Love Is Hard Work: Reflections on 1 Corinthians 13.1-13 (30 January 2022)

RCL Epiphany 4C

30 January 2022

 

Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral

New Westminster BC

 

            One of the downsides of being an academically trained liturgist is that I am frequently irritated by what I see on television or in films.  For example, in the film Master and Commander, set in the Napoleonic Wars, there is a scene of the captain conducting a burial at sea using The Book of Common Prayer.  The crew begin to recite the Lord’s Prayer and say, ‘Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.’  But, as I know, in the prayer book that they would be using, the phrase goes, ‘Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.’

 

            You never want to be seated next to me if the television program or film we’re watching has a wedding scene.  It never fails, especially when the scene is set it what appears to be an Anglican church, that the couple beams at each other during the exchange of the vows and says, ‘I do.’  Anglican wedding services have always asked each of the partners individually, ‘Will you give yourself . . . to love . . . , to comfort . . . , to honour and protect . . . ; and forsaking all others, to be faithful . . . so long as you both shall live?’  To this question the individual responds, ‘I will.’

 

            When the Christian community gathers to give thanks for the marriage that is taking shape and to bless the commitments and vows being made, we are not interested in whether the couple does love each other.  They probably do, especially in this moment.  What we’re interested in is whether they will love each other.  Will they continue build and strengthen their relationship and endure and persevere ‘for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish for the rest of (their) lives.’  Love, in the Christian tradition, is a choice we make each and every day, a decision to fulfill our baptismal promises in this particular and intense relationship.

 

·      Love means saying we’re sorry and repenting.

·      Love means seeking and serving Christ in the one to whom we’ve committed our life, loving them as our closest neighbour.

·      Love means striving for justice and peace in our own household by respecting the dignity of those to whom we are most closely bound.

 

Love means this and so many other things.  Love is more than a feeling; love is a choice, a verb of action, more than some cozy sensation akin to sitting in front of a fire on a cold winter’s day with a warm beverage, more than a romantic sentiment on a greeting card.  Love is hard work.

 

            That love is hard work is, I believe, at the heart of Paul’s famous ‘hymn to love’.  We hear it read at weddings, portions printed in greeting cards and in other media.  For so many people it’s become a kind of ode to romantic love, something humans often do when we want to tame something we realize may actually demand a great deal of us.  And Paul does not mince words in describing how hard the work of love can be.

 

            Think of all the things that Paul says are not love:  impatience, unkindness, envious, boastful, arrogant, rude.  When I look at that list and then look closely at my own life, I already feel a bit overwhelmed.  I can hear the people in Corinth, after they heard these words, either hanging their heads in shame or sputtering defensively about all the times that they think Paul has been impatient or unkind or envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.  After all, that’s what we’re tempted to do when someone holds up a mirror and shows us how we are seen by others. 

 

            But there is good news here as well.  Paul reminds us that we are all works in progress.  This is not an excuse to continue to shirk our responsibility to love others and ourselves as God has loved us in Christ, but a reminder of our human limitations even as we await the fulfillment of God’s promises in the age to come.  I find Paul’s reminder helps me as a tool of self-reflection by taking the risk of delving into why I’m impatient or unkind or envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.  For example, I tend to envious of what I perceive as the advantages of others when I am seemingly blind to the advantages and gifts that have come to me, unexpectedly and undeservedly.  I tend to be impatient when other people seem to refuse stubbornly to look at the world as I see it – how rude!

 

            Certainly two years of a pandemic has stressed our ability to love as Christ loved us and as Paul exhorts us to love.  For some of us our resources of good will have been seriously drawn down.  For others of us we protest perceived wrongs and injustices rather than acknowledge that we do not live in a perfect world, and we are not led by perfect leaders.  Perhaps more ominously, we seek scapegoats to blame for all our perceived wrongs and purposely hide all our mirrors so that we can avoid real self-examination.  Just like the people of Nazareth are outraged when Jesus tells them that his ministry leads him beyond the confines of his hometown and province and into the wider world of non-Jews, women and others who are not socially acceptable folk.

