Thursday, March 31, 2011

Let Today be Tomorrow


[The Primate and the National Bishop honoured me by inviting me to preach at the opening eucharist of the first joint meeting of the Council of General Synod (Anglican) and the National Church Council (Lutheran) on 31 March 2011.  The eucharist commemorated the Anglican theologian, Frederick Denison Maurice, a champion of Christian socialism and church unity.]

         + May the Holy One of Israel who sent the Word into the world to testify to the truth lead us into all truth by the power of the Spirit.  Amen.

         In 1853 a middle-aged Anglican theologian teaching at King’s College London published a series of essays which attracted significant attention from the religious establishment.  King’s College was already the subject of considerable scrutiny as an Anglican balance to the so-called ‘secular’ University College London.  University College had been established to provide university-level education for non-Anglicans in contrast to the Anglican universities of Cambridge and Oxford.  Together King’s College and University College were united in the 1830’s to create the University of London.  But the merger did not lessen the scrutiny directed at this early ecumenical venture. 

         This middle-aged theologian, Frederick Denison Maurice, challenged a number of the commonly-held positions of some leaders of the Church of England, but he was especially critical of several views held by the so-called ‘evangelical’ party.  In the final essay he addressed the question of ‘everlasting punishment’, a principle that the evangelical party saw as crucial to maintaining society’s stability.  Without this teaching, it was thought that the lower classes would cease to behave in a manner that preserved the social order of early Victorian Britain.

         He criticized the idea of ‘everlasting punishment’ on two grounds.  The first was a word study on the difference between ‘everlasting’ and ‘eternal’.  He pointed out that the New Testament tends to use ‘eternal’, a term which means ‘outside of time’, rather than ‘everlasting’, a term which means ‘continuous time without an end’.  This was an important distinction because it provided the rich soil for his second critique.

         ‘Everlasting punishment’ left no room, Maurice argued, for God’s love, a quality essential to God’s very nature.  It was God’s intent that we become who we truly are, God’s beloved, made in the image and likeness of God.  While we could resist God’s love, perhaps even into whatever awaits us after our death, God’s last word to each of us is not ‘everlasting death’ but ‘eternal life’, a ‘yes’ that shatters any ‘no’ human fears and desires for control can utter.  Towards the end of his essay Maurice wrote these words, ones that continue to remain with me every time I begin to doubt what the future holds for me, for my Christian community and for our world:

         I ask no one to pronounce, for I dare not pronounce myself, what are the possibilities of resistance in a human will to the loving will of God.  There are times when they seem to me --- thinking of myself more than of others --- almost infinite.  But I know that there is something which must be infinite.  I am obliged to believe in an abyss of love which is deeper than the abyss of death:  I dare not lose faith in that love.  I sink into death, eternal death, if I do.  I must feel that this love is compassing the universe.  More about it I cannot know.  But God knows.  I leave myself and all to Him.  (From 'Eternal Life and Eternal Death' in Theological Essays, 2nd ed. published in 1853)

         Maurice’s words led to his dismissal from the faculty of King’s College.  While the remaining nineteen years of his life would bring some rehabilitation, Maurice remained a voice that the establishment tried to mute in many and various ways.  For Maurice, the words of the prophet ring true:  “He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity, and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account.”  (Isaiah 53.3)  But seventy-five years after Maurice’s death, the American theologian H. Richard Niebuhr, in his classic work, Christ and Culture, would describe Maurice as a living exemplar of a theologian committed to ‘Christ as the transformer of culture’.  And Michael Ramsey, the one hundredth Archbishop of Canterbury and champion of church union, would write of the influence of Maurice on his own theology.

         Maurice’s confidence in the ‘abyss of love’ was grounded in the ‘foolishness of God’ that Paul speaks of in our reading from 1 Corinthians.  In the death of Jesus of Nazareth we see the abyss of God’s love, an abyss which is far deeper than the human sin which led to his death.  While there are many ways theologians have attempted to explain why Jesus’ death bridges the gap between God’s love and human sin, one thing remains clear:  God’s ‘yes’ to humanity, a ‘yes’ embodied in the life and witness of Jesus of Nazareth, remains stronger and more faithful than any of the ‘no’s’ human beings can express, whether that ‘no’ is found in the worship of power, in the poverty of human greed or in the denial that there is any more to life than the sometimes flat surface many of our sisters and brothers call ‘reality’.  Just as surely as plants will seek the sun, even human perversity will eventually seek the warmth of God’s love and follow the path that this love tracks in the universe.

