, but first let me bury my father. I will follow you, but first let me say farewell to those at my home.

Again there is a desire to follow Jesus, but not to make following Jesus the top priority.

And Jesus uses an interesting metaphor to explain why this just doesn’t work.

“No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (61-62)

I’m not sure if anyone in this room has ever tried to plow a field by hand. I certainly haven’t, but basically, it’s a task that requires you to focus on where you are going, not on where you have been.  If you focus on a spot ahead of you where you intend to wind up, you can create a fairly straight row.  If you keep looking behind you, you won’t. You have to choose to keep looking forward in order to be effective.

Jesus has set his face towards Jerusalem. There is no looking back, and he needs the people who will join him on this pilgrimage to have the same level of focus.

There are times to look behind you, there are times to rest and to care for your family, and there are times to set your face towards Jerusalem and make sure that nothing distracts you from that purpose.

Whenever you say “yes” to something you are inevitably saying “no” to something else.  It’s interesting to me that the only people who receives a rebuke from Jesus in this passage are the disciples who want to bring down judgement on others whose choices differ from theirs. It’s also interesting that Luke doesn’t tell us what the three men decide to do.  Do they return home to their families? Do they bury their father? Do they follow Jesus on this road to Jerusalem?

What are the things you are saying a conscious “yes” and “no” to in your life? What are you saying “yes” and “no” to without being fully aware you are doing so? Does any of that need to shift? If so how?

May you be gentle with yourself as you reflect, curious about what you discover, and inspired to say “yes” fully and without conditions.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

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by Rev Rachel

What does it mean? A Sermon for Sunday June 9, 2019

The following sermon was preached at saint benedict's table on Sunday June 9, 2019.  You can also listen to the live recording or subscribe to our podcast. Just click here.

 

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable and pleasing in your sight O God, for you are our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

So I was talking to a friend of mine about my upcoming ordination to the priesthood and trying to explain what it all means, and when I had finished talking she thought for a little while and then said, “Oh, so you’ll be kind of like Nadia Bolz Weber, but with less tattoos and less swearing.”

And I thought about that and said, “Well, you’re right about the tattoos part.”

Language is such a funny thing isn’t it? Technically a word is just a combination of meaningless symbols and sounds. They shouldn’t have any power. It shouldn’t be possible to say that some words are bad and some are good.

But words do have tremendous power. Words can be used to uplift, to empower, to wound, to demean. Words can used to include or exclude.

There is a reason why we need to think carefully about the words we use.

Tonight’s reading from Acts is one of those readings that anyone who has ever volunteered to read the Bible in public dreads. It contains a rather impressive string of unpronounceable place names. Well done Paul.

The reading begins, “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.” (1)

If you were a Jewish person in the first century, you would know that Pentecost is an agricultural festival celebrated on the fiftieth day after Passover. It’s the day when you offer the first of your crops to God, partly as an expression of gratitude, and partly as a hope that the rest of the crops will grow well so you can feed your family.

You’d also know that Pentecost is more than just an agricultural festival.  It’s also the day that you remember that your ancestors were once enslaved in Egypt and then were finally freed only to wander for fifty days in the wilderness before they came to Mount Sinai where Moses would speak to God directly and receive the law. The law that became a framework for the way of life that you and your ancestors have been trying to follow ever since.

If you were there on the particular Pentecost that our reading from Acts describes, or if you heard that story afterwards, you would see all of these earlier stories and symbols bubbling up and colouring this experience.

I think it would still have seemed pretty bizarre. Terrifying. Less Pentecost and more Pente-chaos.[1]

Now if you’ve been following along with the lectionary readings from Acts in the past little while you are probably noticing themes of inclusion. Story after story shows how groups of people who were once excluded are now included. Story after story shows the early followers of Jesus beginning to become emboldened by this new way of living.

But tonight’s reading takes us back to an earlier time in the story, when things are a little more raw, unsettled, unclear.

Jesus has left his people for a second time – first when he died and then we he ascended to heaven – and no one knows what is going to happen next and so they have all gathered together.

It’s likely that everyone is gathered in one place because there is safety in numbers. It’s likely that everyone is gathered in one place because this group of Christ followers are afraid for their lives.

But it’s also likely, that they are gathered together because rituals and traditions are powerful ways of infusing a sense of stability, a sense of normalcy into turbulent times.

And so they gather together to celebrate Pentecost, just as their ancestors had done for generations.

But they are in for a surprise.

A sound comes from heaven like the rush of a violent wind which moves and fills the entire house. Tongues like fire appear and rest on everyone present. They are filled with the Holy Spirit and develop the ability to speak in multiple languages. (1-4)

These events were loud enough that people came from throughout Jerusalem to the house to see what had happened and pretty soon a large crowd had gathered. And each person in that crowd was shocked to discover that there was someone in the house who was able to speak to them… in their own indigenous languages. (5-8)

It made no sense.

They weren’t all suddenly able to speak the same language. They weren’t suddenly all able to speak the same language as the people inside the house. Rather, all of the insiders were given the ability to speak all of the different languages of the crowd of outsiders who have assembled outside the house to find out what’s going on.

This gift. This ability to speak multiple languages was given to those first followers of Jesus, but it wasn’t for them.

God was calling God’s people into a new way of living, into a new way of being.

Amy Oden explains that “This gift of the Holy Spirit that marks the birth of the church is a gift expressly for those outside the Jesus movement, those who had lived displaced in a language-world not their own. We cannot miss this! It is a spiritual gift given not for the disciples themselves, but for the outsiders listening. God’s gift reaches outward to those outside of this immediate circle of Jesus followers. It seems that one mark of the Holy Spirit’s gifting is that it empowers us to connect to others.”

One mark of the Holy Spirit is that we are empowered to connect with others, not by expecting them to learn our language and customs, but by learning theirs.

Somewhere in our history, the church lost this message. We forgot that our job is to speak in ways that other people can understand. Ways that invite them in. Somewhere along the lines, we forgot this gift and began to believe that our beliefs, our cultural practices, and even our languages were superior to everyone else’s. We lost this Holy Spirit mindset in favour of a colonial one.

Four years ago I spent a couple of months in Spain and I came to love the lispy lilting sounds of the particular type of Spanish that is spoken there.

But when I came back to Canada and began to study the language with a teacher from Mexico, I realized that the sounds that were so comforting to me, were a reminder of colonial oppression to him. When the Spanish explorers first came to his country they came to dominate it, and the Christian religion and the Spanish language were two of their most powerful tools of oppression. The colonial enterprise was successful – like most other people from Mexico he speaks Spanish – but his accent is not the accent of colonial Spain and his feelings about that country are infinitely more complicated than mine.

The same thing happened here in Canada, as indigenous people were forbidden to speak their own languages and forced to learn English and French.

