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.
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.
Growing up we didn’t have wine in our house. We didn’t have it in church either – for communion, we’d pass around trays of tiny shot glasses of grape juice instead.
I had a vague awareness from books and movies that wine was more of a category than a single product. It could be red or white, cheap or expensive. It could have “rich tannins” or “hints of oak.”
When I first started drinking wine, I thought it pretty much all tasted disgusting.
And then one day, some friends took me to a wine tasting and I was able to spend an evening going around with a trained sommelier who tried to teach me about wine. She’d patiently say, “Now this one, this one is lovely with notes of cherries and cinnamon. Swirl your glass and smell. Can you smell the cherries? The cinnamon?”
No.
“How about this one, it’s more floral. Can you smell the difference? Can you taste it?”
No.
Slowly, however, I began to pick up on a few things. I began to be able to notice that one wine smelled different than another, but I definitely couldn’t accurately identify those differences. And I still can’t.
Tonight’s gospel is about transformation. It’s a story about water that becomes wine, and exceptionally good wine at that. It’s a story about people who are slowly beginning to understand who Jesus is. They are beginning to realize that there is “something different about that kid from Nazareth,” even if they can’t identify exactly what that difference is.
It’s also the story of a mother and her son. Mary has been carefully watching and interacting with her son Jesus throughout his entire life and she’s able to pick up on all the subtle nuances of who he is and who he is becoming. She can detect the “strong notes of divinity” in him.
John’s gospel is full of “tasting notes” meant to help us identify Jesus’ character. John calls these notes “signs,” and today’s gospel reading is the first of seven signs that he writes about. Rather than simply providing us with a list of Jesus’ character traits, he gives us a series of stories that show, rather than tell, us exactly who Jesus is. Each sign helps us “taste and see that the Lord is good.” (Psalm 34:8)
The reading begins, “On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee…”
In the first chapter of John, we read about a series of events that all begin with the phrase “the next day.” John is telling the people about Jesus and then “the next day,” he sees Jesus, and then “the next day” several of John’s followers decide to follow Jesus, and then “the next day” they go to Galilee and then, in the second chapter, instead of continuing with this particular grammatical construction, John switches to say, “on the third day.” [1]
John will use this phrase again towards the end of the gospel and I think he is purposely making a connection between this sign and Jesus’ resurrection “on the third day.”
This story has “subtle hints of Easter.”
The wedding doesn’t take place in Jesus’ hometown, it takes place in Cana. Cana is not in Judea, it’s in Galilee, and Galilee was known for it’s “thieves, rebels, and Gentiles.”[2]
The location of the wedding highlights that Jesus did not come to build walls or to shore up boundaries between countries, between religions, or between ethnic groups. He came to show that those kinds of boundaries are not relevant in God’s kingdom.
A wedding was an important community event, a celebration that likely involved everyone in the village and at least some people from neighbouring villages as well – Mary, her son, and his friends have all been invited for example.
Running out of wine at a wedding wasn’t just an unfortunate mistake. It was disgraceful: it could easily be seen as a bad omen about the future of the marriage they were all gathered to celebrate.
But even though running out of wine at a wedding was a serious problem, it still seems like an odd thing for Jesus Christ, the savior of the entire world, to concern himself with. Surely wine at a local wedding is a job for middle management.
But he does choose to become involved, and that choice points to several other things about his character.
Firstly, Jesus is a man who listens to women. This may be the first, but it won’t be the last time a woman will change Jesus’ mind in the gospels.
I’ve been thinking about Mary all week as I have been preparing this sermon. If anyone ever tells you that the Bible isn’t funny, just show them this exchange between Jesus and his mother, because it’s hilarious.
Mary, noticing that the hosts have run out of wine, points out the situation to Jesus whose reply is basically, “How is that my problem? They should have hired a better catering company,” and Mary doesn’t even dignify his comment with a response. She just turns to the servants, instructs them to do whatever Jesus tell them to do and leaves, knowing full well that her kid is going to take care of the situation whether he wants to or not.
I love the trust and confidence that she displays in this interaction. She doesn’t need to debate or argue or plead. She just states the need and trusts that Jesus will take care of it.
She has been watching Jesus carefully for his entire life and she knows who he is and that knowing, that deep knowing, has resulted in a deep sense of safety and trust.
It’s something I admire, even if I can’t always manage to emulate it.
Jesus’s choice to get involved in the menu at a wedding is also a sign that his compassionate nature will regularly lead him to engage with people in need in surprising ways.
Not unlike a fine wine that, after you’ve swirled it around in your glass a few times begins to open up and reveal complex flavours you weren’t expecting.
And how does Jesus re-stock the wine supplies for this wedding? Does he create new wine jugs out of thin air?
No.
We know the people have consumed all the available wine, does Jesus have the servants collect those empty jugs so he can re-fill them?
No.
He doesn’t use vessels meant for wine at all, instead he chooses water jugs used for Jewish purification rites. Here is another complex flavour in John’s account. NT Wright points out that Jesus is doing some new “within the old Jewish system, bringing purification to Israel and the world in a whole new way.” (Commentary on John, 22)
Six water jugs, each meant to hold 20-30 gallons of water filled to the brim with the best wine. Jesus’ actions are also characterized by abundance. He doesn’t create a few bottles of wine and tell the servants to make do, he creates more than enough and of the finest quality.
Jesus’ first miracle affects a large number of people, but is only noticed by a small handful. We’re not told about the panicked bride and groom tearfully yelling at their parents because not only has their poor planning ruined their wedding, it’s a bad omen over their entire marriage. We’re not given scenes of parents who are shocked and perhaps a little disgusted by guests who are guzzling wine so quickly they couldn’t possibly have predicted how much to order. We not given a scene later in the story where any of the guests realize just how good and plentiful the wine at this wedding has become.
Mary is the only person we know for sure even noticed that the wine was running out. The only recorded reaction we have about the replacement wine comes from a servant, the steward, and even he has no idea where the wine came from because none of the servants tell him. Throughout the gospels, people who would typically be the least important are the ones who consistently possess the insider knowledge of what Jesus is capable of.
This is not a flashy show of Jesus’ power performed to a large crowd, even though a large crowd was readily available. It’s a quiet miracle. Performed by servants in a back room.
I’ve said this before, but one thing I find so interesting about biblical stories, is that so much of our interpretation of a story depends on the tone of voice we choose to ascribe to individual characters. And that tone is almost always someone we have to choose to add, it’s usually not written into the text.
I’ve heard this story my entire life and always thought that when the steward says to the groom “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now,” that he is paying the groom a compliment. (11)
But it was recently pointed out to me that there is no reason to assume it’s a compliment at all. In fact, it equally likely, more likely even, that the steward is throwing some “serious shade.”[3]
People who have consumed a lot of wine don’t have the most sophisticated palates. They can’t appreciate good wine so it’s silly to serve it to them. It makes every kind of sense to serve the best wine first and move to the inferior quality product when not only are people less likely to care, there are less likely to notice.
Isn’t it a waste to give such high quality wine to people who can’t even appreciate it?
But Jesus doesn’t think like the steward, or like me for that matter. Jesus always gives us the best, not because we are worthy but in the midst of our unworthiness.
Jesus always gives us the best even when he knows we won’t be able to fully appreciate it.
God feeds us and satisfies our thirst even when we can’t fully appreciate the quality of the wine. God doesn’t wait for us to become worthy because we never will be. We’re all unworthy.
And God loves us anyway.
Unfortunately the church has a pretty terrible track record of thinking that God is more like the steward than like Jesus.
We have a vast storehouse of great wine but oftentimes, we act like all we have are empty jars or the cheapest wine.
Many of us saw a horrific example of this yesterday in video footage that exploded across social media of students from a Catholic high school who were shockingly disrespectful to an indigenous elder in Washington DC. Young people who somehow got the message that on a field trip with their Christian school, it was a good idea to spend their time engaging in the sort of ugly behavior that builds up walls and creates divisions between people.
Their actions leave a bitter, acidic taste in my mouth. They don’t taste anything like Jesus.
That wise elder responded with a quiet dignity I can only hope I will someday have the grace and maturity to emulate. In his actions, we can taste the finest wine.
Those kids behaved in ways that make me so very sad, and angry, and in that rush of emotions I have the temptation to build my own new set of walls, to say, ‘Those kids are not welcome at Christ’s table.”
But those kids don’t need to be excluded from Christ’s table and I don’t get to make that decision. They need someone to show them that the swill they have been consuming is indeed garbage and that, in Christ Jesus, we have a story and a way of living that tastes so much better.
All are welcomed without exception at Christ’s table because it is God’s table and not our own. The table has been set with an abundant feast of the highest quality. We are all welcome at this table, no matter what we have done, no matter how unworthy we feel.
At the table we are offered a taste of what God is like.
So come, taste and see. The Lord is good.
Amen.
[1] Which means this is actually a series of 4 days, 3 that Jesus was present for.
[2] Roy Harrisville
[3] Thanks to Reagan Humber at HFASS for the image of the steward with attitude.
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.
On Kings and Kids: A Sermon for Sunday November 25, 2018
The following sermon was preached at saint benedict's table on Sunday November 25, 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.
Tonight is the final Sunday in the liturgical year, the last Sunday before Advent, commonly called Christ the King Sunday. It is a Sunday to focus on Christ’s power and authority before we shift to the themes of Advent and begin to wait for the Christ who comes as a child in a manger.
Not every denomination celebrates Christ the King Sunday. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Sweden used to call this Sunday the Sunday of Doom, which is pretty intense. Now they call it Return of Christ Sunday, which I think was a pretty wise decision.
In some Anglican Churches, today is also referred to as “Stir Up Sunday,” in part because the collect that used to be said at the beginning of the service began, “Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord…” but also because if you want to have your fancy Christmas pudding ready by December 25th, you need to stir it up today.
But here, tonight, we are celebrating Christ the King Sunday, so it’s fitting that our reading from the Psalms begins, “The Lord is king, he is robed in majesty; the Lord is robed, he is girded with strength.”
The Lord is king, Christ is king. What does that mean to you? When you hear the word “king,” what images come to mind?
Personally, the images that come to my mind, aren’t overly helpful.
Queen Elizabeth is my clearest association with the idea of a ruling monarch. I couldn’t come up with the name of a modern day king without the help of Google. It turns some countries still do have kings, but not ones I’m overly familiar with.
As a kid, I understood that kings were boys and I wasn’t a boy so they were never the character I was overly interested in paying attention to in books or films. But it was more than a gender issue, because almost all of the kings I can think of from films and literature are awful human beings who use their power only for personal gain, do not listen to or care for the people in their realms, and quite often behave like petulant children throwing temper tantrum after temper tantrum. Not much to inspire in that.
It makes it difficult for me to get excited about celebrating Jesus Christ as a King. Christ the mother hen Sunday I could get behind. Christ the social justice warrior. Christ the destroyer of hierarchy. Christ the host of great feasts. All of these images are infinitely more exciting to me than Christ the king.
