Choral Eucharist for the 1st Sunday after Christmas on 31 December 2023

Simeon the prophet speaks of 'falling and rising', a reminder that when we fall, God is present to help us rise.

Let Us Sing of Falling and Rising Again: Reflections on Luke 2.22-40

Let Us Sing of Falling and Rising Again

Reflections on Luke 2.22-40

 

RCL Christmas 1B

31 December 2023

 

Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral

New Westminster BC

 

            If you grew up singing in an Anglican church choir or attending celebrations of morning and evening prayer, then you have had heard one if not all of the Evangelist Luke’s great gifts to Christians – the Song of Zechariah, the Song of Mary and the Song of Simeon.  Over nineteen centuries of Christian devotion, these songs have found a permanent place in our services of daily prayer, the eucharist in some traditions and, more recently, the funerals of the faithful.  All three songs celebrate the world being turned upside down by God in the coming into time and history of the Word made flesh, Jesus, son of Mary, son of Joseph, son of God.

 

            In our tradition the Song of Zechariah is the gospel canticle for morning prayer and the Song of Mary the gospel canticle for evening prayer.  Simeon’s song is more often used at Compline, the night prayer that brings our day to an end in faith and trust in God’s care and compassion for us.  It exists in many translations, but let me share with you the translation from today’s reading:

 

Master, you are now dismissing your servant in peace,

according to your word,

for my eyes have seen your salvation,

which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,

a light for revelation to the gentiles

and for glory to your people Israel. [1]

 

In one continuous Greek sentence are packed some important messages for you and me today as we come to the end of the year and to the end of my time with you as Vicar.

 

            ‘Master, you are dismissing your servant in peace.’  When these words are heard in the context of today’s gospel, we are immediately led to think that Simeon is speaking of his approaching death.  After all, he was promised that he would not die until he saw the Messiah.  But let me offer you a different interpretation.  Simeon is not speaking about his death but about the completion of his mission.  Our word ‘dismiss’ comes from the Latin word meaning to be sent or to be commissioned.  God entrusted Simeon with a mission of waiting for the coming of the Messiah and to be among the first to see that God’s promise was going to be fulfilled.  Now that he has seen Jesus, Simeon has been dismissed honourably from his first mission, waiting for the Messiah, and now begins his next mission, sharing the good news that his waiting has not been in vain.

 

            ‘(For) my eyes have seen your salvation.’  Never forget that salvation means human beings fully alive and able to become who they truly are creatures made in God’s image and called to live in God’s likeness.  Salvation is not about being rescued, unless we think of rescue as being saved from false expectations and delusions about what it means to be stewards of creation and living in harmony with God, with one another and with our own souls, minds and bodies.  Like Simeon, you and I have seen God’s salvation in the lives of our families, our friends, ourselves.  We know that the world as God wishes it to be is not beyond our reach if we ‘think globally and act locally’.  

 

‘(A) light for revelation to the gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.’  We who follow the way of Jesus are light to our neighbours.  Our light may not always shine as brightly or as clearly as we might wish, but our life and witness wherever the followers of the way of Christ gather can bring the promise of help, of hope and of home to those who are on the edges.  Our commitment to the work God has entrusted to us here brings ‘glory’ to all people of faith, especially in a world where many doubt the value of faith.

 

Just after Simeon proclaims his song, he also speaks words that some have interpreted as being somewhat sinister:  “Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, ‘This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul, too.’” [2]  It is not so much sinister as truthful.  We proclaim a gospel that speaks of the world as it is being turned upside down to become the world as God intends it to be.  There are many in our world who will find this message a threat.  To be fully truthful, the gospel is a message that unsettles me as I begin my retirement with a degree of confidence, comfort and security that many here in Canada do not share.  What cost am I willing to pay so that no one is hungry, no one unsafely housed, no one at risk of violence or medical distress?

 

But I am struck by the phrase ‘the falling and the rising’.  We are used to hearing ‘the rise and fall’.  But here Simeon reverses this expected order.  The message of the gospel does cause many to fall – we fall from our illusions about the world, we fall from our self-pride and self-centredness, we fall from our failure to see the dignity and humanity of others who differ from us.  Our falling takes many forms.  But our falling is the moment when the possibility of rising becomes real.  Our failures, our disappointments, our frustrations are doors that open onto ‘a better homeland’.  As one of our prayers of thanksgiving puts it, “We thank you . . . for those disappointments and failures that lead us to acknowledge our dependence on you alone.’ [3]

When I preached my first sermon here on Canada Day 2018, I quoted from a song from the late Canadian folk singer, Stan Rogers, his ballad ‘The Mary Ellen Carter’.  If you don’t know the song, it’s a story of a group of men trying to raise the sunken ship that had been a part of their lives and had been abandoned by its owners.  The final chorus echoes Simeon’s message about falling and rising.