 

            Love, the kind of love God shows to us in the creation of the universe, in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, in the renewing and life-giving power of the Holy Spirit, never ends because God’s work is not yet finished.  You and I, as imperfect as we are, are agents of that work in this time and place.  From time to time we even catch a glimpse of ourselves as God is leading us to become:  icons that are not perfect but faithful representations of the world as it can be, not just in some unknown future, but here and now.  Love is hard work, but it is the only work worth doing. 

Today in Our Hearing: Reflections on Luke 4.14-21

 

Today in Our Hearing

Reflections on Luke 4.14-21

 

RCL Epiphany 3C

23 January 2022

 

Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral

New Westminster BC

 

            During my first year in seminary I was transformed by being introduced to the Jewish Scriptures.  Our professor, Father Joseph Hunt, worked hard to lead us out of the typical Christian view of the so-called ‘Old Testament’ as a lengthy introduction to the ‘real’ Word of God found in the Gospels and apostolic writings into an understanding of the richness of the Scriptures as Jesus and the first Christians knew them and treasured them.

 

            I remember vividly one occasion in that transformation.  We had travelled into Milwaukee with Father Hunt to worship at a local synagogue.  The building had originally been a theatre, so the seats sloped down towards the central platform where the service was led.  At one point during the service I tried to find a place to put down the Siddur, the Jewish prayer book, I’d been given when we entered.  There weren’t any book racks on the seats.  I was sitting on an aisle, so I put my book down on the step that was almost level with my seat.

 

            It couldn’t have been more than a minute or so before I felt a gentle touch on my shoulder.  As I turned to see who had touched me, my prayer book appeared in the hand of the older gentleman who was sitting directly behind me.  As I took the book, he gently and very kindly said to me, ‘We do not put God’s Word on the floor.’  He smiled as one might smile at a well-meaning but not particularly observant young student – which I was – and we returned to our prayers.

 

            Since that day I have never knowingly put a hymnal, a prayer book or a Bible on the floor since.  I’ve been known to juggle books on my lap or slip them beside me on the chair but never on the floor.

 

            It’s not always easy for Christians to embrace this veneration of books that bear our sacred texts.  In Jewish congregations there’s even a special feast that comes in the fall, Simchat Torah, literally ‘rejoicing in the Torah’.  On that evening the Torah scrolls are brought out their tabernacles and carried through the congregation with singing and dancing.  People will kiss the tips of their fingers, touch the scrolls and then kiss their fingers again as the scrolls pass by them.  It’s a celebration that the annual cycle of readings from the Torah has come to an end and a new one is about to begin.  Imagine if we, on the Sunday before the beginning of Advent, were to carry the Bible around the Cathedral, singing and dancing, as we celebrate the end of this year’s lectionary cycle in anticipation of the new one that will shortly begin.  I sometimes do imagine it.

 

            When Nehemiah, Ezra and the other leaders read the Torah to the gathered assembly of the returned exiles in Jerusalem, they were renewing the people’s knowledge of God’s promises after decades of exile in Babylon.  The people were not hearing some ancient and irrelevant texts of interest only to a limited few.  They were hearing God speak to them afresh and they wept as it entered their hearts, minds and souls.

 

            When Jesus read from the prophet Isaiah in the synagogue in Nazareth, he was most likely reading the passage appointed for that Sabbath’s service, the lectionary text for the day.  Everyone had heard these words before, but they were still expectant.  They knew this hometown boy was more than he seemed.  And he didn’t disappoint them:  ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ (Luke 4.21)  ‘Today,’ Jesus says to them, ‘today God’s promise of renewal and reconciliation and restoration has begun.  Right here.  Right now.’

