Infinitely More: Reflections on John 14.12-21

 

 

RCL Easter 6A [i]

10 May 2026

 

Saint Helen’s Anglican Church

Vancouver BC

 

            When I was teaching at Vancouver School of Theology, my New Testament colleague, Lloyd Gaston of blessed memory, created an assignment he called, ‘From Text to Sermon’.  What he was trying to accomplish was to lead his students into a deep dive into a text.  Just as a diver might explore the depths of the sea and bring back to the surface beautiful objects or new species, so too the preacher needed to see what might be lurking among the words of a particular scriptural text.  I have sometimes called this, ‘searching for the Word among the words’.  Once that Word is found, a preacher can begin to craft a sermon.

 

            So today I’m giving you a ‘from text to sermon’.  We’ve spent a number of weeks during Easter journeying with one Gospel, perhaps the most difficult Gospel, so it’s time to take a little dive.

 

            If you were to tell me that I was going to be exiled to a distant island and that I could take only one of the four Gospels with me, then I would choose the Gospel according to John.  I have always found John to be the better storyteller, and his understanding that the kingdom of God is as much a present reality as a future hope energizes the work I have been called to do.  Another reason that I’d take John with me is this:  there are passages that I do not yet understand. Often in John’s Gospel, Jesus says things that are cryptic or clearly have multiple meanings all at the same time.

 

            Let’s take today’s reading from the Gospel.  As is permitted in our lectionary tradition, I added three verses from last week’s Gospel reading.  Adding these three verses helps to make clearer what I think John is saying to us today.

 

            From my first serious engagement with John’s Gospel, I have kept coming back to this verse:  “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.” [ii]  I am left with a question:  How can I, a flawed human being, do greater works than Jesus?

 

            Another matter in today’s Gospel arises from the fact that John was written in Koinē, a form of the Greek language spoken throughout the Mediterranean world during the New Testament era.  This means that you and I have to rely on the expertise of contemporary translators, but there are times when, despite their best efforts, translators cannot in a single word express what is being said.

 

            A case in point is the word translated as ‘Advocate’.  In Koinē the word is Paraklētos, and it is very difficult to find one equivalent word in English.  What the first audience of John’s Gospel would have heard is a constellation of meanings:

 

·      the one who exhorts

·      the one who comforts

·      the one who helps

·      the one who makes appeals on one’s behalf. [iii]

 

English translators have used a variety of words:  “Comforter” (the King James’ Version), “Advocate” (New Revised Standard Version), “Counselor” (New International Version), “Companion” (Common English Bible).

 

            When we put together Jesus’ words about doing greater things and the promise that God will give us one who exhorts, who comforts, who helps and who makes appeals on our behalf, the Spirit of truth, a key message from John’s gospel becomes clearer.  It’s a message that is enshrined in the motto of the University of British Columbia:  Tuum Est or ‘It is yours.’

 

            When Jesus returns to God, something that the Church will celebrate on Thursday, Ascension Day, responsibility for the mission and ministry begun in his life and teaching passes over to us.  While Jesus’ ministry was confined to a particular time and place, our ministry is no longer confined to any particular time or place.  What John the evangelist is trying to tell is this:  What Jesus does is who Jesus is.  What Jesus does reveals who God is.  What we do is who we are.  What we do in Jesus’ name reveals both who God is and what God is doing in our own times and places.

 

            If we were simply left to our own devices, then things might be even bleaker than they seem to be in the present moment.  But we are not left to our devices.  Even in our lowest moments, in our moments of greatest uncertainty, in our moments of doubt and near despair, we have a Companion who exhorts, comforts, helps and appeals to God on our behalf.  We have an Advocate who makes our case to a world in need of reconciliation and renewal, desperate for hope and courage.  Tuum est, says John, “It’s over to you, believers in Jesus, those who follow the way, who know the truth, who live the life.”

 

            It is over to us – with the Advocate’s help – to confront those who claim to be righteous while denying food to the hungry and shelter to the homeless.  It is over to us – with the Comforter’s help – to strengthen the weak, to heal the sick, to bind up the injured.  It is over to us – with the Counselor’s help – to back together those who have followed life-denying paths and those who have lost the way.  It is over to us – with the Companion’s help – to reunite those whom the powerful would divide.

 

            God, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.  But more on this next week.

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[i] RCL Propers using the alternative Hebrew reading and psalm:  Ezekiel 34.1-7a; Psalm 115; Acts 17.22-31; John 14.12-21 (expanded from 14.15-21).