         When Archbishop Morgan contacted me about tonight’s eucharist, he asked me whether I wanted to used the readings and prayers for John Donne, the seventeenth-century Anglican theologian, whose commemoration, for Anglicans and Lutherans, falls on the 31st of March.  Now I have a deep and abiding respect for John Donne, but I realized that the church’s oldest custom is to begin a liturgical day at sunset the day before, a practice we inherited from our Jewish ancestors in the faith.  That meant we could let today be tomorrow and I could honour Maurice, one of my theological heroes, who died on the 1st of April in 1872.

         But there is something more here, my sisters and brothers, something more than a liturgist’s detail-mongering.

         What both Paul and Maurice realized is that today is tomorrow.  For Paul the story of humanity’s creation and fall is recapitulated in Jesus of Nazareth with a stunning reversal of human sin, “(so) if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation:  everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”  (2 Corinthians 5.17)  Later in the same letter, Paul writes, “See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!”  (2 Corinthians 6.2b)  For Maurice the gospel of John with its proclamation that, in Jesus of Nazareth, the Word has been made flesh and dwells among us is a clarion call to recognize that the kingdom of Christ is as well as shall be.  Just as the Samaritan woman heard Jesus say, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you,” surely Maurice would affirm that the same voice, the same eternal presence, speaks to you and to me today.

         While it is difficult for some people to believe in God’s final renewal of the kosmos and our own resurrection, it is even more difficult for many believers to live in ‘eternal’ life, a recognition that the reign of God is a present reality as much as it is a future hope.  It seems so very foolish, in the face of natural disasters in many parts of the world, in the face of civil unrest and violence in other places and in the face of thinly-veiled apocalyptic rhetoric of a federal election campaign, to believe, as the old hymn puts it:

My life flows on in endless song
above earth’s lamentation.
I hear the real though far-off hymn
that hails a new creation.

No storm can shake my inmost calm,
while to that Rock I’m clinging.
Since Love is lord of heaven and earth,
how can I keep from singing?

What though the tempest ‘round me roar,
I hear the truth it liveth.
What though the darkness ‘round me close,
songs in the night it giveth.

No storm can shake my inmost calm,
while to that Rock I’m clinging.
Since Love is lord of heaven and earth,
how can I keep from singing?
(Common Praise #401 vv. 1, 3)

         My sisters and brothers, we are gathered at what may be seen, in some not so distant future, as a historic meeting of the leadership of our two churches.  Although our formal agreement of full communion is but a decade old, our work in Canada reaches back more than three decades and our relationship as two reform movements in the Catholic Church more than four hundred and fifty years.  My own involvement in Anglican-Lutheran relations began in 1978 in seminary and over the intervening thirty-three years I have seen us dutifully crossing the ‘t’s’ and dotting the ‘i’s’ and even the ‘j’s’ in order to achieve some semblance of visible unity.  But I feel the time has come for some serious foolishness on our part if we are to proclaim Christ crucified and risen to our country and, perhaps, to our world.

