Midweek Eucharist for the Feast of Andrew the Apostle on 29 November 2023

Poor Andrew suffered what many of us suffer -- being overlooked. He's generally thought of as the first apostle chosen by Jesus, but he's almost immediately upstaged by his brother, Simon Peter, whose many ups and downs are documented in the Gospels. Andrew remains fairly steady but whenever anyone thinks of the 'first' apostle, it's Peter that comes to mind. Being overlooked or its opposite, receiving the credit for what was really a group effort, are moments when we are reminded that we participate in God's mission not 'ours'. What's most important is that God's work is being done.

A View from the Vicar for Tuesday, 28 November 2023

On Sunday we begin a new liturgical year, the Year of Mark. Mark's gospel was written to people who were experiencing the trauma of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the exodus of Jews and Christians to places of greater safety. It was a frightening time. End times, the eschaton, tends to be a frightening time. But we are not called to be people of fear. Rather we are people of hope who, like the candles we light each week on the wreath, are light in the darkness even if we only enlighten a small portion of the world's shadow.

Midweek Eucharist for the Week of Pentecost 25 on 22 November 2023

In the weekday eucharistic lectionary for this day, we read from 2 Maccabees and Luke's version of the parable of the talents. Both are gruesome stories and speak of the violence that the early Christian community witnessed and experienced. For Christians such as we who live in relative peace and security, it is good for us to be reminded that there can be a cost to being a disciple and that cost is being paid by Christians in other parts of the world. Followers of other faiths are not exempt in a world where the state often demands more than what is rightfully the state's to claim.

A View from the Vicar for Tuesday, 21 November 2023

What is the Reign of Christ in a world where there are competing claims for sovereignty and conflicting loyalties on the part of every human being? For those who follow the way of Christ, who have enlightened hearts, the reign of Christ is founded on the hope of a world made truly free, on the efforts of his disciples to secure the holiness of creation and on the conviction that God is at work for us.

Choral Eucharist for the 25th Sunday after Pentecost on 19 November 2023

Waiting for the promised day of the Lord has prompted some Christians into anxiety and fixation on times and signs. Paul and Jesus both tell the disciples to take care of one another and to remain faithful and steady in the ministries God has entrusted to them.

Our End Is Our Beginning: Reflections on 1 Thessalonians 5.1-11 & Matthew 25.14-30

Our End Is Our Beginning

Reflections on 1 Thessalonians 5.1-11 & Matthew 25.14-30

 

RCL Proper 33A

19 November 2023

 

Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral

New Westminster BC

 

            Two of the more important women in my life are my maternal grandmother and my maternal great-grandmother.  I had the joy to know my grandmother face to face as a boy growing up, but of my great-grandmother, present for my birth, I have no conscious memory.  Both lived through the upheavals and conflicts of the first half of the twentieth century, events that certainly marked the ‘end of the world’ as they knew it as girls and young women.  It’s their attitudes to these earth-shaking events.

            For example, during the Blitz when bombs where falling on them all about, my great-grandmother refused to run to a bomb shelter and walked with dignity despite the explosions.  When asked why she did not run, she is supposed to have said, ‘No German shall ever see me run.’  Of my grandmother it must said that, if she had been told that the world would end in an hour, she would likely have responded, ‘Oh good, there’s time for a cup of tea.’  I hope that I’ve inherited a portion of their sangfroid, their calm and steady attitude during crises.

            We sometimes forget that the first and second generations of Christian disciples, living in the years before and after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 bce, faced their own challenges.  Two of these challenges were directly related.  Because the early Christian disciples expected Jesus to return during the lifetimes of the apostolic generation, the fact that this generation was dying posed a source of anxiety.  We hear Paul addressing this a few verses before today’s reading from his 1^st Letter to the Thessalonians:  “But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.” (1 Thessalonians 4.13-14 NRSVue)

            Their second challenge was the fear that Jesus had not yet returned.  Some Christians might have worried that they had missed the signs and become anxious about how best to prepare for an event that would bring the current world to an end.  To them Paul also writes words of reassurance:  “Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. . . .  So then let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober . . . .  For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him.  Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.” (1 Thessalonians 5.1-2, 6, 9-11 NRSVue)

            So how do we wait for the coming day of the Lord?  Well, first of all, we acknowledge that we are, as Paul might say, people who have been woken up, who have been converted to looking at the world as God looks at it.  Ours is a world filled with beauty and, as we all know too well, ugliness.  Ours is a world filled with promise and with maddening obstacle to the fulfillment of that promise.  Ours is a world filled with diversity and with forces that work night and day to create divisions by claiming that our diversity is a curse not a blessing.