But today the lectionary says we need to talk about Christ the King. Which is probably one of the best reasons to use a lectionary. It forces us to talk about things we would rather ignore and means that as a preacher, I can’t just cherry pick and preach only on the passages of scripture I like.
In tonight’s gospel reading, Pilate asks Jesus directly if he is a king and Jesus gives characteristically vague answers. He never explicitly says, “I am a king,” but, in this exchange with Pilate, Jesus does describe his kingdom, saying, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” (v.36)
“By explaining that his rule or kingdom is not of this world, Jesus means that its origin, values, and methods are from God rather than the world (v.36), evidenced by the refusal of the use of force and violence to defend himself.” (Collegeville Commentary 358)
Jesus may be a king, but he is not a king like any king we have ever known and so in order to understand what kind of a king he is, we have to set aside everything we think we know about kings.
About a month ago, Matthew Shepard’s remains were interred in Washington National Cathedral. The church service was broadcasted via live stream and was something to behold.
Matthew Shepard was a university student who volunteered in his local Episcopal Church. He loved his friends and family, and knew from an early age that he was gay. He died twenty years ago at the age of 21 because some people did not like the way Matthew loved. They drove him to a remote area, tied him to a fence, beat him savagely and left him to die.
His death made national news and inspired an entire generation of people to work to ensure that love is love and that no one would ever again have to feel that their life was in danger because of who God created them to be.
I watched the service at the Cathedral where Matt’s life was celebrated and his ashes were interred and I thought, “For all the things the church gets so very, very wrong, when we get it right, it is truly beautiful.”
I watched Bishop Gene Robinson gently place the urn containing Matthew’s remains in a place of prominence at the front of the church and carefully, reverently smooth out the veil covering the urn, treating them with a care and a gentleness that Matthew did not receive in life and I thought, “This is what is means to use power and authority for all the right reasons and in all the right ways.” To show love and care for the one that many despised. To take the one that many wanted to say did not belong, and to say not only that he belongs, but to place him in the seat of honour.
Theologian Gordon Lathrope says, “Draw a line that includes us and excludes many others, and Jesus Christ is always on the other side of the line. At least that is so if we are speaking of the biblical, historic Christ who eats with sinners and outsiders, who is made a curse and sin itself for us, who justifies the ungodly, and who is himself the hole in any system.” (Lathrop, Holy Ground: a Liturgical Cosmology)
Draw a line that includes us and excludes many others, and Jesus Christ is always on the other side of the line.
Jesus is a king whose power and authority is always used to erase the dividing lines we so love to draw.
Standing in a big fancy church, wearing fancy clothing, and treating Matthew’s remains and his memory with such love and respect, Bishop Gene gave me a glimpse of what it might mean in the Psalms when it says that “The Lord is king, he is robed in majesty; the Lord is robed, he is girded with strength”
It looks a lot like love.
But even before I watched that service, and saw a glimpse of Christ the King in Bishop Gene, I have long considered Matthew Shepard to be a Christ-figure.
There is a song about Matthew on my favourite album by Peter, Paul, and Mary, “In These Times.” We’ll put a link to it on the website this week. (https://youtu.be/l7IA4u-eUKc) In the song, Mary sings alone, her warm voice telling the story of Matthew’s last days on earth, and after each verse, Peter and Paul join in on the chorus that opens with the line, “Jesus, is on the wire.”
The album came out in 2004, I have listened to it countless time, and it still gets me every time.
The line works in two ways, first, because I do believe that Jesus was with Matthew that night. But also because Jesus, like Matthew, was killed because people didn’t like the way he loved. They didn’t like the way Jesus threatened the status quo, they didn’t like the kind of king Jesus came to be.
Anytime you see an image of Jesus as King that neatly matches the image you have of an earthly king, something has gotten lost in translation. You have to look for something different to see the Christ who is king, you have to go to the margins of society, you have to look on the opposite side of any dividing line you are trying to uphold, you have to look on fence in Laramie, you have to look on a cross.
That’s a way of inhabiting kingship that stretches and challenges me to ask, who am I excluding? That’s a way of inhabiting kingship that I can get exited about and celebrate, not just on Christ the King Sunday, but everyday.
But we’re not just here tonight to celebrate Christ the King Sunday, we’re also here to celebrate the baptism of Adalynn Rose Phillips and Danica Si’ipn Phillips and you may think that there is a huge shift to make from the idea of Jesus as a very different kind of king to the baptism of two beautiful little girls, but there really isn’t. Because baptism is also about love and a countercultural narrative that says that God’s way of doing things is different from the world’s way.
Adalynn and Danica are fortunate to have been born into a family that loves them very much – their parents and siblings and extended family love them dearly.
They have two older brothers who are doing a fantastic job of being big brothers. At least when I’m around, Benjamin tends to be the quieter of the two bothers and so tonight I want to share a few things that I’ve learned from Caleb.
Before Adalynn and Danica were born, Caleb came up to me at church and said, “Do you know that we are having two babies? A girl, and a girl.”
And I’ve thought about that many times since then and I think Caleb was saying something very wise. It is really important to remember that while Adalynn and Danica are twins, they are also individuals. They are a girl, and a girl.
It will be so easy to just lump them together as “the twins,” but while that is an important part of their identity, it is not the only thing that will define them. As they grow older they will have different interests and gifts and passions and we need to watch for and celebrate those things.
And I want to work on seeing them as a girl, and a girl as well, but I’m not quite there yet, I still can’t quite tell them apart, which is why I need to admit that this next story happened when I was holding one of the girls, but I can’t remember if it was Adalynn or Danica. I’m going to get better at telling them apart, I promise.
On the first Sunday that Adalynn and Danica came to church, I was holding one of them and Caleb wasn’t sure this was a great idea. He watched me very closely and made sure that I knew that this baby belonged to his family, that she was going to go home with them, that I could NOT take her home with me.
“You could give her back to me right now,” he told me, “I can hold her.”
And Caleb, you were absolutely right once again. Adalynn and Danica belong to your family, to the Phillip’s family, and tempting as it may be, I can’t take them home with me. They will go home with you, and that’s as it should be.
But tonight, we’re going to publicly celebrate another fact, and that is that while I will never be part of the Phillips family, we are in fact, family.
Tonight through baptism, we are publicly stating that Adalynn and Danica are part of God’s family, just as I am part of God’s family. Just like each person here is part of God’s family.
It still doesn’t mean I get to take your sisters home after church, but it does mean that I have a responsibility to love them and to care for them and play a part in helping them become exactly the people that God created them to be.
I’m supposed to do the same thing for you Caleb, we all are, and you are to do the same for us. By continuing to be exactly who you are, you are already doing a great job of reminding us of the same things that baptism reminds us of – that God made us, that God loves us, and that we are all part of God’s family. Thank you for that reminder.
And so, now I’ve talked long enough and it’s time for us to welcome Adalynn and Danica into God’s family through baptism. We’re going to sing shortly, and as we sing, I invite the baptismal party and members of the family to join us at the back of the church. Other friends of Chantelle and David are also invited to gather around the back with us.
Let’s sing.
Crawling Camels and Closed Minds: A Sermon for Sunday October 14, 2018
The following sermon was preached at saint benedict's table on Sunday October 14, 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 God, for you are our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
This sermon is influenced by a sermon preached by Reagan Humber, the pastor of House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver.
Today’s gospel passage is often referred to as the story of the rich young ruler. It’s not a title you can easily infer from our reading from Mark, but the story also appears in the gospel of Matthew, where the man is described as young, and in Luke, where he is described as a ruler.
So this man, runs up to Jesus, falls on his knees and says, “Good Teacher, what much I do to inherit eternal life?” (17) He’s basically asking Jesus to lay out a road map for eternal life.
And Jesus’ response has a bit of an edge to it. “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” (18)
If I was this rich young ruler I’d be instantly confused. I might even mumble an answer like, “Um, because you ARE good or because that’s just a thing we say in this culture as a sign of respect?”
But Jesus doesn’t give him a chance to answer, rather he continues with a short list of commandments. He doesn’t even list them all. And the rich young ruler quickly dismisses the list saying, “Yes, yes, I’m already doing all of that. What else do I need to do?”
Jesus is trying to give this man good news. He is trying to say that this man already knows the way. He doesn’t have to do anything to inherit eternal life, it’s already his.
Jesus is saying, “don’t worry, you’re in good shape,” but the man doesn’t believe him. Surely it’s impossible, he can’t possibly be doing enough already. Surely he needs to do more.
And Jesus, we are told, looks at the man, and loves him. I love these details, Jesus knows and loves this man. He is looking at him, paying attention to him and it is out of that love and that knowing that Jesus speaks the words the man most needs to hear. (21)
Jesus says, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” (21)
Jesus looks at a man who seemingly has it all – he is rich, young, in a position of power, and says, “You lack one thing…” He doesn’t say, “You have too much, get rid of your stuff,” rather he says, “there is something you are missing.” This isn’t about subtraction, it’s about addition.
What does the man lack?
I think, what he lacks is the imagination to believe that another way is possible. The imagination that would lead him to suspect that the way he has been taught to think since birth, might not be the only way to think.
He wants solutions – actions and reasoning that he can understand and if the truth doesn’t fit into that paradigm, he can’t recognize it as truth.
Eternal life is a free gift? There is nothing more I need to do? I’m fine just as I am? It’s unimaginable. It’s impossible. There must be a catch and the rich young ruler wants Jesus to show it to him.
Sometimes we become so locked into our old ways of thinking, that we can’t even imagine a new way is possible. There can be a solution staring us in the face, Jesus can be standing right in front of us telling us that a different, better way is possible, and we won’t be able to see him because we are blinded by our old behaviors and past experiences.
“But throughout the gospel, Jesus lays out that eternal life isn’t built on our effort, on our work, or on our deservedness. The way to eternal life is built upon God’s grace as a gift, which has nothing to do with our own goodness. But the man in the gospel can’t see this because he is blinded by a system of transactional relationships based upon effort and reward.” (RH)
My first spiritual director loved to tell stories and he had some great pithy lines that I will never forget. He once told me the story of a man who was very much like the rich young ruler in our story, and when he described the man he said, “He was one of those guys who spent his whole life earnestly trying to put Jesus out of a job.”
And yes, in case it’s not obvious, he told me this story for a reason. He told me this story because he could see that I was one of those gals who was spending her life earnestly trying to put Jesus out of a job.
And I still am sometimes, but I’m working hard to learn to ask the question, “What is mine to do?” I have a role to play to be sure, but so does Jesus. I need to do my work, and trust that Jesus will do his.
But the rich young ruler can’t imagine a life like that, at least not in the portion of his life story recorded in Mark. He is so stuck in his old way of thinking that Jesus words are shocking to him and Mark tells us that he goes away grieving. (22)
And grief is a deep, and active, and painful emotion. But grief can also be healing. It’s possible, that this man will, after that grief subsides, be willing to have his imagination expanded by Jesus’ words and do exactly what Jesus counsels him to do.
But we don’t get to hear the rest of his story and, by walking away when he does, this young man misses out on the next few things that Jesus says.
