See Who We Are. Become What We See.

See Who You Are.  Become What You See.

The 4^th Sunday after Pentecost

28 June 2020

 

RCL Proper 13A

Genesis 22.1-14; Psalm 13; Romans 6.12-23; Matthew 10.40-42

 

Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral

New Westminster BC

 

How can we sing the Lord’s song upon an alien soil?

            The COVID-19 pandemic has stirred up a controversy among the ranks of those folk who plan, who lead and who ponder the experience of public worship.  This controversy swirls around a simple question:  ‘Should we celebrate the eucharist when so many of our people are unable to participate in person?’.

            It’s a fair question.  Even if our ritual traditions have wrapped the sharing of bread and wine in many layers, the eucharist is, after all, a meal.  If, when we are live-streaming the eucharist because we cannot celebrate it in a larger public gathering, only a small number of people are present and only the priest and a server or deacon receives, then are we keeping faith with Jesus who told all of us to eat this bread and drink this cup?

            I feel this tension most keenly when I point to the consecrated bread and wine on the holy table and then say to those who are present and those who are participating on-line, ‘The gifts of God for the people of God.’  I then consume some of the consecrated bread and all the consecrated wine and Carole consumes the bread that remains.  Somehow I feel that the words and the actions are disconnected.  But I’ll come back to this in a moment.

 

Receiving our marching orders

            Chapter 10 of the Gospel according to Matthew is devoted to Jesus’ instructions, exhortations and warnings to the twelve apostles.  Today we hear his final words before they push off in a new direction, as Jesus travels the highways and byways of Palestine, always working his way towards Jerusalem.  In these three short verses we hear not only their marching orders but ours as disciples of Jesus.

 

1)  We are to be prophets.

            Contrary to popular belief and usage, biblical prophets do not predict the future.  They are people led by God’s Spirit to speak God’s truth to a given people at a given time and place.  Prophets point to what God is doing in the events of their times and ours.  In many ways the prophet’s role is to take the blinders away from our eyes so that we can see more clearly how God is at work in our world whether on-stage or off.

            All disciples of Jesus are to be prophets.  We’re baptized into the same prophetic role as the first apostolic generation was empowered by their experience of Jesus’s life, teaching and resurrection.  We speak of God’s justice, the clear arc of God’s history working towards justice, in a world where injustice is not only widespread and systemic but serves the interests of the few at the expense of the many.

 

2)  We are to be righteous.

            Do not forget that there is a big difference between being self-righteous and being righteous.  Self-righteous folk are convinced that they are always right and that others need to be compelled to follow the same path as theirs.  Self-righteous folk rarely engage in conversations; they prefer monologues filled with moral advice and little self-examination.

            The righteous person tends to seek a conversation with others, especially those whom they may not understand or whose way of life is different from their own.  The righteous are interested in having right relationships:  with God, with others and with self.  The righteous seek to be faithful to their baptismal covenant by

·      resisting evil and, when they fall into sin, repenting and returning to the Lord; 

·      seeking and serving Christ in all persons, loving neighbours as oneself;

·      striving for justice and peace by respecting the dignity of every human person, and

·      safeguarding the integrity of God’s creation.

At the end of the day, the righteous are always just a little bit surprised to learn that others think of them as righteous.  They tend to point to others rather than to themselves.  They understand it’s a lifetime process not something achieved in a moment.

 

3)  We are to be grateful.

            Genuine gratitude is ultimately rooted in a humility that recognizes that all that we are and all that we have is a gift from God.  We are never self-sufficient.  We are always dependant upon the kindness of strangers.  A cup of cold water in the hand of a stranger when we are thirsty is a gift from the hand of God.

            

See who we are.  Become what we see.

            When the priest or bishop presiding at the eucharist says, ‘The gifts of God for the people of God,’ they are speaking words which have an ancient pedigree.  Augustine of Hippo, the fifth-century North African bishop and theologian, is said to have invited his congregation to come forward to receive communion with these words, ‘The gifts of God for the people of God.  See who you are.  Become what you see.’