         I have no doubt that there are many challenges to our moving forward into an unknowable future.  We share so many beliefs and practices in common, but the ethos of our polities, the structures of our national offices and the natural theological diversity that colour both our churches can hinder us from taking bold steps.  When a common office in Ottawa was first mooted at a meeting of the Joint Commission in the autumn of 2007, my colleagues on the Joint Commission will tell you that I looked at the obstacles rather than the promise.  But I have come to believe that our full communion agreement, already embodied in the bricks and mortar of congregations across this country, needs to have a more visible national symbol of our earnest commitment to the full, visible unity of God’s people. 
         What I am hoping for, what I believe others in our two churches are hoping for, is some dramatic steps forward, even at the risk of looking foolish during a time of fiscal uncertainty and a natural but perhaps unwise temptation to withdraw inward in the interests of institutional survival.  The irony is that retrenchment can lead to stagnation and stagnation leads eventually to death.  Paul’s missionary journeys to the cities of the Mediterranean world were not about institutional survival but about sharing the good news of God in Jesus of Nazareth --- even when that message was ‘a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles’ (1 Corinthians 1.23b)  Maurice’s essays were not about institutional survival but about sharing the good news of God in Jesus of Nazareth to an industrial working class that had been marginalized by those with power and influence and who needed a message of hope rather than the reading of a theological ‘riot act’.
         In the late months of 1862 Abraham Lincoln decided upon a course of action that many considered not only foolishness but political suicide.  The federal forces had been repeatedly defeated by smaller confederate armies.  His cabinet and the Congress were divided as to the reason the states were at war with one another.  In this moment Lincoln decided to issue a proclamation emancipating all the slaves held in any area under the control of federal forces effective in March 1863.  His cabinet thought him mad; his family feared for his life.  In December of 1862 Lincoln sent his annual message to the Congress and included these words.   
The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion.
As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.  Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.
These are dramatic words; some might even think them melodramatic to use at a joint business meeting of our two church councils.  But I am convinced that you, members of the executive councils of our two churches, are gathered to let today be tomorrow.  You are here to do more than hear reports and engage in friendly conversation, whether around the business table, the dining table or the social table.  You are here to do more than tick off one more commitment of the Waterloo Declaration and declare ourselves satisfied so that we can back to business as usual. 
         You are here to disenthrall our two churches from any idea of institutional survival and to think anew as surely as our case as churches in full communion is new.  You are here to rise to the occasion of showing the world how truly foolish Christians can be when they are confident that the abyss of God’s love is infinitely deeper than the abyss of human fear.      
         What shape our communion will take is beyond the scope of one sermon.  What direction you should take in achieving a more visible expression of full communion is beyond my authority to describe.  But I can tell you that the kingdom of Christ is among us tonight, that the Spirit of God moves among us tonight, so that we can look beyond budgets and bylaws, canons and constitutions to discover how today can be tomorrow
         If you believe, as I believe, that the Waterloo Communion is more than a convenient way to deal with economic challenges, that the Waterloo Communion is more than a guidebook to ecclesiastical etiquette, that the Waterloo Communion is actually an expression of what the kingdom of Christ can look like in the here and now of twenty-first century Canada, then I am confident that any foolishness that may occur over the next few days and months and years will turn out to be the wisdom of God.
Let us pray.
O God of unchangeable power and eternal light, look favourably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery.  By the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquillity the plan of salvation.  Let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raise up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Some Liturgical Suggestions for Lent III & IV

Here are some liturgical suggestions for Lent III and Lent IV with thanks to the Rev'd James Olson for pointing out that red rubrics are not always helpful!


The Gathering of the Community


Opening Responses

We cast our burdens upon you, O Lord.
And you will sustain us.

Create in us clean hearts, O God.
And renew a right spirit within us.

Cast us not away from your presence
and take not your Holy Spirit from us.

Give us the joy of your saving help again
and sustain us with your bountiful Spirit.

Blessed are you, O Lord, day by day,
the God of our salvation who bears our burdens.

Hymn of Penitence      

‘Before I Take the Body of My Lord’ (Common Praise #610)

Absolution

May the God of compassion, who in Jesus Christ has made us a royal priesthood, forgive you your sins, open your eyes to God’s truth, strengthen you to do God’s will and give you the joy of eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.
[adapted from Common Worship of the Church of England]

Collect of the Day

Lent III
Enduring Presence, goal and guide, you go before and await our coming.  Only our thirst compels us beyond complaint to conversation, beyond rejection to relationship.  Pour your love into our hearts, that, refreshed and renewed, we may invite others to the living water given to us in Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.
[Revised Common Lectionary Prayers]

Lent IV
Discerner of hearts, you look beneath our outward appearance and see your image in each of us.  Banish in us the blindness that prevents us from recognizing truth, so we may see the world through your eyes and with the compassion of Jesus Christ who redeems us.  Amen.
[Revised Common Lectionary Prayers]

The Proclamation of the Word

The usual order of service up to the Creed.  Instead of the Creed the following ‘Affirmation of Faith’ will be said.

An Affirmation of Faith

Do you believe and trust in God the Father, source of all being and life, the one for whom we exist?  We believe and trust in God, the Source of all being and life.

Do you believe and trust in God the Son, who took our human nature, died for us and rose again?  We believe and trust in God, the Word of life incarnate.

Do you believe and trust in God the Holy Spirit, who gives life to the people of God and makes Christ known in the world?  We believe and trust in God, the Spirit of wisdom and truth.

This is the faith of the Church.  This is our faith.  We believe and trust in one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen.
[adapted from Common Worship of the Church of England]

The Holy Communion

The Prayer over the Gifts

Lent III
Faithful God of love whose Son showed us how to serve your people with justice and mercy, we offer you these gifts in faith and love, seeking your strength to meet the needs of ourselves and others.  We ask this in Christ’s name.  Amen.
[Adapted from Revised Common Lectionary Prayers]

Lent IV
Merciful God, we are reconciled to you through the mercy of Christ.  We offer you these gifts confident that you will empower us to be your ministers of reconciliation in the church and in the world.  We ask this in Christ’s name.  Amen.
[Adapted from Revised Common Lectionary Prayers]

The Sending Forth of the Community

The Prayer after Communion

Lent III
Holy One, shape and transfigure us by your grace, that we may grow in wisdom and confidence, never faltering until we have done all that you desire to bring your realm of shalom to fulfillment.  We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.
[Adapted from Revised Common Lectionary Prayers]

Lent IV
God of compassion, you embrace all people at the festive banquet of your table.  May we rejoice in your love and celebrate the inheritance you have given to us.  We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.
[Adapted from Revised Common Lectionary Prayers]


A Take on the Woman at the Well

This video was shared by a friend on Facebook.  I hope that you enjoy it.