After the young man leaves, Jesus says that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter God’s kingdom. (25)
People have been trying to figure out what Jesus meant by this since the moment he said it. A fairly well known interpretation goes something like this: In Jesus’ time there was a gate in Jerusalem called the “Eye of the Needle.” And for whatever reason, the people who built this gate built it in such a way that it was too small for a camel to walk through. And, for whatever reason, they didn’t also build a second camel accessible gate.
In order for a camel to go through this gate, you would have to remove all the cargo the camel was carrying and then the camel would have to sink down to the ground and crawl through the gate.
But here’s the thing. “There is no evidence anywhere in the Mideast” that such a gate existed.” (Collegeville Commentary, 120) None. There is no evidence to suggest that a gate called the Eye of the Needle ever existed.
Well, you might say, we haven’t found any evidence that this gate existed, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t exist in Jesus’ time. Fair enough, except, that we still have camels, and camels can’t crawl.
Jesus is not making a reference to a literal place, he is using a form of hyperbole that is a natural part of Semitic speech.
But why then, did the understanding that there was a literal gate with literal crawling camels become so popular?
I suspect it’s because it is a more comfortable interpretation than to believe that it is utterly impossible for a rich person to enter God’s kingdom.
On one hand, people, especially wealthy people, don’t want to believe that it’s impossible to enter the kingdom of heaven. This crawling camel interpretation provides them with a convenient workaround. It allows them to believe that what Jesus is saying is that it may be hard for a rich person to enter God’s kingdom, but it’s not impossible.
But it’s not only rich people, a category as North Americans we basically all fall into by the way, it’s not only rich people like us who have a hard time with this story.
The church has always had a really hard time hearing that eternal life is a gift. This literal gate/literal camel interpretation is a way of trying to erase God’s grace from the story. And while this story is our focus today, it’s certainly not the only time we have been tempted to erase grace from God’s story.
We reject grace, because we prefer a story that says if we work hard enough we can earn salvation. If we, like that mythical camel, remove all of our baggage, humble ourselves, drop down to our knees and crawl, then we can enter God’s kingdom. If we do this slow, hard, painstaking work, then we will be allowed to enter heaven on our own steam. That’s a story that most of us can wrap our minds around. That’s a story we can be comfortable with.
That’s a story that completely eliminates God’s grace.
We’re uncomfortable with any idea that suggests that we are not in control of our own destinies. We are uncomfortable with any idea that challenges the negative transactional tape in our heads that says we have to do something in order to get something.
We are uncomfortable with the Jesus who says not, “Come to me all you who are weary and heavy burdened and I’ll run you through an intensive salvation boot camp,” but rather says “Come to me all you who are weary and heavy burdened and I will give you rest.” (Matt 11:28)
The rich young ruler hears Jesus’ command to sell all he has and come follow Christ and he walks away grieving. And, as I said earlier, by leaving when he does, the young man missed the good new that Jesus shares with the disciples. He misses hearing Jesus say that, “It is impossible for a person, by the sheer force of their own will, to enter God’s kingdom, but nothing is ever impossible for God.”
Eternal life is God’s job, not ours. There are so many things that are impossible for us to do on our own, but nothing is ever impossible for God.
Stuck in his old ways of thinking, the rich young man leaves before hearing this good news. Where do you as an individual get stuck? Where do we as a community get stuck? Where do we all need to stretch our imaginations?
This past week, Jamie, Danielle and I went to Collegeville for the first session of the Communities of Calling initiative that our church will be a part of for the next 5 years. Jamie and I also returned home and dove straight into 3 days of diocesan synod so we haven’t really have time to unpack all that we heard and experienced in Collegeville just yet, but you will continue to hear more about the project as it unfolds.
What I can tell you today is that a major component of this project is an invitation for us, for all of us, to expand our imaginations and think creatively about vocation, faith, and what it means to be a church.
I’m excited for all of us to have the opportunity to discover the places where we may have fallen into crawling camel thinking and to begin to live into grace-filled God like thinking instead. I’m excited for what will happen when we allow ourselves to be stretched and challenged and inspired by the other participants in this project and by each other.
And, although I can’t imagine what all will happen as a result of this project, I do know about some of the beautiful things we have been able to do as a community when we were bold enough to stretch our imaginations. And those stories give me to confidence to risk stretching my imagination again.
For example, as a small church with a tight budget, it would be easy for us to believe that we cannot afford to be generous. Prudent even. It’s unlikely that anyone would criticize us for saying that we need every single penny that arrives in those offering baskets at the back of the church each Sunday just to keep our basic ministries running. Who would disagree with that?
Not me, that’s for sure.
And yet, in the past 11 years that I have been a part of this community I have watched people with bigger imaginations than mine utterly reject the sort of scarcity mentality that I so often cling to and say, “God is a God of abundance and God calls us to live lives of extravagant generosity.” These people in our community called us to imagine a more generous way of being church. They said, do we really believe that we can do more with 100% of our budget than God can do with 90%? And it captured our imaginations and over the years we gradually grew our budget for missions until it was 10% of our overall budget.
And that’s why, in November, our Mission Fund committee will have the extreme privilege to review your submissions and disburse those funds to people who are doing good work outside the walls of this church.
I stand here before you today saying that this is an amazing and beautiful thing that we do together that several years ago I was utterly convinced was impossible. If it had been up to me, I, like the rich young ruler, would have walked away from this idea with sadness in my heart, and a conviction that such a thing was simply impossible.
But nothing is impossible with God.
At the end of our service, we regularly say a prayer that includes the beautiful lines, “Glory to God, whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine….”
What could happen if we really leaned into that truth? What could happen if we all begin to both ask and imagine?
I can’t imagine all the possibilities, but I do know that nothing, nothing, is impossible with God.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
Check Your Status: A Sermon for Sunday September 23, 2018
The following sermon was preached at saint benedict's table on Sunday September 23, 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.
From time to time when I’m shopping I will see a kid have a complete meltdown. Maybe they are tired, or hungry, or bored or maybe they just really, really want the toy that their parent has said they can’t have. Whatever the reason, they are done, and they express their feelings with tears, loud cries, and flailing limbs.
And usually when I witness this sort of meltdown, one of my main thoughts is, “Wow. I wish it was still socially acceptable for me to behave like that.”
Because I still feel like that sometimes – done. At the end of my rope. And I wonder if I might just feel a lot better if instead of using the more “adult” coping mechanisms the world has insisted I develop as I’ve gotten older, I just had a full on meltdown and then dusted myself off instead.
I wonder about it, but I’ve never had the courage to test the theory out.
At least not in public.
In our reading from James we learn that wisdom that comes from God, and not the world, will lead to mature behaviour, and that the same is true if we decide to be friends with God, instead of with the world. So, perhaps, it’s not that I’m too afraid to see what would happen if I had a public meltdown, perhaps I’m actually a wise friend of God.
This morning I was preaching at the church that I attended when I was 17. I haven’t been back since then, and it was a bit disconcerting to imagine a group of people who, if they remembered me at all, remembered me at 17. It had me thinking a lot this week about growth and maturity.
I also re-read a sermon series I wrote on James about 15 years ago thinking I could re-cycle some of that material, only to find that I couldn’t. The way I preach has changed a lot since then.
Feel free to thank me after the service for the fact that my average sermon clocks in at about 14 minutes these days, not 45.
Today’s lengthy passage from James and our gospel reading from Mark both contain themes of wisdom, growth and understanding. James asks “Who is wise and understanding among you?” and Mark tells us yet another story of Jesus trying to teach the disciples, and the disciples not understanding what he is trying to tell them.
Is it wisdom that keeps me from throwing myself on the grocery store floor crying, “I have had a horrible day and now they are out of my favourite kind of chips? Whhhhhy?”
Maybe.
Or maybe I don’t have temper tantrums in grocery stores because I have found other ways to deal with those feelings.
Because as cathartic as screaming in a grocery store might be, I can also just log into one of my social media accounts and update my status.
I can post my temper tantrum online and get instant gratification.
People will click “like” and write kind words and I’ll feel so much better.
My status will determine my mood.
In our gospel reading, the disciples are also discussing how their status will affect them. Not their Facebook status, of course, but their status in the new kingdom that Jesus is going to bring about.
Jesus and the disciples are traveling through Galilee and Jesus is explaining to them that he is going to be betrayed, die, and three days later, rise again.
He isn’t speaking in riddles or parables this time either; he is laying out the facts as clearly as he can.
And they still don’t get it.
And they argue about which one of them will have the most privileged positions in the new kingdom.
Jesus is trying to teach them what true greatness looks in the counter cultural kingdom he has come to bring about.
He is beginning to challenge their notions of greatness, of what kind of Messiah he is, of what kind of kingdom he has come to usher in. He is teaching them about how this new kingdom will be established and extended.
These are challenging teachings. The disciples don’t get it. Years later, the people who James is writing to still haven’t fully grasped them, and when I look around the world today, I don’t think we have fully grasped them either.
Although it is not always the case, on this day, the disciples are afraid to ask Jesus questions so they argue about status, about which one of them is the greatest instead.
Do you ever do this? You encounter something troubling and rather than deal with it directly you change the subject. Or you hear something you don’t understand, but you’re afraid to ask a question? Possibly because you do not want to look dumb in front of someone you admire. Possibly because you’re also afraid what the answer to your question may be.
Just this week I heard a story about a person who lived for over a decade as if they had HIV/AIDS because they were so afraid that they might have it, that they didn’t want to go to a doctor. It was just too scary to think about.
I also talked to someone else, who, when faced with a serious problem, will quickly and subconsciously scan the situation for the piece they feel the most comfortable with and focus exclusively on that. Their boat is sinking and the latch holding the cabin door in place is coming loose? Time to bail water or jump ship? Nope. Time to grab a screwdriver and fix that latch.
Maybe it’s easier to argue about who will be the greatest in the new kingdom Jesus has come to bring about than to think about all of the things that will have to happen in order to establish that kingdom, including the death of someone they love.
At the end of the day, Jesus and the disciples are inside a house and Jesus asks them what they had been arguing about on the road, and they are silent. (33-34)
This is the silence of shame. The silence of a kid who has been caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
It seems like the disciples know that they should be embarrassed about arguing about their relative status, even if they might not be able to fully articulate why that is. Their silence seem to indicate that they know their talk of greatness is out of step with who Jesus is, with where he is going, and with where he wants to take them.
When they argued about who was the greatest, they were still thinking about worldly categories of greatness. They were still thinking as the world thinks, valuing what the world values.
We can see this in the fact that they are setting themselves up for greatness through self-promotion. Presumably when they are arguing about greatness, they are setting themselves up as the greatest. It’s not clear, but I suspect that their argument on the road didn’t look like Matthew arguing passionately that Peter was the greatest and Peter arguing with equal vehemence that, “No, no, Matthew, I’m not the greatest, you are!” I don’t think it looked like that. I suspect it looked more like self-promotion. Like boasting.
And what felt right and natural as they were walking during the day feels uncomfortable when Jesus questions them about it and so they fall silent.
Jesus doesn’t chastise or rebuke them, rather he continues to teach them about his definition of greatness, a greatness that is not reflective of the world’s values.