 

[ii] John 14.12 (NRSVue).

 

[iii] Gail O’Day, “The Gospel of John” in The New Interpreter’s Bible (1995), IX.747.

 

Jesus as the Way, the Truth and the Life: Reflections on John 14.1-14

 

RCL Easter 5A [i]

3 May 2026

 

Church of the Epiphany

Surrey BC

 

            Although I was born in England, I was raised in the United States.  My father’s family were among the first settlers from England and Wales to colonize the Hudson Valley of New York and the coast of Massachusetts.  From childhood I was taught to be proud of my family’s history and proud of its role in shaping what would become the United States.

 

            As I grew older, I began to learn things that made me more humble.  I knew that some of my ancestors fought in the American Civil War to end slavery, but I did know that sixty years before the Civil War, my family had counted enslaved people as property.  When I went to the Solomon Islands in 1997, I knew that clergy were treated with respect, but I did not realize that a whole family would be thrown off a small plane to make room for me and another colleague.  When in 2008 I flew into Singapore from Yangon with the Bishop of British Columbia, I knew that he and I were the only white people waiting to go through customs and immigration, but I was surprised when an immigration official took us out of the line so that we could pass through more quickly at the diplomatic gate.

 

            In our world today, there are people who are not afraid to use the privileges that come from being citizens of a particular country or from having wealth or from being white or from being male.  There are people who believe that being a Jew or a Muslim or a Christian or one religion or another gives them rights to exclude, to persecute or to dominate people of other faith traditions.

 

            Right now, both here in Canada, in the United States and in Europe, there is a movement called Christian nationalism.  It is a movement that teaches its followers that their countries and cultures are under threat by other people who profess other faiths.  Some of the followers of Christian nationalism believe that any efforts to ensure the fair treatment, full participation and opportunities for all people are wrong.  In the minds of Christian nationalists, there is a natural superiority that belongs to certain groups of people.

 

            Unfortunately, one verse of today’s reading from the Gospel according to John fuels the beliefs of Christian nationalists:  “Jesus said to (Thomas), ‘I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.’” [ii]  I admit that growing up in the Church, I probably thought that these words from the Gospel according to John were intended to claim that being a Christian is better than being a member of any other religion.  But this understanding is not what the writer of the Gospel means.

 

            The Gospel of John was written during a time when the first followers of Jesus, all of whom were Jews, were trying to explain how they understood Jesus.  Along with other Jews, the earlier followers of Jesus shared the same Scriptures, what you and I call the Old Testament or the Hebrew Scriptures.  These Scriptures tell how a particular people came to believe that they had a distinct relationship with the Creator of the universe.  Please note the word I used:  they had a distinct relationship with God not an exclusive one.  The Scriptures are full of stories of how people who were not Jews demonstrated that they were followers of God.

 

            What distinguished the Jews from other followers of God was the law and teachings that came to the Jewish people after their exodus from Egypt.  This law and its teachings came to them through Moses, but time and time again, God sent teachers and prophets to help the people find the right path, the good path.  So, when the earliest followers of Jesus explained how they were being faithful to God, they said that they were followers of the way of Jesus.  This way of Jesus, a way of self-giving love, of forgiveness, of generosity, of respect for the dignity of every human being, led the followers of Jesus to the truth of how to be in relationship with God and to find abundant life in the here and now.

 

            To follow Jesus as the way is to learn the truth of who God is and how to live Christ-like lives.  To follow Jesus is to know that our mission is not to be walls to set people apart but to build houses where all God’s children can live and flourish.  To follow Jesus is to proclaim the Christ who had a welcome for all people, who healed non-Jews as well as Jews, who ate with sinners and outcasts as well as rabbis and other religious leaders.

 

            I believe Jesus to be the way, the truth and the life.  But this belief is not a weapon to be used to belittle others nor a claim that Christians are superior to any other religious community.  Those who know the way, the truth and the life of Jesus do not carelessly speak about destroying civilizations or wage war as if it were a video game.  Those who have ears to hear know that the way of Jesus teaches us to do justice.  Those who have ears to hear know that the truth of Jesus teaches us to love our neighbours as God loves the world.  Those who have ears to hear know that the life of Jesus teaches us to walk humbly with God.

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[i] Acts 7.55-60; Psalm 31.1-5, 15-16 (BAS); 1 Peter 2.2-10; John 14.1-14.