Fill Your Bucket!


RCL Lent 3A
27 March 2011

Saint Faith’s Anglican Church
Vancouver BC

Focus Text:  John 4.1-42

         Bishop Bill Frey, the Bishop of Colorado who ordained me to the diaconate and to the presbyterate, had been Bishop of Guatemala before coming to Colorado.  Leaving Guatemala was not his choice.  He and his family were picked up by the army at gunpoint, driven to their home and given one hour to pack what they could.  They were then taken to the airport where, with two other expatriate clergy from the United States, one Presbyterian, the other Roman Catholic, they were put on an airplane and flown back to the United States.

         Upon their return to the United States Bill and his family were lost.  They had imagined that they would remain in Guatemala until Bill retired, but that future was closed.  Bill was appointed as the Episcopal chaplain at the University of Arkansas, but that could not be his permanent position.  Just when the situation seemed bleak, Bill was elected Bishop of Colorado, a ministry that he exercised until his retirement.

         Now you might think that an experience such as this would have cast a dark shadow over Bill, but nothing could be further from the truth.  I remember his first sermon at Saint Michael’s, my home parish, where the gospel reading was from John’s account of the encounter of the skeptic Nathaniel with Jesus.  What I remember most was Bill’s comment that we often read the Scriptures too seriously, missing some of the humour that is present.

         Such is the case with today’s story of the woman at the well in Samaria.  it is a rare occasion when a smile does not come to my face when I hear this wonderful exchange between Jesus and the woman:

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying this to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”  The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep.  Where do you get that living water?”  (John 4.10-11)

It is as if she says, “I am no fool, even though you may think I am because I am a Samaritan and a woman.  I’m the one with the bucket and you’re the one who is thirsty!”

         If I were ever sent into exile and told that I could only take one gospel with me, it would be the gospel according to John.  His stories are told in a more compelling fashion than those of Matthew, Mark and Luke.  John appreciates women and gives them serious things to say.  A blind man who has been healed can challenge the wisdom and authority of the Jewish council and a disbelieving Thomas is confronted with the reality of the risen Christ.

         I continue to learn from John’s gospel because it can be read on several levels.  His stories can be read as a chronicle of the ministry of Jesus, but they can also be read as a commentary on those texts in the Hebrew Bible which were thought to promise the coming of the Messiah.  John’s gospel is also a rich source of wisdom about the mystery of God’s kingdom as a present reality as well as a future hope.  But most of all I read John’s gospel because I find myself in this account of the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth.

         All of us, young and old, rich and poor, male and female, are the woman at the well, drawing water that does not quench our thirst.  Day after day we come to the well of our daily lives hoping that this time we will draw the water that will quench our deepest thirsts.

·      We all thirst for mystery.  By mystery I mean we all search to know God’s hidden plan for us and for all of creation that is slowly being revealed over the eons in many and various ways.  Even those who consider themselves non-religious seek to understand this mystery.

·      We all thirst for purpose.  By purpose I mean we all search to know what role we play in the unfolding mystery of God’s plan.  Perhaps there is no greater human tragedy than the woman or man who believes that her or his life has had no meaning, no purpose.

·      We all thirst for communion.  By communion I mean we all search to participate in life-giving and life-sustaining relationships, whether between individuals or within a community.  “No one stands alone, standing side by side,” we sing and no one, even those who claim that do not need others, wants to stand alone.

         All of us, young and old, rich and poor, male and female, are the woman at the well, living with one husband after another.  Day after day we abandon one ‘protector’ after another hoping that the next one will give us the security we long to find.

·      We put our trust in our material goods and realize that they break or wear out or do not satisfy our longing.

·      We put our trust in so-called ‘celebrities’ and realize that they are as imperfect as we all, often on a greater and more public scale.

·      We put our trust fads and fashions and realize that they pass quickly without leaving us more secure.

         All of us, young and old, rich and poor, male and female, are the woman at the well, going about our daily routines.  Day after day we do the same things gradually losing hope that anything will change.  But today is not such a day.  Today Jesus comes to our well and offers us the living water that will quench our thirst and give us the foundation we seek.