In the world’s eyes, greatness is often determined by how high up you are on the chain of command. If you have more people serving you than you have to serve, you are on the road to greatness. If you don’t need to serve anyone and everyone is required to serve you, you have achieved true worldly greatness.
But Jesus says that in his kingdom, that order is reversed and greatness is determined by how many people you serve. Greatness is shown in humble, self-sacrificial service to others.
James will put this in the context of a binary. You can either be friends with God or the world, not both. (4:4) You can either choose earthly wisdom or the wisdom that comes from above, not both. Earthly wisdom leads to envy, selfish ambition, disorder and wickedness of every kind. (3:15) Wisdom from above is pure, peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. (16)
The disciples fall silent at Jesus’ question. And then Jesus takes a child from the margins of the group and moves that child not only to the center, but into his arms as well saying “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” (37)
Three years ago when Jamie preached on this same passage, he noted noted: “A child in that world had no status, no rights, really no claim on a role until they hit the age of 13 when the moved into adulthood – as sons or daughters of the Torah.
Yet Jesus takes the status-less child – property of the parents – and he says “now treat this child with dignity, welcome this child in its full humanity and when you do that you are welcoming me, and not only me, but the God who sent me.
Live that way, do that, see people that way and the lie of selfish ambition and self absorbed striving is unveiled.” (Jamie Howison)
I think I have heard this part of the story and seen images of a gentle blonde Jesus surrounded by rosy-cheeked children so many times that it’s easy for me to just gloss over this story. Jesus loves sweet obedient children, this I now, for the Bible tells me so. I should try my best to behave like one.
I have heard this so many times that it doesn’t have a lot of impact anymore and so this week I have tried to imagine the story from a few different angles to see if there is something new it might have to teach me.
I would, for example, love to know what this experience was like for the child in question. One minute you’re playing quietly in the corner, and the next minute your parents’ houseguest has picked you up and plunked you on his lap in the middle of the assembled adults. What did that feel like?
Last week at our 4pm service Jonny was telling the story and lovingly holding his son throughout and then, Jonny suggested that maybe Jesus gave that child didn’t just lovingly hold that child, maybe Jesus was also a bit more playful and gave him a noogie.
That’s also a spin on the story I’d never thought of before and it got me thinking more about that child’s actual experience and less about their role as passive object in an object lesson.
So what if, what if, that child hadn’t been playing peacefully in the corner? What if part of the reason Jesus picked up that child was because the child had started to throw a full on temper tantrum and it had distracted Jesus?
What if the child Jesus has chosen as an illustration of greatness is actually a sobbing, snotty nosed kid mid meltdown?
What does that do to our understanding of this story?
Does it, perhaps, say to the disciples that they don’t have to get stuck in a shame cycle or worry about asking foolish questions of Jesus because greatness can sometimes look like a bit of a mess?
Does it open up an invitation to help us realize that what Jesus is calling the disciples to– and by extension each one of us to – is full participation? It’s a call to bring all of who we are, and not just the nice, well behaved bits.
Does it help us to recognize that while, perhaps we shouldn’t throw temper tantrums in grocery stores we also shouldn’t push past the thoughts and feelings that make us uncomfortable? We don’t need to repress them or be afraid to bring them to Jesus?
Maybe. I hope so. It did for me this week.
It was also helpful to be chewing on these ideas from Mark while also reading James’ call to grow and mature by making wise choices.
Because, when it comes down to it, I don’t think I actually want to throw temper tantrums in public. I like to think I have matured past that type of behavior, but I also want to find ways to healthily acknowledge the sorts of feelings that could lead to a public meltdown. To honour them, not just repress them or feel ashamed of them. That’s what I’m actually looking for.
I’m likely not going to get it right on the first try, but I know I’m in good company. The people James is writing to and the disciples usually follow a pattern of trial and error and error as well. In the next chapter of Mark the disciples will be turn away little children who are being brought to Jesus (10: 13) and James and John, still focused on earthly status, will pull Jesus aside to ask if they can sit at his right and left hand. (10:37)
Even with Jesus’ patient and consistent teaching, it is hard for the disciples to let go of their worldly paradigm. It’s hard for them to begin to think and act differently than they have been taught to think and act their entire lives.
I do believe that some of Jesus’ message is starting to sink in, but it’s sinking in very, very slowly and it will result in slow change, not instantaneous transformation.
Which is encouraging.
Jesus is trying to tell the disciples, and by extension each one of us, to welcome those who do not have any status in our culture. People who, like the child on his lap, have no status, nothing to offer, nothing to bring to the party. Why should we waste our time on people like that?
Because in God’s kingdom all are valued and are valuable. (Paul White)
And that goes for each one of us. Later Jesus will tell us not only to welcome children, but to be like children. (10:15)
And when Jesus is calling us to be like a child – he doesn’t just mean the nice bits of being a child. Jesus is calling all of us.
The quarrelling, squabbling versions of us that James is finding so frustrating. The continually missing the point and wondering who is going to be the most important bits of us.
The too afraid to ask the questions parts of us.
Jesus welcomes all of us, sees us, loves us, embraces us.
May we learn to do the same – for ourselves, and for others.
Amen.
Lean into the things that make you feel most alive: A Sermon for Sunday August 19, 2018
The following sermon was preached at saint benedict's table on Sunday August 19, 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.
“Be careful how you live,” that’s how our reading from Ephesians begins. Life is a theme in both of tonight’s readings. The word “life” or variations like “live” and “living” occur ten times in these two relatively short passages.
In the gospel reading, Jesus says he is the “living bread that came down from heaven… and those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life…. those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.”
Which is a pretty weird thing to say.
Most of us in this room have probably heard these words, or variations of them, only to consume a bit of bread and a mouthful of wine often enough that we forget how shocking they could be.
I have a friend who worked on a Masters thesis on the various ways that the early Christians responded to accusations of cannibalism based on their neighbour’s fairly reasonable assumption that the new fringe group who have arrived on the scene and say they eat human flesh and drink human blood, actually do.
In our time, people may still think Christians are pretty scary, but it’s for very different reasons.
I read Jesus’ words about the life giving properties of his flesh and blood with a sense of relief not horror, because they remind me that the focus of Christ’s message is life, life that is available as a gift, free of charge.
Later in John, Jesus will further expand on this theme by stating that he came so that we “may have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10b) Others translations say “that we might have life and life to the full.”
On Wednesday I went to see the movie “Christopher Robin” with my niece. The film, which is really more for adults than kids, is set in the world of the Winnie the Pooh stories and imagines what might have happened to Christopher Robin when he grew up.
And it isn’t pretty.
After leaving his friends behind in the Hundred Acre Woods, Christopher Robin experiences the trauma of living in a boarding school and fighting in a war. He gets married, has a child, and works very hard at a job he doesn’t seem to enjoy.
He works so hard, in fact, that he is hardly ever home and rarely sees his family. He works so hard that he forgets how to play.
In one scene, his wife is upset to learn that he is going to miss yet another family holiday because of a work emergency and Christopher Robin tries to reason with her saying something like, “I just have to work very hard now, for the next few years, and then, then I’ll have made enough money that I can relax and enjoy life.”
And she replies, “Christopher, this is your life, it is happening right now and you are missing it.”
A lot of people, when they hear Jesus’ words about the bread of life and the promise that anyone who eats that bread will never die, make the same mistake that Christopher Robin does: they get so excited about the idea of eternal life, they get so wrapped up in imaging what might happen next, that they miss the fact that Jesus’ words also have something to say about this life right now. They begin to live like Christopher Robin thinking, “I just have to suffer through this life, but the next life, well, the next life will be glorious!”
We all have a tendency to fall into this sort of either/or thinking, this scarcity mentality – I can either be happy now or in the future, not both. But God is always calling us to think bigger, to accept both/and thinking. Jesus has come to give us life now and in the future. We can have both.
Our reading from Ephesians opens by saying that we need to “[make] the most of the time, because the days are evil.” (v.15)
A day can’t literally be evil can it? Time is a neutral construct. But a day can feel evil or contain evil. I can’t count the number of times this week that someone referred to our current weather conditions as “unsettling” or “apocalyptic.” The days felt evil.
The news didn’t help much either – horrifying stories about child abuse in the church, the death of a beloved icon, and really, any news story that began with the words “The president tweeted…”
It doesn’t take much to get the sense that, just as in Paul’s time, our days are evil too.
I spent a lot of time this week trying to puzzle out why Paul chose to make this argument about time by saying the days are evil. He could have said, “Make the most of the time because time is a gift from our good and loving God,” or “Make the most of the time because life is precious and you don’t want to miss out on any of it.” You know, something that’s got a positive tone to it that I could easily back up with a massive pile of scripture.
But no, Paul chooses to be a bit of a downer. Make the most of the time because the days are evil.
At least, Paul may seem like a downer if you only read this one small section of the letter. We’re over halfway through Ephesians at this point, and Paul spent the first half of the letter laying the groundwork for the advice his offers in the second half.
In the first chapter, he tells us that God’s goal (telos) for the world is to bring all things together in Christ. (1:10) In the third we learn that God wants the church to be the embodiment of that promise on earth. (3:10) Paul is calling the Ephesians to be wise and align their lives with that goal.
Ephesians is also a letter that contains beautiful expressions of how much God loves us like, “I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (3:18-19) There’s some pretty upbeat stuff in this letter.
But this is also a letter about wisdom, and it would be unwise – foolish even – to pretend that evil isn’t real. It is. So if the days are evil, then Paul needs to say that the days are evil. But we also need to remember that this small fragment from Ephesians doesn’t tell the whole story. The days may be evil, but we also know that the whole world is God’s good creation and we are called to play a part in celebrating that which is good, and redeeming that which is evil. (2:10)
Paul’s words are a call to a realistic sort of hope that is honest about the state of things, including the evil of the day.
While it is an interesting academic exercise to try and determine just why Paul chose to describe the days as evil, I think the important point to glean from his words is this: we need to choose wisely and make the most of the time that we have been given.
And that doesn’t mean withdrawing from the world to wait for a better time to come in the future. And that doesn’t mean ignoring the life that we are actively living in this very moment to focus on a life that will be ours in the future.
I also don’t think that either Jesus or Paul are suggesting that if we eat the bread of life that we will be guaranteed a fat bank account, perfect health, or a choice parking spot. Jesus’ promise was to give us “life to the full,” not merely, “all the things you wished for.”
I think Paul’s challenge to us is to pay attention to our lives, to be aware of what is going on, to be fully alive, rather than just coasting through life on autopilot.
Has this ever happened to you? Someone stops you on Monday morning and asks you how your weekend was and you realize you can’t answer because you can’t actually remember what you did on the weekend?
That’s life on autopilot, and I find it really easy to fall into that way of living, but I’ve also found that there is a simple but powerful prayer that can shake me out of it. A prayer that can help me be more careful with my time.
As a young man, St Ignatius of Loyola was so bored that he became a Christian. Confined to a bed after an injury with nothing to read but a few spiritual classics that he didn’t really want to read, he read them, became a changed man.