            What God desires for us in that we become who we truly are, but this is a process not a one-time event.  To be made in the image of God is God’s gift to us, but to grow into the likeness of God is a life-long journey towards spiritual maturity.  Our pilgrimage towards such maturity is strewn with moments of achievement punctuated with obstacles and doubts.  This pandemic is just such a time where obstacles and doubts may cast shadows on our path.

            We all know the old saying that ‘seeing is believing’.  Whether we are physically or digitally present, when we see the gifts of God, we take a step towards becoming what we see.  We see what we love:  the gathered community, the beauty of this space where so many of our memories have been formed, the self-offering of God embodied in the bread and wine.  Seeing these gifts stirs up our belief, a word whose roots, I remind you, mean ‘to consider beloved’.

            Even as we wait to resume sharing the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation, we can see who we are --- the beloved of God being reminded that we are beloved by God.  Even as we wait to sing God’s praise with our own voices and to greet each other with the sign of peace, we can become what we see --- grateful and righteous prophets of a generous and just Creator of the universe.

            For we are the gifts of God for the whole human family.  See who we are.  Become what we see.

We Have Another World in View (14 June 2020)

We Have Another World in View

A Sermon for the 2^nd Sunday after Pentecost

 

RCL Proper 11A [1]

14 June 2020

 

Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral

New Westminster BC

 

We have another world in view.

            As a person who grew up during the charismatic revival in the Diocese of Colorado, I have an inner hymn book that occasionally pops a melody or lyrics into my head at unexpected times.  This week, as I was pondering what to say today, my inner hymn book kept re-playing a Ghanaian folk hymn sung as people are walking to worship.

 

We have another world in view, in view,

we have another world in view.

We have another world in view, in view,

we have another world in view.

Our Saviour has gone to prepare us a place,

we have another world in view.

Our Saviour has gone to prepare us a place,

we have another world in view.

 

            These simple words enshrine what I believe to be the reason God, through the Holy Spirit, has entrusted us to continue the ministry begun in the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth.  These simple words form the foundation to our response to the events that have unfolded before our eyes since the untimely and unlawful death of George Floyd.  These simple words form the essence of the message proclaimed by those who are committed to peaceful change and to the dismantling of the social and cultural structures that support racism in all its forms.

 

            For two thousand years we have held to the hope that the world that God has shown us is possible will come soon.  It was the hope of the first generations of Christians who, in the face of oppression, persecutions and martyrdom, called out in prayer, ‘Maranatha’, ‘Come, Lord.  Come soon.’  It was the hope of the Reformers who shaped the Christian tradition in which we worship today that they could create a truly Christian society.  It was the hope of the many social reformers who fought slavery, who sought justice for indigenous people, who worked for better living and social conditions for workers, that God’s reign of justice would come soon.

 

            It is in the light of this hope that I read today’s reading from the Gospel according to Matthew.

 

Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest.” [2]

 

As Jesus begins his ministry, he is proclaiming this hope, the hope that God’s promised reign was on the immediate horizon.  The poor and marginalized among whom Jesus lived and to whom he brought near God’s healing and God’s good news were no different from those who long for healing and justice in our towns and cities, no different from those of us gathered for worship in the Cathedral and in our homes.

 

We still have work to do.

            When Jesus says, ‘(the) harvest is plentiful,’ I hear him saying to his disciples and to us that there is still work for us to do.  If that isn’t clear to anyone, then all we need to do is to look at the world around us.  The unrest on the streets of the world’s cities is a symptom of a world that is still becoming what God would have it become.  The troubles of the present are a reminder that we, made in the image and likeness of God, have the freedom to choose to give life and to withhold it.  From the beginning we have shown great ingenuity in choosing badly and seeking self-interest rather than the common good.  Undoing the evils of our bad choices requires the conversion of our hearts, minds and wills.