·      In Jesus of Nazareth God reveals the mystery at the centre of all existence:  Eternal life does not spring from knowing the right things but by living a Jesus-shaped life.

·      In Jesus of Nazareth God reveals the purpose of every human life:  Our true purpose is not the acquisition of goods and power but to do justice, to be faithful and to walk humbly with God just as Jesus.

·      In Jesus of Nazareth God draws us into communion with God’s very self:  Wherever God’s people open their arms to the stranger and the need just as Jesus opened his arms, the life-giving and life-sustaining relationships we seek spring up.

·      In Jesus of Nazareth God provides us the sure foundation we seek:  No matter the challenges and disappointments we face, no matter how alone we may feel, Love is Lord of heaven and earth.

         All of us, young and old, rich and poor, male and female are the woman at the well who does not remain silent about the thirst-quenching water she has received and the new ‘protector’ she has found.  If the truth be told, we Anglicans have often remained silent about the well of life around which we gather.  We may be critical of those religious groups that go from door to door, but we cannot pride ourselves on our silence.  All of us, ordained and lay, have had thirsty people come to us and we have not handed them a bucket to dip into the well of faith.  We are so fearful of ‘intruding’ that we allow people to die of thirst.

         So let us become a bucket brigade of living water.  Let us not be reluctant to tell others of the well from which we have drawn the water that soothes the weary soul.  Let us say to them, “Come, friend.  You have no bucket, but I will share mine with you.  Come and drink from this life-giving water.  There is enough for all who thirst.”  Amen.

Friday, March 18, 2011

Pardon My Verb!


RCL Lent 2A
20 March 2011

Saint Faith’s Anglican Church
Vancouver BC

1)  Not my story, not my language

         Last Sunday I spoke of how I am often intrigued by difficult phrases in the Scriptures.  This Sunday presents us with another of these phrases that remind us that we were not the original audience to whom the words we have heard today were directed nor do we speak the language in which these words were first composed.

         The story of Abraham were collected into their present form at some point during the time when the tribes of Israel were united under the monarchy established by the prophet Samuel when he anointed Saul as the first king.  The territory under the control of the tribes was soon to reach its greatest expanse with the people enjoying relative prosperity and feeling proud of their identity.  As the ancient stories about their patriarchs and matriarchs were gathered together, the people were presented with a history of divine guidance and grace which had given rise to their present well-being.  Although they were no doubt proud of their own achievements, the stories of the patriarchs and matriarchs reminded them that all that they had was God’s gift in response to the obedience of their ancestors.

         But in today’s reading there is a phrase that has led to consequences not foreseen by those who first collected the stories of Abraham and Sarah.  God says to Abraham, “. . . in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12.3c)  What you and I, hearing these words from a distance of almost three thousand years and in English rather than biblical Hebrew, do not know is that Hebrew verb used here can be understood in two ways, one that can lead to conflict and arrogance, another that can lead to faithfulness and hope.

2)  A way to death and a way to life

         Throughout Jewish, Christian and Muslim history, this phrase, “. . . in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed,” has primarily been interpreted to mean that “God’s blessing and salvation are given to the whole world through Abraham” (The New Interpreter’s Study Bible 2003)  But how do later generations make a claim on God’s promise to Abraham to make of him a great nation, to give him a rich land and to grant him numerous descendants?  In the Jewish tradition a claim is made upon these promises by virtue of one’s descent from Abraham’s son, Isaac.  In the Christian tradition a claim is made upon these promises by following Abraham’s faithful obedience to the call of God.  In the early Muslim tradition a claim is made upon these promises by virtue of one’s belief that Mohammed, the prophet of God, is a descendant of Ishmael, the first-born son of Abraham.

         Perhaps you can already see how dangerous this understanding of the verb can be.  Centuries of Christian persecution of the Jewish people have been fuelled, in part, by the belief that it is not physical descent from Abraham that matters but spiritual imitation of Abraham’s obedience to God’s call, an obedience that Christians see reflected in the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth.  It is this line of reasoning that lies behind Paul’s words in our reading from his letter to the church in Rome.  Gentiles share in God’s promises not by blood but by faith, their faith in the faithfulness of Jesus.

         The continuing conflict between the Jewish state and the Muslim states that surround it is a geo-political expression of a conflict between the descendants of Isaac and the descendants of Ishmael.  Stories collected by the Hebrew people to explain the success of the early monarchy under Saul and his successors run head-long into stories collected by Muslims to explain the claim of the followers to Mohammed to be the true descendants of Abraham, not through Isaac but through Ishmael.

         How many people have been persecuted and how many people have died because of an ambiguous verb?