In addition to founding the Jesuit order, Ignatius left two gifts to the Christian community: the “spiritual exercises,” an intensive discernment process that takes at least four weeks to complete, and the awareness examen, which can take as little as a few minutes to complete.
Ignatius believed that the awareness examen was the single most important spiritual exercise we can practice. He felt that the examen needed to be done regularly because it “exercises” or develops a discerning heart. He believed that every life experience is accompanied by a movement in your heart and the examen is a practice that helps you to recognize that movement. He prayed this prayer twice a day and encouraged others to do the same.
In fact, he told the monks in his order that if they were in a crisis or too busy to do any other practices, if they were too busy to read scripture or to pray, they could skip everything – every other discipline – except the awareness examen.
It is based on Jesus’s words about coming to give us life to the full and it’s designed to help us make careful use of our time by choosing to lean into the things that make us feel fully alive, and away from the things that don’t.
To practice this prayer you need to take some time every day to review that day and reflect on these questions, “Where did I feel most fully alive today, and where did I feel least alive?’
And that’s pretty much it. Ideally, you follow up on the awareness you gleaned from those questions by choosing to lean into the things that made you feel most alive, and away from the ones that made you feel least alive. It is that leaning into life, that makes this simple prayer so profound.
Living life to the full, feeling fully alive, living the sort of live that Jesus wants us to have, doesn’t mean we will always be happy. Happiness is not necessarily the goal. It’s – sniff – that. Whatever the word for that feeling is. That sense that you are living in a way that is fully how you were created to be.
The examen helps us to notice the good and the bad in our lives and to acknowledge that God is with us in both. Earlier I teased Paul for being a bit of a downer, but truthfully, I am grateful that he was honest and didn’t try to sugar coat his message. If the days are evil, then we need to name them as such.
And when things are good, we need to acknowledge that too. I can sometimes fixate on the bad to the point that I don’t notice the good. Similarly, other people can so repress the bad that they don’t notice the house is burning down around them. The examen provides a balance between the two and helps us to see that God is always with us in both.
In his book Practice Resurrection, Eugene Peterson says, “It is because of God’s way with us as Spirit that we know that everything in and about God is livable – God bringing us into participation with God. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not merely truths to be learned and believed. They are to be lived. The church is not primarily a place for education. It is a place, a playing field if you will, to practice God, practice resurrection.” (Practice Resurrection, 204)
This past week at our day camp, I saw a group of people who were practicing resurrection. The kids at the camp were consistently being encouraged to explore different activities and ideas in order to discover which ones made them feel most fully alive – even if it wasn’t always explicitly put that way. “Just try it” was a value that was infused into every part of the day. Not sure that you can run up a wall? Try it. Act in a silly skit? Try it. Get a piece of chocolate from your forehead to your mouth without using your hands? Try it. Didn’t succeed the first time? Try again!
Through all of these things those kids were exploring who they were created to be in a safe environment that reinforced the fact that they were loved. You could see that through the sweat and the scraped knees that they were experiencing that fully alive feeling. It’s such a good thing and I know those kids will remember and be shaped by those experiences throughout their lives.
We are also called to pay attention to our lives, to how we use our time, and to the things that make us feel most fully alive. It can feel a bit silly or scary at first, but it has a transformative power that it worth some initial discomfort.
And when we begin to pay attention to our lives, when we begin to live into the things that make us feel fully alive, we will also experience a deep sense of gratitude. Gratitude to the God who created us in a unique and beautiful way, and gratitude for the chance to experience the moments of being fully alive.
Giving thanks is a sign that we are filled with the Spirit. This doesn’t mean we are to give thanks for evil or pretend it doesn’t exist, but rather we are to dig deeper into gratitude and call attention to the things that we can honestly be grateful for, even in tough times.
Amen.
Signs, Signs, Everywhere a Sign: A Sermon for Sunday August 5, 2018
The following sermon was preached at saint benedict's table on Sunday August 5, 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 God, for you are our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
Our gospel text opens in the middle of a scene in which a crowd is looking for Jesus. Not having been able to find him, they return to Capernaum to look for him there.
When they finally find Jesus, he tells them that he knows they have been looking for him “not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” (v26) This is in reference to the story we read last week where Jesus fed five thousand people with five loaves and two fish.
A few weeks ago at Theology by the Glass we were discussing the influence that music can have on us and one of the songs we talked about was “Signs” by Five Man Electrical Band. The chorus to that song begins, “Signs, signs everywhere a sign,” and that’s an apt description of the events that lead up to tonight’s gospel reading.
At the beginning of chapter six, we are told that, “A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick.” Tonight’s passage is less than halfway through the chapter and already Jesus has healed people, walked on water, and fed a huge crowd. Signs, signs, everywhere a sign.
Just one of these signs would have been more than enough to make me want to follow Jesus around wondering, “what’s he going to do next?” But Jesus says that the people have been looking for him not because they “saw signs, but because [they] ate [their] fill of the loaves.”
The people, it seems, have bread on the brain.
If you go to Hildegard’s Bakery for bread, and I highly recommend that you do, you may find yourself in a conversation about the many different varieties of bread available. You can’t just walk up to the counter and say “I’d like some bread please,” you have to specify what kind of bread you want. Do you prefer something more dense or airy? Flavoured or plain? Sour dough? Pan bread? Maybe a pizza?
This week I picked up a fabulous sour dough which is my personal favourite and, “whatever is shaped best to fit into the slots of a toaster,” for Mike. Both were delicious.
Next time I go back, I’ll try something different. I love talking to the staff and learning more about bread.
And I hope you all enjoy talking about bread as much as I do, because the lectionary currently has us in a multi-week cycle of Gospel readings called the “Bread of Life” discourses. It can be a nightmare for a preacher – six weeks of finding something original to say about bread. It can be a bit of a nightmare for a congregation. Six weeks of listening to their preacher try to find something original to say about bread.
But of all the miraculous things that Jesus did in this chapter of John’s gospel alone, it was bread that inspired the people to follow him. Bread that was created through a miracle. Bread that was so abundant that everyone was able to eat as much as they wanted.
And, as my friend and fellow pastor Jodi pointed out earlier today, if we have to overemphasize anything in this day and age, “let it be that the whole world is a feast.” I couldn’t agree more.
The people in our story participated in a feast. They had eaten their fill, but that full feeling won’t last forever, they will get hungry again. And they know it. And they are beginning to wonder, if Jesus could transform a small amount of food into a feast, then maybe he could do it again. And again. Maybe they would never have to be hungry again.
And maybe they would no longer have to be subject to an empire that controls their food supply.
Paul Fromberg explains that, “In Jesus’ world the empire was in control of all access to food. The empire used that control to keep people in line. The only people who had access to this power were cultural elites who had control of all the resources including food. Most of the people living on the land, who are the people that Jesus is teaching this day, suffered from a perpetual lack of food. Hunger was the way that most of the people experienced the crushing power of the empire. It’s also one of the many reasons that so many people suffered from sickness. Inadequate nutrition obviously caused epidemics among the people. Which is one of the reasons why so much of the Bible’s imagery about God’s kingdom is about a banquet with plenty to eat. So the people who gathered to hear Jesus teach [in last week’s story] were hungry and they lived under the threat of starvation and sickness and Jesus just bypasses the power of the empire to give them food and make them whole.”
But most of this vision of a new way of doing things still exists mainly in Jesus’ mind. The people who are standing right in front of him haven’t had a couple thousand years to think through the implications of these stories. They have never participated in the Eucharist. They are hearing and experiencing these things for the first time. They may have been able to connect some of the dots between Jesus’ ability to bypass the laws of the empire and the natural world in order to allow them to eat their fill, but they assume that this means that Jesus is an ideal candidate, not to eradicate the earthy political structures, but to simply replace the current rulers of those structures.
They are looking to Jesus as someone who can satisfy their physical hunger and possibly also their political aspirations.
After Jesus multiplied the loaves, we are told that, “When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, ‘This is indeed the prophet who is come into the world.” (v.14) Then they planned to take Jesus by force and make him their king, but Jesus slips away before they can do so.
Which is why they were looking for him at the beginning of tonight’s reading. He’d given them the slip. But now that they have found him, Jesus uses strong language to try and help them realize that, while he may be the one they are looking for, he has no intention of becoming their earthly king.
NT Wright says, “At first, Jesus’ warning seems churlish. He has done something remarkable; they are excited and come to him wanting more; and he all but rebukes them for having the wrong motivation. What else could you expect from them? But underneath the warning of verses 26 and 27 is the recognition that after the feeding in the wilderness they were only a moment away from making him king (v.15) – and they would have meant him to be a king like other kings, a strong this-worldly figure who would lead them in their strong this-worldly agendas. Jesus is indeed king, but the type and manner of his kingship will be very different from what the crowds expected or wanted…” (N.T. Wright, John for Everyone, 79)
Having been found by the people he was trying to avoid, Jesus is confronted with an urgent need to define his terms. He’s using the word “king” to describe himself, but he is a very different kind of king than what the people are expecting. He is using the word “bread,” but he is not using it in a way they have ever heard it used before.
Initially, the crowd has two main frames of reference for the word “bread.” The kind of bread they have recently been served by Jesus, the kind of bread they eat on a regular basis and the bread they know about from the stories of their ancestors, the bread that came down from heaven and fed the Israelites in the wilderness, manna. Both are types of bread that are used to satisfy physical hunger.
Jesus is essentially saying “Look, I don’t want to talk to you about the kind of bread we ate the other day, and I don’t want to talk to you about the kind of bread your ancestors ate in the past, I want to talk to you about an entirely different kind of bread.”
Jesus has their attention and while they don’t fully understand what he is talking about, they are interested in getting some of this new kind of bread, and so they ask how they can acquire it and how much this new special bread will cost.
They are still assuming an earthly system where they will have to give something, in order to get something. They want to reduce what Jesus is talking about to a simple formula, but Jesus won’t let them. Instead, he rejects their request for a transactional exchange and replaces it with an invitation to believe. There is only one thing they have to do if they want this new bread, believe.
Jesus describes this new bread by saying, “the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world,” a description which inspires the people to say, “Sir, give us this bread always.” (v.33-34)
Soon, as Jesus continues to explain what he means many will begin to question him, many will doubt, many will decide they don’t want this bread after all, but those are stories for the next couple of weeks.
For now, the people are hungry for more. More bread to feed their bellies and, now that they know that such a thing may be possible, the bread of life as well.
I worked for years in a number of charities that focussed on feeding people who are poor and the most common question I would receive when sharing about my work with church folks was, “Well it’s all well and good that you’re feeding their bodies, but are you feeding their souls?” The implication was always that souls were infinitely more important than bodies. That telling people about Jesus was infinitely more important than giving them bread. I can imagine those church people saying something similar to Jesus, “Well, feeding us with that bread and that fish was nice enough, but what are you going to do for our souls?”