Which is the exact opposite of what happens in our reading. The outsiders who rush to the house to find out what’s happening don’t first have to learn the insider’s language in order to do so. Instead, the insiders are given the ability to speak to everyone in their own languages.

And when they are caught up in the work of the spirit, they naturally turn outward, to those who have not yet been formally included and begin to share this good news in languages they can understand. It is the work of the insider to translate and speak in a way that can be understood, not the other way around.” (Amy Oden)

A gift given for the sake of others is an odd thing, a threatening thing even, and not everyone who witnesses these events celebrates them.

Luke writes, “All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.” (12-13)

Whenever we encounter something new, something we cannot understand, we face a strong temptation to judge. To restore our sense of comfort and stability by saying that there is something wrong with this new thing.

Those who sneered and said, “They’re drunk,” could walk away riding the high of smug self-righteousness. But in doing so, they lost out on the chance to be transformed by this new thing.

Lost out at least for that moment, because the welcoming work of the Spirit means there is always time for a second, third, or three hundredth chance.

Judgement shuts down communication. It shuts down learning. It’s a barrier to relationship and community.

A better way to respond is to resist judgement and lean into curiosity instead. To ask good, open ended questions. Questions like, “What does this mean?”

The people were not drunk. God was doing a new thing. Those who were curious enough to ask would begin to discover just what that was.

Pentecost is sometimes called the birthday of the church – we don’t, but some churches will even wheel out a birthday cake and sing happy birthday to the church today.

So today is sometimes referred to as the birthday of the church, but the church that was birthed on this day had a particular character. One the institution known as the church has not always managed to reflect.

So when some people have decided that the people gathered are drunk, others ask, “What does it mean?” and to this question, Peter replies: “Indeed these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning.” (15)

Which is a fantastic detail if you ask me.

Also I think it’s sad that this is a detail of our story that we haven’t chosen to commemorate liturgically. Can you imagine it? What is we celebrated the birthday of the church by making sure we’re all out in public at 9:00 in the morning engaging in acts of barrier breaking love for people we do not know that the most logical thing that people witnessing the spectacle can conclude is that we’re drunk?

So Peter explains, “They’re not drunk,” and then he quotes from the prophet Joel:

¹⁷ ‘In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
¹⁸ Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.

The Spirit will be poured out on all flesh, everyone is to be included – young and old, women and men, slave and free. Everyone will prophesy, everyone will speak God’s word into being. Peter wants everyone to know that on that day, the things Joel said would happen are in fact happening.

On Pentecost, the Holy Spirit’s arrival declared in no uncertain terms that anyone who wants to follow Jesus can follow Jesus. Just as they are. The Spirit came to break down barriers, not to build them.

Vance Morgan writes, “God wants human beings to cooperate and communicate effectively. Furthermore, our ability to do so is a divine gift. Whenever we overcome the vast differences that separate us, differences too many to count, the divine is present. Whenever human beings connect, not by eliminating differences but rather by finding commonality, enhanced and deepened by our diverse perspectives and experiences, God is there. The divine strategy, culminating in Pentecost, is simple and profound…

Pentecost also tells us that the divine solution to our failure to understand each other is not conformity, getting everyone on the same page and believing the same thing. Everyone did not miraculously start speaking the same language at Pentecost, as humans did at the start of the Babel story. Each person retained his or her language and was divinely enabled to hear the good news in his or her own tongue. God met everyone exactly where they were, as the divine continues to do.”

God desires to meet us where we are at and God desires that we, empowered by the Spirit, would do the same for others.

May it be so. In the name of our God who creates, redeems, and sustains.

Amen.

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by Rev Rachel

Peter Tells His Story: A Sermon for Sunday May 19, 2019

The following sermon was preached at saint benedict's table on Sunday, May 19, 2019.  You can also listen to the live recording or subscribe to our podcast. Just click here.

 

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable and pleasing in your sight O Lord for you are our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

The lectionary will plunk us squarely in the book of Acts for the next little while and I want to thank Willie James Jennings for his excellent commentary. It was a major influence on this sermon.

Acts is story of revolution. It’s a story told by a master storyteller about the “disrupting presence of the Spirit of God.”

Listen to how Jennings describes it:

“The book of Acts is like the book of Genesis. It announces a beginning but without the language of a beginning. Like Genesis it renders without pomp and flag-waving a God working, moving, creating the dawn that will break each day, putting into place a holy repetition that speaks of the willingness of God to invade our every day and our every moment.

This God of Israel waits no more for the perfect time to be revealed. Now is the time, and here is the place…God moves and we respond. We move and God responds… Cards are on the table and the curtain is drawn back, and God acts plainly, clearly, and in ways that are irrevocable. There is no going back now.” (1-2)

The book of Acts unfolds at a breakneck pace and each chapter shows the early Christ followers learning just how inclusive their new community was going to be.  Group after unexpected group receives the Holy Spirit and is added to their number. Saul learns that he has been wrong to persecute the Christ followers and joins them instead. Phillip can see no reason not to baptism the eunuch from Ethiopia, and now it is Peter’s turn.

When Peter arrives in Jerusalem, the people have already heard about how Peter has recently broken a number of rules and they have questions.  Hey Peter, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” (3)

Peter has some explaining to do.

They aren’t asking if Gentiles can become followers of Jesus, they have already discovered that they can, but their question is “We’ve accepted the new reality in which Gentiles are to be welcomed into our community, but don’t they also need to follow all of our Jewish customs as well?  Aren’t practices like circumcision and dietary laws important components of what it means to follow Christ?

In N.T. Wright’s translation of this passage verse 2 says, “So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, those who wanted to emphasize circumcision took issue with him.”

These men had a clear idea of what it took to be a follower of Christ, and circumcision was on the list.  It was one of the key ways to determine who was in, and who was out.

Every group has a list like this.

I was sitting at the table waiting for everyone to arrive when a volunteer approached me.

Her expression was deadly serious as she leaned towards me and gestured with her finger for me to lean in too so she could whisper.

“You know,” she said in hushed tones, “some Anglicans are actually Christians!”

The Alpha course, which was designed as a sort of Christianity 101 and became very popular in evangelical churches in the 90s was created by an Anglican.

This detail made a lot of people scratch their heads. It directly challenged some of the basic things they had always believed about so called mainline churches. Used to sizing up people and organizations to determine if they were in or they were out, they couldn’t argue with the fact that Nicky Gumble seemed to believe all the right things, and that the course he created seemed to be working.

It made no sense, but their experience participating in the Alpha course made it impossible for them to continue to believe that Anglicans couldn’t be Christians.

It may not have been the most important or powerful moment in the ecumenical movement, but the Alpha course did successfully covert many evangelicals to this new way of thinking, “Some Anglicans were in fact Christians!”

And to be perfectly fair, I could tell a number of very similar stories about Anglicans as well.

What does it take to belong?  In some communities the litmus test for inclusion might be skin colour, your views on abortion or whether or not you’re going to be watching Game of Thrones after church tonight.