         But ambiguous verbs can also be helpful.  Another way of understanding the phrase, ‘. . . in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed,’ is to understand the verb to mean, “. . . people will take Abram’s blessings and well-being as the desired standard when asking a blessing for themselves:  ‘May we be as blessed as Abraham.’” (New Interpreter’s Study Bible 2003)  This understanding looks at the story of Abraham more like a parable than as history.  It is this way of looking at the text that offers you and me a way forward.

3)  May we be blessed as Abraham.

         As the story of Abraham is told in Genesis, the world has become a place filled with peoples of different languages and different views on religion.  Into this time and space God selects a previously unknown Mesopotamian by the name of Abram.  We know nothing of his previous life other than he is married to a woman who has produced no offspring.

         This Abram is told to leave the country of his birth, to turn his back on his kith and kin and to take a childless wife to a land that God will deliver to him.  It is an invitation that you and I, if we are honest, would most likely decline.  After twenty-four years of living west of Granville, our family is now looking at finding a home in a part of the metropolitan area that really is only a point on a map to us.  We have no idea about neighbourhoods, transportation and public services; all our familiar places are here, bound by Cambie, Burrard Inlet, the North Arm of the Fraser and Georgia Strait.  When the children and I drove to Langley for the celebration of Paula’s new ministry at Saint Andrew’s, Anna wasn’t sure that she had even ever been to Langley!  Now, if that is how we are feeling in a world of cars, telephones and the internet, try to imagine being told to leave the only place you’ve ever known, abandon the fundamental security network of your extended family and travel to a yet-to-be-named country with a wife who has not borne any children, a fact that makes the future look very bleak, very bleak indeed.

         But this is what Abraham does. Everything that follows is a consequence of this act of obedience.  Even when there are moments when Abraham may think things are difficult, he holds firmly to the knowledge that he has done what God has asked.  Knowing this, Abraham trusts that God will not forget the promises made contingent on that obedience.

         If we wish to be blessed as Abraham was blessed, then we must be prepared to undertake a journey to an unknown land that may mean leaving some of our security blankets behind and carrying with us some things that may not have borne the fruit we had hoped.  What God promised Abraham was identity, visibility and continuity.  But the promises are only fulfilled when we are willing to undertake a journey to an undiscovered country.

         What we call the ‘Ministry Assessment Process’ is, in reality, just such a journey towards identity, visibility and continuity.

         It is a journey towards identity because we are seeking to learn what it means to be an Anglican community of faith in the twenty-first century.  I am firmly convinced that there are treasures in the Anglican way of following Christ that are desperately needed in today’s world:  practices of prayer, sacramental worship, intellectually-engaged study of the Scriptures, commitment to neighbourhood, community and world, to name but a few.  Yet I also know how we have been ‘Anglican’ in the past may no longer open the treasures of the Anglican way to others today.  So we journey towards a new identity.

         It is a journey towards visibility because we continue to believe that congregations are not the problem but the solution to Christian witness.  But the challenges of maintaining so many buildings may limit our ability to be visible in the communities that need to ‘see’ us.  Our energy is often taken up in figuring out how to fix aging buildings, heat inefficient buildings and deal with exterior decay rather than our energies being directed into programs and initiatives that bring the love of Christ into all the places that long for the touch of God’s wisdom, strength and love.

         It is a journey toward continuity because we are committed to staying, in one way or another, in the neighbourhoods and regions of our world.  When we talk about the stewardship of the assets our predecessors in the faith have left in our hands, we are seeking to use those assets to continue the ministry begun generations ago, whether here at Saint Faith’s or Saint Augustine’s or any of the parishes of our Diocese.  But the continuity we seek is one that is energetically outward-focused, a continuity that asks how our assets enable us to proclaim the good news of God in Jesus Christ to an increasingly unreligious world.

         I believe that these promises will be fulfilled but not without the courage to heed the summons that God issues to every generation, whether we be Jews, Christians or Muslims:  “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”  (Genesis 12.1)  It is a summons that I know we are prepared to heed because we have already taken the initial steps.  We know that being blessed as Abraham was blessed is not a privilege of birth nor a consequence of orthodoxy.  To be blessed as Abraham was blessed means having the courage to leave the familiar behind and seek the land that is yet to be found over the horizon.  Only such a blessing is worth the journey.  Only such a blessing brings life and hope to the traveler.  Amen.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

An Ordo for Lent II 2011

This Lent I have incorporated some new elements into the worship of our community at Saint Faith's.  Today I am posting the elements specific to this coming Sunday's celebration.