It’s a shift from the way that first crowd of people approached the subject, and it’s a shift from the way Jesus approached the subject as well. In this particular gospel passage Jesus is indeed focussing on the bread of life because its important for the people to know about it, not because he doesn’t value the importance of bread for the body. He’s already clearly demonstrated that feeding people’s bodies is important to him. It’s not an either or situation.
But in my church experience it was often made to seem as it is was. Feed people’s bodies? Eh, that’s OK. Feed people’s souls? Well that’s the only work that truly matters.
That’s a shift, but there is also another shift that has happened that makes our world different than the one described in the gospels: we have a very different relationship to bread. Any kind of bread. At least here in North America, it is no longer the staple of our diets that it once was. The symbolism has shifted.
Paul Fromberg, who I quoted earlier, is an Anglican priest in San Francisco and he told me a story about a time when he was serving communion, and one of the first people he approached was someone he didn’t recognise, someone who was new to the church. As Paul approached him with the bread, the young man got a panicked look in his eyes, held out his hands to refuse the bread and said, “I don’t do carbs.”
Needless to say, Paul was stunned. In all his years of serving communion, he had never had anyone respond in that manner.
For many people, bread has shifted from a daily staple in a healthy diet, to a food to eat as a treat or a guilty pleasure, or, for people with celiac or gluten allergies, a food to be avoided entirely if they don’t want to get sick.
For many people, bread is now something to be avoided – either by choice or necessity. It is no longer a universal symbol of a basic food staple that gives everyone life in the way that it once was.
Some of us may need to cut bread out of our diets entirely, but we can still look to these passages to understand that if we want to live, we have to eat. Maybe not bread, but we have to eat something.
You can’t ignore your body and focus solely on your spirit. And we can’t expect people who are poor to do that either. If a person is hungry they need food, and no one should ever be hungry.
We also need the bread of life, Jesus, to sustain our spirits, and that is an important and valuable thing.
We need to value both and keep both in mind, if we place more emphasis on one and ignore the other; we are missing something fundamentally important.
Which is why I love the way, Sunday after Sunday after Sunday, we place an emphasis on both by bringing baskets of food to share with Agape Table and the Bread of Life to share with everyone who choses to come and join us. I love seeing both of those things sharing priority of place around the table.
With Agape Table’s move to a new location we may need to re-think just what we bring to fill these baskets, but I hope we keep finding ways to remember the importance of bread for bellies and bread from heaven. Bringing something to put in those baskets each week is a small thing, it’s an example of offering our lunch like Jamie spoke about last week.
It’s a small thing, but it’s an important thing. It’s important as much, if not more, for us as for the folks at Agape Table.
Our baskets contain items that will help people, but they are also a sign. A sign of the importance of remembering and caring for our neighbours. A sign of our intention to extend the abundance of this table and the abundance of God’s love that it represents with others.
And it’s something I am grateful for.
Amen.
On Mustard Seeds and Storms at Sea: A Sermon for Sunday June 21, 2018
The following sermon was preached at saint benedict's table on Sunday June 21, 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 God, for you are our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
In the section preceding tonight’s gospel, Jesus has been doing a fair bit of teaching about the Kingdom of God using agricultural metaphors. Brian McLaren has suggested that because Kings and Queens and Kingdoms seem so distant from our present day reality that a better way to translate this term might be “God’s dream for the world.” God’s dream for the world that has begun to take shape and is moving steadily towards its final goal.
In Mark’s gospel, Jesus teaches that God’s dream for the world may be “as vulnerable as seeds thrown on a path, on rocks, among thorns (4:1-20); it may be hidden now (4:21-22); its beginnings may be as small as a mustard seed (4:30-32) and its growth as mysterious as growing crops (4:26,27). But nothing can prevent the great future harvest, the light from shining, the mustard shrub from providing shelter and shade. The Kingdom will succeed, [God’s dream will come true], no matter what setbacks there might be along the way. And in case the disciples should have missed the intended meanings, Jesus explained the parables to them in private (4:33-34).”
Today’s gospel passage begins in the evening. Jesus has spent the day floating in a boat and speaking to crowds of people. Some on the shore, some in other boats. Now he suggests to the disciples that they leave the crowds behind and they do.
There are two details I find particularly interesting in this part of the story. First, when the disciples leave in the boat to go with Jesus, they aren’t alone. Other boats are also there with them. (v. 36) Who is in those boats? What is their experience of the rest of this story? We simply don’t know.
The second detail I find interesting is the phrase that has been translated “just as he was.” The verse reads, “And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was.” (v. 36)
Many commentators suggest that this phrase means that Jesus was already in the boat when he asked the disciples to join him and go to the other side. That may very well be, but it does tickle my funny bone a bit to imagine the scene. It’s funny enough to me to imagine Jesus floating in a boat on the water while people stand on shore and listen to him teach, but it’s even funnier to imagine him, tired and noticing that it’s started to get dark, stopping, directly addressing his disciples while everyone else can still hear him, telling them it’s time to leave. The disciples then wade into the water, scramble into the boat and sail away, leaving no time for handshakes, autographs, or selfies with the people who are standing on the shore watching them sail away.
Talk about a dramatic exit.
But Jesus doesn’t stop teaching when they sail away. Rather, as Tim Geddert notes, the boat becomes the classroom, and the lesson plan shifts from metaphors to lived experience. It will soon be time for the disciples to apply what they have been learning in a practical situation.
I have always been a city girl, but when I was in junior high and high school, I lived in St John’s NL, an city on an island surrounded by water and I quickly learned that I was living with people whose culture, who entire way of life was shaped by their relationship to the sea.
Just in case I didn’t pick that up by osmosis, almost every single book I read in my high school literature class were stories of the sea. We read Robinson Crusoe, The Old Man and the Sea, Lord of the Flies and the Newfoundland classics, Death on the Ice and Bartlett the Great Explorer.
And that’s just the books. We studied poetry, drama, and short stories too.
People who live by water learn very quickly that not everything in life is black and white. The ocean is beautiful, it can provide you with a livelihood and food to feed your family, it can be the place that you feel most truly at peace and at home. But the ocean can change in a split second and cause you to experience great terror and suffering. The sea can give life, and just as easily, the sea can take it away.
The setting for tonight’s gospel passage, the Sea of Galilee, is no different. In his book Jesus: A Pilgrimage, James Martin writes: “Even today storms suddenly stir up the Sea of Galilee, the result of dramatic differences in temperatures between the shoreline (680 feet below sea level) and the surrounding hills (which can reach 2000 feet). The strong winds that funnel through the hills easily whip up waves in the relatively shallow waters (only two hundred feet deep). … It’s important to remember the terror that storms held for those in Jesus’ day as well as the rich religious symbolism of water. In ancient times water was a symbol for life and a means of purification, but it also held out the potential for death and was an occasion of danger, as in the story of the flood or the story of Jonah. The Psalms speak of God’s power over the seas and also use water as a symbol of peril: ‘Save me, O God,’ says the psalmist, ‘for the waters have come up to my neck.’ Raging seas and howling storms would have represented to Jesus’ contemporaries chaos and danger. Jewish belief was that the sea could also be the abode of demonic forces. On a less theological level, [- Martins continues -] sea voyages were simply dangerous, as St Paul would attest. A storm at sea could be frightening even for experienced fishermen. Far worse is the storm at sea at night.” (228-9)
Mark tells us that on this particular evening, “a great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already swamped.”
Try to imagine how terrifying this would be. It’s dark, the wind is howling and whipping everything around you. You are wet, you are cold, you can’t see anything because your eyes are stinging and full of water. Nothing around you feels stable, because nothing around you is stable. The boat is pitching and heaving and you know that the boat is also taking on water because you can feel it steadily rising past your toes to your ankles and now its inching up your calves.
This is a pretty good time to freak out. It’s a better time to grab the ropes holding the sails, or an oar, or a bucket and get to work. Try to gain some control of the movement of the boat or, at the very least, try to make sure that there is more water outside the boat, than in it.
And everyone agrees with you. Everyone is feeling and doing the same things you are and then… and then…
You notice that one person is behaving very differently. You frantically try to wipe the water from your eyes, certain they must be playing tricks on you, but no, you are seeing correctly.
Jesus isn’t panicking. Jesus isn’t helping. Jesus is asleep. Jesus is sleeping on a cushion. A cushion? I love Mark’s addition of this little detail. The storm is raging, the boat is pitching and heaving, and Jesus is sleeping on a cushion.
I’m not sure how this would make you feel, but I know that it would make me really angry. The storm is a crisis that requires all hands on deck and Jesus – who should be modelling impeccable servant leadership – is slacking off. He’s asleep! On a cushion!
The next section of the story contains 4 questions.
The disciples ask two of them. During the storm, they ask, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing.” Later, when Jesus has calmed the storm they ask, “Who is this, that even the wind and sea obey him?
The second question suggests that the disciples did not expect that Jesus could stop the storm. Jesus’ ability to command that the wind and sea obey him surprises them. It wasn’t what they were expecting.
So what did they expect Jesus to do when they woke him up?” Grab a bucket and bail? Say something comforting?
Or did they not actually expect him to be able to do anything, they were just shocked that anyone could possibly sleep through a storm. Were they waking him up less to say, “save us” and more to say “what is wrong with you?”
That would be my question. Jesus, your behaviour seems extremely selfish and inappropriate. Don’t you care that we are dying? The text doesn’t say “might perish,” it says “are perishing.” Jesus, we are actively dying, how can you possibly be sleeping at a time like this?
Jesus’ response is to stop the storm, and ask the a few questions of his own. “Why are you afraid?” and “Have you still no faith?”
On first reading, Jesus’ question seems a tad insensitive to me. I don’t think I’d given him top marks in a pastoral care course for this one. It seems obvious that almost dying in a storm and then seeing a man stand up, speak some words that stop a fierce storm in its tracks would be terrifying. Why ask the obvious?
How you interpret these questions will depend largely on the way you imagine Jesus asked these questions. The text doesn’t give us Jesus’ tone, we add that in ourselves. Is he angry? Judgemental? Sad?
I wonder if, having just calmed the storm with seemingly little difficulty, Jesus is now moving on to the more difficult task of calming the disciples. (Geddert 65) The storm may be over, but the disciples are still filled with fear – not awe as the NRSV suggests – they have just confronted their own human mortality and then witnessed Jesus doing the unimaginable. The fear hasn’t left, it’s intensified.
I wonder if Jesus is asking these questions, because he is a good spiritual director. That’s the tone I hear in his questions.
Jesus is asking the disciples to think through and articulate the whys behind their feelings. The wording of the question suggests that he isn’t asking why they were afraid during the storm, but why they are afraid right now after the storm has passed.
I think, there is reason to suggest that the disciples are actually more afraid, or at bare minimum differently afraid, after the storm has subsided than during it. Fear of dying in a storm at sea would have been something they understood, it was likely something they had experienced before. They had a framework for understanding that fear. The revelation of just how powerful Jesus might be – that he can even make the wind and waves obey him – wasn’t something they had a frame of reference for. It wasn’t even close to something they had a frame of reference for.
And that’s terrifying.
And it would be helpful for the disciples to understand not only that they are afraid, but why they are afraid.
Jesus also asks, “Have you still no faith?”