It’s always something.

But God gives Peter a vision of inclusion. It’s a vision of hospitality and welcome in which God says unequivocally that everyone is welcome into the family. As they are. Circumcision and purity codes no longer apply. God says that everything has been made clean. Who can argue with God?

Well, Peter can.

It took Peter, the direct recipient of the vision, 3 times to get the hint. It took the people hearing Peter’s account of the vision significantly less time.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

So Peter arrives in Jerusalem and he has some explaining to do. First, for accepting Cornelius’ hospitality and secondly for baptizing Cornelius and his household and thereby inviting them into full membership in the community without having to first become Jews.

Does Peter dazzle them with rhetoric or complex theological ideas?  No. He tells them a story. A very detailed story of exactly what happened to him in Joppa.

If you’ve been reading along in Acts, you’ll know that this is the second time we get the details of Peter’s vision.   You may think, hey I just read this in the last chapter! Luke should have gotten himself a better editor who would have cut this unnecessary material!

But the repetition is not an accident. It indicates the importance of Peter’s experience not only for Peter but for the entire community. In Joppa, God subverted Peter’s expectations and now, through the re-telling, God will subvert the community’s expectations as well.

Peter’s dream “… must be told in detail so the hearers can begin to see their lives in it. God spoke to Peter and now through Peter God is speaking to the saints gathered to hear.  The power of God is present in weakness, in the voice of one disciple of Jesus who simply tells the truth of what has happened to him and what God did through him.”(117)

Then, as now, there are few things more powerful than the story of a personal experience.

And so Peter begins to tell them about his vision in great detail. He was praying in Joppa and had a vision of a large sheet coming down from heaven.  The sheet is filled with all sorts of animals and a “voice from heaven” tells him to eat them. Peter refuses because some of these animals were considered unclean and he has always honoured Jewish dietary laws. (4-8)

But the heavenly voice responds, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” (9)

This process happens three times. (10) Is this a call back to other series of three in Peter’s life? The denial? Jesus’ questions on the beach? Is it simply a sign of Peter’s stubborn refusal to believe?

Whatever the significance, the sheet is lowered and pulled up to heaven three times and after the final time three men from Caesarea appear in its place. The Spirit tells Peter he is to go with them and also “not to make a distinction between them and us.” (12)

The men have also had a vision in which they were told to find Peter and listen to the message of salvation he would share with them.  Peter begins to speak but before he can finish, the Holy Spirit falls upon the men and Peter recognizes this as the fulfillment of the promise that “John would baptize with water but they would baptize with the Holy Spirit.”

As Peter is conveying the story he makes sure to highlight the work of the Holy Spirit throughout in order to make it clear that although his behavior has been unconventional, he really had no choice but to conclude that Gentiles believers needed to be welcomed into the fold as they were.

I imagine him getting to the final line of his account and throwing up his hands and shrugging his shoulders as he concludes, “If then God gave them the same gift that God gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?”

In other words, “If you want to take issue with my actions, take it up with God, not me.”

With the benefit of historical hindsight, it’s easy for me to place myself on Peter’s side – to put myself by his side before this story even began actually – and to write off the men who want to emphasize circumcision as ignorant fools.

How on earth could they possibly have been so ignorant, so naïve, so self righteously exclusionary as to think that circumcision mattered to God? Keep up folks! God is making all things new!

But recently I was talking to a friend who was passionately discussing the importance of reclaiming her indigenous heritage.  She wants to learn her language and participate in ceremonies. But one of the horrible legacies of residential schools is that she didn’t learn these things as a child and there are very few elders who can teach her now.

She feels adrift without the language and practices that should anchor her identity. She grieves all the things that have already been lost and worries about the challenge of saving the things that still remain.  She wants to participate in the dominant culture, but she does not want to be assimilated into it.

Now the circumstances are very different, but I suspect this is part of what the men who want to emphasize circumcision are also worried about.  The Jewish people were a minority group and their practices were an essential component of their cultural identity. Their religious beliefs and practices kept them from being assimilated into the dominant culture.

Without the practices that helped to form and strengthen their identity as children of God, what will happen to them?  Would they lose their culture? A culture that had been given to them by God and that had sustained them for generations? (115)

These are valid concerns.

The people who favoured circumcision were asking these questions from a sincere desire to know what the right thing to do was. They had open ears and soft hearts. Softer, it seems, than even Peter’s because they know exactly what to do after hearing the story, second hand, only one time.

Peter finishes his story and the people fall silent. A silence that is broken, not by critical words, but by praise. Luke tells us, “And they praised God, saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.” (18)

“This silence is a break in space, and time, and sound that God has orchestrated. This break does not silence Israel’s past, but it is a break in the musical sense, in the sense of jazz improvisation.

[Wynton Marsalis explains that] in the break the band stops playing and leaves space for a soloist to play. In the break the soloist is alone for a moment carrying the time, suspended in air and holding everything together in a single performance: ‘It’s the pressure-packed moment, because you have to maintain the time flow of the whole band by yourself: Our time because your time – yours and yours alone.’

Peter brings them to the break, but the Spirit of God carries the time, holding it in the silence. The moment of silence after [Peter’s] testimony reveals a God who has been keeping time beautifully and faithfully with Israel and now expects the hearers to feel the beat, remember the rhythm, and know the time… After the silence God’s love has modulated into a new key, but the rhythm and song of Israel continues. The beat goes on.  (118)

Peter tells his story. The people listen.  They spend time in silence and then recognizing the truth of what Peter has said, they adjust their thinking and praise God.

Their behavior is worthy of emulation.

When I watch the news it seems to me that more and more we are dividing into camps, building walls and throwing stones over the top.

We aren’t listening to other people’s stories.

Could we emulate those early Christians who listened to Peter’s story, fell silent, and changed their minds?

Can we learn to sing a new song of praise and invite others to sing it too? Just as they are.

May it be so.

Amen.

 

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by Rev Rachel

Safe in God's Hand: A Sermon for Sunday May 12, 2019

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by Rev Rachel

Good Friday?: A Sermon for Friday April 20, 2019

The following sermon was preached at saint benedict's table on Friday April 20, 2019.  On Good Friday, Jamie Howison and I both preach and you can hear both of our sermons on our podcast.

 

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable and pleasing in your sight O Lord for you are our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

To paraphrase Kate Bowler, I’m tired of people trying to Easter the crap out of Good Friday.

Although I have been going to church my entire life, it wasn’t until I came to saint benedict’s table that I began to truly celebrate Good Friday. Prior to that I would typically attend church on Good Friday and Easter Sunday, but the services would have looked almost exactly the same. We’d quickly acknowledge that Jesus died and then spend most of our time celebrating the resurrection.

People often try to Easter the crap of out my life too.