Ordo for Lent II

The Gathering of the Community

Opening Responses

We cast our burdens upon you, O Lord.
And you will sustain us.
 Create in us clean hearts, O God.
And renew a right spirit within us.
 Cast us not away from your presence
and take not your Holy Spirit from us.
 Give us the joy of your saving help again
and sustain us with your bountiful Spirit.
 Blessed are you, O Lord, day by day,
the God of our salvation who bears our burdens.

Hymn of Penitence      

‘Before I Take the Body of My Lord’ (Common Praise #610)

Absolution

May the God of compassion, who in Jesus Christ has made us a royal priesthood, forgive you your sins, open your eyes to God’s truth, strengthen you to do God’s will and give you the joy of eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.
[adapted from Common Worship of the Church of England]

Collect of the Day

Lent II
God of amazing compassion, lover of our wayward race, you bring to birth a pilgrim people, and call us to be a blessing for ourselves and all the world.  We pray for grace to take your generous gift and step with courage on this holy path, confident in the radiant life that is your plan for us, made known and given in Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.
[Revised Common Lectionary Prayers]

The Proclamation of the Word

The usual order of service up to the Creed.  Instead of the Creed the following ‘Affirmation of Faith’ will be said.

An Affirmation of Faith

Do you believe and trust in God the Father, source of all being and life, the one for whom we exist?  We believe and trust in God, the Source of all being and life.

Do you believe and trust in God the Son, who took our human nature, died for us and rose again?  We believe and trust in God, the Word of life incarnate.

Do you believe and trust in God the Holy Spirit, who gives life to the people of God and makes Christ known in the world?  We believe and trust in God, the Spirit of wisdom and truth.

This is the faith of the Church.  This is our faith.  We believe and trust in one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen.
[adapted from Common Worship of the Church of England]

The Holy Communion

The Prayer over the Gifts

Lent II
God of the covenant, you call us to be fruitful servants within creation and to offer our lives as the foundation of your realm.  We lay before you these gifts that you may use them to fulfill the desires of our hearts and to transform us by your grace.  We ask this in Christ’s name.  Amen.
[Adapted from Revised Common Lectionary Prayers]

The Sending Forth of the Community

The Prayer after Communion

Lent II
Grant, O God, that we who have received this eucharist may be your channel for new and abundant life not only hope for, but worked for, through faithful word and deed, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.
[Adapted from Revised Common Lectionary Prayers]

Friday, March 11, 2011

Innocence Lost But Responsibility Gained

RCL Lent 1A
13 March 2011

Saint Faith’s Anglican Church
Vancouver BC

Focus Texts:  Genesis 2.15-17; 3.1-7; Matthew 4.1-11

1)  “For the First Time”

         Frederick Buechner, the American novelist and theologian, tells the following story in his biography, The Sacred Journey.

         In any case, of all the giants who held up my world, [Naya, my maternal grandmother,] was perhaps chief, and when I knew she was coming to Georgetown for a visit that day, I wanted to greet her properly.  So what I did at the age of six was prepare her a feast.  All I could find in the icebox that seemed suitable were some cold string beans that had seen better days with the butter on them long since gone to wax, and they were what I brought out to her in that fateful garden.  I do not remember what she said then exactly, but it was an aside spoken to my parents or whatever grown-ups happened to be around to the effect that she did not usually eat much at three o’clock in the afternoon or whatever it was, let alone the cold string beans of another age, but that she would see what she could do for propriety’s sake.  Whatever it was, she said it drily, wittily, the way she said everything, never dreaming for a moment that I would either hear or understand, but I did hear, and what I came to understand for the first time in my life, I suspect --- why else should I remember it? --- was that the people you love have two sides to them.  One is the side they love you back with, and the other is the side that, even when they do not mean to, they can sting you with like a wasp.  It was the first ominous scratching in the walls, the first telltale crack in the foundation of the one home which perhaps any child has when you come right down to it, and that is the people he loves.  [The Sacred Journey as quoted in Buechner, Listening to Your Life, ed. George Connor, 11-12]

Perhaps only a few of us can remember such a moment in our lives clearly, but all of us have experienced that moment when innocence passes away and we become aware of the world as a place in which the good, the evil and the ambiguous, all exist in the same time and the same space.

2)  The Loss of Innocence

         There are many texts from the Scriptures that cause questions to arise in my mind.  Today’s reading is one of them.  Why, I ask myself, does God not want Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and of evil?  Would God not want them to know what is evil so that they may choose what is good?  Does God want them to live in child-like innocence, playing in the sand box of the garden of Eden, gardening to their hearts’ desire and enjoying each other’s company?