            Claiming to be ‘woke’ these days is fraught with political baggage.  It’s a word that came into use among North Americans of African heritage to describe becoming aware that, despite all the rhetoric of equal opportunity and upward mobility, being of African heritage was rarely an advantage.  It meant and still means becoming aware of the real and persistent obstacles faced by people of colour to full and equal participation in the benefits and privileges of living in North America.  It’s a word that describes the pain and sometimes shame that the descendants of European settlers and immigrants experience when they wake up to these inequalities.  It’s no wonder that some of our neighbours and friends use ‘wokeness’ as a criticism, as an undesirable attitude to adopt.  It’s not a very happy experience to learn, as my family learned, that we enslaved other people despite the family myth of being enlightened New Yorkers.

            So how do we wait for the coming of the Lord?  Well, let me say that I am not suggesting any form of biblical star-gazing that seeks to identify the day, the time, the moment when the day of the Lord shall come.  Even Jesus says in the Gospel according to Matthew, “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father . . . . Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming . . . .  Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” (Matthew 24.36, 42, 44 NRSVue).   In other words, Jesus tells us that we need to be re-awakened to the presence and work of the Kingdom continually (Feasting on the Word, 735).  We need continuous conversion – continuous repentance, transformation and renewal (Feasting on the Word, 735).  Only such continuous wakefulness will allow us to “ . . . expose the powers and principalities of night and darkness and unmask the lie that all is peaceful and secure” (Feasting on the Word, 736).  One of the ‘Five Marks of Mission’ of the Anglican Communion commits all of us ‘(to) seek to transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and to pursue peace and reconciliation.”

            So how do we wait for the coming of the day of the Lord?  Well, in the spirit of my grandmother and my great-grandmother, let’s put the kettle on, make a good cup of tea and then walk calmly, steadily and with dignity into the ministries God has entrusted us to do.  

 

·      We have a ministry of care for the hungry, so we continue to provide meals and to identify how we’re going to continue these thirty years of ministry into the future.  

·      We are called to worship in Word, sacrament and prayer the joy and mystery of God’s love made known to us in Jesus of Nazareth.

·      We continue to proclaim the good news that every man, woman and child is made in the image of God, has been given gifts that help enrich and nurture the diversity of human communities.

·      We commit ourselves to learning those things that make us more able ministers of Christ – the Scriptures, Christian faith and practice, the insights of other religious traditions.

·      We care for one another and for those who are in any need or trouble.

 

We do this every day, as best as we can, walking on the path the Spirit leads us to follow.  Even as we wait for a new priest to join us, there is work to be done.  Even as we wait for years of work on property development to bear fruit, there is work to be done.  God’s promise of Christ’s return helps us to maintain our faith in the midst of hardship and uncertainty, but an even greater gift is the mutual encouragement of the community of faith as we walk the path we are called to walk (Feasting on the Word, 739).

            Friends, in the coming day of the Lord is our beginning, a beginning to be hoped for and a beginning to wish to come soon.  But, in the meantime, in the mean times, we go about the work we’ve been given to do, because with steady and faithful work five becomes ten and two becomes four.  Not a bad result.

 

 

Midweek Eucharist for the Week of Pentecost 24 on 15 November 2023

Listening to those whom we have dismissed or disliked or debated is not an easy thing to do. But it is a necessary thing to learn how to do if we want to hear all that God may be saying to us.

A View from the Vicar for Tuesday, 14 November 2023

Despite the growing pressure to enter into the frenzy that accompanies the approach of Christmas, we are exhorted by Christ to be faithful in the exercise of the responsibilities entrusted to us patiently, calmly and steadily.

Wednesday Eucharist for 8 November 2023

William James, the American philosopher, once told his nephew who had just turned twenty-one that there were only three things he needed to know: "Be kind. Be kind. Be kind." To this Paul in the Letter to the Romans would add: "And love your neighbour." In today's world where conflicts abound, imagine what a difference it would make if we all said to ourselves in every endeavour, in every relationship and in every conflict: "Be kind and love your neighbour."

A View from the Vicar for Tuesday, 7 November 2023

John Lennon's song, "Imagine', caused quite a stir in my conservative hometown when it appeared when I was in high school. As I've grown older, I've come to appreciate what I think is at the heart of his song -- imagine that what describes us does not define us. Lennon understood that without imagining a world of shared humanity there can be no hope. Where there is no hope, despair and nihilism command our allegiance and thus prevent God's children from being free.

Choral Eucharist for All Saints Sunday on 5 November 2023

On All Saints Sunday we sing a song of the saints of God -- all the ordinary people who in pursuing their lives as disciples of Jesus did their best to follow the right in their daily lives. Some of them are known, some known only to a few and some are known only to God. But all of them, past, present and future, have played their part in making the reign of God alive in their communities.

I Sing a Song of the Saints of God: Reflections on 1 John 3.1-3

 

RCL All Saints A

5 November 2023

 

Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral

New Westminster BC

 

I sing a song of the saints of God

Patient and brave and true,

Who toiled and fought and lived and died

For the Lord they loved and knew.

And one was a doctor, and one was a queen,

And one was a shepherdess on the green:

They were all of them saints of God – and I mean,

God helping, to be one too.