Recently I had to update my banking information and my response to almost every question was, “Oh, that’s not true anymore.” That’s no longer my phone number. No, I don’t work there anymore. Yes, I used to teach there, but I don’t anymore. And on the drive home I thought about just how many things have changed for me in the past two years. How many things I’ve lost. How many dreams have died.

There have been Easter moments too, there has been new life and new dreams and things so good I still sometimes have to pinch myself to confirm that they are true.

But those things were born out of death. In order to get to the Easter moments, I have to fully live into the Good Friday ones, and the Holy Saturday ones too.

And it’s been hard for me, but it’s also been difficult for the people around me. People who, with the best of intentions, have more often than not wanted to force my Good Friday into an Easter Sunday.

And my choices boiled down to pretending it was Easter Sunday to make other people more comfortable or owning the truth that for me it was still Friday and that some days, I wasn’t sure Sunday would ever come.

I don’t know why things had to be so hard, but I do know that one of the key things that has saved me in this season has been a decision I made early on to be honest, to resist the temptation to please people and live into a false Easter. The decision I made to say, “This is hard. This is not what I wanted. This did not all work out for the best. I did not land on my feet, I smashed my face off the sidewalk. It hurts.”

I needed to sit in a Good Friday space. To acknowledge the harsh reality of death. To feel the pain of it. To resist the temptation to pretend it was already Easter Sunday.

That saved me.

And the people who were willing to sit with me at the foot of the cross. The people who didn’t need to find a silver lining.   The people who simply said, “I see how hard this it.”

They saved me.

There is no Easter Sunday without Good Friday.

A couple of years ago someone came early to our Good Friday service and with tears in their eyes said, “I hope it’s OK to be here today when I’m clearly not OK.”

You bet it is. It’s always OK and on this day we will acknowledge that truth in a particular way.

Yesterday, after our Maundy Thursday service, we stripped the church, removing linens and coverings and flowers and candles.

The church is emptier.

We are emptier.

The story of Jesus’ death is a powerful and important story that we should tell and re-tell again and again. Today is the day that we boldly and defiantly say, “It’s not Easter yet. It’s OK not to be OK.”

On this day we have full permission to hold the empty, to sit in the meaninglessness, and to acknowledge that not everything can be resolved.

On this day we have full permission to hold space for suffering, for grief, for death.

And we call it good.

And we do this in a world full of people who want to fill the empty, to

find meaning, however shallow in the meaningless, to mute suffering and grief and cloak death in euphemisms.

Christ did not pass. We did not lose him. Christ died.

 And it was good.   It was horrible and painful and it sent everyone around him into a tailspin, but it was also good. Wasn’t it?

Reflecting on the horrors of WW2, German theologian Jurgen Moltmann wondered how theology could exist, how theology could speak, in the face of such overwhelming suffering. He determined that modern theology must be developed “in earshot of the dying Christ.”[1]

Theology, which really just means our thoughts about God, must be developed in earshot of the dying Christ.

What would we hear? What would we see if we resisted the temptation to skip straight to Easter and chose instead to sit quietly at the foot of the cross?

We would hear the sounds of death by crucifixion. The pounding of the hammer, the crack of the wood, the grunting of the soldiers, the panting, the groans, the screams of three men as their flesh is pierced by nails.

We would hear the conversation between Jesus and those other two men. Short, raspy sentences as they all struggled to breath.

We would hear the soldiers and people in positions of leadership casting lots and mocking Jesus.

And we would hear Jesus saying again and again and again, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.

Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.

We would hear the women, loyal to the end, “beating their breasts and wailing.” Their grief too great to be contained.

And we would hear Jesus telling them to continue to weep, but not for him, but for themselves and for their children because even more difficult days are coming.

And we might hear the wind moving through the grass as death leads to silence.

And we might begin to develop a greater humility for all the times that we have also “known not what we do.” And we might learn to hold space for those who weep. And we might condemn less and forgive more.

We might learn to pay attention and say to each other, “I see how hard this is. I can’t change it, and I’m not going anywhere. We can sit in this Good Friday space for as long as we need to.” 

Dr. Sheila Cassidy drew attention to the human rights abuses of the Pinochet regime when she wrote about her own experience of being imprisoned and tortured in Chile in the 1970s.

Dr. Cassidy knows, in her very bones, what it is to suffer, what it is to hold space for the darkness and the difficulty of death. She knows that it is only by living fully into Good Friday that we can ever hope to be an Easter people.

Listen to the words of her poem, “Starting Over – Fighting Back:”

And so we must begin to live again,
We of the damaged bodies
And assaulted mind.
Starting from scratch with the rubble of our lives
And picking up the dust
Of dreams once dreamt.

And we stand there, naked in our vulnerability,
Proud of starting over, fighting back,
But full of weak humility
At the awesomeness of the task.

We, without a future,
Safe, defined, delivered
Now salute you God.
Knowing that nothing is safe,
Secure, inviolable here.
Except you,
And even that eludes our minds at times.
And we hate you
As we love you,
And our anger is as strong
As our pain,
Our grief is deep as oceans,
And our need as great as mountains.

So, as we take our first few steps forward
into the abyss of the future,
We would pray for
Courage to become what we have not been before
And accept it,
And bravery to look deep within our souls to find
New ways.

We did not want it easy God,
But we did not contemplate
That it would be quite this hard,
This long, this lonely.

So, if we are to be turned inside out, and upside down,
With even our pockets shaken,
just to check what’s rattling
And left behind,
We pray that you will keep faith with us,
And we with you,
Holding our hands as we weep,
Giving us strength to continue,
And showing us beacons
Along the way
To becoming new.

We are not fighting you God,
Even if it feels like it,
But we need your help and company,
As we struggle on.
Fighting back
And starting over.[2]

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.

[1] My Bright Abyss by Christian Wiman, 133

[2] https://blueeyedennis-siempre.blogspot.com/2012/11/good-friday-people-and-reflections-on.html

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by Rev Rachel

Follow Me: A Sermon for Sunday April 17, 2019

The following sermon was preached at saint benedict's table on Sunday April 17, 2019.  You can also listen to the live recording or subscribe to our podcast. Just click here.

 

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable and pleasing in your sight O Lord, for you are our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Most of you will be aware that I was in San Francisco last week – I have the post travel cold to prove it.  You could call it a vacation, or professional development, but for me it was a pilgrimage – an intentional journey to a holy site. I’ve been trying to figure out how to get to San Francisco for about ten years.

More specifically, I’ve been trying to figure out how to get to St Gregory of Nyssa Church for about ten years.  So if you’re not already tired of “at St Gregory’s they…” stories, don’t worry, you soon will be.

So at St. Gregory’s when they read the gospel the Bible is carried from one side of the room to the other and unlike in some churches you may have been to where the reader holds the book carefully and reverently up in front of them, at St Gregory’s the person carrying the gospel rests the book on their right shoulder.

Why?

