It is my privilege to offer you some thoughts on the Feast of the Presentation and its implication for those of us who are still waiting like Simeon and Anna for the fulfillment of God's promises.
Click HERE to watch my video.
Tuesday, January 27, 2026
Saturday, January 24, 2026
Seeing with New Eyes: Reflections on the Conversation of Paul
Conversion of Paul [i]
25 January 2026
Parish of Saint Helen’s West Point Grey
Vancouver BC
Click HERE to listen to the Sermon as preached at the 10.00 Eucharist.
In November of 1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States in an election that was fought, in part, over the question of slavery. Lincoln was seen as a moderate who thought that slavery would eventually cease to exist if its expansion into the new western territories of the United States were prohibited. Within a month of his inauguration the American Civil War began when South Carolina militia fired upon Fort Sumpter in Charleston harbour.
By 1862 the Civil War was not going well for the Federal forces, and many voices were raised in demands of an end to the war. But Lincoln’s perspective on the question of slavery had changed. He now favoured the emancipation of all enslaved people and in September of 1862 set forward a proposed proclamation. In his address to the U.S. Congress in December of 1862, Lincoln wrote these words in defence of his plan: “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.” On 1 January 1863 the emancipation proclamation was made.
What Lincoln did was revolutionary. It marked his own conversion to a more radical position than the one he had held when campaigning. But it was also evolutionary. With the emancipation proclamation Lincoln articulated the natural consequences of his belief that slavery was harmful both to the one who was enslaved and to the one who enslaves. Lincoln’s experiences of two years of bloody war gave him a new perspective on both the causes and the remedies necessary to bring the conflict to an end.
What Lincoln had experience was what the Scriptures call metanoia. Metanoia means “a profound transformation in one’s outlook, often involving repentance, conversion or a radical reorientation of life, moving from a previous understanding or state to a new one, sometimes prompted by crisis or a significant (insight).” [ii] On the one hand, metanoia can be revolutionary. But it can also be evolutionary, building upon one’s experience prior to the moment of enlightenment. I think of metanoia as part of the process of becoming more fully the person God created me to be.
Remember last week’s question from Jesus – “Who do you say that I am?” That is the question that Paul faced almost two thousand years ago. My late colleague, Lloyd Gaston, Professor of New Testament at Vancouver School of Theology, immersed himself deeply in the study of Paul. Because of that study, Lloyd was not a fan of the official name for today’s holy day, the Conversion of Paul. Lloyd argued that Paul was not converted; he did not cease to be a Jew. Paul experienced an epiphany which transformed how he answered Jesus’s question. Jesus and those who proclaimed him Messiah were no longer heretics; they were faithful interpreters of the tradition of the Law and the Prophets so central to Paul’s heritage.
Anglicans base our theology in the Scriptures as interpreted by reason and tradition. We do this because we understand that what the Scriptures say is not necessarily what the Scriptures mean. So, we interpret the Scriptures using the resources of human experience. Sometimes we realize that we have tended to listen to the experience of only a select group of people and that we need to listen to more voices. And at other times, we have maintained traditions without questioning their origins and whether there are cultural forces that have limited our understanding of why we have or have not done things in a certain way for generations.
This dynamic and living way of engaging God’s Word as voiced in the words of the Scriptures has led us to make decisions that seem revolutionary to some, evolutionary to others. But whether revolutionary or evolutionary, the result is a change in our perspective on what God is doing for us, in us and through us to bring about the promised reign of justice and peace.
In my almost seventy-three years of life as an Anglican Christian, I have witnessed our tradition change its discipline on marriage to recognize that some marriages die and that those who have experienced such a death can find new life in a new relationship. I have witnessed our tradition realize that the very first apostle was Mary Magdalene and that women played a significant part in the spread of the good news of God in Jesus Christ. This realization has brought me to where I am, a priest married to a priest who was married once before. Some probably think this a revolution and not necessarily a good one, but others see this as a natural evolution from our understanding of the gospel liberty brought to us through Jesus of Nazareth.
This past week in Davos our Prime Minister voiced what many leaders and peoples throughout the world have quietly thought in their hearts. The dogmas on which we built our quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The truth is that the storms have been on the horizons for some time, but now we dare to step into an unknown future by disenthralling ourselves from any illusions about the present. I loved the Prime Minister’s phrase: “The old order is not coming back. We should not mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy.”