         It may well be that the answer to my question is “Yes”.  The text suggests that God would have preferred Adam and Eve to continue in that innocence into which they were created and to remain, like Frederick Buechner before his fateful encounter with his grandmother, unaware of the two sides of those we love. 

         But children never remain children, even those dwelling in Eden.  It is as if God is blind to the inevitable consequence of creating beings who share God’s freedom to act but who do not possess that steadfastness of character that keeps them on path of justice, covenant loyalty and humility.  And so the woman sees a delightful tree, hears that it bestows wisdom and eats.  And so the man takes the gift offered by the woman and eats.  And relationships are altered, whether the relationship between God and human beings or the relationship between one human being to another.  It is worth remembering, in a world where the subordination of women to men continues in many cultures and places, that Genesis tells us that the subordination of women to men is a consequence of human disobedience not an expression of the divine purpose in creation.

         By eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the first couple leaves their innocence behind and faces a new world in which they and all their descendants come to know the reality of moral good and moral evil.  “The forbidden tree offers an experience that is both pleasant and painful; it awakens those who partake of it to the higher knowledge and to the pain that both come with moral choice.” [The Jewish Study Bible]

3)  Whom shall we serve?

         In several ways Matthew’s account of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness brings us back to the garden and the choice before Adam and Eve.  While some readers and listeners seem to get lost in the details, the story itself comes down to a simple question:  Will Jesus choose God or Satan?

         For us hearing the story after two thousand years’ of its re-telling, the answer to this question is a foregone conclusion.  But if Jesus is not free, really free to choose one path or the other, then there is no salvation, no hope for us to celebrate on Easter and reach for through our Lenten pilgrimage.  What we witness in this story is that it is possible to choose God rather than Satan --- even if you are not the Son of God, the incarnate Word of the Holy One of Israel.

         God’s word spoken to us in Genesis and Matthew is not a counsel of despair but a counsel of encouragement and hope.  Although there are texts in the Scriptures which can lead to a certain fatalism, a belief that we have no control over the circumstances of our lives and choices, there are more texts which assert with clarion tones the truth that our choices matter.  Perhaps the most famous of these comes from the prophet Micah:

[The Lord] has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?  [Micah 6.6-8]

Words such as these and the words of prophets, apostles and evangelists call us to lay aside any thoughts of powerlessness or inevitability and to take our place in what some Jewish theologians call tikkun olam, ‘the repairing of the world’.

         We who have been baptized are not only called to witness to the repairing of the world achieved through the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth but to be agents of that repairing and renewing mission of God made known in Christ.

         My sisters and brothers, we live in a society that often waits upon the so-called ‘great’ or ‘influential’ or ‘powerful’ to act to bring about change.  We are inundated with news reports that overwhelm us with stories about oppression, poverty, hunger and injustice throughout the world.  We look at the numerous challenges to the well-being of people currently living in our metropolitan area, our province and our country.  It is tempting in such a climate to pull the covers over our heads or to ‘mind our own business’, forgetting what Marley’s ghost says to Scrooge, ‘Business!  Business!  Mankind was my business!’

         If the story of the tree of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil has any meaning, if there is any purpose of re-telling the story of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, then it is this: The genie is out of the bottle.  Human beings may yearn for the illusory safety of lost innocence, but we have now joined God as moral agents.  Just as surely as God’s purposes affect the creation, so too do ours.

         The pilgrimage of Lent and the life-long pilgrimage of Christian faith is not about ‘care and anxious fear and worry’ but ‘to be led where God’s glory flashes’.  [The Hymnal 1982, #145]. We are no longer in the garden, playing like children, but we have come into that maturity which makes us agents of God’s renewing and reconciling purposes.  One version of the ancient Easter hymn, the Exsultet, speaks of that ‘blessed iniquity’ that merited ‘such a Saviour’.  In other words, we arrive at Easter not bemoaning our human disobedience but rejoicing that, in Christ, we have become a new humanity, sharing in the divine life.

         This Lent I invite you to look around you.  Find one part of the garden of life God has given you to tend that is in need of repair or renewal and give yourself to that work.  Find that cause, whether local or national or international, that arouses your passion and give yourself to that work.  Let us all agree to give up saying “if only I were . . .” or “if only I had . . .”.  Let us take on a new habit of saying, “What is my role in bringing about God’s purposes for x, y or z?”  Let us all agree to set aside the notion that what we do, whoever we are, does not matter.  It is too late to believe this.  Such an attitude, my friends, is the counsel of those powers of darkness that work against God’s purposes, but we are not children of darkness but children of the light.  In that light let us walk the path set before us.  Amen.