Roman emperors used to be carried on people’s shoulders. Early Christians chose to carry the Bible on their shoulder in worship as a way of saying, “Christ is the only king we serve.”

Which is pretty amazing symbolism, if you ask me, but as we generally don’t carry our political leaders around on people’s shoulders anymore, it’s also a symbol that is completely divorced of any cultural significance and it only makes sense if someone helps you decode it.

The story of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is a story that is filled with symbolism. It’s theatrical not just in its scale, but in the attention to detail, details that given how different our culture is from the one in these stories, may also need to be decoded.  Things that would have been very clear to the people experiencing this event first hand no longer make sense to us.

When Jesus enters Jerusalem he is following a pilgrimage path that many others had already followed and would continue to follow.  By the Middle Ages, people making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem were referred to as “palmers” because they often carried a palm branch home as a symbol of their pilgrimage.

Later in history, Shakespeare would have Romeo angle for a kiss from Juliet by referring to his lips as pilgrims and encouraging her to kiss them as “holy palmer’s kiss.”

And we are still celebrating Palm Sunday to this very day, waving branches and taking home palm crosses to tuck in a safe place as a reminder throughout the year, only to return them to the church next year to be burnt and turned into ashes to be used on Ash Wednesday so that this whole process of remembering can begin again.

Holy Week is a pilgrimage, a sacred path that we travel together as we re-tell ancient stories.

It’s a time rich with symbolism and tradition, and as such it can be deeply meaningful or dry and lifeless.  I was talking to someone recently who said, “I just don’t get the point of Easter anymore.” The same day I spoke to another person who said they were really looking forward to Holy Week because it’s “their favourite time of year.”

Where do you fit on that spectrum?  Are you more “what’s the point?” or “it’s the most wonderful time of the year?”

When Jesus enters Jerusalem, we are told he is riding on a “colt that has never been ridden.”  (22:30)

That’s an interesting choice.

I am definitely not an expert on horses, but I have ridden a few times – at summer camps or while on vacation, and every time I have done so, I have chosen a horse that was an expert. In fact, probably due to a combination of care for their customers and the threat of lawsuits, expert horses were the only kind available to me.  Horses that would calmly follow the assigned trail regardless of what the rider chose to do.

That’s just smart right? When you’re going to do something new or dangerous, go with an expert.

But Jesus chooses a “colt that has never been ridden.”

In movies and church re-enactments I’ve only ever seen Jesus riding an animal that was more reflective of the ones I road at summer camp – calmly plodding although despite the crowds of shouting people and palm branches and cloaks with a heavy human perched uncomfortably on top of their back.

But it’s just as likely that this unridden colt would have been wide eyed, filled with panic, and seeking to buck Jesus off at every turn in order to turn around and run back home.

Or at the very least, surely Jesus wouldn’t have been able to calmly wave to the crowd from atop this animal, rather he’d be working hard to control both the direction the animal was walking and working to avoid being bucked off and trampled on the ground.

A colt that has never been ridden.

It’s a weird choice.

It’s weird, but Jesus’ choice to ride an inexperienced colt is teaching me something about the nature of God.

God doesn’t need experts or perfect people. In fact, God often purposely chooses the untried and the unexpected. The people who are wide eyed and anxious and fully aware that they have no idea what they are doing.  The people who want nothing more than to run from the limelight they have sudden been thrust into and run straight back to the safety of their homes.

That’s who God chooses, and that sounds like good news to me.

The various gospels describe the animal that Jesus road in different ways.

Mark and Luke say Jesus chose a colt that had never been ridden (11:2), John says it was a “young donkey,”(12:14) and Matthew says it was a “donkey and a colt.” (21:4)

A donkey AND a colt? Was it some kind of a tag team situation where Jesus rode one for a little bit and then the other?

Or was he riding both at the same time like a circus stunt rider? One leg on each of these animals?  Have we just moved from the bizarre – choosing a colt that doesn’t know what it’s doing to the – well I don’t even know what the word for that kind of spectacle would be.

So at St Gregory’s they move throughout their worship space for different parts of the service – the sermon is in one spot, Eucharist in another, and when I said they move from one space to another, I should have said, they dance from one space to another.  Which could be incredibly overwhelming for a first timer, except that they’ve thought it through, and before you can panic, someone from the church will look you in the eye and say, “welcome friend, put your hand on my shoulder and follow me, and as long as you follow, you’ll be OK.”

I can’t be certain, but I don’t think that Jesus rode into Jerusalem like a stunt rider with one foot on a donkey and one on a colt, but I do think that he may have taken both animals with him.

One of the reasons Matthew references both animals is because he wants us to see that Jesus’ actions are the fulfillment of a prophecy from Zechariah. A prophecy that said:

Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.  (9:9)

I wonder if this scene looked less like a circus, and more like those trail rides I took at camp – with the mother donkey leading the way and her child – the colt that had never been ridden – following behind her with Jesus on its back.

The colt knowing that as long as they followed their mother, they would be just fine.

Just like last week at St Gregory’s as long as I followed the person in front of me, I was just fine.

We don’t have to travel this pilgrim path alone. We just have to keep an eye on our loving mother who is always just a few steps ahead of us.

And that definitely sounds like good news to me.

But why ride any kind of donkey at all? Why not walk? Or ride a horse or a chariot?

It’s not an accident, it’s all part of the spectacle.

Jesus is a king, but not like any king the people have seen before. Writing in the fourth century, St. John Chrysostom noted: “[Jesus] is not drawn in a chariot like other kings, not demanding a tribute. Nor surrounded by officers and guards. Then the people ask: ‘What king has ever entered Jerusalem riding upon an ass?'”

With each choice Jesus makes he is communicating that his kingdom will not be like any kingdom they have ever known or imagined.

In Matthew, Jesus says, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant,  and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave…” (20:25-27)

Jesus is a king, but not a tyrant who will “lord it over them.” Jesus will be different.   In Zechariah it says:

He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim

and the war-horse from Jerusalem;

and the battle bow shall be cut off,

and he shall command peace to the nations;

his dominion shall be from sea to sea,

and from the River to the ends of the earth. (9:10)

“The chariot and war horse are instruments and symbols of war. The new king banishes both. [Jesus] proclaims peace to the nations.”

If anyone in the crowd is reading the symbols correctly, they will recognize that Jesus is a king. A king who comes in peace but a king none of the less. And having never had a king like Jesus before, there is no way that they can fully comprehend what’s happening.

But that lack of comprehension does not stop the people in the crowd from getting caught up in the excitement of the moment. It does not stop them from waving their branches and shouting “Hosanna!”

I have a vague understanding that lately in our city there has been some important “sportsing” going on.  I don’t understand it, but I know it’s happening. And it’s more than likely that if I happened to find myself downtown on a particular day and there were crowds of people filling the streets and shouting excitedly that I might find myself being swept up by the enthusiasm and joining in.