The Hymnal 1940

 

         One of the prevailing myths of the Anglican Communion is that you can anywhere in the Communion and pray the same prayers and sing the same hymns.  Like most myths there is an element of truth in this, but there are also significant differences between the Anglican churches throughout the world.  Sometimes the changes are subtle – a prayer worded slightly differently, a different tune to a familiar hymn.  But then there are moments when one realizes that they are not at home.

 

         I ran into this my first All Saints in Canada in 1987.  I was preparing the order of service for the Chapel of the Epiphany at Vancouver School of Theology and began looking for a hymn or two to be sung.  I was still becoming familiar with the ‘Red Book’, the 1971 hymnal of the Anglican and United Churches, but thus far I hadn’t run into any challenges.  But that day I did.  One of my favourite hymns was missing.  I looked in the 1938 ‘Blue Book’ and my hymn wasn’t there either.  What was wrong with these people?  Surely they wouldn’t have omitted ‘my’ hymn.

 

         When I began asking around, it turned out that no one other than one or two other Americans at VST knew the hymn.  We were hooped and my All Saints celebration wasn’t all that I had hoped it would be.

 

         What I love about this hymn is its sound theology.  In his letters to the early Christian churches in Asia and Greece, Paul uses the word thirty-nine times to describe the disciples of Jesus, the followers of the Way.

 

They loved their Lord so dear, so dead,

And his love made them strong,

And they followed the right, for Jesus’ sake,

The whole of their good lives long.

And one was a soldier, and one was a priest,

And one was slain by a fierce wild beast:

And there’s not any reason – no, not the least –

Why I shouldn’t be one too.

 

         We tend to think of saints in romantic and sometimes sickly sweet ways.  For example, Saint Francis whose icon we have in the Chapel is often described in ways that I call ‘ah-full’.  Saint Francis loved animals – ah, isn’t that sweet!  Saint Francis lived in holy poverty – ah, isn’t that inspiring!  But Saint Francis was more than a sweet and gentle soul.  He had a passion for the poor and gave up all his wealth to serve God.  When the crusaders invaded the Holy Land, Saint Francis travelled unprotected in the hopes of having an opportunity to preach the good news to the leaders of the Muslim kingdoms.  There was a frame of spiritual steel that was clothed by Francis’ simple habit.

 

         When I think about it, the proper way to talk about what it means to follow Jesus as the way, the truth and the life is a life-long commitment to ‘becoming’ a saint.  This is what the writer of the 1^st Letter of John has in mind when he addresses a group of early Christians who were not, to be truthful, a community at peace with one another and with God.  They were divided by competing understandings of who Jesus was and what was necessary to be faithful to him.  Some thought of themselves as ‘perfect’ and more knowledgeable than others.  But the writer, in five simple sentences, states what I believe to be our destination as followers of Jesus.

 

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.  The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.  Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed.  What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.  And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.  (1 John 3.1-3 NRSVue)

 

Friends, we are God’s children now, but what we will be is being revealed, day by day, choice by choice, prayer by prayer.  We are a ‘holy’ people, holy not because of some intrinsic sanctity that evades other people, but holy because we are following the right for Jesus’ sake. 

 

And God has shown us what is right.  It is right to do all we can to ensure that every human being is treated with dignity and respect and that we work to remove any and every obstacle that prevents any child or any adult from becoming more Christ-like in their lives. 

 

It is right to love faithfully, to love as Christ loves when he reaches out to those who may believe themselves to be unlovable, when he touches people’s physical, spiritual and emotional hurts, when he continues to love even when that love is not reciprocated.

 

It is right to live with humility in a world where humility seems to be in scarce supply.  Humility makes room for others to use their gifts, leaving us in the wings.  Humility means accepting limitations on our use of the gifts of this fragile earth, our island home.  Humility acknowledges that I cannot be fully myself unless you are free to be who you are without fear or favour.

 

Today we celebrate all the saints of God, those whose names are known and remembered through the ages, those whose names are known only to ourselves, their families and their friends, those whose names are our own.  Today we sing a song of the saints of God, past, present and future.  Today we sing a song about the persons to our right and to our left, in front of us and behind us.

 

They lived not only in ages past,

There are hundreds of thousands still,

The world is bright with the joyous saints

Who love to do Jesus’ will.

You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea,

In church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea,

For the saints of God are just folk like me,

And I mean to be one too.

All Souls Eucharist on 1 November 2023

Memory is a key dimension of being human. Memories shape us and give us wisdom to move into the future. On the Feast of All Souls we remember those whose lives have forged who we are and we give thanks.

A View from the Vicar for Tuesday, 31 October 2023

A hymn that is popular in the Episcopal Church is 'I Sing a Song of the Saints of God'. Its final verse talks about finding saints everywhere in everyday life and expresses the hope that each one of us has the potential to become a saint. This isn't a faint nor impossible hope; it's our actual vocation as disciples of Jesus.