 

[ii] John 14.6 (NRSVue).

 

Liturgical Land Acknowledgements: A Rationale and Suggested Texts

 Liturgical Land Acknowledgements 

I)  A Theological and Pastoral Foreword

 

         Christian ritual both arises from and shapes Christian identity.  This dynamic is reflected in two words used by the first generations of Christians to describe who they were as a community and what they did when they were gathered in public assembly.

 

         Early Christians chose a Greek political term to describe who they were.  Christians were members of an ekklesia, a public assembly of citizens called out of their daily affairs to take counsel about and to take action for the common good of the whole community, whether citizens or not.  When the Christian ekklesiagathered, its members engaged in leitourgia, another Greek term from the public arena.  Leitourgia meant a voluntary act of public service, diakonia, undertaken for the common good.  We are, as Archbishop William Temple once wrote, the only public institution that exists primarily for its non-members.

 

         Ritual requires thoughtful preparation and engagement regardless of the kind of ritual we are enacting.  This is particularly true in this time and place as we seek to be agents of God’s reconciling love in building a new future from the wreckage of the Church’s involvement in the residential schools and other acts of colonialism and racism.  No congregation should undertake the inclusion of a liturgical land acknowledgement unless it has pondered and is pondering how this liturgical act will be embodied in how the ekklesia does its leitourgia to provide the wider community with a diakonia worthy of our claim to be disciples of Jesus.

 

II)  The Gathering of the Community

 

         In the ordo of The Book of Alternative Services 1985 (BAS), the Gathering of the Community has only two required elements:  (i) the greeting and (ii) the collect of the day.  All the more familiar elements are auxiliary, that is to say, they are used with care to help set the specific liturgical context for the occasion being celebrated.

 

         The form is extremely simple.  This is intentional.  The aim is to set the tone for the celebration and to lead directly into the proclamation of the word and the eucharistic celebration itself.  The entrance rite ought not to become a liturgy in its own right. [1]  

 

         On appropriate occasions this gathering rite may be replaced with ‘A Penitential Order’ (BAS pp. 216-217):  (i) the ‘Grace’, (ii) a penitential versicle and response, (iii) the Collect for Purity, (iv) an optional short reading from the Scripture and (v) the general confession followed by absolution.  The rite continues with an act of praise, if desired, and the collect of the day.

 

III)  Form follows function.

         

         Before we adopt, adapt or create liturgical texts and actions, however, we need to ask a simple preliminary question, ‘What is the liturgical function of such liturgical texts and actions?’

 

i)     Is the acknowledgement intended as a formal announcement that precedes the liturgical gathering of the community?

ii)    Is the acknowledgement intended to be a rite analogous to ‘A Penitential Rite’ and form the core of the gathering rite itself?

iii)  Is the acknowledgement to be ‘an act of praise’ integrated into the gathering rite as described in the BAS?

iv)  Should the acknowledgement include a confession of wrong as a fixed or optional element followed by an absolution or assurance of pardon?  Is it possible, in the current climate, for such an absolution or assurance of pardon to be given? 

v)    If the answer to the question posed above in (iv) is ‘yes’, should this penitential element be specific or general?

vi)  Do we need guidelines for how an acknowledgement is conducted when Aboriginal elders or representatives are formally present?

 

IV)  Draft Texts

 

1.  When the Territorial Acknowledgement is made prior to the beginning of the liturgy, the following form may be used.

 

Presider or other assisting Minister

We recognize and respect that [Parish name] is on the unceded and unsurrendered land of [name(s) of Aboriginal nation(s)].  We acknowledge that colonialism has made invisible their histories and connections to the land.  As a Parish, we are learning and committed to building relationships with the people(s) on whose lands we worship and serve. [2]

 

2.  When the Territorial Acknowledgement is used as an act of greeting and thanksgiving  within the Gathering of the Community, the following form may be used.

 

Presider

In this time and place, we acknowledge that we gather on the unceded ancestral lands of [name(s) of Aboriginal nation(s)]:  From many places and peoples we come to this house of prayer.

 

The Territorial Acknowledgement continues.  The versicles and responses may be led by the Presider and/or other assisting Minister(s).

 

In this time and place, we meet in the presence of the living God:  The Creator who is the source of all that is, seen and unseen.

 

In this time and place, the risen Christ stands in our midst:  Our Companion who walks with us and with all peoples on the path of reconciliation.

 

In this time and place, God’s Holy Spirit breathes in and through us:  The Divine Wisdom who transforms us and all life.

