RCL Proper 16A
23 July 2023
Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral
New Westminster BC
In December of 1963 my family moved into the first and only home my parents ever owned. The house was built in 1959 to accommodate the northward expansion of Colorado Springs, the town where I spend most of my life between 1954 and 1976.
Although our house was relatively new in 1963, my father spent most of the next fifty years doing either renovating the house or repairing it. During those fifty years he redesigned thee main floor, added an extension to the rear of the house, redesigned the basement and put in what I later learned was an unauthorized second bathroom. The front and back yards were extensively landscaped, largely with volunteer labour from my friends and not-so-voluntary labour on my part. These and other smaller projects formed the renovation dimension of my father’s ‘do it yourself’ spirit.
Then there were the inevitable repairs to roofs, fences and sidewalks. There was the major water-main repair – on our side of the property line not the City’s. There was the major kitchen repair after I blew up the kitchen sink during an unauthorized experiment with an explosive device my Uncle Roy had sent when I was about twelve or thirteen.
My father loved his house, his home, and despite some grumbling about the cost of repairs, loved planning renovations and then participating in the work as much as possible. He accepted repairs as the price of home ownership and enjoyed the renovations as part of making better what was already good. He knew, as I’m sure all homeowners know, that one’s home is always a work in progress. Sometimes we renew our homes; sometimes we mend them.
Behind the story of Jacob’s vision at Bethel is a story of a man who is not heroic. Jacob has cheated his brother twice. He has deceived his father. Now he’s on the run from his truly wronged older brother. But, despite all this, he is the bearer of God’s promise to Abraham and to Isaac, a promise Jacob has obtained by less than honourable means to be sure, but the bearer of the promise nevertheless. Jacob is very must a work in progress with need both of repair and renovation.
Behind the story of the man writing to the Christians in Rome is a man with a controversial history. Saul of Tarsus, now known as Paul, was once an active persecutor of Jesus’ disciples, even tending the flung-off outer garments of those who stoned Stephen, the first martyr for Jesus, to death outside the walls of Jerusalem. Paul defied cultural barriers and evangelized non-Jews and used the homes of prominent non-Jewish women as bases of operation in various places in the eastern Mediterranean region of the Roman Empire.
Nevertheless, Paul is, as one author says, an apostle of ‘the heart set free’ (F. F. Bruce). Along with Peter, another flawed and controversial figure in the early Christian movement, Paul is one of a community of faith that will, for better and for worse, transform history to this very day. But Paul, just like Jacob, is a work in progress with need of both repair and renovation.
In Jacob and Paul we meet ourselves. All of us are works in progress living in a world which is itself a work in progress. Yet despite being works in progress in need of repair and renovation, God invites in Christ and empowers through the Spirit to participate in the work of repairing and renovating this home we call ‘earth’.
We cannot ignore nor deny the reality of suffering and imperfection in this world of ours. We cannot deny that bad things happen to good people. Over the millennia since our species gained sentience and self-awareness we have chosen various ways of understanding and living in such a world. Building upon the heritage of our Jewish forerunners, Christians have accepted that, in a world which is ‘already but not yet’ what God intends it to be, that repair and renovation are necessary.
In Christ we have chosen to repair our relationship with God, with each other and with the created order itself. Guided by the Spirit we have crafted codes of behaviour that Jesus summarized as being grounded in love of God and love of neighbour. We have delved into the mystery of divine love and found it embodied in the life and teaching of Jesus. In our times we are working to reconcile, to repair, our broken relationships with Aboriginal peoples throughout the world, with people of other faiths and none, and with our environment.
But it not enough to repair the damage. We also have to renovate, to renew, how our communities live in a world that is still becoming what God dreams it to be. Renovation often trips us up as familiar structures are replaced by new one or spaces are re-arranged.
When I was baptized seventy years ago in July 1953 in Saint Mary’s Church in Molesey, England, the Anglican Communion looked and conducted itself very differently than it does today. I will not list all the renovation work accomplished over these past seven decades, but I will say that I believe we have done good work in renewing the home we call the Anglican Church of Canada. We still have our differences just as Esau and Jacob and Peter and Paul. We are not without our flaws, our weaknesses, our moments of selfishness and short-sightedness. But God continues to give us visions of a heaven and an earth linked in a timeless dance with divine messengers ascending and descending to guide us and to carry our intercessions, thanksgivings and petitions into the presence of God.
Paul writes that “(we) know that the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labour, and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what one already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” (Romans 8.22-25 NRSVue).
Those who hope do not escape the suffering the present time. But the one who hopes may be the only one with the courage to endure the suffering the present. Patience is not acceptance of what is but lives in expectation of the future promised by God. Those who hope are inspired to work to repair and to renovate the present to build a foundation for the future. [Paraphrased from Feasting on the Word for Proper 16A]
Just as surely as God knew the flaws of Jacob and Paul, God knew their strengths. Just as surely as God knows our fears and doubts, God knows our courage and our hopes. For this place is surely holy ground, a place where God, working in us, through us and around us, is revealing the glory of a world set free to be fully alive.
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