Friends, I know that this congregation has experienced some difficult times in the recent past. We are right to acknowledge our grief and our uncertainty. We are right to ponder what the future shape of our mission and ministries in this place will be. But we are here because God has called us here. We are here because God has a vision for who we can become and what we can achieve. We are here because West Point Grey needs us to be here.
What is happening right now is an invitation to metanoia. We could, as the Prime Minister said, make the mistake of turning to nostalgia as a strategy. Or we can look at our life as a congregation, at God’s mission in this time and place, and our ministries that embody that mission with new eyes. With this new perspective we’re likely to catch a glimpse of who we’re meant to be and to become, and I dare say we’ll like what we see.
Tuesday, January 20, 2026
A View from the Vicar: Reflections on the Conversion of Paul
I invite you to listen to my reflections on the Conversion of Paul
by clicking HERE to watch my video.
Thank you and blessings,
Richard +
Saturday, January 17, 2026
Who Do You Say That I Am? Reflections on the Confession of Peter
Confession of Peter [i]
18 January 2026
Parish of Saint Helen’s West Point Grey
Vancouver BC
Click HERE to listen to the Sermon.
As a preschooler our daughter Anna attended Berwick Preschool on the campus of the University of British Columbia. I remember some sort of parent gathering and the staff had prepared lovely name tags for all the parents – but not the kind of name tag you might expect. On each name tag the staff had written the child’s name and the adult’s relationship to that child. Mine read ‘Anna’s Dad’. Some parents were a bit bemused, but I loved it and for many years it adorned my office door at Vancouver School of Theology. I have a suspicion that it’s still tucked away in one of my archive boxes.
“Who do you say that I am?” Well, I’m Anna’s dad as well as David and Owen’s dad. I’m Paula’s husband and Tegan and Brayden’s uncle. Our Anglican ordination rite will tell you that I am a pastor, priest and teacher. I could go on and on, as could each one of us. The answer to the question, “Who do you say that I am?”, depends a great deal upon the relationship between the person asking the question and the person answering it.
Peter and his companions within the inner circle of Jesus have been travelling around with Jesus for some time. They’ve seen him teach; they’ve seen him heal. They’ve seen him engage in conversations and relations with people outside the boundaries of socially acceptable Jewish behaviour of the times. So, when Jesus asks them this fateful question, “Who do you say that I am?”, it’s no wonder that there are different answers – “John the Baptist back from the dead!” “Moses the lawgiver!” “One of the prophets!” “The Messiah, the son of the living God!”
In all these answers the evangelist Matthew is giving us a glimpse into the religious debates that surrounded Jesus’ mission, ministry and identity. These debates fuelled controversies within the earliest Christian communities as well as their opponents and curious outsiders. To this very day there are still controversies about who Jesus is.
But all these controversies and debates, whether in the past, the present and the future, must wrestle with something I shared with in my sermon last week. As my late professor of Christian theology said on the very first day of my very first class in seminary, “When you meet Jesus of Nazareth, you meet God.” I dare say that everything that flows from this statement which I believe to be true and central to our identity depends upon how we understand our relationship with this Jewish rabbi from first-century Palestine who was simultaneously radical and traditional.
From the very beginning there have been Christian teachers who have emphasized the divinity of Christ. Even though Christ comes among us in human form, it is his difference from us that enables him to reconcile us to the living God. In the Gospel according to John, for example, Jesus is the incarnation of the Word, a Greek philosophical term that describes the fundamental pattern of the universe. Jesus knows what his opponents are thinking and carries on his mission with a degree of assuredness. This so-called ‘high’ understanding of Jesus finds its expression in the Nicene Creed with its lengthy philosophical treatment of Jesus in its second paragraph.
But also from the very beginning, there have been Christian teachers who have emphasized the humanity of Jesus. He suffers; he hungers; he sits down with people to eat with them and to talk with them. In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus can even express his doubts and fears at the path that lies before him. This so-called ‘low’ understanding of Jesus influences, in my opinion, the Apostles’ Creed which tells the story of Jesus in its second paragraph.
But the path of Christian discipleship is more than the recitation the Creeds or any other theological explanation of the mission, ministry and identity of Jesus of Nazareth. Christian discipleship is a life-long journey punctuated by moments where the question, “Who do you say that I am?” is turned around and compels each one of us to ask, “Who do I say you are?”