 

In this time and place, together, people of God from every language, culture and nation:  We are being made new by the holy and life-giving Trinity, one God.

 

The liturgy may continue with an act of praise such as the Gloria in excelsis, Kyrie eleison, Trisagion, a canticle or other hymn.  Then the Collect of the Day is said or sung. [3]

 

3.  When the Territorial Acknowledgement is used as an act of confession and repentance within the Gathering of the Community, the following form may be used.

 

Presider

Blessed be the Holy One, who forgives all our sins and whose mercy endures for ever.  Amen.

 

Creator of all, we acknowledge that we gather on the unceded ancestral lands of [name(s) of Aboriginal nation(s)]:  Lead us on pathways of reconciliation and peace.

 

The following versicles and responses may be led by the Presider and/or other assisting Minister(s).  The responses may be said or sung.

 

We have wilfully misused your gifts of creation:

Holy God, holy and mighty, holy immortal one, have mercy upon us.

or

Lord, have mercy upon us.  Christ, have mercy upon us.  Lord, have mercy upon us.

or

Kyrie eleison.  Christe eleison.  Kyrie eleison.

 

We have seen the ill-treatment of others and have not gone to their aid:

Holy God, holy and mighty, holy immortal one, have mercy upon us.

or

Lord, have mercy upon us.  Christ, have mercy upon us.  Lord, have mercy upon us.

or

Kyrie eleison.  Christe eleison.  Kyrie eleison.

 

We have condoned evil and dishonesty and failed to strive for justice:

Holy God, holy and mighty, holy immortal one, have mercy upon us.

or

Lord, have mercy upon us.  Christ, have mercy upon us.  Lord, have mercy upon us.

or

Kyrie eleison.  Christe eleison.  Kyrie eleison.

 

We have heard the good news of Christ, but have failed to share it with others:

Holy God, holy and mighty, holy immortal one, have mercy upon us.

or

Lord, have mercy upon us.  Christ, have mercy upon us.  Lord, have mercy upon us.

or

Kyrie eleison.  Christe eleison.  Kyrie eleison.

 

We have not loved you with all our heart, nor our neighbours as ourselves:

Holy God, holy and mighty, holy immortal one, have mercy upon us.

or

Lord, have mercy upon us.  Christ, have mercy upon us.  Lord, have mercy upon us.

or

Kyrie eleison.  Christe eleison.  Kyrie eleison.

 

Presider

May the God of love and power forgive you/us and free you/us from your/our sins, heal and strengthen you/us by the Holy Spirit, and raise you/us to new life in Christ our Saviour and Friend.  Amen.

 

The liturgy continues with the Collect of the Day. [4]

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[1] The Book of Alternative Services 1985, 175.

 

[2]  Adapted from https://www.newwestcity.ca/indigenous_reconciliation.

 

[3] Adapted from ‘Gathering Sentences for Ordinary Time’ in use at Christ Church Cathedral Vancouver.

 

[4] Adapted from The Book of Alternative Services (1985), 216-217 and Common Worship (2000), 127, 135.

 

Sometimes Meddling Is Necessary: Reflections for the 4th Sunday of Easter

 

RCL Easter 4A [i]

26 April 2026

 

Saint Helen’s Anglican Church

Vancouver BC

 

When preaching becomes meddling

            Once upon a time, back in the late 1960’s, a newly ordained priest was sent to a small parish in the midst of tobacco-growing country in southern Ontario.  The late 1960’s, as some of us here today know all too well, were years of social, cultural and political upheaval.  The Anglican Church was not immune, and today we might well consider some of the issues alive in those years as ‘majoring in minors’ as the Bishop who ordained me was fond of saying.

            On his first Sunday, the young priest preached on the role of women in the Church.  He mentioned that the first person to whom the risen Christ appeared was a woman, and it was this woman who bore witness to the disheartened apostles that Christ had indeed been raised from the dead.  Maybe, the young priest said, we should involve women in more roles.  After the service the wardens came up to him and congratulated him on a fine and meaningful sermon.

            Encouraged by this feedback, on the next Sunday the young priest preached about welcoming divorced and remarried Christians into the congregation.  These were the days when the remarriage of divorced Christians was still a ‘hot’ topic, but the young priest knew that there were a number of divorced and remarried people in town who had once been members of the congregation.  Once again, after the service the wardens came up to him and congratulated him on an even finer and more meaningful sermon.