The text doesn’t tell us and I don’t know if the disciples have “no faith.” I suspect that they did have some faith, but it’s a growing and developing faith.
I worked for years with people who were exploring the practice of living in intentional communities and we’d often bump up against the difference between their expectation of what community would be, and what it actually was. They’d read about community and talk about community and then they would live in community and after a few weeks, or a few months, they would begin to realize that they were only really just beginning to discover what that word actually means.
It is very different to talk about community than to live in one. I think the disciples would understand that. It has been one thing to listen and nod in agreement as Jesus compares God’s dream for the world to a mustard shrub, it’s an entirely different thing to watch Jesus wake up, rise to his full height, command that the storm be still and… it listens.
They have been observing and listening to Jesus and each one of Jesus’s stories, each experience they have with him stretches and changes their understanding of who Jesus is. It isn’t necessarily a change from no faith to faith, but from faith to an ever expanding and deepening faith.
Like Newfoundland, England is a land surrounded by water and that has shaped their culture. It has also shaped the Anglican Church.
If you look up, you’ll notice that the church is shaped like the hull of a boat. The Book of Common Prayer contains an entire section of prayers to be said at sea, including a prayer service to be used when encountering a storm at sea. These prayers are often a beautiful combination of theological and psychological reflection. Perhaps because they are designed to be used in crisis, they are particularly honest about the ways human beings react in difficult times.
There is the classic bargaining that tends to occur when we encounter crisis. One in particular, begs that God will save our lives while also reminding God that “The living, the living shall praise thee!”
In other words, don’t let us die in this storm or we won’t be able to praise you!
And here’s the part I think is particularly fascinating:
“We confess, when we have been safe, and seen all things quiet about us, we have forgot thee our God, and refused to hearken to the still voice of thy word, and to obey thy commandments: But now we see how terrible thou art in all thy great works of wonder; the great God to be feared above all.”
I’ve sometimes heard people preach about this gospel story and say that the point of the story is that Jesus can calm all the storms in our lives. That if you just have enough faith, your life will be smooth sailing.
I don’t think that’s the point of the story at all. I’m not sure any gospel story has a single point, but the thing I am noticing in a particular way today is that there is always more we can learn about God. God is always bigger than we think. You can’t just read the story about the mustard shrub and think you’ve got it all figured out. You can’t just have one encounter with Jesus and believe you know all there is to know.
The storm expanded the disciples understanding of who Jesus is. Our experiences, all our experiences can do the same, if we let them. If we resist the temptation reflected in that prayer from the prayer book to forget God when things are quiet. Because there are insights to be gleaned about who God is from meditating on mustard seeds and storms at sea, and we don’t want to miss out on any of them.
Amen.
Huh, that's interesting: A Sermon for Sunday May 27, 2018
The following sermon was preached at saint benedict's table on Sunday May 27, 2018. You can also listen to the live recording or subscribe to our podcast. Just click here.
I bind unto myself today
The gift to call on the Trinity
The saving faith where I can say
Come three in one, o one in three
Be above me, as high as the noonday sun
Be below me, the rock I set my feet upon
Be beside me, the wind on my left and right
Be behind me, oh circle me with Your truth and light
Amen.
It’s Trinity Sunday. The day when preachers all over the world say an extra prayer that they will somehow manage to avoid saying something either incomprehensible or heretical in their sermon so I thought it would be fitting to begin with a literal prayer of protection from the opening stanzas of a song written by Gayle Salmund and made popular by Steve Bell.
“I bind until myself today the gift to call on the Trinity.”
Father. Son. Holy Spirit.
Creator. Redeemer. Sustainer.
The three in one.
The Trinity.
The first theology course I ever took in university was an upper level course on Trinitarian theology. Partway through the term a friend asked me how I was finding the class and I said, “I think I only understand about a third of what we’re discussing, but I have come to the conclusion that the Trinity is really important.”
I still don’t think I fully comprehend the Trinity, and that’s partly because the Trinity is a mystery. If you think you fully understand it, you are probably missing something, and fortunately, you don’t need to fully understand it to believe in it or appreciate it.
This week I spent a fair amount of time thinking about the many things in life that come in threes.
There is the classic three point sermon. There are three steps to the high altar behind me. There were three Bronte Sisters, three Stooges, and three little pigs. Poutine is made up of cheese, gravy, and French Fries.
None of these perfectly describe what we mean when we say we worship one God, who is also three persons.
In contemporary culture, we say that human beings are made up of body, mind, and spirit. But even when we throw those terms around, we often don’t see them as equally important.
I have a friend who refers to her body as a meat sack, another who says that his body is the “container that carries his brain around,” and another who recently told me that her body is “a bunch of goo held together by skin.”
We tend to have complicated relationships with our bodies. I do. But I also know that God created each one of us with a body, sees those bodies as good, and even willingly took on a human body at one point.
Which leads me to our passage from Romans which begins:
So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh— for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. (Romans 8:12-13)
This text reminds me that not only do I have a complicated relationship with my body, I have a complicated relationship with Paul, the author of Romans.
So we are not supposed to live according to our flesh and need to put to death the deeds of our bodies. Does that mean that our bodies are just the containers that carry the really important parts of ourselves around? Is that what Paul is getting at?
Tonight’s reading begins with the words “So then,” which tells us that these ideas are tied with the ideas that come before them.
NT Wright explains that earlier in Romans when Paul begins to unpack what he means by “the flesh” he is not talking about our bodies. Wright explains that:
“The word we translate, here and elsewhere, as ‘flesh’ refers to people or things who share the corruptibility and mortality of the world, and, often enough and certainly here, the rebellion of the world. ‘Flesh’ is a negative term. For Paul as a Jew the created order, the physical world, was good in itself. Only its wrong use and its corruption and defacing are bad. Flesh highlights that wrong use, that corruption and decay.” (Paul For Everyone: Romans Part One, 140)
So to live by the spirit instead of the flesh is not to pray all the time and ignore your body. Rather, it is to align everything you are – body, mind, and spirit – with God’s way of seeing the world.
In tonight’s gospel passage, Jesus tells the disciples to expect the coming of the Spirit of truth. NT Wright tells us that the Spirit’s role is to “prove the world wrong about sin, righteousness, and judgment all three of which are aspects of the world’s rejection of Jesus…The world judges incorrectly by refusing to recognize Jesus as being sent from the Father and by its inability to penetrate beyond external appearances.”
The point is not to ignore our bodies or to believe that everything about our bodies is wrong, the point it to align our whole being with God’s values and not the values we see in the world which means we have to move past superficial judgments of ourselves, and of others.
One of the key things that the doctrine of the Trinity shows us about how God sees the world, is that God sees everything in the context of relationships. Even God’s relationship to God’s self is relational. God is a community and not an individual, and God keeps inviting us into that communal experience. In our increasingly individualistic world, God calls us into community.
Community is difficult, and it’s dangerous. Community involves putting ourselves into situations where other people may not think or act like we do. It opens us up to vulnerability and to judgment – our own and the judgments of the people we are in community with.
So it’s not surprising that Paul is going to jump from talking about the need to align ourselves with God’s way of seeing and God’s values, to a discussion of fear.
Paul writes “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption.” (15)
We are not slaves, we are beloved children of God. God, who is inherently relational, has adopted us. We do not need to fear. And yet, I suspect that each person in this room has spent at least a portion of this past week feeling afraid. Because fear is also pretty normal.
There is another set of three that I have come to find really helpful. I use them a lot in my retreat and spiritual direction work. I didn’t make this up, but I can’t remember the original source either.
Imagine a series of three concentric circles. In the middle, you have your comfort zone. For most of my life I’ve been taught that a comfort zone is a bad thing, something I needed to get out of, but the truth is, there is nothing inherently wrong with a comfort zone. It’s, well, comfortable. It makes us feel good and warm and safe. We all need to spend at least some of our time existing in this sort of space.
The outer most ring is the exact opposite of your comfort zone, it’s your extreme discomfort zone. In this zone you feel so uncomfortable that it is life threatening. You become so focused on staying alive that you don’t have the energy to focus on anything else.
Although the comfort zone and the extreme discomfort zone are opposites, they do have one important thing in common.
You won’t learn or grow in either space. In one because you are too comfortable to be motivated to change or question anything, and in the other because you are too uncomfortable to be able to change or question anything. That’s what we need the middle circle for.
The middle circle is the “slightly uncomfortable zone.” A space in which you are both not entirely comfortable and not concerned for your personal safety. Something about the situation is motivating you to change and to question, but you have enough of a sense of safety to actually question and change.
I was reflecting on the nature of the trinity on Wednesday when I was waiting for the noon Eucharist to begin. Barbara Schoomski, one of the priests at All Saints, came by and we started to talk about the tent city that has sprung up on the lawn and the new dynamic that it brings to this property. And as we were chatting I realized that there are now three main groups of people using the three main spaces on this property. There are those of us who are part of worshipping congregations who primarily use the sanctuary, there are the folks at Agape Table who use the hall, and there are the people sleeping outside who currently call the front lawn home.
A holy trinity of sorts.
It’s not a perfect metaphor, however. With a few exceptions, we tend to function more like three in three – three distinct groups in three distinct spaces – rather than three in one and one in three.
We all have our comfort zone.
Personally, having worshipped here for almost eleven years and having volunteered at Agape for almost eight, I am fairly comfortable in those two spaces, but this new space on the lawn is more challenging for me.
It’s not because the people make me uncomfortable. The few times I’ve chatted with folks out on the lawn have been pleasant enough. It’s not the people. Perhaps some of you have chosen to join us tonight. If so, welcome here.
You don’t make me uncomfortable, but what your presence represents to me does.
Last year I was chatting to someone about a similar situation and I said, “What concerns me is that the average person in Winnipeg seems to think that the problem is simply one of information. They seem to think that our city is just bursting with resources designed to help folks who are homeless, and the challenge is simply to connect the folks who need the resources with those resources.”
But that’s not the case. Those resources either don’t exist or are already overburdened. There are a lot of reasons why a tent city can spring up on our lawn, but the solution isn’t as simple as handing out some telephone numbers or email addresses. It’s not as simple as asking these folks to move either, moving the people only moves the people, it doesn’t solve the problems associated with our broken housing, mental health, and economic systems.
I’m like a problem I can fix. A question I know the answer to. Tent city doesn’t provide me with either of those things, and that makes me uncomfortable and because I see it almost every day, it won’t let me just ignore the situation and slip back into my comfort zone either.
When I use the model of the three rings with people, I point out that there are typically two reactions when move from our comfort zone to our slightly uncomfortable zone:
1) We may discover that this new thing is actually quite comfortable and we simply expand our zone of comfort.
2) We may discover that the new thing is not immediately comfortable and we move quickly to judge it. It makes us uncomfortable, so it must be bad.
But rather than judging this new thing or experience as either good or bad, there is a third posture we can hold. Rather than saying it is good, or bad, we can say “Huh, that’s interesting.”
“Huh, I’m noticing that I find spending a whole day in silence really tough. That’s interesting.”