If I say that Jesus is my Lord and Saviour, what does the ‘lordship’ of Jesus mean in my life? Sometimes when I hear the phrase, ‘Jesus is Lord’, I hear the strains of the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ from Handel’s Messiah – majestic sounds that herald a cosmic monarch descending from the heavens to establish a divine and powerful kingdom. I admit that there are times when I would like that very much, but then I see how that image has been usurped by Christian nationalists. It’s in those moments that I remember Jesus our Lord washed the feet of his disciples and, on more than one occasion, spoke of servanthood as the truest expression of discipleship.
If I say that Jesus is my Lord and Saviour, what then does Jesus save me from? Or, as one of my teachers was fond of saying, what does Jesus save us for? Jesus saves us from the sin of the world in order that we can become more fully Christ-like. What is the sin of the world? It’s our desire to be God and sovereign rather than to be who we are, creatures who participate in a web of inter-connected relationships with the human and non-human dimensions of creation. What does it mean to more fully Christ-like? It is to choose to participate in God’s on-going work of reconciliation and renewal, to serve God’s mission rather than our self-interests, to restore right relationships rather than create new rifts in the fabric of human communities.
On Wednesday evening we welcomed somewhere between 75 to 100 of our neighbours who came to hear what may or may not be the future of West Point Grey, Kitsilano and Dunbar. Some were members of our congregation; many were not. But we welcome them because we believe that Jesus is present whenever two or three are gathered in his name. And on this occasion his name is ‘lover of neighbours’.
Every day of the week there are childcare programs that meet in this building. True, they pay rent. We also have scouting groups that meet here. Some were members of our congregation; many were not. But we welcome them because we believe that Jesus is present whenever two or three are gathered in his name. And in those places his name is ‘embracer of the little ones’.
Every week there are people who gather for healing. Some were members of our congregation; many were not. But we welcome them because we believe that Jesus is present whenever two or three are gathered in his name. And in those places his name is ‘healer of our souls and bodies”.
Now when Jesus comes into the neighbourhood of West Point Grey, he asks us, “Who do you say that I am?” Some say, ‘welcomer of neighbours’. Some say, ‘embracer of the little ones’. And others say, ‘healer of our souls and bodies’. And then he asks us again, ‘But who else do you say I am?’
Tuesday, January 13, 2026
A View from the Vicar: Thoughts on Matthew 16.13-19
After a couple years of silence, I've decided to return to preparing a weekly video series newly entitled, "A View from the Vicar".
Here is my first instalment: Reflections on Matthew 16.13-19.
I hope that you enjoy these reflections.
Richard +
Saturday, January 10, 2026
Being a Covenant to the Peoples: Reflections on the Baptism of Christ
Being a Covenant to the Peoples
Reflections on the Baptism of Christ
RCL Baptism of Christ A[i]
11 January 2026
Saint Helen’s Anglican Church
Vancouver BC
Click HERE to watch the video recording of the Sermon.
Focus Text
I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness; I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, so that I, the Lord, may open the eyes that are blind, so that I, the Lord, may bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.[ii]
Some years ago I was one of three theme speakers for the annual gathering of the BC and Yukon Anglican Youth Movement along with the late Bishop Jim Cruickshank and the Very Rev’d Beth Bretzlaff, now Dean of Ottawa, but then a young priest in the Diocese of Kootenay. I had chosen the baptismal covenant from The Book of Alternative Services as the structure for my interactive session with the young people from across BC and Yukon.
As I’ve done many times with the covenant, I recited a section and then asked the young people what they thought that it meant for them in their lives, for example, “What does it mean to call God ‘Father’?” or “What does it mean to call Jesus ‘Lord’?” Things were going well, I thought, until I reach the commitment we make to resist evil and repent and return to the Lord. I asked the young people, “Where do you experience evil in your lives?”
At this point one of the adult group leaders said, “Father Leggett, I think that this is a bit too heavy for young people.” Before I could respond, more than one young person said, “No, we want to talk about this. There are bad things in our lives, and we want to know how we resist that evil.” I am happy to say that the young people won the debate, and we continued with a really good discussion about the evil that young people experience in their lives.