Rise again, rise again – 

though your heart it be broken

And life about to end

No matter what you’ve lost, 

be it a home, a love, a friend.  

Like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.

 

            Friends, as God dismisses me from my mission among, I go in peace.  I go in peace because I have seen God’s salvation alive and well here among us.  I go in peace, because I know that we have been and will continue to be a light in this neighbourhood and Diocese and that our ministry here does honour to our forebears who begin this congregation almost one hundred and sixty-five years ago.  I go in peace because none of our falls can compare to our risings.  We shall rise because the work God has begun in this congregation is not yet finished.  And we shall grow in wisdom and in favour with God and with our community.

 

---

[1] Luke 22.29-32 (NRSVue).

 

[2] Luke 2.34 (NRSVue).

 

[3] The Book of Alternative Services 1985, 129.

 

On the Road to Bethlehem -- Yet Again

 On the Road to Bethlehem – Yet Again

Reflections on Luke 2.1-14

 

Christmas Eve

24 December 2023

 

Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral

New Westminster BC

 

            One of the last photographs I took of our Shetland Sheepdog, Seren, was in April of this year as he and I prepared to take our usual walk in McKittrick Park across from our home in North Delta.  He’s looking at me with an expression he used at the beginning of every walk, an expression which says, ‘Let’s get a move on.  I’ve got places to smell, squirrels to control and a world to organize.’

            Seren belonged to that group of creatures for whom the journey is more important than the destination.  This meant that he and I had totally different ideas about what the purpose of a walk around the park was.  It took years of training to stop Seren from visiting every tree in the park, but it was impossible to prevent him from stopping at certain regular places on the trail.  It did no good for me to say silly human things like, ‘It’s the same tree as yesterday!’  Seren would just look at me with a look that said, ‘It’s sad that you live in such a limited sensory world.’

            Every once and a while I would remember on our walks that I actually do enjoy travelling and I admit to having a certain wanderlust.  I’ve been fortunate to have had a career that has taken me to places I would never have thought I’d visit – the Solomon Islands, Myanmar, Aboriginal communities in Canada and the United States.  So, if Seren wanted to check out a particular spot, who was I to deny him the pleasure?

            I’m not so sure that Mary and Joseph would share Seren’s philosophy of travelling.  They faced dangers and hardships that few if any of us have.  Their journey to Bethlehem was not one of their own choosing but an exercise of imperial power and coercion.  Perhaps they were part of a larger company that included members of their extended family, but the story of their arrival in Bethlehem suggests that is was sauve qui peut – everyone for themselves – to find food and shelter in a small town now swollen with unwanted people from throughout the Jewish territories.

            Each year at this time we retrace their journey.  We mark each stage by singing familiar carols that cast their journey in a somewhat romantic light coloured by our memories of other Christmas Eves in our lives.  But this year we tell the familiar story in the shadow of the atrocities committed by Hamas and the staggering consequences on the civilian population of Gaza by the Israeli military response to those atrocities.  Being on the road to Bethlehem tonight is not about a pleasurable road trip but about the flight of thousands throughout the world to find safety from violence.

            Here we are, disciples of the Holy Child, on the road with the Holy Family.  We, like Mary and Joseph, and millions of others over the centuries are seeking that ‘better country’ God has promised us.  We are ‘strangers and foreigners on the earth’ for we are seeking a homeland, ‘a better homeland, that is, a heavenly one’.

            The heavenly homeland we are seeking is not some dwelling place in the clouds.  Our heavenly homeland is an earth where every human being is free to become the person God means them to become.  Our heavenly homeland is an earth where no one has to flee for safety and where we are free to enjoy every step on the journey of life and to savour every stopping place.

