Hear. Read. Mark. Learn. Inwardly Digest.

 

 

RCL Proper 23B

5 September 2021

 

Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral

New Westminster BC

 

            I grew up in an Anglican environment.  Often I would hear adults punctuate a point made in a conversation by saying, ‘Hear.  Read.  Mark.  Learn.  And inwardly digest.’  I understood the gist of the words even if they sounded a bit odd.  But, as all children know full well, adults do have funny ways of speaking.

 

            Then, one Sunday when I was twelve or thirteen – so it must have been the 2^nd Sunday of Advent – our priest began the eucharist by offering the following prayer:

 

Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast, the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ.  Amen.  (BCP 1928, 92)

 

I almost jumped out of my seat.  There it was, the source of those odd words I had heard so often and it was the Prayer Book!  And its message was an exhortation to pay attention to the Bible.  As I thought back to all the times I had heard the phrase used, there was a slight sense that my elders had almost been saying something blasphemous.

 

            In truth they had not been taking the name of the Prayer Book in vain; they had been applying words that had become part of their spiritual DNA to the matters of importance.  They had been doing what participating in worship is meant to do:  what we say and do in public worship is to become embedded and embodied in what we say and do in our lives outside of the formal worship of the Christian community.

 

            At the heart of the worshipping Christian community is the proclamation of the Scriptures.  It is so important that, in the Anglican tradition, we do not entrust what is to be read on a Sunday to the whim of the presider or preacher.  If worship is meant to shape our daily lives and if the Scriptures are the heart of that worship, then what Scriptures are to be read is a concern not just of the congregation but of the wider church, whether understood to be a diocese or a national church.  Our hope is that, despite the varying personalities of Anglican parishes, we are united Sunday after Sunday in our hearing the same texts so that we can be united in common witness.

 

            This morning we’ve just heard three texts that share a common thread, something that does not always happen in the lectionary for the Sundays after Pentecost.

• In Proverbs the writer, in simple and direct words, reminds us that how we respond to those who are poor is not only a matter of character but of divine concern.  
• In James the writer, in words that are painfully true in our day, declares that inequality may be a social reality, but it is not a quality of the kingdom of God as that kingdom is shown in how local Christian communities live and serve.
• In Mark the writer, describing a situation that could apply to numerous places in our world today, describes how a foreign, non-Jewish woman, three categories that should exclude her from Jesus’ mission as then understood, will not be quiet and expects Jesus to act as one who tears down the walls of division between foreigner and native, Jew and non-Jew, male and female, ‘us’ versus ‘them’ by doing what God sent him into the world to do.

 

These are the texts I entered into the draft bulletin for today; these are the texts I’ve been pondering all week; these are the texts we’ve heard.

 

            These are the texts that I had in my mind as I attend a meeting of the City of New Westminster’s Land Use and Planning Committee on Monday.  On Monday we presented our revised property development proposal made necessary by our failure to secure funding for non-market, affordable rental units, long a central component of our redevelopment plan.  When all was said and done, BC Housing was only able to fund some 20% of the units contained in the application they received for funding from the Community Housing Fund and our units weren’t in the 20%.

 

            The Land Use and Planning Committee approved the recommendations of the City Planning Staff that our application process continue forward, good news for all of us, but the Committee’s approval was not unanimous nor without questions.  Let me name three.

• How will our property re-development benefit the common good of the City?
• How will our property re-development contribute to reconciliation with the First Nations on whose traditional lands we live, work and worship?
• How will our property re-development serve the needs of families, especially younger families?

 

As I left the meeting and as I continued to hear, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest both the comments of the Committee and the Scriptures for today, it seemed and still seems to me that we are being asked by both to ‘embrace and ever hold fast’ the hope that what we are doing embodies God’s mission here on the banks of the Fraser River and in the heart of New Westminster.

 

            We all know that we live in a culture where religious communities such as ours are sometimes deemed irrelevant at best and pernicious at worst.  We respond to these attitudes by doing what we do best:  providing a holy place where people can gather to be transformed both by serving and being served so that they can then be sent out for mission.  Some will be members of our Christian community, while many others will not.  But this is what it means to be committed to the common good.

 

            We all know that our society is plagued by inequalities such as those caused by poverty, by prejudice, by structural racism, to name but a few.  Christ came to break such barriers and to bring us into that unity God meant us to share, a unity where the variety of our gifts, personal and communal, strengthen our common humanity.  How can we, as a Christian community, be an agent of reconciliation in how we move forward in the physical re-development of this property?

 

            We all know that we are surrounded by younger families who are struggling to make ends meet, whether financial or social.  I think that we all want something more than one more impersonal tower block here; we want a genuine community that cares for young and old alike.  

            We have heard the Scriptures.  We have read them.  We are marking them.  We are learning them.  We are inwardly digesting them.  And, in the weeks and months ahead, we will continue to listen to the voices of our City and to the voices of the Scriptures so that our re-development embodies what the Spirit is saying to the Church, to us here and now.