 

            Converting our hearts, minds and wills is the work of the Spirit.  Why?  Because God, in God’s infinite wisdom, invites us to be co-workers in this great reclamation project.  Ever since Adam and Eve were given the responsibility to tend the Garden of Eden, God has chosen human beings as agents.

 

We need to invite others to join us in this work.

            But this is a massive project that has lasted for millennia and continues into the present day.  To do this work well requires committed communities of faith who resist evil, who seek and serve Christ in all persons, who respect the dignity of every human being and who strive to safeguard the integrity of creation.  We need such communities because being a co-worker with God is exhausting and the supportive love and concern of other disciples renews us for the work we face.

 

            It’s no secret that the last decades have seen our numbers decline in Canada and elsewhere in the world.  For many reasons Anglicans have been reluctant to do what other Christians have done:  We’ve stopped sharing our faith and inviting others to join us in the work that God has entrusted to us.  But this reluctance has to be overcome.  If we need any incentive to invite others to join us in God’s reclamation of creation, then let’s look only to a world in turmoil.  To use a term we hear frequently these days, God needs many more ‘allies’.

 

Ordinary people are God’s favourites.

            The interesting thing is that God has a preference for ordinary folks as allies.  This is good news for us since we live in an age of celebrity.  We find it hard to imagine sometimes that most of the main characters in the Scriptures are not the rich and the powerful.  They are fisherfolk like Peter, Andrew, James and John.  They are women such as Mary, Elizabeth and Mary Magdalene.  They are even people of questionable qualities such as Matthew the tax-collector and Judas Iscariot.

 

            Some years ago a congregational consultancy conducted a survey about ‘believability’.  They were wondering how congregations grew and who were the influential agents of growth.  They discovered that ordained leadership was influential in the pastoral, liturgical and educational dimensions of congregational life.  The most influential agents of parish growth were the laity because they are the most ‘believable’ when they share their faith with others.  A word spoken in a coffee shop or at dinner or in a private conversation often has more impact that the most carefully constructed and passionately delivered sermon.

 

We have another world in view.

            We do have another world in view.  The world we have in view is a world where every human being is respected and treated with dignity --- especially those whom the majority or the powerful may consider undeserving of respect and dignity.  The world we have in view is a world where ancient wrongs are made right and walls that divided one group from another are torn down.  The world we have in view is a world where every human being has a home and need not fear hunger or strife.

 

            How soon that world comes into being is only known to God.  What can be known is that we have a part to play in bringing that world closer.  The work before us is great.  The need for more hands, hearts and minds to join in the work just as great.  The good news is that the world is filled with the ordinary people that God trusts to do this extraordinary work.

 

            Paul writes, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.  For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.” [3]   We eagerly await the world we have in view.  Our Saviour has gone to prepare us a place.  But, in the Spirit, God has entrusted to us a fair bit of work in the meantime.  I actually find that good news in times such as these.

 

 

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[1] Genesis 18.1-15; Psalm 116.1, 10-17 (BAS); Romans 5.1-8; Matthew 9.35-10.8.

[2] Matthew 9.35-38 (New Revised Standard Version).

[3] Romans 8.18-19 (New Revised Standard Version).

 

Joining in the Dance: Reflection for Trinity Sunday (7 June 2020)

Joining in the Dance

Reflections for Trinity Sunday

RCL Trinity A

7 June 2020

Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral

New Westminster BC

         When my sister and I were growing up, we had few opportunities to spend time with our grandparents.  Our maternal grandparents lived in England and didn’t own a telephone.  Travel across the Atlantic was too expensive for them or for us.  So we had to do with letters and two lengthy and precious visits.  Our paternal grandparents lived in New York and we would drive to visit them every other summer.  Even as a child I knew that these visits were filled with tension, so they usually lasted only a week or so.

         In 1965, two years after we returned from a three-year tour of duty in Germany, my family joined Saint Michael the Archangel Episcopal Church in Colorado Springs.  We settled in and quickly found friends and a supportive community.  Among the members of the parish were Jon and Elma Nottingham, a retired couple who became our foster grandparents.  No birthday was forgotten, no major event left uncelebrated, no achievement left unnoticed.