            Over the past five and a half years I have been drawn closer to Pacific Immigrant Resources Society, one of our community partners.  Each week refugee and immigrant women and their children gather in the Parish Hall to study English, to learn about Canadian culture and to heal from the journeys that brought them here.  I’ve made a point to be a visible but discreet Christian presence given that many come from places where Christians are a minority who keep a low profile.  Every time I see these women and their children, I see a Holy Family seeking shelter and I have an opportunity to be the innkeeper who, on the behalf of our Parish, can say, ‘There is plenty of room in this inn for you.  Come in and find help, hope and home.’

            All of us are on the road to our Bethlehem, our better homeland.  Not all of us have the privilege of enjoying every stage and stop on our way.  Our annual commemoration of the Holy Family’s journey to their Bethlehem renews our commitment to helping, in whatever way we can and by whatever resources we have at our disposal, others reach their destinations in safety and well-being.  We’re all on the road – yet again – may we all reach the destination God is leading us towards soon.

            

 

 

Midweek Eucharist for Advent Ember Day I on 20 December 2023

God's mission, begun in creation, renewed in the incarnation and empowered by the Spirit, continues in us. There is no back-up plan.

A View from the Vicar for Tuesday, 19 December 2023

Have you ever wondered whether the Archangel Gabriel had visited any other women before Mary and asked them the same question only to be told 'no'? I'm not trying to upset orthodoxy, but I am hoping that my question will lead us to grasp that God works with us to achieve God's purposes. Our 'yes' to God is always to question that we are capable of answering.

Martyrs and Hungry Lions: Reflections on John 1.6-8, 19-28

 

RCL Advent 3B

17 December 2023

 

Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral

New Westminster BC

 

            More than forty years ago I accompanied a group of students from Regis High School, the Jesuit boys’ school where I taught for a year before going to seminary, on a white-water rafting trip down the Yampa and Green Rivers from northwestern Colorado into northeastern Utah.  Although I had turned in my resignation, my contract was still in effect, so the Principal invoked the contract for two reasons:  he needed another ‘responsible adult’ and I had made the trip some years earlier as an Explorer Scout.

            Our trip was made under the auspices of Outward Bound, an American non-profit committed to helping young people learn about and appreciate the outdoors.  Our three guides were quite different people.  One guide and I realized that we had might eight years prior as participants in a state leadership program for high school students.  Another guide rarely spoke but was a master chef, so his cooking endeared him to the boys.  The third guide made it known on the first night of our trip, before we had even started down the river, that he was a firm atheist and that he wanted no religious stuff from our group, especially from the three adults, two of whom were Jesuits and one an Anglican on his way to seminary.  At one point during the trip, probably when one or other of the boys was complaining about something, he memorably said, ‘No one likes martyrs but hungry lions.’

            Over these years I have had many an occasion when his words have come back to me.  I know that I’ve used with my children at various points during their lives.  There have more than one committee meeting, whether at VST or the Diocese or the national church, when I’ve quoted him.  It usually has the desired effect of causing some welcome laughter and lightness or the recipient slipping into silence while muttering one or two choice words under their breath.

            But the irony is this:  All of us who are here today are martyrs.  And, as martyrs, we live in a world filled with hungry lions. 

            After all, the word ‘martyr’ is the Greek word for ‘witness’.  No more and no less.  Over the centuries it has come to mean someone who has sacrificed their lives or their livelihoods or both for a cause or a belief.  This evolving change in meaning has led many of us to step back from the word and what it has come to mean, but it is precisely the word that we should embrace as a description of a key dimension of what it means to live as a disciple of Jesus.  We are martyrs for Jesus; we are baptized to bear witness ‘by word and example (to) the good news of God in Jesus’.

            We are martyrs for Jesus when we dare to share our faith with those whose faith is waning or with those whose faith is in values that do not ‘respect the dignity of every human being’ or with those who have no faith at all and are wandering in a wilderness of one sort or another.  I think that it is true to say that Anglicans are often reticent to talk about our faith and how it sustains us in our daily lives and work.  I know that I have had clever things to say about Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons or street evangelists, but I must admit to a certain ‘holy envy’ in their willingness to bear witness and to face the teeth of the hungry lions of public scorn or indifference.  At least, I say to myself, they are willing to take the risk.