I’d have no idea what I was saying, but even I might be inspired to shoue “Go Jets Go!”

Similarly, the people waving their branches and shouting “Hosanna,” which literally means “please save” or “save us now,” probably don’t fully understand what’s happening.  They are right that Jesus has come to save them, while being wrong about how he will save them.

This week I’ve spent a lot of time being disappointed in earthly leaders. I’ve watched my friends fight funding cuts made by the Ontario government that directly impact my godson’s ability to thrive.  I’ve watched bill C-262 – a bill that asks us to treat indigenous people with dignity – I’ve watched that bill languish in the Senate, and I’ve watched leaders in the Anglican communion make decisions that seem to be based more in fear than in love.

I’m disappointed by my leaders.  I disappointed by people who seem to care more about power and safety and money than about people’s lives.

And I’m longing for something different.

I’m longing for someone who looks a little more like a powerful, but humble man riding on an untried colt. A colt that is patiently following its mother through a crowd on a pilgrim path.  I’m longing for someone whose actions are rooted and grounded in the power of self-giving love.

I’m longing for someone who looks well, who looks like Jesus.

The Jesus we will encounter as we remember and re-enact these stories throughout the coming week. And I hope you’ll join us when we do.

Amen.

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by Rev Rachel

Shiny Skin and Shrieking Demons: A Sermon for Sunday March 6, 2019

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by Rev Rachel

Putting Things Right-Side-Up: A Sermon for Sunday February 19, 2019

The following sermon was preached at saint benedict's table on Sunday February 19, 2019.  You can also listen to the live recording or subscribe to our podcast. Just click here.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable and pleasing in your sight O Lord, for you are our rock and our redeemer.  Amen.

When I was in university studying English literature one of the key skills we learned was how to apply different interpretive approaches to a single text.   These approaches were kind of like reading glasses that allowed us to see different things.

Say, for example, you wanted to read one of Shakespeare’s sonnets. You could imagine spreading all those glasses out on the desk in front of you and then picking them up and putting them on one by one.  You could then read that sonnet wearing the glasses of historical critical interpretation, or Freudian interpretation, or structural, or feminist, or, or, or.

You could even be really fancy and wear a couple of different pairs at the same time.

Each pair of glasses provided a unique way of seeing that sonnet and opened up new ideas and interpretations.

Each pair of glasses obscured elements in that sonnet making them difficult, or even impossible to see.

When I was a child, one of the first books I was taught to read was the Bible and no one ever mentioned to me that I would never be able to read the Bible objectively, I would always read it wearing a very specific set of glasses that I could never take off.

No one told me I was reading the Bible wearing the glasses of a white, middle class girl.

And those glasses were going to help me see some things, and they were going to obscure some things as well.

Even though I now know I’m wearing them, I still can’t take them off, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing, as long as I don’t ever forget that I’m wearing those glasses. As long as I don’t start to believe that the way I see things is the only way to see them. As long as I don’t start to think that every single person who has ever read the Bible has read it wearing the exact same glasses that I am wearing.

No one has ever read the Bible objectively, but throughout history most of the people who have publicly interpreted the Bible for us – by preaching or writing theological textbooks  – have been middleclass white men and they tend to forget that they are reading the Bible with white middleclass man glasses on. And, not only did they forget, pretty much everyone else forgot too. Their interpretations became the only interpretations.

That doesn’t surprise me, partly because of my academic training and partly because the fact that we are wearing different sets of glasses often becomes crystal clear to me simply because when I read the Bible, I often see very different things than those men do.

But that doesn’t mean they are mistaken and I am correct.  Their viewpoint is valid, it’s just not the only one. And I am just as likely to forget that my perspective isn’t the only perspective as they have been. I am just as likely to be taken by surprise when I realize that other people read the Bible looking through a very different set of glasses – the glasses of poverty, or environmentalism, or indigeneity or a combination of all three.

These people see things that I don’t.

These people have things to teach me.

One of my best experiences of studying the Bible was doing so with a diverse group of people, including an older Mennonite man who’d worked as a farmer for his entire life.  He was able to pick out and explain all the imagery connected to farming and growing things that I had always just glossed over. He could see things, I couldn’t.

In our gospel reading, Jesus is trying to tell people that the glasses through which they are used to looking at the world, are not the glasses through which he looks at the world.

We sometimes refer to this as Jesus’ upside-down kingdom, noting that Jesus came to turn our norms and expectations upside-down, but I like N.T. Wright’s insistence that Jesus’ way of seeing is in fact right side up, and it is ours that is up side down.

For example, we tend to see scarcity everywhere we look, whereas Jesus sees abundance.

I think it’s a good idea to regularly view the things we think of as “normal” with suspicion, because if we don’t, it’s likely we’ll live into upside-down thinking. The very kind of thinking Jesus came to challenge and to put right-side up.

Today’s gospel reading opens by telling us that Jesus is with a “great multitude of people” who come from a wide range of places.  Some we might recognize like Judea and Jerusalem, and some which might not, like the pagan seaports of Tyre and Sidon.

These people have come from a wide range of places to this “level place” to listen to Jesus and to be healed of their diseases and unclean spirits. (18-19) And they’re not waiting patiently in a line to be healed either, Luke tells us that “All in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out of him and healed all of them.” (19)

I do not envy Jesus at this moment.  This is an entirely unappealing scenario to me – to be in the middle of a crowd where everyone is jostling and trying to touch me.

No thank you.

And when does this crowding and touching stop? It’s not clear.  Are people crowding in and jostling each other for a chance to touch Jesus the entire time he is speaking?

Because of my particular set of glasses, I have always imagined that when Jesus was giving this famous speech, when Jesus was listing the people who are blessed, that it looked a little bit well, it looked a little bit like what is happening right now in church.

I imagined that Jesus was standing at the front of the crowd looking at them because that is the position I expect a teacher to be in.  I also assumed that there was a reasonable amount of personal space between him and the people, and they were calmly listening to him as he spoke.

But that might not be what was happening at all. It’s entirely possible that the entire time Jesus is trying to talk with his disciples about who is blessed, people are pushing into him, jostling each other, talking, making noise, and totally ignoring what he is saying because all they really want is to touch him and be healed.

It might very well be a grittier, more chaotic scene than the one I have always imagined.

And in case it’s not perfectly obvious, it can sometimes be difficult enough for me to get coherent thoughts out when we do have this sort of structure, when I stand here and you sit quietly there, so I can’t imagine what it would be like to continue to preach this sermon if you all decided to start rushing the front and touching me.

And let’s all agree to never find out.

And so as the crowd is pushing and reaching out to touch Jesus and be healed, what is Jesus trying to tell his disciples?

He’s telling them the same thing that Mary sang about in the Magnificat – the poor will inherit the kingdom, the hungry will be satisfied, those who are weeping will laugh.

God’s way is not our way. If we want to see the world the way God sees it, we need a new pair of glasses.