         Shortly after I was ordained in 1981, my parents and I were invited to lunch at Grandma Elma and Grandpa Jon’s house.  At one point Grandma Elma asked, “Father Richard, do you want anything more?”  I said to her, “Grandma Elma, you’ve known me since I was twelve-years-old, you don’t have to call me ‘Father Richard’.”  “I know,” she said, “but do you want anything more, Father Richard.”  Never try telling your grandmother, foster or otherwise, how to address you.

         Grandma Elma was reminding me that our relationship had changed.  It had become more complicated because she and I were now relating in two dimensions, one personal, the other spiritual.  She was my foster grandmother and a lay member of the congregation.  I was her foster grandson and a priest.  Over the next few years she and I would navigate this new mystery where my public role and our personal relationship could not be easily put into separate compartments.

         When I go home today, I will enter the house and re-engage the web of relationships that define my life.  To my mother I will be her son.  To my wife I will be her husband and, because she is a priest of the Diocese, I am also an archdeacon.  To my younger son I will be his father.  Somehow I have to integrate all these relationships in a life-giving and life-enriching way, sometimes successfully, often not so successfully.  I’m sure that I’m not alone in this tricky endeavour.

         When Christians speak about how we understand God, we are trying in limited human language to speak about the mystery of relationships.  Each one of us knows that our lives are webs of relationships and that we play different roles in each one of them.  Relationships are what make us persons.  Human beings are not individual blocks of marble; we are more like diamonds with many facets, each one catching the light and casting a reflection unique to that facet. 

         And it is the relationship between the God whose love caused creation to come into being, the Christ who is God’s love embodied in time and space, and the Spirit who is the love that unites us into the communion of God’s life that we celebrate today.  What Christians have been saying for two thousand years is that when we meet Jesus of Nazareth, however we meet him, you are meeting God.  How will we know this?  The Spirit will lead us to this truth.  We are then brought into the complicated but invigorating dance we call the mystery of God.

         At the end of his second letter to the Christian community in Corinth Paul blesses them with words we’ve come to know well:  “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” [1]  In this one sentence I believe Paul gives us a way of discerning whether our relationships participate in the dance of the divine life God invites us to join.

         “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ”:  Charis, the Greek word translated here as ‘grace’, is better understood to mean ‘a windfall, an undeserved gift freely offered’.  when a relationship is freely offered to us, an invitation from one person to another to know and be known, with no other motive than mutual joy and growth, we are dancing with God.

         “The love of God”:  In Greek there are at least four distinct words to describe different kinds of love.  Here the word is agapé.  This kind of love is the offering of oneself for the good of another.  Agapé expects nothing in return.  Agapé seeks only the welfare of the one who is being loved.  When we are in a relationship where another person embraces us with a love that helps us become more full the person God intends us to become, a love that encourages us to be more human, created in God’s image and likeness, we are dancing with God.

  

         “The communion of the Holy Spirit”:  As Anglicans we become accustomed to hearing ‘fellowship’, but koinônia, ‘communion’, is a far better choice.  Communion is a unity that welcomes the diversity of people, of gifts, of experiences that can be found among human beings.  Communion rejoices in the infinite variety God has caused to come into being.  When we are in a relationship where are distinctiveness as a child of God is welcomed, respected and nurtured, we are dancing with God.

         Today we celebrate the mystery of God and of ourselves as creatures made in the image and likeness of God.  It is a mystery not to be solved but to explore with ever-deepening wonder at what God has wrought.  It is the mystery of a God who seeks to be known in and through the kosmos, in and through human relationships, in and through the wonder of each human being.

         So come and join the dance.  Let us hold each other in our hearts even as we look forward to the day when we can actually join hands again.  Let us dance wherever we may be, for the Lord of the dance is beckoning us to join the circle with the Lover, the Beloved and the Love, one God, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be.

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[1] 2 Corinthians 13.14 (New Revised Standard Version)