            We are martyrs for Jesus when we dare to share our faith by choosing to live and work in ways that others find curious or inconvenient.  I am certain that there are some in our neighbourhood who wish we did not welcome the homeless and the marginally housed here at the Cathedral.  There are times that I hope not to find someone camping in front of the doors to the Cathedral or to the Hall.  But they are here, and we bear witness by our actions that they are surely God’s beloved.  We are now and will continue to be a place where refugee and immigrant women and their children come to learn how to be full participants in Canadian society. We are now and will continue to be a place where people seeking freedom from addictions of one sort or another gather for support and wisdom.  And the hungry lions of electrical bills, gas bills and building maintenance will keep nipping at us saying, ‘Don’t be so generous!’, while our better angels will say, ‘How can we make room for our neighbours?’

            Today Ella will commit herself to being a martyr for Jesus.  She does so as someone who is old enough to know that being a Christian is somewhat counter-cultural, especially being a Christian following the Anglican way of Christian discipleship.  She will face many hungry lions in the days ahead.  But she will not face them alone nor will she face them unprepared and unarmed.  No disciple of Jesus is alone; we stand with one another, and we are upheld by the Holy Spirit who guides our words and actions.  No disciple of Jesus goes forth unprepared and unarmed; we carry the memories of generations who have served and whose examples show us how to act in our own times and places.

            It’s true that no one likes martyrs but hungry lions.  Yet it must be said that not all the hungry lions are trying to silence us.  Some of those hungry lions are people who are desperate to find something worth believing in, something worth working towards, something worth giving one’s heart, mind, soul and strength to. 

            Friends, the spirit of the Lord is upon us and has anointed us to bear witness, to be martyrs, who bring good news to the oppressed, who bind up the broken-hearted, who comfort all who mourn and who proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.  We may well be gnawed by hungry lions, but we shall surely be welcomed by others who seek the banquet we are called to share.

Wednesday Eucharist for the Week of Advent 2 on 13 December 2023

A recent e-mail post from the Alban Institute focused on the need for clergy self-care. One of the articles stressed the importance of intentional breathing, e.g., breathe in to the count of four and breathe out to the count of six or breathe in to the count of four, hold to the count of seven and then breathe out to the count of eight. When Jesus invites us to come to him and rest, he is inviting us to breathe deeply and intentionally the Spirit, the Life-Giver, the Advocate and the Guide. It's an invitation to reject the urgency this time of year seeks to impose upon us and to accept the serenity and sanctity of life God offers us.

A View from the Vicar for Tuesday, 12 December 2023

On the 3rd Sunday of Advent we hear John the Baptist describe himself as a voice in the wilderness. We Christians are also voices in the wilderness of this world. We may sometimes wonder whether our voices are heard, but they are.

Choral Eucharist for the 2nd Sunday of Advent on 10 December 2023

This time of year is full of advertising messages intended to create urgency and perhaps even anxiety on our part that we might miss the 'sale of the century' or such like. But the message of John the Baptist comes to us as a genuine call for renewal and for reconsideration of our lives in preparation for the coming day of the Lord. It is a persistent call that comes to us in many ways.

Midweek Eucharist for the Feast of Nicholas on 6 December 2023

For many Canadian Christians the feast of Nicholas has been an occasion for conflicting emotions -- the joy of the coming Nativity in contrast to the tragedy of the Ecole Polytechnique in Montréal in 1989.  Perhaps remembering the murder of the women might lead us to remember a saint who sought to care for all in his diocese, especially those at risk of exploitation, and who embodied as best as he could the agapē of God in Christ.

A View from the Vicar for Tuesday, 5 December 2023

Prophets are gardeners who dig at the roots of the human condition in order to restore us to our right mind.

Choral Eucharist for the 1st Sunday of Advent on 3 December 2023

Christians are always longing for the fingerprints of the hidden God who has shaped, is shaping and will shape this world into the promise of God's reign of justice and peace.

Finding Signs of the Hidden God: Reflections on Isaiah 64.1-9

Finding Signs of the Hidden God

Reflections on Isaiah 64.1-9

 

RCL Advent 1B

3 December 2023

 

Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral

New Westminster BC

 

            From an early age I have been interested in archaeology.  I think that it is something my father encouraged by our frequent trips to the plains of east of Colorado Springs and to the open park areas of the Front Range of the Rockies to the west of us.  We would spend hours searching the ground for the various stone relics of the Aboriginal peoples who have inhabited those lands for at least ten thousand years or more. 