Last week in my sermon for Epiphany, I spoke to you about the difference between the question, ‘Why do bad things happen to good people?’ and ‘What do good people do when bad things happen?’ It’s appropriate on a day when the Christian community throughout the world remembers the baptism of Christ and its meaning for all those who have gone through the waters of baptism and now bear the name of Christ and have chosen to be one of his disciples.
We heard in our first reading these words: “I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness; I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, so that I, the Lord, may openthe eyes that are blind, so that I, the Lord, may bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.“[iii] These words were spoken to a people who were still in exile but hoping to return to their homeland, a people who were wondering why the ‘bad thing’ of the exile had happened to them. To them the prophet responded by turning the question around and directing them to be a ‘good people’, a covenant people, in whose life God would do ‘infinitely more than (they) could ask or imagine’.
In many and various ways, we are a people living in a time of exile, what some might even want to call ‘bad’ times. When we look around the world, we are besieged by images of war, civil unrest, natural disasters and human needs that tax our compassion. As a nation, we are aware that our old assumptions about our relationships with other nations, especially with our neighbours to the south, no longer serve us well. We know that many of our neighbours here in the Lower Mainland face what is now termed the ‘affordability crisis’. And, adding to our burden, are the upheavals in the life of this congregation over the past decade and over the past two weeks.
But we are a ‘covenant to the nations’; we are a community whom God has called to be witnesses to the blind gaining their sight and to those who are held in any kind of bondage are being set free. Let me share with six things that good people do when bad things have happened and are happening.
When bad things happen, good people gather for strength, comfort and renewal. It is tempting to shut the door, climb into bed and pull the comforter over our heads. We might even remove all social media from our digital devices and cancel our subscriptions to news services. But that won’t serve us well. We continue to gather here, Sunday after Sunday, to hear the Word of God proclaimed, to offer our prayers for the world and ourselves, to be strengthened by the bread broken and the wine poured, and to go forth to do what needs to be done.
When bad things happen, good people resist the evils that distort and deny the purposes of God. We need to be willing to speak openly about all that works against the good news of God in Christ, to acknowledge our own failures and shortcomings, and to re-commit ourselves to lives of reconciliation. We do not forget the past, but rather than be held hostage to that past, we choose to re-vision the future.
When bad things happen, good people tell the story of how, even in such times, God is at work among us. Friends, the good news of God in Jesus Christ is simply the story of human lives that have been transformed by our encounter with God’s love incarnate. The good news speaks whenever you and I share what God has done and is doing to help grow into greater likeness with Christ.
When bad things happen, good people serve their communities, loving their neighbours as themselves. It’s tempting to put a hold on everything until we get our own house in order, but I don’t think that actually works. Do we need to get our house in order? Certainly. But in the meantime, as we doing what we need to do within our walls, we still have obligations to take care of our neighbours and our neighbourhoods.
When bad things happen, good people strive for justice and peace, so that the dignity of every person is respected and treasured. It is easy in bad times to create categories of ‘us versus them’ or ‘insiders and outsiders’ or ‘friends and foes’. But that is not God’s way; we choose a different path. Every human being has been made in the image of God, that is, the power to be life-giving rather than life-denying. Our vocation as a community is to empower each other to become more life-giving in all of our relationships.
When bad things happen, good people care for ‘this fragile earth, our island home’. I remember hearing someone being interviewed and asked, ‘What if you knew you were going to die in an hour, what would you do?’ ‘Plant a tree,’ was the answer. Whether actual or metaphorical, let’s plant trees that will grow to give shade and life. This and so much more is what good people do when bad things happen.
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. Amen.
Thursday, January 1, 2026
More Than We Can Ask or Imagine: Reflections on the Epiphany
More Than We Can Ask or Imagine
Reflections on the Epiphany
RCL Epiphany [i]
4 January 2026
Saint Helen’s Anglican Church
Vancouver BC
In April of 2023 my family spent a week in the old city of Cartagena in Colombia attending a family wedding. Cartagena is one of the oldest European-settler cities in the Americas with most of the buildings in the walled old city dating back to the early 1700’s if not earlier. The streets are narrow and houses are built very close together, sometimes even sharing walls. Often the only distinguishing feature between one home and another is a painted door with a distinctive brass door knocker. What lies behind the door remains unknown, a mystery revealed only to those who enter.