            Emboldened by the successes of his first two Sundays, the young priest decided on his third Sunday to tackle another touchy subject:  how God wanted us to live healthy lives and the dangers of harmful behaviours such as smoking and drinking.  Once again, after the service the wardens approached their priest during coffee hour.  They informed him that they be calling the bishop in the morning to complain about their new priest.  When he reminded them that they had been pleased with his preaching, they said, ‘Well, on the first two Sundays you were preaching, but today you started meddling in our affairs!’

 

Being faithful to the Gospel occasionally requires meddling.

            Desmond Tutu is reported to have said, ‘When people say that politics and religion don’t mix, I wonder which Bible they’re reading.’  I like to remind folks of the difference between being political and being partisan.  Being political means being committed to the common good and flourishing of the whole creation by doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly with God.  Being partisan means being committed to a particular agenda and means of achieving that common good.  Being political risks being accused of meddling in affairs ‘outside of our lane’.  Being partisan risks becoming so blinkered as to be unable to work with those who do not share our particular partisan views.

            So, today I confess that I am probably steering into the ‘meddling lane’ of preaching.  I cannot help but do so given the recent comments made by elected and appointed officials holding power in our neighbour to the south.  I cannot help but do so given the continuation of military interventions that flout international law and threaten the common good of millions if not billions of human beings.  I cannot help but do so because on this ‘Good Shepherd Sunday’, the Scriptures compel me to speak what I believe to be God’s truth.

 

Who are the true shepherds and who are the thieves.

            When political leaders misuse the Scripture and portray themselves as saviours, then all Christians, whether lay or ordained, must speak as prophetically as the prophet Ezekiel.

 

Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord:  As I live, says the Lord God, because my sheep have become a prey and my sheep have become food for all the wild animals, since there was no shepherd, and because my shepherds have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves and have not fed my sheep, therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord:  Thus says the Lord God:  I am against the shepherds, and I will hold them accountable for my sheep and put a stop to their feeding the sheep; no longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, so that they may not be food for them. [ii]

 

When officials speak carelessly and boastfully about destroying a civilization and treating the use of military force as if it were a video game being played out in real time and in real space, then all Christians, whether lay or ordained, must call these people out for whom they really are rather than who they think that they are.

 

So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. [iii]

 

Speaking these words to the powerful is not partisanship; it is claiming the rightful place of religious faith in the conversation about how we act.  It is living out our prayer that God will “(keep) us firm in the hope you have set before us, so that we and all your children shall be free, and the whole earth live to praise your name”. [iv]

 

Persevering in resisting evil

            For almost forty years I have been involved in our church’s on-going work of liturgical revision and renewal.  One of more contentious conversations has been about the three-fold renunciation of Satan, evil and sinful desires that occurs at the beginning of the baptismal liturgy. [v]  In particular, people have expressed honest and differing views on what we understand these renunciations to mean.  Without dragging you into the debate, I will only share what I believe.

            I believe that there is evil at work in our world – not just now but throughout human history.  This evil is not random nor the result of ignorance.  

 

·      Evil consciously pursues of self-interest at the expense of the well-being of everyone and everything else.

·      Evil has agents who believe that they have power while in reality they are enslaved by the evil they are serving.

·      Evil has only one purpose:  the corruption and destruction of God’s beloved creation.  [vi]

 

But evil only thrives until people of faith remember another of Desmond Tutu’s sayings:  “Goodness is stronger than evil; love is stronger than hate; light is stronger than darkness; life is stronger than death.” [vii]  If the resurrection of Jesus means anything in a world such as ours, it means this:  God, working in us through the Holy Spirit, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. [viii]  

So, my friends, go ahead and meddle.  Be political but cautious in partisanship.  And above all be patient and remain hopeful.  As the writer of Psalm 30 says, “Sing praises to the Lord, O you his faithful ones, and give thanks to his holy name.  For his anger is but for a moment; his favour is for a lifetime.  Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.” [ix]  And I do believe that I can see the dawn.

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[i] Ezekiel 34.7-15; Psalm 100; Acts 2.42-47; John 10.1-10 (alternative Hebrew Scripture reading and Psalm).

 

[ii] Ezekiel 34.7-10 (NRSVue).

 

[iii] John 10.7-10 (NRSVue).

 

[iv] The Book of Alternative Services (1985), 215.

 

[v] The Book of Alternative Services (1985), 154.