 

Then there was the trip to Mesa Verde in the southwestern corner of Colorado to visit the cliff dwellings of the Anasazi, one of the peoples who learned to live with the land and then, when the land could no longer support them, disappeared into the surrounding tribes.  I remember stopping briefly just before we left the park.  We walked around to stretch our legs before the three-and-a-half-hour drive home.  On the ground I found some potsherds in the distinctive black-on-white geometric pattern of Anasazi pottery.  I brought them home only to learn that I had committed a federal offence.  Because I had found them on federal park land, I was obliged to report the find to the park rangers.  

 

Stone implements such as arrowheads, scrapers and knives as well as pottery are intensely personal.  They are not the product of a standardized industrial process.  Each one, even when it follows a pattern established for generations, is unique.  I’m sure that when each piece was new and shown to someone, they would say, ‘Oh, I know who made that!’  But to us, living thousands of years later, these objects remain anonymous.

 

In recent decades archaeologists working in northern Scotland excavating one of the oldest inhabited settlements found a piece of pottery.  At first the potsherd was added to a pile of other pieces.  But later, when one of the archaeologists was looking more closely at the piece through a magnifying glass, they made a moving discovery – the thumbprint of the potter.  Here, five thousand years after it was made, was evidence of the creator of this piece.  It was no longer anonymous; there was a person.

 

Those who have been studying Anasazi pottery have made similar discoveries.  These discoveries have revealed that pottery, originally thought to be the preserve of women, was primarily the work of men.  By the end of the Anasazi it was a work equally shared by men, women and young people.  All this was revealed by the study of the fingerprints, the last evidence of the people who lived and died in the arid lands of the Four Corners region of the American Southwest.

 

Archaeologists commit themselves to finding signs of the hidden people whose artifacts remain after thousands of years.  Yet they have to reconcile themselves to the fact that they will never learn the identities of the people whose work lies on the laboratory worktable before them or under the microscopes that bring the tangible signs of the hands of living people into the light of day.

 

In some ways people of faith are archaeologists seeking for the hidden God in the midst of all the artifacts of human life.  There are times when the search for this hidden God is more challenging than others.  When terrorists murder people in their homes and civilians are forced to flee from their homes and hospitals are unable to care for the sick and wounded, it’s not easy to find signs of the God we believe has created us in the divine image.  When we continue to wreak havoc on our planet and resist the changes that we know are necessary, it’s not easy to believe that we are made in the image of God and that we’ve been pleased with ‘memory, reason and skill’.

 

For those who first heard the words of the prophet Isaiah that we have just heard, God seemed to be well and truly hidden.  After decades of exile they were returning to Judah and to the city of Jerusalem.  They were surrounded by the physical ruins of their homeland and by the hostility of the various peoples who had benefitted from the destruction of Israel and Judah almost a century before.  Their religious institutions, the spiritual framework that sustained their identity, were in tatters and many of the people were ignorant of the Scriptures and traditions that gave structure to the community.

 

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence . . . to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence! . . . But you were any, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed.  (Isaiah 64.1, 2b, 5b NRSVue)

 

            But we know from the books of Ezra and Nehemiah that the people began to find the fingerprints of the hidden God and were able to reconstruct their lives.  We know from the book of Ruth that the people learned that the ‘foreigner’, the ‘other’, could be as faithful a witness to the hidden God as someone steeped in the tradition and descended from Abraham and Sarah.  

 

Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.  (Isaiah 64.9 NRSVue)

 

            All around us, my friends, are the fingerprints of the hidden God who is revealed to us in Jesus of Nazareth and through the Spirit of wisdom.  Each one of us is a fingerprint of the hidden God who is still shaping the world into the vessel of justice, kindness and humility that it is intended to be.  Our stories of confidence and hope in times of adversity are fingerprints of the hidden God who began this work by taking the risk to create humanity in the divine image with the power to be both life-giving and life-denying.  

 

            This Advent begins with our community on the cusp of new chapters in the ministry God has entrusted to us in this place and in these times.  Sometimes our neighbours will need us to reveal the signs of God’s presence and activity in a world that often conceals that presence and activity under the shadows of our own life-denying rather than life-giving choices.  So let us begin this new year by re-committing ourselves to discerning the fingerprints of God in this precious clay vessel that is our world.  Those fingerprints found impressed upon our lives and the lives of so many other disciples of Jesus are signs that God has not so hidden from our daily sight that we cannot catch glimpses of the love that will not let us go.  We are, after all, the work of God’s hands, hands that have left their imprint upon us and all God’s beloved.