For example, the door into the house where we stayed brought us into a home with its own art gallery, small swimming pool in the open-air atrium and a dining room and kitchen sheltered by the floor above but open to the cooling air flow from the atrium. It was beautiful; it is beautiful, but you would never guess what lay inside from what is visible from the street.
In Cartagena you can catch a glimpse of what the urban world of the writer of the Letter to the Ephesians experienced. The ancient cities of the Mediterranean world also had narrow streets with houses built close together or adjoining. Only their doors opened out onto the streets; few if any had windows on the street-side of the house. To know what lay inside, one needed to be invited in and then the plan, the design, the quality of the house would become apparent. The English word ‘mystery’ comes from mystērion, a word in ancient Greek which has as one of its meanings ‘the concealed interior plan of a house’. [ii] One explores a mystērion; one delves into it, peeling away its layers like an onion only to realize that the onion is getting bigger not smaller. We discover that faith is always seeking understanding and that questioning is a sign of maturity.
“In former generations [the mystery of Christ] was not made known to humankind,’ writes the author of the Letter to the Ephesians, “as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit: that is, the gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” [iii] For the first followers of Jesus, all Jews, it came as a great surprise that non-Jews, peoples whom many Jews considered to be strangers at best, enemies as worst, began to embrace the good news of God in Jesus. This is not what the Jewish believers expected to see when they entered through the door into the household of faith in Jesus. It was as unexpected as seeing a Muslim immigrant wrestling a weapon from the hands of a terrorist targeting Jews on Bondi Beach. It does not fit the ‘narrative’, the story, we have come to believe is being lived out in our world.
But the author of the Letter goes one step further. Not only is the mystery of God in Christ made known in the growth of Gentile believers, but the church, the followers of Jesus, is the agent through whom this mystery is spread throughout the world in order “ . . . to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things, so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” [iv] My friends, to many people in the world today, the good news of God in Christ is like one of the houses on the narrow streets of Cartagena. People see the various doors, some of those doors painted in lively colours with fancy door knockers, but they do not know what is behind the beautiful colours and fanciful designs. The only way that they will know is if one of us, the disciples of Jesus, open the door and invite them in to explore “the wisdom of God in its rich variety”.
Among all that I believe about what it means to follow Jesus, I share this with you: People come into the household of faith when they are invited. I know that many Anglicans freeze when they hear the word ‘evangelism’. It conjures up images of slick TV preachers who would fit right at home as the cast of programs such as ‘The Price Is Right’ or something on one of the shopping channels. To be sure, many of our neighbours and friends are equally unlikely to respond to these hucksters. But our reticence to invite people to step across the threshold and into our midst is an opportunity that is missed more frequently than I dare to say.
If they were to cross our threshold, they may join us in our life-long exploration of the mystery of God made known in Jesus of Nazareth. For example, in a world where many people ask, ‘Why do bad things happen to good people?’, we might share that this is not the most helpful question. The more helpful question is ‘What do good people do when bad things happen?’ The first question can lead to despondency and even hopelessness; the second leads us into self-examination and a commitment to renewed vision of God’s future for us and for our communities.
If they were to cross our threshold, they could join us in acknowledging that, as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, “For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love.” [v] We live in what is sometimes called ‘the already but not yet’ of God’s reign of peace and justice. In Jesus we have seen the embodiment of that reign. Through the Spirit we are empowered in this in-between time the power to do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. [vi]
One of my favourite prayers comes from Evangelical Lutheran Worship, the worship book of our sisters and brothers in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada. For me it is a prayer for all seasons, but it feels right for such a time as this in the life of this congregation, of our church and of our world. It is a prayer that is prayer rooted in the mystērion of Christian discipleship. It is a prayer that beckons us to open the door to discover what God is doing for us, with us and in us to reveal the glory of God in human lives.
Let us pray.
O God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
[i] Isaiah 60.1-6; Psalm 72.1-7, 10-14 (BAS); Ephesians 3.1-12; Matthew 2.1-12.
[ii] I am grateful to my colleague, the Rev’d Rick Fabian, sometime Rector of Saint Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco, for this observation made to me many years ago.
[iii] Ephesians 3.5-6 (NRSVue).
[iv] Ephesians 3.9-10 (NRSVue).
[v] 1 Corinthians 13.12-13 (NRSVue).
[vi] Ephesians 3.20 as paraphrased in The Book of Alternative Services 1985, 214.
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