Our way of thinking is upside-down; God wants us to put it right.

This winter, on Thursday nights, I’m taking a course on Canadian history from an indigenous perspective. It’s part of the Anglican Church’s commitment to respond to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action.

And if ever there was an experience that can emphasize that the glasses through which you see the world dramatically influence your perspective, comparing the way I was taught Canadian history in high school to how I’m learning it now is a pretty good one.

Because the differences are stunning.

For one thing, I honestly believed when I was studying history in high school that almost all of the indigenous people in Canada died not long after they first made contact with European explorers and the few that may have survived peacefully assimilated into Canadian society.

Now I know that around the time that European settlers were first coming to Canada, the Christian church was enmeshed in some pretty upside-down thinking. They’d forgotten Jesus’ message in tonight’s gospel reading and replaced it with a series of upside-down messages that said:

“Blessed is European culture, blessed are our values, blessed are our methods of governance and ways of organizing society, blessed is our white skin, for God is on our side.

And woe to anyone who looks, or thinks, or acts differently than us.

And if when exploring the world we find land, we can take it, for God wants us to and the Pope has assured us of this through the Doctrine of Discovery.

And if when exploring we find land and it has people on it, but the people do not look and act like us or use the land in the ways that we use land, then we can still take it. Because God wants people to look and act like us, and anyone who does not use the land in the ways that we use land is just wasting it anyway.”

And the people who thought and acted in these ways didn’t realize that they were mixing up the glasses of colonialism with the glasses of Christ’s teachings and not only did this cause tremendous damage, it continues to do so, and it will take a long time and a lot of effort to begin to heal these distorted ways of thinking and damaged relationships.

When Kyle Mason spoke at our last Idea Exchange event – which was recorded and is available as a podcast – he spoke about treaties and territorial acknowledgements and how something as simple as acknowledging that treaties were once signed between diverse peoples detailing how this land was to be used, how just acknowledging those treaties, can help us all to begin to see things in a different way.  It can help us to begin to see through the glasses of reconciliation. It’s a small but powerful thing.

There is so much more that can be done, but each and everything we do matters and can make a difference.

Now, here’s another thing my worldview may be obscuring in this gospel passage.  After sitting with it all week and thinking about what to say to you, I took off my interpretive glasses, cleaned them, and looked again. I looked at the text and I looked at all the words I’d already written and I realized I was still missing something.

Earlier I told you that I’d made an assumption about where Jesus was standing and the distance between him and the rest of the people, assuming it was similar to the way we’re situated right now and I told you that wasn’t what the text actually says.

But even after having written that, I still looked at what Luke says Jesus said, and I assumed a sermon – the kind of sermon where people are placed into various categories and some are good and some are bad, and everyone generally just needs to try a little bit harder.

But now I’m not so sure that that’s what was actually happening.  What if instead of giving a speech, Jesus is looking at the people who are clamoring for his attention, and he is simply blessing them?

What if as they are reaching out to touch him for healing, he is reaching back to offer a blessing?  What is when he says, “Blessed are you who are poor, he isn’t thinking about an abstract group of people who will receive a blessing in the future, but he is looking at people who are actually poor and is actively blessing them right then and there?

And what if the same is true of that list of woes?  What if while he is blessing the people who are desperately trying to get close enough to touch him, he sees other people who are stading a little bit further off. People who think they have it all together. Who think their riches or their happiness or their full bellies are things they have earned and deserve and will last forever. People who think they are independent and don’t need anyone, including God.    What if Jesus see those people and wants to warn them that they are deceiving themselves?

What if blessing really looks like the realization that we need God, and woe looks like fooling ourselves into thinking we are God?

Jesus is doing a lot of things in this gospel reading and we certainly can’t cover them all tonight, but one thing he is doing is warning us about our capacity to deceive ourselves. When the church is more reflective of the list of woes than the list of blessings, then we are surely missing the point.

For the many places we have missed the point in the past, we need to repent and seek forgiveness, for all the ways we have the capacity to mess up again in the future, we need to do our best to see not as the world sees, but as Jesus sees, because that is the only way we will every turn our upside-down thinking and our upside-down world, right-side up again.

But we never have to do anything without first asking for and receiving Christ’s blessing.  A blessing that is always freely and willingly given. We just have to ask.

Amen.

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by Rev Rachel

Tasting Notes: A Sermon for Sunday January 21, 2019

The following sermon was preached at saint benedict's table on Sunday January 21, 2019.  You can also listen to the live recording or subscribe to our podcast. Just click here.

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by Rev Rachel

Ponder This: A Sermon For Sunday December 16, 2018

The following sermon was preached at saint benedict's table on Sunday December 16, 2018.  You can also listen to the live recording or subscribe to our podcast. Just click here.

 

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable and pleasing in your sight O Lord for you are our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Sometimes, when I look at the list of readings for the coming week, I know what to expect before I even look up the verse. John 3:16? I have that one memorized.  1 Corinthians 13? The love chapter. One of the most popular texts to read at a wedding. Got it. And even if I don’t know the exact verse, I usually have a general sense of the book.

But Zephaniah?  I’m pretty sure I’ve read it before, having completed at least a few of the read through the Bible in a year programs I attempted as a kid, but when I saw it listed for this Sunday, I didn’t know what to expect.

I knew Zephaniah was a prophet and so I assumed tonight’s reading would be something challenging and apocalyptic. Something that would be difficult to preach without wagging my finger, but, as it turns out, we’re at the point in Advent where the readings begin to turn towards more positive themes. Jamie got the tough ones over the past few weeks when I was away. He got the readings that remind us that “I’m not OK and you’re not OK.”

Tonight is the third Sunday in Advent, sometimes called Gaudete, or pink, or joy Sunday.  Things are beginning to shift, to soften as we get closer to Christmas.

The third Sunday in Advent has a different tone, but not a different message.  We are not OK. The world is still a complete mess. But even though we have failed God, God will not fail us and today’s readings remind us of that.

Zephaniah is a short book, only 3 chapters long, tucked near the very end of the Hebrew Scriptures.  The first two chapters follow a pretty standard pattern in prophetic writing. The “day of the Lord” is coming, get ready!

In this case, the people of Judah have strayed from the path and are following false gods.   They smugly believe that “the day of the Lord” is the day that they will finally be given power and control. But they are wrong and Zephaniah is here to set the record straight.  When “the day of the Lord” comes, they too will be judged, and found wanting.

This message has been fleshed out in the earlier chapters, but tonight’s reading is from the end of the book and the prophet has shifted to the good news portion of the story. Having firmly established that judgment is deserved, Zephaniah begins to describe a joy-filled future:

14 Sing aloud, O daughter Zion;
shout, O Israel!
Rejoice and exult with all your heart,
O daughter Jerusalem!
15 The Lord has taken away the judgments against you,
he has turned away your enemies.
The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst;
you shall fear disaster no more.