“Huh, I’m noticing that when I talk about my childhood I get really angry. That’s interesting.”
“Huh, I’m noticing that when I see the tent city on the church lawn I experience a range of complicated thoughts and feelings. That’s interesting.”
Now I don’t know what your personal reaction has been to the folks on the lawn – fear, sadness, a sense of pride to come to worship in such a countercultural space – but I suspect that whatever your reaction is, it says more about you than it does about the people living on the lawn.
I can’t tell you what to do, I don’t know what you should do, what we should do.
What I can say is that if you hold your reactions without judgment, if you view them as interesting instead of merely right or wrong, you are more likely to discover what it is you should do.
It may be to pray, to write a cheque or a note of encouragement to All Saints’, to choose to walk through the garden into the church instead of circling around it, to take your coffee outside after church and say “Hi” to someone, always respecting their right to not say “hi” back. It may be to talk with someone you trust to help you sort out your feelings.
Whatever it is, I hope we can, as Paul says, work to align ourselves, more closely with God’s way of seeing, than with the world’s. To realize that because God loves us enough to adopt us, that we do not need to be slaves to fear and to look to extend that freedom to others. Because God doesn’t long to be in relationship only with Godself, or with those of us who are gathered here tonight, God longs to be in relationship with everyone.
And that’s worth celebrating.
Amen.
First. Only. Different.: A Sermon for Sunday April 29, 2018
The following sermon was preached at saint benedict's table on Sunday April 29, 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.
Before we dive in I have some recommendations for further reflection. While I certainly don’t remember every sermon I have ever heard, I remember the sermon Jamie preached here three years ago on tonight’s passage from Acts. I remember what I was doing when I heard first heard it on our podcast – chopping vegetables, I must have missed church that week. I remember saying out loud, “Wait, what?” and I remember that my tears had nothing to do with onions. Check it out.
And then while you’re at it, check out Austen Hartke’s new book “Transforming.” It provides the basis for a lot of what I am going to say tonight.
“I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)
In John’s gospel, Jesus creates this metaphor where he is a vine, we are the branches and God is the master gardener carefully tending to the plant and pruning each branch so that we produce more fruit. Elsewhere we are told that the fruit we are to produce is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23) Good stuff.
What is our role in this process? We are to abide. We are to remain connected to the vine.
My spiritual director recently retired, and I miss her because she is a no-nonsense type of person who managed to make it clear that I was safe and loved, while going straight for my weak spots.
Every single month she would ask these two questions, “How have you wasted time with God this month?” and “How’s the sitting still going?”
Two pointed ways of asking me roughly the same thing, “Are you abiding in the vine?”
She knew that if she asked me how was I being active in my spiritual life, how was the action going I’d have more than enough to talk about.
She also knew that the honest answer to her question would regularly be, “not well,” or something similar to what I tell the dental hygienist about flossing my teeth: “the two days before I see you and the two days after are great.”
It is hard to abide.
In this gospel passage, Jesus is sharing an important truth with us, he is the vine, we are the branches, and God is the master gardener, but how does a person get to become a branch in the first place? Do you have to be born onto the vine? Can new branches be grafted on? If new branches can be added, what would the selection process be for those new branches? What sort of pruning is required to keep the plant healthy and producing good fruit?
These are the questions that the early Christians were wrestling with in the book of Acts.
And in Acts it rapidly becomes clear that the answer to the question, “Can new branches be grafted on,” is “yes!” 3000 new branches were grafted on in one day in one instance and 5000 in an afternoon in another. (Acts 2:41, 4:4)
The selection process for new branches is a bit more confusing. It’ll take them awhile to sort that one out and they, like us, will mess up time and time again as they keep assuming that they, and not God, are in charge of creating the criteria for inclusion.
And the pruning? Well, it turns out circumcision will not be required for these new branches. And neither will traditional Jewish dietary restrictions. And there will be gentile branches, and Samaritan branches and all kinds of other unexpected branches.
What this early Jesus movement is learning, over and over again, is that God doesn’t care about the same categories that they care about, that we care about.
But we’re not there yet. The stories that lead those early followers to reach most of those conclusions occur after tonight’s story. When Philip responds to the angel’s call to go into the wilderness things like circumcision and who can be included are still very much up for debate.
But the hints of where this whole Jesus adventure is going to take them are becoming clearer – it’s going to take them into new and unusual territory.
Shonda Rhimes is the creative force behind shows like Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal. If you watch TV on a Thursday night, the odds are good that you are watching something she created. Odds are, I’m watching too. In her book, “Year of Yes,” she talks about the experience of being an F.O.D. :
I am what I have come to call an F.O.D. – First. Only. Different. We are a very select club, but there are more of us out there than you’d think. We know one another on sight. We all have the same weary look in our eyes… (138)
It takes a lot of work to be an F.O.D. You’re constantly scanning the horizon for danger, constantly asking the question “Am I welcome here?” “Will I be safe here?” In many settings, you’re also constantly, whether you want to or not, teaching other people how to treat F.O.D.s – which pronouns to use, what considerations need to be taken into account when designing events or public spaces, what kinds of questions are, or are not, appropriate to ask. Being an F.O.D. can be exhausting.
Many of us in this room have had the experience of being an F.O.D. It could be for a host of reasons from your skin colour to your sexuality to the fact that you’re the first person in your family to go to university. Whatever your thing is, you know that in certain situations if people were to sing that Sesame Street song, “One of these things is not like the others,” you’re that thing.
In many ways, the book of Acts tells the story of a First. Only. Different. religious movement trying to figure out how they relate not only to the world around them, but to people who also happen to be F.O.D.s who want to join them.
Tonight’s passage from Acts begins with the word “then.” This story takes place after a story in which Philip has been spending time in Samaria inviting people who were previously unwelcome into the new community. That’s an F.O.D. experience.
The old boundaries are falling away. A good Jewish boy would avoid Samaritans, and now Philip is worshipping alongside them.
And then, an angel of the Lord tells Philip to go and travel south on a wilderness road between Jerusalem and Gaza, and he does and as he is walking, he sees a eunuch from Ethiopia coming toward him.
My knowledge of eunuchs is limited to Bible stories and episodes of Game of Thrones, so I did a little more research this week.
Although the practice was forbidden in Jewish culture, it was fairly common for their neighbours in what became Assyria, Babylon, and Persia to use castration to punish criminals, to identify someone as a slave, or to create people who could safely transgress gender norms. Eunuchs were considered to be neither male nor female and as such they could move easily between gendered spaces. A eunuch could spend their days guarding a King’s harem or work in close contact with a Queen without raising anyone’s eyebrows.
This is probably what happened to the eunuch in today’s story. As a child he may have been identified as a person with “potential,” as someone whose intelligence and demeanor would be of benefit to the royal household so he was made into a eunuch. “He” became a “they.”
And whether or not this was something they would have chosen for themselves, they did indeed have potential. Not only does this eunuch work for the Queen, they are her chief finance minister – a high position indeed.
When Philip sees the eunuch from Ethiopia approaching, the Spirit tells him to join them and Philip starts running. I love that detail. Philip doesn’t walk, he runs.
Hearing that the eunuch is reading from Isaiah, Philips asks “Do you understand what you are reading?” and the eunuch responds, “How can I, unless someone guides me?”
And so Philip and the eunuch dive into an impromptu study of a passage from Isaiah that we commonly call the Suffering Servant song. (Isaiah 53:7-8)
Only two verses are quoted, but I like to think that perhaps they read on a bit further than this as well. And if they didn’t, I think it’s fair to assume that Philip was familiar with the next couple of chapters. So let’s wade in some speculative territory for a few minutes. Three chapters after the section quoted in Acts, we read this in Isaiah:
Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say, “The Lord will surely separate me from his people”; and do not let the eunuch say, “I am just a dry tree.” For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. (Isaiah 56:3-5)
This seems to be a pretty unequivocal call for eunuch inclusion, but it was never put into practice. The Jewish community grabbed the pruning shears out of God’s hands and made a few cuts. So, when the Eunuch travelled to Jerusalem they would not have been allowed to convert to Judaism or participate fully in temple worship. Their gender transgressive identity ensured they would never be included.
So now on the trip home, it makes sense to me that the eunuch is searching the scriptures. It makes sense to me that the eunuch has a few questions.
And Philip may have had to explain the interesting case of the Jewish eunuchs.
As I mentioned earlier, around the time that Isaiah was being written, Israel’s neighbours had a habit of castrating slaves and the Israelites had a habit of becoming those slaves.
And as castration is not reversible, but slavery can be, when they are no longer enslaved and in exile, the Israelites had to figure out what to do with the eunuchs in their community. They also needed to figure out what to do with people of mixed race or in mixed marriages, another by-product of their time in exile. Their clean categories were being challenged by their lived experience.
It is in this context that God says “Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say, “The Lord will surely separate me from his people”; and do not let the eunuch say, “I am just a dry tree.” For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. (Isaiah 56:3-5)
God, the master gardener, seems pretty determined to graft foreigners and eunuchs onto the vine. But what about the Jewish people? It seems they were less eager, and this injunction was never implemented – and less we get a superior feeling, our track record in this area has been pretty awful as well.
So the eunuch may actually be asking two questions when they say, “Is there anything preventing me from being baptized?” Anything God’s says? Anything the church says? Anything you Philip will say?
It is not enough to know that God will include them, I suspect the eunuch was very aware of our human tendency to want to grab the pruning shears and put God the gardener out of a job.
And in the context of a human community, it’s not enough to know that God’s welcomes you, you need to know that the people welcome you too.
Look, the eunuch says, there is water here and I want to be baptized.
Is there anything that prevents me from being baptized? Does my race prevent me? Does being a eunuch prevent me? Does anything about me prevent me from being baptized?
Philip’s answer is to baptize the eunuch.
After baptizing the eunuch, Phillip is “snatched away” by the Spirit of the Lord – another great little detail that is never fully explained – and the eunuch from Ethiopia, who never sees Philip again, goes on their way “rejoicing.”
This week I had a conversation with a member of this community that I’m going to take some artistic license with. It went something like this:
“If I live fully into my identity as an F.O.D., will you excommunicate me?”
They were fully aware that I do not have the power to excommunicate anyone, and the question was asked at least in part as a joke, but it’s still a question I want to take seriously.
Remember our gospel passage? I am not the gardener, and neither are you. God decides who gets grafted onto Jesus the vine, I don’t. And you don’t either.
So when someone asks the same question as the eunuch in our story, “What is there to prevent me from being baptized, from being included?” I want to respond just like Jesus does, just like Philip does, and just like the church in Acts will increasingly do by saying that the thing or things that makes you the First. Or the Only. Or the Different. Whatever those things are, they are not valid reasons to exclude you.
You are welcome here. All of you is welcome here. So bring all of who you are to this space, to this community, and, in a few minutes, to this table.
Being baptized, being included, causes the eunuch to rejoice, and church tradition tells us that their joy was so contagious that it became the seed of the church in Ethiopia. That’s some pretty impressive fruit.
Just imagine what kind of beautiful fruit we could produce if we were to follow their example.
Amen.