 

[vi] Paraphrased from Mac Loftin, “Political Demons” in The Christian Century on 5 February 2025 and accessed at https://www.christiancentury.org/features/political-demons on 25 April 2026.

 

[vii] “Goodness Is Stronger than Evil” in Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006), Hymn #721.

 

[viii] See Ephesians 4.20-21.

 

[ix] Psalm 30.4-5 (NRSVue).

 

Discerning the Word within the Words: Reflections for the 3rd Sunday of Easter

RCL Easter 3A [i]

19 April 2026

 

Saint Helen’s Anglican Parish

Vancouver BC

 

            In January of 2012, I had the privilege of travelling with a group of Jewish and Christian clergy from the United States and Canada to Israel.  In hindsight the trip was far too short, and we did not have as many meaningful encounters with Palestinians as we might have wished.  But the trip was a rich encounter between congregational leaders who shared a common responsibility to interpret the Hebrew Scriptures that are central to both our traditions.  

 

One of my lasting memories is that of visiting a yeshiva, a school dedicated to training religious leaders.  The students sat in pairs with a Tanakh, the Hebrew texts that were the Bible for Jesus and his followers, and commentaries.  Unlike my theological college classrooms, students were actively talking with one another, sometimes loudly and energetically, about a text that they were studying.  The head teacher told us that the school was guided by the belief that such conversations, even debates, were valuable in mining all the meanings that were embodied in each text.

 

It was a wonderful reminder that what the Scriptures say may not always be what the Scriptures mean.  I remember when I was growing up in Colorado Springs, a centre of conservative Christian evangelical organizations, having a classmate who always called his parents by their first names.  This was something that was truly radical for me, and, when I asked him to explain, he quoted Matthew 23.9:  “And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father, the one in heaven.”  When I tried this on my parents, I quickly learned from my parents’ reaction that there were various ways of understanding the meaning of that text!

 

In today’s reading from the Gospel according to Luke, the two disciples on the road to Emmaus have their own experience of learning that what the Scriptures say may not always be what the Scriptures mean.  Just like the students in the yeshiva, the two disciples are talking with one another, trying to make sense of the events of the previous week and of that Sunday in particular.  They are so caught up in their conversation that they are unable to recognize Jesus when he sidles up to them on the road.  After trying to explain themselves, Jesus breaks open the Scriptures to them in words that I believe Jesus speaks to every generation:

 

Then Jesus said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!  Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?”  Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures. [ii]

 

My friends, one of the reasons that we gather Sunday after Sunday is break open the Scriptures through our prayers, our singing, our reflections.  We are seeking to find the Word, with a capital ‘W’, within the words that fill our worship.  And how do we find the Word?  We find the Word by asking not whether something is biblical but whether it is Christ-like.  Let me give you an example.

 

One of the major themes in the Gospel according to Matthew is reconciliation within the Christian community.  At one point in the Gospel, Jesus gives his followers this teaching:

 

“If your brother or sister sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.  If you are listened to, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses.  If that person refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church, and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a gentile and a tax collector.” [iii]

 

There are Christian communities where this text is used to justify the practice of ‘shunning’, of exiling a ‘sinner’ from the community and ceasing to have any relationship with that person.  I cannot deny that it’s biblical.

 

            But, if I ask the question, is it Christ-like, I find myself drawn to a different conclusion.  When I look at how Jesus relates to tax collectors and sinners, to gentiles and women, I find that he has this tendency to sit with them and share a meal.  In fact, the most frequent complaint made about Jesus is precisely his willingness to be in relationship with those whom the ‘religious’ folk will have nothing to do.  So, the Word tells me that those with whom I have the greatest conflict, with whom I am in the greatest need of reconciliation, are not to be shunned but embraced.  They are God’s beloved in whom the good news needs to be re-awakened, renewed, revealed.

 

            So, my friends, welcome to the challenge of finding the Word among the words.  Welcome to a community where the Spirit is constantly inviting us, enticing us, to go beneath the surface so that “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.” [iv]  That’s what happened to our friends on the road to Emmaus; they left with the words and then were embraced by the Word.  May it be so for us today and in the days to come.

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[i] RCL Propers with alternative readings from the Hebrew Scriptures:  Isaiah 51.1-6; Psalm 34.1-10; Acts 2.14a, 36-41; Luke 24.13-35.

 

[ii] Luke 24.25-27 (NRSVue).

 

[iii] Matthew 18.15-17 (NRSVue).

 

[iv] Ephesians 3.18-19 (NRSVue).