 

            What Jesus’ audience in Nazareth did not know on that Sabbath is what we have come to know:  God’s promised renewal, reconciliation and restoration is a work in progress, something that some biblical scholars have called ‘the already but not yet’.  But, after all these years and after hearing all these Scriptures more times than we can remember, we may not be as expectant nor as hopeful as the returning exiles in Jerusalem or the occupation-weary Jews of Nazareth.  After two years of this pandemic, we’ve all grown weary and may sometimes feel as if we’re just going through the motions while we await some liberating word from our provincial and federal medical authorities.

 

            God’s promises may not yet have been fully fulfilled in our hearing, but there are already signs that God is accomplishing that which the Scriptures proclaim.

·      Good news is being proclaimed to the poor, whether they are hungry for food and in need of clothing or they are hungry for faith and in need of hope.

·      God is liberating us from our captivity to a disregard for this ‘fragile earth, our island home’ and from a narrow view of who are our sisters and brothers.

·      God is opening the eyes of many to see God’s work in the world and giving us courage to speak of what we see to those who are not sure.

·      Despite our disappointments and our doubts we catch glimpses of God’s favour, God’s graciousness and compassion, peeking out in the most unexpected places.

Today the Scriptures are being fulfilled in our hearing—for those who have ears to hear, hearts to love, minds to ponder, hands to serve.

 

            Forty years ago, Bishop Bill Frey handed me this Bible both when I was ordained to the transitional diaconate and when I was ordained to the presbyterate.  I’m pretty sure that many of you have one of these in your own homes, perhaps one given to you on your own special occasion.  When I pick it up, I feel its life and the potential the words it contains have to empower us to do ‘more than we can ask or imagine’.  Every time you and I open it, it is as if we are in the synagogue at Nazareth and the attendant has handed it to us.  Every Sunday or any other occasion when the reader stands at the lectern, all around us, perhaps most of all, within us, are hearts and minds and souls waiting expectantly for the promises to be fulfilled.

 

            These promises have already been fulfilled in our hearing; of that I am certain.  But may God grant that they be fulfilled in their completeness very soon, for we are all waiting and hoping for that day when ‘we and all (God’s) children shall be free, and the whole world live to praise (God’s) name.’  Amen.

HTC Breakfast Grant Video FINAL

Where Are We Going? Reflections for Epiphany Sunday 2022

2 January 2022 

Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral

New Westminster BC

 

         When the pandemic began, many of the continuing education programs for clergy were cancelled.  In the time between these programs shutting down and our discovery of how to use on-line technology more effectively, I relied on several websites that send out regular e-newsletters with articles and suggested books to read.  It was through one of these websites that I became aware of a book with an intriguing title, How to Lead When You Don’t Know Where You’re Going by Susan Beaumont.

 

         The title intrigued me because, quite frankly, I spent a fair portion of 2020 and 2021 asking that very question:  Where are we going?  On the one hand, I could see and have seen how we have responded to the restrictions of the pandemic by improving our on-line presence and using Zoom for small worship gatherings, meetings and educational programming.  It was and still is clear to me that this is how things are going to be for the foreseeable future.

 

         On the other hand, I am still pondering where we’re going as a congregation.  We’ve seen recent progress on our property redevelopment application, but there’s still a ways to go before shovels are put into the ground and we move out of the Cathedral during construction of the tower next door and the restoration of the Cathedral itself.  COVID has kept many of us physically separated from one another, so it’s not so easy to gauge how people are feeling about our ministry here in the downtown core of New Westminster.  New people have joined us and elders have left us.

 

         For the magi they had a guiding star that led them to Bethlehem and to the young child upon whom the future would weigh so heavily.  True, they brought him gifts associated with royalty, but even the magi could not have imagined what the child’s future would be.  Only a dream sent to Joseph prevents Jesus from becoming one of the casualties of Herod’s paranoid rage when he sends soldiers to kill all the male children two years and younger.  I can imagine Joseph and Mary asking themselves as they fled to Egypt, ‘Where are we going?  What will happen next?’