The Lord has taken away the judgments against you… the Lord is in your midst, you shall fear disaster no more.

The prophet gives reason upon reason to be joyful, to sing, and to shout.

Given that I usually consider Advent to be one of the quietest seasons of the Christian year, this is a pretty loud reading. It’s more “Joy to the World” than “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.”

But Zephaniah provides ample reasons for this loud celebration.  The Lord is here. There is no longer any need to fear judgment, or disaster, or oppressors or anything else because God has taken care of everything.

It’s a time of celebration.

It’s a time of celebration but not just for the people.  God will also celebrate. When the day of the Lord comes, God and God’s people will celebrate together. Singing and shouting as loudly as they can.

Stories of people singing loud songs of praise to God make a lot of sense to me. I have, on more than one occasion felt a sense of joy well up in me that was so strong I couldn’t help but burst into song.  As someone who has gone to church her entire life, I’ve logged a lot of hours singing songs of praise to God with other people as well.

But the reverse? The idea that God would so delight in me, in us, that God would burst into song? Well, that’s not something I’ve ever really thought about.

But that’s what Zephaniah describes.  The prophet tells us that God is here, that God is rejoicing over the people with gladness, renewing them in love, and exulting over them with loud singing.  (3.17) God sings. God shouts. God rejoices.

And the people cannot help but join in and sing along.  What other response can you have when you realize just how much God loves you?  Just how much God delights in you?

It’s a common biblical metaphor to describe the relationship between God and God’s people as a love affair, as a marriage.

Can you imagine a marriage where only one partner does all the work? Well, you probably can, but then you’re not picturing a healthy marriage.  Ideally a marriage is meant to be a partnership, a relationship based on mutuality, where each person loves and care for the other.

Zephaniah is describing a time when the relationship between God and God’s people will be restored.  A time when the love between God and God’s people will be renewed.

It is so easy to think of our relationship with God as a one-way street and focus only on our role – we are to love God and sing praises.  We so easily forget that God delights in us too. But God does. God loves us so much that God can’t help but sing about it.

Another key theme that runs throughout the Bible is that God is thrilled whenever we choose to turn towards God.  God loves and delights in us.

Zephaniah describes God bursting into joyous song. In our gospel reading, Gabriel describes Mary as “favoured.” Later in the gospel of Luke, Jesus talks about angels throwing a party every time a sinner repents. (Luke 15:10)

But Zephaniah goes further still.  God will not be satisfied to celebrate with the people who turn and follow. God’s love will extend even further, to the margins of society to welcome everyone to the party.

In language similar to other prophets like Micah, Zephaniah shows God, the good, good shepherd welcoming outcasts and “the lame” – those who have been marginalized because of a physical disability.  Those who have felt invisible will be made visible – they will be “renown in all the earth,” and they will be “praised among all the people of the earth.” (3:19-20) All will be welcomed, all will be seen, all will be loved and belong.

But Zephaniah is a prophet, painting a picture of the future.  The celebration will come, but not yet.

Fast forward to our gospel reading, and we see another step in God’s plan to redeem humanity: God sends the angel Gabriel to Mary with a message that will interrupt and forever change the plans she has for her life.

Gabriel begins as he always begins, as God always begins -since this is really God’s message, not Gabriel’s – with the affirmation that all that God has created is good.“Greetings, favoured one!” Gabriel proclaims to Mary. “The Lord is with you!” Before she hears anything else, God wants Mary to hear this: She is favoured and God is with her.

Mary may wonder, “Who am I?” but God’s answer is clear, “You are my favoured one, beloved and beautiful to me.”

It is unlikely that Mary would have ever had an opportunity to develop a distinctive identity apart from the one given to her by God. She is too young to have had time to achieve much on which to base her identity. She is too poor to purchase her place in society.

Add to this the fact that she is female, which means that even if she did have accomplishments or social stature to her credit, they likely would have gone unrecognized because of her gender.

All of this makes Mary a most unlikely candidate for helping God save the world, which may just be why God chooses her. Nothing about Mary suggests that she can be who she is apart from God’s favour.

So Gabriel begins by affirming God’s love for Mary and continues, as angels speaking to human beings tend to do, by telling her there is no need to fear:

“Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God.  And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus… [and then] Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” (30-35)

One thing that amazes me about biblical stories like this is that, even after hearing them year in and year out for my entire life, it seems that every year I learn some new detail that opens up the story for me in a new way.  Last year you may have heard me go on, and on, about the shepherds. You can ask me about that later if you didn’t. I’m still pretty excited about it.

This year, I learned about an unusual piece of medieval theology from a fantastic book called, “A Word to Live By” by Lauren Winner.

Presumably uncomfortable with the physical details of this miraculous conception story, the medieval church imagined that Jesus was conceived through Mary’s ear.  Don’t think too deeply or too literally about that, it’s just plain weird, but that’s what they taught.

Now that would perhaps have stayed as an odd piece of church trivia to bring out at parties, if it weren’t for the way Lauren continues to unpack this idea:

“To conceive means to ‘become pregnant with a child’ and it also means ‘to form an intention in the mind or heart.’ (‘Why hast though conceived this thing in thine heart?’ Peter asks the duplicitous Ananais in Acts 5:4, KJV)” Mary conceived a child through her ear, said the medievals; when I – Lauren – listen to the Scriptures in church, I might find the sounded word plants an intention in my heart. I am, in a very small way, imitating Mary, trying to find an openness to whatever God wants to root and gestate in me.” (45)

Mary is someone who listens carefully and thinks deeply about what she has heard. The word “ponder,” which means to weigh or consider the value of, is used to describe her actions more than once in scripture.  Earlier in our gospel reading it says she “pondered” Gabriel’s words of greeting. (29) Later in the story, after a visit from the shepherds in Bethlehem, we are told that “Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” (2:19)

She’s a thinker.  She knows the importance of taking time to quietly reflect on her experiences, to ponder them.  To weigh and consider their value before deciding what to do.

Gabriel tells Mary of God’s plan and as she listens, something is planted in her heart.

The text doesn’t say how long it took Mary to respond to Gabriel’s message – seconds, minutes, hours, days. It just tells us that when she did respond she said, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

This to me, is the quiet work of Advent.  What happens when I slow down long enough to listen to what God is trying to say to me? What happens when I am quiet long enough to absorb and reflect on what I have heard? To weigh its value. What will grow in this waiting that could never take root if I continue to rush?

What new and precious hope will be born?

In Zephaniah, the prophet paints a joy filled picture of what will happen if the people heed the warnings and turn to God.  But the book ends before we find out what happens. Do they listen and allow what they have heard to take root in their lives? We’re not told.

In Mary’s case we do know.  She will take in Gabriel’s news, ponder it in her heart, and later burst into a song so beautiful that many of us still sing it today.

But that’s a story for another time.

Amen.

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by Rev Rachel