 

         For the writer of the Letter to the Ephesians, a similar question weighs on his mind.  He is writing in a time of conflict within the early Jesus movement.  The conflict centres around what it means to be ‘chosen’.  There are those members of the movement, some Jews, some non-Jews, who believe that to be ‘chosen’ means to have a privileged position in the movement and that others need to conform to the standards and practices of the ‘chosen’.  It’s not so unusual a position for privileged individuals or groups to take.  Throughout human history we’ve seen racism, sexism, religious fundamentalism, ethno-centrism, nationalism – whatever ‘-ism’ we care to name – try to impose itself on others and suppress the glorious diversity of humanity as intended by God.

 

         But this is not the understanding of ‘chosen’ that the writer of Ephesians believes to be at the heart of the good news of God in Jesus of Nazareth.  In Jesus God has revealed a mystery that has been making itself evident since the creation:  that every human being has been made in the image of God, that every human being has been called to grow into the likeness of God, that every human being has been given gifts to be used in building an inclusive, diverse and united humanity.

 

         This is a grand vision and a difficult one for any single human being to fulfill by themselves.  But the writer of Ephesians dares to write to his audience words that challenge any narrow sense of ‘chosen-ness’ they may have:  ‘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‘ (Ephesians 3.10).

 

         By ‘the church’ the writer does not mean some abstract idea of ‘church’.  He means the real communities of Jesus’ disciples, wherever they are to be found, who respond to God’s call to gather and to work for the achieving of God’s purposes, ‘the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things‘ (Ephesians 3.9).  In ways that we are still trying to fathom, we have been ‘chosen’ to bring God’s plan into the real times and the real places and the real circumstance of human beings.

 

         Frederick Buechner, the American theologian, essayist and novelist writes in The Alphabet of Grace,

 

I say that feet are very religious too . . . . I say that if you want to know who you are, if you are more than academically interested in that particular mystery, you could do a lot worse than look to your feet for an answer . . . . Since the possibilities for drawing back seem to be infinite, you are, in your quest to see yourself whole, doomed always to see infinitely less than what there will always remain to see. Thus, when you wake up in the morning, called by God to be a self again, if you want to know who you are, watch your feet. Because where your feet take you, that is who you are.

 

Our feet, as a congregation, as a gathering of the disciples of Jesus in these times, in this place, in these circumstances, are firmly planted in the needs, concerns and wants of New Westminster.  It is on this plot of land, one hundred and sixty-one years ago, that the first church was built and, two fires later, where this building in which we now worship arose from the ashes.  It says something about us that we did not move on but re-built twice, here overlooking Columbia Street and the Fraser River.

 

         So, where are we going?  Several times, in different ways, I’ve told public groups, city staff and elected officials that we’re going nowhere.  We are here for a reason and that reason is to bear witness to the three truths I mentioned earlier:

 

·      that every human being has been made in the image of God,

·      that every human being has been called to grow into the likeness of God, and

·      that every human being has been given gifts to be used in building an inclusive, diverse and united humanity.

 

         How we will accomplish this over the coming years is still unfolding.  Accomplishing our work will require every one of the gifts that God has given to each and every member of this congregation.

 

·      In the coming year we must restore confidence in the safety of our place of worship and gathering.

·      In the coming year we must communicate to the wider public and to our City why the re-development of our Hall and the restoration of our Cathedral is not just for the benefit of the ‘chosen’ few but for all those who rely on our physical resources to shape life-giving community.

·  In the coming year we must to do our part to participate in genuine reconciliation with the Aboriginal communities on whose land this building was built.

·      In the coming year we must continue to grow in our understanding of our faith and how each one of us witnesses to the restoring, healing and renewing love of God we have known and know in Jesus.

 

         So, where are we going?  We’re on a road that leads to the fulfillment of God’s promises to us and to all creation.  It’s not always an easy road to follow, but, like all difficult journeys, it is a journey that is always best when travelled in the company of friends who share a common vision and have their eyes fixed on a guiding star, a light that enlightens all peoples, always leading us onwards to that perfect day.